A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

by Amy S. Greenberg

  Stockton gloated about his triumph in a letter to the president. “All is now peaceful and quiet. My word at present is the law of the land. My power is more than regal. The haughty Mexican Cavalier shakes hands with me with pleasure, and the beautiful women look to me with joy and gladness, as their friend and benefactor. In short all of power and luxury is spread before me, through the mysterious workings of a beneficent Providence.”27

  America’s mood verged on the lighthearted: embedded journalists traveling with the troops turned battles into entertainments and idealized both America’s hero-soldiers and their triumphs. The public was so anxious for news from Mexico that some unscrupulous newsboys and the papers themselves manufactured stories to get people to buy papers. One newspaper with its own correspondent in the field celebrated the enthusiasm for war news.

  The newsboy hits the streets and shouts out “here’s the extra ’Erald—got the great battle in Mexico.” The merchant rushes from his store and buys an extra … cartmen draw up to the sidewalk and stop with their loaded carts while they read … the clerk, on his way to the bank, reads a full account.… The dandy on the hotel steps, the cabman on the stand, the butcher at his stall, the loafer on the dock, the lady in the parlor, the cook in the kitchen, the waiter in the barroom, the clerk in the store, the actor at rehearsal, the judge upon the bench, the lawyer in the court, the officer in attendance, even the prisoner at the bar, [read] of the victory and rejoice!28

  The war was going so brilliantly that even Lincoln was forced to take part in a pro-war rally. At the statehouse in June, he found himself, along with four other distinguished speakers, supporting “prompt and united action” to “sustain” America’s honor and “secure her national rights.” The local paper lauded the “warm, thrilling, effective” speeches in favor of war.29

  The speech was strictly political. Lincoln had had no change of heart, and he made no further public statements about the war. He was intent on winning the election. Abandoning his law practice entirely, Lincoln ran a disciplined campaign that summer. It helped that his opponent was an indifferent public speaker. But Lincoln “kept his forces well in hand,” and one supporter remembered that “long before the contest closed we snuffed approaching victory in the air.”30

  Henry Clay made no speeches about the war in the summer of 1846. He was still so adored in his home state that he could have returned to office in 1846, had he wished, or he could have traveled the country, delivering addresses to enthusiastic Whig audiences. But Clay showed no interest. Seemingly retired forever from the world of politics, he roused himself only enough to bemoan the nation’s fate in a letter to a friend in June. “A war between two neighboring Republics! Between them because the stronger one has possessed itself of Territory claimed by the weaker!” It was almost too much to believe, made worse for Clay because he had “foretold” what would happen. “This unhappy War never would have occurred if there had been a different issue of the Presidential contest of 1844.”31

  The “trumpet of war” sounded as loudly in Kentucky as in Illinois. Three regiments of Kentucky volunteers were mustered into service in May and June, and as in Illinois, Clay noted, “a vast proportion” of the volunteers “are Whigs, who disapproved of the measures which have led to this unfortunate war.” Among them was Clay’s favorite son and namesake, Henry Clay Jr., who was appointed lieutenant colonel in the Second Kentucky Volunteers. The father tried to keep up a strong front in a letter to his best female friend, Octavia LeVert: “We cannot but admire and approve the patriotic and gallant spirit which animates our Country men, altho’ we might wish that the cause in which they have stept forth was more reconcilable with the dictates of conscience.” But it was a painful parting. The young volunteer was the most gifted of his sons, the one for whom he had the greatest expectations. How bitter it was that Henry Junior was risking death for a president his father detested and a conflict he despised. Clay presented his son with the family dueling pistols and wept as he bid him goodbye.32

  War News from Mexico, 1848. Richard Caton Woodville of Baltimore was just twenty-three when he produced his ambivalent painting of Americans reading the news from Mexico. This widely circulated image reflects the intense public interest in the war as well as the role that newspapers played in spreading news from the front. The 1846 conflict was the first American war covered by embedded journalists, whose reports offered Americans around the country what would have seemed like intimate access to the experiences of the troops on a nearly daily basis. Woodville’s concern about the impact of the war on the future of slavery can be inferred by the presence of African Americans in the forefront. That the figure to the left is thoughtlessly dropping a match into a barrel suggests that the war may have devastating and unintended consequences. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. (photo credit 6.1)

  Nor was that the full extent of difficulties faced by Clay that summer. While the rest of the nation rejoiced at the news of American victories in Mexico, Clay’s family was “laboring under a severe domestic affliction.” His son John suffered another breakdown in August, requiring a second hospitalization. Clay sought relief at a nearby spa for a few days, but returned home to the devastating news that his first and favorite grandson, Martin Duralde, was dead. Duralde, just twenty-three, had been suffering for eighteen months from a “hoemorrage of the lungs” due to tuberculosis, and had finally succumbed to “frightful convulsions from a congestion of the brain.” Duralde had grown up in the Clay household after his mother’s death at age twenty-two. Clay poured out his grief in a letter to Duralde’s doctor. “Death, ruthless death, has deprived me of Six affectionate daughters, all that I ever had, and has now commenced his work of destruction, with my descendents, in the second generation.”33

