The war with Mexico reviewed

Front matter

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Preface

The delay in publishing tMs Review demands a word of apology or explanation. The author was absent in the West Indies for the benefit of his health when the award was made by the judges, and he did not return home until June. Since that date the leisure which could be snatched from numerous professional duties has been devoted to a careful revision of the work, and the incorporating of some new materials, procured at the seat of government by personal research and the kindness of friends. For a session of Congress has intervened since the essay was written, which has confirmed and developed some important points. Hence the attempt is made to bring its conclusions down to the present time.

The conflict with Mexico was short, and, measured on the scale of European warfare, comparatively insignificant, but in its lessons it is instructive, and in its effects on a forming national character powerful. To draw good out of its evils, is the aim of the American Peace Society, and of the work which now goes forth under

Viii PREFACE.

its auspices. War, the great social AYrong, like idolatry, the great spiritual injury, must fall in due time before the progress of the Gospel. To doubt this result, seems to presume that the Prince of Peace has come in vain, and that finite creatures can eventualy frustrate the plan of the Infinite Creator. Meanwhile, for the justification of the humble labors of any individual or socfety in so stupendous a regeneration, it is enough to say, that God works by means and by men. When was the lowest whisper of prayer unheeded, or the faintest effort unblessed, that ran parallel with his benevolent purposes and his eternal laws ?

The highest ambition of the writer will be amply satisfied, if these pages shall contribute to swell in a small degree the rising tide of public opinion in favor of Peace, and awaken a deeper abhorrence for the bloody and needless arbitration of the sword.

A. A. LIVERMORE.

Keene, N. H., September 11, 1849.

CHAPTER I. Pages. INTEODUCTION 1-5

CHAPTER n.

CIRCUMSTANCES PKEDISPOSINO TO THE WAB WITH

MEXICO 5-13

CHAPTER in.

CHAPTiiii IV.

PBETEXTS FOR WAR 32-39

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VL

THE BEGINNING AND ENDING OF THE WAR, ARGUMENTS

FOR PEACE . 51-66

X CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED 66-81

CHAPTER Vni.

THE EXPENDITURES OF THE WAR 82-102

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

LEGITIMATE BARBAEITIES OF THE WAR . . . 122-139

CHAPTER Xn.

CHAPTER Xm.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

POLITICAL EVILS OF THE ^yXB, AT HOME . . . 168-179

CHAPTER XVI.

CONTENTS. Xi

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XYin.

NE-W SCHEMES OF INVASION AND ANNEXATION . . 200-203

CHAPTER XIX.

MILITARY GLORY 204-208

CHAPTER XX.

THE TRUE DESTINY OP THE UNITED STATES . . 208-212

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXn.

CHAPTER XXHL

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHAPTER XXV.

CHAPTER XXVI.

XU CONTENTS.

CHAPTER xxyn.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED ...,'. 245-258

CHAPTER XXVin.

LESSONS OF THE WAR 259-269

CHAPTER XXIX.

SUBSTITUTES FOB 'WAB 269-277

CmVPTER XXX.

PACIFICATION OP THE WORLD 277-281

CHAPTER XXXI.

Appendix

THE HISTORICAL EVENTS OF THE WAB .... 287 $eq.

THE WAR WITH MEXICO REVIEWED,

CHAPTER I.

Introduction

" The principles of true politics are merely those of morality enlarged."— Burke.

History has assumed, under the light of the Gospel, a new value. It is no longer regarded as owing its chief interest to its royal genealogies, or its bloody record of battles. It is beginning to be understood, that the Providence of God is manifested through the rise and fall of nations. The actors in the scenes of the past have been the agents of a higher power than they themselves recognized. "The hoary registers of time" are the map of the grand march of humanity. To draw the moral of history, therefore, becomes of equal importance to the office of narrating its events. If it be " philosophy teaching by example," it becomes a question of the first importance to learn what the examples teach ; what warning of evil, what encouragement to hope ; what lessons for rulers, or for the people. And since the light has shone down out of Heaven upon the dark confusion of hu-

2 INTRODUCTION.

man aftairs, we can discern a meaning in the most perplexing passages, and trace a guiding clew thi'ough labyrinths more intricate than that of Crete.

