“Sergeant, buck him and gag him, our officers cry,
For each trifling offence which they happen to spy,
Till with bucking and gagging of Dick, Pat and Bill,
Faith, the Mexican’s ranks they have helped to fill,”
so another, an exceptionally good man, testified. “Soldiers will take their merry frolics,” an officer admitted. The camp slogan of a sturdy North Carolina company was: “Soldier, will you work?” “Sell my shirt first.” “Soldier, will you fight?” “Twell I die.” But even their fighting did not prove entirely satisfactory. Individually they were braver than the regulars; but the soldier’s business is to fight when the time comes, and the volunteers to a considerable extent wanted to fight when they pleased. They might do splendidly and they might not, their general knew. In a word, they were unreliable; and they even imperilled their own cause by exasperating the people. Marcy confessed that he felt disappointed. Yet there were offsets. Their patriotism and enthusiasm stimulated their officers and the regulars; and at their best—silent, grim, patient, with a look of kingship in their faces—they glorified hardships, perils, wounds, disease and death.[16]
A common idea of the regulars was expressed in the House by Tilden of Ohio, who described them as “a set of puppets ... shut up without exercise and in barracks, from year’s end to year’s end”; and the “sausage democracy” looked with contempt upon West Pointers as both puppets and aristocrats. The regulars, however, were preferable not only in camp and on the march, but on the field. In addition to being steady themselves, they helped immensely to steady the volunteers; and the regular officers furnished volunteer generals with knowledge, skill and sometimes resolution. As for their own commands, West Pointers might curse their men, but they took splendid care of them; and it was far better that men should fear their officers than that officers, like many in the volunteer army, should fear their men. General Scott said that without the science of the Military Academy his army, multiplied by four, could not have set foot in the capital; and Patterson, like him not a graduate of the school, concurred in this opinion.[17]
Our horse was to a large extent little more than mounted infantry; and our real cavalry, besides riding like the French and therefore badly, showed no mastery in sword practice. On the other hand our field artillery was excellent in personnel and material; and the engineers, though not fully trained according to the most exacting standards, earned abundant praise. More than once they made the very strength of the Mexican position help our men while they were preparing to attack; and the report of General Smith upon certain officers—“Nothing seemed to them too bold to be undertaken, or too difficult to be executed”—might have been applied to the corps as a body.[18]
In organization our armies were inferior to the best European models; but, said Gabriel Ferry in the Revue des Deux Mondes, the soldiers made up for this defect by displaying an energy adequate for every need. The infantry were criticised by foreign observers for a lack of correctness and snap in their movements. “What is called the American army,” wrote the minister of Spain, to imply that we had no real troops. But they husbanded their strength in this way; it was therefore ready for emergencies; and they had the initiative, ingenuity, independence and self-reliance that have been cultivated of late years abroad in place of conventional precision.[19]
Despite all technical defects, the faults of the volunteers and the admixture of mere immigrants among the regulars, we had soldiers to remember with pride. So many of the officers were superior men that almost all caught the inspiration more or less, and the privates felt ready to obey and follow them. The troops as a body acquired a sense of invincibility. “We may be killed, but we can’t be whipped,” was a favorite watch-word; and they fully meant it, said Karl von Grone. Dangers and hardships were bravely faced, as a rule, and often were faced with gayety. “Oh, this is a glorious life of mine,” exclaimed Lieutenant Hamilton; “a life in a land of fruits and flowers, of dark-eyed maidens and sunny skies, of snow-capped mountains and of flowering valleys; a life of adventure, of calm and storm, of bivouac and battle.”[20]
No doubt the political and social conditions of Mexico helped our troops greatly, but in addition to routing every time an enemy who was by no means intrinsically contemptible, outnumbered us and knew the ground, they had to war against deserts, war against mountains, war against fearful storms, war against a strange climate, war against a devouring pestilence; and in spite of every difficulty Scott, after capturing more than a thousand officers and more than six hundred cannon, occupied the capital of Mexico with less than six thousand men. The troops themselves, instead of boasting, pronounced it a “miracle”; but the critical and unfriendly Journal des Débats declared: “The new conquerors have equalled by their exploits the great Cortez himself, if they have not eclipsed him.”[20]