by John Yoo
Like his mentor, Polk interpreted his election as a popular mandate. Polk coveted, in particular, California's fine harbors at San Francisco and San Diego for American merchants and the U.S. Navy. The popular mandate for expansion was so clear that his predecessor, John Tyler, used his lame-duck months in office to engineer the annexation of Texas -- and in a manner that further enhanced presidential power. Anti-slavery Democrats and Whigs in the North had successfully blocked proposals to annex Texas by treaty. With Polk's support, Tyler simply asked Congress to incorporate Texas by statute, which required a simple majority in both houses. The use of a statute, rather than a treaty, would set a precedent for future Presidents, who used what would become known as congressional-executive agreements to adopt the Bretton Woods agreement and the GATT in the wake of World War II.
Annexation of Texas almost guaranteed a confrontation with Mexico, with which it shared an uncertain border. Attempting diplomacy first, Polk sent John Slidell to purchase California and the Southwest Territories. Even though Mexico was bankrupt and had few settlers or troops in the territories, its leaders uniformly viewed a sale as dishonorable and refused to negotiate. Polk turned to military means, especially after rumors arrived that Mexican forces were reinforcing California with British financial support.
In early 1846, the President ordered General Zachary Taylor to move his force of 2,500 troops into the disputed territory between Mexico and Texas. Texas claimed that its territory reached as far south as the Rio Grande River, though as a Mexican province and an independent state it had never extended beyond the Nueces River (about 150 miles farther north of the Rio Grande). Most historians agree that Texas had little claim to the Rio Grande border, but Polk was determined to defend it with military force. He paired his efforts to create a provocation in Texas with preparations to seize California. Polk ordered naval units to be ready to seize San Francisco in the event of war, while Captain John Fremont, already in California, began to encourage American settlers to revolt.
Polk and his cabinet had decided to go to war even before these plans bore fruit. On April 25, 1846, the desired skirmish occurred between Taylor's patrols and Mexican forces. Taylor had moved all the way to the Rio Grande and surrounded the larger Mexican units in the area. The Mexican troops tried to fight their way out, with the loss of 11 Americans, but Taylor defeated them in two battles on May 8 and 9. Two days after the first news of the fighting arrived in Washington, Polk sent a war message to Congress. It misrepresented the facts to guarantee the majorities for war.
Polk claimed that he had deployed troops on the U.S. side of the disputed territory and had ordered them to assume a purely defensive posture. He asserted that Mexican forces had fired the first shot. "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood on American soil," Polk told Congress. In fact, "war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to it, exists by the act of Mexico herself." He called upon Congress "to recognize the existence of the war, and to place at the disposal of the Executive the means of prosecuting the war with vigor, and thus hastening the restoration of peace."228
Polk used his authority over the military to create a situation that had triggered war, but could not conduct significant offensive operations against another nation without congressional authorization of a new army of 50,000 and $10 million in funding. Polk's demand for support opened a sectional divide in Congress that organized itself along partisan lines. Whigs in the North opposed the war, which they viewed as an effort to expand the territory open for slavery. It had become an article of faith in both the North and South that slavery would perish if it could not expand. Democratic leaders in the South and West overwhelmingly supported the war, except Calhoun, who worried that the entry of California and New Mexico as free states outweighed the benefits of adding Texas.
Approval for the recognition of a state of war with Mexico prevailed in test votes by 123-67 in the House, and 26-20 in the Senate. After heavy political pressure from the White House, the final declaration of war was attached to the funding and army bills and approved with only 14 votes against in the House and 2 in the Senate. Public opinion showed a strong majority in favor of territorial expansion, convincing Whigs to make no serious effort to stop the war. They continued to vote supplies for the troops, while denouncing Polk for starting the conflict.229
Once war began, Polk took firm command of operations. California fell quickly to a remarkably small group of American settlers and regular troops. Polk dispatched another small force to the New Mexico territory, which quickly capitulated. Taylor's army of 4,500 won a series of battles in northern Mexico, capturing Monterey in late 1846. His campaign culminated in the January 1847 battle of Buena Vista, where he defeated Santa Anna's army of 20,000.
Despite these military successes, the war was not as easy and swift as Polk and his advisors had anticipated. Mexico rejected peace overtures, and her forces put up stiff resistance in the north. Polk realized that Mexican politics would not permit a negotiated settlement, which drove him to seek a compelling victory. A drive to Mexico City from the north was impractical because of inhospitable terrain.
