Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  On January 3, 1848, Lincoln provoked further Democratic criticism by voting for Representative George Ashmun’s amendment asserting that the Mexican War had been “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President.”69 Pointing out that 1,000 young men from Illinois’s Seventh District were fighting in Mexico, the Springfield Register asked rhetorically: “What will these gallant heroes say when they learn that their representative has declared in the national councils that the cause in which they suffered and braved everything, was ‘unconstitutional,’ ‘unnecessary,’ and consequently infamous and wicked?”70

  Nine days later Lincoln delivered his major hour-long speech on the war, making explicit what had been implicit in his spot resolutions. He would have remained quiet, he said, if Polk had not stated in his annual message that the Mexican government was solely responsible for provoking the war. Moreover, the president had asserted that Congress implicitly endorsed his interpretation of the war’s origin by voting to supply troops in the field. Lincoln, who always voted for such supplies, could not let these pronouncements go unchallenged. In addition, he said, he was moved to speak out because earlier in the session Illinois Democratic Congressman William A. Richardson had introduced resolutions echoing Polk’s self-serving version of history.

  Lincoln disputed that version. Calling the president’s discussion of the issue in his recent message “from beginning to end, the sheerest deception,” he denied Polk’s assumption that either the Nueces River or the Rio Grande formed the southern boundary of Texas. (In Lincoln’s opinion, that boundary was located in the “stupendous deserts” between the two.)71 After systematically reviewing Polk’s address, he declared that he found it “incomprehensible” that “any man, with an honest purpose only, of proving the truth, could ever have thought, of introducing” such flimsy evidence to support his argument. Lincoln made a strong case, for the Rio Grande had not been widely regarded as the southern boundary of Texas; therefore, the territory between the Rio Grande and the Nueces, 150 miles to the north, was at best disputed land, if not actually Mexico’s. Before 1846, such leaders as Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, and Thomas Hart Benton had acknowledged this basic fact.

  Lincoln urged Polk to respond to the interrogatories he had propounded earlier: “Let him answer with facts, and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer, as Washington would answer.” If the president could “show that the soil was ours, where the first blood of the war was shed—that it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas, or of the United States, … then I am with him for his justification.” But if Polk could not prove his case, “then I shall be fully convinced, of what I more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong—that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.” Lincoln maintained that the chief executive had deliberately provoked a war while “trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy.”

  Lincoln then shifted his focus from the origin of the war to the present situation, which saw American forces controlling much of Mexico. Should the United States seize all of that country’s territory? Any of it? Should the war be continued? Having “plunged into” war, Polk, according to Lincoln, “has swept on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself, he knows not where.” The president’s discussion of the war in his annual message, Lincoln said, resembled “the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream.” In describing the various rationales for the war and the different peace terms that might be acceptable, Polk showed that his “mind, tasked beyond it’s power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature, on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it can settle down, and be at ease.” The president, in sum, “is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.”

  In treating the history of Texas, Lincoln uttered words that would return to haunt him thirteen years later when some Southern states left the Union: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,—a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the ter[r]itory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement.”72 In this rather gratuitous passage, Lincoln may have been trying to curry favor with Southern Whigs resentful of Northern congressmen, like John Quincy Adams, who had denied the legitimacy of the Texas revolution of 1836. At that time Lincoln was cooperating with several Southern Whig congressmen in an attempt to help General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana win their party’s presidential nomination.

  A fellow member of the Illinois delegation, Democrat John A. McClernand, recalled that Lincoln “was earnest and spoke with greater rapidity than I ever had heard him speak before. I attributed it to the fact that he had only an hour allotted to him and wanted to say as much as possible in that time. His deficiency in gesticulation was fully made up by the deep earnestness of his manner.”73

  Just before delivering his remarks, Lincoln confided to Whig Congressman Richard W. Thompson of Indiana that he was nervous. “It was not surprising that he felt this way,” Thompson explained, “considering the forum upon which he was for the first time appearing, where those who have gained reputation are few, compared with the multitude who have lost it. The occasion was an embarrassing one to him, and was made more so by the fact that he was gazed at by so many eyes, and watched by adversaries who would have rejoiced at his failure. He was not even personally known to all the members. His appearance was not attractive.”74 Describing some brief remarks that he had delivered a week before his address on the Mexican War, Lincoln told Herndon: “I find speaking here and elsewhere about the same thing. I was about as badly scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak in court.”75 (In 1856, Lincoln confided to Henry C. Whitney: “When I have to speak, I always feel nervous till I get well into it.… I hide it as well as I can.”)76 While reminiscing about this speech, Lincoln said that “he felt like the boy whose teacher asked him why he didn’t spell better. The boy replied: ‘Cause I hain’t just got the hang of the school house. But I’ll get on better later.’ ”77

