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

by Amy S. Greenberg

  Whigs were also worried about their reputation and were determined to avoid any charges of disloyalty. The Federalist Party had been totally discredited by their opposition to the War of 1812, and collapsed as a national party after holding a convention in Hartford to discuss means of bringing that conflict to a close, including the possible secession of New England. The disgrace of the Federalists was so intense that thirty years later Democrats, including Polk, referred to the Whigs as “the Federal Party” as a means of disparaging them.

  In truth, Clay’s party shared a great deal with the earlier Federalists, including a faith in a strong central government, widespread support in New England, and what Democrats regarded as a haughty elitism. They could hardly afford to justify linking themselves with the Federalists by offering only lukewarm support of a foreign war. “The Whigs here are much more ready to turn out than the real annexation party—they say it is to show our country and they are ready to Protect it,” wrote a friend to Hardin. “There is no doubt in my mind but that a majority of those who turn out will be Whigs.”10

  Whigs also feared association with abolitionists, antislavery radicals who believed it was God’s will that slavery end immediately. Even in their two areas of strength, New England and the upper Midwest, abolitionists were only a small minority in the 1840s. But they were vocal, motivated, and seemingly fearless. From the outset they loudly condemned the war with Mexico as unjust and part of a plot to strengthen slavery, just as they had condemned Texas annexation and the Texas Revolution before that. Immediately after the passage of Polk’s war bill, the abolitionist Boston Whig proclaimed it “one of the grossest National lies that has ever been told.” From his post as editor of the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison impressed upon readers that the “chief anti-slavery work” was to end the war: “Endeavor to paralyze the power of the government, that Mexico may be saved, and the overthrow of the Slave Power hastened.” Antislavery ministers condemned the war from their pulpits, and antislavery citizens in New England and the upper Midwest protested the war by writing dozens of antiwar petitions to Congress.11

  Democrats perennially linked Whigs with abolitionists, but in truth a mainstream Whig like Henry Clay or John Hardin had little more in common with an abolitionist like Garrison than did James Polk. The defection of a segment of New York’s Whigs to the Liberty Party in 1844, a defection that may well have cost Clay the election, should have made this obvious. While Whigs (particularly southern Whigs) were more likely than Democrats to personally disapprove of slavery, they were just as willing as Democrats to allow the South its own institutions, particularly given the centrality of slave-grown cotton to northern manufacturing and trade. Cotton was the most valuable national export, and New York’s wealth was closely tied to its control of the transatlantic cotton trade. In the eyes of moderates such as Henry Clay, who linked manumission with the colonization of freed black people in Africa, the agitation of abolitionists was counterproductive, actually setting back the cause of ending slavery by alienating slave owners. And a national party in the 1840s simply couldn’t win a majority on an abolitionist platform. Whigs had to distance themselves not only from their disloyal Federalist forebears but also from antiwar abolitionists. Tempers ran high. When abolitionists in Bloomington said publicly what many in Congress were saying privately, that the war was unjust, volunteers, most likely belonging to both the Whig and Democratic parties, smashed their windows.12

  The Whigs of Illinois more than rose to these challenges. Edward Baker, currently the sitting Whig congressman from Lincoln’s district, also decided to enlist. After receiving permission to raise a fourth regiment of volunteers, he rushed home without even resigning his congressional seat. He made the trip from Washington to Springfield in just six days, and within a month marched with his men out of Springfield through a gathering of thousands of well-wishers.13

  This couldn’t help but have affected Abraham Lincoln deeply. Hardin and Baker were his two main rivals in the congressional district. Both had now chosen war over politics, dismissing as petty concerns, unworthy of a patriot, the issues and contests that still enchanted Lincoln. And while there was no love lost between Lincoln and Hardin since the contested nomination, Edward Baker was one of Lincoln’s closest friends. The Lincolns had revealed the depth of their esteem for Baker when they named their second son, born just months earlier, after him. Young Eddie hadn’t yet sat up when his namesake left for the Halls of the Montezumas.

