by Conrad Black
The Democrats also met at Baltimore, starting on May 27, and Van Buren led on the first ballot, but the requirement for a two-thirds approval of the nominees (which continued in that party until 1936) soon ensured that he could not be chosen, such was the antagonism to him in the South. The eminent historian George Bancroft proposed the 48-year-old former Speaker of the House of Representatives and governor of Tennessee (though twice subsequently defeated seeking that office), James Knox Polk. His name was placed in nomination for the eighth ballot and he was selected on the ninth. Silas Wright, an anti-slavery Van Burenite from New York, was nominated for vice president (the flip-side of what the Whigs had done in 1839 by nominating the pro-slavery nullificationist Tyler to run with the stronger Unionist, Harrison). Wright was invited by telegraph and declined by the same new medium, and instead ran successfully for governor of New York. George M. Dallas, a Pennsylvania “doughface” (malleable northern respecter of what was known as the southern slave power), was selected. Tyler assembled his loyalist Democrats on the same day at Baltimore and they nominated him for reelection, but when it became clear that he did not have appreciable support, he withdrew in August, becoming the first of a string of six consecutive presidents not to run for a second term, and the third of a string of 14 out of 16 between Jackson and McKinley not to achieve a second consecutive term (three died in their first terms).
It had become a very difficult office in a severely divided country. Polk represented the annexation of Texas as a patriotic expansion that was already basically committed, and hewed to the Jackson line: slavery would continue where it was part of the culture but not inconvenience those where it was not, and the nation’s rightful growth must not be throttled or deterred because of unfounded fears. Clay continued to represent himself as pro-annexationist on conditions that were vaguely formulated but could not possibly be met.
Polk became the first dark-horse president in the country’s history, and won by a hair’s breadth, 1.34 million votes to 1.3 million for Clay and 62,000 for the anti-slavery Liberty candidate, James G. Birney, or 49.7 percent to 48.3 percent to 2 percent. Birney polled almost 16,000 votes in New York state, where Polk won over Clay by only 5,000. The abolitionists had put the Jacksonian pro-slavery candidate in the White House. For all the support Clay won in the South, he would have been better off to say he was pro-annexation but anti-slavery, or at least for deferring until a later date the issue of whether there would be slavery in Texas. The slavery debate was becoming more desperately serious so quickly that even the country’s most agile politicians could not adjust to it. If Van Buren had shown a little imagination over Texas, he would have been nominated. Once Polk was nominated, if Clay had shown a little more agile footwork, he would have been elected. The electoral vote was 170 to 105. If Clay had had 6,000 more votes in New York, or just taken 3,000 from Polk, he would have won. In the extreme winter of his presidency, three days before Polk’s inauguration on March 4, 1845, Tyler annexed Texas by resolution of both houses of Congress, already ratified by the legislature and the voters of Texas. Tyler had been a scheming and indifferent president, who made a difficult position worse by his many-sided duplicity. As an ex-president, he would dishonor himself by serving in the provisional congress, and being elected to the permanent congress, of the Confederate States in 1861, just before his death in 1862, aged 71.
James K. Polk, an unknown quantity and not a flamboyant or prepossessing man, would shortly prove a very astute operator at all levels. As noteworthy figures in his cabinet he had former minister to Russia and U.S. senator from Pennsylvania James Buchanan, the ultimate doughface, as secretary of state; former governor and senator from New York, a close Van Buren ally, inventor of the phrase “spoils system,” and leader of the relatively slavery-tolerant “hunker” faction in New York, William L. Marcy, as secretary of war; and historian George Bancroft, who had first proposed Polk as president, as secretary of the navy. Mexico broke off diplomatic relations with the United States at the end of March 1845, and decreed a sizeable augmentation of the armed forces. Apart from Texas, other problems between the two countries included border disputes; $2 million owed under various conventions and commissions by Mexico, and unpaid; and the contentious matter of Mexico’s attempted expulsion of American settlers from California, where the Mexicans accurately foresaw another Texas-like incursion.
