The USA in the Time of James Polk
1845-1849
by Mike Donovan
Mr. Expansionist - VP George M. Dallas –Young Hickory - “We Polked ‘em in ‘44” - “Mr. Polk’s War” - Mr. 49 - Polk the Democrat beat Clay the Whig 170-105 – James G. Birney of the Liberty (anti-slavery) Party received 62,000 votes. – Was youngest to make president up until that time – Inaugurated at 49 – Polk Place – 54/40 or 49?
Popular vote 1844
Polk D) 3,338,000 49.6%
Clay W) 3,330,000 48.1%
Birney L) 62,000 2.3%
James Polk was an ardent expansionist and the Mexican War was declared on his watch. Polk is part of the war-prone heritage of the Democratic Party. The War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War (The Republicans won an election – The Democrats fired on Fort Sumter), World War One, Two, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War were all the responsibility of the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Clinton. The Republicans are to blame for the two Gulf Wars and The Spanish American War - Proving that American militarism is a bi-partisan effort, not to be blamed on either party.
Polk is considered to be one of our obscure Presidents. I’m not sure why, considering the eventful era he presided over.
When Nixon had just left office a book came out, The Final Days, by Bob Woodward in which he told the story of Nixon coming apart at the seams near the end, walking up and down the White House hallways talking out loud to the paintings of the previous presidents. David Frye, a famous comedy impersonator was playing Nixon in a TV skit spoofing this when the painting of Abe Lincoln began talking back.
“Pull yourself together Dick”, admonished the painting with the lips moving, “after all you are our 36th President.”
Nixon is puzzled and talks back, “But Mr. Lincoln, I’m our 37th President.”
To which the Lincoln painting replies, “I never count Polk.”
The Mexican War was Mr. Polk’s War. The Mexican War is generally believed to be one our bad wars. The USA was the villain and Mexico was the victim. By this logic then, Polk was a bad president, for he presided over, indeed instigated a bad war. Even Congressman Abe Lincoln thought it was a bad war, and was mad at Polk.
But there are arguments available for those who might wish to take a less Blame America Historically First point of view.
For one thing American settlers in Texas (and the war was fought over Texas - the Mexican War could just as easily been called the Texan War) were not invaders. They in fact had been invited to settle in Mexico by the Spanish in 1821 and then also by the newly independent Mexican government a year later. The land was too sparsely populated and Mexico needed the settlers. The Yankees were encouraged to migrate there. They were not usurpers. More later.
The North was strongly opposed to the Mexican War primarily because it saw the conflict as a conspiracy to extend the kingdom of southern slavery.
As a result of the one-sided war with Mexico and the Oregon settlement the United States added more territory than even had been acquired in the massive Louisiana Purchase.
When campaigning for President, Polk promised to get tough with England in our dispute with them over the Oregon territory. His campaign slogan was ’54-40 or fight’, which meant that the US would not settle less for that latitude in the dispute (see map). But with war threatening in Mexico, Polk had to settle up with England. He could not take on these two enemies at the same time. So he broke ‘his read my lips 54 40 or fight’ promise and the Oregon controversy was settled at the 49th parallel, where it had already marked the long boundary to the east of Oregon, and where it stands today.
Polk’s cabinet
Sec. of State ------ James Buchanan—1845-1849
Sec. of War—---William. L. Marcy—1845-1849
Sec. of Treasury—R.J. Walker---------1845-1849
Att. General----------J.Y. Mason-------1845-1846
Nathan Clifford---1846-1848
Isaac Toucey-------1848-1849
Postmaster General----Cave Johnson---1845-1849
BIO
James Polk was born on a farm on the North Carolina frontier region in Mecklenburg county on the second of November, 1795, a Washington baby. His ancestors were of Scotch-Irish blood and their name had been Pollok. One too many jokes led to the shortening of the name. His mother was grand niece to the then famous religious reformer John Knox, hence James’ middle name.
Polk was not a very healthy child and was shy and reticent.
His family moved west to the Duck River valley of Tennessee but the boy was shipped back east for schooling.
He went to the same college as basketball immortal Michael Jordan, the University of North Carolina, and graduated with honors in the study of law.
At 19 he married the “handsome” Sarah Childress. They had no little ones. Childress died childless decades after her President/husband passed on.
After returning to Tennessee, Polk continued to study law under no less a personage than the venerable Felix Grundy, a United States Congressman and one of the original “War Hawks” of 1812. Polk set up his shingle and became a practicing attorney in Columbia Tennessee.
At 28 years of age James Polk was elected to the Tennessee state legislature. He sponsored a bill there designed to abolish the popular and cruel custom of dueling. (William Henry Harrison also crusaded against this practice.) What a terrible custom. I didn’t like fist fighting in school, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have relished dueling. I’m glad I didn’t live through those times
From 1825 to 1839 Polk was a Tennessee member of the United States Congress. JP was elected Speaker of the House in ’35.
Polk was elected Governor of Tennessee at the age of 44. He was defeated for re-election.
Because he was short and a fine public speaker he was nicknamed, “The Napoleon of the Stumps.”
Jimmy Polk was a serious man, called downright ‘humorless’ by some accounts. He didn’t drink or smoke, or sleep around on his wife. He kept a Diary in the White House. I think this sample entry of July 16, 1846 captures his peppy personality rather well
“Had the usual number of visitors this morning;
was greatly annoyed by importunities for office
and by beggars for money. I am applied to
almost daily and sometimes half a dozen times
a day … by well dressed persons, man and
woman. … The idea seems to prevail with
many persons that the President is from his
position compelled to contribute to every loafer
who applies, provided he represents that the
sum he wants is to build a church, an academy
or a college.”
This makes me like him more.
Nominated in 1844 for the Presidency at the Baltimore Democratic Convention, James ran and won as an unabashed expansionist candidate. Polk lived up to his campaign promise. James fattened up the USA as no other. Only Jefferson comes close and Jefferson had acquired Louisiana by accident. Polk acquired California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Oregon on purpose.
EVENTS
ELECTION OF 1844
TEXAS ADMITTED TO UNION
OREGON DISPUTE SETTLED WITH U.K.
MEXICAN WAR
BEAR FLAG REVOLT
TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO
WILMOT PROVISO
DEATH OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
ONEIDA CULT OF NY
SUTTER'S MILL
ELECTION OF 1844:
The “second two-party system” was in play in 1844. This was the Whigs versus the Democrats. It had replaced the old Federalist (or National Republicans) versus Democratic Republicans. The 1840's was a big one of the Whigs and they had high hopes of 44.
The primary issue in the campaign of 1844 was the annexation of Texas. The Dems were decidedly for it. The D platform demanded the “Re-annexation of Texas” and the same for Oregon. Their contention was that Texas was supposed to have been included in the Louisiana Purchase in the first place. Mexico allegedly had taken Texas illegally and now we just wanted back what was ours all along. They had a similar weak case for “re-annexation” of Oregon.
The Whigs were just as decidedly against taking Texas. The third party candidacy of James Birney probably threw the election to the Dems.
The Democratic convention opened in Baltimore on May 1 1844. There were two front-runners. Martin van Buren, the former president, was an obvious choice, but he had made a lot of enemies within his own party over the years. The other choice was the famous Lewis Cass.
In the end neither front-runner would back down for the other and as a result the first true dark horse, Jimmy Polk won the nomination.
