Ralph W. Kirkham: A Christian Soldier in the US-Mexican War

North of Mexico’s border, most Americans know the 1846 conflict that established that boundary (if they know it at all) as the training ground for Civil War heroes. Generals Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, and George Meade first experienced military command during the twenty-one-month US invasion of Mexico. The same was true for President Franklin Pierce and Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and Senators Joseph Lane and John Quitman. President Zachary Taylor was a commanding officer in Mexico, as was Pierce’s opponent in 1846, presidential candidate Winfield Scott.

Few of these men took much enjoyment from service in Mexico. Unwilling to voice public opposition to their commander in chief, soldiers were more likely to do so in personal conversations, letters, and diaries. General Zachary Taylor privately denounced the annexation of Texas in 1845 as "injudicious in policy and wicked in fact," and showed little enthusiasm when directed by President James K. Polk to march 4,000 US troops into disputed territory claimed by both Mexico and Texas and provoke a response from Mexico in early 1846. Lee chafed at the limited opportunities to prove himself in battle under Taylor’s command, while Grant shuddered at both widespread Mexican poverty and atrocities committed by US soldiers against Mexican civilians. Grant later described the war as "among the most unjust ever fought by a stronger against a weaker nation." The Civil War, he believed, was "our punishment" for that "transgression."

Although war with Mexico resulted in the transfer of almost half of Mexico’s national territory to the United States in 1848, including California, Nevada, Utah, and portions of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, over the generations that followed many Americans seemed unwilling to celebrate a war that appeared so deficient in high principles. This was a war best forgotten. Nonetheless, when Generals Grant and Lee met at Appomattox Court House to negotiate the terms of the South’s surrender, they broke the ice reminiscing about war in Mexico. Whatever its legacy, Mexico was their shared bond as young officers.

Were it not for the shockingly high casualty rate of the War with Mexico (second only to that of the more famous war a decade and a half later), the list of famous military men who might have reminisced along with these Civil War officers would have been longer. Among the fifty-six cadets who graduated from the still-fledgling military academy at West Point in 1842, five died on duty in Texas or Mexico between 1846 and 1848. One who survived, and never ceased giving thanks for his "great fortune" in this regard, was Ralph W. Kirkham of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Unless you hail from the San Francisco Bay Area, where Kirkham served as adjutant general during the Civil War and later became a prominent banker, land developer, and philanthropist (the 1878 Oakland City Directory listed his occupation as "Capitalist"), you are unlikely to know Kirkham’s name. In March 1847, when ordered to join General Winfield Scott’s army as adjutant general of the Sixth Infantry Regiment in Mexico, Lieutenant Kirkham was a twenty-seven-year-old devout Episcopalian, joyfully nesting in a small cottage with his wife of six months, Kate Mix Kirkham, at Fort Gibson in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

The war was, at this point, almost a year old. Although General Zachary Taylor had secured Northern Mexico with a series of victories along the Rio Grande while General Stephen Watts Kearney captured New Mexico and California, Mexico refused to surrender. So President Polk directed General Scott to follow in the footsteps of Hernán Cortéz and capture Mexico City by an overland route from the port of Veracruz.

Kirkham joined Scott a month after an American amphibious force bombarded Veracruz into submission, and over the following fifteen months took part in a series of five major battles that culminated in the capture of Mexico City in September of 1847, followed by a tedious occupation of the capital as Mexico’s survival as an independent nation appeared an open question. Like most educated soldiers, Kirkham wrote regular and candid letters home (soldier mail was not yet subject to censorship in the 1840s). Kirkham also faithfully kept a diary of his experiences. Fortunately for us, both have survived. In his letters and diary, Kirkham, an eloquent and thoughtful writer, proves a fascinating guide to the invasion and occupation of Central Mexico.

One of the more striking elements of Kirkham’s narration of his experiences in Mexico is the depth of his Protestant faith. From the moment he arrives in Mexico he sees the benign hand of providence in events both large and small, and never ceases to praise his "creator" for his many blessings. While his letters to his wife Kate often reflect on their good luck to be Christians, or describe his happiness in being able to attend Protestant services in Mexico, the extent of his devotion is clearer in his journal entries, which are suffused with heartfelt thanks for God’s grace. Everything he experiences, from battles to his frequent and totally unadulterated joy at the natural beauty of Mexico, is permeated by his faith.

But Kirkham’s deep commitment to Protestantism, a faith shared by most officers and many of the regulars and volunteers in the army, was far from entirely benign in its effects. For many Americans, the US war with Mexico was less a conflict between two neighboring nations than a holy war of Protestant against Catholic. Kirkham’s initially inquisitive attitude toward the Catholic Church in Mexico quickly grew toxic. "The more I see of the Romish religion in this country," he wrote to his wife, "the more I am convinced that it is real idolatry."

For America’s Protestant soldiers, religious bias easily shaded into racism. Kirkham marveled at the fertility of the landscape, and delighted in the flowers, birds, and climate of central Mexico. He repeatedly wondered "what a beautiful and happy country this might be if there were good laws and the people virtuous." But, as he wrote Kate, "I suppose there is no nation on earth where there is so much wickedness and vice of all kinds. There is little incentive to virtue here. How little of that pure and holy religion which our blessed Savior taught is to be found in this country. No one could believe how low and depraved these people are."

