From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (33 page)

By 1844, Texas had become the focal point of rumors, plots and counterplots, diplomatic intrigue, and bitter political conflict. Many Texans favored annexation, others preferred independence, some straddled the fence. Although unwilling to risk war with the United States, Britain and France sought an independent Texas and urged Mexico to recognize the new nation to keep it out of U.S. hands. Alarmist southerners fed each other's fears with lurid tales of sinister British schemes to abolish slavery in Texas, incite a slave revolt in Cuba, and strike a "fatal blow" against slavery in the United States, provoking a race war "of the most deadly and desolating character." In the eyes of some southerners, Britain's real aim was to throw an "Iron Chain" around the United States to gain "command of the commerce, navigation and manufactures of the world" and to reduce its former colonies to economic "vassalage."
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For Americans of all political persuasions, the Union's future depended on the absorption of Texas. Whigs protested that annexation would violate principles Americans had long believed in and might provoke war with Mexico.
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Abolitionists warned of a slaveholders' conspiracy to retain control of the government and perpetuate the evils of human bondage.
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On the annexation of Texas "hinges the very existence of our Southern Institutions," South Carolinian James Gadsden warned Calhoun, "and if we of the South now prove recreant, we will or must [be] content to be Heawers of wood and Drawers of Water for our Northern Brethren."
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In 1844, with an independent Texas a distinct possibility, the Virginian and slaveholder John Tyler, who had become president in 1841 on the death of William Henry Harrison, took up the challenge Jackson and Van Buren had skirted. A staunch Jeffersonian, Tyler is often dismissed as an advocate of states' rights who sought to acquire Texas mainly to protect the institution of slavery. In fact, he was a strong nationalist who pushed a broad agenda of commercial and territorial expansion in hopes of uniting the nation, fulfilling its God-given destiny, and gaining reelection.
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Seeking to win over the Democrats or rally a party of his own, he pressed
vigorously for annexation of Texas. A treaty might have passed the Senate in 1844 had not Calhoun stiffened the opposition by publicly defending slavery. Once the 1844 election was over, lame duck Tyler again proposed admission. Instead of a treaty of annexation, which would have required a two-thirds vote in the Senate, he sought a joint resolution for admission as a state, requiring only a simple majority, on the questionable constitutional grounds that new states could be admitted by act of Congress. The resolution passed after heated debate and drawn-out maneuvering, winning in the Senate by a mere two votes. Texas agreed to the proposals, initiating the process of annexation.
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Mexico considered annexation an act of war. Born in 1821, the nation had great expectations because of its size and wealth in natural resources but had suffered economic devastation during its war of independence. The flight of capital abroad in its early years reduced it to bankruptcy. It was also afflicted by profound class, religious, and political divisions. The central government exercised at best nominal authority over the vast outer provinces. Political instability was a way of life. Rival Masonic lodges contended for power, ironic in a predominantly Catholic country. Coup followed coup, sixteen presidents serving between 1837 and 1851. The "volcanic genius" Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna embodied the chaos of Mexican political life. Brilliant but erratic, skilled at mobilizing the population but bored with the details of governance, he served eleven times as president. A master conspirator, he switched sides with alacrity and was said even to intrigue against himself. Noted for his flamboyance, he buried with full military honors the leg he had lost in battle. When he was later repudiated, his enemies dug up the leg and ceremoniously dragged it through the streets.
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Too proud to surrender Texas but too weak and divided to regain it by force, Mexicans justifiably (and correctly) feared that acquiescence in annexation could initiate a domino effect that would cost them additional territory. In their view, the United States had encouraged its citizens to infiltrate Texas, incited and supported their revolution, and then moved to absorb the renegade state. They denounced U.S. actions as "the most scandalous violation of the law of nations," the "most direct spoliation, which has been seen for ages."
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When the annexation resolution passed Congress, Mexico severed diplomatic relations.

