A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico
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10. Carl von Grone, Briefe über Nord-Amerika und Mexiko und den zwischen beiden gerührten krieg (Braunschweig: Druck von G. Westermann, 1850), 62–63. Translation by Peter van Lidth de Jeude.
11. “Col P. M. Butler,” Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Gazette, Jun. 4, 1847.
12. Oswandel, Notes of the Mexican War, 206; “John of York,” “Letters from the Army, Camp Near Jalapa, 30 April,” Philadelphia North American, May 28, 1847; six Illinois soldiers: John Kreitzer Journal, May 2, 1847, HSP.
13. “Our Army Correspondence, Jun. 11, 1847,” North American and United States Gazette, Dec. 10, 1847.
14. Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott (New York: Sheldon, 1864), 2:579.
15. Ibid.; Nicholas Trist to Virginia Trist, May 21, 1847, LC Trist Papers, Reel 2.
16. Winfield Scott to Nicholas Trist, May 29, 1847, LC Trist Papers, Reel 2; Nicholas Trist to Virginia Trist, May 15, 1847, LC Trist Papers, Reel 2; Scott to Marcy, Jun. 4, 1847, Executive Documents, Senate, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 1847, #29, 7:130.
17. Polk, Diary, 3:57–59.
18. Quote in Otis A. Singletary, The Mexican War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 84.
19. George Turnbull Moore Davis, Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo. T. M. Davis: Captain and Aid-de-camp Scott’s Army of Invasion (New York: Jenkins and McCowan, 1891), 290, 192; quote in Singletary, Mexican War, 83.
20. Davis, Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo. T. M. Davis, 228; Robert Ryal Miller, Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick’s Batallion in the U.S.-Mexican War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 104.
21. Quote in Singletary, Mexican War, 94.
22. K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War: 1846–1848 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 308–11.
23. Quotes in Guillermo Prieto, Memorias de mis tiempos (Paris: Librería de la Vda. de C. Bouret, 1906), 423, translation by the author; Miller, Shamrock and Sword, 105; Bauer, Mexican War, 308–11.
24. Prieto, Memorias de mis tiempos, 417–19, translation by the author.
25. Ignacio de Mora y Villamil to Zachary Taylor, San Luis Potosi, May 10, 1847, House Ex. Doc. 60, 30th Cong, 1st sess., 1139–41.
26. David A. Clary, Eagles and Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle for a Continent (New York: Bantam, 2009), 379–80; Tom Reilly, War with Mexico! America’s Reporters Cover the Battlefront, ed. Manley Witten (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2010), 152.
27. Scott to Marcy, Jul. 25, 1847, Executive Documents, Senate, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 1847, #29, 7:135; Scott, Memoirs, 2:579; Nicholas Trist to James Buchanan, Jul. 23, 1847, Trist Papers, LC, Reel 8.
28. Nicholas Trist to Virginia Trist, Oct. 18, 1847, Trist Papers, LC.
29. Palmerston, Oct. 29, 1847, PPBL, 14; “The Great War Meeting,” NYH, Jan. 30, 1848; NYH, Oct. 8, 1847. See also Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 22.
30. Ben Perley Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (Tecumseh, MI: A. W. Mills, 1886), 1:329–30.
CHAPTER 11. DUTY AND JUSTICE
1. James K. Polk, Diary of a President: James K. Polk, ed. Milo Quaife, 4 vols. (Columbia, TN: James K. Polk Memorial Association, 2005), 3:468.
2. Ibid., 3:483, 468.
3. Ibid., 3:483.
4. J. A. Smith to Virginia Trist, Jun. 2, 1847, Louisville. Trist Papers UNC, Folder 137; H. B. Trist to Virginia Trist, Jul. 31, 1847, Bowdon, Trist Papers, UNC, Folder 137.
5. H. B. Trist to Virginia Trist, Jul. 31, 1847, Bowdon, Trist Papers, UNC, Folder 137; “Policy of the American Government,” Daily American Star (Mexico City), Nov. 17, 1847; Charles Averill, The Mexican Ranchero; or, The Maid of the Chapparal: A Romance of the Mexican War (Boston: F. Gleason, 1847); Martha A. Clough, Zuleika: or the Castilian Captive (Boston: F. Gleason, 1849), 102.
