John Quincy Adams contemplated the same extreme remedy, and Giddings went so far as to write, “Ohio is now a party to no subsisting Union.” Those opposed to the measure felt hostile to the President who had favored and consummated it; the great number whose theory had been that it would not lead to war felt obliged to argue now that Polk had brought about a conflict unnecessarily; and everything in our relations with Mexico was viewed through a fog of prejudices and animosities rising from that gory political battlefield. Not a few appointments to high military positions had seemed to rest on political expediency, and the battles near the Rio Grande had been followed by a long period of inactivity, charged by many to the government. Volunteers not accepted for the war had remarks to make, and troops returning from the front often used expressions hardly coherent enough to be termed remarks. The six-months men called out by Gaines belonged in the latter class; and although Marcy did nothing respecting them save to obey the plain requirement of the law, citizens of Louisiana applied language to him that might have kindled sympathy for Judas Iscariot.[8]
The government’s fiscal system, though of course accepted by many, excited sharp resentment. Overwhelming the country all at once with such a combination of new laws—a warehouse act, a sub-treasury bill and a “free-trade” tariff—was denounced as an unspeakable outrage, and each of those measures amounted in the opinion of many to a crime. Gideon Welles thought the idea of reducing our tariff during the war an “insane project”; and the measure as framed, a compromise between theory and expediency, satisfied hardly any one. Real free-traders complained because their principles had been sacrificed, and the New Englanders because those principles had not been sacrificed enough. The iron and coal state raged and wept by turns: she had been betrayed, and “her groans were music” to the arrogant low-tariff section cherished by the government. Only corruption and intimidation could have carried such a monstrosity through Congress; and, worse yet, “Sir Robert Walker” had been truckling to England. “British all over,” scribbled the American Sentinel on the warehousing system; and the tariff was trailed to a British lair packed with British statesmen, British capitalists, British manufacturers and British merchants. To please them our wheels of production were to stop, our banks close, and the industrious North fall in despair at the feet of an implacable South. “‘To your tents, O Israel!’” cried the National Intelligencer.[9]
DENUNCIATIONS OF THE WAR
In countless eyes the war itself soon lost its glamour. Imagining that our advance to the Rio Grande had been the cause of it, many felt bound to denounce it as unauthorized, unconstitutional, unjust, aggressive; and not a few, in dense ignorance of the history, character and views of the Mexicans, thought, like Professor Kent of Harvard University, that it was “demoniacal” to make war upon those poor innocents, as if they had not been shooting one another pretty continuously and also aching to shoot us. Not reflecting that nations begin to think of indemnities as soon, at least, as they begin to fight, and that legitimate advantages might accrue from occupying Mexican territory, people viewed suspiciously the operations of Taylor, Wool, Kearny, Stockton and Stevenson, threw up their hands, and exclaimed, “Conquest!” as if the ground they stood upon and half the world besides had not been gained by the sword. “Cormorants of territory!” hissed a Thersites. “Sages and Heroes of the Revolution, lo, the consummation of your labors!” wailed a Cassandra; Mexico is to be absorbed, and “the original, moving, burning stimulus” of the crime is the wish to manufacture glory for Polk, and gratify him with a second term. To be sure, the nation had officially endorsed the war; but multitudes were eager to have the nation disgraced, if they could only disgrace Polk.[10]
Toward the future as well as the past frowned the critics of the administration. Territory seemed likely to be acquired, and it was feared that slavery would plant its black hoof upon the soil. In Massachusetts a group of young men, who doubtless believed in freedom unselfishly, believed also that it was the coming idea, and might carry them ahead of such conservative leaders as Webster and Winthrop. Sumner was one of these; and he, without offering proof that slavery stood behind the war, pushed through the legislature some bloodcurdling resolutions against the “gigantic crime”; while Lowell, not stopping to ascertain whether negro servitude could thrive on the Pacific, sounded an appeal to sectional feelings:
“They jest want this Californy
So’s to lug new slave-states in
To abuse ye, an’ to scorn ye,
And to plunder ye like sin.”[11]
From the increased political power of the South, northern agriculture, commerce and manufactures would suffer. New, sparsely settled states would have the same authority in the Senate as Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. The augmenting of Western strength would prove an injury to older sections. New Orleans would gain ground financially and commercially at the expense of New York. Annexing new territory would lessen the value of lands already in the Union. The war would increase the power of the Executive, and bring home an army of “heroes” to monopolize the offices. It was most likely to be interminable and costly, for in the autumn of 1846 Mexico showed no signs of begging for peace and Taylor no signs of accomplishing anything decisive. Privateers might ruin our commerce, and the blockade might lead to European interference. The nation, debased by dwelling upon scenes of devastation and violence, and by the absorption of aliens low in the scale of humanity, would become barbarous, cruel, rapacious, bloodthirsty. Taxes, debt, waste of public funds, corrupt elections, a great standing army, despotism, fanaticism, civil war, disunion, the reprobation of mankind and the retribution of heaven would follow.[11]