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

by Amy S. Greenberg

  Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail after refusing to pay his poll tax in protest against the war. He delivered a lecture titled “Civil Disobedience” calling for resistance against the government, which he declared had been “abused and perverted” in the service of war and slavery. “Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.”53 New England intellectuals such as James Russell Lowell and Ralph Waldo Emerson published trenchant critiques of the war.

  The issue of slavery was not far from the surface of most of these critiques. Polk never wavered from citing Mexican aggression as the war’s cause, and he insisted that the issue of slavery was irrelevant to the prosecution of the war. But when he submitted a request to Congress in August 1846 for two million dollars to negotiate a settlement with Mexico, it became clear to Congress that there would be no peace without territory. Most of that territory was coveted by slave owners. Northern Democrats were blindsided by the request. They had no interest in additional lands to the south, particularly after Polk’s betrayal on Oregon.

  Van Buren supporters in Congress, sick of Polk’s dissimulations, lashed back. On the sweltering evening of August 8, a little-known Pennsylvania Democrat named David Wilmot gained the floor and introduced a rider to the bill banning slavery from any lands taken from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso passed the House along strictly sectional lines but stalled in the Senate, where southerners had an advantage in numbers. Reintroduced in February 1847, it again passed in the House and stalled in the Senate.54

  By the middle of 1847, it was clear to virtually everyone in America that the spread of slavery was intimately connected with the resolution of the war. In September, a “Captain of the Volunteers” stationed in California published a scathing indictment of Polk’s war based on his personal knowledge of the administration’s diplomatic and military efforts to gain California. His account argued not only that “the present administration … have acted with a design to” annex “the territories of the Californias, Sonora, Chihuahua, and New Mexico … a measure as fraught with evil to ourselves as unjust to the inhabitants of Mexico,” but also that “the whole course of the administration” had been ordered to “insure” the possession of “the country of Mexico to the slaveholders of the South.” New England antislavery activists had been repeating this accusation for over a year. The Wilmot controversy allowed more moderate Americans, including men in uniform, to see that they had been right.55

  Walt Whitman, the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, was initially an enthusiastic supporter of the war, proclaiming that Mexico should be “thoroughly chastised.” His support for the Wilmot Proviso led him to revise his views by the summer of 1847. In September he published an editorial, “American Workingmen, Versus Slavery,” that framed his support for the proviso in both sectional and class terms, starkly contrasting the interests of the “workingmen,” with whom Whitman identified, and slave owners. “If either the slaves themselves, or their owners, had fought or paid for or gained this new territory,” he wrote, “there would be some reason in the pro-slavery claims” to Mexican territory. “But every body knows that the cost and work come, forty-nine fiftieths of it, upon the free men.” Whitman’s antislavery views, not shared by the paper’s conservative Democratic owner, got him fired from the Daily Eagle. By arguing that the interests of workingmen and slave owners were opposed, Whitman learned that the interests of the Democratic Party and justice might well be opposed too.56

  With the exception of Free-Soil advocates such as Whitman, Democratic editors and their papers continued to wholeheartedly support the president and his war. America’s popular culture, which enthusiastically embraced the war at the outset, continued to celebrate both American Manifest Destiny and the valor of the American soldier in the months after Wilmot’s proviso was introduced. Urban taverns rang with pro-war drinking songs, marching bands played “General Taylor’s Quick Step” and other military airs, and readers devoured paperback accounts of “the success of American arms” and “Mexican treacheries and cruelties.” Even the citizens of antiwar Boston willingly paid twenty-five cents a person (children under twelve were half price) to visit “Donnavan’s Grand Serial Panorama of Mexico, delineating the Scenery, Towns, Cities, and Battle Fields” in spacious Boylston Hall.57

  A casual observer could be excused for assuming that America was united in support of war, but many Americans were perplexed and angry. Antiwar petitions to Congress appeared from around the country, including Illinois, and no longer just from areas of antislavery strength. Whig newspapers from Maine to South Carolina asked when the war would end, what would happen to Mexico, and why the war had been begun in the first place. “We believe the public sober sense of the nation never desired war,” a North Carolina newspaper stated in May. That same month a rising politician in Ohio wrote to his brother, Lieutenant William T. Sherman, stationed in Mexico, “There is no doubt that a large majority of the people consider it an unjust aggression upon a weak republic, excused by false reason, and continued solely for the acquisition of slave territory.”58

