CHAPTER XXII.

WAR WITH MEXICO.

THE

HE choice of President in 1844 turned upon the Texas question, and as the vote resulted in the election of James K. Polk of Tennessee, who favored annexation, that measure continued to be pressed, as we have seen that it had been at the close of the term of President Tyler. The consequences were left to the new President. Polk was of North Caro

lina descent, one of his ancestors having been a promoter of the "Mecklenburg Resolutions" of 1775. But his family removed to Tennessee in 1806, and he was educated at the University of Nashville. Entering the practice of law, he soon found himself in a political career, and was chosen a member of the State Legislature. Subsequently he was for fifteen years a member of Congress, where he was known as an opponent of the measures of the administration of the younger Adams, and afterwards as a supporter of President Jackson. He was a man of good abilities, and of irreproachable private life. He felt the importance of the crisis at which he entered office, and said in his inaugural address, "Well may the boldest fear, and the wisest tremble, when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness

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of the whole human family." After the struggle with Mexico was over, he was able to add, doubtless with pride, "the acquisition of California and New Mexico, the settlement of the Oregon boundary, and the annexation of Texas, extending to the Rio Grande, are results which, combined, are of greater consequence,

and will add more to the strength and wealth of the nation than any which have preceded them since the adoption of the Constitution."

At the beginning of Polk's administration the boundary between Canada and the United States near

the Pacific Ocean, was unsettled, and at the moment was threatening to bring about war. The United States had long laid claim to the territory in the Oregon region, on the Pacific, as far as fifty-four degrees and forty minutes, and one of the war cries of the Polk campaign had been “ fifty-four forty or fight!" The English government had insisted, on the contrary, that the northern line of the United States did not extend beyond the forty-ninth degree. The American claim was based on the explorations of Captain Robert Gray of Boston, who had entered a river flowing into the ocean, and named it after his vessel, "Columbia," May 11th, 1792; upon the purchase of Louisiana, in 1803, by which all the rights of Spain to the western shores were conveyed; and upon the explorations of Lewis and Clarke soon after that time, by whom the river Columbia had been descended to its mouth. During the administration of Monroe, the United States had proposed a settlement of the dispute, and again in the time of Tyler, and by 1844, the interest in the subject had risen to a remarkable height, and there were those who said that they would rather make the territory the grave of their fellow-citizens and color its soil with their blood, than surrender one inch of it. In his inaugural address, President Polk had stated that he considered our title to the disputed territory "clear and unquestionable;" the region had been held by joint occupancy, under agreements made in 1818 and 1827, but the number of Americans who had settled there had become so considerable that a decision of the ownership of the soil was imperative. During the discussion of the question, the prospect of war with Mexico became more evident, and the United

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States entered into a treaty by which the claims of the British were recognized, and the forty-ninth degree was made our northern boundary.

War with Mexico was brought on by a dispute about the boundary of the State of Texas. The Mex

ican people on becoming independent of Spain in 1821, had united under one government the Provinces of Texas and Coahuila, of which the river Rio Grande was the western boundary. When Texas, on the other hand, had, in 1836, obtained her independence

of Mexico, she claimed that the Province of Coahuila became a part of the Republic, and this, the Legislature of the United Provinces put into the form of a resolution, December 19, 1836. Accordingly when Texas became a part of our Union, it was claimed that her western boundary was the Rio Grande, and not the Nueces, which was the boundary of the Province of Texas before her union with Coahuila by the Republic of Mexico. It was this Territory between the rivers that was in dispute.

As soon as Texas became a part of the United States she called for protection against Mexico, and General Taylor was sent from Western Louisiana with an "Army of Occupation," to advance as near the Rio Grande as he could. He established his camp at first on the Nueces, in November, 1845; but in January, 1846, he received orders to advance to the Rio Grande, and March 28th, he took a post on the east side of the river, opposite Metamoras. A month later, the Mexican General Arista informed Taylor that his government was forced into a war that it could not avoid without being unfaithful to that which is most sacred to men, and at the same time threw a body of his troops over the river and attacked a company of American dragoons, compelling them to surrender after losing sixteen men. * When news of this event reached Washington, the President sent his message to Congress, informing them that war ex

* When the President insisted in his messages that the blood of our citizens had been spilt on "our own territory," Abraham Lincoln introduced into Congress the celebrated “Spot " resolutions, in which he called upon the President to indicate the exact "spot" where this had been done, and to inform the House whether the "citizens "had not been “armed soldiers "sent there by the military orders of the President.