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

by Amy S. Greenberg

  John’s case wasn’t hopeless. In a month he would be rational enough to return home, but his mental health would never again be perfect, and his parents would catch themselves watching his behavior for signs of returning instability. The stress on the family was great. And Clay was not in good health himself. A chronic cough, shortness of breath, and extreme fatigue were clear but unmentioned symptoms of his developing tuberculosis. Clay regretted the annexation of Texas and feared for what would happen to his country under Polk’s guidance, but as 1845 wound down, Mexico was far from his thoughts.

  Polk, on the other hand, could think of little else. He’d been in office nearly a year and his great push to the Pacific had gone nowhere. In November he turned fifty. There was no party for the president. His birthday fell on a Sunday, and if there was any celebration, he failed to make note of it. Instead he went to church, where the minister delivered a “solemn and forcible sermon” from the Acts of the Apostles 17:31, on the coming Day of Judgment.40

  James K. Polk was not a particularly deep thinker, but as the minister hammered into his audience that God “commands that all people everywhere should repent” and that “he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world,” he found himself shocked into introspection. The sermon, he wrote in his diary that night, “awakened the reflection that I had lived fifty years, and that before fifty years more would expire, I would be sleeping with the generations which have gone before me. I thought of the vanity of this world’s honors, how little they would profit me half a century hence, and that it was time for me to be ‘putting my house in order.’ ”41

  Polk did not repent, at least not publicly, and he didn’t join a church. But he did increase pressure on Mexico. On January 13, 1846, he ordered Taylor’s forces to march to the Rio Grande and take up a defensive position deep in the heart of the disputed territory. The navy would blockade the Rio Grande. Surely this would force Mexico’s hand, Polk thought. Either the Mexicans would throw the first punch, so to speak, or they would back down. Either way, Polk would gain California.42

  It was his third attempt to provoke Mexico to war, and Democrats were solidly behind him. John Slidell was still in Mexico, performing a charade of diplomacy while advising the use of force. Comparing Mexico to an unruly woman, Slidell wrote the secretary of state in March 1846, “We shall never be able to treat with her … until she has been taught to respect us.”43

  While he awaited word from Taylor, Polk turned to the issue of Oregon. He was not so cocky as to believe his army could fight two wars at once, or easily defeat Britain, but Polk had made certain promises in 1844 about vanquishing the British from the Pacific Northwest that were proving inexpedient at the moment. Anglophobia was rife in the young nation, and many Americans imagined a vast British conspiracy to control North America and free their slaves. Northwestern Democrats believed all of Oregon, including British Columbia, rightfully belonged to the United States. Congressional representatives offered scathing attacks on England, and calls for war if Britain did not acknowledge U.S. rights in the region. To many in the North, full title to Oregon was more clearly America’s Manifest Destiny than was Texas.44

  Martial fervor grew in intensity, but even in the North there were Whigs willing to point out that taking “all of Oregon” would lead “inevitably to war.” Robert Winthrop, Whig of Boston, quoted Shakespeare’s King John on the floor of Congress in response to “the reckless flippancy with which war is spoken of in this house.” In the 1840s, King John, which relates the struggle over the throne of England in the thirteenth century, was one of Shakespeare’s more popular historical dramas. Near the end of the play the protagonist declares that England will be conquered by foreign invaders only if it is first torn apart by internal strife. The greatest Shakespearian actor of the day, Charles Macready, who was also a friend of Winthrop’s, had recently performed King John in London to great acclaim. Many in Congress, particularly Whigs from the Northeast, knew all about Macready’s forthcoming New York production of the play, which promised to be one of the most elaborate and expensive theatrical productions of the year. They were well aware of the reference when Winthrop compared those congressmen who threatened to “whip Great Britain” to the “swaggering citizens” in the play.

  Here’s a large mouth indeed,

  That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas;

  Talks as familiarly of roaring lions,

  As maids of thirteen do of puppy dogs.