The Whigs convened on May 27. The 44 Whigs set a new standard for negative campaigning. They had one simple slogan for their candidate, Henry Clay.
Was it “Democracy and Prosperity?” – No –
Was it “All the Way With Henry Clay?” – No –
The Whig 1844 ultra-sloganist campaign slogan was, “Who is James K. Polk?” The Whigs were making a running joke out of Polk's relative obscurity. Polk answered them with a win and a war and a strong presidency.
Martin Van Buren was considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 1844, with Lewis Cass close behind. But Van Buren came out against annexation of Texas. He knew this would cost him some votes and it was a courageous stand, but what he didn’t count on was that it would cost him the nomination.
Both main parties held their convention in Baltimore in 5.44.
President Tyler desired the Democratic nomination. He wanted a Presidency that was legitimately earned. But Tyler had alienated himself from both of the big national Parties. He had run against them as a Whig in 1844, and the Whigs had booted him out of their party. Both parties hated him. Tyler could sleep out in the rain.
President Tyler considered running as an independent. The Democrats had to convince him that if he did run, he would probably enable the Whig Clay to win. That was unthinkable. He agreed to step aside so that the Whigs would not win. This was loyal Whig William Henry Harrison’s VP, remember. Tyler’s career had changed quite a bit since he had campaigned in 1840 under the Whig banner of “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”
Van Buren began losing support overnight when he revealed his anti-annexation position at the convention. The pro-annexation group turned away and focused on Lewis Cass (who would lose to Taylor in ’48) as a preferable nominee. In the meantime, Andrew Jackson, displeased with the Van Buren annexation stand like almost everyone else in the party, gave his powerful personal endorsement to James K. Polk as a possible replacement. Polk was already considered a strong candidate for the Vice Presidency. Jackson’s support put Polk in the hunt.
Van Buren scored 146 votes of a possible 266 on the first ballot, Cass of Michigan had 83 and C Johnson 24. By the 7th round Lewis Cass New England began to swing over to Cass and soon that friend of the Indians had 123 votes and Van Buren had 99. James Buchanan was still in the hunt but well back of the pack. As the day came to an end the Cass supporters moved that the rule of 2/3 b replaced by majority, so that Cass would win. The Democratic leadership rejected this overture and the Party went home for the night.
But behind the scenes, the night was just beginning. Political maneuvering went on into the late hours for the candidacy of James Polk.
The next evening Cave Johnson (future cabinet member) and George Bancroft (the famous historian) put Jimmy Polk’s name into the hat. On the 8th ballot, amidst a lot of chaos and argument, Polk took 44 votes and Cass was showing a slipping momentum with his 114. The 9th ballot was described as a stampede for Polk. The convention went bananas and didn’t even bother to finish the voting. Polk was nominated unanimously.
For the Whigs, Henry Clay was the leader and sure 44 nominee. He too, came out against annexation, but with a flip-flop quality to his position. He did not want to alienate to Cotton Whigs, North and South who may have favored slavery and were only against annexation because they were concerned about the threat of disunion. These Whigs were of a mindset of “The Union without Texas, Rather than Texas without the Union.”
Equivocation left Clay without bitter enemies but with too few friends. Clay wasn’t anti-slavery enough to win New York, and not pro-slavery enough to win Tennessee. He lost both states by close margins (Tennessee by 113 votes.) The Liberty party vote in New York state (15,812) almost certainly cost him that state.
Clay had been famously quoted with saying, “I’d rather be right than be president.” Clay’s equivocation on Texas prompted one historian to crack that he was a man who “would rather be president than be right.”
The Whig platform of 44 also pledged to support a one-term presidency as a permanent measure. Whig Congressional candidates also made a one-term pledge.
Religion played a key part in the election of ’44 The vice-presidential nominee for the Whigs, Freylinghausen was such an ardent religious Protestant that the Catholic immigrant vote turned out in great numbers to protest his presence on the ticket. There had been religious violence in Philadelphia between Protestants and these new urban Catholic immigrants.
The Election had the usual dirt slinging. The Democrats printed out a pamphlet called “21 reasons why Henry Clay should not be president. Reason number 3 was that “Clay spends his afternoons in gambling halls and his nights in brothels.” He was also charged with being a duelist.
A false story was circulated about Polk and helped to add a new word to the dictionary.
A phony account by a man named Roorback claimed that a gang of slaves was seen at auction with the letters J.K.P. branded on them. The charge was so patently false that the word Roorback with a small r became part of the national lexicon as a false charge in an election campaign. Roorback is one of those proper improper nouns like boycott or crapper. Except that it didn't last. No one uses it today.
“We Polked Em’ in ‘44”
The election was very close in the popular vote and Polk failed to carry his own state of Tennessee.
Although his margin of victory was close, Polk interpreted his election as a mandate for his pro-expansion campaign position.
During the campaign the phrase “manifest destiny, was coined by a writer named Jack Sullivan.
An easy way to remember the year Polk was elected is to know the campaign slogan for the Dems in 1852 when Franklin Pierce led the ticket,
“We Polked ‘em in 44, We’ll Pierce ‘em in 52.”
54 /40 OR COMPROMISE
Polk and the Democrats needed to minimize the connection between expansionist sentiment and the slavery sentiment if it expected to win enough northern votes to win the Election of 1844. So they took on a partially symbolic truculent attitude towards US expansion into non-slavery Oregon. The slogan was ’54 40 or fight.’ It wasn’t logical, really. The United States, Russia and the UK had been squabbling over the Oregon region for decades. At no time during all of this had the USA ever claimed ownership as high as the parallel of ’54 40. Now it was claiming this or else!
The British took this as exactly what it was, campaign posturing for votes. But the American public bought it. ’54-40 or Fight’ became famous overnight and still has legs. Even today stumblebum drunks who know zero about history will recognize the slogan, even if they can’t give you details on what exactly it meant.
Oregon country from 54 /40 down to the Columbia River was divided between the British and the Americans but this arrangement could not last forever. Something had to give.
In spite of the truculent campaign rhetoric, Polk in office was flexible on Oregon. James privately informed the British Minister in DC, Mr. Pakenham, that the compromise position of 49 degrees would be acceptable. But Pakenham rejected the offer without even consulting the Queen’s government. Polk then asked the Congress on December 2, 1845 for permission to inform Great Britain that the old arrangement was no longer acceptable to the USA.
A hot debate went on in Congress in 1846 over the Oregon question. Webster and Cass led the demand for northwest expansion, that is for 54/40 or fight. Benton and Clay led the opposition, which wanted compromise (49 would do fine) and wanted to avoid war with Britain. Clay had even come out of retirement just to get in on the argument. Henry had just finished serving as Secretary of State under Tyler and was knowledgeable and heavily involved in the Oregon issue. But Clay had retired upon the arrival of the Polk Administration. Now he asked the current South Carolina Senator, a Mr. Huger to resign so that he, Clay, could be nominated by the South Carolina state legislature to fill the vacancy. This Huger nobly did, and Clay jumped back into the halls of Congress just to get into the fracas over Oregon.
In April of 46 President Polk gave one years notice to the British. In one year the joint occupation would come to an end. The ludicrous 54 /40 demand was now presented for real. The threat of war was real and Britain could hardly believe it. But it was real. Pakenham wished he had taken up Polk’s initial compromise offer of the 49th parallel. The UK now changed it’s mind and informed Polk that the 49th parallel was a good idea. But this time Polk said no-go.
