What Hath God Wrought (117 page)

Two other possible scenarios for ending the war found advocates among Democrats outside the administration. Calhoun proposed withdrawing to some easily defensible line, such as that of the Rio Grande. The land north of the chosen line would be annexed, and (he argued) it would not much matter whether the rest of Mexico signed a peace treaty or not, since she would be unable to reconquer the lost provinces.
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The administration disliked Calhoun’s plan because it seemed to acquiesce in sporadic guerrilla fighting along the border, even for generations to come. The most drastic suggestion came from certain wild-eyed northern Democratic imperialists like Robert Stockton, Lewis Cass, and some editors of the northern Democratic penny press. They called for the annexation of all Mexico to the United States. Like Calhoun’s plan, this one also avoided the difficulty of obtaining a peace treaty, since there would be no Mexican Republic left to sign one. Mexico’s natural resources, particularly her silver mines, held considerable attraction. But most southerners abhorred the idea of “All Mexico,” which by incorporating millions of Mexican people, mainly of mixed race, and presumably granting them citizenship, would seriously compromise the nature of the United States as an exclusively white republic. “Ours is the government of the white man,” protested Calhoun in opposition to taking All Mexico.
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The penny press propagandized the cause of All Mexico to immigrant readers who saw no difficulty in ethnic pluralism; the grandiose proposal seemed a logical consequence of the national aggrandizement the papers had touted as a manifest destiny. Several editors claimed the annexation of All Mexico by the United States would “regenerate” the Mexican people.
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Polk had no intention of taking over the entire Mexican population, but tolerated the cause of All Mexico within the Democratic Party; it made his own plans for extensive territorial acquisitions seem modest by comparison. Within his cabinet the arch-expansionist Robert Walker sympathized with All Mexico, and James Buchanan tried to exploit the movement to promote his presidential prospects.

Mainstream Whig exasperation with the president found passionate expression in a forty-five-minute speech by Abraham Lincoln on January 12, 1848. The Texan people’s right of revolution, he argued, extended only to areas where they enjoyed popular support and exerted de facto control, and this included very little southwest of the Nueces River. Polk’s justification for war, Lincoln indignantly proclaimed, “is, from beginning to end, the sheerest deception.” Honesty was just as indispensable to the historical Lincoln as to the Honest Abe of popular mythology. Polk should “remember he sits where Washington sat” and tell the truth about the origin of the war. “As a nation
should
not, and the Almighty
will
not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion—no equivocation.” Addressing the president in tones worthy of the Prophet Nathan addressing King David, Lincoln declared that Polk must be “deeply conscious of being in the wrong”—that he must realize “the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.” Not having been truthful about the beginnings of the war or its objectives, Polk could provide no leadership regarding its ending. Lincoln’s manuscript of his speech reads:

Polk’s perplexity and anxiety over how to end the war, which Lincoln sensed, were real enough. Faced with the implacable hostility of the Mexican people to surrendering any part of their country to the United States, how could he obtain a treaty of cession? The president told Congress that a commissioner had accompanied Scott’s army, empowered to sign a peace treaty whenever the Mexicans were willing to do so, and that after the failure of negotiations in September 1847, he had recalled the commissioner. He did not tell Congress—and did not yet know himself—that the emissary refused to leave and instead resumed negotiations with the Mexican government. The same day Congress convened (December 6, 1847), Polk’s diplomatic representative in Mexico City sent off to Washington a memo of sixty-five handwritten pages explaining his defiance.

III

Nicholas Trist, protégé of Thomas Jefferson, had administered the patriarch’s estate and married his granddaughter Virginia Randolph. He served as private secretary to Andrew Jackson during Andrew Donelson’s absence. Having spent nine years as U.S. consul in Havana for Jackson and Van Buren, Trist possessed a secure command of Spanish. He was now chief clerk of the State Department, and Secretary Buchanan trusted his loyalty implicitly, allowing him to perform as acting secretary on occasion. When President Polk decided to send a peace commissioner to Mexico, Nicholas Trist seemed a safe pair of hands.

