The leading influence in Mr. Polk's cabinet was divided between Mr. Buchanan, secretary of State, and Mr. Marcy, secretary of War. Both were men of conservative minds, of acute judgment in political affairs of long experience in public life; and each was ambitious for the succession to the Presidency. Neither could afford to disregard the dominant opinion of the Southern Democracy; still less could either countenance a reckless policy, which might seriously embarrass our foreign affairs, and precipitate a dangerous crisis in our relations with England. These eminent statesmen quickly perceived that the long-standing issue touching our north- western boundary, commonly known as the Oregon question, was surrounded with embarrassments which, by mismanagement, might rapidly develop into perils of great magnitude in connection with the impending war with Mexico.
The Oregon question, which now became associated, if not complicated, with the Texas question, originated many years before. By our treaty with Spain in 1819, the southern boundary of our possessions on the Pacific had been accurately defined. Our northern boundary was still unadjusted, and had been matter of dispute with Great Britain ever since we acquired the country. By the treaty of Oct. 20, 1818, the 49th parallel of north latitude was established as the boundary between the United States and British America, from the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains, as the Rocky Mountains were then termed. In the same treaty it was agreed that any country claimed by either the United States or Great Britain westward of the Stony Mountains should, with its harbors, bays, and rivers, be open for the term of ten years to the vessels, citizens, and subjects of either power. This agreement was entered into solely for the purpose of preventing disputes pending final settlement, and was not to be construed to the prejudice of either party. This was the beginning of the joint occupancy of the Oregon country, England having with prompt and characteristic enterprise forced her way across the continent after she had acquired Canada in 1763. Stimulated by certain alleged discoveries of her navigators on the north-west coast, Great Britain urged and maintained her title to a frontage on the Pacific, and made a bold claim to sovereignty, as far south as the mouth of the Columbia River, nearly, indeed, to the northern border of California.
Nothing had been done towards an adjustment during the ten years of joint occupancy, and when the term was about to expire, the arrangement was renewed by special convention in 1827, for an indefinite period,—each power reserving the right to terminate the convention by giving twelve-months' notice to the other. The President, John Quincy Adams, made the briefest possible reference to the subject in his message to Congress, December, 1827; speaking of it as a temporary compromise of the respective rights and claims of Great Britain and the United States to territory westward of the Rocky Mountains. For many years thereafter, the subject, though languidly pursued in our diplomatic correspondence, was not alluded to in a President's message, or discussed in Congress. The contracting parties rested content with the power to join issue and try titles at any time by simply giving the required notice. The subject was also overshadowed by more urgent disputes between Great Britain and the United States, especially that relating to the North-eastern boundary, and that touching the suppression of the African slave-trade. The latter involved the old question of the right of search. The two governments came to an agreement on these differences in 1842 by the negotiation of the convention known as the Ashburton Treaty. In transmitting the treaty to Congress, President Tyler made, for the first time since the agreement for a joint occupancy was renewed in 1827, a specific reference to the Oregon question. He informed Congress, that the territory of the United States commonly called the Oregon country was beginning to attract the attention of our fellow-citizens, and that "the tide of our population, having reclaimed from the wilderness the more contiguous regions, was preparing to flow over those vast districts which stretch from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean;" that Great Britain "laid claim to a portion of the country and that the question could not be well included in the recent treaty without postponing other more pressing matters." He significantly added, that though the difficulty might not for several years involve the peace of the two countries, yet he should urge upon Great Britain the importance of its early settlement.
As this paragraph was undoubtedly suggested and probably written by Mr. Webster, it attracted wide attention on both sides of the Atlantic; and from that moment, in varying degrees of interest and urgency, the Oregon question became an active political issue. Before the next annual meeting of Congress, Mr. Upshur had succeeded Mr. Webster in the State department; and the message of the President took still more advanced ground respecting Oregon. For political reasons, there was an obvious desire to keep the action of the government on this issue well abreast of its aggressive movements in the matter of acquiring Texas. Emboldened by Mr. Webster's position of the preceding year, Mr. Upshur, with younger blood, and with more reason for a demonstrative course, was evidently disposed to force the discussion of the question with the British Government. Under his influence and advice, President Tyler declared, in his message of December, 1843, that "after the most rigid, and, as far as practicable, unbiased, examination of the subject, the United States have always contended that their rights appertain to the entire region of country lying on the Pacific, and embraced between latitude 42° and 54° 40´." Mr. Edward Everett, at that time our minister in London, was instructed to present these views to the British Government.
Before the President could send another annual message to Congress, Mr. Calhoun had been for several months at the head of the State Department, engaged in promoting, with singular skill and ability, his scheme for the annexation of Texas. With his quick perception, he discerned that if the policy apparently indicated by Mr. Webster and aggressively pursued by Mr. Upshur, on the Oregon question, should be followed, and that issue sharply pressed upon Great Britain, complications of a most embarrassing nature might arise, involving in their sweep the plans, already well matured, for acquiring Texas. In order to avert all danger of that kind, Mr. Calhoun opened a negotiation with the British minister in Washington, conducting it himself, for the settlement of the Oregon question; and at the very moment when the Democratic National Convention which nominated Mr. Polk was declaring our title to the whole of Oregon as far as 54° 40´ to be "clear and unquestionable," the Democratic secretary of State was proposing to Her Majesty's representative to settle the entire controversy by the adoption of the 49th parallel as the boundary!
The negotiation was very nearly completed, and was suspended only by some dispute in regard to the right of navigating the Columbia River. It is not improbable that Mr. Calhoun, after disclosing to the British Government his willingness to accept the 49th parallel as our northern boundary, was anxious to have the negotiation temporarily postponed. If the treaty had been concluded at that time, it would have seriously interfered with the success of Mr. Polk's candidacy by destroying the prestige of the "Fifty-four forties," as Colonel Benton termed them. In Mr. Polk's election, Mr. Calhoun was deeply and indeed doubly interested; first, because of his earnest desire to defeat Mr. Clay, with whom he was at swords' points on all public issues; and again, because, having assumed the responsibility of defeating the nomination of Mr. Van Buren, he was naturally desirous that his judgment should be vindicated by the election of the candidate whom his Southern friends had put forward. Urgently solicitous for the annexation of Texas, those friends were indifferent to the fate of the Oregon question, though willing that it should be made a leading issue in the North, where it was presented with popular effect. The patriotic spirit of the country was appealed to, and to a considerable extent aroused and inflamed by the ardent and energetic declaration of our title to the whole of Oregon. "Fifty-four forty or fight" became a Democratic watchword; and the Whigs who attempted to argue against the extravagance or inexpediency of the claim continually lost ground, and were branded as cowards who were awed into silence by the fear of British power. All the prejudice against the British Government which had descended from the Revolution and from the war of 1812 was successfully evoked by the Democratic party, and they gained immeasurably by keeping an issue before the people which many of their leaders knew would be abandoned when the pressure of actual negotiation should be felt by our government.
