Junior Officers and the Mexican War
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Automated Template B: Created by James Nail 2011V2.1 Some chance to distinguish ourselves: Junior officers and the Mexican War By Brady L Holley A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Mississippi State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Department of History Mississippi State, Mississippi August 2014 Copyright by Brady L Holley 2014 Some chance to distinguish ourselves: Junior officers and the Mexican War By Brady L Holley Approved: ____________________________________ Jason K. Phillips (Director of Dissertation) ____________________________________ Judith A. Ridner (Committee Member) ____________________________________ Mark D. Hersey (Committee Member and Graduate Coordinator) ____________________________________ Julia Osman (Committee Member) ____________________________________ R. Gregory Dunaway Dean College of Arts & Sciences Name: Brady L Holley Date of Degree: August 15, 2014 Institution: Mississippi State University Major Field: History Major Professor: Jason K. Phillips Title of Study: Some chance to distinguish ourselves: Junior officers and the Mexican War Pages in Study: 238 Candidate for Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Mexican War served as a social battleground for issues such as professionalism, racism, and anti-Catholicism for American regular and volunteer junior officers. Their reaction to these issues influenced and changed the nature of debates to destroy the regular army and close the military academy at West Point. Many in Congress and the United States held a deep-seated fear of the regular army that dated back to the colonial era. They feared that a standing army would become a tool of tyranny and destroy a republican government. Instead, many Americans preferred a volunteer system. They argued that volunteers were virtuous citizens who responded to danger and returned to civilian life when the danger was over. The Mexican War demonstrated that these ideals were not reality, though. Because of this, many in the United States realized that the regular army could safely exist within a republican government, and that the volunteers were not the virtuous patriots many thought. Both regular and volunteer officers reacted with bigotry toward their Catholic opponents in Mexico. Anti-Catholicism impacted the service experience of the junior officers in Mexico. As members of a mostly protestant nation, they pillaged and stole from the many Catholic churches that lay in their path. As members of what they viewed as a superior religion, many officers felt that the Catholic church and faith was a fair target during the Mexican War. Race impacted the service of the junior officers in Mexico. American officers created a racial hierarchy in Mexico that ranked the Mexican populace in various stages of whiteness. The highest social order consisted of those they viewed as white. The lower classes they viewed as a mix of African and Native American. Both regular and volunteers responded in the same manner to these issues. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................1 II. A DISTINCT CLASS OF SOLDIER ..............................................................28 III. CAN IT BE POSSIBLE THIS IS RELIGION AT ALL? ...............................80 IV. I NEVER SHALL BE A WHITE MAN AGAIN ..........................................123 V. THE NAKED DISAGREEABLE TRUTH ...................................................171 VI. CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................217 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................225 ii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION By 1848 the size of the United States had expanded rapidly since the nation’s founding. What had began as a loose collection of states along the Atlantic coast, now stretched to the Pacific Ocean. The recent war with Mexico had added vast expanses of new terrain to the United States, and greatly expanded its frontier. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought the Mexican War to a successful conclusion for the United States, settled the boundary between Mexico and Texas at the Rio Grande, and added the territories of Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to the United States. In return, the United States assumed Mexico’s debts in these regions and paid the Mexican government $15 million for the new territory. The war, which had begun in 1846, witnessed a string of resounding victories for the United States, with the American Army winning every major battle despite being outnumbered in the majority of its battles.1 While the armies of Mexico and the United States met on the battlefield, another war was taking place behind the scenes. In particular social issues such as racism, anti- Catholicism, and professionalism influenced the experiences of American junior officers 1 John S. D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846-1848 (Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 363. 1 throughout the conflict. For example, anti-Catholic attitudes and rhetoric pushed these officers to plunder Mexican churches and assault Catholic clergy while in Mexico. Racism also became a prevalent force among American junior officers during the Mexican War as officers quickly created a racial hierarchy among the Mexican people. Anti-Catholicism and racism were also closely linked to manifest destiny, which argued that it was the ultimate destiny of the United States to expand westward. Throughout the war, Regular and volunteer officers offered a scathing racial and religious critique of the people of Mexico populace. By pointing out what they perceived as the racial and religious inferiority of the Mexican people these officers excused manifest destiny. In their view, it was acceptable to expand and take this land because the United States represented the superior racial and religious force on the North American continent. Professionalism also divided the ranks of the junior officers. The American army in Mexico was comprised of a combination of regular and volunteer forces. These two groups quickly began to ridicule and criticize the practices of the other. For all of this criticism, though, these two groups both responded to anti-Catholicism and racism in a similar manner. This demonstrated that professionalism had its limits as it did not create a class of professional regular officers separate from society. The tension between the regulars and volunteers reflected views within American society and Congress regarding the future of the regular army and West Point. Prior to the war, many members of Congress wanted to destroy the regular army and close West Point. By the end of the Mexican War, though, these sentiments had given way to a general acceptance of both West Point and the regular army. 2 Prior to the outbreak of the Mexican War many in Congress and across the nation had called for the closure of West Point and the destruction of the regular army. To them, these institutions represented a tool of tyranny and despotism. These fears dated back to the colonial period, and reached their peak in the years prior to the Mexican War. During the Mexican War, though, many people realized that the regulars and volunteers were not as dissimilar as they feared. Instead, the two groups reacted to issues such as race in the same manner, thus proving that both groups were made up of average Americans. The regular army, they realized, could successfully operate in a republic without becoming tyrannical, and the ranks of the volunteers were not comprised of the virtuous patriots that many at first thought. The actions of the regular and volunteer junior officers during the Mexican War changed this debate concerning the closure of West Point and the destruction of the regular army by challenging previously held notions regarding these two parts of the army. By 1846 professionalism had become an issue that divided the ranks of the army, and created tension between the volunteers and regulars. To better understand this issue, it is necessary to define and explain the nature of military professionalism during the 1840s. The junior officer class of the regular army embodied military professionalism during the Mexican War. Therefore, professionalism referred to the officers of the regular army, most of whom had been educated at West Point by 1846, and who viewed the regular army as their career. The institutionalized education they received at West Point was instrumental to the process of professionalism. Among other things, all graduates of the military academy received a heavy dose of engineering classes. As such, all graduates were essentially trained as engineers. This was important given the role of the antebellum 3 regular army. While volunteer forces and militia could be useful for a defensive role, many across the nation realized their limitations in offensive warfare. Therefore, the regular army played a key role in offensive foreign wars such as that with Mexico. Furthermore, by the 1840s the United States had already begun to amass an empire, which Thomas Jefferson referred to as an “empire of liberty,” that would stretch to the Pacific Ocean by the conclusion of the Mexican War. The engineering background of the regular junior officers proved quite useful to this process. Basically, the regular army maintained the American empire by building forts and roads, and garrisoning