essay about the mexican american war

The Mexican-American War Essay

The US-Mexican War started on 25 April 1846 and lasted for 2 years until 1848 (Bauer, 1992). The war broke out mainly because both the US and Mexico were interested in Texas, which had gained independence from Mexico in 1836. People have divided opinion on whether the US should have been involved in this war. On one side, some people argue that the US should not have been involved in the war because it had refused to incorporate Texas into the Union in 1836 after gaining independence. On the other side, some individuals hold that the US should have been involved in the war as retaliation after Mexico attacked American soldiers on the disputed land. However, this paper holds that the US should not have engaged in the 1846 Mexican-American War.

The Mexican president at the time, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, had warned the US that any efforts to annex Texas would break the already fragile relationship between Mexico and the US (Frazier, 1998). However, the US president at the time ignored such warnings. Mexico and the US were equal partners in the region, and President James Polk should have respected the calls to leave Texas alone. The Mexican president was only concerned about the peace of the region. President de Santa Anna even went to the extent of begging the US to stay out of Texas, but President Polk was determined to annex Texas to the Union. Therefore, for the interest of peace in the region, the US should not have engaged Mexico in this bloody war.

To show its commitment to resolve the Texan conflict amicably, the Mexican government decided to negotiate with a low-level US government official. Having a low-level government official would keep politics out of the already volatile issue. However, the US government would not divorce the politics of supremacy from the confrontation, and thus it sent a minister to negotiate with Mexico. At this point, it is clear that the US was set for a military confrontation by defying all the demands from the Mexican government. If the US sent a low-profile government official as required, perhaps the war would have been averted.

However, the proponents of the war argue that Mexico had to be held responsible for attacking American troops and killing two officers (Henderson, 2008). Apparently, Mexico had no right to dictate whether Texas wanted to join the Union or remain an independent country. Texas needed help from its allies after being ravaged by the struggle for independence from Mexico. Therefore, the US was simply helping its ally at the time of need through annexation. Additionally, Mexico refused to honor its promise of receiving the US emissary with honor befitting an American government official in foreign land. Therefore, Mexico pushed the US into the war.

In conclusion, there are compelling reasons explaining why the US should or should not have engaged in the Mexican-American War. However, the US should not have engaged in the war. Mexico had categorically stated that the annexation of Texas to the United States would cause conflicts in the region, and President Polk should have respected this stand. Besides, Mexico indicated its willingness to negotiate with a low-profile US government official. However, the US sent a high-ranking minister in the government.

The proponents of the war hold that Mexico had no right to determine if Texas would join the US. However, this argument is weak because Mexico wanted peace in the region and the US should have respected that view. Therefore, the arguments on why the US should not have engaged in the war are highly compelling because peace should surpass supremacy battles.

Bauer, J. (1992). The Mexican War: 1846–1848 . Winnipeg, MB: Bison Books.

Frazier, D. (1998). The U.S. and Mexico at war . Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.

Henderson, T. (2008). A glorious defeat: Mexico and its war with the United States. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.

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IvyPanda. (2020, August 25). The Mexican-American War. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-mexican-american-war/

"The Mexican-American War." IvyPanda , 25 Aug. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/the-mexican-american-war/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'The Mexican-American War'. 25 August.

IvyPanda . 2020. "The Mexican-American War." August 25, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-mexican-american-war/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Mexican-American War." August 25, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-mexican-american-war/.

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Mexican-American War

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 10, 2022 | Original: November 9, 2009

Mexican-American War 1846-1848: Battle of Buena Vista. (Credit: Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848 marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It pitted a politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. President James K. Polk, who believed the United States had a “Manifest Destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. A border skirmish along the Rio Grande that started off the fighting was followed by a series of U.S. victories. When the dust cleared, Mexico had lost about one-third of its territory, including nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.

Causes of the Mexican-American War

Texas gained its independence from Mexico in 1836. Initially, the United States declined to incorporate it into the union, largely because northern political interests were against the addition of a new state that supported slavery . The Mexican government was also encouraging border raids and warning that any attempt at annexation would lead to war.

