Commodore Matthew C. Perry was one of the first American naval officers to overcome the prejudice of seamen against infantry drill, and to form a corps of sailor-soldiers. Under his predecessor, the navy had lost more than one opportunity of gaining distinction because [they were] unable to compete with infantry, or to face cavalry in the open field. Perry formed the first United States naval brigade, though Stockton in California employed a few of his sailors as marines in garrison. The men of Perry’s brigade numbering twenty-five hundred, with ten pieces of artillery, were thoroughly drilled first in the manual of arms and then in company and battalion formations under his own eye. His first employment of part of this body was at Tuspan. Twenty-two days after the fall of Vera Cruz, and on the day of the battle of Cerro Gordo, the bar at the river’s mouth was crossed by the light ships, the fort stormed, and Tuspan “taken at a gallop!” Obliged to give up his marines to General Franklin Pierce, Perry drilled his sailors all the more, so that little leisure was allowed them.

The capture of Tabasco involved the problem of fighting against infantry, posted behind breastworks, with sailors. This was somewhat novel work for our navy. Hitherto all our naval traditions were of squadron fights in line, ship-to-ship duels, or boat expeditions. In the present case the flotilla was to ascend a narrow and torturous river to the distance of nearly seventy miles through an enemy’s country densely covered with vegetation that afforded a continuous cover for riflemen, and then to attack heavy shore batteries.

From various points on the coast, the ships and steamers assembled like magic, and on Monday morning, June 14, 1847, the squadron came to anchor off the mouth of the Tabasco river. The detachments from eleven vessels, numbering 1084 seamen and marines in forty boats, were under the Commodore’s immediate direction and command. He had prepared the plan of attack with great care. Every contingency was foreseen and provided against, and the minutest details were subject to his thoughtful elaboration.

At that point of the river called the Devil’s Bend, danger was apprehended. Here the dense chapparal feathered down to the river’s edge affording a splendid opportunity for ambush. The alert Commodore was standing on the upper waist deck of the Scorpion under the awnings entirely exposed, on the look-out for the enemy. Suddenly, as the flag-ship reached the elbow, from the left side of the river the guns of at least a hundred men blazed forth in a volley, followed by a dropping fire. In an instant the awnings were riddled and all the upper works of wood and iron scratched, dented, and splintered, by the spatter of lead and copper. Strange to say, not a single man on the Scorpion was touched by the volley though a sailor on the Vesuvius was hit later.

As the smoke curled up from the chapparal, Perry pointed with his glass to the guns still flashing, and gave, or rather roared out, the order “Fire.” The guns of the Scorpion, Washington and the surf-boats, with a rattling fusillade of small arms, soon mowed great swaths in the jungle. From the masthead of the Stromboli, a number of cavalry were seen beyond the jungle. A ten-inch shell, from the eight-ton gun of the Vesuvius, exploding among them, seemed to the enemy to be an attack in the rear, cutting off their retreat, and they scattered wildly. Very few of the Mexicans took time to reload or fire a second shot.

It was now past six o’clock and it was determined to anchor for the night. The whole squadron assembled in the Devil’s Turn, and anchored in sight of the Seven Palm Trees below which the obstructions had been sunk. Due precautions were taken against a night attack, as the dense chapparal was only twenty yards distant. A barricade of hammocks was therefore thrown up on the bulwarks for protection, and the sailors, as soldiers are, in rhetoric, said to do, “slept on their arms.” But one volley was received from the shore during the night, the air only receiving injury.

The enemy had placed obstructions at the bar to prevent the further ascent of our forces. The Commodore, early in the morning, dispatched two boats with survey officers to reconnoitre and sound a channel. These drew the fire of a breastwork, La Comena, on the shore, which severely wounded Lieutenant William May.

The boats having been unable to find a channel, Perry gave orders to land. With grape, bombs, and musketry, the fleet cleared the ground, and then Perry gave the order, “Prepare to land,” and led the way in his barge with his broad pennant flying. All eyes watched his movements as he pulled up the river. When opposite the Palms, he steered for the shore, and with his loud, clear voice heard fore and aft, called out, “Three cheers, and land!” The cheers were given with enthusiasm, and then every oar bent. His boat was the first to strike the beach, and the Commodore was the first man to land. With Captain Mayo and his aids, he dashed up the nearly perpendicular bank, and unfurled his broad pennant in the sight of the whole line of boats. Instantly three deafening cheers again rang out from the throats of a thousand men who panted to be near it and share its fortunes. It was a sight so unusual, for a naval Commander-in-chief, to take the field under such circumstances at the head of his command, that the enthusiasm of our tars was unbounded and irrepressible. They bent to their oars with a will and pulled for the shore.

The artillery and infantry were quickly landed on the narrow flats at the base of the high banks. Reaching these, the infantry were formed in line within ten minutes. Then came the tug-work of drawing seven field pieces up a bank four rods high, and slanting only twenty-five feet from a perpendicular. With plenty of rope and muscle the work was accomplished. Three more pieces were landed later from the bomb ketches and added as a reserve. Most of the landing was done in five, and all within ten minutes. In half an hour after the Commodore first set foot on land, the column was in motion as follows:—

The pioneers far in advance under Lieutenant Maynard, the marines under Captain Edson, the artillery under Captain Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, and the detachments of seamen under the various captains to whose ships they severally belonged. Captain Mayo acted as adjutant general, the Commodore giving his personal attention to every movement of the whole. In this, as in all things, Perry was a master of details.

The march upon Tabasco now began, the burly Commodore being at the front. Through a skirt of jungle, then for a mile through a clear plain, and again in the woods, they soon came in sight of Acachapan where an advancing company of a hundred musket-men opened fire on our column. At this chosen place, the Mexican general had intended to give battle, having here the main body of his army with two field pieces and a body of cavalry. At the first fire of the Mexican musketry, our field pieces were got into position, and a few round shots, well served, put the lessening numbers of the enemy to flight. The terrible execution so quickly done showed the Mexicans that the Americans had landed not as a mob of sailors but a body of drilled infantry with artillery. A change came over the spirit of the orator, Bruno, and he fell back in his intrenchments. The road wound near the water and the march was re-commenced.

Meanwhile the ships left in the river were not idle. The flotilla, led by the Spitfire under Lieutenant, now Admiral Porter, had passed the obstructions, and according to Perry’s orders, were gallantly ascending near the fort and town. The three hearty cheers which were exchanged between ships and shore when the two parties caught sight of each other, greatly intimidated the veteranos in the fort. Behind the deserted breastworks of Acachapan, our men found the usual signs of sudden and speedy exit. Clothes, bedding and cooking utensils were visible. The bill of fare for the breakfast all ready, but untasted, consisted of boiled beef, tortillas, squash and corn in several styles.

Without delaying here, the advance column passed on and rested under several enormous scyba trees near a lagoon of water. Officers and men had earned rest, for the work of hauling field pieces in tropical weather along narrow, swampy and tortuous roads, and over rude corduroy bridges hastily constructed by the pioneers, was toilsome in the extreme. In some cases the wheels of a gun carriage would sink to their hubs requiring a whole company to drag them out. Some of the best officers and most athletic seamen fainted from heat and excessive fatigue, but reviving with rest and refreshment, resumed their labors with zeal that inspired the whole line. This march overland of a naval force with artillery along an almost roadless country seemed to demoralize both the veterans and militia in fort and trenches.

The Spitfire and Scorpion passed up the river unmolested until within range of Fort Iturbide, a shot from which cut the paddle-wheel of the Spitfire. Without being disabled, the steamer moved on and got in the rear of the fortification, pouring in so rapid and accurate a fire, that the garrison soon lost all spirit and showed signs of flinching. Seeing this, Lieutenant, now Admiral, Porter landed with sixty-eight men and under an irregular fire charged and captured it, the Mexicans flying in all directions. The town was then taken possession of by a force detailed from the two steamers, under Captain S. S. Lee, Lieutenant Porter remaining in command of the Spitfire.

