Bryant wrote letters from all his foreign tours—those of 1834–6, 1845–6, 1849, 1852–3, and 1857–8; while others of the staff who traveled did the same. In 1834 the Evening Post published a series of letters from South American ports, written anonymously by a naval officer on an American warship; while for twenty years regular correspondence was furnished by a resident of Buenos Aires. When Commodore Biddle sailed into Yeddo Bay the summer of 1846 to try to establish treaty relations with Japan, an officer of his squadron sent the Post a highly interesting account of their chill reception. The vessels were surrounded with hundreds of armed boats from the day their arrival produced consternation upon land; they had been supplied with water, wood, poultry, and vegetables, free; but the authorities had peremptorily refused any further intercourse. Two years later both the Paris and Berlin correspondents wrote vivid descriptions of the revolutionary uprisings of that year, the former being in the thick of the fighting on the Boulevards. Special correspondence in the early fifties came even from Siam. But we can best give an impression of the wealth of this mailed matter by summarizing it for a single month (August, 1850):
From Washington and Albany, continuous correspondence; from Toronto, three articles, on Dominion politics and railways; from Montreal, letter on a great fire there and sentiment toward America; from London, letters by Wm. H. Maxwell and “XYZ” on Peel’s last speech, California gold fever, African trade, stock prices, corn laws, sorrow over President Taylor’s death, etc.; Paris correspondence on dinner to President Louis Napoleon and shouts of “Vive l’Empereur!”; Boston, letters on Massachusetts politics and sad case of Dr. Webster, awaiting execution after having confessed his murder; New Haven, four articles on Yale Commencement, President Woolsey’s oration, and a scientific convention; Chicago, the cholera, the Illinois canal, and crops; Rochester, the Erie Railroad and the “Rochester rappings”; Brattleboro and White Mountains, descriptions of summer excursions; Chester County, Pa., home life of Senator James Cooper, a hated traitor to free-soil principles; Berkshire Valley, charms of the Housatonic.
The world’s first war to be thoroughly and graphically treated in the daily newspapers was, not the Crimean War in which William H. Russell won his fame, but the Mexican War. It was George Wilkins Kendall, a Yankee from New Hampshire who had helped found the New Orleans Picayune nine years earlier, who made the chief individual reputation as a correspondent. Campaigning first with Gen. Zachary Taylor on the Rio Grande, and then joining Winfield Scott on the latter’s dangerous and triumphant march from Vera Cruz to Mexico City, always in the thick of the fighting, once wounded, organizing a wonderfully effective combination of courier and steamboat service, Kendall gave the Picayune by far the best current history of a war that journalism in any land had seen. The New Orleans Delta, the Baltimore Sun, the New York Herald, and, at a slight remove, the Evening Post, followed the fighting with admirable enterprise.
News of the war came to the East through two main channels. The greater part of it was brought from the border (i. e., from Brownsville or Matamoras) or from Vera Cruz to New Orleans or Pensacola, and thence overland northward; a smaller part came in on the long Santa Fé trail to St. Louis. Thus on Christmas Day, 1846, Col. Doniphan, at the head of a force of confident Missourians, defeated a Mexican detachment in the little skirmish of Brazitos, near El Paso. A company of traders from Santa Fé brought the news into Independence, Missouri, on Feb. 15, and the local news-writer there wrote a dispatch which was printed in the St. Louis Republic on the 26th. The Evening Post copied it on March 8, long after most of Doniphan’s seven wounded men had forgotten their injuries. El Paso had been captured from the Mexicans on Dec. 27, and the fact was known in New York on March 10.
The delay in obtaining the news of Buena Vista gave rise to disheartening rumors. The battle which made “Old Rough and Ready” a national idol and the next President of the United States was fought on Feb. 23, 1847, and for a month thereafter the gloomiest reports appeared in the press. After the middle of March Washington and New York were confused and alarmed by vague dispatches from the Southwest; on March 21 President Polk received a detailed account of Taylor’s perilous position, menaced by a force three times as large as his own, and New York heard of it immediately afterward. On the evening of the twenty-second the messages to Washington had “Taylor completely cut off by an overwhelming force of the enemy,” but no word of fighting. The Evening Post of March 30 carried its first news of a definite disaster. It republished from the New Orleans Delta a dispatch, brought by ship, stating “that Gen. Taylor was attacked at Agua Nueva and fell back, in good order, to the vicinity of Saltillo; here he was again attacked by Santa Anna, and a sharp engagement ensued in which Gen. Taylor was victorious, continuing his retreat in good order. Gen. Taylor fell back to Monterey, where he arrived in safety.” Read between the lines, this meant a humiliating defeat. Every one was prepared to credit it, and it was partly corroborated by more meager news carried in the New Orleans Bulletin.
Nevertheless, the Post uttered a shrewd caution against believing the reports. It was justified the following day when copies of the New Orleans Mercury arrived, dated March 23, bearing the full tidings of Taylor’s victory against crushing odds. The false rumors had filtered out through Tampico and Vera Cruz; the truth was brought by army messengers to Monterey, who had to make a detour of hundreds of miles to evade Mexican guerillas. When it reached Washington it found the politicians fiercely debating who was responsible for so weakening Taylor’s army as to enable Santa Anna to smash it; when it reached New York it found the people depressed and indignant; and when it got to Boston on April 1, many denounced it as an April Fool’s joke.
As the war continued the dispatches came more rapidly. The Baltimore Sun early established an express of sixty blooded horses overland from New Orleans, and when it was in effective operation newspapers and letters were carried over the route in six days. This made it possible to have newsboys on Broadway shouting the capture of Vera Cruz a fortnight after it occurred. As Scott pushed inland toward Mexico City, dispatches from him were retarded, for marauding Mexicans made his line of communications with the sea unsafe. Kendall used to start his express riders from the army at midnight, and he chose men who knew the country perfectly; but several were captured and others killed. Nevertheless, the Evening Post could publish the news of Cerro Gordo, fought on April 18, on May 7; the news of the capture of Mexico City, which occurred on Sept. 14, on Oct. 4, or less than three weeks after the event.
Three correspondents in the field furnished the Evening Post with letters—Lieut. Nathaniel Niles, an Illinois soldier with Gen. Taylor; “M. R.” with Scott, and “B” at Matamoras. The last gave a striking history of the rapid Americanization of this Mexican town, telling how the inhabitants reaped a golden fortune and how Taylor’s soldiers chafed under their enforced stay. “M. R.” contributed a picture of the taking of Vera Cruz, in which he carried a rifle. But Niles was the most active and the best writer. When the New Orleans papers, with their advantage of position, tried to give all the credit of Buena Vista to the Mississippi troops (commanded by Jefferson Davis) and to the Kentuckians, Niles flatly contradicted them. The Indiana and Illinois men, he said, deserved quite as much praise. His account of the decisive moment at Buena Vista, when the attack of the Mexicans had been finally and bloodily repulsed, is worth quoting:
At length, about three o’clock p. m., we saw the Mexican force in our rear begin to falter and retrace their steps, under the well-directed shot of our ranks of marksmen, and the artillery still pouring its iron death-bolts into their right. Their lancers, who had taken refuge behind their infantry, and there watched the progress of the fight, made one desperate charge to turn the fortunes of the day by breaking the line of Indiana and Mississippi. But the cool, steady volunteers sent them with carnage and confusion to Santa Ana, on the plain above, with the report that our reserve was 5,000 strong, and filled all the ravines in our rear. The retreat of their infantry, which paused for a moment, was now hastened by the repulse of the lancers, but still under a galling fire. They marched back in excellent order. While making their toilsome and bloody way back, Santa Ana practised a ruse to which any French or English officer would have scorned to resort. He exhibited a flag of truce, and sent it across the plain to our right, where stood our generals.
When the Second Indiana, under Col. Bowles, fled from the field after the first Mexican onset upon the American left, leaving the way to Taylor’s rear open, some one suggested—says Niles—a retreat. “Retreat!” exclaimed Taylor; “No; I will charge them with the bayonet.” Niles reported many human incidents of the war, and dwelt upon the barbarity of the Mexicans: