RESULTS OF THE WAR. GOLD AND THE PACIFIC COAST.
FROM his home at the “Moorings” by the Hudson, Perry gave his attention
to the curiosities and trophies brought home from Mexico. Ever jealous
for the honor of the navy, he noted with pain a letter written by
General Scott to Captain H. Brewerton, superintendent of the Military
Academy at West Point, which was published in the newspapers October
16th, 1848. General Scott had presented sections of several Mexican
flag-staffs captured in the campaign that commenced at Vera Cruz and
terminated in the capital of Mexico. Three of them were thus
inscribed:—
1. “Part of the flag-staff of the castle of San Juan d’Ulloa taken by
the American army March 29th, 1847.”
2. “Part of the flag-staff of Fort San Iago, Vera Cruz, taken by the
American army March 29th, 1847.”
3. “Part of the flag-staff of Fort Conception, Vera Cruz, taken by the
American army March 29th, 1847.”
The four other staves from Cerro Gordo, Perote, Chapultepec, and the
National Palace of Mexico, were in truth “taken by the American army”
without the aid of the navy.
Perry believing that the statements in the paragraphs numbered 1, 2, and
3, were not strictly true, protested in a letter dated Oct. 19th, 1848,
to the editors of the _Courier and Inquirer_. He maintained that the
city and castle of Vera Cruz “surrendered not to the army alone, but to
the combined land and naval forces of the United States.” Appealing to
the facts of history concerning the bombardment of the city by the
squadron, the service of the marines in the trenches, and of the ship’s
guns and men in the naval battery, he continued:—
“Negotiations for the capitulation of the city and castle were conducted
on the part of the squadron by Captain John H. Aulick, assisted by the
late Commander Mackenzie as interpreter, both delegated by me, and as
commander-in-chief at the time, of the United States naval forces
serving in the Gulf of Mexico acting in co-operation with, but entirely
independent of the authority of General Scott, I approved of and signed
jointly with him the treaty of capitulation.”
“It seems to be a paramount duty on my part to correct an error which,
if left unnoticed, would be the source of great and lasting injury to
the navy; and it may reasonably be expected that General Scott will
cause the inscriptions referred to to be so altered as to make them
correspond more closely with history.” In proof of his assertions, Perry
quoted an extract from General Scott’s Orders referring to the services
of the navy in blockade, in disembarkation, in the attack on the city,
and in the battery No. 5.
Like a true soldier, Scott made speedy correction on the brasses, and on
the 24th of October wrote to Captain Brewerton, “Please cause the plates
of those three objects to be unscrewed, efface the inscriptions and
renew the same with the words _and Navy_ inserted immediately after the
word ‘Army.’” He added, “No part of the army is inclined to do the
sister branch of our public defence the slightest injustice, and that I
ought to be free from the imputation, my despatches written at Vera Cruz
abundantly show.”
As commentary on the last line above, it may be stated that in his
autobiography, in writing of Vera Cruz, Scott never mentions Commodore
Perry, the navy, or the naval battery. Biographies of Scott, and makers
of popular histories, basing their paragraphs on “Campaign Lives” of the
presidential candidates, give fulsome praise to Scott, and due credit to
the army; none, or next to none, to Perry and the navy.
The enlarged experience gained by our naval men during the war was now
put to good use, and two great reforms, the abolition of flogging and
the grog ration, were earnestly discussed. The captains were called upon
for their written opinions. These, bound up in a volume now in the navy
archives at Washington, furnish most interesting reading. They are part
of the history of the progress of opinion as well as of morals in the
United States. The proposition to do away with the “cat” and the “tot”
found earnest and uncompromising opponents in officers of the old
school; while, on the other hand, the credit of reforms now well
established has been claimed by the friends of more than one eminent
officer. Let us look at Matthew Perry’s record.
As early as 1824, Perry had studied the temperance question from a naval
point of view. He was, it is believed, the first officer in our navy to
propose the partial abolition of liquor, which was at that time served
to boys as well as to men. This reform, he suggested in a letter to the
Department, dated January 25th, 1824. His endeavor to stop the grog
ration from minors was a stroke in behalf of sound moral principles and
a plea for order. With a high opinion of the marines, and their
well-handled bayonets—before which, the most stubborn sailor’s mutiny
breaks,—Perry yet wished to take away one of the fomenting causes of
evil on shipboard. When a midshipman, Perry was heartily opposed to
strong drink for boys, and especially to the indiscriminate grog system
licensed by government on ships of war. In his diary kept on board the
_President_, the lad notes, with sarcastic comment, the frequent calls
for whiskey from certain vessels of the squadron, especially the
_Argus_, the crew of which had a reputation for a thirst of a kind not
satisfied with water.
Perry’s letter dated New York, February 4th, 1850, fills eleven pages,
and shows his usual habit of looking at a subject on all sides. To have
answered the question as to grog, without consulting the sailors
themselves, would have smacked too much of the doctrinaire for him. He
was personally heartily in favor of abolishing grog, but with that love
for the comfort of his men which so endeared “Old Matt” to the common
sailor, he proposed for the first-rate seamen, the optional use of light
wines. His attitude was that of temperance, rather than prohibition.