In harmony with the comprehensive use, thus briefly indicated, of civil and political history, the American Peace Society wished to subject the late war between the United States and Mexico to the crucible of a philosophical and Christian analysis. The friends of peace have often drawn their arguments and illustrations in vindication of their holy cause from Herodotus and Thucydides, or Hume and Robertson ; but unhappily they have now been provided with a fearful strife nearer home, whose fields of blood are hardly yet dry, and whose wounds are still ghastly, from which they may teach the evils of international war. And now the thunder of artillery and the shrieks of the wounded having died away, they wish to repeat again in mournful recitative, though it be but with a jarring human tongue, the angel's sweet hymn, " on earth peace, good will toward men."

The language of the schedule, issued by the Society in February, 1847, was as follows : " The Review should be written without reference to political parties, and present such a view of the subject as will commend itself, when the hour of sober and candid reflection shall come, to the good sense of fair-minded men in every party and in all sections of the country. The war, in its origin, its progress, and the whole sweep of its evils to all concerned, should be reviewed on the principles of Christianity and of enlightened statesmanship ; showing especially its waste of treasure and human life; — its influence upon the interests of morality and religion, — its inconsistency with the genius of our republican institutions, as well as with the precepts of our religion, and the spirit of the age, — its bearings immediate and remote, on free, popular governments here and through the world ; — how its evils might have been avoided with better results to both parties ; — and ivhat means may and should be

INTRODUCTION. 3

adopted hy nations to preveMt similar evils in future. Our sole aim is to promote the cause of permanent peace, by turning this war into eiFectual warnings against resorts to the sword hereafter."

Here, then, is a distinct purpose, avowed at the outset, to use the Mexican War as an argument for the cause of peace ; to " beat its swords into ploughshares, and its spears into pruning hooks," for the culture of humane and Christian sentiments. Without following the above-mentioned order of topics, with rigid accuracy, it will then be the aim, both of our logic and our rhetoric, in this. Essay, to draw the moral of this event in the nineteenth century, and to employ it as a powerful instrument, furnished by our opponents themselves, — if peace have any opponents, — to scatter the illusions of military glory, and to reveal the incalculable evils of international war. We have great advantages for the accomplishment of this purpose, in the very recent occurrence of the contest ; the voluminous public documents, correspondence, and speeches ; the numerous memoirs, sketches, and letters, written by eye and ear-witnesses and actors in the field and the camp ; and in able and eloquent essays, for and against the war, which have been laid before the public during its progress. Much of the history of the blood-stained past has been written and sung by the advocates of war, the bards and historians of the world's boisterous childhood, who have showered the richest gifts of their genius upon those fierce heroes, who were ready to

" Wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind."

But the time has now come to examine the subject of war in .ill its aspects and all its issues ; to decompose its glittering fabric of glory into its constituent elements ; and while it is '■ fresh and gory," to arrest the fugitive attention of the public, and confine it to the solemn lessons of Providence and

4 INTRODUCTION.

Revelation. And lie, whose pen is moved by pulses from a Christian heart, will not fear to question any customs, usages, or laws pertaining to this relic of barbarism, according to the plain and positive precepts of Christ, and the whole spirit of his religion. Such is the subject, plan and promise of the following pages ; the fulfilment must rest with Him, who deigns to be a co-worker with the humblest of his creatures for good.

