MORE DIFFICULTIES STRAIGHTENED OUT.
Van Buren, the eighth President, was unfortunate in taking the helm as
the financial cyclone struck the country. This was brought about by
scarcity of funds more than anything else. Business-men would not pay
their debts, and, though New York was not then so large as at present,
one hundred million dollars were lost in sixty days in this way.
The government had required the payments for public lands to be made in
coin, and so the Treasury had plenty of gold and silver, while business
had nothing to work with. Speculation also had made a good many snobs
who had sent their gold and silver abroad for foreign luxuries, also
some paupers who could not do so. When a man made some money from the
sale of rural lots he had his hats made abroad, and his wife had her
dresses fitted in Paris at great expense. Confidence was destroyed, and
the air was heavy with failures and apprehension of more failures to
come.
The Canadians rebelled against England, and many of our people wanted to
unite with Canada against the mother-country, but the police would not
permit them to do so. General Scott was sent to the frontier to keep our
people from aiding the Canadians.
[Illustration: LORD ASHBURTON AND DANIEL WEBSTER.]
There was trouble in the Northeast over the boundary between Maine and
New Brunswick, but it was settled by the commissioners, Daniel Webster
and Lord Ashburton. Webster was a smart man and a good extemporaneous
speaker.
Van Buren failed of a re-election, as the people did not fully endorse
his administration. Administrations are not generally endorsed where the
people are unable to get over six pounds of sugar for a dollar.
General Harrison, who followed in 1841, died soon after choosing his
Cabinet, and his Vice-President, John Tyler, elected as a Whig,
proceeded to act as President, but not as a Whig President should. His
party passed a bill establishing the United States Bank, but Tyler
vetoed it, and the men who elected him wished they had been as dead as
Rameses was at the time.
Dorr's justly celebrated rebellion in Rhode Island was an outbreak
resulting from restricting the right of suffrage to those who owned
property. A new Constitution was adopted, and Dorr chosen as Governor.
He was not recognized, and so tried to capture the seat while the
regular governor was at tea. He got into jail for life, but was
afterwards pardoned out and embraced the Christian religion.
In 1844 the Anti-Rent War in the State of New York broke out among those
who were tenants of the old "Patroon Estates." These men, disguised as
Indians, tarred and feathered those who paid rent, and killed the
collectors who were sent to them. In 1846 the matter was settled by the
military.
[Illustration: TARRED AND FEATHERED FOR PAYING RENT.]
In 1840 the Mormons had settled at Nauvoo, Illinois. They were led by
Joseph Smith, and not only proposed to run a new kind of religion, but
introduced polygamy into it. The people who lived near them attacked
them, killed Smith, and drove the Mormons to Iowa, opposite Omaha.
In 1844 occurred the building of the magnetic telegraph, invented by
Samuel F. B. Morse. The line was from Baltimore to Washington, or _vice
versa_,--authorities failing to agree on this matter. It cost thirty
thousand dollars, and the boys who delivered the messages made more out
of it then than the stockholders did.
Fulton having invented and perfected the steamboat in 1805 and started
the Clermont on the North River at the dizzy rate of five miles per
hour, and George Stephenson having in 1814 made the first locomotive to
run on a track, the people began to feel that theosophy was about all
they needed to place them on a level with the seraphim and other astral
bodies.
[Illustration: THE MESSENGER-BOYS MADE MORE OUT OF IT THAN THE
STOCKHOLDERS.]
Texas had, under the guidance of Sam Houston, obtained her independence
from Mexico, and asked for admission to the Union. Congress at first
rejected her, fearing that the Texas people lacked cultivation, being so
far away from the thought-ganglia of the East, also fearing a war with
Mexico; but she was at last admitted, and now every one is glad of it.
The Whigs were not in favor of the admission of Texas, and made that the
issue of the following campaign, Henry Clay leading his party to a
hospitable grave in the fall. James K. Polk, a Democrat, was elected.
His rallying cry was, "I am a Democrat."
The Mexican War now came on. General Taylor's army met the enemy first
at Palo Alto, where he ran across the Mexicans six thousand strong, and,
though he had but two thousand men, drove them back, only losing nine
men. This was the most economical battle of the war.
The next afternoon he met the enemy at Resaca de la Palma, and whipped
him in the time usually required to ejaculate the word "scat!"
Next General Taylor proceeded against Monterey, September 24, and with
six thousand men attacked the strongly-fortified city, which held ten
thousand troops. The Americans avoided the heavy fire as well as
possible by entering the city and securing rooms at the best hotel,
leaving word at the office that they did not wish to be disturbed by the
enemy. In fact, the soldiers did dig their way through from house to
house to avoid the volleys from the windows, and thus fought to within a
square of the Grand Plaza, when the city surrendered. The Grand Plaza is
generally a sandy vacant lot, where Mexicans sell _tamales_ made of the
highly-peppered but tempting cutlets of the Mexican hairless dog.
The battle of Buena Vista took place February 23, 1847, General Santa
Anna commanding the Mexicans. He had twenty thousand men, and General
Taylor's troops were reduced in numbers. The fight was a hot one,
lasting all day, and the Americans were saved by Bragg's artillery.
Bragg used the old Colonial method of rolling his guns up to the nose of
the enemy and then discharging an iron-foundry into his midst. This
disgusted the enemy so that General Santa Anna that evening took the
shreds of his army and went away.
[Illustration: THE FIGHT WAS A HOT ONE.]
General Kearney was sent to take New Mexico and California. His work
consisted mainly in marching for General Frémont, who had been surveying
a new route to Oregon, and had with sixty men been so successful that on
the arrival of Kearney, with the aid of Commodores Sloat and Stockton,
California was captured, and has given general satisfaction to every
one.
In March, 1847, General Scott, with twelve thousand men, bombarded Vera
Cruz four days, and at the end of that time the city was surrendered.
At Cerro Gordo, a week later, Scott overtook the enemy under General
Santa Anna, and made such a fierce attack that the Mexicans were
completely routed. Santa Anna left his leg on the field of battle and
rode away on a pet mule named Charlotte Corday. The leg was preserved
and taken to the Smithsonian Institute. It is made of second-growth
hickory, and has a brass ferrule and a rubber eraser on the end. General
Taylor afterwards taunted him with this incident, and, though greatly
irritated, Santa Anna said there was no use trying to kick.
Puebla resisted not, and the army marched into the city of Mexico August
7. The road was rendered disagreeable by strong fortifications and
thirty thousand men who were not on good terms with Scott. The
environments and suburbs one after another were taken, and a parley for
peace ensued, during which the Mexicans were busy fortifying some more
on the quiet.
September 8 the Americans made their assault, and carried the outworks
one by one. Then the castle of Chapultepec was stormed. First the outer
works were scaled, which made them much more desirable, and the moat was
removed by means of a stomach-pump and blotting-pad, and then the
escarpment was up-ended, the Don John tower was knocked silly by a
solid shot, and the castle capitulated.
Thus on the 14th of September the old flag floated over the court-house
of Mexico, and General Scott ate his tea in the palace of the
Montezumas. Peace was declared February 2, 1848, and the United States
owned the vast country southward to the Gila (pronounced Heeler) and
west to the Pacific Ocean.
The Wilmot Proviso was invented by David Wilmot, a poor, struggling
member of Congress, who moved that in any territory acquired by the
United States slavery should be prohibited except upon the advice of a
physician. The motion was lost.
Gold was discovered in the Sacramento Valley in August, 1848, by a
workman who was building a mill-race. A struggle ensued over this ground
as to who should own the race. It threatened to terminate in a race war,
but was settled amicably.
In eighteen months one hundred thousand people went to the scene.
Thousands left their skeletons with the red brother, and other thousands
left theirs on the Isthmus of Panama or on the cruel desert. Many
married men went who had been looking a long time for some good place to
go to. Leaving their wives with ill-concealed relief, they started away
through a country filled with death, to reach a country they knew not
of. Some died _en route_, others were hanged, and still others became
the heads of new families. Some came back and carried water for their
wives to wash clothing for their neighbors.
[Illustration: SOME CAME BACK AND CARRIED WATER FOR THEIR WIVES TO WASH
CLOTHING.]
It was a long hard trip then across the plains. One of the author's
friends at the age of thirteen years drove a little band of cows from
the State of Indiana to Sacramento. He says he would not do it again for
anything. He is now a man, and owns a large prune-orchard in California,
and people tell him he is getting too stout, and that he ought to
exercise more, and that he ought to walk every day several miles; but he
shakes his head, and says, "No, I will not walk any to-day, and possibly
not to-morrow or the day following. Do not come to me and refer to
taking a walk: I have tried that. Possibly you take me for a dromedary;
but you are wrong. I am a fat man, and may die suddenly some day while
lacing up my shoes, but when I go anywhere I ride."
When he got to Sacramento, where gold was said to be so plentiful, he
was glad to wash dishes for his board, and he went and hired himself out
to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into the fields for to
feed swine, and he would fain have filled his system with the California
peaches which the swine did eat, and he began to be in want, and no man
gave unto him, and if he had spent his substance in riotous living, he
said, it would have been different.
About thirty years after that he arose and went unto his father, and
carried his dinner with him, also a government bond and a new suit of
raiment for the old gentleman.
I do not know what we should learn from this.