Mr. Polk, however, in his Inaugural address, carefully re-examined the position respecting Oregon which his party had taken in the national canvass, and quoted part of the phrase used in the platform put forth by the convention which nominated him. The issue had been made so broadly, that it must be squarely met, and finally adjusted. The Democrats in their eagerness had left no road for honorable retreat, and had cut themselves off from the resources and convenient postponements of diplomacy. Dangerous as it was to the new administration to confront the issue, it would have been still more dangerous to attempt to avoid it. The decisive step, in the policy to which the administration was committed, was to give formal notice to Great Britain that the joint occupancy of the Oregon country under the treaty of 1827 must cease. A certain degree of moral strength was unexpectedly imparted to the Democratic position by the fact that the venerable John Quincy Adams was decidedly in favor of the notice, and ably supported, in a unique and powerful speech in the House of Representatives, our title to the country up to 54° 40´. The first convention for joint occupancy had been negotiated while Mr. Adams was secretary of State, and the second while he was President; so that, in addition to the weight of authority with which he always spoke, his words seemed entitled to special confidence on a question with which he was necessarily so familiar. His great influence brought many Whigs to the support of the resolution; and on the 9th of February, 1846, the House, by the large vote of 163 to 54, declared in favor of giving the treaty notice to Great Britain.
The country at once became alarmed by the growing rumors that the resolution of the House was a direct challenge to Great Britain for a trial of strength as to the superior title to the Oregon country, and it was soon apparent that the Senate would proceed with more circumspection and conservatism. Events were rapidly tending toward hostilities with Mexico, and the aggrandizement of territory likely to result from a war with that country was not viewed with a friendly eye, either by Great Britain or France. Indeed, the annexation of Texas, which had been accomplished the preceding year, was known to be distasteful to those governments. They desired that Texas might remain an independent republic, under more liberal trade relations than could be secured from the United States with its steady policy of fostering and advancing its own manufacturing interests. The directors of the administration saw therefore more and more clearly that, if a war with Mexico were impeding, it would be sheer madness to open a quarrel with Great Britain, and force her into an alliance against us. Mr. Adams and those who voted with him did not believe that the notice to the British Government would provoke a war, but that firmness on our part, in the negotiation which should ensue, would induce England to yield her pretensions to any part of Oregon; to which Mr. Adams maintained, with elaboration of argument and demonstration, she had no shadow of right.
Mr. Adams was opposed to war with Mexico, and therefore did not draw his conclusions from the premises laid down by those who were charged with the policy of the administration. They naturally argued that a war with Great Britain might end in our losing the whole of Oregon, without acquiring any territory on our south- western border. The bare possibility of such a result would defeat the policy which they were seeking to uphold, and would at the same time destroy their party. In short, it became apparent that what might be termed the Texas policy of the administration, and what might be termed the Oregon policy, could not both be carried out. It required no prophet to foresee which would be maintained and which would be abandoned. "Fifty-four forty or fight" had been a good cry for the political campaign; but, when the fight was to be with Great Britain, the issue became too serious to be settled by such international law as is dispensed on the stump.
A very bitter controversy over the question began in the Senate as soon as the House resolution was received. But from the outset it was apparent that those who adhered to the 54° 40´ policy, on which Mr. Polk had been elected, were in a small minority. That minority was led by General Cass; but its most brilliant advocate in debate was Edward A. Hannegan, Democratic senator from Indiana, who angrily reproached his party for playing false to the pledges on which it had won a victory over the greatest political leader of the country. He measured the situation accurately, read with discrimination the motives which underlay the change of policy on the part of the administration and its Southern supporters, and stated the whole case in a quick and curt reply to an interruption from a pro-slavery senator,—"If Oregon were good for the production of sugar and cotton, it would not have encountered this opposition. Its possession would have been at once secured." The change in the Democratic position was greatly aided by the attitude of the Whig senators, who almost unanimously opposed the resolution of notice to Great Britain, as passed by the House. Mr. Webster, for the first if not the only time in his senatorial career, read a carefully prepared speech, in which he did not argue the question of rightful boundary, but urged that a settlement on the line of the 49th parallel would be honorable to both countries, would avert hostile feeling, and restore amity and harmony. Mr. Berrien of Georgia made an exhaustive speech, inquiring into the rightfulness of title, and urged the line of 49°. Mr. Crittenden followed in the same vein, and in a reply to Senator William Allen of Ohio, chairman of Foreign Affairs, made a speech abounding in sarcasm and ridicule. The Whigs having in the campaign taken no part in the boastful demand for 54° 40´, were not subjected to the humiliation of retracing imprudent steps and retracting unwise declarations.
Under the influences at work in the Senate, events developed rapidly. The House resolution of notice was defeated; and the Senate passed a substitute of a less aggressive type, in which the House, through the instrumentality of a conference committee, substantially concurred. The resolution as finally adopted authorized the President "at his discretion" to give notice for the termination of the treaty to Great Britain. The preamble further softened the action of Congress by declaring that the notice was given in order that "the attention of the governments of both countries may be the more earnestly directed to the adoption of all proper measures for a speedy and amicable adjustment of the differences and disputes in regard to said territory."
The Southern Democrats in the House receded from their action, and the modified resolution was carried by nearly as large a vote as had been the previous one for decided and peremptory notice. In short, the great mass of the Southern Democrats in both Houses precipitately threw the Oregon issue aside. They had not failed to perceive that the hesitation of the administration in forcing an issue with Mexico was due to the apprehension of trouble with Great Britain, and they made haste to promote schemes of territorial acquisition in the South-West by withdrawing the pretensions so imprudently put forth in regard to our claims in the North-West. Only forty-six votes were given in the House against what was termed a disgraceful surrender. These were almost entirely from Northern Democrats, though a few Southern Democrats refused to recede. Among those who thus remained firm were Andrew Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas, Howell Cobb, Preston King, and Allen G. Thurman.
The passage of the modified and friendly resolution of notice dispelled all danger of trouble with Great Britain, and restored a sense of security in the United States. Immediately after its adoption, Mr. Buchanan, Secretary of State, under direction of the President, concluded a treaty with the British minister on the basis discussed by Mr. Calhoun two years before. The 49th parallel was agreed upon as the boundary between the two countries, with certain concessions for a defined period, touching the rights of the Hudson-bay Company, and the navigation of the Columbia River by the British. This treaty was promptly confirmed by the Senate, and the long controversy over the Oregon question was at rest. It had created a deep and wide-spread excitement in the country, and came very near precipitating hostilities with Great Britain. There is no doubt whatever that the English Government would have gone to war rather than surrender the territory north of the 49th parallel. This fact had made the winter and early spring of 1846 one of profound anxiety to all the people of the United States, and more especially to those who were interested in the large mercantile marine which then sailed under the American flag.
In simple truth, the country was not prepared to go to war with Great Britain in support of "our clear and unquestionable title" to the whole of Oregon. With her strong naval force on the Pacific, and her military force in Australasia, Great Britain could more readily and more easily take possession of the country in dispute than could the United States. We had no way of reaching Oregon except by doubling Cape Horn, and making a dangerous sea-voyage of many thousand miles. We could communicate across the continent only by the emigrant trail over rugged mountains and almost trackless plains. Our railway system was in its infancy in 1846. New-York City did not have a continuous road to Buffalo. Philadelphia was not connected with Pittsburg. Baltimore's projected line to the Ohio had only reached Cumberland, among the eastern foot-hills of the Alleghanies. The entire Union had but five thousand miles of railway. There was scarcely a spot on the globe, outside of the United Kingdom, where we could not have fought England with greater advantage than on the north-west coast of America at that time. The war-cry of the Presidential campaign of 1844 was, therefore, in any event, absurd; and it proved to be mischievous. It is not improbable, that, if the Oregon question had been allowed to rest for the time under the provisions of the treaty of 1827, the whole country would ultimately have fallen into our hands, and the American flag might to-day be waving over British Columbia. The course of events and the lapse of time were working steadily to our advantage. In 1826 Great Britain declined to accept the 49th parallel, but demanded the Columbia River as the boundary. Twenty years afterwards she accepted the line previously rejected. American settlers had forced her back. With the sweep of our emigration and civilization to the Pacific coast two years after the treaty of 1846, when gold was discovered in California, the tendency would have been still more strongly in our favor. Time, as Mr. Calhoun said, "would have effected every thing for us" if we could only have been patient and peaceful.
