Lincoln’s Covert Action Against the French in Mexico A Jessie Scout Probably Involved

During the Civil War, Napoleon III moved troops into Mexico and occupied the country while the United States government and army were unable to respond to the blatant violation of the Monroe Doctrine. The Confederacy benefitted greatly from the French presence on its border with the Mexican port of Matamoras becoming the South’s greatest source of both exports and imports. When Napoleon III was able to convince Austria’s Maximilian to relocate to Mexico City, the potential permanent presence of an ally for the failing Confederacy and the possibility for the creation of a “Franco-Rebel-Mexican League” was prominently mentioned in correspondence between Generals Grant and Sheridan. The Union Army was fully occupied in the second half of 1864 since Jubal Early had fought into the outskirts of Washington, D.C. before being forced back into defensive positions in the Shenandoah Valley, but Sherman and Grant were pressing the Confederate armies hard and couldn’t afford to antagonize France to the point that Napoleon III could both recognize and openly support the Confederacy. Instead of overt conflict or relying only on diplomacy, Lincoln and Grant chose a third option and decided to support Benito Juarez covertly with weapons deliveries.

A Union Army private, J. Brooks, assigned to Company F, Fifth California Regiment, wrote about very unusual experiences along the Rio Grande River in West Texas and his very interesting narrative recorded events made in October or November, 1864, when Civil War battles were reaching culminating points favoring the Union Army in the distant east. The Confederate army under the command of Jubal Early in Virginia’s strategic Shenandoah Valley was completely defeated by Philip Sheridan on October 19th, leaving the way southward toward Richmond generally open or even further with the goal of a raid in force eventually uniting with Sherman who had occupied Atlanta on September 2nd and was moving toward the Atlantic coast before turning his army north. Grant and the Army of the Potomac were located opposite Petersburg in Virginia and in positions to threaten Richmond, the Confederate capital.

Late in life, Brooks wrote about a very unusual operation a small number volunteers from his company conducted instead of their normal routine of fighting hostile Apache and Comanche Indians raiding settlements along the border with Mexico:

“We only knew that the great war was being waged with success to our arms and that we had pacified the Confederates on that part of the Rio Grande though we were 3,000 miles from the Potomac army and from the great captain then in chief command. Our term of enlistment was soon to expire, being encamped near Mesilla when one day in October or November my company was ordered to fall in line and asked if those who were entitled to early discharge would willingly remain a few months longer and see our task completed in thorough style. There was not a dissenting voice. The general reply was ‘We won t go home so long as we are needed.’ We were then ordered to blacken all the shining metal we carried, every gun brass, buckle, and button. The boys began to protest against this unheard of change of regulations but they were told in sharp military language that soldiers should obey orders without question. So our brilliant brasses were soon smeared with whatever would best conceal them.

“At dusk that same evening a careful detail was made of ten of the best shots and toughest marchers. I found myself chosen as one of the band. We were ordered to go with a wagon to pick up a cannon and a lot of arms that were known to be lying near Fort Bliss, Texas, where the rebels had abandoned them in their retreat after a fight some months before. We moved bravely out from our camp under a lieutenant unknown to me but the trip was ordered by my Captain, James H Whitlock. We marched all night in the desert probably to the south and east and when day approached we were made to conceal ourselves and not allow camp fires or smoke to declare our presence. After the rest and sleep of that day came another long night of tramping and just at dawn the officer crept slyly up to a low hill top and cautiously scanned the view. Then he beckoned a sergeant to come and look and at last signaled to me to do the same in perfect silence. I caught a view across the little stream of the Rio Grande and saw a small town on the opposite side with soldiers in strange uniforms. Our boys felt inclined to jump up on the crest and yell and then form and make a charge as we had so often done before, but the sternness and secrecy of the lieutenant checked the impulse. I hardly comprehended what it was that we beheld but I learned later that it was a squad of French troops of Maximilian’s army. Yet I never learned the name of the place where we saw them. The prostrate lieutenant silently slid back out of their sight and told us to secrete ourselves and not be seen that day. In surprise I asked why we should hide in our own country. ‘Silence. Not another word,’ was the officer’s sharp command. By that time my ideas were fully aroused and everything that occurred in the events of the following days was burned vividly into my memory.”

