And so it was over, a two-year war between two neighbors on the North American continent. It had been a costly war by any standard. The loss of lives had been appalling on both sides. The Americans, for their part, suffered 13,780 dead, and thousands more wounded beyond recovery. The cost in treasure was estimated at about $100 million.* The cost to Mexico had been even greater.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the United States should pay Mexico a sum of $15 million in compensation for the territories she ceded. In addition, the United States assumed responsibility for some $3 million owed by Mexico to American citizens before the war. Together these payments came close to the $25 million that John Slidell, in late 1845, had been authorized to offer,† and the boundaries that resulted from the treaty closely resembled those that Slidell had been instructed to seek.
By all logic, then, both nations would have been better served if those boundary changes could have been effected by a purchase, negotiated without fighting. But even though she had virtually lost all control over New Mexico and California, Mexico could never have relinquished territory without a fight. For such a transfer would not have been the result of a voluntary agreement like the Louisiana Purchase of 1803; it would have resembled the Eighteenth-Century partitions of Poland or the consequence of the notorious Munich agreement of 1938. Few peoples, certainly not the proud Mexicans, would ever entertain offers to purchase parts of their countries; though it cost Mexico dearly to resist, it is to her credit that she did.
As to the strong sense of guilt felt by many Americans over their government’s seizure of New Mexico and California, let me add one more point, that the “right of conquest” was more respected in the nineteenth century that it is today, and that right was cited by some to justify annexation of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and even Veracruz. Even the idea of annexing all of Mexico, outlandish as it may seem today, received strong support in some quarters on both sides of the Rio Grande. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in fact, was castigated in the Senate more for its leniency than for its acquisition of Mexican territory.
It was a dirty war, its costly nature due more to disease and hardship than to enemy action. The sufferings of the individual soldiers—American and Mexican alike—exceeded today’s imagination. Taylor’s trek from Corpus Christi to Matamoros, Santa Anna’s march from San Luis Potosí to Agua Nueva, Wool’s march from San Antonio to Parras, Doniphan’s and Kearny’s marches, the deadly climate of Veracruz—it is doubtful that soldiers on the North American continent have ever withstood anything like them before or since. Discipline was perforce brutal, and desertions were therefore heavy. But heroism and the stoic bearing of physical hardship were more prevalent than human failure. This was no minor episode in our history.
Much has been written about the quality of leadership under which the troops of both sides fought. Mexican leadership, sadly, can be dismissed with an expression of sympathy for the brave Mexican troops who were betrayed by generals motivated primarily by greed and political concerns. It is significant that the flawed Santa Anna was the most capable leader of the Mexicans.
The unbroken string of American victories that culminated in the successful end of the war becloud the fact that the American forces—Taylor’s, Scott’s, Wool’s and Kearny’s—were often placed in precarious positions. Taylor operated on a shoestring; Scott, on less than that, which made it impossible for him to maintain a line of communications with Veracruz on the coast. The paucity of support from Washington was a by-product of Polk’s parsimony, his suspicions of his generals, and his constant underestimation of the problems they were facing. Anxious to run the war as cheaply as possible to justify his role in bringing it on, he was frustrated, rightly, by an unquestionable lethargy in the War and Navy departments in Washington. The quartermaster, in particular, fell short of meeting the legitimate needs of the armies in the field, though Thomas Jesup deserves sympathy for the gargantuan tasks that were laid before him. It is to his credit that he did as well as he did in contracting for ships, constructing landing craft, and sending thousands of tons of ammunition to two fronts in Mexico, all by wagon or mule.
The American military system had not yet come of age, but on the whole the accomplishments of both the Army and the Navy are worthy of admiration.
This narrative has left many loose ends regarding the fortunes of several of the protagonists. A summary of the later stages in the lives of Polk, Scott, and Pillow, in particular, may be of interest.
The court of inquiry ordered by Polk in January 1848 to investigate Pillow, Worth, Duncan, and Scott was actually conducted in Mexico City. The acrimonious proceedings dragged on through April and then recessed, to be continued later in Frederick, Maryland. Scott, relieved of command, fell ill of the vómito on the way home and nearly died. Not completely recovered, he disembarked in New York and was greeted and feted as a hero. Congress, ignoring the cloud under which Polk wanted to keep him, voted Scott its thanks.1 But the court of inquiry, resuming its dreary proceedings at Frederick, continued until other events diverted the public’s attention. Its findings, while critical of Pillow, largely whitewashed him. Pillow was able to celebrate his minor triumph at the White House as a guest of the President.
The controversy had the effect of thwarting Scott’s political ambitions in 1848.‡ While the inquiry was in progress the Whigs met at Philadelphia and, following the lead of Senator John Crittenden, nominated Zachary Taylor for president. Taylor defeated Democratic candidate Senator Lewis Cass in the 1848 election without even bothering to campaign.
Thus the ultimate humiliation was inflicted upon James Polk, the president who had made every effort to politicize the war. The ordeal of riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with Zachary Taylor for the inauguration ceremony must have been more than even his enemies could have wished upon him. Worn out from overwork on details, Polk died in Nashville three months after leaving office, at age fifty-four.