6. Background on novel in Sacvan Bercovitch, ed., The Cambridge History of American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 2:162; Jaime Javier Rodríguez, The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War: Narrative, Time, and Identity (Austin: University of Texas, 2010), 29–32; Shelley Streeby, American Sensations: Class, Empire and the Production of Popular Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 105–23.
7. “The Great War Meeting,” NYH, Jan. 30, 1848; Philadelphia Public Ledger, Dec. 11, 1847.
8. John M. Brannan, letter to his brother Benjamin F. Brannan (Frank) from the City of Mexico, Oct. 24, 1847, Miscellaneous Brannan, J. M. Papers, NYHS.
9. Averill, The Mexican Ranchero, 45.
10. Ibid., 45–46.
11. Ibid., 100.
12. Polk, Diary, 3:76–77.
13. Ibid., 3:200; Buchanan to Nicholas Trist, Oct. 25, 1847, Trist Papers, LC.
14. Polk, Diary, 3:199, 267.
15. Ibid., 3:163.
16. Ibid., 3:256, 10, 91.
17. Ibid., 3:91, 26.
18. Anson and Fanny Nelson, Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1892), 115–16.
19. Polk, Diary, 3:184.
20. Ibid., 3:185, 186.
21. Taylor Adjutant General, Oct. 15, 1846, House Executive Document 60, 29th Cong., 1st sess., 353; John Frost, Pictorial History of Mexico and the Mexican War (Philadelphia, 1871), 339; Polk, Diary, 3:229, 226. For support of the Sierra Madre Line among American soldiers, see “Mexico and the United States,” Free American (Veracruz), Dec. 10, 1847.
22. “Dinner to Gen. Scott at Sandusky,” DNI, Oct. 15, 1852; Scott to Santa Anna, Aug. 21, 1847, Manning, DC, 8:922.
23. Ulysses Grant to Julia Dent, Jan. 9, 1848, Tacabaya, Mexico, Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant; Selected Letters 1839–1865 (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1990), 928; letter from C. B. Ogburn to Issac Golden, Misc. Mss. Ogburn, C. B. Camp in Saltillo, Mexico, Dec. 19, 1847, NYHS.
24. New Orleans Picayune, Dec. 19, 1847; New Orleans Crescent, Apr. 22, 1848; “Massacre of Mexican Citizens!” New Orleans Picayune, reprinted in the Albany Journal, Mar. 16, 1848.
25. Virginia Trist to Tuckerman, Aug. 23, 1863 (filed with Jul. 8 enclosure), Trist Papers, UNC, Folder 225.
26. Ulysses Grant to Julia, Jan. 9, 1848, Tacabaya, Mexico, Memoirs and Selected Letters, 928; John M. Brannan to his brother Benjamin F. Brannan (Frank) from the City of Mexico, Oct. 24, 1847, Miscellaneous Brannan, J. M. Papers, NYHS.
27. Quote in Ellen Hardin Walworth, “To the Christian Herald,” Jan. 25, 1905, manuscript, WFA, 2; J. Winston Coleman Jr., Stage-Coach Days in the Bluegrass (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 137.
28. Quote in Donald W. Riddle, Congressman Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957), 13.
29. David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Henry Clay: The Essential American (New York: Random House, 2010), 42.
30. Ibid., xx.
31. Dennis Hanks to Herndon, Mar. 12, 1866, quoted in William H. Townsend, Lincoln and His Wife’s Home Town (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1929), 89.
32. Nathan Sargent, Public Men and Events, from the Commencement of Mr. Monroe’s Administration, in 1817, to the Close of Mr. Fillmore’s Administration in 1853 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1875), 2:34.
33. Abraham Lincoln, “To Henry Clay,” Aug. 29, 1842, CW, 1:297.
34. Massachusetts House of Representatives, “Documents Relating to the U.S.-Mexican War,” House Doc. 200, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Apr. 22, 1847, NYHS.
