Open for Business and Scattering Gold: U.S. Occupation of Mexico City and Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine, 1847-8 (Part Two)

During the Mexican-American War (1846–48) the U.S. Army implemented an innovative population-centric strategy designed to mitigate animus among Mexicans and reduce the potential for guerrilla warfare in occupied areas. The decision to eschew the traditional practice of forced requisitions, informed U.S. Army counterinsurgency methods for years to come – including in the Philippines. Other policies included paying for goods at equitable market rates, facilitating trade between the capital and coastal region by protecting conveys from guerrilla attacks, rescinding the alcabala tax directed at poorer Mexicans seeking to sell their goods in areas controlled by the U.S. Army, and respecting the property rights of Mexicans. These policies were implemented throughout U.S. occupied Mexico but were particularly important to success in Mexico’s large metropolis.[1]

The Occupation of Mexico City

Life in the large capital was dangerous for soldiers at night, but during the day Mexico City was a pleasant place. Most accounts from soldiers writing to family members back in the United States painted pictures of gaiety despite the guerrilla activity taking place between them and Veracruz. The Lone Star House, at the corner of Refugio and La Palma, like many establishments, was officially a coffee house “supplied with the best wines and liquors to be obtained in Mexico.” The Eagle Coffee House boasted of “procuring wines, liquors, and segars of the choicest brand.” The Theatre Coffee House and Restaurant, run by U.S. Army matron Sarah Foyle, claimed to be open “all hours” of the day to cater to soldiers. The Orleans House advertised “new cider” made at their establishment. Other locales which advertised their services in the U.S. occupation newspaper American Star, included the Mansion House, The Anglo Saxon House, the United States Hotel, and the Olive Branch Coffee House. Many of these establishments were U.S. owned but staffed by Mexicans eager to free the foreign soldiers of their pay.^[2] One example of the all-hour menu provided at the Orleans House – which catered to the regional tastes of its diverse American patrons – evinces the Mexico City market activity working to meet daily demands:

Beef, Pork and Mutton Roasts; Roast Turkeys and Chickens; Corn Beef, Cabbage and Soups, with Vegetables of all kinds; Mutton Chops and Pork Steaks; Fowls, Birds, Sausage and Eggs; Salt Fish, Pigs’ Feet, Tripe, Lamb and Beef Tongues; Pickled Tongues… Corn Bread and Chicken Pie; Baked Beans and Pork; Mush and Milk; Apple, Mince and Custard Pie; Honey, Quince and Peach Preserves.[3]

Top photo: Artist (unknown) rendition titled "The Occupation of the Capitol of Mexico City by the American Army. Source: Wikipedia. In the Public Domain.

Middle photo: Winfield Scott on horseback. Source: Library of Congress. Wikimedia Commons. In the Public Domain.

Bottom photo: The U.S. Naval battery during the bombardment of Vera Cruz on 24 and 25 March 1847. The battery was composed of heavy guns from the U.S. squadron under Commodore M.C. Perry, and commanded by the officers in the following order opposite their respective guns. Drawing on stone by Pfau, painted by Lieutenant H.A. Walke, USN. Source: Naval History and Heritage Command.

For officers there was the popular Aztec Club. Established almost exactly a month after the U.S. Army entered the gates of the city, the Aztec Club – a precursor to other veterans’ groups – was originally formed exclusively for officers who took part in Scott’s central Mexico campaign. Military Governor of Mexico City General John A. Quitman was the club’s first president. General Scott was also made an honorary member. The location of the club was in a palace built in the 1700s for the viceroy of New Spain near the zocalo and Scott’s headquarters. According to the club’s account, the “original home of the Club, was the handsome residence of Señor [José] Bocanegra, who had been formerly Minister to the United States” and briefly president of Mexico. The initial 160 Aztec Club members is a veritable list of American military legends. Membership was later expanded to those who took part in the war and relatives of original members who had passed away.^[4]  

Because of their higher salaries, officers were not only privy to renting elaborate spaces in which to live but also had the option of a private hospital to convalesce under the care of a doctor claiming to be from the “Faculty of Medicine in Paris.” The hospital, located next to the Alameda Central, the oldest public park in the Americas, offered “apartments furnished in the nicest order… coupled with every sort of care and attention.” For the “friends” of “generals and officers” who died in Mexico City, lead coffins guaranteed to be airtight were sold for forty to fifty dollars – an enormous amount that a private could pay off after roughly six months of service.[5]   

In addition to bullfights and balls, there were other venues of entertainment. Madame Armand and Madame Turin performed at the Olympic Circus – which usually hosted European talent. The National Theatre held many performances including a Spanish company featuring a “beautiful comedy” of the two-act historical drama Napoleon lo Manda. The Principle Theatre offered a crusade romance based on the Sophie Ristaud Cottin work The Saracen, Or Maltida and Malek Adhel (1805).^[6] Cottin’s romantic themes of war and mission in Matilda undoubtedly spoke in dramatic tones to its North American attendees – soldiers far from home engaged in their country’s first foreign war: “European Princes, who, for the interest of religion, abandon their vast and flourishing states, and, through the perils of a stormy sea, come to meet their death in a foreign clime.”^[7] The following month, the Principle Theatre advertised a “grand comic ballet” under the title Loves of Rosina and Fobricour offering a half-hearted apology in advance for a “short amorous episode” contained within the performance. “An impartial public will know how to distinguish between the serio-comic and grotesque…”[8] 

U.S. soldiers may not have been princes, but they were not averse to searching for companionship. One month after U.S. troops stormed the city the American Star noted that the mood in the city “has changed, indeed; the crack of the rifle or escopeta [shotgun] is heard no more in the streets…” According to the editors the change was most manifest in the women who “have ceased to flash the fire of indignant scorn from their beautiful eyes, and now stand upon their balconies and walk the streets, viewing us with mild serenity...”^[9] Lt. William H. Davis imparted on his sister Elizabeth his pending lunch date with a Mexican girl who had spent several years in New York, and asked her if a “Mexican sister-in-law” was out of the question. He noted that a rapid change had undergone the city once it was learned that an armistice had been signed – noting that it had “become much gayer.” The large metropolis remained dangerous at night, however, daytime was another matter:

Ladies who before confined themselves closely to their houses, now show themselves, radiant in smiles and beauty. They are very pretty, and even hardened soldiers cannot altogether withstand their fine black eyes and winning manners. They now come out to the theatres, and upon the public drives, and are not the least afraid of the American officers. I am going into a Mexican family to live during the rest of my stay in Mexico, for the purpose of learning the Spanish language, and hope to acquire a tolerable knowledge of it.^[10] 

Property Rights

The U.S. Army’s respect for Mexican property rights was another important facet of Scott’s measures of conciliation. As a policy the U.S. Army did not intentionally requisition church-owned buildings, churches, convents, or monasteries for use – even though those buildings were usually the sturdiest and most easily defendable structures. This was another area where Scott and Halleck learned from the French mistakes in Spain that inversely led to insurgent support.[11] There were occasions when such buildings were seized out of necessity or after the ayuntamiento (city council) of Mexico City recommended some religious buildings be used to house soldiers, but only on rare occasions.^[12] Scott wrote that while “occupying the capital and other cities, strict orders were given that no officer or man should be billeted, without consent, upon any inhabitant; that troops should only be quartered in the established barracks” and other governmental buildings. He also wrote that despite the restrictions, “several large convents and monasteries, with but a few monks each, furnished ample quarters for many Americans, and, in every instance, the parties lived together in the most friendly manner” until the end of the occupation.^[13]

Lessons and Legacy

Winfield Scott never articulated that his “measures of conciliation” were part of a novel, more comprehensive counterinsurgency doctrine designed to keep the Mexican-American War from spiraling out of control like the one which slowly bled Napoleon’s forces in Spain between 1809 and 1813. The term “counterinsurgency” had not yet existed. Scott was simply doing what all studious soldiers wanted: to win the war in the fastest way possible with the least number of lives lost. That was the approach taught at U.S. military institutions such as West Point and Virginia Military Institute. To accomplish that goal, Scott implemented strict martial law codes not only for the Mexican people, but for his soldiers. The general that best embodies the profound changes in the U.S. military during the antebellum period later noted in his Memoirs that “the order worked like a charm; that it conciliated the Mexicans; intimidated the vicious of several races, and being executed with impartial rigor, gave the highest moral deportment and discipline ever known in an invading army.” Indeed, Scott lauded the “prowess” of the army and its discipline as keys to victory, but also believed that “valor and professional science could not alone have dictated a treaty of peace with double our numbers, in double the time, and with double the loss of life, without the measures of conciliation…”^[14]

