“COMMODORE PERRY COMMANDS THE SQUADRON.”
THE precise methods and almost immutable laws of military science
required that the American invasion of Mexico in 1847 should be at the
exact spot on which Cortez landed two centuries before, and where the
French disembarked in 1830, and in 1865. This was at the only port on
the Gulf coast of Mexico, in which large vessels could anchor. Ships
entered by the North channel or fastened to rings in the castle walls.
Our war vessels lay a little south of the Vera Cruz founded by the
Spanish buccaneer.
With but a few skirmishes and little loss, the line of circumvallation
was completed by the 18th, and named Camp Washington. Ground was broken
for intrenchments, and platforms were built for the mortars which were
placed in sunken trenches out of sight from the city. Waiting for a
pause in the raving norther, and then seizing opportunity by the
foremost hair of the forelock, the sailors landed ten mortars and four
twenty-four pounder guns. By the 22d, seven of the mortars were in
position on their platforms. Most of these latter were of the small
bronze pattern called coehorns, after their inventor the Dutch engineer,
Baron Mennon de Coehorn. These pieces could be handled by two men. A few
mortars were of the ten-inch pattern.
This was a pitiful array of ordnance to batter down a walled city, and a
nearly impregnable castle. With these in activity, both city and castle,
if well provisioned, could hold out for months. Shells falling
perpendicularly would destroy women and children, but do little harm to
soldiers. The forty other mortars and the heavy guns were somewhere at
sea on the transports and as yet unheard of, while every day the shadow
of the dreaded _vomito_ stalked nearer. Vera Cruz must be taken before
“King Death in his Yellow Robe” arrived. The Mexicans for the nonce,
prayed for his coming.
The _vomito_, or yellow fever, is a gastro-nervous disorder which
prostrates the nervous system, often killing its victims in five or six
hours, though its usual course is from two to six days. Men are more
susceptible to it than women. It was the Mexican’s hope, for Vera Cruz
was its nursery, and the month of March its time of beginning.
Northerners taken in the hot season might recover. In the cold season,
an attack meant sure death. The disease is carried and propagated by
mosquitoes and flies, and no system of inoculation was then known. An
outbreak among our unacclimated men would mean an epidemic.
Scott, despite his well known excessive vanity, was a humane man and a
scientific soldier. His ambition was to win success and glory at a
minimum of loss of life, not only in his own army but among the enemy.
His aim was to make a sensation by methods the reverse of Gen. Taylor’s,
whose popularity had won him the soldier’s title of “Rough and Ready,”
while Buena Vista had built the political platform on which he was to
mount to the presidency. “Taylor the Louisianian’s” battles were
sanguinary, but indecisive. He had driven in the Mexican left wing.
Scott hoped to pierce the centre, to shed little blood and to make every
shot tell. The people at home knew nothing of war as a science. They
expected blood and “a big butcher’s bill,” and the newspapers at least
would be disappointed unless gore was abundant. His soldiers and
especially those who had been under Taylor and whose chief idea of
fighting was a rush and a scuffle, failed at first to appreciate him,
and dubbed this splendid soldier “Fuss and Feathers.”
Scott determined at once to show, as the key to his campaign, a city
captured with trivial loss. Yet all his plans seemed about to be dashed,
because his siege train had failed to come. The pitiful array of
coehorns and ten-inch mortars, with four light twenty-four pounder guns
and two Columbiads, would but splash Vera Cruz with the gore of
non-combatants, while still the enemy’s flag was flaunted in defiance,
and precious time was being lost. The general’s vanity—an immense part
of him—was sorely wounded. “The accumulated science of the ages applied
to the military art,” which he hoped to illustrate “on the plains of
Vera Cruz,” was as yet of no avail. Further, as a military man, he was
unwilling to open his batteries with a feeble fire which might even
encourage the enemy to a prolonged resistance. Conner is said to have
offered to lend him navy guns, but he declined.