Taking the question, however, as it stood in 1846, the settlement must, upon full consideration and review, be adjudged honorable to both countries. Wise statesmen of that day felt, as wise statesmen of subsequent years have more and more realized, that a war between Great Britain and the United States would not only be a terrible calamity to both nations, but that it would stay the progress of civilization throughout the world. Future generations would hold the governing power in both countries guilty of a crime if war should ever be permitted except upon the failure of every other arbitrament. The harmless laugh of one political party at the expense of the other forty years ago, the somewhat awkward receding from pretensions which could not be maintained by the Executive of the nation, have passed into oblivion. But a striking and useful lesson would be lost if it should be forgotten that the country was brought to the verge of war by the proclamation of a policy which could not be, and was not intended to be, enforced. It was originated as a cry to catch votes; and except with the ignorant, and the few whose judgment was carried away by enthusiasm, it was from the first thoroughly insincere. If the punishment could have fallen only upon those who raised the cry, perfect justice would have been done. But the entire country suffered, and probably endured a serious and permanent loss, from the false step taken by men who claimed what they could not defend and did not mean to defend.
The Secretary of State, Mr. Buchanan, gained much credit for his conduct of the Oregon question, both diplomatically and politically. His correspondence with Mr. Pakenham, the British minister at Washington, was conspicuously able. It strengthened Mr. Buchanan at home, and gave him an enviable reputation in Europe. His political management of the question was especially adroit. His party was in sore trouble over the issue, and naturally looked to him for relief and escape. To extricate the Administration from the embarrassment caused by its ill-timed and boastful pretensions to the line of 54° 40´ was a difficult and delicate task. To accomplish it, Mr. Buchanan had recourse to the original and long disused habit of asking the Senate's advice in advance of negotiating the treaty, instead of taking the ordinary but at that time perilous responsibility of first negotiating the treaty, and then submitting it to the Senate for approval. As a leading Northern Democrat, with an established reputation and a promising future, Mr. Buchanan was instinctively reluctant to take the lead in surrendering the position which his party had so defiantly maintained during the canvass for the Presidency in 1844, and which he had, as Secretary of State, re-affirmed in a diplomatic paper of marked ability. When the necessity came to retreat, Mr. Buchanan was anxious that the duty of publicly lowering the colors should not be left to him. His device, therefore, shifted the burden from his own shoulders, and placed it on the broader ones of the Senate.
Political management could not have been more clever. It saved Mr. Buchanan in large degree from the opprobrium visited on so many leading Democrats for their precipitate retreat on the Oregon question, and commended him at the same time to a class of Democrats who had never before been his supporters. General Cass, in order to save himself as a senator from the responsibility of surrendering our claim to 54° 40´, assumed a very warlike attitude, erroneously supposing that popularity might be gained by the advocacy of a rupture with England. Mr. Buchanan was wiser. He held the middle course. He had ably sustained our claim to the whole of Oregon, and now, in the interest of peace, gracefully yielded to a compromise which the Senate, after mature deliberation, had advised. His course saved the administration, not indeed from a mortifying position, but from a continually increasing embarrassment which seemed to force upon the country the cruel alternatives of war or dishonor.
Mr. Polk was, from some cause, incapable of judging Mr. Buchanan generously. He seems to have regarded his Secretary of State as always willing to save himself at the expense of others. He did not fail to perceive that Mr. Buchanan had come out of the Oregon trouble with more credit, at least with less loss, than any other man prominently identified with its agitation and settlement. This was not pleasing to the President. He had evidently not concealed his distrust from the outset, and had cumbered his offer of a cabinet position with conditions which seemed derogatory to the dignity of Mr. Buchanan,—conditions which a man of spirit might well have resented. He informed Mr. Buchanan that, as he should "take no part himself between gentlemen of the Democratic party who might become aspirants to the Presidency," he desired that "no member of the cabinet should do so." He indeed expressed himself to Mr. Buchanan in a manner so peremptory as to be offensive: "Should any member of my cabinet become a candidate for the Presidency or Vice-Presidency of the United States, it will be expected on the happening of such an event that he will retire from the cabinet." Remembering that Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams had each been nominated for the Presidency while holding the position of Secretary of State in the cabinet of his predecessor, Mr. Polk was attaching a new and degrading condition to the incumbency of that office.
Mr. Polk did not stop with one exaction. Addressing Mr. Buchanan as if he were about to become a department clerk, he informed him that he disapproved "the practice which has sometimes prevailed of cabinet officers absenting themselves for long periods from the seat of government," and practically demanded a pledge that Mr. Buchanan would remain at his post, and be punctual in the discharge of his official duties. In reading Mr. Polk's letter, the inference seems natural that he felt under some pressing obligation to tender to Mr. Buchanan the appointment of secretary of State, but desired to accompany it with conditions which would subordinate him in the general conduct of the administration. With a spirit of docility, if not humility, altogether incomprehensible, Mr. Buchanan "accepted the position cheerfully and cordiallyon the terms on which the offer was made."
It is not surprising that, after agreeing to enter Mr. Polk's cabinet on these conditions, Mr. Buchanan had abundant reason to complain afterwards that the President did not treat him with "delicacy and confidence." On several occasions he was on the point of resigning his position. He was especially aggrieved that the President refused to nominate him to the Supreme Bench in 1846 as the successor of Henry Baldwin. In view of Mr. Buchanan's career, both before and after that time, it seems strange that he should have desired the position. It seems stranger still that Mr. Polk, after refusing to appoint him, should have nominated George W. Woodward, a Pennsylvania Democrat, who was unacceptable to Mr. Buchanan. Mr. Polk, however, appreciated the temperament of Mr. Buchanan, and apparently knew how much he would endure without resentment. While his presence in the cabinet was evidently not a source of pleasure to the President, he realized that it brought character, strength, and power to the administration. Mr. Buchanan was an older man than Mr. Polk, was superior to him intellectually, had seen a longer and more varied public service, and enjoyed a higher personal standing throughout the country.
The timidity of Mr. Buchanan's nature made him the servant of the administration when, with boldness, he might have been its master. Had he chosen to tender his resignation in resentment of his treatment by Mr. Polk, the administration would have been seriously embarrassed. There was, at the time, no Northern Democrat of the same rank to succeed him, except General Cass, and he was ineligible by reason of his uncompromising attitude on the Oregon question. Mr. Polk could not call a Southern man to the State Department so long as Robert J. Walker was at the head of the Treasury. He could not promote Mr. Marcy from the War Department without increasing the discontent already dangerously developed in the ranks of the New-York Democracy. Mr. Buchanan, therefore, held absolute control of the situation had he chosen to assert himself. This he failed to do, and continued to lend his aid to an administration whose policy was destroying him in his own State, and whose patronage was persistently used to promote the fortunes of his rivals and his enemies.
