Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush (28 page)

Jackson's exercise of the powers of his office did not go without criticism and opposition. Like other Presidents who have made broad claims of executive authority, Jackson was attacked as a tyrant or dictator. Congress attempted to use its own powers to oppose Jackson, going so far as the only censure of a President in American history, but the people sent Jacksonian majorities to Congress that reversed these efforts. Nonetheless, Jackson's use of presidential power sparked a seismic political response, the creation of the Whig Party whose platform centered on executive restraint. Opposition to Jackson's use of presidential power restored the two-party political system to America.

Despite these negative aspects to his time in office, scholars continue to regard Jackson as one of the ten greatest Presidents. His foreign policy expanded the frontiers of the nation and opened land to economic development. Expansion did not trigger the centrifugal forces of nullification, and Jackson exercised the full powers of his office to protect the Union and the supremacy of federal law against the birth of secessionism. He democratized the political system by ending the corruption of the Bank, turning out longtime officeholders, and opening up the rising South and West. He reestablished the Presidency as an independent center of power that could pursue policies in the national interest, even if at odds with congressional wishes. He could not have achieved any of these goals without a reinvigorated understanding of the constitutional powers of the office. He bequeathed to a future President, Abraham Lincoln, an understanding of the office that allowed him to save the Union when secession came.

Jackson's restoration of the constitutional powers of the Presidency reached its apogee under his protege, James K. Polk. Scholars consider Polk to be another of America's ten greatest Presidents, and today he is ranked even above his former mentor. Polk had served as Speaker of the House during the Jackson administration and was later elected governor of Tennessee. When the leading candidates for the 1844 election, Van Buren for the Democrats and Clay for the Whigs, both announced they would not support the annexation of Texas, Polk went the other way with the blessing of Jackson. Supporters of expansion at the Democratic convention blocked Van Buren's nomination, and Polk emerged as the dark horse candidate. He sought to unify the Democratic Party by promising to serve only one term. Whigs campaigned on his relative obscurity by asking, "Who is James K. Polk?" They received their answer when Polk won on the platform of annexing Texas, occupying all of the disputed Oregon territory (which would have included parts of Canada between the contemporary borders of Washington State and Alaska), and acquiring California. Polk prevailed in a close election with 1,337,000 votes to Clay's 1,299,000, but by a larger Electoral College advantage, 170-105.
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Like his mentor, Polk interpreted his election as a popular mandate. Polk coveted, in particular, California's fine harbors at San Francisco and San Diego for American merchants and the U.S. Navy. The popular mandate for expansion was so clear that his predecessor, John Tyler, used his lame-duck months in office to engineer the annexation of Texas -- and in a manner that further enhanced presidential power. Anti-slavery Democrats and Whigs in the North had successfully blocked proposals to annex Texas by treaty. With Polk's support, Tyler simply asked Congress to incorporate Texas by statute, which required a simple majority in both houses. The use of a statute, rather than a treaty, would set a precedent for future Presidents, who used what would become known as congressional-executive agreements to adopt the Bretton Woods agreement and the GATT in the wake of World War II.

Annexation of Texas almost guaranteed a confrontation with Mexico, with which it shared an uncertain border. Attempting diplomacy first, Polk sent John Slidell to purchase California and the Southwest Territories. Even though Mexico was bankrupt and had few settlers or troops in the territories, its leaders uniformly viewed a sale as dishonorable and refused to negotiate. Polk turned to military means, especially after rumors arrived that Mexican forces were reinforcing California with British financial support.

In early 1846, the President ordered General Zachary Taylor to move his force of 2,500 troops into the disputed territory between Mexico and Texas. Texas claimed that its territory reached as far south as the Rio Grande River, though as a Mexican province and an independent state it had never extended beyond the Nueces River (about 150 miles farther north of the Rio Grande). Most historians agree that Texas had little claim to the Rio Grande border, but Polk was determined to defend it with military force. He paired his efforts to create a provocation in Texas with preparations to seize California. Polk ordered naval units to be ready to seize San Francisco in the event of war, while Captain John Fremont, already in California, began to encourage American settlers to revolt.

Polk and his cabinet had decided to go to war even before these plans bore fruit. On April 25, 1846, the desired skirmish occurred between Taylor's patrols and Mexican forces. Taylor had moved all the way to the Rio Grande and surrounded the larger Mexican units in the area. The Mexican troops tried to fight their way out, with the loss of 11 Americans, but Taylor defeated them in two battles on May 8 and 9. Two days after the first news of the fighting arrived in Washington, Polk sent a war message to Congress. It misrepresented the facts to guarantee the majorities for war.

Polk claimed that he had deployed troops on the U.S. side of the disputed territory and had ordered them to assume a purely defensive posture. He asserted that Mexican forces had fired the first shot. "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood on American soil," Polk told Congress. In fact, "war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to it, exists by the act of Mexico herself." He called upon Congress "to recognize the existence of the war, and to place at the disposal of the Executive the means of prosecuting the war with vigor, and thus hastening the restoration of peace."
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Polk used his authority over the military to create a situation that had triggered war, but could not conduct significant offensive operations against another nation without congressional authorization of a new army of 50,000 and $10 million in funding. Polk's demand for support opened a sectional divide in Congress that organized itself along partisan lines. Whigs in the North opposed the war, which they viewed as an effort to expand the territory open for slavery. It had become an article of faith in both the North and South that slavery would perish if it could not expand. Democratic leaders in the South and West overwhelmingly supported the war, except Calhoun, who worried that the entry of California and New Mexico as free states outweighed the benefits of adding Texas.

