UNPOPULAR VOICE

Washington DC.

Lincoln, almost thirty-nine years old, has finally achieved a goal he has had for a long time: After some unsuccessful attempts, his district in Illinois has elected him to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Most politicians in that position play it safe. New members of Congress are told to act like children—Be seen but not heard—and Lincoln, having waited so long for his chance to play a role in national affairs, has every reason to be cautious, polite, and politically correct. Instead, today Lincoln will launch a political attack on the party that controls Congress, and on the president of the United States, James K. Polk.

Lincoln in his late thirties. It’s believed this photo was taken in 1846 or 1847, although Lincoln’s oldest son, Robert, thought it might have been taken a year or so later, when Lincoln was serving in Congress.

The Illinois voters who sent him to Washington—many of whom knew him from his four previous terms as a state legislator—will be surprised. He’s not known as a firebrand. He’s seen as good-natured, and more likely to make his point with a funny story than a long speech. He still displays the social graces of a frontier American, which pleases his supporters. His intellect and judgment are well-regarded, but he’s modest about them. During his terms in the Illinois legislature, he focused on dull but important improvements to the state’s roads and waterways.

But unlike many good-natured politicians who appear confident and powerful yet constantly worry about losing anyone’s goodwill, Lincoln isn’t afraid to take a stand against popular opinion. While he was a state legislator, someone called for a vote supporting the “right of property in slaves.” Because Illinois was a northern, free state, it was just a symbolic vote favoring the policies of slavery, not a vote for a law. Voting “aye,” which was how most of the public felt, would have cost Lincoln nothing. In fact, of the eighty-two other legislators voting on the bill, only five were voting against it. But Lincoln joined the tiny group making a stand against the bill, going on record with his unpopular belief that “the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy.” This is the Lincoln who is about to make a stand in Congress.

THE WAR PATH

The issue for him today isn’t slavery; it’s war. For the past two years, the United States has been fighting Mexico, because Mexico owns land that the United States wants. A few years earlier, in 1845, the United States announced it was taking over the Mexican territory of Texas. Around the same time, it told Mexico it wanted to buy the territories of California and New Mexico. But Mexico said it wanted Texas back, and that it wasn’t interested in selling the other land. That’s when the United States decided to take the land by force. Claiming that Mexico had attacked Americans in Texas—a claim that historians consider questionable—the federal government, driven by President Polk, roused the country with slogans about liberty and justice for the people of the West. Congress asked for fifty thousand volunteers; three hundred thousand signed up.

A recruiting poster for the Mexican-American War

From the declaration of war in May of 1846 to the capture of Mexico City in September of 1847, the war was easy going for the United States. It secured everything it wanted. Military commanders became national heroes. When Lincoln arrived in Washington as a new member of Congress, all that remained was negotiation of the final peace treaty.

James K. Polk (1795–1849), the eleventh president of the United States. Son of a wealthy farmer, and a distinguished student at the University of North Carolina, he was a member of Congress by age thirty, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, and then governor of Tennessee before becoming president. Although his critics, including Lincoln, disliked his tactics for expanding the borders of the U.S., within his own party he was considered moderate because he didn’t want to take all of Mexico.

Incredibly, Lincoln is going to make a principled protest against the war. The past two years have proved that war critics are shouted down and called unpatriotic. Even the colleagues who agree with him believe he’s making a mistake by speaking publicly about the subject.

But for Lincoln, the issue is too important to ignore. Ulysses S. Grant, the future general and U.S. president, was a young officer in Mexico and was angry about the war until the end of his life: “To this day,” he said shortly before dying, “I regard the war…as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.”

War critics had another crucial objection: As Grant put it, “The occupation, separation and annexation [of Texas] were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union.” Although extending slavery would have broken several agreements made between the states—one of which, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, was older than the Constitution—the slave states didn’t care.

A congressman from Pennsylvania, David Wilmot, tried to prevent this extension of slavery by making Congress agree even before the war ended that slavery would not be permitted in any territory gained during the conflict. Congress rejected this “Wilmot Proviso” many times.

President Polk, of course, consistently told the public that taking territory had never been the goal of the United States. He completely avoided the question of slavery. Lincoln was infuriated by Polk’s dishonesty in explaining the reasons for, and goals of, the war. A few days before this day’s confrontation, Lincoln demanded evidence from Polk for the president’s claim that Mexico was the aggressor. On this day, he’ll be even stronger in his attack.

“MISERABLY PERPLEXED”

Washington DC has forty thousand residents—an astonishing number to a westerner like Lincoln. But the city still has only two paved streets, and the backyards of even downtown houses are likely to be filled with farm animals. Heading to the Capitol Building, which doesn’t yet have its distinctive dome, Lincoln passes pigs that have been let out to feed on street litter.

He’s fired up by the time he rises to make his speech. The careful, moderate words for which he’ll eventually become famous are set aside today. He says the president’s reason for going to war was “the sheerest deception.” Polk’s latest explanations, Lincoln says, are “like the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream.” The President’s ever-changing plans to finish what was started, says Lincoln, are “equally wandering and indefinite.” Unusually for Lincoln, it’s a strong personal attack: Polk, Lincoln says, “knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.”

A political cartoon from 1848 makes fun of Senator Lewis Cass, a nominee for president who wanted to continue the expansionist policies of President Polk. He’s saying, “New Mexico, California, Chihuahua, Zacatecas, Mexico, Peru, Yucatan, Cuba”—the first two being territories just won in the war with the Mexico, the others being what he’d supposedly take next. The bloody sword over his head, labelled “Manifest Destiny,” refers to the idea that European Americans had an obvious (“manifest”) fate (“destiny”) to expand westward across the continent. Cass lost the election.

Much of what Lincoln says is true, but that hardly matters. The label of “unpatriotic” is easily stuck to war protesters, even when they’re right. Few voters will stop to think that Lincoln was actually being more patriotic than they were. (Another Illinois politician of the time refused to voice his opinions against the Mexican-American with a sarcastic comment about the public’s love of war: “I opposed [the War of 1812]. That was enough for me. I am now perpetually in favor of war, pestilence, and famine.”) Although Lincoln’s term in Congress is only just beginning, he has already made enemies and disappointed voters back in Illinois. When his term is over, his party will lose his seat and Lincoln’s criticism of the war will be blamed, with good reason.

In the end, the United States will pay Mexico for much of the land it has taken, which will make the critics happy. But the question of slavery in the new territories won’t be resolved. The conflict in the West will soon turn deadly, foreshadowing the Civil War. When it does, Lincoln will be there.

Gold was discovered in the newly won territory of California less than a month before the signing of the treaty ending the Mexican-American War. The Gold Rush began about a year later, and in time Americans outnumbered the Mexican citizens of the state. The poster above advertises “The Quickest, Safest and Cheapest” passage in the days before the railroad: Two steamship rides connected by an overland passage in Central America, where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are separated by only a couple of hundred miles. The company advertising in this poster has a route through Nicaragua. Panama was a more popular choice.