Part 11

The Texan struggle for independence from Mexico was cordially welcomed in all parts of the United States, but particularly in the South. Despite the protests of Mexico, public meetings were held; funds were raised; volunteers were enlisted and equipped, and supplies and munitions were sent for the assistance of the Texans in ships openly fitted out in New Orleans.

No sooner had the Texans established a government than the campaign for annexation was begun. The advocates of annexation--principally Southerners--argued in favor of adding so rich and so logical a prize to the territory of the United States, citing the purchase of Louisiana and of Florida as precedents. Their opponents, first on constitutional grounds and then on grounds of public policy, argued against annexation.

Opinion in the South was greatly aroused. Despite the fact that many of her foremost statesmen were against annexation, some of the Southern newspapers even went so far as to threaten the dissolution of the Union if the treaty of ratification failed to pass the Senate.

The campaign of 1844 was fought on the issue of annexation and the election of James K. Polk was a pledge that Texas should be annexed to the United States. During the campaign, the line of division on annexation had been a party line--Democrats favoring; Whigs opposing. Between the election and the passage of the joint resolution by which annexation was consummated, it became a sectional issue,--Southern Whigs favoring annexation and Northern Democrats opposing it.

So strong was the protest against annexation, that the treaty could not command the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate. The matter was disposed of by the passage of a joint resolution (March 1, 1845) which required only a majority vote in both houses of Congress. President Polk therefore took office with the mandate of the country and the decision of both houses of the retiring Congress, in favor of annexation.

Mexico, in the meantime, had offered to recognize the independence of Texas and to make peace with her if the Texas Congress would reject the joint resolution, and refuse the proffered annexation. This the Texas Congress refused, and with the passage, by that body, of an act providing for annexation, the Mexican minister was withdrawn from Washington, and Mexico began her preparations for war.

President Polk had taken office with the avowed intention of buying California from Mexico. The rupture threatened to prevent him from carrying this plan into effect. He therefore sent an unofficial representative to Mexico in an effort to restore friendly relations. Failing in that, he and his advisers determined upon war as the only feasible method of obtaining California and of settling the diplomatic tangle involved in the annexation of Texas.

4. The Conquest of Mexico

The Polk Administration made the Mexican War as a part of its expansionist policy.

"Although that unfortunate country (Mexico) had officially notified the United States that the annexation of Texas would be treated as a cause of war, so constant were the internal quarrels in Mexico that open hostilities would have been avoided had the conduct of the Administration been more honorable. That was the opinion of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, and Tyler.... Mexico was actually goaded on to war. The principle of the manifest destiny of this country was invoked as a reason for the attempt to add to our territory at the expense of Mexico."

After the annexation of Texas it became the duty of the United States to defend that state against the threatened Mexican invasion.

Mexican troops had occupied the southern bank of the Rio Grande. General Zachary Taylor with a small force, moved to a position on the Nueces River. Between the two rivers lay a strip of territory the possession of which was one of the sources of dispute between Mexico and Texas. What followed may be stated in the words of one of the officers who participated in the expedition: "The presence of the United States troops on the edge of the territory farthest from the Mexican settlements was not sufficient to provoke hostilities. We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico begin it" (p. 41). "Mexico showing no willingness to come to the Nueces to drive the invaders from her soil, it became necessary for the 'invaders' to approach to within a convenient distance to be struck. Accordingly, preparations were begun for moving the army to the Rio Grande, to a point near Matamoras. It was desirable to occupy a position near the largest center of population possible to reach without actually invading territory to which we set up no claim whatever" (p. 45).

The occupation, by the United States troops, of the disputed territory soon led to a clash in which several United States soldiers were killed. The incident was taken by the President as a sufficient cause for the declaration of a state of war. The House complied readily with his wishes, passing the necessary resolution. Several members of the Senate begged for a delay during which the actual state of affairs might be ascertained. The President insisted, however, and the war was declared (May 13, 1846).

The declaration of war was welcomed with wild enthusiasm in the South. Meetings were called; funds were raised; volunteers were enlisted, equipped and despatched in all haste to the scene of the conflict.

The North was less eager. There were protests, petitions, demonstrations. Many of the leaders of northern opinion took a public stand against the war. But the news of the first victories sent the country mad with an enthusiasm in which the North joined the South.