  What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?

  He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce.45

  No one spoke cannon fire more lustily than Polk, but the smoke and bounce of the Oregon debate was proving almost too hot to handle. With Taylor on the march to the Rio Grande, time was of the essence. In a masterstroke of diplomacy and domestic politics, Polk appeased northern expansionists by publicly claiming that Oregon belonged to the United States and asking Congress to terminate the joint occupation, while at the same time secretly inviting compromise. Polk was indeed putting his house in order, and it would be a continental empire big enough for young America to grow to adulthood.

  Abraham Lincoln was not one of those Clay worshippers who took the “severe disappointment” of 1844 particularly hard. Having stumped for his hero around the state, he was dismayed by the outcome, but Lincoln rebounded quickly. Other Illinois Whigs were less fortunate. “I do not suppose that in all the union greater mortification of heart & spirit has been experienced than with myself, and my grown sons here on the doleful issue of the last struggle,” one man wrote to John Hardin nearly a month after the election. Another confessed that he “suffered mentally more than human tongue can ever describe” and that Clay’s loss “has unmanned me for everything like business.” But Lincoln was by nature resilient, and high hopes for the future buoyed his spirits.46

  Lincoln, like Clay, paid little attention to Polk’s expansionism in 1845. He hadn’t lost sleep over annexation: “inexpedient,” he’d called it, but that was all. He ignored the war talk. What held him right now was his Springfield life. Mary was pregnant again. There was the rambunctious two-year-old Robert to control. The cow needed milking, and there was firewood to bring in to heat the family’s most cherished possession, their first house, which under Mary’s expert guidance had become a real home. Mary bought china, carpets, and furniture, and the couple entertained regularly, although Mary’s simple Kentucky cooking, “loaded with venison, wild turkeys, prairie chickens and quail and other game,” marked the couple as decidedly less than aristocratic.47

  Mary’s third cousin John Hardin and his wife, Sarah, would never serve their guests such fare. They were vastly richer than the Lincolns, and owned a spacious brick mansion in nearby Jacksonville. It was surrounded by groves and fields with plenty of room for the blooded Kentucky horses that John delighted in breeding and riding. These distinctions meant less to Abraham than to Mary. His law practice was thriving, and like Clay, Lincoln discovered that the ability to weave a tale and entrance an audience was of invaluable use in winning over juries regardless of the merits of the case.

  Lincoln was still thinking about Congress and was determined to “test the temper of the winds again.” Before Baker was seated in the Twenty-ninth Congress, Lincoln went to work winning nomination to the Thirtieth, bombarding the Seventh Congressional District with letters designed to advance his candidacy. One important Whig to whom he wrote two ingratiating letters was John Hardin, then finishing up his short congressional term. He let Hardin know that “one of our best friends” was irritated with the congressman, and suggested how he might right things with the man. He also offered some political gossip about how “the Texas question” was playing among local Democrats.48

  But in the summer of 1845 Lincoln discovered that Hardin was contemplating a return to Congress in 1846. This was a major blow to Lincoln. Hardin did everything well, and his congressional term was no exception. He lodged the first vote ever by an Illinois representative again
st the slave power when he voted against the gag rule, which tabled all petitions about slavery without consideration. He set aside party interests by voting to reimburse ailing Andrew Jackson for a fine incurred many years earlier. He gave a very good speech in favor of protective tariffs. And he actively represented the interests of westerners generally. All these were popular measures with the good people of the Seventh District.

