Peace with Mexico

Written in the midst of the Mexican-American War by former Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, this slender volume mounts an audacious argument: the United States was the aggressor, and victory should not beget conquest. Gallatin contends that the annexation of Texas provoked Mexico's military response, making the subsequent American war effort morally indefensible regardless of battlefield success. He urges his countrymen to reject territorial plunder and instead negotiate peace that honors Mexican sovereignty, offering reparations for American citizens harmed by the conflict but spurning land grabs. Published in 1847 as popular enthusiasm for Manifest Destiny swept the nation, Gallatin's voice stands as a lonely, principled dissent from a founder-era statesman warning that empire would corrupt the republic's founding ideals. His careful legal and moral reasoning, rooted in Enlightenment principles of justice, offers modern readers a window into the heated debates over American expansionism that shaped the nation's continental ambitions and Mexico's enduring grievances.