Devotion to the Adopted Country: U.S. Immigrant Volunteers in the Mexican War

Chapter 1: “To Stop the Mouths of Mendacious Croakers” : Defeating Nativists through Enlistment

Chapter 1 “To Stop the Mouths of Mendacious Croakers” Defeating Nativists through Enlistment  On May 23, 1846, the St. Louis Catholic News-Letter passed along a troubling report to its readers. The editors related a recent conversation with a man just arrived from New Orleans. The anonymous source informed the News-Letter of a storm brewing in New Orleans over the supposed antiwar preaching of several Catholic clergy. The Catholic population of the Crescent City feared that even mere rumors of such activity might incite violence against Catholic churches. Other Catholic papers picked up the story in the days that followed. A week after the St. Louis editors’ report, the Pittsburgh Catholic gave more specific details, stating that the controversy swarmed around Reverend J. J. Mullon, a New Orleans priest accused of encouraging his congregation not to enlist in the war with Mexico. The Catholic printed Mullon’s emphatic reply to the accusations: “Were they the subjects of the Sovereign Pontiff, whose catholicity is less equivocal than that of the Mexicans who had dishonored and insulted the flag of my country, I would be found among the first to stop the mouths of mendacious croakers, about an unholy war, by demanding prompt and instantaneous reparation.” In one sentence, Mullon’s invective addressed several issues facing Catholics and immigrants as war began with the country’s southern neighbor. He countered the long-held nativist belief that U.S. Catholics honored the pope above their country by professing his loyalty to America, addressing potential divisions among Catholics uneasy at fighting a Catholic enemy 9 10 Devotion to the Adopted Country (arguing that religious affinity should not obviate nationalism), and denying the charge that Catholics were all alike. Mullon instead scorned the orthodoxy of Mexicans.1 The war had begun almost a month before the Mullon controversy erupted. On the morning of April 25, 1846, about twenty miles upriver from U.S. General Zachary Taylor’s camp on the lower Rio Grande, Mexican cavalry ambushed Captain Seth B. Thornton’s patrol. Thornton, taken completely by surprise, tried to fight off his attackers but finally had to surrender with most of his remaining troops (approximately eighty men). The Americans had lost eleven men in the fight. After word reached General Taylor the next day (along with one of Thornton’s wounded men carrying a note from Mexican general Anastasio Torrejón), he dashed off notes to Washington and New Orleans letting his superiors and the nation know that hostilities with Mexico had commenced.2 Taylor was on the Rio Grande because of orders from President James K. Polk. Ever since Texas’s successful rebellion against Mexico, the state had claimed the Rio Grande as its southern boundary, while the Mexicans (though not conceding Texas’s independence) claimed the Nueces River. When Texas entered the Union in 1845, the U.S. government inherited the dispute. In late 1845, Polk had ordered Taylor to the Nueces with several thousand men. The following spring, he commanded the general to advance to the Rio Grande to press the U.S. claim. Taylor’s message, along with its call for volunteers from Louisiana and Texas, caused uproar in New Orleans.As the city began preparing for war, local newspapers accompanied vivid (though often inaccurate) speculation about Taylor’s fate with calls for the patriotic men of the city and the nation to leap to her defense. In a May 4 editorial, the Commercial Bulletin emphasized that the Crescent City’s immigrants were obligated to play a role in this cause, arguing,“Our country opens wide her arm to the people of all nations who come in the guise of friendship, and under the shadow of her great standard they find liberty, protection and prosperity . How much more, then, ought every inch of her dominions to be protected from the tread of an enemy! and how ought the naturalized to vie with the native, and the native with the naturalized citizen, in defence and vindication of her rights and character!” Such appeals did not fall upon deaf ears, as immigrants helped fill the six regiments of volunteers that Louisiana furnished in the early days of the war with Mexico. However , this highly charged atmosphere meant that any perceived disloyalty 11 “To Stop the Mouths of Mendacious Croakers” would bring trouble to the immigrant and Catholic communities, as evidenced in the Mullon affair.3 In the weeks that followed...