Did you know? Gold was discovered in California just days before Mexico ceded the land to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Nonetheless, annexation procedures were quickly initiated after the 1844 election of Polk, a firm believer in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny , who campaigned that Texas should be “re-annexed” and that the Oregon Territory should be “re-occupied.” Polk also had his eyes on California , New Mexico and the rest of what is today the American Southwest.

When his offer to purchase those lands was rejected, he instigated a fight by moving troops into a disputed zone between the Rio Grande and Nueces River that both countries had previously recognized as part of the Mexican state of Coahuila .

The Mexican-American War Begins

On April 25, 1846, Mexican cavalry attacked a group of U.S. soldiers in the disputed zone under the command of General Zachary Taylor , killing about a dozen. They then laid siege to Fort Texas along the Rio Grande. Taylor called in reinforcements, and—with the help of superior rifles and artillery—was able to defeat the Mexicans at the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Resaca de la Palma .

Following those battles, Polk told the U.S. Congress that the “cup of forbearance has been exhausted, even before Mexico passed the boundary of the United States, invaded our territory, and shed American blood upon American soil.” Two days later, on May 13, Congress declared war, despite opposition from some northern lawmakers. No official declaration of war ever came from Mexico.

U.S. Army Advances Into Mexico

At that time, only about 75,000 Mexican citizens lived north of the Rio Grande. As a result, U.S. forces led by Col. Stephen Watts Kearny and Commodore Robert Field Stockton were able to conquer those lands with minimal resistance. Taylor likewise had little trouble advancing, and he captured the city of Monterrey in September.

With the losses adding up, Mexico turned to old standby General Antonio López de Santa Anna , the charismatic strongman who had been living in exile in Cuba. Santa Anna convinced Polk that, if allowed to return to Mexico, he would end the war on terms favorable to the United States.

But when Santa Anna arrived, he immediately double-crossed Polk by taking control of the Mexican army and leading it into battle. At the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847, Santa Anna suffered heavy casualties and was forced to withdraw. Despite the loss, he assumed the Mexican presidency the following month.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops led by Gen. Winfield Scott landed in Veracruz and took over the city. They then began marching toward Mexico City, essentially following the same route that Hernán Cortés followed when he invaded the Aztec empire .

The Mexicans resisted at the Battle of Cerro Gordo and elsewhere, but were bested each time. In September 1847, Scott successfully laid siege to Mexico City’s Chapultepec Castle . During that clash, a group of military school cadets–the so-called ni ños héroes –purportedly committed suicide rather than surrender.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Guerrilla attacks against U.S. supply lines continued, but for all intents and purposes the war had ended. Santa Anna resigned, and the United States waited for a new government capable of negotiations to form.

Finally, on Feb. 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, establishing the Rio Grande (and not the Nueces River) as the U.S.-Mexican border. Under the treaty, Mexico also recognized the U.S. annexation of Texas, and agreed to sell California and the rest of its territory north of the Rio Grande for $15 million plus the assumption of certain damage claims.

The net gain in U.S. territory after the Mexican-American War was roughly 525,000 square miles, an enormous tract of land—nearly as much as the Louisiana Purchase’s 827,000 square miles—that would forever change the geography, culture and economy of the United States.

Though the war with Mexico was over, the battle over the newly acquired territories—and whether or not slavery would be allowed in those territories—was just beginning. Many of the U.S. officers and soldiers in the Mexican-American War would in just a few years find themselves once again taking up arms, but this time against their own countrymen in the Civil War .

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The Impact of the Mexican American War on American Society and Politics

On February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed which officially ended the Mexican-American War. However, as the guns fell silent, and the men returned home, a new war was brewing, one that continues to shape the course of this country to this day.

