The Irrepressible Wilmot

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dollars in order that the Mexican commissioners should not

appear wholly empty-handed before their people.

The imposing imperialistic idea of seizing the whole of Mexico was assassinated in cold blood by David Wilmot, an insignificant Congressman from Pennsylvania. He rose in his seat on a memorable day when a bill appropriating money for the war was being discussed, and proposed an amendment, now known as the Wilmot Proviso. He moved that slavery should be forever barred from all territory taken from Mexico as a result of the war. This Proviso did not apply to Texas, of course, as that state was already in the Union.

Wilmot's motives were not clear. He was a Democrat, but his Proviso was certainly in direct opposition to Democratic policy, and was probably proposed without consultation with his party leaders.

What about the Missouri Compromise of 1820? The prevailing but rather uneasy myth was that the famous Compromise had settled the problem of slavery for once and all, yet here was Wilmot opening the controversy again, as casually as one opens a door to let an undesirable cat into the house. The Southern Democrats and their friends had certainly taken it for granted that the Missouri Compromise line along the 36° 30′ parallel would be continued to the Pacific Ocean. That would have divided California into two parts, with the southern section a slave state.

The irrepressible Wilmot prowls for a flickering instant among the Mexican débris. He is a man without a future or a past, and lives in history only as the author of the Proviso. He had no right to be on the stage at all-so his party leaders thought-when abler men were in charge of things.

But there he was, and his Proviso came to a vote. Notwithstanding the Missouri Compromise and the "gentlemen's agreement," the Wilmot Proviso turned out to be a popular measure in Congress. It was defeated, but only by the smallest of margins. The vote on it showed the temper of the country.

No use now to talk about gobbling up the whole of Mexico. Even the Democrats would have opposed such a measure, for what would be the use of eight or ten new Mexican states with slavery forever debarred from them?

At any rate, the pro-slavery party had Texas. That was something and its leaders hoped to get California, or a part of it, admitted to the Union as a slave state. So caucuses were held, and small portions of comfort were passed around while David Wilmot was admonished earnestly, and finally sent back into obscurity.

During the eight months that Grant stayed in Mexico City he became friendly with some of the American and English residents, learned a little Spanish, and ran a bakery for the benefit of the regimental fund.

He made a commercial success of the bakery—a notable achievement, for it was the only success in business that he ever had in his life. "I rented a bakery in the city," he wrote. "Hired bakers-Mexicans-bought fuel and whatever was necessary, and I also got a contract from the chief commissary of the army for baking a large amount of hard bread. In two months I made more money for the fund than to during the entire war."

my pay amounted

Bull-fighting was a national sport, and officers and soldiers attended the fights in large numbers. Curiosity led Grant to see one bull-fight, but only one. He wrote: "The sight to me was sickening. I could not see how human beings could enjoy the sufferings of beasts, and often of men, as they seemed to do on these occasions." Several bulls were killed in the ring and he saw a horse gored to death. "I confess that I felt sorry to see the cruelty to the bull and the horse. I did not stay for the conclusion of the performance; but while I did stay, there was not a bull killed in the prescribed way."

What did he do besides running the bakery and attending

A Solitary Drinker

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to his duties as quartermaster? Did he spend his time in making acquaintances? In exploring the surrounding country? In reading books? Did he get drunk? Did he visit the bagnios with the other officers and acquire a Mexican mistress?

As to the last question, we may be allowed a strong presumption that he never even thought of a Mexican mistress, for we know that he was a thorough puritan by temperament. The repression of his sexual impulse, combined with loneliness and an aversion to army life, fertilized the taste for liquor that he had acquired during the campaign. In Mexico City he was rather pathetically lost among the flashing gayeties of the army of occupation. . . a solitary drinker . . . and the record of his life falls away into a few discursive notes about mountain-climbing and bull-fights. At this time he was a silent, moody officer, engaged in a war that he thought rapacious and unjust.

There was no latent joy in Grant's life; none that is discoverable. He was devoid of that lyrical quality of soul which causes a man to have pleasure in his own perceptions, in the feel and texture of living. His emotions were buried, but not dead; they were buried alive.

In history he exists only in events. Whenever we think of him there is a simultaneous mental picture of something being done. Washington, too, was a doer, but his personality glowed like a bright, cold flame. If the Revolutionary War had never occurred Washington would have been, nevertheless, a stately country gentleman with an aura of power and dignity. But if there had been no Civil War what could we say of Grant? In considering his liquor drinking, we should not forget that practically all the officers and soldiers in Scott's army were drinkers. Intoxication was a custom of the time, and was not looked upon as a fault, unless it was carried to excess. The officers' messes were always supplied with liquor, and officers who did not drink at all were supposed to be strange and perverse creatures.

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Before Scott's troops had left Mexico, and the echoes of the war were still in the air, gold was discovered in California. Within four years the gold supply of the world was quadrupled, and as this so-called precious metal ran through the veins of commerce, an extraordinary transformation took place in the economic structure of the American nation.

In a few years the New York banks were full of California gold. It was used to construct railroads, to augment the size of manufacturing establishments, to acquire mortgages, to control labor, and to manipulate the prices of farm products. It led to a prosperity that was temporary and fictitious, for though the abundance of money had the effect of raising the wages of labor, it increased the price of all the necessaries of life at the same time. In the end the working man and the farmer found themselves but little better off than they had been before.

The entire gold output of California did not add as much as a dollar's worth of real wealth to the world. Its effect was to give power to the individuals and groups that got control of it. Its chief result was to fasten capitalism on the world by providing the financial mechanism through which capitalism maintains its authority; and, in America, it laid the foundations of the huge personal fortunes which grew into full flower during the Civil War and in the decade that followed it.

Very little of the gold from this new El Dorado found its way into Southern banks, or Southern industries, and the slave states began to feel acutely the economic preponderance of the North.

CHAPTER VIII

GRANT TURNS OVER A NEW LEAF

§ 1

OW we see our dusty young officer coming back from Mexico as a brevet captain, with favorable mention in the reports of his brigade and regimental com

manders. But these commendations lacked the exclusiveness that carries distinction. A great many officers had been cited with honor, and a long list of brevet promotions had been made. The brevet rank made no change in Grant's actual status as an officer, nor did it give him an increase in pay. Besides his phantom promotion, Ulysses had brought back a few interesting trinkets, a fleet-footed gray horse, and a pleasant-faced, empty-headed peon servant named Gregory. He had also brought back the liquor habit. It had settled down in his silent personality with the ease of a careless family moving into a wide house. The curios were soon given away, the gray horse was raffled off, Gregory returned to Mexico, but the drinking habit remained.

In August, 1848, he went to St. Louis; and, on the twentysecond of that month, he married Miss Julia Dent. The wedding was a joyous occasion, with laughing, fiddling and dancing. Some one diverted the company with a slowrhythmed Spanish dance to the clacking of castanets and the stamping of feet; and a huge wedding cake was sliced with an officer's sword.

Among the attendants was Lieutenant James Longstreet, then one of Grant's intimate friends. A stolid, thick-set, young South Carolinian was Longstreet, with bluish-gray eyes and a