Untitled Flashcards Set

Chapter 17 

Manifest Destiny  

r 

and Its Legacy 

1841–1848 

Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent allotted by Providence  for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. 

John L. O’Sullivan, 184 

T 

erritorial expansion dominated American  diplomacy and politics in the 1840s. Settlers  swarming into the still-disputed Oregon Country aggra vated relations with Britain, which had staked its own  claims in the Pacific Northwest. The clamor to annex  Texas to the Union provoked bitter tension with Mexico,  which continued to regard Texas as a Mexican province  in revolt. And when Americans began casting covetous  eyes on Mexico’s northernmost province, the great prize  of California, open warfare erupted between the United  States and its southern neighbor. Victory over Mexico  added vast new domains to the United States, but it also  raised thorny questions about the status of slavery in  the newly acquired territories—questions that would be  answered in blood in the Civil War of the 1860s. 

  ^{The Accession of “Tyler Too”} 

A horde of hard-ciderites descended upon Washington  early in 1841, clamoring for the spoils of office. Newly  elected President Harrison, bewildered by the uproar,  was almost hounded to death by Whig spoilsmen. 

The real leaders of the Whig party regarded “Old  Tippecanoe” as little more than an impressive figure head. Daniel Webster, as secretary of state, and Henry  Clay, the uncrowned king of the Whigs and their  ablest spokesman in the Senate, would grasp the helm.  The aging general was finally forced to rebuke the  

*Earliest known use of the term Manifest Destiny, sometimes called  “Manifest Desire.” 

360    

overzealous Clay and pointedly remind him that he,  William Henry Harrison, was president of the United  States. 

Unluckily for Clay and Webster, their schemes soon  hit a fatal snag. Before the new term had fairly started,  Harrison contracted pneumonia. Wearied by official  functions and plagued by office seekers, the enfeebled  old warrior died after only four weeks in the White  House—by far the shortest administration in American  history, following by far the longest inaugural address. 

The “Tyler too” part of the Whig ticket, hitherto  only a rhyme, now claimed the spotlight. What man ner of man did the nation now find in the presidential  chair? Six feet tall, slender, blue-eyed, and fair-haired,  with classical features and a high forehead, John Tyler  was a Virginia gentleman of the old school—gracious  and kindly, yet stubbornly attached to principle. He  had earlier resigned from the Senate, quite unnecessar ily, rather than accept distasteful instructions from the  Virginia legislature. Still a lone wolf, he had forsaken  the Jacksonian Democratic fold for that of the Whigs,  largely because he could not stomach the dictatorial  tactics of Jackson. 

Tyler’s enemies accused him of being a Democrat  in Whig clothing, but this charge was only partially  true. The Whig party, like the Democratic party, was  something of a catchall, and the accidental president  belonged to the minority wing, which embraced a  number of Jeffersonian states’ righters. Tyler had in fact  been put on the ticket partly to attract the vote of this  fringe group, many of whom were influential southern  gentry. 

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Yet Tyler, high-minded as he was, should never  have consented to run on the ticket. Although the  dominant Clay-Webster group had published no plat form, every alert politician knew what the unpublished  platform contained. And on virtually every major issue,  the obstinate Virginian was at odds with the major ity of his adoptive Whig party, which was pro-bank,  pro–protective tariff, and pro–internal improvements.  “Tyler too” rhymed with “Tippecanoe,” but there the  harmony ended. As events turned out, President Har rison, the Whig, served for only 4 weeks, whereas Tyler,  the ex-Democrat who was still largely a Democrat at  heart, served for 204 weeks. 

  ^{John Tyler: A President}  

Without a Party 

After their hard-won, hard-cider victory, the Whigs  brought their not-so-secret platform out of Clay’s waist coat pocket. To the surprise of no one, it outlined a  strongly nationalistic program. 

Financial reform came first. The Whig Congress  hastened to pass a law ending the independent treasury  system, and President Tyler, disarmingly agreeable,  signed it. Clay next drove through Congress a bill for a  “Fiscal Bank,” which would establish a new Bank of the  United States. 

Tyler’s hostility to a centralized bank was notori ous, and Clay—the “Great Compromiser”—would  have done well to conciliate him. But the Kentuck ian, robbed repeatedly of the presidency by lesser men,  was in an imperious mood and riding for a fall. When  the bank bill reached the presidential desk, Tyler flatly  vetoed it on both practical and constitutional grounds.  A drunken mob gathered late at night near the White  House and shouted insultingly, “Huzza for Clay!” “A  Bank! A Bank!” “Down with the Veto!” 

The stunned Whig leaders tried once again. Striv ing to pacify Tyler’s objections to a “Fiscal Bank,” they  passed another bill providing for a “Fiscal Corpora tion.” But the president, still unbending, vetoed the  offensive substitute. The Democrats were jubilant: they  had been saved from another financial “monster” only  by the pneumonia that had felled Harrison. 

Whig extremists, seething with indignation, con demned Tyler as “His Accidency” and as an “Executive  Ass.” Widely burned in effigy, he received numerous  letters threatening him with death. A wave of influ enza then sweeping the country was called the “Tyler  grippe.” To the delight of Democrats, the stiff-necked  Virginian was formally expelled from his party by a  caucus of Whig congressmen, and a serious attempt to  impeach him was broached in the House of Represen tatives. His entire cabinet resigned in a body, except  

John Tyler, Accidental President • 361 

Secretary of State Webster, who was then in the midst  of delicate negotiations with England. 

The proposed Whig tariff also felt the prick of the  president’s well-inked pen. Tyler appreciated the neces sity of bringing additional revenue to the Treasury. But  old Democrat that he was, he looked with a frosty eye  on the major tariff scheme of the Whigs because it pro vided, among other features, for a distribution among  the states of revenue from the sale of public lands in  the West. Tyler could see no point in squandering fed eral money when the federal Treasury was not over flowing, and he again wielded an emphatic veto. 

Chastened Clayites redrafted their tariff bill. They  chopped out the offensive dollar-distribution scheme  and pushed down the rates to about the moderately  protective level of 1832, roughly 32 percent on duti 

able goods. Tyler had no fondness for a protective tar iff, but realizing the need for additional revenue, he  reluctantly signed the Tariff of 1842. In subsequent  months the pressure for higher customs duties slack ened as the country gradually edged its way out of the  depression. The Whig slogan, “Harrison, Two Dollars a  Day and Roast Beef,” was reduced by unhappy Demo crats to “Ten Cents a Day and Bean Soup.” 

  ^{A War of Words with Britain} 

Hatred of Britain during the nineteenth century came  to a head periodically and had to be lanced by treaty  settlement or by war. The poison had festered omi nously by 1842. 

Anti-British passions were composed of many  ingredients. At bottom lay the bitter, red-coated memo ries of the two Anglo-American wars. In addition, the  genteel pro-British Federalists had died out, eventu ally yielding to the boisterous Jacksonian Democrats.  British travelers, sniffing with aristocratic noses at the  crude scene, wrote acidly of American tobacco spitting,  slave auctioneering, lynching, eye gouging, and other  unsavory features of the rustic Republic. Travel books  

Frances Trollope (1780–1863), an English writer  disillusioned by the failure of a utopian community  she had joined in Tennessee, wrote scathingly of the  Americans in 1832, 

“^{Other nations have been called thin-skinned,}  

but the citizens of the Union have, apparently,  no skins at all; they wince if a breeze blows  over them unless it be tempered with  

^adulation.” 

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362  • Chapter 17 Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy , 1841–1848 

overflowing coffers, was a lending nation. The well 

heeled creditor is never popular with the down-at 

the-heels debtor, and the phrase “bloated British  

bond-holder” rolled bitterly from many an American  

tongue. When the panic of 1837 broke and several  

states defaulted on their bonds or repudiated them  

openly, honest Englishmen assailed Yankee trickery.  

One of them offered a new stanza for an old song: 

Yankee Doodle borrows cash, 

Yankee Doodle spends it, 

And then he snaps his fingers at 

The jolly flat [simpleton] who lends it. 

Troubles of a more dangerous sort came closer to  

home in 1837 when a short-lived insurrection erupted  

in Canada. It was supported by such a small minority  

of Canadians that it never had a real chance of suc 

cess. Yet hundreds of hot-blooded Americans, hop 

ing to strike a blow for freedom against the hereditary  

enemy, furnished military supplies or volunteered for  

armed service. The Washington regime tried arduously,  

_{Granger Collectio}n 

The Land of Liberty, 1847 This British cartoo reflected the contemptuous view of American culture, politics, and diplomacy that was common in early nineteenth-century Britain. 

though futilely, to uphold its weak neutrality regula tions. But again, as in the case of Texas, it simply could  not enforce unpopular laws in the face of popular  opposition. 

