It was in reference to another battle, that Whittier composed the noble poem, entitled, "the Angels of Buena Vista," founded on the following facts. "A letter writer from Mexico states, that at the terrible fight of Buena Vista, Mexican women were seen hovering near the field of death, for the purpose of giving aid and succor to the wounded. One poor woman was surrounded by the maimed and suffering of both armies, ministering to the wants of Americans as well as Mexicans, with impartial tenderness." We give a few of the concluding stanzas of this melting, pathetic ballad. "Look forth once more Ximena!" "Like a cloud before the wind Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind; Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive; Hide your faces, holy angels! oh, thou Christ of God, forgive! "Sink, O night, among thy mountains! let thy cool, gray shadows fall; Dying brothers, fighting demons drop thy curtain over all! Through the quickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled; In his sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold. "But the holy Mexic women still their holy task pursued, Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint, and lacking food, Over weak and suffering brothers with a tender care they hung, "Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours; The personal narratives from trustworthy sources are introduced in this review of the Mexican war, as revealing to us more distinctly than whole pages of general description could do, the indescribable and infinite miseries which alight upon the homes of warring nations. We have much more of the same materials on hand, but these must suffice, and perhaps more than suffice. We have already "supped full of horrors." War is indiscriminate. It confounds the innocent with the guilty in one fate, or, it may be, spares the bad to involve the righteous man in ruin. It burns the widow's cottage, while it may leave unharmed the tyrant's palace. It kills, perchance, the father's only son, the staff of his old age, and lets the assassin and robber escape with impunity. Fearful, therefore, beyond the power of human thought, is his act who takes the responsibility of involving two nations in its wide-spread havoc. What is it but to assume for the moment the powers of the Omnipotent without his wisdom and mercy? to vault, as it were, into his seat, and let fly the armies of devouring locusts, or lift the lid of the boiling volcano, and inundate cities with floods of fire and lava, or rock the land with earthquakes, and overwhelm multitudes of human beings beneath the ruins of falling temples and dwellings! When will the rulers and legislators of the nations awake to their awful accountableness in being either principals or accessories to bringing on a war? How shockingly mal apropos and incongruous was that sentiment given by some orator on a festive occasion to some companies parading for their departure to the fields of Mexico, - 66 Washington, our homes, and our country!" For, to omit other considerations, we have seen in this and the last chapter before it, that the warfare against the foreign foe is suicidal; that the sword is two-edged, and cuts us as well as our enemies. The recoil of every blow struck abroad is upon some dear breast at our own fire-side, of father, brother, son, lover, friend. The huzzas of every triumph have been reechoed by the groans and shrieks of wives, mothers, orphans, bereft, distracted, penniless, friendless. Into how many circles of the wise and good, the prosperous and powerful, has the messenger of heavy tidings come! Into how many lowly homes and cabin doors has the grim image stalked, and youth, and manhood, and age, bowed in speechless agony at his coming! The son of a Clay or a Webster has fallen by the side of the poor and obscure man's son. Tell us not of famine. There is no mutual strife, but the strife of self-sacrifice. Tell us not of cholera. There is no hand wet with a brother's blood, "smelling rank to heaven.” But in both instances there is help rendered by the weak and sick to those weaker and sicker than themselves. There is the sharing of the last potato with the famishing. There is danger dared to give but a cup of medicine to the suffering. There is heavenly pity bending with moist eye over the hungry she cannot feed, and over the sick she cannot cure. There is godlike charity, with folded hands and upraised face, invoking that aid from God which man cannot yield. But it adds immeasurably to the patriotic compunction with which an American should look on this war, when we consider that, terrible as may have been the scenes of bereavement, destitution, and distraction at our own fire-sides, and amid "the pleasant places," the beautiful abodes, of civilized and Christian life, we have been busy actors, as well as stricken sufferers. We have invaded the homes of another nation. We have smitten down young and old, man and woman, rich and poor, sick and well, in the relentless conquest. Verily, we have been guilty in this matter, and our brother's blood cries against us from the ground where it has been spilled. The poor cot, the rich hacienda, the bishop's palace, the church of God, the halls of a republic, have been entered, plundered, bombarded, burnt. Indeed, could a fallen spirit be imagined as hovering over Mexico in the character of its evil genius, and devising an extended system of wrong and suffering, a huge and com plicated machine of exquisite, and multiplied, and far-reaching cruelties, one that should do the greatest possible evil with the least possible good; one that should pierce the most hearts, tarnish the most honor, wring forth the most groans, darken the most hearths, and set a-going the most prolific causes of sin and wretchedness in every direction, and to the worst imaginable issues, then we should recognize with a shudder our own country as the evil genius of unhappy Mexico, and war as the infernal engine with which we have worked her nameless and numberless evils. And when, in addition to the essential evil of this instrument of woe, the evil genius be supposed artfully to veil its abominations with the gorgeous drapery of the stars and stripes, and to seduce into its unholy service the flower of youth and the vigor of manhood, to operate at the engine's crushing wheels and dislocating pullies, the picture of that Briarean Inquisition we call war would be complete. CHAPTER XXV. THE VICES OF THE CAMP. "We have heard much of the corrupting tendency of some of the rites and customs of the heathen; but what custom of the heathen nations had a greater effect in depraving the human character, than the custom of war."-NOAH WORCESter. "War produces the characters necessary for war. The camp is infectious. The few who go there virtuous, if they return at all, generally return vicious, and carry the infection into our peaceful hamlets and the bosom of families.". WILLIAM Ladd. MANY of the battles of the Mexican war were fought wholly or partly on the Sabbath. At Monterey, Sacra mento, Cerro Gordo, Chapultepec, and Mexico, more or less of the fighting was done on the Lord's day. While the assemblies of Christians, all over the earth, were met together to hear the word of God, confess their sins, and seek the mercy of heaven through that name which is far "above every name that is named," then, in those hours of sacred rest, devotion, and brotherly love, the death-shots were falling thick and fast, the storm of battle was sweeping with resistless fury over hundreds of the wounded and dying, and many souls cut off unprepared and in the midst of their days, appeared at the bar of a righteous God, to bear witness against the war-system of two professedly Christian nations. Could there be a more shocking contre-temps than a desperate, bloody battle, or siege, on the holy day, when God has said, "Thou shalt not do any work," and all the noises of the earth should be hushed, and man should "be still and know that I am God?" The only conceivable case is a fight on Christmas. The battle of Bracito was fought on the generally-received anniversary of that greatest era in the world's history, when angels from heaven sang the birthanthem of the Saviour of men, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." But battles are not the only violations of the law of the Sabbath. Marchings, drills, all kinds of work, preparations for battle, or burying the dead, and all the bustle, din, and dissipation of a camp life, go on comparatively unchecked. In one word, there is no Sabbath to the warrior. He must work, or march, or fight on the day of rest just as much as on any other day, if his commander and circumstances require it. Many of the greatest battles have been fought on that day, though historians have not cared to state the fact. Waterloo and Plattsburg occur to mind now among others. In a very few instances, generals have refused battle on the Sabbath, but the cases are rare. When men commit themselves to this murderous business, they gen |