Perry arrived at Vera Cruz in the _Mississippi_, March 20, 1847, after a
passage of thirteen days from Norfolk. He was back just in time. Steam
had enabled him to be on hand to accomplish one of the greatest triumphs
of his life. His orders required him to attack the sea fort fronting
Vera Cruz, “if the army had gone into the interior.” The United States
fleet had lain before it for a whole year without aggression. He found
our army landed and Vera Cruz invested on every side. The Mexicans were
actively firing, but as yet there was no response from our side. That
night it blew a gale from the North. The vessels hidden in spray, and
the camps in sand, waited till daylight.
Early next morning, March 21, Perry was informed that the steamer
_Hunter_ together with her prize a French barque, the _Jeune Nelly_,
which had been caught March 20th running the blockade out of Vera Cruz,
and an American schooner, were all ashore on the northeast breakers of
Green Island. Their crews, to the number of sixty souls, were in
imminent danger of perishing. Among them was a mother and her infant
child. Perry was quick to respond to the promptings of humanity. In such
a gale, not a sailing vessel dared leave her moorings. The _Mississippi_
had parted her cables, owing to the violence of the wind. A British war
steamer lay much nearer the scene of disaster, without apparently
thinking of the possibility of moving in such a gale; but Perry knew his
noble ship and what to do with her. He dashed out in the teeth of the
tempest and forced her through the terrific waves. In admiration of the
act, Lieutenant Walke made a graphic picture of the rolling
_Mississippi_, which now hangs in the hall of the Brooklyn Lyceum.
Reaching Green Island, Perry cast anchor. Captain Mayo and four officers
volunteered to go to the rescue of the wrecked people. In spite of the
great peril, they saved the entire party. The scene was one of thrilling
interest when the young mother embraced husband and child in safety on
the deck of the noble steamer. Had not the _Mississippi_ and Perry been
at hand, the whole party must have perished.
It was on his return from this errand of humanity that Commodore Matthew
Perry was given and assumed the command of the American fleet—the first
of such magnitude, and the greatest yet assembled under the American
flag. The time was 8 A. M. March 21st. As Captain Parker recollects: “On
the twenty-first of March shortly after the hoisting of the colors, we
were electrified by the signal from the flag-ship ‘Commodore Perry
commands the squadron.’” At once, Perry called with Conner upon General
Scott concerning the navy’s part in the siege.
The order of relief to Commodore Conner dated Washington March 3, 1847,
was worded: “The uncertain duration of the war with Mexico has induced
the President to direct me no longer to suspend the rule which limits
the term of command in our squadrons in its application to your command
of the Home Squadron.”
[Illustration: PERRY AT THE AGE OF FIFTY-FOUR.]
Scott had opened fire March 18th, but seeing his inability to breach the
walls, he was obliged to apply for help from the navy. When the new and
the old naval commanders visited him in his tent on the morning of the
21st, the General requested of Perry the loan of six of the heavy
shell-guns of the navy for use by the army in battery. Perry’s reply was
instant, hearty, characteristic, naval: “Certainly, General, but I must
fight them.”
Scott said his soldiers would take charge of the guns, if the Commodore
would land them on the beach. To this Perry said “no!” That “wherever
the guns went, their officers and men must go with them.” Scott
objected, declined the conditions, and renewed the bombardment with his
small guns and mortars; but finding that he was only wasting time, he
finally consented and asked Perry to send the guns with their naval
crews. The marines were already in the trenches doing duty as part of
the 3d U. S. artillery. Hitherto the sailors had acted as the laborers
for the army, now they were to take part in the honors of the siege.
This was on account of Perry’s demand.