These Union Army troops previously had been involved in defeating the Confederate forces that had occupied much of southern New Mexico and Arizona to form “Confederate Arizona,” or the “Confederate Territory of Arizona.” The Confederate capital was Mesilla and this was the reason the 5th California Regiment was posted there after the Confederates were defeated in the Battle of Glorieta Pass in March, 1862 and forced to withdraw to El Paso. The retreating Confederates had abandoned rifles and a cannon near Fort Bliss and the soldiers were ordered to retrieve them for an unknown purpose.

The order for them to blacken all of their shiny metal, such as buttons, buckles, and bayonets, and to make no fires that could reveal their presence while resting during the day as they marched only at night was a very unusual order for these soldiers. The arrival of an unknown lieutenant added to the mystery of the maneuvering these soldiers were performing as they approached the Rio Grande river and crept to the top of a low ridge from which they observed French soldiers and were ordered not to expose themselves to the Frenchman. The was no doubt about the reasons that the young soldier later wrote “By that time my ideas were fully aroused and everything that occurred in the events of the following days was burned vividly into my memory.”

The French soldiers were on the border area as a result of the French invasion of Mexico that began in late 1861, while the United States was involved in the Civil War and in a weakened military position that made it unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. The French intervention was initially supported by Great Britain and Spain after Mexico’s President Benito Juarez declaring a two-year moratorium on paying debts owed to creditors in those three countries. The British and Spanish forces were withdrawn when they discovered that Napoleon’s intervention plan was simply a ploy to occupy Mexico at a time when Mexican politics left the country divided with the liberal Benito Juarez opposed by wealthy Mexican elites, the Roman Catholic Church, and some Mexican Indian communities that were devout Catholics after Juarez nationalized the Catholic Church’s wealth. 

Napoleon III, the French emperor, had recently defeated the Austrian Empire in the Franco-Austrian War of 1859 over reunification of northern Italy and the French ruler now had an opportunity to reconcile with Franz Joseph, the defeated Austrian, by installing his brother, Maximilian, as the Emperor of Mexico on a new throne supported by French bayonets in Mexico City. Understanding geopolitics well, Napoleon III knew that by creating a Catholic renewal in Mexico would be welcomed by a large segment of Mexico’s population, making the French occupation easier to manage as the French army drove Benito Juarez from one town to another until only a small segment of Mexican territory adjacent to Texas remained under Juarez’ control. He arrived in Chihuahua in 1864 and subsequently withdrew to El Paso del Norte that became his “capital” for nine months in 1865 and 1866. 

A degree of permanence for Napoleon III’s plan for an western hemisphere empire resulted with the arrival of Mexico’s new emperor, Maximilian I, who landed at Veracruz on May 29, 1864. This was the catalyst that led to J. Brook’s volunteers from Company F to be ordered to blacken all of their brass buckles and buttons in late October or early November in 1864.

Other forces were also in motion.

General Lew Wallace wrote in his autobiography that “At City Point in 1864 I was General Grant’s guest by special invitation” and in a letter to his wife dated September 12, 1864 that he had met with Grant and had also met with Secretary of War Stanton in Washington, D.C. He provided no details in either the letter or his autobiography, but there is a undocumented period in the late 1864 autobiography chapters. The chapter that follows Wallace’s letter to his wife begins with an accounting of a letter received in January, 1865 from a classmate from Indiana, S.S. Brown, who was living as a refugee in Monterrey, Mexico. The “blank” period in the autobiography covers the period from mid-September, 1864 through January, 1865 and the chapter heading reveals a change of interest for Wallace: Departure for Brazos Santiago. Circumstantially, it appears that like Private Brooks, Lew Wallace probably had also blackened his brass buckle and buttons. There is a three month blank space in Lew Wallace’s autobiography, suggesting clandestine activity that remained sequestered from American history as cover stories during this period were maintained for life. 