While Ulysses S. Grant might have argued that the Civil War was God’s punishment for the Mexican-American War, a “wicked war" that was rooted in imperialism and the expansion of slavery, many Americans supported the Mexican-American War as they viewed it as the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny: the promise that the United States would extend from “sea to shining sea.” While Manifest Destiny remains a core of U.S. national identity, in the 1840s it encouraged a slew of ideological debates over this potential new territory, specifically if the territory should be free or enslaved. The Louisiana Purchase caused a major crisis over the organization of new states which Congress ultimately resolved with the Missouri Compromise, the compromise to end all compromises. It is important to note that the debates in 1820 were largely split among party lines, i.e. Democrats vs. Whigs . However, the Mexican American War reopened past wounds and sent the United States into another legislative crisis.

Even before the war was won and territory had been ceded, Congress was already discussing how to organize any potential new territory gained as reparations from Mexico. One of the most important of proposals was the Wilmot Proviso which Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed in 1846, two years before the war ended. Under this proviso, any territory gained by war with Mexico should be free and thus reserved exclusively for whites. Wilmot was a free-soiler, which meant that he did not want to abolish slavery in the places it currently existed but rather prevent its expansion to new territories. However, Wilmot was also a Northern Democrat, and most Democrats supported slavery and protected it, even if they themselves did not own slaves. Many Northern Whigs believed in something called the Slave Power Conspiracy, a conspiracy theory in which slaveowners (the Slave Power) dominated the country’s political system even though they were a minority group, which was accomplished through a coalition with “dough-faced Democrats,” Northern Democrats who supported and protected slavery. While the Wilmot Proviso failed in the Senate, it passed in the House of Representatives because of a coalition between Northern Democrats and Northern Whigs and illustrates the first shift from party alliances to sectional alliances. Indignation over the Wilmot Proviso united southerners against northern threats to their most valuable institution, slavery. After this vote, the antebellum political landscape was forever changed.

The failure of the Wilmot Proviso only put off the issue of slavery for so long. With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded over 525,000 square miles of territory to the United States in exchange for $15 million and the assumption of Mexican debts to American citizens, which reopened the slavery issue. In order to promote party loyalty without aggravating sectional tensions, the Whigs did not include specific resolutions on slavery in their official platform for the Election of 1848. The Democrats ran on popular sovereignty , which is the idea that the status of a territory will be determined by the people residing in that territory. Popular sovereignty is neither explicitly pro-slavery or anti-slavery; however, it does nullify the Missouri Compromise . Neither party adopted a firm stance on slavery in the 1848 election; however, the free-soilers made the election about slavery. Consequently, the Whigs and the Democrats developed campaign materials to be sectionally distributed which highlighted their candidate's support and opposition for slavery respectively. The separate campaign materials in this election reveal the growing sectional divide in antebellum America.

Despite the growing sectionalism, Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican-American War and a slaveholding Whig was elected president in 1848 and served for two years before dying in office of natural causes. The Mexican-American War projected Taylor into a position of celebrity and enabled his election in 1848. After his election, Taylor promised not to intercede with Congress’s decision for the organization of the Mexican Cession. Many southerners felt betrayed by Taylor, a slaveowner from Louisiana, as they equated his position with those of a free-soiler. In this time of heightened sectional tensions, southerners believed that if one did not actively protect slavery and its expansion, one supported abolition.

As a direct result of the Mexican Cession, the California Gold Rush began in 1849 which caused a massive frenzy to organize and admit California into the Union. The Missouri Compromise stated that any territory north of the 36°30’ parallel would be free; however, the line would divide California into two sections. California was never a US territory and approved a free constitution, elected a Governor and legislature and applied for statehood by November 1849. Since California did not wish to be divided into two separate states, a new compromise was formed, aptly named the Compromise of 1850. Under the Compromise of 1850 , California was admitted as a free state without deciding the fate of the remainder of the Mexican Cession. Additionally, under this compromise, there was the federal assumption of Texas debt, the abolishment of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and a stronger fugitive slave law. While controversial, the Compromise of 1850 alleviated the growing tensions over slavery and delayed a full-blown crisis over the issue.