35. Henry Clay to John M. Clayton, Apr. 17, 1847, PHC, 10:322; Clay to Richard Henry Wilde, Apr. 10, 1847, PHC, 10:319; Speech to Delegations of Citizens from New York City, Trenton, New Haven and Philadelphia, Cape May, N.J, Aug. 20, 1847, PHC, 10:347.
36. Henry Clay Jr. to Henry Clay, Feb. 12, 1847, PHC, 10:306. Most scholars examining Clay’s later career have assumed that he was actively pursuing the Whig presidential nomination in 1848, and delivered his Lexington address in order to strengthen his position in the North. “His Lexington
speech was the all but formal launch of his campaign for the nomination” (Heidler, Henry Clay, 427). Clay, however, was adamant that he was not seeking the presidency, particularly after the backlash against his speech in the South.
37. “The Gathering at Lexington,” Hudson River Chronicle, Nov. 16, 1847; “New York, Monday, Nov. 15,” Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, Dec. 1, 1847.
38. “Mr. Clay at Lexington,” Baltimore Sun, Nov. 18, 1847.
39. Clay, Speeches of Clay, 367–69.
40. “Mr. Clay’s Lexington Speech,” Whig Almanac, 1848: 19–28.
41. “New York, Monday, Nov. 15,” Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, Dec. 1, 1847.
42. “Mr. Clay’s Speech and Resolutions,” Daily Atlas, Nov. 17, 1847; “New York, Monday, Nov. 15,” Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, Dec. 1, 1847; “Clay’s Pronunciamiento,” New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette, Nov. 18. 1847.
43. “New York, Monday, Nov. 15,” Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, Dec. 1, 1847.
44. “Mould the Clay,” Liberator (Boston), Feb. 18, 1848.
45. “The Whig Policy, as Viewed by Our Army in Mexico,” Washington Union, quoted in the (Bridgeport, CT) Republican Farmer, Dec. 7, 1847; “Voice from Tennessee,” (Augusta, ME) Age, Dec. 10, 1847; Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York: Oxford University Press 1987), 435; “Henry Clay,” North American (Mexico City), Jan. 25, 1848.
46. Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 281; “Mr. Clay,” Georgia Telegraph, Dec. 7, 1847.
47. “Meetings in Favor of the War,” North American (Mexico City), Jan. 26, 1848; Compton to Palmerston, Nov. 28, 1847, PPBL, 82; see “Progress of the Lexington Movement,” Richmond Enquirer, Dec. 3, 1847, for details on scope of meetings. Also “A Response,” Emancipator, Dec. 8, 1847.
48. “Important from Mexico!” Daily Atlas, Dec. 22, 1847; “The Clay Whigs of New York City,” National Era, Dec. 30, 1847; “The Philadelphia Papers,” Daily Atlas, Dec. 8, 1847; “Great Anti-War Meeting in Philadelphia,” Daily Atlas, Dec. 9, 1847; “A Voice from Philadelphia,” DNI, Dec. 9, 1847.
49. “The Whigs of Trenton,” DNI, Nov. 27, 1847; “Anti-War Meeting,” DNI, Dec. 2, 1847; “The Anti-War Meeting,” Cleveland Herald, Feb. 23, 1848; George Turnbull Moore Davis, Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo. T. M. Davis: Captain and Aid-de-Camp, Scott’s Army of Invasion (New York: Jenkins and McCowan, 1891), 295; “Great Anti-War Meeting in Philadelphia,” Daily Atlas, Dec. 9, 1847.
50. “Great Anti-War Meeting in Philadelphia,” Daily Atlas, Dec. 9, 1847.
51. William Herndon quoted in Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis, Memphis State University Press, 1978), 137.
52. “Policy of the American Government,” Daily American Star (Mexico City), Nov. 17, 1847; Virginia Trist to Tuckerman, Aug. 23, 1863 (filed with Jul. 8 enclosure), Trist Papers, UNC, Folder 225. On soldier behavior, see letters of Maria Wilkins to Lieutenant William D. Wilkins, Dec. 13, 1847, April 29, 1848, William D. Wilkins Papers, LC.