  But Hardin went above and beyond the call of duty while in Washington. He demonstrated his singular ability to manage a crisis aboard the Princeton that fateful day in 1843. He was on deck, “forty or fifty feet off looking on and elevated so as to see all on deck,” when the gun burst. “I was neither shocked or hurt,” he explained to a friend, “and therefore in a condition to see and learn all about that most dreadful catastrophe.” He took command of the wounded and dead visitors, and stayed on the ship for nearly a week.49

  Hardin’s sangfroid impressed everyone, and he emerged from the disaster not quite a hero but certainly something close. His reputation for bravery and leadership renewed by this tragedy, General Hardin was invited to help superintend the examinations of cadets at the military academy at West Point.50

  He also made a splash among the Whigs of the East Coast, many of whom he got to know well while attending Clay’s nominating convention in Baltimore. His supporters claimed that it was Hardin who wrote the first Whig song about James K. Polk, and he was the first in Congress to “give their Polk-stock a good shaking” when he delivered the inaugural speech of the campaign in the House against the “pigmy” presidential candidate. He was noted for his invective and sarcasm, and invitations to speak in support of Clay began to pour in from around the country. Abraham Lincoln stumped for Clay around Illinois, but Hardin, now an honorary member of Boston Clay Club Number One, was in demand from Philadelphia to Georgia.51 When Hardin left Congress he claimed to be glad to be free of the place’s bullying and arguing, which produced scenes that “would have disgraced the meanest western grocery.” Washington wasn’t much: “a long string of good buildings a mile in length,” he wrote his daughter. “And when you leave this street one hundred yards you are out in a very poor country.” His life there had been “pure drudgery.” By the summer of 1844, he was more than “ready to surrender my honor … without a sigh or regret.”52

  He felt himself above politics. He had concluded, he told his wife, Sarah, that politics was an “amoral” way of life. He was anxious to get back to his home and law practice. But with characteristic confidence he also asserted that “no member of Congress” had been more “applauded by his constituents, or by his political friends through out the Union, than myself. Without arrogance I may say, [I] have already left my mark among the public men of this Congress.” Hardin had a healthy sense of self-regard, but the enthusiastic public celebrations held in his honor across his district upon his return suggest that he was every bit as revered by the Whigs of that state as he believed.53

  Now he was back in Illinois, but still acting like a politician. Worse yet, he was winning acclaim across party lines as a proponent of Manifest Destiny. The controversy over Oregon was raging hard. When Illinois Democrats held a public meeting in Springfield in June 1845, in support of the annexation of the entire Oregon Country, Hardin was a featured speaker. In a rousing patriotic speech, he called on listeners to present a united front in support of the annexation of not only Oregon but also California, which “at the proper time” would be “re-annexed” to the United States. It was the duty of all citizens to sustain the president on these matters, and should “the call to war be sounded … it would become the duty of every American citizen to rally to, and uphold the government.” And he would be with them. His listeners could find him “at the battlefront … in any such contest, as long as the United States government existed, or a drop of blood still flowed” in his veins. He promised the people of Illinois that, “right or wrong, he would battle for his country, and for his country alone.” The applause was deafening.54

  That fall Hardin gained more acclaim, and a renewal of his brigadier generalship, when he helped quell violence between Mormon settlers in far western Illinois and their intolerant Gentile neighbors. The Mormons had been the object of persecution almost from the day in 1823 that Joseph Smith first announced that the angel Moroni had delivered to him golden tablets inscribed with scripture for the restoration of Christianity. Since 1839, twelve thousand members of the religious community had existed uneasily in Nauvoo, Illinois, protected from the wrath of non-Mormon neighbors in large part by the Democratic Party, which supported religious freedom and appreciated the reliable votes the Mormons cast in their favor.