  Evidence of this view was clear around the country. Jane Swisshelm of Pittsburgh was just twenty-one years old when the United States declared war on Mexico. She was a deeply religious young woman, and already convinced that slavery was wrong. Although it was common for antislavery women to publish anonymous letters, Swisshelm’s opposition to the U.S.-Mexican War, which she viewed as a natural outgrowth of slavery, convinced her to go further. In 1846 she openly published a series of scathing editorials against the war in a local Pittsburgh paper, a radical move for a woman at the time.

  Swisshelm also refused to shake the hand of an old friend just returned to Pittsburgh after volunteering to fight Mexico. When the volunteer asked if it was “possible” that she would not take his hand, Swisshelm looked into “his manly, handsome face” and told him, “There is blood on it: the blood of women and children slain at their own altars, on their own hearthstones, that you might spread the glorious American institutions of woman-whipping and baby-stealing.”59

  Rebecca Gratz, a sixty-seven-year-old philanthropist in Philadelphia, wrote her sister-in-law, “I feel so much more sorrow & disgust, than heroism in this war.… When we were obliged to fight for our liberty—and rights—there was motive & glory in the strife—but to invade a country and slaughter its inhabitants—to fight for boundary—or political supremacy—is altogether against my principles and feelings.” A doctor’s wife in Pennsylvania declared that through “wicked deception” by Polk, “this war has carried Sorrow and dismay into every portion of our Country.” After witnessing a military funeral for a local soldier in April 1847, a woman in Boston wrote in her diary that “our nation must be cursed for so unrighteous and needless a war. ‘There really is a God who judgeth and will avenge.’ ” A man in rural Massachusetts was so enraged by the war that he suggested to his cousin in Vermont that “the best thing the free states can do is to withdraw from the slave states and establish a free government.” He would just as soon “let the slave states support the accursed slave system alone.”60

  Not even Sarah Polk was immune from attack. A Massachusetts newspaper condemned her as a hypocrite who, despite “her piety … lov[ed] most cordially all plunder, robbery, murder, and every other sport for the sake of slavery.” But James K. Polk came in for special abuse. Emily Huse, a wife and mother in the Wisconsin Territory, bemoaned the war in a letter in September 1847 to a female friend. “Was there ever the like of that Mexican War? Horrid butcherys—Mexico is harder metal than Polk thought.” Huse’s husband had recently learned that three local men were killed in the war, and as a result was unable to sleep. He told his wife that he “wishes President Polk dead. Pity he hadn’t died 3 or 4 years ago.”61

  From his camp near Monterrey, Zachary Taylor was thinking similar thoughts. “A report has reached here that President P
olk was dead, which, I do not credit,” he wrote his son-in-law. But “while I regret to hear of the death of any one,” he admitted, “I would as soon have heard of his death … as that of any other individual in the whole Union.”62

  10

  War Measures

  WHAT POLK FOUND most galling about the cacophony of voices raised against him was that the news from the front was good, remarkably so, and yet he received none of the acclaim. He complained to his cabinet and his diary about “the injustice of giving all the credit of our victories to the commanding General,” and none to the regulars, volunteers, or commander in chief. Even so, he thought, it should have been apparent to everyone that matters in Mexico were progressing nicely.1 General Scott was on the move, the Mexican army was on the defensive, and the plan to take the capital was falling into place.