Yet both sides wanted peace far more than war. The USA had to contend with a probable war with Mexico and could not expect to win there if its forces were maxed out in a war with a power like the UK. Back in Europe Britain had its usual continental threats to deal with and desired the financial and commercial co-operation of America. By pushing foreword the extreme position, the Americans made compromise easy. By pushing for ten bucks, the US got its five.
Fifty Four Forty or Fight!
On the sixth of June 1846, the 54 40 slogan was forgotten and the two sides agreed to the 49th parallel as the permanent boundary. Canada was allowed to retain all of Vancouver Island, some of which dipped well below the line. Now the USA could safely concentrate on the Mexican controversy over Texas.
ORIGINS OF THE MEXICAN WAR
Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. The USA immediately granted Mexico full recognition. The US recognized Mexican independence a lot quicker than the US later recognized Texan, and certainly faster than Mexico recognized Texan independence (which it never did.)
What if the US had supported Spain, instead of Mexico in 1821? Could Mexico have withstood a counter-attack by Spain if Spain had the passive support of the United States? In return for crucial US support in 1821 Mexico took an attitude towards the US in 1845 as if Mexico were great and formidable nation with a long and glorious military history, and the US had been oppressing Mexico from day one.
In fact, neither nation had done anything special in the military field. The US had won a war of independence by running away from big battles and finding a French ally. The US defeated a lot of scattered Indians, and fought the War of 1812 to a draw on its home field thanks largely to British forces being tied down to a total conflagration in Europe. Mexico had thrown off Spanish rule two decades ago and that was it for both teams.
Texas initially became part of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas, then sought statehood within Mexico long before it sought independence.
In 1827 Mexico emancipated its slaves. Texas determined to keep its slaves in chains and the relation between Mexico and that province of Texas was ruined. The worst thing that can be said of the USA in the Mexican War is that Texas loved slavery and that was behind the initial breakup between Texas and Mexico in the first place. One of the reasons that Mexico wanted to reassert its authority over the former province of Texas was to stamp out slavery there.
Texas declared its independence of March 2, 1836 and won it with a military triumph at San Jacinto on April 21 of that same year. Texan blacks after 1836 wanted to forget the Alamo.
When three US Presidents, United States (Van Buren, Harrison and Tyler to a point) rejected the admission of Texas into the USA the British began making overtures to Houston’s gang. A plan floated whereby Texas would free its slaves with compensation from the British. The UK would buy the slaves from Texas if Texas agreed to free them. Britian would move in and become an important trading and political partner with Texas. This plan scared Tyler and the Congress to change its mind and annex Texas by proclamation in March of 1845, a few days before Polk took office.
So both Mexico and Britian were pushing on Texas to give up slavery, so Texas fell back into the arms of the only power that seemed willing to let Texas keep it, the United States. Not only that, the Southern Congressional bloc would surely protect slavery in Texas for the indefinite future.
At the beginning of the war of 1846, many international military analysts actually were putting the odds on Mexico to win (Vegas opened at 2-3 - If you bet Mexico you have to put up 300 pesos to win 200.) Mexico had a large army, and the USA had dismantled its War of 1812 army long ago. This most recent performance of the American Army had produced a stalemate in Canada and an inability to prevent the British from burning down the White House. Mexico had reasons for its false confidence. The United States became the big bully only after it won the war. It wasn’t seen that way by the world when the game began.
The Mexican conflict had four primary origins but there was much to make it even more complex than that. The conflicting interests and the divisions between and within many groups was in play at all times.
The United States was divided internally on many things. It was divided on expansion, divided on slavery, divided on relations with Mexico, divided on relations with Texas, divided by partisan politics between parties and divided by political factions within political parties. It was also divided in foreign policy between maintaining friendly relations with European powers, warning them against interference anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, and fearing military clashes with them. There were financial reasons to desire good relations with Europe, but there was always fear of entanglements in this age of international power plays. It was still the age of conquest. The threat of war with Great Britain for one, was an item on the table for most of the 19th century. The War of 1812 was not in this distant past.
The official trigger for the war was the admission of the Republic of Texas into the United States on July 4, 1845.
Mexico in 1845 had only been independent for a little more than 20 years and was in political chaos. It was a dictatorship maintained by a rubber-stamp Congress to keep up appearances. Santa’s Mexico was no friend of Spain, no friend of Texas, no friend of the USA, and no friend of democracy.
Texas was divided between a desire to enter the USA and a desire to remain independent. Within the group favoring independence there were divisions about which nations to ally itself with. Britain was in the hunt for Texas.
What Texas was not divided on was slavery. Texas was never half slave half free. The USA had never been 100% slavery. Massachusetts had outlawed slavery before Washington was inaugurated. The USA had always been a house divided, part slave, part free. But Texas was different. The independent nation of Texas had lived it’s nine years as a slavery republic.
California was sparsely populated by various national and racial groups and any significant demographic fluctuations or sudden deep-probe military exercises had the potential to change its political status overnight. It was weak and beautiful and an obvious prize and was coveted by the USA, Mexico, Great Britain, and even Russia. Technically it belonged to Mexico but the hold was weak. There was a potential for Texas-style independence thrown in. The Fremont’s Bear Flag Revolt of 1846 almost created the Republic of California (some would say that we have that today).
The four primary reasons why the United States went to war with Mexico in 1845;
One: Mexico refused to accept the annexation of Texas by the USA. Mexico adopted a policy of non-recognition, even though it did not have the military force to enforce its view, much like our non-recognition policy towards Red China in 1950, or Russia in the 1920’s. But Mexico went much further. It declared that annexation of Texas by the US would be casus beli, grounds for war. In other words, Mexico was declaring a state of war with the United States from the moment if and when Texas became part of the USA. In that sense, Mexico started the war, point blank.
Two: Settlement of the exact boundaries of southwest Texas. The US was claiming the Rio Grande as the southern boundary. Mexico claimed the river Nueces. The Rio vs. Nueces argument was to become the visible trigger that started the hostilities of the Mexican War.
The obstacle for a diplomatic settlement in this area was that Mexico did not recognize the recently annexed Texas as American or Texan territory. Therefore Mexico could not with dignity agree to a boundary settlement because the very act of negotiation in itself would constitute de facto recognition of the nation/s it did not recognize.
Three: Settlement of claims of US citizens against Mexico. Many Americans had lent products on a massive scale to Mexico on a pay later basis and Mexico had failed to pay later. Now Mexico was formally announcing that it did not intend to pay at all.
Four: A desire on the United States to acquire California and a fear that Great Britain would take it if the USA did not. The British had a great navy and a strong presence in Oregon country. She did not wish to see the United States acquire California. The USA and the UK were like two competing muggers watching a drunk with a fat wallet stagger out of a bar. California was not going to make it all the way home tonight.
Polk was determined to acquire California from the first day he was in office. For this prize he welcomed the Mexican War, but this is not to say that he deliberately provoked it.
The American naval squadron in the Pacific under Commander Jack Sloat had secret orders as of June 1845 to take San Francisco if a war with Mexico should begin. Further south at Monterey California the American consul there, Thomas “Barry” Larkin, got the word from D.C. that if somehow a revolt by the Americans there against the weak Mexican administration should take place, the Polk administration would look favorably on that event.
