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

by Amy S. Greenberg

  8. “Let It Be Well Done,” Sangamo Journal, Jun. 4, 1846; Illinois State Register, Dec. 27, 1844; E. H. Merryman to John Hardin, Springfield, May 22, 1846, HFP, Box 16.

  9. Samuel Bigger McCartney, “Illinois in the Mexican War” (M.A. thesis, Northwestern University, 1939), 29.

  10. James Davis to Hardin, May 29, 1846, HFP, Box 16.

  11. Letter from Charles Francis Adams, Boston Whig, Jun. 2, 1846; letter to “My Dear Whipple, Jun. 19, 1846,” Liberator, Aug. 21, 1846; see, for example, CG, 29th Cong., 2d sess., 204, 213, 245; 30th Cong., 1st sess., 62, 135,349.

  12. Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: Norton, 2010), 22; Willard L. King, Lincoln’s Manager, David Davis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 54.

  13. Illinois State Register, Jul. 3, 1846; Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, Lincoln, 1809–1865 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), 1:377.

  14. Abraham Lincoln, CW, 3:512.

  15. King, Lincoln’s Manager, 54.

  16. David A. Smith to John Hardin, Jul. 10, 1846, Jacksonville, HFP, Box 16.

  17. Abraham Lincoln to David Smith, Dec. 3, 1847, CW, 1:416.

  18. For a firsthand account of the difficulties facing the army, see Manuel Balbontín, La invasion Americana 1846 á 1848: Apunetes del subteniente de artillería Manuel Balbontín (Mexico City: Tip. De Gonzalo Esteva, 1883).

  19. Otis A. Singletary, The Mexican War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 32.

  20. Calvin Benjamin to Issac Tracy, Metamoras, Mexico, Mar. 29, 1846, Calvin Benjamin Papers, LC.

  21. “Late and Important from Mexico,” Floridian (Tallahassee), Aug. 1, 1846.

  22. “The Fields of Palo Alto,” Cleveland Herald, Jun. 2, 1846; John H. McHenry to Hardin, Washington, DC, May 26, 1846, HFP, Box 16; “The Heroes of ‘Palo Alto’ and ‘Resaca De La Palmas,’ ” Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Gazette, Jul. 7, 1846; “Glorious News of Our Army,” Sangamo Journal, May 28, 1846; see also “Glorious News of Our Army,” Baltimore Sun, May 19, 1846; “Glorious Victory!!” South Carolina Temperance Advocate and Register of Agriculture and General Literature (Columbia, SC), Aug. 27, 1846.

  23. “Letter from the Field of Battle,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel and Gazette, Jun. 1, 1846; “Old Rough and Ready,” North American (Philadelphia), Jun. 17, 1846; meeting reported in Sangamo Journal, Jul. 9, 1846.

  24. Polk, Diary, 1:444; “Santa Fe Taken, Without the Firing of a Gun!” Daily Atlas, Sep. 9, 1846.

  25. “Highly Important News,” Polynesian (Honolulu), Aug. 8, 1846; see also “Reported Taking of California,” North American (Philadelphia), Aug. 19, 1846.

  26. A. Lopez and Leva et al. before the Judge of First Instance, Rancho San Julian, Aug. 28, 1846 (doc. 530), Delfina de la Guerra Collection, Santa Barbara Mission Archives. See also Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 6–10; Louise Pubols, The Father of All: The de la Guerra Family, Power, and Patriarchy in Mexican California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 256–88.

  27. Robert F. Stockton to James K. Polk, Ciudad de los Angeles, Aug. 26, 1846, Correspondence of James K. Polk, ed. Herbert Weaver and Wayne Cutler et al., 11 vols. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969–2009), 10:293–94.

  28. New Orleans Picayune, Apr. 13, 1847, quoted in Thomas William Reilly, “American Reporters and the Mexican War 1846–1848” (Ph.D diss., University of Minnesota, 1975), 1: 21.

  29. “Response to the Call of the Governor,” Sangamo Journal, Jun. 4, 1846.

