Envelope (Outer Letter): Addressed to D.W. Daily; Charlestown, Clark County, Indiana
Stamped: Pt. Isabel, Feb [20] 1847

Letter in possession of, and generously contributed to this website by David James.

Letter transcription & explanatory notes by P. Davidson-Peters (2005).
Any errors are therefore the result of my own deficiencies and interpretations.

Brackets indicate uncertainty of word

An * indicates H. Daily's spelling - see Biographical Notes below letter transcription for correct spelling and relative information.

Camp Agua Nueva
Feb'y 13 1847

Dear Father

An opportunity now offers that I can send a few lines to the Post office. We are now encamped 21 miles south of Saltillo there is about 5000 men encamped here at this time (among which are 3 [parks] of light artillery) and it is said that all troops off the Rio Grand* leaving but sufficient to garrison 1st [different] towns will reach this place in a few days which will swell the numbers to some 8000 which will be about the number that Gen'l Taylor will have under his immediate command the last 3 or 4 days has been the coldest weather we have experienced. We are encamped about the center of a valley some 10 miles wide surrounded by mountains except the north & south passes and immediately between these the mountains are at this time are covered with snow. I have the wind some times through the north and sometimes through the south pass & it is hard to tell which is the coldest = a few days since the Mexicans Lassoed one of the Ark Cavalry the next morning the Ark Boys took to the

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mountains and before night had rubbed out some 23 of them and would have killed a great many more of them if a company from an Ill Reg't had not stopped them it is one of the most austerely acts that one of our troops have ever been guilty of although this is an excuse for them in the fact of Major Bowlin on Camp & being taken prisoner and a report having reach camp that they had all been massacred We are all well that hail form "Old Clark" the call has just sounded for guard mounting so that I will have to close give my Respect to all friends.

Outer folded "envelope"
Addressed to D.W. Daily
Charlestown, Indiana

William "Harrison" Harry Daily was born in Charlestown, Clark Co., Indiana in 1819 and was the eldest child of David Wise Daily and his wife, Mary A. (Shirley). He was a 1st lieutenant, Adjutant, of Company I of the 3rd regiment and was mustered in on 22 June 1846 at New Albany, Indiana, by Colonel Samuel Churchill. Transferred to staff, Harrison was mustered out 24 June 1847, at New Orleans, Louisiana.

D.W. Daily was father of Harrison Daily. He was born David Wise Daily in Charlestown, Indiana on 16 August 1798 and was the son of Philip Daily and Mary (Wise).

Saltillo, the capital of Coahuila state, N Mexico. It is located in an alluvial valley almost surrounded by mountains. Founded in 1575, the city was known in colonial times for its annual fair, at which imports from Spain and the Philippines were exchanged for products made in Mexico. Saltillo was taken by Zachary Taylor's forces in the Mexican War and was occupied by French troops several times during the French intervention in Mexico.

General Zachary Taylor was born in Barboursville, Virginia in 1784. In 1808, he joined the U.S. Army and was commissioned as a first lieutenant. Soon afterward he was ordered west into Indiana Territory, taking command of Fort Harrison. In the War of 1812 he became known as an excellent military commander. He served in the Black Hawk War and the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), and in 1846 President James K. Polk sent an army under his command to the Rio Grande. When the Mexicans attacked his troops, Taylor defeated them despite being outnumbered four to one and he won additional important victories at Monterrey and Buena Vista, becoming a national hero. He was sworn in as the 12th President of the U.S. on 05 Mar 1849, and died the following year in Washington D.C. on the 9th of July.

Massacre by Arkansas Regiment - Newspaper reporters claimed that the chapparal was "strewn with the skeletons of Mexicans sacrificed" by American troops. After one of their members was murdered, the Arkansas volunteer cavalry surrounded a group of Mexican peasants and began an "indiscriminate and bloody massacre of the poor creatures." A young lieutenant named George G. Meade reported that volunteers in Matamoros robbed the citizens, stole their cattle, and killed innocent civilians "for no other object than their own amusement." If only a tenth of the horror stories were true, General Winfield Scott wrote, it was enough "to make Heaven weep, & every American of Christian morals blush for his country." (Digital History.com)