A Wicked War Quotes

“Lincoln had no fears of a powerful central government, for he believed, along with other Whigs, that the purpose of government was “to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all or can not, so well do, for themselves.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“NO POLITICIAN COULD devote as many evenings to poker and whiskey as had Henry Clay and expect a decorous presidential campaign.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“By bundling the authorization of war funds with a declaration of war attributed to Mexico, Democrats ensured that any opponent of the measure could be accused of betraying the troops. Polk’s supporters skillfully managed to stifle dissent in the House by limiting debate to two hours, an hour and a half of which was devoted to reading the documents that accompanied the message. The flabbergasted opposition was caught completely off guard and struggled to amend the bill. Powerless and voiceless, they watched helplessly as Polk’s supporters ruthlessly stifled debate and foisted war on Congress and the country.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“how much misery and distress is caused in the beautiful world of ours by sin.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“Trist’s essential character and beliefs had been shaped by Jefferson: religious skepticism, love of logic, and commitment to abstract notions of justice.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“It was becoming clear that Polk’s “mind was narrow, and he possessed a trait of sly cunning which he thought shrewdness, but which was really disingenuousness and duplicity.” No Democrat would dare say it out loud, not yet anyhow, but the new president was a liar.7”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“He snubbed important members of his party with seeming reckless abandon. He would be himself president. “He had no confid[a]nts except from calculation and for a purpose,” one contemporary noted. “His secretiveness was large, and few men could better keep their own secrets.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“cabinet, because that person would naturally put his personal advancement ahead of the good of the administration. What Polk needed, and would have, was nothing less than absolute loyalty and subservience from “a united and harmonious” cabinet, one that put “the existing administration and the good of the country” first.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“Protestant Americans believed the Catholic inhabitants of Mexico to be inferior in both race and religion and desperately in need of enlightenment.34”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“Most Americans viewed the Texas Revolution not as a war for slavery but as a race war between brown Mexicans and white Texians, and as a result supported the Texians wholeheartedly.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“Widespread racism led many Americans to equate Mexicans with Indians and to conclude that the former were no more deserving of their own land than the latter.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“The U.S.-Mexican War had the highest casualty rate of any American war. Over 10 percent of the seventy-nine thousand American men who served in the war died, most from disease. Mexican casualties are harder to estimate, but at least twenty-five thousand, most civilians, perished in the course of the war.15”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico

“America’s war with Mexico had the highest desertion rate of any American war, over 8 percent. Some of those deserters chose to fight for the enemy, joining the San Patricio Battalion.”
― Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico