The Obscurantist

Adam Trueblood Commentary	Index
Swallowing Poison One aspect of the American civil war that has received relatively little attention is its relation to the earlier Mexican – American war of 1846 – 1848. The national schism of the 1860’s which resulted in the deaths of over 600,000 Union and Confederate soldiers was brought about in part by tensions aroused by the admission of formerly Mexican territories into the young republic and the resultant alteration in the balance of power governing rights of slave ownership. The Mexican conflict was an unjust, bloody war fought for territorial ambitions under the quasi-religious doctrine of Manifest Destiny, and President Polk’s theft of half of Mexico’s territory later played a crucial role in the near destruction of the American republic during the civil war years. The Mexican-American war was brought about by pure avarice and contempt for the sovereignty of our southern neighbor. James Polk entered office with ambitions of expanding the nation to the west through annexation of Texas and acquisition of Mexican territory, and also to the north by pushing Oregon’s borders further into British territory. During his one term administration the country increased in size by two thirds. Though the Whigs in Congress generally opposed the Mexican war, with firm Democratic support a war resolution was passed in May 1846. The resolution was based on a false pretext, as Polk used a skirmish brought about by a US incursion into Mexico as a reason for declaration of war, with “self-defense” as the purported justification. By September 1847 the Mexican forces had been overwhelmed and victorious generals such as Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor had arrived in Mexico City to preside over the surrender. As Ulysses S. Grant said of the war, it was “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” Though the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 formalized the end to the conflict and the transfer of New Mexico and California to the United States, as well as the recognition of the southern border of Texas, the war had sharpened divisions in the United States over the slavery issue, fulfilling Ralph Waldo Emerson’s prescient thought that the conquest of Mexico “will be as the man who swallows arsenic, which brings him down in turn.” The country was sharply divided along political lines, yet with the admission of new territories the question of slavery polarized the nation further and created a clear geographic schism between the North and South. With the inception of the war, northern Whigs attempted to solve the slavery issue for the expected new territories by setting forth the Wilmot Proviso, which banned slavery in territories expected to be acquired from Mexico. Though it passed in the House, the proviso was later defeated in the Democrat controlled Senate, though it divided the Democrats along geographic lines and set off a fierce debate over slavery. This was a foreshadowing of the further division of the country between the pro-slavery South and the anti-slavery North, as the Democrats increasingly became the party of the South and fought tenaciously for regional interests. Political division had been transformed into geographic division, and this proved a near-fatal rift in the fabric of the nation. President Bush and his advisors similarly entered office with grand ambition; they sought to transform America’s place in the world, to pursue an aggressive foreign policy, and to conduct war without regard for international law. Iraq was a strategic acquisition, a long term base for military and economic influence, and all of Bush’s rhetorical justifications are as empty as were James Polk’s one hundred and sixty years ago. Bush came to power with strong support among fundamentalist Christians in the Bible belt of the South. Viewing a map of his projected electoral college support provides an image of red states rising up from a platform in the South, with a spindle extending through the center of the country. Once again the two dominant parties have come to reflect largely regional interests, and with a president espousing aggressive militarism with undertones of religious inspiration, we should all be very concerned about the coming years in the event of a Bush victory. Iraq too has been a poison to test the nation's resilience, but more importantly it is a symbol of the poison that Bush is forcing upon all of us. August, 2004 Quotes for this article provided by "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era" by James McPherson.