MEXICAN WAR: DONIPHAN'S EXPEDITION: MR. BENTON'S SALUTATORY ADDRESS, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.
Colonel Doniphan and Officers and Men:—I have been appointed to an honorable and a pleasant duty—that of making you the congratulations of your fellow-citizens of St. Louis, on your happy return from your long, and almost fabulous expedition. You have, indeed, marched far, and done much, and suffered much, and well entitled yourselves to the applauses of your fellow-citizens, as well as to the rewards and thanks of your government. A year ago you left home. Going out from the western border of your State, you re-enter it on the east, having made a circuit equal to the fourth of the circumference of the globe, providing for yourselves as you went, and returning with trophies taken from fields, the names of which were unknown to yourselves and your country, until revealed by your enterprise, illustrated by your valor, and immortalized by your deeds. History has but few such expeditions to record; and when they occur, it is as honorable and useful as it is just and wise, to celebrate and commemorate the events which entitle them to renown.
Your march and exploits have been among the most wonderful of the age. At the call of your country you marched a thousand miles to the conquest of New Mexico, as part of the force under General Kearney, and achieved that conquest, without the loss of a man, or the fire of a gun. That work finished, and New Mexico, itself so distant, and so lately the ultima thule—the outside boundary of speculation and enterprise—so lately a distant point to be attained, becomes itself a point of departure—a beginning point, for new and far more extended expeditions. You look across the long and lofty chain—the Cordilleras of North America—which divide the Atlantic from the Pacific waters; and you see beyond that ridge, a savage tribe which had been long in the habit of depredations upon the province which had just become an American conquest. You, a part only of the subsequent Chihuahua column, under Jackson and Gilpin, march upon them—bring them to terms—and they sign a treaty with Colonel Doniphan, in which they bind themselves to cease their depredations on the Mexicans, and to become the friends of the United States. A novel treaty, that! signed on the western confines of New Mexico, between parties who had hardly ever heard each other's names before, and to give peace and protection to Mexicans who were hostile to both. This was the meeting, and this the parting of the Missouri volunteers, with the numerous and savage tribe of the Navaho Indians living on the waters of the Gulf of California, and so long the terror and scourge of Sonora, Sinaloa, and New Mexico.
This object accomplished, and impatient of inactivity, and without orders (General Kearney having departed for California), you cast about to carve out some new work for yourselves. Chihuahua, a rich and populous city of near thirty thousand souls, the seat of government of the State of that name, and formerly the residence of the captains-general of the Internal Provinces under the vice-regal government of New Spain, was the captivating object which fixed your attention. It was a far distant city—about as far from St. Louis as Moscow is from Paris; and towns and enemies, and a large river, and defiles and mountains, and the desert whose ominous name, portending death to travellers—el jornada de los muertos—the journey of the dead—all lay between you. It was a perilous enterprise, and a discouraging one, for a thousand men, badly equipped, to contemplate. No matter. Danger and hardship lent it a charm, and the adventurous march was resolved on, and the execution commenced. First, the ominous desert was passed, its character vindicating its title to its mournful appellation—an arid plain of ninety miles, strewed with the bones of animals perished of hunger and thirst—little hillocks of stone, and the solitary cross, erected by pious hands, marking the spot where some Christian had fallen, victim of the savage, of the robber, or of the desert itself—no water—no animal life—no sign of habitation. There the Texian prisoners, driven by the cruel Salazar, had met their direst sufferings, unrelieved, as in other parts of their march in the settled parts of the country, by the compassionate ministrations (for where is it that woman is not compassionate?) of the pitying women. The desert was passed, and the place for crossing the river approached. A little arm of the river, Bracito (in Spanish), made out from its side. There the enemy, in superior numbers, and confident in cavalry and artillery, undertook to bar the way. Vain pretension! Their discovery, attack, and rout, were about simultaneous operations. A few minutes did the work! And in this way our Missouri volunteers of the Chihuahua column spent their Christmas day of the year 1846.