When the Commodore at 2 o’clock p. m. arrived at the ditch and breastworks, a quarter of a mile from the fort, and in sight of the town, he found the deserted place well furnished with cooked dinners and cast off but good clothing. The advance now waited until the straggling line closed up, so that the whole force might enter the city in company. Soon after reaching the fort which mounted two six, three twenty-eight, and one twenty-four pounder guns with numerous pyramids of shot and stands of grape, they found the men from the ships in possession, and the stars and stripes floated above, and each detachment of the column, as it entered, cheered with enthusiasm.

The Commodore and his aids were escorted by the marines and the force marched, company front, to the plaza. They moved almost at a run up the steep street, the band playing Yankee Doodle. Bruno’s prophecy was fulfilled, but without Bruno. A few of the citizens and foreign merchants and consuls whose flags were flying welcomed the Commodore. The rain was now falling heavily and, as the public buildings were closed, and no one seemed to have the keys, the doors were forced. Quarters were duly assigned to the Commodore, staff and marines. The artillery was parked in the arcades of the plaza, so as to command all the approaches to the city, and the men rested. Even the Commodore had walked the entire distance, only one animal, an old mule, having been captured on the way and reserved for the hospital party.

Six days were spent at Tabasco. From the first hour of arriving, the Commodore made ample provision for good order, health, economy, revenue, and the honor of the American name. The scenes on the open square during the American occupation, the tattoo, reveille, evening and morning gun, the hourly cry of “all’s well,” the shrill whistle of the boatswain, and the occasional summons of all hands to quarters, showed that, with perfect discipline, the naval batallion of the Home Squadron was perfectly at home in Tabasco, and that the sailors could act like good soldiers on land as well as keep discipline aboard ship.

The large guns and war relics were put on board the flotilla, but the other military stores were destroyed. Captain A. Bigelow was left in command of the city with four hundred and twenty men. Perry’s orders against pillage were very stringent. He meant to show that the war was not against peaceful non-belligerents, but against the Mexican official class. Perry highly commended Captain Edson and his body of marines for their share of the work at Tabasco. His approbation of these men, who for nine months had served under his immediate eye, was warm and sincere. They afterwards did good service before the gates and in the city of Mexico. Perry wrote of the marines, “I repeat what I have often said, that this distinguished and veteran corps is one of the most effective and valuable arms of the service.”

The capture of Tabasco, whose commercial importance was second to that of Vera Cruz, was the last of the notable naval operations of the war. So far as the navy was concerned, the campaign was over, unless the sailors should turn soldiers altogether, for every one of the Gulf ports was in American hands. Since the fall of Vera Cruz, the navy had captured six cities with their fortresses and ninety-three cannon. This work was all done on shore, off the proper element of a naval force. In addition to these operations, the Commodore demanded and received from Yucatan her neutrality, carried into effect at the ports the regulation of the United States Treasury Department for raising revenue from the Mexicans, and found leisure to erect a spacious and comfortable hospital on the island of Salmadina equipped with all the comforts obtainable. This preparation for the disease certain to come among unacclimated men was most opportune.

About this time Perry sent home to the United States in the Raritan, in care of Captain Forest, the guns captured at various places. Three of the six at Tabasco were assigned to the Annapolis Naval Academy to be used for drill purposes. This was also in compliment to the first graduates of the institution, several of whom were serving in the Mexican campaign, as well as its first principal Captain Franklin Buchanan.

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.

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?

We propose here to summarize the various attempts by Americans to re-open Japan to intercourse with other nations. For two centuries, after Iyéyasŭ and his successors passed their decree of seclusion, Japan remained the new Paradise Lost to Europeans. Perry made it Paradise Regained.