William Gwin, called “Duke Gwin,” after arriving in Mexico two weeks after Maximilian:

“Comrade: Your kind favor of Feb 15th is at hand and carefully read. Replying thereto will say inclosed, please find a statement duly verified. After receiving your letter, I lay awake nearly all night. I usually rest nicely and went over my three years and one month’s service again and like a flash the memory of that scout and his apparent desertion of us in 1863 and a whole lot of incidents that had almost gone from memory came fresh as yesterday. We never knew his name, he was called ‘the Missourian’ nor where he came from, but he knew and I now know he was all right.” 

“We started with much publicity and parade straight away west into the New Mexico deserts to give the Apaches a red hot campaign. After marching two days we camped but for what reason we could not then imagine. About an hour later a Mexican arrived on horseback saying he was lost and wanted food and rest. If he had companions they kept out of our sight. Our officers treated him with welcome and he remained with us. I felt very sure that I had seen the same man from the hill where we had looked across the river and seen foreign soldiers but it was not soldierly to gossip. We were then about ninety miles distant from the town where we had seen them by air line estimate and not a human habitation had been seen for many miles of the way.

“The next day we were joined by a Union officer that we had never seen before escorted by thirty cavalrymen whom I believe to have been regulars. They were all well mounted and equipped and like ourselves had all their brasses and metallic accouterments blackened to make them invisible by night as well as less conspicuous by day…

“Our combined force was soon on the move. Starting about dusk we headed straight south for the Mexican line and crossed it sometime in the night. The officers seemed to know its location though it was far away from the Rio Grande at that point. Very strict orders of silence and secrecy were then given us. At daybreak we went into hiding and spent the day in miserable rest among brush or rocks or ravines with all the difficulties and discomforts pertaining to heat, thirst, and poor food. At dusk it was again forward in the gloom of a wild strange rocky country at our best speed all night. The cavalry rode fast and our eighty footmen did a great deal of double quick to keep up with them. Silence was required when the opening day drove us again into shelter. As before fires were not allowed except where brush or ravines would keep them hidden. This went on I cannot say for how many days till near dawn we arrived beside a Mexican town and made a halt. Here our lost Mexican who had thus far piloted our leaders through uninhabited by ways rode into the place and his friends came out to thank us for bringing him safe home. These well acted theatricals amused us much at the time and kept us guessing what sort of a scheme was behind it all but we trusted in the honor and wisdom of our officers.

“Here we remained to take a brief rest and the strange officer after a few hours of sleep called for a special guard of ten infantry and ten horsemen to accompany him to the next town. Again I was chosen and again we were all put to our best speed and utmost endurance until about night we arrived at a much larger town. There was no way for us privates to learn the names of those localities but I now know from the General’s account what I had before suspected that he had brought us to the city of Chihuahua.

“The officer whose name for forty years I was not permitted to know rode forward to meet a Mexican dignitary and we surmised that their long nocturnal conference was on something deeply important and confidential. That night we were ordered to sleep on our arms and it did not require much watching to enforce that precept. We felt that we were in a foreign country under a strange leader surrounded by mystery and with two sorts of alien soldiers likely to encounter us besides the Indians.

“The next morning a string of army wagons drove in of which we had no previous knowledge. Strange to say the painted letters US had been carefully erased from every wagon and harness. But they were laden with a familiar sort of long heavy boxes. I saw them unloaded and saw the Mexicans give in exchange a quantity of corn and beans for the use of our quartermasters. We could only guess at the contents of the boxes but we imagined that the train must have had a long and laborious journey across Indian Territory and Texas to convey rifles and cartridges secretly from steamer navigation to the heart of Old Mexico for to us no other explanation appeared competent to account for the phenomenon. It was said that the wagons were to be sent back across the Rio Grande. As soon as we had seen them loaded with forage our small escort hastened back to the other town and rejoined the main force. Under Capt Whitlock we retraced our course entirely by night marches with extreme haste and stealthiness until we were again on United States soil. I cannot testify as to the movements of the unknown officer or of the Mexican gentleman whom he is said to have aided in getting to New York. We privates had plenty of duties to perform without noting their further proceedings.

