The North Star (Rochester)/1847/12/03/The Glory
THE GLORY.
Gen. Scott thus recapitulates his losses since arriving at the basin of Mexico:
August 19,20. Killed—137, including 14 officers. Wounded—877, including 52 officers. Missing—(probably killed) 38, rank and file. Total—1052.
September 8. Killed—116, including 9 officers. Wounded—665, including 49 officers. Missing—l8, rank and file. Total—789.
September 12, 13, 14. Killed—l39, including 10 officers. Wounded—703, including 68 officers. Missing—29, rank and file. Total—862.
Grand total of losses—2703, including 383 officers.
At the expense of twenty-seven hundred men, killed, or maimed and mangled, Gen. Scott has taken possession of the capital of Mexico, from which no private property can honestly or honorably be taken, and in which the public property, consisting of inferior ordnance and munitions of war, is not particularly valuable to our country. We find no great glory in this. He has moreoved proved that the Mexicans are comparatively weak or cowardly, or both—a very interesting ethnological fact, no doubt, but hardly worth so expensive a demonstration. We would give quite as much to know the source of the Niger, as to know which is the strongest and most combative, the Yankee or the Mexican; yet we thought the loss of Park was a high price to pay for the former bit of knowledge. What would the loss of 2700 Parks have been?
Gen. Scott seems to claim a great deal of glory on account of the small number of his men. He is rabid on the Union for overrating his forces, and lots old goody Ritchie have the following morsel in the midst of his glorification:
"The army has been more disgusted than surprised that, by some sinister process on the part of certain individuals at home, its numbers have been generally almost trebled in our public papers—beginning at Washington."
He claims to have marched from Puebla with 10,738 rank and file, and to have captured Mexico with 6000. This undoubtedly proves that Scott and his officers understand their trade, as Yankees always do, and that they and their men will fight like devils, whereas the Mexican soldiers will not even fight like men. But as history is very full of similar facts, we can not see anything even novel, much less glorious in all this. It seems nothing better than science, skill, courage, and strength wasted. To the Mexicans there might have been glory in a brave resistance if they had made it. But our army was not in a condition to win glory in any case. They either beat three times their number of cowards—no very glorious feat certainly, or they beat three times their number of brave but ill-directed and comparatively feeble men, righteously fighting for their hearth-stones. Is there any glory on that?—Chronotype.