Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 2.djvu/310

292 The results of all this personal, designing ur factious opposition to the government arid the war proved most unfortunate. The administration could never be sure what action Congress would take, nor when; and therefore its course was necessarily timid, weak and hesitating. 'Time and strength had to be consumed in foreseeing and. in meeting captious objections, and in battling against public prejudices that hampered both military and financial efficiency. ."We shall have three months of turmoil — our errors exposed, our good deeds perverted," wrote Marcy to a friend at the beginning of December, 1846; and such an expectation did not conduce to satisfactory work. Bold, rapid strokes could not be ventured; caution and cheese-paring had to be the rule. In the field all this bore fruit in vexation, delay, expense and loss of life. "In the name of God," exclaimed a man at the front, "will the politicians of our country never cease gambling for the Presidency upon the blood of their countrymen?"

And the uproar had another consequence. When the treaty was ratified the government organ referred to the conflict with Mexico as "one of the most brilliant wars that ever adorned the annals of any nation"; and the chief Whig journal placed these words without criticism in its own editorial column. The trial was over, and the fiercely contesting lawyers walked off, arm in arm, to dine. The inefficient and shameless war was now brilliant and most creditable. Indeed, the Whigs chose for standard-bearer a man who represented professionally the military spirit they had raised pious hands against, who belonged to the slaveholding order so plainly viewed askance by the New Commandment, who had recommended the advance to the Rio Grande, who had aimed the cannon at Matamoros, who had advised appropriating Mexican territory by force of arms, and who owed in fact all his prominence to playing a leading rôle in the "illegal, unrighteous, and damnable" war. Nobody thought of impeaching Polk, or of bringing home to him the guilt that was to have sunk him to the bottom of the bottomless pit.

Yet all the Whig journalism and oratory stood in the record. Hosea Biglow became an immortal. New Englanders gained the ear of reading people. Keen young radicals of the northeast, where the muse of history chiefly dwelt, dominated to a great extent the public thought. Polk retired from power and from