John Salmon Ford Goes To War

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RIP FORD

Part 10: John Salmon Ford Goes To War

by Bob Heinonen

John Salmon Ford participated in most major events in Texas between 1836 and 1870---the Mexican-American War was no exception. But first, personal tragedy struck.

Louisa, with whom he had fallen in love and married in the early fall of 1845, fell sick. “Ford doctored her himself; he almost never left her bedroom, dropping all his outside activities and leaving the management of the paper to [his partner Michael] Cronican. In August [1846] she lapsed into unconsciousness and soon died. John Salmon was stricken with grief. After the funeral services, he left Oakwood Cemetery feeling as if ‘the bosom of destruction’ had passed ‘over his domestic hearth.’”[i]

After many days of self-enforced solitude, Ford threw himself back into his work—and politics. He was elected to the eleven person state central committee for the newly formed Democratic Party. Ford wanted to go to war but felt his place was at his newspaper—until Jack Hays called for volunteers to fill out his regiment. On July 7, 1847, John Salmon Ford enlisted in Hays’ second regiment. He was immediately promoted to lieutenant and transferred to Hays’ staff as regimental adjutant.

On August 12^th, Hays’ command marched south to Mier and then to a campsite just below Matamoros---all of northern Mexico and Vera Cruz was in U.S. hands. Ford was ordered to sail to Vera Cruz to locate a campsite for the regiment which followed by ship shortly afterward.

Hays’ Texas Ranger regiment got a reputation: heroic, out-of-control, tough, vengeful, trustworthy, fearless… They had the most effective weapon in the war—the new Walker-Colt six shot revolver. “The command had men in it who had suffered loss of relatives by the Mexicans massacring prisoners of war. There were men who had been Santa Fe prisoners, Mier prisoners, and prisoners made at San Antonio by Vasquez and Woll. Young Lewin Rogers was in Mexico on a mission of revenge. Mexicans had cut the throats of his family: Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, their daughter, and their son William, who lived as if by a miracle. This affair had happened on the Arroyo Colorado, thirty miles north of Brownsville. Was it a wonder that it was sometimes difficult to restrain these men, whose feelings had been lacerated by domestic breavements and who were standing face to face with the people whose troops had committed these bloddy deeds? They never made war upon any but armed men, when the field was open and the lists free.”[ii]

Hays’ regiment made it “overland through a series of engagements to the ancient walls of Mexico City, where the Mexicans, after a frantic last stand, finally surrendered.

Hays and Adjutant Ford led the rangers into the heart of the city, well ahead of the main army.

‘Los Diablos Tejanos!’ ‘Los Diablos Tejanos!’ cried the Mexicans as they crowded along the streets to get a look at the ‘Texas Devils.’ One war correspondent said they rode some standing upright, some sideways, some facing the rear, some by the reverse flank, some on horses, others on mustangs and mules; on they rode, pell-mell, wearing motley ‘uniforms’ of almost every conceivable variety of pants and shirts, hats and caps (‘caps made of the skins of…the dog, the cat, the bear, the coon, the wild cat…and each cap had a tail hanging to it’). And the frightened onlookers, not knowing whether to cheer or to run, believed the Texan to be ‘a sort of semi-civilized, half man, half devil, with a slight mixture of lion and the snapping turtle,’ and had ‘a more holy horror’ of him than they had of ‘the evil saint himself.’[iii]

Mexico and the United States now changed dramatically. And John Salmon Ford returned home with two things that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Next Month - Part 11: RIP - The War Is Over

Bob Heinonen is the founder of Texas Heroes and has been portraying Rip Ford since 1993.