  Thousands of Whigs followed Hardin and Baker’s lead, but Abraham Lincoln was not among them. Although he had enjoyed his three months of military service as a young man during the Black Hawk War, and claimed in 1858 that his election as captain by his fellow volunteers “gave me more pleasure than any I have had since,” Abraham’s priorities in the summer of 1846 did not extend to Mexico. There was the new baby at home, he had finally won the nomination for Congress, and all his energy was focused on winning the election in August.14

  Nor was Lincoln alone in withstanding the call to arms. There were many powerful public men who found the pro-war hysteria and the enlistment of Hardin and Baker baffling. David Davis, a member of the state legislature and occasional business partner of both Lincoln and Hardin, marveled that “the only Whig Congressman (Col Baker) from this state left his post in Congress and has the command of the 4th Regiment of Volunteers.” Davis refused to speak at an enlistment rally on the grounds that since he was not going to enlist he couldn’t very well ask others to do so. For her part, his wife, Sarah Davis, couldn’t bear “to think of the sacrifice of human life—mourning families and all the evils and miseries attendant on war.”15

  John Hardin’s law partner and closest friend, David A. Smith, was also open in his disdain for the military life. When Hardin tried to entice him to Mexico, his response was definitive. “I would not give the glory and gain of spending one week quietly at home with my wife and children for all the laurels, honor, and enchantments of whatever name or nature that you or all Old Rough & ready will reap on the fields of Mexico,” he wrote Hardin that summer. He had no fear of Hardin’s disdain. “You will most likely say that I am a tame spiritless fellow and will never make any stir in this world. That is very likely and I am content that should be so.” Perhaps, Smith suggested, it was Hardin who had his priorities wrong, and Mexico was the last place a man should look for honor. “The greatest thing to us after all is to conquer ourselves and then we shall be more than the most successful Military chieftains. We shall be conquerors in the highest and best sense of the term.”16

  If David A. Smith was a “tame spiritless fellow,” so too was his friend Abraham Lincoln. Like Smith, Lincoln much preferred life with his wife and children to the “enchantments” of Mexico, and like Smith, he had long held that a man needed to conquer himself, to become disciplined, in order to be a conqueror “in the highest and best sense of the term.” “Internal improvements,” a phrase beloved by Whigs, had two meanings. And Lincoln subscribed to them both. An individual needed to master his or her impulses, work diligently, and focus on the moral improvement of the family, just as surely as a community needed to create institutions such as schools, libraries, and churches, and a state needed to finance bridges and good roads, in order to improve the lives of everyone. It was Whig doctrine. It was also Abraham Lincoln’s creed. Manifest Destiny held an allure, but new land was no substitute for sustained effort and economic development, either for an individual or for a state.17

  Lincoln never seriously considered following Hardin and Baker to Mexico. The invasion of Mexico distracted America from what he believed was truly important—a Whig vision of America’s future glory built on economics and not territorial expansion. This was not Abraham Lincoln’s war.

  Fortunately, his Democratic opponent in the congressional race was a Methodist minister, another “tame spiritless fellow” as lukewarm about the war as he was. But at the moment, the public cared for neither economics nor religion, just Mexico. It was beginning
to dawn on Lincoln that if he was going to get to Washington, he’d have to either avoid discussing the conflict or at least give the impression of speaking in its favor.

  Lincoln was sorry about the war but not especially worried about the outcome. Though foreign observers questioned how a small force comprising mostly down-and-out immigrants and untrained volunteers would perform against a better-prepared and well-organized Mexican army fighting on the defensive, the news from the battlefield was all good. Mexico’s soldiers wore elegant uniforms, but the army was burdened with outdated armaments, political instability, and poorly paid and fed conscripts.18 Even before the Illinois volunteers left the state, news of thrilling victories filled local papers. In the first regular engagement of the war, on May 8, Taylor’s force of two thousand defeated General Arista’s army of six thousand near a watering hole north of the Rio Grande known as Palo Alto. The Mexican column, shattered by Taylor’s efficient artillery, was driven from the field with a loss of two hundred men, nearly four times that of the Americans.

