A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico
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The explosion aboard the Princeton left Washington in shock and the fate of annexation in question. Supporters and foes alike recognized that without Upshur guiding matters, Tyler would have a difficult time bringing Texas into the Union before the 1844 nominating conventions in May. The president knew it too. Only days after the tragedy he admitted to one of his daughters that along with his closest servant, two friends, and the man who would have been his father-in-law, his hopes of reelection died that afternoon as well.30
Had he been in Washington, Henry Clay might well have been aboard the Princeton. Instead he spent that fateful evening at a “splendid ball” in Mobile, Alabama, held in his honor by his friend Octavia LeVert and her husband.31 Clay had several months of strenuous campaigning ahead of him, but the disaster bought him time to consider his options regarding Texas. Upshur’s replacement as secretary of state was John C. Calhoun, a brilliant proslavery ideologue from South Carolina. It would be his job to prepare the Texas treaty for ratification by the Senate.
While Calhoun got settled in his new office, Clay consulted with Whig colleagues about how best to turn the Texas issue to his political advantage. In the decades before the Civil War, the easiest way for a politician to reach a mass audience was to write a letter for publication and submit it to a friendly newspaper; within days he could expect to see it reprinted in local papers around the nation.
Having finally come to the realization that Texas was not going away, Henry Clay determined to publish just such a letter. He would clearly outline his reasons for opposing annexation, and explain to the public, his public, why Tyler’s treaty was such a disaster. To a man, however, Clay’s friends rejected this plan. They recognized what Clay did not: that Texas annexation was wildly popular across the South and West. Unless the candidate was willing to openly antagonize potential voters, he needed to hold his tongue.
But as he slowly traveled from Mobile back to Washington, Henry Clay grew increasingly dissatisfied with this course of action, or rather inaction, as he saw it. He was inundated by questions about Texas by audiences in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. The good citizens of Charleston wanted to know if he was “for or against the annexation of Texas.”32 The New Orleans Picayune demanded that both Clay and Martin Van Buren, the presumptive Democratic nominee, “respond like men” and “declare categorically” their views on the subject, “for thousands are anxious to know what they think.”33
Why shouldn’t Clay respond like a man? Once a subject captured Henry Clay’s attention, it wasn’t in his nature to remain quiet. He was sure that he could provide an answer to the Texas question that would “reconcile all our friends, and many others to the views which I entertain.” As he told his incredulous friend John Crittenden, “Of one thing you may be certain, that there is no such anxiety for the annexation here at the South as you might have been disposed to imagine.”34 Henry Clay might have accepted that a treaty was on the table, but he was still in denial that many Americans could possibly support it.
By the time Clay reached Raleigh, North Carolina, on his sixty-seventh birthday, he had determined to write the letter. With typical impetuosity, he turned right to it. Seated beneath a towering white oak on East North Street, Clay composed a missive that he would later come to regret. He outlined his many reasons for opposing annexation: the crippling Texas debt the United States would be forced to assume, the decided opposition of a large portion of Americans, the likely sectional discord, the evidence that the United States had relinquished all claim to Texas in an earlier treaty, and, most important, the fact that Mexico had never abandoned its claim to the region. Make no mistake, Clay warned readers: “annexation and war with Mexico are identical.” Such a war, Clay argued, would be a catastrophe. “I regard all wars as great calamities … and honorable peace as the wisest and truest policy of this country.”35
Clay mailed the letter to John Crittenden in Washington with instructions that it be published in the nation’s leading Whig newspaper, the National Intelligencer, the following week. No doubt anticipating his friend’s reaction upon reading such a definitive rejection of annexation, Clay assured Crittenden that the likely Democratic nominee, Martin Van Buren, would “occupy common ground” with him on the issue.36 There would be no political repercussions. Clay was sure of it.
