THE POLITICS OF AMERICA'S WAR AGAINST MEXICO

Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (New York: Knopf, 2012) (This  the story of issues which the United States government and the American people have still yet to come to terms. "This is the story of five men, four years, and one foreign war.... That conflict, which breached George Washington's injunction to avoid entanglements abroad, was an act of expansionist aggression against a neighboring country. It reshaped the United Stats into lord of the continent and announced the arrival of a new world power. The U.S.-Mexican conflict also tipped an internecine struggle over slavery into civil war. Though both its justification and its consequences are dim now, this, America's first war against another republic, decisively broke with the past, shaped the future, and to this day affects how the United States acts in the world." "This is also a story about politics, slavery, Manifest Destiny, Indian killing, and what it meant to prove one's manhood in the nineteenth century. It explores the meaning of moral courage in America, the importance of legacies passed between generations, and the imperatives that turn politicians into leaders. And it attempts to explain why the United States invaded a neighboring country and how it came to pass that a substantial number of Americans determined to stop the ensuring war." Id. at xiii. "This book is the tale of not just five men and their families, but also of the rise of America's first national antiwar movement." Id. at xvi. "Democratic congressional leaders attached this declaration of war as a preamble to a bill authorizing funds for the troops, placed it in front of Congress, and demanded assent. It was a shrewd but contemptible move, and new in American history. By bundling the authorization of war funds with a declaration of war attributed to Mexico, Democrats ensured that any opponent of the measure could be accused of betraying the troops. Polk's supporters skillfully managed to stifle dissent in the House by limiting debate to two hours, an hour and a half of which was devoted to reading the document that accompanied the message. The flabbergasted opposition was caught completely off guard and struggled to amend the bill. Powerless and voiceless, they watched helplessly as Polk's supporters ruthlessly stifled debate and foisted war on Congress and the country." Id. at 104. "Illinois was, of course, a free state. It was formed out of territory designated free in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. But particularly in southern Illinois, slavery was very much a reality. According to law, adult slaves became free when they moved to the state. Those under age passed through a period of indenture before earning their freedom. In reality, however, a form of indenture not unlike slavery was the norm in southern Illinois among adults as well as young people. African Americans in Illinois were usually coerced into signing indenture contracts for years at a time. They could not leave the service of their master, could be whipped if disobedient, and were even referred to in legal statutes as 'slaves.' Many of these individuals were sold back into permanent slavery before their indentures expired." "There is little evidence of African Americans in Illinois becoming free after their period of indenture was up, but there is evidence that African Americans with the legal status of slave were still living in the state at the beginning of the U.S.-Mexican War. The 1818 state constitution outlawed the importation of slaves into Illinois but did not free the slaves already there; in 1849 there were still 331 listed in the federal census." Id. at 140-141. "The [embedded] journalists also reported that U.S. troops rioted immediately after entering Veracruz, setting fire to a nearby settlement, Boca Rio, after robbing and raping the inhabitants. Scott resorted to the public hanging of a rapist and issued an order establishing military courts to try Americans for crimes against Mexicans. His actions restored order, but not before the American people realized that American atrocities would not be limited to northern Mexico." Id. 172. "But by the summer of 1847, even hardened journalists from outside New England found themselves forced to report on and condemn American atrocities that left them questioning their assumptions about American morality. It appeared that 'the harsh treatment and privations the men are subjected to soon make one callous to all but his own feelings and interests,' one journalist explained." "The February massacre at Agua Nueva, when the Arkansas Rackensackers killed at least twenty-five Mexican civilian in a cave, was a key turning point in the reporting of the war. Few soldiers who had witnessed the event and scalped corpses could refrain from discussing it, and some of those who died at Buena Vista ... described the murders in the final letters they ever wrote home." Id. at 194. "Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail after refusing to pay his poll tax in protest against the war. He delivered a lecture titled 'Civil Disobedience' calling for resistance against the government, which he declared had been 'abused and perverted' in the service of war and slavery. 'Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individual using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.' New England intellectuals such as James Russell Lowell and Ralph Waldo Emerson published trenchant critiques of 4the war." Id. at 196. 'Among the most tenacious soldiers fighting for Mexico were U.S. deserters who made up the San Patricio (Or St. Patrick's) Battalion. Desertion had been a problem for the U.S. Army since Taylor first entered Texas, particularly among the 40 percent of the regular army who were recent immigrants. Raised in foreign cultures, many immigrants looked at America's fantasy of Manifest Destiny with skepticism, if not outright hostility." Id. at 203. "Polk got California, but it was the antiwar movement that conquered a peace. The American public had turned against the war for a number of reasons, not all of which were admirable. Many were motivated by racism, unwilling to offer citizenship to the people of Mexico. The year 1848 marked the first time that the fear of incorporating supposedly 'inferior races' into the United States limited the nation's territorial expansion. Racism would continue to shape anti-imperialism for the rest of the century, most notably when the Senate rejected President Ulysses S. Grant's treaty to annex the Dominican Republic in 1870 on racial grounds. Others opposed annexing Mexican territory because the feared the increasing power of slaveholders, Some simply concluded that Mexican land wasn't worth the sacrifice of American blood and money." Id. at 263.).