The
Irish Soldiers of Mexico
A
Little Known Bond Between Two Peoples
By Michael Hogan
One of the least-known stories of the Irish who came to America in
the 1840s is that of the Irish battalion that fought on the Mexican
side in the U.S.- Mexico War of 1846-1848. They came to Mexico and
died, some gloriously in combat, others ignominiously on the gallows.
United under a green banner, they participated in all the major battles
of the war and were cited for bravery by General Lopez de Santa Anna,
the Mexican commander in chief and president. At the penultimate battle
of the war, these Irishmen fought until their ammunition was exhausted
and even then tore down the white flag that was raised by their Mexican
comrades in arms, preferring to struggle on with bayonets until finally
being overwhelmed by the Yankees. Despite their brave resistance,
however, 85 of the Irish battalion were captured and sentenced to
bizarre tortures and deaths at the hands of the Americans, resulting
in what is considered even today as the “largest hanging affair
in North America.”
In the spring of 1846, the United States was poised to invade Mexico,
its neighbor to the south. The ostensible reason was to collect on
past-due loans and indemnities. The real reason was to provide the
United States with control of the ports of San Francisco and San Diego,
the trade route through the New Mexico Territory, and the rich mineral
resources of the Nevada Territory - all of which at that time belonged
to the Republic of Mexico.
U.S. President James K. Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to take
a position south of the Nueces River in Texas with a force of 4,000
men. By January 1846, the general had built a fort in what was Mexican,
or at least disputed, territory on the northern banks of the Rio Grande
in an effort to put pressure on the Mexicans to agree to a settlement.
On April 26, 1846, a Mexican cavalry troop crossed the Rio Grande
upstream of Taylor’s army. A patrol sent by Taylor to intercept
them was attacked, and in the skirmish, eleven Americans were killed
and five wounded. When Polk received word of the attack, he delivered
his war message, declaring that since the Mexicans had "shed
American blood on American soil,"a state of war existed between
the United States and Mexico. The
San Patricios fought under a green silk flag emblazoned with the Mexican
coat of arms, an image of St. Patrick, and the words “Erin Go
Braugh.”.
____________________________
The San Patricios fought under
a green silk flag emblazoned
with the Mexican coat of arms, an image of St. Patrick,
and the words “Erin Go Braugh.”
____________________________
Before the declaration of war by the United States, a group of Irish
Catholics headed by a crack artilleryman named John Riley deserted
from the American forces and joined the Mexicans. Born in Clifden,
County Galway, Riley was an expert on artillery, and it was widely
believed that he had served in the British army as an officer or a
non-com in Canada before enlisting in the American army. Riley’s
charge was to turn this new unit into a crack artillery arm of the
Mexican defense. He is credited with changing the name of the group
from the Legion of Foreigners and designing their distinctive flag.
Within a year, the ranks of Riley’s men would be swelled by Catholic
foreign residents in Mexico City, and Irish and German Catholics who
deserted once the war broke out, into a battalion known as Los San
Patricios, or “Those of Saint Patrick.”
The San Patricios fought under a green silk flag emblazoned with the
Mexican coat of arms, an image of St. Patrick, and the words “Erin
Go Braugh” (Ireland Forever). The battalion was made up of artillery
and was observed in key positions during every major battle. Their
aid was critical because the Mexican had poor cannon with a range
of 400 meters less than the Americans. In addition, Mexican cannoneers
were inexperienced and poorly trained. The addition of veteran gunners
to the Mexican side would result in at least two major battles being
fought to a draw. At the Battle of Buena Vista, for example, the San
Patricios held the high ground and enfiladed the Americans. At one
point they even wrested a cannon from the Yanks and led General Taylor’s
advisers to believe that the battle had been lost. Several Irishmen
were awarded the Cross of Honor by the Mexican government for their
bravery in that battle, and many received field promotions.
At the Battle of Churubusco, holed up in a Catholic monastery and
surrounded by a superior force of American cavalry, artillery, and
infantry, the San Patricios withstood three major assaults and inflicted
heavy losses on the Yanks. Eventually, however, a shell struck their
stored gunpowder, the ammunition park blew up, and the Irishmen, after
a gallant counteroffensive with bayonets, were overwhelmed by sheer
numbers. They were tried by a military court-martial and then scourged,
branded, and hanged in a manner so brutal that it is still remembered
in Mexico today.
In almost every Mexican account of the war, the San Patricios are
considered heroes who fought for the noble ideals of religion and
a just cause against a Protestant invader of a peaceful nation. In
U.S. histories, however, they are often portrayed as turncoats, traitors,
and malcontents who joined the other side for land or money.
