A Wicked War by Amy S. Greenberg

Author:Amy S. Greenberg [Greenberg, Amy S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-96091-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-11-06T07:00:00+00:00

Scene in Vera Cruz During the Bombardment. E. B. and E. C. Kellogg, 1847. This lithograph of the bombing of Veracruz, produced by a Hartford, Connecticut, firm, is one of the few American-made images of the war that visually represented the suffering of Mexican civilians. This vision of the widespread destruction of the city by American artillery and the deaths of women and children was most likely based on reports by soldiers and embedded journalists that appeared in American newspapers after the battle. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. (photo credit 8.3)

The journalists also reported that U.S. troops rioted immediately after entering Veracruz, setting fire to a nearby settlement, Boca Rio, after robbing and raping the inhabitants. Scott resorted to the public hanging of a rapist and issued an order establishing military courts to try Americans for crimes against Mexicans. His actions restored order, but not before the American people realized that American atrocities would not be limited to northern Mexico.

Veracruz was the most widely reported battle of the war, and the most negatively reported. The carnage within the walls of the city, and the disorder outside it, led the press to issue open criticism of the American government for the first time during the war. After contemplating the “hideous corpses, staring the living in the face” in Veracruz, many of the entrenched journalists began to question when “the war fiend” would be “tired of his sport, or sated with blood,” and how many “thousands of human lives” would yet “be sacrificed to the ambitious aspirations of man, or the just or unjust requirements of nations.” The public might not trust everything they read in the papers, but they couldn’t help but notice the new skepticism of the embedded reporters.30

The criticism hurt Polk. Democrats had fared badly in the elections of 1846, and Polk’s plan to invade central Mexico was forged in the hopes that it might bring an increasingly unpopular war to a speedy end. But Veracruz had hardly appeased his critics. Unlike Henry Clay, however, Polk never questioned providence. He belonged to no church, but his purpose in life was clear. He was the agent of Manifest Destiny. He ignored the naysayers who wondered out loud why Mexico hadn’t yet capitulated. He left unanswered reports from his commanding officers about atrocities on the front. The mounting death toll among American troops seems to have made no impression on him. When Santa Anna betrayed him and fought like a good patriot, Polk simply moved on and redoubled his efforts to win the war through sheer will and unending labor.

But the hard days and long nights of work, his obsessive attention to detail, and the relentless control he exercised over every department and clerk were taking a toll. “In truth, though I occupy a very high position,” the president lamented in his diary, “I am the hardest working man in this country.” Back in the halcyon days before his inauguration, James Polk had warned potential cabinet members that he would “remain constantly at Washington” during his term in office.

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