The Fort Worth Star-Telegram had an interesting tidbit last week concerning the Sundance Square Christmas tree, whose lights will be switched on Wednesday by the mayor and Marie Osmond, the favorite daughter of the singing Utahns.
In conjunction with that annual tradition, Sasha and Edward P. Bass, Sundance Square owners, donated a 30-foot Christmas tree to Madison Square Park in New York as a gesture symbolizing our common bonds.
New York favorite son William Jenkins Worth, the namesake of our favorite city, is buried just a stone’s throw from Madison Square Park. In fact, in Madison Square Park is a monument to Chester A. Arthur, the 21st president of the United States.
Juxtaposed with our hero general, Arthur’s memorial is but a leaf in the forest compared with Worth’s 51-foot tall monument and burial site.
Some remember Arthur — some — but completely lost to history is the name and fame of Maj. Gen. William Jenkins Worth. We know him as the namesake of Fort Worth, but even many of the fair denizens of our grand Texas city probably know as much about Gen. Worth as the internal workings of a fire ant mound.
My knowledge, too, was once woefully deficient. His uniform that may or may not still be in a display case at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and his role in the Mexican War were all I knew about him.
At one point, the way I understand it, someone or a few people wanted to bring not only his remains but the entire monument back to Fort Worth to serve as his eternal resting place. How would the ghost of Gen. Worth feel about such a long-haul relocation? We suspect he’d a been pissed.
After all, he was laid to rest in his home, the American economic and cultural capital. Not to mention, he never dipped a toe in the Trinity River, much less stepped foot in the city.
Worth monument.
''They haven't moved Muhammad from Mecca,'' said Bill Turner, a Fort Worth resident and Gen. Worth collector, in a New York Times article in 1983. ''Why the heck would you want to move General Worth from New York?”
I think Muhammad’s final resting place is in Medina, but the point is the same.
My interest in Gen. Worth piqued a few years ago after reading Ron Chernow’s fantastic biography on Ulysses S. Grant, a tome in its truest, scholarly sense that played a leading role in sending to the ash heap Grant’s unjust legacy. In reality, Grant’s rightful place in American history is right there with the first George W. And Chernow’s leading man served under Worth in the Mexican War. So, the thought of Worth as an influence on Grant toyed with the mind. (Worth also was a mentor to Robert E. Lee as the Commandant of the Cadets at West Point.)
“I found General Worth a different man from any I had before served directly under,” Grant said in his highly acclaimed memoirs, written on his deathbed. “He was nervous, impatient and restless on the march, or when important or responsible duty confronted him.
“He enjoyed, however, a fine reputation for his fighting qualities, and thus attached his officers and men to him.”
A highly sympathetic and out-of-print Worth biography, General William Jenkins Worth: Monterey’s Forgotten Hero, authored by Edward Wallace and published by SMU in 1953 is out there. But its scarcity has elevated the cost of a copy to the price of beef.
Wallace said he took up the subject of Worth because he didn’t believe history did him any justice. One reason for that, Wallace added: Winfield Scott lived 20 years longer and made sure to sully his legacy.
One guy — probably only one guy, me — has even wondered aloud while sipping on something about Worth being elected president in 1852. That presupposes that Worth didn’t die in 1849.
All it takes is a Google search of the 51-foot high Worth granite obelisk memorial structure and burial place in New York to understand that, using the criteria of the present, he was a big deal in his day. Certainly not Elvis big, but Worth was considered, as the author of that bio glowingly declares, the “beau sabreur” of the U.S. Army — the most gallant, most handsome warrior and best horseman in service to his country.
His burial procession, some nine years after his death — Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Gen. Worth’s monument and final burial place — included Gov. John King, 6,500 soldiers, Mayor Fernando Wood and a bevy of Tammany politicos. As the New York Press described it, New York’s shops closed at noon and church bells began to toll. Sixteen iron gray horses pulled the catafalque and his mahogany casket in a two-mile long parade. Bands played Handel’s Dead March from Saul.
Worth monument.
Marching to his final resting place were even “saucy” vivandiere with laced pantaloons showing beneath skirts carrying a small wine keg slung from her shoulder, according to Wallace’s dissertation, the basis of his book.
“The gallant chivalric Worth was ever seen with waving plume, in the heat of combat, leading to victory,” a soldier said that day in 1857. “His fame will endure when his monument shall have crumbled.”
So admired was Worth by the public — he was the first American to plant an American flag south of the disputed territory of the Nueces River — that many speculated at the time after the Mexican War that superiors in the U.S. Army as well as political movers in Washington, D.C., maneuvered to see to it that Worth be appointed to a position in Texas. In Texas, he would be as far away from the centers of American power after the widely successful end of the Mexican War and his celebrated role in it as commander of the Eighth Infantry.
Author Wallace recalled its summit.
“At the Jackson Day dinner of the New York City Democrats, on Jan. 8, 1848, a toast to him as a man of ‘real worth’ was received with wild enthusiasm, while no mention was made of any other general but [Zachary] Taylor.
“On Jan. 15, 1848, the New York Herald printed a call for a meeting to take place on Feb. 22 to nominate Gen. Worth for the presidency, a boom which had been initiated the previous August by the New York Sun.”
