Westward extension, 1841-1850, by George Pierce Garrison.

252

WESTWARD EXTENSION

[(1847

tors, and they were backed by a strong and growing public sentiment. Buchanan's attitude, in fact,
changed in apparent accord with this variation in
popular feeling. At the opening of the war he insisted that the president should disavow any purpose of acquiring California or New Mexico, and
should assert that the United States desired no
more than the Rio Grande boundary.1 Polk refused to make such a statement, saying that, while
the war was not undertaken for the sake of conquest, it was his intention to insist on a territorial
indemnity which should cover, besides the claims,
the expenses also of the war. This view he consistently maintained; but with the progress of the
war and the growth of the popular impulse to absorb Mexico entirely, Buchanan shifted his ground
till he became apparently one of the most advanced
among the radical expansionists.
Polk himself, in his annual message of December
7, I847, when the city of Mexico was in the possession of Scott's troops, declared that if peace could
not be obtained otherwise it might be necessary
for the United States government to take "the full
measure of indemnity" into its own hands, but insisted that he had never contemplated "a permanent conquest of the Republic of Mexico," nor
the extinction of its independent nationality. Buchanan would have preferred to say that if the military occupation of Mexico and the encouragement
I Polk. MS. Diary, May 13, 1846.