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1Michael_Welch
I just finished Robert W. Merry's "A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent" (published 2010).
I read it to sort of get a better idea of "the border" and its history and ramifications and I did but I was also struck by the "polarization" of politics during Polk's time (his administration: Mar 4 1845-Mar 4 1849; he was the 11th president of the United States and a Jacksonian Democrat from Tennessee), the amount of dissent re the Mexican war (it included Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster as well as a freshman representative to the US house from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln) and the internal bickering within the Polk administration (e. g., his sec'y of state James Buchanan was constantly undermining his own president).
I also have come to the conclusion that the acquisition of what we know today as "the American southwest" (where I live) as well as California and the Pacific northwest (accomplished as well by Polk) was "necessary" and even beneficial to all concerned as well as nigh near "inevitable" although I realize that is a problematic term.
The war itself was fought successfully by its two main generals, Zachary Taylor (on the border of Texas) and Winfield Scott (within "the interior") although some of Taylor's battles were superfluous exercises in rescuing himself and his army from situations HE got them into while Scott conducted a superb campaign as an arrogant and inordinately ambitious Whig who needlessly created conflicts within his officer corps and with his commander in chief that finally led to court martial proceedings!
Whigs such as Clay, Webster and yes Lincoln opposed the war on the grounds that instead of defending the borders of the Texas annexation, Polk meant to have a "war of conquest," particularly of the territory leading to and then including "Upper California" (though he wanted the "baja" too). I think the Whigs in this case were quite right about Polk's actual aims BUT the Mexicans also foolishly invaded the "frontier" between the Rio Bravo del Norte (or the "Rio Grande") and the Nueces river as part of a really impossible effort to reconquer Texas, thereby giving Polk just the excuse he wanted.
Democrats however like Calhoun (a "complex" man, not easily "boxed" as only a southern apologist for slavery) feared a CULTURAL and POLITICAL alteration of American Anglo-Saxon and Scot-Irish society by encompassing an Hispano-Indian culture and tradition dominated or at least influenced by Roman Catholicism. Calhoun "warned" that "things would change" in the very nature of American life up to then if a "vast" region of such diversity was to be incorporated into the political and societal structure hitherto.
Other Democrats like former president Martin Van Buren simply objected to the possibility (almost non existent by the way except for Texas, as Polk himself, a slaveowner, acknowledged) of more "slave states" hewed from huge Texas or the New Mexican territory (which included present day Arizona).
But despite the truly precarious quality of Polk's presidency (perhaps as precarious as Obama's) Polk was able to accomplish ALL four of his pledged aims in the campaign of 1844 (in which he defeated Clay but by a narrow margin): 1) the acquisition of the Oregon territory (present day Oregon, Washington and parts of Idaho), in dispute with the British and accomplished without war; 2) that acquisition of the southwest and California albeit with a war; 3) the downward revision of the tariff of 1842 and 4) the establishment of a US treasury "bank" independent of any other banks which remained "the system" until Wilson's Federal Reserve.
Polk then is often rated as one of the "best" presidents, or at least one of, if not THE most successful. Moreover he promised to serve but one term, refused to support efforts by the Democrats to renominate him in '48, retired on Mar 4 1849 and then "promptly" died four months later!...
I read it to sort of get a better idea of "the border" and its history and ramifications and I did but I was also struck by the "polarization" of politics during Polk's time (his administration: Mar 4 1845-Mar 4 1849; he was the 11th president of the United States and a Jacksonian Democrat from Tennessee), the amount of dissent re the Mexican war (it included Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster as well as a freshman representative to the US house from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln) and the internal bickering within the Polk administration (e. g., his sec'y of state James Buchanan was constantly undermining his own president).
I also have come to the conclusion that the acquisition of what we know today as "the American southwest" (where I live) as well as California and the Pacific northwest (accomplished as well by Polk) was "necessary" and even beneficial to all concerned as well as nigh near "inevitable" although I realize that is a problematic term.
The war itself was fought successfully by its two main generals, Zachary Taylor (on the border of Texas) and Winfield Scott (within "the interior") although some of Taylor's battles were superfluous exercises in rescuing himself and his army from situations HE got them into while Scott conducted a superb campaign as an arrogant and inordinately ambitious Whig who needlessly created conflicts within his officer corps and with his commander in chief that finally led to court martial proceedings!
Whigs such as Clay, Webster and yes Lincoln opposed the war on the grounds that instead of defending the borders of the Texas annexation, Polk meant to have a "war of conquest," particularly of the territory leading to and then including "Upper California" (though he wanted the "baja" too). I think the Whigs in this case were quite right about Polk's actual aims BUT the Mexicans also foolishly invaded the "frontier" between the Rio Bravo del Norte (or the "Rio Grande") and the Nueces river as part of a really impossible effort to reconquer Texas, thereby giving Polk just the excuse he wanted.