Given the enmity with which Protestant soldiers viewed Catholic civilians, perhaps it’s unsurprising that depravity went both ways. US soldiers desecrated Mexican churches, while some officers forced Catholic enlisted men, many of whom were recent immigrants, to attend Protestant services. The Mexican government, fully aware of the religious bias of the officer class, directly appealed to Catholic soldiers in the US Army on religious grounds. They successfully induced enough to change sides that Mexico was able to form a battalion composed of Catholic deserters. The San Patricios, as they were known, turned US artillery against the United States in several of the battles in which Kirkham took part. He also witnessed the capture and execution of many of them by US forces in August 1847, by hanging, he noted with pleasure. "For shooting is too good for them."

Kirkham, like most Americans, believed that defeating Mexico would be a simple affair. Expecting victory on the battlefield to lead naturally to surrender, he repeatedly underestimated just how long the war would drag on. A month after arriving in Mexico, he assured Kate that it was "certain" that "there will be little or no more fighting. Probably at the city of Mexico there will be a few shots fired, but we can take it easy enough." Little did he know that another year would pass before the United States was able to negotiate and ratify a treaty with their proud and defiant neighbor. Many soldiers grew to respect the fighting abilities and bravery of Mexicans, but not Kirkham. Although he was regularly entertained by wealthy Mexicans whose taste he openly admired, he never lost the conviction that the people of Mexico were a "cowardly race."

The capture of Mexico City ended up being far more difficult than Kirkham imagined, "a dearly bought victory on our side" that took the lives of many of his fellow officers. "We gained all we attempted, but oh we shall think of the cost as long as we live," he mused after the Battle of Molina del Rey. Yet even hard-fought military victories failed to bring peace. His repeated hopes during the campaign for Mexico City that "the terms of the treaty have already been decided upon, and as a matter of course it must be such as we wish, for we have the [Mexican] nation in our hands" turned out to be false.

From September 1847 through June 1848, Kirkham experienced the tedium and danger of the occupation of Mexico City, where things were outwardly "quiet" but "hardly a day passes without one or more of our soldiers being assassinated." While most soldiers in Mexico, hungry for the excitement of battle, openly resented the long months of drills and occupation that made up the vast majority of their service, Kirkham calmly accepted the challenges of the drawn-out occupation of the capital as a necessary cost of his chosen "career" as an army officer.

During the fall of 1847 and early winter of 1848, expansionists in the United States began to call for the annexation of all of Mexico as spoils of war. "We shall know soon whether our government intends holding out in the country," he wrote Kate in late October. "If this is the decision, I know, for one, that I am not going to spend my life here away from you, and I shall, accordingly, make arrangements to have you with me." A month later he asked Kate directly, "What do you think of coming to Mexico to live? There seems to be little prospect of the war ending, and everybody seems to think we are to retain possession of the whole country." Kirkham didn’t necessarily support taking all of Mexico, "while . . . it may be right and for the best," he admitted to Kate, "I doubt it." But Kirkham never questioned orders. "If you can join me here I shall be contented," he told his wife. Fortunately for the couple, and for Mexico, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, and ratified by the United States Senate in March and Mexico’s Legislature in May 1848, brought the possibility of Mexico’s total annexation to an end.

Kirkham’s resignation and obedience might seem natural for a soldier. But among his cohort of officers, particularly those raised in New England, a hotbed of anti-war agitation, they come as something of a surprise. His fellow officer Ethan Allen Hitchcock of Vermont wrote in his own diary that the "wickedness" of invading Mexico "is enough to make atheists of us all." Volunteer unrest, atrocities against civilians, and other events that led many enlisted men and officers to question the wisdom of war apparently made no impact on Kirkham. In his first letter home after arriving in Veracruz, he notes that "our shots" during the US bombardment "seem to have penetrated nearly every house in town, completely demolishing many." Yet he expresses none of the sympathy for Veracruz’s civilian population common among other US soldiers and the journalists who sent home to the United States critical reports of the assault.

What explains Kirkham’s striking equanimity in the midst of a controversial and deadly war? Many New Englanders among his class were motivated by political conviction and sympathetic to antislavery appeals. Not Kirkham. Officers were entitled by law to bring servants with them to Mexico, and most either brought slaves or hired free black men to cook, clean, and tend to their horses. Although Kirkham had been living in Indian Territory, where slavery was legal, he shipped out with a white servant, who, much to Kirkham’s dismay, was reclaimed by his sergeant stepfather. Kirkham may not have been a slaveholder, but he admitted to Kate that in retrospect he wished he had brought "a good black boy with me" rather than a white servant.

His luck in graduating from West Point in 1842, rather than earlier, also may have influenced his views. In 1842 the US finally abandoned its six-year war against the Seminole Indians, sparing Kirkham that posting after graduation. Military service in Florida against the Seminole was a grueling and deeply alienating experience that drove many army officers to question the aims and competence of Democratic presidents who appeared willing to send troops into harm’s way for the purpose of land acquisition. Polk was just such a Democrat.

But perhaps Kirkham’s views are best understood as a matter of personal character. Buoyed always by his faith in God, and able to find deep pleasure and meaning in simple things, Kirkham kept his eyes down and did his duty as a soldier and officer, without once questioning the place of the US in Mexico.

Amy S. Greenberg is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Her recent books include Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and the prizewinning A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln and the 1846 US Invasion of Mexico (Knopf, 2012). Her current research is on nineteenth-century American attitudes toward imperialism.