VI
THE AMERICAN ATTITUDE ON THE EVE OF WAR
1845
In the United States a strong feeling against the dominant elements in Mexico had been created by events that did not directly concern us The atrocious massacres perpetrated at Goliad and the Alamo during the Texan struggle for independence made an indelible impression on the public mind. Said Buchanan on the floor of the American Senate: "I shall never forget the deep, the heart—tending sensations of sorrow and of indignation ” which pervaded this body when we first heard of Santa Anna’s “inhuman butcheries.” The decimating of Texan prisoners for trying to escape from their guards, as they had a perfect right to do, and the cruelties, or at least excessive hardships, which they were made to suffer in confinement, deepened the feeling. The official threats of ruthless war and even extermination against the Texans, and the belief that Indians were incited to fall upon their women and children, sharpened it still more. In 1844 one Sentmanat went from New Orleans to Tabasco on a revolutionary mission but was unsuccessful; and his party surrendered to the Mexican leader, General Ampudia, on the promise of good treatment. Most of the men, however, were shot; the rest of them disappeared in prison; Sentmanat was summarily executed; and his head, fried in oil to make it last longer, became the chief decoration of the public square at San Juan Bautista.[1]
Such acts—naturally though incorrectly supposed to represent the character of the Mexican, and linked with the apparent cowardice of Santa Anna and his army in the Texan war of independence—caused the nation in whose name they were perpetrated to be looked upon by not a few Americans as a nest of poisonous reptiles, fit only to be stamped upon,
- ↑ l
117
