Jacob Collamer on Congressional war powers

Jacob Collamer (1791 - 1865), Republican Senator from Vermont

The Cheney-Bush administration will soon depart into the proverbial dustbin of history. But the destructive consequences of their misrule will remain with us for a long time. Identifiable consequence of their Christian jihad in Iraq, in particular, will continue for decades.

The next President and the next Congress will face the duty of reconstructing the rule of law and Constitutional government at the federal level, especially but by no means exclusively in foreign policy. I take it for granted that in the ugly alternative that John McCain becomes President, he will not recognize such a duty. On the contrary, after a McCain-Palin Presidency, that goal could also be pushed out for a generation or more.

This post presents a quotation from a speech in Congress in 1859 over whether President James Buchanan, the second-worst President of the United States after Bush Junior, should be granted the authority to seize the Spanish colony of Cuba. But, first, here's a more recent reminder from the late historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. about why war powers are a particularly important issue. From War and the American Presidency (2004):

For many months, however, President Bush's extraordinary reversal of the direction of American foreign policy had little effective opposition, or even debate. Why should this have been? After all, nothing in a democracy demands more searching discussion than the choice between peace and war. But voters rallied round the flag after September 11, 2001, because Americans felt, as never before, personal vulnerability to enemy attack. In this "homeland security" mood, Democrats believed that criticism of the president's policies might be mistaken for a deficiency of patriotism.

I think the press and television are also to be blamed for the absence of debate. Editorial pages of our most distinguished newspapers were shamefully - and incredibly - oblivious to the drastic significance of the shift to preventive war as the basis of American foreign policy. Comments by Cheney and Rumsfeld were given top billing in most American papers, even the New York Times, while reasoned speeches by Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd opposing the rush to preventive war were consigned to a paragraph on the back pages or wholly ignored. A philanthropist had to pay the Times to print the full text of Byrd's powerful February 12, 2003, speech against the war in a full-page advertisement on March 9.

Sen. Jacob Collamer (1791 - 1865) of Vermont was an antislavery Republican who served in the Senate 1855-1865. The particular issue at hand was expansionism to the south, first of all the seizure of Cuba, which was then a Spanish colony. Southerners were increasingly aggressive in their demands that new Latin American territories, such as Cuba, Nicaragua and a larger portion of Mexico, be occupied and converted into American states. Slave states. Economics were part of the pressure. But what was key was the political imperative to territorial expansion that drove the Slave Power.

The following excerpt is from a speech of Collamer's of 02/21/1859 in the Senate, as reported by The Congressional Globe, which had not yet been succeeded by the Congressional Record as the official record of Congressional proceedings. He references the Mexican War, aka, la guerra de los Estados Unidos a México, assume the official version about Mexican territorial aggression to be true. His point gets to the generally accepted principle, although antislavery advocates were generally opposed to the Mexican War and contested President Polk's highly dubious factual claims about the official cause of war. Collamer to the Senate:

Mr. President, the Constitution provides that Congress shall declare war. What is war? I say, forcible occupation of any part of any country by armies is war. You need not qualify it by saying it is an act of war, that it is hostility, or something of that kind - it is war. Sir, when the Emperor of Russia took possession of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia with a military force, merely on the ground claimed to give protection to the Greek Church, all Europe declared that war existed. [He refers to the Crimean War of 1853-56.] They made no more declarations. It was prosecuted as a war, and terminated as a war, after all its scenes of blood. When Mexico sent an army across the Rio Grande they were driven out, after the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma; but the act they did was to come over with an army, to cross the Rio Grande into a country which they claimed; and what was done? Our Congress declared that war existed by the act of Mexico. So we ourselves have indorsed [sic] it, that the occupancy of any part of any country by a military force is war. Now, sir, I have merely this to say: when the Constitution says that Congress shall declare war, I take it, it necessarily implies this: that no war shall exist in this country by the act of the functionaries of this Government unless Congress has passed upon the constitutional causes of that war. When power is given to them to declare war, there is given to them, and to them only, the power to judge whether there is occasion for a war; and it necessarily follows that if any war exists in this country, not declared upon us from abroad, but by the act of this country, if war exists by any other instrumentality than the declaration of Congress, it exists unconstitutionally.

