A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (51 page)

Polk made clear in his diary the importance of holding “military possession of California at the time peace was made,” and he intended to acquire California, New Mexico, and “perhaps some others of the Northern Provinces of Mexico” whenever the war ended.
⁶⁰
Congress called for 50,000 volunteers and appropriated $10 million. Taking part in the operation were several outstanding junior officers, including Ulysses Grant, George McClellan, Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, Braxton Bragg, Stonewall Jackson, George Pickett, James Longstreet, and William Tecumseh Sherman.

At Palo Alto, in early May, the Americans engaged Arista’s forces, decimating 1,000 Mexican lancers who attempted a foolish cavalry charge against the U.S. squares. It was a brief, but bloody draw in which Taylor lost 9 men to the Mexicans’ 250, but he was unable to follow up because of nightfall. At his council of war, Taylor asked for advice. An artillery captain blurted out, “We whipped ’em today and we can whip ’em tomorrow.” Indeed, on May ninth, the Americans won another lopsided battle at Resaca de la Palma.
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While the military was winning early victories in the field, Polk engaged in a clever plan to bring the exiled dictator who had massacred the defenders of the Alamo and Goliad back from exile in Cuba. On August 4, 1846, Polk negotiated a deal to not only bring Santa Anna back, but to pay him $2 million—ostensibly a bribe as an advance payment on the cession of California. The former dictator convinced Polk that if the United States could restore him to power, he would agree to a treaty favorable to the United States.

Two separate developments ended all hopes of a quick peace. First, Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot attached a proviso to the $2 million payment that slavery be prohibited from any lands taken in the war. Wilmot, a freshman Democrat from Pennsylvania, further eroded the moratorium on slavery debate, which had been introduced in December 1835 to stymie all legislative discussion of slavery. Under the rule all antislavery petitions and resolutions had to be referred to a select committee, whose standing orders were to report back that Congress had no power to interfere with slavery.
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This, in essence, tabled all petitions that in any way mentioned slavery, and it became a standing rule of the House in 1840. But the gag rule backfired. “This rule manufactures abolitionists and abolitionism,” one Southerner wrote, comparing the rule to religious freedom: “It is much easier to make the mass of the people understand that a given prayer cannot be granted than that they have no right to pray at all.”
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(Ironically, the gag rule
had applied
to prayer in Congress too.) After it fell into disuse in 1845, Speakers of the House kept the slavery discussion under wraps by only recognizing speakers who had the Democratic Party’s trust. The chair recognized Wilmot largely because he had proven his loyalty to Polk by voting with the administration on the tariff reduction when every other Democrat had crossed party lines to vote against it.
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But Wilmot hammered the president with his opening statements before invoking the language of the Northwest Ordinance to prohibit slavery from any newly acquired territories.

Although the Wilmot Proviso never passed, a second obstacle to a quick treaty with Santa Anna was the Mexican president himself, who probably never had any intention of abiding by his secret agreement. No sooner had he walked ashore, slipped through the American blockade by a British steamer given a right-of-way by U.S. gunboats, than he had announced that he would fight “until death, to the defense of the liberty and independence of the republic.”
⁶⁵
Consequently, a Pennsylvania congressman and a former dictator unwittingly collaborated to extend the war neither of them wanted, ensuring in the process that the United States would gain territory neither of them wanted it to have.

Meanwhile, in the field, the army struggled to maintain discipline among the hordes of volunteers arriving. New recruits “came in a steamboat flood down the Mississippi, out onto the Gulf and across to Port Isabel and thence up the Rio Grande to Matamoros of Taylor’s advanced base…[When the “12-monthers” came into camp in August 1846], they murdered; they raped, robbed and rioted.”
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Mexican priests in the area called the undisciplined troops “vandals” from hell and a Texas colonel considered them “worse than Russian Cossacks.”
⁶⁷
Each unit of volunteers sported its own dress: the Kentucky volunteers had three-cornered hats and full beards, whereas other groups had “uniforms” of every conceivable color and style. Once they entered Mexico, they were given another name, “gringos,” for the song they sang, “Green Grow the Lilacs.” With difficulty Taylor finally formed this riffraff into an army, and by September he had about 6,000 troops who could fight. He marched on Monterrey, defended by 7,000 Mexicans and 40 cannons—a formidable objective.

