Posted on 07/08/2006 8:03:57 AM PDT by A. Pole
On July 7, 1846, a contingent of Marines raised the American flag over Monterey, California, to mark a proclamation by U.S. consul Thomas Larkin that the territory was being annexed as a consequence of the war with Mexico. Much of the future state had already been taken from Mexico's nominal control by an uprising of American settlers under the Bear Flag.
Victory in the Mexican War meant that the country gained Texas, California, and everything in between, comprising most of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Next to the War of Independence and the Civil War, the Mexican War was the most important conflict laying the foundations of the United States as the power that it is today. Yet the war was controversial at the time, and the arguments and political maneuvering surrounding it still echo in debates over two of the most pressing issues today: immigration policy and presidential war powers.
Mexican textbooks claim that the American southwest was "stolen" and will someday be regained. Radical elements in the movement championing an "open border" between the U.S. and Mexico hope to someday fulfill this irredentist ambition. They see a mass movement of people overwhelming the "anglo" population of the border states.
This is ironic, because it was the influx of American settlers into California and Texas that lost these territories to Mexico in the first place. From 1824 to 1830, promises of cheap land and tax breaks attracted Americans to settle in Texas on the condition they become Catholic and swear allegiance to Mexico. But the number of American colonists eventually began to alarm the Mexican government, which in 1830 prohibited future immigration and tried to coax its own people to move north. Still, illegal American farmers, ranchers, and merchants kept coming. In response to the repressive dictatorship of Antonio Lopez Santa Anna, these Texicans revolted in 1835. They declared their independence a year later and established it on the battlefield.
The Texans wanted to rejoin their homeland, but domestic U.S. politics delayed this development for a decade. The Democrats favored bringing Texas into the union. This had been one of the priorities of Andrew Jackson and his protégé Sam Houston. But the Whigs, centered in New England, opposed what they misperceived primarily as a new territory of slave-owners. The larger benefits of national enlargement eventually prevailed in regard to Texas, but the slavery issue continued to be used in partisan propaganda opposing further expansion during the Mexican War.
The proximate cause of the Mexican War was a dispute about where to draw the international border after Texas joined the United States in 1845. Texas had claimed the Rio Grande River, but neither this line nor the independence of Texas had yet been recognized by the Mexican government. President James Polk, a Democrat and our most underrated president, tried to buy the disputed area, as well as California and New Mexico. This was how Thomas Jefferson had obtained the vast Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, who knew he couldn't hold the territory and needed the money. The Mexican government seemed in the same plight, bankrupt and on the brink of civil war. In December 1845, President Jose Herrera told his state governors that Texas had no value because not enough Mexicans could be persuaded to move there to hold it. The same could have been said about California and the southwest.
There was a plot to install a Spanish nobleman as monarch to restore order, and a military coup overthrew Herrera before an agreement could be reached on a land sale. A war for the borderlands then began, followed shortly by another coup that brought Santa Anna back to power. This represented a swing to the right in Mexican politics, motivated by the desire to resist American demands. There was wild talk about not only retaking Texas, but also marching on New Orleans and sending fleets of privateers against U.S. trade.
With diplomacy failing, Polk had sent 4,000 soldiers under General Zachary Taylor to enforce the boundary claim against Mexico. On April 25, 1846, American soldiers were attacked north of the Rio Grande by Mexican troops. Polk asked Congress to declare war on May 12, the day after word of the battle reached Washington. The House vote was a comfortable 174–14, but the Senate tally was much narrower – it passed the war proclamation by only one vote.
The war was initially very popular in America. Some 200,000 men rushed to join the Army in response to a call for 50,000 volunteers (when war was declared, the U.S. Army had only 10,000 men, a much smaller force than the standing Mexican army). In Tennessee, from where many of the Texas settlers had come, so many wanted to join that lots had to be drawn. The winners got to enlist. The name of the University of Tennessee's athletic teams –"The Volunteers" – is linked to this episode.
Still, many Whigs were against the expansionism of the war, and some Democrats were concerned about presidential power. The Whigs were willing to accept Mexico's claims to the border, and they denounced Polk for sending U.S. troops into harm's way to contest the issue. The young Congressman Abraham Lincoln introduced the infamous "spot resolution" demanding that Polk prove that the "spot" in Texas where American blood had been spilled was legitimate U.S. territory. (Fortunately, Lincoln matured into a stubborn president who would not accept anything less than victory in the Civil War, and would do whatever was needed to prevail. Even during the Mexican War, he and most other Whigs still voted the money and supplies to support the troops in the field despite their dissent over how the conflict started.)
Democratic senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a defender of states' rights and slavery, believed Polk had acted in an offensive and unconstitutional way, without prior congressional authorization. Calhoun's opposition to the war made for an uneasy alliance with the anti-slavery Whigs who saw the war as a southern plot. Democratic senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri agreed, claiming "Never have the men at the head of government . . . [been] more addicted to intrigue." Whig Rep. Joshua Giddings of Ohio denounced "sending an army to invade a neighboring nation, to shoot down our brethren of Mexico" and claimed that "on the day of final retribution, the blood of our slaughtered countrymen" would be on Polk's hands. Henry David Thoreau retreated to Walden Pond and wrote his essay on "Civil Disobedience." James Russell Lowell mocked the soldiers as lower-class ruffians easily duped by appeals to patriotism.