The people of this country had been, long before the adoption of their form of Constitution, the colonists and descendants of the people of England. They had lived under a Government where the discretion of the king could involve the nation in war when he pleased; they had had enough of that; and accordingly, in the Constitution, they carefully reserved the power to make war to be alone in Congress. When it is said that really our people would be better protected abroad if it was known that the President could at once use force and make war when he pleased, that those Governments would be more careful in the treatment of our citizens, what does that mean? Why it means this: a monarchical form of Government with the power of war in the hands of the Executive, is a desirable Government, better than ours. It is a power needed, and it should be had, in the Executive. Sir, the Constitution is not so; the people thought otherwise when they made it. But it is said the President can involve this nation in war whenever he pleases, in the exercise of his diplomatic power; he has nothing to do but to send an insolent correspondence to a foreign nation and involve the nation in war. Because the President may, by abusing the power that he has, make a war, is a miserable argument that we should give him the right to make war when he pleases without abusing anything. If he abuses his diplomatic power for such a purpose, he may be impeached. If you tell him he may use his discretion about going to war when one of our men is imprisoned in Mexico, he can go to war and cannot be impeached. It is no reason, because he has the power by abusing his diplomatic functions to involve this nation in war and subject himself to an impeachment, that, therefore, you shall give him the power to make war so that he shall do it without impeachment.

For another historical footnote, the Czar of Russia at the time was regarded by democrats in Europe and in America as the symbol of reactionary, oppressive autocracy. Russia had confirmed their status as such in their important role in the repression of the democratic revolutions that swept Europe in 1848. Although Britain and France united with the (Islamic) Ottoman Empire to fight Russia in the Crimean War, the Czar was still widely regarded as the ultimate guarantee of monarchical government in most of Europe.

In that regard, it's worth noting that Collamer, born during George Washington's first term as President, recognized in this speech that the power to start wars was one of the most dangerous powers of a monarchy. And that giving the President the sole authority to initiate war was a fundamental contradiction of Democratic government. In this, he echoed what Congressman Abraham Lincoln had written 11 years to his friend William Herndon in a letter of 02/15/1849 about Presidential power to start a war on his own authority:

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our [Constitutional] Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.

Tags: guerra de los estados unidos a méxico, guerra mexicano-estadounidense, mexican-american+war, war powers, us civil war

Confederate "Heritage" Month, April 13: A contemporary polemic against the Mexican War

I recently came across a reprint of a pamphlet published in 1849, reprinted from the Southern Presbyterian Review of that day, called A Review of the Mexican War on Christian Principles by the Rev. Philip Berry.

It's always interesting to see contemporary works on historical events, because they can give you more of a feel for the particular ways in which an event was discussed at the time. Rev. Berry expends considerable energy hashing through the territorial claims to the portion of land between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers, which nominally provoked the start of the war. While historians today pay attention to the claim, it seems relatively trivial in retrospect, because it is obvious now that people then were very much aware that the war involved the annexation of the province of Texas by the United States and its permanent separation from Mexico and President James Polk's ambitions to seize California, as well.

Although Berry is very critical of the Polk administration's war and argues that it was wrong for the US to push into Mexico City once the Rio Grande boundary of Texas was secured, he accepts the claims of Texas and the Polk administration to the disputed land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. He also expresses sympathy for the dubious claims of the Texans in their 1836 declaration of independence to have been opposing a "military dictatorship" in Mexico.

Still, Berry blames the US side for unnecessarily provoking the military clashes that provided the excuse for starting the Mexican-American War. Here is how he makes the argument:

When the government of Mexico refused communication with that of the United States, on the application of the latter, through an express envoy, the government of the United States could but act on the best information it could obtain, with reference to the boundary of this country, at the frontier of Mexico. It was therefore politically warranted in stationing troops anywhere within the boundary line represented by Texas as her's, previously to the act of annexation; though it would not be morally warranted in making no discrimination between the historical line (wherever ascertainable) and the revolutionary one. Nor, in fact, was this government indiscriminate, as regarded New Mexico, the possession of which was not attempted. All the arrangements, however, should have been so made as to avoid, rather than evince a readiness for, the issue. The Americans were in quiet possession of the region west of the Nueces, with very little exception, whilst Gen. Taylor's force remained at Corpus Christi, near that river. "To repel any invasion of the Texan territory which might be attempted by the Mexican forces, it was deemed sufficient, in the spring of 1845, that our squadron had been ordered to the gulf, and our army to take a position between the Nueces and the Del Norte (or Rio Grande)" [quote from Polk]. It was in pursuance of this order that General Taylor took the position above mentioned. No Mexican forces had then crossed the Rio Grande; all was quiet as long as General Taylor remained near the Nueces. (my emphasis)