  The following day, Arista assumed a defensive position along a dried-up riverbed and waited for Taylor. Taylor’s frontal assault at the Resaca de la Palma was a complete success. The regular forces proved experts at the deployment of the bayonet, and the dragoons were magnificent on horseback. Twelve hundred Mexicans were killed, and only 150 Americans. The remains of Arista’s army fled across the Rio Grande to the safety of the well-laid-out brick town of Matamoros. The Mexican general was forced to abandon his personal papers when the Americans gleefully ransacked them. They found orders from the Mexican government to send General Taylor to Mexico City as a prisoner of war. Taylor prepared to cross the Rio Grande and finish off the Mexican army.19

  Arista wanted to hold Matamoros, but his demoralized troops left little hope of withstanding the now imminent attack. On May 17, he began to move supplies and guns from the city. On May 18, U.S. soldiers waded across the river “up to their armpits,” and as “the band struck up yankee doodle the first time it was ever played south of that river,” the men “raised a cheer that made the woods ring.” The U.S. Army marched into Matamoros without opposition and raised the Stars and Stripes above the city, Taylor appointed one of his officers military governor, and the residents of Matamoros had the decidedly unwelcome honor of being the first in Mexico to experience U.S. Army occupation.20

  Everyone recognized the monumental nature of the occasion. Captain R. A. Stewart, an ordained minister, sugar planter, and commander of the Louisiana volunteers, set aside his military garb on Sunday, June 1, to address the victors of Matamoros on Jeremiah 7:7: “Then I will cause you to dwell together in this place, in the land I gave to your fathers forever and ever.” In his view, the occupation of the U.S. Army was “calculated to shed light over the dark borders of Tamaulipas—to make its inhabitants embrace the blessing of freedom.” And Taylor’s remarkable victories “showed most plainly and beautifully, that it was the order of providence that the Anglo-Saxon race was not only to take possession of the whole North American continent, but to influence and modify the character of the world.” The emotional men embraced his affirmation of Manifest Destiny. The “eyes of many sunburnt veterans … were filled with tears” by the end of the reverend’s discourse.21

  Americans at home agreed that the “many daring deeds” and “brilliant impetuosity” of the American troops proved the superiority of the United States and “sustained nobly the character of the Anglo-Saxon race.” Even the anti-Polk congressman John McHenry expressed a bit of glee in a letter to his cousin Hardin after the capture of Matamoros about “how our army have whipped the Mexicans.” The press went wild in their celebration of the “heroic little army” that had achieved such “matchless victories.” “The prowess of our brave soldiers has made the perfidious Mexicans bite the dust,” cheered an Illinois paper. “The serpent of the Mexican arms now writhes in death agony in the beak of the American eagle.” Another paper gushed that “since the eventful days of our Revolutionary struggle no battle has been fought in which the heroes who march under the Star Spangled Banner, covered themselves with more glory, than did the little band who pressed forward at the command of the heroic Taylor, and charged an enemy of vastly superior numbers, in the very teeth of their roaring, death-dealing cannon!”22

  No one received more acclaim than Zachary Taylor. Letters from the battlefront universally praised the “cool and gallant manner” in which Taylor led his troops, and noted that he “won the hearts of his soldiers by his willingness to share with them the most imminent perils.” Journalists insisted that “there are few instances of a popularity so suddenly acquired, yet so universal and well founded, as that of Gen. Taylor.” It wasn’t simply his “brilliant” victories and military “genius” but “the display of gallantry, coolness, and conduct which won those victories” that “gained him the hearts of his countrymen.” Immediately after the battles on the Rio Grande, soldiers in the field began composing and singing “Taylor songs.” By early July, newspapers were already speaking of General Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready,” as a presidential candidate, while the public gathered at rallies designed to advance his candidacy.23 Polk simmered, convinced the acclaim belonged to him and not to his Whig general.

  By midsummer, news from the front, or fronts, was even better. At the start of the war, Polk, with the military counsel of Major General Winfield Scott, had decided on a two-pronged attack on Mexico: Taylor’s forces were to drive south through Texas and Monterrey toward Mexico City, while a second force, under the direction of Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny, would capture Mexican lands to the west, into New Mexico and Chihuahua and on to California. A third, smaller central division, under the command of Brigadier General John Ellis Wool, was added to secure Chihuahua in north-central Mexico. Polk ordered the navy to blockade the port of Veracruz, and sent word to Commodore Sloat in California to put his earlier order for the capture of California into action.

