A SCOT AT CERRO GORDO

By the time George Ballentine, a handloom weaver and British Army veteran in Paisley, Scotland, decided to emigrate to the United States in the summer of 1845, his country had fallen on hard times. The widespread adoption of power looms throughout Great Britain had put his profession on the path to extinction, and, like many of his countrymen, Ballentine could earn only starvation wages. He hoped to find work as a weaver when he arrived in New York, but almost immediately he found his prospects there to be nearly as dismal. One day, on hearing that he could earn more than $100 a year as an American soldier (in addition to having his basic needs met), Ballentine walked into a U.S. Army recruiting office in lower Manhattan and offered to enlist for a five-year tour of duty.

A recruiting sergeant informed Ballentine that he had been ordered not to accept former British servicemen on the grounds that deserters generally turned out to be bad soldiers. But Ballentine had papers proving that he had purchased his discharge some five years earlier, and so on August 12, 1845, he joined the U.S. Army at age 33.

Sent to Fort Pickens, on Florida’s Santa Rosa Island, for training, Ballentine found himself mostly in the company of Irish, Scottish, and German immigrants. Assigned to Battery I, 1st U.S. Artillery, he became part of the 12,000-man force led by Major General Winfield Scott that landed at Veracruz during the Mexican-American War and fought its way to the Mexican capital. The following account of the Battle of Cerro Gordo, on April 18, Autobiography of an English Soldier in the United States Army