A provocative incident on the Canadian fron tier brought passions to a boil in 1837. An American  steamer, the Caroline, was carrying supplies to the  insurgents across the swift Niagara River. It was finally  attacked on the New York shore by a determined Brit ish force, which set the vessel on fire. Lurid American  illustrators showed the flaming ship, laden with shriek ing souls, plummeting over Niagara Falls. The craft in  

penned by these critics, whose views were avidly read  on both sides of the Atlantic, stirred up angry outbursts  in America. 

But the literary fireworks did not end there. Brit ish magazines added fuel to the flames when, enlarging  on the travel books, they launched sneering attacks on  Yankee shortcomings. American journals struck back  with “you’re another” arguments, thus touching off the  “Third War with England.” Fortunately, this British American war was fought with paper broadsides, and  only ink was spilled. British authors, including Charles  Dickens, entered the fray with gall-dipped pens, for  they were being denied rich royalties by the absence of  an American copyright law.* 

Sprawling America, with expensive canals to  dig and railroads to build, was a borrowing nation  in the nineteenth century. Imperial Britain, with its  

*Not until 1891 did Congress extend copyright privileges to foreign  authors. 

fact sank short of the plunge, and only one American  was killed. 

This unlawful invasion of American soil—a coun terviolation of neutrality—had alarming aftermaths.  Washington officials lodged vigorous but ineffective  protests. Three years later, in 1840, the incident was dra matically revived in the state of New York. A Canadian  named McLeod, after allegedly boasting in a tavern of  his part in the Caroline raid, was arrested and indicted  for murder. The London Foreign Office, which regarded  the Caroline raiders as members of a sanctioned armed  force and not as criminals, made clear that his execu tion would mean war. Fortunately, McLeod was freed  after establishing an alibi. It must have been airtight,  for it was good enough to convince a New York jury.  The tension forthwith eased, but it snapped taut again  in 1841, when British officials in the Bahamas offered  asylum to 130 Virginia slaves who had rebelled and  captured the American ship Creole. Britain had abol ished slavery within its empire in 1833, raising south ern fears that its Caribbean possessions would become  Canada-like havens for escaped slaves. 

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  ^{Manipulating the Maine Maps} 

An explosive controversy of the early 1840s involved  the Maine boundary dispute. The St. Lawrence River  is icebound several months of the year, as the British,  remembering the War of 1812, well knew. They were  determined, as a defensive precaution against the Yan 

kees, to build a road westward from the seaport of  Halifax to Québec. But the proposed route ran through  disputed territory—claimed also by Maine under the  misleading peace treaty of 1783. Tough-knuckled lum 

berjacks from both Maine and Canada entered the dis puted no-man’s-land of the tall-timbered Aroostook  River valley. Ugly fights flared up, and both sides sum moned the local militia. The small-scale lumberjack  clash, which was dubbed the Aroostook War, threat 

ened to widen into a full-dress shooting war. As the crisis deepened in 1842, the London Foreign  Office took an unusual step. It sent to Washington a  nonprofessional diplomat, the conciliatory financier  Lord Ashburton, who had married a wealthy American  woman. He speedily established cordial relations with  Secretary Webster, who had recently been lionized dur ing a visit to Britain. 

The two statesmen, their nerves frayed by pro tracted negotiations in the heat of a Washington  summer, finally agreed to compromise on the Maine  boundary (see Map 17.1). On the basis of a rough, split the-difference arrangement, the Americans were to  retain some 7,000 square miles of the 12,000 square  miles of wilderness in dispute. The British got less land  

Tensions with Britain • 363 

but won the desired Halifax-Québec route. During the  negotiations the Caroline affair, malingering since 1837,  was patched up by an exchange of diplomatic notes. 

An overlooked bonus sneaked by in the small print  of the same treaty: the British, in adjusting the U.S.- Canadian boundary farther west, surrendered 6,500  square miles. The area was later found to contain the  priceless Mesabi iron ore of Minnesota. 

  ^{The Lone Star of Texas Shines Alone} 

During the uncertain eight years since 1836, Texas had  led a precarious existence. Mexico, refusing to recog nize Texas’s independence, regarded the Lone Star  Republic as a province in revolt, to be reconquered in  the future. Mexican officials loudly threatened war if  the American eagle should ever gather the fledgling  republic under its protective wings. 

The Texans were forced to maintain a costly mili tary establishment. Vastly outnumbered by their  Mexican foe, they could not tell when he would strike  again. Mexico actually did make two halfhearted raids  that, though ineffectual, foreshadowed more fearsome  efforts. Confronted with such perils, Texas was driven  to open negotiations with Britain and France, in the  hope of securing the defensive shield of a protectorate.  In 1839 and 1840, the Texans concluded treaties with  France, Holland, and Belgium. 

Britain was intensely interested in an independent  Texas. Such a republic would check the southward  surge of the American colossus, whose bulging biceps  posed a constant threat to nearby British possessions  in the New World. A puppet Texas, dancing to strings  

0 

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S^t_{. L}a^w_re^nc_{e R}. 

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sion, behind which foreign powers could move into the  Americas and challenge the insolent Monroe Doctrine.  French schemers were likewise attracted by the hoary  game of divide and conquer. These actions would  result, they hoped, in the fragmentation and militari 

^MontréalHalifax MAINE 

zation of America. 

Dangers threatened from other foreign quarters.  

VT. 

N.H. 

NOVA SCOTIA 

A T L A N T I C 

O C E A N 

British abolitionists were busily intriguing for a foot hold in Texas. If successful in freeing the few blacks  there, they presumably would inflame the nearby slaves  of the South. In addition, British merchants regarded  

Proposed road route 

Webster-Ashburton treaty line 

Given up by United States 

Acquired by United States 

Map 17.1 Maine Boundary Settlement, 1842 © Cengage Learning 

Texas as a potentially important free-trade area—an  offset to the tariff-walled United States. British manu facturers likewise perceived that those vast Texas plains  constituted one of the great cotton-producing areas of  the future. An independent Texas would relieve Brit ish looms of their chronic dependence on American  fiber—a supply that might be cut off in time of crisis by  embargo or war. 

Houghton-Mifflin 

Kennedy, The American Pagent 14e, ©2010 kennedy_17_01_Ms00381 

Maine Boundary Settlement, 1842 Trim 20p6 x 19p0 

No bleeds 

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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

_{Saint Louis Art Museum, Eliza McMillan Trus}t 

St. Louis in 1846, by Henry Lewis Thousands of pioneers like these pulling awa 

from St. Louis said farewell to civilization as they left the Mississippi River and headed 

across the untracked plains to Oregon in the 1840s. 

  ^{The Belated Texas Nuptials} 

Partly because of the fears aroused by British schem ers, Texas became a leading issue in the presidential  campaign of 1844. The foes of expansion assailed  annexation, while southern hotheads cried, “Texas or  Disunion.” The pro-expansion Democrats under James  K. Polk finally triumphed over the Whigs under Henry  Clay, the hardy perennial candidate. Lame duck presi dent Tyler thereupon interpreted the narrow Demo cratic victory, with dubious accuracy, as a “mandate” to  acquire Texas. 

Eager to crown his troubled administration with  this splendid prize, Tyler deserves much of the credit  for shepherding Texas into the fold. Many antislavery  Whigs feared that Texas in the Union would be red  meat to nourish the lusty “slave power.” Aware of their  

Thomas J. Green (1801–1863), who served as a brigadier  general in the Texas Revolution, published a pamphlet  in 1845 to make the case for American support of an  independent Texas: 

“^{Both the government of the United States and}  

Texas are founded upon the same political code.  They have the same common origin—the same  language, laws, and religion—the same pur suits and interests; and though they may remain  independent of each other as to government,  they are identified in weal and wo’—they will  flourish side by side and the blight which affects  

^{the one will surely reach the other.}” 

364    

opposition, Tyler despaired of securing the needed  two-thirds vote for a treaty in the Senate. He therefore  arranged for annexation by a joint resolution. This  solution required only a simple majority in both houses  of Congress. After a spirited debate, the resolution  passed early in 1845, and Texas was formally invited to  become the twenty-eighth star on the American flag. 

