History of the War Between Mexico and the United States with a Preliminary View of its Origin Part 8

In such a juncture what was the duty of the United States? It is an easy matter for speculative philosophers or political critics to find fault with the conduct of statesmen and to become prophets of woe _after_ the occurrence of events they deprecate. But such men are timid actors on the world's stage, and especially in such a theatre of folly as the Mexican republic. Governments have but two ways of settling international disputes,--either by negotiation or war,--and, even the latter must be concluded by diplomacy, for nations rarely fight until one of them is completely annihilated. Negotiation, or the attempt to negotiate, had been completely exhausted by us. Meanwhile Mexico continued to excite our curiosity by spasmodic struggles in nerving her people for the war, as well as by gasconading despatches which breathed relentless animosity to our country for the annexation of Texas.

Nevertheless, this sensitive and vaunting nation would neither make peace, establish boundaries, negotiate, nor declare war. Was it reasonable that such a frantic state of things should be permitted to continue? Could this perverse aversion to fighting or friends.h.i.+p be tolerated? Were our countries to conclude an eternal compact of mutual hatred and non intercourse? Was such childish obstinacy and weakness to be connived at in our country? Was it due to common sense, justice, or the preservation of a good neighborhood that we should remain supine under insane threats and dishonorable treatment? We a.s.serted that, upon the Texas question, we had rightly no dispute with Mexico, except as to the boundary involved in the territory our forces were then occupying or about to cross. We did not design discussing our right to annex Texas.

That was an act accomplished and unalterable. It was, doubtless, exceedingly convenient for Mexico to maintain this pacific state of _quasi-war_ and to reject, alike, our amity and hostilities, as long as she owed us many millions of dollars and refused either to pay princ.i.p.al or interest, or to conclude a treaty for the settlement of unadjusted claims. Whilst her government was able to enforce non-intercourse, it was free from importunity and payment. But this adroit scheme of insolvency was unjust to our citizens, and only served to augment the liabilities of Mexico. What then remained to be done? The reply may be found in a significant anecdote related by Mr. Adams in a speech in congress on the Oregon question, on the 2d of January, 1846.

"After negotiating"--said he--"for twenty years about this matter we may take possession of the subject matter of negotiation. Indeed, we may negotiate after we take possession, and this is the military way of doing business. When Frederick the Great came to the throne of Prussia he found that his father had equipped for him an army of a hundred thousand men. Meeting soon after the Austrian minister, the latter said to him: "Your father has given you a great army, but ours has seen the wolf, whilst your majesty's has not." "Well--well!" exclaimed Frederick, "I will soon give it an opportunity to see the wolf!" Frederick then added, in his memoirs:--"I had some excellent old _pretensions_ to an Austrian province, which some of my ancestors owned one or two centuries before; accordingly I sent an amba.s.sador to the court of Austria stating my claim, and presenting a full exposition of my right to the province.

The same day my amba.s.sador was received in Vienna, I entered Silesia with my army!"[94]

Such would be a prompt and impulsive answer to the manifold prevarications of seditious Mexico. But the army we advanced and the country we occupied, were neither the army of Frederick nor the pleasant vales of rich and populous Silesia. A nearly desolate waste, stretched from the Nueces to the Rio Grande, barren alike in soil and inhabitants, and tempting none to its dreary wilderness but nomadic _rancheros_ or outlaws who found even Mexico no place of refuge for their wickedness.

It was, surely, not a land worthy of bloodshed, and yet, in consequence of its sterility, it became of vast importance on a frontier across whose wide extent enemies might pa.s.s un.o.bserved and unmolested. With the entire command of the Rio Grande from its source to its mouth in the hands of our enemy, and the whole of this arid region flanking the stream and interposing itself between Mexico and our troops, it is evident that our adversaries would possess unusual advantages over us either for offensive or defensive war. The mere control of the embouchure of the river was no trivial superiority, for, on a stormy and inhospitable coast, it was almost impossible to support an effectual blockade and thus prevent the enemy from being succored along his whole frontier with arms and provisions from abroad. By seizing, however, the usual points of transit and entrance on the lower Rio Grande many of these evils might be avoided; and, if Mexico ultimately resolved on hostilities, we should be enabled to throw our forces promptly across the river, and by rapid marches obtain the command of all the military positions of vantage along her north-eastern boundary.

The foresight of Frederick the Great disclosed to him the military value of Silesia in the event of a war with Austria, and it was probably that circ.u.mstance, quite as much as his alleged political rights, that induced him to enter it with an army on the day when he commenced negotiations. He began the war with Austria by surprising Saxony, and, during all his difficulties, clung tenaciously to the possession of Silesia. Saxony was important as a military barrier covering Prussia on the side of Austria, while Silesia indented deeply the line of the Austrian frontier and flanked a large part of Bohemia.[95] Thus Saxony and Silesia formed a natural fortification for Prussia, just as the deserts of the disputed land, when in our rear, covered the undefended confines of Texas at the same time that they gave us the keys to the enemy's country at Point Isabel and Matamoros.

It may be a.s.serted that, when vacant or nearly vacant territory is in controversy between two nations, and forms the only subject of real dispute between them, it would be better for both to refrain from an attempt to occupy it, provided they are willing to arbitrate the quarrel, or settle it by diplomacy. But, when both parties a.s.sert claims, both have equal rights to enter it, when negotiation fails. The decision is then to be made only by intimidation or war. There is no alternative by which collision can be escaped, and it is the duty of the wiser of the disputants to place his national forces in such an advantageous position as either to defend his acknowledged territory or force himself to be driven from the soil he claims. "I do not consider the march to the Rio Grande to have been the cause of the war"--said a distinguished statesman, "anymore than I consider the British march on Concord or Lexington to have been the cause of the American revolution, or the crossing of the Rubicon to have been the cause of the civil war in Rome. The march to the Rio Grande brought on the _collision of arms_, but, so far from being the cause of the war, it was itself the effect of those causes."

The power of declaring war is expressly reserved by the const.i.tution to congress, and, though the president is commander in chief of the army when called into actual service, he should be extremely cautious in issuing orders or doing acts which may lead to hostilities resulting in war. Our congress was in session in January, 1846, when Mr. Slidell was rejected by Mexico, when our international relations were complicated as I have described, and when the secretary of war, by the president's direction, gave the order for Taylor's advance to the Rio Grande. This was an act that brought the armies of Mexico and the United States in front of each other; and although there can be no doubt that congress would have authorised the movement of our troops under the military advice of General Taylor,--provided the Rio Grande was to be made an ultimatum in the ratification of a treaty by our senate,--it is, nevertheless, to be profoundly regretted that the question was not previously submitted to our national representatives. At that moment the public mind was distracted between Mexico and England; but the Oregon question nearly absorbed the apparently minor difficulties with our restive neighbor. Congress contemplated the solemn probability of war with one of the mightiest nations of our age, and even some of our experienced statesmen,--as we have seen in the example of Mr.

Adams,--recommended the most stringent measures of armed occupation. At such a crisis, and with a confidential knowledge of all our foreign relations, it was the duty of the president to represent these matters frankly to congress and to ask the opinion of his const.i.tutional advisers, as he subsequently did in the settlement of the dispute with Great Britain. This prudent act would have saved the executive from needless responsibility, whilst it indicated a sensitive devotion to the behests of our const.i.tution. Congress met whilst our troops were encamped at Corpus Christi, as an army of observation, whose hostile, though protective character, was unquestionable; yet our representatives neither ordered its return nor refused it supplies. This denoted a willingness to sanction measures which might either pacify Mexico, or impose upon that republic the immediate alternative of war. It is not improbable that congress would have adopted such a course, because, according to the pretensions of Mexico, our troops had already invaded her domains. This is an important view of the question which should not be pa.s.sed by silently. Mexico, it must be remembered, never relinquished her right to reconquer Texas, but always claimed the _whole_ province as her own, a.s.serting a determination to regard its union with our confederacy as justifiable cause of war. The joint-resolution, alone, was therefore a belligerent act of the congress of the United States, sufficient, according to the doctrine of Mexico, to compel hostile retaliation. But, moreover, as the entire soil of Texas, from the Sabine to the Nueces or Rio Grande was still claimed by Mexico as her unsurrendered country, the landing of a single American soldier anywhere south of our ancient boundary with Spain, was quite as hostile an invasion of Mexican territory as the pa.s.sage of our army from Corpus Christi to Point Isabel.

Occasions upon which the eminent right of self protection has been adopted as a principle of action in the United States, are not wanting in our political history. The circ.u.mstances in all, are of course not precisely the same, but the policy is identical. The conduct of our government in regard to General Jackson's invasion of Florida for the suppression of Indian cruelties may be referred to. But congress might have found a still more a.n.a.logous case, in the dispute between Spain and the United States as to the eastern limits of Louisiana. Spain alleged that Florida extended to the Mississippi, embracing what was then a wilderness, but, now, forms the populous States of Alabama and Mississippi; while our government a.s.serted that all the territory eastward of the Mississippi and extending to the Rio Perdido belonged of right to us by virtue of the treaty concluded at Paris on the 30th of April, 1803. By acts of congress in 1803 and 1804 the president was authorized to take possession of the territory ceded by France, to establish a provisional government, to lay duties on goods imported into it; and, moreover, _whenever he deemed it expedient_, to erect the bay and river Mobile into a separate district, in which he might establish a port of entry and delivery.

In 1810, President Madison believing that the United States had too long acquiesced in the temporary continuance of this territory under Spanish domain, and that nothing was to be gained from Spain by candid discussion and amicable negotiation for several years, solved the difficulty by taking possession of Mobile and Baton Rouge and extending our jurisdiction to the Perdido. This possession, he took means to ensure, if needful, by military force. Mr. Madison's conduct was a.s.sailed in congress by the federalists who regarded it as an unjustifiable and offensive demonstration against Spain, but it was defended with equal warmth by the opposition,--especially by Mr.

Clay,--and the Rio Perdido has ever since continued to form the western limit of Florida.[96]

When nations are about to undertake the dread responsibility of war, and to spread the sorrow and ruin which always mark the pathway of victorious or defeated armies, they should pause to contemplate the enormity of their enterprise as well as the principles that can alone justify them in the sight of G.o.d and man. Human life cannot be lawfully destroyed, a.s.sailed or endangered for any other object than that of just defence of person or principle, yet it is not a legal consequence that defensive wars are always just.[97]

"It is the right of a State," said that profound moralist and statesman, Sir James Mackintosh, "to take all measures necessary for her safety if it be attacked or threatened from without: provided always that reparation cannot otherwise be obtained; that there is a reasonable prospect of obtaining it by arms; and that the evils of the contest are not probably greater than the mischiefs of acquiescence in the wrong; including, on both sides of the deliberation, the ordinary consequences of the example as well as the immediate effects of the act. If reparation can otherwise be obtained, a nation has no necessary, and therefore no just cause of war; if there be no probability of obtaining it by arms, a government cannot, with justice to their own nation, embark it in war; and, if the evils of resistance should appear on the whole greater than those of submission, wise rulers will consider an abstinence from a pernicious exercise of right as a sacred duty to their own subjects, and a debt which every people owes to the great commonwealth of mankind, of which they and their enemies are alike members. A war is just against the wrongdoer when reparation for wrong cannot otherwise be obtained; but is then only conformable to all the principles of morality when it is not likely to expose the nation by whom it is levied to greater evils than it professes to avert, and when it does not inflict on the nation which has done the wrong, sufferings altogether disproportioned to the extent of the injury. When the rulers of a nation are required to determine a question of peace or war, the bare justice of their case against the wrongdoer never can be the sole, and is not always the chief matter on which they are morally bound to exercise a conscientious deliberation. Prudence in conducting the affairs of their subjects is in them a part of justice."

These are the true principles by which Mexico should have judged the controversy between us, before she rejected all our efforts to negotiate, and forced our government to prepare for hostilities.

The idea of war, for mere conquest, seems now to be obsolete among civilized nations. To political dominion, as exhibited in the various governments of the old world, and in most of the new, geographical limits are definitely a.s.signed. This fact must, hereafter, greatly modify the objects of war, by narrowing them to _principles_ instead of _territory_. Principles, however, are always the fair subjects of controversy for the diplomatic art. Yet such is the perversity of human nature, that, although we are convinced of the propriety and possibility of adjusting our disputes by reason, we nevertheless go to war for these very principles, and, after having done each other an incalculable amount of injury, at last sit down like cripples, to negotiate the very matters which ought to have been treated and terminated diplomatically at first. It is, perhaps, the folly of mankind to believe that there is more wisdom in negotiators and diplomacy when nations are lame and weakened by war than when they are full of the vigorous energy and intelligence of peace!

NOTE.--It may be useful to record the following proclamation of General Woll, before annexation, in order to show, that the agreements between Santa Anna and the Texans in 1836, are not the only Mexican doc.u.ments in existence which seemed to open the boundary question between Texas and Tamaulipas.

"_Headquarters of the Army of the North, Mier, June 20, 1844._

"I, Adrian Woll, general of brigade, &c., make known:

"1. The armistice agreed on with the department of Texas having expired, and the war being, in consequence, recommenced against the inhabitants of that department, all communication with it ceases.

"2. Every individual, of whatever condition, who may contravene provisions of the preceding article, shall be regarded as a traitor, and shall receive the punishment prescribed in article 45, t.i.tle 10, treatise 8, of the articles of war.

"3. _Every individual who may be found at the distance of one league from the left bank of the Rio Bravo, will be regarded as a favorer and accomplice of the usurpers of that part of the national territory, and as a traitor to his country; and, after a summary military trial, shall receive the said punishment._

"4. Every individual who may be comprehended within the provisions of the preceding article, and may be rash enough to fly at the sight of any force belonging to the supreme government, shall be pursued until taken, or put to death.

"5. In consideration of the situation of the towns of La Reda and Santa Rita de Ampudia, as well as of all the _farm houses beyond the Rio Bravo_, I have this day received, from the supreme government, orders to determine the manner by which those interested are to be protected; but, until the determination of the supreme government be received, I warn all those who are beyond the limits here prescribed, to bring them within the line, or to abandon them; as those who disobey this order, will infallibly suffer the punishment here established.