  Lieutenant Colonel Henry Clay Jr. Henry and Lucretia’s third and most promising son volunteered to lead Kentucky troops to Mexico, despite his father’s hostility to the war and his own Whig principles. Courtesy of Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate, Lexington, Kentucky. (photo credit 6.2)

  September brought more alarming news. Henry Clay Jr., who had joined Taylor’s forces after his victories along the Rio Grande, had “met with a serious accident.” Perhaps the elder Henry never heard the rumor that Lieutenant Colonel Henry Clay’s injuries were sustained in a riding accident while drunk. He was charged with drunkenness in the accident, but his subordinates maintained the charges were false. He admitted to his father that “I have not and probably shall never recover the perfect use of my arm.” Clay’s nerves may have been at a fevered pitch over the safety of his son that month, but September also brought the most brilliant victory yet for U.S. forces.34

  Monterrey, a provincial capital of fifteen thousand, sat on a key transit route in northern Mexico and was considered of strategic importance both to Mexicans and to Americans, who envisioned the city as an anchor in a defensive line across northern Mexico. After his embarrassing losses along the Rio Grande, General Arista was stripped of command. His replacement was ordered to concentrate his forces in Monterrey and defend the city from invaders. Given the setting of the town, nestled in the foothills of a mountain range and extending along a river, and the layout of the city, with straight and easily barricaded streets, this seemed straightforward. In July and August, the seven thousand Mexican troops now gathered in the area, under the command of General Ampudia, constructed impressive fortifications around the city.

  Taylor, meanwhile, marched his six thousand men from Matamoros to Monterrey. On September 19, he reconnoitered the mile-long city, seemingly unconcerned that he was about to attempt to storm a virtual fortress. On Sunday, September 20, U.S. troops deployed into a line of battle. During the three-day battle that followed, they accomplished the seemingly impossible. Taylor divided his forces, and half, under the command of Brigadier General William Jenkins Worth, took advantage of a driving rain to seize the main road into town by surprise. They then stormed the town, first seizing earthworks from the Mexicans, then
capturing a stone fort with the use of an artillery barrage, and finally driving the Mexicans from their interior fortifications. The other half of the American forces, under Taylor, attacked from the opposite direction. On the morning of September 23, Taylor’s forces were fighting in the streets of Monterrey, smashing through the walls of houses and bayoneting Mexican soldiers. The destruction was terrible, and horrified residents watched as “Monterey was converted into a vast cemetery. The unburied bodies, the dead and putrid mules, the silence of the streets, all gave a fearful aspect to this city.”35

  Heroic Defense of the City of Monterey. Mexicans produced few images of the invasion of their country during or directly after the war. This rare lithograph depicts the chaos and destruction of the street fighting during the third day of the siege of Monterrey from a distinctly Mexican perspective. Mexican soldiers heroically defend their city with the help of civilians and a priest. From Album Pintoresco de la República Méxicana (Mexico: Hallase en la estamperia de Julio Michaud y Thomas), ca. 1848–50. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. (photo credit 6.3)

  The following morning, Ampudia surrendered. The Americans were getting dangerously close to his munitions storehouse, and the general feared an explosion. All public property in the town was handed over to Taylor’s forces, and Mexican troops agreed to retire from the field. The U.S. Army settled into an extended occupation of the town. Ampudia requested, and was granted, an eight-week armistice, which each government had the right to veto.

  The terms were generous on Taylor’s part—far too generous, in Polk’s eyes. “It was a great mistake of Gen’l Taylor to agree to an armistice,” the president wrote in his diary when he heard. “He had the enemy in his power & should have taken them prisoners.” He immediately, and angrily, vetoed the armistice. The cabinet agreed that had Taylor “captured the Mexican army, deprived them of their arms, and discharged them … it would have probably ended the war with Mexico.” But Taylor’s actions made sense given the situation, which Polk wholly failed to comprehend. The American troops were exhausted, hungry, and low on ammunition. They were in no state to continue the grueling hand-to-hand combat that would be required to secure the city.36

  Taylor was also fairly sure the war was now over. The United States had secured Texas and had taken the fight into Mexico itself. His job was now done. Five hundred U.S. soldiers had perished in the capture of Monterrey, and Taylor had no interest in seeing that number increase. Had the war been about the Mexico-Texas boundary, it would have been over.

  But Polk’s ambitions involved more than Texas alone, and they were growing larger with each U.S. victory. At a cabinet meeting on June 30, Secretary of State Buchanan tried, once again, to convince the president of the folly of dismembering Mexico. When Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker argued in favor of taking everything north of the twenty-sixth parallel (including most of Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, and Baja California, as well as a good portion of Nuevo Léon and Tamaulipas; in total, a third of modern-day Mexico), Buchanan protested. “If it was the object of the President to acquire all the country North of 26° … it should be known,” he insisted. And “the opinion of the world would be against” us, “especially as it would become a slave-holding country.” Walker responded “that he would be willing to fight the whole world sooner than suffer other Powers to interfere in the matter.” Polk agreed with his belligerent secretary: “I remarked that I preferred the 26° to any boundary North of it.”37 And no one in the cabinet questioned Buchanan’s assumption that these new lands would become slave territory.