COVERING UP THE TRAIL

“It then seemed urgently desirable to do something to justify the expedition and vindicate our mission to convert some of the Apaches. We got on the trail of a band of the hostiles before returning to camp. We killed only one but captured several with all their stock and camp outfit.

“Another remarkable thing then happened for our diversion. A parade was held at which a general order was read by our captain though signed by an officer whose name I did not know or have forgotten. Whitlock was always unpretentious and moderate of language but this general order was most bombastic and sensational. It did not recount any of the things that we had actually done but spoke largely of exploits we knew nothing about. I presume that the said order is somewhere safe in the military records to account for the way we had been employed while playing hookey. I remember it was quite strong on our adventures as Indian exterminators. I now imagine that it was the inventive genius of a future novelist that gave a breezy tone to the document and long kept us laughing.

“We then marched eastward to our camp loudly glorying in the success of the Indian raid and very silent about all the rest. I should have stated earlier that the special guard of ten from my company received most positive orders not to communicate by letter or otherwise any fact or action of this or any other military movement to persons outside of the army. For many years I scrupulously observed that injunction but the chief actor seems to have dismissed all fear that any censure could attach in recent years to those irregular proceedings. Among the ten I had only one comrade who had enough penetration of mind to form a correct idea of our errand to the Mexican town but he is now dead. Indeed, I feel sure that the Captain and all my mates of the special guard have now passed away, myself alone being left to tell the story. However some of the main party may still be living. Not long after these events most of us were discharged for expiration of term of enlistment at La Mesilla near the boundary. I was offered one thousand dollars bounty to enlist in the army of Juarez. But I had no desire to serve like a Hessian or mercenary under any flag not our own. Still quite a number of the old comrades accepted the bounty and went in to help clean out the French and so did a good many of the Confederates who certainly needed the bounty and could render a good equivalent in battle.”

Brooks’ explanation of the care taken by the officers involved in “covering up the trail” to conceal the fact that the infantry troops and the cavalry “regulars” had been deep inside Mexico to Chihuahua City after being led by an unusual individual, “a Mexican arrived on horseback saying he was lost and wanted food and rest … Our officers treated him with welcome and he remained with us.” Brooks estimated the soldiers had traveled 90 miles from the location where they observed the French soldiers and he later described the “well rehearsed theatricals” that occurred at their destination. “Here our lost Mexican who had thus far piloted our leaders through uninhabited by ways rode into the place and his friends came out to thank us for bringing him safe home.”

Other theatricals occurred that failed to catch the attention of the very observant Brooks. The “scout who was disguised … who appeared as a camp follower stated that he was going to Mexico that he was out of repute with the boys and he knew Wm. M. Gwin who was going to be the prime minister under Maximilian … and that night he disappeared.” The scout known only as “the Missourian” was searched for and an entire company of Union cavalry “followed his trail to near the Mexican border” as the scout from Missouri’s status as a Confederate sympathizer, if not a spy, was greatly reinforced through the searches made to capture him. The region was recently the Confederate Territory of Arizona and sympathizers were very likely reinforcing the cover status of a Union covert agent entering Mexico who intended to make contact with the key Confederacy supporter associated with Napoleon III, former Senator William Gwin, who was expected to become a key official in Maximilian’s empire. Maximilian consented to accept the crown in October 1863 and according to Brooks, the Missourian went south around the same time.

Having an entire Union cavalry company in hot pursuit of the Missourian scout definitely enhanced his status as an important Confederate official or officer as he continued traveling deep into Mexico, probably moving in a southeast direction to enter French controlled territory. These careful theatrics helped ensure the scout would be accepted by Confederate sympathizers inside Mexico, again “covering up the trail” of the scout known as the Missourian.

