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In 1846, shortly after annexing the Republic of Texas
into the Union, the US for the first time in its 70-year life as an independent
nation, declared war on a country of the New World, also a former colony
which had recently obtained its independence, Mexico. It was with an overwhelming
majority that Congress adopted the war declaration, complying with a request
from the President, James Polk, a Democrat. Barely a month and a half later,
a 21-page article appeared in the American Review, a monthly periodical
which made no bones about being a Whig Journal, one identifying
with the Whig Party, at the other end of the political spectrum from the
party of the President. The author, D. D. Barnard, a Whig member of the
US House of Representatives, ostensibly voices not only his own but his
opposition to James Polk’s war policy, which he firmly contests on political
and ideological grounds. The biting tone of his denunciation stands in
sharp contrast with the jingoistic, hawkish rhetoric of the many press
articles which cheered the war at the time. The article gives an insight
into the depth of political and ideological divisions in the country about
the chief point at issue in connection with the war — territorial expansion
or expansionism. We may wonder, however, whether the Whigs were as opposed
to expansionism as a first reading of the article tends to suggest: while
the author forcefully challenges the "manifest destiny" ideology, does
he really reject whatever it embodies?
This paper will first focus on the author’s
political objections to President Polk’s approach; it will then comment
upon the author’s ironical denunciation of "manifest destiny"
rhetoric; finally, it will try to unravel what this article
reveals about the Whig position concerning expansionism.
No reader of this article can possibly
miss D.D. Barnard’s polemical goals: he keeps referring to James Polk.
"The President" or "he" are the grammatical subjects of a large number
of clauses; in many cases, the verbs express determination or speculation:
President intended...", "he directed,", "he has calculated...", "hardly
has the President deemed it necessary..". The same meaning is
suggested through determiners and nouns: "his
order", "his appetite" , "in every step of his progress". These
examples bear witness to the political point the author intends to make,
i.e. that the Chief Executive is bears total responsibility for the ongoing
Oddly enough, never is the President’s surname mentioned.
On the contrary, when D.D. Barnard quotes a member of the Polk Administration,
the office-holder’s name (Mr. Buchanan) is specified, rather than his position
(he was Secretary of State). This may suggest that Mr Buchanan merely acted
as a go-between, as if, albeit his essential office in the area of foreign
relations and diplomacy, he was content to be James Polk’s bellboy or messenger,
imparting "the desire of the President" to his emissary John Slidell, who
was supposed to offer Mexico a compromise, the settlement of Mexican debts
to American citizens and the purchase of California. In this way, the author
intimates that the chief executive’s function is carried out in an autocratic
manner, in violation of the constitutional framework of checks and balances
designed by the Founding Fathers. In the present situation, according to
the Whig representative, the system cannot operate inasmuch as all decisions
are made by the head of the executive branch, while the people’s representatives
in Congress are ignored. Thus the whole article invites the reader to expect
the final charge: "[the President] manifests a
reckless disregard of Constitutional restraints and of his own solemn oath",
i.e. the oath an incoming President takes on the day of his inauguration
to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States"
with the help of God. According to the author, the US has been involved
in war by an autocrat who "wantonly trample(s) on" the supreme law of the
land: democracy is in jeopardy in the US.
The author’s objective is to exonerate Congress, and
in so doing his own party, from the decision to declare war on Mexico.
Indeed the US Constitution makes Congress responsible for declaring war,
and Whig members (perhaps even Barnard himself?) were among those who voted
for war. To him, Congress was deluded by the President into bowing to his
wishes. He supplies what he regards as a "proof"
Polk’s deceitful trick ("the pretence set up by
the President,"). In his war message to Congress, delivered
on May 11, 1846, James Polk had urged the lawmakers to declare war on Mexico
for three reasons essentially: Mexico had failed to pay American claims;
it had blatantly snubbed the US by refusing to receive the American special
envoy, John Slidell; finally, and most important, Mexican troops had assailed
US soldiers on the northern bank of the Rio Grande, which James Polk claimed
was Texan (and therefore American) territory. Thus the President blamed
Mexico not only for the outbreak of hostilities, but also for openly challenging
the US: under such conditions, Congress could do nothing but take up the
gauntlet, if only to save the honor of the nation. But D.D. Barnard and
other Whigs now believe themselves to be in a position to prove the President
wrong: "We believe this to have been the
state of the case".
