Orators caused as much pain as generals, perhaps. “Black Tom” Corwin’s brilliant advice that American soldiers in Mexico should be welcomed to hospitable graves, though it gained high rank in the nightmare school of literature, overshot the mark. It scandalized the nation. It staggered patriotism. It shocked humanity. Most of all it infuriated the troops, battling for their country in a foreign land. The speech arrived at Buena Vista soon after the struggle with Santa Anna. A rude effigy of Corwin was made up of the vilest materials, dressed in a Mexican uniform and burned; and over the ashes these lines were posted up:
“Old Tom Corwin is dead and here he lies;
Nobody’s sorry and nobody cries;
Where he’s gone and how he fares,
Nobody knows and nobody cares.”
The soldiers had friends at home, and of course made their sentiments known. The speech sounded the knell of its author’s great political hopes; and there is reason to believe that its reception frightened into dumbness a number of his colleagues, who had arranged to follow his lead.[17]
But other styles of oratorical attack were still feasible. Just before Congress met in December, 1846, the Whigs hung out at the Chinese Museum, Philadelphia, their Great Blue Light. In other words a powerful orator, a powerful lawyer, a powerful statesman—Daniel Webster by name—after studying on the problem for half a year, undertook, if one may quote an admirer, to “knock the sand” from under the government. Hour after hour he talked on, till he mortgaged fourteen columns of the United States Gazette, and the reporters fled; but he came far short of making out a case. Other efforts of his proved no more successful. Before the Whig convention at Springfield he argued in a tedious, prosy, court-room style. This is “a war of pretexts”—three of them, he asserted: first, that Mexico invaded American territory; secondly, that she would not receive Slidell; and thirdly, that she would not pay our claims. Did Webster fail to see that a casus belli recognized almost unanimously by our Executive and Congress was for this country at least more than a “pretext”? Did he fail to see that his other “pretexts” had not been offered by Polk as grounds for passing the war bill? And how could he say the pretexts were “all unfounded”? Did he suppose that Mexico had paid our claims? Did he suppose that she had welcomed Slidell? Of course not; but he was the attorney of New England Whiggism, trying to make a good case out of a poor one.[18]
His really effective contributions to the polemics consisted, not of arguments, but of impressive hints: “I am greatly deceived, Mr. President, if we shall not ere long see facts coming to the light, and circumstances found coinciding and concurring, which will fix on the government” its alleged guilt; and a President bringing on war in the manner charged against Polk, would commit “an impeachable offence,” as if Polk might have been impeached after Congress had assumed the responsibility for his acts. But unhappily Father Ritchie offered another citation, “Well, well, we know; or there be, and if there might; or if we list to speak.”[18]
And not only did Webster disappoint, but he mortified Whig friends. Texas had been an independent state as early as 1840, he said; our annexing it gave Mexico no just ground of complaint; she was “entirely unreasonable and senseless” in rejecting our offer to treat; if she preferred war to peace we could but fight; and now the war must be vigorously prosecuted. He squarely refused to call the invasion of her territory unjust. He seemed to approve of his son’s going to the field in the “unholy” cause of his country. He admitted that Whig policy in Massachusetts was in some respects “quite narrow.” “I am tired—and disgusted—as much as you possibly can be, with the fanaticism and narrowness of some of our People,” he wrote; and no doubt it made him still more tired to hear Lowell’s captivating but wayward muse advise young fellows, on grounds of personal advantage, to keep out of the army, and suggest that, should they get seduced by some “strutting” sergeant into taking up arms for the country, insubordination and even desertion would become them.
“Thrash away, you’ll hev to rattle