Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

XV MEXICAN WAR—ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA AND NEW MEXICO 1846-8

With Texas came naturally a desire for more slave territory. Wrong is never satiated; it hungers as it feeds on its prey.

Pretence for quarrel arose over the boundary between Texas and Mexico. The United States unjustly claimed that the Rio Grande was the southwestern boundary of Texas instead of the Nueces, as Mexico maintained. Mexico was invaded, her cities, including her ancient capital, were taken, and her badly-organized armies overthrown. Congress, by an Act of May 13, 1846, declared that "by the act of the Republic of Mexico a state of war existed between that government and the United States," and it virtually ended in September, 1847, though the final treaty of peace at Guadalupe Hidalgo was not signed until February 2, 1848. While the annexation of Texas was regarded by Mexico as a cause of war, yet she did not declare war on that ground.

The principle of "manifest destiny" was proclaimed for the United States. In the prosecution of the war, with shameless effrontery it was justified on the necessity that "we want room" for the two hundred millions of inhabitants soon to be under our flag.

Answering this cry, put up by Senator Cass of Michigan, Senator
Thomas Corwin, in a spirit of prophecy, said:

"But you still say you want room for your people. This has been the plea of every robber-chief from Nimrod to the present hour. I dare say, when Tamerlane descended from his throne, built of seventy thousand human skulls, and marched his ferocious battalions to further slaughter,—I dare say he said, 'I want room.' Alexander, too, the mighty 'Macedonian Madman,' when he wandered with his Greeks to the plains of India, and fought a bloody battle on the very ground where recently England and the Sikhs engaged in a strife for 'room' . . . Sir, he made quite as much of that sort of history as you ever will. Mr. President, do you remember the last chapter in that history? It is soon read. Oh! I wish we could understand its moral. Ammon's son (so was Alexander named), after all his victories, died drunk in Babylon. The vast empire he conquered to 'get room' became the prey of the generals he trained; it was desparted, torn to pieces, and so ended. Sir, there is a very significant appendix; it is this: The descendants of the Greeks— of Alexander's Greeks—are now governed by a descendant of Attilla."

Through the greed of the slave power Texas was acquired, and they still longed for more slave territory, and weak Mexico alone could be depleted to obtain it.

Southern California and New Mexico had a sufficiently warm climate for slavery to flourish in.

The war was far from popular, though the pride of national patriotism supported it. Clay and Webster each opposed it, and each gave a son to it.(57)

Abraham Lincoln, then for a single term in Congress, spoke against it, but, like most other members holding similar views, voted men, money, and supplies to carry it on.

Senator Benton of Missouri, a party friend to the administration of Polk and favoring the war, said:

"The truth was, an intrigue was laid for peace before the war was declared! And this intrigue was even part of the scheme for making war. It is impossible to conceive of an administration less warlike, or more intriguing, than that of Mr. Polk. They were men of peace, with objects to be accomplished by means of war. . . . They wanted a small war, just large enough to require a treaty of peace, and not large enough to make military reputations dangerous for the Presidency."(58)

It was predicted the war would not last to exceed "90 to 120 days." The proposed conquest of Mexico was so inlaid with treachery that this prediction was justified. The Administration conspired with the then exiled Santa Anna "not to obstruct his return to Mexico."

"It was the arrangement with Santa Anna! We to put him back in Mexico, and he to make peace with us: of course an agreeable peace . . . not without receiving a consideration: and in this case some millions of dollars were required—not for himself, of course, but to enable him to promote the peace at home."(59)

Accordingly, in August, 1846, before Buena Vista and other signal successes in the war, the President asked an appropriation of $2,000,000 to be used in promoting a peace.

But already jealousy and envy toward the generals in the field had arisen, which culminated in President Polk offering to confer on Senator Thomas H. Benton (of his own party) the rank of Lieutenant- General, with full command, thus superseding the Whig Generals, Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, then possible Presidential candidates.(60)

The acquisition of more territory from Mexico being no secret, a bill for the desired appropriation precipitated, unexpectedly, a most violent discussion of the slavery question, never again allayed until slavery was eliminated from the Union.

A Democratic Representative from Pennsylvania, David Wilmot, who favored the acquisition of California and New Mexico, for the purpose of "preserving the equilibrium of States," and as an offset to the already acquired slave State of Texas, which was then expected to be soon erected into five slave States, moved, August, 1846, the following proviso to the "two million bill":

"That no part of the territory to be acquired should be open to the introduction of slavery."

This famous "Wilmot Proviso" never became a part of any law; its sole importance was in its frequent presentation and the violent discussions over it.

Thus far the national wrong against Mexico had for its manifest object the spread of slavery.

The proposition to seize Mexican territory and dedicate it to freedom threw the advocates of slavery and the war into a frenzy, and consternation in high circles prevailed.

The proviso was adopted in the House, but failed in the Senate. It was, in February, 1847, again, by the House, tacked on the "three million bill," but being struck out in the Senate, the bill passed the House without it. But the proviso had done its work; the whole North was alive to its importance, and Presidential and Congressional timber blossomed or withered accordingly as it did or did not fly a banner inscribed "Wilmot Proviso."