An important connection to these well prepared and rehearsed espionage capabilities involved Missouri, the point of origin of the scout “who was disguised … who appeared as a camp follower” in Brook’s narrative. Missouri was the location of the plan to create the original Jessie Scouts who operated under the command of General John C. Fremont and were named for Fremont’s wife, Jessie. These skilled scouts departed Missouri and came into the eastern theater in early 1862 where one of them, called “Old Clayton,” was involved in training scouts operating while wearing Confederate uniforms under Generals Milroy, Averell, and Sheridan. Operations conducted by the original scouts were generally highly risky but any results were worth the risk. One scout, Jack Sterry, attempted to send Longstreet’s Corps in the wrong direction during Second Manassas, Leon Greenwald led a scout team to sabotage one of two pontoon bridges over the Potomac and effectively trapped Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia on the wrong side of the river after the Battle of Gettysburg. It is entirely possible that the “Missourian” was one of these skilled operators who had been sent west to support General Kit Carson in operations along the Mexican border.

Brook explained Kit Carson’s role in the entire operation:

“We were then near the Rio Grande. In about two hours an order came from Gen Carson (Kit Carson) to black our guns, all buttons, and buckles also. This tried the temper of some of the men…”

Carson was also connected back to Missouri since he had been a scout leading General John C. Fremont’s exploration into the west, an expedition that began in St. Louis. Carson was hired as a guide and it was through Fremont’s reports of the expedition that made Kit Carson famous and into a place in American history. Jessie Fremont, the daughter of Senator Thomas Hart Benton and wife of General Fremont, was instrumental in making the shy Kit Carson into a national figure. Pamela Herr and Mary Lee Spence’s book, The Letters of Jessie Benton Fremont, makes the connection between Jessie Fremont and the future commander on the Mexican border. 

 Confederate uniforms. These soldiers were called “Jessie Scouts,” and one of them may have been assigned under the command of General Kit Carson during the period just prior to Carson ordering men of the 5th California Regiment to blacken their shiny brass buttons.

Also in her anonymous role, Jessie Fremont had a significant potential connection to Tennessee’s former Senator William Gwin who was in the process of making connections with both Napoleon III and Maximilian I. Gwin became wealthy in the California gold fields, as had Jessie’s husband. Her connection to Gwinn is explained in letters written by one of Jessie’s personal enemies, Confederate spy Rose Greenhow. 

few other women in town. ‘I never spoke to her after we left ship or visited her which piqued her very much,’ Jessie Fremont wrote.”

There was a very good reason for the dislike Jessie Fremont displayed toward Rose Greenhow and this same factor had managed to engage Jessie in espionage activities since being a teenager, insights that made her an extremely intelligent anonymous partner for her husband who seemed to lack a similar level of intellectual capability. Jessie later explained her role in intelligence during the Mexican War and the reason the Greenhows were not trusted in The Letters of Jessie Benton Fremont.

“Mr. Buchanan [Secretary of State] often brought important letters in Spanish, from the confidential agent in Mexico (during the war) to my Father’s for translation. My sister and myself would make the translations. Genl. Dix (N.Y.) was on the Military Com. & knew Spanish. He was a near neighbor & congenial friend. My Father too knew Spanish thoroughly, and he & Genl. Dix would read out a translation to Mr. Buchanan and after, we (who knew Spanish well) made out the written papers.

“The Librarian and translator at the State Dept. Mr. Greenhough (Greenhow) of course knew Spanish. But his wife was in the pay of the English Legation as a spy & our private information reached them through her. Mr. Buchanan when he knew this thought best to cut off opportunities but not betray knowledge of being watched.

“This is only one of many corroborating bits of circumstantial evidence of constant rivalry & counteraction by England regarding Mexico…. For 20 years my Father was Chairman of the Military Com(mittee). He knew the personnel of the army and their wants in a way no passing Secretary could. Also he had been in the army and in addition to experience had a love for military matters. Our house — the “library” — and my Father’s com(mittee) room were the real war Dept….”

This next line in Jessie’s account of her activities during the Mexican War explains a great deal about the inaction by President Buchanan in the prequel of the Civil War:

“Mr. Buchanan had no fibre in him that responded toward to war — or combativeness in any form. It was a moral impossibility that any move toward gaining California should have been made without my Father’s knowledge.”