It seems odd that anyone would defect from a superior force sure of
victory to join an obviously inferior one certain to be defeated,
even if, as most U.S. accounts assert, there were offers of money
and land from the Mexicans. There was plenty of free land to the west,
much easier to come by than risking oneís life in combat against
a Yankee army. To determine the true causes of the defection of these
men, it is necessary to reflect on the temper of the times.
The potato blight that began in 1845 brought devastation to Europe.
For the Irish, it was the beginning of massive evictions, starvation,
sickness, and death. Of the many fortunate enough to afford the fare
for an escape to the New World, tens of thousands would die en route
as a result of the inhuman conditions aboard Great Britainís
vessels.
Victims of oppression in the Old World, they were to experience it
again in the New. Confronted by enormous numbers of Irish-Catholic
immigrants in the 1840s, American nativism reared its ugly head. "All
the world knows," wrote historian Thomas Gallagher, "that
Yankee hates Paddy." And so it seemed to those who had survived
the perilous journey to America only to be labeled inferior by demagogic
politicians and feared by Anglo-American workmen. Victims of prejudice
in the New World, it should not be considered strange that they would
shortly find themselves becoming sympathetic to the Mexicans. Here
was another Catholic people being invaded by Protestant foreigners.
According to a contemporary account, “On reaching Mexico they
discovered they had been hired by heretics to slaughter brethren of
their own church. On top of this they were confronted with the hatred
of their fellow soldiers.“All
the world knows that Yankee hates Paddy.”
____________________________
“All the world knows
that Yankee hates Paddy.”
____________________________
The intense prejudice of many of the American soldiers, especially
the volunteers, has been commented upon by at least one careful historian.
According to K. Jack Bauer, author of The Mexican War: 1846-48, the
majority of American soldiers were products of a militantly Protestant
culture that still viewed Catholicism as a misdirected and misbegotten
religion. Although the regulars included a significant number of Catholic
enlisted men, the volunteers did not. This strengthened the tendency
to ignore the rights and privileges of the Church in a Catholic country
as well as increase the harassing of that Church. Some of the volunteersí
acts, like the stabling of horses in the Shrine of San Francisco in
Monterrey, so upset the Mexicans that they still mention it in modern
works.
America was a nation founded by Calvinists who, in rejecting the Church
of England, had rejected the hierarchy of both Anglican and Catholic
institutions. Free to elect their own ministers, they were equally
free to elect their own governors. Those who still clung to a hierarchical
model were considered regressive and unfit for self-government.
The Catholic Church was, to the Calvinist way of thinking, connected
politically to a repressive and antiquated system. Catholics, it was
widely believed, had not developed a habit of independent thought.
They were still chained to a religion that accepted the pope, a foreign
power, as their authority, rather than their individual consciences.
It was believed that not only were Catholics unable to think for themselves
in matters of faith or morals, they were equally incapable of being
part of a democratic system. Thus, by the early 1800s the Catholic
religion was seen at best as retrograde and, at worst, inimical to
a democratic republic.
As early as 1830 the American Bible Society urged the unity of Protestant
sects to combat Romeís influence in the West. While in the
early Republic there was some tolerance of Catholic minorities, this
was to change quickly with the increase in immigration of Irish Catholics
during the 1830s and 1840s, reaching its crest during the years of
the Irish famine as poor, rural Catholics flooded into American towns
and cities. Anti-Catholic riots broke out in Philadelphia in 1844,
and when they were over, the Irish ghetto lay in ruins, hundreds of
homeless Irish roamed the streets, and two Catholic churches were
burned to the ground.
Since solidarity in the face of commonly perceived oppression is a
universal characteristic of any ethnic or religious group, it is hardly
surprising that Irish Catholics would find unity among themselves
in the military service. As the war progressed and they witnessed
more depredations against their coreligionists in Mexico, it is understandable
that some Irishmen felt they had more in common with the Mexicans
than the invading Americans. The destruction of Catholic churches
in Mexico by the invading U.S. army and other depredations by Protestant
volunteers had also been well documented by both sides. And, just
in case they needed a reminder of the connection between the Americans'
treatment of the Irish at home and the abuse of Mexicans abroad, leaflets
written by the Mexican general Santa Anna were widely distributed.