Mr. Polk was by singular fortune placed at the head of one of the most vigorous and important administrations in the history of the government. He had not been trained in the higher duties of statesmanship, and was not personally equal to the weighty responsibilities which devolved upon him. He was overshadowed by the ability of at least three members of his cabinet, and was keenly sensible of their superiority. He had, however, a certain aptitude for affairs, was industrious, and in personal character above reproach. Mr. Webster described him with accuracy when he spoke of him as "respectable but never eminent."
When first elected to the House of Representatives in 1824, Mr. Polk was but twenty-nine years of age. He was re-elected continuously for fourteen years. He was one of the most pronounced adherents of Jackson, and joined in the extreme and unreasonable opposition to the administration of John Quincy Adams. The period of his service in the House was distinguished by partisanship of a more bigoted and vindictive type than prevailed at any other time in the history of that body. He was Speaker during the last Congress of Jackson's Presidency and during the first under the administration of Van Buren. When the Whig members forced an inquiry in to the conduct of Samuel Swartwout, the defaulting collector of customs for the port of New York,—a case which figured prominently in the exciting Presidential canvass of 1840,—they would not trust Mr. Polk with the duty of naming the committee of investigation. The House itself exercised the power of appointment, to the great disparagement of the Speaker.
When Mr. Polk closed his service in the Chair, at the end of the Twenty-fifth Congress, no Whig member could be found who was willing to move the customary resolution of thanks,—an act of courtesy which derives its chief grace by coming from a political opponent. When the resolution was presented by a Democratic Representative from the South, it was opposed in debate by prominent Whig members. Henry A. Wise, who five years later supported Mr. Polk for the Presidency, desired to have the resolution peremptorily ruled out on a point of order. Sergeant S. Prentiss, the incomparably brilliant member from Mississippi, attacked it most violently. His impassioned invective did not stop short of personal indignity and insult to Mr. Polk. He denied with emphatic iteration that the Speaker had been "impartial." On the contrary he had been "the tool of the Executive, the tool of his party." He analyzed Mr. Polk's course in the appointment of committees, and with much detail labored to prove his narrowness, his unfairness, his injustice as a presiding officer. For one, he said, he was "not wiling to give to Mr. Polk a certificate of good behaviour, to aid him in his canvass for the governorship of Tennessee, for which he is known to be a candidate." He believed "this vote of thanks was to be used as so much capital, on which to do political business," and he declared with much vehemence that he "was not disposed to furnish it."
The opprobrious language of Prentiss did not wound Mr. Polk so seriously as did the vote of the House on the resolution of thanks. The Whigs, as a party, resisted its adoption. The Democrats could not even bring the House to a vote upon the resolution without the use of theprevious question, and this, as a witty observer remarked, was about as humiliating as to be compelled to call theprevious questionon resolutions of respect for a deceased member. When the demand was made for "the main question to be put," the Whigs, apparently eager to force the issue to the bitter end, called for theayesandnoes. John Quincy Adams, who headed the roll, led off in the negative, and was sustained by such able and conservative members as John Bell from Mr. Polk's own State, McKennan of Pennsylvania, Evans of Maine, Corwin of Ohio, Menifee from the Ashland district in Kentucky, and William Cost Johnson of Maryland. The vote stood 92 to 75. Mr. Polk had been chosen Speaker by a majority of thirteen. The Whigs had thus practically consolidated their party against a vote of courtesy to the presiding officer of the House.
Mr. Polk's situation was in the highest degree embarrassing, but he behaved with admirable coolness and self-possession. He returned his thanks to the "majority of the House," which had adopted the resolution, significantly emphasizing the word "majority." He said he regarded the vote just given "as of infinitely more value than the common, matter-of-course, customary resolution which, in the courtesy usually prevailing in parliamentary bodies, is passed at the close of their deliberations." His reference "to the courtesy usually prevailing in parliamentary bodies" was made, as an eye- witness relates, with "telling accent, and with a manner that was very disconcerting to the Whigs." His address was scrupulously confined to "the majority of the House," and to the end Mr. Polk exhibited, as was said at the time, "a magnificent contempt for the insulting discourtesy of the Whigs."
The incident was made very prominent in the ensuing canvass in Tennessee, where Mr. Polk won a signal victory, and was installed as governor. The Democrats treated the action of the House as a deliberate insult, not merely to the Speaker, but to his State, and not only to his State, but to the venerable ex-president, whose residence at the Hermitage, in the judgment of his devoted followers, made Tennessee illustrious and almost sacred ground. Jackson himself was roused to intense indignation, and, though beyond threescore and ten, was active and unceasing in his efforts to insure a victory to Mr. Polk. The contest, though local in its essential character, attracted observation and interest far beyond the borders of the State.
The political importance of Mr. Polk was enhanced by the proscriptive course of his opponents in the House of Representatives. The refusal to join in the resolution of thanks operated in a manner quite contrary to the expectations of the Whigs, and was indeed effectively turned against them. The generous instincts of the people condemned an attempt to destroy the honorable fame of a public man by what they considered to be an act of spiteful persecution. It was the opinion of John Bell, who of all men had the best opportunity for impartial judgment in the premises, that the vote of himself and his fellow Whigs on the resolution was an indirect but potential cause of Mr. Polk's nomination and election to the Presidency. It gave him prominence as a friend of Jackson, and made him available as a candidate against Van Buren for the Democratic nomination. The opponents of the latter instinctively knew that it would be dangerous to defeat him with any one who did not stand well with Van Buren's powerful patron. The events of 1839 and 1844 in the life of Mr. Polk have therefore an interesting relation to each other.
Review (continued).—Relations with Mexico.—General Taylor marches his Army to the Rio Grande.—First Encounter with the Mexican Army.—Excitement in the United States.—Congress declares War against Mexico.—Ill Temper of the Whigs.—Defeat of the Democrats in the Congressional Elections of 1846.—Policy of Mr. Polk in Regard to Acquisition of Territory from Mexico.—Three- Million Bill.—The Famous Anti-slavery Proviso moved by David Wilmot.—John Quincy Adams.—His Public Service.—Robert C. Winthrop chosen Speaker.—Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.—Presidential Election of 1848.—Effort of the Administration to make a Democratic Hero out of the Mexican War.—Thomas H. Benton for Lieutenant-General. —Bill defeated.—Nomination of General Taylor for the Presidency by the Whigs.—Nomination of General Cass by the Democratic Party. —Van Buren refuses to support him.—Democratic Bolt in New York. —Buffalo Convention and the Organization of the Free-soil Party. —Nomination of Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams.—Mr. Clay's Discontent.—Mr. Webster's Speech at Marshfield.—General Taylor elected.—The Barnburners of New York.—Character and Public Services of Mr. Van Buren.
By a suggestive coincidence, the practical abandonment of the line of 54° 40´ by the administration was contemporaneous with the outbreak of the Mexican war. The modified resolution of notice to Great Britain was finally passed in both branches of Congress on the 23d of April, and on the succeeding day the first blood was shed in that contest between the two Republics which was destined to work such important results in the future and fortunes of both.
The army of occupation in Texas, commanded by General Zachary Taylor, had, during the preceding winter, been moving westward with the view of encamping in the valley of the Rio Grande. On the 28th of March General Tyler took up his position on the banks of the river, opposite Matamoros, and strengthened himself by the erection field-works. General Ampudia, in command of the Mexican army stationed at Matamoros, was highly excited by the arrival of the American army, and on the 12th of April notified General Taylor to break up his camp within twenty-four hours, and to retire beyond the Nueces River. In the event of his failure to comply with these demands, Ampudia announced that "arms, and arms alone, must decide the question." According to the persistent claim of the Mexican Government, the Nueces River was the western boundary of Texas; and the territory between that river and the Rio Grande—a breadth of one hundred and fifty miles on the coast—was held by Mexico to be a part of her domain, and General Taylor consequently an invader of her soil. No reply was made to Ampudia; and on the 24th of April General Arista, who had succeeded to the command of the Mexican army, advised General Taylor that "he considered hostilities commenced, and should prosecute them."
