3.2 W. H. Emory, Notes of a Military Reconnoissance [sic] from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California, including part of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers (Washington: Wendell & Van Benthuysen, 1848).
3.3 Courtesy Utah State Historical Society.
3.4 Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
3.5 Courtesy of Palace of the Governors, New Mexico.
3.6 From the Collection of Ray John de Aragon.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Winston Groom is the author of sixteen previous books, including Vicksburg, 1863; Patriotic Fire; Shrouds of Glory; Forrest Gump; and Conversations with the Enemy (with Duncan Spencer), a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He lives with his wife and daughter in Point Clear, Alabama.
Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, who had once nearly killed Andrew Jackson in a gunfight, was John C. Frémont’s father-in-law, and an ardent expansionist. His friendship with President James K. Polk turned acrimonious after Frémont was court-martialed. (illustration credit 1.1a)
General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the perennial Mexican president, double-crossed President James K. Polk after Polk assisted him in his return from exile to Mexico. (illustration credit 1.1b)
On February 28, 1847, Colonel Alexander Doniphan and his 1,000-man regiment of Missouri Volunteers attacked and routed a 3,800-man Mexican army on the Sacramento River twenty-five miles north of Chihuahua City, capturing that enormous province for the American forces. (illustration credit 1.1c)
Bent’s Fort was a bastion of civilization on the wild plains of the Southwest, along the Santa Fe Trail. (illustration credit 1.1d)
Brigham Young became the leader of the Mormons after the murder of founder Joseph Smith. Unlike Moses, who led his people out of the wilderness, Young led the Mormons into the wilderness of the Far West to escape the U.S. government. (illustration credit 1.1e)
Commodore John Drake Sloat was censured by the U.S. secretary of the navy for being a nervous Nellie during the Mexican conflict. (illustration credit 1.1f)
Left: “Old Rough and Ready” Zachary Taylor commanded the army in the north of Mexico and was afterward elected president of the United States. (illustration credit 1.1g)
Captain John C. Frémont was a topographical engineer with the U.S. Army whose writings about exploration in the Far West in the 1840s made him the most famous man in America. A run-in with his commanding officer nearly landed him in prison—or worse. (illustration credit 1.1h)
Sutter’s Fort, built by a Swiss immigrant, was the center of civilization in California’s Sacramento valley, and figured prominently in the Donner tragedy and, later, the Great Gold Rush. (illustration credit 1.1i)
James Reed was one of the leaders of the doomed Donner party, from which he luckily became an outcast after killing a fellow traveler. (illustration credit 1.1j)
Winfield Scott, hero of the War of 1812, was commander of the U.S. Army, but nearly lost his reputation over a “hasty plate of soup.” (illustration credit 1.1k)
No American embraced the concept of manifest destiny more than President James K. Polk, who made a list of four things he wished to accomplish during his presidency, then retired after his first term. When he left office, America was a nation “from sea to shining sea.” (illustration credit 1.1l)
Left: Brash and arrogant, Robert F. Stockton was commodore of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during the American conquest of California. Right: David Wilmot, an obscure congressman from Pennsylvania, set off a firestorm when he proposed an amendment that would have outlawed slavery in any territory acquired during the Mexican War. (illustration credit 1.1m)
The first battles of the Mexican War at Resaca de la Palma and Palo Alto were mere tune-ups to the big battles later on. (illustration credit 1.1n)
Polk’s contrarian secretary of state, James Buchanan, was often at odds with the president in matters of foreign policy. As a diplomat, he frequently balked at what he believed was rashness on Polk’s part. (illustration credit 1.1o)
A fanciful drawing of Monterrey right before the battle. Seen in the foreground is the Bishop’s Palace. It was during this battle that General Taylor learned the Mexican army was no pushover. (illustration credit 1.1p)
There was tough hand-to-hand combat in the streets of Monterrey, where both Jefferson Davis and Ulysses S. Grant distinguished themselves in battle. (illustration credit 1.1q)
Kit Carson, a legendary mountain man and scout for Frémont’s expeditions, rose to become a general in the U.S. Army. (illustration credit 1.2)