  Scott, like Cortés before him, had stormed Veracruz during Holy Week. Not long afterward, Manuel G. Zamorg, a major in the national guard of Veracruz, bemoaned the fact that “the Conquest of Mexico, to judge from present indications, was far harder to Cortez in 1521 than it is to the Yankees in 1847. What a miserable reflection!” Scott set off for Mexico City after securing Veracruz in April. He understood that there was no time to rest, or to lose sleep over the collateral damage. The troops needed to reach higher ground to stave off yellow fever, and General Santa Anna was on his way.2

  Santa Anna had been kept busy by affairs in the capital. After marching back from Buena Vista, he quelled a rebellion in Mexico City, reestablished order, and promised the people of Mexico that he would defeat the invaders. Three days after news of the fall of Veracruz reached Mexico City, he was marching toward the coast with an army of twelve thousand. He established headquarters near his summer estate and prepared to crush the Americans at a mountain pass called Cerro Gordo on the road to the capital.

  SCOTT’S ADVANCE TO MEXICO CITY (photo credit m10.1)

  When Scott’s troops arrived at Cerro Gordo they found an impenetrable Mexican defensive line spanning two miles from the bank of a river across the pass and over two hills. “The hights of Cero Gordo looked almost as imposable to take as the hights of Gibralter,” one soldier wrote home. Scott sent his engineers to search for a solution. Captain Robert E. Lee proved the hero of the day when he discovered a mountain path around Santa Anna’s position. On April 18, the two armies battled on the road, and a portion of U.S. troops secretly moved around the Mexican left flank. They emerged in the rear of the enemy, causing instant confusion. As the Mexican troops began to flee, Santa Anna found himself face-to-face with Edward Baker’s Fourth Illinois Volunteers. He barely escaped with his life and had to leave behind in his carriage $18,000 in gold, a lunch of roast chicken, and the artificial leg he wore after battling the French in the Pastry War nine years earlier. The men of Illinois turned over the gold, ate the chicken, and brought the leg back home with them.3

  The battle lasted only a few hours. It was a decisive victory, and while no Buena Vista, it finally brought the volunteers some measure of the glory they craved. “The American heart is again made to swell and throb with the emotions of joy and national pride and exultation, over another and not less glorious achievement of our indomitable army,” the New Orleans Delta proclaimed. But it was a bloody battle. Writing in his journal that evening, a Pennsylvania volunteer reported seeing “no less than fifty dead Mexicans all on one pile … Some groaning. It was enough to move the strongest heart.… Although our enemy’s[,] yet as an American I could not help having that sympathy which all soldiers should have for one or other especially when wounded in defense of their country.”4 The following day Scott continued the push forward toward the capital. Mexico’s president issued an edict calling on the men of the region to form irregular units and drive the invaders back to Vera Cruz. A light corps of mounted lancers could, it was hoped, achieve what the army could not. Mexico embraced guerrilla warfare.5

  “Capture of Gen. Santa Anna’s Private Carriage at Battle of Cerro Gordo, April 18, 1847.” Edward Baker’s Fourth Illinois Volunteers had the good luck to capture Santa Anna’s artificial leg during the battle. They brought the leg back to Illinois as a trophy of war, and it now resides at the Illinois State Military Museum. J. Jacob Oswandel, Notes of the Mexican War, 1846–47–48 (Philadelphia, 1885), 131. (photo credit 10.1)

  Among the most tenacious soldiers fighting for Mexico were the U.S. deserters who made up the San Patricio (or St. Patrick’s) Battalion. Desertions had been a problem for the U.S. Army since Taylor first entered Texas, particularly among the 40 percent of the regular army who were recent immigrants. Raised in foreign cultures, many immigrants looked at America’s fantasy of Manifest Destiny with skepticism, if not outright hostility. One Prussian volunteer from Ohio, Otto Birkel, noted in his diary that “the Founding Fathers of the [American] Republic were right to … recommend the strongest neutrality in all world affairs to their grandsons; but these grandsons thought themselves wiser, and now there is talk of uniting the entire continent of North and South America into one enormous state.” While anyone who had traveled through Europe “can very well see the madness of these plans,” in the United States “the majority of the people … do not doubt the possibility of the undertaking, and are supported … by countless demagogues.”6

