Training Ground by Martin Dugard
10/23/2024 3:10 pm | : 18 mins. | Share to: 
A few months ago I saw a video on YouTube which was examining the inherent geographical advantages that the USA has. And, from what it covered, it talked about how much of what was once Mexico's most arable and verdant land was lost to the US during the Mexican-American war.
Now, I know about the war in the very broad strokes, but I didn't really have a strong sense of it. So, I went looking for some books to read on the topic and eventually landed on Training Ground by Dugard, as I thought the framing of the war as also a place that many of the notable names from the Civil War was interesting.
Here's the blurb on Amazon:
For four years during the Civil War, Generals Grant and Lee clashed as bitter enemies in a war that bloodied and scorched the American landscape. Yet in an earlier time, they had worn the same uniform and fought together.
In The Training Ground, acclaimed historian Martin Dugard presents the saga of how, two decades before the Civil War, a group of West Point graduates—including Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and William Tecumseh Sherman—fought together as brothers. Drawing on a range of primary sources and original research, Dugard paints a gripping narrative of the Mexican War, which eventually almost doubled the size of the United States.
The Training Ground vividly takes us into the thick brush of Palo Alto, where a musket ball narrowly misses Grant but kills a soldier standing near him; through the mountains and ravines of Cerro Gordo, as Lee searches frantically for a secret route into the Mexican army's seemingly invincible position; to Monterrey, as future enemies Davis and Grant ride together into battle; down the California coast, where war-hungry Sherman seeks blood and vengeance. And we are there as the young troops mount the final heroic—and deadly—assault on Mexico City.
So, for the past few weeks I've been working through it. The truth is, I am not a big war history buff and I found the book hard to get through for that reason. It's not just four biographies, it is an overview of the war which zooms in on portions relating to the four of them, but still maintaining the overall narrative of the war. Today, on my flight to Las Vegas for work, I finally finished it.
(The above is from Wikipedia, not the book. Including it for the reader's benefit.)
Overall, if you're like me and wanting to learn about the Mexican-American war, or its connections to the Civil War, I recommend this book. But I don't think I recommend it as a general book for most people.
I did export the segments I highlighted from the book, and will share them here as well as giving some small notes after each:
"They may shout and hurrah, and dance around the bonfires that will be lighted, the cannon that will roar in honor of some field of human butchery; but to what end? Is not life miserable enough, comes not death soon enough, without resort to the hideous energy of war? People of the United States! Your rulers are precipitating you into a fathomless abyss of crime and calamity! Why sleep you thoughtless on its verge, as though this was not your business, or murder could be hid from the sight of God by a few flimsy rags called banners? Awake and arrest the work of butchery ere it shall be too late to preserve your souls from the guilt of wholesale slaughter! Hold meetings! Speak out! Act!"
This comes from a segment which described the anti-war efforts against this war. I found the verbiage and tone very interesting to see, with some echoings to today.
"Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart," said Tecumseh.
One thing the book highlights is that some names I know historical figures by were modified because of their enrollment in West Point. "William" Tecumseh Sherman was not born William. It was added to his name by his father when he was submitted for admittance to West Point.
Ulysses S. Grant had no S. initial until he arrived at the school due to some clerical error. And because his name would be listed as U. S. Grant, he got nicknamed (Uncle) Sam Grant, which he chose to just go by and not fight.
But, I found this quote from Sherman interesting, while not revolutionary to hear in this modern era it speaks a great deal to his mindset and that which became evident in the Civil War.
The result was an appalling number of deaths. Unmarked graves soon lined the San Juan. Regimental bands so often played a death march for funerals that Camargo's mockingbirds learned to mimic the refrain.
I found this just so dark. Again, I've heard this concept before of birds learning songs from humans, but under the framing of this war it struck me enough that I highlighted it while reading.
