assignment of the year 1846

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Assignment Of The Year

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The Way We Were—and the Way We Went—in 1846

What with the Mexican War, and a million square miles of new real estate, our westward destiny became highly manifest

Timothy Foote

It was the year covered wagons began heading for California; the year the first baseball game was played; and the year when people were reading Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." It was the year the Smithsonian Institution was founded, an event just now being celebrated as the Smithsonian marks its 150th birthday, complete with a special exhibit on 1846 at the National Portrait Gallery and a large traveling show.

As author Timothy Foote, an editor at Smithsonian, points out, beyond the Institution's founding, 1846 was an astonishing and decisive year in American history. "It was the year the Mexican War began. The year when the country, taking a quantum leap forward, suddenly completed the westward course of empire that Jefferson had dreamed of when he sent Lewis and Clark out exploring 40 years before. As 1846 began, the Union occupied less than half of what is the continental United States today; when it was over we possessed, or were soon to possess, all of it."

The man who set it all in motion was President James K. Polk. The means he used to acquire California, New Mexico, and most or all of what are now Arizona, Nevada and Utah were controversial even then. "A fair number of people today," Foote writes, "can hardly mention the Mexican War without wincing as if for the transgressions of some shady relative."

We Americans, however, cannot understand our past, says Foote, if we assume that the people who lived then were just like us. Americans of 1846 could not have imagined the current deep concern for the condition of minorities, nor the environmental awareness that has us debating whether wolves should be reintroduced into Yellowstone Park.

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A Nation on the Move: Westward Expansion, 1800–1860

The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848

OpenStaxCollege

[latexpage]

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify the causes of the Mexican-American War
• Describe the outcomes of the war in 1848, especially the Mexican Cession
• Describe the effect of the California Gold Rush on westward expansion

Tensions between the United States and Mexico rapidly deteriorated in the 1840s as American expansionists eagerly eyed Mexican land to the west, including the lush northern Mexican province of California. Indeed, in 1842, a U.S. naval fleet, incorrectly believing war had broken out, seized Monterey, California, a part of Mexico. Monterey was returned the next day, but the episode only added to the uneasiness with which Mexico viewed its northern neighbor. The forces of expansion, however, could not be contained, and American voters elected James Polk in 1844 because he promised to deliver more lands. President Polk fulfilled his promise by gaining Oregon and, most spectacularly, provoking a war with Mexico that ultimately fulfilled the wildest fantasies of expansionists. By 1848, the United States encompassed much of North America, a republic that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

JAMES K. POLK AND THE TRIUMPH OF EXPANSION

A fervent belief in expansion gripped the United States in the 1840s. In 1845, a New York newspaper editor, John O’Sullivan, introduced the concept of “manifest destiny” to describe the very popular idea of the special role of the United States in overspreading the continent—the divine right and duty of white Americans to seize and settle the American West, thus spreading Protestant, democratic values. In this climate of opinion, voters in 1844 elected James K. Polk, a slaveholder from Tennessee, because he vowed to annex Texas as a new slave state and take Oregon.

Annexing Oregon was an important objective for U.S. foreign policy because it appeared to be an area rich in commercial possibilities. Northerners favored U.S. control of Oregon because ports in the Pacific Northwest would be gateways for trade with Asia. Southerners hoped that, in exchange for their support of expansion into the northwest, northerners would not oppose plans for expansion into the southwest.

President Polk—whose campaign slogan in 1844 had been “Fifty-four forty or fight!”—asserted the United States’ right to gain full control of what was known as Oregon Country, from its southern border at 42° latitude (the current boundary with California) to its northern border at 54° 40′ latitude. According to an 1818 agreement, Great Britain and the United States held joint ownership of this territory, but the 1827 Treaty of Joint Occupation opened the land to settlement by both countries. Realizing that the British were not willing to cede all claims to the territory, Polk proposed the land be divided at 49° latitude (the current border between Washington and Canada). The British, however, denied U.S. claims to land north of the Columbia River (Oregon’s current northern border) ( [link] ). Indeed, the British foreign secretary refused even to relay Polk’s proposal to London. However, reports of the difficulty Great Britain would face defending Oregon in the event of a U.S. attack, combined with concerns over affairs at home and elsewhere in its empire, quickly changed the minds of the British, and in June 1846, Queen Victoria’s government agreed to a division at the forty-ninth parallel.

In contrast to the diplomatic solution with Great Britain over Oregon, when it came to Mexico, Polk and the American people proved willing to use force to wrest more land for the United States. In keeping with voters’ expectations, President Polk set his sights on the Mexican state of California. After the mistaken capture of Monterey, negotiations about purchasing the port of San Francisco from Mexico broke off until September 1845. Then, following a revolt in California that left it divided in two, Polk attempted to purchase Upper California and New Mexico as well. These efforts went nowhere. The Mexican government, angered by U.S. actions, refused to recognize the independence of Texas.

Finally, after nearly a decade of public clamoring for the annexation of Texas, in December 1845 Polk officially agreed to the annexation of the former Mexican state, making the Lone Star Republic an additional slave state. Incensed that the United States had annexed Texas, however, the Mexican government refused to discuss the matter of selling land to the United States. Indeed, Mexico refused even to acknowledge Polk’s emissary, John Slidell, who had been sent to Mexico City to negotiate. Not to be deterred, Polk encouraged Thomas O. Larkin, the U.S. consul in Monterey, to assist any American settlers and any Californios , the Mexican residents of the state, who wished to proclaim their independence from Mexico. By the end of 1845, having broken diplomatic ties with the United States over Texas and having grown alarmed by American actions in California, the Mexican government warily anticipated the next move. It did not have long to wait.

WAR WITH MEXICO, 1846–1848

Expansionistic fervor propelled the United States to war against Mexico in 1846. The United States had long argued that the Rio Grande was the border between Mexico and the United States, and at the end of the Texas war for independence Santa Anna had been pressured to agree. Mexico, however, refused to be bound by Santa Anna’s promises and insisted the border lay farther north, at the Nueces River ( [link] ). To set it at the Rio Grande would, in effect, allow the United States to control land it had never occupied. In Mexico’s eyes, therefore, President Polk violated its sovereign territory when he ordered U.S. troops into the disputed lands in 1846. From the Mexican perspective, it appeared the United States had invaded their nation.

In January 1846, the U.S. force that was ordered to the banks of the Rio Grande to build a fort on the “American” side encountered a Mexican cavalry unit on patrol. Shots rang out, and sixteen U.S. soldiers were killed or wounded. Angrily declaring that Mexico “has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil,” President Polk demanded the United States declare war on Mexico. On May 12, Congress obliged.

The small but vocal antislavery faction decried the decision to go to war, arguing that Polk had deliberately provoked hostilities so the United States could annex more slave territory. Illinois representative Abraham Lincoln and other members of Congress issued the “Spot Resolutions” in which they demanded to know the precise spot on U.S. soil where American blood had been spilled. Many Whigs also denounced the war. Democrats, however, supported Polk’s decision, and volunteers for the army came forward in droves from every part of the country except New England, the seat of abolitionist activity. Enthusiasm for the war was aided by the widely held belief that Mexico was a weak, impoverished country and that the Mexican people, perceived as ignorant, lazy, and controlled by a corrupt Roman Catholic clergy, would be easy to defeat. ( [link] ).

U.S. military strategy had three main objectives: 1) Take control of northern Mexico, including New Mexico; 2) seize California; and 3) capture Mexico City. General Zachary Taylor and his Army of the Center were assigned to accomplish the first goal, and with superior weapons they soon captured the Mexican city of Monterrey. Taylor quickly became a hero in the eyes of the American people, and Polk appointed him commander of all U.S. forces.

General Stephen Watts Kearny, commander of the Army of the West, accepted the surrender of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and moved on to take control of California, leaving Colonel Sterling Price in command. Despite Kearny’s assurances that New Mexicans need not fear for their lives or their property, and in fact the region’s residents rose in revolt in January 1847 in an effort to drive the Americans away. Although Price managed to put an end to the rebellion, tensions remained high.

Kearny, meanwhile, arrived in California to find it already in American hands through the joint efforts of California settlers, U.S. naval commander John D. Sloat, and John C. Fremont, a former army captain and son-in-law of Missouri senator Thomas Benton. Sloat, at anchor off the coast of Mazatlan, learned that war had begun and quickly set sail for California. He seized the town of Monterey in July 1846, less than a month after a group of American settlers led by William B. Ide had taken control of Sonoma and declared California a republic. A week after the fall of Monterey, the navy took San Francisco with no resistance. Although some Californios staged a short-lived rebellion in September 1846, many others submitted to the U.S. takeover. Thus Kearny had little to do other than take command of California as its governor.

Leading the Army of the South was General Winfield Scott. Both Taylor and Scott were potential competitors for the presidency, and believing—correctly—that whoever seized Mexico City would become a hero, Polk assigned Scott the campaign to avoid elevating the more popular Taylor, who was affectionately known as “Old Rough and Ready.”

Scott captured Veracruz in March 1847, and moving in a northwesterly direction from there (much as Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés had done in 1519), he slowly closed in on the capital. Every step of the way was a hard-fought victory, however, and Mexican soldiers and civilians both fought bravely to save their land from the American invaders. Mexico City’s defenders, including young military cadets, fought to the end. According to legend, cadet Juan Escutia’s last act was to save the Mexican flag, and he leapt from the city’s walls with it wrapped around his body. On September 14, 1847, Scott entered Mexico City’s central plaza; the city had fallen ( [link] ). While Polk and other expansionists called for “all Mexico,” the Mexican government and the United States negotiated for peace in 1848, resulting in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in February 1848, was a triumph for American expansionism under which Mexico ceded nearly half its land to the United States. The Mexican Cession , as the conquest of land west of the Rio Grande was called, included the current states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Mexico also recognized the Rio Grande as the border with the United States. Mexican citizens in the ceded territory were promised U.S. citizenship in the future when the territories they were living in became states. In exchange, the United States agreed to assume $3.35 million worth of Mexican debts owed to U.S. citizens, paid Mexico $15 million for the loss of its land, and promised to guard the residents of the Mexican Cession from Indian raids.

As extensive as the Mexican Cession was, some argued the United States should not be satisfied until it had taken all of Mexico. Many who were opposed to this idea were southerners who, while desiring the annexation of more slave territory, did not want to make Mexico’s large mestizo (people of mixed Indian and European ancestry) population part of the United States. Others did not want to absorb a large group of Roman Catholics. These expansionists could not accept the idea of new U.S. territory filled with mixed-race, Catholic populations.

Explore the U.S.-Mexican War at PBS to read about life in the Mexican and U.S. armies during the war and to learn more about the various battles.

CALIFORNIA AND THE GOLD RUSH

The United States had no way of knowing that part of the land about to be ceded by Mexico had just become far more valuable than anyone could have imagined. On January 24, 1848, James Marshall discovered gold in the millrace of the sawmill he had built with his partner John Sutter on the south fork of California’s American River . Word quickly spread, and within a few weeks all of Sutter’s employees had left to search for gold. When the news reached San Francisco, most of its inhabitants abandoned the town and headed for the American River. By the end of the year, thousands of California’s residents had gone north to the gold fields with visions of wealth dancing in their heads, and in 1849 thousands of people from around the world followed them ( [link] ). The Gold Rush had begun.

The fantasy of instant wealth induced a mass exodus to California. Settlers in Oregon and Utah rushed to the American River. Easterners sailed around the southern tip of South America or to Panama’s Atlantic coast, where they crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific and booked ship’s passage for San Francisco. As California-bound vessels stopped in South American ports to take on food and fresh water, hundreds of Peruvians and Chileans streamed aboard. Easterners who could not afford to sail to California crossed the continent on foot, on horseback, or in wagons. Others journeyed from as far away as Hawaii and Europe. Chinese people came as well, adding to the polyglot population in the California boomtowns ( [link] ).

Once in California, gathered in camps with names like Drunkard’s Bar, Angel’s Camp, Gouge Eye, and Whiskeytown, the “ forty-niners ” did not find wealth so easy to come by as they had first imagined. Although some were able to find gold by panning for it or shoveling soil from river bottoms into sieve-like contraptions called rockers, most did not. The placer gold, the gold that had been washed down the mountains into streams and rivers, was quickly exhausted, and what remained was deep below ground. Independent miners were supplanted by companies that could afford not only to purchase hydraulic mining technology but also to hire laborers to work the hills. The frustration of many a miner was expressed in the words of Sullivan Osborne. In 1857, Osborne wrote that he had arrived in California “full of high hopes and bright anticipations of the future” only to find his dreams “have long since perished.” Although $550 million worth of gold was found in California between 1849 and 1850, very little of it went to individuals.

Observers in the gold fields also reported abuse of Indians by miners. Some miners forced Indians to work their claims for them; others drove Indians off their lands, stole from them, and even murdered them. Foreigners were generally disliked, especially those from South America. The most despised, however, were the thousands of Chinese migrants. Eager to earn money to send to their families in Hong Kong and southern China, they quickly earned a reputation as frugal men and hard workers who routinely took over diggings others had abandoned as worthless and worked them until every scrap of gold had been found. Many American miners, often spendthrifts, resented their presence and discriminated against them, believing the Chinese, who represented about 8 percent of the nearly 300,000 who arrived, were depriving them of the opportunity to make a living.

Visit The Chinese in California to learn more about the experience of Chinese migrants who came to California in the Gold Rush era.

In 1850, California imposed a tax on foreign miners, and in 1858 it prohibited all immigration from China. Those Chinese who remained in the face of the growing hostility were often beaten and killed, and some Westerners made a sport of cutting off Chinese men’s queues, the long braids of hair worn down their backs ( [link] ). In 1882, Congress took up the power to restrict immigration by banning the further immigration of Chinese.

As people flocked to California in 1849, the population of the new territory swelled from a few thousand to about 100,000. The new arrivals quickly organized themselves into communities, and the trappings of “civilized” life—stores, saloons, libraries, stage lines, and fraternal lodges—began to appear. Newspapers were established, and musicians, singers, and acting companies arrived to entertain the gold seekers. The epitome of these Gold Rush boomtowns was San Francisco, which counted only a few hundred residents in 1846 but by 1850 had reached a population of thirty-four thousand ( [link] ). So quickly did the territory grow that by 1850 California was ready to enter the Union as a state. When it sought admission, however, the issue of slavery expansion and sectional tensions emerged once again.

Section Summary

President James K. Polk’s administration was a period of intensive expansion for the United States. After overseeing the final details regarding the annexation of Texas from Mexico, Polk negotiated a peaceful settlement with Great Britain regarding ownership of the Oregon Country, which brought the United States what are now the states of Washington and Oregon. The acquisition of additional lands from Mexico, a country many in the United States perceived as weak and inferior, was not so bloodless. The Mexican Cession added nearly half of Mexico’s territory to the United States, including New Mexico and California, and established the U.S.-Mexico border at the Rio Grande. The California Gold Rush rapidly expanded the population of the new territory, but also prompted concerns over immigration, especially from China.

Review Questions

Which of the following was not a reason the United States was reluctant to annex Texas?

According to treaties signed in 1818 and 1827, with which country did the United States jointly occupy Oregon?

During the war between the United States and Mexico, revolts against U.S. control broke out in ________.

Why did whites in California dislike the Chinese so much?

The Chinese were seemingly more disciplined than the majority of the white miners, gaining a reputation for being extremely hard-working and frugal. White miners resented the mining successes that the Chinese earned. They believed the Chinese were unfairly depriving them of the means to earn a living.

The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848 Copyright © 2014 by OpenStaxCollege is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

SOLUTION: Can I ask your help, please, for the following problem: Using the digits from the year 1846, make a number sentence that equals to 75, 76, 96, 97, 98. (We already found everything

Annual Message to Congress (1846)

• December 08, 1846

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Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

In resuming your labors in the service of the people it is a subject of congratulation that there has been no period in our past history when all the elements of national prosperity have been so fully developed. Since your last session no afflicting dispensation has visited our country. General good health has prevailed, abundance has crowned the toil of the husbandman, and labor in all its branches is receiving an ample reward, while education, science, and the arts are rapidly enlarging the means of social happiness. The progress of our country in her career of greatness, not only in the vast extension of our territorial limits and the rapid increase of our population, but in resources and wealth and in the happy condition of our people, is without an example in the history of nations.

As the wisdom, strength, and beneficence of our free institutions are unfolded, every day adds fresh motives to contentment and fresh incentives to patriotism.

Our devout and sincere acknowledgments are due to the gracious Giver of All Good for the numberless blessings which our beloved country enjoys.

It is a source of high satisfaction to know that the relations of the United States with all other nations, with a single exception, are of the most amicable character. Sincerely attached to the policy of peace early adopted and steadily pursued by this Government, I have anxiously desired to cultivate and cherish friendship and commerce with every foreign power. The spirit and habits of the American people are favorable to the maintenance of such international harmony. In adhering to this wise policy, a preliminary and paramount duty obviously consists in the protection of our national interests from encroachment or sacrifice and our national honor from reproach. These must be maintained at any hazard. They admit of no compromise or neglect, and must be scrupulously and constantly guarded. In their vigilant vindication collision and conflict with foreign powers may sometimes become unavoidable. Such has been our scrupulous adherence to the dictates of justice in all our foreign intercourse that, though steadily and rapidly advancing in prosperity and power, we have given no just cause of complaint to any nation and have enjoyed the blessings of peace for more than thirty years. From a policy so sacred to humanity and so salutary in its effects upon our political system we should never be induced voluntarily to depart.

The existing war with Mexico was neither desired nor provoked by the United States. On the contrary, all honorable means were resorted to to avert it. After years of endurance of aggravated and unredressed wrongs on our part, Mexico, in violation of solemn treaty stipulations and of every principle of justice recognized by civilized nations, commenced hostilities, and thus by her own act forced the war upon us. Long before the advance of our Army to the left bank of the Rio Grande we had ample cause of war against Mexico, and had the United States resorted to this extremity we might have appealed to the whole civilized world for the justice of our cause. I deem it to be my duty to present to you on the present occasion a condensed review of the injuries we had sustained, of the causes which led to the war, and of its progress since its commencement. This is rendered the more necessary because of the misapprehensions which have to some extent prevailed as to its origin and true character. The war has been represented as unjust and unnecessary and as one of aggression on our part upon a weak and injured enemy. Such erroneous views, though entertained by but few, have been widely and extensively circulated, not only at home, but have been spread throughout Mexico and the whole world. A more effectual means could not have been devised to encourage the enemy and protract the war than to advocate and adhere to their cause, and thus give them "aid and comfort." It is a source of national pride and exultation that the great body of our people have thrown no such obstacles in the way of the Government in prosecuting the war successfully, but have shown themselves to be eminently patriotic and ready to vindicate their country’s honor and interests at any sacrifice. The alacrity and promptness with which our volunteer forces rushed to the field on their country’s call prove not only their patriotism, but their deep conviction that our cause is just.

The wrongs which we have suffered from Mexico almost ever since she became an independent power and the patient endurance with which we have borne them are without a parallel in the history of modern civilized nations. There is reason to believe that if these wrongs had been resented and resisted in the first instance the present war might have been avoided. One outrage, however, permitted to pass with impunity almost necessarily encouraged the perpetration of another, until at last Mexico seemed to attribute to weakness and indecision on our part a forbearance which was the offspring of magnanimity and of a sincere desire to preserve friendly relations with a sister republic.

Scarcely had Mexico achieved her independence, which the United States were the first among the nations to acknowledge, when she commenced the system of insult and spoliation which she has ever since pursued. Our citizens engaged in lawful commerce were imprisoned, their vessels seized, and our flag insulted in her ports. If money was wanted, the lawless seizure and confiscation of our merchant vessels and their cargoes was a ready resource, and if to accomplish their purposes it became necessary to imprison the owners, captains, and crews, it was done. Rulers superseded rulers in Mexico in rapid succession, but still there was no change in this system of depredation. The Government of the United States made repeated reclamations on behalf of its citizens, but these were answered by the perpetration of new outrages. Promises of redress made by Mexico in the most solemn forms were postponed or evaded. The files and records of the Department of State contain conclusive proofs of numerous lawless acts perpetrated upon the property and persons of our citizens by Mexico, and of wanton insults to our national flag. The interposition of our Government to obtain redress was again and again invoked under circumstances which no nation ought to disregard. It was hoped that these outrages would cease and that Mexico would be restrained by the laws which regulate the conduct of civilized nations in their intercourse with each other after the treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation of the 5th of April, 1831, was concluded between the two Republics; but this hope soon proved to be vain. The course of seizure and confiscation of the property of our citizens, the violation of their persons, and the insults to our flag pursued by Mexico previous to that time were scarcely suspended for even a brief period, although the treaty so clearly defines the rights and duties of the respective parties that it is impossible to misunderstand or mistake them. In less than seven years after the conclusion of that treaty our grievances had become so intolerable that in the opinion of President Jackson they should no longer be endured. In his message to Congress in February, 1837, he presented them to the consideration of that body, and declared that—

The length of time since some of the injuries have been committed, the repeated and unavailing applications for redress, the wanton character of some of the outrages upon the property and persons of our citizens, upon the officers and flag of the United States, independent of recent insults to this Government and people by the late extraordinary Mexican minister, would justify in the eyes of all nations immediate war.

In a spirit of kindness and forbearance, however, he recommended reprisals as a milder mode of redress. He declared that war should not be used as a remedy "by just and generous nations, confiding in their strength for injuries committed, if it can be honorably avoided," and added:

It has occurred to me that, considering the present embarrassed condition of that country, we should act with both wisdom and moderation by giving to Mexico one more opportunity to atone for the past before we take redress into our Own hands. To avoid all misconception on the part of Mexico, as well as to protect our own national character from reproach, this opportunity should be given with the avowed design and full preparation to take immediate satisfaction if it should not be obtained on a repetition of the demand for it. To this end I recommend that an act be passed authorizing reprisals, and the use of the naval force of the United States by the Executive against Mexico to enforce them, in the event of a refusal by the Mexican Government to come to an amicable adjustment of the matters in controversy between us upon another demand thereof made from on board out of our vessels of war on the coast of Mexico.

Committees of both Houses of Congress, to which this message of the President was referred, fully sustained his views of the character of the wrongs which we had suffered from Mexico, and recommended that another demand for redress should be made before authorizing war or reprisals. The Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, in their report, say:

After such a demand, should prompt justice be refused by the Mexican Government, we may appeal to all nations, not only for the equity and moderation with which we shall have acted toward a sister republic, but for the necessity which will then compel us to seek redress for our wrongs, either by actual war or by reprisals. The subject will then be presented before Congress, at the commencement of the next session, in a clear and distinct form, and the committee can not doubt but that such measures will be immediately adopted as may be necessary to vindicate the honor of the country and insure ample reparation to our injured fellow-citizens.

The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives made a similar recommendation. In their report they say that—

They fully concur with the President that ample cause exists for taking redress into our own hands, and believe that we should be justified in the opinion of other nations for taking such a step. But they are willing to try the experiment of another demand, made in the most solemn form, upon the justice of the Mexican Government before any further proceedings are adopted.

No difference of opinion upon the subject is believed to have existed in Congress at that time; the executive and legislative departments concurred; and yet such has been our forbearance and desire to preserve peace with Mexico that the wrongs of which we then complained, and which gave rise to these solemn proceedings, not only remain unredressed to this day, but additional causes of complaint of an aggravated character have ever since been accumulating. Shortly after these proceedings a special messenger was dispatched to Mexico to make a final demand for redress, and on the 20th of July, 1837, the demand was made. The reply of the Mexican Government bears date on the 29th of the same month, and contains assurances of the "anxious wish" of the Mexican Government "not to delay the moment of that final and equitable adjustment which is to terminate the existing difficulties between the two Governments;" that "nothing should be left undone which may contribute to the most speedy and equitable determination of the subjects which have so seriously engaged the attention of the American Government;" that the "Mexican Government would adopt as the only guides for its conduct the plainest principles of public right, the sacred obligations imposed by international law, and the religious faith of treaties," and that "whatever reason and justice may dictate respecting each case will be done." The assurance was further given that the decision of the Mexican Government upon each cause of complaint for which redress had been demanded should be communicated to the Government of the United States by the Mexican minister at Washington.

These solemn assurances in answer to our demand for redress were disregarded. By making them, however, Mexico obtained further delay. President Van Buren, in his annual message to Congress of the 5th of December, 1837, states that "although the larger number" of our demands for redress, "and many of them aggravated cases of personal wrongs, have been now for years before the Mexican Government, and some of the causes of national complaint, and those of the most offensive character, admitted of immediate, simple, and satisfactory replies, it is only within a few days past that any specific communication in answer to our last demand, made five months ago, has been received from the Mexican minister;" and that "for not one of our public complaints has satisfaction been given or offered, that but one of the cases of personal wrong has been favorably considered, and that but four cases of both descriptions out of all those formally presented and earnestly pressed have as yet been decided upon by the Mexican Government." President Van Buren, believing that it would be vain to make any further attempt to obtain redress by the ordinary means within the power of the Executive, communicated this opinion to Congress in the message referred to, in which he said:

On a careful and deliberate examination of their contents of the correspondence with the Mexican Government, and considering the spirit manifested by the Mexican Government, it has become my painful duty to return the subject as it now stands to Congress, to whom it belongs to decide upon the time, the mode, and the measure of redress.

Had the United States at that time adopted compulsory measures and taken redress into their own hands, all our difficulties with Mexico would probably have been long since adjusted and the existing war have been averted. Magnanimity and moderation on our part only had the effect to complicate these difficulties and render an amicable settlement of them the more embarrassing. That such measures of redress under similar provocations committed by any of the powerful nations of Europe would have been promptly resorted to by the United States can not be doubted. The national honor and the preservation of the national character throughout the world, as well as our own self-respect and the protection due to our own citizens, would have rendered such a resort indispensable. The history of no civilized nation in modern times has presented within so brief a period so many wanton attacks upon the honor of its flag and upon the property and persons of its citizens as had at that time been borne by the United States from the Mexican authorities and people. But Mexico was a sister republic on the North American continent, occupying a territory contiguous to our own, and was in a feeble and distracted condition, and these considerations, it is presumed, induced Congress to forbear still longer.

Instead of taking redress into our own hands, a new negotiation was entered upon with fair promises on the part of Mexico, but with the real purpose, as the event has proved, of indefinitely postponing the reparation which we demanded, and which was so justly due. This negotiation, after more than a year’s delay, resulted in the convention of the 11th of April, 1839, "for the adjustment of claims of citizens of the United States of America upon the Government of the Mexican Republic." The joint board of commissioners created by this convention to examine and decide upon these claims was not organized until the month of August, 1840, and under the terms of the convention they were to terminate their duties within eighteen months from that time. Four of the eighteen months were consumed in preliminary discussions on frivolous and dilatory points raised by the Mexican commissioners, and it was not until the month of December, 1840, that they commenced the examination of the claims of our citizens upon Mexico. Fourteen months only remained to examine and decide upon these numerous and complicated cases. In the month of February, 1842, the term of the commission expired, leaving many claims undisposed of for want of time. The claims which were allowed by the board and by the umpire authorized by the convention to decide in case of disagreement between the Mexican and American commissioners amounted to $2,026,139.68. There were pending before the umpire when the commission expired additional claims, which had been examined and awarded by the American commissioners and had not been allowed by the Mexican commissioners, amounting to $928,627.88, upon which he did not decide, alleging that his authority had ceased with the termination of the joint commission. Besides these claims, there were others of American citizens amounting to $3,336,837.05, which had been submitted to the board, and upon which they had not time to decide before their final adjournment.

The sum of $2,026,139.68, which had been awarded to the claimants, was a liquidated and ascertained debt due by Mexico, about which there could be no dispute, and which she was bound to pay according to the terms of the convention. Soon after the final awards for this amount had been made the Mexican Government asked for a postponement of the time of making payment, alleging that it would be inconvenient to make the payment at the time stipulated. In the spirit of forbearing kindness toward a sister republic, which Mexico has so long abused, the United States promptly complied with her request. A second convention was accordingly concluded between the two Governments on the 30th of January, 1843, which upon its face declares that "this new arrangement is entered into for the accommodation of Mexico." By the terms of this convention all the interest due on the awards which had been made in favor of the claimants under the convention of the 11th of April, 1839, was to be paid to them on the 30th of April, 1843, and "the principal of the said awards and the interest accruing thereon" was stipulated to "be paid in five years, in equal installments every three months." Notwithstanding this new convention was entered into at the request of Mexico and for the purpose of relieving her from embarrassment, the claimants have only received the interest due on the 30th of April,  1843, and three of the twenty installments. Although the payment of the sum thus liquidated and confessedly due by Mexico to our citizens as indemnity for acknowledged acts of outrage and wrong was secured by treaty, the obligations of which are ever held sacred by all just nations, yet Mexico has violated this solemn engagement by failing and refusing to make the payment. The two installments due in April and July, 1844, under the peculiar circumstances connected with them, have been assumed by the United States and discharged to the claimants, but they are still due by Mexico. But this is not all of which we have just cause of complaint. To provide a remedy for the claimants whose cases were not decided by the joint commission under the convention of April 11, 1839, it was expressly stipulated by the sixth article of the convention of the 30th of January, 1843, that—

A new convention shall be entered into for the settlement of all claims of the Government and citizens of the United States against the Republic of Mexico which were not finally decided by the late commission which met in the city of Washington, and of all claims of the Government and citizens of Mexico against the United States.

In conformity with this stipulation, a third convention was concluded and signed at the city of Mexico on the 20th of November, 1843, by the plenipotentiaries of the two Governments, by which provision was made for ascertaining and paying these claims. In January, 1844, this convention was ratified by the Senate of the United States with two amendments, which were manifestly reasonable in their character. Upon a reference of the amendments proposed to the Government of Mexico, the same evasions, difficulties, and delays were interposed which have so long marked the policy of that Government toward the United States. It has not even yet decided whether it would or would not accede to them, although the subject has been repeatedly pressed upon its consideration. Mexico has thus violated a second time the faith of treaties by failing or refusing to carry into effect the sixth article of the convention of January, 1843.

