A lithograph print of the Castle de Perote (the Fortaleza de San Carlos, or the Fortress of San Carlos) in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz after the American army took possession on April 22, 1847 (denoted by the American flag waving from the castle tower and the American troops, commanded by General Winfield Scott, that are shown in the forground in front of the castle). This print credits Colonel F. M. Winkoop of the First Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers Civil and Military Governor and lists the captains who garrisoned the castle (including F. L. Bowman, Nagle, Binder, Bennett, Scott, G. Taylor, and Walker). In late April 1847, U.S. troops advancing toward Mexico City captured the Mexican Castle of Perote, an old Spanish fortress that they found abandoned and filled with Mexican munitions. The U.S. Army maintained a garrison there until the end of the war, using the fort as a base for anti-guerrilla patrols. The castle already had an infamous reputation as a political prison and numerous U.S. and Texan adventurers had been imprisoned there before the war including men from the Texan Santa Fe expedition, the Nicholas Dawson prisoners, the Mier expeditions as well as the prisoners taken by Mexican General Adrián Woll when he occupied San Antonio in 1842. Among these prisoners were Samuel H. Walker, New Orleans Picayune correspondent George Wilkins Kendall, William A. W. "Bigfoot" Wallace, Samuel Maverick, Sr., Judge Anderson Hutchinson, Thomas Jefferson Green, and William S. Fisher. The fort’s importance as a prison in Mexican history is also extensive. Mexican Generals José de Urrea and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna himself were imprisoned there at different stages during their careers, and Mexico’s first president, General Guadalupe Victoria died there in 1843. This 1850 lithograph was based upon an original sketch by Private James T. Shannon who arrived there in 1847 with Company A of the First Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. [For further information on James T. Shannon, see Shannon’s original sketchbook among the Special Collections at UT Arlington’s Libraries at https://rc.library.uta.edu/uta-ir/handle/10106/27520; and his drawing of the Siege of Puebla: Ben Huseman, "The Siege of Puebla: No. 160," in Eyewitness to War?: Prints and Daguerreotypes of the Mexican War, 1846-1848, Sandweiss, Stewart, and Huseman (Fort Worth, Texas: Amon Carter Museum, 1989), 347-350.]
