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Manifest Destiny
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Thursday, December 25, 2003 - 10:20 AM
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Chapter 8 in A Peoples History of the United States discusses what many people in the United States call the Mexican War. After reading about events leading up to the war, and some of the people involved, it's no doubt that many people from Mexico refer to this act of aggression against their nation as Invasión de Estados Unidos. The best translation to English I can find is: "Invasion of the United States."
James Polk, 11th US president elected in 1845, is considered the last Jacksonian and an expansionist. One of the earliest goals of his presidency was the acquisition of California. New Mexico and California belonged to Mexico who had just won independence from Spain in 1821. The idea of Manifest Destiny was taking hold of America at this time and expansion from coast to coast was considered undeniable. It's interesting to see some of the writers and speakers form this time who spoke about these acts of aggression against Mexico.
Writer John O'Sullivan is one of the first people thought to reference the idea of Manifest Destiny. He said it was, "Our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." After Mexican forces were coerced into firing the first shot, Polk and his administration distorted the facts until war seemed justified. Walt Whitman, believing these lies, was quoted as saying, "Yes: Mexico must be thoroughly chastised! ... Let our arms now be carried with spirit which shall teach the world that, while we are not forward for quarrel, America knows how to crush, as well as to expand!"
On the other hand, many people apposed the attacks. James Russell Lowell wrote a series of satirical poems put in the Boston Courier which were later collected as the Biglow Papers. In the poems, New England farmer Hosea Biglow spoke in his own dialect on the war. Here is an excerpt from it:
"Ez fer war, I call it murder, --
There you hev it plain an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment for that;
God hez sed so plump an' fairly,
It 's ez long ez it is broad,
An' you've got to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God."
Also, Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay his Massachusetts poll tax in an act of defiance to the Mexican War. While in jail, his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who the book said agreed with the idea but felt it futile to protest, visited Thoreau and asked, "What are you doing in there?" Thoreau supposedly replied, "What are you doing out there?"
Manifest Destiny is yet another dark page of history. Mexico eventually surrendered, and though there were many in America who wanted to take all of the country, the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo took only half of their land. The new US border was set at the Rio Grand, and Mexico and California were ceded. Fifteen million dollars were given to Mexico for the land, which seemed to justify the agreesion. The last line of the chapter was a quote by a newspaper which, referring to the payment for the land, read, "We take nothing by conquest. . . . Thank God."
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