Trist’s orders, prepared in April 1847, directed him to attach himself to Winfield Scott’s headquarters and encourage the Mexican government to negotiate peace with him. Elaborate instructions specified the territorial concessions he should demand and how much the United States would pay Mexico for each. Trist’s mission was supposed to be a state secret, for the administration had not yet publicly admitted that it waged war for territory. Polk paid his commissioner out of executive funds and did not submit his name for Senate confirmation. Trist set out traveling under an assumed name. By the time he sailed from New Orleans, however, the newspapers had wind of his story. No one knows who blew Trist’s cover, but since the leak went to Democratic, expansionist newspapers (the
New York Herald
and the
Boston Post
), Buchanan may have done it to ingratiate himself with the press and gain support for the next presidential nomination. Because the administration did not trust the Whig Scott, they did not fully brief him on Trist’s mission and even encouraged their emissary to confide in Democratic general Gideon Pillow rather than the army commander. Unsurprisingly, Scott and Trist began quarreling as soon as Trist arrived in Veracruz on May 6, 1847. Trist wanted Scott to forward his invitation to negotiate to the Mexican minister of foreign relations, but he didn’t tell Scott what the message contained. Scott, his suspicions of administration duplicity aroused, refused to do so and complained of Trist’s presumptuousness. Trist enlisted the services of the neutral British to send his letter to the enemy, but matters proceeded slowly. Polk and his cabinet grumbled that the Trist-Scott alienation was hindering Trist’s mission, though the origin of the problem lay in their own arrangements. Fortunately, the basic decency of Trist and Scott, together with their common dedication to winning an honorable peace, overcame their initial misunderstanding. The turning point occurred on July 6 when Trist felt sick and Scott sent him a jar of guava marmalade.
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During the armistice that began on August 21, following the Battle of Churubusco, Trist finally got a chance to test his government’s treaty draft against the proposals of his adversaries. Polk had instructed Trist to get at least Alta California and New Mexico in addition to the Rio Grande boundary for Texas; he should also try to obtain Baja California and a canal route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The Mexicans found out through their efficient intelligence network that Baja and Tehuantepec were not essential to Trist and successfully rejected his pressure for them. They conceded a willingness to sell Alta California, including San Francisco Bay, but only as far south as Monterrey. They balked at selling areas with populations loyal to Mexico, such as New Mexico and the region between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. Trist offered to refer the Texas boundary question to his government if the Mexican negotiators would refer the New Mexico question to theirs.
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This round of negotiations ended in stalemate on September 6. Santa Anna received conflicting advice from the peace and war factions within his capital, and opted for the latter. Trist had impressed his Mexican counterparts with his courtesy and understanding for their position. His own superiors reacted with anger when his referral of the Texas boundary reached them; they could not afford to have the Rio Grande boundary questioned, since the declaration of war itself hinged upon it.

Even as these negotiations went on, however, the administration was rethinking its position. Polk decided that the U.S. military victories during the past six months justified taking more territory from Mexico than he had instructed Trist in April. The president and his cabinet agreed to put Baja and transit across Tehuantepec on the “must have” list, and that a considerable portion of what is now northern Mexico should be acquired as well, perhaps as far south as Tampico.
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After learning that the early September negotiations had not born fruit, Polk concluded that Trist was not the man to get tough with the Mexicans and resolved to recall his commissioner. It had been a tactical mistake for the United States to appear eager to end the war, he decided. Let the Mexicans suffer under occupation a while longer, and they would come begging for peace. On October 6, 1847, a message from Secretary of State Buchanan went out ordering Trist to return to the United States “at the first safe opportunity.” Buchanan did not specifically enumerate the administration’s new territorial requirements, which would have been no concern of Trist’s any longer.
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Trist’s recall notice, delayed by Mexican partisan activity, took over a month getting to him. When he received it on November 16, he felt that the president, not being abreast of events in Mexico, had made a monumental mistake. Trist perceived that Mexican political realities dictated reaching an accord with the liberal
moderados
who had succeeded Santa Anna; if this were not achieved soon, power would pass to intransigents. The possibility of Mexico disintegrating into anarchy, leaving no stable government at all to negotiate, could not be ruled out. Trist wrote Buchanan on November 27 urging that a new commissioner be appointed immediately and stating his intention to remain and brief the successor. He continued to agonize over his position. Then, on December 6, Trist sent his fateful message announcing that, in violation of his orders, he had invited the Mexican government at Querétaro to negotiate a peace with him, on the basis of the instructions he had received back in April.
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Trist informed the Mexicans that his president had recalled him, and that Polk no doubt intended to impose terms even harsher than those Santa Anna had found unacceptable in early September. He offered to let them make peace on the basis of his original proposals, by which Mexico would cede Alta California, New Mexico, and Texas above the Rio Grande. Take it or leave it. The Mexican authorities took it, although reluctantly, to forestall worse. Only with peace could the
federalistas moderados
preserve the union of their states and hold free elections throughout the country. They felt heavy pressure from financiers, often representing British interests, who had lent the Mexican government money. Only with peace could their administration regain collection of the tariffs at Mexican ports from the occupying power and start to repay these loans. Mexican commissioners met with Trist throughout the month of January to settle specifics. The negotiators on both sides worried as much about getting their treaty ratified by their respective governments as they did about disagreements with each other. Trist had to work all by himself, without clerical, legal, or archival help. In defining the precise boundary, Trist gained the harbor of San Diego for the United States, but not an outlet to the Gulf of California. The negotiators relied on an inaccurate map, and not until 1963 were all the resulting boundary confusions cleared up.
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Trist left the railroad route south of the Gila River to be acquired for $10 million in 1853 (from a restored regime of the venal Santa Anna) by what is called the Gadsden Purchase. He assumed U.S. responsibility for preventing the Indian tribes living north of the border from raiding Mexican homes south of it, a significant concession.

But Trist did not deal entirely generously with Mexico in the treaty. His original instructions actually authorized him to pay up to $20 million for the territory acquired, but he reduced the sum to $15 million, no doubt in hopes of mollifying Polk. Before the war, Slidell would have paid $25 million. Just how little $15 million represented to pay for California and New Mexico may be judged from the fact that in the summer of 1848 the United States offered Spain $50 to $100 million for its colony Cuba—and the offer was rejected.
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The claims against Mexico by U.S. citizens were valued at no more than $3.25 million and assumed by the United States government. To the Mexicans, the terms they signed on to, stipulating the loss of almost half their territory, seemed drastic and humiliating, not moderate. The sums paid out in accordance with the treaty paled in comparison with the estimated $100 million that it cost to wage the war, not counting pensions to veterans and widows.
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