The United States troops, during the Mexican War, won brilliant--almost unbelievable successes--against superior forces and in the face of immense natural obstacles. Had the war been less of a military triumph there must have been a far more widely-heard protest from Polk's enemies in the North. Successful beyond the wildest dreams of its promoters, the victorious war carried its own answer to those who questioned the worthiness of the cause. Within two years, the whole of Mexico was under the military control of the United States, and that country was in a position to dictate its own terms.

The demands of the United States were mild to the extent of generosity. Under the treaty the annexation of Texas was validated; New Mexico and Upper California were ceded to the United States; the lower Rio Grande was fixed as the southern boundary of Texas, and in considerations of these additions to its territory, the United States agreed to pay Mexico fifteen millions of dollars.

Under this plan, Mexico was paid for territory that she did not need and could not use, while the United States gave a money consideration for the title to land that was already hers by right of conquest, and of which she was in actual possession.

The details of the treaty are relatively unimportant. The outstanding fact is that Mexico was in possession of certain territory that the ruling power in the United States wanted, and that ruling power took what it wanted by force of arms. "The war was one of conquest in the interest of an institution." It was "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."

Congressman A. P. Gardner of Massachusetts summarized the matter very pithily in his debate with Morris Hillquit (New York, April 2, 1915), "We assisted Texas to get away from Mexico and then we proceeded to annex Texas. Plainly and bluntly stated, our purpose was to get some territory for American development." (Stenographic report in the New York Call, April 11, 1915.)

5. Conquering the Conquered

The work of conquering the Southwest was not completed by the termination of the war. Mexico ceded the territory--in the neighborhood of a million square miles--but she was giving away something that she had never possessed. Mexico claimed title to land that was occupied by the Indians. She had never conquered it; never settled it; never developed it. Her sovereignty was of the same shadowy sort that Spain had exercised over the country before the Mexican revolution.

The new owners of the Southwest had a very different purpose in mind. No empty title would satisfy them. They intended to use the land. The Indians--already in possession--resented the encroachments of the invaders, but they fared no better than the Mexicans, or than their red-skinned brothers who had contended for the right to fish and hunt along their home streams in the Appalachians. The Indians of the Southwest fought stubbornly, but the wars that meant life and death to them were the merest pastime for an army that had just completed the humiliation of a nation of the size and strength of Mexico. The Indians were swept aside, and the country was opened to the trapper, the prospector, the trader and the settler.

The Mexican War was a slight affair, involving a relatively small outlay in men and money. The total number of American soldiers killed in the war was 1,721; the wounded were 4,102; the deaths from accident and disease were 11,516, making total casualties of 5,823 and total losses of 15,618.

The money cost of the Mexican War--the army and navy appropriations for the years 1846 to 1849 inclusive--was $119,624,000. Obviously the net cost of the war was less than this gross total,--how much less it is impossible to say.

No satisfactory figures are available to show the cost in men and money of the Indian Wars in the Southwest. "From 1849 to 1865, the government expended $30,000,000 in the subjugation of the Indians in the territories of New Mexico and Arizona." Their character may be gauged by noting from the "Historical Register" (Vol. 2, p. 281-2) the losses sustained in the four Indian Wars of which a record is preserved. In the Northwest Indian Wars (1790 to 1795) 896 persons were killed and 436 were wounded; in the Seminole War (1817 to 1818) 46 were killed and 36 were wounded; in the Black Hawk War (1831-2) the killed were 26 and the wounded 39; in the Seminole War (1835-1842) 383 were killed and 557 wounded. These were among the most serious of the Indian Wars and in all of them the cost in life and limb was small. Judged on this standard, the losses in the Southwest, during the Indian Wars, were, at most, trifling. The total outlay that was involved in the conquest of the vast domain would not have covered one first class battle of the Great War, and yet this outlay added to the territory of the United States something like a million square miles containing some of the richest and most productive portions of the earth's surface.

This domain was won by a process of military conquest; it was taken from the Mexicans and the Indians by force of arms. In order to acquire it, it was necessary to drive whole tribes from their villages; to burn; to maim; to kill. "St. Louis, New Orleans, St. Augustine, San Antonio, Santa Fe and San Francisco are cities that were built by Frenchmen and Spaniards; we did not found them but we conquered them." "The Southwest was conquered only after years of hard fighting with the original owners" (p. 26). "The winning of the West and the Southwest is a stage in the conquest of a continent" (p. 27). "This great westward movement of armed settlers was essentially one of conquest, no less than of colonization" (p. 370). None of the possessors of this territory were properly armed or equipped for effective warfare. All of them fell an easy prey to the organized might of the Government of the United States.

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