On December 5th, President Martin Van Buren expressed his hope that France and Mexico would quickly settle their differences and that Mexico’s ports would be once again opened to "vessels of all friendly nations". It’s quite likely that Van Buren wrote this before he heard that France had declared war on Mexico. Van Buren’s message was dated December 5th, five days after war was declared. Given how long it took for news to travel in 1838, it is quite likely Van Buren’s words were written before he received the news of war.
In Van Buren’s State of the Union address, he spoke only of a naval blockade and nothing of war. In early 1838, French King Louis Philippe put a naval blockade on the ports of Mexico in response to claims by French nationals of losses during unrest in the early years of the new Mexican Republic. Mexico had just won its independence from Spain in 1830 and there were widespread unrest as competing factions vied for control of the nation. France was Mexico's third largest trading partner behind the United States and Great Britain, and many French merchants had set up shop there, but relations between the two countries remained tense and many of these French merchants suffered significant damages due to the unrest. One notable merchant was a French pastry chef who claimed his shop was looted in 1832 and demanded that Mexico pay him 60,000 pesos, an amount equal to sixty times the value of his shop. This and other similar complaints convinced the French prime minister Louis-Mathieu Molé to demand that Mexico pay a total of 600,000 pesos. A peso was an average daily wage back then and 600,000 pesos was an enormous amount for the new Republic to pay. When Mexican President Anastasio Bustamante did not make payment, the French King ordered an attack on the fortress of San Juan de Ulúa and a seize on the city of Veracruz.
Just 4 days later, President Martin Van Buren delivered his second state of the union address and in it, he referred to the blockade, but not the declaration of war. Perhaps, not being aware of the declaration of war, President Van Buren wrote of his hope for "an early settlement of the difficulties between France and Mexico will soon reestablish the harmonious relations". Perhaps those hopes were dashed when the news finally reached Van Buren's desk.
"I regret to state that the blockade of the principal ports on the eastern coast of Mexico, which, in consequence of differences between that Republic and France, was instituted in May last, unfortunately still continues, enforced by a competent French naval armament, and is necessarily embarrassing to our own trade in the Gulf, in common with that of other nations. Every disposition, however, is believed to exist on the part of the French Government to render this measure as little onerous as practicable to the interests of the citizens of the United States and to those of neutral commerce, and it is to be hoped that an early settlement of the difficulties between France and Mexico will soon reestablish the harmonious relations formerly subsisting between them and again open the ports of that Republic to the vessels of all friendly nations."
Three months after France declared war, Mexico and France signed a peace treaty. Mexico agreed to pay the 600,000 pesos in damages but failed to pay and this was used 22 years later as justification by France for a second intervention. The conflict between France and Mexico became known as the "Pastry War" and was the first French intervention.
References
"Second Annual Message." Second Annual Message | The American Presidency Project, 3 Dec. 1838, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/second-annual-message-4
Robertson, William Spence. “French Intervention in Mexico in 1838.” The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 24, no. 2, 1944, pp. 222–52. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2507834. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastry_War
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