"Abraham Lincoln first earned national attention by calling out President James K. Polk's lies about the lead-up to the conflict, which lasted from April 1846 to February 1848, on the floor of Congress. Ulysses S. Grant called the war "one of the most unjust ever waged." Henry David Thoreau's famous essay "Resistance to Civil Government" was written partly in response to the Mexican-American War, which he decried as "the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool." Other American paragons of virtue who were publicly opposed at the time: William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglass."
"Yet on Feb. 2, the anniversary of what Mexico calls the American Intervention, Trump declared that a war in which the United States conquered more than half of its southern neighbor for no reason other than it wanted to was a testament to "the unmatched power of the American spirit" and guided by "divine providence." And in case anyone was still wondering why Trump would feel fit to commemorate events that happened almost 200 years ago, he argued the job wasn't done."
The Mexican-American War (April 1846–February 1848) is described as a colonial conflict launched to humiliate a weaker country, motivated by revenge and racist leadership. Prominent contemporaries including Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry David Thoreau, William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglass publicly condemned the war as unjust and manipulative. On Feb. 2, President Trump commemorated the U.S. victory, calling it evidence of American spirit and divine providence and linking it to his efforts to defend the southern border and uphold law and order. No president since the Civil War has publicly praised the war, making the proclamation diplomatically provocative and politically unusual.
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