They read in part:
“Can you fight by the side of those who put fire to your temples
in Boston and Philadelphia? Did you witness such dreadful crimes and
sacrileges without making a solemn vow to our Lord? If you are Catholic,
the same as we, if you follow the doctrines of Our Savior, why are
you murdering your brethren? Why are you antagonistic to those who
defend their country and your own God?” Why indeed? Many Irishmen
were quick to see that higher loyalties should prevail, and they joined
the Mexican side. They simply had more in common with the Mexicans
than with the invaders. As the war progressed and they witnessed more
depredations against their co-religionists in Mexico, it is understandable
that some Irishmen felt they had more in common with the Mexicans
than the invading Americans.
____________________________
As the war progressed and they witnessed
more depredations
against their co-religionists in Mexico, it is understandable that
some
Irishmen felt they had more in common with the Mexicans
than the invading Americans.
____________________________
The Protestants certainly saw similarities and were quick to point
them out. The Mexican, they asserted, like the Irishman, was unstable,
ignorant, feckless, easily led, and incapable of participation in
a republic. Using both the pseudo-science of phrenology and the more
respectable science of physiology, contemporary American scientists
determined that the short full figures of the Irish indicated that
they were “inactive, slothful and lazy.” This was a stereotype
also applied to the Mexican. The coarse red hair of the Irish showed
that they were “excitable and gushing. Their ruddy complexions
indicated that they were selfish “with hearty animal passions”
Irishmen of this period are variously described as have a “hanging
bone gait...the low brow denoting a serf of fifty descents dark eyes
sunken beneath the compressed brows” with a look of “savage
ferocity” By the 1840s this legitimization of negative racial
characteristics had reached its apex.
Most of those who had settled in America in the 18th and early 19th
centuries had no real sense of national identity. Allegiances were
territorial rather than nationalistic. But while there was no clear
sense of nationhood, Americans were nevertheless in the process of
defining who they were. And they did this essentially by stating quite
clearly what an American was not. In the 1840s he was not a "Negro,"
not a Mexican, not an Indian, and certainly not an Irish Catholic.
Manifest Destiny was another aspect of Calvinist belief. It held simply
that the Anglo-American was predestined by God to inherit the entire
American continent. Beginning with the "noble experiment"
in New Jerusalem (Salem, Massachusetts), the “City on the Hill,”
this new breed would spread over the entire land mass of the Americas,
displacing indigenous people, and buying out or running off French
and Spanish landholders on their inevitable march of progress. The
inheritors of Manifest Destiny, it must be remembered, were white
Anglo-Protestants, and they took steps to ensure that the distinctions
between them and others, whether religious or racial or quasi-scientific,
were constantly emphasized to prove that they were deserving of this
gift.
In September 1847, the Americans put the Irish soldiers captured at
the Battle of Churubusco on trial. Forty-eight were sentenced to death
by hanging. Those who had deserted before the declaration of war were
sentenced to whipping at the stake, branding, and hard labor. Forty-eight
of the San Patricios were hanged, 18 in San Angel and 30 in a place
called Mixcoac.
General Winfield Scott had chosen an officer who had been twice disciplined
for insubordination as his executioner of the last group of 30 San
Patricios. Colonel William Harney had been soldiering for almost 30
years and was notorious for his brutality. During the Indian Wars
he was charged with raping Indian girls at night and then hanging
them the next morning after he had taken his pleasure. In St. Louis,
Missouri, he was indicted by a civilian court for the brutal beating
of a female slave that resulted in her death. The choice of Harney
as executioner of the San Patricios seemed calculated by the American
high command to inflict brutal reprisals on the Irish Catholic soldiers.
Harney would not disappoint them. The
inheritors of Manifest Destiny were white Anglo-Protestants, and they
took steps to ensure that the distinctions between them and others,
whether religious or racial or quasi-scientific, were constantly emphasized
to prove that they were deserving of this gift.
____________________________
The inheritors of Manifest Destiny
were white Anglo-Protestants,
and they took steps to ensure that the distinctions between them
and others, whether religious or racial or quasi-scientific, were
constantly
emphasized to prove that they were deserving of this gift.
____________________________
Meanwhile the Battle of Chapultepec raged on. Finally, at 9:30 a.m.
the Americans scaled the walls of Chapultepec Castle (in Mixcoac),
tore down the Mexican flag, and raised the Stars and Stripes. With
that, Harney drew his sword and, "with as much sangfroid as a
military martinet could put on,"gave the order for execution.
The San Patricios, after four and a half hours of standing bound and
noosed in the 90-degree sun, were finally “launched into eternity.”
The punishments ordered for the San Patricios and the way they were
carried out conveyed more than the mere judgment of the court. They
were clear examples of religious and racist reprisals. In spite of
the fact that more than 5,000 U.S. soldiers deserted during the Mexican
War, only the San Patricios were so punished, and only the San Patricios
were hanged.
