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5. Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Fort Brown
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Ambush / 63 his mission, as previously mentioned, and was returning to the United States. Nevertheless, GeneralTaylor kept his troops hard at work on the six-bastioned earthen field fort and took additional defensive measures as well. He ordered that troops sent out to gather fuel were to clear the chaparral-obscured sector of the Point Isabel road to the width of ten feet on each side, and arranged for Captain Samuel Walker’s company of Texas Rangers to be mustered into his army. As detachments of recruits arrived, the general immediately assigned them to understrength units.20 It was Tuesday evening April 21 that Colonel Cross’s skeletal remains were recovered and brought into camp. The following morning, April 22, General Ampudia, who had the day before ordered all Americans to leave Matamoros for Victoria within twenty-four hours, sent across the river yet another angry, ominous message, this one prompted by Taylor’s blockade of the Rio Grande. Ampudia mistakenly thought that the two schooners that had been prevented from entering the mouth of the Rio Grande, and that were loaded with flour for his army, had been captured by American naval forces; he indicated that there would be serious consequences if the ships were not released.Taylor, who was aware that two schooners bearing flour for Matamoros had been turned away,sent Ampudia a scathing reply,as mentioned below,one that was cheered by Meade, Dana, and others, and indeed appears to have been applauded by the entire command. His answer consisted chiefly of a litany of the hostile words and acts encountered by his army since early March, and of his own contrasting efforts, as he saw it, to maintain peaceable relations pending some resolution at a higher level of the dispute overTexas. In addition, he chided the Mexican general for the rude tone of his letter, defended the blockade as being an exceedingly mild and reasonable reaction to Ampudia’s threats, and in a variety of ways conveyed his determination to meet force with force if necessary . At the same time, he offered to raise the blockade if Ampudia would agree to a truce until their governments settled the boundary issue or war was declared.21 Meade believed that General Taylor’s salvo would bring the Mexicans “to their senses.” As for his own condition, on April 23 he informed his wife: “I am in fine health and spirits, enjoying myself as well as I can away from you and the dear children. . . . My time is principally occupied in drawing, and all my spare moments I am on my horse’s back, galloping about within the line of our camp. I find the more I exercise the better I am.”22 On April 24, however, the situation changed. General Mariano Arista, who had just taken command of the forces in and around Matamoros, informed General Taylor that he regarded hostilities as having commenced. Although the Americans were unaware that the previous day President Paredes had proclaimed his nation would conduct a defensive war against the United States, Arista’s announcement co- 64 / Ambush incided with reports that Mexican troops were crossing the Rio Grande in large numbers both below and above the American camp, leading Taylor to send out dragoons that evening to reconnoiter. A detachment of dragoons that rode south some twenty-five miles returned the next day without seeing any Mexican troops. A squadron of sixty-two that went upriver under the command of Captain Seth B.Thornton of F company, Second Dragoons, who was supported by Captain William Hardee of C company and their lieutenants, George T. Mason and Elias K. Kane, likewise had discovered no conclusive sign of an imminent attack when they halted for the night. Yet the next morning , upon entering a chaparral-fenced ranch bordering the river, about twenty miles above Taylor’s camp, they were ambushed and overwhelmed by a contingent of some 1,500 Mexican cavalry and infantry regulars.23 It was Captain Thornton’s guide, Chapita, who first brought word to General Taylor that a skirmish had occurred. As was later confirmed by survivors, Chapita had refused to go more than a few miles further upstream with the squadron on the morning of the twenty-fifth, having become convinced by people questioned along the way that a large Mexican force had indeed crossed the Rio Grande in that vicinity. Upon hearing volleys of musket fire, Chapita had hidden, abandoning his horse, and thereafter had...