Through the Daughters of the American Revolution, Ellen elevated her bond with the original American John Hardin over that with her father. She created an organization that to this day asserts the special status of those whose blood is drawn from warriors of the country’s war for independence, rather than war for empire. “From these Colonial struggles,” the DAR asserted, “will come an American manhood that will build a structure for liberty to endure forever.” Ellen ignored the many similarities between the two John Hardins, two men who never missed an opportunity to fight, who were among the first to raise troops to face the enemy, who both were colonels in the U.S. Army and generals in their state militia, who both were killed in the name of Manifest Destiny while accompanied by unacknowledged and unfree African American servants. Both men were dead before the age of thirty-nine. Ellen may never have considered the extent to which the Revolution, the Indian wars that killed the original John Hardin, and the war with Mexico that killed her father were linked. Nor did she publicly recognize the manner in which slavery and Indian killing became part of the structure that was passed down through the generations. She believed that “American manhood” would be born from Colonial struggles. Certainly, this was true in the case of her own family.12
Her organization was successful beyond anyone’s expectations. One thousand women joined in the first year. By 1901 there were DAR chapters in every state, as well as in two conquests of the recent Spanish-American War, the territories of Puerto Rico and the Philippines. From her post as director general of the Women’s National War Relief Association (another association she helped found), Ellen was in a superb position to both provide comfort to America’s soldiers fighting against Spain and advance the DAR in the country’s new colonial possessions. By 1906 there were more than 50,000 dues-paying members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 2011 there were 165,000 members. More than 850,000 American women have joined the DAR since the organization’s inception.
The U.S.-Mexican War is one of the few American wars not commemorated in Washington, D.C. There is no monument to the 1847 conflict in the nation’s capital, not even a statue. But the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, with almost three thousand chapters in all fifty states and eleven foreign countries, lays claim to an imposing marble edifice just two blocks from the White House. The sprawling Beaux Arts structure, as large as a city block, contains not only administrative offices but also D.C.’s biggest concert hall, a charming historical museum, a series of rooms furnished with period antiques (some of which belonged to the Walworth family), and one of the largest genealogical libraries in the nation.
The cool, high-ceilinged library, free and open to the public, is an oasis of calm just off the busy Washington Mall. Potted plants soak up the ample light pouring through intricately etched skylights, and flags of the fifty states wave softly in an air-conditioned breeze. The chandeliers are primarily decorative. It is an excellent place to think about lineage, and patrons make the most of it. Those who aren’t playing with their phones or making use of the computer terminals are poring over genealogical materials at long mahogany tables.
Gazing down over all of them is a life-sized portrait labeled “Ellen Hardin Walworth. Founder, Daughters of the American Revolution.” Ellen looks regal in a dress of black velvet and cream lace with three-quarter-length sleeves. The outfit perfectly matches the silver highlights in her thick, dark hair. The bodice of her gown is clasped with a heavy gold DAR brooch closely resembling a military medal, and the portrait painter has painstakingly printed the word founder in the center of the brooch so that it can be read from several feet away. Ellen gazes up from the book she holds in her lap, her posture erect. She has been caught in the act of reading. Or perhaps she was reading out loud, telling a story about sacrifice, inheritance, and American history.
Acknowledgments
I HAVE ACCRUED a tremendous number of debts in the process of researching and writing this book. Any scholar hoping to say something new about Henry Clay, James K. Polk, Abraham Lincoln, or the war between the United States and Mexico is forced to contend with a daunting historiography on each of these topics. This book was only possible because generations of remarkable scholars sorted through letters, edited papers, and gracefully synthesized existing scholarship to make sense of these men and the war that drew them together. My reliance on the work of Jean H. Baker, K. Jack Bauer, Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, Gabor Boritt, Eric Foner, William E. Gienapp, David and Jeanne Heidler, Daniel Walker Howe, Frederick Merk, Mark E. Neely Jr., Merrill Peterson, Robert Remini, Joel Silbey, and particularly Charles Sellers will be obvious to readers familiar with their classic works.