Jessie Fremont apparently was the anonymous center of a group of unconventionally thinking — and acting — politicians and soldiers from the Fremont residence in St. Louis, Missouri. She was connected to General Kit Carson, the Union army commander whose troops were operating along the border with Mexico and there was a link between the Fremonts and William Gwin who was being used as a potential point of contact being sought by the scout, the Missourian, who entered Mexico. Jessie Fremont definitely had access to key individuals and she may have been deeply involved in planning the 1864 covert action into Mexico that supported Juarez.

Brook’s very detailed narrative that was written in Washington state caught the attention of an unnamed reporter from Portland, Oregon, who had been meeting with the aging soldier. The reporter wrote:

“By a rare coincidence on returning to Portland, I found one week later that the syndicate journals of the land were giving a notable interview of Frank G. Carpenter with General Lew Wallace in which the aged author told the main facts of the very same exploit across the border. As the correspondent appears to have given them in the General’s own words, I take the liberty of quoting the paragraph entire as an excellent summary of the deed he accomplished and of its bold purpose. But it was regrettable to find in the hero’s autobiography that his active pen was laid by and his reminiscences terminated by approaching death before reaching the date of his remarkable expedition.”

Carpenter’s article had the headline “How Mexico Was Saved.”

“I suppose your memoirs will contain much unwritten history. Yes, I had to do with some important matters in the life of the Nation and with some things the real history of which is unknown. For instance, I was the agent of General Grant in giving the Mexicans such assistance as enabled them to keep their country a republic. Louis Napoleon wanted to make it a monarchy. He was backing Maximilian and was in a fair way to succeed. This was just at the close of the rebellion when we were still in an unsettled condition and did not dare risk a war with France. I was sent by General Grant without the knowledge of Secretary Seward to consult with General Juarez, the Mexican President, to see if we could not in some way assist the republic. I went to the Rio Grande and pushed my way through the country to Chihuahua where I met Juarez. He was in a bad way had but few troops and but few arms and it looked as though Maximilian must succeed. We discussed the matter and as a result he sent the Governor of Tamaulipas with me back to the United States and there in connection with Matias Romero, the Mexican Minister to Washington, we bought about $5,000,000 worth of Winchester rifles cannon and other munitions of war and paid for them with Mexican Government bonds.”

Wallace remarked on page 138 of his Autobiography that he didn’t speak Spanish and this may explain the role of the “lost Mexican” arriving in Brook’s camp where he was welcomed by the officers in charge. This man led the American infantry and cavalry group to Chihuahua city where the “lost Mexican” was welcomed by his friends and Lew Wallace met with Benito Juarez as U.S. Army wagons with the U.S. on them blacked out were unloaded with the rifles and ammunition in them being passed out to Juarez’ troops.

The very observant Private Brooks concluded that the strange officer and the scout identified only as the “Missourian” that Brooks appears to have gotten to know very well during what appears to have been a full year of periodic association. Brooks had more insight into the scout than he acknowledged in his narrative and he later concluded in a sworn statement:

“And it is now my belief that this strange officer was General Wallace and that this scout who left us was the man who saved Mexico.”

Frank G. Carpenter, the reporter who interviewed Wallace, lamented the fact that in “the hero’s autobiography that his active pen was laid by and his reminiscences terminated by approaching death before reaching the date of his remarkable expedition.” Wallace’s Autobiography left a historically “blank” period from late September, 1864 through January, 1865 as the very talented writer chose to ignore “his remarkable expedition” that was classified. The role of the “Missourian,” probably a skilled Jessie Scout like his fellow scouts who remained on the eastern battlefields, will probably never be revealed. Brook’s short conclusion about the scout, “that this scout who left us was the man who saved Mexico,” was not expanded upon as Brook continued with “covering up the trail.”

Brooks was associated with the scout from “sometime in 1862” until he told Brooks in 1863 that he was “going to Mexico.” Brooks reply that the scout “need not look to me for friendly aid if he did” suggests that friendly aid might have been expected since there was a history of this relationship between the two men in their past association.

Brooks knew something about the Missourian and his mission or he would have not concluded that “this scout who left us was the man who saved Mexico.”