11. An Opponent of the War (1847)

BY SENATOR THOMAS CORWIN

Corwin, elected to the United States Senate in 1844 as a Whig, was persistent in his opposition to the war with Mexico. He was a born orator, and by this courageous but indiscreet speech in the Senate against granting an appropriation with which to buy peace and territory from Mexico, he gained renown, but injured his political advance- For Corwin, see A. P. Russell, Thomas Corwin.-Bibliography: Channing and Hart, Guide, § 194.

ment.

MR.

【R. PRESIDENT, I . . . beg the indulgence of the Senate to some reflections on the particular bill now under consideration. I voted for a bill somewhat like the present at the last session — our army was then in the neighborhood of our line. I then hoped that the President did sincerely desire a peace. Our army had not then penetrated far into Mexico, and I did hope, that with the two millions then proposed, we might get peace, and avoid the slaughter, the shame, the crime, of an aggressive, unprovoked war. But now you have overrun half of Mexico -you have exasperated and irritated her people - you claim indemnity for all expenses incurred in doing this mischief, and boldly ask her to give up New Mexico and California; and, as a bribe to her patriotism, seizing on her property, you offer three millions to pay the soldiers she has called out to repel your invasion, on condition that she will give up to you at least one-third of her whole territory. .

But, sir, let us see what, as the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations explains it, we are to get by the combined processes of conquest and treaty.

What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexico? It is consecrated to the heart of the Mexican by many a wellfought battle with his old Castilian master. His Bunker Hills, and Saratogas, and Yorktowns, are there! The Mexican can say, "There I bled for liberty and shall I surrender that consecrated home of my affections to the Anglo-Saxon invaders? What do they want with it? They have Texas already. They have possessed themselves of the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. What else do they want? To what shall I point my children as memorials of that independence which I bequeath to them when those battle-fields shall have passed from my possession?"

Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts, had England's Lion ever showed himself there, is there a man over thirteen and under ninety who would not have been ready to meet

him? Is there a river on this continent that would not have run red with blood? Is there a field but would have been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered Americans before these consecrated battlefields of liberty should have been wrested from us? But this same American goes into a sister republic and says to poor, weak Mexico, "Give up your territory, you are unworthy to possess it; I have got one-half already, and all I ask of you is to give up the other!" England might as well, in the circumstances I have described, have come and demanded of us, "Give up the Atlantic slope-give up this trifling territory from the Alleghany Mountains to the sea; it is only from Maine to St. Mary's only about one-third of your republic, and the least interesting portion of it." What would be the response? They would say, we must give this up to John Bull. Why? "He wants room." The Senator from Michigan says he must have this. Why, my worthy Christian brother, on what principle of justice? "I want room!"

Sir, look at this pretence of want of room. With twenty millions of people, you have about one thousand millions of acres of land, inviting settlement by every conceivable argument, bringing them down to a quarter of a dollar an acre, and allowing every man to squat where he pleases. But the Senator from Michigan says we will be two hundred millions in a few years, and we want room. If I were a Mexican I would tell you, "Have you not room in your own country to bury your dead men? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands, and welcome you to hospitable graves."

Why, says the chairman of this Committee on Foreign Relations, it is the most reasonable thing in the world! We ought to have the Bay of San Francisco. Why? Because it is the best harbor on the Pacific! It has been my fortune, Mr. President, to have practised a good deal in criminal courts in the course of my life, but I never yet heard a thief, arraigned for stealing a horse, plead that it was the best horse that he could find in the country! We want California. What for? Why, says the Senator from Michigan, we will have it; and the Senator from South Carolina, with a very mistaken view, I think, of policy, says you can't keep our people from going there. I don't desire to prevent them. Let them go and seek their happiness in whatever country or clime it pleases them.

All I ask of them is, not to require this Government to protect them with that banner consecrated to war waged for principles - eternal, enduring truth. Sir, it is not meet that our old flag should throw its

protecting folds over expeditions for lucre or for land. But you still say you want room for your people. This has been the plea of every robber chief from Nimrod to the present hour. . . .

Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 29 Cong., 2 sess. (Blair and Rives, Washington, 1847), 216–217 passim, February 11, 1847.

12. A Young Officer in the War (1847)

BY SECOND LIEUTENANT ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT

Young Grant was fresh from West Point; he served throughout the war, first under Taylor and later under Scott. For his gallantry in the event here described he was brevetted captain and mentioned in several reports, among others in that of Major Robert E. Lee.- For Grant, see Channing and Hart, Guide, § 25.— Bibliography: H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, VIII, 550-556; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 194.