President Polk's Democratic Party had a long-standing distrust of the armed forces, believing that the nation had little need for a standing army. Volunteers like Davis were his ideal soldiers. "It has never been our policy to maintain large standing armies in time of peace," Polk had declared before the war began. "They are contrary to the genius of our free institutions, would impose heavy burdens on the people and be dangerous to public liberty. Our reliance for protection and defense on the land must be mainly on our citizen soldiers, who will be ever ready, as they have been ever ready in times past, to rush with alacrity, at the call of their country, to her defense."
Oh how far this country has come, and learned. The book points out that the Mexican-American war was basically the first war for the US after the war of 1812. And it jumped out to me how different the political landscape was where they questioned even needing a standing army at all. Obviously, Polk here is meaning that the country would rely more on the militias, rather than the standing army. It's like saying that cities shouldn't have paid fire departments and should rely entirely on volunteer fire departments. Or, I suppose, perhaps it is even more about state vs national in the structure, but, regardless - the correct decision won out.
Polk's greatest dilemma over Taylor's armistice, however, lay not with the opinions of the British or the French, and certainly not with that of the Mexicans. It was the American people whom he feared most. The problem had its roots in democracy and a politician's need to be elected by the people before being allowed to serve. Americans had historically been an easily malleable, highly illiterate, and ill-informed mass of voters. But that was changing, and quickly. Technological advances in papermaking and the invention of the steam printing press (which printed well over 1,000 pages per hour, as opposed to the 240 of the Gutenberg-style manual press) had made newspapers affordable and more easily mass-produced beginning in the 1830s. Once only for the well-off, papers sprang up all around the country; New York alone had eleven dailies, a quick source of news and opinion available for as little as a penny a day.
Another interesting insight outside of the war; that the changing face of the populace thanks to the industrial revolution's innovation of the printing press threatened to interfere with the politics behind and around the war. Another echoing moment for today and the land of social media, etc. Obviously the question around algorithms etc., is inherently different at a base level, but still, I see interesting parallels still today - 200 years later.
Scott's invasion of Veracruz was the largest-ever landing of American troops on foreign soil and would not be surpassed until June 6, 1944 — D-day.
This passage jumped out at me. It lasted nearly 100 years.
Grant's job during the three-month delay in Puebla was to ride out with empty wagons and purchase produce and goods from local farmers. As a result, he often returned looking dirty and unkempt, his uniform unbuttoned for comfort. The date has been lost to history, but sometime during this period, Lee paid a visit to Garland's command and remonstrated Grant for his lack of spit and polish. It was the first time the two men ever met, and the wording was harsh enough that Grant would remember it for the rest of his life — and would remind Lee of it again when next they met on a Palm Sunday far in the future.
A bit poetic here.
By 4:00 a.m., Mexico City's authorities had sent a delegation to Scott, requesting terms of surrender. As the sun rose over the capital the following morning, the American flag was raised over Mexico's National Palace. Scott slept there that night, guarded by a squad of U.S. Marines, in what was also known as the Halls of Montezuma.
It's one of the few lines I know from the Marine Corp. anthem, and I had forgotten it was a direct reference to the Mexican-American war.
Homesick for Julia and their growing family, he abruptly resigned his commission in 1854 and returned home. Rumors that drunkenness was the cause have been greatly exaggerated, as Grant was known for his inability to drink more than a few sips of alcohol owing to his light weight and diminutive size. He struggled to find a new profession and soon failed at a number of business ventures that included farming, tanning, and bill collecting. When the Civil War began, Grant was commissioned as a colonel in the Illinois militia. Within three years he had risen to become general-in-chief of all U.S. armies. Following the war, he returned to civilian life. Grant successfully ran for president in 1868 and served two terms. He died on July 23, 1885, shortly after completing his memoirs, which were edited by Mark Twain.
The Epilogue gave a post-war summation of each of Grant, Lee, Sherman and Davis; this passage from Grant was interesting to me. I had forgotten that Mark Twain edited Grant's autobiography, and also I didn't know about his non-war life and how he had attempted a few businesses before being called back to war and rising through the ranks to Commander-in-Chief.
And that's it. As I said, overall I enjoyed the book and it accomplished what I set out to do, but it didn't floor me such that I am going to urge everyone to read it.
