Time moved with leisure steps in those days, but as soon as news of this wanton outrage reached the United States, prompt measures were taken to punish its authors. On February 5, 1832, the frigate Potomac, commanded by Commodore John Downes, anchored off Quallah Battoo and landed a force of 250 men to attack the town. The assaulting party, composed mainly of marines, did its work in a thorough and practical manner. The town and the four forts defending it were captured and destroyed, and several hundred Malays killed, including the rajah chiefly concerned in the plunder of the Friendship and the massacre of its crew. The surviving rajahs begged for peace, and this was finally granted by Commodore Downes, but the lesson taught at the cannon's mouth is still remembered on the Sumatran coast. The Marine Corps participated with brilliant results in the Florida Indian War, and in the siege of Vera Cruz and the march to the City of Mexico their services were of the first order. In fact, General Scott is authority for the statement that at all times during the Mexican War they were placed where the hardest work was to be done. At the storming of Chapultepec, Major Levi Twiggs, of the marines, led the assaulting party and was killed. This fortress having been captured, the marines in General Quitman's division moved directly on the City of Mexico, and were accorded the honor of first entering the palace and hoisting the American flag. The marines who accompanied Commodore Perry to Japan, in 1852, took an important part in that expedition. A force of a hundred marines was landed, and, together with a like number of soldiers and two brass bands, marched through Yeddo to the palace of the Mikado, creating a most favorable impression on the foreign officials. A similar display was made by Perry when he returned to Japan in 1854, to receive the answer of the Japanese Government to his representations previously made regarding the advantages of foreign trade. It was a force of marines who captured John Brown at Harper's Ferry, in 1859. While the militia of Virginia was assembling by the thousand to attack the little band of abolitionists, a force of one hundred marines was sent from Washington, and a squad of eight of them battered down the door of John Brown's fort, and captured his party, to the chagrin of the hundreds of other military men near by who hoped to have a hand in the affair.