  Polk’s plans were spectacularly successful. Kearny marched the fifteen hundred frontiersmen who made up his Army of the West a thousand miles, averaging a hundred miles a week, from Fort Leavenworth in Kansas all the way to the provincial capital of New Mexico. Despite bluster on the part of Manuel Armijo, governor of New Mexico, in six weeks the Yankees marched unopposed into Santa Fe. On August 16, New Mexico and its eighty thousand inhabitants were in American hands. After Kearny promised to protect the inhabitants and their property and to respect their religion, the majority of the proud citizens of Santa Fe took an oath of allegiance to the United States. Unaware of the extent of simmering hostility to American occupation that existed in the province, Kearny took leave of New Mexico for California, after directing a Missouri lawyer under his command, Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan, to head south to Chihuahua to reinforce Taylor.

  The Army of the West was accompanied by a thousand Missouri volunteers and a battalion of Mormon soldiers, serving in the only religiously based unit in American military history. After John J. Hardin directed the expulsion of Mormons from Illinois, Brigham Young determined to move beyond the reach of American persecution. Mere days after Congress’s assent to war, a church elder asked Polk for federal assistance for a migration to Mexican territory beyond the Rocky Mountains. Polk agreed, provided the Mormons also fight Mexico. Polk authorized Kearney to receive “as volunteers a few hundred of the Mormons who are now on their way to California, with a view to conciliate them, attach them to our country, & prevent them from taking part against us.” The five hundred men of the battalion contributed their uniform allowance to the purchase of wagons and provisions that enabled the Mormon exodus. Seventy women and children accompanied the soldiers all the way to California. By the end of the summer, the American public was convinced that New Mexico was safe in American hands, as headlines proclaimed, “Santa Fe Taken, Without the Firing of a Gun!”24

  The news from California was even more brilliant. Nearly a year before provoking war with Mexico, Polk had authorized a
“scientific expedition” to California under the command of famed explorer Captain John C. Frémont, Thomas Hart Benton’s son-in-law. Frémont arrived in California in January 1846, where the suspicious actions of his men drove the Mexican authorities to order him out of the country. They decamped for Oregon, but when a special courier from Washington brought news of worsening hostilities with Mexico, Frémont returned to California, fought several modest skirmishes, and raised a flag in Sonoma featuring a crudely drawn picture of a bear. They declared California independent on July 4, 1846, only days before gaining confirmation that Mexico and the United States were in a state of war. Then Frémont’s men lowered the Bear Flag and replaced it with the Stars and Stripes.

  Commodore Sloat, receiving the same news of war, captured Monterey on July 7, and three days later the navy occupied San Francisco Bay. California’s major ports were secured. On August 16, Commodore Robert Stockton, who succeeded Sloat, took Los Angeles without opposition, and declared himself governor of the territory. By the end of the summer, papers were confidently reporting that “the whole of Upper California is now in the possession of the Americans” and “forever lost to Mexico.” As in New Mexico, papers reported, “the capture of California seems to have been effected without bloodshed or resistance.”25

  This was not entirely true. While bloodshed was minimal, there were countless episodes of robbery and intimidation that left much of the populace disenchanted with the Yankees. In Santa Barbara, a picturesque town of approximately two hundred adobe houses with red tile roofs laid out between a placid bay and the mountains, U.S. troops made the mistake of imposing upon the powerful de la Guerra family. José de la Guerra, the richest man in the county, “offered to help” the Americans by lending them ten to twelve horses out of the approximately fifty-eight thousand on his quarter-million-acre ranch. After the ranch manager’s wife prepared and served them breakfast, eight U.S. soldiers seized forty-three horses and threatened the life of ranch employees, claiming that “they were enemies of the government and the troops could take anything and everything.” Three lieutenants ended up in court as a result. But most californios lacked the connections and resources of the de la Guerras and had no recourse when their property was taken.26