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Edited on Mon Jul-10-06 09:14 PM by UTUSN
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From, A People’s History of the United States, by Howard ZINN (paperback)
p. 149: We take nothing by conquest, thank God
…. “Violence leads to violence, and if this movement of ours does not lead to others and to bloodshed, I am much mistaken.“ ….
p. 150: In the White House now was James Polk, a Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the night of his inauguration, confided to his Secretary of the Navy that one of his main objectives was the acquisition of California. His order to General Taylor to move troops to the Rio Grande was a challenge to the Mexicans. ….
Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into territory inhabited by Mexicans was clearly a provocation. ….
p. 151: “A corps of properly organized volunteers…would invade, overrun, and occupy Mexico. They would enable us not only to take California, but to keep it.” It was shortly after that, in the summer of 1845, that John O’Sullivan, editor of the Democratic Review, used the phrase that became famous, saying it was “Our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” Yes, manifest destiny.
All that was needed in the spring of 1846 was a military incident to begin the war that Polk wanted. ….
The Mexicans had fired the first shot. But they had done what the American government wanted, according to Colonel Hitchcock, who wrote in his diary, even b efore those first incidents: “I have said from the first that the United States are the aggressors…. We have not one particle of right to be here….”
P. 152: Polk recorded in his diary what he said to the cabinet meeting: “I stated … that up to this time, as we knew, we had heard of no open act of aggression by the Mexican army, but that the danger was imminent that such acts would be committed. ….
The country was not “excited and impatient.” But the President was. …. Polk spoke of the dispatch of American troops to the Rio Grande as a necessary measure of defense. As John Schroeder says (Mr. Polk’s War): “Indeed, the reverse was true; President Polk had incited war by sending American soldiers into what was disputed territory, historically controlled and inhabited by Mexicans.”
Congress then rushed to approve the war message. “The disciplined Democratic majority in the House responded with alacrity and high-handed efficiency to Polk’s May 11 war recommendations.” …. p. 153: Debate on the bill providing volunteers and money for the war was limited to two hours, and most of this was used up reading selected portions of the tabled documents, so that barely a half-hour was left for discussion of the issues.
The Whig party was presumably against the war in Mexico, but it was not against expansion. ….Also they were not so powerfully against the military action that they would stop it by denying men and money for the operation. They did not want to risk the accusation that they were putting American soldiers in peril by depriving them of the materials necessary to fight. The result was that Whigs joined Democrats in voting overwhelmingly for the war resolution, 74 to 4. ….
In the Senate, there was debate, but it was limited to one day, and “the tactics of stampede were there repeated,” according to historian Frederick Merk. The war measure passed, 40 to 2, Whigs joining Democrats. …
Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was not yet in Congress when the war began, but after his election in 1846... …. …His “spot resolutions” became famous--he challenged Polk to specify the exact spot where American blood was shed “on the American soil.” But he would not try to end the war by stopping funds for men and supplies. …. …he said, “…The declaration that we have always opposed the war is true or false, according as one may understand the term ‘oppose the war.’ …. The marching an army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops and property to destruction… ….With few individual exceptions, you have constantly had our votes here for all the necessary supplies….”
p. 154: Accompanying all this aggressiveness was the idea that the United States would be giving the blessings of liberty and democracy to more people. This was intermingled with ideas of racial superiority, longings for the beautiful lands of New Mexico and California, and thoughts of commercial enterprise across the Pacific.
p. 156: The churches, for the most part, were either outspokenly for the war or timidly silent. ….However, one Baptist minister, the Reverend Francis Wayland, president of Brown University, gave three sermons in the university chapel in which he said that only wars of self-defense were just, and in case of unjust war, the individual was morally obligated to resist it and lend no money to the government to support it.
p. 157: As the war went on, opposition grew. ….The abolitionists, speaking through William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator, denounced the war as one “of aggression, of invasion, of conquest, and rapine--marked by ruffianism, perfidy, and every other feature of national depravity…” ….
p. 158: Where was popular opinion? It is hard to say. After the first rush, enlistments began to dwindle. The 1846 elections showed much anti-Polk sentiment, but who could tell how much of this was due to the war? ….
p. 160: We know much more about the American army--volunteers, not conscripts, lured by money and opportunity for social advancement via promotion in the armed forces. …. At first there seemed to be enthusiasm in the army, fired by pay and patriotism. … This initial spirit soon wore off. ….
p. 161: By late 1846, recruitment was falling off, so physical requirements were lowered, and anyone bringing in acceptable recruits would get $2 a head. Even this didn’t work. …. And soon, the reality of battle came in upon the glory and the promises. ….
p. 163: Meanwhile, by land and by sea, Anglo-American forces were moving into California. …. It was a separate war that went on in California, where Anglo-Americans raided Spanish settlements, stole horses, and declared California separated from Mexico--the “Bear Flag Republic.”
p. 165: After Taylor’s army took Monterey (Mexico) he reported “some shameful atrocities” by the Texas Rangers, and he sent them home when their enlistment expired. But others continued robbing and killing Mexicans. ….The U.S. bombardment of the city (Vera Cruz) became an indiscriminate killing of civilians. ….
p. 166: It was a war of the American elite against the Mexican elite, each side exhorting, using, killing its own population as well as the other. …. P. 167: As often in war, battles were fought without point. …”He had originated it in error and caused it to be fought, with inadequate forces, for an object that had no existence.” ….
p. 168: “Although they had volunteered to go to war, and by far the greater number of them honored their commitments by creditably sustaining hardship and battle, and behaved as well as soldiers in a hostile country are apt to behave, they did not like the army, they did not like war, and generally speaking, they did not like Mexico or the Mexicans. …. The glory of the victory was for the President and the generals, not the deserters, the dead, the wounded. ….
p. 169: Mexico surrendered. There were calls among Americans to take all of Mexico. The Treaty… llll just took half. ….The United States paid Mexico $ million, which led the Whig Intelligencer to conclude that “we take nothing by conquest….Thank God.”
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