His men stared back at him with justified skepticism. The rest of the army could hardly bear to watch. His commander sent an order to retire, but Jackson replied that it would be more dangerous now to withdraw than to stay. If the general would give him 50 veterans, he would attempt to capture the Mexican breastwork instead. Help finally did come, and Jackson got his gun into position and engaged the Mexican battery in a virtual muzzle-to-muzzle shootout. In time, thanks mainly to Jackson’s sheer will, the enemy gun was overpowered and the breastwork stormed.

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Jackson was not the only one to distinguish himself that day. Among the first men in the ditch guarding the castle was Lieutenant Lewis A. Armistead. A step behind him, bearing the colors, was Lieutenant James Longstreet. And beside him was the man who had finished dead last in Jackson and McClellan’s West Point class, Lieutenant George E. Pickett. A musket ball struck Longstreet, but as he fell Pickett caught the colors and carried them heroically over the wall and into the castle. Last at West Point, Pickett was first at Chapultepec.

Little did these three young men suspect that 16 years later, on a hot July 3, 1863, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, their destinies would again intertwine. On that day Longstreet would command the Confederate corps that would make the most famous charge in American history. Directly under him, in command of the main division making the charge — and for whom the charge would be named — would be George Pickett. One of Pickett’s brigadiers, destined to die there, would be Lewis Armistead.

Unlike Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, the charge at Chapultepec was a success. The Americans overran the castle in just over an hour, but Mexico City was not yet theirs. They had only made it possible to attack the last line of defense at the city’s gates. As Jackson raced down the causeway toward the city with his artillery caisson, dying to administer the coup de grce, he was accompanied by Lieutenants D.H. Hill and Barnard Bee. All were urging Captain John Magruder, a hothead himself, to let them continue the assault. All four of these officers would one day be Confederate generals.

Two others in that category, Beauregard and Lieutenant Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox, were at that moment in deep trouble at the Belen Gate, at the southwest corner of the city. Both were finding it an emphatically hot place — so hot that nearly everyone there was wounded, including Beauregard. Wilcox, however, led a charmed life. A Mexican musket ball hammered into the side of the Colt revolver hanging on his left hip, spinning him around and dazing him. But he was unhurt, and when he picked up the musket ball that had struck his revolver, he found it flattened to the thickness of a silver dollar by the force of the impact. Clearly stamped on one side of this lead wafer was the name of the pistol’s maker and the place where it was made. The same luck would follow Wilcox through the Civil War. At the Battle of White Oak Swamp, Virginia, in 1862, he would take half a dozen bullet holes through his clothing but emerge untouched. Indeed, he would pass through his four years of service to the Confederacy without a single serious injury.

North of the Belen Gate into Mexico City was the San Cosme Gate, where resistance to the invaders was equally spirited. Ulysses S. Grant, still nominally a regimental quartermaster, had again made his way to the front lines. As his comrades dodged Mexican bullets, Grant spied a church belfry that seemed to command the area behind the gate. He commandeered a mountain howitzer, ordered it hauled up into the belfry, and from there, less than 300 yards from the gate, dropped fire on a startled and confounded enemy with striking effect. The Americans controlled both gates before evening and prepared for a final push through the city on the following day. But Santa Anna evacuated overnight, and the next day city authorities surrendered. The war was all but over.

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