Liberation and Conquest:
John Hamilton Robinson and U. S. Adventurism Toward Mexico, 1806–1819

David E. Narrett

This article examines the tendency of U. S. adventurers to conceive of liberation and conquest as a single enterprise through their participation in the Mexican Wars of Independence against Spain. The author addresses this theme by examining John Hamilton Robinson (1782–1819), explorer and spy, diplomatic envoy and military adventurer, volunteer Mexican officer, and a mapmaker of imperialistic intent.
"Europe enslaved millions! America liberated them!?" These fiery words headed a broadside issued in Pittsburgh in late 1813. The author was John Hamilton Robinson, formerly a physician in St. Louis, and recently returned from Chihuahua, where he had served briefly as State Department envoy to New Spain.1 Calling attention to "the Mexican revolution," then underway for three years, he admonished U. S. citizens to volunteer for the "Republican armies" fighting to overthrow Spanish rule in that land.2	1
Figure 1. John Hamilton Robinson (1782–1819). This portrait, by an unknown artist, was painted during Robinson's lifetime. Courtesy of Mrs. Mary Deborah Robinson Huerta.
Robinson dismissed any notion that a volunteer expedition against New Spain would interfere with mustering regular troops for his country's ongoing war with Great Britain. From his viewpoint, the fight for Mexican independence was but another theater in the struggle against English imperialism. The British were all too ready, he warned, to intervene in American affairs by mediating peace between metropolitan Spain and its rebellious American colonies. England stood as the protector of the Spanish monarchy ("the imbecile government of Spain" as Robinson put matters) beset by Napoleon's legions. Who could doubt that Great Britain—"a government who has subjugated India"—aspired to "controul the destinies of Mexico" and employ that country's wealth against the United States?3	2
While mindful of British power, John Hamilton Robinson's address of 1813 is most notable for assuming amicable relations between U. S. volunteers and Mexican insurgents bound together in a common cause. The people of Mexico could be expected to receive North American friends "with the most fraternal affection." As supportive evidence, Robinson cited Zebulon Montgomery Pike, his old companion, whom he had accompanied during the latter's trek across the southern plains and Northern New Spain in 1806–1807. Anticipating Mexico's struggle for independence, Pike had written in 1808 that twenty thousand U. S. "auxiliaries," allied with Mexican revolutionaries, would be sufficient to liberate that entire country. Success would come, however, only if the U. S. volunteers acted with "strict discipline," treated the civilian population with fairness, and respected "the institutions of their religion." Quoting freely from Pike, Robinson predicted certain victory in Mexico for disciplined and enthusiastic American troops: "They will only have to march from province to province, and be hailed by the united Voices of grateful millions as their deliverers and Saviours, while our national character, would be resounded to the most distant nations of the earth."4	. . .