As for Texas, she was now at war with Mexico. At least that was the official Mexican position. Therefore when Texas was annexed to the United States, Mexico carried over the same belligerence to the Texas that was part of the United States. Mexico was now at war with the United States. It was a little odd that Texas had been claiming Independence for 8 years and Mexico had not recognized it, but had taken no military action to contest the Texan claim. But when Texas became part of the United States it was time for war. Mexico was sending mixed signals of political and military belligerence.
Was Polk really to blame for putting American military forces into the no-man’s land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande when Mexico had announced that the independence and annexation of Texas would not stand? Maybe, but Mexico had passively accepted Texan independence for 8 years. If Mexico had already shown that it was not willing to risk to war with Texas, why would it now risk war with the United States?
The US Army occupation of the disputed zone between the rivers was a pre-emptive and provocative action, to be sure. But it was done in anticipation of a similar move by Mexico. If a war was imminent, it would be tactically unwise to let the Mexican Army occupy the disputed area first.
If Mexico was a paper tiger and had no intention of calling its own bluff at the Rio, Polk certainly had no way of knowing that. And like the 1990 Gulf War, everyone knew how weak the enemy was only after the fighting proved it. Before the fighting everyone was concerned about enemy potential.
Mexico intended to go to war with the USA and had declared a state of war to now exist between them. Polk had every right to react accordingly. If history calls him a reactionary, that is and accurate description of his decision for war.
Mexico under Santa Anna the dictator, had voted ten million dollars specifically to prosecute the war against the United States. When General Taylor was dispatched to Corpus Christi to defend the disputed region, there were no new military appropriations approved or even proposed by the United States Government. It can easily be claimed that the US was sending an army to Texas for defensive purposes. American avarice was a factor to be sure, but too many ortho-left people seem to believe that this was the only factor. Few Americans know that it was Mexico that declared a state of war to exist, not the US. Them, not US.
On the eve of war Polk sent an emissary to Mexico to try and negotiate a peaceful solution. John Slidell was authorized to negotiate the boundary dispute in the Rio Grande area and to make a generous cash offer to buy New Mexico and California. As a bonus, the US would also pick up the tab on the claims of all US citizens against the Mexican government. It was a bribe, to be sure, but a better choice for Mexico than a vaguely just war against a superior foe. Slidell arrived in Mexico City with high hopes, but Santa Anna would not allow Slidell an audience with anyone, let alone Santa Anna. Slidell slid off into the sunset of impending war.
VOTING FOR WAR APPROPRIATIONS
There a disturbing and slick element in how Polk got Congressional approval for war. Almost every history book talks about the Congressional vote for war with Mexico. In reality, Congress did not vote for a formal declaration of war. Congress voted on an appropriation, not on a war. They voted on an appropriation of ten million dollars for a war that was declared to be already in progress. The exact wording indicated that since Mexico has already declared a state of war, and hostilities had already broken out at the Rio Grande, then Uncle Sam will spend this large amount of money on said war. It was not a strict vote on war vs. no war.
That is how the Mexican war began. So a Congressman voting no was saying, “I know there is a war on, but I have decided to vote against supporting the troops.” It painted the opposition into a corner and was the first of America’s several semi-declared, or as I like to call them, “authorization wars.” The Whig opposition of 1846 did not want to look like the disloyal Federalists of the War of 1812, a bad call that demolished the fading Federalist Party.
So the vote was on appropriation of 10 mil for a war that was declared to be already in progress at the instigation of the Mexico. Many Whigs voted for Mexican War appropriations against their conscience, giving Polk the overwhelming edge he desired.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES YES 174 NO 14
SENATE YES 42 NO 2
THE MEXICAN WAR
General Zachary Taylor was dispatched to the disputed region in southern Texas. At first he was told to halt and make camp at the Nueces. Later he marched to the Rio Grande.
Americans read about it in the newspapers. This was the first war that was followed in detail on a daily basis by the entire nation through the telegraph and the newspaper.
The clashes of arms began in the vicinity of Matamoros.
Soon Taylor was invading Mexico from points north.
In California the telegraph had not yet found its way. Events there were largely influence by the lack of effective communications on all sides. A dispatch between Washington and California took months, so there was no way of knowing from California if and when war had officially broken out between Mexico and the US.
Captain John Fremont led the “Bear Flag Revolt” against Mexican rule in California on June 14, 1846.
Commander Sloat took California in the name of the USA in Pizarro style on July 7.
COMEDIAN MIKE DONIPHAN
In the meantime Doniphan (pronounced ‘Donovan’) invaded northern Mexico from a point further west. (map) 43 Mexican soldiers were killed on Christmas day, 1846 at El Brazito in the first clash with Doniphan and his 984 troops. The US Army suffered only 7 wounded and no KIA’s.
Doniphan’s men then marched across the arid plains of northern Mexico, the men filling their scabbards with water and marching with their blades in their hands.
The Yankees then scored another victory over the Mexican Army at Sacramento River just north of Chihuahua on February 23, 1847. The Americans were outnumbered two to one and faced a well-fortified and strategically sound position. But through smart maneuvering and skilled use of artillery the US force routed the Mexicans, killing over 300 while losing only one American dead. The man killed on the US side was one of the fighting merchants that accompanied the Doniphan caravan. He was not in the pay of the government. Several wagons of traders had joined the force, to try to make money at some point, to supply the troops, and to help with the fighting.
The Mexican Army fled the capitol city of Chihuahua. The Doniphan Thousand, as they were called, then occupied Chihuahua for 49 days before finally making contact with other American forces in Mexico. Until they had sent a messenger to reach the others, ‘Dunnie’s Thousand’ had no idea where the other US forces were and felt that any major movement either forward or back would be precarious.
The Thousand finally marched east and met the forces of Generals Wool and Taylor at Buena Vista. Doniphan’s men were subsequently mustered back to the states where they finished their tour of duty in Kansas from whence they had started Doniphan’s Thousand had marched over 5,000 miles.
Mexican War Map
BUENA VISTA
The most spectacular battle of the Mexican War was the one on February 22-23 1847 at Buena Vista between forces under Santa Anna and an army commanded by future president Zachary Taylor. The American force had been marching deep into Mexico for weeks. On February 22, 1847 20,000 Mexicans attacked 4,500 Americans at the small encampment of Buena Vista.
Santa Anna’s men had the high ground but it was so twisted and narrow that it made it impossible for the Mexicans to set up and use big guns effectively, rendering this classic trump card useless. The American position was more of a vulnerable flat field, but it enabled effective movement of units and artillery. Nevertheless the Mexicans almost overran the American positions. The hero of the day was Zachary Taylor, who stood brave and strong in the middle of a murderous crossfire and directed the artillery effectively. Superior US guns and tactics enabled the Yankees to barely hold on. Neither side had won the battle of Buena Vista. 247 Americans died in action. Twice as many fell on the Mexican side. As always, there were twice as many wounded as killed on both sides.
Taylor expected the battle to continue. But in the morning of the third day the Mexicans were gone. The USA had won a close match by default. BV was the last major battle on the northern Mexican front. The Mexican Army had retreated in defeat from a battlefield that had been a draw.
Santa then pulled a ‘Baghdad Bob’ and took a few American prisoners back to the capital, telling everyone that Buena Vista had been a Mexican victory.
