news of peace and absorption in the United States—which came on the evening of August 6, 1848—greeted a busy and hopeful community.[1]
So much for the north, and we pass now to the régime of Scott. After learning of the atrocities perpetrated on the Rio Grande, that "scientific and visionary" officer drafted and laid before the secretary of war a martial-law order, to be enforced in Mexico until action should be taken by Congress. But the idea of putting constraint on the free American voter probably struck Marcy with terror. He started at the title, said nothing, and after a while returned the paper without comment. Scott then sent it on to Taylor, and was informed that the General threw it aside almost instantly, calling it "another of Scott's lessons." The crying need of some adequate method for punishing American soldiers in foreign parts compelled Marcy in December to recommend that Congress authorize a military tribunal; but that body also doubtless had an eye to votes, and took no action.[2]
scott, however, though an aspirant for the Presidency, did not shrink from his duty, and on arriving in Tampico he issued
General Orders 20, which threw the pale of martial law round all United States forces operating in Mexico, and provided for the punishment, through "military commissions," of offences committed by, in or upon them.[3] Orders 20, republished at Vera Cruz, Puebla and the capital and widely circulated in Spanish, were supplemented by issuing safeguards, under which one or more soldiers, bearing a proper document signed by a corps or division commander, could be quartered at any place which it was especially for the interest of the army to protect.[4] In occupying towns the rule was to billet no officer or man, without consent, upon any inhabitant, and to quarter the troops in barracks and other public buildings already used for the purpose by the Mexican government.[5] These arrangements, the practice of paying for everything used by the army, the principle of treating non-combatant Mexicans as fellow-citizens, and a strenuous endeavor to enlist the coöperation of all the decent men of the army in the suppression of outrages constituted the system of Scott.[6]
At Vera Cruz misdeeds were perpetrated, of course, but the culprits who could be detected paid a price for their sport that