In the investigation of this war, we would rise, as suggested in the circular of the Society, far above the tempestuous region of partisan politics, and the extravagances of zealous, but injudicious reformers. We would speak, as men bound by the laws of natural justice, and as Christians bowing to the benevolent precepts of Christ, as the ultimate authority in every question of public, not less than of private morals. One of the vices of the times is headlong ultraism ; — the ultraism of conservatism, as well as that of radicalism. Impatient of halves, men " go the whole," to use the national phrase. It is not a day of qualification, or moderation. Parties tolerate none in their ranks, that will not ride the pendulum of their peculiar notions to the utmost point of its swing. The very nature and form of social progress, developed in our country, predisposes us to this fierce intolerance. The rush and eagerness of our daily life, the earnest enterprise that is busy all over the land, that plies every tool and machine, spins along the lines of city intercourse, pours forth into forests and prairies, skims every river and lake, and careers over every ocean, in the pursuit of wealth, naturally incUne our people to adopt very decided opinions upon eveiy subject. They act under a momentum that easily throws them into extremes. We would guard against this weakness. We would speak " the words of truth and soberness." However severe may be our judgment of the late contest between the United States and Mexico, it shall be a censure within the bounds of reason and religion, and therefore commending itself to whatever there may be of reason and religion in the minds of our readers ; and all the more severe because springing not from wholesale and indiscriminate abuse, but from the simple and eternal principles of right. It requires no far-fetched proofs or strained positions ; no fanatic appeals or ultra doctrines, to brand the war in question with an adequate seal of infamy. For its own history is its sufficient exposure. Its origin, causes, purposes, and results are truth-telling witnesses against it. To be abhorred and condemned, it needs but to be recorded and reviewed.

Chapter II. Circumstances Predisposing To The War With

MEXICO.

" If that the Heavens do not their visible spirits Send quickly down to tame these vile offences, 'T \^•ill come. :* # # Humanity must, perforce, prey on itself, Like moDSters of the deep." — Shakspeare.

No event in history has an independent and solitary existence. All its facts may be said, in one sense, to be the effect of all that precedes, and the cause of all that follows, For history is not so much a chain, as a network. Its transactions do not obey a law of simple succession, but of intricate combination. The working out of the great designs of Providence is furthered by a diversity of agencies, — some in conflict, and otliers in alliance. We can, therefore, understand historically nothing by itself. To know even one

1* nation truly and thoroughly, we need to know all nations. Viewed according to this judgment, the history of mankind is a unity, and its truest designation is universal.

This general principle holds true, in its application to the important matter under review. To comprehend it aright, we need to have been diligent students of the past as well as the present. It involves, especially, the great questions of European colonization in America, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, under the English, or Protestant, and Continental, or Catholic forms, and their respective issues down to this moment.

In truth, far back even beyond the third and fourth generation, the causes have been in process to predispose us to this Mexican crisis, and, if prudence and wisdom did not govern both the aggrieved and the aggressor, to plunge us in a brute strife. This is no sudden leap. This is no mine sprung T\'ithout warning. On both sides, the elements have been silently brewing, through many years, for the issues of to-day. As the cannons that have mowed down ranks of living men, and the deadly bombs that have crashed through homes of affection, have in many cases been lying rusty and ancient, the relics of days gone by ; so have the causes that set these horrid engines in operation been long accumulating in the arsenal, so to speak, and lying unused, until the fatal imprudence or passion of one or both parties has summoned them into action.

To specify a leading cause, we would advert to what Sir Robert Peel has called, in the British Parhament, " a development of military ambition in the United States ; " in one sense, both cause and effect of the war with Mexico. The attentive student of lii story will be at no loss to trace the origin and growth of this fearful passion. For the time we have existed as a people, we have been no sluggards in the use of the sword. The old French and Indian wars occupied our great grandfathers ; the Revolution our grandfathers; the war of 1812 our fathers, and Creek and Cherokee expatriations, and Black Hawk, Patriot, Seminole, and Mormon skirmishes their sons. The martial spirit is always a tiger, and we have given the tiger too much room and freedom. In fact, the Temple of Peace has not remained long shut during our national existence. Though most of our wars have been small ones, that circumstance has not prevented their imbuing a large portion of our citizens with the ambition of arms. It is one of our maxims, that " in time of peace we should prepare for war." The whole population are armed ; there is not, probably, a house in the country, unless it belong to a Quaker or a Non-resistant, without its sword, pistol, musket, or rifle. The expenses of our army and navy, even in time of peace, have always exceeded, by many milUons, the maximum of the civil list. Hence there is always existing a large profession of men, whose seeming interest it is to have their country engaged in war ; for then every expenditure in this direction is enormously increased ; active service creates vacancies and accelerates promotions ; and the prize money of war is better than the earnings of industry.