  30. William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (New York: Appleton, 1892), 258–59.

  31. Clay to Horace Greeley, New York City, Jun. 23, 1846, PHC, 10:274.

  32. Henry Clay to Octavia Walton LeVert, Mobile, AL, Jun. 25, 1846, PHC, 10:274.

  33. Henry Clay to Francis Lieber, Aug. 20, 1846, PHC, 10:278; Henry Clay to Dr. George McClellan, Lexington, Sep. 24, 1846, PHC, 10:280; Dr. George McClellan to Henry Clay, Philadelphia, Sep. 17, 1846, PHC, 10:279; Henry Clay to Dr. George McClellan, Lexington, Sep. 24, 1846, PHC, 10:280.

  34. Henry Clay to Octavia Walton LeVert, Lexington, Nov. 6, 1846, PHC, 10:284; Henry Clay Jr. to Henry Clay, Camp at Agua Nueva, Feb. 12, 1847, PHC, 10:306; details on drunkenness, Damon Eubank, The Response of Kentucky to the Mexican War, 1846–1848 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), 42.

  35. Ramón Alcaraz et al., The Other Side: Or, Notes for the History of the War Between Mexico and the United States, trans. Albert C. Ramsey (New York: John Wiley, 1850), 80.

  36. James K. Polk, Diary of a President: James K. Polk, ed. Milo Quaife, 4 vols. (Columbia, TN: James K. Polk Memorial Association, 2005), 2:181, 184.

  37. Ibid., 1:496.

  38. “The Spirit of the Country,” Philadelphia North American, May 25, 1846.

  39. “Monterey Mexico, Oct. 20, 1846” and letter from “Point Isabel, Nov. 1, 1846,” both in “Later from the Army,” Augusta Chronicle, Nov. 20, 1846.

  40. “Relief of the Sick Soldiers,” Alexandria Gazette, Oct. 30, 1846; letter from “H,” Balize (LA), Nov. 14, 1846, in “Later from the Army,” Augusta Chronicle, Nov. 20, 1846; King, Lincoln’s Manager, 54–55.

  41. Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 22–23, 85. On unskilled labor options, see Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

  42. James M. McCaffrey, Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846–1848 (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 119–20, quote on 120; Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 32–33. On firefighting and professionalization, Amy Greenberg, Cause for Alarm: The Volunteer Fire Department in the Nineteenth-Century City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

  43. Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant; Selected Letters, 1839–1865 (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1990), 918; on atrocity, see Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 113–37.

  44. James Buckner Barry, Buck Barry: Texas Ranger and Frontiersman, ed. James K. Greer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 40.

  45. “From Mexico,” New Orleans Picayune, Oct. 6, 1847, quoted in DNI, Oct. 17, 1846; Philip Norbourne Barbour, Journals of the Late Brevet Major Philip Norbourne Barbour and His Wife Isabella Hopkins Barbour: Written During the War with Mexico—1846, ed. Rhoda van Bibber Tanner Doubleday (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1936), 95; “From the Charleston Mercury: Affairs at Monterey, Monterey (Mexico),” Oct. 11, 1846, in Niles’ National Register, Nov. 21, 1846; F. L. Gifford to Bunkhead, May 20, 1846, Palmerston Papers, British Library, VI:37.

  46. “From the Charleston Mercury: Affairs at Monterey, Monterey (Mexico),” Oct. 11, 1846, in Niles’ National Register, Nov. 21, 1846; George Meade, The Life and Letters of General George Gordon Meade (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 1:147.

  47. “From Monterey,” correspondence of the New Orleans Delta, Dec. 1, 1846, in DNI, Jan. 1, 1847; Frank A. Hardy to Horace Hardy, Oct. 23, 1846, Frank Hardy letters, Ohio Historical Society.

  48. “From Monterey,” correspondence of the New Orleans Delta, Dec. 1, 1846, in DNI, Jan. 1, 1847.

  49. Zachary Taylor, Letters of Zachary Taylor from the Battlefield of the Mexican War, ed. William H. Swanson (Rochester, NY: Genesee Press, 1908), 22, 24; Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott (New York: Sheldon, 1864), 2:392; Scott to Marcy, Jan. 16, 1847, quoted in Mark E. Neely Jr., The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 9; Francis Baylies, A Narrative of Major General Wool’s Campaign in Mexico: In the Years 1846, 1847 & 1848 (Albany: Little, 1851), 57.