In The Japan Expedition, the editor of Perry’s work has given, on page 62, in a tabulated list, the various attempts made by civilized nations to open commerce with Japan from 1543 down to 1852. In this, the Portuguese, Dutch, English, Russians, American, and French have taken part. This table, however, is incomplete, as we shall show.

The American flag was probably first carried around the world in 1784, by Major Robert Shaw, formerly an officer in the revolutionary army of the United States First Artillery. It was, therefore, seen in the eastern seas as early as 1784, and at Nagasaki as early as 1797. In 1803, Mr. Waardenaar, the Dutch superintendent at Déshima, not having heard that the peace of the Amiens, negotiated by Lord Cornwallis and signed March 27, 1802, had been broken, boarded a European vessel coming into port, and recognized an American, Captain Stewart, who during the war had made voyages for the Dutch East India Company. Captain Stewart explained that he had come with a cargo of wholly American goods, of which he was proprietor. The following dialogue ensued:—

Q. “Who is the King of America.”

A. “President Jefferson.”

Q. “Why do you come to Japan?”

A. “To demand liberty of commerce for me and my people.”

Waardenaar suspected that the real chief of the expedition was not Stewart, but “the doctor” on board, and that it was a British ship. Hence, on Waardenaar’s report to the governor of Nagasaki, the latter forbade Stewart the coasts of Japan, allowing, him, however, water and provisions.

The facts underlying this apparent attempt of the enterprising Yankee to open trade with the United States so early in the history of the country seemed to be these. Captain Stewart, an American in the service of the Dutch East India Company, having made his first voyage from Batavia to Nagasaki in 1797, was sent again the following year, 1798. An earthquake and tidal wave coming on, his ship dragged her anchors and the cargo, consisting chiefly of camphor, was thrown overboard. The vessel would have become a total wreck but for the ingenuity of a native. He “used helps undergirding the ship,” floating her. Then taking her in tow of a big junk, he drew her into a safe quarter. For this, the Japanese was made a two-sworded samurai. Stewart was sent back to Batavia. Thence he fled to Bengal, where he most probably persuaded the English merchants to send him in a ship to Japan with a cargo, to open trade for them under the name of Americans.

A few days after Stewart had left, Captain Torry, the accredited agent of the Calcutta Company, came to Nagasaki, to open trade if possible. Torry had sent Stewart before him, the Japanese not daring, he thought, to refuse Englishmen after allowing Americans to trade. Torry was, however, sent away as being in league with Stewart, and left after obtaining a supply of water.

In 1807, as Hildreth in his Japan, states, the American ship, Eclipse, of Boston, chartered at Canton, by the Russian American Company for Kamschatka and the north-west coast of America, entered the harbor of Nagasaki under Russian colors, but could obtain no trade and only provisions and water. The Dutch flag being driven from the ocean, the annual ships from Batavia to Nagasaki in 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, and at least one of the pair in 1806, 1807 and 1809, were American bottoms and under the American flag, so that the Japanese became familiar with the seventeen-starred flag of the United States of America.

The brilliant and successful foreign policy of President Andrew Jackson in Europe, has been already noted. Even Asia felt his influence. Mr. Edmund Roberts^[21], a sea captain of Portsmouth, N. H., was named by President Jackson, his “agent” for the purpose of “examining in the Indian ocean the means of extending the commerce of the United States by commercial arrangements with the Powers whose dominions border on those seas.” He was ordered, January 27, 1832, to embark on the United States Sloop-of-war, Peacock, in which he was rated as captain’s clerk. On the 23rd of July, he was ordered “to be very careful in obtaining information respecting Japan, the means of opening a communication with it, and the value of its trade with the Dutch and Chinese.” Arriving at Canton, he might receive further instructions. He had with him blanks. On the 28th of October, 1832, Edward Livingstone, the United States Secretary of State, instructed him that the United States had it in contemplation to institute a separate mission to Japan. If, however, a favorable opportunity presented, he might fill up a letter and present it to the “Emperor” for the purpose of opening trade. Roberts was successful in inaugurating diplomatic and commercial relations with Muscat and Siam, but, on account of his premature death, nothing came of his mission to Japan. He died June 12, 1836, at Macao, where his tomb duly inscribed, is in the Protestant cemetery.

