A History Lesson
In 1846 Democratic president James K. Polk ordered American troops into the hotly contested border area between the Rio Grande and the Nueces rivers following some hostilities in the area. In doing so he asked Congress not to declare war, but to admit a state of war with Mexico already existed. Charging that shots had been fired on American soil, he rallied the patriotic fervor of the nation, which saw over 300,000 men enlist to fight the Mexicans (50,000 would be sent to modern day Texas in order to defeat the Mexicans).
A freshman representative would challenge Polk to prove the first shot had indeed been fired by Mexicans on American soil (a hotly contested issue at the time). President Polk ignored him. The local newspapers would compare him to Benedict Arnold for going against the obvious right of the United States of America to defend herself. The young representative claimed that to 'accept Polk's position without question was 'to allow the President to invade a neighboring nation...whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary.' The Whig party (later to reorganize as the Republican party) he represented voted on a measure which called the war 'unecessarily and unconstitutionaly' initiated by the president.
Today, President Polk is considered a top ten president for his annexation of Texas (prior to the war) and his stern negotiations in victory, receiving reparations which would incude all of modern-day California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, and a small portion of Wyoming (the Mexican Cession). The young representative is viewed by most as the Nation's greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.