March. and under the smoke of defending the fourth part of Mexico we had just snatched from her to despoil her of another. The programme succeeded after a struggle, but the dark catastrophe locked up in our bloody acquisitions was hidden for many years. Zachary Taylor-plain, blunt warrior that he was-obeyed the orders of his commanderin-chief without a question. Marching his troops through the wild and uninhabited country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, he reached the southwestern angle of land where this latter river empties into the Gulf of Mexico. His instructions required him to take possession of Point Isabel and other points which threatened Matamoras, the Mexican town on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande; points occupied by Mexican citizens he had six months before been ordered not to molest. Taylor's advance, besides menacing an old Mexican town across the river, was a wanton and warlike invasion April. of territory on the eastern bank colonized by Mexico, to which Texas never had the shadow of a right, though voting it into her dominion. Spanish-American citizens and the local authorities protested to no purpose; for Taylor intrenched himself opposite Matamoras, in sight of the bayonets and banners of the Mexican troops, and next began blockading the river. Upon his persistent refusal to withdraw to the line of the Nueces, the Mexican general, Arista, sent a military force across the Rio Grande. Collision and bloodshed were inevitable; and a April 23. small reconnoitring party of Americans being soon after attacked by a larger Mexican force and captured, with a trifling loss in killed and wounded, the United States literally put the onus upon Mexico of striking the first blow and shedding the first blood. But the real cause of war consisted, as Mexico well claimed, in Taylor's position at the Rio Grande which he refused to quit. Indeed, it resulted readily from his plans that, after the well-fought fields of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, our conquering general crossed the Rio Grande and took Matamoras before he could possibly have learned whether Congress would declare offensive war. May 8-9. 1846. WAR AGAINST MEXICO DECLARED. 527 April. Neither troops nor squadrons on the frontier and coast of Mexico bearing the stars and stripes could terrify Paredes or give imposing consequence to Slidell's fruitless mission. Returning to New Orleans, Slidell reported by letter his ill success.*. And now it was left for the wolf to proclaim to the American people how the lamb had polluted the waters. Polk's ferocious war message was transmitted to Congress on the 11th of May, with May 11. its howling catalogue of grievances. Mexico had refused to negotiate with an envoy sent to her with full power to adjust every difference, and settle all boundary difficulties on the most indulgent terms. Mexico's continued and unredressed wrongs committed upon the persons and property of American citizens cried out against her. All this was enough to exhaust the cup of forbearance; but now "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood upon the American soil." "War exists, and notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself." This was an ingenious plea to the country, and it had its full effect, though not a word of allusion had been made to the scheme for annexing more Mexican territory. Congress resolved at once a formal declaration of the war as already existing "by the act of Mexico."§ It was enough that Taylor's gallant little army was in peril, * 1 Curtis's Webster, chap. 21. May 12-13. † We have shown how Mexico strained to pay all she was bound to pay under her treaty, until the Texas annexation fairly excused her. Supra, p. 523. See, also, 8 H. H. Bancroft, chap. 13, for details. Mexico's feeble condition pleaded for mercy. A second arbitration convention had been concluded in 1843 to dispose of outlawed claims against Mexico, and Mexican claims in return against the United States. Mexico ratified; but in the United States Senate the treaty was altered and in its mutilated state no further notice was taken of it. Yet Polk unfairly asserted, in his message of December 8 1846, that Mexico had violated her faith in this respect. 8 H. B Bancroft, ib. President's Message, May 11, 1846; Congressional Debates. for all the President's wishes to be promptly and harmoniously complied with. Congress authorized a call for fifty thousand volunteers, one-half of them to be immediately May. mustered into the service and the remainder kept as a reserve; ten million dollars out of the Treasury surplus of twelve millions were appropriated to begin operations with, and expenditures aggregating more than fifty millions were authorized before the session came to an end. To the call for volunteers our people quickly responded. The heart-beat was passionate in all sections bat New England,-" our country, right or wrong." Aug. 18. While our commander, General Taylor, after crossing the Rio Grande, struck for the interior of Mexico, summary possession was taken of the territories for which the eagle's eye had glistened. New Mexico and California were the new prey. General Kearny, at the head of a competent force, marched upon Santa Fé, the capital of New Mexico, that ancient town for which so