Such is the history of the wrongs which we have suffered and patiently endured from Mexico through a long series of years. So far from affording reasonable satisfaction for the injuries and insults we had borne, a great aggravation of them consists in the fact that while the United States, anxious to preserve a good understanding with Mexico, have been constantly but vainly employed in seeking redress for past wrongs, new outrages were constantly occurring, which have continued to increase our causes of complaint and to swell the amount of our demands. While the citizens of the United States were conducting a lawful commerce with Mexico under the guaranty of a treaty of "amity, commerce, and navigation," many of them have suffered all the injuries which would have resulted from open war. This treaty, instead of affording protection to our citizens, has been the means of inviting them into the ports of Mexico that they might be, as they have been in numerous instances, plundered of their property and deprived of their personal liberty if they dared insist on their rights. Had the unlawful seizures of American property and the violation of the personal liberty of our citizens, to say nothing of the insults to our flag, which have occurred in the ports of Mexico taken place on the high seas, they would themselves long since have constituted a state of actual war between the two countries. In so long suffering Mexico to violate her most solemn treaty obligations, plunder our citizens of their property, and imprison their persons without affording them any redress we have failed to perform one of the first and highest duties which every government owes to its citizens, and the consequence has been that many of them have been reduced from a state of affluence to bankruptcy. The proud name of American citizen, which ought to protect all who bear it from insult and injury throughout the world, has afforded no such protection to our citizens in Mexico. We had ample cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of hostilities; but even then we forbore to take redress into our own hands until Mexico herself became the aggressor by invading our soil in hostile array and shedding the blood of our citizens.

Such are the grave causes of complaint on the part of the United States against Mexico—causes which existed long before the annexation of Texas to the American Union; and yet, animated by the love of peace and a magnanimous moderation, we did not adopt those measures of redress which under such circumstances are the justified resort of injured nations.

The annexation of Texas to the United States constituted no just cause of offense to Mexico. The pretext that it did so is wholly inconsistent and irreconcilable with well-authenticated facts connected with the revolution by which Texas became independent of Mexico. That this may be the more manifest, it may be proper to advert to the causes and to the history of the principal events of that revolution.

Texas constituted a portion of the ancient Province of Louisiana, ceded to the United States by France in the year 1803. In the year 1819 the United States, by the Florida treaty, ceded to Spain all that part of Louisiana within the present limits of Texas, and Mexico, by the revolution which separated her from Spain and rendered her an independent nation, succeeded to the rights of the mother country over this territory. In the year 1824 Mexico established a federal constitution, under which the Mexican Republic was composed of a number of sovereign States confederated together in a federal union similar to our own. Each of these States had its own executive, legislature, and judiciary, and for all except federal purposes was as independent of the General Government and that of the other States as is Pennsylvania or Virginia under our Constitution. Texas and Coahuila united and formed one of these Mexican States. The State constitution which they adopted, and which was approved by the Mexican Confederacy, asserted that they were "free and independent of the other Mexican United States and of every other power and dominion whatsoever," and proclaimed the great principle of human liberty that "the sovereignty of the state resides originally and essentially in the general mass of the individuals who compose it." To the Government under this constitution, as well as to that under the federal constitution, the people of Texas owed allegiance.

Emigrants from foreign countries, including the United States, were invited by the colonization laws of the State and of the Federal Government to settle in Texas. Advantageous terms were offered to induce them to leave their own country and become Mexican citizens. This invitation was accepted by many of our citizens in the full faith that in their new home they would be governed by laws enacted by representatives elected by themselves, and that their lives, liberty, and property would be protected by constitutional guaranties similar to those which existed in the Republic they had left. Under a Government thus organized they continued until the year 1835, when a military revolution broke out in the City of Mexico which entirely subverted the federal and State constitutions and placed a military dictator at the head of the Government. By a sweeping decree of a Congress subservient to the will of the Dictator the several State constitutions were abolished and the States themselves converted into mere departments of the central Government. The people of Texas were unwilling to submit to this usurpation. Resistance to such tyranny became a high duty. Texas was fully absolved from all allegiance to the central Government of Mexico from the moment that Government had abolished her State constitution and in its place substituted an arbitrary and despotic central government. Such were the principal causes of the Texan revolution. The people of Texas at once determined upon resistance and flew to arms. In the midst of these important and exciting events, however, they did not omit to place their liberties upon a secure and permanent foundation. They elected members to a convention, who in the month of March, 1836, issued a formal declaration that their "political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, sovereign, and independent Republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations." They also adopted for their government a liberal republican constitution. About the same time Santa Anna, then the Dictator of Mexico, invaded Texas with a numerous army for the purpose of subduing her people and enforcing obedience to his arbitrary and despotic Government. On the 21st of April, 1836, he was met by the Texan citizen soldiers, and on that day was achieved by them the memorable victory of San Jacinto, by which they conquered their independence. Considering the numbers engaged on the respective sides, history does not record a more brilliant achievement. Santa Anna himself was among the captives.

In the month of May, 1836, Santa Anna acknowledged by a treaty with the Texan authorities in the most solemn form "the full, entire, and perfect independence of the Republic of Texas." It is true he was then a prisoner of war, but it is equally true that he had failed to reconquer Texas, and had met with signal defeat; that his authority had not been revoked, and that by virtue of this treaty he obtained his personal release. By it hostilities were suspended, and the army which had invaded Texas under his command returned in pursuance of this arrangement unmolested to Mexico.

From the day that the battle of San Jacinto was fought until the present hour Mexico has never possessed the power to reconquer Texas. In the language of the Secretary of State of the United States in a dispatch to our minister in Mexico under date of the 8th of July, 1842—

Mexico may have chosen to consider, and may still choose to consider, Texas as having been at all times since 1835, and as still continuing, a rebellious province; but the world has been obliged to take a very different view of the matter. From the time of the battle of San Jacinto, in April, 1836, to the present moment, Texas has exhibited the same external signs of national independence as Mexico herself, and with quite as much stability of government. Practically free and independent, acknowledged as a political sovereignty by the principal powers of the world, no hostile foot finding rest within her territory for six or seven years, and Mexico herself refraining for all that period from any further attempt to reestablish her own authority over that territory, it can not but be surprising to find Mr. De Bocanegra the secretary of foreign affairs of Mexico complaining that for that whole period citizens of the United States or its Government have been favoring the rebels of Texas and supplying them with vessels, ammunition, and money, as if the war for the reduction of the Province of Texas had been constantly prosecuted by Mexico, and her success prevented by these influences from abroad.

In the same dispatch the Secretary of State affirms that—

Since 1837 the United States have regarded Texas as an independent sovereignty as much as Mexico, and that trade and commerce with citizens of a government at war with Mexico can not on that account be regarded as an intercourse by which assistance and succor are given to Mexican rebels. The whole current of Mr. De Bocanegra’s remarks runs in the same direction, as if the independence of Texas had not been acknowledged. It has been acknowledged; it was acknowledged in 1837 against the remonstrance and protest of Mexico, and most of the acts of any importance of which Mr. De Bocanegra complains flow necessarily from that recognition. He speaks of Texas as still being "an integral part of the territory of the Mexican Republic," but he can not but understand that the United States do not so regard it. The real complaint of Mexico, therefore, is in substance neither more nor less than a complaint against the recognition of Texan independence. It may be thought rather late to repeat that complaint, and not quite just to confine it to the United States to the exemption of England, France, and Belgium, unless the United States, having been the first to acknowledge the independence of Mexico herself, are to be blamed for setting an example for the recognition of that of Texas.

And he added that—

The Constitution, public treaties, and the laws oblige the President to regard Texas as an independent state, and its territory as no part of the territory of Mexico.

Texas had been an independent state, with an organized government, defying the power of Mexico to overthrow or reconquer her, for more than ten years before Mexico commenced the present war against the United States. Texas had given such evidence to the world of her ability to maintain her separate existence as an independent nation that she had been formally recognized as such not only by the United States, but by several of the principal powers of Europe. These powers had entered into treaties of amity, commerce, and navigation with her. They had received and accredited her ministers and other diplomatic agents at their respective courts, and they had commissioned ministers and diplomatic agents on their part to the Government of Texas. If Mexico, notwithstanding all this and her utter inability to subdue or reconquer Texas, still stubbornly refused to recognize her as an independent nation, she was none the less so on that account. Mexico herself had been recognized as an independent nation by the United States and by other powers many years before Spain, of which before her revolution she had been a colony, would agree to recognize her as such; and yet Mexico was at that time in the estimation of the civilized world, and in fact, none the less an independent power because Spain still claimed her as a colony. If Spain had continued until the present period to assert that Mexico was one of her colonies in rebellion against her, this would not have made her so or changed the fact of her independent existence. Texas at the period of her annexation to the United States bore the same relation to Mexico that Mexico had borne to Spain for many years before Spain acknowledged her independence, with this important difference, that before the annexation of Texas to the United States was consummated Mexico herself, by a formal act of her Government, had acknowledged the independence of Texas as a nation. It is true that in the act of recognition she prescribed a condition which she had no power or authority to impose—that Texas should not annex herself to any other power—but this could not detract in any degree from the recognition which Mexico then made of her actual independence. Upon this plain statement of facts, it is absurd for Mexico to allege as a pretext for commencing hostilities against the United States that Texas is still a part of her territory.

But there are those who, conceding all this to be true, assume the ground that the true western boundary of Texas is the Nueces instead of the Rio Grande, and that therefore in marching our Army to the east bank of the latter river we passed the Texan line and invaded the territory of Mexico. A simple statement of facts known to exist will conclusively refute such an assumption. Texas, as ceded to the United States by France in 1803, has been always claimed as extending west to the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo. This fact is established by the authority of our most eminent statesmen at a period when the question was as well, if not better, understood than it is at present. During Mr. Jefferson’s Administration Messrs. Monroe and Pinckney, who had been sent on a special mission to Madrid, charged among other things with the adjustment of boundary between the two countries, in a note addressed to the Spanish minister of foreign affairs under date of the 28th of January, 1805, assert that the boundaries of Louisiana, as ceded to the United States by France, "are the river Perdido on the east and the river Bravo on the west," and they add that "the facts and principles which justify this conclusion are so satisfactory to our Government as to convince it that the United States have not a better right to the island of New Orleans under the cession referred to than they have to the whole district of territory which is above described." Down to the conclusion of the Florida treaty, in February, 1819, by which this territory was ceded to Spain, the United States asserted and maintained their territorial rights to this extent. In the month of June, 1818, during Mr. Monroe’s Administration, information having been received that a number of foreign adventurers had landed at Galveston with the avowed purpose of forming a settlement in that vicinity, a special messenger was dispatched by the Government of the United States with instructions from the Secretary of State to warn them to desist, should they be found there, "or any other place north of the Rio Bravo, and within the territory claimed by the United States." He was instructed, should they be found in the country north of that river, to make known to them "the surprise with which the President has seen possession thus taken, without authority from the United States, of a place within their territorial limits, and upon which no lawful settlement can be made without their sanction." He was instructed to call upon them to "avow under what national authority they profess to act," and to give them due warning "that the place is within the United States, who will suffer no permanent settlement to be made there under any authority other than their own." As late as the 8th of July, 1842, the Secretary of State of the United States, in a note addressed to our minister in Mexico, maintains that by the Florida treaty of 1819 the territory as far west as the Rio Grande was confirmed to Spain. In that note he states that—

By the treaty of the 22d of February, 1819, between the United States and Spain, the Sabine was adopted as the line of boundary between the two powers. Up to that period no considerable colonization had been effected in Texas; but the territory between the Sabine and the Rio Grande being confirmed to Spain by the treaty, applications were made to that power for grants of land, and such grants or permissions of settlement were in fact made by the Spanish authorities in favor of citizens of the United States proposing to emigrate to Texas in numerous families before the declaration of independence by Mexico.

The Texas which was ceded to Spain by the Florida treaty of 1819 embraced all the country now claimed by the State of Texas between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. The Republic of Texas always claimed this river as her western boundary, and in her treaty made with Santa Anna in May, 1836, he recognized it as such. By the constitution which Texas adopted in March, 1836, senatorial and representative districts were organized extending west of the Nueces. The Congress of Texas on the 19th of December, 1836, passed "An act to define the boundaries of the Republic of Texas," in which they declared the Rio Grande from its mouth to its source to be their boundary, and by the said act they extended their "civil and political jurisdiction" over the country up to that boundary. During a period of more than nine years which intervened between the adoption of her constitution and her annexation as one of the States of our Union Texas asserted and exercised many acts of sovereignty and jurisdiction over the territory and inhabitants west of the Nueces. She organized and defined the limits of counties extending to the Rio Grande; she established courts of justice and extended her judicial system over the territory; she established a custom-house and collected duties, and also post-offices and post-roads, in it; she established a land office and issued numerous grants for land within its limits; a senator and a representative residing in it were  elected to the Congress of the Republic and served as such before the act of annexation took place. In both the Congress and convention of Texas which gave their assent to the terms of annexation to the United States proposed by our Congress were representatives residing west of the Nueces, who took part in the act of annexation itself. This was the Texas which by the act of our Congress of the 29th of December, 1845, was admitted as one of the States of our Union. That the Congress of the United States understood the State of Texas which they admitted into the Union to extend beyond the Nueces is apparent from the fact that on the 31st of December, 1845, only two days after the act of admission, they passed a law "to establish a collection district in the State of Texas," by which they created a port of delivery at Corpus Christi, situated west of the Nueces, and being the same point at which the Texas custom-house under the laws of that Republic had been located, and directed that a surveyor to collect the revenue should be appointed for that port by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. A surveyor was accordingly nominated, and confirmed by the Senate, and has been ever since in the performance of his duties. All these acts of the Republic of Texas and of our Congress preceded the orders for the advance of our Army to the east bank of the Rio Grande. Subsequently Congress passed an act "establishing certain post routes" extending west of the Nueces. The country west of that river now constitutes a part of one of the Congressional districts of Texas and is represented in the House of Representatives. The Senators from that State were chosen by a legislature in which the country west of that river was represented. In view of all these facts it is difficult to conceive upon what ground it can be maintained that in occupying the country west of the Nueces with our Army, with a view solely to its security and defense, we invaded the territory of Mexico. But it would have been still more difficult to justify the Executive, whose duty it is to see that the laws be faithfully executed, if in the face of all these proceedings, both of the Congress of Texas and of the United States, he had assumed the responsibility of yielding up the territory west of the Nueces to Mexico or of refusing to protect and defend this territory and its inhabitants, including Corpus Christi as well as the remainder of Texas, against the threatened Mexican invasion.

But Mexico herself has never placed the war which she has waged upon the ground that our Army occupied the intermediate territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. Her refuted pretension that Texas was not in fact an independent state, but a rebellious province, was obstinately persevered in, and her avowed purpose in commencing a war with the United States was to reconquer Texas and to restore Mexican authority over the whole territory—not to the Nueces only, but to the Sabine. In view of the proclaimed menaces of Mexico to this effect, I deemed it my duty, as a measure of precaution and defense, to order our Army to occupy a position on our frontier as a military post, from which our troops could best resist and repel any attempted invasion which Mexico might make. Our Army had occupied a position at Corpus Christi, west of the Nueces, as early as August, 1845, without complaint from any quarter. Had the Nueces been regarded as the true western boundary of Texas, that boundary had been passed by our Army many months before it advanced to the eastern bank of the Rio Grande. In my annual message of December last I informed Congress that upon the invitation of both the Congress and convention of Texas I had deemed it proper to order a strong squadron to the coasts of Mexico and to concentrate an efficient military force on the western frontier of Texas to protect and defend the inhabitants against the menaced invasion of Mexico. In that message I informed Congress that the moment the terms of annexation offered by the United States were accepted by Texas the latter became so far a part of our own country as to make it our duty to afford such protection and defense, and that for that purpose our squadron had been ordered to the Gulf and our Army to take a "position between the Nueces and the Del Norte" or Rio Grande and to "repel any invasion of the Texan territory which might be attempted by the Mexican forces."

It was deemed proper to issue this order, because soon after the President of Texas, in April, 1845, had issued his proclamation convening the Congress of that Republic for the purpose of submitting to that body the terms of annexation proposed by the United States the Government of Mexico made serious threats of invading the Texan territory. These threats became more imposing as it became more apparent in the progress of the question that the people of Texas would decide in favor of accepting the terms of annexation, and finally they had assumed such a formidable character as induced both the Congress and convention of Texas to request that a military force should be sent by the United States into her territory for the purpose of protecting and defending her against the threatened invasion. It would have been a violation of good faith toward the people of Texas to have refused to afford the aid which they desired against a threatened invasion to which they had been exposed by their free determination to annex themselves to our Union in compliance with the overture made to them by the joint resolution of our Congress. Accordingly, a portion of the Army was ordered to advance into Texas. Corpus Christi was the position selected by General Taylor. He encamped at that place in August, 1845, and the Army remained in that position until the 11th of March, 1846, when it moved westward, and on the 28th of that month reached the east bank of the Rio Grande opposite to Matamoras. This movement was made in pursuance of orders from the War Department, issued on the 13th of January, 1846. Before these orders were issued the dispatch of our minister in Mexico transmitting the decision of the council of government of Mexico advising that he should not be received, and also the dispatch of our consul residing in the City of Mexico, the former bearing date on the 17th and the latter on the 18th of December, 1845, copies of both of which accompanied my message to Congress of the 11th of May last, were received at the Department of State. These communications rendered it highly probable, if not absolutely certain, that our minister would not be received by the Government of General Herrera. It was also well known that but little hope could be entertained of a different result from General Paredes in case the revolutionary movement which he was prosecuting should prove successful, as was highly probable. The partisans of Paredes, as our minister in the dispatch referred to states, breathed the fiercest hostility against the United States, denounced the proposed negotiation as treason, and openly called upon the troops and the people to put down the Government of Herrera by force. The reconquest of Texas and war with the United States were openly threatened. These were the circumstances existing when it was deemed proper to order the Army under the command of General Taylor to advance to the western frontier of Texas and occupy a position on or near the Rio Grande.

The apprehensions of a contemplated Mexican invasion have been since fully justified by the event. The determination of Mexico to rush into hostilities with the United States was afterwards manifested from the whole tenor of the note of the Mexican minister of foreign affairs to our minister bearing date on the 12th of March, 1846. Paredes had then revolutionized the Government, and his minister, after referring to the resolution for the annexation of Texas which had been adopted by our Congress in March, 1845, proceeds to declare that—

A fact such as this, or, to speak with greater exactness, so notable an act of usurpation, created an imperious necessity that Mexico, for her own honor, should repel it with proper firmness and dignity. The supreme Government had beforehand declared that it would look upon such an act as a casus belli, and as a consequence of this declaration negotiation was by its very nature at an end, and war was the only recourse of the Mexican Government.

It appears also that on the 4th of April following General Paredes, through his minister of war, issued orders to the Mexican general in command on the Texan frontier to "attack" our Army "by every means which war permits." To this General Paredes had been pledged to the army and people of Mexico during the military revolution which had brought him into power. On the 18th of April, 1846, General Paredes addressed a letter to the commander on that frontier in which he stated to him: "At the present date I suppose you, at the head of that valiant army, either fighting already or preparing for the operations of a campaign;" and, "Supposing you already on the theater of operations and with all the forces assembled, it is indispensable that hostilities be commenced, yourself taking the initiative against the enemy."

The movement of our Army to the Rio Grande was made by the commanding general under positive orders to abstain from all aggressive acts toward Mexico or Mexican citizens, and to regard the relations between the two countries as peaceful unless Mexico should declare war or commit acts of hostility indicative of a state of war, and these orders he faithfully executed. Whilst occupying his position on the east bank of the Rio Grande, within the limits of Texas, then recently admitted as one of the States of our Union, the commanding general of the Mexican forces, who, in pursuance of the orders of his Government, had collected a large army on the opposite shore of the Rio Grande, crossed the river, invaded our territory, and commenced hostilities by attacking our forces. Thus, after all the injuries which we had received and borne from Mexico, and after she had insultingly rejected a minister sent to her on a mission of peace, and whom she had solemnly agreed to receive, she consummated her long course of outrage against our country by commencing an offensive war and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil.

The United States never attempted to acquire Texas by conquest. On the contrary, at an early period after the people of Texas had achieved their independence they sought to be annexed to the United States. At a general election in September, 1836, they decided with great unanimity in favor of "annexation," and in November following the Congress of the Republic authorized the appointment of a minister to bear their request to this Government. This Government, however, having remained neutral between Texas and Mexico during the war between them, and considering it due to the honor of our country and our fair fame among the nations of the earth that we should not at this early period consent to annexation, nor until it should be manifest to the whole world that the reconquest of Texas by Mexico was impossible, refused to accede to the overtures made by Texas. On the 12th of April, 1844, after more than seven years had elapsed since Texas had established her independence, a treaty was concluded for the annexation of that Republic to the United States, which was rejected by the Senate. Finally, on the 1st of March, 1845, Congress passed a joint resolution for annexing her to the United States upon certain preliminary conditions to which her assent was required. The solemnities which characterized the deliberations and conduct of the Government and people of Texas on the deeply interesting questions presented by these resolutions are known to the world. The Congress, the Executive, and the people of Texas, in a convention elected for that purpose, accepted with great unanimity the proposed terms of annexation, and thus consummated on her part the great act of restoring to our Federal Union a vast territory which had been ceded to Spain by the Florida treaty more than a quarter of a century before.

After the joint resolution for the annexation of Texas to the United States had been passed by our Congress the Mexican minister at Washington addressed a note to the Secretary of State, bearing date on the 6th of March, 1845, protesting against it as "an act of aggression the most unjust which can be found recorded in the annals of modern history, namely, that of despoiling a friendly nation like Mexico of a considerable portion of her territory," and protesting against the resolution of annexation as being an act "whereby the Province of Texas, an integral portion of the Mexican territory, is agreed and admitted into the American Union;" and he announced that as a consequence his mission to the United States had terminated, and demanded his passports, which were granted. It was upon the absurd pretext, made by Mexico (herself indebted for her independence to a successful revolution), that the Republic of Texas still continued to be, notwithstanding all that had passed, a Province of Mexico that this step was taken by the Mexican minister.

Every honorable effort has been used by me to avoid the war which followed, but all have proved vain. All our attempts to preserve peace have been met by insult and resistance on the part of Mexico. My efforts to this end commenced in the note of the Secretary of State of the 10th of March, 1845, in answer to that of the Mexican minister. Whilst declining to reopen a discussion which had already been exhausted, and proving again what was known to the whole world, that Texas had long since achieved her independence, the Secretary of State expressed the regret of this Government that Mexico should have taken offense at the resolution of annexation passed by Congress, and gave assurance that our "most strenuous efforts shall be devoted to the amicable adjustment of every cause of complaint between the two Governments and to the cultivation of the kindest and most friendly relations between the sister Republics." That I have acted in the spirit of this assurance will appear from the events which have since occurred. Notwithstanding Mexico had abruptly terminated all diplomatic intercourse with the United States, and ought, therefore, to have been the first to ask for its resumption, yet, waiving all ceremony, I embraced the earliest favorable opportunity "to ascertain from the Mexican Government whether they would receive an envoy from the United States intrusted with full power to adjust all the questions in dispute between the two Governments." In September, 1845, I believed the propitious moment for such an overture had arrived. Texas, by the enthusiastic and almost unanimous will of her people, had pronounced in favor of annexation. Mexico herself had agreed to acknowledge the independence of Texas, subject to a condition, it is true, which she had no right to impose and no power to enforce. The last lingering hope of Mexico, if she still could have retained any, that Texas would ever again become one of her Provinces, must have been abandoned.

Return to Part I

The consul of the United States at the City of Mexico was therefore instructed by the Secretary of State on the 15th of September, 1845, to make the inquiry of the Mexican Government. The inquiry was made, and on the 15th of October, 1845, the minister of foreign affairs of the Mexican Government, in a note addressed to our consul, gave a favorable response, requesting at the same time that our naval force might be withdrawn from Vera Cruz while negotiations should be pending. Upon the receipt of this note our naval force was promptly withdrawn from Vera Cruz. A minister was immediately appointed, and departed to Mexico. Everything bore a promising aspect for a speedy and peaceful adjustment of all our difficulties. At the date of my annual message to Congress in December last no doubt was entertained but that he would be received by the Mexican Government, and the hope was cherished that all cause of misunderstanding between the two countries would be speedily removed. In the confident hope that such would be the result of his mission, I informed Congress that I forbore at that time to "recommend such ulterior measures of redress for the wrongs and injuries we had so long borne as it would have been proper to make had no such negotiation been instituted." To my surprise and regret the Mexican Government, though solemnly pledged to do so, upon the arrival of our minister in Mexico refused to receive and accredit him. When he reached Vera Cruz, on the 30th of November, 1845, he found that the aspect of affairs had undergone an unhappy change. The Government of General Herrera, who was at that time President of the Republic, was tottering to its fall. General Paredes, a military leader, had manifested his determination to overthrow the Government of Herrera by a military revolution, and one of the principal means which he employed to effect his purpose and render the Government of Herrera odious to the army and people of Mexico was by loudly condemning its determination to receive a minister of peace from the United States, alleging that it was the intention of Herrera, by a treaty with the United States, to dismember the territory of Mexico by ceding away the department of Texas. The Government of Herrera is believed to have been well disposed to a pacific adjustment of existing difficulties, but probably alarmed for its own security, and in order to ward off the danger of the revolution led by Paredes, violated its solemn agreement and refused to receive or accredit our minister; and this although informed that he had been invested with full power to adjust all questions in dispute between the two Governments. Among the frivolous pretexts for this refusal, the principal one was that our minister had not gone upon a special mission confined to the question of Texas alone, leaving all the outrages upon our flag and our citizens unredressed. The Mexican Government well knew that both our national honor and the protection due to our citizens imperatively required that the two questions of boundary and indemnity should be treated of together, as naturally and inseparably blended, and they ought to have seen that this course was best calculated to enable the United States to extend to them the most liberal justice. On the 30th of December, 1845, General Herrera resigned the Presidency and yielded up the Government to General Paredes without a struggle. Thus a revolution was accomplished solely by the army commanded by Paredes, and the supreme power in Mexico passed into the hands of a military usurper who was known to be bitterly hostile to the United States.

Although the prospect of a pacific adjustment with the new Government was unpromising from the known hostility of its head to the United States, yet, determined that nothing should be left undone on our part to restore friendly relations between the two countries, our minister was instructed to present his credentials to the new Government and ask to be accredited by it in the diplomatic character in which he had been commissioned. These instructions he executed by his note of the 1st of March, 1846, addressed to the Mexican minister of foreign affairs, but his request was insultingly refused by that minister in his answer of the 12th of the same month. No alternative remained for our minister but to demand his passports and return to the United States.

Thus was the extraordinary spectacle presented to the civilized world of a Government, in violation of its own express agreement, having twice rejected a minister of peace invested with full powers to adjust all the existing differences between the two countries in a manner just and honorable to both. I am not aware that modern history presents a parallelcase in which in time of peace one nation has refused even to hear propositions from another for terminating existing difficulties between them. Scarcely a hope of adjusting our difficulties, even at a remote day, or of preserving peace with Mexico, could be cherished while Paredes remained at the head of the Government. He had acquired the supreme power by a military revolution and upon the most solemn pledges to wage war against the United States and to reconquer Texas, which he claimed as a revolted province of Mexico. He had denounced as guilty of treason all those Mexicans who considered Texas as no longer constituting a part of the territory of Mexico and who were friendly to the cause of peace. The duration of the war which he waged against the United States was indefinite, because the end which he proposed of the reconquest of Texas was hopeless. Besides, there was good reason to believe from all his conduct that it was his intention to convert the Republic of Mexico into a monarchy and to call a foreign European prince to the throne. Preparatory to this end, he had during his short rule destroyed the liberty of the press, tolerating that portion of it only which openly advocated the establishment of a monarchy. The better to secure the success of his ultimate designs, he had by an arbitrary decree convoked a Congress, not to be elected by the free voice of the people, but to be chosen in a manner to make them subservient to his will and to give him absolute control over their deliberations.

Under all these circumstances it was believed that any revolution in Mexico founded upon opposition to the ambitious projects of Paredes would tend to promote the cause of peace as well as prevent any attempted European interference in the affairs of the North American continent, both objects of deep interest to the United States. Any such foreign interference, if attempted, must have been resisted by the United States. My views upon that subject were fully communicated to Congress in my last annual message. In any event, it was certain that no change whatever in the Government of Mexico which would deprive Paredes of power could be for the worse so far as the United States were concerned, while it was highly probable that any change must be for the better. This was the state of affairs existing when Congress, on the 13th of May last, recognized the existence of the war which had been commenced by the Government of Paredes; and it became an object of much importance, with a view to a speedy settlement of our difficulties and the restoration of an honorable peace, that Paredes should not retain power in Mexico.

Before that time there were symptoms of a revolution in Mexico, favored, as it was understood to be, by the more liberal party, and especially by those who were opposed to foreign interference and to the monarchical form of government. Santa Anna was then in exile in Havana, having been expelled from power and banished from his country by a revolution which occurred in December, 1844; but it was known that he had still a considerable party in his favor in Mexico. It was also equally well known that no vigilance which could be exerted by our squadron would in all probability have prevented him from effecting a landing somewhere on the extensive Gulf coast of Mexico if he desired to return to his country. He had openly professed an entire change of policy, had expressed his regret that he had subverted the federal constitution of 1824, and avowed that he was now in favor of its restoration. He had publicly declared his hostility, in strongest terms, to the establishment of a monarchy and to European interference in the affairs of his country. Information to this effect had been received, from sources believed to be reliable, at the date of the recognition of the existence of the war by Congress, and was afterwards fully confirmed by the receipt of the dispatch of our consul in the City of Mexico, with the accompanying documents, which are herewith transmitted. Besides, it was reasonable to suppose that he must see the ruinous consequences to Mexico of a war with the United States, and that it would be his interest to favor peace.