  50. “The Spirit of the Country,” Philadelp
hia North American, May 25, 1846.

  51. Abraham Lincoln to Joshua Speed, Oct. 22, 1846, CW, 1:391.

  52. Ellen Hardin Walworth, “The Battle of Buena Vista,” American Monthly Magazine IV (Jan. 1894): 128; Samuel Bigger McCartney, “Illinois in the Mexican War” (M.A. thesis, Northwestern University, 1939), 32.

  53. John Hardin to Sarah Hardin, Aug. 3, 1846, La Vaca, Texas, HFP, Box 17:2.

  CHAPTER 7. BUENA VISTA

  1. John Hardin letter to “My dear sister” (Margaret McKee), San Antonio, TX, Sep. 27, 1846, HFP, Box 17.

  2. John Hardin to Sarah Hardin, Aug. 3, 1846, La Vaca, TX, HFP, Box 17.

  3. Hardin to Sarah, Jul. 23, 1846, steamer Missouri, “Within 40 Miles of New Orleans” HFP, Box 17:2; John Hardin letter to Dear Smith, San Antonio, Sep. 30, 1846, HFP, Box 17; John Hardin to Sarah Hardin, Aug. 29, 1846, Camp Crockett, 3 miles from San Antonio, HFP, Box 17; “Flare up Among the Illinois Volunteers,” Daily Atlas, Aug. 14, 1846; Milwaukee Sentinel, Aug. 14, 1846. Report originally published in New Orleans (unnamed paper) and St. Louis Republican.

  4. John Hardin letter to Dear Smith, San Antonio, Sep. 30, 1846, HFP, Box 17; Zachary Taylor to R. C. Wood, Camargo, Mexico, Aug. 11, 1846, in Letters of Zachary Taylor from the Battlefield of the Mexican War, ed. William H. Swanson (Rochester, NY: Genesee Press, 1908), 38.

  5. Ellen Hardin to John Hardin, Jacksonville, Aug. 1846, HFP, Box 17; John Hardin letter to Dear Smith, San Antonio, Sep. 30, 1846, HFP, Box 17.

  6. Samuel Bigger McCartney, “Illinois in the Mexican War” (M.A. thesis, Northwestern University, 1939), 41.

  7. Grant to Julia Dent, Jul. 6, 1845, in Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967), 1:49; Robert Hunter to Sarah Jane Hunter, Apr. 21, 1846. Robert and Sarah Jane Hunter Letters, 1846–1847, LSU Special Collections; Robert E. May, “Invisible Men: Blacks and the U.S. Army in the Mexican War,” in Darlene Clark Hine, ed., A Question of Manhood: A Reader in U.S. Black Men’s History and Masculinity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 473–85.

  8. William Cooper Nell, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution: With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons (Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1855), 391.

  9. James Bearden to Henry E. Dummer, Apr. 10, 1847, Jacksonville, IL, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Manuscripts Collection; John T. Stuart to John J. Hardin, Aug. 30, 1833, HFP, Box 11.

  10. Paul Finkelman, “Evading the Ordinance: The Persistence of Bondage in Indiana and Illinois,” Journal of the Early Republic 9 (Spring 1989): 35–48.

  11. Richard Lawrence Miller, Lincoln and His World: Prairie Politician (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2008), 1:194; Finkelman, “Evading the Ordinance.”

  12. “Illinois a Slaveholding State,” Liberator, Mar. 31, 1854.

  13. Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln (New York: Norton, 1987), 105–8.

  14. Philip Nourbourne Barbour, Journals of the Late Brevet Major Philip Norbourne Barbour and His Wife Martha Isabella Hopkins Barbour: Written During the War with Mexico—1846, ed. Rhoda van Bibber Tanner Doubleday (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1936), 28; May, “Invisible Men,” 473; Robert Ryal Miller, Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick’s Batallion in the U.S.-Mexican War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 31.