5. PRESIDENT JAMES K. POLK AND THE MEXICAN WAR
General Zachary Taylor was named commander of the Army of Observation at the end of May and was told to be ready to enter Texas when informed of a Mexican invasion of Texas after Texan accession to U.S. annexation. Taylor’s army had only 3,500 men, a quarter of the forces Washington had had at Yorktown, and half the entire strength of the U.S. Army (which less than 20 years later would be 100 times as large). In July, Taylor advanced to Corpus Christi, about 150 miles from the Rio Grande. In November, Polk sent John Slidell as a special minister plenipotentiary to Mexico, on hearing that Mexico was prepared to resume diplomatic relations, and with a mission to buy California and New Mexico for up to $40 million, concede outstanding money claims, and make the Rio Grande the border between the two countries, incorporating Texas into the U.S. When there was a coup in Mexico at the end of 1845 (a frequent occurrence in that country), Slidell was not received and he departed in March 1846. He advised Washington that the Mexicans had been emboldened by confidence that the United States would soon be going to war with Great Britain over the Oregon boundary dispute. Taylor had moved forward to the Rio Grande in January 1846. In April, General Pedro de Ampudia, commanding 5,700 men, confronted Taylor and told him to withdraw or war would commence.
On December 2, 1845, the U.S. president had enunciated the “Polk Doctrine” —an elaboration of the Monroe Doctrine, by which he reserved exclusively to “the people of this continent” the determination of their “destiny,” and declared that “We can never consent that European powers shall interfere to prevent such a union [as Texas and the U.S.] because it might disturb the ‘balance of power’ which they may desire to maintain on this continent,” and that there would be no further “European colony or dominion” set up anywhere in North America. This was a clever amplification of the Monroe-Adams formulation of 21 years before. It swaddled American imperialism in continental defense and shifted the focus from the United States simply snatching a large chunk of a neighboring country to a forceful defense of North American prerogatives. North America for the North Americans was the fig-leaf placed over the American rape of its southern neighbor. Polk was waving the flag and inciting enthusiasm for “manifest destiny,” a phrase coined by nationalist editor John L. O’Sullivan, and taken up by the New York Morning News at the end of 1845. Before hostilities began in earnest, Polk was trying to put a star-spangled disguise over the slavery implications of the Texas annexation (which would now include New Mexico and parts of the present states of Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado, and Utah).
Polk showed astute strategic and tactical skill in moving to dispose of the Oregon dispute before matters boiled over with Mexico. In his annual message to the Congress on December 2, 1845, Polk claimed the whole of Oregon, recommended the end of the joint convention for Anglo-American occupation, and called for military protection of the Oregon Trail. This got his followers shouting “54°40 or Fight!” and created a bellicose atmosphere for conducting discussions with the British. The British requested renewal by the U.S. of the offer to saw in half the disputed territory, now shared altogether, by extending the 49th parallel as the border to the Pacific, except for the tip of Vancouver Island. Polk denied this but let it be known that if the British requested the resumption of talks, the U.S. would agree. A draft treaty drawn by the British reached Washington on June 6, 1846, and at the same time the British advised the Mexicans that they would not become involved in Mexican-American relations. The British draft was acceptable, extending the 49th parallel, assuring the navigation rights of both countries in the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, and gr
anting the British maritime access to the Columbia River. Polk took the unusually cautious step of submitting the draft to the Senate, where it was overwhelmingly approved. He thus got rid of any possibility of a two-front war, produced an eminently reasonable compromise, and made it impossible for him to be stabbed in the back when at grips with Mexico by allegations of having sold out Oregon. He also brought back the Independent Treasury Act in August 1846, which wasn’t a national bank, but wasn’t the secretary of the Treasury personally managing the currency either, and thus put central banking on a sound basis before war had begun in earnest with Mexico, unlike the monetary chaos in the midst of which Madison had gone into the War of 1812.
On April 25, 1846, 11 of General Taylor’s cavalrymen were killed by the Maxi-cans and Taylor reported to Washington that hostilities had begun. Polk called for a declaration of war on May 9, and this was voted 174–14 in the House, and a motion denying approval of Polk’s action in occupying disputed territory and provoking Mexico was voted down 97–27. The president thus barely protected himself against the not-unfounded charge of warmongering, and the Senate passed the declaration of war 40–2. The initial actions were along the Rio Grande, where Taylor, though substantially outnumbered, defeated the Mexicans at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, inflicting about a 1,000 casualties and suffering just 48 dead and 120 American wounded. The Mexicans were adequately brave and motivated, but under-equipped and under-trained, and the quality of their officers was poor. Mexico started with an undisciplined army of 32,000, while the United States bulked up its army from 7,000 to 104,000, though only 31,000 were regulars, as opposed to reservists sauntering in with their own rifles and a rather casual approach to military discipline.
