CHAPTER XXV.

FIGHTING THE YELLOW FEVER. PEACE.

AFTER his exploits at Tuspan, Tabasco and Yucatan, Perry, having captured every port and landing place along the whole eastern coast of Mexico, and established a strict blockade, thereby maintaining intact the base of supplies for the army in the interior, turned his attention to new foes. Bands of guerrillas, the fragments of the armies which Scott had destroyed, were not the only things to be feared. Mosquitoes and winged vermin of many species, malarial, yellow and other fevers—two great hosts—were to be fought night and day without cessation.

It is said that in northern Corea, “the men hunt the tigers during six months in the year, and the tigers hunt the men during the other six months.” In Mexico, along the coast, the northers rage during one half of the year, while the yellow fever reigns through the other half, maintaining the balance of power and an equilibrium of misery.

Fire broke out on the _Mississippi_, owing to spontaneous combustion of impure coal put on board at Norfolk, in a wet condition. It was extinguished only by pumping water into the coal-bunkers. Through this necessity, the flag-ship, which had thus far defied the powers of air, sun and moisture, became a foothold of pestilence. Yellow fever broke out, and, towards the end of July, the _Mississippi_ had to be sent to Pensacola.

Perry shifted his flag to the _Germantown_, (a fine old frigate fated to be burned at Norfolk in 1861), Capt. Buchanan, and sailed July 16, to inquire after the health of the men on blockade and garrison duty in the ports, while the two hundred or more patients of the _Mississippi_ quickly convalesced in Florida.

Northers and vomito, though depended on by the Mexicans to fight in their courses against the Yankees, did not work together in the same time. The northers thus far had kept back the yellow fever, but now while Scott’s army moved in the salubrious highlands of the interior, the unacclimated sailors remaining on the pestilential coast were called to fight disease, insects, and banditti, at once. They must hold ports with pitifully small garrisons, enforcing financial regulations, and grappling with villainous consuls who desecrated their national flags by smuggling from Havana, and by harboring the goods of the enemy. Many so-called “consuls” in Mexican ports were never so accredited, and could not appreciate the liberal policy of the United States towards neutrals.

While the plague was impending, there was a woeful lack of medical officers; one surgeon on seven ships at anchor, and two assistant surgeons in the hospital, composing the medical staff. The patients at Salmadina did well, but the fever broke out among the merchant vessels at Vera Cruz and the foreign men-of-war at Sacrificios.

By the middle of August, the sickly season was well advanced, and with so many of the large ships sent home for the health of the men, Perry’s force was small enough, while yet the guerrillas were as lively and seemingly as numerous and ubiquitous as mosquitoes. Fortunately for the American cause, some of the most noted of the guerrilla chiefs fell out among themselves and came to blows.

Perry wrote to Washington earnestly requesting that marines be sent out to act as flankers to parties of seamen landed to cut off guerrilla parties. In the night attacks which were frequent, the men and officers had to stand to their guns for long hours in drenching dews and heavy miasma.

The conditions of life on the low malarious Mexican coast are at any time trying to the thick-skinned whites, and unacclimated men from the north; but, in war time, the dangers were vastly increased. The marines left at the ports when on duty had to endure the piercing rays of the sun at mid-day and the heavy dews at midnight, and to beat off the guerrillas who skirmished in darkness. Added to this, were the investigations or excavations which mosquitoes, sandflies, centipedes, scorpions and tarantulas, were continually making into the human flesh with every sort of digging, fighting, chewing, sucking, and stinging instruments with which the inscrutable wisdom of the Almighty has endowed them. Added to these foes without, was that peculiar form of _delirium tremens_ prevailing along the rivers and brought on by tropical heat with which some of the Americans were afflicted. The victims, prompted by an irresistible desire to throw themselves into the water, were often drowned. Hitherto only known in Dryden’s poetry American officers now bore witness to its violence.

On the ships, the miasma arising from decaying kelp washed upon the barren reefs and decomposed by the sun’s rays created the atmospheric conditions well suited for the spread of vomito. A sour nauseating effluvia blew over the ships all night, and easily operated upon the spleen or liver of those who, from exposure, fatigue or intemperate habits, were most predisposed.

The Commodore convened a board of medical officers on board the _Mississippi_ prior to her departure to inquire into the causes of the disorder. In their opinion, it was atmospheric,—a theory justified by the fact that patients convalesced as soon as the ships moved out to sea. The theory of inoculation by flies, mosquitoes and other insects was not then demonstrated as now, though for other reasons netting was a boon and protection to the hospital patients.

One of the first cases, if not the very first case, of yellow fever attacking a ship’s crew in the American navy was that on board the _General Greene_, commanded by M. C. Perry’s father in 1799. Coming north from the West Indies to get rid of the disease, it broke out again at Newport. So virulent was the contagion, that even bathers in the water near the ship, were attacked by it. The memories of his childhood, which had long lain in his memory as a dream, became painfully vivid to the Commodore as he visited the yellow fever hospital, and saw so many gallant officers and brave men succumb to the scourge. “King Death sat in his yellow robe.” Soon even the robust form of the Commodore succumbed to the severe labors exposure and responsibilities laid upon him, though fortunately he escaped the yellow fever. Four officers died in one week; but Perry, after a season of sickness, recovered, and, on the approach of autumn was up again and active.

The expression of thanks to the navy for its services was only to an extent that may be called niggardly. Perry had sometimes to apply the art of exegesis to find the desired passage containing praise. After the brilliant Tuspan affair, he discovered a fragment of a paragraph, in a dispatch alluding to other matters, which was evidently intended to mean thanks. Instead of reading it on the quarter-deck, he mentioned it informally to his officers, lest the men should be discouraged by such faint praise. In response to the compliments of the city authorities of New York and Washington, Perry made due acknowledgment.