Even at this early stage, it became clear that the United States would prevail, and in the process occupy large areas of territory previously held by Mexico. At Monterrey, in September 1846, Taylor defeated a force of slightly superior size to his own. The final rush was led by Jefferson Davis and his Mississippi volunteers. On the cusp of a major victory, Taylor halted and accepted an eight-week armistice, even allowing the Mexicans to withdraw their army. He did so more out of necessity than charity, since his depleted force desperately needed 5,000 reinforcements, which arrived the following January. American troops then resumed their advance.

Attack was the American modus operandi during the war. Despite taking the offensive, the United States time and again suffered only minor losses, even when assaulting Mexicans dug in behind defenses. And
every
unit of Taylor’s army attacked—light dragoons, skirmishers, heavy infantry. The success of the Americans impressed experienced commanders (such as Henry Halleck, who later wrote about the offensives in his book,
Elements of Military Art and Science
), who shook their heads in wonder at the Yanks’ aggressiveness.
⁶⁸

Meanwhile, Taylor now had a reputation as a true hero. Suddenly it dawned on Polk that he had created a viable political opponent for any Democratic candidate in 1848, and he now scrambled to swing the military glory to someone besides Old Rough-and-Ready. Ordering Taylor to halt, Polk instructed General Winfield Scott, the only other man truly qualified to command an entire army, to take a new expedition of 10,000 to Vera Cruz. Polk ironically found himself relying on two Whig generals, “whom he hated more than the Mexicans.”
⁶⁹
Scott had no intention of commanding a disastrous invasion, telling his confidants that he intended to lose no more than 100 men in the nation’s first amphibious operation: “for every one over that number I shall regard myself as a murderer.”
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In fact, he did better, losing only 67 to a fortified city that had refused to surrender.

Other offensives against Mexican outposts in the southwest and in California occurred simultaneous to the main Mexican invasion. Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny marched from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Santa Fe, which he found unoccupied by enemy forces, then set out for California. Reinforced by an expedition under Commodore Robert Stockton and by the Mormon battalion en route from Iowa, Kearny’s united command reached San Diego, then swept on to Los Angeles. By that time, the Mexicans had surrendered—not to Stockton or Kearny, but to another American force under John C. Frémont. The Pathfinder, as Frémont was known, had received orders from Polk to advance to California on a “scientific” expedition in December 1845, along with the Slidell Pacific Fleet orders. Thus, from the outset, Polk had ensured that sufficient American force would rendezvous in California to “persuade” the local pro-American
Californios
to rise up. What ensued was the the Bear Flag Revolt (hence the bear on the flag of the state of California), and Polk’s ambition of gaining California became a reality.

In Mexico, in August, Scott renewed his advance inland toward Mexico City over the rugged mountains and against stiff resistance. Scott had no intention of slogging through the marshes that protected the eastern flank of Mexico City, but instead planned to attack by way of Chapultepec in the west. As he reached the outskirts of Chapultepec, he found the fortress defended by 900 soldiers and 100 young cadets at the military college. In a pitched battle where American marines assaulted positions defended by “los niños”—students from the elite military school—and fighting hand to hand, saber to saber, Scott’s forces opened the road to Mexico City. On September 14, 1847, in the first-ever U.S. occupation of an enemy capital, American marines guarded the National Palace, “the Halls of Montezuma,” against vandals and thieves. Santa Anna was deposed and scurried out of the country yet again, but 1,721 American soldiers had died in action and another 11,155 of disease.

