George Ballentine - Autobiography of an English soldier in the United States Army

Autobiography of an English Soldier in the United States Army

GEORGE BALLENTINE

Autobiography of an English soldier in the United States army, G. Ballentine

Jazzybee Verlag Jrgen Beck

86450 Altenmnster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN: 9783849649272

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

admin@jazzybee-verlag.de

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CONTENTS:

DURING the discussion in the Senate of the United States, upon the bill to confer additional military rank upon General Winfield Scott, in acknowledgment of his great services to his country, General Shields remarked that no worthy history of the Mexican war had yet been written. The truth of the observation was everywhere felt. What has hitherto appeared on the subject, beyond the official despatches, has more resembled romance than history, being in the main confined to dashing narratives of the personal adventures of roving or belligerent Hotspurs, who knew little and cared less about the discipline and routine of the every-day life of the regular soldier; or on the other hand to eulogistic compilations, prepared for sale, rather than as contributions to history. The writers of both classes have "cast discreetly into shade" whatever would "offend the eye" of the readers they sought to appreciate.

As a partial remedy for the evil complained of by the gallant officer above referred to, the publishers put forth the present volume. If it does not rise to the dignity of history, it at least partakes of that faithfulness of record and clearness of detail which give history its value. The author is manifestly superior to that class of his countrymen ordinarily found in the rank and file of an army, in intelligence, in education, in observation, in descriptive and narrative power, and in candor and liberality of sentiment. Something of foreign misapprehension, possibly some degree of foreign preference or prejudice, may be found in his pages; and it is by no means improbable that some of his criticisms upon men and events may be unjust; but there is throughout the volume an evident desire to be just as well as independent, both in criticism and in narration.

The publishers confidently express the opinion, in which they are confirmed by the verdict of the literary gentlemen to whom the work has been submitted for supervision, not only that nothing has yet issued from the American press that gives so intelligent and lively a description of the actualities of the war in Mexico, but that no work is extant in the English language which presents so interesting a picture of a soldier's lifehis round of conversation, his employments, his toils, dangers, and escapeswhat he sees and does, and how he does itas this autobiography. The reader will find it difficult to part company with the author. There is no "fine writing" to pall upon the taste. Everything is told naturally, and everything is described earnestly. The style is nervous yet chaste, and free from the coarseness which too often disfigures a soldier's narrative. Yet there is no sentimentality. The manliness of the true soldier is apparent on every page. The charm of the work is in the impressive distinctness of every picture of place or incident. The reader will feel as though he accompanied the hardy soldier from the moment of his enlistment to that of discharge; messing with him on Governor's Island, marching with him to join the forces under General Scott, sleeping with him on the mountain side, where the bed is made softer by putting aside some of the larger stones, circuitously approaching the scene of action, exchanging a repartee or a word of encouragement with a comrade, mingling in the mle, and finally entering the city of Mexico in triumph, and realizing all the peculiarities of its buildings and its people. So vividly is every scene painted that a stranger, with the volume as his guide, might trace the entire route of the American army through Mexico, locate every bivouac, and comprehend every manuvre or military movement. The publishers feel assured that this commendation of the volume will be verified by every intelligent reader of its pages.

I arrive in New York, and make several strange acquaintances.

I LEFT home for the United States in the summer of 1845, for the same reason that yearly sends so many thousands there, want of employment. I had both read and heard a good deal about America, and knew that money could not be picked up in the streets there, any more than at home; but I was scarcely prepared to find the scramble for the means of living so fierce and incessant, as I found it in New York.

Being a handloom weaver, I called on several persons belonging to that business, and from the same town as myself, Paisley, in the west of Scotland. They told me they had to work very hard to earn three dollars and a half, or at most, four dollars a week; while loom rent and other expenses, with loss of time, changing and putting in new sorts of work, reduced their wages to an average of less than three dollars, or about twelve shillings a week. There were some weavers in carpet factories in Philadelphia they told me, and also a few in New York, who earned five or six dollars a week; but only a few could find employment at these places, which were also subject to periods of stagnation of business, when the cost of living soon exhausted the savings of those who were provident enough to save a little for a rainy day. They generally, while informing me of plenty of places where I might find employment at weaving, such as it was, advised me to try and find employment as a labourer in preference; which some of them declared their intention of doing as soon as they had finished their engagements.

While walking along the wharfs at the East River one morning, my attention was arrested by a placard above one of the shops which front Brooklyn, stating, in the usual Brobdignagian typography of these announcements, that one hundred able-bodied men were wanted for whaling. Applicants were directed to walk up stairs. With a vague idea that possibly a South Sea voyage might answer my peculiar situation, I walked up and presented myself to a man whom I found sitting at a desk in a large room, barely furnished, and very dirty. I asked him if he could inform me as to the terms of engagement. "I can't do anything else," he replied, as he got up from his desk, and coming close up to me, asked if I meant to join the money-making business of whaling. He was a small cadaverous looking being, with sandy hair, sallow complexion, and red eyes that glittered like a ferret's, as you caught an occasional glimpse of them from behind a pair of green spectacles. I told him in reply, that I was out of employment, and not particularly nice as to what I tried, if I were able for it, and it promised tolerable pay. "Ah!" said he, "Stranger, I guess you are in a particular all fir'd streak of good luck; we are nearly filled up, that is a fact, but if you are in good healthlet me just look at your arm," he continued, as he seized hold of one, feeling it up to the shoulder for the purpose of testing its muscular condition. Being satisfied with his examination, apparently, he asked me if I was an American citizen. I told him I was not, having only arrived in the country a few weeks before. "That is no matter," said he, winking one of the ferret eyes, "I can fix that right away." He then congratulated me upon being in a fair way to make my fortune, and informed me that the men employed in whaling were paid by shares, which they called lays, and that their wages were proportionate to their luck. He had known a young man have eight hundred, or a thousand dollars for his share, or lay, in a voyage that did not last over eighteen months. A whale ship would have very bad luck if the men aboard of her did not clear three or four hundred dollars a year. Bad health alone, he said, had prevented him from going a voyage or two; and so he went on with a great deal more to the same effect, most of which I thought too good to be true. Thanking him, however, for his information, and promising to call again after thinking the matter over, I left the office. I can't deny that his statements made a considerable impression on me at the time, though of course I believed that he greatly exaggerated. Still it is probable that I would have doubled Cape Horn in one of these whalers, perhaps touching at Nukuheva, and a few of the islands in that vicinity, and realizing some of those scenes of enchantment of which the inimitable Herman Melville has given such charming and graphical descriptions in his Typee and Omoo, but for the following incident.