Commodore Kennedy in the Peacock, with the schooner Enterprise, visited the Bonin Islands in August 1837, an account of which was written by Doctor Ruschenberger,^[22] the fleet surgeon.

The sight of the flowery flag of “Bé-koku” or the United States, became more and more familiar to the Japanese coasting and ship population, as the riches of the whaling waters became better known in America. The American whalers were so numerous in the Japan seas by the year 1850, that eighty-six of the “black ships” were counted as passing Matsumaé in twelve months. Perry found that no fewer than ten thousand of our people were engaged in this business. Furthermore, the Japanese waifs blown out to sea were drifted into the Black Current and to the Kurile and Aleutian islands, to Russian and British America, to Oregon and California, and even to Hawaii.

The necessity of visiting Japan on errands of mercy to return these waifs became a frequent one. Reciprocally, the Japanese sent the shipwrecked Americans by the Dutch vessels to Batavia whence they reached the United States. This was the cause of the “Morrison’s” visit to the bay of Yedo and to Kagoshima in 1837. This ship, fitly named after the first Protestant English missionary to China, whose grave lies near Roberts in the terraced cemetery at Macao, was despatched by an American mercantile firm. Included among the thirty-eight persons on board were seven Japanese waifs, Rev. Charles Gutzlaff, Dr. S. Wells Williams, Peter Parker, Mr. King, the owner, and Mrs. King. They sailed July 3d. The vessel reached Uraga, bay of Yedo, July 22d, and Kagoshima in Satsuma August 20, but was fired on and driven away. The name of “Morrison Bluff” on the map of Japan is an honor to American Christianity, as it is a shame to Old Japan.

The proposition to open commercial relations with the two secluded nations now came definitely before Congress. On February 15th 1845, General Zadoc Pratt, chairman of the select committee on statistics introduced the following resolution in Congress to treat for the opening of Japan and Corea. “Whereas it is important to the general interests of the United States that steady and persevering efforts should be made for the extension of American commerce, connected as that commerce is with the agriculture and manufactures of our country; be it therefore resolved, that in furtherance of this object, it is hereby recommended that immediate measures be taken for effecting commercial arrangements with the Empire of Japan and the Kingdom of Corea,^[23] for the following among other reasons.” Then follows a memorandum concerning the proposed mission.

Captain Mercator Cooper, in the whale ship Manhattan, of Sag Harbor, returned twenty-two shipwrecked Japanese early in April 1845, from the island of St. Peters to Uraga in the bay of Yedo, where he lay at anchor four days obtaining books and charts. When the Japanese embassy of 1861 reached New York, one of the first questions asked by them was, “Where is Captain Cooper?”

Our government authorized Commodore Biddle, then in command of the East Indian squadron, to visit Japan in the hope of securing a convention. He left Chusan July 7th, and, on the 20th of July 1846, with the ship of the line, Columbus, 90 guns, and the sloop of war, Vincennes, he anchored off Uraga. Application for trade was made in due form, but the answer given July 28th by the Shō-gun’s deputy who came on board with a suite of eight persons, was a positive refusal. Commodore Biddle being instructed “not to do anything to excite a hostile feeling or distrust of the United States,” sailed away July 29, in obedience to orders.

