was never a better Thermopylæ than this; only it was the invading troops that took possession of it and held it. Santa Anna made the attack. Had the Persians held Thermopylæ, would the Spartans have forced them? I fear not.
Yet the Mexicans ought to have forced these gates. They could not have been flanked; they should not have been routed. But they were wearied with a long march, and the Americans held the position. Pluck and prowess, and, above all, Providence, overthrew them. "Providence," for God was in this war more than most Northern Americans dreamed, and very differently from what Southern Americans dreamed. It was not to give slavery a stronger hold or to hasten its destruction that our war occurred with Mexico. It was to open that country to the Bible and the true Church. It was to Christianize Mexico, not to free or enslave our land, that this war arose. Its fruit, planted then, has been growing since, daily and hourly, and will grow until this land is free from the curse that has so long and so grievously rested upon it.[1]
- ↑ General Lew. Wallace, in a late letter to a reunion of the Mexican veterans, thus describes a late visit to the field of Buena Vista: "I have ridden over the old field three times in the seven years last past, and always with the same feeling of wonder at the audacity of the chief who, with his four thousand five hundred, abided there the shock of the Mexican Napoleon's twenty-two thousand, and of admiration at the pluck and endurance of the few who, turned and broken, crushed on the right and left, and, by every rule of scientific battle, whipped oftener than there were hours of the day, knew it not, but rallied and fought on, the infantry now covering the artillery, the artillery now defending the infantry, the cavalry overwhelmed by legions of lancers, and union of effort nowhere—fought on, and at last wrung victory from the hands of assured defeat. "The field is but little changed. The road to La Angostura is still the thoroughfare across it; winding along the foot of the hills on its left, and looking down into the fissures and yawning gaps which made the valley to the right so impassable even to skirmishers. I stopped where the famous battery was planted across the road, literally our last hope, and tried to recall the feeling of the moment. On the left all was lost; Clay, M'Kee, Hardin, and Veil were dead: where all were brave, but one regiment was standing fast—the only one which through all the weary hours of the changing struggle had not turned its face from the enemy—I mean the Third Indiana. Against the battery so supported,
