Read The Man Who Saved the Union for Free Online

stand and discovered a larger number of Mexicans arrayed for battle. “Our wagons were immediately parked, and Gen. Taylor marched us up towards them,” Grant wrote Julia. “When we got in range of their artillery they let us have it right and left.” The first cannonballs fired at the Americans did no damage. “They would strike the ground long before they reached our line, and ricocheted through the tall grass so slowly that the men would see them and open ranks and let them pass,” Grant wrote. As the Americans drew nearer to the Mexicans, however, the firing grew more dangerous. Taylor ordered the American artillery to return fire. “Every moment we could see the charges from our pieces cut a way through their ranks making a perfect road,” Grant recorded. “But they would close up the interval without showing signs of retreat.”
    The Mexican artillery and small arms fire eventually took a toll. “Although the balls were whizzing thick and fast about me, I did not feel a sensation of fear until nearly the close of firing,” Grant wrote Julia. “A ball struck close by me, killing one man instantly. It knocked Capt. Page’s under jaw entirely off and broke in the roof of his mouth, and knocked Lt. Wallen and one sergeant down besides.”
    Dusk brought the battle to an end, with the Mexicans falling back. The Americans counted their modest casualties—nine dead, fewer than fifty wounded—and estimated the greater losses on the Mexican side. Grant and the others congratulated themselves on surviving their first action and prepared to resume the fight the next day.
    In the morning, though, they discovered that the Mexicans had abandoned the field. Grant and the others for the first time witnessed the aftermath of battle. “It was a terrible sight to go over the ground…,” Grant wrote Julia, “and see the amount of life that had been destroyed. The ground was literally strewed with the bodies of dead men and horses.”
    Taylor sent scouts to find the Mexican army. Thick chaparral blocked the way, and the scouts advanced with care. They spotted the Mexicans beyond a series of ponds at Resaca de la Palma. The Mexican army from the day before had been augmented by troops from Matamoros, and theentire force had drawn up a defensive line behind the ponds. The American scouts engaged the Mexicans from a distance and sent word back to the main force.
    Taylor ordered his army forward. The captain of Grant’s company had gone with the scouts, leaving Grant in command of the unit—“an honor and responsibility I thought very great,” he wrote. As the army made contact with the Mexicans, Grant’s company was on the American right, and he led his company through the bushes wherever an opening appeared. “At last I got pretty close up without knowing it,” he explained. “The balls commenced to whistle very thick overhead, cutting the limbs of the chaparral right and left. We could not see the enemy, so I ordered my men to lie down, an order that did not have to be enforced.” Gradually Grant realized that the Mexicans were firing not at his unit but at some troops behind them, and he managed to extricate his men to better ground.
    Meanwhile the American left had forced the Mexicans back, and the entire Mexican line began to crumple. “Our men continued to advance and did advance in spite of their shots, to the very mouths of the cannon, and killed and took prisoner the Mexicans with them, and drove off with their own teams, taking cannon ammunition and all to our side,” Grant told Julia. “In this way nine of their big guns were taken and their own ammunition turned against them.”
    Grant himself led a charge between two ponds and was thrilled to capture a Mexican colonel and several enlisted men, who offered little resistance. He proudly sent the prisoners, under guard, to the American rear. But as he was doing so an American private, helping a wounded American officer, emerged from a thicket ahead of