My debt to the institutions and individuals who facilitated my research is no less acute, and easier to narrate. The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, American Philosophical Society, Gilder Lehrman Foundation, Huntington Library, and, at Penn State, the Institute for the Arts and Humanities and Richards Civil War Era Center each provided financial support for this project. Librarians and archivists at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate, Bancroft Library, British Library, Chicago History Museum, Daughters of the American Revolution Library, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Huntington Library, James K. Polk Memorial Association, Library of Congress, Louisiana State University Special Collections, Massachusetts Historical Society, Monticello, New-York Historical Society, Ohio Historical Society, Santa Barbara Mission Archives, and Wisconsin Historical Society were enormously helpful, as was the staff of the Penn State University libraries, particularly Eric Novotny. Agnes Hamberger at the Saratoga Springs History Museum deserves special thanks not only for her extensive assistance with research but also for her unflagging support of this project. Former Jacksonville, Illinois, mayor Ron Tendick generously shared his research on the Hardin family. Anne Brinton slogged through microfilm on my behalf, Alexandria Lockett and William Cossen helped with copyediting and proofreading, and Peter Van Lidth de Jeude provided translations of German accounts of the war.
I am also in the debt of colleagues who generously provided their time and knowledge to making this study better. Kevin Adams, John Belohlavek, Andrew Burstein, Andrew Cayton, Brian DeLay, Richard Doyle, Daniel Walker Howe, Nancy Isenberg, Alexis McCrossen, Mark E. Neely Jr., Carol Reardon, and Andrés Reséndez each read and commented on a draft of this manuscript. Sean Trainor managed to complete a detailed line edit of the initial draft by lamplight while camping. Their suggestions, corrections, criticism, and support have vastly improved this book and saved me the embarrassment of a great number of errors. Remaining errors are of course my own.
My wonderful colleagues and students at Penn State University have helped me refine my arguments, as have audiences at lectures and conferences over the previous eight years. Discussions about this project with William Blair, Gregg Cantrell, Patricia Cline Cohen, Robert Devens, Jonathan Earle, Gary Gallagher, Kristin Hoganson, Walter Johnson, Anthony E. Kaye, Robert E. May, Chandra Manning, Francesca Morgan, Anne C. Rose, Naoko Shibusawa, Michael Vorenberg, Ronald and Mary Zboray, and Andrew Zimmerman have been particularly useful. Mark Neely’s knowledge of all things Lincoln has been a much-appreciated resource from the earliest stage of this project. The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic has proven a wonderfully nurturing environment for thinking through the history of this most crucial era.
My brothers, Mike and Ken Greenberg, have shaped my approach to the war over years of discussions about U.S.-Mexico relations. My parents, Kenneth and Jane Lee Greenberg, have long nurtured my interest in history. They always hoped I would write a book that people might actually read. Jessica Greenberg has been a tireless booster of my work. Daily e-mails with Alexis McCrossen have proven a crucial source of analysis, inspiration, and support. Rich Doyle, always eager to toss ideas back and forth, kept me focused on the big picture. It is an honor to publish this book with Knopf. My editor, Andrew Miller, and
editorial assistants Andrew Carlson and Mark Chiusano have been a pleasure to work with. Without the encouragement of my indomitable book agents, Sydelle Kramer and Susan Rabiner, this book would never have been written. They know how much they have shaped this project.
Finally, my greatest thanks go to my family, Rich, Jackson, and Violet Doyle. Without their love and support I would be nowhere. They have put up with my obsessive discussion of the Hardin family, out-of-town research trips, and general book-related distraction for too many years. I offer them the dedication of this book knowing full well the gesture is nothing compared to the debt I owe each of them.
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES
AHSDN Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de la Defensa de la Nación, Mexico City
ALP Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress
CG U.S. Congress, Congressional Globe
CW Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Balser et al. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953)
DC Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Inter-American Affairs, 1831–1860, ed. William R. Manning, 8 vols. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1938)
DNI Daily National Intelligencer, Washington, DC
HFP Hardin Family Papers, Chicago History Museum
HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania
LC Library of Congress
NYH New York Herald
NYHS New-York Historical Society
MHS Massachusetts Historical Society
PHC The Papers of Henry Clay, ed. James F. Hopkins, Mary W. M. Hargreaves, et al., 11 vols. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1959–92)
PPBL Palmerston Papers, Vol. CXXXI, Manuscripts Division, British Library
UNC University of North Carolina
WFA Walworth Family Archive, Saratoga Springs History Museum
INTRODUCTION
1. Comprehensive histories of the war with an emphasis on the military experience include K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War: 1846–1848 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), John D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2000), and David A. Clary, Eagles and Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle for a Continent (New York: Bantam, 2009). Clary’s volume is notable for its coverage of Mexico’s military history. On the Army of the West, see Winston Groom, Kearney’s March: The Epic Creation of the American West, 1846–1847 (New York: Knopf, 2011).
