Confederate "Heritage" Month, April 12: Polk and the Mexican War

General Zachary Taylor in camp

The late historian Theodore Draper wrote about the Mexican War in Presidential Wars New York Review of Books 09/26/1991 issue (link behind subscription).

The war against Mexico in 1846 was President James K. Polk's personal crusade to obtain Texas and California. Even a historian so little censorious as Samuel Eliot Morison recognized that Polk "baited Mexico into a war with the United States in which California was the big pile of blue chips." Albert Gallatin, the secretary of the treasury under both Jefferson and Madison, the last surviving statesman present at the creation, demanded, "What shall we say of a war iniquitous in its origin, and provoked by ourselves, of a war of aggression, which is now publicly avowed to be one of intended conquest?" A young congressman made his maiden speech in opposition to the war with Mexico. He voted in favor of a resolution declaring that the war was "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President." The young congressman was Abraham Lincoln.

The Morison quote is from The Oxford History of the American People (1965). The paragraph that includes it reads:

Even though President Polk knew little about California except what [John Charles] Frémont [later to become the first Republican candidate for President in 1856] related, he wished desperately to acquire it for the United States because he feared lest England or France get it first. First he tried to buy it, but Mexico refused to sell. Next, he tried to stir up revolution in California. When that failed to come off on time, he baited Mexico into a war with the United States in which California was the big pile of blue chips.

Morrison also describes how Polk sent American troops to Texas, then recognized by the US as an independent Republic - and it was indeed functioning as an independent Republic - in July 1845 under the command of Gen. Zachary Taylor, who took a position on the Nueces River. There was no dispute about whether this piece of territory was part of Texas. Even Mexico recognized that it was.

Mexico did not recognize Texas' independence. But they also were not trying to wage war to regain it. Morison compares that to the situation in which Mexico and most Latin American republics found themselves at the time in relation to Spain. There was still a state of war existing with Spain, but Spain was not trying to reclaim those lands. It had been more than 20 years since the last military confrontation had taken place. He observes, "If Polk had been context with Texas and had not reached for California, there is no reason to suppose that Mexico would have initiated hostilities, although she would long have delayed acknowledging the loss of Texas".

After a US mission to Mexico under the leadership of John Slidell failed to negotatie to secure a purchase of Texas and California, in January 1846 Polk ordered Taylor to take his forces across the Nueces River and occupy the western bank of the Rio Grande River, which he did. This was the action that finally set off the shooting war. Morison writes of Polk's action, "That was an act of war, since the Nueces had been the southern boundary of Texas for a century".

Since Abraham Lincoln is even more heavily identified with a later war, it's worth quoting this observation of Draper's:

Lincoln's actions in the first months of the Civil War have been used to justify presidential wars. But Lincoln was faced with an internal rebellion, not an external threat. He acted to resist an attack, not to send armed forces half way around the world. Lincoln was responding to an unprecedented type of civil war, and his proclamation calling out the militia to suppress the revolt cannot be used to justify presidential wars of very different character without indiscriminately disregarding the difference between a sudden civil war and deliberate intervention in a Korean-type war.

Tags: abraham lincoln, confederate heritage month 2008, guerra de estados unidos a méxico, guerra hispano-estadounidense, james k polk, mexican-american war, thedore draper