In 1836 the United States could have annexed Texas, but only at the cost of war. Not only would Mexico have considered the annexation of its rebel province an act of aggression, but so would the rest of the world. As a result, three presidents and the majority of congressional representatives turned their backs on annexation, and for good reason. A state of intermittent warfare continued between Texas and Mexico.
Almost every American believed that the United States had a special destiny in the world. They took it for granted that the blessings of “republican liberty” enshrined in the Constitution “should expand over the earth, and spread their benign influence from pole to pole.”15 But few in the 1830s felt that territorial expansion should proceed at the cost of war with a neighboring republic. Not even Andrew Jackson—a mentor and personal friend of Sam Houston’s and the man whose actions led the Five Civilized Indian Tribes to walk the Trail of Tears so that expansionists in what is today the American Southeast could take their land—was willing to propose the annexation of Texas.
Jackson had more than one possible war in mind when he sidestepped the question of the annexation of Texas. Few politicians wanted to disturb the delicate sectional balance between North and South. Men who believed with their whole hearts that all of North America would eventually become part of the United States, who lobbied even for the acquisition of Canada, objected to allowing Texas into the Union. For the enormous territory would enter as a slave-owning state, possibly as many as five slave states. And for those who believed (as did many northerners) that there was a “slave power conspiracy” at work in the government, the last thing they wanted to do was increase the power of the South, particularly in the Senate. Antislavery firebrand John Quincy Adams, a fixture in Congress since the end of his presidency in 1829, made exactly this point when he warned his colleagues in no uncertain terms that annexing Texas would “secure and rivet” the “undue ascendancy of the slave-holding power in the government.”16
So although Americans felt a strong kinship with the white population of Texas, and most Texians, under siege by Mexico and falling into ever greater debt, were desperate to join the Union, year after year annexation remained unconsummated. Jackson’s successor, the “little magician” from New York, Democrat Martin Van Buren, skillfully sidestepped the issue of Texas with his customary political adroitness. So too did the first Whig president, General William Henry Harrison, elected after Van Buren’s magic proved insufficient to extricate the Democratic Party from a national financial panic that started under its watch in 1837 and lingered through the election of 1840.
It took a desperate man to upset the status quo and make the annexation of Texas a reality. John Tyler, a rogue Whig distrusted by both his own party and the opposition Democrats, had been William Henry Harrison’s vice president, succeeding the aging former general when he died of pneumonia in 1841, just a month after his inauguration—thus forever branding him “His Accidency.” However, Tyler’s greatest ambition was to be elected to his own term. To achieve that, all he had to do was smoothly manage the remainder of Harrison’s.
This proved to be beyond Tyler’s abilities. He plowed his rough way forward for four years, a slaveholding Virginia aristocrat who had allied himself with Clay and his Whigs in the 1830s out of a shared distrust of Andrew Jackson’s Democratic agenda. But his states’-rights ideology made him just as suspicious of the nationalist program of internal improvements and centralized banking that Clay’s party attempted to push through after Harrison’s election. In power for the first time, the Whigs understandably considered the presidencies of Harrison and Tyler their own.
But Tyler would not play along. He repeatedly vetoed legislation to centralize the banking system, infuriating Henry Clay, who had masterminded the legislation, and ultimately leading to the resignation of nearly the entire presidential cabinet. Clay formally read Tyler out of his party. Whig stalwarts in the cabinet, many of whom were indebted to Clay, were replaced by yes-men and cronies, including Abel Upshur, a close friend since Tyler’s youth. Clay’s supporters were dismissive of Tyler’s men, but objective minds (and there were a few in Washington at the time) recognized that the new secretary of state was a man of substance. As navy secretary, Upshur had done a brilliant job modernizing and reorganizing the navy. One underestimated his capabilities at one’s own risk.
Now a president without a party, Tyler made overtures to the Democrats, but they proved no more receptive to supporting the rogue president than had been their opponents. Desperate for an issue that might win him election, Tyler saw salvation in Texas.
Tyler reasoned that sentiment in favor of annexation was so high outside Washington that accomplishing it would keep him in office without the help of either major party. He pursued Texas with the conviction that the annexation of that republic, independent from Mexico for only seven years, was essential not only to the “salvation of the Union” but also to the salvation of his own political career.17
Tyler and Upshur threw themselves into the project beginning in 1842. Texians, concerned that overtures from the United States would mobilize Mexican forces against them, demanded a guarantee of military protection before commencing the courtship. Upshur offered a verbal promise, enough to start the proceedings, but Texas demanded something in writing before taking the relationship to the next level. The same day that Clay read in the paper that Tyler was on the verge of presenting an annexation treaty to the Senate, the Texians got their own valentine. On February 14, 1844, the American representative in Texas promised, in secret negotiations, that the moment Texas signed a treaty of annexation, “a sufficient naval force shall be placed in the Gulf of Mexico, convenient for the defense of Texas, in case of any invasion which may threaten her seaboard,” and measures would be taken “to repel any invasion by land.”18 Signed, the document essentially committed U.S. troops to certain war with Mexico.
