Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 1.djvu/159

130 of smelling the battle from afar like the war-horse and crying, "Ha, ha!" — this is out of the question. It was not in him, Neither intellect, conscience nor imagination permitted it. The Cabinet, which he selected with care, hampered by no preëlection agreements, was much like him; and as Benton said, it is "impossible to conceive of an administration less warlike, or more intriguing." "Mr. Polk never dreamed of any other war than a war upon the Whigs," admitted Robert Toombs, then a Whig member of Congress, in February, 1846.

A number of circumstances almost committed him to a peaceable course toward Mexico. During the discussions of the annexation project one of the strongest objections had been that it would involve the country in war, and its advocates had strenuously denied this allegation. The President belonged to that group, and Webster said: "That Mr. Folk and his Cabinet will desire to keep the peace, there is no doubt. The responsibility of having provoked war by their scheme of annexation is what they would greatly dread. Though many plain citizens desired a fight an influential body of merchants, financiers and conservatives did not; and in the View of a still greater number a vital discrepancy between the predictions of the annexations and their later conduct would surely have been damaging "The Oregon question threatened to prove serious; and it is hardly incredible that Polk, even if quite willing to meet an attack from Mexico, would have desired to attack her before settling this controversy with England. The secretaries of state, war and the navy did not hail from fire-eating communities. The head of the army, General Scott, was a Whig and a recognized candidate for the Presidency; and the chiefs of the Democratic party had fully sense enough to understand that a war might enable him to succeed Polk. In fact the President's diary exhibits painful writhings due to such a possibility. Finally war, no matter how successful, would mean taxes, and even those who demanded a fight might not be Willing to pay for it. Certainly Polk was not self-sacrificing enough to desire the odium of laying war taxes for the sake of bringing Scott into the White House. Besides, it looked as if war expenses could not fail to strengthen the tariff system, and that was obnoxious to a great number of the Democrats.