Zachary Taylor. Photograph by Mathew Brady, ca. 1847. Taylor, known as “Old Rough and Ready,” was ordinarily dressed less formally than in this daguerreotype portrait taken during or soon after the war. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. (photo credit 5.2)
Taylor may have felt ambivalence when Polk ordered him to leave Louisiana for Texas in the summer of 1845. Like most officers, Taylor supported the Whig Party over the Democrats. While neither side advocated a large peacetime army, Whigs repeatedly pushed for increased funding for the army and were steadfast supporters of the military academy at West Point. The Democratic Party feared the consolidation of power associated with a standing army, and wistfully believed state militias capable of protecting the nation. They didn’t trust professional military men, and suggested that West Point might as well be disbanded. Army officers were suspicious, as well, of Democratic schemes for expansion. Less than four years had passed since the United States withdrew from a brutal guerrilla war of attrition against the Seminole Indians of Florida. The seven-year-long war, which failed to remove the tribe from their ancestral home, was fought in the blistering heat of the Everglades’ swamplands. It was remarkably unpopular with officers and enlisted men alike, many of whom sympathized with the Seminoles and grew to hate the white settlers of the region. Many West Point officers resigned as a result of service in the Seminole War. Taylor, like most other Whigs, had serious misgivings about the annexation of Texas. According to one of his officers, Taylor privately denounced annexation as “injudicious in policy and wicked in fact.”15
But Taylor followed orders and marched his troops to the edge of the contested territory. Not long after his arrival along the banks of the Sabine River, he received a novel map of Texas from the quartermaster general’s office. It superimposed a new boundary mark at the Rio Grande over the earlier boundary mark at the Sabine. Lieutenant Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock of Vermont marveled in his diary at the “impudent arrogance and domineering presumption” of both the map and the administration that made it. Hitchcock, a close friend of Taylor’s for twenty-five years, was the grandson of Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen, and had served as both commandant of cadets and assistant professor of tactics at West Point. He would soon celebrate his forty-eighth birthday, and as a man born at the close of the eighteenth century, he had seen many things in his life. But he was sickened by the implications of this map for the future mission of the troops. “It is enough to make atheists of us all to see such wickedness in the world, whether punished or unpunished,” he wrote in his diary.16
Fall in Corpus Christi was better than expected. The town itself was a disgrace, a ramshackle settlement of twenty or thirty structures that existed primarily for the purposes of illegal trade across the Nueces. Most of the population was involved in smuggling to some degree or another. But there were excellent opportunities for fishing and swimming in the bay. The men broke up the monotony of drilling with horse races and light amusements, including a performance of Othello in which another West Point officer, a young lieutenant named Ulysses S. Grant, was cast as the daughter of Brabantio. On October 16, the secretary of war directed Taylor to move “as close as circumstances will permit” to the Rio Grande, subject to his own judgment. Taylor’s judgment told him to stay where he was, and so the troops remained in Corpus Christi.17
Winter was less pleasant. A severe cold snap at the end of November took everyone by surprise. The sun didn’t shine for two straight weeks in December, and the men shivered in raised tents designed for use in balmy Florida. It was the coldest weather anyone in the region could remember. In an ominous preview of things to come, dysentery and diarrhea caused by poor sanitation began to ravage the camp. Some of the men took out their frustrations on local residents. After a spate of “outrages of aggravated character” against Mexicans living nearby, Taylor restricted his men to camp at nighttime.18
On February 3, 1846, Taylor received direct orders to march his men 150 miles south, all the way to the Rio Grande, also known as the Rio del Norte. He was understandably unenthusiastic. Secretary of War Marcy had earlier suggested to Taylor that the army’s mission was defensive. The new orders reiterated that Taylor should not consider Mexico “an enemy” unless, of course, it should act that way. But if Mexico fired the first shot, Taylor should take advantage, and “not act merely on the defensive.” Clearly the administration was hoping Taylor would shoulder some of the blame if hostilities ensued. And how could he not? Why was he deliberately marching four thousand men deep into territory that was widely understood, by everyone other than fervent U.S. expansionists, to belong to Mexico? “The ‘claim,’ so called, of the Texans to the Rio Grande, is without foundation,” Colonel Hitchcock wrote in his diary. “She has never conquered, possessed, or exercised dominion west of the Nueces.”19
Taylor had done almost nothing to prepare for future operations while in Corpus Christi. Now he sat on news of the impending move for three days. But conditions in the camp had degenerated, and Lieutenant Ulysses Grant summed up the reaction to Taylor’s orders: “Fight or no fight evry one rejoises at the idea of leaving Corpus Christi.” On the eve of their departure, General Taylor issued orders to the troops governing relations with civilians. He enjoined “all under his command to observe, with the most scrupulous regard, the rights of all person who may be found in the peaceful pursuit of their respective avocations, residing on both banks of the Rio Grande. No person, under any pretence whatsoever, will interfere in any manner with the civil rights or religious privileges of the people, but will pay the utmost respect to both.” Taylor had these instructions translated into Spanish and posted along the route to Matamoros, on the Rio Grande. Taylor wrote a new will before starting the long trek to an unknown fate.20
In March 1846, Taylor marched his four thousand men through the Nueces Strip. It was “dreary, desolate, dry, and barren” countryside, a land better suited for snakes than people. The nearer they got to the Rio Grande, “the more dwarfed and thorny the vegetation—only the cactus more hideously large.” And it was hot. “The sun streamed upon us like a living fire,” one soldier recorded. Despite Taylor’s proclamation asserting the “friendly intentions” of the U.S. Army, many of the inhabitants fled when they caught sight of the American troops. By no means did this feel like American territory. One American soldier who marched out of Corpus Christi expressed his disorientation in a letter back home to Illinois. Sitting in “the shade of a sort of white thorn,” he reflected that “all about me are cactus, God knows how many kinds. It is impossible to describe them. All plants here have thorns, all animals stings or horns and all men carry weapons and all deceive each other and themselves.”21
Mexican forces, meanwhile, had begun to mass at Matamoros on the southern bank of the Rio Grande, near the mouth of the river. From time to time the U.S. soldiers caught sight of them, marching in the distance. The Americans on the ground grasped better than most what was happening. Colonel Hitchcock wrote in his diary: “We have not one particle of right to be here.… It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it chooses.”22
Taylor took up a position directly across the Rio Grande from the fortified port town of Matamoros and placed his cannon in clear sight of the stone and adobe buildings of the town square. He directed naval units to blockade the city and prevent food or supplies from reaching either the city of sixteen thousand or the occupying Mexican army. Cuban-born General Pedro Ampudia, a veteran of the Alamo and San Jacinto, sent Taylor a message giving him twenty-four hours to break camp and return to Corpus Christi. He also had handbills smuggled into the U.S. camp promising good treatment and high pay to any immigrants who chose to desert to Mexico. Taylor explained that he was under orders, and suggested that responsibility for the war would rest with the nation that fired the first shot. Taylor would regret war, but he would not avoid it.23
His men weren’t so sure. In one night fifty swam across the river and disappeared into Mexico. Taylor posted guards to prevent further desertions. Two weeks after Taylor’s arrival, forty-two-year-old General Mariano Arista, a former Mexican governor who had once lived in Cincinnati, assumed command of the Mexican forces, which now numbered eight thousand. The following day, April 24, Arista sent a detachment of cavalry across the river. Taylor dispatched a small squadron of dragoons to meet them. The Americans were overwhelmed, and after a short firefight they surrendered to the Mexicans. Eleven U.S. soldiers were killed. Polk had his reason for war, although he didn’t know it. Given the lack of communication between the Mexican frontier and the rest of the world, it would be two full weeks before the tidings would reach Washington.24
Polk spent those two weeks preparing for a war he was intent on beginning, regardless of conditions on the Rio Grande. On May 3, he called Senator Thomas Hart Benton to his offices in order to press the Democratic leader on the issue. Benton was one of the nation’s most outspoken expansionists, a former Tennessean who, like Polk, modeled himself on Andrew Jackson and preached the gospel of Manifest Destiny. A physically imposing man with a temper that matched his bulk, Benton had served under Jackson in the War of 1812 and loved a good fight. He had killed a man in a duel, and shot his onetime mentor Jackson in the arm. He left Tennessee to get out of Jackson’s shadow, and was now the West’s most powerful politician.
