form their line of battle before a cavalry brigade, twelve hundred
strong, led by General Garcia Condé, ex-minister of war, swept
down from the fortified heights with a thunder and roar to open the
engagement. This time there was no waiting, as at the Brazitos, for
the Mexicans to get within close range; the advancing force was too
formidable for that. In the centre of the American position was posted
the artillery--four howitzers and six field-guns--under Captain
Weightman. Above the ever loudening thunder of the approaching cavalry
could be heard that young officer’s cool, clear voice: “Form battery!
Action front! Load with grape! Fire at will!” As the wave of galloping
horses and madly cheering men surged nearer, Weightman’s gunners,
getting the range with deadly accuracy, poured in their thirty shots a
minute as methodically as though they were on a target-range. In the
face of that blast of death the Mexican cavalry scattered like autumn
leaves. Within five minutes after their bugles had screamed the charge,
the finest brigade of cavalry that ever followed Mexican kettle-drums,
shattered, torn, and bleeding, had turned tail and was spurring full
tilt for the shelter of the fortifications, leaving the ground over
which they had just passed strewn with their dead and dying. For the
next fifty minutes the battle consisted of an artillery duel at long
range, throughout which Colonel Doniphan sat on his war-horse at the
rear of the American battery, his foot thrown carelessly across the
pommel of his saddle, whittling a piece of wood--an object-lesson in
coolness for his men and, incidentally, a splendid mark for the Mexican
gunners.
While the guns of the opposing forces were exchanging compliments at
long range the American officers busied themselves in forming their
men preparatory to taking the offensive. That was Doniphan’s plan
of battle always--to get in the first blow. When everything was in
readiness, Colonel Doniphan tossed away his stick, pocketed his knife,
drew his sabre, and signalled to his bugler to sound the advance. As
the bugles shrieked their signal the whole line, horse, foot, and guns,
dashed forward at a run. It was a daring and hazardous proceeding,
a thousand men charging across open ground and up a hill to carry
fortifications held by a force four times the strength of their own,
but its very audacity brought success. So splendid was the discipline
which Doniphan had hammered into his force that the infantry officers
ran sideways and backward in front of their men as they advanced,
just as they would have done on the drill field, keeping them in such
perfect step and order that, as an English eye-witness afterward
remarked, a cannon-ball could have been fired between their legs down
the line without injuring a man. Not a shot was fired by the Americans
until they reached the first line of redoubts, behind which the Mexican
officers were frantically endeavoring to steady their wavering men.
As the Americans surged over the intrenchments they paused just long
enough to pour in a volley and then went in with the bayonet. At
almost the same moment Captain Weightman brought his guns into action
with a rattle and crash and began pouring a torrent of grape into the
now thoroughly demoralized Mexicans. As the right wing stormed the
breastworks an American sergeant who was well in advance of the line,
having emptied his rifle and pistols and being too hard-pressed to
reload them, threw away his weapons and defended himself by hurling
rocks. When the order to charge was given, Kirker, the Indian fighter,
called to another scout named Collins: “Say, Jim, let’s see which of
us can get into that battery first.” The battery referred to was in
the second redoubt, whence it was directing a galling fire upon the
Americans over the heads of the Mexicans defending the first line of
fortifications. Collins’s only reply was to pull down his hat, draw
his sword, bury his spurs in his horse’s flanks, and ride at the
battery as a steeplechaser rides at a water-jump, Kirker, his long
hair streaming in the wind, tearing along beside him. Is it any wonder
that the Mexicans exclaimed to each other: “These are not men we are
fighting--they are devils!”
