35. James K. Polk, “Letters of James K. Polk to Cave Johnson, 1833–1848,” Tennessee Historical Magazine 1 (Sep. 1915): 209–56, quote on 245.
36. “Mr. Clay’s Last Texas Letter,” Pittsfield (MA) Sun, Sep. 19, 1844.
37. Ibid.; “Electors of Michigan!” (1844), American Broadsides and Ephemera, ser. 1, no. 14258.
38. “Workingman’s Song #2,” in John S. Littell, The Clay Minstrel, or National Songster, 2nd ed. (New York: Greeley and McElrath, 1844), 339.
39. “Gallant Harry, the Song of the Clay Club of Germantown,” in Littell, The Clay Minstrel, 158; Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, Voices Without Votes: Women and Politics in Antebellum New England (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2010), 135; Nathan Sargent, Public Men and Events, from the Commencement of Mr. Monroe’s Administration, in 1817, to the Close of Mr. Fillmore’s Administration in 1853 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1875), 2:246; on female partisanship, see Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to Be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
40. David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Henry Clay: The Essential American (New York: Random House, 2010), 424–25.
41. John Hickey, The Democratic Lute, and Minstrel: Comprising a Great Number of Patriotic, Sentimental, and Comic Political Songs and Duetts: Entirely Original (Philadelphia: H. B. Pierson, 1844), 5.
42. Whether the Liberty Party vote was responsible for Clay’s loss has been the subject of ample debate. Most Liberty Party members in New York were Whigs who had voluntarily left the party in large part because they disagreed with the positions of men like Clay. To suggest they would have voted for Clay had there been no Liberty Party ignores the fact that there was one. See, for example, Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 133–36; Vernon L. Volpe, “The Liberty Party and Polk’s Election, 1844,” Historian 23 (Jan. 1991): 697. For a counterargument, see Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 144.
43. Mrs. Robert S. Todd to Mary Todd Lincoln, quoted in Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Life of Henry Clay (Boston: Little, Brown, 1937), 376.
44. Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk, 76–77.
45. Ibid., 77; Blacksmith Harry to Polk, Nov. 28, 1844, in James K. Polk Papers, LC.
46. Jackson to W. B. Lewis, Feb. 4, 1845, quoted in Sellers, Polk, Continentalist, 184.
47. Andrew Jackson Jr. to A. O. P. Nicholson, Jun. 17, 1845, quote in Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (New York: Random House, 2008), 304; Remini, Clay, 1n. 1.
48. James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington: GPO, 1901), 4:373–82; Sellers, Polk, Continentalist, 209.
49. Raleigh letter quotes, DNI, Apr. 27, 1844.
CHAPTER 4. SPEAKING CANNON FIRE
1. Waddy Thompson to Daniel Webster, Apr. 11, 1843, DC, 8:544; David A. Clary, Eagles and Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle for a Continent (New York: Bantam, 2009), 55; El Mosquito Mexicano, Dec. 16, 1842, quote in George Brack, Mexico Views Manifest Destiny, 1821–1846: An Essay on the Origins of the Mexican War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975), 103.
2. Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845), 5:171.
3. Elizabeth Fries Lumis Ellet, The Court Circles of the Republic (Philadelphia, 1872), 381, quote in Charles Sellers, James K. Polk, Continentalist, 1843–1846 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 2:163; Martin Van Buren to Polk, Jan. 18, 1845, Polk Papers, LC.
4. James K. Polk, “Letters of James K. Polk to Cave Johnson, 1833–1848,” Tennessee Historial Magazine 1 (Sep. 1915): 254.
5. Gideon Wells quote in Richard R. Stenberg, “President Polk and California: Additional Documents,” Pacific Historical Review 10 (1941): 217–19, quotes on 219.
6. Senator Dix quote in Sellers, Polk, Continentalist, 218.
7. Gideon Wells quote in Stenberg, “President Polk and California,” 219.
8. James K. Polk, Diary of a President: James K. Polk, ed. Milo Quaife, 4 vols. (Columbia, TN: James K. Polk Memorial Association, 2005), 4:350; see also Paul H. Bergeron, The Presidency of James K. Polk (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1987), 23–49.
9. Correspondence of James K. Polk, ed. Herbert Weaver and Wayne Cutler et al., 11 vols. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969–2009), 7:355–56; Anton and Fanny Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1892), 52.
10. Quote in Sellers, Polk, Continentalist, 308; Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk, 54.
11. Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk, 94.
12. John Robert Irelan, The Republic, or the History of the United States of America (Chicago: Fairbanks and Palmer, 1888), 11:675; Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk, 81.
13. Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk, 93.