Directly after this notification was received, General Taylor dispatched a party of dragoons, sixty-three in number, officers and men, up the valley of the Rio Grande, to ascertain whether the Mexicans had crossed the river. They encountered a force much larger than their own, and after a short engagement, in which some seventeen were killed and wounded, the Americans were surrounded, and compelled to surrender. When intelligence of this affair reached the United States, the war-spirit rose high among the people. "Our country has been invaded," and "American blood spilled on American soil," were the cries heard on every side. In the very height of this first excitement, without waiting to know whether the Mexican Government would avow or disavow the hostile act, President Polk, on the 11th of May, sent a most aggressive message to Congress, "invoking its prompt action to recognize the existence of war, and to place at the disposition of the Executive the means of prosecuting the contest with vigor, and thus hastening the restoration of peace." As soon as the message was read in the House, a bill was introduced authorizing the President to call out a force of fifty thousand men, and giving him all the requisite power to organize, arm, and equip them. The preamble declared that "war existed by the act of Mexico," and this gave rise to an animated and somewhat angry discussion. The Whigs felt that they were placed in an embarrassing attitude. They must either vote for what they did not believe, or, by voting against the bill, incur the odium which always attaches to the party that fails by a hair's-breadth to come to the defense of the country when war is imminent.
Prominent Whigs believed, that, as an historical and geographical fact, the river Nueces was the western boundary of Texas, and that the President, by assuming the responsibility of sending an army of occupation into the country west of that river, pending negotiations with Mexico, had taken a hostile and indefensible step. But all agreed that it was too late to consider any thing except the honor of the country, now that actual hostilities had begun. The position of the Whigs was as clearly defined by their speakers as was practicable in the brief space allowed for discussion of the war bill. Against the protest of many, it was forced to a vote, after a two hours' debate. The administration expected the declaration to be unanimous; but there were fourteen members of the House who accepted the responsibility of defying the war feeling of the country by voting "no"—an act which required no small degree of moral courage and personal independence. John Quincy Adams headed the list. The other gentlemen were all Northern Whigs, or pronounced Free-Soilers.
The Senate considered the bill on the ensuing day, and passed it after a very able debate, in which Mr. Calhoun bore a leading part. He earnestly deprecated the necessity of the war, though accused by Benton of plotting to bring it on. Forty senators voted for it, and but two against it,—Thomas Clayton of Delaware and John Davis of Massachusetts. Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky and Mr. Upham of Vermont, when their names were called, responded, "Ay, except the preamble." The bill was promptly approved by the President, and on the 13th of May, 1846, the two Republics were declared to be at war. In the South and West, from the beginning, the war was popular. In the North and East it was unpopular. The gallant bearing of our army, however, changed in large degree the feeling in sections where the war had been opposed. No finer body of men ever enlisted in an heroic enterprise than those who volunteered to bear the flag in Mexico. They were young, ardent, enthusiastic, brave almost to recklessness, with a fervor of devotion to their country's honor. The march of Taylor from the Rio Grande, ending with the unexpected victory against superior numbers at Buena Vista, kept the country in a state of excitement and elation, and in the succeeding year elevated him to the Presidency. Not less splendid in its succession of victories was the march of Scott from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico, where he closed his triumphal journey by taking possession of the capital, and enabling his government to dictate terms of peace.
For the first and only time in our political history, an administration conducting a war victorious at every step, steadily lost ground in the country. The House of Representatives which declared war on the 11th of May, 1846, was Democratic by a large majority. The House, elected in the ensuing autumn, amid the resounding acclamations of Taylor's memorable victory at Monterey, had a decided Whig majority. This political reverse was due to three causes,—the enactment of the tariff of 1846, which offended the manufacturing interest of the country; the receding of the administration on the Oregon question, which embarrassed the position and wounded the pride of the Northern Democrats; and the wide-spread apprehension that the war was undertaken for the purpose of extending and perpetuating slavery. The almost unanimous Southern vote for the hasty surrender of the line of 54° 40´, on which so much had been staked in the Presidential campaign, gave the Whigs an advantage in the popular canvass. The contrast between the boldness with which the Polk administration had marched our army upon the territory claimed by Mexico, and the prudence with which it had retreated from a contest with Great Britain, after all our antecedent boasting, exposed the Democrats to merciless ridicule. Clever speakers who were numerous in the Whig party at that day did not fail to see and seize their advantage.
The Mexican war had scarcely begun when the President justified the popular suspicion by making known to Congress that one of its objects was to be the acquisition of territory beyond the Rio Grande. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that he expected such acquisition to be one of its results. He ably vindicated the policy of marching a military force into the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, by the fact that he was memorialized to do so by the still existing Congress of Texas, on the urgent plea that Mexico was preparing to move upon the territory with a view to its recapture. In this Congress of Texas, the same body that completed the annexation, there were representatives from the territory in dispute beyond the Nueces; and the President felt that they were in an eminent degree entitled to the protection of our government. Events were so hurried that in three months from the formal declaration of war, and before any victory of decisive significance had been achieved, the President sent a special message to Congress, in which he suggested that "the chief obstacle to be surmounted in securing peace would be the adjustment of a boundary that would prove satisfactory and convenient to both republics." He admitted that we ought to pay a fair equivalent for any concessions which might be made by Mexico, and asked that a sum of money should be placed in his hands to be paid to Mexico immediately upon the ratification of a treaty of peace. As a precedent for this unusual request, the President cited the example of Mr. Jefferson in asking and receiving from Congress, in 1803, a special appropriation of money, to be expended at his discretion. As soon as the reading of the message was concluded, Mr. McKay of North Carolina, chairman of the committee of ways and means, introduced a bill, without preamble or explanation, directing that two millions of dollars be appropriated, to be "applied under the direction of the President to any extraordinary expenses which may be incurred in our foreign intercourse." The war was not referred to, Mexico was not named, and the simple phraseology of the Jefferson Act of 1803 was repeated word for word.
A very animated debate followed, in which Northern men took the lead. Mr. Robert C. Winthrop spoke of the administration with unwonted harshness, declaring that "it and its friends had thought fit, during the present session, to frame more than one of these important measures, so as to leave their opponents in a false position whichever way they voted." . . . He "could not and would not vote for this bill as it now stood. . . . It was a vote of unlimited confidence in an administration in which, he was sorry to say, there was very little confidence to be placed." Mr. John Quincy Adams differed from Mr. Winthrop, and could not refrain from a pardonable thrust at that gentleman for his previous vote that "war existed by act of Mexico." He differed from his colleague, Mr. Adams demurely affirmed, with a regret equal to that with which he had differed from him on the bill by which war was declared. He should not vote for this bill in any form, but suggested that it be so amended as to specify expressly that the money is granted for the purpose of negotiating peace with Mexico.