53. Nicholas Trist to Edward Thornton, Jul. 15, 1847, Trist Papers, LC; pro-annexation articles from central Mexico, see “Annexation,” Flag of Freedom (Puebla, Mexico), Nov. 24, 1847; El Norte Americano (Mexico City), Nov. 5 and 30, 1847; “Policy of the American Government,” Daily American Star (Mexico City), Nov. 17, 1847.
54. Nicholas Trist to Thornton, Dec. 4, 1847, DC, 8:985; Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott (New York: Sheldon, 1864), 2:576; Thornton to Nicholas Trist, Nov. 22, 1847, Trist Papers, LC; Nicholas Trist 1848 manuscript, Trist Papers, UNC.
55. Nicholas Trist to S. M. Felton, Apr. 5, 1847, Trist Papers, LC; Nicholas Trist to Buchanan, Dec. 6, 1847, DC, 8:888; Nicholas Trist to Buchanan, Dec. 4, 1847, DC, 8:987; Compton to Palmerston, Nov. 28, 1847, PPBL, 82.
56. Polk, Diary, 3:252; Virginia Trist to Tuckerman, Aug. 23, 1863 (filed with Jul. 8 enclosure), Trist Papers, UNC, Folder 225.
57. Polk, Diary, 3:301.
58. Lincoln, CW, 4:184; Lincoln, “To William H. Herndon, Dec. 13, 1847,” CW, 1:420.
CHAPTER 12. TO CONQUER A PEACE
1. Giddings to L. W. Giddings, May 10, 1846, Giddings Papers, Ohio Historical Society.
2. CG, 29th Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 643–44.
3. Sumner to Winthrop, Boston, Aug. 5, 1846, Winthrop Family Papers, MHS.
4. Winthrop to Sumner, Aug. 7, 1846, Winthrop Family Papers, MHS; Sumner to Winthrop, Boston, Aug. 10, 1846, Winthrop Family Papers, MHS.
5. Winthrop to Mrs. Gardner, Feb. 2, 1847; Winthrop to Appleton, Feb. 5, 1847; Winthrop to Mrs. Gardner, Washington, DC, Jun. 18, 1846, all Winthrop Family Papers, MHS.
6. James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, DC: GPO, 1901), 4:533–49.
7. Francis Baylies, A Narrative of Major General Wool’s Campaign in Mexico: In the Years 1846, 1847 & 1848 (Albany: Little, 1851), 5; David A. Clary, Eagles and Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle for a Continent (New York: Bantam, 2009), 324 (quote), 284, 339.
8. Quote in John H. Schroeder, Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846–1848 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), 69–70.
9. Georgetown (SC) Winyah Observer, Oct. 13, 1847, Nov. 3, 1847, quote in Ernest McPherson Lander Jr., Reluctant Imperialists: Calhoun, The South Carolinians, and the Mexican War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 151–52.
10. Abraham Lincoln, Dec. 22, 1847 (Printed Resolution and Preamble on Mexican War: “Spot Resolutions”), ALP. Available online at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/alhome.html.
11. CG, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 95.
12. William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (New York: Appleton, 1892), 266.
13. Lincoln, CW, 1:446–47.
14. Abraham Lincoln to Congress, Jan. 12, 1848 (revised draft prepared for publication), ALP.
15. Quoted in Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1858 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), 1:430.
16. DNI, Jan. 20, 1848.
17. “Boston Daily Atlas, Speech of Mr. Lincoln, of Illinois, on the Reference of the President’s Message.” Jan. 27, 1848, Brattleboro (VT) Semi-Weekly Eagle, Feb. 4, 1848. The Arkansas Weekly Gazette offered the preamble and resolutions of his speech in full: “The War with Mexico,” Jan. 13, 1848.
