"Polking at The Issue"
POL AP2
DB 2022
INTRODUCTION
Are you familiar with what the snowball effect is? In the case that you're not, let me quickly educate you on the term. A snowball effect is a metaphorical process of a situation that starts rather small at first, but as you continue to let that snowball roll down that hill, it simply won't stop growing and growing into a greater danger. That's what the Mexican-American war is in a way to the USA, and here I am to explain to you exactly why this is the case.
In our class Policy, we've been going down the three branches of government and dissecting their processes to what feels often like it was down to the molecular level. For this unit, we're learning about the executive branch and its innerworkings, viewing previous presidents and the executive orders they had, along with their effects and intentions. Addressing our deep dive into this subject, our assigned action project is simply the equivalent of a regular AP history essay in the old fashion you're most likely thinking of.
In this essay, I've chosen the Mexican-American war due to it being a rather overlooked conflict of US history. Below you'll find an evaluation of the war and war policy, with an answered question of whether or not the Mexican-American war and its policies were just. Enjoy.
THE PROLOGUE OF A WAR
In November 5, 1844, James K. Polk had won the election for presidency as a "dark horse" (the underdog essentially) candidate for the Democrat party, and only by a small percentage as well in terms of votes against his rival Whig party candidate Henry Clay.
President Polk was incredibly invested in the idea of expansion in the United States, starting early on in his presidency with successfully negotiating a treaty to claim the territory of Oregon from the British, with the festering of a conflict not being too far ahead with Mexico.
Switching perspectives for a moment, we take a quick look at Mexico. Mexico had been awfully generous during the time, concerning themselves with Americans migrating into Texas (which was Mexican territory at the time), allowing a good handful of them to create lives for themselves in the state. This was an error on the part of Mexico, as the increasing interest in Texas from Americans began to spark conversation . During John Tyler's presidency, (which ended in 1845), he had begun proposing the idea of a treaty of annexation for Texas, speaking with US inhabitants in Mexico about signing and supporting the annexation. This was done in secrecy, as both the Texas citizens and other members in the discussion of the annexation were confident that if Mexico were to hear of the secret negotiations, they would reign hell on citizens and declare war.
Inevitably, Mexico ended up finding out about President Tyler's talk of annexation of Texas, which they then warned USA that any further discussion of the treaty would result in Mexico declaring war. This was the momentary end to any revisiting of the annexation, up until Polk came into office.
Mexico had been tense with its relations to America for a good few years before this event had occurred, as in 1842, the accidental capture of Monterrey from Mexico by the US happened. After receiving false news on an apparent war that had broken out between the USA and Mexico, a commander in the US army sent troops on ships over to Monterey to capture it from Mexico. Successfully having captured Monterey under the impression it was in war time, they only learned the next day that there was in fact, no conflict between America and Mexico and decided to give Monterey back, leaving back to America with their ships. This was also done during John Tyler's presidency, perhaps even in some way instigated by John considering his interest in Mexican territory during his run.
Revisiting Polk, he had absolutely no interest in easing these tensions. Strangely it seemed Polk, if anything, was a fan of John Tyler's work. The territory claim on Oregon had been in note of John Tyler's fear that the British were going to attempt making Oregon a slave-free state, which he believed would cause irreparable damage to the United States (which it definitely would've, but for the better), and the revisit to the annexation of Texas was seen by Polk (now known as the "Texas-Tyler" treaty) as the opportunity that he wanted to take, dismissing the warning.
The annexation of Texas ended up going through the Texan Congress and accepted the US Congress's proposal to join the United States, this was because it literally was just American immigrants in Mexico deciding whether or not they want it to be part of the USA, so inevitably it was going to pass as it was rigged in the favor of the United States. Shortly after this move, Polk attempted to bargain for the purchase of California (after signing the annexation of Texas) with Mexico, who refused and ignored Polk in negotiating any sort of purchase of California.
This all led up to the great cause of conflict: Deciding where exactly were the border of the Rio Grande.
WAR ENSUES!
Polk intentionally sent US troops to overstep the border between Mexico and US, after agitating Mexico with where the border line really is, provoking a patrolling squad on Mexico’s territory to open fire on US soldiers. This led to the death of sixteen troops on what was (at the time) Mexican soil. Polk decided to utilize the deaths of these US soldiers to falsely claim that these soldiers had their blood spilled on “American soil.” This was used to justify a declaration of war against Mexico, with the support and favor of democrats looking to commercialize and bank on the opportunity for more land. The vote to declare war was met with conflict from Congress, sparked into debate by Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln and others in Congress with something called “The Spot Resolutions", which was essentially a push for the exact location of where the corpses of the sixteen soldiers were found.
It was hard for Congress not to declare war when the House had an overwhelming vote to declare war, passing at a vote of 174 - 14.
This was overlooked and the declaration of war was passed in 1846 with overwhelming support from the states and its citizens, with the exception of New England who was anti-slavery and feared the expansion of land in America would "encourage the expansion of slavery" (which it did).
Safe to say, Americans were blood-thirsty for a war against an opponent they had full confidence they could beat. New land meant new opportunities, which was made even more promising when the land was in the hands of what Americans thought was a weak country. Why would Americans think such a thing about Mexico? Well it wasn't without reason, as Mexico’s political and economic system at the time struggled greatly due to constant coups, revolutions, and civil wars. The clear lack of stability in their systems and crippling debt surrounded by the negative take on their Roman Catholic monarchy created obvious opportunities for the United States, which was going through an economic flourish, to expand.