The victory of the Bracito opened the way to the crossing of the river Del Norte, and to admission into the beautiful little town of the Paso del Norte, where a neat cultivation, a comfortable people, fields, orchards, and vineyards, and a hospitable reception, offered the rest and refreshment which toils and dangers, and victory had won. You rested there till artillery was brought down from Sante Fé; but the pretty town of the Paso del Norte, with all its enjoyments, and they were many, and the greater for the place in which they were found, was not a Capua to the men of Missouri. You moved forward in February, and the battle of the Sacramento, one of the military marvels of the age, cleared the road to Chihuahua; which was entered without further resistance. It had been entered once before by a detachment of American troops; but under circumstances how different! In the year 1807, Lieutenant Pike and his thirty brave men, taken prisoners on the head of the Rio del Norte, had been marched captives into Chihuahua: in the year 1847, Doniphan and his men enter it as conquerors. The paltry triumph of a captain-general over a lieutenant, was effaced in the triumphal entrance of a thousand Missourians into the grand and ancient capital of all the Internal Provinces! and old men, still alive, could remark the grandeur of the American spirit under both events—the proud and lofty bearing of the captive thirty—the mildness and moderation of the conquering thousand.
Chihuahua was taken, and responsible duties, more delicate than those of arms, were to be performed. Many American citizens were there, engaged in trade; much American property was there. All this was to be protected, both life and property, and by peaceful arrangement; for the command was too small to admit of division, and of leaving a garrison. Conciliation, and negotiation were resorted to, and successfully. Every American interest was provided for, and placed under the safeguard, first, of good will, and next, of guarantees not to be violated with impunity.
Chihuahua gained, it became, like Santa Fé, not the terminating point of a long expedition, but the beginning point of a new one. General Taylor was somewhere—no one knew where—but some seven or eight hundred miles towards the other side of Mexico. You had heard that he had been defeated, that Buena Vista had not been a good prospect to him. Like good Americans, you did not believe a word of it; but, like good soldiers, you thought it best to go and see. A volunteer party of fourteen, headed by Collins, of Boonville, undertake to penetrate to Saltillo, and to bring you information of his condition. They set out. Amidst innumerable dangers they accomplish their purpose, and return. Taylor is conqueror; but will be glad to see you. You march. A vanguard of one hundred men, led by Lieutenant-colonel Mitchell, led the way. Then came the main body (if the name is not a burlesque on such a handful), commanded by Colonel Doniphan himself.
The whole table land of Mexico, in all its breadth, from west to east, was to be traversed. A numerous and hostile population in towns—treacherous Camanches in the mountains—were to be passed. Every thing was to be self-provided—provisions, transportation, fresh horses for remounts, and even the means of victory—and all without a military chest, or even an empty box, in which government gold had ever reposed. All was accomplished. Mexican towns were passed, in order and quiet: plundering Camanches were punished: means were obtained from traders to liquidate indispensable contributions: and the wants that could not be supplied, were endured like soldiers of veteran service.
The long march from Chihuahua to Monterey, was made more in the character of protection and deliverance than of conquest and invasion. Armed enemies were not met, and peaceful people were not disturbed. You arrived in the month of May in General Taylor's camp, and about in a condition to vindicate, each of you for himself, your lawful title to the double sobriquet of the general, with the addition to it which the colonel commanding the expedition has supplied—ragged—as well as rough and ready. No doubt you all showed title, at that time, to that third sobriquet; but to see you now, so gayly attired, so sprucely equipped, one might suppose that you had never, for a day, been strangers to the virtues of soap and water, or the magic ministrations of the blanchisseuse, and the elegant transformations of the fashionable tailor. Thanks perhaps to the difference between pay in the lump at the end of the service, and driblets along in the course of it.
You arrived in General Taylor's camp ragged and rough, as we can well conceive, and ready, as I can quickly show. You arrived: you reported for duty: you asked for service—such as a march upon San Luis de Potosi, Zacatecas, or the "halls of the Montezumas;" or any thing in that way that the general should have a mind to. If he was going upon any excursion of that kind, all right. No matter about fatigues that were passed, or expirations of service that might accrue: you came to go, and only asked the privilege. That is what I call ready. Unhappily the conqueror of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena Vista, was not exactly in the condition that the lieutenant-general, that might have been, intended him to be. He was not at the head of twenty thousand men! he was not at the head of any thousands that would enable him to march! and had to decline the proffered service. Thus the long-marched and well-fought volunteers—the rough, the ready, and the ragged—had to turn their faces towards home, still more than two thousand miles distant. But this being mostly by water, you hardly count it in the recital of your march. But this is an unjust omission, and against the precedents as well as unjust. "The ten thousand" counted the voyage on the Black Sea as well as the march from Babylon; and twenty centuries admit the validity of the count. The present age, and posterity, will include in "the going out and coming in" of the Missouri-Chihuahua volunteers, the water voyage as well as the land march; and then the expedition of the one thousand will exceed that of the ten by some two thousand miles.
The last nine hundred miles of your land march, from Chihuahua to Matamoros, you made in forty-five days, bringing seventeen pieces of artillery, eleven of which were taken from the Sacramento and Bracito. Your horses, travelling the whole distance without United States provender, were astonished to find themselves regaled, on their arrival on the Rio Grande frontier, with hay, corn, and oats from the States. You marched further than the farthest, fought as well as the best, left order and quiet in your train; and cost less money than any.
You arrive here to-day, absent one year, marching and fighting all the time, bringing trophies of cannon and standards from fields whose names were unknown to you before you set out, and only grieving that you could not have gone further. Ten pieces of cannon, rolled out of Chihuahua to arrest your march, now roll through the streets of St. Louis, to grace your triumphal return. Many standards, all pierced with bullets while waving over the heads of the enemy at the Sacramento, now wave at the head of your column. The black flag, brought to the Bracito, to indicate the refusal of that quarter which its bearers so soon needed and received, now takes its place among your trophies, and hangs drooping in their nobler presence. To crown the whole—to make public and private happiness go together—to spare the cypress where the laurel hangs in clusters—this long, perilous march, with all its accidents of field and camp, presents an incredibly small list of comrades lost. Almost all return: and the joy of families resounds, intermingled with the applause of the State.
I have said that you made your long expedition without government orders: and so, indeed, you did. You received no orders from your government, but, without knowing it, you were fulfilling its orders—orders which, though issued for you, never reached you. Happy the soldier who executes the command of his government: happier still he who anticipates command, and does what is wanted before he is bid. This is your case. You did the right thing, at the right time, and what your government intended you to do, and without knowing its intentions. The facts are these: Early in the month of November last, the President asked my opinion on the manner of conducting the war. I submitted a plan to him, which, in addition to other things, required all the disposable troops in New Mexico, and all the American citizens in that quarter who could be engaged for a dashing expedition, to move down through Chihuahua, and the State of Durango, and, if necessary, to Zacatecas, and get into communication with General Taylor's right as early as possible in the month of March. In fact, the disposable forces in New Mexico were to form one of three columns destined for a combined movement on the city of Mexico, all to be on the table-land and ready for a combined movement in the month of March. The President approved the plan, and the Missourians being most distant, orders were despatched to New Mexico to put them in motion. Mr. Solomon Sublette carried the order, and delivered it to the commanding officer at Santa Fé, General Price, on the 22d day of February—just five days before you fought the marvellous action of Sacramento. I well remember what passed between the President and myself at the time he resolved to give this order. It awakened his solicitude for your safety. It was to send a small body of men a great distance, into the heart of a hostile country, and upon the contingency of uniting in a combined movement, the means for which had not yet been obtained from Congress. The President made it a question, and very properly, whether it was safe or prudent to start the small Missouri column, before the movement of the left and the centre was assured: I answered that my own rule in public affairs was to do what I thought was right, and leave it to others to do what they thought was right; and that I believed it the proper course for him to follow on the present occasion. On this view he acted. He gave the order to go, without waiting to see whether Congress would supply the means of executing the combined plan; and for his consolation I undertook to guarantee your safety. Let the worst come to the worst, I promised him that you would take care of yourselves. Though the other parts of the plan should fail—though you should become far involved in the advance, and deeply compromised in the enemy's country, and without support—still I relied on your courage, skill, and enterprise to extricate yourselves from every danger—to make daylight through all the Mexicans that should stand before you—cut your way out—and make good your retreat to Taylor's camp. This is what I promised the President in November last; and what I promised him you have done. Nobly and manfully you have made one of the most remarkable expeditions in history, worthy to be studied by statesmen, and showing what citizen volunteers can do; for the crowning characteristic is that you were all citizens—all volunteers—not a regular bred officer among you: and if there had been, with power to control you, you could never have done what you did.