November 1846

In November 1846 an eight-week armistice in the Mexican American war expired, having failed to produce a negotiated peace. In the hopes of forcing the Mexicans back to the negotiating table, President Polk agreed to General Winfield Scott’s proposal to launch an amphibious invasion of central Mexico through the port of Veracruz. As part of the plan, Scott stripped General Zachary Taylor’s army of nearly all of its professional (“regular army”) soldiers, in order to use them in the Veracruz invasion.

In January 1847 Mexican soldiers ambushed and killed an American courier, discovering on his body orders removing the regular soldiers from Taylor’s command. It was exactly the sort of opportunity, Mexican General (and dictator) Antonio López de Santa Anna had been waiting for. Armed with the information, Santa Anna moved to attack Taylor’s weakened force, in the hopes of destroying it.

By mid-February, at the Angostura Pass, Santa Anna’s army had closed on and effectively surrounded Taylor’s army, which was composed almost entirely of volunteer militiamen. Santa Anna sent a message though the lines, demanding that Taylor surrender. Despite being outnumbered three to one, Taylor responded to Santa Anna’s courier, “Tell him to go to hell.”

Santa Anna began his attack on February 22, presumably unaware that it was George Washington’s birthday. In the words of historian Robert W. Johannsen, “a more inopportune time could not have been selected by the Mexican general.” Washington’s birthday was then a great national patriotic holiday (the only other national holiday at the time being the 4th of July), and as the fighting commenced the American generals rode along the lines reminding their men of the heroism of Washington and his army, while the band wailed “Hail, Columbia!” The Mexican attack commenced late in the day, and darkness soon ended it, indecisively. That night both sides prepared for Santa Anna’s main assault, which would come the following morning.

At first light on the morning of February 23, with over 15,000 men, Santa Anna began his attack on the 4,700 American defenders. While the American right held firm, the left began to crumble under the weight of the Mexican assaults. With his infantry beginning to drop back and his entire position in jeopardy, Taylor rode up to a battery of “flying artillery” under the command of Captain Braxton Bragg (one of the few regular army units still in his command) and gave a command that would become famous: “Double shot your guns and give them hell, Bragg!” (During Taylor’s presidential campaign the command was softened to “A little more grape, Captain Bragg.”) While Bragg’s artillery checked the Mexican advance, Taylor called forward his reserves, a regiment of Mississippi riflemen under the command of Colonel Jefferson Davis. The sudden counterattack by the Mississippians surprised and stunned the surging Mexicans, throwing them back in confusion. Shot in the ankle while leading the attack, Davis stayed with his men until the Mexican rout was complete, and the battle was won. Meanwhile in the center of the American line a young colonel in the command of a regiment of Kentuckians was killed by Mexican lancers. That colonel, Henry Clay, Jr., was the son of the Mexican War’s most vocal opponent in Congress. With his men exhausted and short of supplies, on the night of the 23rd Santa Anna withdrew.

The news of the improbable victory over Santa Anna’s army by a greatly unnumbered force of American volunteer militiamen thrilled the American public and made a hero of Zachary Taylor, gaining him the Whig nomination for President in 1848 over the party’s long-time standard bearer Henry Clay, and propelling him to the White House.

The Battle of Buena Vista occurred on February 23, 1847.