  Reaction to the speech was predictably partisan. William Schouler, a Massachusetts Whig leader, reported that the “tall, raw-boned, thin and spare” Lincoln “speaks with rapidity and uses a good deal of gesture, some of which is quite new and original. He was listened to, however, with great attention, and made a sound, sensible and manly speech.”78 According to Congressman Thompson, Lincoln scored a success, rising “above the common Congressional level.… I heard no other criticism of his speech than what came from himself—for, unlike many I have known, he placed a modest estimate upon his own abilities. His friends were satisfied—more than that, they were delighted.”79 The Baltimore American deemed it “a very able speech.”80 An Illinois Whig newspaper reported that the address “is spoken of as an able effort, and at once places him in the front rank of the best speakers in the House.”81

  Lincoln’s opponents were less pleased. As he had doubtless anticipated, Democrats—including colleagues in the House—took exception to his arguments. Representative John Jameson of Missouri expressed astonishment that the congressman from a district that had sent into battle such heroes as John J. Hardin, Edward D. Baker, and James Shields could “get up here and declare that this war is unc
onstitutional and unjust, and thereby put so many of his brave constituents in the wrong, … committing moral if not legal murder.” Lincoln, Jameson speculated, must have been responding to pressure from “the party screw.”82 John L. Robinson of Indiana called Lincoln a hypocrite for supporting the presidential candidacy of General Taylor while denouncing Polk for starting the war. Taylor, according to Robinson, was more responsible for the outbreak of hostilities than was the president. The Hoosier congressman also scolded Lincoln for not informing his constituents during the 1846 election campaign that he regarded the war as “unnecessary and unconstitutional.”83 Willard P. Hall of Missouri denounced congressional war critics (not mentioning Lincoln specifically): “Who does not know that the speeches of honorable members of Congress have been published in Mexican newspapers, and read at the head of Mexican armies, to incite them to attack our troops? Who does not know that the people of Mexico have read and thought over these productions until they believe there is a Mexican party in this country, and Mexican Representatives on this floor?”84 Howell Cobb of Georgia, who maintained that Corpus Christi was the spot where the war began, taunted Lincoln and other Whigs: “You are stickling about the commencement of this war; tell me how it was that you sat quietly, without opening your mouths in complaint, and allowed the army of the United States to plant themselves on the western border of the Nueces, thus commencing the war, as you now claim?”85 A New York Evening Post correspondent dismissively remarked that Lincoln sang the “usual burden of whig songs” in “various keys.”86

  The shrillest criticism came from the Illinois Democrats. In Sangamon County they met to condemn Lincoln for supporting “the schemes of … apologists and defenders of Mexico, and revilers of their own country.”87 A mass meeting in Clark County denounced Lincoln for his resolutions “against his own country” and urged that they “be long remembered by his constituents.”88 In Morgan County, a similar gathering condemned Lincoln as the “Benedict Arnold of our district” who would “be known here only as the Ranchero Spotty of one term.”89 Democratic newspapers took up the cry, including the Springfield Register, the Peoria Democratic Press, and the Peoria Free Press. The Belleville Advocate was typical of the rest when it claimed that Lincoln “is against his country in her struggle with a foreign and unprincipled government.”90

  Lincoln was doubtless unsurprised by Democratic criticism; he may have been nonplussed, however, when William Herndon, a strong Whig, found fault with his partner’s support of the Ashmun amendment and his denunciation of Polk. In response, Lincoln emphatically declared: “I will stake my life, that if you had been in my place, you would have voted just as I did [on the Ashmun amendment].” Rhetorically, he asked: “Would you have voted what you felt you knew to be a lie? I know you would not. Would you have gone out of the House—skulked the vote? I expect not.” William A. Richardson’s resolutions made “the direct question of the justice of the war; so that no man can be silent if he would. You are compelled to speak; and your only alternative is to tell the truth or tell a lie. I can not doubt which you would do.”91 (To Usher F. Linder, Lincoln stressed the point even more forcefully, arguing that congressional Whigs “are compelled to speak and their only option is whether they will, when they do speak, tell the truth, or tell a foul, villainous, and bloody falsehood.”)92

