CHAPTER XXII.

“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.”

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.