HW - Please answer question 8(Aim) using proof from reading Monday and Tuesday (Please type) This will be a classwork/assesment grade
THE MEXICAN AMERICAN WAR (1846)
Aim: Was War with Mexico justified?
Task:
1) Read all questions
2) Highlight proof in every paragraph
3) Answer questions completely using specific
proof from the reading
4) Answer Aim question
President Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase had doubled
the territory of the United States, extending it to the Rocky Mountains. To the
southwest was Mexico, which had won its independence in a revolutionary war
against Spain in 1821—a large country that included Texas and what are now New
Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, and part of Colorado. After
agitation, and aid from the United States, Texas broke off from Mexico in 1836
and declared itself the "Lone Star Republic." In 1845, the U.S.
Congress brought it into the Union as a state.
In
the White House now was James Polk, a Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the
night of his inauguration, confided to his Secretary of the Navy that one of
his main objectives was the acquisition of California. His order to General
Taylor to move troops to the Rio Grande was a challenge to the Mexicans. It was
not at all clear that the Rio Grande was the southern boundary of Texas,
although Texas had forced the defeated Mexican general Santa Anna to say so
when he was a prisoner.
The
traditional border between Texas and Mexico had been the Nueces River, about
150 miles to the north, and both Mexico and the United States had recognized
that as the border. However, Polk, encouraging the Texans to accept annexation,
had assured them he would uphold their claims to the Rio Grande.
1) What was
the position of Polk regarding California and Mexico? Explain
Taylor
moved his troops to Corpus Christi, Texas, just across the Nueces River, and
waited further instructions. They came in February 1846—to go down the Gulf
Coast to the Rio Grande.
The
Washington Union, a newspaper expressing the position of President Polk and the
Democratic Party, had spoken early in 1845 on the meaning of Texas annexation:
Let the great measure of
annexation be accomplished, and with it the questions of boundary and claims.
For who can arrest the torrent that will pour onward to the West? The road to
California will be open to us. Who will stay the march of our western people?
It was
shortly after that, in the summer of 1845, that John O'Sullivan, editor of the
Democratic Review, used the phrase that became famous, saying it was “Our
manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the
free development of our yearly multiplying millions."
2) How did
Polk and O’Sullivan justify the annexation of Texas? Explain
All
that was needed in the spring of 1846 was a military incident to begin the war
that Polk wanted. It came in April, 25 when a patrol of Taylor's soldiers was
surrounded and attacked by Mexicans, and wiped out: sixteen dead, others
wounded, the rest captured.
When
the dispatches arrived from General Taylor telling of casualties from the
Mexican attack, Polk summoned the cabinet to hear the news, and they
unanimously agreed he should ask for a declaration of war. Polk's message to
Congress was indignant:
The cup of forbearance had
been exhausted even before the recent information from the frontier of the Del
Norte [the Rio Grande]. But now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed
the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American
blood upon the American soil. . . .
As war exists,
notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico
herself, we are called upon by every consideration of duty and patriotism to
vindicate with
decision the honor, the rights, and the
interests of our country.
3) What was
Polk’s argument to go to war with Mexico?
Explain
Congress
then rushed to approve the war resolution giving the president what he wanted –
the right to take Mexican lands.
The
Mexicans had fired the first shot. But they had done what the American
government wanted, according to Colonel Hitchcock, who wrote in his diary, even
before those first incidents:
I have said from the first
that the United States are the aggressors. . . . We have not one particle of
right to be here.. . . It looks as if the government sent a small force on
purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as
much of this country as it chooses, for, whatever becomes of this army, there
is no doubt of a war between the United States and Mexico. . . . My heart is
not in this business . . . but, as a military man, I am bound to execute
orders.
4) Why wasn’t
Colonel Hichcock’s heart in the military action against Mexico?
Frederick
Douglass, former slave, extraordinary speaker and writer, wrote in his
Rochester newspaper the North Star, January 21, 1848, of "the present
disgraceful, cruel, and iniquitous war with our sister republic. Mexico seems a
doomed victim to Anglo Saxon cupidity and love of dominion." Douglass was
scornful of the unwillingness of opponents of the war to take real action (even
the abolitionists kept paying their taxes):
The determination of our
slaveholding President to prosecute the war, and the probability of his success
in wringing from the people men and money to carry it on, is made evident,
rather than doubtful, by the puny opposition arrayed against him. No politician
of any considerable distinction or eminence seems willing to hazard his
popularity with his party . . . by an open and unqualified disapprobation of
the war. None seem willing to take their stand for peace at all risks; and all
seem willing that the war should be carried on, in some form or other.
5) Why was
Douglas so angry about the war? Explain
Some
newspapers, at the very start of the war, protested. Horace Greeley wrote in
the New York Tribune, May 12, 1846:
We can easily defeat the
armies of Mexico, slaughter them by thousands, and pursue them perhaps to their
capital; we can conquer and "annex" their territory; but what then?
Have the histories of the ruin of Greek and Roman liberty consequent on such
extensions of empire by the sword no lesson for us? Who believes that a score
of victories over Mexico, the "annexation" of half her provinces,
will give us more Liberty, a purer Morality, a more prosperous Industry, than
we now have? . . . Is not Life miserable enough, comes not Death soon enough,
without resort to the hideous enginery of War?
6) Explain why
Greeley saw the war with Mexico as hypocritical?
Mexico
surrendered. There were calls among Americans to take all of Mexico. The Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 1848, just took half. The Texas boundary
was set at the Rio Grande; New Mexico and California were ceded. The United
States paid Mexico $15 million, which led the Whig Intelligencer to conclude
that "we take nothing by conquest. . . . Thank God."
7) Do you
agree with the quote from the Whig Intelligencer? Explain why!
8) According
to the evidence was war with Mexico justified? (Aim) Use all the documents and quotes to complete this answer!