All the companies were now pressing forward and pouring over the
intrenchments, the Mexicans sullenly giving way before them. Meanwhile
the left wing, under Major Gilpin, had scaled the heights, swarmed
over the breastworks, and driven out the enemy, while a company under
Captain Hughes had burst into a battery defended by trenches filled
with Mexican infantry, which they had literally cut to pieces, and
had killed or captured the artillerymen as they were endeavoring to
set off the guns. Though the Mexican commander, General Heredia, made
a desperate attempt to rally his panic-stricken troops under cover
of repeated gallant charges by the cavalry under Condé, the men were
too far gone with terror to pay any heed to the frantic appeals of
their officers. With the American cavalry clinging to its flanks and
dealing it blow upon savage blow, the retreat of the Mexican army
quickly turned into a rout, the splendid force that had marched out
of Chihuahua a few days before returning to it a beaten, cowed, and
bleeding rabble. The battle of the Sacramento lasted three hours
and a half, and in that time an American force of nine hundred and
twenty-four effective men--the rest were teamsters--utterly routed a
Mexican army of four thousand two hundred and twenty men fighting from
behind supposedly impregnable intrenchments. In killed, wounded, and
prisoners the Mexicans lost upward of nine hundred men; the Americans
had four killed and seven wounded. The battle of the Sacramento was
in many respects the most wonderful ever fought by American arms. For
sheer audacity, disproportionate numbers, and sweeping success the
battle of Manila Bay may be set down as its only rival. The only land
battle at all approaching it was that of New Orleans, but there the
Americans fought at home, on their own soil, behind fortifications.
At Sacramento Doniphan’s men attacked a fortified position held by
troops outnumbering them more than four to one. They were in a strange
land, thousands of miles from home. They were in rags, suffering from
lack of food. They believed that they had been abandoned by their own
government and left to their fate. In case of defeat there was no hope
of succor, no help--nothing but inevitable destruction. That is why I
say that the exploit of these Missourians has never been surpassed, if,
indeed, it has ever been equalled in the annals of the world’s warfare.
There is little more to tell. The following day, with the regimental
bands playing “Hail Columbia” and “Yankee Doodle,” Colonel Doniphan and
his men entered the city of Chihuahua in triumph. For two months they
held undisputed possession of the metropolis of northern Mexico; the
city was cleaned and policed; law and order were rigidly enforced and
the rights of the citizens strictly respected. On the 28th of April,
1847, in pursuance of orders received from General Wool, the expedition
evacuated Chihuahua and set out across an arid and desolate country
for Saltillo, covering the six hundred and seventy-five miles in
twenty-five days. After being reviewed and publicly thanked by General
Taylor, the Missourians started on the last stage of their wonderful
march. Reaching Matamoros, at the mouth of the Rio Grande, they took
ship for New Orleans, whose citizens went mad with enthusiasm. Their
journey by steamboat up the Mississippi was one continuous ovation;
at every town they passed the whistles shrieked, the bells rang, and
the townspeople cheered themselves hoarse at sight of the sun-browned
veterans in their faded and tattered uniforms. On July 1, after an
absence of a little more than a year, to the strains of “Auld Lang
Syne” and “Home, Sweet Home,” Doniphan and his One Thousand once again
set foot on the soil of old Missouri. Going out from the western
border of their State, they re-entered it from the east, having made a
circuit equal to a fourth of the circumference of the globe, providing
for themselves as they went, driving before them forces many times
the strength of their own, leaving law and order and justice in their
wake, and returning with trophies taken on battle-fields whose names
few Americans had ever heard before. It is a sad commentary on the
gratitude of republics that the government never acknowledged, either
by promotion, decoration, or the thanks of Congress, the invaluable
services of Alexander Doniphan; there is no statue to him in any town
or city of his State; not even a mention of his immortal expedition
can be found in the school histories of the nation he served so well.
He lived for forty years after his great march and lies buried under
a granite shaft in the cemetery at Liberty, Mo. Though forgotten by
his countrymen, the brown-faced folk below the Rio Grande still tell
of the days when the great captain came riding down from the north to
invade a nation at the head of a thousand men.
WHEN WE FOUGHT THE JAPANESE
WHEN WE FOUGHT THE JAPANESE
“... I met ’im all over the world, a-doin’ all kinds of things,
Like landin’ ’isself with a Gatlin’ gun to talk to them ’eathen kings.
* * * * *
For there isn’t a job on the top o’ the earth the beggar don’t know, nor do--
You can leave ’im at night on a bald man’s ’ead to paddle ’is own canoe.”