Calhoun, professing great alarm and great concern for the Constitution, on February 19, 1847, introduced into the Senate his celebrated resolution declaring, among other things, that the Territories belonged to the "several States . . . as their joint and common property." "That the enactment of any law which should . . . deprive the citizens of any of the States . . . from emigrating with their property [slaves] into any of the Territories . . . would be a violation of the Constitution and the rights of the States, . . . and would tend directly to subvert the Union itself."

Here was the doctrine of state-rights born into full life, with the old doctrine of nullification embodied. Benton, speaking of the dangerous character of Calhoun's resolution, said of them:

"As Sylla saw in the young Caesar many Mariuses, so did he see in them many nullifications."

Benton, quite familiar with the whole history of slavery before, during, and after the Mexican War, himself a Senator from a slave State, says the Wilmot proviso "was secretly cherished as a means of keeping up discord, and forcing the issue between the North and the South," by Calhoun and his friends, citing Mr. Calhoun's Alabama letter of 1847, already quoted, in proof of his statement.

By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February, 1848) for $15,000,000 (above $3,000,000 more than was paid Napoleon for the Louisiana Purchase), New Mexico and Upper California were ceded by Mexico to the United States, and the Rio Grande from El Paso to its mouth became the boundary between the two countries. Upper California is now the State of California, and the New Mexico thus acquired included much of the present New Mexico, nearly all of Arizona, substantially all of Utah and Nevada, and the western portion of Colorado, in area 545,000 square miles, which, together with the Gadsden Purchase, by further treaty with Mexico (December 30, 1853) for $10,000,000 more, completed the despoiling of the sister Republic. The territory acquired by the last treaty now constitutes the southern part of Arizona and the southwest corner of New Mexico.

Almost contemporaneous with the invasion of Mexico, and as part of the plan for the acquisition of her territory, Buchanan, then Secretary of State, dispatched Lieutenant Gillespie, of the United States Army, via Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and Mazatlan, to Monterey, Upper California, ostensibly with dispatches to a consul, but really for the purpose of presenting a mere letter of introduction and a verbal request to Captain John C. Fremont, U.S.A., then on an exploring expedition to the Pacific Coast. The Lieutenant found Fremont at the north end of the Great Klamath Lake, Oregon, in the midst of hostile Indians. The letter being presented, Gillespie verbally communicated from the Secretary a request for him to counteract any foreign scheme on California, and to cultivate the good-will of the inhabitants towards the United States.

On this information Fremont returned, in May, 1846 (the month the war opened on the Rio Grande), to the valley of the Sacramento. His arrival there was timely, as already the ever-grasping hand of the British was at work. There had been inaugurated (1) the massacre of American settlers, (2) the subjection of California to British protection, and (3) the transfer of its public domain to British subjects. Fremont did not even know war had broken out between the United States and Mexico, yet he organized at first a defensive war in the Sacramento Valley for the protection of American settlers, and blood was shed; then he resolved to overturn the Mexican authority, and establish "California Independence." The celerity with which all this was accomplished was romantic. In thirty days all Northern California was freed from Mexican rule—the flag of independence raised; American settlers were saved, and the British party overthrown.

Since its discovery by Sir Francis Drake—two hundred years—England had sought to possess the splendid Bay of California, with its great seaport and the tributary country. The war between the United States and Mexico seemed her opportune time for the acquisition, but her efforts, both by sea and land, were thwarted by her only less voracious daughter.(61)

Often in human affairs events concur to control or turn aside the most carefully guarded plans. California and the other Mexican acquisitions were by the war party—the slave propagandists—fore- ordained to be slave territory. The free State men had done little to favor its theft and purchase, and it was therefore claimed that they of right should have little interest in its disposition.

Just nine days (January 24, 1848) before the treaty of peace (Guadalupe Hidalgo), John A. Sutter, a Swiss by parentage, German by birth (Baden), American by residence and naturalization (Missouri), Mexican in turn, by residence and naturalization, together with James A. Marshall, a Jerseyman wheelwright in Sutter's employ, while the latter was walking in a newly-constructed and recently flooded saw-mill tail-race, in the small valley of Coloma, about forty-five miles from Sacramento (then Sutter's Fort), in the foot- hills of the Sierras, picked up some small, shining yellow particles, which proved to be free gold.(62)

"The accursed thirst for gold" was now soon to outrun the accursed greed for more slave territory. The race was unequal. The whole world joined in the race for gold. The hunger for wealth seized all alike, the common laborer, the small farmer, the merchant, the mechanic, the politician, the lawyer and the clergyman, the soldier and the sailor from the army and navy; from all countries and climes came the gold seeker; only the slaveholder with his slaves alone were left behind. There was no place for the latter with freemen who themselves swung the pick and rocked the cradle in search of the precious metal.

California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona still give up their gold and their silver to the free miner; and the financial condition and prosperity of the civilized countries of the world have been favorably affected by these productions, but of this we are not here to speak. Slavery is our text, and we must not stray too far from it.

