Taylor Wins at Buena Vista: Outnumbered Americans Prevail

Zachary Taylor's 4,600 troops were outnumbered more than three to one when Santa Anna's army of nearly 15,000 appeared in the mountain passes south of Saltillo. What followed was the bloodiest single day of the Mexican-American War and the battle that made Taylor president of the United States, though he had no business winning it by any conventional military calculation. Taylor had been ordered to hold a defensive position at Monterrey after his earlier victories, but he advanced south to Buena Vista against orders from President Polk, who distrusted Taylor's growing political ambitions and had transferred most of his veteran troops to Winfield Scott's campaign against Veracruz. Taylor was left with mostly untested volunteer regiments from Mississippi, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, supported by a handful of artillery batteries. Santa Anna had intercepted a message revealing Taylor's weakened position and marched his army north through the desert in a forced march that cost thousands of men to dehydration and desertion before a shot was fired. He sent Taylor a demand for surrender. Taylor refused. The battle on February 23, 1847, raged across a broken landscape of ravines and plateaus. Mexican infantry nearly broke through the American left flank before Jefferson Davis's Mississippi Rifles and Braxton Bragg's artillery batteries counterattacked. Bragg's canister fire at close range shattered the final Mexican assault. Taylor allegedly told Bragg to give them "a little more grape." Santa Anna withdrew overnight, having suffered roughly 1,800 casualties to Taylor's 665. The battle effectively ended the war in northern Mexico. Taylor rode his fame directly to the White House in 1848, running as a Whig candidate with no political platform beyond his military reputation. He died sixteen months into his presidency, but the officers who served under him at Buena Vista — Davis, Bragg, and others — would lead armies on both sides of the Civil War thirteen years later.