flag.

Answering this cry, put up by Senator Cass of Michigan, Senator
Thomas Corwin, in a spirit of prophecy, said:

"But you still say you want _room_ for your people. This has been
the plea of every robber-chief from Nimrod to the present hour.
I dare say, when Tamerlane descended from his throne, built of
seventy thousand human skulls, and marched his ferocious battalions
to further slaughter,--I dare say he said, 'I want room.' Alexander,
too, the mighty 'Macedonian Madman,' when he wandered with his
Greeks to the plains of India, and fought a bloody battle on the
very ground where recently England and the Sikhs engaged in a strife
for 'room' . . . Sir, he made quite as much of that sort of history
as you ever will. Mr. President, do you remember the last chapter
in that history? It is soon read. Oh! I wish we could understand
its moral. Ammon's son (so was Alexander named), after all his
victories, died drunk in Babylon. The vast empire he conquered to
'get room' became the prey of the generals he trained; it was
desparted, torn to pieces, and so ended. Sir, there is a very
significant appendix; it is this: The descendants of the Greeks--
of Alexander's Greeks--are now governed by a descendant of Attilla."

Through the greed of the slave power Texas was acquired, and they
still longed for more slave territory, and weak Mexico alone could
be depleted to obtain it.

Southern California and New Mexico had a sufficiently warm climate
for slavery to flourish in.

The war was far from popular, though the pride of national patriotism
supported it. Clay and Webster each opposed it, and each gave a
son to it.(57)

Abraham Lincoln, then for a single term in Congress, spoke against
it, but, like most other members holding similar views, voted men,
money, and supplies to carry it on.

Senator Benton of Missouri, a party friend to the administration
of Polk and favoring the war, said:

"The truth was, an intrigue was laid for peace before the war was
declared! And this intrigue was even part of the scheme for making
war. It is impossible to conceive of an administration less warlike,
or more intriguing, than that of Mr. Polk. They were men of peace,
with objects to be accomplished by means of war. . . . They wanted
a small war, just large enough to require a treaty of peace, and
not large enough to make military reputations dangerous for the
Presidency."(58)

It was predicted the war would not last t