But other causes, besides those above noted, have contributed to awaken in "Young America" the aspiration for military renown. General hterature, whether in the form of poetry, oratory, or history, and whether imported or domestic, has always thrown the decisive preponderance of its influence into the war scale. Repubhcans have wished to show that they were equal to the performance of any feat that king or kaiser ever dared, or that minstrel ever sung. It has been openly avowed on the floor of Congress, by the most distinguished men of the country, that the time had arrived for us to do " some great thing," to let the Old World know that we were not the cowards or sluggards they miglit otherwise suppose us to be. As if it were not well known in every land, from north to south, that the

United States was rising to be a leading power in the eartli ; as if two wars with the British monarchy, in which we certainly were not worsted, were not sufficient witnesses to our valor, without seeking a quarrel with a rent and distracted nation to show our republican manhood; as if the good opinion of the crumbhng, bankrupt, starving, war-taxed, and groaning kingdoms of Europe were to be purchased at the fearful price of one di'op of human blood unrighteously shed. In the recent tremendous agitations, that have swept like a resistless tide over that continent, the example of republican America has been loudly and cheeringly quoted ; — would that we were more worthy of the title of the banner republic ! — but what has been quoted for imitation, for inspiration, for justification, by the masses struggling for their inalienable rights, has not been our wars, our slaveries, our inconsistencies, but our equal rights, our bread enough and to spare, our wise institutions, our world-renowned enterprise and industiy, and our unrivalled prosperity.

Again ; the pride of race has swollen to still greater insolence the pride of country, always quite active enough for the due observance of the claims of universal brotherhood. The Anglo-Saxons have been apparently persuaded to tliiiik themselves the chosen people, the anointed race of the Lord, commissioned to drive out the heathen, and plant their religion and institutions in every Canaan they could subjugate. The idea of a "destiny," connected with this race, has gone far to justify, if not to sanctify, many an act on either side of the Atlantic ; for which both England and the United States, if nations can be personified, ought to hang their heads in shame, and weep scalding tears of repentance. When they can produce any Mosaic commission from the Almighty King of kings, to diffuse the gospel of peace at the point of the bayonet, or the benign arts and sciences of a civilized age by the brute force of an earlier

CIRCUMSTANCES PREDISPOSING TO THE WAR. d

period, it will be quite time enough to consider their authority. Meanwhile, the inquiry presses powerfully, are these same destined Anglo-Saxon missionaries so immaculate in their character, so wise in their great national ideas, and so unbendingly true in their realization of them, that they have earned a title or authenticated " a divine right " to conquer and colonize the rest of God's earth ? And when on one shore we have taken the guage of L-eland's woes and wrongs, and the oppressions of the factories, collieries, ships, and colonies of England ; and, on the other shore, recalled the repudiation of State debts, the slavery of three millions of immortal beings, and the endless wrongs of the natives of the soil, which we so proudly tread, to enumerate no other crimes ; — we shall admit, with gi'eat reluctance, that either of the gigantic progenies of the Anglo-Saxon race has established by past wisdom, fidelity, or consistency, a presumptive title to be appointed guardian over the decrepid races of the Eastern or Western hemisphere. They may, doubtless, plead the right of might; but that is far from being the might of right. They may use the old appeal, ultima ratio regum, the ultimate resort of kings, and alas ! we now see, of republics too ; but so long as they have no more divine method than that, of civilizing the savage, and Christianizing the heathen, they are held down by an eternal gravitation to the vulgar level of

True, they possess arts and arms, but there are even more potent agents than these in the progress of humanity. Have we read the history of sixty centuries, and failed to leam even the alphabet of the sublime lessons she would teach, — • that truth, love, righteousness, great and heavenly piinciples only, can worthily and successfully preside over the processes of human improvement? It is still an unsettled question, whether the Crusades, the Norman conquest, or the wars of the old French Revolution, did more evil or good. But there is not the glimmer of a doubt that the mariner's compass, the art of printing, the steamboat, the railroad, and the telegraph, have been ministers of good to mankind. We must be dull scholars in the Christian lore, and the veriest laggards in the work of the present age, if we still cherish the old folly of ambition and vainglory that has demonized the nations of the dead. But not to dwell longer upon considerations that will come up again in another connection, none can be blind to the pride of race as one of the causes that has prompted the hostihties in Mexico.

