So without regard to the logic of the situation, the welfare of the country or the needs of our armies it was urged; and then Calhoun made a profit in his turn by bringing in a series of pro-slavery dogmas to rally the southerners under his banner. The northern Whigs, for reasons just mentioned, and particularly to save themselves at home, took up the Proviso, and it fared well; but after a time the party discovered that favoring it might cost them several states in the next Presidential contest, and so the New Commandment was quietly filed away.[30]
BERRIEN’S PLAN
To replace it, however, calm the “Proviso men,” and avert a party split by preventing the emergence of a slavery issue, the “patriotic sublimity” of the Whigs evolved another idea. This was the proposition of Senator Berrien that no territory should be taken from Mexico, and that while it would be “desirable” to have the Texas boundary settled and our claims paid, we should always be ready to make terms that would leave Mexican honor “inviolate.” Here was truly a remarkable proposition. By voting three millions to facilitate a settlement with Mexico, in full view of Polk’s grounds for proposing that measure, Congress had already committed itself to the principle of acquiring territory.[31]
But other objections to Berrien’s plan far outweighed the point of consistency. If the United States was to decide what would satisfy Mexican honor, the plan could only have proved futile—even insulting; and if Mexico herself, it was ludicrous. Nothing would have satisfied Mexico’s ideas of honor except the evacuation of her territory and the surrender of Texas. When convinced by the passage of this resolution that she had nothing to lose in the end, she would have felt still less anxiety to sacrifice her daily golden egg—the money that our armies paid out—by ending the war. Implying that she had done nothing worthy of stripes, Berrien turned the war Message and the war bill into falsehoods, and accused the United States of a horrible crime—the crime of warring upon an innocent neighbor merely to do havoc. He reduced the minima of our solemn demands to mere desiderata. He represented our expenditures, our dead and our victories as elements of a senseless farce, and left us no respectable excuse for having troops in Mexico, except that we sent them down to scatter silver dollars and study the fandango. He proposed to make this nation unique in history as combining the villain, the ruffian, the simpleton and the comedian. He attempted to revive the unendurable status quo ante, leave the United States without indemnity for the past or security for the future, stimulate Mexican vanity and self-confidence, and weaken the prestige of our arms in Europe. In order to preserve Whig solidarity he aimed to deprive us, not merely of California, but of self-respect.[31]
All this Berrien proposed. Yet Webster, dreaming still of the Presidency, endorsed the plan. He was put up as a candidate by the Massachusetts Whigs on that basis; and his party, hoping to win spoils in the approaching national election by this device, quite generally accepted it. Said a correspondent of the National Intelligencer, vouched for by the editor as a Whig statesman, “No Mexican territory. Let this be the issue. Let this be the motto inscribed on the Whig banner, and victory is certain.”[31]
All these manoeuvres of the Whigs, aided by the Democratic underworking, resulted, of course, in the protraction of a war which they posed as hating. The first seven weeks of the session were almost thrown away. The opposition hung back from granting needed troops for reasons already suggested, and also lest the administration should turn the appointments to party account. Democratic dissensions and probably a wish to annoy Whig generals had a similar effect. Grudges on account of the tariff and the river and harbor veto played their part against war legislation. Men stooped so low as to argue that Polk, the President of the United States, could not be trusted with $3,000,000, when customhouse officials had larger sums in their keeping. And then his “imbecile” administration was charged with permitting the war to drag, “when by a few vigorous blows it could have been ended long since.” Its course exhibited “unsurpassed inefficiency,” declared the Boston Atlas, as well as “one unrelieved picture of wrongdoing, corruption, weakness and blunders.” Indeed, the government, “rolling this war, as a sweet morsel, under its tongue,” was detected in wilfully doing “everything in its power to prevent” the energetic operations upon which, as any one could see, its financial, political and personal credit vitally depended.[32]
CLAY’S LEADERSHIP
In November, 1847, Henry Clay, the plumed leader of the national Whig party, celebrated also as the man who elected Polk, after taking even a longer time than others to consult the omens, gave out a speech and a set of resolutions. These were intended as a chart for the party to be guided by under the pilotage of that distinguished though unlucky navigator. The author forgot having said in 1813, “an honorable peace is attainable only by an efficient war,” but he remembered to condole with suffering Ireland. He forgot that a country engaged in hostilities of uncertain duration and cost cannot wisely bind itself to specific terms of peace, but reiterated the favorite Whig taunt that it was a blind war, without known aim. Historically too, he wandered a little, for he charged the President with ordering Taylor to plant cannon opposite Matamoros “at the very time” when Slidell was “bending his way” to Mexico; but Polk was unpopular, and few thought it necessary to speak the truth about him. We oppose the annexation of Mexico, Clay proclaimed, which, on the other hand was perhaps too true to be interesting; and we demand only a proper boundary for Texas, which bore him a long distance toward Berrien.[33]
But here was the master stroke: We desire to acquire no foreign territory “for the purpose” of extending slavery to it. This had the threefold merit of completely “dodging” the great question of principle, giving the northern Whigs a graven image to worship, and conceding to their southern brethren a full privilege to do anything possible in the acquired territory, after it should be ours. But unfortunately for his party the Navigator admitted that Congress had made the conflict a national war, that a long series of “glorious” victories had been won, and that since Congress had formulated no declaration regarding the objects in view, Polk—frequently accused by Whigs of carrying on the war for diabolical purposes both abhorrent and fatal to the Constitution—had been free to use his judgment. In Mexico Clay’s speech was widely circulated, and a competent observer thought it might delay peace one or two years. Such was the highest Whig leadership in what Webster called a “dark and troubled night.”[33]
One idea in the minds of not a few who endorsed the “no territory” plan was that its adoption would render the prosecution of the war aimless, and so check it abruptly. Others favored gaining the same end by stopping supplies. Ex-Senator Rives, a leader of prominence, advised Crittenden to concert measures for this purpose with Democratic “patriots”; and in fact an understanding on the point seems to have been reached. “Be prompt, when you are wrong, to back straight out,” urged the New York Tribune, demanding the recall of our troops. Other Whigs, after doing all they could to make the war aimless, argued, We are fighting for nothing, why persist? “Let us call home our armies,” insisted Corwin. “Stop the war. Withdraw our forces,” cried Sumner; and Corwin believed, early in February, 1847, that only two more votes would commit the Senate for this plan of complete national stultification, and for bringing back in a keenly aggravated state all our Mexican difficulties. Practically nobody dreamed of offering to Mexico the reparation that such an idea of dropping the war implied. The proposition was therefore hollow and insincere; little more than politics weakly flavored with sentimentality.[34]