The U.S. presidential election held in late autumn of 1844 was not merely a contest over which party would administer the executive branch of the federal government, it was a referendum on whether the nation would go to war with Mexico. The margin of victory was razor-thin but the ascendancy of James K. Polk to the post of Commander-in-chief meant a plurality of voting Americans believed the United States should annex the breakaway state and accept the consequences: that incorporation of the Lone Star Republic meant inheriting an ongoing war with Mexico.[1]

Right: One of several campaign banners Nathaniel Currier is known to have produced for the Democrats in 1844. It features two laurel-wreathed, oval portraits of Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates James K. Polk (left) and George M. Dallas (right). The print imitates the hanging drapes and tassels of cloth banners, aspiring to a "trompe l'oeil" effect. In the center, above the portraits, appear an eagle and several American flags. Below the portraits are acanthus cornucopias similar to those in the "Grand National Whig Prize Banner Badge" (no. 1844-9). The campaign slogan "Polk, The Young Hickory. Dallas And Victory" appears in a rising sun above the eagle. Nathaniel Currier also produced a nearly identical banner for opposition candidates Clay and Frelinghuysen (no. 1844-12). Judging from its copyright date the Whig banner appeared in April, while the Democratic banner was not deposited for copyright until June 26, after that party's late-May national convention. Source: Wikimedia.

From the time Texas submitted its first application for annexation in 1837 the belief that incorporation entailed war was common among Americans and Mexicans and became widespread as 1844 approached. In addition, northern anti-slavery activists believed southern expansionists advocated annexation to extend slavery into that territory and simultaneously overwhelm northern representation in the federal government. Quaker abolitionist and writer Benjamin Lundy ascribed to this conspiracy in his 1837 compilation, The War in Texas, and quoted former U.S. President John Quincy Adams’ 1835 speech claiming Texas “‘insurrectionists’” were essentially Americans “‘revolutionizing the country; and that they are dependent upon this nation, for both the physical and pecuniary means, to carry the design into effect.’” Similar to Mexican rhetoric overlooking Tejano contribution to Texan independence, Adams believed the looming conflict represented a larger racial conflagration pitting “‘soldiers of fortune’” such as Santa Anna against white settlers. In his dire prognostication, Adams believed such a war would become “‘a war of races – the Anglo-Saxon American pitted against the Moorish-Spanish-Mexican American,’” he wrote, “‘a war between the Northern and Southern halves of North America, from Passamaquoddy to Panama.’”[2]

While Lundy represented a growing northern dissatisfaction with the persistence of slavery, moderate politicians who believed adding Texas to the American Union was a provocation were more reluctant to make public claims due to the fear of backlash from vocal southerners. One expansionist who put Adams in his crosshairs was Henry Stuart Foote. Foote was one of a handful of key Polk allies in the senate during the war and played a prominent role in the effort to annex all of Mexico and later Yucatan at a critical period in late 1847 and early 1848. In 1841, Foote published, Texas and the Texans, and was flourishingly critical of Adams’ efforts to keep the breakaway republic out of American hands. Foote labeled the former president one of “the enemies of Texas and the Texans” and a “Goliath-of-Gath Ex-President of a great Republic… and mischievous peddler of interested Politico-Fanaticism, who ever attempted to shuffle off his false haberdashery upon honest and confiding men and women...” Foote argued the initial rejection of annexation made Texas “at once a great Empire – leaving her resources under her own control, and placing her in a position much better than that of the States of the Union.”[3]

The Mexican Perspective

Mexicans also followed sectional divisions in the United States but used the terms “acquire” (adquiriendo), “aggregation” (agregación), and “admission” (admisión) when addressing the subject. During the years after Texan independence, Diario’s editors in Mexico City printed excerpts of U.S. antislavery groups’ petitions to the federal government opposing annexation as if those groups were articulating official Mexican position, and believed those pleas carried more weight in the larger debate than they did. In essence, many naively hoped anti-slavery sentiment in the north and New England was stronger than the zeitgeist to push the boundaries of the United States. Ultimately, when the issue arose again in the 1844 presidential election the Mexicans were caught off guard because Polk was relatively obscure, but the popularity of the Democrat party platform brought victory. In sum, they overestimated the power of antislavery feeling among Americans vis-à-vis the desire for territory, and when the invasion commenced in 1846, they discovered that among the soldiers fighting side-by-side with southerners were indifferent northerners from every state more concerned with adventure and glory in their nation’s first foreign war than with the plight of the slave. This assumption was a strategic and costly gamble on the part of the Mexicans – who might have been better served engaging with the British to reach an accommodation rather than futilely seeking to regain militarily what was lost. Nevertheless, it was extremely difficult for moderate Mexican statesman to even consider talking with the Texans given the militaristic rhetoric emanating from the junta prior to the war.[4]