The evidence offered by the Whigs revolves around a set
of dates which the author clearly seems to vouch for: on January 13th,
1846, the President, as chief of the US Army, "directed the movement of
(the) army [from the Nueces river in Texas, where Zachary Taylor’s troops
had been stationed] to the Rio Grande."The presidential
order was accounted for with reference to "some new and urgent necessity
to ‘provide for the
defence of that portion of our country’".
A week later, however, James Slidell was being told by Secretary of State
Buchanan that the President had ordered the troops’ move "in
anticipation of the final refusal of the Mexican Government to receive
[him]". This is presented by D.D. Barnard as proof that James
Polk lied to Congress in his war message; he may also have deceived General
Zachary Taylor, who was to run for President in 1848 under the Whig banner
and be elected. The whole maneuver had been plotted "all along" by James
Polk, with specific objectives which had nothing to do with the plea he
made to Congress on May 11. Thus Congress, and especially the Whig Party,
were the victims of the President’s devious ways and, having been left
"no alternative but war," should be fully exonerated. They did not have
time to investigate: since American blood was already being shed due to
Mexican aggression, the people’s representatives could only give the President
the go-ahead and allow him to conduct the war for the people’s security
and the honor of the country.
What the author and his fellow Whigs also regard as a
lie is the President’s argument that the portion of land between the Nueces
and the Rio Grande was a "portion of [the American] country." To them,
the President’s order to Zachary Taylor entailed "directing
the invasion of the proper soil of Mexico" and therefore
war with Mexico on his sole authority". Indeed when Texas was
still Mexican, the Nueces was held to be its boundary. The President was
therefore supporting an irresponsible claim by the ex-Republic of Texas:
the area which American troops had penetrated was "more
than ever belonged to Texas". Therefore there was no legitimate
reason for the troops’ move. The reason could only be to "leave no alternative
but war to [the Mexican] Government." The argument puts Mexico on a level
with the representatives of the American people: both were the victims’
of James Polk’s machiavellian plot, hatched for purely expansionist purposes:
is manifest to us that the object which the President has all along proposed
to himself to secure, out of our difficulties with Mexico, has been the
acquisition of territory."
D.D. Barnard’s article makes such a striking
counterpoint to John O’Sullivan’s famed 1845 "Manifest Destiny" editorial
that we may safely infer it was written in reaction to it, to counter the
current Democratic majority’s ideology. In his Democratic Review,
O’Sullivan had aimed at convincing those still doubtful about, or opposed
to, the annexation of Texas that the Texas Republic had been "disintegrated
from Mexico in the natural course of events" and that its "incorporation
into the Union was not only inevitable, but the most natural, right, and
proper thing in the world." Barnard does not dwell on the Texas question:
it is the current war that he focuses on. In this respect, all his arguments
are meant to prove that there was nothing "natural" or "inevitable" about
the outbreak of the Mexican War: it was wholly contrived by the President.
What is "manifest" to Whigs, rather than America’s "destiny," is that the
President’s aggressive expansionist policy disproves O’Sullivan’s claim
that "California [would], probably, next fall from" Mexico "without the
agency of [the US] government." Barnard means to warn his readers that,
should California become American, it would certainly not result from "the
spontaneous working of principles" that the famous Democratic editor had
depicted a few months before.
Barnard’s polemic style is particularly aggressive when
he refers to what he thinks Polk’s political ambition is: ensuring a second
term in office. He draws the fierce caricature of an ogre with a "sharp"
"appetite" for the "fine country of the Rio Grande" and Upper California.
To portray the man from within as an American Machiavelli, he makes use
of indirect free speech: "he must have more than
ever belonged to Texas", "he could get
[Mexico’s] lands in consideration of the debts", "he
could make her bear all and everything". Barnard hints that
the President had such devious intentions right from the time he was sworn
in: he had hoped that he would preside over the annexation of Texas, but
lame-duck President John Tyler, a Whig, had played a trick on him by pushing
for annexation and securing it through a joint resolution of Congress at
the very end of his term. Thus, to D.D. Barnard, Polk wanted the Mexican
War to offset this initial setback by incorporating still more territory
into the US: if it did, history — and American voters in 1848 — would liken
James Polk to famous predecessors who contributed to an "aggrandized republic,"
namely Presidents Jefferson, who had purchased Louisiana in 1803, and Monroe,
during whose first term Spain had ceded the Floridas to the US under the
Adams-Onis Treaty. Barnard and the Whigs, however, preferred to condemn
Polk’s move as a "daring experiment and political gambling" and outdoing
worst and boldest of his predecessors", a clear allusion to
the Whigs’ chief foe, "King Andrew I" — Andrew Jackson.
Although most of the article is a harsh criticism of
the President himself and his sly designs, a central part focuses on the
expansionist or continentalist rationale. The author purposely uses standard
"manifest destiny" rhetoric such as "the march
of our greatness", or "it was our ‘destiny’
to possess and rule this continent", to echo O’Sullivan’s well-known
phrase, "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence."
The reader of the mid-1840s certainly recognized the missionary theory
whereby Americans were to "possess and rule" the "continent," so as to
bestow on it the benefits of Christian (to wit, Protestant) civilization
and of democratic institution (the "Model Republic,". The mission had been
entrusted specifically to Anglo-Saxon Americans, i.e. to the people of
British origin who had founded America and then made it into a republic.
Americans of the 1840s had inherited the mission from the May Flower Pilgrims,
who had concluded a covenant with God: the mission to "possess and rule
the continent" was therefore their "allotted inheritance".
Providence’s design had been passed on to them and they were therefore
as "bound" by the covenant to fulfill the mission as the Pilgrims had been
in the early seventeenth century. Barnard’s stress on "bound" is probably
an allusion to the other meaning of the word, i.e. to the alleged inevitability
of the whole process.
In the present article, the references to Americans’
"destiny" are mingled with indirect free speech (cf. the preterit in "We
Anglo-Saxon Americans," whereby the author suggests that James
Polk identifies with and circulates "manifest destiny" ideology. Since
D.D. Barnard has been lashing out at Polk, the reader will infer that such
ideology should at least be taken with a pinch of salt: it is unlikely,
for example, that the author subscribes to the last clause of the paragraph,
i.e. the claim that God has ordered Americans to "drive
out all other nations before [them]". "Manifest destiny" rationale
emphasized the notion of a chosen people, and expansionists of the 1840s,
most of whom were Democrats, were wont to make ample use of the personal
pronoun "we" to distinguish Anglo-Saxon Americans from other peoples and
invite all white Americans to join in the chorus. In the article, however,
Barnard clearly does not adhere to the expansionist creed. Though he may
be an Anglo-Saxon American, he does not identify with an aggressive policy
of conquest, even backed by a self-satisfying, alluring rhetoric.