However, in 1854 tensions over slavery once again skyrocketed over the organization of Kansas and Nebraska. While Kansas and Nebraska were not part of the Mexican Cession, their debates over their organization are linked to the Mexican-American War. As stated above, the Mexican-American War re-opened the discussions over how to organize territory, and one of the proposed solutions was popular sovereignty. While the Compromise of 1850 elected not to include popular sovereignty, it reemerged in 1854 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act , where Kansas and Nebraska would be organized using popular sovereignty. The Kansas-Nebraska Act caused Bleeding Kansas , where pro-slavery and anti-slavery Americans flocked to Kansas in an attempt to establish either a slave or free government in that state, which eventually erupted into violence where neighbor killed a neighbor in the name of slavery and abolition. Bleeding Kansas is also the first instance where John Brown , famous for his 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry, used violence to enact his radical abolition vision. Moreover, the Kansas-Nebraska Act propelled future President Abraham Lincoln into the national spotlight. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois’s pet project and popular sovereignty is often associated with Douglas. Lincoln and Douglas engaged in a series of debates in 1858, which mainly focused on popular sovereignty and slavery’s expansion. While Lincoln lost the senatorial election in 1858 to Douglas, he became well known because of the debates, which positioned himself to be the Republican candidate for the Presidential Election of 1860. Additionally, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the final nail in the coffin for the Whig Party and paved the way for the establishment of the Republican Party, the first prominent anti-slavery party which was rooted in sectionalism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson prophetically wrote, “Mexico will poison us.” The Mexican-American War and the massive territory gained reopened debates over slavery which diminished party alliances and increased sectional alliances. These debates over slavery eventually led to the demise of the Second Party System and paved the way for the rise of Republicanism. Sectional tensions had never been stronger and there were open discussions of disunion which increased as the 1850s progressed. All these tensions and issues would come to head with the Election of 1860 and eventually with the Civil War, where brother fought against brother. To say "Mexico poisoned" the United States is an understatement, the bloodshed during the Civil War rivaled any other American conflict and today we are still in the process of healing wounds that occurred over 150 years ago.

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Tejano Heroes of the Texas Revolution

14.2: The Mexican-American War

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George State Universities via GALILEO Open Learning Materials

In the days after the election of 1844 before Polk’s inauguration, at the behest of lame duck President Tyler, Congress passed a resolution to annex Texas. Although Mexico had finally recognized Texas’s independence in 1845, it held that the border between Mexico and Texas was the Nueces River, as it had been from the colonial era. Texas—and now the United States—held the border as the Rio Grande. The area between the two rivers was not the real point of contention for the two countries. The Rio Grande wanders aimlessly for hundreds of miles far into New Mexico and presentday Colorado; in effect, claiming the Rio Grande as the boundary tacitly laid claim to hundreds of thousands more acres. Mexico responded to annexation by cutting off diplomatic relations with the U.S.; both countries prepared for war. As a last-ditch effort to avoid war, Polk sent emissary John Slidell to Mexico City to resolve the border dispute. His secondary mission, however, was to secure California and New Mexico for the United States. Slidell was authorized to pay $5 million for New Mexico and as much as $25 million for Alta (Upper) California. Soon after Slidell’s arrival in Mexico City, the Mexican press learned of his mission to attempt buying so much Mexican territory. Newspapers and journals denounced Slidell and the United States, and leaflets appeared all over the city threatening rebellion if the government negotiated. Slidell was sent away.

Polk seized this opportunity to provoke war with Mexico. He ordered General Zachary Taylor into the disputed territory between the rivers. When a skirmish broke out between Taylor and the Mexican general assigned to patrol the disputed territory, Polk declared war, saying that he had tried every effort at reconciliation. “Mexico,” he stated, “has passed the boundary of United States, invaded our territory, and shed American blood upon the American soil.” Despite opposition from some Whigs, most notably Abraham Lincoln, Congress overwhelmingly approved the declaration of war. The view from Mexico City was very different, however. Mexico contended that the United States had not only taken Texas, but also tried to double Texas’s size. Moreover, when Mexico tried to defend its territory, the United States claimed that Mexico had invaded U.S. land.