Approval for the recognition of a state of war with Mexico prevailed in test votes by 123-67 in the House, and 26-20 in the Senate. After heavy political pressure from the White House, the final declaration of war was attached to the funding and army bills and approved with only 14 votes against in the House and 2 in the Senate. Public opinion showed a strong majority in favor of territorial expansion, convincing Whigs to make no serious effort to stop the war. They continued to vote supplies for the troops, while denouncing Polk for starting the conflict.
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Once war began, Polk took firm command of operations. California fell quickly to a remarkably small group of American settlers and regular troops. Polk dispatched another small force to the New Mexico territory, which quickly capitulated. Taylor's army of 4,500 won a series of battles in northern Mexico, capturing Monterey in late 1846. His campaign culminated in the January 1847 battle of Buena Vista, where he defeated Santa Anna's army of 20,000.

Despite these military successes, the war was not as easy and swift as Polk and his advisors had anticipated. Mexico rejected peace overtures, and her forces put up stiff resistance in the north. Polk realized that Mexican politics would not permit a negotiated settlement, which drove him to seek a compelling victory. A drive to Mexico City from the north was impractical because of inhospitable terrain.

Polk decided on a risky amphibious landing at Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico, to be followed by a land advance to the Mexican capital. He had the good sense to place in command Winfield Scott, who executed one of the most successful American military campaigns in history. With 10,000 troops, he captured the heavily defended Veracruz in March 1847, twice defeated larger armies led by Santa Anna, and took Mexico City on September 14. The Mexican government surrendered, and General Scott imposed an occupation government on the capital. Officers such as Grant, Lee, Jackson, Meade, Pickett, and McClellan would all serve in this "dress rehearsal" for the Civil War.
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Even as his war plans succeeded, Polk came under increasing opposition at home. The 1846 elections returned a narrow Whig majority, which doubted Polk's claim that Mexico had started the war and the United States had only acted in self-defense. In a message to Congress, Polk argued that Mexico's past wrongs against the United States and its provocation of war required an "indemnity" -- namely the Southwest and California. Congress had approved the war, and once declared, "it became my duty under the Constitution and the laws to conduct and prosecute it." To Whigs who argued against seizing new territory, Polk responded that "the doctrine of no territory is the doctrine of no indemnity." If adopted, he warned, it "would be a public acknowledgement that our country was wrong and that the war declared by Congress with extraordinary unanimity was unjust and should be abandoned."

A young freshman Congressman, Abraham Lincoln, rose to challenge Polk's accounting of events. He introduced a series of resolutions questioning whether the Rio Grande had ever been understood as the border of Texas and whether Mexico had started the war, and he demanded that Polk provide information to Congress on "the spot" where the first skirmish had occurred. In a speech on January 12, 1848, Lincoln accused Polk of starting the war and "trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory." Neither the House nor the President seems to have paid much attention to Lincoln, though the House passed a resolution praising General Taylor and declaring that Polk had started the war "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally," which the Senate rejected.
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An anti-war Congress could not prevent the Commander-in-Chief from continuing to dictate wartime strategy and operations. Even before the war had started, Polk had decided how American forces would be deployed and defined their objectives. After the capture of Mexico City, the President unilaterally set occupation policy, which included holding the capital and the major ports and collecting tax revenues to offset the cost of military operations. While Polk had hoped to squeeze the Mexicans until they agreed to a favorable peace, he began to hope for broader territorial concessions. With Mexico's government weak, its military almost nonexistent, and its people unruly, Polk now wanted Baja California, all of Mexico as far south as Tampico (another 500 kilometers south of the Rio Grande), and control of the isthmus of Tehuantepec for the construction of a transcontinental canal.

Polk unilaterally governed the process for making peace. He chose peace envoys without Senate advice and consent, set the goals for the negotiations, and ultimately decided to send to the Senate the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (even though his negotiator, Nicholas Trist, had only won Polk's minimum terms). While it did not fulfill all of Polk's territorial ambitions, it transferred California, the future states of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah, and the disputed territory on the Texas border, in exchange for the paltry sum of $15 million. Mexico lost 40 percent of her territory, while the United States gained the land that would be the base for its future world power.
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The treaty ended the Mexican-American War on acceptable terms, without a long-term occupation or a descent into chaos along the southern border.

Political opposition during the Mexican-American War demonstrates the checks that Congress always has available against the executive, even at the height of his wartime powers. Polk agreed to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo for a reason -- Congress would not support the actions needed to conquer more land. Polk had wanted to pressure the Mexicans by continuing military operations. Even after the fall of Mexico City, he had ordered American troops to invade Baja California and had proposed sending forces to annex the Yucatan peninsula.

To expand military operations beyond occupation duty, the President needed more troops and money. American forces had suffered 10 percent casualties, with seven out of every eight being lost to disease rather than battle, and the costs of the war were reaching $100 million. The Whig-dominated Congress rejected Polk's requests for more military funding and increases in the size of the army, and the Senate ratified the terms of the peace treaty by 36-14. While some Southerners wanted more land, the majority of Whigs wanted no territory other than San Francisco.
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Like Jackson before him, Polk's energetic executive encouraged a partisan counterattack. Just as Jackson's war with the Bank led his opponents to organize a new opposition party, Polk's war sparked a Whig victory in the next presidential elections. Polk's success, in fact, provoked an even more dangerous reaction. Support for the war resided primarily in the South and among Democrats, while opposition centered in the Northeast among Whigs. By opening a huge territory to settlement and statehood, the Mexican-American War made the future of slavery the central issue of national politics. The war aligned North and South antagonism over slavery with the political parties, which would undermine their ability to ameliorate sectional tensions. The volatile mixture of new territory and political inflexibility would set the conditions for the coming of the Civil War.