Zachary Taylor and the timeless Winfield Scott, who had distinguished himself in the War of 1812 more than 30 years before, were the leading American generals. The benefits of Jefferson’s military academy (West Point) were already evident, and among the junior officers in this war who would within 20 years achieve world fame and in some cases immortality were Captain Robert E. Lee, Lieutenants Thomas Jonathan Jackson, James Longstreet, Braxton Bragg, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, George G. Meade, George H. Thomas, and George B. McClellan, and Colonel Joseph E. Johnston. The advantages of a professional, non-political officer corps would soon become clear to the whole world. This is one of Thomas Jefferson’s achievements for which he has received insufficient credit.
President Polk and War Secretary Marcy, though their backgrounds were, respectively, southern legislative log-rolling and New York boiler-room machine politics, soon proved very capable war leaders. They sat down with General Scott on May 14 and worked out the war plan. General Stephen W Kearny, with a cavalry regiment from Fort Leavenworth, was declared to be commander of the Army of the West and dispatched to take Santa Fe, New Mexico, and drive on to San Diego and Los Angeles, assisted by naval forces conducting minor amphibious operations on the California coast, and by groups of armed settlers. There was a certain amount of backing and filling in California, with both American and Mexican settlers staging revolts, but this phase of operations went off more or less as planned. Taylor would wage a battle of the frontiers and shatter the Mexican forces in front of him and take Monterrey and Buena Vista, and Scott would be landed from the sea at the great Mexican fortress of Veracruz and would move inland and occupy the capital, Mexico City. It was an imaginative, practical plan that was successfully executed, and was a stark contrast to the fantasies entertained in Madison’s time of over taking Canada (which Jefferson had once mistakenly described as “a mere matter of marching,” but in 16 presidential years, he and Madison had not assembled the boots or men for the march). There were internecine problems, as Taylor and Scott were known to be Whigs and Polk suspected them both (with reason, as it turned out) of trying to parlay military success into residency in the White House, and they suspected Polk and Marcy of withholding what they would need to enjoy complete victory. (Both generals ran for president in the next six years.)
Kearny arrived in Santa Fe on August 29, 1846, after scattering Mexican forces almost without firing a shot. He pressed on to Los Angeles, where he arrived on January 10, 1847. Colonel (as he became in the course of the action) John C. Frémont and Commodore Robert F. Stockton had subdued most of California by August 17 and suppressed a Mexican revolt by the end of September. Frémont received the surrender of the Mexican forces on January 13, 1847. A jurisdictional dispute broke out between Kearny and Frémont, and eventually Frémont was court-martialed for disobedience and mutiny. Polk upheld most of the finding but reinstated Frémont in the army, from which he then resigned. Frémont was the son-in-law of Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and this episode created serious frictions within the senior ranks of the Democrats.
Taylor captured Monterrey on September 25, and agreed to an eight-week armistice to resupply his forces. This annoyed Polk, who wanted the swiftest prosecution of the war possible. Taylor and Polk each imputed political motives to the other and Taylor published a letter in a New York newspaper criticizing the administration. Polk lost faith in Taylor’s ability to win the war quickly and approved Scott’s taking 9,000 of Taylor’s men (his army had been bulked up significantly) to add to his Veracruz landing force.
Taylor ignored orders and marched on to Buena Vista, where he encountered the inevitable and inimitable Santa Anna at the head of 15,000 men. Santa Anna had told an American emissary in February 1846 that for $30 million, he would return from exile in Cuba and arrange the Mexican cession of Texas and California to the U.S. Polk did not approve the bribe but did allow Santa Anna’s return through the American blockade. Once back in Mexico, Santa Anna accused the incumbent president, Herrera, of treason for trying to negotiate dishonorably with the United States, staged a coup, and installed himself as president again. He took up his old military command and tried to stop Taylor at Buena Vista. Santa Anna gave Taylor a respectable fight but had to withdraw on February 23, 1847, after losing about 500 dead, twice as many as the Americans. Marcy reprimanded Taylor for criticizing the administration publicly. Taylor remained at Monterrey without orders or more than bare supplies and retired from the army on November 26, 1847. He returned a hero to the United States, just in time for the election season.