The U.S. strategy for the Mexican-American War called for a three-pronged attack on Mexico. The Army of the West was to take and occupy New Mexico; the Army of the Center, to remain in northern Mexico. In anticipation of war with Mexico, the United States assembled a Navy fleet off the coast of California, deploying Marines to the ships. In June of 1846, a small group of mostly American settlers seized the garrison at Sonoma, California. The takeover was peaceable; in fact, no shots were fired. Many of the settlers and californios, or Mexican residents of California, supported the rebellion, as the government of the California territory was ineffectual and notoriously unstable: in the twenty-five year period before the revolt, leadership had changed hands more than forty times. Upon taking the garrison, the rebels proclaimed a new government of the California Republic. This Republic was very short-lived, lasting less than a month; indeed, few Californians knew of its existence. Twenty-six days after the birth of the California Republic, an army corps of engineers under the command of John Frémont marched into Sonoma. The Republic disbanded, and Frémont and the U.S. took over.

Meanwhile, the third prong of the U.S. attack on Mexico, the Army of Occupation, was to take Mexico City. General Winfield Scott led an amphibious assault against the port city of Veracruz and, after taking the city, began his march to the capitol. Scott’s arrival in Mexico coincided with great political turmoil in the nation; in the time since the outbreak of war, the Mexican president had been overthrown by a general. The general then tried to abrogate the constitution, declare martial law, and take power himself; consequently, he was overthrown in a rebellion. The army then invited Santa Anna back from exile to resume the presidency. By the time that Scott took Veracruz, Santa Anna had only just arrived and taken command.

Scott’s army was successful in taking much of the city. On August 20, Scott asked for surrender from Santa Anna; Santa Anna agreed to negotiate. Rather than seriously negotiating surrender, however, Santa Anna used the time to shore up the city defenses. By the time the armistice was at an end, Santa Anna was ready for battle, with his forces concentrated at Chapultepec Castle at the center of the city. The defenders of the Castle, about 1,000 men and the cadets from the military academy, laid land mines all over slopes of the steep hill upon which the Castle was located. The land mines failed to explode. After a fierce battle, Scott’s forces prevailed. Mexican sources attest that by the time Scott’s forces reached the Castle, only a handful of cadets remained to defend it. After the death of his comrades, the last remaining cadet wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and jumped from the palace terrace, plummeting to his death on the steep rocks below.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Aftermath of the War

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended Mexican-American War, was signed in February of 1848. The treaty confirmed the U.S. title to Texas and ceded the Alta California and New Mexico territories to the United States, some 525,000 square miles. Mexico was allowed to keep everything south of the Rio Grande. The United States agreed to pay $15 million and to assume the claims of Americans against the Mexican government, about $3,250,000. In short, Mexico lost more than half of its territorial landmass in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The land ceded to the United States eventually became the states, or part of the states, of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, and Kansas, tremendously increasing the U.S. holdings and stoking the fires of Manifest Destiny. The most radical adherents of Manifest Destiny had gone so far as to demand the annexation of not only “all of Texas,” but all of Mexico as well. Why, given the expansionist climate of the era, did the United States not lay claim to all of Mexico? Perhaps the best answer to this question lies in an examination of the problems that arose from the Mexican Cession itself.

Through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States acquired about 55% of Mexico. Of course these lands were not “empty” but (sparsely) populated with indigenous peoples and Mexican citizens who suddenly, and through no choice of their own, found themselves residents of the United States. It is estimated that there were 80,000 Mexican citizens in California in the late 1840s. Many of the families had been residents of the California or New Mexico territories for generations, since the Spanish colonial period. Mexico was keenly interested in ensuring that these Mexicans would be provided for under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which stated that all Mexican citizens who remained in the ceded lands for more than one year could become naturalized U.S. citizens. Moreover, the original version of the treaty guaranteed that Mexican and Spanish land deeds and grants would be recognized by the United States, allowing resident Mexicans to retain ownership of their lands. Later amendments and interpretations of the treaty weakened this provision.