2. On Mexico’s experiences in the war, see Jesús Velasco Márquez, La Guerra del ’47 y la opinión pública (1845–1848) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Also Clary, Eagles and Empire; Irving W. Levinson, Wars Within War: Mexican Guerrillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, 1846–1848 (Fort Worth, TX: TCU Press, 2005); Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), and particularly on the context for war, Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities on the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
3. The best (and only) biographical study of John J. Hardin is Nancy L. Cox, “A Life of John Hardin of Illinois, 1810–1847” (M.A. thesis, Miami University, 1964). Portions of Hardin’s life have also been explored by Richard Lawrence Miller, Lincoln and His World: Prairie Politician (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2008); and to a lesser degree by Geoffrey O’Brien, The Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Madness and Murder in Gilded Age America (New York: Henry Holt, 2010).
4. The majority of scholars who have written about Trist’s career have followed the lead of Democratic critics in the 1840s who condemned the diplomat’s behavior and belittled his abilities. See, for example, Jack Nortrup, “Nicholas Trist’s Mission to Mexico: A Reinterpretation,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 71, no. 3 (1968): 321–46; David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1975), 501. Two important exceptions are Dean B. Mahin, Olive Branch and Sword: The United States and Mexico, 1845–1848 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997), and Wallace Ohrt, Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1997).
5. See Robert W. Merry’s A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009) for a positive portrait that acknowledges Polk’s deceit and vindictive actions. Charles Sellers’s unparalleled two-volume biography of Polk, James K. Polk: Jacksonian and James K. Polk: Continentalist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957, 1966), is vastly less sympathetic than Merry’s. William Dusinberre’s Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James K. Polk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) offers a highly critical assessment.
6. See, for example, David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Henry Clay: The Essential American (New York: Random House, 2010); Maurice Baxter, Henry Clay and the American System (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995); Clement Eaton, Henry Clay and the Art of American Politics (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957).
7. See, for example, Robert V. Remini’s Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: Norton, 1991).
8. Donald W. Riddle, Congressman Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957), 4.
9. Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962), 1. See also Mark E. Neely Jr., “Lincoln and the Mexican War: An Argument by Analogy,” Civil War History 24 (Mar. 1978): 5–24, and Gabor S. Boritt, “A Question of Political Suicide? Lincoln’s Opposition to the Mexican War,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 67 (Feb. 1974): 79–100.
10. Scholars have argued that “the opposition to the War of 1812 outmatched any antiwar sentiment that has since followed,” based on the divided congressional response to the initial June 1812 war bill. But the response of Congress to a call for war does not reflect the evolving stance of Americans over the course of a war. The antiwar movement in 1812 was passionate but largely limited to New England. It never took on a grassroots character, and shrank rather than grew over time. While antiwar activists in 1812 had a positive impact on the growth of free speech in America, and formed America’s first national peace societies, their views were far less diffuse than those of antiwar activists in 1847. Congressional representatives, particularly in 1846, were more circumspect than those in 1812 because opposition to the war in 1812 led to the demise of the Federalist Party. See Rachel Hope Cleves, The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 153–93, quote on 156. Also Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Valarie H. Ziegler, The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1992); Richard Buel, America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
11. William Jay, A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War (Boston: American Peace Society, 1853); Justin Smith, The War with Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1919).
12. John H. Schroeder, Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846–1848 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), 162.
13. Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 279. Two recent studies have given more attention to the antiwar movement: see Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1845 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 768–69, and Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 48–49, 65–67.
14. Robert Ryal Miller, Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick’s Battalion in the U.S.-Mexican War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 174. Americans
have always held conflicted feelings about military service, and desertion rates from both wartime and peacetime armies were high throughout the nineteenth century. On military service and desertion, see Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784–1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); John Phillips Resch, Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999); Kevin Adams, Class and Race in the Frontier Army: Military Life in the West, 1870–1890 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009). Adams attributes high U.S. Army desertion rates to an understanding of citizenship as contractual. The notion that citizens could voluntarily choose their allegiances, they believed, also afforded them the flexibility to leave service when they pleased.
15. Both figures are disputed. No one counted Mexican casualties, and there are over a thousand missing U.S. soldiers, likely killed by irregular forces, who have not factored into the 10 percent figure. According to the Department of Defense, 13,283 Americans died in the war with Mexico, which would indicate a mortality rate of 17 percent. Even the most conservative estimate of American casualties indicates that this war was far more deadly than the Civil War, with a 6.5 percent mortality rate. Clifton D. Bryant, The Handbook of Death and Dying (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003), 1:545; Clary, Eagles and Empire, 131, 412; Levinson, Wars Within War, 123–24.
16. Pletcher, Diplomacy of Annexation, 609–10.
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