The most important campaign of the Mexican-American War (1846–8) was General Winfield Scott’s daring 1847 seizure of Mexico City. Conducted after landing 10,000 men and supplies at the coastal city of Veracruz, Scott marched his vastly outnumbered soldiers 250 miles into the heart of hostile territory. After four major battles – three of which took place around Mexico City – newspapers and writers at home such as Joel Tyler Headley lauded Scott as the “second Cortez, with his little band of brave men around him. Three hundred and twenty-four years divide those conquerors – the only two whose invading feet had ever pressed this soil, and both making an epoch in the history of the country.” Indeed, the early sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire by Hernán Cortés – facilitated at great length by the Tlaxcalans of central Mexico – served as an epic benchmark by which contemporary observers measured the U.S. Army’s astounding success. One New York newspaper wrote, “Hernando Cortez and Winfield Scott henceforth and forever must be great and associated names in the world’s history.” And similar in many ways to the campaign that took place from 1519 to 1521, Scott was aided by the inaction and indifference of municipal leaders on the capital’s periphery in Puebla – many of whom had an antagonistic history with Mexico’s military strongman General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who seized power in a coup in 1841. 80 miles east of Mexico City, on May 28 Scott entered Puebla unopposed and made the 75,000-person city his home for ten weeks, while Santa Anna and Mexico’s generals seethed. The 4th of July celebration held there by the U.S. Army was particularly distressing to Mexico City leadership because of the active participation of Puebla’s citizenry – many of whom were unmarried, reciprocally interested in their occupiers, and willing to collaborate in ways that military history rarely details.[1]
One December 1, 1847, the U.S. Army’s occupation newspaper in Puebla, Flag of Freedom, printed an article titled “the physiology of evening parties.” Published less than three months after Scott successfully seized Mexico City, the article, likely parodied in the spirit of popular writer and itinerant evangelist Lorenzo Dow, outlined the “pleasant reunions of society, where youth, beauty, talent and old age assemble to while away a few pleasant hours in each others society”. The article was a romantic exposition reflecting the charitable nature of the Pueblans towards their occupiers, and the gaiety existing among the American invaders. The anonymous writer himself confessed to being “naturally fond” of such social events, and noted that the “quadrille” – a European predecessor of the American square dance – was the “most desirable way of amusing ones’ self, particularly if your partner happens to be a young, lively, pretty girl, full of wit and talent.” Usually employing four couples on a square or rectangle, the quadrille originated in late eighteenth-century France, and was introduced to Americans by the British during the antebellum era. The use of martial language was one obvious indication that the writer was also a soldier, as he outlined how diplomatic tact was equally important to winning hearts and minds:
We are now entering the ‘Salle de dance,’ and a bright array of flashing artillery meets us in the shape of lovely women’s sparkling eyes. Bless their dear hearts how charming they look, arrayed in their snowy uniforms of white muslin… or white silk, the emblem of their own pure hearts. There they sit, mutely imploring to be invited to the coming quadrille; and they never have to wait very long either. As a reserve to the young, unmarried portion of the ladies, you will discover a strong demonstration of wall flowers, i.e., anxious mammas, superintending the propriety of their daughters and anon hinting to them whom they should or should not dance with. Discrimination in this respect is necessary, for some young men make far more desirable ‘matches’ than others.[2]
The writer noted that any soldier with the “appearance of being vulgar” was resolutely rejected by the discriminating mothers or aunts acting as protectors for their nieces. Meanwhile, the aged officers who found little pleasure or prestige in dancing engaged in whist – a trick-taking game of cards originating in England. “A social game of whist is far from a disagreeable manner of dissipating an hour and I have had many a hearty laugh over the vagaries of the whist table,” the writer explained, “particularly if my fellow-player happens to be a jovial ‘old boy,’ and our adversaries a positive, short tempered veteran of the last war [of 1812], and his associate a meek, easy, mild, good natured sort of a man.” Likewise, the ballroom’s “ante chamber” was devoted to “genteel gambling” of the higher ranks. “The whist and ecarte tables are all filled with solemn looking old gentlemen who have either passed the age or consider it derogatory to their dignity, to dance.” These officers, many of whom were either West Point-educated or politically appointed, were often War of 1812 veterans, who found more excitement plotting and strategizing future careers as veteran-politicians in the expansive country:
