Chapter XIII: Polk’s Whirl; Or, the American Polka

1845–1849.

The Floor Committee for the coming Polka described.—History of previous
Balls, Country Dances, Virginia Reels, Quincy Waltzes, Irish Jigs,
South Carolina Shake-ups, etc.—General Taylor, his Advances and
Movements at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena
Vista.—How his Partner, the Army, was taken away.—General Scott among
the Mustangs at Vera Cruz, Natural Bridge, Chapultepec, Mexico,
etc.—Of Wool, Kearny, Fremont, and Commodore Sloat.—What New Mexico
and California added and subtracted.—The Mustang Liniment, or Treaty
of Guadaloupe Hidalgo.—How the Path for the Traditional Sun of
Civilization Westward was cut and paved.—Revolvers judicially quoted
and applied.—Peculiar Fruit adorning the Pendulous Branches of Trees
in New Settlements.—What the Little Trick of the Wizard of the South
conjured up.—California in 1848 and now contrasted.—David Wilmot
raises a Ghost which disturbs several Party Feasts.—How the Polka
Party broke up; and how it pleased some and dissatisfied others.

The committee of the American people, in November, 1844, designated new floor-managers for the coming season of four years.

With Washington and John Adams the nation had had the old-fashioned, respectable country dance; the up and down, square, staid figures, moving through the rhythmic performances and retiring with marked dignity. Then came the Virginia reel, led by Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, with the same partners throughout. The Quincy waltz followed, ending in a dishevelled gallop, when the heated dancers were led off to chilling ice-creams and whipped syllabubs. This was succeeded by a long puzzling Irish jig, under Jackson, with a lively and frequent change of partners and a passionate mixture of feet, heads, and ball-room dresses. A Dutch hornpipe led a select party through the mazy solemnities, and intermixed fandango advances and retreats which characterized the Van Buren schottishe. Then came the quick-footed cachuca, performed by the Harrison-Tyler troupe, ending in a South Carolina shake-up, where the darkies were the principal performers, although Calhouned white men promoted the dance and took the profits of the abundantly patronized bar. The floor was now cleared for the polka, an extremely spirited, gyrating series of figures, in which the main object was to balance, by rapid dodges and double-shuffling whirls, the forcibly acquired colored partner, named Texas, with the new incoming free State arrivals. The sets were soon formed. President Polk was of course head manager, having able assistants in James Buchanan, carrying a stately variegated black and white rose; Robert J. Walker, his button-hole adorned with a gold-colored treasury ribbon; William L. Marcy, resplendent with a broad crimson war-sash across his broad chest; George Bancroft, in a navy-blue uniform, open in front for the ready exit of his never-ceasing orders; Cave Johnson, in mail attire; and John Y. Mason with his narrow cranium transfigured by a straitened cross-barred attorney’s cap. Southern men, North and South, stepped eagerly forward to join in the popular dance.

General Taylor, a modest young man of sixty-one, was directed by the managers to make an advance, with a party clothed in the United States military dress, to a place on the large floor, chalked out between the Neuces and Rio Grande, with a hint not to be offensive in his attitudes, but to look as disagreeable as he chose; and that if anybody, especially the blanketed Mexicans, who insisted on having that part of the large ball-room exclusively to themselves, should give him any chance, however small, to fall foul of them, ball or no ball. When one is desirous of a quarrel he is not usually, especially at the Southwest, long kept out of the enjoyment. In April, 1846, General Ampudia and General Taylor chanced to touch each other, and off went the chip from the American shoulder. Of course everybody who at the North sold goods to the South, and every one at the South who possessed a colored brother in fee-simple, was indignant about the chip, which for the time conveniently represented American honor.

The national gorge and the price of negroes rose simultaneously. Fifty thousand men and $10,000,000 were voted by Congress to iron out the creases made in our flag. Of course the young man of sixty-one soon got into the adobe-colored tumble which was impatiently expected. May 8, 1846, with the aid of 2,300 men, he tripped up General Arista with 6,000 men, at Palo Alto, and the next day fell violently against him at Resaca de la Palma. The chopfallen Mustangs, picking up themselves and their dirtier blankets, made all haste to get out of reach of the rough-and-ready treatment, and sped across the Rio Grande to Monterey. But the young man, excited by the jerking mazourka step into which the dance now broke, grasped his partner, the army, around the waist, and flung across the opening spaces against the frightened Mustangs at Monterey. It was a hard shock, and, of course, the sorry-visaged Mexicans were hurled against the wall.