many Texas-American invasions had been equipped. No formal opposition being offered, he hoisted the American flag and by authority of President Polk proclaimed New Mexico a part of the United States. Military possession was secured by the appointment of civil officers to govern the territory. Leaving a strong garrison at Santa Fé, Kearny ordered a portion of his command, under Colonel Doniphan, to join General Wool at Chihuahua, and then with a small force he started for California. Wool's invasion of the neighboring provinces of Coahuila and Chihuahua, west of the Rio Grande, was for military effect simply; but California, the lamb of golden fleece, made the chief prize of our rapine. Borne off from its mother's arms without a struggle, this Pacific province was almost as easily seized as New Mexico. The whole story of California's conquest is one of utter disregard for Mexican rights of jurisdiction over Mexican soil. As part of the late swarming movement we have mentioned, from the region of Missouri across the Rocky Mountains, many of our pioneer settlers had in preference to inclement Oregon 1842-43. CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA. 529 1843-45. chosen the beautiful and undulating country of upper California. Almost simultaneously with President Tyler's intrigue to acquire Texas, or perhaps slightly earlier, these American immigrants began to arrive in the Pacific coast province, and the natives treated them kindly. The Mexican republic tried in vain* to close the gate upon the dangerous new-comers. This vastly significant feat of carrying the Anglo-American race beyond the last mountain barriers west of the Mississippi and planting it firmly on the remote ocean shore was, so Benton has alleged, an act not of the American government, but of the people, which compelled the government to follow.† And with some reference to this momentous achievement, though the importance of his mission has been much exaggerated, young John C. Fremont, Benton's son-in-law, who was a young and daring lieutenant of the army, promoted soon to a captaincy, made three exploring expeditions into the vast and almost unknown interior of this immense slope, a large tract of which was ours by good right already. Oregon was the ultimate direction to which Fremont's first expedition bore; and he left the 1842. mouth of the Kansas River by a route familiar to JuneOregon trappers and emigrants, and proceeded up the Platte, and past Fort Laramie to the South Pass. This was the occasion on which our pathfinder, or scientific explorer rather, climbed to the top of the highest peak of the Rocky Mountains; a mere incident, of course, but one which took strong hold of the popular imagination. Fremont's second expedition in 1843 was of much more consequence it involved military preparations, and is said to have had military objects in view; and, more than this, Benton relates that the administration actually tried to countermand the young officer's orders, but he was hurried off by a stratagem of his wife before the Junecountermand could reach him. His new route struck farther south; on his way to our outposts on the * By an order of September, 1845. 2 Benton, 478, 579. VOL. IV.-84 September. 1843. November. +2 Benton's View, 468 Columbia he turned aside and explored the Great Salt Lake of what is now Utah Territory; and completing, finally, his overland survey he connected it with Wilkes, the 1843. naval explorer. He made a boat trip down the November. 1844. July. Columbia River to Fort Vancouver and back before starting homeward; and it was upon his homeward journey that he explored in California, having embarked upon some mythical river which was believed to flow into San Francisco Bay. Enduring with his men many winter perils among the snow-capped heights of the Nevadas, he at length reached a frontier fort, and came back to his starting-point in midsummer by following the trail of the Santa Fé caravans. Fremont's California exploration was only an incident of this second expedition, nor had he any important connection with the secret plans of President Tyler which looked to its conquest; and yet the Missourians whose influence procured the expedition had some secret purpose, if Benton, who ought to know, relates truly; and outside the great work of geographical survey on which the government engaged him, there is reason to think that he was a mysterious forerunner of those north-western settlers whose more immediate purpose had been to forestall the British occupation of Oregon and who shared in the ambition of southern Democrats to realize our "manifest destiny" on the Pacific slope, though without the design which these latter cherished of increas ing the area of American slavery.* Full of energy and fire (for he had the French dash in his composition) and disposed to assume authority which was not conferred upon him, Fremont was presently in California on a third exploration, with armed followers, when he received orders to co-operate with other secret agents of the United States who were preparing to January- detach that province from Mexico when the ripe moment should arrive, peaceably, however, if this were possible. But as affairs turned, he soon figured in a 1846. May. *See 16 H. H. Bancroft, chap. 19; 2 Benton, 478, 579, etc.; 69 Niles, 48, 75. |