However, racial tensions emerged as the conquest of the territories of the Cession set a pattern for violence and racial antagonism that still resonates today. Over the next decades, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans alike (some having become citizens, some having declined the offer and remaining Mexican citizens) lost their lands as Texas, California, New Mexico, and the United States government itself declared the Mexican and Spanish land deeds “imperfect,” questioned their veracity, and ultimately took the lands of tejanos, californios, and others. Before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexicans owned all lands valued over $10,000 in California; by the 1870s, they owned only one-quarter of these lands; by the 1880s, californios were relatively landless. Thousands went from being landowners to laborers, sometimes on the very land they had once owned. Much of the work was migratory in nature, and Mexican laborers were paid as much as two-thirds less than white laborers. California, Texas, and other soon-to-be states also passed laws that targeted and politically unempowered Mexican-Americans. A good example of this type of legislation was California’s Greaser Act, enacted in 1885. Technically, the Greaser Act was an antivagrancy law. However, “vagrants” were defined in the law as “all persons who are commonly known as ‘Greasers,’ or the issue of Spanish and Indian blood…and who go armed and are not peaceable and quiet persons.” In general, Hispanics became more and more alienated from the dominant society in the decades after Guadalupe Hidalgo.

So why didn’t the United States acquire “all of Mexico” after conquering Mexico City? Some historians argue that racism played a large role. It was one thing to take the thinly-populated portions of Mexico that could be populated with many more Caucasian Americans and another thing entirely to take over a country, or “uncontrolled dominion,” with a turbulent history, populated with people of mixed ancestry, whom many Americans considered to be “mongrels.” Ultimately, Mexico would have been an expensive, complicated problem for the United States. In taking the California and New Mexico territories, the U.S. increased its land mass by some 20% and gained the important ports of San Diego and San Francisco, thus allowing for trade with Asia, a much more pragmatic and manageable arrangement.

Because the Mexican Cession delineated by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo represented a tremendous increase to the land mass of the United States, it did much to further manifest destiny. The last major territorial acquisition of the continental United States followed on the heels of the Mexican Cession of 1848. In 1854, the United States and the Mexican government, once again under the control of the corrupt Santa Anna, signed the Mesilla Treaty, confirming the Gadsden Purchase. The United States paid $10 million for Arizona’s Mesilla Valley, approximately 30,000 acres. The purchase also clarified and finalized the border between the United States and Mexico. The U.S. desired this land for two additional reasons. First, the Mesilla Valley offered the best terrain for building a transcontinental railroad along a deep southern route. Second, by securing the land south of the Gila River, the United States finalized the border between California and Baja California (now the U.S. and Mexico) as south of the San Diego Bay, offering an excellent harbor. Plans were made for building the trans-continental railroad from Texas to San Diego, but nothing ever materialized.

The war was a tremendous military victory for the United States. The American military gained much experience. West Point and the Naval Academy claimed that their training were the key to success and justified their existence with the war’s success. The Marines won prestige as well and still sing of the conquest of “the halls of Montezuma.” The British and foreign skeptics also reevaluated their opinion on American military strength in the war’s aftermath. However, the war was also costly. Some 13,000 Americans died, most from disease. The war’s monetary cost was about $100,000,000. The war also influenced foreign relations in Latin America, especially with Mexico, in lasting ways. Mexico, and much of Latin America, considered that the United States had deliberately provoked the war and that American greed was its primary underlying cause. The war intensified what has been referred to as “Yankeephobia” in Latin America, leading to distrust and suspicion. The United States, many contended, was untrustworthy, considered itself superior to others, and was a bully. It was called the “Colossus of the North.” Perhaps most significantly, the war upset the carefully-maintained domestic political truce over slavery. Some felt that the war would lead to a severe sectional crisis; poet Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “Mexico will poison us!” Many Whigs opposed the war on principle, believing that the U.S. had no legal right to the land south of the Nueces River, the original boundary dispute between Texas and Mexico; many abolitionists believed that the war was provoked by the South in order to expand slavery. The sheer amount of possible slaveholding territory coming into the Union upset the balance established by the Missouri Compromise, reignited the slavery debate, and threatened stability. In response to this, Congressman David Wilmot introduced a bill, called the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico in the war. The measure was eventually defeated and never became law. However, it was strongly supported by representatives of Congress from the free states. Ultimately, the Mexican War represented the looming question of slavery’s future.