14. Ibid., 79–80.
15. Ibid., 112.
16. Irelan, Republic, 675.
17. Ibid.; John Reed Bumgarner, Sarah Childress Polk: A Biography of the Remarkable First Lady (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co, 1997), 59; Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk, 51–52.
18. Quote in Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, Voices Without Votes: Women and Politics in Antebellum New England (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2010), 146–47.
19. Stenberg, “President Polk and California,” 219; Sellers, Polk: Continentalist, 213.
20. George E. Ellis, Letters upon the Annexation of Texas. Addressed to Hon. John Quincy Adams (Boston: White, Lewis, and Potter, 1845), 47, 6, 23.
21. El Defensor de las Leyes (Mexico City), Mar. 26, 1845; El Siglo Diez y Nueve, Nov. 31, 1845; both quotes in Brack, Mexico Views Manifest Destiny, 141, 143.
22. Comunicación circular que el Exmo. Sr. Don Manuel Peña y Peña estendió en el año de 1845, como ministro de relaciones, sobre la cuestión de paz o Guerra, según el estado que guardaba en aquella época (Querétero, Nov. 27, 1845), quote in Brack, Mexico Views Manifest Destiny, 161; Buchanan to Slidell, Nov. 10, 1845, DC, 8:172–82.
23. Louis Martin Sears, John Slidell (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1925), 45; John Slidell to James Buchanan, New Orleans, Sep. 25, 1845, in Works of James Buchanan, ed. John Bassett Moore (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1909), 6:264.
24. Stenberg, “President Polk and California,” 218.
25. Ibid. For a stronger statement on Polk’s duplicity, see Glenn W. Price, Origins of the War with Mexico: the Polk-Stockton Intrigue (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967).
26. Buchanan to Slidell, Mar. 12, 1846, Executive Document, 29th Cong., 1st sess., 1845–46, Number 196, 56.
27. Ibid.; Slidell to Polk, Mexico, Dec. 29, 1845, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 10:449.
28. “Henry Clay and Ashland,” Cleveland Daily Herald, May 31, 1845.
29. Heidler, Henry Clay, 397; “Henry Clay and Ashland,” Cleveland Daily Herald, May 31, 1845; “The Shades of Ashland,” Cleveland Daily Herald, Sep. 5, 1843.
30. “The Shades of Ashland,” Cleveland Daily Herald, Sep. 5, 1843; “Henry Clay and Ashland,” Cleveland Daily Herald, May 31, 1845; Koerner, Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, 1:350.
31. “Henry Clay and Ashland,” Cleveland Daily Herald, May 31, 1845.
32. Madeleine McDowell, “Recollections of Henry Clay,” Century Magazine, May 1895, 765–70, quotes on 768.
33. Clay to Mary Bayard, Lexington, Feb. 4, 1845, PHC, 10:197; Clay to Mary Bayard, Lexington, May 7, 1846, PHC, 10:267.
34. H. Clay and Richard L. Troutman, “The Emancipation of Slaves by Henry Clay,” Journal of Negro History 40, no. 2 (Apr. 1955): 179–81.
35. Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Life of Henry Clay (Boston: Little, Brown, 1937), 379–80.
36. Tilford to Cla
y, Feb. 17, 1845, PHC, 10:200.
37. Henry Clay to Henry Clay Jr., Mar. 29, 1830, PHC, 8:185; Henry Clay to Henry Clay Jr., Apr. 2, 1827, PHC, 6:385; Henry Clay Jr., Diary, 1840–41, University of Kentucky Special Collections.
38. Van Deusen, Life of Henry Clay, 233.
39. Clay to Henry Clay Jr. Lexington, Apr. 8, 1845, PHC, 10:215.
40. Polk, Diary, 1:85.
41. Ibid.
42. William L. Marcy to Zachary Taylor, Jan. 13, 1846, in Messages of the President of the United States with the Correspondence, Therewith Communicated, Between the Secretary of War and Other Officers of the Government, on the Subject of the Mexican War, House Executive Documents, 30th Cong. 1st sess., no. 60 (Washington, DC: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1848), 89–90.
43. Slidell to Buchanan, Jalapa, Mar. 18, 1846, Executive Document, 29th Cong., 1st sess., 1845–1846, no. 196, 57.
44. On Anglophobia, see Sam W. Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010).
45. Robert Charles Winthrop, A Memoir of Robert C. Winthrop (Boston: Little, Brown, 1897), 39–40; information on King John in Charles H. Shattuck, Shakespeare on the American Stage: From the Hallams to Edwin Booth (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1976), 69.
