for a long while, met with exasperating rebuffs. In reply to an American overture Rejón, the minister of relations, intimated in August, 1846, that our government wished to ignore the causes of the war because we dared not face the question of its justice. Six months later a messenger from our State Department was handled unceremoniously, as with tongs; and he brought back, in a quite offensively worded note, the refusal of Mexico to treat unless our forces should first withdraw from her soil and her waters. Naturally Polk was displeased. Instead of wishing longer to conciliate, he felt disposed to bring the stern realities of war home to the Mexicans, and in fact concluded that such a change of policy would be essential. In particular he decided that our custom of paying liberally for whatever was used by our armies, and thus providing the inhabitants with a profitable market, should give way to a system of levying "contributions" and seizing supplies; and corresponding intimations were despatched to the commanding generals. This method was harsh, but still it was only the legitimate harshness of war. It is no part of an invader's duty to scatter gold over conquered territory, and our government did not propose to go a step beyond the acknowledged rights of belligerency. Vattel, the standard authority on international law, said,
A nation [at war] on every opportunity lays its hands on the enemy's goods, appropriates them to itself, and thereby, besides weakening the adversary, strengthens itself, and, at least in part, procures an indemnification, an equivalent, either for the very cause of the war, or for the expenses and losses resulting from it.[1]
The real field of investigation, however, is not Washington but Mexico. The true question is, what things were actually done by the Americans there; and these may for convenience be grouped in four classes, which can readily be distinguished even if not practically to be severed: first, the direct relations of our commanding officers to the people; secondly, their relations through Mexican officials; thirdly, their relations through the behavior of their troops; and finally their relations to the Mexican civil administration.
- ↑ M. C. Rejón to J. Buchanan, August 31, 1846, Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 1, 29 Cong., 2 sess., p. 43; A. J. Atocha to Buchanan, July 3, 1847, Buchanan Papers, Penn. Hist. Society; *Consul J. Black, February, 24, 1847, State Dept.; Don Simplicio, February 17, 1847; La Epoca, February 23, 1847; *Bermúdez de Castro to Spanish government, no. 444, res., March 1, 1847, Archivo Particular del Minist. de Estado, Madrid; Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 1, 30 Cong., 1 sess., p. 37; Polk, Diary, II. 145, 432; Polk to House of Representatives, January 2, 1849, House Ex. Doc. No. 20, 30 Cong., 2 sess. (Intimations) House Ex. Doc. No. 60, 30 Cong., 1 sess., pp. 341, 1005; Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 14, 30 Cong., 1 sess., p. 5. E. de Vattel, Droit des Gens, book III., ch. 9, sect. 161.
