Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 1.djvu/134

Rh that his departure from the United States created almost a panic in our money market

Besides, it was assumed that party feeling would go to about the same lengths here as in Mexico, and that our differences over the slavery question and the tariff would probably make it impossible for us to conduct a war vigorously — perhaps impossible to wage it at all. "The northern states, I again repeat to you, will not aid those of the south in case of war with Mexico," wrote Almonte while minister at Washington in June, 1844. European journals like Le Constitutionnel of Paris conﬁrmed this opinion; and the London Times remarked, It would be a war, not of the United States, but of a party that has only a bare majority, and "odious" to a "large and enlightened minority in the best States." Moreover, argued the oﬂicial journal of Mexico, the injustice of the war would of itself excite American opposition.

From a military as well as a political point of View this country seemed feeble. Our regular army was understood to be numerically insignificant and fully occupied with frontier and garrison duties; our artillery appeared weak in quality as well as in numbers; and our cavalry was deemed little more than a cipher. As for volunteers, our citizen-soldiers were represented in Mexico not merely as unwarlike, but as "totally unﬁt to operate beyond their frontiers." In eed, as competent a judge as Captain Elliot, British minister in Texas — who knew the United States well, and in the spring of 1845 was in close touch with Mexican leaders at their capital — said that the greater their number, the greater would be the difficulty of invading Mexico. "They could not resist artillery and cavalry in a Country suited to those arms," he believed; "they are not amenable to discipline, they plunder the peasantry, they are without steadiness under reverses, they cannot march on foot." Nor did there exist in this country, added Elliot, either aptitude or adequate means for a regular military invasion.

"America, as an aggressive power is one of the weakest in the world. . . ﬁt for nothing but to ﬁght Indians," declared Britannia, an important English weekly; and apparently the war of 1812, to which the Mexicans referred with peculiar satisfaction, had proved even more than this. The military