46. William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Welk, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (New York: Appleton, 1892), 256; John Boyle to John J. Hardin, Tremont, IL, Nov. 27, 1844, HFP, Box 15:4; George T. Davis to Hardin, Nov. 24, 1844, HFP, Box 15:4.
47. Isaac Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1885), 82–83; Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, A Biography (New York: Norton, 1987), 112–13.
48. Herndon, Lincoln, 257; Lincoln to Hardin, Springfield, May 21, 1844, CW, 1:336. See also Lincoln to Hardin, Springfield, Dec. 17, 1844, CW, 1:342–43.
49. Hardin to David A. Smith, Mar. 1, 1844, HFP, Box 14:3.
50. Nancy L. Cox, “A Life of John Hardin of Illinois, 1810–1847” (M.A. thesis, Miami University, 1964), 82–98, quote on 88.
51. John J. Hardin, Speech of Mr. J. J. Hardin, of Illinois Reviewing the Principles of James K. Polk and the Leaders of Modern Democracy (Washington, DC: J. and G. S. Gideon, 1844), 3.
52. John J. Hardin to David A. Smith, Jul. 12, 1844, HFP, Box 15:3; John Hardin to Ellen Hardin, Dec. 1, 1843, WFA.
53. John J. Hardin to Sarah Hardin, May 26, 1844, HFP, 15:2; Sangamo Journal, May 3 and 10, 1844.
54. Sangamo Journal, Jun. 12, 1845.
55. Ellen Hardin Walworth, “Charter Member, Application for Membership #5,” Dec. 1890, Manuscript Collection. Daughters of the American Revolution Library, Centennial Hall, Washington, DC. See also Frederick Gerhard, Illinois as It Is (Chicago: Keen and Lee, 1857), 118–19.
56. Lincoln to Benjamin F. James, Springfield, Jan. 14, 1846, CW, 1:353–54; Lincoln to Boal, Jan. 7, 1846, CW, 1:352–53; Cox, “Hardin,” 113.
57. Quote in Beveridge, Lincoln, 1:372; Lincoln to Hardin, Springfield, Jan. 19, 1846, CW, 1:356–57.
58. Quote in Beveridge, Lincoln, 1:373–74.
59. Quote in Herndon, Lincoln, 95.
60. Sangamo Journal, Jun. 12, 1845.
61. Hardin to Major Dunlap, Feb. 5, 1846, HFP, Box 16.
62. Sangamo Journal, Apr. 23, 1846, quoted in Beveridge, Lincoln, 1:375–76.
CHAPTER 5. “THE MISCHIEF IS DONE”
1. Nicholas Trist letter, May 4, 1833, quote in James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), 3:605.
2. Elizabeth Trist to Nicholas Trist, Feb. 9, 1820, Trist Papers, UNC, Folder 19.
3. Nicholas Trist to Andrew Jackson Donelson, Feb. 10, 1830, Trist Papers, LC.
4. James K. Polk, Diary of a President: James K. Polk, ed. Milo Quaife, 4 vols. (Columbia, TN: James K. Polk Memorial Association, 2005), 4:261; n.d., Trist Papers, LC, Reel 6.
5. Polk, Diary, 4:261.
6. N.d., Trist Papers, LC, Reel 6.
7. Polk, Diary, 1:354.
8. Anson and Fanny Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1892), 99.
9. New Orleans Delta and New Orleans Bulletin, quoted in “Mexican Affairs,” South Carolina Temperance Advocate and Register of Agriculture and General Literature (Columbia, SC), Apr. 23, 1846.
10. Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk, 103.
11. Walt Whitman, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 11, 1846.
12. Robert C. Winthrop, A Memoir of Robert C. Winthrop (Boston: Little, Brown, 1897), 40; “Affairs with Mexico,” Daily Sentinel and Gazette (Milwaukee, WI), Apr. 29, 1846.
13. Polk, Diary, 1:354.
14. Stephen A. Douglas to Hardin, May 2, 1846, Letters of Stephen A. Douglas, ed. Robert Johannsen (Urbana: University of Illinois Pess, 1961), 137, 138 n. 1.
15. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, ed. W. A. Croffut (New York: Putnam, 1909), 200; on the Seminole War, see Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784–1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 49–52.
16. Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, 198.
17. K. Jack Bauer, Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 117–18; William L. Marcy to Zachary Taylor, Oct. 16, 1845, in Messages of the President of the United States … on the Subject of the Mexican War, House Executive Documents, 30th Cong., 1st sess., no. 60 (Washington, DC: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1848), 89–90.
18. K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War: 1846–1848 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 34.
19. Marcy to Taylor, Jan. 13, 1846. Messages of the President … on the Subject of the Mexican War, 91; Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, 200.