The floor managers for some reason—some uncharitably thought from envy at seeing the modest young man attracting so much admiration—took away his partner, and sent it off with a younger man, General Scott, then only sixty, to another part of the room. The figures which he cut with his set of twenty thousand at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, National Bridge, Churubusco, Contreras, Chapultepec, and city of Mexico, were waltzed with unflagging energy.

Meanwhile, the young man Taylor, left with only 4,759 raw troops, was set upon in February, 1847, at Buena Vista, by Santa Anna and 22,000 well-baked Mexicans. The South American Warwick left 1,500 men, his carriage, travelling equipage, and the best part of himself—his wooden leg—upon the field, and with the fragments escaped southwards. Almost simultaneously new-comers were seen flying, in movements more or less effective, across the room,—General Wool, with 2,900 men, at San Antonio; General Kearny, at Sante Fé, New Mexico; Captain John C. Fremont and Commodore Sloat, in California; all performing feats which brought murmurs of applause even from trans-sea critics.

At last the Mexicans gave out, tired and glad to apply to their wounds that Mustang liniment, the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, mixed up March 2, 1848.

New Mexico and California were, by this treaty, added, with eight hundred thousand square miles, to our westering borders. Henceforth the Rio Grande babbled a bi-lingual story to the Saxon Americans on its right, and the mezzo-tinted, mezzo-clad Mexicans on its left. The path of civilization, whose sun-leaning course through the centuries, from Assyria to America, is not unfamiliar to Americans, was now securely macadamized by Yankee pavers to the Pacific. The Atlantic slopes, of course, were easily turned westward, and their readily manufactured fruits rolled down into the Mississippi basin, and over its heaping rim beyond. Revolvers were boxed and transported in increased quantities to the Southwest, to supply the judicial demand; as every man who takes up government land is liable to sudden litigations, where the trials revolve quickly, and cast with fatal speed one of the litigants. The wonderful vegetation of this newly opened region, gorgeous in tropical luxuriance, was for a few years made more remarkable by the human fruitage, which not unfrequently hung suspended with impressive weight from the pendulous branches. Fortunately these productions are short-lived. They are but the morning mists that hide for an hour the mammoth sierras and wide-armed plains, that nurse continents and centuries to manly vigor.

ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY.
(p. 421)
]

The little Calhoun trick had, quite unexpectedly to the wizard of the South, conjured up,—not a few paltry African patches grinning with ghastly spectres, chained in the linked dance of death,—but broad empires brimming soon with stalwart men and women. Calhoun proposes, but conscience disposes.

The yellow-fever broke out, soon after the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, in our new Californian possession, carrying off people, not thence, but thither. By the side of palace hotels, now gleaming along golden bays; solid warehouses, through whose opened doors show the well-stored sheaves of Continental harvests; settled industries that spike the land with stacks, vineyards, mills, and spired villages; palace cars which in a week have blazoned their luxurious splendors through solitudes threaded only a few years ago by the dangerous blazed track; and giant steamers wading the Pacific Sea, and carrying to the Mongolian empires of the Orient a staggering back-load of American products,—by the side of these actual marvels, even a score of years has made the contrasted early life of the gold adventurer, gambling in revolver-furnished tents, dangerous night brawls, and rude visits of vigilance committees, a theme for romance and its twin ally, history. It had taken nearly three centuries since Sir Thomas Drake proclaimed California the ward of Elizabeth, for the North American boy to acquire sufficient courage to touch her virgin lips, and claim her in happy wedlock.

Our New Mexico brought immediate and national disturbance. Slavery there was considered objectionable by many; and as soon as Territories were proposed to be carved out of those wide limits, the Wilmot proviso, to exclude slavery from it, arose at the expected Calhoun feast like Banquo’s ghost, and, disturbing the revel, followed with reproachful look almost every American statesman. It strode into the Democratic Convention at Baltimore, which nominated Lewis Cass, and sat alongside of the shivering president and secretaries. It stalked into the Whig assemblage at Philadelphia, which took the young man for its candidate, and troubled its peace. Finally, it flitted to Buffalo, and made its appearance at a mixed gathering which presented Martin Van Buren,—now the political friend of the ghost,—with just the ghost’s chance for the Presidency.

And so the ball and polka party turned out very much as other balls. Those who had expected a great deal from it did not enjoy it much; while those who had no hand in getting it up had a good time, ate the most supper, had the least headache the next morning, and often spoke of it afterwards with pleasurable recollections. Among the former were Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Polk, and the floor committee; among the latter the modest young man, now sixty-five years of age, John C. Fremont, several people who did not part their hair in the middle, and a growing set who were friends of those who could not divide their crinkled hair as yet either way or any way.