The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 18, July 1914 - April, 1915 Page: 248

                                
The Southwestern Historical Quarterly

quired Texas they longed for New Mexico and California,"-it
seems well to point out a few salient facts that such writers as
Rhodes,1 Henry Wilson,2 Jay,8 H. H. Bancroft,4 Henry Cabot
Lodge5 and other members of the older6 school of American his-
torians, have apparently overlooked.
One indeed has difficulty in finding any true grounds at all for
the opinion of this group. Their argument, however, runs about
as follows: The Mexican War had as its object the acquisition
of California; it occurred during the administration of a south-
ern president, and was largely the product of his own devising;
it was therefore fought simply to extend the area of slavery. As
Henry Wilson expressed it in The Rise and Fall of the Slave
Power, the "march into territory inhabited by Mexicans        . .
meant more than 'to defend our own and the rights of Texas.'
It could only mean, it did mean, the acquisition of more terri-
tory, in which to establish slavery, and by which the further ex-
tension and development of slave holding institutions could be
promoted."
Those who adopt this course of reasoning, however, leave out
of consideration a most essential fact. The movement for the
annexation of California, as we have endeavored to show, did not
begin with the presidency of James K. Polk, nor with the out-
break of the Mexican War. It originated more than a decade be-
fore either of these events and by 1846 had developed such
strength and headway that its successful culmination was merely
a matter of time, as was even then pretty generally recognized.
After 1846 the course of the movement was obscured by the
acrimonious debates over the conduct of the war, and the Wilmot
Proviso--the latter especially precipitating a conflict of principle
in which the south took an active and determined part. It is
scarcely possible, however, to maintain, as some have done, that
1James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States (New York, Mac-
millan. 1894), I. 87.
'Henry Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (Boston.
Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 1879), II, 9.
'Jay, Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War, 107.
' I. H. Bancroft, Works, XIII, 344.
'Henry Cabot Lodge, Daniel Webster (American Statesman Series), 289.
'For a more recent writer taking this view, see H. Addington Bruce,
Romance of American Eoxpansion (New York. Moffat, Yard & Co. 1909),
139.

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