Horace Greeley: Our Country, Right or Wrong! (1846)

Our Country, Right or Wrong!

This is the spirit in which a portion of the Press, which admits that our treatment of Mexico has been ruffianly and piratical, and that the invasion of her territory by Gen. Taylor is a flagrant outrage, now exhorts our People to rally in all their strength, to lavish their blood and treasure in the vindictive prosecution of War on Mexico.  We protest against such a course . . .

We can easily defeat the armies of Mexico, slaughter them by the thousands, and pursue them perhaps to their capital;  we can conquer and 'annex' their territory; but what then?  Have the histories of the ruin of Greek and Roman liberty consequent on such extensions of empire by sword no lesson for us? Who believes that a score of victories over Mexico, the 'annexation' of half her provinces will give us more Liberty, a purer morality, a more prosperous Industry, than we now have? . . . Is not Life miserable enough, comes not Death soon enough, without resort to the hideous enginery of War?

People of the United States! Your Rulers are precipitating you into a fathomless abyss of crime and calamity! Why sleep you thoughtless on its verge, as though this was not your business, or Murder could be hid from the sight of God by a few flimsy rags called banners? Awake and arrest the work of butchery ere it shall be too late to preserve your souls from the guilt of wholesale slaughter!

(From New York Tribune, May 12, 1846. The original post is at Documents for the Debate on going to war with Mexico.)