There you have a four-line epitome of the career and character of the
burly, tousle-headed, gruff-voiced old sea-dog who is the hero of
this narrative. His name? Matthew Calbraith Perry, one time commodore
in the navy of the United States and younger brother of that other
Yankee sea-fighter, Oliver Hazard Perry, without whose picture, wrapped
in the Chesapeake’s flag and standing in a dramatic attitude in the
stern-sheets of a small boat, no school history of the United States
would be complete. Though Matthew did not have to depend upon the
reflected glory of his famous brother, for he won glory enough of his
own, his extraordinary exploits have never received the attention of
which they are deserving, partly, no doubt, because they were obscured
by the smoke of his brother’s guns on Lake Erie and partly because they
were performed at a period in our national history when the public mind
was occupied with happenings nearer home.
His father, a Yankee privateersman of the up-boys-and-at-’em school,
was captured by a British cruiser during the Revolution and sent as a
prisoner of war to Ireland, where his captivity was made considerably
more than endurable by a peaches-and-cream beauty from the County
Down. After the war was over he returned to Ireland and gave a typical
story-book ending to the romance by hunting up the girl who had cheered
his prison hours and making her his wife. The dashing young skipper and
his sixteen-year-old bride built themselves a house within sight of
the shipping along the Newport wharfs, and there, when the eighteenth
century lacked but half a dozen years of having run its course and when
our flag bore but fifteen stars, Matthew was born. How many of the
neighbors who came flocking in to admire the lusty youngster dreamed
that he would live to command the largest fleet which, in his lifetime,
ever gathered under the folds of that flag and that his exploits on
the remotest seaboards of the world would make the wildest fiction seem
probable and tame?
Young Perry was helping to make history at an age when most boys are
still in school, for, as a midshipman of seventeen, he stood beside
Commodore Rodgers when he lighted the fuse of the “Long Tom” in the
forecastle battery of the frigate _President_ and sent a ball crashing
into the British war-ship _Belvidera_--the first shot fired in the War
of 1812. In the same ship and under the same commander he scoured the
seas of northern Europe in a commerce-destroying raid which extended
from the English Channel to the Arctic, during which the daring
American was hunted by twenty British men-of-war, sailing, for safety’s
sake, in pairs. As a young lieutenant in command of the _Cyane_ he
convoyed the first party of American negroes sent to West Africa to
establish, under the name of Liberia, a country of their own. It was
on this voyage that the character of the man who, in later years, was
to revolutionize the commerce of the world first evidenced itself.
Putting into Teneriffe, in the Canaries, for water and provisions,
Perry, resplendent in “whites” and gold lace, went ashore to pay the
Portuguese governor the customary call of ceremony. As he was taking
leave of the governor he casually remarked that the _Cyane_, on leaving
the harbor, would, of course, fire the usual salute. Whereupon the
Portuguese official, a pompous royalist who had a deep-seated aversion
to republican institutions and went out of his way to show his contempt
for them, told the young commander that the shore batteries would
return the salute _less one gun_, for, as he impudently remarked,
Portugal considered herself superior to republics and could not treat
them as equals. Perry, white with anger, told the governor that the
nation which he had the honor to serve was the equal of any monarchy on
earth, and that unless he received an assurance that his salute would
be returned gun for gun, he would fire no salute at all. That afternoon
the _Cyane_ sailed past the batteries, over which flew the Portuguese
flag, in a silence which unmistakably spelled contempt. Though
personally Perry was the most peaceable of men, as the representative
of the United States in distant oceans he perpetually carried a chip on
his shoulder and defied any one to knock it off. A cannibal king tried
it once, and--but of that you shall hear a little later.