Democrats however like Calhoun (a "complex" man, not easily "boxed" as only a southern apologist for slavery) feared a CULTURAL and POLITICAL alteration of American Anglo-Saxon and Scot-Irish society by encompassing an Hispano-Indian culture and tradition dominated or at least influenced by Roman Catholicism. Calhoun "warned" that "things would change" in the very nature of American life up to then if a "vast" region of such diversity was to be incorporated into the political and societal structure hitherto.
Other Democrats like former president Martin Van Buren simply objected to the possibility (almost non existent by the way except for Texas, as Polk himself, a slaveowner, acknowledged) of more "slave states" hewed from huge Texas or the New Mexican territory (which included present day Arizona).
But despite the truly precarious quality of Polk's presidency (perhaps as precarious as Obama's) Polk was able to accomplish ALL four of his pledged aims in the campaign of 1844 (in which he defeated Clay but by a narrow margin): 1) the acquisition of the Oregon territory (present day Oregon, Washington and parts of Idaho), in dispute with the British and accomplished without war; 2) that acquisition of the southwest and California albeit with a war; 3) the downward revision of the tariff of 1842 and 4) the establishment of a US treasury "bank" independent of any other banks which remained "the system" until Wilson's Federal Reserve.
Polk then is often rated as one of the "best" presidents, or at least one of, if not THE most successful. Moreover he promised to serve but one term, refused to support efforts by the Democrats to renominate him in '48, retired on Mar 4 1849 and then "promptly" died four months later!...
2rolandperkins
"dissent (From Mexican War)
...included Clay, Calhoun,
Webster and Lincoln." (1)
Michael, I remembered reading (in a Jr. H.S. text of Clayʻs and Calhounʻs being "Hawks", but then I remembered that that was in connection with the War of 1812. Itʻs still hard to believe that
Calhoun didnʻt join the majority of Southern politicians who were "Hawksʻ re the Mexican War. Websterʻs (W, NH) being a "dove", (though they didnʻt use that word then) only placed him with the majority of New England politicians I wonder what is your source.
Lincolnʻs (W, Il) opposition I knew about, but not from any academic source: There is a
plaque in honor of his having traveled all the way from what they then called "The West" to speak against the war at
the Unitarian Church on Beacon St., Boston.
...included Clay, Calhoun,
Webster and Lincoln." (1)
Michael, I remembered reading (in a Jr. H.S. text of Clayʻs and Calhounʻs being "Hawks", but then I remembered that that was in connection with the War of 1812. Itʻs still hard to believe that
Calhoun didnʻt join the majority of Southern politicians who were "Hawksʻ re the Mexican War. Websterʻs (W, NH) being a "dove", (though they didnʻt use that word then) only placed him with the majority of New England politicians I wonder what is your source.
Lincolnʻs (W, Il) opposition I knew about, but not from any academic source: There is a
plaque in honor of his having traveled all the way from what they then called "The West" to speak against the war at
the Unitarian Church on Beacon St., Boston.
3Michael_Welch
The "source" is Merry's book of course (and his source is the congressional record of the time); it's an interesting read and as I caution, you should not assume Calhoun is a "simple" man.
One can be "for" expansion in a certain situation and at a certain time and against it at another -- the circumstances of 1812 were not those of 1846-48 and obviously not as successful as per the "northern" border eh.
Calhoun stated that he "accepted" the war once begun but he doubted the results would be as sanguine (rather "sanguinary" as it turned out; and the Mexican war hastened the crisis of the 1850s over slavery's expansion) as some supposed.
The historian Odie Faulk who has written a short account of the war has remarked that certainly the conquered areas were "better off" as part of the US. Mexico was in the 1840s as it is today -- basically a dysfunctional state with rampant official corruption which hardly controls anything outside the federal district.
The situation in the 1840s was as per Lyndon Johnson re south Vietnam in the mid 1960s: "What's all this 'coup' shit?!"
It's like "they say": "we stole Texas et. al., 'fair and square'"...
One can be "for" expansion in a certain situation and at a certain time and against it at another -- the circumstances of 1812 were not those of 1846-48 and obviously not as successful as per the "northern" border eh.
Calhoun stated that he "accepted" the war once begun but he doubted the results would be as sanguine (rather "sanguinary" as it turned out; and the Mexican war hastened the crisis of the 1850s over slavery's expansion) as some supposed.
The historian Odie Faulk who has written a short account of the war has remarked that certainly the conquered areas were "better off" as part of the US. Mexico was in the 1840s as it is today -- basically a dysfunctional state with rampant official corruption which hardly controls anything outside the federal district.