It was never going to be possible to keep the politics of slavery out of the conduct of the war. Congressman David Wilmot produced an amendment, known to history as the Wilmot Proviso, which prohibited slavery in any new territory that might accrue to the United States from the current war. Several months of acrimonious debate ensued in both houses of Congress. The Democrats hewed to their line that the Mexican War was an entirely justified response to Mexican mistreatment of Americans in Texas, and to Mexican aggression. And the Whigs attacked it as simple imperialism, conducted in furtherance of slavery and unconstitutionally initiated. The southern view, as usual in these times, was given by Calhoun in the Senate on February 19 and 20.
The South refused to be defensive about slavery, and sought its positive protection. The constitutional compact and states’ rights theories received their usual airing, and Calhoun expressed concern about the South losing its influence in the balance of events. He said that if that balance was lost, the result would be “Political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster,” and added that “if trampled upon, it will be idle to expect that we will not resist it.”81 The Whigs gained a narrow majority of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections of 1846.
General Winfield Scott’s amphibious landing near Veracruz, designed to end the war, was launched on March 9, 1847, as 10,000 men were put ashore in special landing craft. Veracruz, defended by 5,000 Mexican soldiers, surrendered on March 27. Scott set out for Mexico City, soundly thrashing Santa Anna at Cerro Gordo and taking over 3,000 Mexican prisoners. As a third of his army vanished when their terms of enlistments were up and many were sick, Scott paused for several months and was joined in August by General Franklin Pierce, bringin
g his strength back to 13,000 men. At Churubusco on August 20, Santa Anna fought hard and bravely, and took 7,000 casualties, but inflicted only 1,000 casualties on the Americans. Scott pressed on to the capital, and after the Battle of Chapultapec, occupied the city of 200,000 with only 6,000 soldiers on September 13 and 14. Santa Anna resigned as president and conducted a few more military operations and then was sacked as commander of the army. The old scoundrel again went into exile. (He would return yet again as president in 1853, but was chased out once and for all in 1855 and lived for a time in Staten Island, where he imported chicle for tires. This was unsuccessful but his partner, Thomas Adams, invented the “Chiclet” at great profit.)
Polk had sent the senior clerk of the State Department, Nicholas Trist, to negotiate peace terms, and squabbling immediately erupted between him and Scott. Trist was eventually recalled in November, but ignored the fact and negotiated and signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848. The United States paid a total of about $18,250,000 to Mexico, and Mexico renounced everything north of the Rio Grande, Gila, and Colorado Rivers. It was a gigantic acquest for the United States, 1,193,000 square miles, almost 150 percent of the size of the Louisiana Purchase. The United States had suffered 1,721 dead in action or of wounds, 11,155 who died of disease, 4,102 wounded. The cost to the Treasury was $97.5 million; it was a good deal more onerous proportionately than the War of 1812, but the United States bagged another great chunk of a continent at a knockdown economic cost and with a bearable loss of life.
Polk presented Trist’s treaty to the Senate with an ambiguous endorsement, given that it was unauthorized. The Senate ratified, 38–14, on March 10, 1848, and the opposition was from doughface Democrats led by Buchanan (despite his presence as secretary of state in Polk’s administration), who now wanted to annex the whole of Mexico. It had worked as a splendid, cheap patriotic war after all, though there were absurd aspects to it (Santa Anna’s presence virtually assured that), and much of it, including the peace negotiations, was conducted contrary to orders. The Wilmot Proviso was again defeated, and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 picked up another 45,000 square miles, for $10 million. It was brilliant strategy by Polk. The growth of slavery was concealed in the glorious martial growth of the nation, and, as a bonus, gold was fortuitously discovered on January 24, 1848, in large quantities at Sutter’s Mill, California, and over 100,000 adventurers and fortune-seekers flooded into the state (as it soon became) from all over the world by the end of 1849. If Polk had bungled the war effort as badly as Madison had, it would have been a disaster (though there was no chance that the Mexicans would prove as militarily proficient as the British and the Canadians). By settling Oregon first and devising a realistic war plan, Polk had gambled successfully, made an immense accretion of territory, and punted the slavery issue forward again for a few years, though the atmosphere in which it was endlessly discussed was becoming steadily more ominous. The awful reckoning slavery always portended could not now be long postponed.