On Mexico!

The Mexican-American War perfectly reflected the expansionist/ racial superiority policy of slave owning POTUS James Polk and was largely a "popular" yet controversial war...there was a small group of very vocal critics.

Henry David Thoreau- refused to pay taxes (and spent time in jail) because it directly supported the war.

This war is "the work of a few individuals using government as their tool."

Paying this tax supports "a violent and bloody measure that enables the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood."

John Quincy Adams- cast the first vote in 1846 against the war.

"This is a most unrighteous war."

Abraham Lincoln- openly criticized President Polk's version of "American blood spilled on American soil".

"Show me where there is American blood on American soil...with facts, and not with arguments."

Ulysses S. Grant- serving in the war later said...

"One of the most unjust wars ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker nation."

Ralph Waldo Emerson- the great philosopher and writer...

"America's swallowing up of over half of Mexico would be like a man who swallows arsenic...Mexico will poison us."

Frederick Douglass- in a speech often referred to as "On Mexico" gave probably the most inflammatory remarks.

Upon hearing of a General who had been killed said, "another legalized murderer has gone to their account...Why may not the oppressed say, when an oppressor is dead, either by disease or by the hand of the foe on the battlefield, that there is one less oppressor left on earth? For my part, I would not care if, tomorrow, I should hear the death of every man who engaged in that bloody war in Mexico, and that every man had met the fate he went there to perpetrate upon unoffending Mexicans."