The bill was promptly modified in accordance with the desires of Mr. Adams, and at the moment when its passage seemed secure it was arrested by an amendment of momentous character, submitted by a young member from Pennsylvania. David Wilmot represented a district which had always given Democratic majorities, and was himself an intense partisan of that political school. He was a man of strongphysiqueand strong common sense; of phlegmatic temperament, without any pretension to genius; a sensible speaker, with no claim to eloquence or oratory. But he had courage, determination, and honesty. He believed the time had come to arrest the progress and extension of slavery. He knew that the two-million bill was urged by the President because he wished to use the money to promote the acquisition of territory, and he determined then and there to make a stand in favor of free soil. He thereupon, on the 8th of August, 1846, moved aprovisoto the two-million bill, declaring it to be "an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from Mexico, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist therein."
Mr. Wilmot was in the first session of his first Congress, was but thirty-three years of age, and up to that moment had not been known beyond his district. His amendment made his name familiar at once throughout the length and breadth of the Republic. No question had arisen since the slavery agitation of 1820 that was so elaborately debated. The Wilmot Proviso absorbed the attention of Congress for a longer time than the Missouri Compromise: it produced a wider and deeper excitement in the country, and it threatened a more serious danger to the peace and integrity of the Union. The consecration of the territory of the United States to freedom became from that day a rallying cry for every shade of anti-slavery sentiment. If it did not go as far as the Abolitionists in their extreme and uncompromising faith might demand, it yet took a long step forward, and afforded the ground on which the battle of the giants was to be waged, and possibly decided. The feeling in all sections became intense on the issue thus presented, and it proved a sword which cleft asunder political associations that had been close and intimate for a lifetime. Both the old parties were largely represented on each side of the question. The Northern Whigs, at the outset, generally sustained the proviso, and the Northern Democrats divided, with the majority against it. In the slave States both parties were against it, only two men south of Mason and Dixon's line voting for free soil,—John M. Clayton of Delaware in the Senate, and Henry Grider of Kentucky in the House. Mr. Grider re-entered Congress as a Republican after the war. Among the conspicuous Whigs who voted for the proviso were Joseph R. Ingersoll and James Pollock of Pennsylvania, Washington Hunt of New York, Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts, Robert C. Schenck of Ohio, and Truman Smith of Connecticut. Among the Democrats were Hannibal Hamlin, and all his colleagues from Maine, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, Preston King of New York, John Wentworth of Illinois, Allen G. Thurman of Ohio, and Robert McClelland of Michigan, afterwards Secretary of the Interior under President Pierce.
Mr. Webster voted for the proviso, but with gloomy apprehensions. He could "see little of the future, and that little gave him no satisfaction." He spoke with portentous gravity, and arrested the attention of the country by the solemnity of his closing words: "All I can scan is contention, strife, and agitation. The future is full of difficulties and full of dangers. We appear to be rushing on perils headlong, and with our eyes all open." There was a singular disagreement between the speech and the vote of Mr. Webster. The speech indicated his real position. His vote was in deference to the opinion of Massachusetts. The most conspicuous Northern Whigs who voted against the proviso were Alexander Ramsey of Pennsylvania, since the distinguished Republican senator from Minnesota, and Secretary of War under President Hayes; and Samuel F. Vinton of Ohio, one of the oldest and ablest representatives in Congress.
The House attached the proviso to the two-million bill, and thus defeated it for the session. The Democratic Senate took it up on the day fixed for final adjournment. The majority were not willing to accept the appropriation with the anti-slavery condition upon it, and John Davis of Massachusetts, fearing if the bill went back to the House the proviso might on reconsideration be defeated, deliberately held the floor until the session expired. In the next session the two-million bill, increased to three millions, was passed without the proviso, the administration being strong enough, with the persuasions of its patronage, to defeat the anti-slavery amendment in both branches.
During the proceedings on the three-million bill, an interesting and instructive incident occurred. The venerable John Quincy Adams appeared in the House for the first time during the session, on the 13th of February (1847), having been detained by a very severe illness. As he passed inside the door the entire House voluntarily rose, business was suspended, and Mr. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee (afterwards President of the United States), addressing the Chair, said, that in compliance with the understanding with which he selected a seat at the beginning of the session, he now tendered it to the venerable member from Massachusetts, and congratulated him on being spared to return to the House. Mr. Adams, enfeebled by disease, tremulous with age, returned his thanks, regretting that he had not "voice to respond to the congratulations of his friends for the honor which had been done him." Among those who paid this unusual, indeed unprecedented, mark of respect to a fellow- member, were many from the South, who within a few years had voted to censure Mr. Adams, and had endeavored in every way to heap obloquy upon him for his persistent course in presenting anti- slavery petitions. Spontaneous in impulse, momentary in duration, simple in form, it was yet one of the most striking tributes ever paid to moral dignity and lofty character.
Mr. Adams was nearing the end of his illustrious life, and a year later was stricken down in the seat which had been so graciously tendered him. His career was in many respects remarkable. He had been minister to five different European courts, senator of the United States, appointed to the Supreme Bench, had been eight years Secretary of State, and four years President. His opportunities were great, his advantages rare, his natural abilities strong. To those he added a high standard of morality, and a love and endurance of labor possessed by few. But it may fairly be doubted whether, if his Presidency had closed his public life, his fame would have attracted special observation. He would scarcely have ranked above Monroe, and would have borne no comparison with Madison. In the Senate he had made no impression. His service abroad was one of industrious routine. His career as Secretary of State was not specially distinguished. The only two treaties of marked importance that were negotiated during his incumbency, were carried, on test questions, by the Cabinet against his judgment. His dispatches have been little quoted as precedents. His diplomatic discussions were not triumphs. Indeed, he was not felicitous with his pen, and suffers by contrast with some who preceded him and many who followed him in that office. But in his sixty-fifth year, when the public life of the most favored draws to a close, the noble and shining career of Mr. Adams began. He entered the House of Representatives in 1831, and for the remainder of his life, a period of seventeen years, he was the one grand figure in that assembly. His warfare against those who would suppress free speech, his heroic contest in favor of the right of the humblest to petition for redress of grievances, are among the memorable events in the parliamentary history of the United States. The amplitude of his knowledge, his industry, his unflagging zeal, his biting sarcasm, his power to sting and destroy without himself showing passion, made a combination of qualities as rare as it was formidable. His previous career had been one of eminent respectability, to be coldly admired and forgotten. His service in the House gave him a name as enduring as the Republic whose history he adorned.
In breadth and thoroughness of learning, Mr. Adams surpassed all his contemporaries in public life. His essays, orations, and addresses were surprisingly numerous, and upon a great variety of subjects. It cannot be said, however, that he contributed any thing to the permanent literature of the country. Nor, in a true estimate of his extraordinary career in Congress, can it be asserted that he attained the first rank as a parliamentary debater. It must be borne in mind that much of his fame in the House of Representatives was derived from the nature of the one question with which he became so conspicuously identified. It was in large degree the moral courage of his position which first fixed the attention of the country and then attracted its admiration. The men with whom he had exciting scenes in regard to the "right of petition" and its cognate issues were in no case the leading statesmen of the day. Wise, Bynum, Dromgoole, Pinckney, Lewis, Thomas F. Marshall, and the other Southern representatives with whom Mr. Adams came in conflict, were ready and brilliant men, but were far below the first rank of debaters. Indeed, with few exceptions, the really eminent debaters were in the Senate during the period of Mr. Adams's service in the House. Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Benton, Mr. Hayne, Mr. Silas Wright, Mr. Crittenden, Mr. Ewing, Mr. Watkins Leigh, Mr. Rives, Mr. Choate, Mr. John M. Clayton, Mr. Berrien, were an altogether higher and abler class of men than those with whom Mr. Adams had his frequent wrangles in the House. The weapons which he so successfully employed against the young "fire-eaters" would have proved pointless and valueless in a contest with any one of the eminent men who in that long period gave character to the Senate.
