Spot Resolutions

Lincoln's resolutions were a direct challenge to the validity of the president's words, and representative of an ongoing political power struggle between Whigs and Democrats.

The first: "whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his messages declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819, until the Mexican revolution."

The other six resolutions extended the analysis to determine whether the territory on which the casualties occurred was ever under the government or laws of Texas or of the United States.

The House of Representatives never acted on Lincoln's resolutions, but they demonstrated the Whig reluctance to accept President Polk's grounds to begin the war.

[2][3]According to Lincoln biographer David Herbert Donald, "nobody paid much attention to his resolutions, which the House neither debated nor adopted".