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Curse of the Forbidden Fruit

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Curse of the Forbidden Fruit CURSE OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT: SOUTHERN OPPOSITION DURING THE MEXICAN WAR ERA, 1835-1850 By BRETT RICHARD BELL A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of History MAY 2015 © Copyright by BRETT RICHARD BELL, 2015 All Rights Reserved © Copyright by BRETT RICHARD BELL, 2015 All Rights Reserved To the Faculty of Washington State University: The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of BRETT RICHARD BELL find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted. __________________________________________ Jennifer Thigpen, Ph.D., Chair ___________________________________________ Susan Peabody, Ph.D. __________________________________________ Lawrence Hatter, Ph.D. ii CURSE OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT: SOUTHERN OPPOSITION DURING THE MEXICAN WAR ERA, 1835-1850 Abstract by Brett Richard Bell, Ph.D. Washington State University May 2015 Chair: Jennifer Thigpen This study examines southern opposition to the Mexican War. The story of such opposition is essential to a complete understanding of the Mexican War and the growing sectional conflict in the late antebellum period. It illustrates that much more opposition existed to the war in the South than is commonly thought. Nonetheless, southern war opponents failed to restrict the grand strategy of the Polk administration or shorten the length of the conflict. The main reason they failed in these goals stemmed from the inability of northern and southern opponents to work together to form and sustain a national antiwar movement. Southern war opponents firmly supported slavery and southern honor, and northern opponents did not, and this fissure doomed opposition in both sections. Almost all southerners committed themselves to defending slavery and southern honor – twin pillars which provided southerners with their very identities as free-American citizens – at all costs. iii The dissertation is organized thematically. The first chapter analyzes the important political and military events leading up to the American declaration of war against Mexico. I argue that many southerners opposed Texas annexation until 1844 as they thought it would unite the North against the South, thus endangering slavery and honor even in the southern states. The second and third chapters analyze southern opposition within the military. These chapters demonstrate that significant opposition existed in the ranks and offer southern honor as central to that opposition. The fourth and fifth chapters focus on southern reactions to the Wilmot Proviso – an attempt by northerners to prevent the spread of slavery to any territory acquired from Mexico as a result of the war. I conclude that the decisions made from 1835 to 1850 proved to be disastrous to the South. The Mexican War was a failure for all southerners, as not only did opponents fail to achieve their goals, but supporters also lost access to the West. While the vast majority of southerners hoped to create a secure environment for slavery and honor, by the end of this period they perceived themselves to be living in an insecure world with dangers on all sides. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………… iii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………… 1 1. “A Question of Life or Death”: Texas, Mexico, and Southern Honor………………… 17 2. “The Mean and Ungentlemanly Treatment Which the Southerners Have Received”: Honor and Dissent During the Monterey Campaign……………………...74 3. “To Sustain Untarnished the Honor of Our State”: Mutineers of Buena Vista…………………………………………………………… 120 4. “The Signs of the Times Are Portentous of Evil”: The Wilmot Proviso…………………………………………………………………. 158 5. “Kill Off the Southern Convention, hang a Few Northern Abolitionists, and put a few Southern mad-caps in a straight-jacket”: Comprise, Conventions, and Southern Honor…………………………………………………... 198 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………… 247 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………. 253 v Introduction On February 9, 1847, South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun voiced his opposition against the Mexican War. For the first eight months of the war, Calhoun voted for money, supplies, and men to prosecute the conflict, but he now withdrew his support. During the course of his speech, Calhoun noted that “a mysterious connection between the fate of this country and that of Mexico.” The connection was so great, Calhoun believed, that “her independence and capability of sustaining herself are almost as essential to our prosperity, and the maintenance of our institutions as they are to hers.” He further warned the Senate that Mexico was “to us the forbidden fruit; the penalty of eating it would be to subject our institutions to political death.” Yet, much like Eve in the Garden of Eden, many Americans were tempted by what they ought not to touch. The Mexican War seemed likely to add new western territories, which could open up new economic opportunities for the country. The extension of slavery into the west was particularly alluring for southerners. These benefits, however, were illusory. This new territory, Calhoun cautioned, would almost assuredly bring northern attacks on the institution of black slavery – the very foundation of southern society. Calhoun believed that interference with Mexico promised only evil for the United States and his beloved South.1 This study examines Americans like Calhoun – southern opponents to the Mexican War.2 The story of such opposition is essential to a complete understanding of the Mexican War and the 1 Calhoun speech in the Senate, February 9, 1847, in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume 24, 1846- 1847, eds. Clyde N. Wilson and Shirley Cook (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 118-133; Genesis 2:17 (English Standard Version); and Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 418-430. 2 I consider the South to be all the slave states except Delaware, which had a very small slave population at the time of the Mexican War. 1 growing sectional conflict in the late antebellum period.3 Much more opposition existed to the war in the South than is commonly thought.4 Nonetheless, southern war opponents failed to restrict the grand strategy of the Polk administration or shorten the length of the conflict. The main reason they failed in these goals stemmed from the inability – or a complete unwillingness – of northern and southern opponents to work together in a national antiwar movement. Southern war opponents firmly supported slavery and southern honor, and northern opponents did not, and this fissure doomed opposition in both sections. It was southern opponents – those who supported the Union as it stood and opposed territorial expansion – who provided several of the plans which could have potentially prevented sectional conflict. But they failed. This devotion to slavery and southern honor, however, also meant that war opponents shared a common foundation with southern war supporters. The shared values of slavery and honor made it easier for southerners to work together in the years following the war in defense of southern rights. The vast majority of southerners committed themselves to defending slavery and 3 For a thorough discussion of the political and military developments in the United States during the Mexican War, see Justin H. Smith, The War With Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan Company, 1919). 4 Most scholars believe that opposition was mostly confined to northeastern Whigs. For example, see K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War: 1846-1848 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 358-370; Thomas Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 1-9; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 658-791; David Mayers, Dissenting Voices in America's Rise to Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 109-137; Frederick Merk, “Dissent in the Mexican War,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 81(1969): 121-136; Dexter Perkins, “Dissent in Time of War,” Virginia Quarterly Review 47, no. 2 (Spring 1971): 161-74;and John H. Schroeder, Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846-1848 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), ix-164. At one point or another, a surprising number of southerners were opponents to the war. Prominent politicians like Calhoun, Thomas Hart Benton, Alexander Stephens, John Berrien, Thomas Clingman, Willie P. Mangum, Henry Hilliard, and Henry Clay all expressed considerable opposition to the war – and this is only a sample of political opposition. Such influential periodicals as The Southern Quarterly Review, DeBow’s Review, and The Southern Literary Messenger, as well as newspapers like North Carolina’s Fayetteville Observer and Virginia’s The Southern Planter all ran antiwar articles throughout the war. Some of the soldiers fighting the war also became dissidents. While only a few deserted or mutinied during their time in Mexico, the overwhelming majority of volunteers became so disenchanted with the war effort that they refused to re-enlist when their terms expired. Opposition, thus, can be located in every southern state, in both the Whig and Democratic political parties, in popular culture, on the homefront, and in the ranks. Southern opposition to the Mexican War, therefore, was more extensive than is popularly thought. 2 southern honor – twin pillars
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