Matthew Calbraith Perry: A Typical American Naval Officer

by William Elliot Griffis

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.