When Secretary of State John C. Calhoun submitted the completed treaty to the Senate on April 22 for closed debate, its fate looked promising. But events that week would conspire against the annexation of Texas. The first strike against it was the work of a shocked antislavery Democrat, Senator Benjamin Tappan of Ohio. Firmly believing that the treaty would “disgrace the nation,” Tappan leaked it to the press. The administration had hoped to keep the details out of the public eye for as long as possible, but on Saturday, April 27, the treaty appeared in full along with supporting documents that revealed the covert nature of the proceedings and questionable promises made to Texas, including that Valentine’s Day commitment to protection from Mexico. That same Saturday Henry Clay’s Raleigh letter rejecting the annexation of Texas also appeared in print, as did a letter from Martin Van Buren on the same subject.37
Van Buren’s language differed from Clay’s, but he too rejected annexation. The canny New Yorker was considered by many to be the very epitome of the scheming politician, and Whigs were not alone in condemning “his selfishness, his duplicity, his want of manly frankness.” Yet conscientious scruples led him to oppose immediate annexation, political ramifications aside. Given that every other nation would consider the annexation of Texas an unjustified act of aggression against Mexico, Van Buren suggested that annexation might “do us more real lasting injury as a nation than the acquisition of such a territory, valuable as it undoubtedly is, could possibly repair.” He argued that “we have a character among the nations of the earth to maintain.… The lust of power, with fraud and violence in the train, has led other and differently constituted governments to aggression and conquest,” but the United States was motivated by “reason and justice.” If Van Buren had anything to say about it, the United States would not lose that reputation over Texas.38
Nor was that all the news on Saturday, April 27. A fourth astounding report could be found in the columns of the Washington daily press: a letter from John C. Calhoun to the British minister, Sir Richard Pakenham, stating that the annexation of Texas was essential to the security of the South and to the expansion of slavery, which Calhoun argued was a social ideal. Because slavery was “essential to the peace, safety, and prosperity of states in the union in which it exists,” Texas must be annexed.39
This was not the spin the administration had hoped for from the secretary of state. Like Calhoun, Tyler and Upshur were slaveholders, but they had steadfastly maintained a public stance that annexation was an issue of national interest, unconnected to slavery. Upshur was confident that the initial “burst of repugnance at the North” toward the idea of annexation could be overcome once the North realized the economic advantages of the union. He had explained his reasoning to Calhoun back in August 1843: “I have never known the north to refuse to do what their interest required, and I think it will not be difficult to convince them that their interest requires the admission of Texas into the Union as a slaveholding state.” Tyler and Upshur spent the winter of 1843–44 making exactly this argument.40
Calhoun refused to play along. The new secretary of state was a pro-slavery radical and an uncomfortable fit in a political system that divided Americans by party rather than section. Seemingly forgetting that in his role as secretary of state his allegiance belonged to the nation as a whole and not to his beloved South, Calhoun released his letter to Pakenham precisely because he wanted to force the Tyler administration to publicly embrace slavery. In the process he upended the Texas debate on the eve of ratification.
So it was that on the very day the public became aware of the annexation treaty in all its detail, both of the likely presidential candidates rejected the annexation of Texa
s in a manner that strongly suggested collusion, while the secretary of state willfully alienated northern support of the treaty by casting the issue in starkly sectional terms. Tyler’s dream of annexing Texas, once so close, began to evaporate along with the promised northern support for the treaty. The Whig-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee sat on the treaty for three weeks and then sent it back to the Senate without comment on May 10. Senators of both parties called for a full investigation into the irregular manner in which the administration had conducted its negotiations, particularly the promises made to protect Texas. Even Democrat Thomas Hart Benton, one of the Senate’s staunchest expansionists, alliteratively railed against the “insidious scheme of sudden and secret annexation” brought forth by “our hapless administration.”41
None of this made the slightest difference at the 1844 Whig national convention, which met in Baltimore less than a week after the treaty and the controversial letters appeared in the Washington daily press. Van Buren’s letter left Whigs in “a perfect state of exultation.”42 Few of them doubted that Old Van, a northerner in the pro-expansion party, would be hurt far worse by his anti-annexation stance than would Clay, a southerner in a party that was ambivalent about expansion. Come November, Clay should have no problem beating Van Buren in the general election.