  The war, then, was far from over.

  As the summer turned to fall, American newspaper readers might have noticed a subtle shift in war news. After the initial euphoria of America’s stunning victories dissipated, the nearly universal response in favor of the war began to fray. In late May, the Philadelphia North American, a staunch Whig paper, had cheered that “all party distinctions” had been “lost—all hearts heated and fused into one fiery mass against the foes of the country.”38

  But news of mounting casualties led many in the United States to ask why the war had not yet been brought to a conclusion. Because the army did not censor the letters of soldiers, both volunteers and regulars wrote home with vivid reports of overcrowded, unsanitary camps and outbreaks of communicable diseases in the regiments. Many of these were published by their families in local papers. One October 1846 letter from Monterrey, published in the New Orleans Picayune, admitted that “the health of the army is bad, a very heavy proportion of the officers and men being on the sick list.… Our sufferings are intolerable.” A correspondent to the New Orleans Times noted in November that “disease was very common with the officers and the men” stationed along the Rio Grande. Volunteers, particularly from the countryside, lacked the previous exposure to communicable diseases that might have provided some immunity, and as a result they suffered from this disease at a higher rate than did the regulars. Unused to standards of camp sanitation, and more liable to undercook their rations or overindulge on the novel tropical fruits they encountered, they were also more prone to illness caused by tainted water and poor diet.39

  The women of Baltimore formed a benevolent organization “to assist the poor sick and wounded soldiers” with donations of preserved food, and journalists made similar appeals to the “patriotism” of women in other towns, but the bad news kept coming. When a shipload of sick and injured soldiers arrived in Louisiana, a journalist marveled that half of the passengers “were wounded or sick, some having lost their legs, others their arms, and others being wounded in their arms and legs.… Will you believe me when I tell you that with all these sick and wounded and dying men, not a surgeon or nurse was sent along to attend upon them, not a particle of medicine furnished, not a patch of linen for dressing wounds.” David Davis wrote to a Massachusetts friend that the Illinois volunteers “have been treated worse than dogs & one half either die, or return home, emaciated & with constitutions wholly broken down.”40

  The public evinced quite a bit more concern about the volunteers than the regulars. Although serving in the same army, they were dramatically different groups, and were perceived that way at the time. More than twice as many volunteers as regulars served in Mexico, 59,000 versus 27,000. The vast majority of enlisted men in the peacetime regular army were poor, uneducated, and unskilled. Forty percent were recently arrived immigrants (many not yet naturalized), and 35 percent could not sign their name. Their average age was twenty-five. Service in the army was neither particularly remunerative nor honorable; in a democratic culture that upheld freedom and independence as precious American rights, soldiers were considered overly servile. They were subjected to harsh corporal punishment, including whipping, and forced to labor under conditions they considered degrading, often alongside slaves. Most men who enlisted in the regular army did so because they had no better options in the sluggish and unpredictable economy in the decade following the Panic of 1837. Even those poorly paid jobs open to unskilled laborers, such as digging ditches and canals or hauling coal, were hard to come by. Not surprisingly, many of these men deserted when the opportunity presented itself.41

  Volunteers, by contrast, tended to come from the middle and upper echelons of society. Their ideas about discipline were decidedly more lax than those of the regular army, and they insisted upon being treated with respect, like citizens. They demanded (but were not legally entitled to) the right to withdraw from service when they chose.

  There was no love lost between the two groups. Volunteers looked down upon the regulars and often failed to conceal their contempt. Their disdain was not simply grounded in a conviction of their social superiority. Like most Americans, the volunteers questioned whether a democratic republic like the United States had any need for a standing army, and doubted that men serving for wages could be relied upon in a fight. Both beliefs had long histories. Soon after the Revolution, Congress declared that peacetime stan
ding armies were “inconsistent with the principles of republican government” and “dangerous to the liberties of a free people,” since they could easily be “converted into destructive engines for establishing despotism.” As for paying men to fight, this too seemed suspicious to Americans. In the 1840s Americans still venerated the volunteer ethos as particularly admirable and trustworthy, while professionalization would not take on the positive attributes of skill and expertise until after the Civil War. One could practice as a doctor or lawyer in the 1840s without a great deal of training or any formal certification, and all firefighting was conducted by volunteers, even in large cities. Americans were hesitant to employ paid firemen because they questioned whether men motivated by financial interests would be willing to risk their lives at a fire. Paying soldiers seemed equally problematic.42

  The regulars, by contrast, found preposterous the idea that volunteers could defend the United States, let alone conduct an offensive war like that in Mexico. They resented their extra rights and privileges, as well as the fact that volunteers won a disproportionate amount of praise for victories that by rights belonged to the regulars. Zachary Taylor, who found the volunteers impossible to control, believed them more trouble than they were worth. Perhaps he was right. Volunteers, lacking both training and discipline, were not only less reliable under fire than the regulars, and disproportionately susceptible to communicable disease, in part because of their poor sanitation practices, but also committed atrocities against Mexican civilians that would come to shock Americans back home.