Mexico angrily charged that the Americans had  despoiled it of Texas. This was to some extent true in  1836, but hardly true in 1845, for the area was no lon ger Mexico’s to be despoiled of. As the years stretched  out, realistic observers could see that the Mexicans  would not be able to reconquer their lost province. Yet  Mexico left the Texans dangling by denying their right  to dispose of themselves as they chose. 

By 1845 the Lone Star Republic had become a dan ger spot, inviting foreign intrigue that menaced the  American people. The continued existence of Texas as  an independent nation threatened to involve the United  States in a series of ruinous wars, both in America and  in Europe. Americans were in a “lick all creation” mood  when they sang “Uncle Sam’s Song to Miss Texas”: 

If Mexy back’d by secret foes, 

Still talks of getting you, gal; 

Why we can lick ’em all you know 

And then annex ‘em too, gal. 

What other power would have spurned the imperial  domain of Texas? The bride was so near, so rich, so fair,  so willing. Whatever the peculiar circumstances of the  Texas Revolution, the United States can hardly be accused  of unseemly haste in achieving annexation. Nine long  years were surely a decent wait between the beginning  of the courtship and the consummation of the marriage. 

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  ^{Oregon Fever Populates Oregon} 

The so-called Oregon Country was an enormous wil derness. It sprawled magnificently west of the Rockies  to the Pacific Ocean, and north of California to the line  of 548 40’—the present southern tip of the Alaska pan handle. All or substantial parts of this immense area  were claimed at one time or another by four nations:  

Spain, Russia, Britain, and the United States. Two claimants dropped out of the scramble. Spain,  though the first to raise its banner in Oregon, bartered  away its claims to the United States in the so-called  Florida Treaty of 1819. Russia retreated to the line of 548 40’ by the treaties of 1824 and 1825 with America and  Britain. These two remaining rivals now had the field  to themselves. 

British claims to Oregon were strong—at least to  that portion north of the Columbia River. They were  based squarely on prior discovery and exploration,  on treaty rights, and on actual occupation. The most  important colonizing agency was the far-flung Hud 

son’s Bay Company, which was trading profitably with  the Indians of the Pacific Northwest for furs. Americans, for their part, could also point pride fully to exploration and occupation. Captain Rob ert Gray in 1792 had stumbled upon the majestic  

Oregon Fever • 365 

In winning Oregon, the Americans had great faith in  their procreative powers. Boasted one congressman in  1846, 

“^{Our people are spreading out with the aid of}  

the American multiplication table. Go to the  West and see a young man with his mate of  eighteen; after the lapse of thirty years, visit him  again, and instead of two, you will find twenty two. That is what I call the American multiplica 

^{tion table.}” 

Columbia River, which he named after his ship; and  the famed Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–1806  had ranged overland through the Oregon Country  to the Pacific. This shaky American toehold was ulti 

mately strengthened by the presence of missionaries  and other settlers, a sprinkling of whom reached the  grassy Willamette River valley, south of the Colum bia, in the 1830s. These men and women of God, in  saving the soul of the Indian, were instrumental in  saving the soil of Oregon for the United States. They  stimulated interest in a faraway domain that countless  Americans had earlier assumed would not be settled  for centuries. 

Pundt and Koenig’ 

General Store, Omaha 

City, Nebraska, 1858 

Settlers bound for  

Colorado and California  

stopped here for provisions  

before venturing farther  

west across the open  

plains. The Huntington Library & Art  

Collections, San Marino, California 

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366  • Chapter 17 Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy , 1841–1848 

Scattered American and British pioneers in Oregon  continued to live peacefully side by side. At the time  of negotiating the Anglo-American Convention of  1818 (see pp. 239–240), the United States had sought to  divide the vast domain at the forty-ninth parallel. But  the British, who regarded the Columbia River as the St.  Lawrence of the West, were unwilling to yield this vital  artery. A scheme for peaceful “joint occupation” was  thereupon adopted, pending future settlement. 

The handful of Americans in the Willamette Val ley was suddenly multiplied in the early 1840s, when  “Oregon fever” seized hundreds of restless pioneers.  In increasing numbers, their creaking covered wag ons jolted over the two-thousand-mile Oregon Trail  as the human rivulet widened into a stream.* By 1846  about five thousand Americans had settled south of the  Columbia River, some of them tough “border ruffians,”  expert with bowie knife and “revolving pistol.” 

The British, in the face of this rising torrent of  humanity, could muster only seven hundred or so sub jects north of the Columbia. Losing out lopsidedly in  the population race, they were beginning to see the  wisdom of arriving at a peaceful settlement before  being engulfed by their neighbors. 

A curious fact is that only a relatively small seg ment of the Oregon Country was in actual controversy  by 1845. The area in dispute consisted of the rough  quadrangle between the Columbia River on the south  and east, the forty-ninth parallel on the north, and  the Pacific Ocean on the west. Britain had repeatedly  offered the line of the Columbia; America had repeat edly offered the forty-ninth parallel. The whole fateful  issue was now tossed into the presidential election of  1844, where it was largely overshadowed by the ques tion of annexing Texas. 

  ^{A Mandate (?) for Manifest Destiny} 

The two major parties nominated their presidential  standard-bearers in May 1844. Ambitious but often  frustrated Henry Clay, easily the most popular man in  the country, was enthusiastically chosen by the Whigs  at Baltimore. The Democrats, meeting there later,  seemed hopelessly deadlocked. Van Buren’s opposition  to annexing Texas ensured his defeat, given domina 

tion of the party by southern expansionists. Finally  party delegates trotted out and nominated James K.  Polk of Tennessee, America’s first “dark-horse” or “sur prise” presidential candidate. 

*The average rate of progress in covered wagons was one to two miles  an hour. This amounted to about one hundred miles a week, or about  five months for the entire journey. Thousands of humans, in addition  to horses and oxen, died en route. One estimate is seventeen deaths a  mile for men, women, and children. 

Polk may have been a dark horse, but he was hardly  an unknown or decrepit nag. Speaker of the House of  Representatives for four years and governor of Tennes see for two terms, he was a determined, industrious,  ruthless, and intelligent public servant. Sponsored  by Andrew Jackson, his friend and neighbor, he was  rather implausibly touted by Democrats as yet another  “Young Hickory.” Whigs attempted to jeer him into  oblivion with the taunt “Who is James K. Polk?” They  soon found out. 

The campaign of 1844 was in part an expression  of the mighty emotional upsurge known as Manifest  Destiny. Countless citizens in the 1840s and 1850s,  feeling a sense of mission, believed that Almighty God  had “manifestly” destined the American people for a  hemispheric career. They would irresistibly spread their  uplifting and ennobling democratic institutions over  at least the entire continent, and possibly over South  America as well. Land greed and ideals—”empire” and  “liberty”—were thus conveniently conjoined. 

Expansionist Democrats were strongly swayed by  the intoxicating spell of Manifest Destiny. They came  out flat-footedly in their platform for the “Reannex ation of Texas”^† and the “Reoccupation of Oregon,”  all the way to 548 40’. Outbellowing the Whig log cabinites in the game of slogans, they shouted “All of  

*The United States had given up its claims to Texas in the so-called  Florida Purchase Treaty (Adams-Onís Treaty) with Spain in 1819 (see  p. 240). 

_{Library of Congres}s 

Manifest Destiny: A Caricature The spirit of Mani Destiny swept the nation in the 1840s, and threatened to  sweep it to extremes. This cartoon from 1848 lampoons proslavery Democratic presidential candidate Lewis Cass as  a veritable war machine, bent on the conquest of territory  ranging from New Mexico to Cuba and even Peru 

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_{Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, N}Y 

Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way This romantic tribute to the spirit o Manifest Destiny was commissioned by Congress in 1860 and may still be seen in the  Capitol. 

Oregon or None.” (The slogan “Fifty-four forty or  fight” was not coined until two years later, in 1846.)  They also condemned Clay as a “corrupt bargainer,” a  dissolute character, and a slaveowner. (Their own can 

didate, Polk, also owned slaves—a classic case of the  pot calling the kettle black.) 

The Whigs, as noisemakers, took no backseat. They  countered with such slogans as “Hooray for Clay” and  “Polk, Slavery, and Texas, or Clay, Union, and Lib erty.” They also spread the lie that a gang of Tennessee  slaves had been seen on their way to a southern market  branded with the initials J. K. P. (James K. Polk). 