Fueled by Manifest Destiny and its concomitant racial and religious
animosity, the American government dictated terms to the Mexicans
in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. More than two-thirds of
the Mexican Territory was taken, one-half if one included Texas, and
out of it the United States would carve California, Nevada, New Mexico,
Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and parts of Kansas and Colorado. It was a
profitable American adventure, a conquest to put Napoleon to shame,
and all done in the name of democracy and Manifest Destiny.
Among all the major wars fought by the United States, the Mexican
War is the least discussed in the classroom, the least written about,
and the least known by the general public. Yet, it added more to the
national treasury and to the land mass of the United States than all
other wars combined.
After the conflict, so much new area was opened up, so many things
had been accomplished, that a mood of
self-congregation and enthusiasm took root in the United States. The
deserters from the war were soon forgotten as they homesteaded and
labored in the gold fields of California or, as the 1860s approached,
put on the gray uniform of the Confederacy or the blue of the Union.
Prejudice against the Irish waned, as the country was provided with
a “pressure valve” to release many of its new immigrants
westward. A marble plaque in the town square reads “In Memory
of the Irish Soldiers of the Heroic Battalion of San Patrick Who Gave
Their Lives for the Mexican Cause During the Unjust North American
Invasion of 1847.”
____________________________
A marble plaque in the town square
reads
“In Memory of the Irish Soldiers of the Heroic Battalion of San
Patrick Who
Gave Their Lives for the Mexican Cause During the
Unjust North American Invasion of 1847.”
____________________________
As Irish veterans returned from the Civil War and gained political
power, they were increasingly seen as a branch of the white race (Celtic
American) by the so-called scientific theorists who had previously
denied them that privilege. Irish in the United States, anxious to
be assimilated, gladly accepted the new designation. Ironically, the
American Irish would be among the first to disassociate themselves
from the San Patricios and promote the notion that it was not an Irish
battalion at all! Moreover, anti-Catholic prejudice would so diminish
that by 1960 an Irish Catholic would be elected president of the United
States. The Soldiers of St. Patrick
would disappear from the annals of U.S. history, an embarrassing reminder
of a less tolerant era in our Republic.
Each year commemorations are held in San Angel in Mexico to honor
the Irish who died in the war. A marble plaque in the town square
reads “In Memory of the Irish Soldiers of the Heroic Battalion
of San Patrick Who Gave Their Lives for the Mexican Cause During the
Unjust North American Invasion of 1847,” followed by the names
of 71 of the men. A color guard of crack Mexican troops marches forward
with the Mexican and Irish colors to a spine-jarring flourish of drums
and bugles. The “Himno Nacional” (National Anthem) is then
played, followed by “The Soldier’s Song” Students and
dignitaries place floral tributes on the paving stones, and an honor
roll is called of the fallen soldiers as the crowd collectively chants
after each name, “Murio por la patria!” (He died for the
country!). In Clifden, County Galway, the birthplace of John Riley,
a similar ceremony is held each September 13.
For most Mexicans, solidarity with the Irish is part of a long tradition.
There is in both countries an emphasis on the spiritual center in
the family and a non-materialistic viewpoint whereby a person’s
worth is determined not by what he owns but by the quality of his
life. And if Paddy and Bridget, like
José and Maria, were considered incapable of being assimilated
into Anglo-Protestant society, their acceptance into Mexican society
was seamless. In the words of John Riley, written in 1847 but equally
true today, “A more hospitable and friendly people than the Mexican
there exists not on the face of the earth...especially to an Irishman
and a Catholic.”
Riley sums up what cannot be clearly documented in any history: the
basic, gut-level affinity the Irishman had then, and still has today,
for Mexico and its people. The decisions of the men who joined the
San Patricios were probably not well planned or thought out. They
were impulsive and emotional, like many of Ireland's own rebellionsóincluding
the Easter Uprising of 1916. Nevertheless, the courage of the San
Patricios, their loyalty to their new cause, and their unquestioned
bravery forged an indelible seal of honor on their sacrifice.
Michael Hogan is the author of 14 books, including The Irish Soldiers
of Mexico, which was the basis for two documentary films and an MGM
release titled One Man’s Hero, starring Tom Berenger and Daniela
Romo. He is the head of the humanities department at the American School
of Guadalajara and historical consultant to the Irish Embassy in Mexico.
This article was reprinted with permission from Crisis Magazine at
www.crisismagazine.com
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