A dispute over the Texas boundary exacerbated Mexican-American conflict. Under Spanish and Mexican rule, the province had never extended south of the Nueces River; Texas had never established its authority or even a settlement beyond that point. On the basis of nothing more than an act of its own congress and the fact that Mexican forces withdrew south of the Rio Grande after San Jacinto, Texas had claimed territory to the Rio Grande. Despite the dubious claim and the uncertain value of the barren land, Polk firmly supported the Texans. He ordered Gen. Zachary Taylor to the area to deter a possible Mexican attack and subsequently instructed him to take a position as close to the Rio Grande as "prudence will dictate."
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Polk also set out to acquire California. Only six thousand Mexicans lived there. Mexico had stationed in its northernmost province an army of fewer than six hundred men to control a huge territory. In October 1842, acting on rumors of war with Mexico, Cmdre. Thomas ap Catesby Jones sailed into Monterey, captured the local authorities, and raised the U.S. flag. When he learned there was no war, he lowered the flag, held a banquet of apology for his captives, and sailed away.
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Americans were increasingly drawn to California. Sea captains and explorers spoke with wonderment of the lush farmland and salubrious climate of this land of unlimited bounty and "perpetual spring," "one of the finest countries in the world," in the words of consul Thomas Larkin. The "safe and capacious harbors which dot her western shore," an Alabama congressman added, "invite to their bosoms the rich commerce of the East."
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American emigration to California grew steadily, raising the possibility of a replay of the Texas game. Signs of British interest increased the allure of California and the sense of urgency in Washington. Polk early committed himself to its acquisition, alerted Americans in the area to the possibility of war, and ordered his agents to discourage foreign acquisition.

Polk also wielded a "diplomatic club" against Mexico in the millions of dollars in claims held by U.S. citizens against its people and government. Many of the claims were inflated, some were patently unjust, and most derived from profiteering at Mexico's expense. They were based on the new international "law" imposed by the leading capitalist powers that secured for their citizens the same property rights in other countries they
had at home.
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A commission had scaled the claims back to $2.5 million. Mexico made a few payments before a bankrupt treasury forced suspension in 1843. Americans charged Mexico with bad faith. Mexico denounced the claims as a "tribute" it was "obliged to pay in recognition of U.S. strength."
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Polk's approach to Mexico was dictated by the overtly racist attitudes he shared with most of his countrymen. Certain of Anglo-Saxon superiority, Americans scorned Mexicans as a mixed breed, even below free blacks and Indians, "an imbecile, pusillanimous race of men . . . unfit to control the destinies of that beautiful country," a "rascally perfidious race," a "band of pirates and robbers."
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Indeed, they found no difficulty justifying as part of God's will the taking of fertile land from an "idle, thriftless people." They assumed that Mexico could be bullied into submission or, if foolish enough to fight, easily defeated. "Let its bark be treated with contempt, and its little bite, if it should attempt it, [be] quickly brushed aside with a single stroke of the paw," O'Sullivan exclaimed.
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Some Americans even assumed that Mexicans would welcome them as liberators from their own depraved government.

Given the intractability of the issues and the attitudes on both sides, a settlement would have been difficult under any circumstances, but Polk's heavy-handed diplomacy ensured war. There is no evidence to confirm charges that he plotted to provoke Mexico into firing the first shot.
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He seems rather to have hoped that by bribery and intimidation he could get what he wanted without war and to have expected that if war did come, it would be short, easy, and inexpensive. His sense of urgency heightened in the fall of 1845 by new and exaggerated reports of British designs on California, he tightened the noose. In December 1845, he revived the Monroe Doctrine, warning Britain and France against trying to block U.S. expansion. He deployed naval units off the Mexican port of Veracruz and ordered Taylor to the Rio Grande. He sent agents to Santa Fe to bribe provincial authorities of the New Mexico territory and persuade its residents of the benefits of U.S. rule. He dispatched secret orders to the navy's
Pacific squadron and Larkin that should war break out or Britain move overtly to take California they should occupy the major ports and encourage the local population to revolt. He may also have secretly ordered the adventurer—and notorious troublemaker—John Charles Frémont to go to California. In any event, Frémont in the spring of 1846 turned abruptly south from an expedition in Oregon and began fomenting revolution in California.
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Having encircled Mexico with U.S. military power and begun to chip away at its outlying provinces, Polk set out to force a deal. Mistakenly concluding that Mexico had agreed to receive an envoy, he sent Louisianan John Slidell to Mexico City. The president's instructions make clear the sort of "negotiations" he sought. Slidell was to restore good relations with Mexico while demanding that it surrender on the Rio Grande boundary and relinquish California, no mean task. The United States would pay Mexico $30 million and absorb the claims of its citizens.