On the crucial issue of Texas, the acrobatic Clay  tried to ride two horses at once. The “Great Compro miser” appears to have compromised away the presi dency when he wrote a series of confusing letters. They  seemed to say that while he personally favored annex ing slaveholding Texas (an appeal to the South), he  also favored postponement (an appeal to the North).  He might have lost more ground if he had not “strad dled,” but he certainly alienated the more ardent  antislaveryites. 

In the stretch drive, “Dark Horse” Polk nipped  Henry Clay at the wire, 170 to 105 votes in the Electoral  College and 1,338,464 to 1,300,097 in the popular col umn. Clay would have won if he had not lost New York  State by a scant 5,000 votes. There the tiny antislavery  Liberty party absorbed nearly 16,000 votes, many  of which would otherwise have gone to the unlucky  Kentuckian. Ironically, the anti-Texas Liberty party,  by spoiling Clay’s chances and helping to ensure the  election of pro-Texas Polk, hastened the annexation of  Texas. 

Land-hungry Democrats, flushed with victory,  proclaimed that they had received a mandate from  

the voters to take Texas. But a presidential election is  seldom, if ever, a clear-cut mandate on anything. The  only way to secure a true reflection of the voters’ will  is to hold a special election on a given issue. The pic 

ture that emerged in 1844 was one not of mandate but  of muddle. What else could there have been when the  results were so close, the personalities so colorful, and  the issues so numerous—including Oregon, Texas, the  tariff, slavery, the bank, and internal improvements?  Yet this unclear “mandate” was interpreted by President  Tyler as a crystal-clear charge to annex Texas—and he  signed the joint resolution three days before leaving  the White House. 

  ^{Polk the Purposeful} 

“Young Hickory” Polk, unlike “Old Hickory” Jackson,  was not an impressive figure. Of middle height (five  feet eight inches), lean, white-haired (worn long), gray eyed, and stern-faced, he took life seriously and drove  himself mercilessly into a premature grave. His burdens  were increased by an unwillingness to delegate author ity. Methodical and hard-working but not brilliant, he  was shrewd, narrow-minded, conscientious, and persis tent. “What he went for he fetched,” wrote a contempo rary. Purposeful in the highest degree, he developed a  positive four-point program and with remarkable suc 

cess achieved it completely in less than four years. One of Polk’s goals was a lowered tariff. His secre tary of the Treasury, wispy Robert J. Walker, devised a  tariff-for-revenue bill that reduced the average rates of  the Tariff of 1842 from about 32 percent to 25 percent.  With the strong support of low-tariff southerners, the  Walker Tariff bill made its way through Congress,  

    367 

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368  • Chapter 17 Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy , 1841–1848 

Table 17.1 House Vote on Tariff of  

Region For Against New England 9 1 Middle states 18 44 West and Northwest 29 10 South and Southwest 58 20 total 114 93 

though not without loud complaints from the Clayites,  especially in New England and the middle states, who  cried that American manufacturing would be ruined  (see Table 17.1). But these prophets of doom missed the  mark. The Walker Tariff of 1846 proved to be an excel 

lent revenue producer, largely because it was followed  by boom times and heavy imports. 

A second objective of Polk was the restoration of  the independent treasury, unceremoniously dropped by  the Whigs in 1841. Pro-bank Whigs in Congress raised  a storm of opposition, but victory at last rewarded the  president’s efforts in 1846. 

The third and fourth points on Polk’s “must list”  were the acquisition of California and the settlement of  the Oregon dispute (see Map 17.2). 

⁶⁰°N^{130°W 120°W 110°W} 

“Reoccupation” of the “whole” of Oregon had been  promised northern Democrats in the campaign of  1844. But southern Democrats, once they had annexed  Texas, rapidly cooled off. Polk, himself a southerner,  had no intention of insisting on the 548 40’ pledge of  his own platform. But feeling bound by the three offers  of his predecessors to London, he again proposed the  compromise line of 498. The British minister in Wash 

ington, on his own initiative, brusquely spurned this  olive branch. 

The next move on the Oregon chessboard was  up to Britain. Fortunately for peace, the ministry  began to experience a change of heart. British anti expansionists (“Little Englanders”) were now per suaded that the Columbia River was not after all the St.  Lawrence of the West and that the turbulent American  hordes might one day seize the Oregon Country. Why  fight a hazardous war over this wilderness on behalf  of an unpopular monopoly, the Hudson’s Bay Com pany, which had already “furred out” much of the area  anyhow? 

Early in 1846 the British, hat in hand, came around  and themselves proposed the line of 498. President  Polk, irked by the previous rebuff, threw the decision  squarely into the lap of the Senate. The senators speed 

ily accepted the offer and approved the subsequent  treaty, despite a few diehard shouts of “Fifty-four forty  forever!” and “Every foot or not an inch!” The fact that  the United States was then a month deep in a war with  Mexico doubtless influenced the Senate’s final vote. 

0 

150 300 Km. 

Focus of dispute by 1846 

Satisfaction with the Oregon settlement among  

A L A S K A (Russia) 

⁵⁴°⁴⁰'N 

0 150 300 Mi. B R I T I S H 

Area of original dispute over Oregon 

Americans was not unanimous. The northwestern  states, hotbed of Manifest Destiny and “fifty-four forty ism,” joined the antislavery forces in condemning what  they regarded as a base betrayal by the South. Why all  

N O R T H A M E R I C A ( C A N A D A ) 

^R O ^C K _Y 

of Texas but not all of Oregon? Because, retorted the  expansionist Senator Benton of Missouri, “Great Britain  is powerful and Mexico is weak.” 

So Polk, despite all the campaign bluster, got nei 

⁵⁰°N 

⁴⁹°N 

Compromise line, 1846 

^Vaⁿc^ou_v^er ^I. 

^Fra^se^r R_. 

C^o_lu^mbia R_. 

Treaty of 1818 ^M O 

ther “fifty-four forty” nor a fight. But he did get some thing that in the long run was better: a reasonable  compromise without a rifle being raised. 

  ^{Misunderstandings with Mexico} 

P A C I F I C 

Ft.  

Vancouver 

O R E G O N C O U N T R Y 

U _N 

T_A ^I N _S 

Missourⁱ R^. Yello^ws^t_on^e R^. 

O C E A N ^Or^ego_{n Tr}^ai_l 

U N I T E D 

Faraway California was another worry of Polk’s. He and  

N 

⁴²°N 

Willamette 

Valley 

Adam_{s-Onís Treaty of 1819} 

Sn^ak^e _R. 

S T A T E S 

other disciples of Manifest Destiny had long coveted its  verdant valleys, and especially the spacious bay of San  Francisco. This splendid harbor was widely regarded as  

⁴⁰°N 

M E X I C O 

America’s future gateway to the Pacific Ocean. The population of California in 1845 was curiously  mixed. It consisted of perhaps thirteen thousand sun 

Map 17.2 The Oregon Controversy, 1846 © Cengage Learning 

blessed Spanish Mexicans and as many as seventy-five  thousand dispirited Indians. There were fewer than  

HMCo 

Kennedy, The American Pageant, 4e ©2010 Oregon Boundary Dispute, 1846 

No bleeds 

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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

_{Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinicke Rare Book}  

_{Room and Manuscript Library, Yale Universit}y 

Fort Vancouver, Oregon Country, ca. 1846 Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River near its confluence with the Willamette River, was the economic hub of the Oregon Country during the early years of settlement. Founded as a Hudson’s Bay Company fur-trading outpost, the fort was handed over to the Americans when Britain ceded the Oregon Country to the United States in 1846. 

a thousand “foreigners,” mostly Americans, some of  whom had “left their consciences” behind them as they  rounded Cape Horn. Given time, these transplanted  Yankees might yet bring California into the Union by  “playing the Texas game.” 

Polk was eager to buy California from Mexico, but  relations with Mexico City were dangerously embit tered. Among other friction points, the United States  had claims against the Mexicans for some $3 million  in damages to American citizens and their property.  The revolution-riddled regime in Mexico had formally  agreed to assume most of this debt but had been forced  to default on its payments. 

