This a superb treatise about the politics of an era lost in vague memories of Manifest Destiny and the Halls of Montezuma. After independence, the US prospered, but not so Mexico. Its population declined, there was significant racial conflict between the Europeans and the Indians, and it became what today is known as a 'failed state'. There was virtually no centralized government and "between 1821 and 1857, the presidency of Mexico changed hands at least fifty times, almost always by coup d'etat". The 'Texians' had achieved independence in 1836, and were clamoring for annexation. That the US would expand from coast-to-coast was a generally accepted principle. The only real questions were how far north and south on the way west, and who might we have to fight to get there.
As the 1844 election approached, all acknowledged that the Great Compromiser, the founder of the Whig Party, the master of the House and later, the Senate, Kentucky's Henry Clay would at long last achieve the prize he had been twice denied. The Democrats were in disarray. They nominated Polk, the 'Young Hickory' after Jackson recommended him for the highest office. He was such a long shot that one Whig paper punned "the Democrats must be Polking fun at us". Clay was opposed to annexation because he knew it would lead to war. Polk made it the central theme of his campaign and he pulled off the upset. America was on the threshold of fulfilling its destiny - Texas, Oregon and California awaited. Annexation was approved by Congress and the President, and Texas joined the union on July 4, 1845. A treaty with England led to Oregon becoming a US territory. Polk provoked a border dispute, and in the summer of 1846 had his war with Mexico. The letter he sent to Congress stating that the US and Mexico were already at war was generally conceded to be a pack of outlandish lies, but the bloodlust for territory was overwhelming. Fourteen votes in the House (including former President Adams) and two in the Senate ( John C. Calhoun abstained) were all that mustered the strength to resist. And from day one Polk made it clear - Texas was a given - he wanted New Mexico and California too. Within a year though, popular enthusiasm began to fade as American atrocities against the perceived racially inferior Mexicans began to see the light of day. A vigorous anti-war movement surfaced in the northeast and Whigs nationally remained opposed. The Wilmot Proviso ( excluding slavery from any territory taken in the war) passed the House, but not the Senate, thus further dividing opinion around the country between pro- and anti-slavery supporters. The war, however, went very well as Gen. Winfield Scott captured and occupied Mexico City on Sept. 14. Polk waited for a surrender and an honorable peace - but it was not forthcoming. The Mexicans opposed the occupation and initiated a low-grade guerrilla resistance. Clay, who had lost his son in battle, protested the war, as did a young Abe Lincoln in his first Congressional speech. The war became so unpopular that many called for the US troops to come home and for Polk to forego his demands for territory. There then arrived from Mexico, six weeks after it had been signed, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It had been negotiated on Polk's terms by his diplomatic agent, Nicholas Biddle. This notwithstanding that Polk recalled Biddle after he realized the diplomat had come to oppose the war and the occupation. Biddle, with the support of Gen. Scott, ignored the recall. The Treaty accepted the Rio Grande as the Texas boundary and awarded New Mexico and Upper California to the US, thus achieving all of Polk's initial war aims.
Polk had won the war, magnificently expanded the country, but lost the day. The Whig General, Zachary Taylor, who had reluctantly participated in the opening invasion of northern Mexico succeeded him in the White House. Polk himself died a few months after he returned home to Tennessee. Taylor supported the Compromise of 1850 allowing California to enter the union as a free state. The war and its aftermath led to the inadequate presidencies of Taylor and Pierce and further exacerbated tension between the north and the south. In his memoirs, one of the successful young West Point officers said that the war "was one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker one and that the Civil War was our punishment for that transgression". Ulysses Grant's opinion represented the late 19th century view of the war. The author closes with, " It is one of the few American wars not commemorated in Washington D.C. There is no monument to the 1847 conflict in the nation's capital , not even a statue."
Clearly, the Mexican-American War was inconsistent with our republican principles. We trumped up a phony war against a harmless neighbor. But, I can't help but conclude that the western half of the US prospered in our system in ways that it never could have in Mexico's. And as a part-time resident of southern California and western Colorado, whose ancestors came to the US a decade after the war, I'm pleased with the consequences of Manifest Destiny.
No comments:
Post a Comment