A year or so after he had landed his party of negro colonists he
visited the coast of cannibals and fevers again and at the mouth
of the Mesurado River chose the site of the future capital of
Liberia, which was named Monrovia in honor of President Monroe, thus
establishing the first and only colony ever founded by the United
States. His next commission was to wipe out the pirates who, shielding
themselves under the flags of the new South American republics and
assuming the thin disguise of privateersmen, were terrorizing commerce
upon the Spanish main. Under Commodore David Porter he spent eight
months under sail upon the Gulf, and when he at last turned his
bowsprit toward the north, he had put an end to the depredations of
the “dago robbers,” as his seamen called them. It was here, in fact,
that the term “dago” as applied by Americans to foreigners of the Latin
race began. The name of James, the Spaniards’ patron saint, has been
indiscriminately bestowed, in its Spanish form, Iago, upon provinces,
islands, towns, and rivers from one end of Spanish America to the
other, Santiago, San Diego, Iago, and Diego being such constantly
recurring names that the American sailors early fell into the custom of
calling the natives of these parts “Diegos” or “dago men,” whence the
slang term so universally used to-day.
About the time that the United States was celebrating its fiftieth
birthday the government at Washington, thinking it high time to give
the Europeans an object-lesson in the naval power of the oversea
republic, ordered a squadron of war-ships to the Mediterranean, in
many of whose ports the American flag was as unfamiliar as China’s
dragon banner. The command of the expedition was given to Commodore
Rodgers, who hoisted his pennant on the _North Carolina_, the finest
and most formidable craft that had yet been launched from an American
shipyard, and Perry went along as executive officer to his old chief.
When the great ship, with the grim muzzles of her one hundred and two
guns peering from her three tiers of port-holes, majestically entered
the European harbors under her cloud of snowy canvas, the natives were
goggle-eyed with admiration and amazement, for in those days most
Europeans thought of America--when they gave it any thought at all--as
a land of Indians, grizzly bears, and buckskin-clad frontiersmen. As
executive officer, Perry’s duties comprised pretty much everything
which needed to be done on deck. Whether in cocked hat and gold
epaulets by day or in oilskins and sou’wester at night, he was regent
of the ship and crew. The duties of the squadron were not confined
to visits of ceremony, either, for one of the objects for which it
had been sent was to teach the pirates who infested Levantine waters
that it was as dangerous to molest vessels flying the American flag
as to tamper with a stick of dynamite. During the Greek struggle for
independence, which was then in progress, the Greek privateers had
on more than one occasion been a trifle careless in differentiating
between the vessels of neutral nations and those of their Turkish
oppressors, and in May, 1825, they committed a particularly bad error
of judgment by seizing a merchant ship from Boston. In those days the
administration at Washington was as quick to resent such affronts
as it is tardy nowadays, and no sooner had the American squadron
arrived in Levantine waters than it sought an opportunity to teach the
Greeks a lesson. An opportunity soon presented itself. Learning that
a British merchantman, the _Comet_, had been seized by the Greeks,
Rodgers ordered her to be recaptured and sent a boarding party of
bluejackets and marines to do the business. Swarming up the bow-chains,
the Americans gained the deck before the pirates realized just what
was happening, though the ship was not taken without a desperate
hand-to-hand struggle, in which Lieutenant Carr, singling out the
pirate chief, killed him with his own hand. Thenceforward the Greeks,
whenever they saw a vessel flying the stars and stripes, touched their
hats, figuratively speaking. The _North Carolina’s_ mission thus having
been accomplished, in the spring of 1827 Perry ordered the boatswain to
sound the welcome call: “All hands up anchor for home.”
So well had Perry performed his exacting duties that when the
_Concord_, of eighteen guns, was completed, two years later, he was
given command of her and instructed to carry our envoy, John Randolph,
of Roanoke, to Russia. While lying in the harbor of Cronstadt the
_Concord_ was visited by Czar Nicholas I--the first Russian sovereign
to set foot on the deck-planks of an American war-ship. He was so
pleased with what he saw that he invited Perry to a private audience,
during which the young American naval officer and the Great White Czar
chatted and smoked with all the informality of old friends. Before
the interview was over the ruler of all the Russias offered Perry an
admiral’s commission in the Russian service, but the latter, recalling,
no doubt, the unfortunate experience of his great countryman, John
Paul Jones, while admiral in the navy of Czar Nicholas’s grandmother,
the Empress Catherine, declined the flattering offer. The Yankee
sailorman’s next experience with the Lord’s anointed was on the other
side of Europe. Acting under instructions to leave the visiting cards
of the United States at every port of importance in the Old World--for
nations are just as punctilious about paying and returning calls
as society women--Perry dropped anchor one fine spring morning in
the harbor of Alexandria. Invited to dine at Ras-el-Tin Palace with
Mohammed Ali, the founder of the Khedival dynasty, the brilliancy
and efficiency of the young American impressed the conqueror of the
Sudan as much as they had the conqueror of Poland, and when Perry and
his officers left they took with them, as presents from the Khedive,
thirteen gold-mounted, jewel-incrusted swords, from which, by the way,
was adopted the “Mameluke grip” now used in our navy.
