("Here we are on the banks of the Nueces in the grand camp...)
"Here we are on the banks of the Nueces in the grand camp of the army of occupation." So wrote Lt. Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana when in 1845, not many months before the outbreak of the Mexican War, he joined the white-tented encampment of General Zachary Taylor in Texas. And so he continued writing during the uncertain life of camp and campaign for the better part of the next two years. In these letters to his wife, published here for the first time, Dana provides a detailed, firsthand view of the United States' war with Mexico―fighting off the Mexicans from within Fort Brown during the initial attack; hearing the distant thunder of artillery as Taylor's army marched to the rescue of the beleaguered Seventh Infantry; occupying Matamoros; taking Monterrey, street by street with the defenders firing from the housetops. After Monterrey, Dana was at the siege of Veracruz and on the march to Cerro Gordo. Badly wounded in the attack on Telegraph Hill at Cerro Gordo, he was left on the field for dead, but was rescued by a burial party a day and a half later. Following the Mexican War, Dana went on to become a major general during the Civil War and later to have an illustrious career as a railroad executive. Nearly one hundred of his letters about the Mexican War survived and are now in the archives at West Point. From them Robert Ferrell has edited this vivid, eyewitness narrative.
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Businessman military railroad executive
Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana was born on April 15, 1822 at the military post of Fort Sullivan, Eastport, Maine, United States. His father, Nathaniel Giddings Dana, brother of James Freeman and Samuel Luther Dana, was an army officer, and his grandfather, Luther Dana, had been an officer in the navy during the Revolution. On the side of his mother, Mary Langdon Harris, he was descended from Woodbury Langdon, a member of the Continental Congress and brother of John Langdon.
Dana entered West Point Military Academy in 1838, graduating in 1842.
In 1842 Dana was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 7th Infantry. He served in the military occupation of Texas and in the Mexican War, taking part in the defense of Fort Brown, the battle of Monterey, the siege of Vera Cruz, and the battle of Cerro Gordo, where he was severely wounded at the storming of Telegraph Hill, and left on the field as dead until picked up by a burying party thirty-six hours later.
He had been promoted to first lieutenant early in 1847, and in 1848 was appointed a captain and assistant quartermaster. He was stationed in Minnesota, became familiar with business conditions there, and in 1855 resigned from the army, establishing a banking business in St. Paul, as a member of the firm of Dana & Borup.
He was brigadier-general in the Minnesota militia from 1857 to 1861. He entered the volunteer army as colonel of the 1st Minnesota Infantry, October 2, 1861, and within a few days took it into action at Ball's Bluff. The regiment, composed in large part of lumbermen, was called upon after the battle to bring off the defeated troops to the Maryland shore of the Potomac, a task reminiscent of Glover's, with his Marblehead men, after the battle of Long Island. Dana was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, February 3, 1862, and commanded a brigade of the II Corps in the Peninsular campaign and at Antietam, where he was again badly wounded. He was disabled for many months, but was meanwhile appointed major-general of volunteers, November 29, 1862.
After his return to duty he had no considerable field service, but commanded successively the defenses of Philadelphia, the expedition which secured a lodgment on the Texas coast late in 1863, and districts along the Mississippi River, no longer the theatre of active operations. He resigned from the army, May 27, 1865.
For five years he was general agent of the American-Russia Commercial Company of Alaska, and thereafter an executive officer of several railroads, notably the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. Under authority of a special act of Congress passed in 1894, he was appointed captain--the rank he had formerly held in the regular army--and placed on the retired list. He was deputy commissioner of pensions from 1895 to 1897.
("Here we are on the banks of the Nueces in the grand camp...)
In 1844 Dana married Sue Lewis Martin Sandford, at St. Louis.