How the successor of Conner announced to his sailors the glory awaiting
them is told in the words of Rear-Admiral John H. Upshur. “I shall never
forget the thrill which pervaded the squadron, when, on the day, within
the very hour of his succeeding to the command, he announced from his
barge, as he pulled under the sterns of all the vessels of the fleet, in
succession, that we were to land guns and crews to participate in the
investment of the city of Vera Cruz. Cheer after cheer was sent up in
evidence of the enthusiasm this promise of a release from a life of
inaction we had been leading under Perry’s predecessor inspired in every
breast. In a moment everything was stir and bustle, and in an incredibly
short space of time, each vessel had landed her big gun, with double
crews of officers and men. . . Perry announced that those who did not
behave themselves should not be allowed another chance to fight the
enemy—which proved a guarantee of good conduct in all. . . . Under the
energetic chief who succeeded to the command of a squadron dying of
supineness, until his magic word revived it, the navy of the United
States sustained its old prestige.”
Not only were men and officers on the ships thrilled at the sight of
Perry’s pennant, but joy was carried to many hearts on shore. A writer
in the _New York Star_, of August 7th, 1852, who was on board the
flag-ship during two days of the siege details the incidents here
narrated.
At the investment of the city there were still left in it a few American
women with their children mostly of the working class, their husbands
having been driven from the city by the authorities. Governor Landero
was not the man to make war on women and children, and they remained in
peace until the bombardment commenced. Then they thronged to the house
of Mr. Gifford the British consul for protection, and he transferred
them to the sloop-of-war _Daring_, Captain George Marsden, who found
them what place he could on his decks, already crowded with British
subjects flying from the doomed city.
We had then seventy vessels, chartered transports and vessels of war in
front of the city, but from negligence on the part of General Scott and
Commodore Conner no provision was made to succor and relieve our
homeless citizens, though “I,” says the correspondent, “who write this
from what I saw, caused application to be made to both to have them
taken from the deck of the _Daring_ (where they were in the way and only
kept for charity) to some of our unoccupied transport cabins. Commodore
Conner flatly refused, as Captain Forrest of the navy knows, for he
heard it, to have anything to do with them, and General Scott had no
time. Just about then, Commodore Perry came down, to the Gulf. At noon
his pennon of command floated from the _Mississippi_, and before the sun
went down, he had gathered into a place of safety every person, whether
common working people or not, who had the right to claim the protection
of the American flag.”
The same writer adds: “The other time I saw him, he had just been told
that Mr. Beach of the _New York Sun_ and his daughter were in great
danger in the city of Mexico, as Mr. Beach was accused of being a secret
agent of the United States. The informant at the same time volunteered
the information that the _Sun_ ‘went against the Navy and Commodore
Perry.’ ‘The Navy must show him that he is mistaken in his bad opinion
of it,’ said the bluff Commodore, ‘and the question is not who likes me
but how to get an American citizen, and above all an unprotected female
out of the hands of the Mexicans.’ The son of Gomez Farias, the then
President of Mexico, and one or two other Mexican gentlemen had come on
board the _Mississippi_ from the British steamer, to solicit the kind
offices of Commodore Perry for permits to pass the American lines. The
Commodore seized the occasion to make exchange of honor, and courtesy
with young Farias. He stated the case of a father and daughter being
detained in dangerous uncertainty in the city of Mexico, and obtained
the pledges of the Mexicans to promote their safe deliverance. It was
effected before they arrived in Mexico, but the quick and generous
action of Perry was none the less to be esteemed.”
We may thus summarize the events of a day ever memorable to Matthew
Perry.
March 20th. Arrival from the United States in the _Mississippi_.
Norther.
March 21. (_a_) Daylight—Rescue of the _Hunter_. (_b_) 8 A. M. Receives
command of squadron. (_c_) Call with Conner on Gen. Scott. (_d_)
Proposal for naval battery. (_e_) Perry returns to the fleet and assumes
command. (_f_) Under stern of each vessel, announces naval battery.
(_g_) Arranges for American women and children from Vera Cruz. (_h_)
Preparations for landing the heavy navy guns.