  Herndon’s contention, as Lincoln paraphrased it, was “that if it shall become necessary, to repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the Constitution, cross the line, and invade the ter[r]itory of another country; and that whether such necessity exists in any given case, the President is to be the sole judge.” After denying the relevance of such an argument to the case against Polk, Lincoln declared, “Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose.” Lincoln cited a hypothetical case: “If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of the British invading us’ but he will say to you ‘be silent; I see it, if you don[’]t.’ ” Lincoln contended that Herndon’s interpretation differed from that of the Founding Fathers: “The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.” But the framers of the Constitution believed that such an abuse of power was “the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions” and they therefore made sure that “no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.” But Herndon’s “view destroyed the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.”93

  To an Illinois Baptist minister who defended Polk’s conduct in bringing on the war, Lincoln stressed that the U.S. Army in proceeding to the Rio Grande at the president’s order, before hostilities had commenced, had “marched into a peaceful Mexican settlement, and frightened its inhabitants away from their homes and their growing crops.” If those actions seemed inconsequential to the clergyman, Lincoln asked, “Would you venture to so consider them, had they been committed by any nation on earth, against the humblest of our people? I know you would not. Then I ask, is the precept ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them’ obsolete?—of no force?—of no application?”94

  As these letters suggest, Lincoln was truly outraged by Polk’s conduct. The main arguments of Lincoln’s speech echoed those he had heard Clay espouse in November 1847, arguments made by many other Whigs. The Chicago Journal sarcastically exclaimed: “Oh! Most righteous war! An American army in the midst of the 19th century, robbing a weak and defenceless nation of her territory to subsist upon.”95 Lincoln shared the Journal’s indignation and excoriated Polk not only for partisan reasons (though the speech was to some extent a characteristically Lincolnian attack on Democrats, replete with personal ridicule) but also to express his anger at what he perceived to be gross unfairness. Herndon, who warned Lincoln that he was committing political suicide by criticizing the way in which the war was provoked, later said that “his sense of justice and his courage made him speak … as to the War with Mexico.”96 The Polk administration had, in Lincoln’s view, played the bully, and he hated bullies. The passion behind Lincoln’s invective was striking, for it was among the bitterest antiwar speeches delivered in the House up to that time.

  Six months after denouncing Polk, Lincoln again turned his attention to the origins of the Mexican War. In the midst of a humorous speech ridiculing the 1848 Democratic presidential nominee, he suddenly abandoned his satirical tone and indignantly rebuked House Democrats: “The marching an army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops, and other property to destruction, to you may appear a perfectly amiable, peaceful, unprovoking procedure; but it does not appear so to us. So to call such an act, to us appears no other than a naked, impudent absurdity.”97 The passion in these sentences, so different from the rest of the speech, illustrates the depth of Lincoln’s anger.

  In addition, Lincoln may have denounced Polk’s action because he came to realize that the war might expand the realm of slavery. Most Midwesterners who opposed the war did so because of their antislavery convictions. One historian speculated plausibly that “underneath the whole pile of political froth, Lincoln had a deep, underlying motive in displaying hostility to the Mexican war and that motive was his desire to thwart the expansion of slavery. He had not felt the bearing the war had upon slavery when he was back in Springfield; but in Washington it loomed large to him and gave him quite a different perspective.”98

  Herndon wrongly al
leged that misgivings about Lincoln’s antiwar stand were widespread among Illinois Whigs. It is true that Caleb Birchall, a Springfield bookseller who in 1842 had been a member of the executive committee of the Henry Clay Club, said that Lincoln had “rendered himself very unpopular.”99 But virtually all criticism of Lincoln’s “spot resolutions” and his subsequent speech came from Democrats. No Whig journal criticized his stand on the war, and the party named him to serve as an assistant presidential elector in 1848. Despite his pledge to step down after one term, some Whigs favored his renomination. In April 1848, Allen Ford of the Lacon Illinois Gazette editorialized that Lincoln “has ably and faithfully discharged his duties; and if he has at no time intimated a willingness or desire to retire at the expiration of the term for which he was elected, we are not sure but that the interests of the district would be quite as well promoted by his re-nomination and reelection for another term.”100 Lincoln was not averse, as he told Herndon: “It is very pleasant to learn from you that there are some who desire that I should be reelected.… I made the declaration that I would not be a candidate again, more from a wish … to keep peace among our friends, and to keep the district from going to the enemy, than for any cause personal to myself.… [I]f it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected I could not refuse the people the right of sending me again.”101 (There was no disgrace in serving only one term. In the 1840s and 1850s, the average length of service for a U.S. Representative was three years.)