21 January 1848
The North Star calls for withdrawal from Mexico
Rochester, New York; United States and Mexico
The North Star, edited by Frederick Douglass, published “The War with Mexico,” condemning the invasion and its racial and slaveholding justifications. The editorial criticized both Democrats and Whigs for sustaining the war and urged petitions to Congress for the immediate recall of U.S. forces. It linked Black abolitionist criticism to opposition to conquest abroad.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
Zinn attributes the editorial to Douglass; the surviving newspaper article is unsigned, so this entry identifies the newspaper as its authorial setting. Its claims about national opinion are the editorial’s argument, not a representative survey. The original issue’s date, headline, opening and concluding demand were checked against the Library of Congress scan, with OCR used to read the intervening columns.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 8, pp. 157–158; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- The North Star, January 21, 1848, p. 2, “The War with Mexico”; Library of Congress original newspaper scan ↗