At this very time, eight American sailors, or seven, as the Japanese account states, wrecked on the whale ship, Lawrence, June 6th, were imprisoned in Yezo; but the fact was not then known in Yedo. After seventeen months confinement, they were sent to Nagasaki and thence in October 1847, to Batavia. From one of these sailors, a Japanese samurai, or two-sworded retainer of a damiō, named Moriyama Yénosŭké, (Mr. Grove-mountain) learned to speak and read English with tolerable fluency. He acted as chief medium of communication between the Japanese and their next American visitor, Glynn; and afterwards served as interpreter in the treaty negotiations at Yokohama in 1854. At this time the Dutch trade with Japan barely paid the expenses of the factory at Déshima. The Dutch East India Company some years before had voluntarily turned over the monopoly to the Dutch government. Trade was now upon a purely sentimental basis, being kept up solely for the honor of the Dutch flag. The next step, which logically followed, was a letter from the King of Holland to the Shō-gun recommending that Japan open her ports to the trade of the world. Meanwhile, the Mikado commanded that the coasts should be strictly guarded “so as to prevent dishonor to the Divine Country.”

In September, 1848, fifteen foreign seamen, eight of them Americans, wrecked from the Ladoga, were sent in a junk from Matsumaé to Nagasaki. The Netherlands consul at Canton made notification January 27, 1849, to Captain Geisinger, a gallant officer on the Wasp in 1814, in command of the Peacock during Mr. Roberts’s first embassy, and now in command of the East India squadron, who sent Commander Glynn in the Preble, the brig once in Perry’s African squadron, and carrying fourteen guns, to their rescue. Stopping at Napa, Riu Kiu, on his way to Nagasaki, he learned from the Rev. Dr. J. Bettelheim the missionary there, of the rumors concerning “the Japanese victory over the American big ships.” The snowball of rumor in rolling to the provinces had become an avalanche of exaggeration, and Glynn at once determined to pursue “a stalwart policy.” On reaching Nagasaki, he dashed through the cordon of boats, and anchored within cannon shot of the city. He submitted to the usual red tape proceedings and evasive diplomacy for two days, and then threatened to open fire on the city unless the sailors were forthcoming. That the Japanese had already learned to respect American naval gunnery, having heard of it at Vera Cruz, the following conversation will show. The Japanese, through the Dutch, had been kept minutely informed as to the Mexican war and, in their first interview with Commander Glynn, remarked:—

“You have had a war with Mexico?”

“Yes.”

“You whipped her?”

“Yes.”

“You have taken a part of her territory?”

“Yes.”

“And you have discovered large quantities of gold in it?”

The imprisoned seamen were promptly delivered on the deck of the Preble. They stated that, when in Matsumaé, they had learned from the guards of their prison of every battle we had with the Mexicans and of every victory we had gained. The prestige of the American navy won at Vera Cruz and on the two coasts had doubtless a good influence upon the Japanese, making Glynn’s mission easier than it otherwise might have been. In his report, Commander Glynn suggested that the time for opening Japan was favorable and recommended the sending of a force to do it.

Commerce with China, the settlement of California, the growth of the American whale-fishery in the eastern seas, the expansion of steam traffic, with the corollary necessities of coal and ports for shelter, and the frequency of shipwrecks, were all compelling factors in the opening of Japan—which event could not long be delayed.

The shadows of the coming event were already descried in Japan. Numerous records of the landing or shipwreck of American and other seamen are found in the native chronicles of this period. The Dutch dropped broad hints of embassies or expeditions soon to come. In September, 1847, the rank of the governor of Uraga, the entrance-port to the Bay of Yedo, was raised. In October, the daimiōs or barons were ordered to maintain the coast defences, and encourage warlike studies and exercises. In November, the boy named Shichiro Marō, destined to be the last Tai-kun (“Tycoon”) and head of Japanese feudalism, came into public notice as heir of one of the princely families of the Succession. In December, a census of the number of newly cast cannon able to throw balls of one pound weight and over was ordered to be taken. The chronicler of the year 1848 notes that nineteen foreign vessels passed through the straits of Tsushima in April, and closes his notice of remarkable events by saying: “During this year, foreign ships visited our northern seas in such numbers as had not been seen in recent times!”