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10 Advoc. Peace 1 (1852-1853)

handle is hein.journals/wrldaf10 and id is 1 raw text is: ADVOCATE OF PEACE. JANUARY, 1852. EFFECTS OF A BAD PRECEDENT: OR, LEGACIES FROM OUR WAR WITH MEXICO. A BAD example is prolific of mischief. Such was our war with Mexico; a direct and ominous contradiction of our whole previous policy; a prece- dent which we expected from the first to find drawing after it a long train of evils. Nor were we disappointed; for a large body of the soldiers, en- gaged in that infamous war, did not get, on their way back toward their homes in different parts of the Union; farther than New Orleans, before they en- listed anew in a marauding expedition, under the name of a Buffalo Hunt, to wrest from Mexico another Texas lying between the Rio Grande and the Sierre Madre. Our government, in whose service they had learned these bad habits, promptly interposed to arrest the villainous scheme; but these drilled and disciplined bandits, having once got in legalised war a taste for pillage and blood, could not lose it all at once, and conseouently held them- - selves ready for any enterprise that gave promise of pay, or hope of plun- der. Nor did they wait in vain. There was ere long concocted a plot to revo- lutionize the island of Cuba; and an attempt was made to carry it into execution. The vigilance and energy of our government defeated the conspirators; but the last year, in spite, of all its precautions, they renewed the attempt, and went so far as to land on that island between five and seven hundred troops, scooped for the most part from the offscourings of our Mex- ican war. It is quite remarkable that the main body of those buccaniers under Lopez, were soldiers returned from our war in Mexico, where they had caught the spirit, and formed the habits, which fitted them for this lawless, piratical invasion of Cuba. The upshot of this ill-starred expedition is familiar to every reader; but the mischief of our national precedent in the war with Mexico did not end here, nor can human sagacity foresee where it will ever end. The virus has been infused into the heart of the people; and nobody can tell how long the leprosy will last, or how far it will extend. In a population like VOL. X. - NO. I. - MONThLY. I