The U.S. Constitution specifies that Congress, and only Congress, has the power to declare war. Tyler blanched when he received a copy of the pledge several weeks later. He instantly recognized that the vow to provide military protection to Texas exceeded his powers as president and would infuriate Congress if, or rather when, it was made public. He countermanded the written pledge, but not before the courtship had advanced to the point of no return on Texas’s part. Mexico began massing forces near the Texas border. Not long after Valentine’s Day, annexation suddenly appeared inevitable.
None of this should have come as a surprise to Henry Clay. His Washington friends might not have told him explicitly about the treaty, but several of them had warned him of Tyler’s intentions. Nor did one need inside information to figure out that the Texas issue was on the verge of exploding.
The tension had been building for months. Over the course of the fall of 1843, the legislatures of several southwestern states petitioned Congress for the admission of Texas. After the president spoke out in favor of annexation, his supporters unleashed a sophisticated propaganda campaign extolling the advantages of annexation and advancing specious claims that Texas rightfully “belonged” to the United States by virtue of the Louisiana Purchase. Rumors of British designs on Texas began appearing in Democratic newspapers. Americans both resented and feared their former colonizer, and threats of British encroachment were almost always effective at mobilizing the public. Now it appeared that if the United States didn’t move fast, the British might annex Texas themselves, abolish slavery there, and threaten the peace and security of the United States.
In November the North American, one of the nation’s leading papers, stated definitively that “the project of annexing Texas to the United States will be proposed and urged by the acting President and his Secretary of State,” while that same month local newspapers from Charleston, South Carolina, to Bridgeport, Connecticut, proclaimed it “certain” that a treaty would soon come before Congress.19
Clay himself had been inundated with letters from supporters about the issue, most of which he ignored. To
one friend he replied in early December, “I am surprised that Texas should occasion you so much uneasiness at the North. In the whole circle of my acquaintance in K.[entucky] I do not remember to have heard lately a solitary voice raised in favor of or against Annexation.”20
This was balderdash. Few states had stronger ties to Texas than Kentucky. Many of the original settlers of Mexican Texas hailed from the Bluegrass State, the Texas secretary of war was a Kentuckian, and, as Clay well knew, his good friend John Crittenden’s son George was currently serving in the Texas army. Texas annexation was hugely popular in Clay’s state and growing more so by the day, as it was throughout the entire Southwest. In the last months of 1843 Whig voters in both the North and South began pestering their representatives with questions about Clay’s views on annexation, and newspapers from Indiana, Kentucky, Boston, and New York openly debated how the Sage of Ashland might vote on an annexation bill.21
Clay ignored it all. He refused to accept that John Tyler, the very definition of an impotent politician, could negotiate a treaty of annexation with Texas, let alone convince two-thirds of the Senate to ratify it. It was too implausible to contemplate. “Let Mr. Tyler recommend” annexation, he told a friend, “if he please, and what of that?… Such a recommendation would be the last desperate move of a desperate traitor.” When John Crittenden warned Clay in early December that Tyler had set his sights on Texas, Clay dismissed his concerns. Having already determined that annexation was impossible, Clay was sure that Tyler was introducing it “for no other than the wicked purpose of producing discord and distraction in the nation.” This was nothing more than a cynical plot on the part of extremists to divide both the country and his party, and Clay did not “think it right to allow Mr. Tyler, for his own selfish purposes, to introduce an exciting topic to add to the other subjects of contention that exist in this country.”22
Manifest Destiny aside, Henry Clay had his own destiny to consider. His five-month electioneering tour of the Southeast would return him to Washington for the opening of the Whig nominating convention in May 1844. He would not allow Texas to become a diversion, either from the economic issues that mattered to the country or from the forthcoming election that mattered to him. The same week that Clay arrived in New Orleans, a New York abolitionist paper expressed astonishment that anyone could still doubt that a bill to annex Texas would come before the present session of Congress. The following day the Telegraph of Houston reported that Texas’s House of Representatives had passed a joint resolution in favor of annexation. Although the article was quickly reprinted in the papers of New Orleans as well as the rest of the United States, Henry Clay somehow missed the news.23
Clay’s degree of denial in this matter was astounding but not really out of character. His critics had long condemned him for trying to be all things to all people. But Clay’s unwillingness to engage with deeply divisive issues wasn’t primarily the product of his personal ambition. It was a necessary survival mechanism for any presidential hopeful within the two-party political system of the era. Because the Whigs and the Democrats were national parties, a candidate who alienated the mass of his supporters in one or another region lost all hope of winning a national election. Appeasing both the North and the South was a delicate balancing act, and becoming more so by the day, but Clay had thus far demonstrated an excellent sense of balance. Surely it wouldn’t fail him now.