Polk and his cabinet during the Mexican War. This is the first photograph of a president and his cabinet. Seated (from left): Attorney General John Y. Mason, Secretary of War William L. Marcy, Polk, and Treasury Secretary Robert J. Walker. Standing: Postmaster General Cave Johnson and the dapper Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft. (illustration credit 1.3)
An “Adonis who made women swoon” was how they described Colonel Alexander Doniphan, who commanded the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers during the war with Mexico, in what came to be known as Doniphan’s Expedition. (illustration credit 1.4)
San Francisco, 1846 (illustration credit 1.5)
Sketch of the Old Spanish Palace in Santa Fe, where Governor Manuel Armijo lived and held court until the arrival of General Kearny (illustration credit 1.6a)
Sketch of a typical Santa Fe–territory ranch of the 1840s, built to ward off depredations by Indians (illustration credit 1.6b)
Kearny’s march: Frederic Remington’s drawing of U.S. troops going to Mexico) (illustration credit 1.6c)
Klamath Indians attacked Frémont’s expedition as they attempted to survey Klamath Lake in Oregon Territory. Unbeknownst to Frémont, President Polk had wrested control of the territory away from the British. (illustration credit 1.7a)
Kit Carson and others in Frémont’s party were startled and alarmed high in the Sierra Mountains when an old Digger Indian woman suddenly appeared in the light of their campfire. (illustration credit 1.7b)
Lieutenant Edward F. Beale of the U.S. Navy led a relief expedition to Kearny’s embattled party near San Diego, then walked barefoot for more than thirty miles across a rocky, cactus-strewn desert to find aid at the U.S. garrison. (illustration credit 1.7c)
There were tense moments in Monterey Bay in 1847 when a powerful British battleship (left) appeared. But the two American frigates need not have worried. The English ship rounded up and anchored, peaceful as a yacht. (illustration credit 1.8)
Jessie Benton Frémont, the fervent booster and defender of her husband, John C. Frémont, the fabled “Pathfinder” (illustration credit 1.9)
Eighteen-year-old Susan Shelby Magoffin was a recent bride, and newly pregnant, when she embarked with her husband down the Santa Fe Trail in 1846. She kept a fine diary of her trip. (illustration credit 2.1)
The infamous black flag of “no quarter,” captured from the Mexicans following their defeat by Doniphan’s First Missouri Mounted Volunteers at the Battle of Sacramento, February 28, 1847. (illustration credit 2.2)
Stephen Watts Kearny, ca. 1820s (illustration credit 2.3)
Lieutenant Emory’s plan of the Battle of Los Angeles (illustration credit 2.4)
Civil War photograph of William Emory, Kearny’s chief of topography on the march, who kept a detailed notebook later published as Lieutenant Emory Reports. (illustration credit 2.5)
Trapped by snow in the High Sierras, the miserable Donner party began eating their dead, and were rumored to have eaten their living as well. Half a dozen parties of relief were only partly successful in bringing them out. (illustration credit 2.6)
End of the Santa Fe Trail after months—and a thousand miles—of hard traveling (illustration credit 2.7)
Cuban-born General Pedro de Ampudia, who once chopped off a rival’s head and fried it in oil for exhibition in a town square. He was a tough customer, but was defeated by Zachary Taylor at the Battle of Monterrey. (illustration credit 2.8)
> Phillip St. George Cooke, who was tapped to command the Mormon Battalion on its fantastic march to California, 1846–1847 (illustration credit 2.9)
Lieutenant Emory’s plan of the Battle of San Gabriel (illustration credit 3.1)
Entrepreneur Lansford W. Hastings led the Donner party to its doom by touting the “Hastings Cutoff” route across the Sierra mountains. Hastings had never traveled the route when he claimed, in a widely distributed pamphlet, that it would cut three hundred miles off the trip to California. (illustration credit 3.2)
General John E. Wool and staff in Mexico, 1846; this is thought to be the first photograph of the U.S. military in action. General Wool raised a division in the Midwest and marched them nine hundred miles to join General Taylor at the Battle of Saltillo. (illustration credit 3.3)
General Stephen Watts Kearny as he would have appeared in 1846 at the time of his march (illustration credit 3.4)
General Manuel Armijo, the corrupt governor of Santa Fe, who was described by an English traveler as “a mountain of fat” (illustration credit 3.5)
The “camp of death” for a group of the wretched Donner party, seeking to descend from their winter trap in the Sierra mountains (illustration credit 3.6)
Winston Groom, Kearny's March
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