Corpus Christi History
By Murphy Givens

Wednesday, Dec. 2, 1998

Kinney makes a fortune from Taylor's army

   Eight companies of the Third Infantry were encamped in Corpus Christi by Aug. 15, 1845. Zachary Taylor's "Army of Occupation" had a tremendous impact on Corpus Christi. Next to opening the port, it was the single most important event in this city's history.
    What was called a smuggler's outpost thrived when more than 4,000 soldiers arrived. (A 4,000-man army doesn't seem like much, but back then it represented half the total strength of the U.S. Army.) With the army came prostitutes, gamblers, whiskey drummers, sutlers, civilian contractors -- all the usual camp followers an army attracted. The population jumped from 100 to 2,000, not counting the soldiers. This was the beginning of Corpus Christi as a place of note.
    It made the city's founder and promoter, Henry L. Kinney, rich. By the time the army left, he was called the richest man in Texas. He rented a shellcrete building on Water Street to Taylor for his headquarters (where NationsBank's parking garage is now). He opened a hotel, the Kinney House, and owned gambling houses, and saloons. Other businesses paid him royalties to operate. He sold beef to the army and served as Taylor's quartermaster.
    Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock wrote in his journal that, ``Kinney seems to have a government of his own here . . . He lives by smuggling goods across the line."
    Kinney had written glowing descriptions of Corpus Christi to get the army here. But once they were here, the soldiers found no Camp Salubrity. The army rations gave them scurvy and the food they bought from local vendors gave them dysentery. There was poor sanitation and a shortage of drinking water. The men drank bad water and sickened while others drank bad whiskey and brawled.
    One officer wrote that "almost all the houses in Corpus Christi are drinking houses put up since our arrival."
    Discipline was lax, according to Hitchcock, and there was very little training, leaving the men free to pursue private pleasures and fight.
    ``It is noteworthy that since the arrival of the 2nd Dragoons," Hitchcock wrote, ``there have been several disgraceful brawls and quarrels, to say nothing of drunken frolics. The Dragoons have made themselves a public scandal. One captain has resigned to avoid trial; two others have had a dirty brawl; and still two others are on trial for fighting over a low woman."
    On Aug. 24, he wrote, ``one of the most terrific storms I ever knew. Two valuable colored servants struck by lightning -- one killed, the other may recover. Many tents blown down."
    The servant killed was a young man belonging to Lt. Braxton Bragg (a future Confederate general.) He was sitting in his tent with his head leaning against the pole, an army surgeon wrote, when lightning struck the tent pole and passed through his head.
    On Sept. 13, a small old steamer being used by the army, the Dayton, burst its boilers near McGloin's Bluff (Ingleside), killing 10. Hitchcock picked a burial spot ``on the brow of the hill northwest of the camp; it commands a view of the Nueces and Corpus Christi Bay; it is a beautiful spot" (That's Bayview Cemetery).
    Hitchcock was so sick he hardly had the energy to jot down his criticisms of the army, of his fellow officers, and especially of the commanding general. But he found fault wherever he cast his eye. Hitchcock was an unusual man. He was the grandson of the revolutionary hero Ethan Allen, and was said to be the smartest man in the army. He studied mystic philosophers, read Spinoza, and kept up a correspondence with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
    In the meantime, he criticized Taylor for not imposing strict discipline. He criticized Taylor for failure to scout out the land or determine the whereabouts of Mexican forces. He criticized Taylor for not drilling the troops so they could be maneuvered as units. Mainly, he criticized Taylor for being Taylor, for not being a West Pointer, for dressing like a farmhand in old baggy pants and straw hat, and for his undisguised political ambitions. As Hitchcock decided, Taylor needed a military victory so he could become president. Hitchcock wrote that Taylor ``is instigated by ambition -- or so it seems to me."
    Others in the army, including Lt. U. S. Grant, did not share Hitchcock's low opinion of Taylor. Many of them worshipped Taylor for his lack of pretension. Grant wrote that the general ``could put his meaning so plainly that there was no mistaking it." Grant in time would pattern his own command style from what he learned from ``Old Rough and Ready."

(This is the second of three columns on Zachary Taylor's army in Corpus Christi.) (Murphy Givens can be reached by e-mail at givensm@scripps.com or by phone, 886-4315. Previous columns can be found on-line at www. caller.com/mgivens.)

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