Polk decided on a risky amphibious landing at Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico, to be followed by a land advance to the Mexican capital. He had the good sense to place in command Winfield Scott, who executed one of the most successful American military campaigns in history. With 10,000 troops, he captured the heavily defended Veracruz in March 1847, twice defeated larger armies led by Santa Anna, and took Mexico City on September 14. The Mexican government surrendered, and General Scott imposed an occupation government on the capital. Officers such as Grant, Lee, Jackson, Meade, Pickett, and McClellan would all serve in this "dress rehearsal" for the Civil War.230
Even as his war plans succeeded, Polk came under increasing opposition at home. The 1846 elections returned a narrow Whig majority, which doubted Polk's claim that Mexico had started the war and the United States had only acted in self-defense. In a message to Congress, Polk argued that Mexico's past wrongs against the United States and its provocation of war required an "indemnity" -- namely the Southwest and California. Congress had approved the war, and once declared, "it became my duty under the Constitution and the laws to conduct and prosecute it." To Whigs who argued against seizing new territory, Polk responded that "the doctrine of no territory is the doctrine of no indemnity." If adopted, he warned, it "would be a public acknowledgement that our country was wrong and that the war declared by Congress with extraordinary unanimity was unjust and should be abandoned."
A young freshman Congressman, Abraham Lincoln, rose to challenge Polk's accounting of events. He introduced a series of resolutions questioning whether the Rio Grande had ever been understood as the border of Texas and whether Mexico had started the war, and he demanded that Polk provide information to Congress on "the spot" where the first skirmish had occurred. In a speech on January 12, 1848, Lincoln accused Polk of starting the war and "trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory." Neither the House nor the President seems to have paid much attention to Lincoln, though the House passed a resolution praising General Taylor and declaring that Polk had started the war "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally," which the Senate rejected.231
An anti-war Congress could not prevent the Commander-in-Chief from continuing to dictate wartime strategy and operations. Even before the war had started, Polk had decided how American forces would be deployed and defined their objectives. After the capture of Mexico City, the President unilaterally set occupation policy, which included holding the capital and the major ports and collecting tax revenues to offset the cost of military operations. While Polk had hoped to squeeze the Mexicans until they agreed to a favorable peace, he began to hope for broader territorial concessions. With Mexico's government weak, its military almost nonexistent, and its people unruly, Polk now wanted Baja California, all of Mexico as far south as Tampico
(another 500 kilometers south of the Rio Grande), and control of the isthmus of Tehuantepec for the construction of a transcontinental canal.
Polk unilaterally governed the process for making peace. He chose peace envoys without Senate advice and consent, set the goals for the negotiations, and ultimately decided to send to the Senate the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (even though his negotiator, Nicholas Trist, had only won Polk's minimum terms). While it did not fulfill all of Polk's territorial ambitions, it transferred California, the future states of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah, and the disputed territory on the Texas border, in exchange for the paltry sum of $15 million. Mexico lost 40 percent of her territory, while the United States gained the land that would be the base for its future world power.232 The treaty ended the Mexican-American War on acceptable terms, without a long-term occupation or a descent into chaos along the southern border.
Political opposition during the Mexican-American War demonstrates the checks that Congress always has available against the executive, even at the height of his wartime powers. Polk agreed to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo for a reason -- Congress would not support the actions needed to conquer more land. Polk had wanted to pressure the Mexicans by continuing military operations. Even after the fall of Mexico City, he had ordered American troops to invade Baja California and had proposed sending forces to annex the Yucatan peninsula.
To expand military operations beyond occupation duty, the President needed more troops and money. American forces had suffered 10 percent casualties, with seven out of every eight being lost to disease rather than battle, and the costs of the war were reaching $100 million. The Whig-dominated Congress rejected Polk's requests for more military funding and increases in the size of the army, and the Senate ratified the terms of the peace treaty by 36-14. While some Southerners wanted more land, the majority of Whigs wanted no territory other than San Francisco.233
Like Jackson before him, Polk's energetic executive encouraged a partisan counterattack. Just as Jackson's war with the Bank led his opponents to organize a new opposition party, Polk's war sparked a Whig victory in the next presidential elections. Polk's success, in fact, provoked an even more dangerous reaction. Support for the war resided primarily in the South and among Democrats, while opposition centered in the Northeast among Whigs. By opening a huge territory to settlement and statehood, the Mexican-American War made the future of slavery the central issue of national politics. The war aligned North and South antagonism over slavery with the political parties, which would undermine their ability to ameliorate sectional tensions. The volatile mixture of new territory and political inflexibility would set the conditions for the coming of the Civil War.