Turning back to the negotiations for the first treaty with Mexico, we find, to her everlasting credit, though compelled to part with her possessions, she still desired they should continue to be free.

Slavery, as has already been shown, did not exist in Mexico by law; and California and New Mexico held no slaves, so, during the negotiations, the Mexican representatives begged for the incorporation of an article providing that slavery should be prohibited in all the territory to be ceded. N. P. Trist, the American Commissioner, promptly and fiercely resented the bare mention of the subject. He replied that if the territory to be acquired were tenfold more valuable, and covered a foot thick with pure gold, on the single condition that slavery was to be excluded therefrom, the proposition would not be for a moment entertained, nor even communicated to the President.(63)

Though the invocation was in behalf of humanity, the "invincible Anglo-Saxon race" (so cried Senator Preston in 1836) "could not listen to the prayer of superstitious Catholicism, goaded on by a miserable priesthood."

Now that California and New Mexico were United States territory, how was it to be devoted to slavery to reward the friends of its acquisition?

As slavery was prohibited under Mexican law, this territory must by the law of nations remain free until slavery was, by positive enactment, authorized therein. This ancient and universal law, however, was soon to be disregarded or denied by the advocates of the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States spread itself over territories, and, by force of it, legalized human slavery therein, and guaranteed to citizens of a State the right to carry their property—human slaves included—into United States territory and there hold it, by force of and protected by the Constitution, in defiance of unfriendly territorial or Congressional legislation. This novel claim also sprung from the brain of Calhoun, and was met with the true view of slavery, to wit: That it was a creature solely of law; that it existed nowhere of natural right; that whenever a slave was taken from a jurisdiction where slaves could be held by law, to one where no law made him a slave, his shackles fell off and he became a free man. The soundness of the rule that a citizen of a State could carry his personal property from his State to a Territory was admitted, but it was claimed he could not hold it there if it were not such as the laws of the Territory recognized as property. In other words, he might transfer his property from a State to a Territory, but he could not take with him the law of his State authorizing him to hold it as property. The law of the situs is of universal application governing property.

It remains to briefly note the effort to extend and interpret the Constitution, with the sole view to establish and perpetuate human slavery.

Near the close of the session of Congress (1848-49), Mr. Walker of Wisconsin, at the instigation of Calhoun moved, as a rider on an appropriation bill, a section providing a temporary government for such Territories, including a provision to "extend the Constitution of the United States to the Territories." This astounding proposition was defended by Calhoun, and, with his characteristic straightforwardness, he avowed the true object of the amendment was to override the anti-slavery laws of the Territories, and plant the institution of slavery therein, beyond the reach of Congressional or territorial law.

Mr. Webster expounded the Constitution and combated the newly brought forward slave-extension doctrine, but a majority of the Senate voted for the amendment.

The House, however, voted down the rider, and between the two branches of Congress it failed. For a time appropriations of necessary supplies for the government were made to depend on the success of the measure.(64)

Thus again the newly acquired domain escaped the doom of perpetual slavery.

But we have done with the Mexican War and the acquisition of Mexican territory. It remains to be told how this vast domain was disposed of. No part of it ever became slave.

There was not time in Polk's administration to dispose of it. General Zachary Taylor, the hero of Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey, and Buena Vista, became President, March 4, 1849. He was wholly without political experience and had never even voted at an election. He was purely a professional soldier, and a Southerner by birth and training; was a patriot, possessed of great common sense, and knew nothing of intrigue, and was endowed with a high sense of justice, and believed in the rights of the majority. He belonged to no cabal to promote, extend, or perpetuate slavery, and, probably, in his conscience was opposed to it. His Southern friends could not use him, and when they demanded his aid, as President, to plant slavery in California, he not only declined to serve them, but openly declared that California should be free. In different words, but words of like import, he responded to them, as he did to General Wool, at a critical moment in the battle of Buena Vista. Wool remarked: "General, we are whipped." Taylor responded: "That is for me to determine."(65)

(57) Lt.-Col. Henry Clay, Jr., fell at Buena Vista February 23, 1847, and Maj. Edward Webster died at San Angel, Mexico, January 23, 1848.

(58) Thirty Years' View, vol. ii., p. 680.

(59) Ibid., p. 681.

(60) Taylor became President March, 1849, succeeding Polk, and died in office July 9, 1850. Scott was nominated by his party (Whig) in 1852, and defeated; Franklin Pierce, a subordinate General of the war, was elected by his party (Democrat) President in 1852.

(61) Thirty Years' View, vol. ii., pp. 688-692.

(62) Hist. Ready Ref., vol. i, p. 350.

(63) Trist's letter to Buchanan, Secretary of State, Von Holst, vol. iii., p. 334.

(64) Historical Ex., etc., Dred Scott Case, pp. 151-9. This is the first Congress where its sessions were continued after twelve o'clock midnight, of March 3d, in the odd years. Ibid., pp. 136-9.

(65) Hist. of Mexican War (Wilcox), p. 223.