Chapter XXXII.

ruin, "and devastation, and misery, and death, inflicted by our troops upon a people who never injured us, who never fired a shot on our soil, and who were, utterly in- capable of acting on the offensive against us.'^ Nor was our exultation at the flow of Mexican blood repressed by the recollection that American blood flowed With it. Our neighbors, and friends, and countrymen, by thousands, fell in battle, or wasted in the noisome hospital—but their sufferings excited almost as little thought and compassion as those of the Mexicans. The nation had gained glory, * Says an able writer : " American gentlemen, husbands and fathers, send an army to collect a debt from some Mexican chieftains by bombarding Vera Cruz. By day and by night the awful storm of bomb-shells is rained down upon the devoted city. Christian gentlemen guide these guns, and kindle these fires of hell. Mothers and daughters fly shrieking through the streets, an'd their mangled limbs are buried beneath the ruins of their dwellings. , These shells explode in infant nurseries, by the bedside of languishing ^lisease, in parlors of refinement and piety. Ladies have limb torn from limb by the balls which American gentlemen fire. A large party of ladies, in the terror of that awful bombardment, fly to the cellar of one of the most costly stone mansions, hoping there to find refuge from these engines of destruction which have demolished many of their dwellings, and by a bloody death bereaved them of many of their dearest friends. The thunders of the bombardment, the crash of the explosions of bomb-shtlls, the shrieks of the dying, pierce the darkness of the cellar, and excite to a frenzy of terror the trembling females there. A shell falls upon the roof of the house, descends into the cellar, and explodes ; and the limbs of these mothers and maidens, mangled and gory, are driven into the walls. And this is honorable warfare—this is Christian warfare—and the result of such scenes is the subject for civic re- joicing, bonfires, and illuminations! And respectable men, humane men, men who sit at the table of Jesus Christ as his dis- ciples, who publish papers to guide the world to Christian feelings and practices, consider this a very suitable way of collecting debts."