Occupying both California and Texas, plus the southwestern part of North America, and following Scott’s capture of Mexico City, the United States was in a position to negotiate from strength. Polk instructed Nicholas Trist, a staunch Whig, to negotiate a settlement. Polk thought Trist, a clerk, would be pliant. Instead, Trist aggressively negotiated. Whigs and some Democrats cast a wary eye at occupied Mexico herself. The last thing antislavery forces wanted was a large chunk of Mexico annexed under the auspices of victory, then converted into slave territory. They recoiled when the editor of the New York
Sun
suggested that “if the Mexican people with one voice ask to come into the Union our boundary…may extend much further than the Rio Grande.”
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Poet Walt Whitman agreed that Mexico “won’t need much coaxing to join the United States.”
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Such talk was pure fantasy from the perspective of majorities in both the United States and Mexico. White Americans had no intention of allowing in vast numbers of brown-skinned Mexicans, whereas Mexico, which may have detested Santa Anna, had no love for the gringos.

Trist and Mexican representatives convened their discussions in January 1848 at the town of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and a month later the two sides signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It provided for a payment of $15 million to Mexico, and the United States gained California, the disputed Texas border to the Rio Grande, and a vast expanse of territory, including present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada. Trist ignored Polk’s revised instructions to press for acquisition of part of northern Mexico proper.

Polk was furious and recalled Trist, who then ignored the letter recalling him, reasoning that Polk wrote it without full knowledge of the situation. Trist refused to support Polk’s designs on Mexico City; and Scott, another Whig on-site, concurred with Trist’s position, thus constricting potential slave territory above the Rio Grande. Polk had to conclude the matter, leaving him no choice but to send the treaty to Congress, where it produced as many critics as proponents. But its opponents, who had sufficient votes to defeat it from opposite sides of the slavery argument, could never unite to defeat it, and the Senate approved the treaty on March 10, 1848. As David Potter aptly put it, “By the acts of a dismissed emissary, a disappointed president, and a divided Senate, the United States acquired California and the Southwest.”
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Victorious American troops withdrew from Mexico in July 1848. Polk’s successful annexation of the North American Southwest constituted only half his strategy to maintain a balance in the Union and fulfill his 1844 campaign promise. He also had to obtain a favorable settlement of the Oregon question. This eventually culminated in the Packenham-Buchanan Treaty. A conflict arose over American claims to Oregon territory up to Fort Simpson, on the 54-degree 40-minute parallel that encompassed the Fraser River. Britain, however, insisted on a Columbia River boundary—and badly wanted Puget Sound. Polk offered a compromise demarcation line at the forty-ninth parallel, just below Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island—which still gave Americans claim to most of the Oregon Territory—but the British minister Richard Packenham rejected Polk’s proposal out of hand. Americans aggressively invoked the phrase “Fifty-four forty or fight,” and the British, quickly reassessing the situation, negotiated with James Buchanan, secretary of state, agreeing to Polk’s compromise line. The Senate approved the final treaty on June 15, 1846.

Taken together, Mexico and Oregon formed bookends, a pair of the most spectacular foreign policy achievements in American history. Moreover, by “settling” for Oregon well below the 54-degree line, Polk checked John Quincy Adams and the Whigs’ dreams of a larger free-soil Pacific Northwest. In four short years Polk filled out the present boundaries of the continental United States (leaving only a small southern slice of Arizona in 1853), literally enlarging the nation from “sea to shining sea.”

At the same time, his policies doomed any chance he had at reelection, even should he have chosen to renege on his campaign promise to serve only one term. Polk’s policies had left him a divided party. Free-soilers had found it impossible to support the Texas annexation, and now a reduced Oregon angered northern Democrats as a betrayal, signaling the first serious rift between the northern and southern wings of the party. This breach opened wider over the tariff, where Polk’s Treasury secretary, Robert J. Walker, pressed for reductions in rates. Northerners again saw a double cross.

When Polk returned to Tennessee, where he died a few months later, he had guided the United States through the high tide of manifest destiny. Unintentionally, he had also helped inflict serious wounds on the Democratic Party’s uneasy sectional alliances, and, as he feared, had raised a popular general, Zachary Taylor, to the status of political opponent. The newly opened lands called out once again to restless Americans, who poured in.