since precautions against the Indians could not be neglected. In his Message to the Senate, March 24, 1846, the President declared it his "settled purpose" to maintain peace with Mexico, and it is believed that no expression of his indicating a desire to provoke a conflict can be found.[1]
The measures of the administration corresponded with its professions In the first place this was true negatively. It would not be easy to deny that Mexico's refusal to pay the instalments of our awards could have been handled by our government in a way to enrage this nation, already so eager for the fray, and probably her severance of diplomatic relations might have been used to precipitate an issue; but no advantage was taken of either opportunity. Another instance is even more signal. One can hardly doubt that Polk might have brought on a war in the summer of 1845, had he so desired. Not only had Mexico grossly insulted us, refused to pay those awards, and severed relations with us both at her capital and at our own, but she had, solemnly announced that our annexing Texas would be regarded as equivalent to a declaration of f'war, notified her agents privately and the world at large publicly that she was going to fight, and begun preparations for immediate hostilities. Had Polk summoned Congress and laid all the facts before it, a declaration of war, or at least an ultimatum that Mexico would in all probability have rejected, must certainly, or almost certainly, have been the response; and if one may judge from the state of mind existing in the United States at the time, our people would in the main have "supported such a course. "The current of public opinion," said the St. Louis Republican, "seems now strongly inclined in favor of a war with Mexico." "All the better portions of the press of the country, "was the summary of the New Orleans Picayune, "are urgent for the adoption of the most energetic measures" against that country. Almost every Democratic journal and a vast majority of the Whig journals, declared the Washington Globe, were for crushing Mexico at once. "The people will approve" of vigorous action, admitted even the Charleston Courier.[2]
But Polk did not adopt a course of that sort. He took no such steps to settle matters with England as a President of ordinary common sense would have taken, if anxious to fight