Polk needed Benton’s support, but also had reason to believe he would be sympathetic with Polk’s approach. “I told him we had ample cause for War,” Polk wrote in his diary. Benton “expressed a decided aversion to a war with Mexico” and particularly “advised delay” until negotiations with England over Oregon were “either settled” or “brought to a crisis, one of which must happen very soon.” Polk agreed that if war could be avoided “honourably,” that would be ideal, and he promised Benton that he would wait until John Slidell’s return from Mexico to take action.25
Two days later, Polk and his cabinet agreed that they should wait for an update from General Taylor (from whom nothing had been heard in a month) before declaring war. On May 6, they received the erroneous news that Mexico had not yet attacked the United States. Two days later John Slidell returned from Mexico. He had no more idea than did Polk that Taylor had been fighting Mexico for over a week.
The failed diplomat and the president spoke privately for an hour, Slidell impressing upon Polk his conviction that “but one course toward Mexico was left to the U.S. and that was to take the redress of the wrongs and injuries which we had so long borne from Mexico into our own hands, and to act with promptness and energy.” Polk agreed, and told Slidell that he had “made up” his mind to send a declaration of war to Congress “very soon.”26
The following day, Saturday, May 9, Polk called his cabinet together and asked, again, whether they agreed to “recommend a declaration of war against Mexico” despite the fact that, as far as they knew, Mexico had not attacked the United States. Polk told them “that in my opinion we had ample cause of war, and that it was impossible that we could stand in statu quo, or that I could remain silent much longer.” After all, “the country was excited and impatient on the subject.”27
Polk was right on the last point. For weeks Democratic newspapers had been predicting that “war will be immediately declared against Mexico.” The Mississippian declared that “our government has exhausted all measures for peace and conciliation” and thus “no alternative is left but a resort to arms.” In Brooklyn, Walt Whitman was sure that “the people here, ten to one, are for prompt and effectual hostilities.” Polk explained to his cabinet that since the country wanted war, if he failed to rise to the call, “I would not be doing my duty.” All but Bancroft agreed that a recommendation of war against Mexico should be made to Congress the following Tuesday.28
Four hours later, Polk finally received news of the attacks on Taylor’s forces. The president threw himself into composing a declaration of war over the course of that evening and throughout a long Sunday. He stopped work only long enough to attend a two-hour church service with Sarah, consult with important members of his party, and sit down to Sunday supper. At ten thirty he finally went to bed. “It was a day of great anxiety to me,” he wrote in his diary, “and I regretted the necessity which had existed to make it necessary for me to spend the Sabbath in the manner I have.”29
Polk had been composing this declaration in his mind for weeks, but it remained unfinished. He refused to see company on Monday morning and continued revising the message to Congress. Polk didn’t like doing things at the last minute. It bothered him that he “had no time to read the copies of the correspondence furnished by the War & State Departments” that would accompany his message. For a man who assiduously checked the work of even minor clerks, the fact that a document of this importance was leaving his office without a final proofreading must have been anxiety-provoking.