Texas was no ordinary issue, however. It was proving to be exceptionally polarizing. Secretary of State Abel Upshur publicly maintained that annexation would be for the good of the entire nation, but he wrote privately to a friend in August 1843 that the South should “demand” the annexation of Texas regardless of the opinion of northerners. “The history of the world does not present an example of such insult, contempt, and multiplied wrongs and outrages from one nation to another as we have received and are daily receiving from our northern brethren!!” Upshur wrote. “It is a reproach to us that we bear it any longer.”24
Nor were all southerners as circumspect as Upshur. Most saw no need to keep their feelings to themselves, and many northerners found the southern bluster difficult to stomach. As Texas heated up and Henry Clay remained cold, abolitionist papers increased their invective against politicians afraid to “exasperate the South” lest they “feel her talons.” The country was full of men like Clay who refused to see that “the South has been anxiously watching and earnestly making its opportunity to strike a death-blow on the free labor of the North.” This push for Texas was a prime example. Extremists on both sides agreed that more was at stake than merely winning an election. This debate was about manhood itself. “This is not the spirit of manly freedom,” one paper declared in disgust. “When men at the North act like slaves, the South will treat them as such. When they are tame, she will domineer—when they whimper she will put on the lash—but when they face her with a look of manly decision, she will cringe, and be respectful to our honor and our rights.”25
Henry Clay thought he could navigate these waters, but on Valentine’s Day he received evidence that his sense of direction had failed him. This news should have raised a warning flag and made him question his political intuition, perhaps even reconsider the extent of his omniscience. But because of his towering faith in his own abilities, he instead considered this only a momentary lapse. It would take nearly a year before Henry Clay realized that this momentary lapse was something far greater, that his life and his country were on the verge of dramatic change.
On February 27, 1844, Secretary of State Upshur completed negotiations with Texas to bring the republic into the United States. He and President Tyler had done the impossible: Texas would be a state at last. All that was left was to sell it to the Senate.
The following day dawned bright and cloudless. Senators broke early from a lively debate over the future of the Oregon Country, jointly controlled by the United States and Britain, which was the object of increasing and passionate desire by northern expansionists. Thousands of American settlers had made the arduous trek by covered wagon to farm its fertile soils, and they were anxious to see British claims to the region extinguished. But Britain’s navy was the most powerful in the world, and the country’s claims to the region equally formidable. Plenty of senators had strong feelings about how to handle Britain, but this debate would have to wait.
The wealthy and powerful in Washington were off to a party. Senators, members of the cabinet, and assorted other luminaries lucky enough to receive one of the formal invitations on thick card stock gathered at Bradley’s Wharf “precisely at 11 o’clock” for a cruise of the Potomac aboard the new steam frigate Princeton, the “pride of the navy.”26 Tyler and Upshur were there, with ample reason to celebrate. The afternoon promised both entertainment and relaxation. The guests would have the great good fortune to witness a demonstration of the world’s largest naval gun, nicknamed “Peacemaker,” and a lavish banquet belowdecks would cap the festivities.
Both the Princeton and its cannon represented the fulfillment of a personal crusade on Upshur’s part to strengthen the U.S. Navy, which had been perennially underfunded and long the subject of mockery. The Princeton and “Peacemaker” offered evidence that the scientific and financial resources poured into the navy had paid off. These technological marvels surely offered proof that the U.S. Navy was more than prepared to face Mexico, or even England if need be, in battle. As the flag-festooned vessel steamed along at a brisk pace through abundant ice floes, the secretary of state must have felt a special pride.27
Spirits among the passengers were high, and the champagne flowed freely. When the captain fired off “Peacemaker,” the cheers of the well-dressed crowd were universal and enthusiastic. They headed belowdecks for an elaborate feast, appetites stoked by the display of American militarism. As the sun began to set, the Princeton turned toward her anchorage. With Mount Vernon, George Washington’s historic estate, in view, Thomas Gilmer, a rising political star who had been secretary of the navy for just ten days,
called on the captain for one final cannon discharge in honor of the nation’s first president.
Most of the guests were still belowdecks and felt little concern when they heard a loud explosion. But as billowing smoke filled the cabin, and shouts and screams echoed from above, it became obvious that something had gone terribly wrong. “Peacemaker” had exploded, instantly killing Upshur and eight other men, including Henry, the slave who dressed President Tyler each morning; Thomas Gilmer, the new secretary of the navy; and David Gardiner, a former state senator from New York. Dozens of others were injured, including one of the nation’s leading expansionists, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, whose right eardrum was shattered.
John J. Hardin, an up-and-coming thirty-four-year-old congressman from Illinois, was on deck when the gun burst. His wife, Sarah, the mother of three young children, was fortunately still in the cabin. “The horrors of that scene are still before me,” he wrote to a friend a week later. “The ghastly countenances of the dead, the shattered limbs, the gashes in the wounded and their mournful moanings, can neither be described or imagined. Yet sadder and more piercing to the breast than this were the wailings and shrieks of agony of the wives of those who were killed.”28
President Tyler survived. At the time of the explosion the widowed president was belowdecks flirting with Gardiner’s twenty-four-year-old daughter Julia, a New York belle less than half his age. Tyler proved instrumental in helping Julia overcome the grief of losing her father, and Julia lessened the president’s distress over the “awful and lamentable catastrophe” that was in fact the worst tragedy ever to befall a presidential cabinet.29 Two months later the couple was engaged.
A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico Page 3