*****
Thus, for more than two years, has the government of President Herrera maintained its respectability and authority in spite of a failing treasury, political factionists, and domestic rebellion. The attempted task of national reorganization has been honestly and firmly, if not successfully carried out. The army, that canker of the nation, has been nearly destroyed, and its idle officers and men discharged to earn their living by honest labor. A great change has passed over Mexico. Santa Anna lives abroad in almost compulsory exile. Canalizo and Paredes are dead. Bustamante, without political strength or party, retains a military command. The force in garrison does not amount to more, probably, than five or six thousand. The prestige of the army was blurred and blighted by the war. Nearly all the old political managers and intriguers are gradually passing from the stage, and, with the new men coming upon it, to whom the war has taught terrible but salutary lessons, we may hope that another era of civilization and progress is about to dawn upon this great country. This hope is founded on the establishment of order and official responsibility by a strong government which will neither degenerate into despotism nor become corrupt by the uninterrupted enjoyment of power. The true value of the representative system will thus become rapidly known to Mexico as she develops her resources, by the united, constitutional, and peaceful movement of her state and national machinery.
*****
Among all the agitators of the country no one has been, by turns, so much courted and dreaded as Santa Anna. His political history, sketched in this volume, discloses many but not all the features of his private character. He possessed a wilful, observant, patient intellect, which had received very little culture; but constant intercourse with all classes of men, made him perfectly familiar with the strength and weaknesses of his countrymen. There was not a person of note in the Republic whose value he did not know, nor was there a venal politician with whose price he was unacquainted. Believing most men corrupt or corruptible, he was constantly busy in contriving expedients to control or win them. A soldier almost from his infancy, during turbulent times among semi-civilized troops, he had become so habitually despotic that when he left the camp for the cabinet he still blent the imperious General with the intriguing President. He seemed to cherish the idea that his country could not be virtuously governed. Ambitious, and avaricious, he sought for power not only to gratify his individual lust of personal glory, but as a means of enriching himself and purchasing the instruments who might sustain his authority. Accordingly, he rarely distinguished the public treasure from his private funds. Soldier as he was by profession, he was slightly skilled in the duties of a commander in the field, and never won a great battle except through the blunders of his opponents. He was a systematic revolutionist; a manager of men; an astute intriguer;—and, personally timid, he seldom meditated an advance without planning a retreat. Covetous as a miser, he nevertheless, delighted to watch the mean combat between fowls upon whose prowess he had staked his thousands. An agriculturist with vast landed possessions, his chief rural pleasure was in training these birds for the brutal battle of the pit. Loving money insatiably, he leaned with the eagerness of a gambler over the table where those who knew how to propitiate his greediness learned the graceful art of losing judiciously. Sensual by constitution, he valued woman only as the minister of his pleasures. The gentlest being imaginable in tone, address, and demeanor to foreigners or his equals, he was oppressively haughty to his inferiors, unless they were necessary to his purposes or not absolutely in his power. The correspondence and public papers which were either written or dictated by him, fully displayed the sophistry by which he changed defeats into victories or converted criminal faults into philanthropy. Gifted with an extraordinary power of expression, he used his splendid language to impose by sonorous periods, upon the credulity or fancy of his people. No one excelled him in ingenuity, eloquence, bombast, gasconade or dialectic skill. When at the head of power, he lived constantly in a gorgeous military pageant; and, a perfect master of dramatic effect upon the excitable masses of his countrymen, he forgot the exhumation of the dishonored bones of Cortéz to superintend the majestic interment of the limb he had lost at Vera Cruz. [78]
It will easily be understood how such a man, in the revolutionary times of Mexico, became neither the Cromwell nor the Washington of his country. The great talent which he unquestionably possessed, taught him that it was easier to deal corruptly with corruptions than to rise to the dignity of a loyal reformer. He and his country mutually acted, and reacted upon each other. Neither a student nor a traveller, he knew nothing of human character except as he saw it exhibited at home, and there he certainly sometimes found excuses for severity and even despotism. It is undeniable that he was endowed with a peculiar genius, but it was that kind of energetic genius which may raise a dexterous man from disgrace, defeat or reverses, rather than sustain him in power when he has reached it. He never was popular or relied for success on the democratic sentiment of his country. He ascertained, at an early day, that the people would not favor his aspirations, and, abandoning federalism, he threw himself in the embrace of the centralists. The army and the church-establishment,—combined for mutual protection under his auspices,—were the only two elements of his political strength; and as long as he wielded their mingled power, he was enabled to do more than any other Mexican in thoroughly demoralizing his country. As a military demagogue he was often valuable even to honest patriots who were willing to call him to power for a moment to save the country either from anarchy or from the grasp of more dangerous aspirants. Until the army was destroyed, Santa Anna could not fall, nor would the military politicians yield to the civil. As long as this dangerous chief and his myrmidons remained in Mexico, either in or out of power, every citizen felt that he was suffering under the rod of a Despot or that the progress of his country would soon be paralyzed by the wand of an unprincipled Agitator. But with the army reduced to the mere requirements of a police system, and Santa Anna beyond the limits of the Republic, the nation may breathe with freedom and vigor. [79]
Note.—These historical sketches of the late war with Mexico are designed to present a rapid view of the chief events and motives of the international conflict rather than to portray the separate actions of civil and military men who were engaged in it. We have, therefore, not been as minute as might be desired either by ourself or by interested individuals. This, however, will be remedied in the general "History of the War between Mexico and the United States," which we design publishing.
In narrating the battles we have sketched them according to the published plans of the commanders on both sides. This is the fair system of describing and judging; but whether those plans were always the most judicious, is a matter for military criticism in which we have not present space to indulge. Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, Buena Vista, Vera Cruz, Molino del Rey, Chapultepec, and the time as well as the mode of capturing the capital, have all been discussed and condemned by the prolific class of fault finders—most of whose judgments, when at all correct, are founded upon knowledge acquired or assured subsequently to the actions, and which was entirely inaccessible to the commanders when they fought the battles that are criticised. One thing, however, should gratify our Generals exceedingly, and it is that in truth they did fight and win the several actions in question, notwithstanding their blunders and notwithstanding the fact that their junior civil and military critics could have fought them so much better! They had, it seems, a double triumph—one over their own stupid ignorance and another over the enemy!
Footnotes
[ [77] In his letter to the Secretary of War on the 1st of February from Cascatlan, he says: "to enable me to live out of the way of the banditti travelling about here in large parties, I have had to spend more than two thousand dollars, necessary to maintain a small escort, when, through the scarcity of means in the treasury, I served my country without pay." This is a singular illustration of Santa Anna's characteristic avarice. Perhaps no man ever served his country for more liberal and certain pay than this chieftain. We have been informed by one of our highest officers, who was in the capital after its occupation by our troops, and had access to the Mexican archives, that, amid all Santa Anna's political and military distresses he never forgot his pecuniary interests. The books of the treasury showed that, at the moment when the city was about to fall and when there was scarcely money enough to maintain the troops, he paid himself the whole of his salary as President up to that date, and all the arrears which he claimed as due to him, as President also, during the period of his residence in exile at Havana!