Wanted Dead or Alive: Today in Manhunting History -- March 10, 1916: Wilson Orders the Villa Manhunt

The Columbus raid was not the first time the Mexican Revolution had spilled over the border. During the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the pace of violence along the Mexican-U.S. border increased dramatically. A series of raids, marked by theft, robbery, kidnapping, and murder in the lower Rio Grande valley began in the summer of 1915. In September alone, attacks occurred on Brownsville, Red House Ferry, Progresso Post Office, and Las Paladas. In October a passenger train was wrecked by bandits, killing several people, north of Brownsville. During the two-and-a-half month siege of Naco, Sonora, at least 54 Americans in neighboring Naco, Arizona were killed or wounded by stray fire from Mexican forces. As one Army officer noted, the frontier was in “a state of constant apprehension and turmoil because of the frequent and sudden incursions into American territory and depredations and murders on American soil by Mexican bandits.”

Despite his violent depredations as part of the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa’s flamboyance and reputation for helping the poor made him a popular figure with the American press and the public, and even the staid New York Times referred to Villa as “the Robin Hood of Mexico.” Villa’s popularity extended to U.S. policymakers in the Wilson administration. General Hugh Scott, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, had commanded the Southern Department for five years and was close friends with the revolutionary. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan gave Villa credit for “valuable services” in “restoring order in Sonora,” adding: “Your patient labors in this matter are greatly appreciated by the State Department and the President.” President Woodrow Wilson himself declared that Villa was “not so bad as he had been painted,” and that amidst the turmoil of the Revolution, “Villa was perhaps the safest man to tie to.”

Shortly after overthrowing the Huerta regime, however, in mid-1914 Villa broke off relations with the political leader of the revolution, Venustiano Carranza, and soon the former allies were fighting against one another. In 1915 Carranza’s military commander, General Alvaro Obregon, defeated Villa in four major battles. By the fall of 1915 the Wilson administration understood Villa’s power was waning, and on October 19 officially recognized the Carranza government. Yet Villa continued fighting and on November 1 attacked Carrancista forces at the border town of Agua Prieta. The United States allowed the Carrancistas to rush reinforcements via rail through U.S. territory, and supplied the electricity that allowed searchlights to illuminate the Villistas during the battle. By the end of 1915, only a few hundred followers remained from Villa’s army that had once numbered between 30-50,000 men.
Villa blamed the Wilson administration for his defeat at Agua Prieta which, with American recognition of the Carranza government, led him to swear revenge on the United States. Villa and his remaining men, mostly his elite guard of Dorados, started a campaign of harassment of both Carrancistas and Americans. On January 10, 1916, Villa’s forces stopped a train of the Mexican North Western Railway Company near Santa Ysabel, Chihuahua. They dragged 17 American miners off the train, and amid cries of “Viva Villa,” they stripped and shot the Americans in cold blood. News of the massacre “set off violent agitation in Congress,” and a “wild anger and excitement greater than any since the sinking of the Lusitania surged through part of the American people.”
Because an Associated Press correspondent was staying in the Columbus Hotel during the March 9 attack, President Wilson learned of the raid only three hours after Villa had recrossed the border into Mexico. Wilson immediately summoned his private secretary and personal friend, Joseph P. Tumulty, and told him to convene a Cabinet meeting early the next morning.

Despite the calls for retaliation after Santa Ysabel, the Wilson administration insisted it was an internal matter for Carranza to deal with. Yet after the Columbus attack the clamor for intervention was irresistible, and even U.S. officials who had been close to Villa recognized the threat he posed. Wilson now regarded Villa as little more than a bandit who threatened the security of the southwestern United States. The American consul in Torreon wrote to General Scott: “This is a different man than we knew. All the brutality of his nature has come to the front, and he should be killed like a dog.” Scott’s successor as Commander of the Southern Department, Major General Frederick Funston, delivered his assessment to the War Department the day after the Columbus raid: “Unless Villa is relentlessly pursued and his forces scattered he will continue raids. As troops of the Mexican Government are accomplishing nothing and as he can make his preparations undisturbed, he can strike at any point on the border.”

On March 10 Wilson’s cabinet unanimously agreed to use military force against Villa lest Congress adopt a resolution calling for armed intervention and forcing the President’s hand. Yet Wilson adamantly told Tumulty: “There won’t be any war with Mexico if I can prevent it.” To guard against this danger, the President announced: “An adequate force be sent at once in pursuit of Villa with the single object of capturing him and putting a stop to his forays.”