Thousands of Whigs from around the country traveled to Baltimore to make Henry Clay’s coronation official. On the second of May they paraded through Baltimore, a “great mass of noble, fine-looking fellows,” for almost an hour and a half. The weather was cool, the skies overcast. It was a joyous and colorful procession, a “day of jubilee” with “each state under its proper banner, and each individual swelling out its numbers, with flags and patriotic devices, badges and the weapons of peace.” According to sixty-three-year-old Philip Hone, a wealthy sophisticate and member of the New York delegation, it “presented a pageant more bright and brilliant than any I ever beheld.” He delighted in the crowd. They were “cheered on by the bright eyes of the prettiest young women in the world … with handkerchiefs waving overhead and wreaths and bouquets thrown at their feet.”43
The crowd was equally pleased by the loud, colorful, and festive proceedings. Congressman John J. Hardin of Illinois was dumbstruck. “The Grand procession … far exceeded anything which I imagined or could describe,” he wrote his wife, now back home in Illinois with their children. “It was larger than ever was convened, or ever will be again convened in the United States in my lifetime. There were arches & flags & banners extended across the streets by scores; & banners & flags in the procession by hundreds. The procession was 4 or 5 miles long.… The city contains 130,000 inhabitants, & all the inhabitants, & all its citizens, with their tens of thousands from other states were on the streets through which the procession passed. Every window on the street was open & filled with human hands.”44 Hardin couldn’t help but conclude that the American people loved and trusted his Whig Party.
Spectators noted the many live raccoons, symbols of the party ever since Harrison had been portrayed wearing a coonskin cap in the election of 1840, as well as highly polished and beribboned looms, spinning machines, and cotton presses, all of which spoke to the Whig faith in developing American industry. The parade also featured ballot boxes, stuffed eagles, bands of minstrel singers, and mechanics carrying the tools of their trades.
But far outnumbering these were flags and banners, many sewn and presented to the delegations by Clay’s legions of female supporters, testifying to the party’s frenzy for one man. “Harry, the Star of the West” was lauded as “the champion of American industry,” “our brave chieftain,” and “our country’s hope.” New Jersey Whigs professed their adoration for Clay because “he’s honest, he is capable, for his patriotism and talents we honor him, for his virtues and worth we will elevate him.” Baltimore Whigs coupled a portrait of Clay with the motto “History and fame will long proclaim our Harry’s Deeds.” New York City Whigs married an image of Clay to his famous statement that he would “rather be right than be president,” but lest that sentiment seem out of place, the Alabama banner reminded viewers that “there’s no such word as fail.”45 Perhaps the delegations from the Southwest offered fewer images of Clay than those in the Northeast, but the unity of the Whig Party was striking in its totality.
Clay’s visage was even more ubiquitous at the assembly, which gathered in the Universalist Church on Calvert Street. “Clay badges hung conspicuously at all button holes.… Clay portraits, Clay banners, Clay ribands, Clay songs, Clay quick-steps, Clay marches, Clay caricatures, meet the eye in all directions.” All of Baltimore seemed to be in a frenzy for Henry Clay, and leave it up to the Whigs to figure out a way to make money from the spectacle. Hat shops offered “Clay hats,” and tailoring shops offered Clay coats.
