Senator Jefferson Davis to Governor Albert G. Brown,* October 3, 1847

Reports of the Battles of Monterey and Buena Vista.

(From the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.)

Brierfield 3d Oct. 1847

Govr. A. G. Brown

Sir,

Herewith I have the honor to transmit to you the reports of the Regimental officers of the Battles of Monterey and Buena Vista, as far as the same were in my possession. I had hoped before this to have received full information in relation to the number of Rifles for which our state will be justly responsible and to have sent you a consolidated return; but regret to say that no company return has been made to me, since that of which I advised you.

It was my purpose to have made a report to you, which should have been a history of our Campaign in Mexico, but ill health at last compels me to abandon the design. A wish on the part of the Company officers to have their reports published, has been communicated to me by one of their number, and I have replied that they would be furnished to the Executive.

Very Respectfully

yr. mo. obt. svt.

Jeffn. Davis.

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* At the election of officers of the First Mississippi Regiment of Volunteers War with Mexico July 18, 1846, Capt. A. B. Bradford, who had been a soldier under Jackson in 1812-15 and Colonel of a regiment of Tennessee volunteers of Armstrong's mounted brigade under General Call in Florida, 1836, and was known as "the hero of Withlacoochee," was supported by the northern counties for Colonel and received 350 votes to 300 for Jefferson Davis, who was a graduate of West Point, had been a Lieutenant in the regular army in the Black Hawk war, and Adjutant of the Dragoons in a Comanchee war, and was at the time a Representative of Mississippi in Congress. R. N. Downing also received 135 votes, W. L. Brandon 91, and A. G. Bennett 37. Bradford declined to consider the election his, although it was sufficient in militia elections, unless he had a majority of the regiment. On the second ballot Davis received a majority of 147. A. K. McClung, R. E. Downing and Major-General Duffield were candidates for Lieutenant-Colonel and McClung was elected on the second ballot. On a subsequent day Bradford was elected Major. McClung commanded the regiment until after it reached New Orleans.

The staff officers were: Richard Griffith, Adjutant; Seymour Halsey, Surgeon; John Thompson, Assistant Surgeon; Charles T. Harlan, Sergeant-Major; S. Warren W White, Quartermaster-Sergeant; Kemp S. Holland, Commissary; Stephen Dodds, Principal Musician.

Colonel Davis, then at Washington, D. C., arranged that the regiment should be armed with rifles instead of the ordinary infantry musket. On this subject he said later in life: "General Scott endeavored to persuade me not to take more rifles than enough for four companies, and objected particularly to percussion arms as not having been sufficiently tested for the use of troops in the field. Knowing that the Mississippians would have no confidence in the old flint lock muskets, I insisted on heir being armed with the kind of rifle then recently made at New Haven, Conn., the Whitney rifle. From having been first used by the Mississippians, those rifles have always been known as the Mississippi rifles." The arms were sent to the regiment by ship, to New Orleans. They were without bayonets, there having been no time to make them. Colonel Davis, traveling by way of Wheeling, joined his command at the camp near New Orleans July 21, 1846.

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See:

• Col. Jefferson Davis to Brig. Gen. John A. Quitman, September 26, 1846
• Col. Jefferson Davis to Brig. Gen. John A. Quitman, Undated

SOURCE: Dunbar Rowland, Editor, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches, Volume 1, pp. 102-3