Flogging had been introduced into the American navy in 1799, when “the
cat-of-nine tails” was made the legal instrument of punishment, “no
other cat being allowed.” Not more than twelve lashes were allowed on
the bare back. Even a court martial could not order over a hundred
lashes. As to its total abolition, Perry felt that his own opinion
should be formed by a consensus of the most respectable sailors.
Personally he was in favor of immediately modifying, but not at once
abolishing the penalty. This was to him “the most painful of all the
duties of an officer.” He would rather make it more formal, leaving the
question of its administration not in the hands of the captain, but of
an inferior court on ship of three officers, the finding of the court to
be subject to the captain’s revision. Perry believed, as the result of
long experience, that the old sailors and the good ones were opposed to
total abolition of flogging, since the punishment operated as a
protection to them against desperate characters. To satisfy himself of
public opinion, he went on board the _North Carolina_ and asked Captain
J. R. Sands to call to him eight of the oldest active sailors. The men
came in promptly to the cabin, not knowing who called them or why. All
were native Americans, and all were opposed to the abolition of
flogging. Nevertheless, Perry was glad when this relic of barbarism was
abolished from the decks of the American ships of war. On him fell the
brunt of the decision. He first enforced discipline, chiefly by moral
suasion, on a fleet in which was no flogging. The grog ration was not
abolished until 1862.
Until the great civil war, only two fleets—that is, collections of war
vessels numbering at least twelve—had assembled under the American
flag. These were in the waters of Mexico and Japan. Both were commanded
by Matthew C. Perry.
Nearly forty years have now passed since the Mexican war, and a survey
of the facts and subsequent history is of genuine interest. The United
States employed, in the invasion of a sister republic, about one hundred
thousand armed men. Of these, 26,690 were regular troops, 56,926
volunteers, while over 15,000 were in the navy, or in the department of
commissariat and transportation. Probably as many as eighty thousand
soldiers were actually in Mexico. Of this host, 120 officers and 1,400
men fell in battle or died of wounds, and 100 officers and 10,800 men
perished by disease. These figures by General Viele are from the army
rolls. Another writer gives the total, in round numbers, of American
war-employées lost in battle at 5,000, and by sickness 15,000. About
1,000 men of the army of occupation died each month of garrison-fever in
the city of Mexico, and many more were ruined in health and character.
In all, the loss of manhood by glory and malaria was fully 25,000 men.
The war cost the United States, directly, a sum estimated between
$130,000,000 and $166,500,000. Including the pensions, recently voted,
this amount will be greatly increased.
Turning from the debit to the credit account, the United States gained
in Texas, and the ceded territory, nearly one million square miles of
land, increasing her area one-third, and adding five thousand miles of
sea-coast, with three great harbors. Except for one of those
world-influencing episodes, which are usually called “accidents,” but
which make epochs and history, this large territory would long have
waited for inhabitants. The vast desert was made to bud with promise,
and blossom as the rose, by the discovery of some shining grains of
metal, yellow and heavy, in a mill race. California with her golden
hands rose up, a new figure in history, to beckon westward the returned
veteran, the youth of the overcrowded East, the young blood and sinew of
Europe. The era of the “prairie schooner” to traverse the plains, the
steamer to ply to the Isthmus, the fast-sailing American clipper ships
to double the Cape, was ushered in. Zadoc Pratt’s dream of a
trans-continental railway, laid on the Indian trails, soon found a solid
basis in easy possibility. In the eight months ending March 1850, nine
millions of gold from California entered the United States. The volume
of wealth from California and Texas in thirty-two years, has equalled
the debt incurred during the great civil war to preserve the American
union; enabling the government to say to Louis Napoleon, “Get out of
Mexico, and take imperialism from the American continent.”
Yet even California, and the boundless possibilities of the Pacific
slope could not suffice for the restless energy of the American. The
merchant seeking new outlets of trade, the whaler careering in all seas
for spoil, the missionary moved with desire to enter new fields of
humanity, the explorer burning to unlock hidden treasures of mystery,
looked westward over earth’s broadest ocean. China had opened a few
wicket gates. Two hermit kingdoms still kept their doors barred. Corea
was no lure. It had no place in literature, no fame to the traveller, no
repute of wealth to incite. Its name suggested no more than a sea-shell.
There was another nation. Of her, travellers, merchants, and martyrs had
told; about her, libraries had been written; religion, learning, wealth,
curious and mighty institutions, a literature and a civilization, gold
and coal and trade were there. Kingly suitors and the men of many
nations had pleaded for entrance and waited vainly at her jealously
barred and guarded doors. The only answer during monotonous centuries
had been haughty denial or contemptuous silence. Japan was the sleeping
princess in the eastern seas. Thornrose castle still tempted all daring
spirits. Who should be the one to sail westward, with valor and with
force, held but unused, wake with peaceful kiss the maiden to life and a
beauty to be admired of all the world?