What then were the augmented necessities of the case which, in the following spring, impelled the advance of our army to the banks of the Rio Grande? There had been indeed a change of government — Herrera deposed — Paredes in power. "The partisans of Paredes (as our minister in the despatch referred to states,) breathed the fiercest hostility against the United States." The re-conquest of Texas and war with the United States were openly threatened. These were the circumstances existing, when it was deemed proper to order the army under the command of General Taylor to advance to the western frontier of Texas, and occupy a position on or near the Rio Grande [according to a Presidential message by Polk]. If these were all the circumstances that created the propriety of marching the troops from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, in what remarkable particular did this propriety outweigh that which required the army to remain at the former station? — "the threatened invasion from Mexico?" There had been such menaces from Mexico for several years before our army entered Texas. If Mexico was until then unequal to the fulfilment of her menaces, or abstained from attempt to carry them into effect, what probability was there of her so doing, when our army was there? What effect had yet been consequent on the circular of Condé, the Mexican Minister of War, as far back as in July, 1845, announcing to various authorities that war was declared against the United Stales, arid enunciating the vocabulary of military preparation? It has resulted as was apparently taken for granted that it would, there being at the time little curiosity as to what "might in that noise reside!" The attitude of Mexico was subsequently scarcely more threatening than aforetime. And without assuming it to have been the effect exclusively of our advanced position, experiance has proved that collision — sanguinary collision — look place very soon afterwards; while there is far from being ground, as suggested by previous experience, for the expectation of such collision, had our army retained its position at Corpus Christi. It has been indeed stated, and we have no contradiction of it, that General Arista, Commanding on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, proposed to General Taylor that they should retain their relative positions, to avoid collision. In fact, the object of the Mexican army crossing the Rio Grande does not appear to have been so much for the purpose of contesting a question of boundary ... as for protecting her citizens on the east bank, who were regarded, though without sufficient reason, as molested by the approach of an American army - a motive anything but discreditable to Mexico.

Polk wasn't just concerned about militarily securing Texas. He wanted to use the military pressure on Mexico to force them to sell California to the US, as well.

Berry is here framing an argument around one of the key elements in the Christian doctrine of the Just War, that war should be undertaken only as a last resort. After noting - bitterly it appears - that future generations would likely regard the US cause in that war as a just one, he summarizes his position. Note that Berry uses "United States" as a plural phrase. This was the customary usage in English prior to the Civil War. Since the Civil War, "United States" in English is used as a singular phrase. Evern English grammar reflects the decisive decision that the Civil War represented in favorite of the democratic Jacksonian notion of American nationhood and against the Calhoun/Confederate secessionist concept. Berry:

Such was the origin and commencement of the Mexican war ... a war that might ... have been avoided by the United States, had they been so disposed, probably without diminution of an inch of territory, certainly without detriment to their soil or their people, or even what is called their honour - a war, consequently, which no degree of political justice (in the ordinary sense of the expression,) could morally justify.

Berry addresses various justifications raised by defenders of the Polk policy, some of which sound awfully familiar: the Polk administration showed great forebearance in its prewar dealings with Mexico; it was necessary to show the Mexicans that Constitutional procedures (getting approval from Congress prior to starting a war) would not hamper the US in its international dealings; Mexico was planning to establish and monarchy; the US needed "to present evidences of our warlike capacities to the rest of the world" (we call it "toughness" and Will in contemporary language).

One section of Berry's pamphlet I don't quite know how to read. He seems to think that American troops behaved much more responsibly and humanely toward the captured and wounded of the opposing army than did the Mexicans. But he goes into some length to tell stories in a fairly maudlin mode of the noble Mexican women who tended to wounded American soldiers.

What Berry's pamphlet does not include is any discussion of the larger political context of the war, of which the most obvious are the impulse for American expansionism and the slavery issue. I have to wonder if that might not have something to do with the fact he first published the piece in the Southern Presbyterian Review. Because the antislavery Wilmot Proviso, an amendment that was attached to a war-related Congressional appropriation in 1846, became the main vehicle around which opponents of the Polk war policies focused. The fact that the slavery issue goes unmentioned in Berry's pamphlet thus really sticks out.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2008, guerra de estados unidos a méxico, guerra mexicano-estadounidense, mexican-american war

Confederate "Heritage" Month, April 12a: Timeline of Mexican War

Gen. Winfield Scott enters Mexico City, March 1847

This post provides a timeline for some of the major milestones of the Mexican War.