  15. John Hardin, “Memorandums of Travel in Texas and Mexico with the Army of Chihuahua in the Summer and Autumn of 1846,” 10–12, 14, HFP, Box 17:2; Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

  16. John Hardin, “Memorandums of Travel in Texas and Mexico with the Army of Chihuahua in the Summer and Autumn of 1846,” Oct. 16, 25, 27, HFP, Box 17:2.

  17. Zachary Taylor to R. C. Wood, Agua Nueva, Mexico, Feb. 9, 1847, Letters of Zachary Taylor, 85.

  18. James K. Polk, Diary of a President: James K. Polk, ed. Milo Quaife, 4 vols. (Columbia, TN: James K. Polk Memorial Association, 2005), 1:417–18.

  19. Letter from Henry Clay Jr. to Henry Clay, Feb. 12, 1847, PHC, 10:306.

  20. Henry Clay to Octavia LeVert, New Orleans, Dec. 19, 1846, PHC, 10:299; Henry Clay to John Pendleton Kennedy, New Orleans, Dec. 27, 1846, PHC, 10:301.

  21. “Toast at the Dinner of the New England Society of Louisiana,” PHC, 10:300.

  22. “Mr. Clay,” Mississippian, Jan. 14, 1847; Lowell Journal and Worcester Spy quoted in “Beating Their Idol,” Emancipator, Feb. 17, 1847.

  23. “Mexican War,” Vermont Gazette, Jan. 19, 1847. See also New Orleans Picayune, Dec. 23, 1846; Augusta Chronicle, Dec. 30, 1846; Baltimore Sun, Jan. 4, 1847; New Hampshire Gazette, Dec. 14, 1847; Philadelphia North American, Jan. 4, 1847; Cleveland Herald, Jan. 7, 1847; Lowell Journal and Worcester Spy quoted in “Beating Their Idol,” Emancipator, Feb. 17, 1847.

  24. Thomas D. Tennery, The Mexican War Diary of Thomas D. Tennary, ed. D. E. Livingston-Little (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 66.

  25. Quote in Felice Flanery Lewis, Trailing Clouds of Glory: Zachary Taylor’s Mexican War Campaign and His Emerging Civil War Leaders (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010), 173.

  26. Samuel E. Chamberlain, My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue, ed. William H. Goetzmann (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), 119.

  27. Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500–2000 (New York: Penguin, 2005), 261–62.

  28. Quote ibid., 271. On Santa Anna, see Will Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

  29. Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View; or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820–1850. (New York: D. Appleton, 1873), 2:680.

  30. James K. Polk to William H. Haywood Jr., Oct. 10, 1846, Correspondence of James K. Polk, ed. Herbert Weaver and Wayne Cutler et al., 11 vols. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969–2009), 11:349.

  31. James K. Polk to William H. Polk, Oct. 2, 1846, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 11:349.

  32. Letter from Henry Clay Jr. to Henry Clay, Feb. 12, 1847, PHC, 10:307.

  33. John Hardin letter to “dear wife,” Parras, Mexico, Dec. 7, 1846, HFP, Box 17:3.

  34. John Hardin letter to Smith, Parras, Mexico, Dec. 10, 1846, HFP, Box 17:3.

  35. “Quarrel between Gen. Wool and Col. Hardin,” Trenton State Gazette, Jan. 29, 1847.

  36. Letter from Henry Clay Jr. to Henry Clay, Feb. 12, 1847, PHC, 10:305; report of inebriation, Frankfort (KY) Commonwealth, Nov. 17, 1846.

  37. John Hardin letter to Smith, Parras, Mexico, Dec. 10, 1846, HFP, Box 17:3; Archibald Yell to James K. Polk, Monclov, Mexico, Nov. 5, 1846, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 11:385; Lewis, Trailing Clouds of Glory, 173.

  38. Zachary Taylor to R. C. Wood, Monterrey, Mexico, Nov. 26, 1846, Letters of Zachary Taylor, 71; Zachary Taylor to R. C. Wood, Matamoras, Mexico, Jun. 21, 1846, Letters of Zachary Taylor, 13–14.

