[Robert] Anderson’s third war came in Mexico. He might easily have avoided the fighting, because of his Florida-induced fevers, but he pressed the army to send him.
[…]
Scott offered him a position on his staff, but Anderson begged off, feeling it his duty to see action.
His letters home spoke sympathetically of the Mexican people. During the siege of Vera Cruz in 1847, he expressed concern for the Mexicans inside and a worry that American soldiers might commit atrocities when the city fell. “It really goes to my heart to be compelled to do my duty when I know that every shot either injures or seriously distresses the poor inoffensive women and children, who have neither part nor lot in this War.” He wished, he said, to see “this war civilized,” with “civilities between the forces whenever they are not engaged in battle.”
He was mortified when his old Florida illness, fever and chills, felled him and kept him from a major battle, but he recuperated enough to fight in the Battle of Molino del Rey, one of the war’s hottest actions. His orders that day involved the capture of a huge building that dominated the plain in front of the city. Inside this structure was an open quadrangle. Whichever side held this courtyard could hold the building, and with it, perhaps the whole battlefield. Anderson and his few men battered through a door and rushed into the quadrangle. They immediately came under attack from Mexican troops who stood above them on all four walls.
Under this deadly fire, wounded in five places, Anderson kept his tiny command together for two hours until relieved. From his sickbed he later wrote his wife. He reported that he was first wounded in the shoulder. Blood soaked his cloak, but he continued to lead the command. He grew weak. “My wound, giving me much pain, had now rendered me less vigorous than I was.” Still he kept on. “Getting a half dozen men more, I went forward and entered the enclosure under a pretty galling fire. As I passed through the passageway, a ball grazed my right leg, grazing the bone outside about three inches below my knee.” He stumbled, but continued on for two more hours, until other officers arrived with reinforcements. He assured her that the wounds in his arms and leg would show scars but “are nothing,” and that the ball, still in his shoulder, would, according to a physician, “do no harm.”
He did not tell her that when the relief force found him he was lying on the ground, holding his head up with his hands, directing the remnants of his command. As he was being carried out on a litter, he still supervised the care of his wounded.
Source:
Detzer, David. “A Gentle Man.” Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War. New York: Harcourt, 2002. 17-19. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Anderson, Artillery Officer, pp. 81, 91, 179, 312-317.
W. Marshall Anderson, “A Sketch of Major Robert Anderson,” privately printed in Ohio, 1861, pp. 5-6.
Further Reading:
Winfield Scott / “Old Fuss and Feathers” / “Grand Old Man of the Army”
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