Santa Anna had sound reasons for retreating from the battlefield at Buena Vista. He was aware that his men had marched for two days without water and had been promised all the water they could drink after they overran the American position, plus all of the enemy’s provisions after the victorious battle. When they only tied on the field at Buena Vista, they had to go back for some more water. Water was to Buena Vista what oil was to the Battle of the Bulge. It was both the prize and the energy source.
Santa Anna also knew that another American invasion force was gathering near Vera Cruz and he had to think about fighting to defending the nation of Mexico down there. Furthermore a civil war between the authorities and the Catholics had broken out in Mexico City. The government was trying to seize church property in order to help pay for the war, and, needless to say, there was a problem with that. Barricades separating the sides were rising up in the streets of the capitol and artillery was lobbing shells from one side to the other. But these were token gestures of aggression, for both sides wanted the Mexico City Civil War settled peacefully. The city problems were making it difficult to deploy Mexican forces to the eastern shore to defend Vera Cruz.
The American invasion force landed on Vera Cruz on March 9, 1847. It was the USA’s first “D-Day.” Vera Cruz was heavily defended by Mexican forts but the fighting gringos landed a few miles to the North outside the range of the fort’s cannon. 10,000 US regulars made it ashore by the end of the night of March 11.
The US commander sent a message to the fort demanding a surrender, at least for the safety of the civilians. The US correctly informed the Mexicans that they were in a hopeless situation militarily. The Mexican Commander Frank Lopez sent back a one word response, “Loco!”
The US flotilla in VC Harbor was growing, and more troops landed over the next several days. But several storms, called “northers” disrupted the attempt to supply the troops already ashore and provide them with siege artillery.
By March 24, a few heavy cannon were set up at the gates of two of the Vera Cruz forts. The guns of the forts did not stand by passively and the battle was on. A huge hole was soon torn into one of the forts. The Americans clearly had the heavier firepower. Many civilians inside the fort were injured or killed as the shell fight lasted many days.
Finally the fort and the city of Vera Cruz surrendered. News of this reached Washington D.C. at about the same time as did the news of Buena Vista, which had taken much longer to travel back. The victory of Taylor at Buena Vista was the one the public was most taken with. The siege of Vera Cruz was more of a story of the USA doing the bullying. And the VC force under Scott still had much fighting to do.
Approximately 100 Mexican civilians died inside the forts from the US bombardment. Many historians blame America first at Vera Cruz and condemn US actions there as part of a war they condemn America for in general. But how could the Americans win the war without reducing the forts? And how could any fort commander surrender without a fight? It was a tragedy of war that was hard to avoid on both sides.
A third expedition under Kearney was sent to the west to conquer New Mexico and California, which he did bloodlessly. However, in early 1847 there were several terrible revolts against American authority both by the New Mexicans and by Native Americans. The Spaniards and the Native Americans had been enemies (‘this is our war” a Navajo chief told an American emissary) for some time. But now, in some instances, the Indians and the Spaniards united to fight the Yankees. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.
Much of what is today New Mexico and Arizona was aflame with danger for US Americans. Governor Bent of Colorado and several others were murdered. The Utes and the Navajos were killing any and all Anglo - Americans for terrorist purposes. Polk sent out a punitive expedition with instructions to try to make peace treaties and somehow quell these rebellions.
The fighting in the valley of the Taos River was particularly serious.
General Winfield Scott at Vera Cruz retraced the route of conquest of Cortez the conquistador. Scott’s Army marched west and had a fierce fight at Cerro Gordo.
The war ended with the capture of Mexico City.
SETTLEMENT OF THE MEXICAN WAR – GUADALUPE HIDALGO
The USA today is a nation of 3,717,000 square miles, the third largest in the world after Russia and China. But if not for Nicolas Trist the United States would probably be an even larger nation.
Trist continued to negotiate with the Mexicans after he had been ordered home by Polk and he signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2 1848 against the wishes of the President. Most of the Democratic leadership was clamoring for annexation of parts of or all of Mexico in addition to the lands already taken in the war. But the treaty of GH did not include territory in Mexico proper. Only the areas that Polk had wanted to purchase at the outset.
Polk wanted more. But with the country fatigued with war The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo passed in both Houses of Congress and Polk decided not to veto it. Trist saved northern Mexico from becoming part of the United States. It was somewhat the reverse of Monroe’s bold decision in Paris in 1803 when he bought Louisiana on his own initiative without the President Jefferson’s permission.
Guadalupe-Hidalgo included a payoff by the United States of $25 million for California, plus $15 million for the rest of what is now the southwestern USA, plus the assumption of $3 million in claims against Mexico by US citizens.
Enemies and lukewarm friends of the USA see the payola as an admission of guilt. Some might see it as a rank bribe. It could also be seen as honorable. Polk was in a position to take all he had been previously willing to pay for without paying a dollar. American blood had been shed. He could have rejected the Trist treaty and taken part or all of Mexico. America had command of their capitol city and the Mexican army was shattered. But Polk decided to pay for it anyway, and US military forces evacuated their country. From that moment on no one has ever suggested that Mexico is not completely free and independent. The United States did not leave a puppet government in place. The settlement of the Mexican War, as surely as its origins, are not the stains on the flag that many critics think.
The areas the USA retained from the Mexican War were not densely populated by the Spanish. Gringo settlers outnumbered theirs. They started the belligerence with the political declaration of war over Texas.
If Mexico had allowed Texas to peacefully join the United States, would there have been a Mexican War? It is an important question. The answer is no.
Historians are quick to magnify the depth of US home opposition to the war. But most of it was based on opposition to slavery, not expansionism per se. There was never any groundswell opposition to how the USA conducted itself with Mexico during the events leading up to the outbreak of hostilities.
Mexico had largely itself to blame for its disastrous war with the United States. It took two to tango in 1846.
Every country is conceited. But small conceited nations should be smart enough to not pick fights with bigger and stronger conceited nations.
90,000 American served in the Mexican War and 1,721 died in combat. 11,155 died of disease and other natural hazards. It was the usual story of 19th century warfare. Combat deaths were usually small compared to the toll taken by yellow fever, dysentery, and accidents. It would be the same story in the Civil War and the Spanish American Conflict. The World Wars of the 20th Century would be a different story.
Not a single member of the Mexican Air Force died in the War.
Nick Trist was fired for his services to his country.
Nothing would please me more than to see Mexico voluntarily join the USA. I have dreamed of that all my life. The Trilateral Commission is supposed to be working on a North American Union of Mexico, the USA and Canada at this very moment. Presidential candidate Ron Paul talked of this recently. Its probably never going to happen. During and after the Mexican War there was much talk of this dream. For a few years it wasn't a joke.
The left should also ask itself what would have been the result if Mexico had won the war on the battlefield. Mexico would have taken and kept most of whatever it had won militarily. Then a 140 years later, the scholars could call them “robbers” and “imperialists.” Mexico had dreams of empire on the North American continent too. They just didn't get to live that dream because they lost the war. But Mex was no more or less moral than the United States in war aims. Mexico wasn't going to war on principle. Mexico was going to war for land. And remember, many European military analysts had predicted a Mexican victory when the war began. One expert wrote that the Mexican Army would be marching down Pennsylvania Ave within six weeks.
INDIAN TROUBLES IN THE NORTHWEST
On November 29, 1847 the Cayuse Indians attacked a settlement of white missionaries, killing 13. The most prominent among them was Dr. Marcus Whitman.