18. “Editorial Correspondence,” Daily Atlas, Jan. 15, 1848. Slight variations of this report appeared in New London (CT) Morning News, Jan. 25, 1848; Alexandria (VA) Gazette, Feb. 8, 1848; Trenton (NJ) State Gazette, Feb. 4, 1848; and the People’s Advocate and New London (CT) County Republican, Jan. 26, 1848. Most quoted him as saying that “Military Glory is a rainbow, which rises in the heavens and dazzles with its luster; but it comes forth from clouds of desolated cities and showers of human blood.” Southern Patriot, Feb. 11, 1848, described Lincoln and left out any discussion of his speech.
19. Baltimore Patriot quoted in Rockford (IL) Forum, Jan. 19, 1848.
20. “By Magnetic Telegraph,” Daily Atlas, Jan. 13, 1847; see also “Congress,” Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Gazette, Jan. 19, 1848; Augusta (ME) Chronicle, Dec. 28, 1848; Augusta (ME) Age, Dec. 31, 1848; Keene (NH) Sentinel, Dec. 30, 1847; Easton (MD) Gazette, Jan. 22, 1848; Wachusetts Star, Jan. 18, 1848; Litchfield (CT) Republican, Dec. 30, 1847; National Aegis, Jan. 19, 1848; Emancipator, Jan. 19, 1848; Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 14, 1848; New Bedford (MA) Mercury, Jan. 14, 1848; New Orleans Picayune, Jan. 2 and Jan. 20, 1848; Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 23, 1847; Bennington (VT) Gazette, Jan. 19, 1848.
21. Missouri Republican quoted in the Illinois Journal, Feb. 3, 1848.
22.“ ‘Spotty’ Lincoln, of Illinois,” Illinois Globe, quoted in the Daily Ohio Statesman, Feb. 3, 1848.
23. “Benedict Arnold” and “Ranchero Spotty” in Illinois State Register, Mar. 10, 1848; “Died” in the Peoria Press, quote in the Il
linois State Register, Feb. 25, 1848; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York, 1995), 125; see 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): 87, for a complete list of citations.
24. Newton Curtis, The Hunted Chief: or Female Ranchero (New York, 1847), 3; Polk quote in Richardson, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 4:473; on the impact of guerrilla activity on U.S. forces, see Irving W. Levinson, Wars Within War: Mexican Guerrillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, 1846–1848 (Fort Worth, TX: TCU Press, 2005).
25. Herndon, Abraham Lincoln, 269–70.
26. Ibid.; Lincoln to Herndon, Feb. 2, 1848, in Lincoln, CW, 1:448; CG, Appendix, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 161.
27. CG, Appendix, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 163.
28. Lincoln, CW, 1:515.
29. Lincoln to Herndon, Feb. 2, 1848, in Lincoln, CW, 1:448.
CHAPTER 13. A CLEAR CONSCIENCE
1. James K. Polk, Diary of a President: James K. Polk, ed. Milo Quaife, 4 vols. (Columbia, TN: James K. Polk Memorial Association, 2005), 3:277.
2. Ibid., 3:329; letters from Manuel G. Zamorg, major of the National Guard of Veracruz, to Andrew Osuguera, Mexican Legation at Paris, Jan. 31, 1847, Zamorg Papers, NYHS; Compton to Palmerston, Jan. 27, 1848, PPBL, 130.
3. G. Loomis to “Charity,” New Orleans, Feb. 23, 1848, LSU Special Collections.
4. George Lockhart Rives, The United States and Mexico, 1821–1848 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 2: 612.
5. Nicholas Trist to Buchanan, Feb. 2, 1848 DC, 8:1059.
6. Virginia Trist to Tuckerman, Aug. 23, 1863 (filed with Jul. 8 enclosure), Trist Papers, UNC, Folder 225.
7. Nicholas Trist to Virginia Trist, Feb. 1, 1848. Trist Papers, LC.
8. Polk, Diary, 3:345.
9. Ibid., 3:348. The leading scholar of the All Mexico Movement concluded that Trist’s treaty “seems to have been an essential factor in preventing the absorption of Mexico.” John D. P. Fuller, The Movement for the Acquisition of All Mexico, 1846–1848 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1936), 93.