Chapter 6

Persistent Pressure from the United States

Defeat in the war with the United States in 1846–7 added new problems to those subsisting from the past. The explanations for the defeat and the immediate consequences have been explored in the historical literature. It is clear that, as the war dragged on, the United States wished to terminate the Mexican conflict as rapidly as possible. The defeat of Mexico not only took a terrible toll on US operational forces, but had serious repercussions within that country, where, especially among northern-state Republican Party representatives such as Abraham Lincoln, there was much opposition to the war.

Disillusionment pervaded the Mexican Republic. No other Latin American country had been dispossessed or pressured in such a way. Mexico, however, managed to survive as a sovereign entity. Even so, the matter of Mexico’s total absorption within the United States or the establishment of a US protectorate over Mexico was broached in both countries in the aftermath of the defeat of 1847. The US army finally left Mexico City on 12 June 1848. On the following day, President Herrera returned to the National Palace.

The Impact of the War on Mexican Politics

After the outbreak of war, the British Foreign Secretary received a report from the minister in Mexico City concerning an idea which appeared to be circulating among certain US interests during the occupation of Matamoros. This entailed breaking up the existing Mexican Republic by forming a northern entity to be called the ‘Republic of the Sierra Madre’. Such an imaginary state would consist of New Mexico, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Chihuahua and Durango. An invitation appeared in a newspaper in Matamoros to throw off Mexican rule and establish such a separate state. The British Minister commented that:

It is perfectly well known that many persons in Chihuahua and the neighbouring Departments are prepared to submit to the protection of the United States; or they recognise in their present Government nothing but tyranny and neglect; they are subjected to the most corrupt execution of the laws; taxes are levied upon them in the most unfair and unequal manner; and when they demand protection from internecine convulsions or inroads of the wild Indians, they find the Government utterly powerless and unable to take the most ordinary measures of safety and precaution.¹

The principal inhabitants of Matamoros had fled to the interior, leaving the place in the hands of unsavoury types, US soldiery and ‘a swarm of New Orleans Volunteers’, whose numbers kept increasing. Ships regularly arrived from New Orleans, and river navigation up the Río Grande reached Camargo.²

Military defeat brutally exposed the extent of Mexico’s political failure to construct a viable national state between 1821 and 1846. It showed up the inability of both Imperial Spain and Independent Mexico to bring the far north under effective control. Yet, during the war, Mexicans had inflicted serious damage on the US army and demonstrated tenacity and courage in the defence of their country, irrespective of the limitations of their military and civil leaders. Any subsequent foreign army attempting to take advantage of divisions within the United States, in order to subordinate the Mexican Republic, would have done well to study what happened to the Americans in 1846–7.³

Many Mexican Liberals, notably Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, regarded the United States as a fellow constitutional and federal republic. Juárez would hold a similar view during the French Intervention of 1862–7, identifying with the northern cause in opposition the Confederacy of 1861–5. Defeat in 1847 accelerated the Mexican debate on how to restructure the country. In that sense, it contributed to the ideas and policies adopted during the Reform era of 1855–76. Many Mexicans, however, saw the war not only as a political disaster but also as a cultural assault on their country by a foreign power with a distinctly different ethos. Mexican self-perception and national reconstruction would be founded upon this difference. It raised the issue of whether Mexico’s Indian, Hispanic and Catholic inheritance should be regarded as an obstacle and blight in a nineteenth-century state, as most Liberals thought, or as the real source of its distinctiveness and strength, as many Conservatives argued or instinctively felt.

The acquisition of Mexican territory to include Upper California in 1848, combined with the Oregon Treaty of 1846 with the British, meant that the United States controlled both the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. It would, consequently, require the shortest possible routes of communication between them. Trist, in the peace negotiations begun on 27 August 1848, had proposed the Río Grande as the new frontier, then westward to include New Mexico and as far as the Gila and Colorado Rivers and southward down the Gulf of California to include Baja California. The proposals included the perpetual right of transit across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, by land or canal, for US citizens, manufactured and general produce, free of tax. The Mexican negotiators insisted that the Río Nueces, not the Río Grande, was the frontier of Texas, and they absolutely rejected the cession of Baja California and the right of transit across the Isthmus. As a result, Trist was obliged to drop the acquisition of Baja California and abandon the prospect of a virtual acquisition of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.⁴