This led to a war with the Cayuse.
THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN LEFT
The home front opposition to the Mexican War was the Vietnam protest of its time. There weren’t any organized mass protests by commoners. There were on the other hand well organized rallies for the commoners in favor of the war. In Philadelphia 20,000 marched in support of the Mexican war for example.
But the mere fact that that there was an anti-war movement of any kind in the press and within the government was a watershed of American History. Never before had a war been received with such open moral disapproval. It was the crowning moment in the rise of the American left.
Opposition to the Mexican War was all part and parcel of the progressive intellectual social movement that was sweeping the world and the country in the 1840’s. Anti-slavery was on the march. Reform for prisons, new compassion and care for the mentally ill, rights for children, liberation for women, all these were at a fevered pitch and in the middle of it all a war for territorial conquest against a weak neighbor, and a war of dubious justification in it’s origin. The Mexican War was the first time that Sam wore the black hat.
It is not surprising then that a 37 year old Whig Congressman from Illinois, who had yet to grown his famous beard, would rise on the capitol floor and demand to know at exactly what spot on American soil was American blood shed to precipitate this war of aggression. Nor was it that surprising that Henry David Thoreau would refuse to pay a small tax because some of that money would go to pay for the war. Thoreau went to jail.
Abolitionist editor and general all-round troublemaker Willie Garrison openly rooted for the Mexicans to win. His Liberator published this, “Every lover of Freedom and humanity throughout the world must wish them the most triumphant success.”
The Congressional elections of the fall of 46, mid-war, were a rejection of the war party. The Whigs took control of both houses of Congress, a hint of the Whig White House soon to come.
By the way, the historians almost never mention it, but Lincoln supported the Mexican War at first. Some prominent Whigs visited him and persuaded him that he was in error. Lincoln then opposed the war.
BIBLE COMMUNISTS OF ONEIDA 1848
Historians rarely call it a cult. But it was. Oneida lasted until from 1848 to 1880 and was the most durable of all the reformist experimental communities (cults) that swept the country in the 1840’s. And if the FBI knew about a similar operation today, they would shut it down in less than 24 hours.
It had all the requirements of the modern cult. The self-sacrifice, the charismatic leader, the perverse world within the outside world.
The Oneida cult published a newspaper called Battle Axe. This rad group made Brook Farm look like a bunch of squares. The Oneida community defied the sexual customs of the day and for that matter, those of today. People stayed ‘busy’ at Oneida. In the 1970’s the term for what these people practiced in 1848 was called ‘open marriage.’ People still got married at Oneida, but fidelity was not required. Every woman was free to ring the triangle and yell, “come and get it!” No one would call her bad names behind her back. They were doing it too.
The fearless leader of this 1848 sex farm was Clyde Noyes, the Jim Jones of Oneidatown. Noyes had been educated at Andover, and then Dartmouth before attending divinity school at Yale. Noyes was not allowed to graduate from Yale refused to graduate Noyes even though his grades were good. The issue as his spiritual conceit. Noyes considered himself perfect and Yale could not countenance such impudence.
Noyes believed that once a person was saved, they had nothing to feel guilty or sorry about. They were now perfect. He was the original perfectionist and his followers called themselves “Perfectionists.” )It would be hard to have a marriage spat with one of these people, “Oh, like you're so perfect!” - “Why yes I am, in fact.”)
At the Oneida Community the Yalee cult leader declared himself one of the ‘spiritually advanced’ of this world. This carried a special advantage at Oneida. Although theoretically, any man could score with any wife, in practice only those men who were deemed to be “spiritually advanced” were allowed to have sex with a woman. These chosen cads were allowed and indeed encouraged, to have sex with all of the wives. I'm not making this stuff up.
This idea that the Lord gives all the candy to the good was some kind of incentive for people to show fine spiritual colors. At last. Someone finally figured out a way to get men to behave. Similar rules were enforced at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 by the mad cult god Jim Jones.
There's more. It gets worse. Although Oneida was a sex cult, most of the men were actually instructed to not have sex. Still other males were allowed to have sex but not allowed to have orgasms. What fun these guys must have been to hang out with. You ask them a harmless question and they start kicking doors down.
The Noyes cult also practiced the group criticism, a practice later popular in Mao’s Red China. Individuals were forced to sit in the middle of a circle and listen to blunt and brutal criticism by all of the other members. I would have told them to go jump into lake Oneida.
There was, of course, one exception to the criticism ritual, one guy with a pass. Guess who. Clyde Noyes himself was the only one who was literally above criticism.
There were other bizarro communities in the finger-lakes region (now we know how the lakes got their name.) The political crossovers were many, with a general liberal theme. The northern experimental communities were almost unanimously abolitionists on the side. Where there was a feminist (male or female), there was an abolitionist. Where there was an anti-salooner, there was an abolitionist. Where there was a person fighting for the rights of the criminal or of the insane or of the criminally insane, there was an abolitionist. In fact few abolitionists were singularly abolitionists. The crusader, then and now, is on the side of right on dozens of issues, rarely one.
Therefore, when word got around the South of the sexual practices of the upstate New York Oneida abolitionist cult, it had political repercussions. These wild stories coming out of the North convinced the South all the more that their conservative culture was the morally superior one. This assisted them in rationalizing their continued faith in the institution of slavery. Oneida's sex parties helped to keep people in chains.
SLAVERY
KILLED OVER A CILLEY ARGUMENT
Tensions were high between North and South in the Congress as surely as in the towns of America. These Congressmen were a microcosm of the entire country as they were supposed to be. Cross words in Congress often nearly led to crossed swords. Many Congressmen came to work armed with knives and concealed pistols.
An argument between Representatives from Maine and Kentucky in 1848 turned deadly. Jonathan Cilley from Maine (born in New Hampshire) and William Graves of Kentucky were both freshman Congressmen. The Southerner was the one who started the escalation to violence.. What a shocker. Southern honor always justified violence.
It all started when Graves didn’t like the arguments of Cilley. Graves then challenged him to a duel. Cilley didn’t feel the same level of hostility but he didn’t want to look like a wimp so be bought the bait.
Two Congressman met at Bladensburg Maryland, the town where the British had landed in 1813. Congressmen Cilley and Graves used long range rifles and dueled at 100 yards.
After two shots each had missed. There was a conference and Cilley made a kind and gentle speech about how there was no need to go any further with this. Graves was on the fence but his second, his dueling assistant, was Congressman Henry A. Wise of Virginia. This Wise guy was a mean spirited lover of slavery. Wise gave Graves a pep talk about, ‘living up to his last name’ and ‘icing this no-good Yankee.’ Graves listened closely to a word from the Wise. After thinking it over he made Cilley go back out on the field. In the next round of rifle-chicken Representative Graves shot Representative Cilley dead.
The supercilious rifle fight between two respectable Congresspersons led to the passage in February of 1839 of a Federal law banning the practice of dueling in the District of Columbia. Wise was mad when this law was passed but Wise was mad, period. From now on, if Congressmen were going to kill each other, they would first have to drive to Virginia.
QUINCY ADAMS RIP
He had earned the nickname ‘Old man eloquent.’ Former president John Quincy Adams served as a Congressman for almost two decades, and had led the fight against the ‘gag rule,’ a pro-south racist law in Congress forbidding the discussion of the slavery issue in that supposedly high and just body.