It was under these circumstances and upon these considerations that it was deemed expedient not to obstruct his return to Mexico should he attempt to do so. Our object was the restoration of peace, and, with that view, no reason was perceived why we should take part with Paredes and aid him by means of our blockade in preventing the return of his rival to Mexico. On the contrary, it was believed that the intestine divisions which ordinary sagacity could not but anticipate as the fruit of Santa Anna’s return to Mexico, and his contest with Paredes, might strongly tend to produce a disposition with both parties to restore and preserve peace with the United States. Paredes was a soldier by profession and a monarchist in principle. He had but recently before been successful in a military revolution, by which he had obtained power. He was the sworn enemy of the United States, with which he had involved his country in the existing war. Santa Anna had been expelled from power by the army, was known to be in open hostility to Paredes, and publicly pledged against foreign intervention and the restoration of monarchy in Mexico. In view of these facts and circumstances it was that when orders were issued to the commander of our naval forces in the Gulf, on the 13th day of May last, the same day on which the existence of the war was recognized by Congress, to place the coasts of Mexico under blockade, he was directed not to obstruct the passage of Santa Anna to Mexico should he attempt to return.

A revolution took place in Mexico in the early part of August following, by which the power of Paredes was overthrown, and he has since been banished from the country, and is now in exile. Shortly afterwards Santa Anna returned. It remains to be seen whether his return may not yet prove to be favorable to a pacific adjustment of the existing difficulties, it being manifestly his interest not to persevere in the prosecution of a war commenced by Paredes to accomplish a purpose so absurd as the reconquest of Texas to the Sabine. Had Paredes remained in power, it is morally certain that any pacific adjustment would have been hopeless.

Upon the commencement of hostilities by Mexico against the United States the indignant spirit of the nation was at once aroused. Congress promptly responded to the expectations of the country, and by the act of the 13th of May last recognized the fact that war existed, by the act of Mexico, between the United States and that Republic, and granted the means necessary for its vigorous prosecution. Being involved in a war thus commenced by Mexico, and for the justice of which on our part we may confidently appeal to the whole world, I resolved to prosecute it with the utmost vigor. Accordingly the ports of Mexico on the Gulf and on the Pacific have been placed under blockade and her territory invaded at several important points. The reports from the Departments of War and of the Navy will inform you more in detail of the measures adopted in the emergency in which our country was placed and of the gratifying results which have been accomplished.

The various columns of the Army have performed their duty under great disadvantages with the most distinguished skill and courage. The victories of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma and of Monterey, won against greatly superior numbers and against most decided advantages in other respects on the part of the enemy, were brilliant in their execution, and entitle our brave officers and soldiers to the grateful thanks of their country. The nation deplores the loss of the brave officers and men who have gallantly fallen while vindicating and defending their country’s rights and honor.

It is a subject of pride and satisfaction that our volunteer citizen soldiers, who so promptly responded to their country’s call, with an experience of the discipline of a camp of only a few weeks, have borne their part in the hard-fought battle of Monterey with a constancy and courage equal to that of veteran troops and worthy of the highest admiration. The privations of long marches through the enemy’s country and through a wilderness have been borne without a murmur. By rapid movements the Province of New Mexico, with Santa Fe, its capital, has been captured without bloodshed. The Navy has cooperated with the Army and rendered important services; if not so brilliant, it is because the enemy had no force to meet them on their own element and because of the defenses which nature has interposed in the difficulties of the navigation on the Mexican coast. Our squadron in the Pacific, with the cooperation of a gallant officer of the Army and a small force hastily collected in that distant country, has acquired bloodless possession of the Californias, and the American flag has been raised at every important point in that Province.

I congratulate you on the success which has thus attended our military and naval operations. In less than seven months after Mexico commenced hostilities, at a time selected by herself, we have taken possession of many of her principal ports, driven back and pursued her invading army, and acquired military possession of the Mexican Provinces of New Mexico, New Leon, Coahuila, Tamaulipas, and the Californias, a territory larger in extent than that embraced in the original thirteen States of the Union, inhabited by a considerable population, and much of it more than 1,000 miles from the points at which we had to collect our forces and commence our movements. By the blockade the import and export trade of the enemy has been cut off. Well may the American people be proud of the energy and gallantry of our regular and volunteer officers and soldiers. The events of these few months afford a gratifying proof that our country can under any emergency confidently rely for the maintenance of her honor and the defense of her rights on an effective force, ready at all times voluntarily to relinquish the comforts of home for the perils and privations of the camp. And though such a force may be for the time expensive, it is in the end economical, as the ability to command it removes the necessity of employing a large standing army in time of peace, and proves that our people love their institutions and are ever ready to defend and protect them.

While the war was in a course of vigorous and successful prosecution, being still anxious to arrest its evils, and considering that after the brilliant victories of our arms on the 8th and 9th of May last the national honor could not be compromitted by it, another overture was made to Mexico, by my direction, on the 27th of July last to terminate hostilities by a peace just and honorable to both countries. On the 31st of August following the Mexican Government declined to accept this friendly overture, but referred it to the decision of a Mexican Congress to be assembled in the early part of the present month. I communicate to you herewith a copy of the letter of the Secretary of State proposing to reopen negotiations, of the answer of the Mexican Government, and of the reply thereto of the Secretary of State,

The war will continue to be prosecuted with vigor as the best means of securing peace. It is hoped that the decision of the Mexican Congress, to which our last overture has been referred, may result in a speedy and honorable peace. With our experience, however, of the unreasonable course of the Mexican authorities, it is the part of wisdom not to relax in the energy of our military operations until the result is made known. In this view it is deemed important to hold military possession of all the Provinces which have been taken until a definitive treaty of peace shall have been concluded and ratified by the two countries.

The war has not been waged with a view to conquest, but, having been commenced by Mexico, it has been carried into the enemy’s country and will be vigorously prosecuted there with a view to obtain an honorable peace, and thereby secure ample indemnity for the expenses of the war, as well as to our much-injured citizens, who hold large pecuniary demands against Mexico.

By the laws of nations a conquered country is subject to be governed by the conqueror during his military possession and until there is either a treaty of peace or he shall voluntarily withdraw from it. The old civil government being necessarily superseded, it is the right and duty of the conqueror to secure his conquest and to provide for the maintenance of civil order and the rights of the inhabitants. This right has been exercised and this duty performed by our military and naval commanders by the establishment of temporary governments in some of the conquered Provinces of Mexico, assimilating them as far as practicable to the free institutions of our own country. In the Provinces of New Mexico and of the Californias little, if any, further resistance is apprehended from the inhabitants to the temporary governments which have thus, from the necessity of the case and according to the laws of war, been established. It may be proper to provide for the security of these important conquests by making an adequate appropriation for the purpose of erecting fortifications and defraying the expenses necessarily incident to the maintenance of our possession and authority over them.

Near the close of your last session, for reasons communicated to Congress, I deemed it important as a measure for securing a speedy peace with Mexico, that a sum of money should be appropriated and placed in the power of the Executive, similar to that which had been made upon two former occasions during the Administration of President Jefferson.

On the 26th of February, 1803, an appropriation of $2,000.000 was made and placed at the disposal of the President. Its object is well known. It was at that time in contemplation to acquire Louisiana from France, and it was intended to be applied as a part of the consideration which might be paid for that territory. On the 13th of February, 1806, the same sum was in like manner appropriated, with a view to the purchase of the Floridas from Spain. These appropriations were made to facilitate negotiations and as a means to enable the President to accomplish the important objects in view. Though it did not become necessary for the President to use these appropriations, yet a state of things might have arisen in which it would have been highly important for him to do so, and the wisdom of making them can not be doubted. It is believed that the measure recommended at your last session met with the approbation of decided majorities in both Houses of Congress. Indeed, in different forms, a bill making an appropriation of $2,000,000 passed each House, and it is much to be regretted that it did not become a law. The reasons which induced me to recommend the measure at that time still exist, and I again submit the subject for your consideration and suggest the importance of early action upon it. Should the appropriation be made and be not needed, it will remain in the Treasury; should it be deemed proper to apply it in whole or in part, it will be accounted for as other public expenditures.

Immediately after Congress had recognized the existence of the war with Mexico my attention was directed to the danger that privateers might be fitted out in the ports of Cuba and Porto Rico to prey upon the commerce of the United States, and I invited the special attention of the Spanish Government to the fourteenth article of our treaty with that power of the 27th of October, 1795, under which the citizens and subjects of either nation who shall take commissions or letters of marque to act as privateers against the other "shall be punished as pirates."

It affords me pleasure to inform you that I have received assurances from the Spanish Government that this article of the treaty shall be faithfully observed on its part. Orders for this purpose were immediately transmitted from that Government to the authorities of Cuba and Porto Rico to exert their utmost vigilance in preventing any attempts to fit out privateers in those islands against the United States. From the good faith of Spain I am fully satisfied that this treaty will be executed in its spirit as well as its letter, whilst the United States will on their part faithfully perform all the obligations which it imposes on them.

Information has been recently received at the Department of State that the Mexican Government has sent to Havana blank commissions to privateers and blank certificates of naturalization signed by General Salas, the present head of the Mexican Government. There is also reason to apprehend that similar documents have been transmitted to other parts of the world. Copies of these papers, in translation, are herewith transmitted.

As the preliminaries required by the practice of civilized nations for commissioning privateers and regulating their conduct appear not to have been observed, and as these commissions are in blank, to be filled up with the names of citizens and subjects of all nations who may be willing to purchase them, the whole proceeding can only be construed as an invitation to all the freebooters upon earth who are willing to pay for the privilege to cruise against American commerce. It will be for our courts of justice to decide whether under such circumstances these Mexican letters of marque and reprisal shall protect those who accept them, and commit robberies upon the high seas under their authority, from the pains and penalties of piracy.

If the certificates of naturalization thus granted be intended by Mexico to shield Spanish subjects from the guilt and punishment of pirates under our treaty with Spain, they will certainly prove unavailing. Such a subterfuge would be but a weak device to defeat the provisions of a solemn treaty.

I recommend that Congress should immediately provide by law for the trial and punishment as pirates of Spanish subjects who, escaping the vigilance of their Government, shall be found guilty of privateering against the United States. I do not apprehend serious danger from these privateers. Our Navy will be constantly on the alert to protect our commerce. Besides, in case prizes should be made of American vessels, the utmost vigilance will be exerted by our blockading squadron to prevent the captors from taking them into Mexican ports, and it is not apprehended that any nation will violate its neutrality by suffering such prizes to be condemned and sold within its jurisdiction.

I recommend that Congress should immediately provide by law for granting letters of marque and reprisal against vessels under the Mexican flag. It is true that there are but few, if any, commercial vessels of Mexico upon the high seas, and it is therefore not probable that many American privateers would be fitted out in case a law should pass authorizing this mode of warfare. It is, notwithstanding, certain that such privateers may render good service to the commercial interests of the country by recapturing our merchant ships should any be taken by armed vessels under the Mexican flag, as well as by capturing these vessels themselves. Every means within our power should be rendered available for the protection of our commerce.

The annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury will exhibit a detailed statement of the condition of the finances. The imports for the fiscal year ending on the 30th of June last were of the value of $121,691,797, of which the amount exported was $11,346,623, leaving the amount retained in the country for domestic consumption $110,345,174. The value of the exports for the same period was $113,488,516, of which $102,141,893 consisted of domestic productions and $11,346,623 of foreign articles.

The receipts into the Treasury for the same year were $29,499,247.06, of which there was derived from customs $26,712,667.87, from the sales of public lands $2,694,452.48, and from incidental and miscellaneous sources $92,126.71. The expenditures for the same period were $28,031,114.20, and the balance in the Treasury on the 1st day of July last was $9,126,439. 08.

The amount of the public debt, including Treasury notes, on the 1st of the present month was $24,256,494.60, of which the sum of $17,788,799.62 was outstanding on the 4th of March, 1845, leaving the amount incurred since that time $6,467,694.98.

In order to prosecute the war with Mexico with vigor and energy, as the best means of bringing it to a speedy and honorable termination, a further loan will be necessary to meet the expenditures for the present and the next fiscal year. If the war should be continued until the 30th of June, 1848, being the end of the next fiscal year, it is estimated that an additional loan of $23,000,000 will be required. This estimate is made upon the assumption that it will be necessary to retain constantly in the Treasury $4,000,000 to guard against contingencies. If such surplus were not required to be retained, then a loan of $19,000,000 would be sufficient. If, however, Congress should at the present session impose a revenue duty on the principal articles now embraced in the free list, it is estimated that an additional annual revenue of about two millions and a half, amounting, it is estimated, on the 30th of June, 1848, to $4,000,000, would be derived from that source, and the loan required would be reduced by that amount. It is estimated also that should Congress graduate and reduce the price of such of the public lands as have been long in the market the additional revenue derived from that source would be annually, for several years to come, between half a million and a million dollars; and the loan required may be reduced by that amount also. Should these measures be adopted, the loan required would not probably exceed $18,000,000 or $19,000,000, leaving in the Treasury a constant surplus of $4,000,000. The loan proposed, it is estimated, will be sufficient to cover the necessary expenditures both for the war and for all other purposes up to the 30th of June, 1848, and an amount of this loan not exceeding one-half may be required during the present fiscal year, and the greater part of the remainder during the first half of the fiscal year succeeding.

In order that timely notice may be given and proper measures taken to effect the loan, or such portion of it as may be required, it is important that the authority of Congress to make it be given at an early period of your present session. It is suggested that the loan should be contracted for a period of twenty years, with authority to purchase the stock and pay it off at an earlier period at its market value out of any surplus which may at any time be in the Treasury applicable to that purpose. After the establishment of peace with Mexico, it is supposed that a considerable surplus will exist, and that the debt may be extinguished in a much shorter period than that for which it may be contracted. The period of twenty years, as that for which the proposed loan may be contracted, in preference to a shorter period, is suggested, because all experience, both at home and abroad, has shown that loans are effected upon much better terms upon long time than when they are reimbursable at short dates.

Necessary as this measure is to sustain the honor and the interests of the country engaged in a foreign war, it is not doubted but that Congress will promptly authorize it.

The balance in the Treasury on the 1st July last exceeded $9,000,000, notwithstanding considerable expenditures had been made for the war during the months of May and June preceding. But for the war the whole public debt could and would have been extinguished within a short period; and it was a part of my settled policy to do so, and thus relieve the people from its burden and place the Government in a position which would enable it to reduce the public expenditures to that economical standard which is most consistent with the general welfare and the pure and wholesome progress of our institutions.

Among our just causes of complaint against Mexico arising out of her refusal to treat for peace, as well before as since the war so unjustly commenced on her part, are the extraordinary expenditures in which we have been involved. Justice to our own people will make it proper that Mexico should be held responsible for these expenditures.

Economy in the public expenditures is at all times a high duty which all public functionaries of the Government owe to the people. This duty becomes the more imperative in a period of war, when large and extraordinary expenditures become unavoidable. During the existence of the war with Mexico all our resources should be husbanded, and no appropriations made except such as are absolutely necessary for its vigorous prosecution and the due administration of the Government. Objects of appropriation which in peace may be deemed useful or proper, but which are not indispensable for the public service, may when the country is engaged in a foreign war be well postponed to a future period. By the observance of this policy at your present session large amounts may be saved to the Treasury and be applied to objects of pressing and urgent necessity, and thus the creation of a corresponding amount of public debt may be avoided.

It is not meant to recommend that the ordinary and necessary appropriations for the support of Government should be withheld; but it is well known that at every session of Congress appropriations are proposed for numerous objects which may or may not be made without materially affecting the public interests, and these it is recommended should not be granted.

The act passed at your last session "reducing the duties on imports" not having gone into operation until the 1st of the present month, there has not been time for its practical effect upon the revenue and the business of the country to be developed. It is not doubted, however, that the just policy which it adopts will add largely to our foreign trade and promote the general prosperity. Although it can not be certainly foreseen what amount of revenue it will yield, it is estimated that it will exceed that produced by the act of 1842, which it superseded. The leading principles established by it are to levy the taxes with a view to raise revenue and to impose them upon the articles imported according to their actual value.

The act of 1842, by the excessive rates of duty which it imposed on many articles, either totally excluded them from importation or greatly reduced the amount imported, and thus diminished instead of producing revenue. By it the taxes were imposed not for the legitimate purpose of raising revenue, but to afford advantages to favored classes at the expense of a large majority of their fellow-citizens. Those employed in agriculture, mechanical  pursuits, commerce, and navigation were compelled to contribute from their substance to swell the profits and overgrown wealth of the comparatively few who had invested their capital in manufactures. The taxes were not levied in proportion to the value of the articles upon which they were imposed, but, widely departing from this just rule, the lighter taxes were in many cases levied upon articles of luxury and high price and the heavier taxes on those of necessity and low price, consumed by the great mass of the people. It was a system the inevitable effect of which was to relieve favored classes and the wealthy few from contributing their just proportion for the support of Government, and to lay the burden on the labor of the many engaged in other pursuits than manufactures.

A system so unequal and unjust has been superseded by the existing law, which imposes duties not for the benefit or injury of classes or pursuits, but distributes and, as far as practicable, equalizes the public burdens among all classes and occupations. The favored classes who under the unequal and unjust system which has been repealed have heretofore realized large profits, and many of them amassed large fortunes at the expense of the many who have been made tributary to them, will have no reason to complain if they shall be required to bear their just proportion of the taxes necessary for the support of Government. So far from it, it will be perceived by an examination of the existing law that discriminations in the rates of duty imposed within the revenue principle have been retained in their favor. The incidental aid against foreign competition which they still enjoy gives them an advantage which no other pursuits possess, but of this none others will complain, because the duties levied are necessary for revenue. These revenue duties, including freights and charges, which the importer must pay before he can come in competition with the home manufacturer in our markets, amount on nearly all our leading branches of manufacture to more than one-third of the value of the imported article, and in some cases to almost one-half its value. With such advantages it is not doubted that our domestic manufacturers will continue to prosper, realizing in well-conducted establishments even greater profits than can be derived from any other regular business. Indeed, so far from requiring the protection of even incidental revenue duties, our manufacturers in several leading branches are extending their business, giving evidence of great ingenuity and skill and of their ability to compete, with increased prospect of success, for the open market of the world. Domestic manufactures to the value of several millions of dollars, which can not find a market at home, are annually exported to foreign countries. With such rates of duty as those established by the existing law the system will probably be permanent, and capitalists who are made or shall hereafter make their investments in manufactures will know upon what to rely. The country will be satisfied with these rates, because the advantages which the manufacturers still enjoy result necessarily from the collection of revenue for the support of Government. High protective duties, from their unjust operation upon the masses of the people, can not fail to give rise to extensive dissatisfaction and complaint and to constant efforts to change or repeal them, rendering all investments in manufactures uncertain and precarious. Lower and more permanent rates of duty, at the same time that they will yield to the manufacturer fair and remunerating profits, will secure him against the danger of frequent changes in the system, which can not fail to ruinously affect his interests.

Simultaneously with the relaxation of the restrictive policy by the United States, Great Britain, from whose example we derived the system, has relaxed hers. She has modified her corn laws and reduced many other duties to moderate revenue rates. After ages of experience the statesmen of that country have been constrained by a stern necessity and by a public opinion having its deep foundation in the sufferings and wants of impoverished millions to abandon a system the effect of which was to build up immense fortunes in the hands of the few and to reduce the laboring millions to pauperism and misery. Nearly in the same ratio that labor was depressed capital was increased and concentrated by the British protective policy.

The evils of the system in Great Britain were at length rendered intolerable, and it has been abandoned, but not without a severe struggle on the part of the protected and favored classes to retain the unjust advantages which they have so long enjoyed. It was to be expected that a similar struggle would be made by the same classes in the United States whenever an attempt was made to modify or abolish the same unjust system here. The protective policy had been in operation in the United States for a much shorter period, and its pernicious effects were not, therefore, so clearly perceived and felt. Enough, however, was known of these effects to induce its repeal.

It would be strange if in the face of the example of Great Britain, our principal foreign customer, and of the evils of a system rendered manifest in that country by long and painful experience, and in the face of the immense advantages which under a more liberal commercial policy we are already deriving, and must continue to derive, by supplying her starving population with food, the United States should restore a policy which she has been compelled to abandon, and thus diminish her ability to purchase from us the food and other articles which she so much needs and we so much desire to sell. By the simultaneous abandonment of the protective policy by Great Britain and the United States new and important markets have already been opened for our agricultural and other products, commerce and navigation have received a new impulse, labor and trade have been released from the artificial trammels which have so long fettered them, and to a great extent reciprocity in the exchange of commodities has been introduced at the same time by both countries, and greatly for the benefit of both. Great Britain has been forced by the pressure of circumstances at home to abandon a policy which has been upheld for ages, and to open her markets for our immense surplus of breadstuffs, and it is confidently believed that other powers of Europe will ultimately see the wisdom, if they be not compelled by the pauperism and sufferings of their crowded population, to pursue a similar policy.

Our farmers are more deeply interested in maintaining the just and liberal policy of the existing law than any other class of our citizens. They constitute a large majority of our population, and it is well known that when they prosper all other pursuits prosper also. They have heretofore not only received none of the bounties or favors of Government, but by the unequal operations of the protective policy have been made by the burdens of taxation which it imposed to contribute to the bounties which have enriched others.

When a foreign as well as a home market is opened to them, they must receive, as they are now receiving, increased prices for their products. They will find a readier sale, and at better prices, for their wheat, flour, rice, Indian corn, beef, pork, lard, butter, cheese, and other articles which they produce. The home market alone is inadequate to enable them to dispose of the immense surplus of food and other articles which they are capable of producing, even at the most reduced prices, for the manifest reason that they can not be consumed in the country. The United States can from their immense surplus supply not only the home demand, but the deficiencies of food required by the whole world.

That the reduced production of some of the chief articles of food in Great Britain and other parts of Europe may have contributed to increase the demand for our breadstuffs and provisions is not doubted, but that the great and efficient cause of this increased demand and of increased prices consists in the removal of artificial restrictions heretofore imposed is deemed to be equally certain. That our exports of food, already increased and increasing beyond former example under the more liberal policy which has been adopted, will be still vastly enlarged unless they be checked or prevented by a restoration of the protective policy can not be doubted. That our commercial and navigating interests will be enlarged in a corresponding ratio with the increase of our trade is equally certain, while our manufacturing interests will still be the favored interests of the country and receive the incidental protection afforded them by revenue duties; and more than this they can not justly demand.

In my annual message of December last a tariff of revenue duties based upon the principles of the existing law was recommended, and I have seen no reason to change the opinions then expressed. In view of the probable beneficial effects of that law, I recommend that the policy established by it be maintained. It has but just commenced to operate, and to abandon or modify it without giving it a fair trial would be inexpedient and unwise. Should defects in any of its details be ascertained by actual experience to exist, these may be hereafter corrected; but until such defects shall become manifest the act should be fairly tested.

It is submitted for your consideration whether it may not be proper, as a war measure, to impose revenue duties on some of the articles now embraced in the free list. Should it be deemed proper to impose such duties with a view to raise revenue to meet the expenses of the war with Mexico or to avoid to that extent the creation of a public debt, they may be repealed when the emergency which gave rise to them shall cease to exist, and constitute no part of the permanent policy of the country.

The act of the 6th of August last, "to provide for the better organization of the Treasury and for the collection, safe-keeping, transfer, and disbursement of the public revenue," has been carried into execution as rapidly as the delay necessarily arising out of the appointment of new officers, taking and approving their bonds, and preparing and securing proper places for the safe-keeping of the public money would permit. It is not proposed to depart in any respect from the principles or policy on which this great measure is rounded. There are, however, defects in the details of the measure, developed by its practical operation, which are fully set forth in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, to which the attention of Congress is invited. These defects would impair to some extent the successful operation of the law at all times, but are especially embarrassing when the country is engaged in a war, when the expenditures are greatly increased, when loans are to be effected and the disbursements are to be made at points many hundred miles distant, in some cases, from any depository, and a large portion of them in a foreign country. The modifications suggested in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury are recommended to your favorable consideration.

In connection with this subject I invite your attention to the importance of establishing a branch of the Mint of the United States at New York. Two-thirds of the revenue derived from customs being collected at that point, the demand for specie to pay the duties will be large, and a branch mint where foreign coin and bullion could be immediately converted into American coin would greatly facilitate the transaction of the public business, enlarge the circulation of gold and silver, and be at the same time a safe depository of the public money.

The importance of graduating and reducing the price of such of the public lands as have been long offered in the market at the minimum rate authorized by existing laws, and remain unsold, induces me again to recommend the subject to your favorable consideration. Many millions of acres of these lands have been offered in the market for more than thirty years and larger quantities for more than ten or twenty years, and, being of an inferior quality, they must remain unsalable for an indefinite period unless the price at which they may be purchased shall be reduced. To place a price upon them above their real value is not only to prevent their sale, and thereby deprive the Treasury of any income from that source, but is unjust to the States in which they lie, because it retards their growth and increase of population, and because they have no power to levy a tax upon them as upon other lands within their limits, held by other proprietors than the United States, for the support of their local governments.

The beneficial effects of the graduation principle have been realized by some of the States owning the lands within their limits in which it has been adopted. They have been demonstrated also by the United States acting as the trustee of the Chickasaw tribe of Indians in the sale of their lands lying within the States of Mississippi and Alabama. The Chickasaw lands, which would not command in the market the minimum price established by the laws of the United States for the sale of their lands, were, in pursuance of the treaty of 1834 with that tribe, subsequently offered for sale at graduated and reduced rates for limited periods. The result was that large quantities of these lands were purchased which would otherwise have remained unsold. The lands were disposed of at their real value, and many persons of limited means were enabled to purchase small tracts, upon which they have settled with their families. That similar results would be produced by the adoption of the graduation policy by the United States in all the States in which they are the owners of large bodies of lands which have been long in the market can not be doubted. It can not be a sound policy to withhold large quantities of the public lands from the use and occupation of our citizens by fixing upon them prices which experience has shown they will not command. On the contrary, it is a wise policy to afford facilities to our citizens to become the owners at low and moderate rates of freeholds of their own instead of being the tenants and dependents of others. If it be apprehended that these lands if reduced in price would be secured in large quantities by speculators or capitalists, the sales may be restricted in limited quantities to actual settlers or persons purchasing for purposes of cultivation.

In my last annual message I submitted for the consideration of Congress the present system of managing the mineral lands of the United States, and recommended that they should be brought into market and sold upon such terms and under such restrictions as Congress might prescribe. By the act of the 11th of July last "the reserved lead mines and contiguous lands in the States of Illinois and Arkansas and Territories of Wisconsin and Iowa" were authorized to be sold. The act is confined in its operation to "lead mines and contiguous lands." A large portion of the public lands, containing copper and other ores, is represented to be very valuable, and I recommend that provision be made authorizing the sale of these lands upon such terms and conditions as from their supposed value may in the judgment of Congress be deemed advisable, having due regard to the interests of such of our citizens as may be located upon them.

It will be important during your present session to establish a Territorial government and to extend the jurisdiction and laws of the United States over the Territory of Oregon. Our laws regulating trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes east of the Rocky Mountains should be extended to the Pacific Ocean; and for the purpose of executing them and preserving friendly relations with the Indian tribes within our limits, an additional number of Indian agencies will be required, and should be authorized by law. The establishment of custom-houses and of post-offices and post-roads and provision for the transportation of the mail on such routes as the public convenience will suggest require legislative authority. It will be proper also to establish a surveyor-general’s office in that Territory and to make the necessary provision for surveying the public lands and bringing them into market. As our citizens who now reside in that distant region have been subjected to many hardships, privations, and sacrifices in their emigration, and by their improvements have enhanced the value of the public lands in the neighborhood of their settlements, it is recommended that liberal grants be made to them of such portions of these lands as they may occupy, and that similar grants or rights of preemption be made to all who may emigrate thither within a limited period, prescribed by law.

The report of the Secretary of War contains detailed information relative to the several branches of the public service connected with that Department. The operations of the Army have been of a satisfactory and highly gratifying character. I recommend to your early and favorable consideration the measures proposed by the Secretary of War for speedily filling up the rank and file of the Regular Army, for its greater efficiency in the field, and for raising an additional force to serve during the war with Mexico.

Embarrassment is likely to arise for want of legal provision authorizing compensation to be made to the agents employed in the several States and Territories to pay the Revolutionary and other pensioners the amounts allowed them by law. Your attention is invited to the recommendations of the Secretary of War on this subject. These agents incur heavy responsibilities and perform important duties, and no reason exists why they should not be placed on the same footing as to compensation with other disbursing officers.

Our relations with the various Indian tribes continue to be of a pacific character. The unhappy dissensions which have existed among the Cherokees for many years past have been healed. Since my last annual message important treaties have been negotiated with some of the tribes, by which the Indian title to large tracts of valuable land within the limits of the States and Territories has been extinguished and arrangements made for removing them to the country west of the Mississippi. Between 3,000 and 4,000 of different tribes have been removed to the country provided for them by treaty stipulations, and arrangements have been made for others to follow.

In our intercourse with the several tribes particular attention has been given to the important subject of education. The number of schools established among them has been increased, and additional means provided not only for teaching them the rudiments of education, but of instructing them in agriculture and the mechanic arts.

I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the Navy for a satisfactory view of the operations of the Department under his charge during the past year. It is gratifying to perceive that while the war with Mexico has rendered it necessary to employ an unusual number of our armed vessels on her coasts, the protection due to our commerce in other quarters of the world has not proved insufficient. No means will be spared to give efficiency to the naval service in the prosecution of the war; and I am happy to know that the officers and men anxiously desire to devote themselves to the service of their country in any enterprise, however difficult of execution.

I recommend to your favorable consideration the proposition to add to each of our foreign squadrons an efficient sea steamer, and, as especially demanding attention, the establishment at Pensacola of the necessary means of repairing and refitting the vessels of the Navy employed in the Gulf of Mexico.

There are other suggestions in the report which deserve and I doubt not will receive your consideration.

The progress and condition of the mail service for the past year are fully presented in the report of the Postmaster-General. The revenue for the year ending on the 30th of June last amounted to $3,487,199, which is $802,642.45 less than that of the preceding year. The payments for that Department during the same time amounted to $4,084,297.22. Of this sum $597,097.80 have been drawn from the Treasury. The disbursements for the year were $236,434.77 less than those of the preceding year. While the disbursements have been thus diminished, the mail facilities have been enlarged by new mail routes of 5,739 miles, an increase of transportation of 1,764,145 miles, and the establishment of 418 new post-offices. Contractors, postmasters, and others engaged in this branch of the service have performed their duties with energy and faithfulness deserving commendation. For many interesting details connected with the operations of this establishment you are referred to the report of the Postmaster-General, and his suggestions for improving its revenues are recommended to your favorable consideration. I repeat the opinion expressed in my last annual message that the business of this Department should be so regulated that the revenues derived from it should be made to equal the expenditures, and it is believed that this may be done by proper modifications of the present laws, as suggested in the report of the Postmaster-General, without changing the present rates of postage.

With full reliance upon the wisdom and patriotism of your deliberations, it will be my duty, as it will be my anxious desire, to cooperate with you in every constitutional effort to promote the welfare and maintain the honor of our common country.

Wilmot Proviso

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Presidential Speeches

May 11, 1846: war message to congress, about this speech.

James K. Polk

May 11, 1846

The existing state of the relations between the United States and Mexico renders it proper that I should bring the subject to the consideration of Congress. In my message at the commencement of your present session the state of these relations, the causes which led to the suspension of diplomatic intercourse between the two countries in March, 1845, and the long-continued and unredressed wrongs and injuries committed by the Mexican Government on citizens of the United States in their persons and property were briefly set forth. As the facts and opinions which were then laid before you were carefully considered, I can not better express my present convictions of the condition of affairs up to that time than by referring you to that communication. The strong desire to establish peace with Mexico on liberal and honorable terms, and the readiness of this Government to regulate and adjust our boundary and other causes of difference with that power on such fair and equitable principles as would lead to permanent relations of the most friendly nature, induced me in September last to seek the reopening of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Every measure adopted on our part had for its object the furtherance of these desired results. In communicating to Congress a succinct statement of the injuries which we had suffered from Mexico, and which have been accumulating during a period of more than twenty years, every expression that could tend to inflame the people of Mexico or defeat or delay a pacific result was carefully avoided. An envoy of the United States repaired to Mexico with full powers to adjust every existing difference. But though present on the Mexican soil by agreement between the two Governments, invested with full powers, and bearing evidence of the most friendly dispositions, his mission has been unavailing. The Mexican Government not only refused to receive him or listen to his propositions, but after a long-continued series of menaces have at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil. It now becomes my duty to state more in detail the origin, progress, and failure of that mission. In pursuance of the instructions given in September last, an inquiry was made on the 13th of October, 1845, in the most friendly terms, through our consul in Mexico, of the minister for foreign affairs, whether the Mexican Government "would receive an envoy from the United States intrusted with full powers to adjust all the questions in dispute between the two Governments," with the assurance that "should the answer be in the affirmative such an envoy would be immediately dispatched to Mexico." The Mexican minister on the 15th of October gave an affirmative answer to this inquiry, requesting at the same time that our naval force at Vera Cruz might be withdrawn, lest its continued presence might assume, the appearance of menace and coercion pending the negotiations. This force was immediately withdrawn. On the 10th of November, 1845, Mr. John Slidell, of Louisiana, was commissioned by me as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the United States to Mexico, and was intrusted with full powers to adjust both the questions of the Texas boundary and of indemnification to our citizens. The redress of the wrongs of our citizens naturally and inseparably blended itself with the question of boundary. The settlement of the one question in any correct view of the subject involves that of the other. I could not for a moment entertain the idea that the claims of our much-injured and long-suffering citizens, many of which had existed for more than twenty years, should be postponed or separated from the settlement of the boundary question. Mr. Slidell arrived at Vera Cruz on the 30th of November, and was courteously received by the authorities of that city. But the Government of General Herrera was then tottering to its fall. The revolutionary party had seized upon the Texas question to effect or hasten its overthrow. Its determination to restore friendly relations with the United States, and to receive our minister to negotiate for the settlement of this question, was violently assailed, and was made the great theme of denunciation against it. The Government of General Herrera, there is good reason to believe, was sincerely desirous to receive our minister; but it yielded to the storm raised by its enemies, and on the 21st of December refused to accredit Mr. Slidell upon the most frivolous pretexts. These are so fully and ably exposed in the note of Mr. Slidell of the 24th of December last to the Mexican minister of foreign relations, herewith transmitted, that I deem it unnecessary to enter into further detail on this portion of the subject. Five days after the date of Mr. Slidell's note, General Herrera yielded the Government to General Paredes without a struggle, and on the 30th of December resigned the Presidency. This revolution was accomplished solely by the army, the people having taken little part in the contest; and thus the supreme power in Mexico passed into the hands of a military leader. Determined to leave no effort untried to effect an amicable adjustment with Mexico, I directed Mr. Slidell to present his credentials to the Government of General Paredes and ask to be officially received by him. There would have been less ground for taking this step had General Paredes come into power by a regular constitutional succession. In that event his administration would have been considered but a mere constitutional continuance of the Government of General Herrera, and the refusal of the latter to receive our minister would have been deemed conclusive unless an intimation had been given by General Paredes of his desire to reverse the decision of his predecessor. But the Government of General Paredes owes its existence to a military revolution, by which the subsisting constitutional authorities had been subverted. The form of government was entirely changed, as well as all the high functionaries by whom it was administered. Under these circumstances, Mr. Slidell, in obedience to my direction, addressed a note to the Mexican minister of foreign relations, under date of the 1st of March last, asking to be received by that Government in the diplomatic character to which he had been appointed. This minister in his reply, under date of the 12th of March, reiterated the arguments of his predecessor, and in terms that may be considered as giving just grounds of offense to the Government and people of the United States denied the application of Mr. Slidell. Nothing therefore remained for our envoy but to demand his passports and return to his own country. Thus the Government of Mexico, though solemnly pledged by official acts in October last to receive and accredit an American envoy, violated their plighted faith and refused the offer of a peaceful adjustment of our difficulties. Not only was the offer rejected, but the indignity of its rejection was enhanced by the manifest breach of faith in refusing to admit the envoy who came because they had bound themselves to receive him. Nor can it be said that the offer was fruitless from the want of opportunity of discussing it; our envoy was present on their own soil. Nor can it be ascribed to a want of sufficient powers; our envoy had full powers to adjust every question of difference. Nor was there room for complaint that our propositions for settlement were unreasonable; permission was not even given our envoy to make any proposition whatever. Nor can it be objected that we, on our part, would not listen to any reasonable terms of their suggestion; the Mexican Government refused all negotiation, and have made no proposition of any kind. In my message at the commencement of the present session I informed you that upon the earnest appeal both of the Congress and convention of Texas I had ordered an efficient military force to take a position "between the Nueces and the Del Norte." This had become necessary to meet a threatened invasion of Texas by the Mexican forces, for which extensive military preparations had been made. The invasion was threatened solely because Texas had determined, in accordance with a solemn resolution of the Congress of the United States, to annex herself to our Union, and under these circumstances it was plainly our duty to extend our protection over her citizens and soil. This force was concentrated at Corpus Christi, and remained there until after I had received such information from Mexico as rendered it probable, if not certain, that the Mexican Government would refuse to receive our envoy. Meantime Texas, by the final action of our Congress, had become an integral part of our Union. The Congress of Texas, by its act of December 19, 1836, had declared the Rio del Norte to be the boundary of that Republic. Its jurisdiction had been extended and exercised beyond the Nueces. The country between that river and the Del Norte had been represented in the Congress and in the convention of Texas, had thus taken part in the act of annexation itself, and is now included within one of our Congressional districts. Our own Congress had, moreover, with great unanimity, by the act approved December 31, 1845, recognized the country beyond the Nueces as a part of our territory by including it within our own revenue system, and a revenue officer to reside within that district has been appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. It became, therefore, of urgent necessity to provide for the defense of that portion of our country. Accordingly, on the 13th of January last instructions were issued to the general in command of these troops to occupy the left bank of the Del Norte. This river, which is the southwestern boundary of the State of Texas, is an exposed frontier. From this quarter invasion was threatened; upon it and in its immediate vicinity, in the judgment of high military experience, are the proper stations for the protecting forces of the Government. In addition to this important consideration, several others occurred to induce this movement. Among these are the facilities afforded by the ports at Brazos Santiago and the mouth of the Del Norte for the reception of supplies by sea, the stronger and more healthful military positions, the convenience for obtaining a ready and a more abundant supply of provisions, water, fuel, and forage, and the advantages which are afforded by the Del Norte in forwarding supplies to such posts as may be established in the interior and upon the Indian frontier. The movement of the troops to the Del Norte was made by the commanding general under positive instructions to abstain from all aggressive acts toward Mexico or Mexican citizens and to regard the relations between that Republic and the United States as peaceful unless she should declare war or commit acts of hostility indicative of a state of war. He was specially directed to protect private property and respect personal rights. The Army moved from Corpus Christi on the 11th of March, and on the 28th of that month arrived on the left bank of the Del Norte opposite to Matamoras, where it encamped on a commanding position, which has since been strengthened by the erection of fieldworks. A depot has also been established at Point Isabel, near the Brazos Santiago, 30 miles in rear of the encampment. The selection of his position was necessarily confided to the judgment of the general in command. The Mexican forces at Matamoras assumed a belligerent attitude, and on the 12th of April General Ampudia, then in command, notified General Taylor to break up his camp within twenty-four hours and to retire beyond the Nueces River, and in the event of his failure to comply with these demands announced that arms, and arms alone, must decide the question. But no open act of hostility was committed until the 24th of April. On that day General Arista, who had succeeded to the command of the Mexican forces, communicated to General Taylor that "he considered hostilities commenced and should prosecute them." A party of dragoons of 63 men and officers were on the same day dispatched from the American camp up the Rio del Norte, on its left bank, to ascertain whether the Mexican troops had crossed or were preparing to cross the river, "became engaged with a large body of these troops, and after a short affair, in which some 16 were killed and wounded, appear to have been surrounded and compelled to surrender." The grievous wrongs perpetrated by Mexico upon our citizens throughout a long period of years remain unredressed, and solemn treaties pledging her public faith for this redress have been disregarded. A government either unable or unwilling to enforce the execution of such treaties fails to perform one of its plainest duties. Our commerce with Mexico has been almost annihilated. It was formerly highly beneficial to both nations, but our merchants have been deterred from prosecuting it by the system of outrage and extortion which the Mexican authorities have pursued against them, whilst their appeals through their own Government for indemnity have been made in vain. Our forbearance has gone to such an extreme as to be mistaken in its character. Had we acted with vigor in repelling the insults and redressing the injuries inflicted by Mexico at the commencement, we should doubtless have escaped all the difficulties in which we are now involved. Instead of this, however, we have been exerting our best efforts to propitiate her good will. Upon the pretext that Texas, a nation as independent as herself, thought proper to unite its destinies with our own she has affected to believe that we have severed her rightful territory, and in official proclamations and manifestoes has repeatedly threatened to make war upon us for the purpose of reconquering Texas. In the meantime we have tried every effort at reconciliation. The cup of forbearance had been exhausted even before the recent information from the frontier of the Del Norte. 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. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are now at war. As war exists, and, 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. Anticipating the possibility of a crisis like that which has arrived, instructions were given in August last, "as a precautionary measure" against invasion or threatened invasion, authorizing General Taylor, if the emergency required, to accept volunteers, not from Texas only, but from the States of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and corresponding letters were addressed to the respective governors of those States. These instructions were repeated, and in January last, soon after the incorporation of "Texas into our Union of States," General Taylor was further "authorized by the President to make a requisition upon the executive of that State for such of its militia force as may be needed to repel invasion or to secure the country against apprehended invasion." On the 2d day of March he was again reminded, "in the event of the approach of any considerable Mexican force, promptly and efficiently to use the authority with which he was clothed to call to him such auxiliary force as he might need." War actually existing and our territory having been invaded, General Taylor, pursuant to authority vested in him by my direction, has called on the governor of Texas for four regiments of State troops, two to be mounted and two to serve on foot, and on the governor of Louisiana for four regiments of infantry to be sent to him as soon as practicable. In further vindication of our rights and defense of our territory, I invoke the prompt action of Congress to recognize the existence of the war, and to place at the disposition of the Executive the means of prosecuting the war with vigor, and thus hastening the restoration of peace. To this end I recommend that authority should be given to call into the public service a large body of volunteers to serve for not less than six or twelve months unless sooner discharged. A volunteer force is beyond question more efficient than any other description of citizen soldiers, and it is not to be doubted that a number far beyond that required would readily rush to the field upon the call of their country. I further recommend that a liberal provision be made for sustaining our entire military force and furnishing it with supplies and munitions of war. The most energetic and prompt measures and the immediate appearance in arms of a large and overpowering force are recommended to Congress as the most certain and efficient means of bringing the existing collision with Mexico to a speedy and successful termination. In making these recommendations I deem it proper to declare that it is my anxious desire not only to terminate hostilities speedily, but to bring all matters in dispute between this Government and Mexico to an early and amicable adjustment; and in this view I shall be prepared to renew negotiations whenever Mexico shall be ready to receive propositions or to make propositions of her own. I transmit herewith a copy of the correspondence between our envoy to Mexico and the Mexican minister for foreign affairs, and so much of the correspondence between that envoy and the Secretary of State and between the Secretary of War and the general in command on the Del Norte as is necessary to a full understanding of the subject.  

More James K. Polk speeches

THE AMERICAN YAWP

12. manifest destiny.

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1862. Mural,  United States Capitol .

*The American Yawp is an evolving, collaborative text. Please click  here  to improve this chapter.*

I. Introduction

Ii. antebellum western migration and indian removal, iii. life and culture in the west, iv.  texas, mexico and the united states, v. manifest destiny and the gold rush, vi. the monroe doctrine and manifest destiny., vii. conclusion, viii. primary sources, ix. reference material.

John Louis O’Sullivan, a popular editor and columnist, articulated the long-standing American belief in the God-given mission of the United States to lead the world in the peaceful transition to democracy. In a little-read essay printed in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review , O’Sullivan outlined the importance of annexing Texas to the United States:

Why, were other reasoning wanting, in favor of now elevating this question of the reception of Texas into the Union, out of the lower region of our past party dissensions, up to its proper level of a high and broad nationality, it surely is to be found, found abundantly, in the manner in which other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. 1

O’Sullivan and many others viewed expansion as necessary to achieve America’s destiny and to protect American interests. The quasi-religious call to spread democracy coupled with the reality of thousands of settlers pressing westward. Manifest destiny was grounded in the belief that a democratic, agrarian republic would save the world.

John O’Sullivan, shown here in a 1874 Harper’s Weekly sketch, coined the phrase “manifest destiny” in an 1845 newspaper article.  Wikimedia .

Although called into name in 1845, manifest destiny was a widely held but vaguely defined belief that dated back to the founding of the nation. First, many Americans believed that the strength of American values and institutions justified moral claims to hemispheric leadership. Second, the lands on the North American continent west of the Mississippi River (and later into the Caribbean) were destined for American-led political and agricultural improvement. Third, God and the Constitution ordained an irrepressible destiny to accomplish redemption and democratization throughout the world. All three of these claims pushed many Americans, whether they uttered the words manifest destiny or not, to actively seek the expansion of democracy. These beliefs and the resulting actions were often disastrous to anyone in the way of American expansion. The new religion of American democracy spread on the feet and in the wagons of those who moved west, imbued with the hope that their success would be the nation’s success.

The Young America movement, strongest among members of the Democratic Party but spanning the political spectrum, downplayed divisions over slavery and ethnicity by embracing national unity and emphasizing American exceptionalism, territorial expansion, democratic participation, and economic interdependence. 2 Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson captured the political outlook of this new generation in a speech he delivered in 1844 titled “The Young American”:

In every age of the world, there has been a leading nation, one of a more generous sentiment, whose eminent citizens were willing to stand for the interests of general justice and humanity, at the risk of being called, by the men of the moment, chimerical and fantastic. Which should be that nation but these States? Which should lead that movement, if not New England? Who should lead the leaders, but the Young American? 3

However, many Americans, including Emerson, disapproved of aggressive expansion. For opponents of manifest destiny, the lofty rhetoric of the Young Americans was nothing other than a kind of imperialism that the American Revolution was supposed to have repudiated. 4 Many members of the Whig Party (and later the Republican Party) argued that the United States’ mission was to lead by example, not by conquest. Abraham Lincoln summed up this criticism with a fair amount of sarcasm during a speech in 1859:

He (the Young American) owns a large part of the world, by right of possessing it; and all the rest by right of wanting it, and intending to have it. . . . Young America had “a pleasing hope—a fond desire—a longing after” territory. He has a great passion—a perfect rage—for the “new”; particularly new men for office, and the new earth mentioned in the revelations, in which, being no more sea, there must be about three times as much land as in the present. He is a great friend of humanity; and his desire for land is not selfish, but merely an impulse to extend the area of freedom. He is very anxious to fight for the liberation of enslaved nations and colonies, provided, always, they have land. . . . As to those who have no land, and would be glad of help from any quarter, he considers they can afford to wait a few hundred years longer. In knowledge he is particularly rich. He knows all that can possibly be known; inclines to believe in spiritual trappings, and is the unquestioned inventor of “Manifest Destiny.” 5

But Lincoln and other anti-expansionists would struggle to win popular opinion. The nation, fueled by the principles of manifest destiny, would continue westward. Along the way, Americans battled both native peoples and foreign nations, claiming territory to the very edges of the continent. But westward expansion did not come without a cost. It exacerbated the slavery question, pushed Americans toward civil war, and, ultimately, threatened the very mission of American democracy it was designed to aid.

Artistic propaganda like this promoted the national project of manifest destiny. Columbia, the female figure of America, leads Americans into the West and into the future by carrying the values of republicanism (as seen through her Roman garb) and progress (shown through the inclusion of technological innovations like the telegraph) and clearing native peoples and animals, seen being pushed into the darkness. John Gast, American Progress, 1872.  Wikimedia .

After the War of 1812, Americans settled the Great Lakes region rapidly thanks in part to aggressive land sales by the federal government. 6 Missouri’s admission as a slave state presented the first major crisis over westward migration and American expansion in the antebellum period. Farther north, lead and iron ore mining spurred development in Wisconsin. 7 By the 1830s and 1840s, increasing numbers of German and Scandinavian immigrants joined easterners in settling the Upper Mississippi watershed. 8 Little settlement occurred west of Missouri as migrants viewed the Great Plains as a barrier to farming. Farther west, the Rocky Mountains loomed as undesirable to all but fur traders, and all Native Americans west of the Mississippi appeared too powerful to allow for white expansion.

“Do not lounge in the cities!” commanded publisher Horace Greeley in 1841, “There is room and health in the country, away from the crowds of idlers and imbeciles. Go west, before you are fitted for no life but that of the factory.” 9 The New York Tribune often argued that American exceptionalism required the United States to benevolently conquer the continent as the prime means of spreading American capitalism and American democracy. However, the vast West was not empty. Native Americans controlled much of the land east of the Mississippi River and almost all of the West. Expansion hinged on a federal policy of Indian removal.

The harassment and dispossession of Native Americans—whether driven by official U.S. government policy or the actions of individual Americans and their communities—depended on the belief in manifest destiny. Of course, a fair bit of racism was part of the equation as well. The political and legal processes of expansion always hinged on the belief that white Americans could best use new lands and opportunities. This belief rested on the idea that only Americans embodied the democratic ideals of yeoman agriculturalism extolled by Thomas Jefferson and expanded under Jacksonian democracy.

Florida was an early test case for the Americanization of new lands. The territory held strategic value for the young nation’s growing economic and military interests in the Caribbean. The most important factors that led to the annexation of Florida included anxieties over runaway enslaved people, Spanish neglect of the region, and the desired defeat of Native American tribes who controlled large portions of lucrative farm territory.

During the early nineteenth century, Spain wanted to increase productivity in Florida and encouraged migration of mostly southern enslavers. By the second decade of the 1800s, Anglo settlers occupied plantations along the St. Johns River, from the border with Georgia to Lake George a hundred miles upstream. Spain began to lose control as the area quickly became a haven for slave smugglers bringing illicit human cargo into the United States for lucrative sale to Georgia planters. Plantation owners grew apprehensive about the growing numbers of enslaved laborers running to the swamps and Native American-controlled areas of Florida. American enslavers pressured the U.S. government to confront the Spanish authorities. Southern enslavers refused to quietly accept the continued presence of armed Black men in Florida. During the War of 1812, a ragtag assortment of Georgia enslavers joined by a plethora of armed opportunists raided Spanish and British-owned plantations along the St. Johns River. These private citizens received U.S. government help on July 27, 1816, when U.S. army regulars attacked the Negro Fort (established as an armed outpost during the war by the British and located about sixty miles south of the Georgia border). The raid killed 270 of the fort’s inhabitants as a result of a direct hit on the fort’s gunpowder stores. This conflict set the stage for General Andrew Jackson’s invasion of Florida in 1817 and the beginning of the First Seminole War. 10

Americans also held that Creek and Seminole people, occupying the area from the Apalachicola River to the wet prairies and hammock islands of central Florida, were dangers in their own right. These tribes, known to the Americans collectively as Seminoles, migrated into the region over the course of the eighteenth century and established settlements, tilled fields, and tended herds of cattle in the rich floodplains and grasslands that dominated the northern third of the Florida peninsula. Envious eyes looked upon these lands. After bitter conflict that often pitted Americans against a collection of Native Americans and formerly enslaved people, Spain eventually agreed to transfer the territory to the United States. The resulting Adams-Onís Treaty exchanged Florida for $5 million and other territorial concessions elsewhere. 11

After the purchase, planters from the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia entered Florida. However, the influx of settlers into the Florida territory was temporarily halted in the mid-1830s by the outbreak of the Second Seminole War (1835–1842). Free Black men and women and escaped enslaved laborers also occupied the Seminole district, a situation that deeply troubled enslavers. Indeed, General Thomas Sidney Jesup, U.S. commander during the early stages of the Second Seminole War, labeled that conflict “a negro, not an Indian War,” fearful as he was that if the revolt “was not speedily put down, the South will feel the effect of it on their slave population before the end of the next season.” 12  Florida became a state in 1845 and white settlement expanded.

American action in Florida seized Indigenous people’s eastern lands, reduced lands available for freedom-seeking enslaved people, and killed entirely or removed Native American peoples farther west. This became the template for future action. Presidents, since at least Thomas Jefferson, had long discussed removal, but President Andrew Jackson took the most dramatic action. Jackson believed, “It [speedy removal] will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters.” 13 Desires to remove Native Americans from valuable farmland motivated state and federal governments to cease trying to assimilate Native Americans and instead plan for forced removal.

Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, thereby granting the president authority to begin treaty negotiations that would give Native Americans land in the West in exchange for their lands east of the Mississippi. Many advocates of removal, including President Jackson, paternalistically claimed that it would protect Native American communities from outside influences that jeopardized their chances of becoming “civilized” farmers. Jackson emphasized this paternalism—the belief that the government was acting in the best interest of Native peoples—in his 1830 State of the Union Address. “It [removal] will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites . . . and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.” 14

The experience of the Cherokee was particularly brutal. Despite many tribal members adopting some Euro-American ways, including intensified agriculture, slaving, and Christianity, state and federal governments pressured the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee Nations to sign treaties and surrender land. Many of these tribal nations used the law in hopes of protecting their lands. Most notable among these efforts was the Cherokee Nation’s attempt to sue the state of Georgia.

Beginning in 1826, Georgian officials asked the federal government to negotiate with the Cherokee to secure lucrative lands. The Adams administration resisted the state’s request, but harassment from local settlers against the Cherokee forced the Adams and Jackson administrations to begin serious negotiations with the Cherokee. Georgia grew impatient with the process of negotiation and abolished existing state agreements with the Cherokee that had guaranteed rights of movement and jurisdiction of tribal law. Andrew Jackson penned a letter soon after taking office that encouraged the Cherokee, among others, to voluntarily relocate to the West. The discovery of gold in Georgia in the fall of 1829 further antagonized the situation.

The Cherokee defended themselves against Georgia’s laws by citing treaties signed with the United States that guaranteed the Cherokee Nation both their land and independence. The Cherokee appealed to the Supreme Court against Georgia to prevent dispossession. The Court, while sympathizing with the Cherokee’s plight, ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case ( Cherokee Nation v. Georgia [1831]). In an associated case, Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia laws did not apply within Cherokee territory. 15 Regardless of these rulings, the state government ignored the Supreme Court and did little to prevent conflict between settlers and the Cherokee.

Jackson wanted a solution that might preserve peace and his reputation. He sent secretary of war Lewis Cass to offer title to western lands and the promise of tribal governance in exchange for relinquishing of the Cherokee’s eastern lands. These negotiations opened a rift within the Cherokee Nation. Cherokee leader John Ridge believed removal was inevitable and pushed for a treaty that would give the best terms. Others, called nationalists and led by John Ross, refused to consider removal in negotiations. The Jackson administration refused any deal that fell short of large-scale removal of the Cherokee from Georgia, thereby fueling a devastating and violent intratribal battle between the two factions. Eventually tensions grew to the point that several treaty advocates were assassinated by members of the national faction. 16

In 1835, a portion of the Cherokee Nation led by John Ridge, hoping to prevent further tribal bloodshed, signed the Treaty of New Echota. This treaty ceded lands in Georgia for $5 million and, the signatories hoped, would limit future conflicts between the Cherokee and white settlers. However, most of the tribe refused to adhere to the terms, viewing the treaty as illegitimately negotiated. In response, John Ross pointed out the U.S. government’s hypocrisy. “You asked us to throw off the hunter and warrior state: We did so—you asked us to form a republican government: We did so. Adopting your own as our model. You asked us to cultivate the earth, and learn the mechanic arts. We did so. You asked us to learn to read. We did so. You asked us to cast away our idols and worship your god. We did so. Now you demand we cede to you our lands. That we will not do.” 17

President Martin van Buren, in 1838, decided to press the issue beyond negotiation and court rulings and used the New Echota Treaty provisions to order the army to forcibly remove those Cherokee not obeying the treaty’s cession of territory. Harsh weather, poor planning, and difficult travel compounded the tragedy of what became known as the Trail of Tears. Sixteen thousand Cherokee embarked on the journey; only ten thousand completed it. 18 Not every instance of removal was as treacherous or demographically disastrous as the Cherokee example. Furthermore, tribes responded in a variety of ways. Some tribes violently resisted removal. Ultimately, over sixty-thousand Native Americans were forced west prior to the Civil War. 19

The allure of manifest destiny encouraged expansion regardless of terrain or locale, and Indian removal also took place, to a lesser degree, in northern lands. In the Old Northwest, Odawa and Ojibwe communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota resisted removal as many lived on land north of desirable farming land. Moreover, some Ojibwe and Odawa individuals purchased land independently. They formed successful alliances with missionaries to help advocate against removal, as well as with some traders and merchants who depended on trade with Native peoples. Yet Indian removal occurred in the North as well—the Black Hawk War in 1832, for instance, led to the removal of many Sauk to Kansas. 20

Despite the disaster of removal, tribal nations slowly rebuilt their cultures and in some cases even achieved prosperity in new territories. Tribal nations blended traditional cultural practices, including common land systems, with western practices including constitutional governments, common school systems, and creating an elite enslaving class.

Some Native American groups remained too powerful to remove. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, the Comanche rose to power in the Southern Plains region of what is now the southwestern United States. By quickly adapting to the horse culture first introduced by the Spanish, the Comanche transitioned from a foraging economy into a mixed hunting and pastoral society. After 1821, the new Mexican nation-state claimed the region as part of the northern Mexican frontier, but they had little control. Instead, the Comanche remained in power and controlled the economy of the Southern Plains. A flexible political structure allowed the Comanche to dominate other Native American groups as well as Mexican and American settlers.

In the 1830s, the Comanche launched raids into northern Mexico, ending what had been an unprofitable but peaceful diplomatic relationship with Mexico. At the same time, they forged new trading relationships with Anglo-American traders in Texas. Throughout this period, the Comanche and several other independent Native groups, particularly the Kiowa, Apache, and Navajo, engaged in thousands of violent encounters with northern Mexicans. Collectively, these encounters comprised an ongoing war during the 1830s and 1840s as tribal nations vied for power and wealth. By the 1840s, Comanche power peaked with an empire that controlled a vast territory in the trans-Mississippi west known as Comancheria. By trading in Texas and raiding in northern Mexico, the Comanche controlled the flow of commodities, including captives, livestock, and trade goods. They practiced a fluid system of captivity and captive trading, rather than a rigid chattel system. The Comanche used captives for economic exploitation but also adopted captives into kinship networks. This allowed for the assimilation of diverse peoples in the region into the empire. The ongoing conflict in the region had sweeping consequences on both Mexican and American politics. The U.S.-Mexican War, beginning in 1846, can be seen as a culmination of this violence. 21

“Map of the Plains Indians,” undated.  Smithsonian Institute .

In the Great Basin region, Mexican independence also escalated patterns of violence. This region, on the periphery of the Spanish empire, was nonetheless integrated in the vast commercial trading network of the West. Mexican officials and Anglo-American traders entered the region with their own imperial designs. New forms of violence spread into the homelands of the Paiute and Western Shoshone. Traders, settlers, and Mormon religious refugees, aided by U.S. officials and soldiers, committed daily acts of violence and laid the groundwork for violent conquest. This expansion of the American state into the Great Basin meant groups such as the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe had to compete over land, resources, captives, and trade relations with Anglo-Americans. Eventually, white incursion and ongoing wars against Native Americans resulted in traumatic dispossession of land and the struggle for subsistence.

The federal government attempted more than relocation of Native Americans. Policies to “civilize” Native Americans coexisted along with forced removal and served an important “Americanizing” vision of expansion that brought an ever-increasing population under the American flag and sought to balance aggression with the uplift of paternal care. Thomas L. McKenney, superintendent of Indian trade from 1816 to 1822 and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1824 to 1830, served as the main architect of the civilization policy. He asserted that Native Americans were morally and intellectually equal to whites. He sought to establish a national Indian school system.