Barnard probably has a point when he contests
manifest-destiny advocates’ inclusive tendencies: even among "Anglo-Saxon"
Americans, not all were continentalists, and not all were war hawks either:
J.C. Calhoun, the famous South Carolinian Democrat, was staunchly opposed
to the Mexican War. Even O’Sullivan criticized presidential war policies
initially. However, a large section of the nation had caught the expansionist
fever, as attested by the Democratic presidential front-runner, Martin
Van Buren, losing his party’s 1844 nomination to Polk because he did not
back the annexation of Texas. The Whig candidate, Henry Clay, lost the
subsequent election to Polk, due to the latter’s call for annexation of
Oregon and of Texas; campaign propaganda actually urged "reannexation"
of Texas, on the (debatable) grounds that it had been part of the Louisiana
Territory in 1803, and should never have been renounced by Secretary of
State John Quincy Adams in the Adams-Onis Treaty. Given the scope of expansionist
fervor in the mid-1840s, reflected in the enthusiastic popular response
to the Mexican War in the whole country, blaming the sole President for
the current diplomatic ventures was hardly legitimate. The author clearly
avoids mentioning the Democratic Party: in so doing he fails to draw a
faithful portrait of the US. Thus it was not Polk who set up what Barnard
calls "the absurd and false claim to the whole of Oregon" — i.e. including
what was soon to become British Columbia, as far as the border with Russian
Alaska, on line 54° 40’. The claim was made by Western Democrats, including
Senators Lewis Cass and Allen, who understandably showed more interest
in western aggrandizement, which they hoped would reinforce the West’s
weight in the Union, than in pushing US borders further south.
Though neither party is named, this article is blatantly
partisan and not entirely devoid of demagogy, as befits a mid-term election
year editorial: in 1846, the Whig Party was hoping to recapture a majority
in Congress, lost to the Democrats in 1844. For partisan-political reasons,
D.D. Barnard makes a point of distinguishing the American people from the
chief executive when he ironically mentions to the "supreme affection which
[Polk] thinks animates the American people for their neighbor’s possessions
— or what he supposes to be [their] covetous desires, [their] rapacity,
and [their] ambition." He reproaches the President with attributing to
the people moral flaws which are actually his own.
Where does Representative Barnard, as a Whig, stand in
the expansionist debate? It is easy to guess that he does not support the
"All Mexico or none" movement, backed only by the most extremists of expansionists.
He is even opposed to fighting for the "fine country of the Rio Grande,"
though it includes "several of the richest mines
in all Mexico". The economic wealth it would bring to the US
would not offset the problems that would arise from the fact that the area
includes "several towns and cities, and sixty thousand Mexicans." Under
the rules set by Jefferson in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, this would
make the area eligible for statehood immediately. But were mixed-race Catholic
Mexicans fit to rule themselves? Many in the US doubted it at the time.
Barnard does not pose the problem explicitly, but such questions were so
often debated in the mid-1840s that mere hints were sufficient.
A few tell-tale signs reveal that Barnard is not entirely
opposed to expansionism, however. First, he fails to call into question
the annexation of Texas, which was Mexico’s legitimate motive for severing
diplomatic relationships with the US in 1845. Naturally he could hardly
challenge it since a Whig President could be credited with its completion.
But when he writes about Mexico being "unwise
enough to sulk about the Annexation of Texas", it is
not clear whether his words are to be interpreted as an ironical denunciation
of Polk’s contemptuous attitude to the southern neighbor of the US or if
he himself would not be inclined to be paternalistic toward the weaker
nation. Either way, it is clear that he considers Texas to be part and
parcel of the US now, however Mexico may feel about it.
When the article was published, the negotiations with
Britain about the Oregon Country had almost led to a treaty. Since 1818,
Oregon had been submitted to a status of joint occupation: but several
thousand American pioneers and settlers had been taking the Oregon Trail
to the fertile Willamette Valley in the last few years. Neither the Whigs
nor the Democrats were insensitive to their political future. The reader
can guess from the article that incorporating the south of the Oregon Country
is not deemed unreasonable by Barnard: Whig politicians favored economic
and commercial expansion, and Puget Sound could afford an attractive gateway
to the Pacific and to Asian commerce. American interest in China had begun
to manifest itself two years before, when the US-Sino (Wanghiya) Treaty
had been hammered out, under Whig President Tyler. And although Barnard
feigns ironical contempt when he pictures Polk aiming to"clutch"
"the fine harbor of San Francisco", Whig politicians were not
insensitive to the great commercial promise of the Golden Gate.