The US government failed to secure two of its strategic aims, the right of transit across northern Mexico and across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Yet, somehow, Mexico and the United States had to find a way of living together, despite hostilities and mutual incomprehension, since, as two North American states, they shared a lengthy border. This border henceforth encroached farther southward and, on the eastern side, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo pushed the Texas border down to the Río Grande.⁵ Despite the level of pressure by the United States on Mexico during the 1850s, the only territory actually gained was the relatively small area of the La Mesilla or ‘Gadsden Strip’, purchased in 1853.⁶

A key figure at this crucial moment was the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations, José Fernando Ramírez, who subsequently published his account of the war and the uneasy relationship between Mexico and the United States.⁷ Ramírez hoped to revive the older Mexican policy of trying to bring in the European powers as a counterpoise to the United States. This had been unsuccessful in the case of Texas secession and annexation by the United States in 1836–45 and would fail again during Santa Anna’s dictatorship of 1853–5. Furthermore, the external debt issue and repeated unpaid interest exposed the Mexican government’s incapacity to service debt consistently. That, in turn, led European governments to push Mexico disdainfully to one side, deepening the new Republic’s international isolation.⁸

Mexico’s internal and external difficulties should be viewed in relation to the political struggles in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s. The latter particularly affected the constantly changing attitudes of US political figures and interest groups towards Mexico. The two overriding issues, in this respect, were the method of transit between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the balance between slave and non-slave states within the United States. The Mexican War had thrown the focus precisely on these two issues.

The Transit Question

The large acquisition of territory under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, moreover, increased tensions within the United States concerning the nature of the Federal Republic and how it could be constituted as a nation. This treaty had neither provided a definitive statement of the southern frontier of the United States nor resolved the question of transit between the oceans.⁹ Inside Mexico, a republic also preoccupied with the issue of national consolidation, the grand dream continued to be the prospect of inter-oceanic communication across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The State government of Oaxaca was in no way absent in this regard.¹⁰

On 1 March 1842, the Santa Anna regime’s provisional decree gave a concession to José de Garay, a financier closely connected to the government, for the construction of an intercontinental canal across the Isthmus. Work was to commence within twenty-eight months, or the concession would lapse. Garay was to survey the terrain at his own expense. On 21 December 1843, however, Garay reported that the work could not be done within the time allotted. Extensions were granted by succeeding regimes. However, before the final term closed, on 21 August 1846, Garay transferred the concession to the House of John Schneider & Co. of London and the British House of Manning and Mackintosh in Mexico, which in the previous year had negotiated a contract with the Mexican government for the lease of the National Mint (‘Casa de Moneda’). The transfer was legitimised on 7 January 1847, but the fresh contract introduced a new dimension into the Isthmus question by providing for the settlement of foreign colonists in the Coatzacoalcos area, in the northern Isthmus. This raised several questions, because US forces were at that moment advancing towards Mexico City. Not least among these questions was the widespread recollection among Mexicans that foreign colonists had been responsible for the secession of Texas in 1836. Ramírez, writing in 1852, advised circumspection in any dealings on the subject, since foreign resources would be involved in the construction of any form of transit, and this had often negative results for Mexico.¹¹

Once US forces were occupying Mexico City, the question of the Isthmus became critical. Continued unrest in the southern zone of the Isthmus further complicated matters, since it looked from the outside as though both State and national governments had lost control of the region.¹²