European emigration, too, has had its effect. Hundreds of thousands, with all their old-world ideas, unbaptized into the spirit of liberty, except it be as license, have been transplanted into the vast regions of the IMiddle States, the West and South- West. They have been accustomed to the bloody dramas of Europe, and <they have supposed that the same must be acted over again in America. Far be it from us to take up any slanderous speech against our emigrant brethren, many of whom have shown themselves capable of understanding the rights and discharging the obligations of freemen, and have added much to the wealth, intelligence, and morality of their adopted country. But it is well known that no inconsiderable part of the American army has consisted of foreigners. They have been warmly commended as showing, by their readiness to enlist, and espouse our quarrels, their enthusiasm in the cause of liberty, and fidelity to their land of refuge. But the lover of peace will see, at the bottom of this fair-seeming, the dangerous element of military habits, acquired during the turbulent scenes of the last fifty years, transferred from the banks of the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Shannon, to those of the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Colorado. The" roots of the old war-encumbered civilization, — torn and broken, indeed, but possessing an unyielding tenacity of life, — are set out in the rich soil of the American prairies. Whether they live and bear their bitter fruits, or wither and die, is for the friends of peace, under God, to decide. The great valley of the West may become the hot-bed of war; and nothing but a wide and early dissemination of the pacific principles of the Gospel, by books, tracts, lectures, and conversation, can prevent our late foray into a sister republic from being the prolific seed of sorrows without end.

Indeed, the slow advance in their full power, of the schoolhouse and the church, after the fugitives that have gone into the wilderness, has given time for a rank development of barbaric passions and habits. The tendencies to physical violence, somewhere or upon somebody, it mattered little where or upon whom, have had too little check. The true American ideas have been supplanted by a system of Bedouin morality in the minds of not a few, cast beyond the control of a high-toned public conscience. Powerful as the older and more civilized portions of the Union have been in their enterprize, zeal for freedom, and moral and religious character, Avherever their sons have pitched the tents of their wanderings, yet the truth compels us to say, that in some portions of the East, the Centre, the feudal South, and South- West, and the rude West, the good principles of an earlier day have lost their savor, and the way has been opened for precisely such results as have been developed during the last four years, — the Annexation of Texas, a sanguinary and embittered war, and the dismemberment of Mexico. The relations of cause and eifect hold true in the moral as surely as in the material world. Nations reap what they sow. We have, in sober fact, been educating ourselves for a considerable time for just such issues as have lately been developed. Our treatment both of the red man and the black man, has habituated us to " feel our power, and forget right." Wars enough have been waged to keep our muskets bright. Our fourth-of-July oratory has inserted in youthful veins the deadly virus of warlike passion. The dauntless enterprize of the emigrants who have battled with the wolf and the savage for their domains, and who have been " famous according as they had lifted up axes upon the thick trees," * has been but too ready, under the promptings of a selfish aggrandizement, to conquer armies as well as forests, and to blow up capitals with as little compunction as steamboats. The West and South have many noble and heroic elements of character ; but a true friend of either will not hesitate to bid them respectively beware of War and Slavery, as institutions and customs at variance with free institutions and the Christian religion.

