nents of the administration averred this to be the design of
the President, although it was not, and the suspicion was
increased by the known fact that the Secretary of the Treas-
ury, Robert J. Walker, was an advocate of this policy. ^
Inasmuch as President Polk initiated his own policy and resolutely and independently pursued his own plans, no account of his presidency can be satisfactory to-day which is not based on a careful examination of the voluminous diary ^ in whose pages are recorded not only his own views and intentions, but also brief reports of cabinet meetings and of conferences with party leaders. Turning to this record we find that Polk told his cabinet, September 4, 1847, that if the war was still further prolonged he would "be unwill- ing to pay the sum which Mr. Trist had been authorized to pay," in the settlement of a boundary, by which it was con- templated that the United States would acquire New Mexico and the Calif ornias; and that "if Mexico continued obsti- nately to refuse to treat, I was decidedly in favor of insisting on more territory than the provinces named." The question was discussed by the cabinet on September 7, and Secretary Walker and Attorney-General Clifford are recorded as "in favour of acquiring in addition the department or state of Tamaulipas, which includes the port of Tampico." Secre- tary Buchanan, the Postmaster-General, and Secretary John Y. Mason opposed this proposition. The President declared himself " as being in favour of acquiring the cession of the Department of Tamaulipas, if it should be found practicable." Clifford proposed the recall of Trist and the prosecution of the war with the greatest vigor until Mexico should sue for peace. This was approved by Walker and by the President, ex- cept as regards the recall of Trist. A month later he changed his mind and Trist was recalled, as he notes, October 5,
1 Baltimore American in Niles, LXXIII, 113.
2 George Bancroft's typewritten copy of the MS. of the diary Is among the Bancroft Papers in the Lenox Library. For an account of the diary see Schonler, Historical Briefs, 121-124. I may take the occasion here to express ray apprecia- tion of the courtesy of Mr. Eames and Mr. Paltsits in giving me every facility in the examination of the diary and correspondence of Polk.
