Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

The President, without the authority or knowledge of Congress, ordered General Taylor to march to the Rio Grande and maintain it as the southern line of Texas. This precipitated the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, in which Taylor defeated the Mexicans. The Democratic Congress then prefaced a bill providing for the national defence by declaring that “we are at war by the act of Mexico.” The purpose of the Mexican war was very freely and severely criticised by a large portion of the people and by many of the ablest men of the nation. The Whigs in Congress were willing to vote for all needed appropriations for the support of the army, but a few members of the House, with the late John Strohm, of Pennsylvania, as the leader, after unsuccessfully struggling to strike out the declaration that “we were at war by the act of Mexico,” refused to vote for the army appropriation; and Corwin, of Ohio, made the ablest speech that ever was delivered in the Senate, with the single exception of Webster’s reply to Hayne, against the Mexican war and against appropriating money for its prosecution.

ZACHARY TAYLOR

The certainty that the administration would acquire a large portion of Mexican territory for the purpose of creating new Slave States gave dignity and importance to the slavery agitation that it never before attained, and in the fall elections of 1846 the Whigs carried the popular branch of Congress by a decided majority. The repeal of the protective tariff of 1842 and the substitution of the revenue tariff of 1846 contributed considerably to the Democratic disaster, and the war was finally prosecuted by the administration with an adverse House, although willing to furnish all appropriations necessary to support the armies in the field.

After Taylor’s early victories over the Mexicans he invaded Mexican territory and captured Monterey, and these victories made his name a household word throughout the country. Instead of permitting Taylor to proceed with the war that he had so successfully conducted up to that time, the administration decided to practically retire him. General Scott was called to plan an independent campaign from Vera Cruz to the capital of Mexico. It was openly charged that the administration feared the popularity of “Old Zach,” as Taylor was generally called by the people, and that it had little fear of Scott as a Presidential candidate. Scott planned his campaign; was furnished with an independent army, and when he arrived at Vera Cruz he stripped General Taylor of nearly all his regulars, leaving him an army of but little over 4000, most of them volunteers. Santa Anna, whose return to Mexico had been sanctioned by our Government, made himself Military Dictator. He gathered an army of 22,000 of the best Mexican troops and made a rapid movement to strike and crush General Taylor at Buena Vista. The history of that battle is well known. Taylor not only defeated but routed the Mexicans, and thereby made himself the next President of the United States.

General Scott made a most brilliant campaign, fighting repeated battles, and finally captured the City of Mexico, when the administration involved him in bitter controversy, as was easily done with General Scott, and had him tried by a court of his inferiors in the Capitol of the enemy he had conquered. Brilliant as was his military campaign he returned home with little if any increased prestige, and every schoolboy in the land was huzzaing for “Old Zach,” or for “Old Rough and Ready.”

There seems to be poetic justice in the marvellous historical fact that with the large amount of territory conquered from Mexico, and the additional territory afterward purchased by the Gadsden treaty, the South did not gain a single Slave State, and it quickened the issue of slavery that greatly hastened its destruction just when it hoped to attain omnipotence.

It was uncertain after the war of Mexico was inaugurated and the certainty of the acquisition of Mexican territory accepted just when and in what shape the issue of the extension of slavery would be presented. To the surprise of the friends of the administration it came much sooner and in much graver form than they had anticipated. On the 8th of August, 1846, President Polk sent a message to Congress asking for an appropriation to be placed at the President’s disposal to enable him to negotiate an advantageous treaty of peace with the Mexican Government, and a bill was promptly presented to the House appropriating $32,000,000 for immediate use in negotiations with Mexico. There were a number of able and earnest antislavery Democrats in the House, and among them David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania. When the bill, making the large appropriation to obtain peace with Mexico, that obviously meant the acquisition of Southern territory, was presented to the House, repeated conferences were had between the antislavery Democratic leaders, and what has since been known as the “Wilmot Proviso” was originally drawn by Judge Brinkerhoff, then a Democratic Congressman from Ohio, and finally revised and agreed upon, to be offered as an amendment to the Mexican Appropriation bill.

The Speaker was adverse to the antislavery Democrats, and it was uncertain whether any of them could obtain the floor to offer the amendment. The result was that a copy of the proviso was furnished to some half a dozen, with the understanding that each should take advantage of any opportunity to obtain the floor during the consideration of the bill and offer the amendment. The opportunity happened to come to Mr. Wilmot, and he offered the following amendment, that is the original of what is now known as the “Wilmot Proviso.”

“Provided, That as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty that may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory except for crime whereof the party shall be first duly convicted.”