The directors of the administration saw therefore more and more clearly that, if a war with Mexico were impeding, it would be sheer madness to open a quarrel with Great Britain, and force her into an alliance against us.

Fifty-four forty or fight" had been a good cry for the political campaign; but, when the fight was to be with Great Britain, the issue became too serious to be settled by such international law as is dispensed on the stump.

It had created a deep and wide-spread excitement in the country, and came very near precipitating hostilities with Great Britain.

There is no doubt whatever that the English Government would have gone to war rather than surrender the territory north of the 49th parallel.

There was scarcely a spot on the globe, outside of the United Kingdom, where we could not have fought England with greater advantage than on the north-west coast of America at that time.

Taking the question, however, as it stood in 1846, the settlement must, upon full consideration and review, be adjudged honorable to both countries.

Wise statesmen of that day felt, as wise statesmen of subsequent years have more and more realized, that a war between Great Britain and the United States would not only be a terrible calamity to both nations, but that it would stay the…

Future generations would hold the governing power in both countries guilty of a crime if war should ever be permitted except upon the failure of every other arbitrament.

But a striking and useful lesson would be lost if it should be forgotten that the country was brought to the verge of war by the proclamation of a policy which could not be, and was not intended to be, enforced.

It was originated as a cry to catch votes; and except with the ignorant, and the few whose judgment was carried away by enthusiasm, it was from the first thoroughly insincere.

But the entire country suffered, and probably endured a serious and permanent loss, from the false step taken by men who claimed what they could not defend and did not mean to defend.

His course saved the administration, not indeed from a mortifying position, but from a continually increasing embarrassment which seemed to force upon the country the cruel alternatives of war or dishonor.

The generous instincts of the people condemned an attempt to destroy the honorable fame of a public man by what they considered to be an act of spiteful persecution.

They must either vote for what they did not believe, or, by voting against the bill, incur the odium which always attaches to the party that fails by a hair's-breadth to come to the defense of the country when war is imminent.

But all agreed that it was too late to consider any thing except the honor of the country, now that actual hostilities had begun.

No finer body of men ever enlisted in an heroic enterprise than those who volunteered to bear the flag in Mexico.

They were young, ardent, enthusiastic, brave almost to recklessness, with a fervor of devotion to their country's honor.

For the first and only time in our political history, an administration conducting a war victorious at every step, steadily lost ground in the country.

The contrast between the boldness with which the Polk administration had marched our army upon the territory claimed by Mexico, and the prudence with which it had retreated from a contest with Great Britain, after all our antecedent…

The Mexican war had scarcely begun when the President justified the popular suspicion by making known to Congress that one of its objects was to be the acquisition of territory beyond the Rio Grande.

He ably vindicated the policy of marching a military force into the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, by the fact that he was memorialized to do so by the still existing Congress of Texas, on the urgent plea that Mexico was…

He believed the time had come to arrest the progress and extension of slavery.

He knew that the two-million bill was urged by the President because he wished to use the money to promote the acquisition of territory, and he determined then and there to make a stand in favor of free soil.

He thereupon, on the 8th of August, 1846, moved a proviso to the two-million bill, declaring it to be "an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from Mexico, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…

The wonder excited by the raising of the vast army which saved the Union from destruction was even surpassed by the wonder excited by its prompt and peaceful dissolution.