I

WAS with the earliest of the troops to enter the Mills. In passing through to the north side, looking towards Chapultepec, I happened to notice that there were armed Mexicans still on top of the building, only a few feet from many of our men. Not seeing any stairway or ladder reaching to the top of the building, I took a few soldiers, and had a cart that happened to be standing near brought up, and, placing the shafts against the wall and chocking the wheels so that the cart could not back, used the shafts as a sort of ladder extending to within three or four feet of the top. By this I climbed to the roof of the building, followed by a few men, but found a private soldier had preceded me by some other way. There were still quite a number of Mexicans on the roof, among them a major and five or six officers of lower grades, who had not succeeded in getting away before our troops occupied the building. They still had their arms, while the soldier before mentioned was walking as sentry, guarding the prisoners he had surrounded, all by himself. I halted the sentinel, received the swords from the commissioned officers, and proceeded, with the assistance of the soldiers. now with me, to disable the muskets by striking them against the edge of the wall, and throw them to the ground below. . .

During the night of the 11th [September] batteries were established which could play upon the fortifications of Chapultepec. The bombardment commenced early on the morning of the 12th, but there was no further engagement during this day than that of the artillery. Gen

eral Scott assigned the capture of Chapultepec to General Pillow, but did not leave the details to his judgment. Two assaulting columns, two hundred and fifty men each, composed of volunteers for the occasion, were formed. They were commanded by Captains McKinzie and Casey respectively. The assault was successful, but bloody.

Worth's command gradually advanced to the front. . . . Later in the day in reconnoitring I found a church off to the south of the road, which looked to me as if the belfry would command the ground back of the garita San Cosme. I got an officer of the voltigeurs, with a mountain howitzer and men to work it, to go with me. The road being in possession of the enemy, we had to take the field to the south to reach the church. This took us over several ditches breast deep in water and grown up with water plants. These ditches, however, were not over eight or ten feet in width. The howitzer was taken to pieces and carried by the men to its destination. When I knocked for admission a priest came to the door, who, while extremely polite, declined to admit us. With the little Spanish then at my command, I explained to him that he might save property by opening the door, and he certainly would save himself from becoming a prisoner, for a time at least; and besides, I intended to go in whether he consented or not. He began to see his duty in the same light that I did, and opened the door, though he did not look as if it gave him special pleasure to do so. The gun was carried to the belfry and put together. We were not more than two or three hundred yards from San Cosme. little gun dropped in upon the enemy and created great confusion. Why they did not send out a small party and capture us, I do not know. We had no infantry or other defences besides our one gun.

The shots from our

of the city He was so

to bring

The effect of this gun upon the troops about the gate was so marked that General Worth saw it from his position. pleased that he sent a staff officer, Lieutenant Pemberton . me to him. He expressed his gratification at the services the howitzer in the church steeple was doing, saying that every shot was effective, and ordered a captain of voltigeurs to report to me with another howitzer to be placed along with the one already rendering so much service. I could not tell the General that there was not room enough in the steeple for another gun, because he probably would have looked upon such a statement as a contradiction from a second lieutenant. I took the captain with me, but did not use his gun.

U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (New York, 1885), I, 152-159 passim.

13. Capture of Mexico (1847)

BY GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT

Scott served with honor in the War of 1812, and in 1841 became commander-in

chief of the army. Like Taylor, he was a Whig. The Democratic administration with reluctance consented that he should command in person the expedition against Mexico, which he brought to the brilliant close described in the report given below. Scott was punctilious and brave and loyal, and in the Mexican War he showed himself a leader among soldiers. - For Scott, see M. J. Wright, General Scott, passim, especially Preface. — Bibliography as in No. 12 above.

HEAD-QUARTERS OF THE ARMY,

National Palace of Mexico, Sept. 18, 1847.

T the end of another series of arduous and brilliant opera

Ations, of more than forty-eight hours continuance, this

glorious army hoisted, on the morning of the 14th, the colors of the United States on the walls of this palace. . .

...

—a

This city stands upon a slight swell of ground, near the centre of an irregular basin, and is girdled with a ditch in its greater extent navigable canal of great breadth and depth — very difficult to bridge in the presence of an enemy, and serving at once for drainage, customhouse purposes, and military defence; leaving eight entrances or gates over arches, each of which we found defended by a system of strong works, that seemed to require nothing but some men and guns to be impregnable.

Outside, and within the cross-fires of those gates, we found to the south other obstacles but little less formidable. All the approaches near the city, are over elevated causeways, cut in many places (to oppose us) and flanked on both sides by ditches, also, of unusual dimensions. The numerous cross-roads are flanked in like manner, having bridges at the intersections, recently broken. The meadows thus chequered, are, moreover, in many spots, under water, or marshy; for, it will be remembered, we were in the midst of the wet season, though with less rain than usual, and we could not wait for the fall of the neighboring lakes and the consequent drainage of the wet grounds at the edge of the city the lowest in the whole basin.

After a close personal survey of the southern gates, covered by Pillow's division and Riley's brigade of Twigg's, with four times our numbers concentrated in our immediate front, I determined, on the