Congress rejected McKenney’s plan but instead passed the Civilization Fund Act in 1819. This act offered $10,000 annually to be allocated toward societies that funded missionaries to establish schools among Native American tribes. However, providing schooling for Native Americans under the auspices of the civilization program also allowed the federal government to justify taking more land. Treaties, such as the 1820 Treaty of Doak’s Stand made with the Choctaw nation, often included land cessions as requirements for education provisions. Removal and Americanization reinforced Americans’ sense of cultural dominance. 22

After removal in the 1830s, the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw began to collaborate with missionaries to build school systems of their own. Leaders hoped education would help ensuing generations to protect political sovereignty. In 1841, the Cherokee Nation opened a public school system that within two years included eighteen schools. By 1852, the system expanded to twenty-one schools with a national enrollment of 1,100 pupils. 23 Many of the students educated in these tribally controlled schools later served their nations as teachers, lawyers, physicians, bureaucrats, and politicians.

The dream of creating a democratic utopia in the West ultimately rested on those who picked up their possessions and their families and moved west. Western settlers usually migrated as families and settled along navigable and potable rivers. Settlements often coalesced around local traditions, especially religion, carried from eastern settlements. These shared understandings encouraged a strong sense of cooperation among western settlers that forged communities on the frontier.

Before the Mexican War, the West for most Americans still referred to the fertile area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River with a slight amount of overspill beyond its banks. With soil exhaustion and land competition increasing in the East, most early western migrants sought a greater measure of stability and self-sufficiency by engaging in small-scale farming. Boosters of these new agricultural areas along with the U.S. government encouraged perceptions of the West as a land of hard-built opportunity that promised personal and national bounty.

Women migrants bore the unique double burden of travel while also being expected to conform to restrictive gender norms. The key virtues of femininity, according to the “cult of true womanhood,” included piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. The concept of “separate spheres” expected women to remain in the home. These values accompanied men and women as they traveled west to begin their new lives.

While many of these societal standards endured, there often existed an openness of frontier society that resulted in modestly more opportunities for women. Husbands needed partners in setting up a homestead and working in the field to provide food for the family. Suitable wives were often in short supply, enabling some to informally negotiate more power in their households. 24

Americans debated the role of government in westward expansion. This debate centered on the proper role of the U.S. government in paying for the internal improvements that soon became necessary to encourage and support economic development. Some saw frontier development as a self-driven undertaking that necessitated private risk and investment devoid of government interference. Others saw the federal government’s role as providing the infrastructural development needed to give migrants the push toward engagement with the larger national economy. In the end, federal aid proved essential for the conquest and settlement of the region.

American artist George Catlin traveled west to paint Native Americans. In 1832 he painted Eeh-nís-kim, Crystal Stone, wife of a Blackfoot leader.  Smithsonian American Art Museum .

Economic busts constantly threatened western farmers and communities. The economy worsened after the Panic of 1819. Falling prices and depleted soil meant farmers were unable to make their loan payments. The dream of subsistence and stability abruptly ended as many migrants lost their land and felt the hand of the distant market economy forcing them even farther west to escape debt. As a result, the federal government consistently sought to increase access to land in the West, including efforts to lower the amount of land required for purchase. Smaller lots made it easier for more farmers to clear land and begin farming faster. 25

More than anything else, new roads and canals provided conduits for migration and settlement. Improvements in travel and exchange fueled economic growth in the 1820s and 1830s. Canal improvements expanded in the East, while road building prevailed in the West. Congress continued to allocate funds for internal improvements. Federal money pushed the National Road, begun in 1811, farther west every year. Laborers needed to construct these improvements increased employment opportunities and encouraged nonfarmers to move to the West. Wealth promised by engagement with the new economy was hard to reject. However, roads were expensive to build and maintain, and some Americans strongly opposed spending money on these improvements.

The use of steamboats grew quickly throughout the 1810s and into the 1820s. As water trade and travel grew in popularity, local, state, and federal funds helped connect rivers and streams. Hundreds of miles of new canals cut through the eastern landscape. The most notable of these early projects was the Erie Canal. That project, completed in 1825, linked the Great Lakes to New York City. The profitability of the canal helped New York outpace its East Coast rivals to become the center for commercial import and export in the United States. 26

Early railroads like the Baltimore and Ohio line hoped to link mid-Atlantic cities with lucrative western trade routes. Railroad boosters encouraged the rapid growth of towns and cities along their routes. Not only did rail lines promise to move commerce faster, but the rails also encouraged the spreading of towns farther away from traditional waterway locations. Technological limitations, constant repairs, conflicts with Native Americans, and political disagreements all hampered railroading and kept canals and steamboats as integral parts of the transportation system. Nonetheless, this early establishment of railroads enabled a rapid expansion after the Civil War.

Economic chains of interdependence stretched over hundreds of miles of land and through thousands of contracts and remittances. America’s manifest destiny became wedded not only to territorial expansion but also to economic development. 27

The debate over slavery became one of the prime forces behind the Texas Revolution and the resulting republic’s annexation to the United States. After gaining its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico hoped to attract new settlers to its northern areas to create a buffer between it and the powerful Comanche. New immigrants, mostly from the southern United States, poured into Mexican Texas. Over the next twenty-five years, concerns over growing Anglo influence and possible American designs on the area produced great friction between Mexicans and the former Americans in the area. In 1829, Mexico, hoping to quell both anger and immigration, outlawed slavery and required all new immigrants to convert to Catholicism. American immigrants, eager to expand their agricultural fortunes, largely ignored these requirements. In response, Mexican authorities closed their territory to any new immigration in 1830—a prohibition ignored by Americans who often squatted on public lands. 28

In 1834, an internal conflict between federalists and centralists in the Mexican government led to the political ascendency of General Antonio López de Santa Anna. Santa Anna, governing as a dictator, repudiated the federalist Constitution of 1824, pursued a policy of authoritarian central control, and crushed several revolts throughout Mexico. Anglo settlers in Mexican Texas, or Texians as they called themselves, opposed Santa Anna’s centralizing policies and met in November. They issued a statement of purpose that emphasized their commitment to the Constitution of 1824 and declared Texas to be a separate state within Mexico. After the Mexican government angrily rejected the offer, Texian leaders soon abandoned their fight for the Constitution of 1824 and declared independence on March 2, 1836. 29 The Texas Revolution of 1835–1836 was a successful secessionist movement in the northern district of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas that resulted in an independent Republic of Texas.

At the Alamo and Goliad, Santa Anna crushed smaller rebel forces and massacred hundreds of Texian prisoners. The Mexican army pursued the retreating Texian army deep into East Texas, spurring a mass panic and evacuation by American civilians known as the Runaway Scrape. The confident Santa Anna consistently failed to make adequate defensive preparations, an oversight that eventually led to a surprise attack from the outnumbered Texian army led by Sam Houston on April 21, 1836. The battle of San Jacinto lasted only eighteen minutes and resulted in a decisive victory for the Texians, who retaliated for previous Mexican atrocities by killing fleeing and surrendering Mexican soldiers for hours after the initial assault. Santa Anna was captured in the aftermath and compelled to sign the Treaty of Velasco on May 14, 1836, by which he agreed to withdraw his army from Texas and acknowledged Texas independence. Although a new Mexican government never recognized the Republic of Texas, the United States and several other nations gave the new country diplomatic recognition. 30

Texas annexation had remained a political landmine since the Republic declared independence from Mexico in 1836. American politicians feared that adding Texas to the Union would provoke a war with Mexico and reignite sectional tensions by throwing off the balance between free and slave states. However, after his expulsion from the Whig party, President John Tyler saw Texas statehood as the key to saving his political career. In 1842, he began work on opening annexation to national debate. Harnessing public outcry over the issue, Democrat James K. Polk rose from virtual obscurity to win the presidential election of 1844. Polk and his party campaigned on promises of westward expansion, with eyes toward Texas, Oregon, and California. In the final days of his presidency, Tyler at last extended an official offer to Texas on March 3, 1845. The republic accepted on July 4, becoming the twenty-eighth state.

Mexico denounced annexation as “an act of aggression, the most unjust which can be found recorded in the annals of modern history.” 31 Beyond the anger produced by annexation, the two nations both laid claim over a narrow strip of land between two rivers. Mexico drew the southwestern border of Texas at the Nueces River, but Texans claimed that the border lay roughly 150 miles farther west at the Rio Grande. Neither claim was realistic since the sparsely populated area, known as the Nueces strip, was in fact controlled by Native Americans.

In November 1845, President Polk secretly dispatched John Slidell to Mexico City to purchase the Nueces strip along with large sections of New Mexico and California. The mission was an empty gesture, designed largely to pacify those in Washington who insisted on diplomacy before war. Predictably, officials in Mexico City refused to receive Slidell. In preparation for the assumed failure of the negotiations, Polk preemptively sent a four-thousand-man army under General Zachary Taylor to Corpus Christi, Texas, just northeast of the Nueces River. Upon word of Slidell’s rebuff in January 1846, Polk ordered Taylor to cross into the disputed territory. The president hoped that this show of force would push the lands of California onto the bargaining table as well. Unfortunately, he badly misread the situation. After losing Texas, the Mexican public strongly opposed surrendering any more ground to the United States. Popular opinion left the shaky government in Mexico City without room to negotiate. On April 24, Mexican cavalrymen attacked a detachment of Taylor’s troops in the disputed territory just north of the Rio Grande, killing eleven U.S. soldiers.

It took two weeks for the news to reach Washington. Polk sent a message to Congress on May 11 that summed up the assumptions and intentions of the United States.

Instead of this, however, we have been exerting our best efforts to propitiate her good will. Upon the pretext that Texas, a nation as independent as herself, thought proper to unite its destinies with our own, she has affected to believe that we have severed her rightful territory, and in official proclamations and manifestoes has repeatedly threatened to make war upon us for the purpose of reconquering Texas. In the meantime we have tried every effort at reconciliation. The cup of forbearance had been exhausted even before the recent information from the frontier of the Del Norte. 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. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are now at war. 32

The cagey Polk knew that since hostilities already existed, political dissent would be dangerous—a vote against war became a vote against supporting American soldiers under fire. Congress passed a declaration of war on May 13. Only a few members of both parties, notably John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun, opposed the measure. Upon declaring war in 1846, Congress issued a call for fifty thousand volunteer soldiers. Spurred by promises of adventure and conquest abroad, thousands of eager men flocked to assembly points across the country. 33 However, opposition to “Mr. Polk’s War” soon grew.

In the early fall of 1846, the U.S. Army invaded Mexico on multiple fronts and within a year’s time General Winfield Scott’s men took control of Mexico City. However, the city’s fall did not bring an end to the war. Scott’s men occupied Mexico’s capital for over four months while the two countries negotiated. In the United States, the war had been controversial from the beginning. Embedded journalists sent back detailed reports from the front lines, and a divided press viciously debated the news. Volunteers found that war was not as they expected. Disease killed seven times as many American soldiers as combat. 34 Harsh discipline, conflict within the ranks, and violent clashes with civilians led soldiers to desert in huge numbers. Peace finally came on February 2, 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The United States gained lands that would become the future states of California, Utah, and Nevada; most of Arizona; and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Mexican officials would also have to surrender their claims to Texas and recognize the Rio Grande as its southern boundary. The United States offered $15 million for all of it. With American soldiers occupying their capital, Mexican leaders had no choice but to sign.

“General Scott’s entrance into Mexico.” Lithograph. 1851. Originally published in George Wilkins Kendall & Carl Nebel, The War between the United States and Mexico Illustrated, Embracing Pictorial Drawings of all the Principal Conflicts (New York: D. Appleton), 1851.  Wikimedia Commons

The new American Southwest attracted a diverse group of entrepreneurs and settlers to the commercial towns of New Mexico, the fertile lands of eastern Texas, the famed gold deposits of California, and the Rocky Mountains. This postwar migration built earlier paths dating back to the 1820s, when the lucrative Santa Fe trade enticed merchants to New Mexico and generous land grants brought numerous settlers to Texas. The Gadsden Purchase of 1854 further added to American gains north of Mexico.

The U.S.-Mexican War had an enormous impact on both countries. The American victory helped set the United States on the path to becoming a world power. It elevated Zachary Taylor to the presidency and served as a training ground for many of the Civil War’s future commanders. Most significantly, however, Mexico lost roughly half of its territory. Yet the United States’ victory was not without danger. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an outspoken critic, predicted ominously at the beginning of the conflict, “We will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man who swallows the arsenic which will bring him down in turn. Mexico will poison us.” 35 Indeed, the conflict over whether to extend slavery into the newly won territory pushed the nation ever closer to disunion and civil war.

California, belonging to Mexico prior to the war, was at least three arduous months’ travel from the nearest American settlements. There was some sparse settlement in the Sacramento Valley, and missionaries made the trip occasionally. The fertile farmland of Oregon, like the black dirt lands of the Mississippi Valley, attracted more settlers than California. Dramatized stories of Native American attacks filled migrants with a sense of foreboding, although most settlers encountered no violence and often no Native Americans at all. The slow progress, disease, human and oxen starvation, poor trails, terrible geographic preparations, lack of guidebooks, threatening wildlife, vagaries of weather, and general confusion were all more formidable and frequent than attacks from Native Americans. Despite the harshness of the journey, by 1848 approximately twenty thousand Americans were living west of the Rockies, with about three fourths of that number in Oregon.

The great environmental and economic potential of the Oregon Territory led many to pack up their families and head west along the Oregon Trail. The Trail represented the hopes of many for a better life, represented and reinforced by images like Bierstadt’s idealistic Oregon Trail.  Albert Bierstadt, Oregon Trail (Campfire), 1863.  Wikimedia .

Many who moved nurtured a romantic vision of life, attracting more Americans who sought more than agricultural life and familial responsibilities. The rugged individualism and military prowess of the West, encapsulated for some by service in the Mexican war, drew a growing new breed west of the Sierra Nevada to meet with the Californians already there: a breed of migrants different from the modest agricultural communities of the near West.

If the great draw of the West served as manifest destiny’s kindling, then the discovery of gold in California was the spark that set the fire ablaze. On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall, a contractor hired by John Sutter, discovered gold on Sutter’s sawmill land in the Sacramento Valley area of the California Territory. Most western settlers sought land ownership, but the lure of getting rich quick drew younger single men (with some women) to gold towns throughout the West. These adventurers and fortune-seekers then served as magnets for the arrival of others providing services associated with the gold rush. Towns and cities grew rapidly throughout the West, notably San Francisco, whose population grew from about five hundred in 1848 to almost fifty thousand by 1853. Lawlessness, predictable failure of most fortune seekers, racial conflicts, and the slavery question all threatened manifest destiny’s promises.

Throughout the 1850s, Californians beseeched Congress for a transcontinental railroad to provide service for both passengers and goods from the Midwest and the East Coast. The potential economic benefits for communities along proposed railroads made the debate over the route rancorous. Growing dissent over the slavery issue also heightened tensions.

The great influx of diverse people clashed in a combative and aggrandizing atmosphere of individualistic pursuit of fortune. 36 Linguistic, cultural, economic, and racial conflict roiled both urban and rural areas. By the end of the 1850s, Chinese and Mexican immigrants made up one fifth of the mining population in California. The ethnic patchwork of these frontier towns belied a clearly defined socioeconomic arrangement that saw whites on top as landowners and managers, with poor whites and ethnic minorities working the mines and assorted jobs. The competition for land, resources, and riches furthered individual and collective abuses, particularly against Native Americans and older Mexican communities. California’s towns, as well as those dotting the landscape throughout the West, struggled to balance security with economic development and the protection of civil rights and liberties.

This cartoon depicts a highly racialized image of a Chinese immigrant and Irish immigrant “swallowing” the United States–in the form of Uncle Sam. Networks of railroads and the promise of American expansion can be seen in the background. “The great fear of the period That Uncle Sam may be swallowed by foreigners : The problem solved,” 1860-1869.  Library of Congress .

The expansion of influence and territory off the continent became an important corollary to westward expansion. The U.S. government sought to keep European countries out of the Western Hemisphere and applied the principles of manifest destiny to the rest of the hemisphere. As secretary of state for President James Monroe, John Quincy Adams held the responsibility for the satisfactory resolution of ongoing border disputes between the United States, England, Spain, and Russia. Adams’s view of American foreign policy was put into clearest practice in the Monroe Doctrine, which he had great influence in crafting.

Increasingly aggressive incursions from Russians in the Northwest, ongoing border disputes with the British in Canada, the remote possibility of Spanish reconquest of South America, and British abolitionism in the Caribbean all triggered an American response. In a speech before the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, Secretary of State Adams acknowledged the American need for a robust foreign policy that simultaneously protected and encouraged the nation’s growing and increasingly dynamic economy.

America . . . in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. . . . She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. . . . She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. . . . Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice. 37

Adams’s great fear was not territorial loss. He had no doubt that Russian and British interests in North America could be arrested. Adams held no reason to antagonize the Russians with grand pronouncements, nor was he generally called upon to do so. He enjoyed a good relationship with the Russian ambassador and stewarded through Congress most-favored trade status for the Russians in 1824. Rather, Adams worried gravely about the ability of the United States to compete commercially with the British in Latin America and the Caribbean. This concern deepened with the valid concern that America’s chief Latin American trading partner, Cuba, dangled perilously close to outstretched British claws. Cabinet debates surrounding establishment of the Monroe Doctrine and geopolitical events in the Caribbean focused attention on that part of the world as key to the future defense of U.S. military and commercial interests, the main threat to those interests being the British. Expansion of economic opportunity and protection from foreign pressures became the overriding goals of U.S. foreign policy. 38 But despite the philosophical confidence present in the Monroe administration’s decree, the reality of limited military power kept the Monroe Doctrine as an aspirational assertion.

Bitter disagreements over the expansion of slavery into the new lands won from Mexico began even before the war ended. Many northern businessmen and southern enslavers supported the idea of expanding slavery into the Caribbean as a useful alternative to continental expansion, since slavery already existed in these areas. Some were critical of these attempts, seeing them as evidence of a growing slave-power conspiracy. Many others supported attempts at expansion, like those previously seen in eastern Florida, even if these attempts were not exactly legal. Filibustering, as it was called, involved privately financed schemes directed at capturing and occupying foreign territory without the approval of the U.S. government.

Filibustering took greatest hold in the imagination of Americans as they looked toward Cuba. Fears of racialized revolution in Cuba (as in Haiti and Florida before it) as well as the presence of an aggressive British abolitionist influence in the Caribbean energized the movement to annex Cuba and encouraged filibustering as expedient alternatives to lethargic official negotiations. Despite filibustering’s seemingly chaotic planning and destabilizing repercussions, those intellectually and economically guiding the effort imagined a willing and receptive Cuban population and expected an agreeable American business class. In Cuba, manifest destiny for the first time sought territory off the continent and hoped to put a unique spin on the story of success in Mexico. Yet the annexation of Cuba, despite great popularity and some military attempts led by Narciso López, a Cuban dissident, never succeeded. 39             

Other filibustering expeditions were launched elsewhere, including two by William Walker, a former American soldier. Walker seized portions of the Baja peninsula in Mexico and then later took power and established a slaving regime in Nicaragua. Eventually Walker was executed in Honduras. 40 These missions violated the laws of the United States, but wealthy Americans financed various filibusters, and less-wealthy adventurers were all too happy to sign up. Filibustering enjoyed its brief popularity into the late 1850s, at which point slavery and concerns over secession came to the fore. By the opening of the Civil War, most saw these attempts as simply territorial theft.

Debates over expansion, economics, diplomacy, and manifest destiny exposed some of the weaknesses of the American system. The chauvinism of policies like Native American removal, the Mexican War, and filibustering existed alongside growing anxiety. Manifest destiny attempted to make a virtue of America’s lack of history and turn it into the very basis of nationhood. To locate such origins, John O’Sullivan and other champions of manifest destiny grafted biological and territorial imperatives—common among European definitions of nationalism—onto American political culture. The United States was the embodiment of the democratic ideal, they said. Democracy had to be timeless, boundless, and portable. New methods of transportation and communication, the rapidity of the railroad and the telegraph, the rise of the international market economy, and the growth of the American frontier provided shared platforms to help Americans think across local identities and reaffirm a national character.

1. Cherokee petition protesting removal, 1836

Native Americans responded differently to the constant encroachments and attacks of American settlers. Some resisted violently. Others worked to adapt to American culture and defend themselves using particularly American weapons like lawsuits and petitions. The Cherokee did more to adapt than perhaps any other Native American group, creating a written constitution modeled off the American constitution and adopting American culture in dress, speech, religion and economic activity. In this document, Cherokee leaders protested the loss of their territory using a very American tactic: petitioning. 

2. John O’Sullivan declares America’s manifest destiny, 1845

John Louis O’Sullivan, a popular editor and columnist, articulated the long-standing American belief in the God-given mission of the United States to lead the world in the transition to democracy. He called this America’s “manifest destiny.” This idea motivated wars of American expansion. He explained this idea in the following essay where he advocated adding Texas to the United States.

3. Diary of a woman migrating to Oregon, 1853

The experience of migrating west into territory still controlled by Native Americans was difficult and dangerous. In these diary excerpts we find the experience of Amelia Stewart Knight who traveled with her husband and seven children from Iowa to Oregon. She was pregnant the entire trip and gave birth to her eighth child on the side of the road near the journey’s end. 

4. Pun Chi Complains of racist abuse, 1860

The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought a major influx of Asian immigrants to the new state. This number only grew after railroad companies turned to Chinese laborers to build western railroads. Life for these immigrants was particularly difficult, as even financially successful Chinese immigrants faced considerable discrimination. In 1860, the Chinese merchant Pun Chi drafted this petition to congress, calling on the legislature to do more to protect Chinese immigrants.

5. Wyandotte woman describes tensions over slavery, 1849

In 1843, the Wyandotte nation was forcefully removed from their homeland in Ohio and brought to the Kansas Territory. They found themselves on a borderland between Native American territory and Missouri’s slave society, and when the national Methodist church split, debates over slavery threatened the Christianity of the Wyandotte. This letter depicts the complex relationship between recently removed Native peoples, Christianity, and slavery.

6. Letters from Venezuelan General Francisco de Miranda regarding Latin American Revolution, 1805-1806

During a trip to the United States, Venezuelan General Francisco de Miranda worked to launch a revolution in Venezuela that he expected would spread throughout South America. He made a series of high-level contacts, as indicated in the letters below. The American public saw South American revolutionaries as “fellow republicans.” At least three American ships, numerous American guns, and about 200 recruits participated in Miranda’s failed attempt at Revolution. 

7. President Monroe outlines the Monroe Doctrine, 1823

The spirit of Manifest Destiny had its corollary in an earlier piece of American foreign policy. Americans sought to remove colonizing Europeans from the western hemisphere. As Secretary of State for President James Monroe, John Quincy Adams crafted what came to be called the Monroe Doctrine. President Monroe outlined the principles of this policy in his seventh annual message to Congress, excerpted here. 

8. Manifest destiny painting, 1872

Columbia, the female figure of America, leads Americans into the West and into the future by carrying the values of republicanism (as seen through her Roman garb) and progress (shown through the inclusion of technological innovations like the telegraph) and clearing native peoples and animals, seen being pushed into the darkness. 

9. Anti-immigrant cartoon, 1860

Many white Americans responded to increasing numbers of immigrants in the 1800s with great fear and xenophobic hatred, seeing immigrants as threats to their vision of manifest destiny. This cartoon depicts a highly racialized image of a Chinese immigrant and Irish immigrant “swallowing” the United States–in the form of Uncle Sam. In the second image, the Chinese immigrant swallows the Irish immigrant. Networks of railroads and the promise of American expansion can be seen in the background.

This chapter was edited by Joshua Beatty and Gregg Lightfoot, with content contributions by Ethan Bennett, Michelle Cassidy, Jonathan Grandage, Gregg Lightfoot, Jose Juan Perez Melendez, Jessica Moore, Nick Roland, Matthew K. Saionz, Rowan Steinecker, Patrick Troester, and Ben Wright.

Recommended citation: Ethan Bennett et al., “Manifest Destiny,” Joshua Beatty and Gregg Lightfoot, eds., in The American Yawp , eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Recommended Reading

• Blackhawk, Ned. Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
• Brooks, James F. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
• Cusick, James G. The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007.
• DeLay, Brian. War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
• Exley, Jo Ella Powell. Frontier Blood: The Saga of the Parker Family. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005.
• Gómez, Laura E. Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
• Gordon, Sarah Barringer. The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
• Greenberg, Amy S. Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Haas, Lisbeth. Conquest and Historical Identities in California, 1769–1936. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
• Hämäläinen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
• Holmes, Kenneth L. Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, 1840–1849. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
• Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
• Hyde, Anne F. Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
• Johnson, Susan Lee. Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush. New York: Norton, 2000.
• Larson, John Lauritz. Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
• Lazo, Rodrigo. Writing to Cuba: Filibustering and Cuban Exiles in the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
• May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
• Merry, Robert W. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009.
• Namias, June. White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
• Perdue, Theda. “Mixed Blood” Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.
• Peters, Virginia Pergman. Women of the Earth Lodges: Tribal Life on the Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.
• Peterson, Dawn. Indians in the Family: Adoption and the Politics of Antebellum Expansion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
• Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
• Wilkins, David E. Hollow Justice: A History of Indigenous Claims in the United States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.
• Yarbrough, Faye. Race and the Cherokee Nation: Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008
• John O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17, no. 1 (July–August 1845), 5. [ ↩ ]
• Yonatan Eyal, The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). [ ↩ ]
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Young American: A Lecture Read Before the Mercantile Library Association, Boston, February 7, 1844.” http://www.emersoncentral.com/youngam.htm , accessed May 18, 2015. [ ↩ ]
• See Peter S. Onuf, “Imperialism and Nationalism in the Early American Republic,” in Empire’s Twin: U.S. Anti-imperialism from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism , eds. Ian Tyrell and Jay Sexton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 21–40. [ ↩ ]
• Abraham Lincoln, “Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions: First Delivered April 6, 1858.” http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/discoveries.htm , accessed May 18, 2015. [ ↩ ]
• Edmund Jefferson Danziger, Great Lakes Indian Accommodation and Resistance During the Early Reservation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 11–13. [ ↩ ]
• Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Trans-Appalachian Frontier, Third Edition: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775–1850 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 474–479. [ ↩ ]
• Mark Wyman, Immigrants in the Valley: Irish, Germans, and Americans in the Upper Mississippi Country, 1830–1860 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), 128, 148–149. [ ↩ ]
• Horace Greeley, New York Tribune , 1841. Although the phrase “Go west, young man,” is often attributed to Greeley, the exhortation was most likely only popularized by the newspaper editor in numerous speeches, letters, and editorials and always in the larger context of the comparable and superior health, wealth, and advantages to be had in the West. [ ↩ ]
• Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Empire, 1767–1821 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 344–355. [ ↩ ]
• Francis Newton Thorpe, ed., The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America Compiled and Edited Under the Act of Congress of June 30, 1906 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909. [ ↩ ]
• Thomas Sidney Jesup, quoted in Kenneth Wiggins Porter, “Negroes and the Seminole War, 1835–1842,” Journal of Southern History 30, no. 4 (November 1964): 427. [ ↩ ]
• “President Andrew Jackson’s Message to Congress ‘On Indian Removal’ (1830).” http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=25&page=transcript , accessed May 26, 2015. [ ↩ ]
• Ibid. [ ↩ ]
• Tim A. Garrison, “ Worcester v. Georgia (1832),” New Georgia Encyclopedia. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/worcester-v-georgia-1832 . [ ↩ ]
• Fay A. Yarbrough, Race and the Cherokee Nation: Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 15–21. [ ↩ ]
• John Ross, quoted in Brian Hicks, Toward the Setting Sun: John Ross, the Cherokees, and the Trail of Tears (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011), 210. [ ↩ ]
• Russell Thornton, The Cherokees: A Population History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 76. [ ↩ ]
• Senate Document #512, 23 Cong., 1 Sess. Vol. IV, p. x. https://books.google.com/books?id=KSTlvxxCOkcC&dq=60,000+removal+indian&source=gbs_navlinks_s . [ ↩ ]
• John P. Bowes, Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016). [ ↩ ]
• Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). [ ↩ ]
• Samuel J. Wells, “Federal Indian Policy: From Accommodation to Removal,” in Carolyn Reeves, ed., The Choctaw Before Removal (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985), 181–211. [ ↩ ]
• William C. Sturtevant, Handbook of North American Indians: History of Indian-White Relations , Vol. 4 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1988), 289. [ ↩ ]
• Adrienne Caughfield, True Women and Westward Expansion (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005). [ ↩ ]
• Murray Newton Rothbard, Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962). [ ↩ ]
• Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817–1862 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996). [ ↩ ]
• For more on the technology and transportation revolutions, see Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007). [ ↩ ]
• David Reimers, Other Immigrants: The Global Origins of the American People (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 27. [ ↩ ]
• H. P. N. Gammel, ed., The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897 , Vol. 1 (Austin, TX: Gammel, 1898), 1063. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth5872/m1/1071/ . [ ↩ ]
• Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1989). [ ↩ ]
• Quoted in The Annual Register, or, a View of the History and Politics of the Year 1846, Volume 88 (Washington, DC: Rivington, 1847), 377. [ ↩ ]
• James K. Polk, “President Polk’s Mexican War Message,” quoted in The Statesmen’s Manual: The Addresses and Messages of the Presidents of the United States, Inaugural, Annual, and Special, from 1789 to 1846: With a Memoir of Each of the Presidents and a History of Their Administrations; Also the Constitution of the United States, and a Selection of Important Documents and Statistical Information , Vol. 2 (New York: Walker, 1847), 1489 . [ ↩ ]
• Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005). [ ↩ ]
• James M. McCaffrey, Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846–1848 (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 53. [ ↩ ]
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 51. [ ↩ ]
• Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (New York: Norton, 2000). [ ↩ ]
• John Quincy Adams, “Mr. Adams Oration, July 21, 1821,” quoted in Niles’ Weekly Register 20, (Baltimore: H. Niles, 1821), 332. [ ↩ ]
• Gretchen Murphy, Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of U.S. Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). [ ↩ ]
• Tom Chaffin, Fatal Glory: Narciso López and the First Clandestine U.S. War Against Cuba (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1996). [ ↩ ]
• Anne F. Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 471. [ ↩ ]

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California Saints

A 150-year legacy in the golden state, richard o. cowan and william e. homer, a year of decision: 1847.

Richard O. Cowan and William E. Homer,  California Saints: A 150-Year Legacy in the Golden State  (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1996), 81–104.

The year 1846 has been called “the year of decision” because of its key place in American history. [1] The following year, 1847, played a similarly pivotal role in Latter-day Saint history.

During 1847, three major groups of Latter-day Saints were involved in building the American West: (1) The main body of the Church was at Winter Quarters on the Missouri River. In the spring, Brigham Young led the first party from this group toward the Rocky Mountains; (2) The Mormon Battalion completed its march to California and made significant contributions to several communities there; and (3) The Brooklyn colony was developing its settlement on the San Francisco Bay.

In Yerba Buena, Samuel Brannan began the year on 1 January by issuing another extra in advance of his regular publication of the California Star. He announced: “We shall commence publishing a paper next week, which will be the government organ by the sanction of Colonel Freemont, who is now our Governor.” [2]

Brannan sent a copy of the extra, together with a circular, to the Church newspaper in Great Britain, the Millennial Star. He reported: “In relation to the country and climate we have not been disappointed . . . but, like all other new countries, we found the accounts of it very much exaggerated.” [3]

On 9 January 1847, Brannan began weekly publication of the California Star. The newspaper was California’s second and began publication just five months after Monterey’s Californian, which in May was moved to San Francisco where it competed directly with the Star. In contrast to the Prophet and the Messenger, which Brannan had published in New York, this paper “was not issued as an organ of Mormonism,” but rather as a general newspaper. [4] Although Samuel Brannan was the paper’s proprietor, by April Edward Kemble, the non-Latterday Saint who had acted as Brannan’s assistant in New York and who had come with the group on the Brooklyn, assumed the editorship.

The Donner Tragedy

The 1846–47 winter was early and violent. It trapped the Donner wagon train of sixty immigrants in the Sierra Nevada mountains without adequate provisions. By mid-January a few of the party had snowshoed out of the mountains to Johnson’s Ranch, near present-day Marysville. Winter rains had flooded the Bear River and rendered the Sacramento plains a vast quagmire. Nevertheless, there was no time to waste. John Rhoads, a Latter-day Saint whose family had arrived overland just three weeks earlier, volunteered to go to Sutter’s Fort for help. Lashing two pine logs together with rawhide and forming them into a raft, he crossed the Bear River. Taking his shoes in his hands and rolling his pants up above his knees, he waded through water that was frequently three feet deep. Sometime during the night he reached the fort although the journey generally took about two days. [5] Volunteers were scarce because the war with Mexico had brought about a shortage of men. With some difficulty, a group of twenty was recruited and dispatched from Sutter’s Fort. After several attempts hindered by defections, only seven rescuers remained, including John Rhoads and his brother Daniel. To reach the summit, they had to break a trail through soft, waist-deep snow.

They finally reached the Donner Party camp on 18 February. “They saw only snow, and a sudden fear fell upon them that they had struggled so hard only to arrive too late. Spontaneously, they hallooed together. At the sound they saw a woman emerge, like some kind of animal, from a hole in the snow. They floundered toward her, and she, tottering weakly, came toward them. She spoke, crying out in a hollow voice, unnerved and agitated: ‘Are you men from California, or do you come from heaven?’” [6]

The rescue party was not large enough to take all the survivors out. They had to make the painful choice of who would go and who would stay. John Rhoads remembered his promise to Harriet Pike, one of those who had walked out to Johnson’s Ranch and a daughter of the Latter-day Saint laundress, Lavinia Murphy. He had promised that he would bring her babies out if he had to tie them on his back. Upon searching the camp, Rhoads found that Mrs. Murphy and her seventeen-year-old son had just died. John quickly rolled the one surviving Pike child, Naomi, in a blanket and hastened up the snow ramp to overtake the rescue party with its twenty-two immigrants. He carried her in the blanket, even after horses were obtained, as the child was too emaciated and frail to ride alone. Surprisingly, she lived to be ninety-three years old. She was one of the last Donner survivors when she died.

Meanwhile, word of the Donners’ plight reached Yerba Buena. Samuel Brannan published the story in his paper and expressed hope that the community would do something to help the immigrants. [7] Under the leadership of Washington A. Bartlett, supplies were gathered and a new rescue party of twenty men, including Brooklyn passenger Howard Oakley, was dispatched four days later.

By early March, lingering snow had caused most of the rescue party to give up. Oakley was one of only seven who continued through the deep snow over the pass. The group found eleven survivors huddled around a fire which had melted a big hole in the snow. Oakley received the assignment to bring out seven-year-old Mary Donner. [8]

Samuel Brannan’s Challenges

The Latter-day Saints in California had their own problems. In his New Year’s Day circular, Samuel Brannan lamented that “about twenty males of our feeble number have gone astray after strange gods, serving their bellies and their own lusts,” rather than cooperating in efforts to help the Saints provide for one another. [9] Such chronic dissension widened the already existing rifts.

Brannan faced another difficult and perplexing challenge as the New Hope Colony declined into an abyss of suspicion and greed. Feeling it was commensurate with his status as presiding elder, William Stout claimed for himself all the acreage that had been improved and tilled, as well as the first house built there.

Brannan knew he had to contact Brigham Young, not only to tell him of the paradise he had found in California, but also to obtain advice and support in dealing with his increasingly contentious and dwindling flock. Leaving William Glover in charge of the settlement, Brannan set out on 4 April 1847 to meet President Young on the Plains. [10]

The first stop was the New Hope Colony, where, after trying to reason with Stout, Brannan settled the issue by expelling him. Despite difficulties, the Saints did plant several acres of crops, but, as John Horner admitted, since it was “late in the season, and the grasshoppers numerous, we got only experience from this venture.” [11]

The next stop was Sutter’s Fort, where Brannan found an experienced trail guide, Charles Smith (said to have been a Latter-day Saint in Nauvoo), to accompany him together with another unnamed young man. The thousand-mile journey through Indian country and harsh natural conditions was hazardous for such a small party, attesting to Brannan’s courage and the urgency he felt.

Brannan wrote:

We crossed the Snowy Mountains of California, a distance of 40 miles, . . . in one day and two hours, a thing that has never been done before in less than three days. We traveled on foot and drove our animals before us, the snow from twenty to one hundred feet deep. When we arrived through, not one of us could scarcely stand on our feet. The people of California told us we could not cross them under two months, there being more snow on the mountains than had ever been known before, but God knows best, and was kind enough to prepare the way before us. [12]

The Mormon Battalion in California

While Brannan traveled east, members of the Mormon Battalion were helping to build Southern California. Hostilities related to the Mexican War had barely ceased when the Battalion arrived. In December 1846, the forward contingent of Gen. Stephen W. Kearny’s Army of the West, which had preceded the Battalion by about one and one-half months, secured the peace. By 10 January 1847 the American flag was hoisted over Los Angeles, and three days later, just two weeks before the Battalion soldiers first sighted the Pacific, John C. Fremont accepted the final surrender of Mexican forces. Hence the Battalion’s service in California was not primarily military in nature. Furthermore, its assignments were influenced more by the power struggle between Colonel Fremont and General Kearny than by the conflict between the United States and Mexico.

After only two days in San Diego, the Battalion was ordered to go to San Luis Rey, about forty miles north. Arriving there on 3 February, the soldiers found a decrepit and abandoned Franciscan mission situated in another beautiful and fertile winter valley. This was also a strategic location from which they could be ordered into action, if needed, to defend San Diego against a Mexican invasion or to check Fremont should he attempt to take over Los Angeles. While stationed at San Luis Rey, the soldiers improved their skills in military drills and skillfully cleaned and repaired the mission buildings. Perhaps more important, they demonstrated their good behavior and loyalty to Colonel Cook and General Kearny.

As the Latter-day Saint soldiers conducted religious activities at San Luis Rey, the long-festering conflict between their own military and spiritual leaders worsened. [13] Jefferson Hunt, whom Brigham Young had appointed captain of Company A, claimed authority to call and direct religious services. Levi Hancock, however, criticized Hunt and the other captains, saying they had been deficient in living the gospel, and refused to defer to their military rank. As one of the original Seven Presidents of the Seventy called to serve directly under the Twelve, Hancock believed he should take the lead in spiritual matters and thus made his own plans for worship services. Together with David Pettigrew, he also initiated ceremonial washings and anointings in hopes of sparking a spiritual revival. [14]

In March, Company B, with only two hours’ notice, was sent back to San Diego to assume garrison duty. [15] The industriousness and good behavior of these Latter-day Saint soldiers in San Diego helped overcome deceitful rumors and prejudice and earned them a favorable reputation. Army doctor John S. Griffin reported that “the prejudice against the Mormons here seems to be wearing off—it is yet among the Californians a great term of reproach to be called a Mormon—yet as they are a quiet, industrious, sober, inoffensive people—they seem to be gradually working their way up—they are extremely industrious—they have been engaged while here in digging wells, plastering houses, and seem anxious and ready to work.” [16]

In San Diego, Company B organized among themselves debating teams, a chorus, and other educational and cultural activities—something which the citizens found unusual for soldiers. They also constructed a kiln and fired forty thousand bricks, with which they paved sidewalks and lined several of the fifteen or twenty wells they had dug. They built a brick courthouse, which also served as a school. [17]

Before the Battalion came, residents of San Diego had been able to procure water only at some distance from town. The soldiers’ proposition to dig a well in the village was met with scorn by the townsfolk. Nevertheless, a thirty-foot well was dug and abundant water of a superior quality became available. An American sailor described how the locals would “hardly take time to finish their breakfast in the morning, but out they go and SIT AROUND THE WELL, smoke their cigaritos, while one of the party is everlastingly drawing up a bucket for the edification of the company.” [18]

“I think I whitewashed all San Diego,” Battalion member Henry G. Boyle recalled. “We did their blacksmithing, put up a bakery, made and repaired carts, and, in fine, did all we could to benefit ourselves as well as the citizens.” [19] Appreciative local residents petitioned the military to keep the Battalion there. When told that it was impossible, they asked that another contingent of Mormons take their places. “When we came to leave the place,” one of the soldiers recalled, “they seemed to cling to us, as though they had been parting with their own children.” [20]

Meanwhile, when Col. Philip St. George Cooke left San Luis Rey for Los Angeles on 19 March, he took the four remaining companies of the Battalion with him. When they arrived in Los Angeles four days later, the soldiers were impressed with the beautiful ranches, orchards, and vineyards surrounding the small town. The day after their arrival, Fremont’s “California Volunteers” would not recognize the authority of Kearny and Cooke and refused to turn over their artillery. Cooke declined to press the issue because he feared that by so doing he might fan into “civil war” the long-standing antagonism between his Mormon troops and the Missourians among Fremont’s Volunteers. [21]

One of the Saints recorded that Fremont’s men had “been using all possible means to prejudice the Spaniards and Indians against us by telling them we would take their wives &c. thereby rousing an excitement through the country.” [22] Occasionally, the Latter-day Saints and “bullies” among the former Missourians clashed in town. Regular soldiers of the First Dragoons sometimes came to the defense of the Battalion men, telling them, “Stand back; you are religious men, and we are not; we will take all of your fights into our hands” and with an oath promising, “You shall not be imposed upon by them.” [23]

Colonel Cooke ordered the men to enlarge the breastwork which had been constructed the previous January on the hill overlooking Los Angeles. At first, twenty-eight men from each company put in ten-hour days building the fort, members of the crew being rotated every four days. However, as the threat of conflict subsided the pace of construction slackened. [24]

On 8 May, Colonel Cooke sent a detachment of twenty Battalion men to protect Isaac Williams’s Rancho Santa Ana de Chino, near present-day Pomona. This was the beginning of a long-lasting relationship between Williams and the Saints. While on patrol, some of the Battalion surprised a small group of marauding Indians. Amid the ensuing conflict, five Indians were killed and two Battalion men slightly wounded. This was “their first and only battle with other humans in which blood was spilled.” [25]

A Fourth of July celebration featured the raising of the U.S. flag on the new 150-foot flagpole—the first such celebration in the little village of Los Angeles. The New York Volunteers band, which had come from Santa Barbara, played the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and the First Dragoons fired a thirteen-gun salute. An officer read the Declaration of Independence while the soldiers stood in formation. Levi Hancock then sang a patriotic song which he had earlier composed. On this occasion, Fort Moore was officially dedicated—named for Capt. Benjamin D. Moore, a member of Kearny’s First Dragoon who was killed the previous December in the Battle of San Pasqual. [26] Over a century later, a large memorial, adjacent to the Los Angeles civic center, would commemorate Fort Moore.

While these events were unfolding in Southern California, Gen. Steven W. Kearny and Col. John C. Fremont headed east to Washington—Kearny to make his report to the president and Congress, and Fremont, following slightly behind, to stand trial for insubordination and usurpation of authority in declaring himself governor of California. General Kearny chose fifteen Mormon Battalion soldiers to go with him as his personal escort. This honor denoted a marked contrast to his denouncement of Fremont’s California Volunteers for their poor treatment of local residents. The general assured the Battalion that his report of them would be favorable.

Leaving Monterey on the last day of May, this group followed the California Trail, the same route Samuel Brannan had taken a few weeks earlier. Upon reaching Fort Leavenworth on 22 August, members of the Mormon escort were discharged, each receiving a payment of $8.60 for his extra five weeks of service. Within a week, these soldiers traveled up the Missouri River to Winter Quarters, where they gave the Saints their first eyewitness report of the Battalion’s activities. [27]

Meanwhile, Battalion members in California became increasingly anxious to hear about their families and the main body of the Church. Their anxiety was heightened by the few fragmentary and confused reports they were able to receive. For example, a passenger on a sailing vessel told the men in San Diego that “a party of Mormons had been caught in the snows while crossing the Sierra Nevadas. The few that survived existed on human flesh.” [28] The Battalion men had no way of knowing that this report referred to the comparatively small Donner Party rather than to the great Latter-day Saint exodus. Another report indicated that Samuel Brannan had gone east across the mountains to meet the main Pioneer company under Brigham Young and to lead them to California, and that “the brethren at San Francisco were doing all in their power to prepare a home for their friends.” [29]

As 16 July, the end of the Battalion’s year-long enlistment, drew near, the men had to decide whether to reenlist. Jefferson Hunt and other Battalion officers, believing that the Saints would ultimately “settle in the vicinity of the Bay of San Francisco,” favored another year of service. However, the rank and file, influenced by Levi Hancock and other religious leaders, favored an early discharge because the war with Mexico had already ended. [30] Henry W. Bigler reported that “all hands were now busy making preparations to leave for their homes wherever that was; whether on Bear River, California, or Vancouver Island up in the British possession. For the truth is we do not know where President Young and the Church is!” [31]

California’s military governor, Richard Mason, wrote to the adjutant general in Washington concerning the Mormon Battalion:

Of services of this battalion, of their patience, subordination, and general good conduct, you have already heard; and I take great pleasure in adding that as a body of men they have religiously respected the rights and feelings of these conquered people, and not a syllable of complaint has reached my ears of a single insult offered or an outrage done by a Mormon Volunteer. So high an opinion did I entertain for the battalion, and of their special fitness for the duties now performed by the garrisons in this country, that I made strenuous efforts to engage their services for another year. [32]

Many promises were made to induce the Battalion members to reenlist, including one that the government would pay to have their families transported to California to join them.

On the appointed date, the Battalion’s companies were gathered at the nearly completed Fort Moore to either reenlist or be mustered out. They had put in a long year and were anxious to be reunited with their families. Nevertheless, eighty-one chose to reenlist. [33] Henry G. Boyle, one of those who reenlisted, explained his decision:

I did not like to reenlist, but as I had no relatives in the Church to return to, 1 desired to remain California til the Church became located, for it is impossible for us to leave here with provisions to last us any considerable length of time. And if I Stay here or any number of us, it is better for us to remain together, than to Scatter all over Creation. [34]

The eighty-one men who reenlisted were organized into the “Mormon Volunteers” and assigned duty in San Diego. Learning this, the residents there “anxiously awaited” the soldiers’ return. “Some even went out to greet the returning soldiers a day before they came.” [35]

The majority of those who were discharged chose to go to Northern California to find work in San Francisco or at Sutter’s Fort before rejoining their families. Three miles outside Los Angeles, these soldiers met at an appointed spot in a rivergrove to make preparations for their journey. Within a few days two large groups headed north, one captained by Jefferson Hunt along the coast and one by Levi Hancock inland. Thus the rift between the Battalion’s military and religious leaders was now reflected in an actual split into two groups. The largest group, 164 men led by Levi Hancock and David Pettigrew, organized themselves in ancient Israelite fashion, with captains of tens, fifties, and hundreds. Taking the central route into the San Joaquin Valley, they reached Sutter’s Fort on 26 August.

When Jefferson Hunt discussed the possibility of recruiting an entirely new Mormon Battalion to serve under his leadership, army authorities in Southern California suggested he detour, via the coastal route to Monterey, and present this idea to Governor Mason. [36] Hunt’s group of about one hundred reached Monterey on 10 August, where Mason endorsed Hunt’s proposal. While most of the group continued on to the San Francisco Bay Area to find work, three stayed in Monterey to work as carpenters and roofers on several buildings, including the town hall.

Members of the Hunt and Hancock groups reunited at Sutter’s Fort. Since “many of them were poorly clad, and otherwise short of means to fit themselves out for Salt Lake,” they took employment with Captain Sutter. Hiring about fiftysix of the “Mormon boys” enabled him to move forward with his plans to build a gristmill on the American River about four miles from his fort and also a sawmill at Coloma nearly forty miles further upstream. At the same time he “had at Coloma nearly three hundred thousand bushels of wheat to harvest and thresh.” [37] The remainder of the soldiers then turned east to cross the Sierra Nevada en route to rejoin their families and the main body of the Saints.

Brannan Meets the Pioneers

After passing through Fort Hall (in present-day Idaho), Samuel Brannan arrived on 30 June at Brigham Young’s camp on the Green River in present-day Wyoming. Pioneer William Clayton recorded: “After dinner . . . Elder Samuel Brannan arrived, having come from the Pacific to meet us, obtain counsel, etc.” [38]

President Young listened patiently as Brannan, using his best salesmanship, enthusiastically laid before him all the obvious reasons for settling in California. However, the wise Church leader was not impressed. He had consistently maintained that the main body of the Church would locate eight hundred miles inland from the coast in the Rocky Mountains. Furthermore, he had seen the final destination in a vision, and Brannan’s descriptions did not sound like the right place. Most importantly, the better Brannan made California sound, the more President Young knew it could never provide permanent peace, since it would also appeal to the Saints’ enemies. He later remarked: “When the pioneer company reached Green River we met Samuel Brannan and a few others from California, and they wanted us to go there. 1 remarked: ‘Let us go to California, and we cannot stay there over five years; but let us stay in the mountains, and we can raise our own potatoes and eat them; and I calculate to stay here.’” [39]

As Brannan tarried with Brigham Young at the Green River, an advance party from Pueblo, Colorado, representing the group of Battalion sick and some southern Saints, approached the camp. One of these scouts was Elder Amasa M. Lyman, who had been a missionary among the southern Saints. He had been dispatched from Brigham Young’s main camp to provide leadership in Pueblo. Because some of the soldiers were considering returning east to their families rather than continuing west to California, as they had been enlisted to do, the Battalion’s reputation was at stake. Desertion by a few could mean loss of pay for many. Brannan was just the man needed to convince them to continue on to California. He was appointed to meet the Saints from Pueblo, who were under the charge of Capt. James Brown, a Mormon Battalion officer who was a Latter-day Saint, and to escort them to the main body of the Pioneers.

Brigham Young’s camp pressed on toward the Great Basin, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley on 24 July 1847. Just five days later, Brannan arrived with the Pueblo contingent. He was disappointed to learn that President Young was already planning a city in the valley large enough to accommodate those still remaining on the trail. President Young had also designated a temple site. Brannan’s hope that he could guide the main body of the Church to California was dashed. His trip was seemingly wasted.

While in the Salt Lake Valley waiting for Captain Brown and his party to make final preparations for the trip with him to California, Brannan accepted the invitation of his old friend, Elder Orson Pratt, to show the Pioneers how to make California adobe bricks. The adobe dwellings constructed that summer provided shelter for the Saints, including President Young’s family, to survive the following harsh winter.

Instead of sending all the Battalion soldiers on with Brannan, Brigham Young changed his mind and advised most of them to remain in the Salt Lake Valley and help out there, since their enlistment time had elapsed. He had their military leader, Captain Brown, discharge them and sent him to collect their final pay.

On 7 August, two days before Brannan and Brown left for California, Brigham Young, on behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, wrote two letters of greeting to the Saints there. In the first letter, addressed specifically to members of the Mormon Battalion, he declared:

When you receive this and learn of this location, it will be wisdom for you all, if you have got your discharge as we suppose, to come directly to this place, where you will learn particularly who is here, who not. If there are any men who have not families among your number, who desire to stop in California for a season, we do not feel to object; yet we do feel that it will be better for them to come directly to this place, for here will be our headquarters for the present, and our dwelling place . . . and we want to see you, even all of you, and talk with you, and throw our arms around you. [40]

In the second letter, addressed to the California Saints as a whole, President Young praised the excellence of the Salt Lake Valley’s soil, water, and climate. He then added:

You are [also] in a goodly land; and if you choose to tarry where you are, you are at liberty so to do; and if you choose to come to this place, you are at liberty to come, and we shall be happy to receive you, and give you an inheritance in our midst. . . not that we wish to depopulate California of all the saints, but that we wish to make this a stronghold, a rallying point, a more immediate gathering place than any other; and from hence let the work go out, and in process of time the shores of the Pacific may be overlooked from the temple of the Lord. [41]

After getting outfitted at Fort Hall, the Brown-Brannan party followed the California Trail west. Along the way, Brannan and Brown parted company. One of the Battalion soldiers, Abner Blackburn, detailed their conflicts: “Brannan and Cap Brown could not agree on anny subject. Brannan thought he knew it all and Brown thought he knew his share of it. They felt snuffy at each other and kept apart.” On 5 September in Truckee Canyon, their frictions came to a head: “Cap Brown wanted [to] travel on several miles before breakfast. Brannan said he would eat breakfast first. Brown sayes the horses would goe anny how for they belonged to the government and were in his care. They both went for the horses and a fight commenced. They pounded each other with fists and clubs until they were sepperated. They both ran for their guns. We parted them again.” The group parted and Brannan rode on ahead. [42]

The next day, near Donner Lake, Brannan intercepted the approximately 140 Battalion soldiers heading east. He shared Brigham Young’s counsel that those who did not have sufficient provisions to winter in the Salt Lake Valley should remain in California until spring. [43] Daniel Tyler recorded that Brannan’s description of the Salt Lake Valley “was anything but encouraging. . . . It froze there every month. . . . [T]he ground was too dry . . . . [If] irrigated with the cold mountain streams, the seeds planted would be chilled and prevented from growing, . . . [and] all except those whose families were known to be at Salt Lake had better turn back and labor until spring, when in all probability the Church would come to them.” [44]

The following day, Captain Brown’s party came into camp. After he shared with them the letter he was carrying from the apostles, about half of the soldiers decided to continue east under Levi Hancock’s leadership. Apparently, Hancock and Jefferson Hunt forged at least a partial reconciliation, because Hunt also went with the group. They reached the Salt Lake Valley in October. Some, whose families were not yet there, immediately went on to Winter Quarters, arriving in December. Of those who returned to the settlements in California, about half found work with Sutter. [45] This leftover five hundred Saints in California: eighty reenlistees in San Diego and four to five hundred scattered about the state, mostly in the North.

Among the Battalion men who parted were a father and son who had served together for over a year. Albert Smith went on to the Great Basin while his son Azariah, who had just celebrated his nineteenth birthday, returned to Sutter’s Fort. [46]

Brannan also traveled on to Sutter’s Fort. There he and his trail partner, Charles Smith, rented a one-room adobe, acquired a small boat to bring merchandise from San Francisco, and set up a general store. [47] Smith remained at Sutter’s Fort to manage the store. This little enterprise became a foundation that eventually brought Brannan unimagined wealth.

Meanwhile, Captain Brown, accompanied by his son, Jesse, went on to San Francisco then headed south to Monterey. There he met Governor Mason, who ordered the paymaster to give Brown ten thousand dollars in Spanish doubloons (nearly a million dollars in today’s currency) as payment in full for his service and the service rendered by the Battalion members who had not been able to complete the march to the Pacific because of illness. Brown immediately transported the gold to the Salt Lake Valley, arriving on 15 December. After paying the soldiers, Brown, with Church leaders’ sanction, used the remaining three thousand dollars to purchase a ranch with a few dilapidated buildings at the mouth of Weber Canyon. There, “Brownville” was settled by James Brown and others who were deeded plots of land on the ranch. This settlement grew into the city of Ogden, Utah. The ranch also contained the Great Basin’s only established cattle herd. It supplied milk, meat, and cheese, which allowed the Pioneers to survive their first harsh winter. It is said that the ten thousand dollars in gold doubloons was virtually the only money circulated in Utah until miners brought gold from California the following year. [48]

Brannan’s Return to San Francisco

While Brannan was away, growth continued in San Francisco (as Yerba Buena was now called because of an order ascribed to Mayor Bartlett). [49] Two auctions were held for San Francisco city lots, which were purchased in just a few hours, many by Latter-day Saints. The Star disclosed that as of 30 June the town’s population had reached 459 and that half of its 157 buildings had been constructed since 1 April. [50] Thus in less than one year, Church members had likely erected more than one hundred dwellings for themselves, their families, and their community.

At about this time, Addison Pratt arrived in San Francisco from his mission in the Society (Tahitian) Islands. He discerned discord existing among the San Francisco Saints:

There was much dissatisfaction among the Brooklyn brethren as to Brannan’s proceedings while on board of the Brooklyn, and several of them proposed to me to take charge of the spiritual affairs among them. But I told them it was not my place to meddle with their affairs in any wise as Brannan was the man that was appointed by the church to look after them, and my mission was to another part of the world altogether. [51]

Upon Brannan’s return to San Francisco on 17 September 1847, he wrote to Jesse Little:

“I found everything on my return far better than my most sanguine expectation. . . . When I landed here with my little company there was but three families in the place and now the improvements are beyond all conception. Houses in every direction, business very brisk and money plenty. Here will be the great Emporium of the Pacific and eventually of the world.” Brannan was a man of vision: if California were accounted as a separate country today, it would rank seventh in the world economically.

Although apprehensive comments were heard before the Saints’ arrival, attitudes had already changed dramatically. Brannan gratefully acknowledged in his letter to Jesse Little that “the Mormons are A No. 1 in this country.” [52] William Glover had just been elected to San Francisco’s original six-member town council and a few days later was appointed to the school board. [53]

President Young’s August letter to the California Saints had counseled: “We do not desire much public preaching or noise or confusion concerning us or our religion in California at the present time.” It also expressed support for Brannan’s leadership:

We are satisfied with the proceedings of Elder Brannan. We believe that he is a good man and that it is his design to do right. No doubt that he has been placed in very trying circumstances in connection and common with you, since your journey to California was first contemplated; and if he or you have erred . . . we feel to exhort you at all times to cultivate the spirit of meekness, kindness, gentleness, compassion, love, forgiveness, forbearance, long-suffering, patience, and charity one towards another; and look upon others faults and follies as you want others to look upon yours; and forgive as you want to be forgiven.

President Young also urged the Brooklyn Saints to honor the balance of the three-year compact to labor “unitedly for the good of the whole.” [54]

The Church’s decision to settle in the Great Basin rather than going to the Coast changed the plans of many of the California Saints. “You can imagine our disappointment,” William Glover recalled. The company was broken up as many Saints began making preparations for going to the mountains. Glover also disapproved of what happened at New Hope: “The land, the oxen, the crop, the houses, tools, and launch, all went into Brannan’s hands, and the Company that did the work never got anything for their labor.” [55] In October, contrary to Brigham Young’s counsel, Brannan took steps to liquidate the common fund. In the Star, he advertised that all the holdings of “the firm of S. Brannan & Co.” were for sale. [56]

A few days later, Samuel Brannan wrote to Brigham Young and the Twelve:

I hope, brethren, that you will not suffer your minds to be prejudiced or doubt my loyalty from any rumors. . . . I want your confidence, faith and prayers, feeling that I will discharge my duties under all circumstances, and then I will be happy. . . . To you I stand ready at any moment to render an account of my stewardship. [57]

Over two years would pass before Brannan would have any face-to-face contact with higher Church leaders.

With the group planning to leave and the Church discouraging overtly religious activity, Brannan increasingly channeled his energy into civic and business enterprises. He continued drumming up support in the Star for a public school. As early as the paper’s second issue, he had offered to donate a plot of land and fifty dollars to erect one. By December, San Francisco’s first schoolhouse was completed on Clay Street next to the plaza. [58] A memorial, erected by San Francisco’s Centennial Commission and local Masonic lodge, stands today in Portsmouth Square in recognition of that school.

On 2 December, Brannan called a meeting to organize the San Francisco Branch with Addison Pratt as president. Disconcerted, Pratt recorded:

To my presiding, I objected perhaps too strongly, but not withstanding, they voted me in, and I then felt it my duty to act. Strong accusations were presented against Brannan by the “Brooklyn” company to the effect that he had devised ways and means whereby he had swindled them out of their property with the pretense that he was collecting for the church. . . . But there were two parties, one for Brannan, and the other against him, and the Battalion boys gradually allowed themselves to be drawn in some on the one side and some on the other, and party feelings were thus fast growing in spite of my best efforts to keep it down. . . . I also learned that Br. Brannan expected me to rule the branch, and that 1 in turn was expected to be ruled by him. But when he found that I had some notions of my own that should be consulted, I became very obnoxious to him. [59]

Soon Brannan, Pratt, and the entire Latter-day Saint colony were overcome by a tide of unforeseeable events that swept away the branch and the town’s recently planted spiritual roots.

