lincoln on the war

8/14/2019 Lincoln on the War

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on

The Mexican War

A Speech in Congress

by

Representative Lincoln


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Adapted

for the 21st Century

by

Lance V. Mack


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In May of 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico.

WAR

March of 2003


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I believed the President had forced the war

upon Mexico in order to seize territory from

a weaker neighbor.

Polk

TX

George W.

OIL


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We Whigs opposed the declaration

of war, but supported appropriations

to support it.

WAR


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Both parties, with their eye on the coming

1848 elections, were furiously trying to prove

that their position on the war had been

correct.


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In a message to Congress, the

President charged Mexico with

starting the War.


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January 12, 1848

Some, if not all the gentlemen on the other side of the House, have

spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly understood them, of the vote

given a week or ten days ago..


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declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily

and unconstitutionally commenced by the President


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I admit that such a vote should not be

given in mere party wantonness, and

that the one given is justly censurable if

it have no other or better foundation.

I am one of those who joined in that vote,

and I did so under my best impression ofthe truth of the case.

How I got this impression, I will now try to show.


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Congress

When the war began, it was my opinion that all those who,

because of knowing too little.

The American People


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or knowing too much


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in the beginning of it, nevertheless, good citizens and Patriots

should remain silent on that point, at least until the war should be

ended. I have adhered to this view, and acted upon it since I took

my seat here


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I think I should still adhere to it, were it not that the

President and his friends will not allow it to be so.


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Besides the continual effort of the President

to argue every silent vote given for supplies


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into an endorsement of the justice and wisdom of his conduct


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besides that singularly candid paragraph in his late Message in which he

Tells Congress, with great unanimity, that, by an act of the Government of

Mexico, a state of war exists between that Government and the United

States

WAR


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..when the same journals that informed him of this also informed him that

what he could not prove by telling the truth


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he could not prove by telling the whole truth

NOT FOUND

NOT FOUND

NOT FOUND

NOT FOUND


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..demanded of all who will not submit to being misrepresented, in justice to

themselves, to speak out


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I cannot be silent, even if I should wish to.


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Seeing this, I carefully examined the

Presidents messages to ascertain what he

himself had said and proved upon the

point.


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The result of this examination was to make the impression that,

taking for true all the President states as facts, he falls far short

of proving his justification.


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The President would have gone farther with his proof, had it not been for

the small matter that the Truth would not permit him.


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The President, in his first War Message of 1846, declares that the

soil was ours upon which hostilities were commenced by Mexico.


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and he repeats that declaration, in almost the same language, in each

successive declaration, thus showing that he esteems that point a highly

essential one. To my judgment, it is the very point upon which he should

be justified or condemned.


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In his Message of December 1846, it

seems to have occurred to him that title

ownershipto soil or anything else, isnot a simple fact, but it is a conclusion

following one or more simple facts, and

that it was incumbent upon him to

present the facts on which the first blood

of the War was shed.


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Now I propose that the whole of thisissue and evidenceis, from the

beginning, the sheerest deception.


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My way of living leads me to spend much time in courts of justice.


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There I have sometimes seen a

good lawyer, struggling for his

clients neck in a desperate case,

employing every artifice to workaround, befog, and cover up, with

many words, some point arising in

the case, which he dared not admit

and yet could not deny.


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Party bias may help to make it appear so, but with all allowance I can

make for such bias, it still does appear to me that just such, and from just

such necessity, is the Presidents struggle in this case


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But if he cannot or will not do thisif, on any pretense or no pretense, heshall refuse to do it, then I shall be fully convinced of what I more than

suspect already: that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrongthat

he feels that the blood of this War, like the blood of Abel, is crying out to

Heaven against him.


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I shall be fully convinced thatoriginally having some strong motivewhat, I

will not stop now to give my opinion concerning--


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to involve the two countries in a War

WAR


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and trusting to escape scrutiny.


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by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory


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that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood


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he plunged into itand has swept on and on


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til, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued


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he now finds himself he knows not where.


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How like the half-insane mumblings of a fever

dream is the whole part of his late message!


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At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever that we

can get but territory and showing us how we can support the War

by levying contributions on Mexico.


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your daughters


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and urging the national honor, the security of the future, the prevention

of foreign interference, and even the good of Mexico herself, as among

the objects of the war.


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bearing all its expenses, without a purpose or a definite object. So, then,

the national honor and the security of the future may be considered the

non-purposes and indefinite objects of the war.

2011


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2005

20072008

2009

2010

Lest the questions I here

suggest be consideredspeculative only, let me be

indulged a moment in trying

to show that they are not.

The war has gone on now some twenty months. How can we make

anything out of the situation?


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And there is yet another question, a practical question, pressing closely

upon us, a question which the President seems never to have thought of.

?


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As to the mode of terminating the War and securing peace, the President is

wandering and indefinite.

WAR


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First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the War in the vital

parts of the enemys country


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and after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the President

drops down into a half-despairing tone and tells us that with a people

distracted and divided by contending factions


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and a government subject to constant changes by successive revolutions,

the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace.


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But he soon falls into doubt about this, too, and then drops back into

the already half-abandoned ground of more vigorous prosecution.


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All this shows that the President is in no wise satisfied with his own

positions. First he takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it,

he argues himself out of it, then seizes another.and goes through

the same process.


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And then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the

old one again which he has sometime before cast off.

?


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His mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some

tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can

settle down and be at ease.


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Again, it is a singular omission that nowhere has the President intimated

when he expects the War to terminate. Now, at the end of twenty months,

and with every department of our military


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officers and enlisted, regulars and volunteers--doing all that they could do

and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought that they could

not doafter all this, the President shows us that as to the end he himself has

not even an imaginary conception.


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As I have said before, he does not know where he is.

????

?

?

?

??


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No.


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He knows.


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He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.


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God grant that he may be able to show there is not something about his

conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity!


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lincoln on the war

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