The Hargous Brothers of New York purchased the British company’s right to the original Garay concession in February 1849. Manuel Escandón became an associate in the following year. The Hargous had close connections with New Orleans businessmen, notably Judah P. Benjamin, who were interested in forming a Tehuantepec Railroad Company (otherwise known as the New Orleans Company). Given the strategic and potentially economic importance of the Isthmus, the lapse of the original Garay concession only exacerbated the transit question. This transfer was not well received by the Mexican government when it came to hear of it. The contract introduced the interests of the US southern states into the transit question. A southern group pressed for the right to construct a canal. This immediately raised hackles in Mexico, already alarmed at southern expansionist tendencies. The accompanying issue involved Mexican sovereignty, because US interests, and the government supporting them, wanted Mexico to give the United States the right of military intervention in the Isthmus, in case of dangers arising from the construction of the transit route. On 25 January 1851, the Mexican government signed a convention with the US Minister Plenipotentiary, Robert P. Letcher, Virginia-born former Whig governor of Kentucky (1840–4), in which Mexico and the United States both undertook to protect the builders of a canal project. When this became known in Mexico, the factions opposed to the ruling Liberal moderates, taking their stand on the defence of sovereignty, compared this to the process that had led to the loss of Texas. This precipitated the Mexican government’s repudiation of the agreement on 22 May. Letcher, unable to secure another, left Mexico in August 1851. The years between the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 and the McLane-Ocampo Treaty of 1859 became those of the most intense pressure on Mexico to concede further territory and transit rights across the north and the Isthmus. These issues soured Mexico’s relationship with the United States, which never ceased to be the object of suspicion.¹³

Southern interests, focused in New Orleans and Charleston, believed that in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Trist had not gone far enough. One of their leading figures, was Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War (1853–7) in the administration of the expansionist Franklin Pierce. Davis, who had fought at the head of the Mississippi Regiment in the Mexican War at Monterrey and Buenavista, argued for a much greater acquisition of territory at the expense of Mexico. This would be southward beyond the limits negotiated in 1848, perhaps across underpopulated territory as far south as the Sierra Madre. The former US Secretary of State (1845–9), James Buchanan, favoured the Gila River as the border with Mexico. Both Davis and Buchanan advocated construction of a railway across this territory to the Pacific Ocean, as a parallel to the Isthmus route. The Mexican Governments of Herrera and Arista opposed further territorial cessions across the north, intended to hold on to Baja California and the Sea of Cortez, and remained wary of any potential US presence in the Isthmus.¹⁴

From 1850, US relations with Mexico oscillated around the question of further territorial concessions from Mexico, a state vulnerable because of its weakness. However, the territorial gains in 1848 threatened to upset the balance between slave and free states within the United States. Texas, annexed in 1845, had increased the number of slave states, although in 1850 California was admitted to the Union as a free state. Although there were sixteen free states and fifteen slave states, the balance still held in the Senate. Under the Missouri Compromise of September 1850, New Mexico and Utah remained territories. Their populations were to vote for which status they wished to have.¹⁵

The Pierce administration, which favoured further territorial acquisitions, appointed James Gadsden, who came from a leading South Carolina family, to be Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico on 12 May 1853, for the purpose of negotiating the purchase of territory from Mexico at the southern border of New Mexico. Gadsden had been president of the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad Company in 1840–50, and was entrusted with this objective, so that a railway could be constructed from El Paso (Texas) parallel to the Gila River and thence across to the Pacific. He was, moreover, personally close to Davis. Gadsden arrived in Mexico City in August 1853. No mention was made of the Isthmus transit in his instructions. Gadsden’s counterpart in the Santa Anna regime was the Secretary of Relations, the Conservative Díez de Bonilla, who was anxious to reduce US territorial designs to the minimum tolerable. Still in the process of recovering from the war of 1846–7, the Mexican government was devoid of funds, dependent upon receipt of the instalments of the treaty indemnity and could not risk another military conflict with the Americans.¹⁶

Within Gadsden’s remit, however, was the possibility of acquiring Sonora, Chihuahua and possibly Baja California, for a substantial sum, possibly $50 million. Negotiations for a treaty began between 10 and 23 December 1853. When the draft reached the US Senate for ratification, the crisis over the balance between slave and non-slave states in the expanding frontier states of the mid-west delayed approval until late April 1854. President Pierce, however, seemed to be in no hurry to sign the treaty. Northern Senators opposed to the expansion of slavery were the principal opponents of ratification. In return for an indemnity of $10 million, Mexico conceded a strip of territory on what became the southern border of Arizona, for the railway. It did not result in a natural frontier, such as Davis wanted, and was the absolute minimum of what had originally been desired. The Mexican government delayed ratification. Almonte, Mexican Minister in Washington, feared that, without Mexican ratification, the United States would declare war and simply take the full extent of territory desired. The final exchange of treaties between Almonte and US Secretary of State William Marcy took place in Washington on 30 June 1854. Almonte had already received the first instalment of the indemnity – the sum of $7 million – on 22 June.¹⁷