[1] Bernard de Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943).

[2] Quoted in Millennial Star 9 (15 October 1847): 307.

[3] Ibid., 306.

[4] Hubert H. Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: The History Co., 1886), 5:552.

[5] Annaleone D. Patton, California Mormons by Sail and Trail (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1961), 67.

[6] George R. Stewart, Ordeal By Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), 191.

[7] California Star, 16 January 1847.

[8] Stewart, 243–16.

[9] Millennial Star 9 (15 October 1847): 306.

[10] Andrew Jenson, comp., “The California Mission” (hereafter CM); LDS Church Archives.

[11] John Horner, “Voyage of the Ship ‘Brooklyn,’” Improvement Era 9, no. 10 (August 1906): 795.

[12] Millennial Star 9 (15 October 1847): 305.

[13] Larry D. Christiansen, “The Struggle for Power in the Mormon Battalion, Dialogue 26, no. 4 (winter 1993): 51–69.

[14] John F. Yurtinus, “A Ram in the Thicket: The Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War” (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1975), 539–42.

[15] Ibid., 543–45.

[16] Ibid., 557.

[17] Daniel Tyler, A Concise History of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War (Glorieta, N. Mex.: 1881), 290; Henry W. Bigler, Bigler’s Chronicle of the West, ed. Erwin G. Gudde (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962), 61.

[18] Capt. S. F. DuPont, Extracts from Private Journal-Letters, quoted in Yurtinus, 561.

[19] Quoted in Leo J. Muir, A Century of Mormon Activities in California (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Tress, 1952), 65.

[20] William Hyde Diary, June 1847, quoted in Yurtinus, 561.

[21] Yurtinus, 500.

[22] Frank A. Golder, The March of the Mormon Battalion: From Council Bluffs to California (New York: The Century Co., 1928), 219.

[23] Tyler, 280.

[24] Encyclopedia of Historic Forts (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 80; Yurtinus, 572.

[25] Yurtinus, 574.

[26] Ibid., 579–80.

[27] Ibid., 504–26.

[28] Ibid., 555.

[29] Quoted in ibid., 556.

[30] Colder, 227–30; Yurtinus, 585–89, 591–92; see also Susan E. Black, “The Mormon Battalion: Conflict Between Religious and Military Authority,” Southern California Quarterly 74, no. 4 (winter 1992): 324–25.

[31] Bigler, 57 n. 19.

[32] Quoted in Bancroft, 5:492 n. 20.

[33] Yurtinus, 607.

[34] Henry G. Boyle Diary, 20 July 1847; typescript, Brigham Young University Archives.

[35] Yurtinus, 612–13.

[36] Pauline Udall Smith, Captain Jefferson Hunt of the Mormon Battalion (Salt Lake City: The Nicholas G. Morgan, Sr., Foundation, 1958), 122.

[37] The Journals of Addison Pratt, ed. S. George Ellsworth (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), 335.

[38] William Clayton’s Journal (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1921), 281.

[39] Preston Nibley, Brigham Young: The Man and His Work (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1970), 97.

[40] Journal History, 7 August 1847 (hereafter JH); LDS Church Archives.

[42] Abner Blackburn, Frontiersman: Abner Blackburn’s Narrative, ed. Will Bagley (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992), 65, 102.

[43] CM, 18 September 1847; Homer, 30–31.

[44] Tyler, 315.

[45] Yurtinus, 630–32.

[46] Azariah Smith, The Gold Discovery Journal of Azariah Smith, ed. David L. Bigler (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), 102–3.

[47] Although Sutter later recalled the partner’s name as George Smith or Gordon Smith, he was probably the same Charles Smith who served as Brannan’s guide.

[48] Archie Leon Brown and Charlene L. Hathaway, 141 Years of Mormon Heritage (Oakland: Archie Leon Brown, 1973), 103–6.

[49] California Star, 30 January 1847.

[50] California Star, 28 August 1847 and 4 September 1847.

[51] Journals of Addison Pratt, 330.

[52] Samuel Brannan to Jesse C. Little, in CM, 18 September 1847.

[53] California Star, 18 September 1847.

[54] JH, 7 August 1847.

[55] William Glover, The Mormons in California (Los Angeles: Dawson, 1954), 21.

[56] California Star, 9 October 1847.

[57] JH, 17 October 1847.

[58] California Star, 16 January 1847 and 4 December 1847.

[59] CM, 24 January 1848.

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Teen suspended for using term ‘illegal aliens’ sues his north carolina high school.

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A 16-year-old North Carolina student has sued his high school for suspending him after he used the term “illegal aliens” in a question about an assignment.

Christian McGhee, who received a three-day suspension for using the phrase last month at Central Davidson High School in Lexington, has accused the school of violating his First Amendment rights in the lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday.

“Aside from the obvious fact that his words had nothing to do with race, his speech was protected under the First Amendment: he asked his teacher a question that was factual and nonthreatening, and officials could not have reasonably forecast that his question would cause substantial School disruption,” the suit said.

“Nor did his question actually cause substantial School disruption.”

According to the lawsuit, the incident occurred on April 9 when a teacher gave Christian an assignment that used the word “alien,” and he asked, “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?”

A Hispanic student in Christian’s class reportedly “joked” that he was going to “kick Christian’s a–,” so the teacher took the matter to the assistant principal, per the suit.

Eventually, his words were deemed to be offensive and disrespectful to his classmates, so he was suspended.

“The School punished C.M. for his question with three days out-of-school suspension — a punishment described by the administration as ‘harsh,'” the suit states. “In issuing that punishment for his comment, the School baldly concluded that C.M.’s question was ‘racially insensitive’ and a ‘racially motivated comment which disrupts class.’”

According to the complaint, the school had no legal justification for harshly punishing the student.

The teen’s mother, Leah McGhee, said the lawsuit was filed against the North Carolina school because it indirectly accused her son of being a racist, and she doesn’t want that to affect his chances of being accepted into colleges.

“This label that was so unfairly placed on his record is going to hinder him,” she told  NewsNation . 

The suspension may also affect the student-athlete’s prospects of securing a college sports scholarship, the Carolina Journal reported

“Because of his question, our son was disciplined and given THREE days OUT of school suspension for ‘racism,’” McGhee wrote in an email describing the incident.

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“He is devastated and concerned that the racism label on his school record will harm his future goal of receiving a track scholarship. We are concerned that he will fall behind in his classes due to being absent for three consecutive days,” she added in the message, which was shared with the outlet.

McGhee said she hired an attorney because the assistant principal refused to remove the suspension from her son’s record.

The popular  X account Libs of TikTok  weighed in on the issue by saying Christian’s record could be “damaged” by the brouhaha over political correctness.

“Please support this based student by helping to raise awareness to his story!” the conservative account wrote in the post, which has received more than 4 million views.

Among those to respond was X owner Elon Musk, who wrote: “This is absurd.”

Conservative personality Ian Miles Chong called it “insane.”

“How does one get suspended for using the term illegal alien?” he asked.

Libs of TikTok added: “Hopefully North Carolina officials can step in and ensure his record isn’t tarnished in any way because he’s trying to secure an athletic scholarship for college.

“He should not be persecuted for using the correct term just because the left is trying to change our entire language,” the account added.

A staffer at Central Davidson High School told Newsweek that they could not comment about a specific student due to federal protections.

“Please know that Davidson County Schools administrators take all discipline incidents seriously and investigate each one thoroughly,” the rep told the mag. “Any violation of the code of conduct is handled appropriately by administrators.”

The student handbook says that “schools may place restrictions on a student’s right to free speech when the speech is obscene, abusive, promoting illegal drug use, or is reasonably expected to cause a substantial disruption to the school day,” the Carolina Journal reported.

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Jasson Dominguez starting rehab assignment to set up ‘tough’ Yankees decision

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The countdown to the Yankees’ decision on Jasson Dominguez is about to begin.

Dominguez is scheduled to start a rehab assignment on Tuesday or Wednesday with Single-A Tampa, manager Aaron Boone said Saturday.

The 21-year-old outfielder, who has been sidelined since September by Tommy John surgery, will DH for the first two weeks of rehab games before mixing in the field.

Once Dominguez starts his rehab assignment, it will officially begin a 20-day clock — assuming he remains healthy and has no setbacks — after which the Yankees will have to either add him to the active roster or option him to the minor leagues.

The Yankees’ starting outfield is currently locked in with Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo, while DH Giancarlo Stanton has provided solid production through the first six weeks of the season.

If they all stay healthy over the next month, it would not be surprising to see the Yankees send Dominguez to Triple-A once his rehab assignment is up.

“Hopefully it is a tough decision at that point, because good things are happening here,” Boone said Saturday at Tropicana Field. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

Dominguez crushed his September call-up last season, but it lasted only eight games before he landed on the injured list with a UCL tear that required surgery after posting a .980 OPS with four home runs while starting all eight games in center field.

Before his MLB debut, the top prospect had played just nine career games at Triple-A.

“I always feel like I’ve been one of the high guys on Jasson,” Boone said. “Going back to last spring, I’m like, this guy’s a big leaguer. There’s no doubt in my mind he’s going to have a really good major league career. … Now, when does that happen? When does he really take off and pop and all that? That always is an unknown and remains to be seen. Everyone’s trajectory is different. But I am confident in the person and the talent.”

Plenty of things could happen before the Yankees have to make a call on Dominguez that could change their plans.

For now, they are just happy that the rehab process to this point has gone as well as could have been expected.

Boone even said that Dominguez is “ready to go” defensively — he was expected to throw to bases for the first time on Saturday at the club’s player development complex — but the Yankees are easing him into action.

“It seems like there’s been very few hiccups along the way,” Boone said. “It’s been smooth, he hasn’t been rushed.”

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Transactions of the American Art-Union for the Year 1846

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This pamphlet once belonged to the New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis (1893–1902). Two etched frontispieces of "The Jolly Flatboat Men" by George Caleb Bingham and "A Sybil" by Daniel Huntington advertize the subjects of large engravings that the American Art-Union chose in 1846 to have made for distribution to its subscriber-members. Eighty pages of text summarize the proceedings of a recent annual meeting, list 142 paintings distributed to subscribers by lottery in December 1846, and name the organization's officers and honorary secretaries across the United States. Also described are the 1840 Act of Incorporation and 1843 emended Constitution. Both the cover and title page are adorned with a vignette of three young women holding symbols of sculpture, painting and design or architecture, pointing to the Art-Union's mission of encouraging contemporary American art.

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Title: Transactions of the American Art-Union for the Year 1846

Publisher: American Art-Union, New York (1838–51)

Artist: Frontispiece after George Caleb Bingham (American, Augusta County, Virginia 1811–1879 Kansas City, Missouri)

Artist: Frontispiece after Daniel Huntington (American, New York 1816–1906 New York)

Engraver: Vignette engraved by Henry Walker Herrick (American, Hopkinton, New Hampshire 1824–1906 Manchester, New Hampshire)

Printer: George F. Nesbitt (New York, NY)

Medium: Illustrations: etching, engraving, wood engraving

Dimensions: 8 11/16 × 5 7/16 in. (22 × 13.8 cm)

Classification: Books

Credit Line: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1924

Accession Number: 24.66.338

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• From North and Central America
• From United States
• From A.D. 1800–1900

American Art-Union, annual subscription receipt

Gallery of american art, no. i, american art-union, report for 1845, transactions of the american art-union for the year 1845.

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The Year of Decision 1846

BY BERNARD DE VOTO

CHAPTERS XXVI-XXXII

MISSOURI RIDES SOUTH

In his earlier chapters Mr. DeVoto has told of the westward push in that year of Manifest Destiny, 1846. The mountain men opened up the trails and found the passes across the Sierra; the Mormons were on the march, and westward went other great wagon trains — people of wealth and quality like the Donner party, writers like Parkman the historian, and soldiers like Fremont who were going over the ground in the event that we might have to fight Mexico.

In the closing hours of his administration, President Tyler pushed the annexation of Texas through Congress. President Polk therefore had this new area on his mind from the moment he took office; as part of the United States, it had to be defended. Mexico declined to recognize its independence. And to certain large-minded “Texians" like Sam Houston, Texas included part of present-day Mexico and everything west and north of the Louisiana Purchase.

Acting on President Polk’s orders, Zachary Taylor reached the Rio Grande in March of 1846. A month later he was attacked by the Mexicans, who captured one of his patrols. This border incident, Congress declared, created a state of war. On May 8 and 9, Taylor attacked at Palo Alto and at Resaca de la Palma, and won.

Rather, the American artillery and the enterprise of the individual American soldier won for him. Taylor, though he was idolized by his troops, contributed nothing but “inspiration” throughout the war. He was brave but stupid, lethargic, without ideas, wholly ignorant of tactics, strategy, and maneuver. At the end of May he crossed the Rio Grande; two months later he began a leisurely, aimless invasion of Mexico’s “Northern Provinces.” In late September his officers won the bloody battle of Monterrey, but it had little effect on the war.

The idea that Mexico would capitulate after the occupation of her seaports and her “Northern Provinces” proved fallacious. Polk dispatched General John Ellis Wool to invade Chihuahua. Then he ordered the Army of the West under Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny, our best frontier officer, to invade New Mexico from Fort Leavenworth.

Kearny had six troops of his own crack regiment, the First Dragoons. The rest of his men were volunteers, practically all of them enlisted in Missouri. They included a regiment which has given his expedition a special color in history.

This was the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers, commanded by a frontier lawyer and commonwealth-builder named Alexander Doniphan, a remarkable man with a great gift of leadership. A colonel by election, Doniphan cajoled and drove his troops through hardship and danger. These “Doniphesias” were farm boys from Missouri and frontiersmen from all over — a bellyaching, blaspheming, fearless, friendly regiment. They were, quite literally, an army of good will.

The task carelessly confided to Kearny and his men was fantastic. They were to cross the Great American Desert by way of the Santa Fe Trail. They were to invade a hostile province and hold it, eight hundred miles from their base. Then — so Polk’s orders ran — if Kearny saw fit, he could go on and conquer California! Let’s inspect this “Army" of the West . . .

THE YEAR OF DECISION 1846

by BERNARD DEVOTO

WHEN the Laclede Rangers arrived at Fort Leavenworth, it was too late in the day for them to be mustered in. Colonel Kearny invited the officers to dine with him, but could not entertain the whole outfit — and army regulations forbade the feeding of civilians. As heroes, they were willing to die in the Halls of Montezuma but they wanted to live to get there. So the officers, returning from an excellent dinner, found their command preparing to take the post apart. Fast thinking was called for, and Captain Hudson, the lawyer who had raised the company, made an oration. He waved not only the flag of freedom but the silk guidon stitched by fair fingers in the homeland, and the Rangers cheered. “Yes,” he bellowed, “we shall knock at the gates of Santa Fe as Ethan Allen knocked at the gates of Ticonderoga, and to the question ‘Who’s there?’ we shall reply, ‘Open these gates in the name of the great Jehovah and the Laclede Rangers.’” Tumultuous applause. The captain soared on: “But suppose the fellows inside should call out, ‘Are you the same Laclede Rangers who went whining round Fort Leavenworth in search of a supper?’” Hudson knew his Missourians and there was no mutiny.

This gives the tone of the Army of the West. It was the damnedest army. It could do nothing well except march and fight, and would not do those by the book. For a while, till they learned to respect the unalterable, the West Pointers who had to oversee it would willingly have murdered most of its components.

They were volunteers, they were farmers mostly, they were incredibly young, they were Missourians and frontiersmen. All good armies grouch; probably none has ever bellyached so continuously as this one. They groused about their officers, their equipment, the food, the service regulations, the climate, the trail, the future. They would accept direction or command no more easily here than at home, and were always assaulting their noncoms, on the grounds that Joe’s stripes could not neutralize his native stupidity and did not sanction him to put on airs. They howled derision of the officers whenever it was safe and frequently when it wasn’t, made fantastic plots against the more inflexible of them, and when a vacancy occurred resolved to elect no one except from the rank of private. They abominated neatness, they hated the routine of guard duty and the care of horses, they straggled worse than any other fighting troops in history. Till the army was concentrated at Bent’s Fort, its component parts were just where whim took them — a battalion strung out for five miles while the individual soldier wasted ammunition on imaginary antelope; or three-quarters of the army marching in a clump with the guard just to see what the country was like.

They were extremely uncomfortable until they learned the mechanics of soldiering. Their equipment was incomplete and faulty. Boots didn’t fit and blisters burned one’s heels but were no worse than the sores made by pack straps. Saddles were rudimentary, made running sores on the horses’ backs, and seemed designed to split the rider lengthwise. The first few days saw the only rain they would encounter till they reached the mountains, and initiated them in the pinch of sodden saddles, daylong drenching, water-soaked blankets, cold food, and muddy underdrawers.

The West Pointers fell back on the simple assumption of all military life, that though soldiers may be fighting men they are also children. Issued a day’s rations at dawn, they would eat it all for breakfast, grouching about having to do their own cooking, or throw away what they could not eat and then, at night, curse God, Polk, Kearny, and Doniphan, who required patriots to go supperless. Some would replace the water in their canteens with whiskey, sip it through torrid hours, and have to ride retching in the wagons. Or they would drink bad water till their bellies swelled, and have to crawl into the grass and lie foundered for hours. They knew the management of horses on farms but resented the cavalryman’s subjection to the well-being of his mount, and took such wretched care of theirs that the officers had to hold classes of instruction. Kearny anticipated that, coupled with the probable failure of supplies, this bad management would give him an army of infantry from Santa Fe on.

However, he had a job to do and he drove them hard. He was fortunate in having Doniphan, colonel by suffrage of free electors, a drawling uncle to farm boys who were far from home. Doniphan was seldom or never in uniform, unfenced by discipline, always approachable, forever calling privates Jim or Charlie, a master of impromptu exhortation. The boys looked at the Colonel, lounging his huge frame beside some poker game or amiably explaining that Joe had to go on guard tonight because Elmer had done his stint last night, and didn’t yield to that phantasy of chopping up a West Pointer. They dug in and marched. Fifteen miles was a standard day’s travel on the prairies but it was too slow going for Kearny. He demanded twenty miles a day, twenty-five, twenty-eight, thirty, sometimes thirty-two. The troops wailed but took it — took it, in fact, better than the horses, which weakened on a diet of grain and developed the vicious ailments of their species. And the infantry took it best of all. Companies A and B customarily forged ahead of the cavalry they were attached to and, though they cursed the inhumanity of their officers, took pride in their mileage. Their lips parched in the prairie wind, the sun nauseated them, the wagons and ambulances were always picking up some who had not stood the pace, they were sure that Kearny was a tyrant, but they made camp some hours before the cavalry and turned out to boo them in great content when the tired beasts sagged in at twilight. The legs of the men swelled at the shin with a queer distemper, which turned out to be periostitis, the common splint they were accustomed to treat in plow horses.

There were rattlesnakes by the hundred, killed on the march, buzzing from beside the buffalo chips the soldiers stooped to pick up, slithering into their blankets at night. There were the mosquitoes, much deadlier than the snakes. There were swarms of buffalo gnats to choke the nostrils and cluster under the eyelids of men and horses. The country began to break out in patches of “saline incrustation,” alkali. Like the emigrants to the northward, the army drank corrosive water and got violently physicked. And not only by alkali; the curse of armies, dysentery, had begun to flourish. Nor was the scummy standing water of the buffalo wallows any better for them, when it was all they got to drink at nooning, crawling with infusoria and noisome with buffalo urine. The less fit began to break. As the trains fell farther behind and rations shortened, scurvy appeared. Measles traveled with them. The wagons filled with sick; some of them died. A grave had to be dug at Pawnee Rock; and from there on, burial parties were no novelty. They had come for a patriotic summer while the eagle screamed, but for some of them the great adventure was ending in a short agony and a shallow grave filled with such stones as could be gathered to keep the wolves away.

Grouchy and hungry, they reached the Arkansas at its great bend. There was water in the river, which was by no means a constant condition. In these parts it is a muddy and rather odorous stream which runs in trickles through a wide bottom choked with cottonwoods and brush. Farther west it narrows to a more certain bed, like the Platte, and as it gets nearer the mountains has more water in it. The trail followed its general direction, touching its crazy course at the nodes, and the freighters were accustomed to camp on certain timbered islands as a defense against the Indians.

The country grew more severe now, the scale infinitely extended, the swell longer and the pitch steeper, the wind stronger, the sun hotter, the dust more inexhaustible, water scarcer and less drinkable. If there was little water, there were millions of flowers; if the steady wind blistered their faces and sudden torrid gusts sandblasted them with alkali, the infinitely blue sky produced cloud effects the most magnificent. They trudged through prairie-dog towns a mile wide, jackrabbits by the hundred streaked away from them, the nights were full of wolves. The horses grew weaker but the men slowly toughened. Kearny watched them and applied more pressure. They howled and lustily hated all officers, so much so that accusations of malingering and inefficiency now circulated about even the venerated Doniphan.

The oldest trail went to Bent’s Fort and thence south over Raton Pass. The army kept to the Arkansas in true desert, sandy, sparsely vegetated, beginning to break up into foothills, but supplied with drinking water of a sort at safe intervals. They crossed the Cimarron River at Chouteau’s Island and, since it was here the international boundary, became an army of invasion at last, though they would cross again to American soil before they reached Bent’s Fort.

Inconceivably, the weather got hotter still, but one day a storm passed near enough to cool the air. The nights were always cold, campfires were just buffalo chips, and rations were slim and bad. Then the unpredictable country got green for a space and even produced some patches of trees — and finally, at the Big Timbers, a substantial belt of them. Then more desert, more siroccos — and then the infantry came over an incline to a flat stretch, and on the western horizon thin, dark, cloudlike masses were suddenly recognizable as a culminating wonder, the Rocky Mountains. The doughboys yelled in delight and suddenly realized that they had come a long way from Missouri. A hell of a long way! They took up the march across a last stretch of parched sand and sagebrush and sometime before noon saw the walls of Bent’s Fort rising from the plain. Two miles from it they reached Moore’s detachment camped by the river, made their own camp, and started to dig a well. It was July 28 and the infantry had beaten everyone except the advance guard to the rendezvous.

Five hundred and thirty miles out from Independence, on the north bank of the Arkansas again, they had reached the first permanent settlement in what is now Colorado, Bent’s Old Fort or Fort William, at a crossroads of the West. Except for Fort Union, the American Fur Company’s headquarters at the mouth of the Yellowstone, Bent’s was the largest of all the trading posts, and it had perhaps the most varied and adventurous history. Its thick adobe walls made a rectangle a hundred by a hundred and fifty feet, inclosing a central patio; two of them were two stories high, and there was a walled corral beyond. It was a complete factory for the Indian trade — warehouses, smithy, wagon shop, storerooms — and it had dormitories and such incredibilities as a billiard table and an icehouse. Many mountain men wintered among its comforts; usually at least one village of Indians was camped by the river, three hundred yards away. They were usually Southern Cheyenne, whose trade the firm monopolized, but might be Arapaho or Ute or even Kiowa or Comanche. The post’s daily life was an adventure story, and the yarns it heard are our lost history.

The army of invasion moved out from Bent’s Fort on August 1 and 2. Kearny had done his best to tighten its organization, had left about seventy-five on sick call to rejoin him at Santa Fe or be carted back to Fort Leavenworth, and had clamped down such discipline as was at all possible.

The traders followed, practically all of this year’s trains to Santa Fe. Army and traders, it was a formidable caravan. One census makes it 1556 wagons and nearly 20,000 stock all told, oxen, beeves, horses, mules. A long column moving through the most intense heat yet encountered and the worst desert of the trail. Lieutenant Emory’s thermometers showed 120° and the sirocco never died across the sand. The troops tied handkerchiefs over their mouths, to no avail. They got nosebleeds from the altitude and dysentery from the alkali. They could not be controlled at water holes, where the first ones spoiled the drinking for the rest. The horses were even worse; Captain Johnston observed that when the water was scarcest they were most apt to urinate in it. Private Marcellus Edwards of Doniphan’s Company D said of one small pool they passed on August 4 that it was “so bad that one who drank it would have to shut both eyes and hold his breath until the nauseating dose was swallowed.”

All this time they were angling toward the mountains; the Spanish Peaks grew higher every mile and the main range of the Rockies stretched its abrupt bastion out of sight, north and south. At last they struck the Purgatoire near the present site of Trinidad, Colorado, and it proved to be a stream out of paradise, swift, cold, poetically timbered. They drank till all were surfeited and some vomited; they bathed, they washed their clothes. One of them went mad, several died from the now ended strain, but game was shot, some supplies caught up, and beef could be butchered. The next night the campfires slanted upward at a steep pitch: they were in the Raton Pass. Here was the first place where an alert enemy could have destroyed them, but in spite of the daily rumors no enemy appeared; the one alarm was just some Doniphesias wasting ammunition for the fun of it. Raton Pass is a long, twisting, arduous grade and they did better with it than the horses, which were now punchdrunk. They reached the top and looked out on one of the continent’s great views, all New Mexico spread out below in the molten gold of southwestern sun. They clambered down the other side and found that the molten gold was hot.

Now the scouts were bringing in various Mexicans. Spies probably, and Kearny sent them home to report that he was irresistible. They had proclamations by Armijo and others, the usual proclamations, and they brought notice of trouble ahead. Two thousand troops were assembling to oppose the invasion, then five thousand, eight thousand, twelve thousand. Kearny closed up his intervals, posted scouts, and kept on. At the Mora they found another beautiful campground and the first settlement since Fort Leavenworth, a half-dozen adobe huts and “a pretty Mexican woman with clean white stockings, who very cordially shook hands with us and asked for tobacco.” Every few miles there were more huts, where the streams made a green thread across burned plains, and the Doniphesias could buy mutton, corn, vegetables. They could also feel a hearty Protestant contempt for pop ish superstitions and, gaping at the Mexicans, marvel at the extremity of poverty, dirt, obsequiousness, and desire to please the conquerors.

The daily captives told conflicting stories. Either there were no preparations to resist or the whole province had risen. Americans from Santa Fe came in and the best thought was that Armijo would fight at Apache Canyon, fifteen miles from the city.

Las Vegas was the largest village they had seen so far. They bought some sheep, scorched their palates with the native stews, and stole some corn for themselves and their horses. Kearny promptly won the villagers by promising to pay for the corn, which was not the custom of any other troops who had ever passed this way. There was a growing murmur: some of the Missourians were remembering that the Texas Expedition of 1841 had been attacked and slaughtered in the canyon just beyond Las Vegas and that at San Miguel, a few miles farther on, General Salazar had shot some of the prisoners. That night word came that a Mexican force had reached that same canyon and was fortifying it.

Word of the expected battle went far back on the trail and Captain Weightman of the artillery, coming up after convalescing at Bent’s Fort, rode all night to take part in it. He reached the army at reveille and Major Swords was with him, the quartermaster, bringing Kearny’s commission as brigadier general. Kearny made combat dispositions, spare ammunition was issued; some of Doniphan’s officers reminded their men that, on General Taylor’s word, Missouri volunteers had not distinguished themselves at the battle of Okechobee, so maybe they had better wipe out that stain. Keyed up, the army marched through town and halted while Kearny, from a roof top, announced to the villagers that they were now Americans. He did it skillfully, reminding them of the oppressions they had suffered, promising them security in their property and religion, and assuring them that the United States would defend them against the Indians as in two centuries no one ever had. There is no record of what they felt, a humble folk whose entire history had been misery, paupered by all governments, preyed on by brigands, and called by the Apache the mere herders who raised stock for them. They knew no way of life that was not constant oppression and intermittent massacre. Probably the promise of protection from Indians warmed them a little, though it was not to be kept for half a century. Probably also they cared no more than anyone else to acknowledge another conqueror. However, much experience of conquest had taught them that courtesy was best. They smiled, bowed, cheered, gave fruits and wines to the guards, and took the meaningless forced oath of allegiance in the best of humor.

The first formal occupation made, Kearny prepared to drive the enemy out of the narrow canyon that today bears his name. He sent the infantry with a couple of dismounted companies of the First Missouri over the foothills to the right. He formed the rest of the Doniphesias and the artillery behind the Dragoons, took his place at the head of his old regiment, pushed out a cavalry point, and ordered the army forward. The Dragoons trotted, then broke into a gallop. There was a shine of sabers in the sunlight, the pound of hoofs and the long lift of the charge — and the guidons were fluttering in the empty pass. No enemy, just another rumor, and the army rejoiced in its first battle.

The next day Kearny swore in another, larger town, San Miguel, and among the day s pickups was the son of the General Salazar who had slaughtered the Texans. On the following day they passed the ruins at Pecos that had once been the largest town of the Pueblo Indians. Stephen Watts Kearny had intersected a conquest of his predecessor, Coronado. President Polk’s brigadier had taken over a harvesting whose last yields are not yet in, and today at Taos or Tesuque or Santo Domingo any tourist may catch a glimpse, making what he can of it, of blood and cruelty remembered for centuries and not yet resolved. The shaping of that memory began with Coronado and the Spanish search for cities named for the buffalo — cities which were said to be paved and roofed with gold.

That same day, August 12, all messengers and prisoners said that Armijo had fled his position in Apache Canyon. So the road was open and Captain Johnston, of Kearny’s staff, wrote in his journal, “here is the end of the campaign.”

Tuesday, August 18, a cloudy morning with occasional showers. The army marched before dawn, twisting through the defile. They reached the abandoned fortifications and decided that a few hundred men could have held them off, though the engineers thought that the position could have been turned. Out of the canyon to sagebrush flats, arroyos, foothills, small canyons. By midafternoon they were trudging across the high plain above Santa Fe, a slow line of dirty, ragged men on foot or riding emaciated horses. They halted and waited for the laboring artillery to come up.

They were tired and hungry, but below them lay the Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis. The sudden wealth of trees hid its full extent and the adobe houses were dingy against overcast skies. To most of the army it seemed a miserable and dirty town, but it was a capital city and older than any settlement in the United States.