The situation in the 1840s was as per Lyndon Johnson re south Vietnam in the mid 1960s: "What's all this 'coup' shit?!"
It's like "they say": "we stole Texas et. al., 'fair and square'"...
4RickHarsch
The 'better off' argument simply doesn't convince me.
5Michael_Welch
By the way Webster was a senator from Massachusetts although he was born in New Hampshire...
6Michael_Welch
It may not convince but if I had the choice of living in say Arizona as part of the United States I'd choose that rather than as part of Mexico and so apparently do thousands of Mexicans as well as Hondurans, Guatemalans etc. -- but then ask me as per the Netherlands or Denmark hmmm...
7RickHarsch
Sure, Michael, but you have to ask yourself how thing turned out the way they did in these countries. Particularly easy is Guatemala, a virtual US plantation until they started fighting back, and then a virtual US training-slaughterhouse.
8Michael_Welch
I don't think if the southwest were still Mexican it would have altered so much in Guatemala but then I doubt the southwest COULD have STAYED Mexican -- it simply wasn't being settled by Mexicans (then) but more and more by Americans...
9RickHarsch
I think you missed my point.
10Michael_Welch
Well I'm not arguing that US policies in central America or re Mexico have not been self serving and detrimental to the populations but I still don't see how the southwest and California could have remained Mexican.
But perhaps what you are arguing is that a United States DIMINISHED in area, power etc., would have been "better" for Latin America than the "superpower" and the one that believed in its "manifest destiny"? That may or may not be so but Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams and even John C. Calhoun envisioned a "destiny" on a somewhat "smaller" scale too.
Ironically Lincoln, the critic of the Mexican war at the time, and U. S. Grant, a young cavalry lieutenant serving with Taylor who thought the war an immoral attack of the strong upon the weak and said so in his famous "Memoirs," ended up creating one of the greatest military powers in the world and ensuring it dominated "coast to coast." Lincoln admired really only Clay as a politician but Jackson as a staunch unionist. The expansion of the United States was one of the main causes of the civil war but the civil war made the US a great power...
But perhaps what you are arguing is that a United States DIMINISHED in area, power etc., would have been "better" for Latin America than the "superpower" and the one that believed in its "manifest destiny"? That may or may not be so but Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams and even John C. Calhoun envisioned a "destiny" on a somewhat "smaller" scale too.
Ironically Lincoln, the critic of the Mexican war at the time, and U. S. Grant, a young cavalry lieutenant serving with Taylor who thought the war an immoral attack of the strong upon the weak and said so in his famous "Memoirs," ended up creating one of the greatest military powers in the world and ensuring it dominated "coast to coast." Lincoln admired really only Clay as a politician but Jackson as a staunch unionist. The expansion of the United States was one of the main causes of the civil war but the civil war made the US a great power...
11Michael_Welch
Some quotes to underscore my points:
"As the 'Union' {the official national Democratic paper} complained 'The Whig members of the house of representatives are piling resolutions upon resolutions against the war.'...
"One was Abraham Lincoln, a lanky Illinois legislator in his late thirties with a hero worship regard for Henry Clay. He called on the president to answer eight questions designed to elicit an admission that the war's first blood had been spilled not on American soil but on disputed soil.
"Later Lincoln rose on the house floor to direct his considerable rhetorical flair against the beleaguered president. He accused Polk of seeking 'to avoid the scrutiny of his own conduct...by fixing the public eye upon military glory -- that rainbow that rises in showers of blood -- that serpent's eye that charms but to destroy.' The president 'talked like an insane man' the combative freshman said, adding 'His mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and thither like an ant on a hot stove.'" (p 411)
Interesting the "showers of blood" which would become virtual "oceans" of such during Lincoln's own presidency and the ad hominem attack on Polk would resemble those on Lincoln himself. It's easier to criticize presidents than to be one I guess.
On Calhoun:
"...The South Carolinian rose on the senate floor in early January {1848} to deliver an hour long speech on the subject {of the war}.
"He had opposed the war declared Calhoun not simply because he considered it unnecessary and avoidable or because he thought Polk had no authority to seize disputed territory or because he rejected the allegations upon which congress had sanctioned it. No he said, his central concern was that 'I believed it would lead to great and serious evils to the country and greatly endanger its free institutions.'...
"Calhoun dismissed those who believed America could build up from the ashes of Mexico's defeat a free and independent republic that would operate like the United States. He couldn't see he confessed how such a republic could grow up under the protection and authority of its conqueror. An aristocracy yes; a 'kingly government' perhaps; a despotism certainly. But he added 'I had always supposed that republican government was the spontaneous work of the people -- that it came from the people -- from the hearts of the people -- that it was supported by the hearts of the people and that it required no support, no protection from any quarter whatsoever.'...
