Battles on the way. Its difficulties soon appeared. At Cerro Gordo, sixty miles from Vera Cruz, Santa Anna posted thirteen thousand of his Mexicans in a mountain pass, to whose natural strength he had added by fortification. It took two days to force a passage, the Americans losing about five hundred, but inflicting a far greater loss. on their brave opponents, (April 18-19.) Here, however, they paused; a part of the force was soon to be discharged, and Scott decided he would make his dismissals and wait for the empty places to be filled. He accordingly advanced slowly to Puebla, while the Mexicans kept in the background, or appeared only as guerillas, (May 28.) The guerilla warfare had been foretold as the one insuperable obstacle to the progress of the American army; it proved harassing, but by no means fatal. During the delay ensuing on land, the fleet in the gulf, under Commodore Perry, took Tuspan and Tobasco, both being but slightly defended, (April 18-June 15.) At length reënforcements having reached the army, making it not quite eleven thousand strong, it resumed its march, and entered the valley of Mexico, (August 10.) In valley There the Mexicans stood, Santa Anna still at of Mexico. their head, thirty-five thousand in their ranks, regular troops and volunteers, old and young, rich and poor, men of every profession and trade, all joining in the defence of their country, now threatened at its very heart. Behind the army was the government, endeavoring to unite itself, yet still rent and enfeebled to the last degree. Even the clergy, chafed by the seizure of church property to meet the exigencies of the state, were divided, if not incensed. It was a broken nation, and yet all the more worthy of respect for its last earnest resistance to the foe. Never had armies a more magnificent country to assail or to defend than that into which the Americans had penetrated. They fought in defiles or upon plains, vistas of lakes and fields before them, mountain heights above them, the majesty of nature everywhere mingling with the contention of man. Fourteen miles from the city, battles began at Contreras, where a Mexican division under General Valencia was totally routed, (August 19–20.) The next engagement followed immediately, at Churubusco, six miles from the capital, Santa Anna himself being there completely defeated, (August 20.) An armistice suspended further movements for a fortnight, when an American division under Worth made a successful assault on a range of buildings called Molino del Rey, close to the city. This action, though the most sanguinary of the entire war, — both Mexicans and Americans surpassing their previous deeds, was without results, (September 8.) A few days later, the fourth and final engagement in the valley took place at Chapultepec, a fortress just above Molino del Rey. Within the lines was the Mexican Military College, and bravely did the students defend it, mere boys outvying veterans in feats of valor; but the college and the fortress yielded together, (September 12-13.) The next day Scott, with six thousand five hundred men, the whole of his army remaining in the field, entered the city of Mexico, (September 14.) 'Wilmot The war had not continued three months, when proviso. the United States made an overture of peace, (July, 1846.) It was referred by the Mexican administration to the National Congress, and there it rested. In announcing to the American Congress the proposal which he had made, President Polk suggested the appropriation of a certain sum, as an indemnity for any Mexican territory that might be retained at the conclusion of the war. In the debate which followed, an administration representative from Pennsylvania, David Wilmot, moved a proviso to the proposed : appropriation "that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any territory on the continent of America which shall hereafter be acquired by or annexed to the United States by virtue of this appropriation, or in any other manner whatsoever." The proviso was hastily adopted in the House; but it was too late to receive any action in the Senate before the closing of the session, (August.) In the following session the proviso again passed the House, but was abandoned by that body on being rejected by the Senate. Mexican When the American commissioner, N. P. Trist, proviso. met the commissioners on the part of Mexico, he found them reluctant to yield any territory. It went especially against their will to open any to slavery; their instructions being quite positive on the point that any treaty to be signed by them must prohibit slavery in the ceded country. "No president of the United States," replied Commissioner Trist, "would dare to present any such treaty to the Senate." Trist was recalled, but he took it upon himself Treaty. to remain where he was, and to treat with new commissioners, two months after the entrance of the American army into the city of Mexico. The result of battles rather than of negotiations was a treaty signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo, a suburb of the capital. By this instrument Mexico ceded Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, while the United States agreed to surrender all other conquests, and to pay for those retained the sum of fifteen millions, besides assuming the claims of American merchants against Mexico to the amount of more than three millions, (February 2, 1848.) Ratifications were finally exchanged at Queretaro, (May 30,) and peace proclaimed at Washington, (July 4.) The Mexican territory that is, the portion which remained was rapidly evacuated. Old CHAPTER IX. COMPROMISE OF 1850. THE former domain of the United States was domain. gradually organized. Wisconsin came in quietly as a state, (May 29, 1848.) Oregon was established as a territory after frequent debate upon the exclusion of slavery, and an attempt to extend the line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific, so that the territory south of 36° 30′ might be considered slaveholding. A trouble of quite a different sort broke out in connection with Oregon; the Indians of that territory taking up arms, to the great peril of its settlers, in the year of its organization, (1848.) The next year another territory was peaceably organized in Minnesota, (1849.). New But with regard to the new domain, there were domain. grave difficulties. Eight hundred thousand square miles of territory had been added by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the two millions previously belonging to the United States. To any nation this would have been an embarrassing accession; to ours it was almost overwhelming, on account of its relation to slavery. The southern people claimed the war as of their making; its spoils, therefore, were for them. Northern men, who stood for freedom, declared the war a sufficient evil in itself, without entailing the greater evil of slavery extension, So one section set itself against the other on the borders of the new domain. Free-soil That the feeling in the north had become much party. stronger, was proved by the formation of a new party on the side of freedom. The presidential canvass began, and the whig and democratic parties entered into it with no other special purpose regarding freedom or slavery than to let both alone. But the free-soil party, in convention at Buffalo, (August, 1848,) announced "the duty of the federal government to relieve itself from all responsibility for the existence or continuance of slavery," and "the only safe means of preventing the extension of slavery... to prohibit its extension by act of Congress." Public opinion was touched. The whig party, or some of its northern leaders, made a show of liberal principles. The democrats, in spite of being aided by all the patronage of the administration, lost ground. Though not carrying a single state, or a single electoral vote for their own candidate, the free-soilers had much to do with determining the election of the whig candidate, Zachary Taylor, as less hurtful to freedom than his competitor. Root's tion. When Congress met, in December, the House of resolu- Representatives, on motion of Joseph M. Root, of Ohio, instructed its committee on territories to report a bill or bills providing territorial governments for New Mexico and California, "excluding slavery." A bill for California passed the House, but was blocked in the Senate on account of the restriction against slavery. Conven- Calhoun, still a senator, prepared an address of tion of the southern members of Congress to their constitumembers ents, (January, 1849.) It inveighed against the of Con- aggressions of the north, particularly its evasion of gress. the fugitive slave law, and its abolitionism. "We ask not," wrote Calhoun, "as the north alleges we do, for the extension of slavery. That would make a discrimination in our favor as unjust and unconstitutional as the dis southern |