Note 33 — XXIII CERRO GORDO April, 1847

Scott’s report was a model in concealing facts; and Worth, writing to a member of his family, called it “a lie from beginning to end.” Gen. U. S. Grant, doubtless recording without investigation his early impressions, wrote in his Personal Memoirs (i, 132): “Perhaps there was not a battle of the Mexican war, or of any other, where orders issued before an engagement were nearer being a correct report of what afterwards took place,” and such has been the accepted opinion, though a thoughtful comparison of the orders with Scott’s own report (Sen. 1; 30, 1, pp. 258, 261) is enough to disprove this view. For example, Scott in his orders, intending to attack from the enemy’s rear, assigned no troops to the frontal attack on El Telégrafo, which was the main feature of the actual battle. Unpublished documents of a wholly unbiassed character disprove it still further. As two more illustrations, the artillery, for which infinite trouble was taken to make a passable road, did not figure at all in the battle (though a section of Taylor’s battery went that way in season to join in the pursuit), and a court of inquiry declared that Riley’s brigade, which played a most important rôle, was diverted from its original destination—a finding approved by Scott (65gen. orders 249). Robert Anderson said that if Scott’s orders had been carried out, not a Mexican would have escaped (Lawton, Artillery Officer, 137); and Davis, Shields’s aide, stated that Twiggs failed to execute Scott’s orders and disappointed Scott’s expectations (Autobiography, 148). See also notes 22 and 25. It is possible that one reason why Scott in his report commended Twiggs’s course was that, even if satisfied as to the practicability of his own plan, he did not care to raise an issue on that question. Obviously it would have been impossible to prove now that the plan was practicable, and a bitter, harmful controversy would have resulted. That on general principles such an exposure of the American flank was very hazardous could not be denied.