ADRIAN WOLL.

FOOTNOTES:

[81] On the 15th of June, 1845, Mr. Bancroft, as acting secretary of state, wrote to General Taylor as follows:

"The point of your ultimate destination is the western frontier of Texas, where you will select and occupy, on or near the Rio Grande del Norte, such a site as will consist with the health of the troops, and will be best adapted to repel invasion, and to protect what, in the event of annexation, will be our western border."

On the 30th of July, 1845, the secretary of war, Mr. Marcy, declared to him that "the Rio Grande is claimed to be the boundary between the two countries, and up to this boundary you are to extend your protection, only excepting any posts on the eastern side thereof which are in the actual occupancy of Mexican forces, or Mexican settlements over which the republic of Texas did not exercise jurisdiction at the period of annexation, or shortly before that event. It is expected that, in selecting the establishment for your troops, you will approach as near the boundary line--the Rio Grande--as prudence will dictate. With this view, the President desires that your position, for a part of your forces, at least, should be west of the river Nueces."

This, and even more forcible language, was repeated in letters from the same source on the 23d and 30th of August, and on the 16th of October, 1845. In the last letter the secretary of war states distinctly that the western boundary of Texas is the Rio Grande. See Senate doc. No. 337, 29th cong. 1st sess. pp. 75, 77, 80, 81, 82.

[82] That this was General Taylor's view of the question is proved by a remark in his letter to General Ampudia on the 12th of April, 1846, on being warned by that officer to break up his camp and to retire to the other bank of the Nueces. General Taylor says: I need hardly advise you that charged as I am, _in only a military capacity, with the performance of specific duties, I cannot enter into a discussion of the international question involved in the advance of the American army_.--id. p. 124.

[83] See Senate Doc. No. 337, 29th cong. 1st sess. p. 99.

[84] Id. p. 75.

[85] Id. p. 82.

[86] American State papers, vol. 4, p. 468.

[87] Id. vol. 2, p. 662.

[88] As it may be important that the reader should understand the t.i.tle to Louisiana under which the boundary of the Rio Grande was claimed, the following is a summary of its history. Louisiana originally belonged to France, but by a secret compact between that country and Spain in 1762, and by treaties, in the following year, between France, Spain, and England, the French dominion was extinguished on all the continent of America. In consequence of the treaty between this country and England in 1783, the Mississippi became the western boundary of the United States from its source to the 31 of north lat.i.tude, and thence, on the same parallel to the St. Mary's. France, it will be remembered, always had _claimed_ dominion in Louisiana to the Rio Bravo or Rio Grande, by virtue

1st. Of the discovery of the Mississippi from near its source to the ocean.

2d. _Of the possession taken, and establishment made by La Salle, at the bay of St. Bernard, west of the rivers Trinity and Colorado, by authority of Louis XIV, in 1685_; notwithstanding the subsequent destruction of the colony.

3d. Of the charter of Louis XIV, to Crozat in 1712.

4th. The historical authority of Du Pratz, Champigny, and the Count de Vergennes.

5th. Of the authority of De Lisle's map, and of the map published in 1762 by Don Thomas Lopez, _geographer to the king of Spain_, as well as of various other maps, atlases, and geographical and historical authorities.

By an article of the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, in October, 1800, Spain retroceded Louisiana to France; yet this treaty was not promulgated till the beginning of 1802. The paragraph of cession is as follows: "His Catholic majesty engages to retrocede to the French republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations above recited relative to his Royal Highness, the Duke of Parma, the colony and province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it already has in the hands of Spain, _and that it had when France possessed it_, and such as it should be, after the treaties pa.s.sed subsequently between Spain and other powers." In 1803, Bonaparte, the first consul of the French republic, ceded Louisiana to the United States, as fully and in the same manner as it had been retroceded to France by Spain in the treaty of San Ildefonso; and, by virtue of this grant, Messieurs Madison, Monroe, Adams, Clay, Van Buren, and Jackson contended that the original limits of the state had been the Rio Grande. However, by the 3rd article of our treaty with Spain in 1819, all our pretensions to extend the territory of Louisiana towards Mexico or the Rio Grande, were resigned and abandoned by adopting the River Sabine as our southern confine in that quarter. See Lyman's diplomacy of the United States. Vol. 1, p. 368, and vol. 2, p. 136.

The following extract from a valuable letter with which the author was favored by Ex-President Adams, who, as secretary of state, conducted the negotiations with Spain, will explain his opinions and acts upon a subject of so much importance.

QUINCY, 7th July, 1847.

"Whoever sets out with an inquiry respecting the right of territories in the American hemisphere claimed by Europeans, must begin by settling certain conventional principles of right and wrong before he can enter upon the discussion.