Renewed US Pressure after the Revolution of Ayutla

At the end of his term in office, President Pierce appointed John Forsyth, another southerner, this time from Georgia, where his father had been governor, to replace Gadsden as Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico. This appointment was ratified by President Buchanan who took office on 4 March 1857. Forsyth, who fought in the First Georgia Regiment in the War of 1846–7, was editor of the Mobile Register in Alabama, and close to Davis. He had drawn attention in articles during the mid-1850s in that newspaper to the growing economic and demographic disparity between north and south, and the political consequences of the south becoming a minority within the Union. Arriving in Mexico City on 15 October 1856, he was to be the instrument of the expansionist objectives of the Buchanan administration. He and Gadsden continued to correspond concerning Mexican affairs. In view of the Mexican government’s perennial shortage of funds, Forsyth’s instruction was to insist that loans should depend on territorial concessions. The United States wanted the grant of perpetual transit rights across the Isthmus, which it claimed had been promised by article 8 of the Mesilla Treaty of 1853, the cession of all Baja California, virtually all of Sonora, northern Chihuahua above the thirtieth parallel, and the settlement of outstanding financial claims. Although Mexico would retain sovereignty over the Isthmus, no compensation was to be offered in return for the transit rights.¹⁸

At the same time, Forsyth warned the Buchanan administration of the danger of European intervention in Mexico, in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine, because of the unresolved debt question and outstanding claims for reparations. President Comonfort had already rejected Mexican government responsibility for the abuses committed by private individuals against British and Spanish nationals. Forsyth believed that the US government should assist Mexico financially through reciprocal agreement, reviving the Isthmus transit issue and the cession of territory, and attempt to replace Great Britain as Mexico’s prime trading partner.¹⁹ Forsyth had been instructed by his government to persuade Mexico in a trade agreement to reduce tariffs on US trade by 20 per cent, thereby giving the country preference over British trade. He told Secretary of State Lewis Cass that the British Chargé d’Affaires had intimated that such a measure would cost Great Britain $15 million annually on the value of lost trade with Mexico. Forsyth strongly believed that the United States should act as Mexico’s befriender by the exclusion of the European powers, despite the ten years from the war of 1846–7, during which relations between the two countries had remined unstable.²⁰

Forsyth’s view of Mexico’s position in the world remained pessimistic: there were on-going conflicts with Britain and Spain; the Church was in open revolt; the Treasury was empty; communications with the United States were irregular. His two nightmares were the descent on Mexico of a French army of 10,000 men in support of a French prince for the vacant Mexican throne, or British money transforming Mexico into a dependency. Both would be, he told Cass, a threat to the Monroe Doctrine: Mexico was a patient needing medical attention and the United States should not shrink from the task of being the surgeon. If the United States did not step in, Mexico would become the battleground where the US struggle for supremacy in the Americas would be fought. Forsyth admitted to believing in ‘Manifest Destiny’. He explained to Cass that history and experience taught that ‘our race and our institutions’ would spread across the American continent, enabling ‘the superiority of the white man’ to bring about the disappearance of the mestizo from the Western world.²¹

Aware of Comonfort’s difficult position concerning territorial cession, Forsyth had warned the US government not to overstep the mark. Discretion rather than forceful speed should, in his view, be the rule. He reminded Cass that the Plan of Ayutla of March 1854 had condemned the sale of national territory as treason. Comonfort and his Secretary for External Relations, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, on 12 September 1857, rejected territorial cession to the United States and Isthmus transit in return for emergency funding. Lerdo took his stand on defence of Mexican sovereignty. The US government, however, was raising the fresh question of transit across northern Mexico from El Paso to Guaymas. In all, the US government suggested the sum of $12 million as compensation. Forsyth told Cass on 18 November that Mexican government finances were in such a terrible condition that eventually Mexico would give in to pressure.²²

Within the United States, the strongest pressure on the Buchanan administration came from southern politicians and business interests preoccupied with the decline of southern influence within the Republic’s political institutions and the threat, thereby, to slavery. These issues greatly influenced the conduct of US foreign policy in relation to Mexico. Their mounting intensity during the 1850s endangered the balance of interests within the Union and threatened an insoluble constitutional crisis.²³