THE ABSORPTION OF MEXICO 233
prepared to go to that extent; and furthermore, that I did not desire that anything I said in the message should be so obscure as to give rise to doubt or discussion as to what my true meaning was ; that I had in my last message declared that I did not contemplate the conquest of Mexico. And that in another part of this paper I had said the same thing."
It will be noticed that on this occasion Robert J. Walker comes out squarely for all of Mexico. He seems to have improved the occasion again in his Treasury report to express his views, but the President required that to be in harmony with the message. Perhaps it will not be superfluous to remark that the most advanced expansionist in Polk's cab- inet always had been an expansionist, was opposed to slav- ery, although a Southerner by adoption, and was during the Civil War a strong Union man.
Twice later this crucial paragraph was revised. In its final form it read: "If we shall ultimately fail [i, e., to secure peace], then we shall have exhausted all honorable means in pursuit of peace, and must continue to occupy her country with our troops, taking the full measure of indem- nity into our own hands, and must enforce the terms which our honor demands." ^ An earlier passage, however, in explicit terms renounced the " all-of -Mexico " policy in these words : " It has never been contemplated by me, as an object of the war, to make a permanent conquest of the Republic of Mexico, or to annihilate her separate existence as an inde- pendent nation. "2
The opening of Congress gave an opportunity for the rising feeling for all of Mexico to show its strength. Yet it must not be forgotten that the new House had been elected over a year earlier, when the opposition to the war was perhaps at
1 Niles's Register, LXXIII, 230.
2 Ibid. The sincerity of this renunciation coming from one who had declared that war existed by the act of Mexico was not unnaturally doubted. Calhoun wrote his son, Dec. 11 : " You of course have seen the Message and the course it indicates to be pursued toward Mexico. The impression here is that it is intended to conquer and subject the whole country." Correspondence of John C. Calhoun in Report of the Am, Hist. Assoc., 1899, II, 741.