Mexican Government:

1821: Spanish colonial authorities give Moses Austin permission for 300 American families to immigrate into Texas

1822: Iturbide becomes Emperor. Mexico achieves formal independence. US recognizes Mexican independence in October. Santa Anna begins revolt against Iturbide.

To expand a bit on 1822, the years 1820-23 were a period in which the tyrannical government of Fernando VII in Spain agree to place back into effect the liberal Constitution of Cádiz. The sitting viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), Apodaca, supported the move as did large sections of the politically active Mexican population. But the aristocracy in New Spain and the Church hierarchy there came up with a plan to declare Mexican independence and proclaim a Mexican Empire, with the crown offered to Fernando VII or another Bourbon. Gen. Augustín de Iturbide allied with the monarchist conspirators. The Imperio Mexicano officially came into being on Sept. 27, 1821, initially ruled by a junta. Iturbide was crowned Emperor Augustine I on Feb. 21, 1822. Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna began a revolt against Iturbide late in 1822.

1823: The Santa Anna-led revolt ends with the installation of a new junta on Nov. 7; Central American provinces decide for independence of Mexico, Chiapas province chooses to remain part of Mexico

1824: Mexican Republic proclaimed on Oct. 4. Guadalupe Victoria becomes President.

1825: Treaty of Peace and Friendship between US and Mexico

1827: Military rebellion in Otumba, Mexico, which raises objections to US intrigues in Mexican politics

1829: Vicente Guerrero becomes President; Guerrero's government successfully repels an invasion by 3,000 Spanish troops, demonstrating Mexico's defensive capabilities

1830: Anastasio Bustamante seizes power in a revolt, becomes President of the Republic

1831: Bustamante's government executes Guerrero by firing squad

1833: Gen. Manuel Gómez Pedraza becomes President for three months; Santa Anna becomes President - between 1833 and 1855, he will be in and out of the Presidency 11 times; his Vice President Valentín Gómez de Farías plays a large role in the Santa Anna government for the next two years; Gómez Farías was a committed liberal, but Santa Anna's more conservative sympathies limited liberal reform

1836: Santa Anna conducts war of independence against Mexico; Santa Anna captured by Texans, signs Treaty of Velasco granting Texas independence; Mexican Congress adopts the liberal Constitution of 1836 that comes into effect Jan. 1, 1837

1837: Bustamante elected President

1838: France attempts to seize Veracruz, repelled by Santa Anna in la Guerra de los Pasteles, in which Santa Anna loses a leg

1841: A three-man military junta (Generals Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga, Gabriel Valencia and Santa Anna) ousts Bustamante as President; Santa Anna becomes provisional president in a military dictatorship

1842: Santa Anna names Nicolas Bravo President

1843: Santa Anna returns to the Presidency, which he soon passes to Valentín Canalizo

1844: Santa Anna elected President, requests funds for a military expedition against Texas; Paredes begins a revolt in Guadaljara against Santa Anna's government; Santa Anna places Canalizo in again as interim president while he leads an army against Paredes; officials and citizens of Mexico City imprison Canalizo in December; José Joaquín de Herrera becomes President

1845: Santa Anna jailed, then exiled to Cuba; Paredes presses revolt against Herrera

1846: Paredes ousts Herrera and becomes President; Paredes ousted by army revolt in August; Nicolás Bravo serves as substitute President; Gen. Marioano Sala and Valentín Gómez de Farías become heads of interim government; Santa Anna returns in August to lead the army against the United States; Gómez Farías elected President;

Mariano Paredes de Arrillaga

1847: Santa Anna resumes Presidency; Pedro María Anaya becomes substitute President; Manuel de la Peña y Peña serves as interim president (Sept-Nov) while US occupies capital; Anaya again becomes interim President

Feb 1848: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed ending war with the US

June 1848: Peña again becomes interim president (Jan-June); Herrera returns to Presidency in June, serves until 1851

See timeline for Administración Nacional at Archivo General de la Nación México.