  39. John Hardin, “Memorandums of Travel in Texas and Mexico with the Army of Chihuahua in the Summer and Autumn of 1846,” 40–42, Oct. 23, 1846, HFP, Box 17:2.

  40. John Hardin letter to Smith, Parras, Mexico, Dec. 10, 1846, HFP, Box 17:3; John Hardin letter to “Dear Henry” [Capt. John Henry], Parras, Mexico, Dec. 16, 1846, HFP, Box 17:3.

  41. John Hardin letter to “Dear Henry” [Capt. John Henry], Parras, Mexico, Dec. 16, 1846, HFP, Box 17:3.

  42. “In our Remarks,” Genius of Liberty (Veracruz), Oct. 5, 1847; “Pleasures of Soldiering,” Richmond Enquirer cited in Niles’ National Register 71 (Sep. 26, 1846): 55.

  43. “In our Remarks,” Genius of Liberty (Veracruz), Oct. 5, 1847; Zachary Taylor to R. C. Wood, Monterrey, Mexico, Dec. 10, 1846, Letters of Zachary Taylor, 75. See also the letters of Alexander Somerville Wotherspoon to Louisa Kuhn, Wotherspoon Family Papers, LC.

  44. Diary of William H. Daniel, 1846–47, Manuscript Department, Filson Club, Louisville, KY, 34, 44, quote in Richard V. Salisbury, “Kentuckians at the Batt
le of Buena Vista,” Filson Club Historical Quarterly 61, no. 1 (Jan. 1987): 34–53, quote on 36.

  45. Ellen Hardin Walworth, “Mrs. Ellen Hardin Walworth,” American Monthly Magazine (Jul. 1893): 43.

  46. Ellen Hardin Walworth, “Earliest Recollections,” undated manuscript, WFA.

  47. John Hardin to Ellen Hardin, Washington City, Dec. 1, 1843, WFA.

  48. John Hardin to Ellen Hardin, Encantada, Mexico, 12 miles south of Saltillo, Jan. 3, 1847, HFP, Box 17:3.

  49. Sarah Hardin to John Hardin, Lang Syne, Dec. 20, 1846 (from Princeton, MS), HFP, Box 17:3; information on Abram Smith plantation and slaves based on 1850 Census from Kent T. Dollar, Soldiers of the Cross: Confederate Soldier-Christians and the Impact of the War on their Faith (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), 20.

  50. Sarah Hardin to John Hardin, Lang Syne, Dec. 15, 1846, HFP, Box 17:3.

  51. John Hardin to Sarah Hardin, Encantada, Mexico, Feb. 7, 1847, HFP, Box 17:3.

  52. Transcript of John Hardin letter to Stephan Douglas, Feb. 4, 1847, HFP, Box 17:3.

  53. John Hardin to Ellen Hardin, Jan., 31, 1847, HFP, Box 17:3.

  54. John Hardin to Sarah Hardin, Agua Nuevo, Feb. 21, 1847, transcript, WFP.

  55. John Palmer diary, Dec. 27, 1846, Huntington Library.

  56. Samuel Chamberlain, My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue, ed. William H. Goetzmann (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), 133–34.

  57. Manuscript by Lyman Guinnip to Senator Richard Yates (n.d.), 1–2, HFP, Box 17:2.

  58. Chamberlain, My Confession, 157; Ottawa Free Trader, Apr. 16, 1847, quoted in McCartney, “Illinois in the Mexican War,” 45; Guinnip manuscript, 2, HPF, Box 17:2.

  59. Guinnip manuscript, 3–4, HPF, Box 17:2.

  60. “Buena Vista,” DNI, Apr. 7, 1847.

  61. Guinnip manuscript, 5, HPF, Box 17:2.

  62. Dr. John Upsher Lafon to R. J. Jackson, Feb. 24, 1847, Manuscript Collection, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, quote in Richard V. Salisbury, “Kentuckians at the Battle of Buena Vista,” Filson Club Historical Quarterly 61, no. 1 (Jan. 1987): 34–53, quote on 51; McCartney, “Illinois in the Mexican War,” 49.