The passion for land, also, is a leading characteristic of the American people. Coming out of the straitened limits of the old countries, where human beings seem to be hydrostatically compressed within the smallest possible limits, they naturally expatiate at large upon the boundless savannahs of an unappropriated soil. A vast, indefinite, but everhaunting ambition, seizes the new comer. The physical grandeur of scale awakens an aspiring imagination. Territory becomes inwoven to all ideas of personal or national welfare. Almost every man owns his rood or his township of this generous fee-simple of nature; and almost every farmer owns and attempts to till more than is justified by good husbandry. Tliis may prove true nationally, not less than agriculturally. An incessant grasping after more territory has characterized our past policy. The god Terminus is an unknown deity in America. Like the hunger of the pauper boy of fiction, the cry has been, " More, more, give us more." But we must confess that we have actually settled and subdued to the uses of civilization only a minor part of the vast regions we occupy. We have struck the

Pacific Ocean, and, far from being content with the immense slopes of the Rockj Mountai'ns, and the great Valley of the Mississippi on the east, and that of the Columbia on the west, we have chafed against the boundaries of nature and of our neighbors, and, like Jezebel, have coveted their vineyards. The history of the last few years has yielded a melancholy illustration of the eloquent special pleading of the exhorbitant passions, and the self-deceivmg justifications of ambition. Prompt excuses have been discovered for this boa-constrictor appetite of swallowing states and provinces, in the glory of free institutions, the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and the extension of our industrial and commercial system. Alas ! we have thus discovered opiates to lull our consciences when they were uneasy, and tonics to invigorate our ambition when it was halting. VUnder the dominion of tliis lust for territory, however acquired, we have pushed onwards in a hot and unjustifiable invasion, and by a compulsory peace, have extorted from our neighbors more than half a milHon of square miles of land, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, across the breadth of the North American continent.

Chapter III. The Chief Motive Of The War

" He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Kot colored like his own ; and having power T' enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause, Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey." — Cowpee.

The motives which actuate public men and political parties, are not always openly avowed. There are secrets of state in the administration of republican as well as despotic governments, though not of the same number or extent. The causes which determine the line of national policy, can sometimes only be inferred, though the inference may be raised to a high degree of probability. Important documents, which would no doubt throw great light upon international affairs, are buried in the archives of state, and a seal put upon their publication by the plea, more or less valid, that it wovild embarrass the public service. We are, therefore, left somewhat in the dark in reasoning upon the events of history, though of a very recent date ; and we can hope to reach in our conclusions only a reasonable measure of moral probability, not an irresistible mathematical certainty.

The circumstances enumerated in the last chapter, were predisposing causes of war, but, of themselves, they would not have produced that unhappy result. Hence we look for some more positive and potent element. We are ready to concede sometliing to the pacific settlement of the Oregon question, which turned the war spirit into a new channel ; — something to the desire of giving eclat to a new administration ; something to the vast expansion of civil and military patronage produced by war ; something to the interested clamor of Mexican claimants and their friends ; something to the magic power of Texan scrip ; something to a wide-spread suspicion and a quick jealousy of European interference in the affairs of this continent ; but we feel confident that we are stating a solemn and incontrovertible truth, when we say that we discern in slavery the main-spring to the war with Mexico. Had the idea of extending the " peculiar " institutions of the South, and the political power resulting therefrom, been entirely excluded from the question, not a shot would ever have been fired.

We desire to make such a record on this point as will stand justified fifty years hence, when the planners and actors in present scenes have passed oft' the stage. For the purpose of confirming our statements, we shall take the liberty of quoting published and authentic documents, without reference to parties. We shall thus be led directly to the conclusion expressed above.

It is unnecessary here to recount the details of the annexation of Texas to the United States, as our aim is not a history, so much as a review, of an important portion of history, recent and well-known. That event, however, was regarded by Mexico as an act of war in itself, and was, no doubt, one of the prominent causes, notwithstanding all disclaimers, that led to the actual commencement of hostilities ; for our armies surely never would have advanced either to the Nueces or to the Rio Grande, had it not been for the ostensible purpose of protecting our newly-acquired domains. But the scheme of Annexation was devised, — as openly declared by some of its staunchest advocates, — to give greater security to the institutions of the South. The clear and direct inference is, that slavery and the war with Mexico have had a cause-and-effect connection. Had slavery not existed in our land, there would have been no annexation ; and had there been no annexation, there would have been no strife. Who can dispute these propositions, when he has candidly and truthfully weighed the following declarations of some of the leading politicians of the day ? The idea of Southern aggrandizement was early broached and steadily avowed. Let the credible witnesses give their testimony.