Manifest Destiny

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on our part the pacific one."
As a matter of fact the U.S. had long
been willing to accept the 49th parallel, but
had been rebuffed by the British. Furthermore,
Polk did not want war simultaneously
with Mexico (which seemed imminent)
and Britain. The compromise gave
both Canada and the United States aPacific
outlet. And, observed Samuel Morison
in The Oxford History of the American
People, except "for a minor controversy
over the islands of Puget Sound, this western
end of the lengthy frontier between
Canada and the United States gave no further
trouble."
The signing of the Oregon treaty meant
the American Republic now reached from
Atlantic to Pacific. President Polk surely
felt, wrote historian GlyndonVan Deusen,
"that ports on the Pacific were more important
than territory; that the area north of
the 49th parallel was not worth a war, so
long as the United States had access
through the Vancouver Straits to the ocean;
and that compromise with the British in
Oregon was necessary if they were to be
kept from getting a slice of a greater pize,
California."
Young Hickory, as James Knox Polk
was called, was carrying on as Old Hickory
wished. (Polk was the youngest president
elected to date.) Andy Jackson, says
Frederick Merk in Manifest Destiny and
Mission in American History, still "lent
glamour to Manifest Destiny." The former
president "sent repeated letters in the years
preceding his death lin 1845] to friends
urging the annexation of Texas and the occupation
of Oregon, and these were usually
promptly transmitted to the press. Jackson
urged annexation to insure the national
safety and interest and to checkmate the
machinations of the British."
Above all was that matter of Texas, over
which Henry Clay had lost the presidency
in 1844, alienating both North and South,
abolitionist and slaveowner. Clay viewed
the annexation as a judgment about states'
rights and slavery. On the one hand, according
to Clement Eaton rn Henry CIay
and the Art of American Politics, Mr. Clay
"declared that he personally had no objection
to the annexation of Texas, but that he
was unwilling to see it made an issue
which 'jeoparded' [sic] the Union. He
protested against the positions of the extremists
of South Carolina who wished
to make the recent rejection of the Texas
treaty an occasion to dissolve the
L]nion."
But, as we have said, the Polk people
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wanted annexation - or "reannexation,"
since it was considered to be part
of the Louisiana Purchase given up by
J.Q. Adams. And that was not all that
Young Hickory had in mind. Indeed,
President Polk told his Navy secretary:
"There are four great measures which
are to be the measures of my administration:
one, a reduction of the tariff; another,
the independent treasury; a third,
the settlement of the Oregon boundary
territory; and lastly, the acquisition of
California." The first.,three wercfaits accomplis
by 1846, but the latter required
war with Mexico.
Polk saw in California a ground for
possible European intrigue proscribed
by the Monroe Doctrine. The same
was true of the Oregon Country and
Mexico, "where the United States had
interests of its own." notes Frederick
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An entire generation of political and
military leaders emerged from the
battlefields of the Mexican-American War,
including four American presidents:
.^ (clockwise f10m upper left) Zachary Taylor,
a Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and
E' Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
? lronically, the most notable figure to emerge
F from that war was a congressman who
! vehemently opposed it: Abraham Lincoln.
THE NEW AMERICAN . JULY 28, 2003