Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1847-11-20
THE wAR.-coNQUEsT IT'S OBJECT AND AIM


The OBJECT Of The United States u.s. under lis rights
begent nation TO possess itself entirely of Upper Cali
joria Secretary of the Navy to Commodore Sloat, July
IL, 1886.
The War has not been vaged with vie,o to conquest
Presidents Message TO Congress, Dec s, 1916.
The President toresees cosrISGEScY Which the Uni
ted States acH erer surrender renquh the possessions Of
ne Cahtorn'as Secretary of the Navy to Commodore
Stockton, Jan. IL, ls47.
Whilst our whole country was yet either unsus-
pcious could not bring itself to believe that the
present Administration was covertly taking mea-
sures to bring on War with Mexico, our readers
are well aware that we not only early denounced
that design, but pointed directly to the personal pur
poses which had suggested it, the supposed popular
passion for territorial ACKNOWLEDGEMENT which gave it
hopes of support, and, as necessary consequence,
the ultimate object (ConquesD for which, however
dissembled, the war was begun and would be pro-
secuted. We early declared what we knew to be
the counses entertained about the Court, and the
philosophy (for it had taken that orm) upon which
the Executive and its advisers proposed to act.
That philosophy, we knew and asserted, had en-
bodied itself in regular formulary of axioms
nearly as follows:
First. That Mr.. Polk came to the Presidency,
not through any effcacious personal popularity or
power, but by the fictitious favor of Party, which
had taken him up merely because it did not know
what else to do.
Second. That for the purposes of party, not less
than his own, popularity must be created for him
now that he was elected.
Third. That ordinary measures, and especially
those to which he and the party were pledged could
effect nothing, would effect less than nothing, to-
wards this most indispensable end.
Fourth. That, however, war party is always
popular in this country
Fyth. That it was, therefore, the true policy of
the Executive to involve the country in war;
which would, by its victories over a weak and its
territorial acquisitions wide country, give him,
as its author, popularity, power, party, and pres
hge-all that he had not; recruit with a splendid
and vast addition the exhausted stores of official
influence and patronage; and place the Opposition,
Wing or Democratic in the dilemma either of run
ming the risk of resisting the War or of becoming
in effect his instruments by sustaining it.
In spite 1--WE repeat of every previous conception
of what men, whether violent or senseless, could
dare attempt in this country SO Jealous of its free
dom and watchful of its interests, such were pre-
cisely the conjectures which we had formed in adj
vance of any known movement towards the Rio
Grande, and full month before that message
of 1S45, in which the Executiye-hiding from the
country what was meditated and assembling what
had been already begun-deliberaely labored to pre-
pare, by the most hostile views of our relations
with Mexico, justification in the popular passions
which would shield, when they could no longer be
concealed, his previous steps of war; however ille
gal and presumptuous Such, we say were our re-
luctant but clear convictions of the line of action
which had been settled at the palace. Many ndi-
cations had betrayed it to us and, shaping our
conclusions from these, we had reduced them to
just the formulary above stated and had even SO re-
peated them to friends in conversation, when of
sudden we found that our propositions were, al
most in terms, in the mouths of those adherents to
power who never, any more than an echo, have any
voice any opinion of their own, and are but the
reverberaton Of authority. We knew at once, of
course, that we had hit not only the purposes but
the very thoughts of the Administration and not
only its thoughts, but almost the forms Of speech
in which it was conveying its conclusions to its
more confidential followers.
We need hardly remind the Public how bitterly,
when first made it, the charge Of either intended
War or expected Conquest was denied for the Pre-
sdent, most libellous of him, by that irregular
member of his Administration and Cabinet las he
really ISL the Editor of the government paper As
little is it needul that we should bid the country re-
collect how, in the face of every subsequent dsco-
sure, these denials have been repeated. Nor least
OF ALL is it now necessary that we should state
how entirely, by the whole progress Of events and
revelations, all that originally suspected SO re-
luctantly, and all that, when at length denonc-
ed it, was contradcted SO angrly and contumelious
ly, has been confirmed in every particular.
This Administration-whose utmost reach of
policy is mposture, whose forte seems to be
secretiveness-appears, in its warlike genius, to
imagine that the arts which originally availed it in
an election-arts which have already failed it, ex-
cept in single State-can render it, to the end,
glorious in arms 1t clearly persuades itself that a
long, distant, expensive, obstinate war, presently to
grow as nhuman cas- originally twas needless and
Illegal be carried through, as was begun, by
the most transparent trickery. Certainly, in the
field it is permitted TO deceive an enemy: but the
President is not in the position in which alone
stratagem is warranlabe or can avaihat is to say,
face to face with the foe. Mexico he cannot delude
A a.