Usually an opponent of President Polk, Adams was one of the most politically active former presidents in American history.
On February 21 1848 he died at his desk in Congress.
BOX BROWN
Slavery thrived under Polk. He was a slave-owner himself.
One slave named Henry Brown escaped to the North and freedom in his own unique way.
Brown was a slave in the South. The last straw fro Brown came when his wife and children were sold to another plantation. He determined to escape to the North and buy the freedom of his family once he became free to work in the north and save up the money.
Brown calculated that while Congress wasn't going to deliver, the post office might. In early 1849 mailed himself to Philly in a box. And he pulled it off! Brown arranged to have his living body nailed and mailed.
Brown lay down in a large box in Richmond. His friends hammered him shut and mailed him North right in front of the whites of the whites eye's. Brown had the box addressed to a shoemaker in Philadelphia. After a grueling and perilous trip of 26 hours Brown was delivered. His abolitionist friends opened the box in the free North and out sprang the elated Mr. Brown, with his words of triumph, “How do you do gentlemen?”
He soon published him memoir, entitled The Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown. Henry used the proceeds from the book to purchase the freedom of his wife and child. The abolitionists promoted the book to get their message out. What a story. NBC made a mini-series on Box Brown starring Sherman Hemsley as Box.
THE SAN FRANCISCO FORTY-EIGHTERS
The football team is called the 'Niners, but the birth of the California gold rush was in Polk's year of 1948. It took the country a year to take the new gold discoveries seriously, then then the floodgates opened for the huge wave of greed in 1849.
Rumors and legends about gold and silver in California had been in circulation for centuries, but none of them had ever “panned out.”
Captain Sutter and his partner Jack Marshall started up a sawmill at the present town of Coloma. One day early in 1848 Marshall picked up apiece of shiny yellow metal and asked Sutter if it was gold. Sutter told him to take it to San Francisco to find out. Marshall came back from Frisco with the exiting news. This was gold, and there was more laying around the sawmill. “To hell with the wood!” shouted Sutter exitedly.
Sutter and Marshall made a deal with the local Indians. They bought a the area of land around the mill and agree to pay them one third of all the gold discovered and mined there. Late in 1848 a party of Oregon prospectors decided to simply not pay the Indian tax, called a tithe. Once one party refused to pay, no one else did either. The Indian got the mine shaft in Sutter's Saw Mill/Mine.
Marshall and Sutter weren't pros. They hooked up with one named Isaac Humphrey's who took over the site and put gold mining on a state of the art operation.
The two leading papers in San Francisco, the Californian, and the California Star carried stories in march 1848 about the gold in Sutter's Sawmill, but the stories were cautious and small. Even the locals weren't taking it seriously yet. The papers only had rumors to work with.
By the end of April the Californian was printing stories that this was the real deal. Not only was gold plentiful, but it was a free-for-all situation. “Every person takes the right to gather all he can without any regard to claims.”
This set off the California gold rush in the west. But the news still hadn't kicked in from coast to coast. It wasn't until September 1848 that the East coast got real wind of the western yellow. When Polk left office in March 1849, the California Gold Rush of 1849 was just getting ready to explode.
A Frenchman named Claude Baptiste went to work early in the gold rush with Sutter and Marshall, and commented that maybe it was God's plan to make sure that gold was not discovered in California until the Americans got their hands on it. It was indeed poor timing for Mexico. No sooner do they concede California after a controversial and disastrous war, than gold is found there.
One lefty historians claims that Polk knew in advance that there was gold in California before he started the Mexican War and in fact that is why he started it! How can anyone take that idea seriously?
AFTER OFFICE
Polk made a definite pledge to not run for a second term and its a good thing he honored it. He wouldn't have lasted four months into his second term.
The first thing Polk did when he left office was to take a tour of the country. But he became seriously ill and had to end the trip before he had seen all the states on the itinerary.
Polk had recently bought the house of ex-senator Fekix Grundy of Tennessee, naming it “Polk Place.” (People named their homes back then and continued to do so well into the early part of the 20th century. The habit was long out of style by the time I was born in 1955. Now you look odd giving your home a name, so I do it anyway. My condo in Brookline is called “Donovan's Dungeon.”)
Polk was hoping to enjoy a long retirement away from the political battlefield. At the end of his term he wrote to a friend that he was certain that he was going to be much happier out of office than he ever was in it. But he did not live long enough to prove it.
President James Polk bought Grundy's farm on June 15, 1849. Mr. Polk checked out of Polk Place at the age of only 53. (I say “only” because I am 53. If I were 20 I'd write, “Polk lived to the ripe old age of 53.”) JP found Jesus at the end. He was baptized into the Methodist religion one week before he passed away. Mr. Polk had been born a Presbyterian. Polk is the first US president who died before his mother did.
John Quincy Adams said of James Polk that he had never seen anyone grow old so quickly as had Polk in office. That's a bit of a self-fulfilled analysis on Johnny' part. JQA ripped Polk mercilessly for four years then commented on how worn-out the poor guy looked. JQA for example once said that Polk had, “no wit, no gracefulness of delivery, no elegance of language, no pathos, nothing that can constitute an orator.” If only we had tapes. James couldn't possibly have been all that bad.
Many historians imply, and some come out and say flatly, that the stress of the Presidency is what caused Polk to check out three months after being sworn out.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Polk had digestive medical issues before he became president. He might have died at 53 even if he had been a barge driver's assistant. Having a low job or no job is just as stressful as the presidency. Most presidents have lived to an average old age. This would seem to disprove the commonly held belief that being president ages men to an unnatural degree. 58 year old men become president, and when they leave office at 66 the public is sad because the presidency has made him look so old. I think the presidency is taking far too much credit for the beating that father time gives everyone in those age brackets.
Sarah Polk lived on to a ripe old age and became a very popular states-person. She never stopped wearing black to her last day in honor of her husband the President. It matched her black slaves.
Jimmy Polk left it all to his wife, but included a stipulation that when Sarah died, the Polk slaves were to be emancipated. By the time she died, all the nation's slaves had been freed anyway, so here's a great big thanks a lot James Polk from the African American community.
LEGACY OF POLK'S MEXICAN WAR
The Mexican War has done a lot of traveling on the history highway. The older history books were certainly too biased in favor of the USA. But the new politically left US history textbooks are something else. Two wrongs don't make a right. The new history books openly root against the USA and express nothing but sympathy for the completely innocent Mexicans. As if any of these scholars would give seven states back to Mexico right now if it was up to them. They're so hurt by our shame. When American troops commit atrocities in the Mexican War, they play it up as if the entire US Army was made up of Bill Calleys. When the Mexicans resist and use violence to terrorize the occupiers, the authors support them as moral heroes for their deeds.
The BAF historians (Blame America First) seem to forget one important factor. Mexico was not a nation of Native North Americans in the first place. If we were robbers in 1845, we were robbing the robbers.
The Spaniards had defeated the Native Americans just as we had. It was these conquistadores that we defeated in the Mexican War, not some super-victim race of a highly foreign color. It was an Inter-European war.