The only time Mr. Adams ever crossed swords in the House with a man of commanding power was in the famous discussion of January, 1836, with George Evans of Maine. Mr. Adams had made a covert but angry attack on Mr. Webster for his opposition to the Fortification Bill in the preceding Congress, when President Jackson was making such energetic demonstrations of his readiness to go to war with France. To the surprise of his best friends, Mr. Adams warmly sustained Jackson in his belligerent correspondence with the government of Louis Philippe. His position probably cost him a seat in the United States Senate for which he was then a candidate. Mr. Webster preferred John Davis, who had the preceding year beaten Mr. Adams in the contest for governor of Massachusetts. These circumstances were believed at the time to be the inciting cause for the assault on Mr. Webster. The duty of replying devolved on Mr. Evans. The debate attracted general attention, and the victory of Mr. Evans was everywhere recognized. TheGlobefor the Twenty- fourth Congress contains a full report of both speeches. The stirring events of forty years have not destroyed their interest or their freshness. The superior strength, the higher order of eloquence, the greater mastery of the art of debate, will be found in the speech of Mr. Evans.
As a parliamentary debater, using that term in its true signification and with its proper limitations, George Evans is entitled to high rank. He entered the House in 1829, at thirty-two years of age, and served until 1841, when he was transferred to the Senate. He retired from that body in 1847. Upon entering the Senate, he was complimented with a distinction never before or since conferred on a new member. He was placed at the head of the Committee on Finance, taking rank above the long list of prominent Whigs, who then composed the majority in the chamber. The tenacity with which the rights of seniority are usually maintained by senators enhances the value of the compliment to Mr. Evans. Mr. Clay, who had been serving as chairman of the committee, declined in his favor with the remark that "Mr. Evans knew more about the finances than any other public man in the United States." The ability and skill displayed by Mr. Evans in carrying the tariff bill of 1842 through the Senate, fully justified the high encomiums bestowed by Mr. Clay. The opposition which he led four years after to the tariff bill of 1846 gave Mr. Evans still higher reputation, though the measure was unexpectedly carried by the casting vote of the Vice-President.
When Mr. Evans's term of service drew near to its close, Mr. Webster paid him the extraordinary commendation of saying in the Senate that "his retirement would be a serious loss to the government and the country." He pronounced the speech just then delivered by Mr. Evans, on the finances, to be "incomparable." The "senator from Maine," continued Mr. Webster, "has devoted himself especially to studying and comprehending the revenue and finances of the country, and he understand that subject as well as any gentleman connected with the government since the days of Gallatin and Crawford,—nay, as well as either of those gentlemen understood it." This was the highest praise from the highest source! Of all who have represented New England in the Senate, Mr. Evans, as a debater, is entitled to rank next to Mr. Webster!
The next Congress met in December, 1847. Besides the venerable ex- president, there were two future Presidents among its members— Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Mr. Robert C. Winthrop was chosen Speaker. He was nominated in the Whig caucus over Samuel F. Vinton of Ohio, because he had voted for the Wilmot Proviso, and Mr. Vinton against it.* Mr. Vinton was senior in age and long senior in service to Mr. Winthrop. Mr. Vinton had entered the House in 1823 and Mr. Winthrop in 1840. Mr. Vinton had moreover been selected as the Whig candidate for Speaker in the preceding Congress, when that party was in minority. The decision against him now created no little feeling in Whig circles, especially in the West where he was widely known and highly esteemed. But, while Mr. Winthrop was rewarded by this nomination for his vote in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, the more pronounced anti-slavery men were hostile to him. In the end he owed his election to timely aid from Southern Whigs. This fact, no doubt, had its effect on Mr. Winthrop's mind, and with other influences tended to separate him rapidly and conclusively from the anti-slavery wing of the Whig party.
It would, however, be unjust to Mr. Winthrop not to recognize that the chief reason for his selection as Speaker was his pre-eminent fitness for the important post. He was a young man, and, other conditions being equal, young men have been uniformly preferred for the arduous duties of the Chair. From the organization of the government the speakers, at the time of their first election, have been under forty-five years of age,—many, indeed, under forty. In only four instances have men been selected beyond the age of fifty. Mr. Clay when first chosen was but thirty-four, Mr. Polk thirty-nine, Mr. John Bell thirty-seven, Mr. Howell Cobb thirty- three, and Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter, the youngest man ever elected Speaker, was but thirty. Mr. Winthrop was thirty-eight. He was bred to the law in the office of Mr. Webster, but at twenty-five years of age entered political life as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He was soon after promoted to the speakership of that body, where he earned so valuable a reputation as a presiding officer that some of his decisions have been quoted as precedents in the National House, and have been incorporated in permanent works on Parliamentary Law. He was chosen in Congress when he was but thirty, and was in his fifth term in the House when he was advanced to the Speakership. As an orator he was always graceful and effective, but never took high rank in the House as a debater. His early life gave promise of a long public career in Massachusetts as the successor of the older Whig leaders who were passing off the stage. He followed Mr. Webster in the Senate for a brief period, when the latter became Secretary of State under Mr. Fillmore. His conservative tendencies on the Slavery question, however, were not in harmony with the demands of public opinion in Massachusetts, and in 1851 he was defeated for the governorship by George S. Boutwell, and for the senatorship by Charles Sumner. Mr. Winthrop's political career closed when he was forty-two years of age.
The events of the year 1847 had persuaded the Whig leaders that, if they persisted in the policy embodied in the Wilmot Proviso, they would surrender all power to control the ensuing Presidential election. By clever management and the avoidance of issues which involved the slavery question, they felt reasonably sure of the votes of Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, with a probability of securing Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida. To throw these States away by an anti-slavery crusade was to accept inevitable defeat, and disband the Whig party. Mr. Winthrop was therefore representing the prevailing wishes of Northern Whigs when he used his influence to restrain rather than promote the development of the anti-slavery policy which had been initiated with such vigor. The result of this change was soon visible. In the preceding House, with a large Democratic majority, the Wilmot Proviso had been adopted. In the Whig House, over which Mr. Winthrop presided, it was found impossible to repeat the vote during the preparations for the national contest then impending. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which we acquired a vast territory from Mexico, was ratified by the Senate, and the House voted the fifteen millions demanded by it without adding a restriction of any kind on the subject of slavery. Every acre of the nine hundred thousand square miles was free territory while under the rule of Mexico, and the Commissioners of that government were extremely anxious that the United States should give a guaranty that its character in this respect should not be changed. They urged that to see slavery recognized upon soil once owned by Mexico would be so abhorrent to that government as it would be to the United States to see the Spanish Inquisition established upon it. Mr. Nicholas F. Trist, the American commissioner, gave a reply which a free Republic reads with increasing amazement. He declared that if the territory proposed to be ceded "were increased tenfold in value, and, in addition to that, covered a foot thick with pure gold, on the single condition that slavery should be forever excluded," he would not "entertain the offer for a moment, nor even think of sending it to his government. No American President would dare to submit such a treaty to the Senate."
