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

by Amy S. Greenberg

  The people of the new Mexican nation were divided by region and by race, and there was no compelling ideology that drew them together. They lacked the faith in national destiny and the superiority of their nation’s political and social forms that unified the citizens of the United States. The vast majority were Indians, living in relatively autonomous communities that had existed prior to Spanish conquest three centuries earlier. Their identities were grounded in patriarchal kinship networks. While Mexico’s constitution declared all men citizens of Mexico with equal rights under the law, few Indians felt any allegiance to the nation or considered themselves Mexicans.32

  Nor were the small percentage of Mexicans of European origin, known as criollos, united in a shared vision for the future development of Mexico. The elite proved unwilling to contribute to Mexico’s tax base during the first decades after independence, and different political factions proved unable to fashion a stable political system. Turmoil became the norm, and frequent coups made any hope of developing the nation’s resources a fleeting dream; between 1821 and 1857 the presidency of Mexico changed hands at least fifty times, almost always by coup d’état. A centralized economy and highly limited trade benefited few outside the capital and provided residents of frontier provinces with little opportunity for profit. Nor did the federal government provide residents of the northern provinces with protection from hostile Indian tribes who regularly robbed, kidnapped, and murdered Mexicans. While the United States was thriving in the 1830s and 1840s, Mexico was foundering.33

  Polk’s good friend Sam Houston put bluntly what most Americans, particularly in the South and West, believed to be true: that “Mexicans are no better than Indians.” It appeared evident to Americans that the people of Mexico were incompetent at governing and administering, so much so that the citizens of the country’s northern provinces were eager to break away and merge with the United States. Who wouldn’t want to trade impoverishment for the lifestyle of the American immigrants, settlers who’d brought with them consumer goods and medicines unavailable in northern Mexico? Protestant Americans believed the Catholic inhabitants of Mexico to be inferior in both race and religion and desperately in need of enlightenment.34

  Then there was California. Like many Americans, Polk had had his appetite for Mexico whetted specifically by that territory. In 1840 Richard Henry Dana’s best seller Two Years Before the Mast had described in glowing detail the wonders of a beautiful, fertile land on the Pacific Coast, with magnificent harbors, a lucrative cowhide trade, and countless sea otters, whose dense pelts were in great demand in Asia. From California, the United States could gain easy access to the whaling ports of Hawaii, and ultimately to Asia. California should belong to America.

  Out on the campaign trail, Polk broadcast in no uncertain terms his determination to remake the American map. His 1844 campaign was the most uncompromisingly expansionistic in American history, with the candidate promising that if elected, he would wrestle the entirety of the Oregon Country from England. “Fifty-four forty or fight,” the Democratic slogan about seizing Oregon, encapsulated his vision of an America that spanned the continent. He offered an openly pugilistic platform and evinced no hesitation about putting U.S. soldiers in harm’s way in order to fulfill what he saw as the nation’s destiny. His was a well-formulated political agenda pumped out by a spirited campaign and an energized Democratic Party. “The Union of our party seems to be perfect,” he marveled to a friend in June. “The greatest enthusiasm is everywhere prevailing.”35

  By midsummer the inexpediency of Clay’s Raleigh letter opposing annexation had become clear even to the Sage of Ashland. He began to hedge his bets, to backtrack. He published two letters in July in Alabama suggesting that perhaps his Raleigh letter had been premature and that if annexation could take place without national dishonor or war, and if the country as a whole wanted it, well, then as president he would be happy to bring Texas into the Union. He wasn’t opposed to the annexation of Texas in the abstract, only to the annexation of Texas right now. He also attempted to assuage southern voters by asserting that the questions of annexation and slavery were separate in his mind, that they were not related “one way or the other.”36

  Clay’s Alabama letters swayed few voters, but they offered ample fuel for the Democratic charge that Prince Hal could not be trusted. “There is a vein of dishonesty and of double-dealing creeping thro’ Henry Clay’s course on the Texas question, unworthy of an American Statesman,” concluded a Massachusetts paper. “He evinces traits of character which make him an unsafe man to trust with the destines of the nation.” Democrats in Michigan placed his letters on a broadside as a prime example of “that political consistency which has ever characterized ROTTEN HEARTED POLITICAL DEMAGOGUES in all ages of the world.”37

  One constituency remained unmoved by all the commotion: Clay’s female supporters. Perhaps because Texas had never fired their imaginations as it had that of their husbands, fathers, and brothers, they remained as devoted to Clay and his protective tariffs as ever. As one popular “Workingman’s Song” asserted,

  The Ladies—bless the lovely band—Our country’s joy and pride,

  They go for Harry, hand in hand, Maid, matron, belle, and bride,

  To gain “Protection” for themselves; They’ll marry, and marry away,

  And tell their lovers and husbands, and sons, To vote for Henry Clay.38

  Women around the country sewed flags and banners for Clay processions regardless of their husbands’ political leanings, attended Whig meetings and conventions, and took the lead singing Whig songs. As one favored ditty from the Clay Club in Germantown, Pennsylvania, asserted, “There’s not a lass in this broad land but vows she’d scorn to marry / The lad who don’t give heart and hand to glorious gallant Harry!” In Litchfield, Connecticut, “3000 Whig ladies” turned out in matching outfits for a pro-Clay rally, while in Bangor, Maine, a young mother taught her eighteen-month-old daughter Agnes to answer the question “Who’s going to be president?” with “Henry Clay.” The wife of the president of the Democratic National Convention made her Pennsylvania home a meeting place for Clay women and proudly told her husband’s Democratic friends that “though my husband is a Polk man, I am a Clay man; in fact the ladies are all Clay men.”39

  The problem was that none of these female “Clay men” could vote, and not enough of the voting men favored Clay. The candidate was now sixty-seven, repeating the same message that had driven him for decades. He’d had a heart attack two years earlier, and now looked old and worn-out. He discounted the “colds” that frequently attacked him, but quite likely Clay was suffering from the early stages of tuberculosis, known at the time as consumption because of its wasting effects on the body. Tuberculosis, a slow and relentless killer that attacks the respiratory system, was widespread, untreatable, and misunderstood in the nineteenth century. Virtually no one realized it was communicable, but everyone recognized the symptoms. Clay’s grandson Martin Duralde was a sufferer. He had been living at Ashland at the height of his contagiousness, but Clay might have caught the disease at any point during the campaign or years earlier.40

  In the face of Polk’s determination to remake the American map, both Clay and his message seemed faded. The Democrats took note and, playing on Clay’s reputation as the cunning “old coon,” taunted:

  Their coons are dead, their cabins down,

  Hard cider grown quite stale, sirs,

  And at the people’s with’ring frown,

  Their leader grows quite pale, sirs.41

  The election results were remarkably close, a difference of just 38,000 votes out of more than 2.7 million cast. Polk carried the South, with the exception of North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. At another point in his life, Polk would have mourned this third rejection by his home state, but not this year. He did well in the West. Despite Lincoln’s best efforts, everything west of Ohio went Democratic. Polk did surprisingly well in the Northeast also.

  Polk won Pennsy
lvania, not because of any groundswell of support for Texas in the Keystone State but because of the repeated promises of native son George Dallas that Polk would pass a protective tariff. Polk also won New York. His victory there was achieved by a razor-thin margin of only 5,000 votes. Abolitionist James Birney, candidate of the antislavery Liberty Party, earned almost 16,000 votes. Had just 5,000 Liberty Party supporters voted for Henry Clay, whose views they most certainly preferred to Polk’s, Clay would have won the state, and with it the electoral vote and the national election.42

  Henry Clay was at a wedding in Lexington when he heard the news. The daily mail from the Northeast to the Southwest traveled through Cincinnati, on the Kentucky border. It reached the Lexington post office around ten at night. Several guests, anxious for election news, left the wedding for the purpose of retrieving the mail from the post office the moment it materialized. They returned with a letter, consulted among themselves, and then brought it to Clay, who was, as usual, surrounded by a group of women. Among them was Abraham Lincoln’s mother-in-law, Betsy Todd. She described Clay’s reaction in a letter to her stepdaughter, Mary Todd Lincoln:

  He opened the paper and as he read the death knell of his political hopes and lifelong ambition, I saw a distinct blue shade begin at the roots of his hair, pass slowly over his face like a cloud and then disappear. He stood for a moment as if frozen. He laid down the paper, and, turning to a table, filled a glass with wine, and raising it to his lips with a pleasant smile, said: “I drink to the health and happiness of all assembled here.” Setting down his glass, he resumed his conversation as if nothing had occurred and was, as usual, the life and light of the company. The contents of the paper were soon known to everyone in the room and a wet blanket fell over our gaiety. We left the wedding party with heavy hearts. Alas! Our gallant “Harry of the West” has fought his last presidential battle.43

  The daily eastern mail made it to Nashville about the same time it arrived in Lexington. The Nashville postmaster, a personal friend of Polk’s, discovered a handwritten note from the Cincinnati postmaster attesting to the election results when he opened the mail package that night. He quietly called the Democratic proprietor of a “large livery service” and asked him how quickly he could get a letter to the Polks’ home in Columbia, fifty miles away. James Polk was called from bed before dawn the next morning with the news. For the twenty hours between when the Polks learned of their altered circumstances and the regular delivery of the mail from Nashville, James and Sarah went about their business as usual, without letting on that they had any special news or any reason to celebrate.44

  No doubt they were enjoying their last moments of serenity. When the election results became public, “the joy of the Democrats knew no bounds.” Skinned raccoons hung from trees on major thoroughfares, and torchlight victory processions illuminated towns and cities across the country. Polk received a delegation of Democrats who had come all the way from Alabama to congratulate the president-elect in person, and orators at public meetings in Nashville and Columbia answered the question “Who is James K. Polk?” by introducing the new president. Congratulatory letters came from around the country, including one from Harry, a slave owned by Polk and hired out as a blacksmith in Mississippi. “I have been betting and lousing on you for the last several years but I have made it all up now,” Harry wrote. “I am in hopes that you will come to this state before you go to the white house & let me see you once more before I die.” 45

  James K. Polk, demonstrating the unwavering self-righteousness that would mark his presidency, embraced the slim victory as a mandate. Like Old Hickory, he believed his election reflected the will of the virtuous citizenry. Polk would ensure that their will would be done.

  Nor was it only Polk who saw a mandate in the 1844 election results. On February 26, 1845, after elaborate maneuvering and several dubious promises made on behalf of both Tyler and Polk, Congress passed a joint resolution to admit Texas as a state. It was a controversial tactic, since a joint resolution enabled passage with a simple majority in both houses of Congress, as opposed to the two-thirds of the Senate constitutionally required for the adoption of treaties. Democrats had failed to muster the support of two-thirds of senators and might not have gained a majority of both houses were it not for the fact that so many opponents of annexation understood further objections as futile once Polk became president-elect. On March 1, just days before leaving office, a vindicated John Tyler invited Texas to join the United States.

  President-elect Polk began his journey to the White House with an overnight stop at the Hermitage to pay his respects to General Jackson. Jackson, racked by old wounds, tuberculosis, and diarrhea, was barely hanging on, sustained only by rice and milk. But Polk’s election had made him blissfully happy. Jackson was confident that Polk would not let him down, that he would “fearlessly carry out all his principles.” Both men knew that it was the last time they would meet.46

  As Polk continued on to Washington he no doubt remembered the trip the two Hickories had made in the opposite direction at the close of Jackson’s presidency in 1837. Miraculously, Jackson’s prophecy to Sarah Polk that she would one day be queen had come true. It would now be up to James Polk to fulfill Jackson’s legacy during his own term in office.

  Andrew Jackson passed away just four months later. Some of his final words to his family were about Texas and Oregon. He hoped both could be settled amicably, but if not, “let war come. There would be patriots enough in the land found to repel foreign invasion come from whatsoever source.” He also mused that one of his few regrets in life was that he “didn’t shoot Henry Clay.”47

  The weather on Tuesday, March 4, 1845, was inauspicious for an inauguration. Overcast skies had turned into a steady rain by the time the soon-to-be eleventh president of the United States made his way down Pennsylvania Avenue in an open carriage drawn by four horses. A record crowd was on hand to witness the ceremony. His escorts carried batons of young hickory. The First Lady, dressed in a gray and red striped satin gown, carried an elaborate ivory-handled fan, wholly unnecessary given the weather, but too beautiful to lay aside. On one side it featured portraits of all the presidents, including James, and on the other a picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

  Polk mounted a platform on the steps of the Capitol and in a clear, firm voice offered his vision of the future to the assembled mass of umbrellas. The greatest portion of his speech focused on Manifest Destiny, the issue that had won him the presidency. Predictably, he promised to bring the annexation of Texas to a speedy close, but he made it clear that Texas was hardly the extent of his vision for America. “Our title to the country of Oregon is clear and unquestionable,” he asserted. And although he said nothing about California specifically, the most lyrical portion of his address involved “pioneers” and “distant regions” and how “our people, increasing to many millions, have filled the eastern valley of the Mississippi, adventurously ascended the Missouri to its headsprings, and are already engaged in establishing the blessings of self-government in valleys of which the rivers flow to the Pacific.”48

  At that very moment, U.S. ships were en route to the Gulf of Mexico to protect the newest state from its southern neighbor. Polk knew well that Mexico was unlikely to accept the new political reality. But he had no fear for the future. Here he was, about to enter the White House, and the opportunity to dismember Mexico was being handed to him like a gift.

  As for Henry Clay, he retreated to his Kentucky plantation, humiliated and deeply bitter. No matter—he was convinced he’d already beheld the future. In Raleigh, North Carolina, almost a full year earlier, Clay had written that “annexation and war with Mexico are identical.”49 Those words had cost him the presidency. Now it looked like his prophecy was about to come true.

  What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?

  He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce.

  —SHAKESPEARE, KING JOHN, ACT 2, SCENE 1

  4

&
nbsp; Speaking Cannon Fire

  POLK ENTERED OFFICE with big plans and poor people skills. His vision for the nation was audaciously outsized; he had hardly hinted at it in his inaugural address. Not only would he embrace Congress’s passage of the joint resolution admitting Texas as a state, but he would attempt to make the most of the newly annexed republic’s territorial claims. He would uphold Texas’s claims to the land between the Nueces River and the more southwesterly Rio Grande, however laughable those claims might be. The truth was that virtually none of the inhabitants in the disputed area considered themselves Texans, and despite repeatedly rebuffed excursions to the south and the west, the Lone Star Republic had only managed to establish one small settlement, Corpus Christi, at the mouth of Nueces Bay at the northern edge of the territory. And of course Mexico still hadn’t recognized Texas’s independence. Yet Polk would make it happen, and he would also face down the world’s superpower, Great Britain, in order to gain Oregon, as the northern wing of his party demanded, despite the fact that the Princeton and its big gun “Peacemaker” had thus far done far more damage to Washington’s political class than to Britain’s naval supremacy.

  Polk would do this, yes, but he would go further. Young Hickory’s true plan, the one he had shared only with Sarah, was nothing less than wresting away Mexico’s prized Pacific territory. Alta California was a land of unparalleled ports and unfathomed natural resources, “the richest, most beautiful, and the healthiest country in the world,” as the U.S. minister to Mexico had described it the year before. According to the U.S. consul, annual exports from this magical land included 85,000 cowhides, 16,000 bushels of wheat, 1.5 million pounds of tallow for candles, 1 million feet of lumber, 20,000 beaver and otter skins, and 100 ounces of gold. True, Mexico had firmly rejected all previous offers to purchase California and had been particularly sensitive on the subject since the fall of 1842, when a doltish U.S. commodore, mistakenly believing that war between the United States and Mexico was imminent, seized the California port of Monterey and informed the shocked residents that the United States was annexing California. Tyler had apologized and assured Mexico that it was all an innocent mistake—there was no plot afoot, and of course the rogue commodore would be removed from his position. But after something like this, who could blame Mexicans for questioning U.S. motives in the region? When Americans “invaded” their country and continued to act “as though it were their home,” Mexicans knew they could never rest secure.1