In 1883 the conservative historian and poet José María Roa Bárcena articulated the Mexican position concerning annexation in his work Memories of the North American Invasion. Roa Bárcena noted that in 1843, Jose Maria Bocanegra, the Minister of Foreign Relations who worked with U.S. officials to have prisoners of the Santa Fe Expedition released, was concerned over “the spirit and tone of the North American press in favor of the admission of Texas to the Union,” and informed U.S. Minister to Mexico Waddy Thompson that Thompson was “‘obliged to prevent an unprecedented aggression in the annals of the world from being consumed… at the expense of the disasters of war…’” In addition to proclamations in 1843 directed at foreign invaders in Texas, Juan Almonte, the Mexican Minister in Washington issued his own ultimatums equating annexation with military aggression – forcing the U.S. Secretary of State Abel Upshur to respond: “As to the threat of war made in advance, in the name and by the express order of the Mexican Government, the undersigned reminds General Almonte that it is neither the first nor the second time that Mexico has given the same warning to the United States, under similar circumstances.” Relations further deteriorated in 1844 when Secretary of State John C. Calhoun and Texas commissioners effected a treaty of annexation in Washington for consideration in the Senate. Bocanegra’s reaction, which had become official policy, was that “Mexico would have to consider the ratification of the treaty as a declaration of war.”[5]

Right: A half-length portrait (seated, facing front) of Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, a Mexican general, politician and diplomat. Source: Wikimedia.

Americans understood as much from press reports, noted how the issue “united all parties” in Mexico, and how the Mexican government “would listen to no propositions” regarding Texas because the government – regardless of party affiliation – “repeated its former declarations that it would consider annexation as a declaration of war.” Although Calhoun’s treaty was rejected by pro-annexationist senators like Thomas Hart Benton because they believed annexation required full congressional approval (i.e. both the House and Senate), it nevertheless demonstrated to Mexican officials that events were moving headlong in the direction of annexation and the upcoming presidential election was the deciding factor. Adding to the war chorus was increasingly belligerent language from the Democrat party towards Great Britain, which tied the entire expansionist platform together to create one grand geostrategic bugbear justifying continental ambitions. Philadelphia’s Public Ledger encapsulated the platform: “They want California, they want Texas, they want Oregon; and possessing the whole, they would drive us out of the Pacific, and annoy seriously in the Gulf of Mexico.”[6]

“Annexation and war with Mexico are identical!”

Although James K. Polk was a national figure among the informed political class, Whig presidential candidate and Kentucky senator Henry Clay had long been a household name. Because Polk represented the Democratic platform calling for the “whole of the Territory of Oregon… and the re-annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable period” it was incumbent on Clay to articulate his position on Texas, and he avoided doing so as long as possible to preserve fragile sectional alliances within the Whig party. On April 13, 1844, Clay visited Raleigh, North Carolina, at the behest of party members holding a rally and spoke for two hours before fireworks closed the celebration. A few days later Clay penned a letter and had his friend Senator John Crittenden forward it to the editors of the National Intelligencer – the main Whig organ in the U.S. capital. In his letter, Clay expressed his position that “‘if the government of the United States were to acquire Texas, it would acquire along with all the incumbrance which Texas is under, and among them the actual or suspended war between Mexico and Texas.” Clay’s words were clear enough, but he added, “‘Of that consequence there cannot be a doubt, Annexation and war with Mexico are identical!’” Clay’s letter was published on the 27th and that same day former president Martin Van Buren’s opinion appeared in the Washington Globe outlining his belief “that Mexico and Texas are now at war – that immediate annexation would therefore involve us in a war with Mexico.” That summer, Clay stood his ground again by adding that Mexico had “repeatedly and solemnly declared, that she would consider annexation as war with her.” Thus, the positions were crystallized for voters. One Democrat newspaper in Ohio succinctly summed up the contest:

The great issue between the Whig and self-styled Democratic parties at this time, is Henry Clay and peace – or James K. Polk and war. – Do not be alarmed, for this is really the great issue. Let us see what the facts are – Henry Clay is opposed to annexation – James K. Polk is in favor of immediate annexation, Mexico has declared that if the United States should annex Texas they should consider it a declaration of war against Mexico. Then to vote for James K. Polk, who goes in for immediate annexation, is to vote for this Government going into war with Mexico – is it not?[7]

Notes

(1.) The following is an amended excerpt from: Benjamin J. Swenson, Wars of the Mexican Gulf: The Breakaway Republics of Texas and Yucatan, US Mexican War, and Limits of Empire (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2024), 2–5.
(2.) Benjamin Lundy, The War in Texas; a review of the facts and circumstances showing that this contest is a crusade against Mexico, set on foot and supported by slaveholders, land-speculators, &c. in order to re-establish, extend, and perpetuate the system of slavery and the slave trade. (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1837), 3, 35. Adams’ speech, House of Representatives May 25, 1835.
(3.) Henry Stuart Foote, Texas and the Texans: or, advance of the Anglo-Americans to the south-west; including a history of leading events in Mexico, from the conquest by Fernando Cortes to the termination of the Texan revolution, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co., 1841), 391, 399.
(4.) Diario del Gobierno, Aug. 16, 1843. vol. 26 no. 2976. (Excerpt from Massachusetts Legislature)
(5.) José María Roa Bárcena, Recuerdos de la invasión norte-americana, 1846-1848 (Mexico: Librería Madrileña de San Buxó, 1883), 16; Upshur quoted in: George Lockhart Rives, The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 588-590; Almonte to Upshur, Nov. 3, 1843; Upshur to Almonte, Nov. 8, 1843. See: John Hays Hammond, “José María Roa Bárcena: Mexican Writer and Champion of Catholicism,” The Americas 6, no. 1 (1949): 45-55; Earl R. McClendon, “Daniel Webster and Mexican Relations: The Santa Fe Prisoners,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1933): 288–311.
(6.) “Later from Mexico” Public Ledger, Philadelphia June 20, 1844; “No Compromise” Public Ledger, Philadelphia May 1, 1844. For Benton, see: Congressional Globe, 28th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1844), 655. June 10, 1844.
(7.) Republican Banner, Nashville, May 6, 1844 (citing Raleigh letter); “Texas Opinions of the Press” Nashville Union, May 11, 1844 (citing Van Buren’s letter); “The Great Mass Meeting of the Whigs” New York Herald, Aug. 30, 1844 (Ashland letter July 27); “The Issue.” The Ohio Democrat, New Philadelphia, July 4, 1844. For an account of Raleigh, see: Henry Thomas Shanks, ed., The Papers of Willie Person Mangum, vol. 4, 103 (Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1955), 103.

"Wars of the Mexican Gulf: The Breakaway Republics of Texas and Yucatan, US Mexican War, and Limits of Empire 1835-1850" by Benjamin J. Swenson (Author) Casemate Imprint: Pen & Sword Military, November 2024. Hardcover, 272 pages. 

Highly recommended: ☆☆☆☆☆

From the publisher, "One nation in turmoil, another seeking aggrandizement, smaller states jostling for security, mercenary expeditions, and political and racial armed struggles breaking out. In 1835 the northern Mexican state of Texas declared its independence and won it after defeating General Santa Anna’s forces at the Battle of San Jacinto. A few years later, as a larger and looming war with the United States approached, the gulf state of Yucatan did the same by claiming itself a separate republic. For Mexican authorities, the existence of breakaway republics on its periphery represented an existential crisis and an opportunity for U.S. and European interests. For many on both sides, the US-Mexican war officially beginning in 1846 after the Republic of Texas was annexed to the United States was merely a continuation of a conflict that began ten years earlier. Adding to the turmoil, the uprising in Yucatan by indigenous Maya against a criollo minority in 1847 and the contemplated military intervention and annexation of that republic by American leadership towards the end of the war sheds light on a conflict with ethnic, national, and international dimensions. In his second transnational history of the Mexican-American War, historian Benjamin J. Swenson examines the breakaway republics of Texas and Yucatan and demonstrates how the war was not only a manifestation of American expansionism and internal Mexican disunion, but a geostrategic contest involving European states seeking to curtail a nascent imperial power’s dominance in North America."    ☞ Buy on Amazon