The Mexcian American War
Thomas Corwin, "Against the Mexican War" (1847)
Thomas Corwin was a Whig senator from Ohio. Many Whigs, especially northern Whigs, questioned the need for and wisdom of expansion. The Mexican-American War proved controversial and divisive. Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his taxes because they would be used to support the war. That action and a subsequent essay, "On Civil Disobedience," became important precedents 120 years later during the Vietnam conflict. Corwin's speech touches on key elements of the antiwar argument.
What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexico? It is consecrated to the heart of the Mexican by many a well-fought battle with his old Castilian master. His Bunker Hills, and Saratogas, and Yorktowns are there! The Mexican can say, "There I bled for liberty! and shall I surrender that consecrated home of my affections to the Anglo-Saxon invaders? What do they want with it? They have Texas already. They have possessed themselves of the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. What else do they want? To what shall I point my children as memorials of that independence which I bequeath to them, when those battlefields shall have passed from my possession?"
Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts, had England's lion ever showed himself there, is there a man over thirteen and under ninety who would not have been ready to meet him? Is there a river on this continent that would not have run red with blood? Is there a field but would have been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered Americans before these consecrated battlefields of liberty should have been wrested from us? But this same American goes into a sister republic, and says to poor, weak Mexico, "Give up your territory, you are unworthy to possess it; I have got one half already, and all I ask of you is to give up the other!" . . . .
Sir, look at this pretense of want of room. With twenty millions of people,
Thomas Corwin was a Whig senator from Ohio. Many Whigs, especially northern Whigs, questioned the need for and wisdom of expansion. The Mexican-American War proved controversial and divisive. Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his taxes because they would be used to support the war. That action and a subsequent essay, "On Civil Disobedience," became important precedents 120 years later during the Vietnam conflict. Corwin's speech touches on key elements of the antiwar argument.
What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexico? It is consecrated to the heart of the Mexican by many a well-fought battle with his old Castilian master. His Bunker Hills, and Saratogas, and Yorktowns are there! The Mexican can say, "There I bled for liberty! and shall I surrender that consecrated home of my affections to the Anglo-Saxon invaders? What do they want with it? They have Texas already. They have possessed themselves of the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. What else do they want? To what shall I point my children as memorials of that independence which I bequeath to them, when those battlefields shall have passed from my possession?"
Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts, had England's lion ever showed himself there, is there a man over thirteen and under ninety who would not have been ready to meet him? Is there a river on this continent that would not have run red with blood? Is there a field but would have been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered Americans before these consecrated battlefields of liberty should have been wrested from us? But this same American goes into a sister republic, and says to poor, weak Mexico, "Give up your territory, you are unworthy to possess it; I have got one half already, and all I ask of you is to give up the other!" . . . .
Sir, look at this pretense of want of room. With twenty millions of people,