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. Whatever may have been the sentiments of the past, despite also the provocation of the Mexico of Santa Anna’s time, the verdict of history as given by Herbert Bancroft, will now find echo all over our common country. “The United States was in the wrong, all the world knows it; all honest American citizens acknowledge it.”