Note 29 — XXIII CERRO GORDO April, 1847

The text is based primarily on the full and minute account given in the diary of George B. McClellan (who accompanied Pillow and whose integrity and technical ability will not be questioned) and the following documents: reports of Engineers Stevens (66May 7) and Tower (66undated); Haskell and sixteen officers (Picayune, May 29); Haskell (ib., June 28); Pillow, reply (ib., June 9); Id., 61substitute report, May 29 (to take the place of his published report, which he admitted was not correct); 139letters of Col. Campbell, an able and fair man (who said privately the affair was most badly managed; also that Pillow was no general, and on the field had no judgment or decision); 224Williams to Hitchcock, June 4, 1849; Wynkoop, July 16, in Picayune, Sept. 19; Stevens, I. I. Stevens, i, 125 (Stevens says, e.g., that Pillow’s attack failed because “made prematurely, with great precipitation, without order in the assaulting columns, and before the supporting columns were in position, and at the wrong point,” and that it, “both as to time and as to direction, was earnestly remonstrated against by the engineer officer directing the attack, by the personal staff of the general, and by Col. Campbell, second in command”). Of course Ripley, who wrote his history of the war in consultation with Pillow, gives a misleading account of this affair as of others.