position on the east bank of the Rio Grande within the limits of Texas, then recently admitted as one of the States of our Union, the Commanding-General of the Mexican forces, who, in pursuance of the orders of his Government, had collected a large army on the opposite shore of the Rio Grande, crossed the riv.er, invaded our territory, and commenced hostilities by attackmg our forces^ " Every honorable effort has been used by me to avoid the war that followed ; but all have proved vain. All our attempts to preserve peace have been met by insult and resistance on the part of Mexico." " This war has not been waged with a view to conquest," &c., &c.
With a reckless consistency rarely paralleled, he an- nounced to Congress on the 6th of July, 1848, that " the war ih which our country was -reluctantly involved in the NECESSARY vindication of the national rights and honor, has been terminated."
The fictions of Mr. Polk were reiterated by his party with all the gravity of sincere belief. The Whigs in Con- gress, with a few honorable exceptions, pursued a different policy. They fearlessly confessed that the war for which they voted was unnecessary and unjust, a war of aofsfression and not of defence : and that the assertion in behalf of which they enrolled their names in an enduring record, that the war existed " by the act of Mexico" was FALSE. To excuse their conduct, they also had their fiction. They voted to raise fifty thousand men, for the purpose of rescuing General Taylor and his little army from capture by the Mexicans ! The falsehoods respecting the Mexican war, coined in Washington, became a circulating medium throughout the country. They were found in almost every official de- spatch ; they were uttered through the press ; they were passed as genuine by Governors in their messages, and by Legislatures in their resolves. Who shall estimate the