Bluff and hale looking military men, who have always got Lundy’s Lane, New Orleans and Okeechobee at the tips of their tongues, and will glowingly describe, the incidents of the battlefield, as they deal their cards – quiet, innocent looking men who play cards, for mere accommodation sake, and garrulous ‘old maids’ by whom dancing and thoughts of matrimony have been long eschewed. Around, watching the progress of the games, are to be seen no end to bashful young men, and a mystic class of hard featured sober ‘gents’ who here retire to talk politics and discuss the affairs of the nation.[3]
Indeed, from Mexico City to Veracruz, and wherever the U.S. Army planted its flag, the quadrille played an unchronicled role in the aftermath of a successful military campaign and occupation. Formal events, like the galas of fairy tales, often adjourned at midnight, when the evening’s participants went their separate ways – or not. “But the clock points to 12, and there is a movement of departure amongst the company. Gallant admirers and devoted swains are rushing breathlessly about in search of miscellaneous bonnets and cloaks in which they industriously and tenderly array the fair owners.” Those more inclined to reenact the dance, “are flying frantically around, for cars, hacks, and private carriages. ‘Old boys’ in comic exultation are making no end of jokes on the recent quadrilles, and indulging in facetious speculations in reference to partners of the dance, becoming partners for life.” Concerned parents, acting as chaperons “on voyages of discovery, in search of flirting daughters, surreptitiously conveyed into obscure corners by devoted admirers.” This was the untold story of the U.S. Army’s occupation of Mexico during the armistice – nearly a year of revelry during the ratification of a treaty ending the war and altering the dynamics of a continent. “Laughing, loving, light hearted girls are bidding affectionate ‘good nights’ to each other,” the author described, “anon tantalizing the surrounding gentlemen, by kissing their female friends; the gentlemen being of opinion that it would be highly agreeable if similar marks of esteem were extended to them. Card players are sweeping their gains into their purses, and political adversaries forget their animosities in the parting shake of the hand.”[4]
A month later, Mexico City’s U.S. Army occupation newspaper Daily American Star printed a marriage notice taken from the northern city of Monterrey, which was captured in the autumn of 1846. “We also observe in the papers a notice of the marriage at Monterey,” the article stated, “of John J. Chester, printer, belonging to company H, 1st Virginia regiment of volunteers, formerly of Philadelphia, to Magdealena, only daughter of Don Miguel Rodríguez, of Villa Real, in Mexico.” Whether or not Mr. Chester stayed behind in the un-relinquished part of Mexico is speculation, but there were many who did. “This is the true spirit of annexation,” the editors wrote, “and one that we admire so much that we are ready to be annexed on the same terms. The prospect looks much brighter in the annexation of a Mexicana, than of Mexico.” On July 4, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was proclaimed. On the morning of August 1 – almost a year after Scott’s army seized the Mexican capital – a quiet ceremony was conducted in the large plaza fronting the National Palace where the occupation army formally gave up its authority. “The ceremony was void of interest on all sides,” noted a reporter. A similar ceremony took place in Veracruz that same morning. On August 21, the New Orleans Crescent reported that all was “quiet” in the coastal city, and “not a single soldier” from the U.S. remained. By the time the Americans returned home, all the romantic talk of Spanish conquistadors, or revelry in the Halls of Montezuma, had become passé, and the quadrille Americanized in a country largely content with expansion.[5]
[1] J.T. Headley, The Life of Winfield Scott (New York: Charles Scribner, 1861), 96; “The Conquest of Mexico.” Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 28, 1847. (“From the N.Y. Express”).
[2] “Stray leaves from the Journal of a Cosmopolite No. IX. Physiology of Evening Parties.” Flag of Freedom, Puebla, vol. 1. Dec. 22, 1847, No. 18.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Daily American Star, Mexico City, Jan. 30, 1848 (vol. 1, no. 108), p. 2; New Orleans Crescent, August 7, 1848; Charleston Courier, August 12, 1848; New Orleans Crescent, August 21, 1848.
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