There were other reasons for the U.S. Army’s success in the Mexico City campaign: training and better technology helped the relatively small American army outmaneuver and outgun a demoralized and fractured enemy, the wise decision to limit the area of occupation in central Mexico denied insurgents the advantage of geography, and Mexican spies kept Scott informed of activity along the corridor between Veracruz and Mexico City when guerrillas threatened the logistics line. One of these assets without the other would have made victory much more difficult. Nevertheless, Scott’s decision to ‘scatter gold’ rather than adhere to the Napoleonic maxim that war support war would prove so successful military scholars never realized it was a counterinsurgency doctrine designed to stymie an insurgent war before it could get off the ground. The Mexicans tried but failed. Paying for goods at market rates, keeping trade between the capital and Veracruz open by protecting conveys, rescinding the alcabala tax, and respecting property rights – all inglorious ways of building goodwill and dividing public opinion of the enemy ensured a more comprehensive victory, and more importantly, a lasting and equitable peace between neighboring states. 

[1] Benjamin J. Swenson, “‘Measures of Conciliation’: Winfield Scott, Henry Halleck, and the Origins of US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine,” Journal of Military History 86, no. 4 (Oct. 2022): 859-881; Benjamin J. Swenson, The Dawn of Guerrilla Warfare: Why the Tactics of Insurgents against Napoleon failed in the US Mexican War (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2023).

[2] The American Star, Mexico City. October 12, 1847. Liquor was prohibited or severely restricted during Mexican holidays to reduce the chances of confrontation. On All Saints Day (November 1), also known as the Day of the Dead, “all liquor stores, grog shops, pulque shops, bar-rooms, and other places where spiritous and intoxicating liquors are sold, shall be closed on those days.” (Ibid. October 30, 1847). For a look at the relationship between U.S. military officials and the Mexico City Council, see: Linda Arnold, “The U.S. Intervention in Mexico, 1846-1848,” in, A Companion to Mexican History and Culture (Oxford: William H. Breezley, ed. Blackwell Publishing, 2011), 262-272. Mexico City councilman Manuel Reyes Veramendi acted as an important intermediary between the occupation army and the citizenry.

[3] Ibid. October 29, 1847.

[4] The Constitution of the Aztec Club of 1847 and the List of Members, 1893 (Washington D.C.: Judd & Detweiler Printers, 1893), 3. The Aztec Club of 1847 is still in existence, and its membership is extended to those who can trace kinship back to the original members or those who would have been eligible of membership. “It is not known that any record exists of the early proceedings of the Club…” (Ibid.) The club’s archives are in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where at the U.S. Army War College is located.

[5] The American Star, Mexico City, October 29, 1847.

[6] Ibid. October 12, 14, 1847. Andrés de la Covert-Spring, Napoleon lo Manda, drama histórico-novelesco, en dos actos, D. Francisco Oliva, Barcelona, 1843. Joseph Michaud (ed.), The Saracen, Or Matilda and Malek Adhel, A Crusade-Romance from the French of Madame Cottin (New York: Isaac Riley, 1810).

[7] Michaud (ed.), The Saracen, Or Matilda, 95.

[8] Daily American Star, Mexico City, November 6, 1847.

[9] Ibid. October 15, 1847. The American Star changed its name to Daily American Star October 12, when it began publishing daily.    

[10] George Winston Smith and Charles Judah (ed.), Chronicles of the Gringos: The U.S. Army in the Mexican War, 1846-1848 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), 400. Letter dated March 14, 1848.

[11] Swenson, Rewriting the ‘Detestable’ Rules of War: The ‘Guerrilla System’ and Counterinsurgency in Napoleonic Spain and the Mexican-American War, 1808-1848” (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, 2021)

[12] See: Daily American Star, Mexico City, December 11, 1847. “The Ayuntamiento have furnished a list of buildings…”

[13] Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, Memoirs (New York: Sheldon & Co., 1864), 580.

[14] Ibid. 396, 540.