Texas:

1835: rebellion against Mexico begins with a tentative declaration of independence in Nacogdoches on 11/07

1836: Texas formally declares independence in New Washington on 03/02; Sam Houston selected as President, Lorenzo de Zaval as Vice President; Texans defeated and massacred by Santa Anna's troops at Ft. Alamo in March; Sam Houston's Texas troops defeat Santa Anna's army at the Battle of San Jacinto and takes Santa Anna prisoner; Santa Anna signs treaty granting Texas independence

United States:

1820: Compromise of 1820; slavery issue emerges as a serious regional division

1844: Treaty of annexation between the US and Texas signed in March, rejected by the Senate; Democrat James K. Polk elected President, takes office in March of 1845

1845: Polk sends John Slidell to Mexico to negotiate sale of Texas and California to the US

Mar 1845: Congress approves annexation of Texas through joint resolution

Dec 1845: US formally annexes Texas as a slave state

Jan 1846: Polk presses military confrontation with Mexico at the piece of land between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers that is in dispute between Texas and Mexico

July 1846: John Charles Fremont proclaims the fake Republic of California (Bear Flag Republic)

Mar 1847: US troops under Gen. Winfield Scott enter Mexico City

Feb 1848: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed ending war with Mexico

Tags: confederate heritage month 2008, guerra de estados unidos a méxico, guerra mexicano-estadounidense, mexican-american war

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

Confederate "Heritage" Month, April 9: Texas and Mexico

US President John Tyler, later a supporter of the Confederacy

Texas was a province of Mexico until they achieved their independence in 1836. Mexico never recognized the independence of Texas. Mexico ceded their claims to Texas at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War (1846-48).

It was in 1821 when Mexico was still ruled by a Spanish viceroy that a grant given to Moses Austin had allowed 300 American families to settle in the province of Texas.

Walter LaFeber on Texas independence from The American Age (1989):

The three hundred American families led by Moses Austin into Texas during 1819-1821 had become 15,000 Americans by 1830. The Mexican province turned into another part of the American frontier as immigrants, lured by the possibility of obtaining 4,400 acres of land for a mere $200, flocked in to find their fortune. In addition to accepting Mexican citizenship. Mexico required the settlers to be Roman Catholic and have no slaves. The Americans ignored the last two rules. In 1830. Mexico City officials realized that Texas was being swamped by the multiplying Americans, some of whom ranked among the most uncontrollable gunslingers on the frontier. Santa Anna, who ruled Mexico, finally abolished all state legislatures, centralized power in Mexico City, and moved an army into Texas to control the settlers. Instead of obeying, the Texans replayed 1775—1776: they demanded full restoration of their rights, set up Committees of Correspondence to coordinate resistance, and finally, in 1836, declared their independence. Texas won a short, bloody war. The new government was helped by thousands of Americans who rushed in for glory, action and land. Some of the emigrants died when the Texas garrison at the Alamo was wiped out in early 1836, but others helped win the pivotal battle of San Jacinto. Meanwhile, Stephen Austin, Moses' son, borrowed most of his funds from the United States to fight the war.

The antislavery movement was emerging into general public consciousness and becoming a real political force in the 1830s. Slavery oppenents like John Quincy Adams and the writer and advocate of women's rights Lydia Maria Child raised opposition to the annexation of Texas to the US because it would increase the American territory in which slavery was allowed.

James Polk won as the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1844 against Whig Henry Clay. Polk ran on the promise of annexing Texas and a maximal version of Oregon to the United States. The negotiations with Britain over the boundaries of Oregon led to a lot of militant rhetoric, and also inspired editor John L. O'Sullivan of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review to coin the term Manifest Destiny. After quite a bit of posturing, Polk agreed to settle the border at what's now the Washington-Canadian border (the 49th parallel). Polk was facing a war with Mexico, which he figured would be easier to win than a war with Britain, especially if he didn't have to fight both simultaneously.

LaFeber notes an interesting aspect of this confrontation. Polk expected that Britain would back down because of their dependence on American cotton. But Britain mobilized for war and it was Polk who wound up retreating from his maximum demands. Fifteen years later, the Southern planters expected that the power of King Cotton would get the Confederacy British recognition and aid. They, too, were disappointed.

Outgoing Whig/Democratic President John Tyler failed to win the two-thirds Senate approval for a treaty annexing Texas. (Tyler was kicked out of the Whig Party while he was President and returned to the Democratic Party after his Presidency.) But he established a new Constitutional precedent by asking them to annex the new state by joint resolution, which required only a majority, though in both houses. Concerns over conflict with Mexico and over the addition of a new slave state held the Senate approval to a 27-25 vote. But that was good enough. Texas formally entered the Union as a slave state on December 29, 1845.

President Tyler, it's worth noting, later supported the Confederacy. He died in 1862, when he was a member of the House of Representatives of the Confederate State of America, though it was a few days before he could formally begin service in the Rebel Congress. It's sad and outrageous that a former President of the United States would embrace out-and-out treason like Tyler did.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2008, guerra de estados unidos a méxico, guerra mexicano-estadounidense, mexican-american war