A more serious bone of contention was Texas. The  Mexican government, after threatening war if the  United States should acquire the Lone Star Republic, had  recalled its minister from Washington following annex 

ation. Diplomatic relations were completely severed. Deadlock with Mexico over Texas was further  tightened by a question of boundaries. During the long  era of Spanish Mexican occupation, the southwestern  boundary of Texas had been the Nueces River. But the  expansive Texans, on rather far-fetched grounds, were  claiming the more southerly Rio Grande instead. Polk,  for his part, felt a strong moral obligation to defend  Texas in its claim, once it was annexed. 

The Mexicans were far less concerned about this  boundary quibble than was the United States. In their  eyes all of Texas was still theirs, although temporarily in  revolt, and a dispute over the two rivers seemed point 

less. Yet Polk was careful to keep American troops out  of virtually all of the explosive no-man’s-land between  the Nueces and the Rio Grande, as long as there was  any real prospect of peaceful adjustment. 

The golden prize of California continued to cause  Polk much anxiety. Disquieting rumors (now known to  have been ill-founded) were circulating that Britain was  about to buy or seize California—a grab that Americans  could not tolerate under the Monroe Doctrine. In a last  desperate throw of the dice, Polk dispatched John Slidell  to Mexico City as minister late in 1845. The new envoy,  among other alternatives, was instructed to offer a  maximum of $25 million for California and territory to  the east. But the proud Mexican people would not even  permit Slidell to present his “insulting” proposition. 

  ^{American Blood on}  

American (?) Soil 

A frustrated Polk was now prepared to force a showdown.  On January 13, 1846, he ordered four thousand men,  

    369 

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370  • Chapter 17 Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy , 1841–1848 

On June 1, 1860, less than a year before he became  president, Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) wrote, “^{The act of sending an armed force among the}  

Mexicans was unnecessary, inasmuch as Mex ico was in no way molesting or menacing the  United States or the people thereof; and . . . it  was unconstitutional, because the power of  levying war is vested in Congress, and not in  

^{the President.}” 

under General Zachary Taylor, to march from the Nueces  River to the Rio Grande, provocatively near Mexican  forces. Polk’s presidential diary reveals that he expected  at any moment to hear of a clash. When none occurred  after an anxious wait, he informed his cabinet on May 9,  1846, that he proposed to ask Congress to declare war on  the basis of (1) unpaid claims and (2) Slidell’s rejection.  These, at best, were rather flimsy pretexts. Two cabinet  members spoke up and said that they would feel better  satisfied if Mexican troops should fire first. 

That very evening, as fate would have it, news of  bloodshed arrived. On April 25, 1846, Mexican troops  had crossed the Rio Grande and attacked General Tay lor’s command, with a loss of sixteen Americans killed  or wounded. 

Polk, further aroused, sent a vigorous war message  to Congress. He declared that despite “all our efforts”  to avoid a clash, hostilities had been forced upon the  country by the shedding of “American blood upon the  American soil.” A patriotic Congress overwhelmingly  voted for war, and enthusiastic volunteers cried, “Ho for  the Halls of the Montezumas!” and “Mexico or Death!”  Inflamed by the war fever, even antislavery Whig bas 

tions melted and joined with the rest of the nation,  though they later condemned “Jimmy Polk’s war.” As  James Russell Lowell of Massachusetts lamented, 

Massachusetts, God forgive her, 

She’s akneelin’ with the rest. 

In his message to Congress, Polk was making  history—not writing it. Like many presidents with  ambitious foreign-policy goals, he felt justified in  bending the truth if that was what it took to bend a  reluctant public toward war. If he had been a histo 

rian, Polk would have explained that American blood  had been shed on soil that the Mexicans had good  reason to regard as their own. A gangling, rough featured Whig congressman from Illinois, one Abraham  Lincoln, introduced certain resolutions that requested  information as to the precise “spot” on American soil  where American blood had been shed. He pushed his  spot resolutions with such persistence that he came  to be known as the “spotty Lincoln,” who could die of  

“spotted fever.” The more extreme antislavery agitators  of the North, many of them Whigs, branded the presi dent a liar—“Polk the Mendacious.” 

Did Polk provoke war? California was an impera tive point in his program, and Mexico would not sell it  at any price. The only way to get it was to use force or  wait for an internal American revolt. Yet delay seemed  dangerous, for the claws of the British lion might  snatch the ripening California fruit from the talons of  the American eagle. Grievances against Mexico were  annoying yet tolerable; in later years America endured  even worse ones. But in 1846 patience had ceased to be  a virtue, as far as Polk was concerned. Bent on grasping  California by fair means or foul, he pushed the quarrel  to a bloody showdown. 

Both sides, in fact, were spoiling for a fight. Feisty  Americans, especially southwestern expansionists,  were eager to teach the Mexicans a lesson. The Mexi cans, in turn, were burning to humiliate the “Bul lies of the North.” Possessing a considerable standing  army, heavily overstaffed with generals, they boasted  of invading the United States, freeing the black slaves,  and lassoing whole regiments of Americans. They  were hoping that the quarrel with Britain over Oregon  would blossom into a full-dress war, as it came near  doing, and further pin down the hated yanquis. A con quest of Mexico’s vast and arid expanses seemed fan tastic, especially in view of the bungling American  invasion of Canada in 1812. 

Both sides were fired by moral indignation. The  Mexican people could fight with the flaming sword of  righteousness, for had not the “insolent” Yankee picked  a fight by polluting their soil? Many earnest Americans,  on the other hand, sincerely believed that Mexico was  the aggressor. 

  ^{The Mastering of Mexico} 

Polk wanted California—not war. But when war came,  he hoped to fight it on a limited scale and then pull out  when he had captured the prize. The dethroned Mexican  dictator Santa Anna, then exiled with his teenage bride  in Cuba, let it be known that if the American blockad 

ing squadron would permit him to slip into Mexico, he  would sell out his country. Incredibly, Polk agreed to  this discreditable intrigue. But the double-crossing Santa  Anna, once he returned to Mexico, proceeded to rally  his countrymen to a desperate defense of their soil. 

American operations in the Southwest and in  California were completely successful (see Map 17.3).  In 1846 General Stephen W. Kearny led a detachment  of seventeen hundred troops over the famous Santa  Fe Trail from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe. This sun 

baked outpost, with its drowsy plazas, was easily cap tured. But before Kearny could reach California, the  

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fertile province was won. When war broke out, Cap tain John C. Frémont, the dashing explorer, just “hap pened” to be there with several dozen well-armed men.  In helping to overthrow Mexican rule in 1846, he col laborated with American naval officers and with the  local Americans, who had hoisted the banner of the  

short-lived California Bear Flag Republic. General Zachary Taylor meanwhile had been spear heading the main thrust. Known as “Old Rough and  Ready” because of his iron constitution and incred ibly unsoldierly appearance—he sometimes wore a  Mexican straw hat—he fought his way across the Rio  Grande into Mexico. After several gratifying victories,  he reached Buena Vista. There, on February 22–23,  1847, his weakened force of five thousand men was  attacked by some twenty thousand march-weary troops  under Santa Anna. The Mexicans were finally repulsed  with extreme difficulty, and overnight Zachary Taylor  became the “Hero of Buena Vista.” One Kentuckian was  

Map 17.3 Major Campaigns of the Mexican War © Cengage Learning 

Causes of the Mexican War • 371 

heard to say that “Old Zack” would be elected president  in 1848 by “spontaneous combustion.” 

Sound American strategy now called for a crush ing blow at the enemy’s vitals—Mexico City. General  Taylor, though a good leader of modest-sized forces,  could not win decisively in the semideserts of northern  Mexico. The command of the main expedition, which  pushed inland from the coastal city of Veracruz early  in 1847, was entrusted to General Winfield Scott. A  handsome giant of a man, Scott had emerged as a hero  from the War of 1812 and had later earned the nick name “Old Fuss and Feathers” because of his resplen dent uniforms and strict discipline. He was severely  handicapped in the Mexican campaign by inadequate  numbers of troops, by expiring enlistments, by a more  numerous enemy, by mountainous terrain, by disease,  and by political backbiting at home. Yet he succeeded  in battling his way up to Mexico City by Septem ber 1847 in one of the most brilliant campaigns in  

120°W 110°W 100°W 90°W 

⁴⁰°N 

Bear Flag Revolt 

F^rém^on^t 1⁸4⁶ 

OREGON 

TERRITORY 

(1846) 

_Fré^mo_nt ¹⁸4⁵_–46 

UNORGANIZED 

TERRITORY 

Pl^atte _R. 

^Mi_s^sou_ri 

WISCONSIN 

IOWA 

ILLINOIS 

MICH. 