The marketing of Henry Clay was in full bloom, and the Whigs were in absolute heaven. “Oh, the rushing, the stirring, the noise, the excitement! To see it and feel it all is glory enough for one day,” gushed a reporter. The enthusiasm reached all the way to New York, where a barber publicly professed his change of heart. No longer would he support Van Buren, since, as he told one reporter, “all the world’s going for Clay; and I, as barber, must go too.”46
In proceedings that were “brief and to the purpose,” Henry Clay was unanimously nominated his party’s candidate for president, on a platform that said nothing about Texas. The resolution was “accompanied by such cheers and clappings of hands as the world never heard before.” The hall vibrated with the applause. Philip Hone declared it “one of the most sublime moral spectacles ever exhibited” and wrote in his diary, “I shall always rejoice that I was present.” The following day an independent newspaper declared, “We never saw such a spirit of enthusiasm as now exists amongst the whigs in favor of Henry Clay,” and predicted that if Clay were “not elected president,” then the editors “don’t know a hawk from a handsaw.”47
Whig campaign ribbon, Baltimore National Convention, 1844. Silk ribbons featuring Henry Clay’s likeness were produced by the thousands for the Whig National Convention in Baltimore and proudly worn by delegates. This particular design proclaims Clay “the fearless Friend of his Country’s Rights” and offers a whitewashed image of Ashland, Clay’s Kentucky estate, worked not by slaves but by a white farmer. Clay, and the Baltimore convention, carefully avoided discussion of the controversial issues of slavery and Texas. Susan H. Douglas Political Americana Collection, #2214, Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. (photo credit 1.2)
As for Prince Hal, his bliss was complete. He felt “profound gratitude” for the unanimous nomination. It had taken ten weeks, but his valentine had arrived at last. The people loved him; the Texas treaty, mired in committee in the Senate, was in doubt; and as for the Democrats, “I do not think I ever witnessed such a state of utter disorder, confusion, and decomposition as that which the Democratic Party now presents,” he crowed to a friend. Everything seemed to be going Henry Clay’s way. Not that he ever had any doubt. He was “firmly convinced that my opinion on the Texas question will do me no prejudice at the South.”48
He was right about the Democrats, at least. In the weeks before their own convention at the end of May, matters looked particularly bleak. The party of Andrew Jackson had been adrift since the economic panic of 1837 and subsequent shocking victory of William Henry Harrison in 1840. Recent developments did not augur well for a return to power in 1844. Van Buren’s letter deeply unsettled party leaders in the South and West, and by mid-May it was widely reported that “gentlemen of the Mississippi Delegation, as well as from Alabama and Virginia, have openly declared that they will not go for any candidate that is not for the annexation of Texas.”49
But without Van Buren, what chance did the party have against Henry Clay? The latter was not alone in assuming that Van Buren “is really the strongest man of their Party.” Many Democrats doubted “whether anything can be done now—any candidate that may be proposed—or any measu
re that can be adopted—can stay the great and overwhelming tide that is urging the party that came into power with Gen. Jackson to utter dissolution.”50
Old Jackson himself was hardly more positive. Terminally ill at his Tennessee estate, he admitted to a friend that he was “unmanned” by Van Buren’s rejection of Texas, and “shed tears of regret” when he read it. Old Hickory had allowed diplomatic consideration to rule when he was president. He had kept Texas at arm’s length despite believing in his heart that territorial expansion was America’s destiny, despite a close personal relationship with Texas president Sam Houston, despite feeling as deeply as anyone that the Texians were kin who belonged back in the family.51
Now, at the close of his life, he felt the pull of Texas once more. Jackson was no longer the power broker of his party, but his opinion still counted. And he believed the time for annexation had come. Rousing himself from bed, he fired off a string of letters to friends and supporters, so many that they seemed to one concerned recipient to “manifest a mania” on the subject.52 Van Buren’s position was wrong. The party would have to find a new candidate, one who favored the annexation of Texas. Jackson loved Van Buren but could no longer support him. He wrote directly to his former vice president and warned him that his election in 1844 was impossible under these circumstances. Van Buren, shocked by the desertion of his mentor, destroyed the letter.
It wasn’t easy for Jackson to reject Van Buren, but the interests of the party, his party, and of his nation came first. Old Hickory had a plan for the salvation of both. He put pen to paper once more, and summoned James K. Polk to his bedside.
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