Congressman Lincoln and the return of the wooden leg of General Santa Anna

[David Lockmiller]

(05-27-2013 04:59 PM)william l. richter Wrote:  And the point of all this is. . . ?

Mark Twain said the US Grant's memoirs were well written, he did not say that they were correct. Grant was 40 years too late.

Mexico wanted a war and got one. That the US won was against all expectations, including those of the Duke of Wellington, was surprising to everyone including Mexico. It was the better gunnery of the West Point trained artillerymen that made the big difference.

Like the Native Americans of yore and the US today, Mexico had a lousy immigration policy. She settled the Goths along her borders, expecting them to keep their compatriots out. They did not.

The first mention of the Rio Grande as the border of Texas was in the 1836 Treaty of Velasco. Signed under duress? Many claimed that Sam Houston saved Santa Ana when he gave the distress sign of a Mason as a rope was being thrown over a nearby tree limb. He was glad to give Texas the Rio Grande in exchange. He also surrendered all the Mexican army in Texas--or at least he ordered it back to the Rio Grande. Lesson to the wise--do not lose a war and expect a whole lot of sympathy from the winners. Lincoln's Spot Resolution was a Whig attempt to politicize the war over slavery, a move first started by Mexico's deposed minister to the US (recently ousted by another of Mexico's constant revolutions at home) Juan Almonte. The "Spot" was irrelevant.

My one point was that both sides goaded each other into a fight. Bullying had nothing to do with it. The US was not the nation in size and power as we are in the 21st century. Mexico took us on and lost. C'est la guerre.

But do not panic! My other point was that we are cruising for our own loss of the Great Southwest back to Mexico or to the independent Spanish-speaking Republica de Aztlan. After all we are settling the Goths along our border, too. Que viva! No one seems to learn from history. Or to quote that paragon of American History, Jimmy Durante, "everybody's trying to get in on the act!"

Did Mark Twain join you and say that Grant's memoirs were incorrect?

Did someone in Mexico order President Polk to order General Taylor and his army to the Rio Grande so that Mexico would have "just cause" to invade the United States and conquer New Orleans and Mobile?

You say that Grant was 40 years too late. Too late, for what? Too late to tell the truth?

Was James Russell Lowell too late to tell the truth? The first series of Biglow Papers was published in The Boston Courier newspaper in 1846–48 and collected in book form in 1848.

Lord Charnwood in his book "Abraham Lincoln," (Garden City Publishing Co. edition, 1938, page 92) wrote of the Mexican War:

"The judgment on that war expressed at the time in the first 'Biglow Papers' has seldom been questioned since, and there seldom can have been a war so sternly condemned by soldiers--Grant amongst others--who fought in it gallantly. The facts seem to have been just as Lincoln afterwards recited them in Congress. The Rio Grande, which looks a reasonable frontier on a map, was claimed by the United States as the frontier of Texas. The territory occupied by the American settlers of Texas reached admittedly up to and beyond the River Nueces, east of the Rio Grande. But in a sparsely settled country, where water is not abundant, the actual border line, if there be any clear line, between settlement from one side and settlement from the other will not for the convenience of treaty-makers run along a river, but rather for the convenience of the settlers along the water-parting between the two rivers. So Mexico claimed both banks of the Rio Grande and Spanish settlers inhabited both sides. Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor, who was allowed no discretion in the matter, to march troops right up to the Rio Grande and occupy a position commanding the encampment of the Mexican soldiers there. The Mexican commander, thus threatened, attacked. The Mexicans had thus begun the war. Polk could thus allege his duty to prosecute it."

Mr. Richter expressed some slight concern that Santa Anna may have signed the so-called 1836 Treaty of Velasco "under duress."

Grant wrote in his Memoirs (Vol I, page 55): "I am aware that a treaty, made by the Texans with Santa Anna while under duress, ceded all the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande; but he was a prisoner of war when the treaty was made, and his life in jeopardy."

One of the famous lines in Shakespeare's play, "King Richard III," was: "A horse! A horse! my kingdom for a horse!"

Either King Richard III had a very small kingdom, or he had a great need for a horse!

As for whether the so-called 1836 Treaty of Velasco was signed (May 14, 1836) General Santa Anna under duress, Mr. Richter seems to admit that General Santa Anna was under great distress, as his graphic description of the general's imminent hanging depicts.

The government of President José Justo Corro in Mexico City resolved, on May 20, 1836 (6 days later), to disassociate itself from all undertakings entered into by Santa Anna while he was held captive. Mexico's position was that Santa Anna had no legal standing in the Mexican government to agree to those terms or negotiate a treaty; Santa Anna's position was that he had signed the documents under coercion as a prisoner, not as a surrendering general in accordance with the laws of war. In fact, he had no authority under the Mexican Constitution to make a treaty, and in any case, the treaty was never ratified by the Mexican government.

And Lincoln said in his January 12, 1848 speech in Congress: "The position so often taken that Santa Anna while a prisoner of war, a captive, could not bind Mexico by a treaty, I deem conclusive."

I agree with the opinions of Lincoln and Grant on the subject.