Modern left-wing historians such as Paul Foos have followed Lowell's lead, seeing an army recruited from a "despised labor force" and the war "critical in shaping the new exploitive social relations that would characterize 'free labor' and American capitalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." The antiwar movement has changed little over the centuries, and its vision for the country has not improved.
The Whigs won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives in the 1846 election, gaining 37 seats, but were split on the war. And those who were opposed could not decide on an alternative policy. Yet, in January 1848, with the war won, the Whigs passed an amendment in the House censuring Polk for a "war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun." Soon thereafter, however, it was the war hero Zachary Taylor who won the presidency in 1848 on the Whig ticket.
Meanwhile, U.S. forces advanced from Texas into northern Mexico, and, after the sea-borne capture of Vera Cruz, marched on Mexico City. The capital fell in September 1847. Though heavily outnumbered in every major battle, the better-armed and -led Americans consistently outfought their opponents. Another U.S. column had taken Santa Fe in May, 1846.
The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo met all of Polk's territorial objectives, but did not still domestic opposition. Polk had completed America's march across the continent, gaining strategic Californian ports to open the Pacific. Yet he was exhausted by the political struggle, and he did not seek re-election. A majority of senators in each party did come together to ratify the treaty, 38-14, showing that it is possible for bipartisanship to prevail when the national stakes are high. We can only pray that such an outcome will be the case in the future.
Open borders bump
"The name of the University of Tennessee's athletic teams –"The Volunteers" – is linked to this episode."
Very interesting, I'd always wondered where that nickname came from. Thanks for posting this and enlightening me. The rest of the article is very interesting too. I think the Mexican-American war is not properly understood. At least not here in Yankee-land where I live.
I have to admit I was fairly ignorant of the war with Mexico and the Independence of Texas until only recently. With that new understanding, I have to admit that the illegal border crossing does indeed look like an invasion sponsored by the Mexican government and not a benign work program.
I agree Jocon! I didn't learn anything about it in Horace Mann School!
We should have annexed all of Mexico along with Cuba in the later Spanish-American War.
With a lot of manufacturing and retirees moving down Mexico way, they just might have surprised you and became sun-belt "red states" but I guess we'll never know.
JAMES K. POLK
(Flansburgh/Linnell)
In 1844, the Democrats were split
The three nominees for the presidential candidate
Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist
James Buchanan, a moderate
Louis Cass, a general and expansionist
From Nashville came a dark horse riding up
He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
Austere, severe, he held few people dear
His oratory filled his foes with fear
The factions soon agreed
He's just the man we need
To bring about victory
Fulfill our manifest destiny
And annex the land the Mexicans command
And when the vote was cast the winner was
Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
In four short years he met his every goal
He seized the whole southwest from Mexico
Made sure the tarriffs fell
And made the English sell the Oregon territory
He built an independent treasury
Having done all this he sought no second term
But precious few have mourned the passing of
Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president
Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump
My great-great-great-great grandfather served in the Mexican-American War. He was a private in Company F, 1st Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers. His service records I obtained from the National Archives make very interesting reading. In 1996 I discovered he was buried without a headstone. With copies of his service records I was able to get the VA to place a veteran's headstone on his grave.
Very good post. Thanks.
Individual Mexican troops fought well and bravely, and there really wasn't any sort of obvious technical advantage to American weapons - the leadership of Santa Anna was simply atrocious. Though the Mexicans can look themselves in the mirror for who is at fault in putting him in power over and over again.
Other interesting thing about the War is the Europeans expected the Mexicans to win. When Scott cut off his supply lines and dove to Mexico City, Wellington said "Scott is lost."
War of 1812 is the same way.
Basically, the War of 1812 was a US attempt to conquer Canada, which failed rather miserably. This isn't covered in school. The fighting along the Canadian border tends to be completely and utterly ignored - and that's where the vast majority of the war was fought.
The whole impressment of sailors thing was a cover. Virtually all the sailors being impressed were from New England, yet New England congressmen voted against the war (and later even threatened to secede in protest) while the war got its support from the South and West in districts where there were few or no sailors - they saw the war as an opportunity to take Canada while the British were occupied with fighting Napoleon.
Great post - lots of nuggets
I don't know about anybody else, but I need these history lessons. Thanks much.
I'll bet that the textbooks in Mexico don't mention that even after achieving a total victory over in the war, the United States agreed to pay the Mexican government a huge amount of money to compensate for the costs of war, and also that the occupation of Mexico was very brief. In fact, the United States withdrew all of its troops from Mexico within a few years and didn't interfere with its domestic politics.
How many other conquering nations have treated a defeated enemy in such a way?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.