The truth seems to be that Matthew Perry was not personally in favor with the authorities at Washington. He had won his position and honors by sheer merit, and had compelled praise which else had been withheld. In this matter, he was not alone, for even Scott gained his brilliant victories without the personal sympathies or good wishes of the Administration.

It was as much as the Commodore of the great fleet could do to get sufficient clerical aid to assist him in his vast correspondence and other pen-work, so great was the fear at Washington, that the public funds would be squandered.

Perry persistently demanded more light draft steamers drawing not over seven and a half feet and armed with but one heavy gun, for river work. Mexico is a country without one navigable river, and only the most buoyant vessels could cross the bars. He pled his needs so earnestly that the Secretary of the Navy, John T. Mason, took him to task. It is probable that the very brilliancy of the victories of both our army and navy in Mexico, blinded, not only the general public, but the administration to the arduous nature of the service, and to the greatness of the difficulties overcome. The campaign of the army was spoken of as a “picnic,” and that of the navy as a “yachting excursion.” Certain it is that the administration seemed more anxious to make political capital out of the war, than either to appreciate the labors of its servants or the injustice done to the Mexicans.

In all his dispatches, Perry was unstinting in his praise of the army, to whose success he so greatly contributed. From intercepted letters, he learned that the presence of his active naval force had kept large numbers of the Mexican regulars near the coast, and away from the path of Scott’s army. He had seriously felt the loss of his marines, a whole regiment of whom, under Colonel Watson, had been taken away from him to go into the interior. Nevertheless, he remitted no activity, but, by constantly threatening various points, the coast was kept in alarm so that Mexican garrisons had to remain at every landing place along the water line. He thus contributed powerfully to the final triumph of our arms. On the 30th of September, he heard with gratification of the entry, thirteen days before, of Scott’s army into the city of Mexico. During November and December, the Commodore made several cruises up and down the coast, firmly maintaining the blockade, until the treaty of peace was signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. In Yucatan, Perry did much to hasten the end of the war of race and caste, which was then raging between the whites and the Indian _peones_ and rancheros.

Santa Anna who had concealed himself in Pueblo, hoping to escape by way of Vera Cruz, opened negotiations with Perry, who replied, that he would receive him with the courtesy due to his rank, provided he would surrender himself unconditionally as a prisoner of war. It turned out in the end, that, without let or hindrance by either Mexicans or Americans, Santa Anna the unscrupulous and avaricious, left his native land, April 5, 1848, on a Spanish brig bound to Jamaica. Gallantly but vainly he had tried to resist “the North American invasion.” After seventy-eight years of amazing vicissitudes, the last years of his life being spent on Staten Island, N. Y., chiefly in cock-fighting and card-playing, he died June 20, 1876, at Vera Cruz. He was the incarnation of fickle and ignorant Mexico.

The re-embarkation of the troops homeward began in May. The city, the fortress, and the custom-house of Vera Cruz, were restored to the Mexican government, June 11, 1848. Four days later, the Commodore leaving the _Germantown_, _Saratoga_ and a few smaller vessels in the gulf, sent the other men-of-war northward to be repaired or sold. The frigate _Cumberland_, bearing the broad pennant, entered New York bay July 23, 1848.

In the war between two republics, the American soldier was an educated freeman, far superior in physique and mental power to his foeman. The Mexicans were docile and brave, easily taking death while in the ranks, but unable to stand against the rush and sustained valor of the American troops; while their leaders were out-generaled by the superior science of officers who had been graduated from West Point. In the civil war, thirteen years later, nearly all the leaders, and all the great soldiers on both sides, whose reputations withstood the strain of four years’ campaigning, were regularly educated army officers who had graduated from the school of service in Mexico. It was the preliminary training in this foreign war, that made our armies of ’61, more than mobs, and gave to so many of the campaigns the order of science. The Mexican war was probably the first in which the newspapers made and unmade the reputation of commanders, and the war correspondent first emerged as a distinct figure in modern history. Some of the famous sayings, the texture of which may be either historically plain, or rhetorically embroidered, are still current in American speech. Nor will such phrases, as “Rough and Ready,” “Fuss and Feathers,” “A little more grape, Captain Bragg,” “Wait, Charlie, till I draw their fire,” “Certainly General, but I must fight them,” “Where the guns go, the men go with them,” soon be forgotten.

As to the rights of the quarrel with Mexico, most of the officers of the army and navy were indifferent; as perhaps soldiers have a right to be, seeing the responsibility rests with their superiors, the civil rulers. Matthew Perry, as a soldier, felt that the war was waged unjustly by a stronger upon a weaker nation, and endeavored, while doing his duty in obedience to orders, to curtail the horrors of invasion. He was ever vigilant to suppress robbery, rapine, cold-blooded cruelty, and all that lay outside of honorable war. In the letters written to his biographer, by fellow-officers, are many instances of “Old Matt’s” shrewdness in preventing and severity in punishing wanton pillage, and the infliction of needless pain on man or beast.

Whatever may have been the sentiments of the past, despite also the provocation of the Mexico of Santa Anna’s time, the verdict of history as given by Herbert Bancroft, will now find echo all over our common country. “The United States was in the wrong, all the world knows it; all honest American citizens acknowledge it.”

President Polk and his party, in compelling the war with Mexico, meant one thing. The Almighty intended something different. Politicians and slave-holders brought on a war to extend the area of human servitude. Providence meant it to be a war for freedom, and the expansion of a people best fitted to replenish and subdue the new land. At the right moment, the time-locks on the hidden treasuries of gold drew back their bolts, and a free people entered to change a wilderness to empire. There is now no slavery in either the new or the old parts of the United States.