Technological Development and Manifest Destiny

As the United States expanded geographically, it also underwent a period of growth and development in technology. Many advocates of manifest destiny saw a clear link between territorial growth and technological development; internal development, the mechanism that would spread American influence, followed on the heels of expansion. Two technologies were particularly important in facilitating communication and travel across the great distances from coast to coast: the telegraph and the railroad.

The development of a railroad infrastructure had begun in the 1830s in a limited area and proved to be viable and profitable. Rail travel transformed the American economy in the 1840s and 1850s, linking port cities to the interior. Before the advent of rail, the main route of commerce was along canal lines, which remained rail’s biggest competitor for quite some time. Although the steam locomotive was faster, shipping costs were cheaper by canal. By the 1850s, however, the railroad network had grown into the dominant means of transport by far. The growth of the telegraph and railroads also provided stability to the growing nation. The United States had become so big that critics doubted its ability to effectively govern so much land and so many people. Railroads and the telegraph provided one solution. Moreover, they facilitated the emergence of a national market system.

The expansion of railroads and the telegraph was not just an effect of manifest destiny. It was a continuation of an ongoing discussion in the American government: the debate over internal improvements. The issue was first raised under Jefferson and focused on the building of canals to better connect the trans-Appalachian frontier to the United States. The debate changed with evolving technology and was raised again and again, most notably during the Madison and Jackson presidencies. A constant in the debate was the discussion of whether or not it was appropriate to use federal money to fund these internal improvements. Manifest destiny and its accompanying technological advances was simply the latest incarnation of this debate.

The significance of these technological advances to the concept of Manifest Destiny appears in various cultural artifacts. In John Gast’s “American Progress” (1872), for example, the floating figure above the landscape resembles an angel and symbolizes the American belief that Manifest Destiny was divinely ordained. How does the angel express the concept of Manifest Destiny as espoused by John O’Sullivan? The paragraph below is from a nineteenth century description of the painting by George Crofutt, who widely distributed his engraving of it.

In “American Progress,” a diaphanously and precariously-clad America floats westward through the air with the “Star of Empire” on her forehead. She has left the cities of the east behind, and the wide Mississippi, and still her course is westward. In her right hand she carries a school book— testimonial of the national enlightenment, while with her left she trails the slender wires of the telegraph that will bind the nation. Fleeing her approach are Indians, buffalo, wild horses, bears, and other game, disappearing into the storm and waves of the Pacific coast. They flee the ponderous vision— the star “is too much for them.”

Technology enabled American expansionism throughout the North American continent by facilitating travel and communication. Americans were not the only ones to harness this technological power towards an expansionist goal; during the 1800s, these technologies further enabled European powers such as France, Britain, and Germany to establish a new kind of colonialism: imperialism. The telegraph and railroad, along with other new technologies such as the steamboat and the Maxim gun, one of the first machine guns, allowed a small number of Europeans to dominate large areas and great numbers of people and fuel their own Industrial Revolutions. In this way, Manifest Destiny became a part of a greater nineteenth century movement in expansionism.

In 1845, the United States annexed Texas and admitted it to the Union. Tensions arose between the U.S. and Mexico over the boundary; the U.S. claimed the Rio Grande as the border, with Mexico claiming the long-established boundary at the Nueces River. The real reason for this border dispute was deeply linked to the expansionist desires of the United States; establishing the Rio Grande as the border would lay claim to a substantial portion of Mexico outside of the confines of Texas. John Slidell’s mission to Mexico exemplifies this intent; although his formal mission was diplomatic, he was secretly charged with buying a substantial portion of the Mexican northwest for the United States. When Mexicans responded to this offer with outrage, Polk took advantage by provoking war. The Mexican-American War, fought from 1846 to 1848, culminated with General Winfield Scott’s invasion of Mexico City.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War. The treaty confirmed the U.S. title to Texas and ceded the Alta California and New Mexico territories to the United States, some 525,000 square miles. Mexico lost more than half of its territorial land mass. This ceded land eventually became all of, or part of, the U.S. states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, and Kansas, tremendously increasing U.S. holdings and stoking the fires of Manifest Destiny. In 1848, the Gadsden Purchase finalized the present border between the United States and Mexico with the purchase of Arizona’s Mesilla Valley.