TERR. 

OHIO 

June 14, 1845 

Yerba Buena 

^Bent’s Fort 

^R. 

Fort 

Leavenworth 

^Mi_ssⁱs^si_pp^{i R}. 

IND. 

^{(San Francisco)} Occupied July 10, 1846 

_Co^lora_do ^R. 

_Ke^{arny 184}8 

MISSOURI 

KENTUCKY 

P A 

Monterey 

Occupied July 7, 1846 

Taos Revolt Feb. 3–4, 1847 

A^rkan^sa^{s R}. 

U N I T E D S T A T E S TENNESSEE 

C 

I 

F _I 

C 

S_t^oc^kt_o^{n 18}4₆ 

Los Angeles 

San Gabriel 

Jan. 8, 1847 

San 

M E X I C O Kear^ny 1846 

Santa Fe 

Occupied Aug. 18, 1846 Valverde 

Dec. 12, 1846 

El Brazito 

INDIAN 

 ^TERRITORY ARKANSAS 

MISS. 

ALA. 

GA. 

^O C ^E A _N 

Diego 

_{Dec. 25, 1846} San Pasqual 

³⁰°N 

Dec. 6, 1846 

D^onⁱp^h_an 

1⁸⁴7 

^Rio _Graⁿd_e 

T E X A S 

Fort 

Sam Houston 

LOUISIANA New Orleans 

FL. 

0 

200 400 Km. 

S^lo_a^t 1₈⁴6 

Sacramento Feb. 28, 1847 

Chihuahua 

W^oo^l ₁8⁴6 

(San Antonio) 

^Nu_ece^{s R}. 

Corpus 

Christi 

S^co^tt ¹8⁴6 

Gulf of 

N 

0 200 400 Mi. 

Buena Vista 

Matamoros 

Mexico 

_{Feb. 22–23, 1847} Monterrey 

Disputed area 

Mexican movements U.S. movements Mexican victory 

Mazatlán 

S_an^ta Aⁿⁿa 

1⁸4₇ 

San Luis 

Potosí 

Sept. 19–24, 1846 

Tampico 

Occupied 

Mérida 

U.S. victory 

U.S. naval blockade 

20°N 

Mexico City 

Sept. 13–14, 1847 

Nov. 14,1846 

S^co^{tt 1}8⁴7 

Veracruz 

Mexican cession, 1848 

Cerro Gordo 

April 17–18, 1847 

Occupied 

March 29,1847 

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372  • Chapter 17 Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy , 1841–1848 

American military annals. He proved to be the most  distinguished general produced by his country between  the Revolution and the Civil War. 

  ^{Fighting Mexico for Peace} 

Polk was anxious to end the shooting as soon as he  could secure his territorial goals. Accordingly, he sent  along with Scott’s invading army the chief clerk of the  State Department, Nicholas P. Trist, who among other  weaknesses was afflicted with an overfluid pen. Trist  and Scott arranged for an armistice with Santa Anna, at  a cost of $10,000. The wily dictator pocketed the bribe  and then used the time to bolster his defenses. 

Negotiating a treaty with a sword in one hand and  a pen in the other was ticklish business. Polk, disgusted  with his blundering envoy, abruptly recalled Trist. The  wordy diplomat then dashed off a sixty-five-page letter  explaining why he was not coming home. The presi 

dent was furious. But Trist, grasping a fleeting oppor tunity to negotiate, signed the Treaty of Guadalupe  Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, and forwarded it to  Washington. 

War News from Mexico, by Richard 

Caton Woodville The newfangle 

telegraph kept the nation closely informed  

of events in far-off Mexico. 

The terms of the treaty were breathtaking. They  confirmed the American title to Texas and yielded the  enormous area stretching westward to Oregon and the  ocean and embracing coveted California. This total  expanse, including Texas, was about one-half of Mex 

ico. The United States agreed to pay $15 million for the  land and to assume the claims of its citizens against  Mexico in the amount of $3,250,000 (see “Makers of  America: The Californios,” pp. 374–375). 

Polk submitted the treaty to the Senate. Although  Trist had proved highly annoying, he had generally fol lowed his original instructions. And speed was imper ative. The antislavery Whigs in Congress—dubbed  “Mexican Whigs” or “Conscience Whigs”—were  denouncing this “damnable war” with increasing heat.  Having secured control of the House in 1847, they were  even threatening to vote down supplies for the armies  in the field. If they had done so, Scott probably would  have been forced to retreat, and the fruits of victory  might have been tossed away. 

Another peril impended. A swelling group of  expansionists, intoxicated by Manifest Destiny, was  clamoring for all of Mexico. If America had seized it,  the nation would have been saddled with an expensive  

_{Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, Private Collection, image}  

_{courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.}  

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Early in 1848 the New York Evening Post demanded, “^{Now we ask, whether any man can coolly}  

contemplate the idea of recalling our troops  from the [Mexican] territory we at present  occupy . . . and . . . resign this beautiful country  to the custody of the ignorant cowards and  profligate ruffians who have ruled it for the  last twenty-five years? Why, humanity cries out  against it. Civilization and Christianity protest  against this reflux of the tide of barbarism and  

” 

anarchy. 

Such was one phase of Manifest Destiny. 

and vexatious policing problem. Farseeing southerners  like Calhoun, alarmed by the mounting anger of anti slavery agitators, realized that the South would do well  not to be too greedy. The treaty was finally approved by  the Senate, 38 to 14. Oddly enough, it was condemned  both by those opponents who wanted all of Mexico  and by opponents who wanted none of it. 

Victors rarely pay an indemnity, especially after  a costly conflict has been “forced” on them. Yet Polk,  who had planned to offer $25 million before fighting  the war, arranged to pay $18,250,000 after winning it.  Cynics have charged that the Americans were pricked  by guilty consciences; apologists have pointed proudly  to the “Anglo-Saxon spirit of fair play.” A decisive factor  was the need for haste, while there was still a respon 

sible Mexican government to carry out the treaty  and before political foes in the United States, notably  the antislavery zealots, sabotaged Polk’s expansionist  program. 

  ^{Profit and Loss in Mexico} 

As wars go, the Mexican War was a small one. It cost  some thirteen thousand American lives, most of them  taken by disease. But the fruits of the fighting were  enormous. 

America’s total expanse, already vast, was increased  by about one-third (counting Texas)—an addition even  greater than that of the Louisiana Purchase. A sharp  stimulus was given to the spirit of Manifest Destiny, for  as the proverb has it, the appetite comes with eating. 

The Mexican War proved to be the blood-spattered  schoolroom of the Civil War. The campaigns provided  priceless field experience for most of the officers destined  to become leading generals in the forthcoming conflict,  including Captain Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant Ulysses  S. Grant. The Military Academy at West Point, founded  

The Peace Settlement with Mexico • 373 

in 1802, fully justified its existence through the well trained officers. Useful also was the navy, which did  valuable work in throwing a crippling blockade around  Mexican ports. A new academy at Annapolis had just  been established by Navy Secretary and historian George  Bancroft in 1845. The Marine Corps, in existence since  1798, won new laurels and to this day sings in its stir 

ring hymn about the “Halls of Montezuma.” The army waged war without defeat and with out a major blunder, despite formidable obstacles and  a half-dozen or so achingly long marches. Chagrined  British critics, as well as other foreign skeptics, reluc tantly revised upward their estimate of Yankee military  prowess. Opposing armies, moreover, emerged with  increased respect for each other. The Mexicans, though  poorly led, fought heroically. At Chapultepec, near  Mexico City, the teenage lads of the military academy  there (los niños) perished to a boy. 

Long-memoried Mexicans have never forgotten  that their northern enemy tore away about half of their  country. The argument that they were lucky not to  lose all of it, and that they had been paid something  for their land, has scarcely lessened their bitterness.  The war also marked an ugly turning point in rela 

tions between the United States and Latin America as  a whole. Hitherto, Uncle Sam had been regarded with  some complacency, even friendliness. Henceforth, he  was increasingly feared as the “Colossus of the North.”  Suspicious neighbors to the south condemned him as  a greedy and untrustworthy bully, who might next  despoil them of their soil. 

Most ominous of all, the war rearoused the snarling  dog of the slavery issue, and the beast did not stop yelp ing until drowned in the blood of the Civil War. Abo litionists assailed the Mexican conflict as one provoked  by the southern “slavocracy” for its own evil purposes.  As James Russell Lowell had Hosea Biglow drawl in his  Yankee dialect, 

They jest want this Californy 

So’s to lug new slave-states in 

To abuse ye, an’ to scorn ye, 

An’ to plunder ye like sin. 

