George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army
George Gordon Meade, Ed.

[83] ninth came off, and we have some fifty wounded officers and men. But I must refer you to our official reports, which will show you the number of killed and wounded on both sides, and quantity of property we have taken possession of.

It will make you happy I know to hear of so brilliant an affair, and of your good husband having had a share in it. I assure you it consoles me for all I have suffered during the last nine months, and I can now show my face with something to sustain me when I return to Philadelphia. I want to see Matamoras taken, our steamboats established on the river, and every preparation made for advancing into their country. Then we shall have done more than we came here for.

I have but little time to devote to you, as I am ordered to make a sketch of the field of battle. So I must conclude by telling you I am perfectly well in every respect.

Here we are in our old camp, masters of everything around us, and with the road to our depot perfectly clear. I trust you will receive my previous letters in time to prevent any unnecessary alarm from the thousand wild and extravagant rumors which I see by the papers from New Orleans have been put in circulation. It appears as if only the timid in our camp have deigned to enlighten the press, for they have every place taken, and our condition was represented as truly deplorable.

We all congratulate ourselves heartily in having done everything without any assistance whatever, and we now trust the country will look upon the army in a more favorable light, and be disposed to award to them some little efficiency.

It is now rendered beyond a doubt that the Mexicans had in the affair of the eighth between six and seven thousand men, while we had but two thousand, and on the ninth they had six thousand, we having only one thousand seven hundred. Their rout was total, and nothing saved the destruction of their entire army but the approach of night and the nature of the country, a dense thicket, which enabled them to disperse and reach the river during the night. The Mexican officers acknowledge the loss by killed and wounded to be one thousand two hundred on their side; then some three hundred were drowned in crossing the river, and between one and two thousand have deserted them, thus leaving them with only about four