What he clearly rejects about Polk’s handling of the
Oregon question is its extremism: he thinks the US has no legitimate cause
for claiming 54° 40’ as its northern border, insofar as few if any
Americans have settled north of Puget Sound. Senator Allen’s "Fifty-four
Forty or Fight" slogan is therefore dismissed as genuinely imperialistic
since it cannot be justified as meeting the needs of American citizens.
Thus it would be wrong to infer from a superficial reading
of the article that Barnard or his Party were opposed to any form of territorial
expansion: what they refused was conquest, hence the call for "peace
without conquest" in the conclusion. Land obtained through conquest
was a form of theft, "the wanton desire of spoiling the enemy of his goods,
his possession and his heritage." Mexico had recently won its independence,
as the US had in 1776: Americans should therefore respect Mexicans’ desire
for self-determination, in accordance with their own cherished principles,
and should seek to restore peaceful relations with the "sister republic"
to the south, as Jefferson himself had recommended. The Democratic administration’s
deceitful and hostile attitude endangered the "honor" of the nation. Vanquishing
a "poor, distracted (country), in anarchy, and
almost in ruins" was anything but glorious — it was dishonorable.
As Barnard anticipates, even the "Imperial City" (Mexico City) was captured:
Polk insisted that it be so, and when General Taylor appeared too tepid,
he had General Winfield Scott carry out the mission in 1847, although the
negotiations for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had already begun.
The reference to the nation’s "honor" in the article
may also mean that Barnard identifies with at least part of the "manifest
destiny" ideology: to him, as long as land can be obtained through peaceful
negotiations to serve the needs of the American people, as long as it is
achieved through strictly constitutional processes (i.e. approved by the
people’s representatives rather than spurred by the executive), expansion
is just and honorable. Inasmuch as the American democratic system is faithfully
abided by, peaceful expansion might even serve the interests of mankind.
But as the Mexican War flouts these principles, Barnard and Whigs can only
"pray the Administration, for the honor of the country, for humanity’s
sake, to make peace with Mexico."
A century and a half later, D.D. Barnard’s editorial can
be approached as a testimony that gives precious insight into the issues
being debated in the US at the beginning of the Mexican War. It reveals
that Whig politicians, many of whom had approved the declaration of war,
had grown rather uneasy: they were aware that the war was popular, yet
they had not lost hope to win the next congressional elections. A way out
was, as D.D. Barnard does in this editorial, to denounce the President’s
autocratic administration and his manipulation of the American people,
but without endangering the future of US soldiers risking their lives fighting
"Mr. Polk’s War": indeed Whig members of Congress consistently voted to
appropriate funds for the war.
Barnard himself runs a risk when he calls for "the interested
interposition of ... England, or France, or both" in the last paragraph,
in open defiance of Mr Polk’s reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine in December
1845. The prevailing mood was nationalistic in the mid-1840s, and even
if several treaties had been hammered out between Britain and the US since
the War of 1812 (chiefly to settle border questions), the two countries
still had conflicting relationships: thus it was chiefly because Britain
had taken an interest in Texas that American expansionists had succeeded
in mustering a majority in Congress to annex it. In calling for British
mediation, Whigs could be attacked for selling out America’s chief enemy,
a charge which had led to the Federalists’ demise after the War of 1812.
On the other hand, the article fails to address a pivotal
issue, the connection between the Mexican War and slavery. As proved by
the proviso introduced by a Pennsylvania Democratic representative, David
Wilmot, a month after Barnard’s editorial was published, many in America
were concerned about the question. Had the Mexican War been contrived by
anti-abolitionists, hoping to protect "the peculiar institution" by extending
it south of the Texas border, as many northern Whigs (like John Quincy
Adams) surmised? Tackling this burning issue was dangerous in an election
year and Barnard obviously preferred to turn a blind eye. Such a cowardly
attitude may have contributed to the Whig Party’s victory in the 1846 congressional
elections. But in the long run, despite Henry Clay’s attempts to postpone
the showdown through compromise, it was eventually to be fatal to the party
before the Civil War.
Puyjarinet Université de Metz