With just hours to spare before he addressed Congress, he called Democratic senators Lewis Cass and Thomas Hart Benton to his office. Cass read the message and “highly approved it.” Benton was not impressed by Polk’s war bill. He told the president that “he was willing to vote men and money for defence of our territory, but was not prepared to make aggressive war on Mexico.” Furthermore, he “disapproved the marching of the army from Corpus Christi to the left Bank of the Del Norte.” When Benton left Polk’s office, the president was not at all sure the senator would support his war. Polk “inferred, too, from his conversation that he did not think the territory of the U.S. extended West of the Nueces.”30
At noon Polk sent his message to Congress. In the strongest possible language he excoriated Mexico, elided the truth, and demanded not that Congress declare war but that it recognize a war already in existence. He informed them that “now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil.” None of it was true—but Polk didn’t consider it lies. There was a greater truth at stake, and he spoke in its service: “As war exists, and notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself, we are called upon by every consideration of duty and patriotism to vindicate with decision the honor, the rights, and the interest of our country.”31
Democratic congressional leaders attached this declaration of war as a preamble to a bill authorizing funds for the troops, placed it in front of Congress, and demanded assent. It was a shrewd but contemptible move, and new in American history. By bundling the authorization of war funds with a declaration of war attributed to Mexico, Democrats ensured that any opponent of the measure could be accused of betraying the troops. Polk’s supporters skillfully managed to stifle dissent in the House by limiting debate to two hours, an hour and a half of which was devoted to reading the documents that accompanied the message. The flabbergasted opposition was caught completely off guard and struggled to amend the bill. Powerless and voiceless, they watched helplessly as Polk’s supporters ruthlessly stifled debate and foisted war on Congress and the country.
Just before the final vote, Garrett Davis, the Whig representative from Clay’s district in Kentucky, gained the floor by a subterfuge, and then launched into an attack on Polk’s statement and the rushed proceedings. “The river Nueces is the true western boundary of Texas,” thundered Davis. It wasn’t Mexico but “our own President who began this war. He has been carrying it on for months.” Although repeatedly interrupted by Democrats and called to order by the Speaker of the House, Davis alone was able to voice what many of his colleagues believed: “that if the bill contained any … truth and justice,” it would acknowledge “that this war was begun by the president.”32
There were few men in Congress who took Polk’s claims at face value. For weeks, newspapers had asked their readers “for what purpose … our Army of Occupation has been ordered down from Corpus Christi to the Rio del Norte,” and concluded that Polk both �
��contemplated and desired” war. If not, “why was the United States army thrust upon the very lines of the Mexican?” The fact that he had provoked war by moving U.S. troops into an area long claimed by Mexico was self-evident. But the war bill offered the opposition a cruel choice: either assent to Polk’s lies or vote against reinforcements for Zachary Taylor’s troops, who, as far as anyone knew, were at that very moment engaged in battle with a much stronger Mexican army. Nor was Polk the only politician to recognize that “the country was excited and impatient” for war.33
Seventy-eight-year-old John Quincy Adams was having none of it. As secretary of state under James Monroe, Adams had been one of the nation’s foremost expansionists, a firm believer since the 1810s that the entirety of North America was “our natural dominion.” He wrote the Monroe Doctrine, which made a claim for U.S. influence throughout the hemisphere. He secured U.S. access to the Pacific with his Transcontinental Treaty. And he continued to maintain that the United States should control the entirety of the Oregon Country.34
John Quincy Adams. Antislavery activist John Quincy Adams headed the congressional opposition to war as leader of the “Immortal Fourteen,” the select group of antislavery congressmen who voted against Polk’s war bill. National Archives. (photo credit 5.3)
But in the years since his presidency, his energies had increasingly focused on America’s domestic perils, and the fate of American slavery was now his biggest concern. Adams was not opposed to war in general. There were “times and occasions of dire necessity for war,” he wrote. But this was not one of them. He was adamant that “war for the right can never be justly blamed; war for the wrong can never be justified.” His opposition to “this most outrageous war” was total. Just before the vote he told his fellow Massachusetts representative, Robert Winthrop, that he “hoped the officers would all resign, & the men all desert, & he would not help them, if they did not.” When it was time to cast his vote, Adams loudly shouted no. But there were only thirteen men who followed his lead, all of whom, along with their constituencies, believed slavery to be the greatest peril facing America.35
A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico Page 14