In line with Lowell’s charge, the bulk of the Ameri can volunteers were admittedly from the South and  Southwest. But, as in the case of the Texas Revolution, the  basic explanation was proximity rather than conspiracy. 

Quarreling over slavery extension also erupted on  the floors of Congress. In 1846, shortly after the shoot ing started, Polk had requested an appropriation of  $2 million with which to buy a peace. Representative  David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, fearful of the southern  “slavocracy,” introduced a fateful amendment. It stipu lated that slavery should never exist in any of the terri tory to be wrested from Mexico. 

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MakersofAmerica The Californios 

I 

n 1848 the United States, swollen with the spoils  of war, reckoned the costs and benefits of the con flict with Mexico. Thousands of Americans had fallen  in battle, and millions of dollars had been invested in a  war machine. For this expenditure of blood and money,  the nation was repaid with ample land—and with peo ple, the former citizens of Mexico who now became,  whether willingly or not, Americans. The largest single  addition to American territory in history, the Mexican  Cession stretched the United States from sea to shining  sea. It secured Texas, brought in vast tracts of the des ert Southwest, and included the great prize—the fruited  valleys and port cities of California. There, at the con clusion of the Mexican War, dwelled some thirteen  thousand Californios—descendants of the Spanish and  Mexican conquerors who had once ruled California. The Spanish had first arrived in California in 1769,  extending their New World empire and outracing Rus sian traders to bountiful San Francisco Bay. Father  Junipero Serra, an enterprising Franciscan friar, soon  established twenty-one missions along the coast (see  

Map 17.4). Indians in the iron grip of the missions were  encouraged to adopt Christianity and were often forced  to toil endlessly as farmers and herders, in the process  suffering disease and degradation. These frequently  maltreated mission Indians occupied the lowest rungs  on the ladder of Spanish colonial society. 

Upon the loftiest rungs perched the Californios.  Pioneers from the Mexican heartland of New Spain,  they had trailed Serra to California, claiming land and  civil offices in their new home. Yet even the proud  Californios had deferred to the all-powerful Francis 

can missionaries until Mexico threw off the Spanish  colonial yoke in 1821, whereupon the infant Mexican  government turned an anxious eye toward its frontier  outpost. 

Mexico now emptied its jails to send settlers to  the sparsely populated north, built and garrisoned  fortresses, and, most important, transferred authority  from the missions to secular (that is, governmental)  authorities. This “secularization” program attacked and  eroded the immense power of the missions and of their  

Dance of Native Californians at San Francisco de Assis Mission, 1816,  

Ludwig Choris In the sixty years that they operated, the twenty-one California  

missions employed 142 priests and baptized 87,787 Indians. Missions became a  

combination of churches, towns, schools, farms, factories, and prisons. 

_{University of California at Berkeley, Bancroft Librar}y 

374    

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_{Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural}  

^38°N 

San Rafael 1817 

San Francisco 

San Francisco Solano 1823 

San Francisco de Asís 1776 

San José 

S 

I 

E 

R 

R 

_{History Museum of Los Angeles Count}y 

^36°N 

Santa Clara 1777 

Monterey 

San Carlos Borromeo 

1770 

1797 

Santa Cruz 

1791 

San Juan Bautista 1797 

Soledad 

1791 

A 

N 

E 

V 

A 

D 

The Landowner and His Foreman, by Julio Michard, 1839 This California ranchero’s way of life was soon to b extinguished when California became part of the United  States in 1848 and thousands of American gold-seekers rushed into the state the following year. 

San Antonio 

de Padua 

1771 

P A C I F I C 

O C E A N 

La Purísima 

Concepción 

1787 

San Miguel 

1797  

San Luis Obispo 1772 

Santa Ynez 

1804 

A 

Mission 

Presidio (Fort) El Camino Réal (Royal Road) 

^34°N 

0 

Franciscan masters—with their bawling herds of cattle,  

Santa Barbara 

1786 

30 60 Km. 

San Buenaventura 

1782 

San Fernando Rey 

1797 

San Gabriel 

debased Indian workers, millions of acres of land, and  lucrative foreign trade. The frocked friars had com manded their fiefdoms so self-confidently that earlier  reform efforts had dared to go no further than levy ing a paltry tax on the missions and politely requesting  that the missionaries limit their floggings of Indians to  fifteen lashes per week. But during the 1830s, the power  

0 30 60 Mi. 

122°W 

N 

1771 

San Juan Capistrano 1776 

San Luis Rey 

1798 

San Diego de Alcalá 

of the missions weakened, and much of their land and  their assets was confiscated by the Californios. Vast ran 

120°W 

1769 

chos (ranches) formed, and from those citadels the Cali fornios ruled in their turn until the Mexican War. 

Map 17.4 Spanish Missions and Presidios © Cengage Learni 

The Californios’ glory faded in the wake of the  American victory, even though in some isolated places  they clung to their political offices for a decade or two.  

Houghton-Mifflin 

Kennedy, The American Pagent 14e, ©2010 kennedy_17_04_Ms00291 

Spanish Missions and Presidios 

No bleeds 

Overwhelmed by the inrush of Anglo gold-diggers— some eighty-seven thousand after the discovery at Sut ter’s Mill in 1848—and undone by the waning of the  pastoral economy, the Californios saw their recently  acquired lands and their recently established politi cal power slip through their fingers. When the Civil  War broke out in 1861, so harshly did the word Yankee ring in their ears that many Californios supported the  South. 

By 1870 the Californios’ brief ascendancy had  utterly vanished—a short and sad tale of riches to  rags in the face of the Anglo onslaught. Half a cen tury later, beginning in 1910, hundreds of thousands  of young Mexicans would flock into California and the  

Southwest. They would enter a region liberally endowed  Trim 20p6 x 35p6  

with Spanish architecture and artifacts, bearing the  Final Proof: 8/8/08 

names of Spanish missions and Californio ranchos. But  they would find it a land dominated by Anglos, a place  far different from that which their Californio ancestors  had settled so hopefully in earlier days. 

    375 

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_{West Point Museum Art Collection, United States Military Academ}y 

Storming the Fortress of Chapultepec, Mexico, 1847 The American success  

Chapultepec contributed heavily to the final victory over Mexico. One American 

commander lined up several Irish American deserters on a gallows facing the castle and 

melodramatically dropped the trapdoors beneath them just as the United States flag  

was raised over the captured battlement. According to legend, the flag was raised by 

First Lieutenant George Pickett, later immortalized as the leader of “Pickett’s charge” i 

the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, 1863. 

The disruptive Wilmot amendment twice passed the  House, but not the Senate. Southern members, unwill ing to be robbed of prospective slave states, fought the  restriction tooth and nail. Antislavery men, in Congress  and out, battled no less bitterly for the exclusion of  slaves. The Wilmot Proviso never became federal law,  but it was eventually endorsed by the legislatures of all  but one of the free states, and it came to symbolize the  burning issue of slavery in the territories. 

In a broad sense, the opening shots of the Mexican  War were the opening shots of the Civil War. President  Polk left the nation the splendid physical heritage of  

Chapter Review KEY TERMS 

California and the Southwest but also the ugly moral  heritage of an embittered slavery dispute. “Mexico will  poison us,” said the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Even the great champion of the South, John C. Cal 

houn, had prophetically warned that “Mexico is to us  the forbidden fruit . . . the penalty of eating it would be  to subject our institutions to political death.” Mexicans  could later take some satisfaction in knowing that the  territory wrenched from them had proved to be a ven 

omous apple of discord that could well be called Santa  Anna’s revenge. 