The war itself was quick, as territory after territory was captured by US forces. This war wasn't without losses, as 15,000 US soldiers had died in the war, with an undocumented amount of losses for Mexican soldiers that was guaranteed to be more than double the casualties that of the USA's.
Strangely enough, in terms of war policies issued, there was none that came up in my research. The only thing notable was the negotiations to actually end the war. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was proposed by Nicolas Trist, the chief clerk of the State department, who wrote to his wife in a letter regarding the proposed treaty, stated: “Knowing it to be the very last chance and impressed with the dreadful consequences to our country which cannot fail to attend the loss of that chance, I decided today at noon to attempt to make a treaty; the decision is altogether my own.”
There had been two previous attempts at negotiating a deal with Mexico, but skepticism of Polk’s associates and him, was refused and ignored. Trist and General Winfield Scott determined the only way for negotiation to be possible with Mexico was through winning the war.
Trist himself, in regards to proposing the treaty, was in favor of Mexico as he believed Washington lacked any sort of sympathetic understanding of the state that Mexico was in. The treaty that was proposed and accepted was made in defiance against President Polk, serving to aid Mexico with recovery efforts made by Nicolas Trist.
The US government was hesitant to accept the negotiation terms of the treaty in regards to paying Mexico 15 million USD, which was noted to be in “consideration of the extension acquired by the boundaries of the United States.” The US also agreed to paying off any debts owed by American citizens to the Mexican government, which mainly was tied with American Texas immigrants.
The Mexican-American war officially came to an end on February 2nd, 1848.
JUDGMENT OF CONFLICT.
Do I believe the war on Mexico was just? Considering that the cause of conflict was due to an ancient conquistador mindset on behalf of President Polk, I’m inclined to side myself on the belief that this war was incredibly unjust. As explained earlier, this war was caused and initiated the moment 16 American soldiers were ordered to overstep the borders of Mexico to build a fort on the banks of Rio Grande. It was such a forced conflict that there were many, but clearly not enough, voices in the government branches outraged by the recklessness of Polk’s actions that there were people unable to even believe that what Polk was saying was true (The Spot Resolutions). Americans began to tire of the war the longer it went on, because bloodlust can only last for so long until you get sick.
The war was built on conflict fueled by men who were told "no" too many times when they wanted to get candy last minute in the check-out aisle. It wasn't needed and shouldn't have happened, but the idea of this conflict not happening at all creates interesting conflicts in how the rest of history would've gone.
For example, would America be established as a world power as soon as it did in WW1? How would politics be affected with the state of Texas under Mexican control? Then there's the California Gold Rush, which would've been interesting to see it never happen for the American people. There's a lot of things that fascinated me about this war that make me question if it was wrong in all the right ways.
Let me quickly put something into perspective. The Mexican-American war, as mentioned earlier, ended on February 2nd, 1848, and the Civil War began in 1861. 13 years after the great expansion of territory in the United States, the Mexican-American War has been hypothesized to have indirectly caused the Civil War, due to brewing conflict over the dispute of slavery as slave states increased during a period of time where, not so long before, John Tyler had thought the belief that the British had secret plans to push for Oregon to be a free state would be catastrophic for the United States.
Oregon.
Oregon is not exactly a big state to begin with, so of course an expansion as massive as the capture of Texas and the purchase of California was going to cause conflicts on a heavily-debated topic in a politically-heated country.
Even Mexico began to polish up their political system after getting that loss handed to them so easily due to disorganization and incredible debt, with the people unified under the willpower to no longer be viewed as weak by any other countries again.
So there were pros and cons to what the war inevitably concluded to, but I'm still settled on the idea that this war was unjustified as it was just seemingly cruel for the United States to do.
Genuinely the only positive thing that came out of the war in accordance WITH the war was how the "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo" was handled by Nicolas Trist. He seemingly was the only one that had any sense of empathy with Mexico during the war, not that I don't appreciate the "Spot Resolutions", but Nicolas actually made a difference in the war and wasn't dismissed with his negotiations in favor of Mexico.
And that's the snowball effect.
CONCLUSION
I don't think there's ever gonna be a case where I pass up the opportunity to research about Mexico when it comes to an action project. It's become my pride and joy to dump hours into looking into. In this scenario though, I was obligated to learn more about the USA than Mexico, but still nonetheless I managed to squeeze out a piece of history important to Mexico's political system history (which I never had any information on before). There is something I hate about this type of AP essay format, which I've addressed at the very beginning of my introduction. That's right, the snowball effect. There was a CVS-pharmacy receipt worth of information I needed to learn about to explain something that we called the "underlying" causes to a war. Something that wasn't the direct cause of conflict, but the stressor for a war. As you may have read, there were a lot of stressors for this war.Point is, it was a lot. I don't really enjoy going down rabbit holes for an action project due to deadlines never feeling like they can honor my obsessiveness with going into detail about everything until it feels complete. Even as I was copying and pasting this text from a doc I had this information all written out on, I ended up adding two or three more underlying causes.
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