The predictable failure of Slidell's mission led directly to war. Mexico had agreed only to receive a commissioner to discuss resumption of diplomatic relations. Slidell's mere presence destabilized an already shaky government. When he moved on to the capital, violating the explicit instructions of Mexican officials, his mission was doomed.
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After Mexico refused to receive him, he advised Polk that the United States should not deal further with them until it had "given them a good drubbing."
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Polk concurred. After learning of Slidell's return, he began drafting a war message. In the meantime, Taylor took a provocative position just north of the Rio Grande, his artillery trained on the town of Matamoros. Before the war message could be completed, Washington learned that Mexican troops had attacked one of Taylor's patrols. American blood had been shed on American soil, Polk exclaimed with exaggeration. The administration quickly secured its declaration of war.

The Mexican-American War resulted from U.S. impatience and aggressiveness and Mexican weakness. Polk and many of his countrymen were determined to have Texas to the Rio Grande and all of California on their own terms. They might have waited for the apples to fall from the tree, to borrow John Quincy Adams's Cuban metaphor, but patience was not among their virtues. Polk appears not to have set out to provoke Mexico into what could be used as a war of conquest. Rather, contemptuous
of his presumably inferior adversaries, he assumed he could bully them into giving him what he wanted. Mexico's weakness and internal divisions encouraged his aggressiveness. A stronger or more united Mexico might have deterred the United States or acquiesced in the annexation of Texas to avoid war, as the British minister and former Mexican foreign minister Lucas Alaman urged. By this time, however, Yankeephobia was rampant. Mexicans deeply resented the theft of Texas and obvious U.S. designs on California. They viewed the United States as the "Russian threat" of the New World. Incensed by the racist views of their northern neighbors, they feared cultural extinction. Newspapers warned that if the North Americans were not stopped in Texas, Protestantism would be imposed on the Mexican people and they would be "sold as beasts."
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Fear, anger, and pride made it impossible to acquiesce in U.S. aggression. Mexico chose war over surrender.

Polk's strategy for fighting Mexico reflected the racist assumptions that got him into war. Certain that an inferior people would be no match for Americans, he envisioned a war of three to four months. The United States would secure control of Mexico's northern provinces and use them to force acceptance of the Rio Grande boundary and cession of California and New Mexico.

In a strictly military sense, Polk's estimate proved on the mark. Using artillery with devastating effect, Taylor drove Mexican attackers back across the Rio Grande. Over the next ten months, he defeated larger armies at Monterrey and Buena Vista, fueling popular excitement, making himself a national hero, and gaining control of much of northern Mexico. In the meantime, Cmdre. Robert Stockton and Frémont backed the so-called Bear Flag Revolt of Americans around Sacramento and proclaimed California part of the United States. Colonel Stephen Kearney's forces took New Mexico without resistance. To facilitate negotiations, Polk permitted the exiled Santa Anna to go back to Mexico where, in return, he was to arrange a settlement.

War is never as simple as its planners envision, however, and despite smashing military successes, Polk could not impose peace. Mexico turned out to be an "ugly enemy," in Daniel Webster's words. "She will not fight—& will not treat."
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Despite crushing defeats, the Mexicans refused to negotiate on U.S. terms. They mounted a costly and frustrating guerrilla war against the invaders, "hardly . . . a legitimate system of warfare,"
Americans snarled, additional evidence (if any was needed) of Mexican debasement.
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Santa Anna did Polk's deviousness one better, using the United States to get home and then mobilizing fierce opposition to the invaders. "The United States may triumph," a Mexican newspaper proclaimed defiantly, "but its prize, like that of the vulture, will lie in a lake of blood."
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