HITCHCOCK: PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR, INTELLECTUAL, SPY HANDLER

 By Juan Montoya

If you had a choice, which historical figure who strode through our area would you characterize as one of the most intriguing?

Now, we've had our share of luminaries who have made a mark in local history.

Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Zachary Taylor,  come to mind as does Porfirio Diaz, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhardt among  others. Texas Ranger Rip Ford, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, Robber Barons Robert King, Charles Stillman, Mifflin Kenedy, are others.

But for my nickel, one of the most intriguing would have to be Ethan Allen Hitchcock.

His biographers say that Hitchcock was born in Vergennes, Vermont, and was the grandson of American Revolutionary War hero General Ethan Allen, of Green Mountain Boys fame.

He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1817 (17th out of 19) and was commissioned a third lieutenant in the U.S. Artillery.

From 1829 to 1833, he served as commandant of cadets at West Point and achieved the rank of  lieutenant colonel in the 3rd U.S. Infantry by 1842 in command of Fort Stansbury.

He served in the Seminole War in Florida, in the Pacific Northwest, and in the Mexican-American War under Taylor, and then as Gen. Winfield Scott's inspector general in the march on Mexico City. He received a brevet promotion to colonel for Contreras and Churubusco and to brigadier general for Molino del Rey.

But while he was in the command of Zachary Taylor as he advanced south from Ft. Jesup, in Louisiana to Corpus Christi and then on to the mouth of the Rio Grande, he served as the army's commandant.
Yet, despite his military achievements, it was his intellectual endeavors that made him stand out from the rest of the military heroes of that war – including Grant and Lee – who were under his command in the assault on Mexico City.

He was devoted to scholarship, was an avid reader of philosophy, a correspondent with the leading minds of the 19th century, and a soldier known as the "Pen of the Army," attributes that certainly would attract us to him.

He was also General Winfield Scott' s right-hand man during the Mexican War and a Civil War military advisor to President Abraham Lincoln .

But despite this, the respect he earned for his professional astuteness does not alone make him exceptional, for Hitchcock, above all, was a moral man. He lived his life, not just as an aficionado of the abstract ethics of Spinoza, but as a principled man who was willing to speak out for what he believed.
"Veritas" was the nom de plume he chose when writing to newspapers to defend his commander from the slanders of political opponents, and it serves him well as an epitaph.

As an adjutant general on the staff of General Edmund Pendleton Gaines in the late 1830s, he saw service in the war against the Seminoles. Hitchcock was opposed to the government policy toward the Seminoles and a critic of the actions of president Andrew Jackson. He wrote in his diary at the time:

"The treaty of Paynes Landing (which called for the Seminoles to move out of Florida) was a fraud on the Indians: They never approved of it or signed it. They are right in defending their homes and we ought to let them alone."

This would not be the only time, in a 47-year military career packed full of moral choices, when he would be required by duty to prosecute a war that he did not believe right.

When the Mexican-American war broke out, he wrote his thoughts about his feelings about a war with Mexico, which by now appeared unavoidable, and his opinion of General Zachary Taylor, in his diary in an entry dated Sept. 20, 1845. His entries were published later in 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. 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."

An interesting tidbit about Hitchcock was that when the war with Mexico came, it interrupted an exchange of letters between Hitchcock and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In fact, his books on alchemy and alchemists formed the basis for his fame in those intellectual circles.

Hitchcock transferred to the staff of General Winfield Scott as inspector general and became indispensable to the commander who needed Hitchcock's vast administrative talents and organizational abilities. In addition to seeing to discipline, drill and logistics, he recognized the need for better intelligence in a country about which the American Army knew close to nothing.

He organized a contingent of highwaymen and criminals being held in prison at Puebla to spy for the Americans. At the head of the group was a man named Manuel Dominguez, who Hitchcock described as "a very curious and interesting man."

He was paroled from prison on the condition that he work for the American Army and sent to Hitchcock.

In his diary entry for the 26th of June, he described his recruitment of the spy company:

"This morning I brought twelve from the city prison into the presence of my Dominguez and saw a most extraordinary meeting. Dominguez met some of his friends for the first time in years – men with whom he had doubtless been engaged in many an adventure, perhaps highway robbery. 

"They embraced and swore eternal fidelity to each other and the United States. I remanded them to prison, saying that I would report their cases to the General and ask for their release. The General gave permission for the release of what would become the nucleus of an almost 100-man spy company under Dominguez."

After the war the spy company commander was no longer safe in his own country. Hitchcock arranged for Dominguez and his family to move to New Orleans. Then he began the task of obtaining  government protection and financial support for his spies 

He appealed to the senator from Mississippi, Jefferson Davis, who had served notably in Mexico and was wounded there. Davis introduced a bill that would provide relief for Dominguez and his family, but it died in committee. Hitchcock wrote a second letter to Davis. It too failed to elicit any action by Congress.

In the end, Dominguez and many of the Spy Company were transported to Cameron County, along the Mexico-Texas border where they became some of its pioneer residents.