  But after news of Mormon polygamy appeared in a local newspaper in June 1844, Smith was killed by an Illinois mob. When word of a major assault against the sect and countermeasures by Mormons against Gentile neighbors made their way to the governor in the fall of 1846, Hardin led four hundred members of the militia to break up the conflict. That spring he also oversaw the expulsion of the Mormons across state lines. Mormons might not agree, but the Gentiles of Illinois praised Hardin’s “wise and skillful management” of the Mormon displacement. Hardin was credited with putting a stop “to the lawlessness and bloodshed their presence engendered.” The displacement of the Illinois Mormons was hardly fair, but quite likely Hardin prevented a full-scale slaughter of the oppressed minority.55

  This paragon of virtue was Abraham Lincoln’s competition for the Whig nomination to the Thirtieth Congress. Lincoln began writing letters to editors and lobbying delegates on his own behalf. In early September he went to Hardin’s house to ask him directly: Was he intending to run in 1846? Hardin refused to commit himself one way or another. Lincoln realized that in order to win the nomination he would have to go on the offensive. “Hardin is a man of desparate [sic] energy and perseverance; and one that never backs out; and, I fear, to think otherwise, is to be deceived in the character of our adversary,” he wrote one friend. Lincoln would not be deceived, and he would not back down. This election would be his. In other circumstances, perhaps, “if Hardin and I stood precisely equal—that is if neither of us had been to congress, or, if we both had,” Lincoln would have given way. But “turn about is fair play,” and it was Lincoln’s turn now.56

  By January 1846, as John Slidell’s diplomatic mission slid into farce and General Paredes was inaugurated as president of Mexico, Lincoln’s efforts to line up delegates had become almost maniacal. He knew General Hardin had all the advantages in the contest, but he would not let his chance at Congress slip by again. He wrote personal letters to “three or four of the most active Whigs in each precinct,” made trips throughout the district, and demanded that his friends lobby everyone they knew: “let not opportunity of making a mark escape.” When Hardin suggested that the two of them stop actively electioneering and instead submit their names for party election among Whig voters, Lincoln rebuffed his old friend. “I have always been in the habit of acceding to almost any proposal that a friend would make; and I am truly sorry I can not in this.” It would have cost him the election, for everyone knew John Hardin’s name but few knew Lincoln’s.57

  Hardin withdrew from the contest in disgust. In February 1846, as Polk plotted his next move with Mexico, Hardin published a public letter in which he firmly denied any agreement with Lincoln or Baker to rotate the office, as Lincoln had claimed. “I deem it an act of justice to myself,” he wrote, “to state that his report is utterly without foundation. I never made any bargain, or had any understanding … respecting either the last or any future canvass for Congress.” He also published his offer to let the Whig voters decide the issue, along with Lincoln’s rejection of that seemingly democratic proposal, and accused Lincoln of improper campaign practices.58

  With that, Lincoln’s path to Congress was finally open, but the cost had been great. Hardin would never again be “a father” to Lincoln: the two men were no longer on speaking terms. And Lincoln had lost something more. He could
no longer pretend to the voters, or to himself, that “if elected I shall be thankful; if not it will be all the same,” as he had claimed six years earlier.59

  For Hardin it was no great sacrifice. His heart wasn’t in the contest, and his withdrawal from the race might have had little to do with Lincoln’s success lining up delegates. Lincoln’s attention that spring extended no further than the perimeter of his congressional district, but his opponent’s view was far more expansive. He had his eye on California. Back in June 1845, Hardin had told the largely Democratic audience at the meeting in favor of annexing Oregon that “if he decided to run away from Illinois, he could be found in California.”60

  Now he was watching events in Mexico with great care. Several weeks prior to his clash with Lincoln, Hardin wrote to a highly placed military friend in order to gain confirmation of the “insult” offered the United States when Mexico refused to receive John Slidell. “If Mexico does not give every explanation & satisfaction which our govt. should demand under the circumstances,” General Hardin saw “no resort but to take up arms.” Hardin wasn’t naive. He recognized that it might be all “diplomatic smoke” by the Polk administration. And if that were the case, his friend should feel free to burn his letter. But if there was going to be a war, Hardin wanted to be first in line for a commission. However he might feel about the president personally, “in our foreign relations I acknowledge no … party but one country, & believe it to be the duty of all true patriots to strengthen the hands of the govt.… against the aggression & insult from foreign nations.” Hardin was itching for a fight, and he suspected he didn’t have long to wait.61