Review - "The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals" edited by Timothy Johnson

[The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals edited by Timothy D. Johnson (Louisiana State University Press, 2024). Hardcover, 3 maps, chapter notes, index. Pages main/total:xvii,233/267. ISBN:978-0-8071-8238-3.]

Over the decades following the conclusion of the War of 1812, elements of the United States Army operated primarily as coastal defense garrisons and frontier constabulary, thus the outbreak of war with Mexico offered a unique opportunity for West Point graduates to test themselves against a foe organized on roughly similar European-style lines. Historians have most commonly examined those experiences, and what roles they might have played in professional development, within the process of writing general officer biographies. The result, in terms of providing both descriptive detail and analysis, has always been a mixed bag. While some coverages point toward useful insights and possible connections between Mexican-American War service and Civil War generalship, the rest come across as being mostly box-checking exercises completed along the way toward toward presenting the main event of their subject's military career, the American Civil War. What sets apart the 2024 anthology The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals is its laser focus on drawing out those connections. Timothy Johnson, Winfield Scott biographer and author of a number of scholarly Mexican-American War titles, serves as this volume's editor, and he successfully presses his essay contributors to both recount the military participation in Mexico of West Point-trained officers who would later become high-ranking Civil War generals and cite specific examples of how those experiences might have shaped later command performances under vastly increased levels of responsibility.

Johnson's assemblage of writers is noteworthy for having a number of major biographers in it as well as others who have authored important works on topics directly related to their essay subject's Civil War military career. The essays, twelve in total, are evenly divided between Union and Confederate generals, ten of whom rose to army command (the other two were high-profile corps commanders entrusted with major independent operations). For the Union side, the author-subject pairings are Timothy Smith on U.S. Grant, Stephen Engle on Don Carlos Buell, Ethan Rafuse on Joseph Hooker, Thomas Cutrer on George McClellan, Jennifer Murray on George Meade, and Brian Steel Wills on George Thomas. On the Confederate side, we get Joseph Glatthaar on Robert E. Lee, Sean Michael Chick on P.G.T. Beauregard, Cecily Zander on Braxton Bragg, Christian Keller on Stonewall Jackson, Craig Symonds on Joe Johnston, and Alexander Mendoza on James Longstreet.

Drawing connections between Mexican-American War and Civil War experiences is most often framed around positive and negative "lessons" learned from youthful experiences in the former which were then later applied to leadership in the latter. As several contributors to this volume prominently note, these links must in the main be inferred. Many of their subjects wrote little to nothing about their experiences in Mexico, while those that did only rarely linked (at least in direct fashion) their own Civil War decision-making and conduct of military affairs to what they either did or observed during the Taylor and Scott campaigns in north and central Mexico. Johnson's contributors collectively navigate that tricky path with caution and judiciousness.

In Mexico, junior officers, particularly staff officers, keenly observed a wide range of matters related to civil-military affairs. According to Glatthaar, Lee, through direct awareness of the troubling military-political divide that developed between his mentor General Scott and the Polk administration, likely learned important lessons about personal and professional relationships between superiors and principal subordinates that helped him later foster a cordial and effective military partnership with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Closely working with the highly touchy Scott in Mexico also taught Lee the value of showing proper (even strategic) deference to superiors and knowing when to gracefully quit pressing when it came to losing disagreements (ex. Lee's strong disapproval of, but quiet acquiescence with, the Davis administration's decision to reorganize brigades with regiments from the same state). On the less productive side was how Joseph Hooker responded to what he witnessed during the conflict. Unlike many of his fellow West Point graduates who observed with disdain naked political interference in military matters in Mexico, Hooker, as insightfully examined by Rafuse, embraced "playing games" with that system. That relish for games of intrigue pervaded Hooker's entire Civil War career, contributing mightily to his downfall. At any rate, with the war in Mexico came more direct reinforcement of the reality that politics and war were inextricably linked and cooperating with politician-officers was an inescapable part of the professional war fighting experience.

While the scale and distances involved in the war with Mexico helped quartermaster officers like Grant to refine their logistical managements skills, the experiences of living off the land through foraging and occupation without at the same time inciting a general uprising also proved instructive. Many West Point-trained professionals freely expressed their disdain for volunteer soldiers, and highlights from Murray's Meade chapter draw correlations between the Pennsylvanian's Mexican War experiences, where he witnessed widespread pillaging and other abuses of the local population, and his clear support for a conciliatory manner of conducting warfare during the early years of the American Civil War. Everyone recognized that volunteers needed strong subordination and discipline in order to be transformed into effective soldiers.

The importance of awarding credit where credit was due in official writings, regardless of personal animosities, was also realized by most as being in the best interest of the service. When it was not done as expected, officers such as Beauregard became embittered by the experience. A part of that self-aggrandizement at the expense of others stemmed from officers forging cynical alliances with the press corps. For Meade, who is known by all Civil War students for the special hell he wanted to reserve for newspaper reporters, the origins of that attitude developed during the Mexican War. There he traced through the press the making of undeserved reputations as well as the silent treatment given to distinguished officers who opposed, on principle, cultivating self-promotional relationships with ambitious reporters. Meade also carefully noted the internal dissension, jealousy, and unseemly competition for attention that playing those games engendered in the officer corps. 

On a tactical basis, the war taught the value of combined arms, and many young officers appreciated the battle-winning outcomes that resulted from closely coordinated infantry and artillery attacks both in the open and against fortified positions. The Thomas and Beauregard chapters from Wills and Chick are particularly strong on detail in regard to tracing artillery exploits in Mexico. Both chapters demonstrate how that war raised the prestige and reputation of the field artillery service in the U.S. Army. When it came to the process of neutralizing Mexican strongpoints, many staff and line officers also witnessed the value of using turning movements in conjunction with frontal masking demonstrations and artillery fire. The actions of engineer officers such as Lee and Beauregard also clearly revealed the value to be derived from, and the dangers attended with, personal reconnaissance. Just in general ways, junior officers acting on the staffs of general officers in Mexico gained professional knowledge about how armies (or at least higher formations) actually worked in the field, an eye-opening experience for those accustomed to company-level frontier service or static fort postings.

In the area of personal relationships, the shared experiences of the war with Mexico forged lifelong bonds among many fellow officers (a close attachment exemplified by the formation and endurance of the Aztec Club). Knowing that true measurements of character and military ability emerge from the testing ground of war, Mexico also allowed those officers who served together to take stock of colleagues who would later become either comrade or foe during the Civil War.

When the Mexican-American War experiences of Civil War generals are discussed in the literature, it is primarily through the themes of the war with Mexico either being a proving ground for what was learned at West Point or the conflict being an education in and of itself. On a collective basis, there are certainly noteworthy elements of both of those themes inside this strong set of essays. While there is a degree of repetition entailed with compiling twelve independent essays involving basically only two major campaigns, and a few chapters lean most strongly into the descriptive realm of presentation, there is certainly more than enough analytical heft across the volume to make this anthology a heartily recommended read for even the most broadly informed students of both wars.