Worth was, Wallace noted, “a little above medium height, erect and well-built with dark hair and dark eyes. An engaging and decisive manner marked by a quickness in apprehension.” Other writings describe him as “charming when he chose to be” and a “good conversationalist,” and always tailored “within an inch of his life.”
The year 1848 was Gen. Zachary Taylor’s time. The hero of the Mexican War and Millard Fillmore, who headlined the Whig ticket, defeated Democrat Lewis Cass and William Butler, as well as a ticket headed by former President Martin Van Buren, who ran on a Free Soil platform.
Worth died in San Antonio the next year, in May 1849, a second bout with cholera his demise. Taylor died in 1850. Fillmore, then the incumbent, failed to secure the Whig nomination in 1852, losing to Winfield Scott. (An aside: Winfield Scott of the Scott Mansion, today Thistle Hill, was a cattle baron and buried in Oakwood Cemetery on the North Side. Different people.)
As Wallace noted in the Worth bio, history makes not even a footnote of anything coming of the Worth presidential talk in 1848, but that didn’t deter bitter attacks on him that year by the pro-Scott American Star. Worth, the paper alleged, was a seceder Whig who had turned Democrat and wanted to annex Mexico, Central America, and Cuba. (The annexation charge was true.)
Worth
Worth certainly would have been inspired to play the foil to both Scott’s lifelong ambition to become president, something Scott believed was his destiny, as well as Franklin Pierce’s campaign for the Democratic nomination. During the war, Pierce, as general of a volunteer regiment, collaborated with Worth in the Battle of Contreras. Pierce did not acquit himself well during the fight, but Worth had already made his mind up about him.
Worth was never impressed.
“Three months since the rout of Cerro Gordo and we still wait,” Worth said in letters published by The New York Times in 1916. “The enemy has had time to recuperate in spirits, in men and material.
“Well, we did not advance. Why? It is understood we wait the coming of a Gen. Pierce, with some 2,000 or 3,000 men. He is understood to have been en route from Vera Cruz … and to this moment we have no reliable knowledge of his whereabouts. So, our movement is entirely indefinite.”
Scott was in every way, shape, and form — physically and emotionally — a mirror to one of our more recent executive office holders. He was as vindictive as he was an egotistical windbag, according to historical accounts. (That is not a political statement or editorial.)
It’s not as if Worth was shy about his own abilities in the field. His nicknames “Haughty Bill” and the “Fighting Cock of the Army” were well earned.
In frequently sparring with Washington, Worth resembled the Generals MacArthur, Arthur and son Douglas. (Scott was renowned for squaring off with Washington as well.)
His “soldierly spirit” was said to be so stirred over the beginnings of the Mexican War, but in fact it was a streak of vainglory, common among the officer corps in that day and into the 20th century, that impelled him, as was evident after the capture of Monterrey.
“My cup of distinction and happiness is full. My duty, my whole duty, and more has been done,” he wrote in letters. “In respect to my operations and the brilliant results, there is but one voice, and that a loud and stunning acclaim. … The most vindictive foes crouch at my feet, and my friends choke with joy and delight. I have earned the triumph and bear and wear it with modesty and humility. My soldiers and volunteers throng my quarters and huzza me in the streets.”
President James K. Polk approved, too, telling Worth he had merited a promotion and as soon as Congress returned the president would make a more “signal manifestation of his appreciation, the brevet of Major General, with assignment accordingly.”
“It will gall and wormwood in certain quarters,” Worth wrote in a letter to his son-in-law.
He was almost certainly referring to Scott, who for four decades, since the War of 1812, was Worth’s intimate friend and confidant. So close were the two and so much did Worth think of Scott that he named his only son Winfield Scott Worth. But by the end of the Mexican War, the two were the bitterest of enemies over two letters linked to the press that appeared to give credit of success to someone other than Scott, a mortal sin. (Correspondingly, Worth had his son’s name changed to William Scott Worth.)
The incident, in which Scott placed three, including Worth, under arrest for insubordination, was one of the most scandalous in U.S. Army history and led to Polk replacing Scott as supreme commander.
Among those who tried to heal the schism was Robert E. Lee, then a captain on Scott’s personal staff, to no avail.
As for Scott and Worth, there would never be a bridge. Of Worth, Scott said he was “done with him forever.”
Said Worth: “I shall say nothing in relation to the appeal of Major General Scott to public sympathy, or the attitude of defiance he has thought proper to assume before this court. Gen. Scott has been pleased publicly to announce that, at the end of this court he shall ‘be done with him [me] forever.’ Be it so. I have the consolation of knowing, that the ties of friendship, formed from intimate personal and professional association, and strengthened, for 35 years, by many reciprocities of kindness and obligation, have not been broken asunder by any act of mine.”
Worth accepted the surrender of Mexico City and served on the commission ending hostilities with Brigadier General Persifor Smith on the American commission that drew up the agreement to suspend hostilities pending the ratification of the peace treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
If not 1848, Worth was very likely plotting a run for president in 1852. And it would have been gloriously ugly facing his old friend and enemy Scott, the Whig candidate. All that would have been missing was social media and 24-hour cable news networks to detail the punches.
Enjoy that Christmas tree, New York City.