Tariff of 1842 (361) Caroline (362) 

Creole (362) 

Aroostook War (363) Manifest Destiny (366) 

376    

“Fifty-four forty  or fight” (367) 

Liberty party (367) Walker Tariff (367) spot resolutions (370) 

California Bear Flag  

Republic (371) 

Buena Vista, Battle of (371) Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty  of (372) 

Conscience Whigs (372) Wilmot Proviso (376) 

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PEOPLE TO KNOW 

John Tyler 

James K. Polk 

Stephen W. Kearny 

John C. Frémont 

CHRONOLOGY 

Winfield Scott Nicholas P. Trist David Wilmot 

Chapter Review • 377 

1837 Canadian rebellion and Caroline incident 

1839 Aroostook War breaks out over Maine  boundary 

1840 Antislavery Liberty party organized 

1841 Harrison dies after four weeks in office Tyler assumes presidency 

1842 Webster-Ashburton treaty 

1844 Polk defeats Clay in “Manifest Destiny”  election 

1845 United States annexes Texas 

To Le 

William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great  West (1992) 

Iris Engstrand et al., Culture y Cultura: Consequences of the  U.S.-Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1998) 

John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (1986) 

Sam W. Haynes and Christopher Morris, eds., Manifest  Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism (1997) 

Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The  Mexican War in the American Imagination (1985) Theodore J. Karamanski, Fur Trade and Exploration:  Opening the Far Northwest, 1821–1852 (1983) 

James McCaffrey, Army of Manifest Destiny: The American  Soldier in the Mexican War (1992) 

Go to the CourseMate website at  

www.cengagebrain.com for  

additional study tools and review  

materials—including audio and  

video clips—for this chapter. 

1846 Walker Tariff 

Independent treasury restored 

United States settles Oregon dispute with  

Britain 

United States and Mexico clash over Texas  

boundary 

Kearny takes Santa Fe 

Frémont conquers California 

Wilmot Proviso passes House of  

Representatives 

1846–1848 Mexican War 

1847 Battle of Buena Vista 

Scott takes Mexico City 

1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 

Dale Morgan, ed., Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of  the California-Oregon Trail (1963) 

Martha Sandweiss, Print and Legend: Photography and the  American West (2002) 

Michael L. Tate, Indians and Emigrants: Encounters on the  Overland Trails (2006) 

Richard Bruce Winders, Crisis in the Southwest: The United  States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas (2002) 

A complete, annotated bibliography for this  chapter—along with brief descriptions of the  People to Know—may be found on the American  Pageant website. The Key Terms are defined in a  Glossary at the end of the text. 

Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

AP* Review Questions for Chapter 17 

1.  What distinguished William Henry Harrison’s presidency? 

 (A) It was plagued by tensions between western set tlers and Native Americans. 

 (B) It was the shortest on record. 

 (C) It was marked by hard drinking. 

 (D) It was undermined by venomous Whig party politics. 

 (E)  It was the first time a frontiersman held the United States’ highest office. 

  2.  What prompted fiercely loyal Whigs to denounce their leader, President John Tyler, as “His Accidency”?  (A) His veto of bills to establish a national bank  (B) His refusal to sign the Tariff of 1842 

 (C) His height and natural clumsiness 

 (D) His perceived ineptitude as president 

 (E)  His inability to keep his entire cabinet from resigning 

  3.  Tyler was considered by contemporaries as a “Demo crat in Whig clothing” for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that he 

 (A) supported states’ rights over a nationalist agenda.  (B) disliked protective tariffs. 

 (C) favored federal funding of internal improvements like roads and canals. 

 (D) opposed a national bank. 

 (E)  rejected the idea of turning profits from the sale of western lands over to the states. 

  4.  In the 1830s, America’s relationship with Britain was marked by all of the following EXCEPT 

 (A) a borrower-lender status. 

 (B) a constant state of being on the brink of war.  (C) a series of compromises. 

 (D) ongoing boundary disputes. 

 (E)  tension over tariffs. 

  5.  The U.S.-British tension over the Maine-Canada boundary that nearly sparked a war was finally settled in 1842 by 

 (A) granting the entire area in question to the Americans. 

 (B) granting the entire area in question to the British.  (C) dividing the area equally between both nations.  (D) adjusting the Canadian border so that the United 

States gained an additional 6,500 square miles.  (E)  adjusting the Canadian border so that the British gained thousands of miles of U.S. territory. 

377A    

  6.  Which of the following did NOT influence the deci sion to annex Texas, the Lone Star Republic, to the United States in 1845? 

 (A) Fear that Texas’s continued independence made America vulnerable 

 (B) The belief that Mexico would not be able to reclaim its lost Texas territory 

 (C) Increasing British interest in Texas 

 (D) Pressure from southern states to annex Texas, ide ally as a slave territory 

 (E)  Whig campaigning in the 1844 election on the promise of annexing Texas 

  7.  Manifest Destiny is best described as 

 (A) a sense of mission to ultimately eliminate slavery from U.S. soil. 

 (B) the goal of expelling all foreign influences from American borders so that the nation could fully develop as a republic. 

 (C) the notion that America was ordained by God to spread its democratic institutions beyond its exist ing borders. 

 (D) America’s push toward becoming a commercial nation and world power. 

 (E)  a phrase coined by Henry Clay to justify pushing the British further back into Canada. 

  8.  How was the question of the Oregon boundary finally resolved between the United States and Britain?  (A) Britain peacefully settled for the proposed line of 498. 

 (B) America threatened war with England over settling the boundary at the Columbia River. 

 (C) Polk pushed his 1844 campaign promise of the 548 40’ line until Britain agreed. 

 (D) The two nations agreed to continue jointly occu pying the region as they had for decades. 

 (E)  American settlers in the territory attacked small clusters of British until they withdrew into 

Canada. 

  9.  All of the following fanned the flames that led to the U.S. war with Mexico EXCEPT 

 (A) Polk’s desire for California. 

 (B) Britain’s offer to purchase California from Mexico.  (C) a dispute over where the Texas border with Mexico actually lay. 

 (D) Mexico’s anger at the U.S. annexation of its terri tory in revolt, Texas. 

 (E)  American bloodshed at the hands of Mexican troops along the Rio Grande. 

Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

10. What was Polk’s real goal once the battle with Mexico began? 

 (A) To end the fighting once he captured California  (B) To conquer all of Mexico’s land claims north of the Nueces River 

 (C) To use Santa Anna to betray—and help the United States annex—Mexico 

 (D) To keep Mexico from regaining Texas and advanc ing into the United States 

 (E)  To take Mexico City 

 11. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S. war with Mexico, included all of the following terms EXCEPT that it 

 (A) confirmed that Texas belonged to the United States. 

 (B) gave the United States all of the territory to the Pacific, including California. 

 (C) required the United States to assume the land claims against Mexico made by U.S. citizens.  (D) required that the United States pay $25 million for its land acquisitions, primarily California. 

 (E)  granted to the United States nearly one-half of all the land formerly held by Mexico. 

 12. Who were the Californios? 

 (A) The original inhabitants of the land later called California 

 (B) The descendants of Spanish and Mexican conquer ors who once ruled the region 

 (C) Christian missionaries who sought to convert local Indians along the Pacific Coast 

 (D) Mexican prisoners released from jail and sent to settle California 

 (E)  The name given to U.S. settlers who moved into the territory acquired after the war with Mexico 

 13. From a domestic standpoint, which of these was NOT a product of the war with Mexico? 

 (A) A significant loss of life and a weakening of the U.S. army 

 (B) Training the military officials who would eventu ally become leaders in the Civil War 

 (C) Pushing the slavery debate into the foreground  (D) Weakening U.S. relations with Latin America  (E)  Increasing the geographic size of the United States by one-third 

AP* Review Questions for Chapter 17 • 377B 

14. Symbolically important, the 1846 Wilmot Proviso stated that 

 (A) slavery should never be established in the territo ries acquired from Mexico. 

 (B) each new territory in the land acquired from Mex ico should decide the slave issue for itself. 

 (C) slavery in the United States should end by a speci fied date. 

 (D) the number of slave and free states should remain equal and balanced. 

 (E)  southern states would make no effort to influence the further course of slavery in the territories. 

 15. John C. Calhoun stated, “Mexico is to us the forbid den fruit . . . the penalty of eating it would be to sub ject our institutions to political death.” How did this statement prove to be correct? 

 (A) Northerners took control of the newly acquired land, limiting the South’s power. 

 (B) European nations regarded the United States as an aggressor. 

 (C) The controversy resulting from gaining new land led to the Civil War. 

 (D) The United States went into debt after paying mil lions of dollars for the Mexican Cession. 

 (E)  The president gained too much power with the addition of new territories. 

 16. All of the following accomplishments from the 1840s are examples of America fulfilling its Manifest Destiny EXCEPT 

 (A) gaining land that would become New Mexico and Arizona from Mexico. 

 (B) lowering tariff rates. 

 (C) annexing Texas. 

 (D) formally acquiring land in Oregon Country.  (E)  acquiring gold-rich California. 

Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.