With this suppression, if not indeed re-action, of the popular feeling in the North, on the subject of slavery, the two great parties approached the Presidential election of 1848. Each was under peculiar embarrassment in the selection of a candidate, and the presentation of the principles on which support was to be asked. The anomaly presented in the Congressional election of 1846, where an administration conducting a successful war was defeated before the people, promised to be repeated. The Democratic party had precipitated the war, had organized the military force that prosecuted it, had controlled its immense patronage, and had brought it to a victorious conclusion, yet had gained no political strength in the country. The two gallant soldiers who had so largely shared, if indeed they had not absorbed, its glory, were Whigs, and both were in ill-humor with the administration. After the battle of Buena Vista, Taylor's victorious progress had been checked and his army crippled by orders from Washington, which reduced his force, and turned the Regulars over to Scott. Scott ended his brilliant campaign in a flagrant quarrel with the Secretary of War, and was summoned home peremptorily with the prospect of a court-martial. He was ordered to leave General William O. Butler, a Democratic general, in command of the army in the city of Mexico after resistance had ceased.
The administration had obviously endeavored from the first to create a Democratic hero out of the war. Authorized to appoint a large number of officers in the increased military force, raised directly by the United States, an unjust discrimination was made in favor of Democrats. Thus William O. Butler, John A. Quitman, and Gideon J. Pillow, prominent Democratic leaders in their respective States, were appointed Major-generals directly from civil life. Joseph Lane, James Shields, Franklin Pierce, George Cadwalader, Caleb Cushing, Enos D. Hopping, and Sterling Price, were selected for the high rank of Brigadier-general. Not one Whig was included, and not one of the Democratic appointees had seen service in the field, or possessed the slightest pretension to military education. Such able graduates of West Point as Henry Clay, jun., and William R. McKee, were compelled to seek service through State appointments in volunteer regiments, while Albert Sidney Johnston, subsequently proved to be one of the ablest commanders ever sent from the Military Academy, could not obtain a commission from the General Government. In the war between Mexico and Texas, by which the latter had secured its independence, Johnston had held high command, and was perhaps the best equipped soldier, both by education and service, to be found in the entire country outside the regular army at the time of the Mexican war. General Taylor urged the President to give Johnston command of one of the ten new regiments. Johnston took no part in politics; but his eminent brother, Josiah Stoddard Johnston, long a senator from Louisiana, was Mr. Clay's most intimate friend in public life, and General Taylor's letter was not even answered. The places were wanted for adherents of the administration, and Tibbatts of Kentucky, Jere Clemens of Alabama, Milledge L. Bonham of South Carolina, Seymour of Connecticut, and men of that grade,—eminent in civil life, active partisans, but with no military training,—were preferred to the most experienced soldiers. This fact disfigures the energetic record of Mr. Marcy as secretary of War, and was eminently discreditable to the President and all his advisers.
Perhaps the most inexcusable blunder of the administration was the attempt to take Thomas H. Benton from the Senate, where he was honored, eminent, and useful, make him Lieutenant-general, and send him out to Mexico to supersede both Scott and Taylor in command of the army. The bill to enable this to be done actually passed the House. When under discussion in that branch, a prominent Democratic member from Ohio declared, as one reason for passing the bill, that two of the generals are opposed politically to the Democratic party, and "by their own acts or those of their friends are candidates for the Presidency." The evident basis of this argument was, that the Mexican war being a Democratic venture, no Whig had the right to profit by it. The bill was fortunately stopped in the Senate, though that body at the time had a Democratic majority. The measure was killed by one convincing speech from Mr. Badger of North Carolina. The senators knew Colonel Benton's temper and temperament, and understood how completely unfitted he was for military command, and how his appointment would demoralize and practically destroy the army. To the end of his life, however, Colonel Benton himself believed a serious mistake had been made. He had been commissioned colonel in the war of 1812, but though of unquestioned bravery, and deeply read in military science, it had never been his fortune to engage in battle, or to see the face of an enemy. Yet in the autobiographical sketch which precedes his "Thirty Years' View," he complacently assured himself that his appointment as Lieutenant- general over Scott and Taylor "could not have wounded professional honor," as at the time of his retiring from the army he "ranked all those who have since reached its head."
But all the efforts to make a Democratic hero out of the war failed. The line-officers appointed from civil life behaved gallantly. The volunteers under their command were exceptionally excellent,— almost competent themselves to the conduct of a campaign. The political generals who vaulted from law-offices into the command of brigades and divisions were furnished by the War Department with staff-officers carefully chosen from the best educated and most skillful of the regular army. All would not suffice, however, to displace Taylor and Scott from the post of chief heroes. "Old Rough and Ready," as Taylor was called by his troops, became a popular favorite of irresistible strength, and in the Whig convention of 1848 was chosen over Mr. Clay as the standard-bearer of his party. He was placed before the people on his record as a soldier, unhampered by the political declarations which make up the modern platform. Mr. Clay had expected the nomination, and General Scott had offered to run on the same ticket as Vice-President; but against the constantly rising tide of Taylor's popularity both ordinary and extraordinary political combinations gave way. Even the Kentucky delegation divided,—in accordance with Mr. Crittenden's judgment, though not by his advice. To the overwhelming chagrin and mortification of Mr. Clay, a man unknown in political circles was preferred as the candidate of the party of which he felt himself to have been the creator. Mr. Clay was enraged by the result, and never became reconciled to it. Though he gave in the end a quiet vote at the polls for Taylor, he stubbornly refused during the campaign to open his lips or write a word in favor of his election. Mr. Webster, though without the keen personal disappointment of Mr. Clay, was equally discontented with the nomination. He had spoken in a semi-public way for several months previous to the convention, of the folly of nominating "a swearing, swaggering, frontier colonel" for the Presidency,—an allusion to General Taylor, which was scandalously unjust, and which was contradicted by his whole life. When Taylor was finally nominated, Mr. Webster resented the selection as an indignity to the statesmen of the Whig party. His only ray of comfort was the defeat of Abbott Lawrence for the Vice-Presidency by Millard Fillmore. Mr. Lawrence was a man of wealth, the most prominent manufacturer at the time in the country, of high personal character, and of wide political influence. He was the leading Taylor-Whig in New England, and his course had given offense to Mr. Webster to such an extent indeed, that on a public occasion, after the Presidential election, he referred to Mr. Lawrence in an unfriendly and discourteous manner.
The situation became still further complicated. The Whigs believed they had avoided the responsibility of positive declaration on either side of the issue embodied in the Wilmot Proviso, by selecting a military hero as their candidate. In the phrase of the day, he could make a "Star and Stripe" canvass, with fair chance of success, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line. There was loss to be incurred by either course. The Whig managers saw plainly that an anti-slavery policy would give almost the entire South to the Democrats, and a pro-slavery policy would rend the Whig party throughout the North. They wisely concluded, if the canvass were merely a game to win votes, that the non-committal plan was the safe one. But this evasive course was not wholly successful. There was a considerable body of men in New England, and especially in Massachusetts, known as "Conscience Whigs," who had deep convictions on the subject of slavery, and refused to support General Taylor. Conspicuous among these were Henry Wilson, E. Rockwood Hoar, and Charles Francis Adams. A defection of the same kind among the Whigs of New York was prevented by the active influence of Mr. Seward, but it developed rapidly in the northern section of Ohio. Throughout the country the Whigs began to fear that a mistake had been made, and that the old leaders had been thrown overboard without due thought of the consequences. Mr. Clay's private correspondence exhibited unmistakable gratification at this aspect of affairs, for he felt assured that the influential Whigs who were now organizing against Taylor would have supported him as cordially as they had done in 1844.