20. Bauer, Mexican War, 26; Grant to Julia Dent, Mar. 3, 1846, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967), 1:74–75; Messages of the President … on the Subject of the Mexican War, 119–20; Will discussed in Bauer, Zachary Taylor, 125 n. 47.
21. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas, or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier, ed. Witold Rybczynski (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 314; Ephraim Kirby Smith, To Mexico with Scott: Letters of E. Kirby Smith to His Wife (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919), 28; Otto Engelmann, ed., “The Second Illinois in the Mexican War: Mexican War Letters of Adolph Engelmann, 1846–1847,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 26, no. 4 (Jan. 1934): 357–452, quote on 388–89.
22. Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, 213.
23. Robert Ryal Miller, Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick’s Batallion in the U.S.-Mexican War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 17.
24. Desertion cited in “Our relations with Mexico,” Philadelphia North American, May 11, 1846; Singletary, Mexican War, 12.
25. Polk, Diary, 1:375–76.
26. Ibid., 1:382.
27. Ibid.
28. “War with Mexico,” Mississippian, Apr. 15, 1846; Walt Whitman, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 11, 1846; Polk, Diary, 1:384.
29. Polk, Diary, 1:389–90.
30. Ibid., 1:390.
31. James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, DC, 1901), 4:442–43.
32. CG, 29th Cong., 1st session, 1846, 794.
33. New York Tribune, quote in “The Army of Occupation,” Liberator, May 1, 1846; Charleston Mercury, quoted in DNI, May 11, 1846.
34. Adams to Richard Rush, May 20, 1818, in John Quincy Adams, The Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 6:322.
35. John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (New York: AMS Press, 1970), 12:255–66; Robert Winthrop to “my dear Clifford,” May 15, 1846, Winthrop Family Papers, MHS, Boston, Reel 24.
36. Robert Winthrop to “my dear Clifford,” May 15, 1846, Winthrop Family Papers, MHS.
37. Ibid.; “W
ar with Mexico Declared,” Cleveland Herald, May 18, 1846, see also DNI, May 13, 1846, Scioto Gazette (Chillicothe, OH), May 21, 1846.
38. Robert Winthrop to “my dear Clifford,” May 15, 1846, Winthrop Family Papers, MHS; “War with Mexico Declared,” Cleveland Herald, May 18, 1846. See also DNI, May 13, 1846; Scioto Gazette (Chillicothe, OH), May 21, 1846.
39. Clifford to Winthrop, May 18, 1846. Winthrop Family Papers, MHS.
40. Polk, Diary, 1:391–92.
41. Ibid., 1:393.
42. CG, 29th Cong., 1st sess., 1846, 786; Calhoun to Henry W. Conner, May 15, 1846, in Papers of John C. Calhoun, ed. John Caldwell Calhoun, Robert Lee Meriwether, Clyde Norman Wilson, William Edwin Hemphill, and Shirley Bright Cook (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 111; quoted in Sellers, Polk, Continentalist, 418.
43. Calhoun to Henry W. Conner, May 15, 1846, in Papers of John C. Calhoun, 111.
44. “The War with Mexico—New Troops in the Field,” New Orleans Tropic, quoted in the Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, May 14, 1846.
45. Polk, Diary, 1:393.
46. Ibid., 1:397–98.
47. Ibid., 1:399.
48. James K. Polk to William H. Polk, Jul. 14, 1846, Correspondence of James K. Polk, ed. Herbert Weaver and Wayne Cutler et al., 11 vols. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969–2009), 11:245–46.
CHAPTER 6. A TAME, SPIRITLESS FELLOW
1. Abraham Lincoln, CW, 1:408, 416; Gabor Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis: Memphis State University, 1978), 109–10.
2. Illinois State Register, Jul. 17, 1846.
3. John McHenry to John Hardin, May 12, 1846, HFP, Box 16.
4. Ibid.
5. Illinois State Register, May 29, 1845; “General Orders,” Sangamo Journal, May 28, 1846; Geo. Davis to Hardin, Alton, May 30, 1846, HFP, Box 16; Nancy L. Cox, “A Life of John Hardin of Illinois, 1810–1847” (M.A. thesis, Miami University, 1964), 169.
6. David Logan to Hardin, May 23, 1846, HFP, Box 16; Thomas Ford to “Dear General,” Springfield, May 18, 1846, HFP, Box 16.
7. H. L. Cooley to Hardin, May 24, 1846, Steamer LaClede, Miss. River, HFP, Box 16; “General Orders,” Sangamo Journal, May 28, 1846.
A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico Page 38