Late in the afternoon the conquerors were ready. Two subofficials had come out to profess submission and, sending his artillery to a hill that commanded the town, Kearny rode back with them and his staff, the army following in column. Bridies jingled and scabbards clanked in the little, twisting, dirty streets, between the brown adobe houses. There was a low wailing behind shuttered windows where women cowered in terror of the rape and branding which the priests had told them the Americans meant to inflict. Soldiers filed into the Plaza of the Constitution, which has always been the center of the town’s life. The infantry stood at parade rest, the tired horses drooped; in the silence one heard the rustle of cottonwoods and the silver music of the creek. The ranks stiffened and the muskets came to present arms, Kearny and his staff raised their sabers, the bugles blared down those empty streets, and the flag went up. As it touched the top of the staff, the artillery on the hilltop boomed its salute, and for the first time in history the Americans had conquered a foreign capital. And they had done exactly what Mr. Polk had instructed them to do: they had taken New Mexico without firing a shot.

Kearny’s men began to shed some of the indurated provincialism they had brought here. At first they just gaped at the unfamiliar. It was laughable but it was nicely colored. The town was full of Indians — some of familiar types, others very strange. There were the Pueblo people, fat, docile, and tamed — or, as at Santo Domingo, warlike, haughty, bearing themselves with an ineffable contempt. Ute, Apache, Navajo, came in to investigate the conquerors and calculate the chances. All these in scarlet, green, purple — and the New Mexicans also violent in color. Men in breeches slit to show their drawers, operatic with cloaks, musical with spurs and silver ornaments. Women also in primary colors, barelegged, short-skirted, lowwaisted. The Missourians were shocked by the paint on their faces, their familiarity and easy laughter, and, the truth is, by the charm they gave to what had to be considered vice. They showed their breasts and, it was believed, — in fact it soon proved, — they could be easily possessed, for pay, for kindness, or for mere amenity. An instructed prudery showed itself: sex ought not to be decorative.

This was a simple, childlike, gay people, given to fandangos, feasts, parades. One joined them at first derisively, then with the simplicity of boys on a holiday. So the frail girls could be frail charmingly, and Inez glancing over her shoulder at Mass turned out to be much like Betsy when the fiddles were playing a hoedown at a corn husking back home.

Similarly with other things. The farm boys began by laughing at an alien way of life but pretty soon were taking to it with the readiness of all Yankee armies. They were lofty toward alien agriculture — irrigation, intensive cultivation, a French valuation of manure and waste. It was comic of the foreigners to work their women in the fields, of the women to carry baskets on their heads. The jackasses no larger than St. Bernards, with produce piled high on their backs, were funny. The communal herds were funny, goat’s milk was funny, the children herding the goats with hugs and kisses were funny. Then they weren’t funny any longer. The Missourians decided that they would never understand these people, and no matter. They crowded the Plaza with them, evenings and Sundays, shot dice and played monte with them, were rolling cigarettes and learning to eat chili without tears. They played with the children, dropped in on Juan or Jesus of an evening and jabbered with him and his wife and his aunts and aunts-in-law in a mixed jargon which no one understood. They swarmed to innumerable fandangos. They learned some good addresses.

They hauled a huge, antique press down from Taos and began to publish a newspaper. They organized debating societies, legislatures, glee clubs. The city slickers of the Laclede Rangers set up a theatrical company — and the New Mexicans could now raise their eyebrows at a barbarian morality which dressed up blond young lieutenants in women’s clothes.

Kearny was organizing the conquest and preparing the future. His proclamation was hardly dry when he began reducing the taxes that had sweated these people for two centuries. He made every possible demonstration of peace, courted the fat, powerful priests, was brisk and kind to the humble. Kearny broke bread, made speeches, granted privileges, accepted the kindly honors heaped on him, commanded the presence of raiding Indians whom he ordered to make treaties, memorized the protocol and details of local administration.

Kearny had delegated to Doniphan the task which Polk had imposed, of organizing the civil law. Whatever help he might need was at hand in his own regiment. He called on Francis P. Blair, Jr., Captain Waldo the trader, the historian John T. Hughes, and a private of Captain Moss’s Company C, a 26-year-old genius named Willard P. Hall, a Yale man removed from Baltimore to Missouri. They produced a constitution and a code, which Kearny proclaimed the law of the commonwealth. Later, in the chaos that headed up in 1850, Congress would find that Polk, through Kearny, had exceeded his authority and would rescind part of them. But, in their essentials, they governed New Mexico up to statehood, and large parts of them govern New Mexico today. Not a bad achievement for soldiers taken from barracks duty to build a state — and another way in which this conquest was strange to a much conquered people.

Having conquered and pacified his province, Kearny prepared to carry out the rest of his task — to take his three hundred Dragoons on to California. Another regiment of volunteers, the Second Missouri, was coming down the trail under Sterling Price. It could garrison Santa Fe. Five hundred of the migrating Mormons had been enlisted and would follow Kearny to California — Philip St. George Cooke, promoted lieutenant colonel, was sent back to lead them when their commander died. That left the First Missouri without occupation. Kearny decided that they would be most useful farther south. He ordered Doniphan to join General Wool at Chihuahua. There was no way of knowing that Wool was not at Chihuahua, that he never would get there, that even now his expedition was foundering in the country which Polk supposed it could cross without effort.

Kearny departed for California on September 25, leaving Doniphan one further chore: he would be so good as to settle the Indian question. He would, that is, notify the Navajo, the Apache, and the Ute that they were no longer licensed to rob and murder New Mexicans; he would make treaties with them, lecture them on behavior, and preach or scare them into peace.

Space is lacking to describe the campaigns of October and November, which were pure prodigy. In small detachments, the First Missouri combed country where troops had never gone before and have never gone since — country which, mostly, seems beyond the ability of armies to invade. They shoved their horses up mountains of glare ice; they slept under snow; they crossed rock deserts and climbed down the vertical canyons of that waste, even reaching the Canyon de Chelly. They convinced the Ute, who promised to be very good Indians indeed. The Navajo, who outnumbered them hundreds to one, could have annihilated them but achieved an idea that these were an altogether new and novel kind of white men and behaved with extreme respect. The First Missouri had danced with the Pueblo over some Navajo scalps; now it was their pleasure to dance with the Navajo over some Pueblo scalps. They got some new horses, they filled their pockets with souvenirs, some of them were able to get buckskins to replace their tattered uniforms — the quartermaster supplies they should have had never did catch up with them.

Finally, on November 21, Doniphan herded several thousand Navajo to a rendezvous at Bear Spring. There followed the slow, stately, and preposterous ceremonies by which Indians and army officers were accustomed to reach agreement — parades, feasts, drama, sham battles, and endless oratory. The Navajo claimed alliance with the Americans, who had come here to make war on the New Mexicans and appeared to be illogical when they asked the Indians not to do likewise. Doniphan got that point cleared up and the New Mexicans classified as Americans who must not be robbed or murdered from now on. A treaty as formal as one with a major power was drawn up. By its terms the Navajo agreed to cherish not only the New Mexicans but the Pueblo as well. Doniphan, Jackson, and Gilpin signed it on behalf of James K. Polk, the father of these good children, and no less than fourteen Navajo chiefs scratched their crosses underneath. It was impressive and affecting.

On December 12, Doniphan was back at the Rio Grande, where his various organizations were disposed between Socorro and Santa Fe. Some of them now got the $42 clothing allowance they should have had in May, the first pay they had received and the last they were to get while on active service. Doniphan began to prepare them for the rest of the campaign.

A good many of them had died in the Indian country or on the way back; more had fallen sick. The job had had to be done without preparation, with inadequate supplies, poor food, no shelter against the weather. The Doniphesias were baying their resentment — but with a difference now. They had always beefed and bellyached — they always would; but now their complaints had a new tone, the confidence of tested men. They had done the unparalleled, and had done it easily. They were veterans.

With 856 effectives Doniphan started south on December 12 (half their year’s enlistment had been completed on December 10), and the rest of his command followed in two sections. Most of the traders at Valverde broke camp and went with the army or just behind it, an anxiety and a ghastly inconvenience. The weather had turned cold and there was nothing but dry grass and soapweed for the fires. Between December 19 and 23 they came together again at Doña Ana.

Here rumors of great armies coming up from El Paso thickened. On Christmas Eve the camp was under investigation by Mexicans, but no one felt alarmed and no one thought to push the scouts out farther the next morning.

They welcomed Christmas with gunfire and band music, then took up the march in excellent spirits. The camp had not been well made or closely guarded, and much of the stock had strayed, so that Doniphan’s trains and a third of his regiment were strung out for miles behind him. The boys sang and joked their way for eighteen miles, then pitched camp toward three o clock, at a place called El Brazito. It was not far from the present hamlet of Mesilla, New Mexico, and about thirty miles from El Paso.

It looked like a good camp site and, rejoiced to be let off with a Christmas march of only eighteen miles, the greater part of the army whooped off to water their mounts and gather firewood. During the march some scouts had brought in a beautiful white stallion. It caught the appreciative Missouri eye. Doniphan and several of his officers spread out a blanket and sat down to a game of loo to determine whose horse it was. The cards ran Doniphan’s way and he had just got a hand which would have ended matters, when he looked up and saw a Mexican army forming a battle line half a mile away. Cursing the interruption, he buckled on his saber and prepared to improvise a battle.

It was an army somewhat larger than Doniphan’s total force and had been gathered at El Paso by a temporary general named Ponce de Leon after earlier recruiting efforts had failed, It was adequately equipped and clad in the gorgeous uniforms that no Mexican force ever failed to acquire, but it lacked fighting men. Properly primed with rhetoric, it had ridden out from El Paso to annihilate the Gringos, whom it despised with the universal Mexican contempt of blonds. It had a piratical black flag with two death’sheads lettered Libertad 6 muerte, and a punctilious officer carried this banner forward to invite Doniphan to surrender. Doniphan, who had got his sidearms on, returned the traditional answer, and the pause had allowed most of the wood-gatherers to come in shouting.

Doniphan formed them, perhaps four hundred all told, into a kind of line as infantry. The Mexicans began bleating at them with a twopound howitzer loaded with copper slugs, then fired continuously but wildly from their whole line. The First Missouri were under fire at last, six months out from Fort Leavenworth, and were pleasantly stimulated. Curious about the howitzer, which was posted on a flank, some Company G boys ran out and took it. The Mexicans knew that battles were won by charging and, infantry and lancers alike, trotted forward, firing as they came. Doniphan had his men lie down and got most of them to hold their fire. At about a hundred yards he gave the charge two volleys. The charge stopped and the Mexican army began to run away, except that a couple of hundred lancers veered off to a flank and tried to attack some of the wagons. The efficient Reid, however, had got some twenty of his company mounted and launched them at the lancers, who joined their companions to the rear. Reid could not catch up with them and they galloped on to El Paso, where they reported that the war was lost.

It had taken less than thirty minutes. Stragglers hurrying up the road at the sound of gunfire got there too late for the fun, and in fact not all the wood-gatherers got in. Doniphan reported 43 Mexicans known to be killed and 150 wounded. Seven of his Missourians had flesh wounds which they could flourish at less fortunate companions. Arguing violently about who had done the most execution, they went out to gather in the commissary. They got sizable stores of bread and cigars and a great quantity of wine. It was excellent wine; so, veterans also of gunfire now, the First Missouri settled down to celebrate Christmas.

But in the excitement the white stallion had bolted.

Entering El Paso the next day, the army had arrived at a considerable city. It was the last outpost of the Great Spain that had found New Mexico beyond its strength. More than ten thousand people, a more vigorous stock than the New Mexicans, lived in the beautiful town in its green valley, and an ancient culture flourished there.

But Doniphan, at the end of a thousand-mile line of communication, two thousand miles from the War Department, did not know what to do. The White House had arranged for Wool to take Chihuahua. Doniphan now knew that the trivialities of terrain and command which the White House strategy had disregarded had broken up the pretty plan. (Happily he did not know that Missouri, hearing that Wool had turned back, supposed that its Mounted Volunteers were lost forever and was now mourning them.) Rumor had Taylor badly licked and perhaps a prisoner; it also had Southern Chihuahua and its neighbors rising en masse to destroy its invaders. What was he to do? Councils of war produced conflicting advice, — the army, if consulted, would have turned back, Private Robinson said, — and finally Doniphan put an end to debate. The hell with it: he would go on and do Wool’s job.

He sent for his artillery but at Santa Fe Price, who had extinguished one revolt just as it got started, was wary. He would release only Major Meriwether Lewis Clark and the battery of Captain Weightman, and wanted some time before releasing them. Doniphan cracked down on the traders, who had been an annoyance all along and were a burden from now on. Some of them had set up shop in El Paso and were doing an excellent business. Some bolted ahead to Chihuahua to run their chances; and, though Doniphan sent a posse after them, most of these got away. Others held back, intending to wait till the invasion was settled one way or the other, or to detour it at their convenience. They were, however, a possible source of manpower, and Doniphan got tough. He called in his patrols, who had been looking for Chihuahua troops or chasing Apache for the inhabitants.

Clark arrived with Weightman’s artillery on February 1, and a week later the First Missouri took up the march. The unruly traders were now commanded to form themselves into a military battalion and take part in their own defense. They did so and Samuel Owens, the half-brother of one of A. Lincoln’s fiancees, was made their major. Over two hundred of them were enrolled and they had more than three hundred wagons. The arrival of the artillery had brought Doniphan’s strength to 924 effectives.

They were marching again, the job they did best. On the sixth day out they got themselves into a prairie fire. A campfire spread into the mountains, where it burned beside them throughout a day’s march. Lieutenant Gibson remembered an old song, “Fire in the mountains! run, boys, run!” and that night they had to run when a gale drove the flames down to their camp. There was a wild half-hour while the army set backfires, galloped the horses and wagons about, and swore at one another in pyrotechnic light till the show was over. Still another kind of campfire had been added to their memories.

Doniphan had been keeping them in military formation the last few days and his reconnaissance parties had seen evidence of hostilities ahead. On the night of February 27 he camped some fifteen miles north of a creek called the Sacramento, which was about the same distance north of the city of Chihuahua. His scouts and some stragglers who had come into camp had told him that the Mexicans had gathered at the Sacramento and were prepared to fight him there. The information was accurate; the First Missouri was going to have a battle.

Chihuahua had raised and equipped a sizable force, after floundering through the period of factionalism, jealousy, and treachery that attended every part of the Mexican war effort. It amounted to about three thousand organized troops and perhaps a thousand additional pressed peons who were armed principally with machetes. It did not have Santa Anna to drill it, however, and he was the only one who could make marksmen out of peaceable, oppressed people not used to bearing arms. Its general was a trained engineer but neither he, his soldiers, nor the supporting population had acquired any respect for their enemy. Throughout the war Mexican armies were always being half paralyzed at the beginning of an action by the discovery that the cowardly Gringos would fight. As scouts reported the approach of Doniphan’s command, an exhilaration seized Chihuahua. Battle rhetoric in newspapers, broadsides, and the sermons of priests promised everyone an overwhelming victory. About a thousand people went out to make a bleachers at the expected battleground, and the army took with it a thousand prepared ropes. They would make a coffle in which to lead the captured Americans to Mexico City.

Conde, the commander, had prepared a fortified position near the crossing of the Sacramento, where the hills came in and narrowed the approach. He was a first-rate engineer and brought against the First Missouri the science of fortification which reached back all the way to Roman times and had been maturing ever since. The works would have edified Uncle Toby and should have been impregnable to assault. Conde failed to consider only one eventuality: what if the Americans did not know the textbook approach?

He should have considered it, for, after reconnoitering the position, Doniphan and his staff saw no reason why they need come by the route prepared for them. On the morning of February 28 they started out from camp, Clark’s band rendering “Yankee Doodle.” On the way to the Sacramento, Doniphan gave them a battle formation new to the art of war but excellently adapted to the circumstances. He formed his train and the wagons of the traders in four parallel columns — the moving fort of any caravan on the Santa Fe Trail when it was on guard against Indian attack. In extremity the wagons could have formed a corral, within which the army could have held off many times its number. He put his cavalry, infantry, and artillery in the intervals between columns, where it was ready to deploy at need. The classical American symbol, a train of white-tops, moved compactly toward the Sacramento. Approaching the fortifications, Doniphan took his formation to the flank, half turning the Mexican position instead of coming from the front as he was expected to do. On the way to the flank there was an arroyo and the Mexican lancers might have cut a disorganized train to pieces. But this train was not disorganized. The high art of the bullwhackers scored a military triumph in getting the wagons across swiftly and in order, to the orchestrated profanity that was appropriate.

It was a wild and stimulating time. The now frustrated redoubts opened fire at long range and the panoplied lancers formed under banners.

Doniphan ordered his troops out into line and Clark’s artillery shattered the lancers before they got well started. Thereafter for an hour the artillery commands banged at each other. Clark had made his battalion (part of it was a St. Louis militia organization of honorable traditions) first-rate artillerists. Though the fuses were faulty and many shells exploded prematurely, he put down a successful barrage. The Mexican pieces were old, their powder was bad. The solid shot they fired came up visibly, bounding and ricocheting. The farm boys watched them come, yelled their appreciation of the show, made bets with one another, and dodged so successfully that the only casualties were horses.

The Mexicans made another charge, at the rear and the wagons this time; and the traders, who could shoot as well as the army, beat it off without trouble. Doniphan moved his lines nearer the half-turned redoubts, and musketry fire blazed everywhere. The Missourians were shooting in earnest, but the truth is that the Mexicans, who had had no practice with arms and had been battered by artillery, mostly contented themselves with hoisting their pieces over the parapets and discharging them at the sky. Doniphan, who sat on his horse and cursed with homespun eloquence, watched the army work up to within four hundred yards of the redoubts, and then launched three companies of cavalry and Weightman’s artillery in a charge at the Mexican guns. It started out gaudily, but his adjutant, DeCourcy (who was rumored to be drunk), halted two of the companies halfway across. Doniphan got a bad scare and the halted companies stood cursing with fire coming at them from two directions. Weightman galloped his two howitzers halfway to the redoubts, unlimbered, and began to fire again. Owens, the trader, with two companions galloped down the front of the redoubts and got himself killed. Reid had not obeyed the order to halt, but took his company up to the parapets and over them. The two companies that had halted joined him, and the forts were carried in a few minutes of chaotic battle. The Missourians used their sabers, their clubbed muskets, convenient stones, and even their fists. The few minutes were gory enough to provide them with a lifetime of reminiscence — beheaded Mexicans, Mexicans split lengthwise, Mexicans shot down on the run, Mexicans locked in death-grapples with their assailants, scared horses stampeding, roar of artillery, mountain men on one knee drawing beads, and the boys from home acting much as they did at a turkey shoot.

The Mexicans broke and ran. Some of them tried to rally on the other hill, but simultaneously Gilpin’s wing swarmed over those fortifications and now everyone was running. The First Missouri, an army of victorious individualists, milled round for anybody’s horse that was handy and began a pursuit. They sabered Mexicans on the run, they chased them down the river, they chased them into the hills, where some Apache who had taken box seats for the spectacle killed a number; and a big moon came up and the Mexicans were still running. Some of them ran the full fifteen miles to Chihuahua. The Americans came straggling back to the battlefield by moonlight, found the surgeons of both armies gathering in the wounded, and answered the yells of their officers, who were trying to bring the victors together again as an army.

They had been fighting for more than three hours. Owens, the trader, had been killed. (Legend says that he had some romantic reason for wanting to die and had dressed in white clothes before the battle.) A sergeant had received a wound from which he died, and seven others had minor wounds. On their part, they had killed more than three hundred Mexicans, wounded at least as many more, taken forty prisoners, and permanently broken resistance in the State of Chihuahua. While the wounded screamed in the mesquite, the First Missouri ranged over the field to gather in the spoils. They were considerable, for Chihuahua had done well by its defenders. The Doniphesias got ten cannon and a miscellany of antique trench pieces, hundreds of small arms, many tons of powder, seven elegant carriages belonging to generals and their guests, Conde’s field desk, scores of wagons and carts, hundreds of horses and mules and beeves, thousands of sheep. They got the ropes in which they were to have been marched to Mexico City and the black pirate flag with death’s-heads that had been flaunted at El Brazito. They got a paymaster’s box with $3000 in copper coin, and they got an amount of silver which may have been $5000 or $50,000, but was carefully not reported to their officers. They loaded their pockets, belts, and haversacks with loot and came back to report themselves.

So they had still another kind of campfire, victorious under a big moon with the wounded moaning near by and Missouri two thousand miles from home, pounding one another’s backs, wringing the officers’ hands, and beginning to tell the stories that would bore their grandchildren.

The next day, March 1, Doniphan sent Mitchell and an advance guard to occupy Chihuahua, and on March 2 rode at the head of his column into this, the principal city of Northern Mexico, which had fallen to a handful of ragged boys from the prairies. Forgive him if he swaggered, “not unlike a strutting gander,” and forgive the boys, frowzy, ill-smelling, and unshaved, if, with the bands producing “Yankee Doodle” again and “Washington’s March,” they told each other that they had kept their oath and captured the Halls of Montezuma. A populace which had been promised the complete destruction of the invading heretics was panic-stricken, gaped at the conquerors in terror mingled with disbelief, and hurried out the prettiest senoritas with melons, tortillas, and more wine. The army swaggered and yelled behind its bands — past the mint, past the great cathedral, round the plaza, and on to ceremonies of capitulation. Private Robinson, nineteen years old a few days back, wrote in his diary a good soldier’s summary: “We rode through the principal streets and public square, and on a rocky hill on the south side of the city fired a national salute in honor of the conquest, stole wood enough to get supper, and went to bed as usual among the rocks.”

Eight months after the administration strategists had laid out this campaign in the Executive office, an improvised organization had fulfilled the President’s intent, deep in enemy country, without support from the War Department, by application of their native talents to the task at hand. Frontiersmen easily changing phase, farmers becoming soldiers, they had conducted a probably impossible campaign to victory.

In a year of decision they had produced a decision. Chihuahua, one of the “Northern Provinces” of Mr. Polk’s concern, had been made secure for the duration. New Mexico was also secure. Since New Mexico was secure, California also was secure. Moreover, the Southwestern Indians, the Navajo and the Apache, though far from dissuaded, had at least learned to be cautious. Finally, by its mere presence in Chihuahua, the First Missouri had turned a balance farther to the east. On February 22 and 23, Taylor’s subalterns won the battle of Buena Vista — but barely won it. It was a bloody battle, and the excellent army which Santa Anna had raised lost it by an extremely narrow margin. If Santa Anna could have had the troops which faced Doniphan at Sacramento, it is likely that Taylor’s army would have been chased in fragments through the State of Coahuila.

Sacramento and Chihuahua made the high moment of the First Missouri. From then on, life was pleasant enough but an anti-climax of garrison duty, drill, abortive expeditions, rumors, rioting, and finally the march to the Rio Grande. They occupied Chihuahua through March till nearly the end of April, while Doniphan tried to get orders from the War Department or any superior officer.

They got the news of Buena Vista (fought February 22-23) and made the town reverberate. At last one of Doniphan’s patrols got through to Wool at Saltillo and came back with orders from Taylor to join him there. Some of the traders prepared to stay at Chihuahua, others to go back to Santa Fe, still others to march through the interior with their custodians. Doniphan released his prisoners and discharged his governors, turning the city back to its officials. He got the First Missouri ready to move again. A few farm boys " went over the hill” to marry their senoritas and make homesteads in this valley. A few señoritas put on breeches and prepared to follow their farm boys. And on April 25, 26, and 28, in various divisions, the army left Chihuahua, heading south and east.

They had a diversified march to make — more jornadas, more mountains, more green valleys. But they were certainly the best marchers in the world by now, and though — as always — some sickened and a few died, they put their shoulders into it. Dust, sand, swamps, summer heat, lizards, scorpions, snakes — nothing mattered now that they had turned east. Doniphan laid the gad to them and all their records toppled. They foraged liberally but also they chased Apache and Comanche for the natives, Mitchell and the indefatigable Reid riding the flanks in sweeping forays.

I he army came down to the beautiful oasis of Parras and for the first time encountered a population who had learned to fear and hate American soldiers, a lesson the Doniphesias had taught no one. " Wherever we encamped, in five minutes women and children would roam through the tents to sell different articles, never meeting with insult or injury. Wool’s and Taylor’s troops had given the natives wholly different emotions, and from now on the Doniphesias would see an ugliness of war that was strange to them.

Another hitch brought them to Saltillo and on to the battlefield of Buena Vista and the headquarters of General Wool. Doniphan tried to brush and curry them a little, but it was no use. Drawing full rations at last, after eleven months, some of them refused soap, explaining that they had no clothes to wash. Doniphan got them into line long enough for Wool, the precisian, to review them, but again it was no use — they gaped and lounged and made remarks. Wool tried to re-enlist them for another year, which showed optimism. Even Meriwether Lewis Clark made comments on the way the War Department had treated them, and when Wool said he would take care of them Clark remembered out loud that they had heard the same story at Fort Leavenworth.

They got a chance to stare at Taylor too, near Monterrey, and found that they loved him and his great-commoner act. They left their sick here — lowlands and tropical weather were cutting them down — and marched on to the Rio Grande. At Reynosa they had reached navigable water — by marching almost exactly thirty-five hundred miles from Fort Leavenworth. Here, ending a feat of arms without parallel, they awaited transports in rain, swamps, and muggy heat. They were dirty, they were lousy, they had practically no clothes left, and they acquired a new set of grievances against the war. The government could not send their horses home by boat but would try to drive them overland — and could not transport their outfits. They burned their saddles and blankets and crowded aboard bad transports, to eat weevily hardtack, be seasick, and find themselves with as little drinking water as if they were making another jornada. So they came to New Orleans and down the gangplanks, some of them wearing only greatcoats, some just their drawers, all long-haired and bearded and burned black.

New Orleans, which was near enough to the war to recognize heroes at sight, went wild over them. Missouri outdid New Orleans. St. Louis — where they found friends who had grown rich from the war, as they assuredly had not — broke out its bunting and illuminations and deafened the heroes with as much cannon fire as they had heard at Sacramento.

As long as they lived, the twelvemonth’s march would splash their past with carmine — prairie grass in the wind, night guard at the wagons, the high breasts of the Spanish Peaks and all New Mexico spread out before them from the Raton, fandangos at Santa Fe, glare ice above the Canyon de Chelly, the hot gladness of the charge at Sacramento, the grizzly that wandered through our camp that night, tongues swollen by the jornadas , Jim dying in the snow, the ammonia stench of the buffalo wallows, the campfires glimmering in a slanting line of rubies all the way up the pass, the señorita who looked in the wagon that day when I was sick and “oh the beauty of the exquisite Spanish word pobrecito when heard from such lips.”

They too had found the West and left their mark on it, an honorable signature.

( To be concluded )

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Reds reliever Ian Gibaut hoping to return this year after AIN (nerve) procedure

Cincinnati Reds reliever Ian Gibaut had surgery to address lingering pain in his forearm, and Reds manager David Bell said that the hope is that Gibaut will return this season.

Following two rehab assignments that ended due to forearm discomfort, Gibaut had an AIN (nerve) release. 

Last year, Gibaut was the Reds’ most consistent setup reliever behind closer Alexis Díaz. Gibaut posted a 3.33 ERA and made 74 appearances, which was the fifth-most in baseball. 

Gibaut experienced forearm discomfort during spring training. He was hopeful to be ready for the start of the season. While that didn’t happen, he started a rehab assignment on April 5 and was targeting a return around April 20. 

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Gibaut was then pulled from his rehab assignment due to forearm discomfort. He started another rehab assignment in late April but then suffered another setback. 

This year, Fernando Cruz has filled Gibaut’s role in the back of the bullpen. The Reds signed five relievers to big league contracts in free agency, and that group of pitchers has helped fill out the Reds’ depth. 

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Washington Nationals Designate Former All-Star Reliever Matt Barnes For Assignment

Sam connon | may 7, 2024.

• Washington Nationals

The Washington Nationals have designated relief pitcher Matt Barnes for assignment, the team announced Tuesday morning.

Washington made the move in order to free up space for left-handed pitcher Robert Garcia, who was activated off of the 15-day injured list. Garcia had been out with the flu since April 21.

Barnes, meanwhile, had been on the Nationals' active roster since Opening Day. The 33-year-old righty had a 6.75 ERA, 1.500 WHIP, 6.8 strikeouts per nine innings and a -0.2 WAR in 13.1 innings this season.

The Nationals have returned LHP Robert Garcia from rehab assignment and reinstated him from the 15-day Injured List.  The Nationals have designated RHP Matt Barnes for assignment.  The 40-man roster is now at 39. — Nationals Communications (@NationalsComms) May 7, 2024

The last time Barnes took the mound was May 2 against the Texas Rangers . He gave up three hits, a walk and three earned runs in that game, which marked the third contest this season in which he allowed multiple runs.

That doesn't mean Barnes wasn't effective at times in 2024, though, considering eight of his 14 appearances were scoreless. His ERA was sitting at 3.24 as recently as April 21.

Barnes signed a minor league contract with the Nationals in February.

It's been a tough few years for Barnes, who was once a first round pick, World Series champion and All-Star with the Boston Red Sox .

Right after he signed a two-year, $18.75 million contract extension with the Red Sox in 2021, his numbers fell off. From Aug. 7 to the end of the regular season, Barnes posted a 10.13 ERA, .340 batting average against and a 1.110 OPS against.

Barnes then went 0-4 with a 4.31 ERA in 2022, before Boston traded him to the Miami Marlins in 2023. Through 24 appearances that year, Barnes had a 5.48 ERA and 1.641 WHIP, at which point he underwent season-ending hip surgery .

Now, Barnes is either headed back to the minors, the waiver wire or the open market.

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Sam Connon is a Staff Writer for Fastball on the Sports Illustrated/FanNation networks. He previously covered UCLA Athletics for Sports Illustrated/FanNation's All Bruins, 247Sports' Bruin Report Online, Rivals' Bruin Blitz, the Bleav Podcast Network and the Daily Bruin, with his work as a sports columnist receiving awards from the College Media Association and Society of Professional Journalists. Connon also wrote for Sports Illustrated/FanNation's New England Patriots site, Patriots Country, and he was on the Patriots and Boston Red Sox beats at Prime Time Sports Talk.

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