"{Calhoun} saw his country's identity wrapped up not just in the northern European, protestant culture that was its heritage and not just in the elaborate and profound democratic creed bequeathed by its founders but also in its racial and ethnic makeup -- Caucasian and Anglo Saxon. And he saw in a conquest of Mexico a fundamental threat to the racial and ethnic identity of the United States.
"'I know...sir' said Calhoun 'that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our union any but the Caucasian race -- the free white race. To incorporate Mexico would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race.... Ours sir is the government of the white man.... And yet it is professed and talked about to erect these Mexicans into a territorial government and place them on an equality with the people of the United States. I protest utterly such a project!'
"Beyond that Calhoun concluded, it wasn't possible for America to be an empire and a republic at the same time because such imperial ambitions would lead inevitably to ever greater concentrations of power in the federal government.... There was no historical precedent of such a conquest on such a scale he added, 'without disastrous consequences.... This union would become imperial and the states mere subordinate corporations.'" (pp 413-415)
Calhoun's are I think very apt observations from 165 years ago which resonate in our time as an amalgam in a way of anti immigrant "tea party" attitudes mixed with a more leftist critique of the US as an "imperium" in the guise of a democratic republic?...
"As the 'Union' {the official national Democratic paper} complained 'The Whig members of the house of representatives are piling resolutions upon resolutions against the war.'...
"One was Abraham Lincoln, a lanky Illinois legislator in his late thirties with a hero worship regard for Henry Clay. He called on the president to answer eight questions designed to elicit an admission that the war's first blood had been spilled not on American soil but on disputed soil.
"Later Lincoln rose on the house floor to direct his considerable rhetorical flair against the beleaguered president. He accused Polk of seeking 'to avoid the scrutiny of his own conduct...by fixing the public eye upon military glory -- that rainbow that rises in showers of blood -- that serpent's eye that charms but to destroy.' The president 'talked like an insane man' the combative freshman said, adding 'His mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and thither like an ant on a hot stove.'" (p 411)
Interesting the "showers of blood" which would become virtual "oceans" of such during Lincoln's own presidency and the ad hominem attack on Polk would resemble those on Lincoln himself. It's easier to criticize presidents than to be one I guess.
On Calhoun:
"...The South Carolinian rose on the senate floor in early January {1848} to deliver an hour long speech on the subject {of the war}.
"He had opposed the war declared Calhoun not simply because he considered it unnecessary and avoidable or because he thought Polk had no authority to seize disputed territory or because he rejected the allegations upon which congress had sanctioned it. No he said, his central concern was that 'I believed it would lead to great and serious evils to the country and greatly endanger its free institutions.'...
"Calhoun dismissed those who believed America could build up from the ashes of Mexico's defeat a free and independent republic that would operate like the United States. He couldn't see he confessed how such a republic could grow up under the protection and authority of its conqueror. An aristocracy yes; a 'kingly government' perhaps; a despotism certainly. But he added 'I had always supposed that republican government was the spontaneous work of the people -- that it came from the people -- from the hearts of the people -- that it was supported by the hearts of the people and that it required no support, no protection from any quarter whatsoever.'...
"{Calhoun} saw his country's identity wrapped up not just in the northern European, protestant culture that was its heritage and not just in the elaborate and profound democratic creed bequeathed by its founders but also in its racial and ethnic makeup -- Caucasian and Anglo Saxon. And he saw in a conquest of Mexico a fundamental threat to the racial and ethnic identity of the United States.
"'I know...sir' said Calhoun 'that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our union any but the Caucasian race -- the free white race. To incorporate Mexico would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race.... Ours sir is the government of the white man.... And yet it is professed and talked about to erect these Mexicans into a territorial government and place them on an equality with the people of the United States. I protest utterly such a project!'
"Beyond that Calhoun concluded, it wasn't possible for America to be an empire and a republic at the same time because such imperial ambitions would lead inevitably to ever greater concentrations of power in the federal government.... There was no historical precedent of such a conquest on such a scale he added, 'without disastrous consequences.... This union would become imperial and the states mere subordinate corporations.'" (pp 413-415)
Calhoun's are I think very apt observations from 165 years ago which resonate in our time as an amalgam in a way of anti immigrant "tea party" attitudes mixed with a more leftist critique of the US as an "imperium" in the guise of a democratic republic?...
12Michael_Welch
By the way Merry's quotes of the Calhoun speech are from the "Daily Union," that official Democratic organ, under the title "Speech of Mr Calhoun" January 6 1848...
13RickHarsch
I guess I agree with the young Grant.
14Michael_Welch
That's fair.
Grant was underrated as a prez by the way and probably as a general too. After all HE defeated the great Robert E. Lee, not vice versa...
Grant was underrated as a prez by the way and probably as a general too. After all HE defeated the great Robert E. Lee, not vice versa...