The liberal pundits and stand-ups rail about how we stole from the brown in Mexico. How brown are the Mexicans? The Philippinos are far browner. The Mexican power was a European predatory power, just like us, with no more of a religious claim to the desert land, as did the USA, China or Turkey. Mexico was a residual renegade part of the old Spanish empire, a nation that had massacred Native Americans and established peonage for them later. If there was a bad guy in the Mexican War there was a second one there too. Mexico had a long Spanish history before it was Mexico. They destroyed the culture that was in place before them.
SOURCES
America and its Peoples, by Mintz and McMurray c) 2001
Big modern college hardcover textbook. Great maps. The book is incorrect about the Whigs and Abraham Lincoln. The authors state that the Whigs punished Lincoln for opposing the Mexican War,
“ One of Lincoln’s constituents branded him “the Benedict
Arnold of our district,” and he was denied renomination
by his own party. “
This clearly implies that Lincoln was punished by the Whig party for his war stance, but in actuality the Whig Congressional candidates all ran on a one-term pledge in the first place. The party wanted a rotation of personalities and was committed to the one-term idea as an advertised party policy. Lincoln was in a rotation with two other Whig Congressmen on the same seat. The Whig party even proposed a one-term presidency as a permanent measure.
America and its Peoples never quotes a single person who defends the war, or any one who condemned the Mexican belligerence; nor does the big book say a single kind word about the courage and heroism of our troops. Instead it quotes everyone who was against the war, every anti-war editorial, finds space for eyewitness accounts of American brutality in the Mexican theatre and speaks of the heroism of the oppressed Spanish population. America and its Peoples is a polemic. This was the general history textbook assigned to a student at Boston University in 2002 who gave me the book after graduating. When they talk about a liberal education today they mean the intolerant partisan version of the word, the figurative version.
An American History, by David Saville Muzzey – c) 1933
Very well written book, although some of the quiz questions are needlesly stern.
Muzz defends the United States with some emotion on the Mexican War. He quotes one of the home-team bashing historians, then counters with a few simple points like,
“We had a right to annex Texas after that republic had maintained its
its independence for nine years; yet Mexico made annexation a
cause for war.”
An irrefutable point.
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Stanford's Thomas A. Bailey – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
Bailey is one of the best writers of all time, but he Blames America First for the war with Mexico. He does blame Mexico some, too, but mostly America was in the wrong.
A Century of American Diplomacy, by John W. Foster, c)1900 – Former U. S. Secretary of State turned historian. Very good reading.
A Country Made by War, by Geoffrey Perret – This was an excellent reading experience. I'm less fond of a couple of his other books.
To Conquer a Peace, The War Between Mexico and the United States, by John Edward Reems – c) 1974 – Weems is a Texan who is highly recommended by Bruce Catton. Is that good or bad?
Diary of James K. Polk, by James K. Polk – Polk’s diary of his White House years wasn’t discovered until 1910. I took it out of the library but returned it before I read more than 30 pages. I really have to buy my own copy.
A Diplomatic History of the American People, by Thomas A. Bailey – c)1958 – I love this guy, in spite of his vicious bias, which he never owns up to. He never presents his arguments as though they are arguments. Even when he takes my side in his bias, I wish he'd admit that these aren’t finalized historical facts, but rather one scholar’s conclusions based on his own life and his personally arranged research.
Tom Bailey is always easy to read.
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, Farnam Professor of Diplomatic History in Yale University – c) 1934 Henry Holt
DHUS is one dy-no-myte read.
Bemis tries to help the reader understand why Mexico was unhappy that masses of Yankees were despoiling their land,
“From Mexican policy towards immigrants to Texas, the United States, if it needed to, could learn what it would mean today to stimulate and invite
masses of alien, say oriental, populations to settle in California.”
That's a loaded quote.
It's a great point, even if it does make Bemis look a little racist, and Sammy might be surprised to know that California is indeed swarming with orientals today, and the country is no worse for it.
On the other hand, the Mexicans are proven no more or less racist and selfish than any other nation. Today the left hates the USA because it is too racist and narrow minded to allow a flood of illegal Mexican immigrants across the southern borders. The USA has supposedly lost sight of its role as haven and melting pot for the foreigners who want to come here. Well maybe so, but remember that Mexico had the exact same narrow-minded and racist attitude towards the anglos who invaded Texas by immigration in the 1830's.
The Great Events, by Famous Historians, Volume XVII – c) 1905 – The National Alumni
The chapter used here is The Discovery of Gold in California, by John S. Hittel. The mining world has a lot of words I have to look up, like 'placer', 'race', 'palladium', 'auriferous', and 'cat'.
History of a Free People by Henry W. Bragdon (Phillips Academy Exeter) and Samuel P. McCutchen (School of Education New York University) – c) 1954 MacMillan
High school history hardcover from a tough guy era. They make the excellent point that Mexico was not afraid of war with the United States because of the weak performance of the US armed forces in the War of 1812.
A History of the United States, by Henry William Elson – c)1947 14th revised edition! – Elson is the king.
A History of Presidential Elections, by Eugene Roseboom
On the Hill, A History of the American Congress, by Alvin M. Josephy Jr. -c) 1975 – Josephy indicts the United States as the sole aggressor in the Mexican War. He mentions that Mexico “broke diplomatic relations with the United States,” but commits a sin of omission when he does not mention that Mexico repeatedly declared that a state of war now existed between Mexico and the United States. And this was long before Polk sent a war message to Congress, and before the outbreak of any shooting hostilities between the Nueces and the Rio or anywhere else.
Nobody ever wants to mention that Mexico declared war first. Like that doesn't count for anything.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 –
Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
“Sambo” wrote more history books than most people have read. He claimed that this was his nickname in the Navy.
Rise of the American Nation, by Todd and Curti – c) 1955 – These guys point out some very conservative facts about the origins of the Mexican War. For example how in 1835 Mexico had unjustly arrested and executed 22 southwest American settlers on bogus charges of plotting a revolution against Mexico.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty of Columbia University – c) 1966 – Fourth revised edition c) 1977
Garraty admits that the United States was a bully in Mr. Polk's War but on the even-handed side does remark that,
“This war broke out in large measure because of Mexico's stubborn pride. Texas had existed as a republic for the better part of a decade without Mexico making any serious effort to reconquer it. It was Mexico that broke off diplomatic relations with the U.S.”
I'm up to page 479 in this 521 pager. Overall I don't like Jack Garraty.
From Slavery to Freedom, by John Hope Franklin for the Box Brown story.
The Story of the Mexican War, by Robert Selph Henry c) 1950 “The people of the United States … for a century have had toward the war with Mexico an apologetic, even a shamefaced, attitude which is not justified by the facts.”
This is a good book but it is easy to put down. It takes some work to read it.
The United States to 1865, by Michael Kraus – c) 1959 University of Michigan Press, Volume Four of the University of Michigan History of the Modern World
If Columbia/CCNY Kraus had spent more time on the Mexican War than on conditions of frontier life, it would have made for a better book in my book.
The United States, From Colony to World Power, by Oliver Perry Chitwood, Frank Lawrence Owsley, and H.C. Nixon, c)1949 – I have the revised edition of 1954 and have read most of it. A good general history, but with the slow down type chapters like art, reform movements, literature and economics mixed in a little too much.
The United States, The History of a Republic, c) 1957 by Rich Hofstadter, William Miller and Daniel Aaron, a particularly intelligent book by three super-eggheads. They are especially advanced on economics, more so than most general historians. They worship Jefferson.
The Wars of America, by Robert Leckie
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