When Andrew Jackson sat himself down in the White House, in 1829, he
promptly inaugurated the same straight-from-the-shoulder-smash-bang
foreign policy which had characterized him as a soldier and used the
navy to back up his policy. During the period from 1809 to 1812 the
Neapolitan Government, first under Joseph Bonaparte and then under
Joachim Murat, had, under the terms of Napoleon’s universal embargo,
confiscated numerous American ships and cargoes, the claims filed with
the State Department in Washington aggregating upward of one million
seven hundred thousand dollars. No sooner had Jackson taken his oath
of office, therefore, than he appointed John Nelson minister to the
kingdom of Naples and ordered him to collect these claims. And in order
that the Neapolitans, who were an evasive lot and kissed every coin
good-by before parting with it, might be convinced that the United
States meant business, Commodore John Patterson--the same who had aided
Jackson in the defense of New Orleans--was given a squadron of half a
dozen war-ships and instructed to back up the minister’s demands by
the menace of his guns. The force at Patterson’s disposal consisted
of three fifty-gun frigates and three twenty-gun corvettes, which
sufficed, according to the plan evolved by the commodore, for a naval
drama in six acts. Almost at the moment of sailing the commander of
the _Brandywine_ was taken ill, and our friend Perry was ordered to
replace him. (Did you ever hear of such a persistent run of luck?) Now,
of all the Americans who visit Naples each year, I very much doubt
if there is one in a hundred thousand who is aware that an American
war fleet once lay in that lovely harbor and threatened--in diplomatic
language, of course--to blow that charming city off the map if a little
account which it had come to collect was not paid then and there. When
Minister Nelson went ashore in the _Brandywine’s_ gig, called upon the
Neapolitan minister of state, Count Cassaro, and intimated that the
United States would appreciate an immediate settlement of its account,
which was long overdue, the wily Neapolitan almost laughed in his face.
Why should the government of Ferdinand II, notorious for its corruption
at home, pay any attention to the demands of an almost unknown republic
five thousand miles away? The very idea was laughable, preposterous,
absurd. No! the Yankee envoy, with but a solitary war-ship to back him
up, would not get a single _soldo_. Very well, said Minister Nelson,
the climate was pleasant and the Neapolitan Government might shortly
change its mind--in fact he thought that it undoubtedly would--and
he would hang around. So Perry dropped the _Brandywine’s_ anchor
under the shadow of Capadimonte, and he and Minister Nelson smoked
and chatted contentedly enough in the pleasant shade of the awnings.
Three days later another floating fortress, black guns peering from
her ports and a flag of stripes and stars trailing from her stern,
sailed majestically up the bay. It was the frigate _United States_.
Again Minister Nelson called on Count Cassaro, and again his request
was refused, but this time a shade less curtly. Nor did King Bomba, in
his palace on the hill, laugh quite so loudly. Four days slipped away
and _splash_ went the anchor of the _Concord_ alongside her sisters.
King Bomba began to look anxious, and his minister was plainly worried,
but still the money remained unpaid. Two days later the _John Adams_
came sweeping into the harbor under a cloud of snowy canvas and hove
to so as to bring her broadside to bear upon the city--whereupon Count
Cassaro sent hurriedly for some local bankers. When the fifth ship
sailed in, the city was agog with excitement, and the Neapolitans had
almost reached the point of being honest--but not quite. But the report
that a sixth ship was entering the harbor brought the desired result,
for Count Cassaro called for his carriage, hastened to the American
envoy, and asked him whether he would prefer the money in drafts or
cash.