  Furthermore, while a significant proportion of immigrant soldiers were Catholic, the officers, for the most part, were Protestant, and the army reflected the virulent anti-Catholicism of American society in the 1840s. Anti-Catholic riots were common events in northeastern cities in the 1830s and 1840s. Just two years before the start of the war, objections to the use of the Catholic King James Bible in public schools led to a major riot in Philadelphia and a national conversation about the place of Catholicism in America. There were plenty of soldiers who claimed “that the present war is favored by the Almighty, because it will be the means of eradicating Papacy, and extending the benefits of Protestantism.” Catholic immigrants found it difficult to abide by some of the army’s rules. Soldiers of all faiths were advised, or compelled, to attend the Protestant services offered by the army chaplain. They were often banned from attending Catholic mass. Not surprisingly, they had trouble justifying a war waged on fellow Catholics.7

  Mexicans recognized their quandary. From the opening shots of the war, the nation encouraged desertions with promises of respect, public assistance, and eventual land grants. In June 1847, Juan Soto, governor of Veracruz, distributed a handbill, in both Spanish and English, that appealed to “Catholic Irish, Frenchmen, and German[s] of the invading army!” It stated, “The American nation makes a most unjust war to the Mexicans and has taken all of you as an instrument of their iniquity. You must not fight against a religious people, nor should you be seen in the ranks of those who proclaim slavery of mankind as a constitutive principle. The religious man … is not on the part of those who desire to be the lords of the world, robbing properties and territories which do not belong to them and shedding so much blood.” Deserters would not be alone; “many of your former companions fight now content in our ranks. After this war is over, the magnanimous and generous Mexican nation will duly appreciate the services rendered, and you shall remain with us, cultivating our fertile lands. Catholic Irish, French, and German!! Long live liberty!! Long live our holy Religion!!” Two months later, Santa Anna issued a similar circular promising land and equality to American soldiers.8

  More than a few Catholics found appeals like these persuasive, and decided to switch their allegiance. Under the leadership of a tall, blue-eyed Irishman named John Reilly, who deserted from Taylor’s camp across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, 150 former U.S. soldiers became one of Santa Anna’s greatest weapons, experts at operating the artillery that the U.S. Army employed with crushing effectiveness. Fighting under a shamrock-festooned flag, with promises of land and glory as a reward for their service, the St. Patrick’s battalion knew that surrender to the United States was the equivalent of death. Although many members of the battalion
were recent immigrants from Europe and not American citizens, the U.S. Army considered them all traitors.

  The road north from Cerro Gordo passed through miles of jungle full of musical birds of all hues. A Pennsylvania volunteer declared it “the prettiest country that I have yet seen … like the Garden of Eden more than anything I can compare it to.” Scott spent the first half of May in Jalapa, a scenic town of gardens and orange groves. The troops delighted in the temperate climate four thousand feet above Veracruz. Everything is “neat and clean,” wrote a volunteer, “not only the streets and houses but also the citizens.” It reminded many volunteers of home, and inspired fantasies of Americanization. One volunteer found it “easy to imagine ourselves in some thriving Yankee town.” Another was “astonished as well as delighted to see such an intelligent set of people. I did not think that there was such people in all Mexico judging from those I had seen before. Business is done here in a neat and Yankee style. The females are beauty’s they cannot be beat.”9

  But perhaps the similarity of Jalapa to the United States exacerbated their homesickness, for what most of the twelve-month volunteers imagined was being back in the United States. They were sick of Mexico. Carl von Grone, a Prussian serving with Scott, wrote to his brother in Germany that “the numerous thieving riff-raff” among the volunteers “committed the most shameless acts of depravity on a daily basis” in Jalapa, “including the robbing of women on open streets, thefts in their accommodations, break-ins, robbing of churches and so on.”10 Their enlistments were almost up, and despite Scott’s entreaties and the recent victory at Cerro Gordo, virtually none of them wanted to continue fighting. As Colonel Pierce M. Butler, commander of the South Carolina volunteers, wrote to the governor of his state, “The contest is unequal and the service an inglorious one. The universal voice of the Army, Navy, and Volunteers, is for terminating this contest, and peace would be to them the most welcome news.” Their terms of service over, the regiments left Mexico in droves, and American papers sought to justify their unwillingness to continue fighting.