Even though the treaty did not recognize even broader American gains, it cemented Polk's place among the nation's greatest Presidents. Polk secured Texas and added the land between the Louisiana Purchase and the Pacific Ocean to the United States. He increased the size of the nation more than any President before or since. While these lands had been sparsely settled under their previous owners, they would someday rank among the more populous and dynamic states in the Union. Polk's vision gave the United States a continent-wide breadth, and it neutralized any natural enemies along the northern or southern borders. With the addition of California and the Northwest, the United States would be protected on both flanks by wide oceans, and by the end of the century it would become a great power. The expansion of the United States was anything but inevitable, propaganda for "Manifest Destiny" notwithstanding. Polk pursued a high-risk strategy that prevailed thanks to Mexico's military weakness and the superior fighting abilities of the U.S. armed forces.234
A President with a modest view of his constitutional powers would have shrunk from provoking war over the Texas border, not to mention invading Mexico. Only by fully exercising the powers of the Presidency, as laid down by Jackson, could Polk have realized his dream of reaching the Pacific. Lincoln and other Whigs criticized Polk's exercise of his constitutional rights, just as future Congresses would challenge Presidents who claimed the authority to take the nation into war. And they had much to complain of. As Commander-in-Chief, Polk manipulated events to produce a war, maneuvered Congress into funding it, and held sole control over its goals and strategies. In the words of the leading historian of the period, Daniel Howe, Polk "probably did as much as anyone to expand the powers of the Presidency -- certainly at least as much as Jackson, who is more remembered for doing it." Overcoming the errors of Madison's ways, the vigor and energy of his leadership set the model for other Presidents in wartime. Polk's success was inextricably intertwined with the Jacksonian understanding of a constitutionally energetic executive, and it worked to the nation's incalculable benefit.235
CHAPTER 6
Abraham Lincoln
NO ONE STANDS HIGHER in our nation's pantheon than Abraham Lincoln. Washington founded the nation -- Lincoln saved it. Without him, the United States might have lost 11 of its 36 states, and 10 of its 30 million people. He freed the slaves, ended the planter society, and ushered in a dynamic political system and market economy throughout the nation. Building on Jackson's arguments against nullification, he interpreted the Constitution as serving a single nation, rather than existing to protect slavery. The Civil War transformed the United States from a plural word into a singular noun. That nation no longer withheld citizenship because of race, and guaranteed to all men the right to vote and to the equal protection of the laws. Where once the Constitution was seen as a limit on effective government, Lincoln transformed it into a charter that empowered popular democracy.
Part of Lincoln's greatness stems from his confrontation of tragic choices. As he famously wrote in 1864, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."1He did not seek the war, but understood that there were worse things than war. Victory over the South came at an enormous cost to the nation. About 600,000 Americans lost their lives out of a population of 31 million -- about equal to American battle deaths in all of its other wars combined. One-quarter of the South's white male population of military age were killed or injured. While the total value of Northern wealth rose 50 percent during the 1860s, Southern wealth declined by 60 percent.2
The human cost weighed heavily upon Lincoln, but it was necessary to atone for the wrong of slavery. "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away," Lincoln wrote in his Second Inaugural Address. "Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword," he continued, "as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"3 One of the lives lost would be Lincoln's -- the first President to be assassinated.
Lincoln's greatness is inextricably linked to his broad vision of presidential power. He invoked his authority as Commander-in-Chief and Chief Executive to conduct war, initially without congressional permission, when many were unsure whether secession meant war. He considered the entire South the field of battle, and read his powers to attack anything that helped the Confederate war effort. While he depended on congressional support for the men and material to win the conflict, Lincoln made critical decisions on tactics, strategy, and policy without input from the legislature. The most controversial was the Emancipation Proclamation. Only Lincoln's broad interpretation of his Commander-in-Chief authority made that sweeping step of freeing the slaves possible.
Some have argued that part of Lincoln's tragedy is that he had to exercise unconstitutional powers in order to save the Union. In their classic studies of the Presidency, Arthur M. Schlesinger called Lincoln a "despot," and both Edward Corwin and Clinton Rossiter considered Lincoln to have assumed a "dictatorship."4 These views echo arguments made during the Civil War itself, even by Republicans who believed that the Cons
titution could not address such an unprecedented conflict. Lincoln surely claimed that he could draw on power beyond the Constitution in order to preserve the nation. As he wrote to a Kentucky newspaper editor in 1864, "Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the Constitution?" To Lincoln, common sense supplied the answer: "By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb." Necessity could justify unconstitutional acts. "I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation."5
Lincoln, however, was no dictator. While he used his powers more broadly than any previous President, he was responding to a crisis that threatened the very life of the nation. He flirted with the idea of a Lockean prerogative, but his actions drew upon the same mix of executive authorities that had supported Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson. He relied on his power as Commander-in-Chief to give him control over decisions ranging from tactics and strategy to Reconstruction policy. Like his predecessors, Lincoln interpreted his constitutional duty to execute the laws, his role as Chief Executive, and his presidential oath as grants of power to use force, if necessary, against those who opposed the authority of the United States. Lincoln understood "my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government -- that nation -- of which that constitution was the organic law."6 It seems clear that Lincoln believed that the Constitution vested him with sufficient authority to handle secession and Civil War without the need to resort to Jefferson's prerogative.