But what of Polk’s law partner, Gideon Pillow? That controversial man apparently changed his spots but little in the years following 1848. After going back to civilian life in Tennessee, Pillow returned to uniform in the Civil War. Perhaps fortunately for the Union, the uniform he donned was gray. He was last heard of evacuating his troops at Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River, in February 1862. The victor in that campaign had been a junior officer in the same army, Ulysses S. Grant.
And the flamboyant William Jenkins Worth? Worth’s political ambitions had always been chimerical, and his role in the controversy with Scott did him no good. He remained in the army and died in Texas in 1851. His name is immortalized not by his real heroism in the Mexican War but by a fort he later established on what was then the Texas frontier—Fort Worth.
And the two colorful characters from the West, Stephen W. Kearny and John C. Frémont? On return to the East from California, they continued their previous conflict throughout Frémont’s much publicized court-martial. Throughout this “public circus,”2 Benton did everything he could to assist his son-in-law, and his main weapon, still, was bombast, “the Thunderer turned demagogue.”3 But the military court defied the senator and found Frémont guilty of insubordination, and sentenced him to dismissal from the army. At the completion of his part in the hearings, in early 1848, Kearny was sent as governor to Veracruz and later to Mexico City. Then, like Scott, he fell victim to the vómito, but, unlike Scott, survived only long enough to return to Washington and be honored by promotion to brevet major general. On his deathbed he asked to see Jessie Frémont, “once his friend, daughter of one man and wife of another man who had once been his friends.”4 But Jessie Frémont held Kearny responsible for all that had happened to her menfolk, and Kearny died with his wish to see her unfulfilled.
Frémont, like Pillow, learned no lessons from his tribulations. Polk attempted unsuccessfully to mollify Benton by remitting Frémont’s dismissal, but Frémont, in a rage, resigned his Army commission anyway. Still wielding influence, he soon led another expedition to the Rocky Mountains, this time without either Carson or Fitzpatrick, and the result was a disaster. His party became lost in the snows, some of the members resorting to cannibalism before the survivors were rescued.5 Still immensely popular in California, Frémont was elected as one of its first two senators in 1850, and in 1856 he became the first presidential nominee of the Republican party, losing the election to the aging James Buchanan. Frémont later reentered the service of the United States as a major general of volunteers during the Civil War and ineptly commanded a division during the 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign. He lived until 1890 but, like Nicholas Trist, died down on his luck.
Santa Anna’s roller-coaster career did not end with his removal from office in late 1847. On April 20, 1853, the Napoleon of the West was inaugurated once more as president of the Mexican Republic. That presidency lasted about two and a half years, and in 1855 Santa Anna was exiled again. He visited New York in May 1866 and finished his memoirs in 1874, when he was permitted to return to Mexico as a private citizen. He died unnoticed in Mexico City on June 21, 1876. His career of ups and downs was symbolic of the confusion that gripped Mexico throughout the nineteenth century.
The Mexican War cast a pall over the relations between the United States and Mexico, a pall that lasts to this day because the Mexicans have never become reconciled to it. Their history since 1848 has not been happy: subjugation to the foreign emperor Maximilian; rebuilding by the celebrated Juarez soon thereafter; a long period of dictatorship under Díaz; revolutions shortly after the turn of the century; a one-party government—all accompanied by chronic poverty and corruption. Throughout their tribulations the Mexicans have found it convenient to blame the Colossus of the North for their misfortunes.
Indeed the United States has hardly been blameless since 1848, and its actions toward Mexico have been marred by such episodes as the Pershing Punitive Expedition (1916) in pursuit of Pancho Villa.
But even though U.S. actions during the last few decades have been generally honorable, resentment continues to smolder, and the war that raged between 1846 and 1848 is often cited as a major cause of Mexican woes: “Alas, poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!”
* Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the United States, pp. 216–18. The number of men in service were 31,024 regulars (old and new establishments and including 548 marines) and 73,532 volunteers. Of these 944 regulars (including nine marines) were killed or died of wounds; 607 volunteers met the same fate. Disease and accidents killed 5821 regulars (including three marines) and 6408 volunteers. In the field, the volunteer losses from disease far exceeded the rate for regulars, but the regulars had the job of garrisoning Veracruz and other unhealthy places. Only about one death in eight came from enemy action.
† Upton (p. 221) places expenditures during the years 1846–1848 at $74 million for the army, $27 million for the navy. This figure of $101 million exceeded the 1843 expenditure level by about $81 million. But taking into consideration all other expenditures, including $15 million payment to Mexico, Justin Smith estimates the total cost at about $100 million above “normal” expenditures. Justin Smith, vol. II, p. 267.
Mexican records were so poor—or nonexistent—that Justin Smith, the greatest scholar on the Mexican War, does not even address the subject.
‡ The Whigs nominated Scott in 1852. He was defeated by his former subordinate Franklin Pierce. He remained as general-in-chief, U.S. Army, until late in 1861, retiring with the rank of brevet lieutenant general.