TAYLOR CROSSES THE ARROYO COLORADO, MANUFACTURES A WAR

 By Juan Montoya

By now, only the most gullible history students believe that the Mexican-American War was caused by a random confrontation between a detail of Zachary Taylor's Army of Occupation and Mexican forces along the Rio Grande.

Even before there was a confrontation between U.S. and Mexican forces, his quartermaster Maj. General Ethan Allen Hitchcock detected that Taylor was itching for a fight. He was against the war against a weaker opponent and stated his feelings about a war with Mexico, which by now appeared unavoidable.

Hitchcock wrote in his diary on September 1845 while the army was in Jessup, Louisiana and before they were ordered to proceed to Corpus Christi. His entries were published later a a book titled Fifty Years of Camp and Field.

"General Taylor came into my tent this morning and again, as frequently of late, he introduced the subject of moving upon the Rio Grande. I discovered this time more clearly than ever that the General is instigated by ambition – or so it appears to me. He seems quite to have lost all respect for Mexican rights and willing to be an instrument of Mr. (James) Polk for pushing our boundary as far west as possible.

"When I told him that, if he suggested a movement (which he told me he intended), Mr. Polk would seize upon it and throw the responsibility on him, he at once said he would take it, and added that if the President instructed him to use his discretion, he would ask no orders, but would go upon the Rio Grande as soon as he could get transportation. I think the General wants an additional brevet, and would strain a point to get it."

From the beginning, moves by Polk when he ordered Taylor south from the Nueces River to the north bank of the Rio Grande to increase the pressure on the Mexican government to negotiate for the sale of California and the pushing of the Texas border to the Rio Grande, the strategy was one bent on creating a confrontation to justify the invasion into Mexican territory.

Taylor first met resistance from the Mexicans March 25 at the Arroyo Colorado when Mexican vaqueros said they would attack if his troops crossed the arroyo. Taylor pushed on and the vaqueros disappeared into the chaparral. One of these vaqueros might well have included Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, then only 23, a local rancher and heir to the Espiritu Santo Grant, whose northern fringes abutted the Arroyo Colorado. He was recruited as a scout for the Mexican forces and was in a group of vaqueros called Defensores de la Patria.

In other words, Cortina, if he was there, was standing on his own land. Thirteen years later, his rage at the invading settlers and dispossession of Mexican land owners in South Texas triggered his takeover of Brownsville and exploded into the Cortina wars.

 

On March 28, 1846, Taylor started constructing Ft. Texas directly across the river from Matamoros as Mexican officials and residents looked on from the opposite bank.

When Mexican officials protested, he answered by blockading the mouth of the Rio Grande and disrupting the flow of commerce and communications between Matamoros and New Orleans and Mexico City.

Later, Taylor sent raiding parties across the river to search for armed parties in Mexico and engage them. In one such engagement a Lt. Porter and one other man were killed.

It was on the 24th of April that Taylor finally got his wish. He sent Capt. Seth Thornton and 62 of his  dragoons ostensibly on a reconnaissance mission to ascertain the crossing above river of a sizeable Mexican force under the command of Gen. Anastacio Torrejon.

According to Capt. William Hardee, an officer in the detachment, he said Taylor's order to Thornton "as I understood them, were to ascertain if the enemy had crossed the river above our camp, and to reconnoiter his position and force."

According to Hardee, no mention was made of confronting the enemy or engaging them in battle.

However, Thorton seems to have been under other orders from Taylor.

Hardee notes in a letter he wrote to Taylor as a prisoner of the Mexican forces in Matamoros two days after Thornton was ambushed, that on the 25th "all his inquiries along the way tended to the conviction that the enemy had crossed in strength."

About 23 miles from our camp (Rancho Carrizitos) our guide became so satisfied of this fact that he refused to go further and no entreaties on the part of Capt. Thornton could shake his resolution."

That guide was a spy named Chepita, a servant of Col. Henry L. Kinney, a contraband runner and founder of Corpus Christi, who tagged along with his employer who had signed on with the army to procure supplies for Taylor and provide the general with intelligence from behind enemy lines.

The result of Thornton disregarding Chepita's information – and Hardee's reason to be perplexed with his commander's decision to confront the  1,600-strong enemy in apparent contradiction to his orders – was the capture of more than 40 U.S. soldiers, the death of seven dragoons and the wounding of the rest.

When Taylor got word of the encounter, he mailed Polk a dispatch stating that "hostilities may now be considered as commenced."

Polk then announced to Congress and the world, " Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil."

On May 13, 1846, Congress declared war on Mexico, despite protests by the Mexican government . Mexico officially declared war on July 7.