The incorporation of so much Mexican territory and so many Mexican citizens into the United States led to great problems. The conquest of the territories of the Mexican Cession set a pattern for violence and racial antagonism that still resonates today. Over the next decades, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans alike lost their lands in Texas, California, and New Mexico; the United States government declared the Mexican and Spanish land deeds “imperfect,” questioning their veracity and ultimately taking the lands of tejanos, californios, and others.

The Mexican-American War adversely and lastingly influenced foreign relations in Latin America. Mexico, and much of Latin America, believed that the United States deliberately provoked the war, with American greed being its primary underlying cause. The war intensified Latin American “Yankeephobia,” leading to distrust and suspicion. The war also upset the carefully-maintained domestic political truce over slavery. Some felt that the war would lead to a severe sectional crisis. The sheer amount of potential slaveholding territory coming into the Union upset the balance established by the Missouri Compromise, reignited the slavery debate, and threatened stability.

Finally, the growth of technologies such as the telegraph and the railroad accompanied and enhanced the growth of Manifest Destiny, connecting the burgeoning country in communication and ease of travel. Rail linked the ports and the interior, facilitating trade and propelling the emergence of a national market system.

Exercise $\PageIndex{1}$

The “Greaser Act” is an example of

a law that targeted and politically unempowered Mexican-Americans.
“Yankeephobia” in Mexico.
an attempt to maintain the balance between free and slaveholding states in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War.
an attempt to settle territorial disputes between the United States and Mexico.

Exercise $\PageIndex{2}$

The Wilmot Proviso is an example of

Exercise $\PageIndex{3}$

As a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico lost more than half of its territorial land mass.

Exercise $\PageIndex{4}$

The growth of rail and telegraph was hailed by expansionists as a means to

spread American influence.
enhance internal development.
facilitate trade.
all of the above.

11.4 The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Identify the causes of the Mexican-American War
Describe the outcomes of the war in 1848, especially the Mexican Cession
Describe the effect of the California Gold Rush on westward expansion

Tensions between the United States and Mexico rapidly deteriorated in the 1840s as American expansionists eagerly eyed Mexican land to the west, including the lush northern Mexican province of California. Indeed, in 1842, a U.S. naval fleet, incorrectly believing war had broken out, seized Monterey, California, a part of Mexico. Monterey was returned the next day, but the episode only added to the uneasiness with which Mexico viewed its northern neighbor. The forces of expansion, however, could not be contained, and American voters elected James Polk in 1844 because he promised to deliver more lands. President Polk fulfilled his promise by gaining Oregon and, most spectacularly, provoking a war with Mexico that ultimately fulfilled the wildest fantasies of expansionists. By 1848, the United States encompassed much of North America, a republic that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

JAMES K. POLK AND THE TRIUMPH OF EXPANSION

A fervent belief in expansion gripped the United States in the 1840s. In 1845, a New York newspaper editor, John O’Sullivan, introduced the concept of “manifest destiny” to describe the very popular idea of the special role of the United States in overspreading the continent—the divine right and duty of White Americans to seize and settle the American West, thus spreading Protestant, democratic values. In this climate of opinion, voters in 1844 elected James K. Polk, a slaveholder from Tennessee, because he vowed to annex Texas as a new slave state and take Oregon.

Annexing Oregon was an important objective for U.S. foreign policy because it appeared to be an area rich in commercial possibilities. Northerners favored U.S. control of Oregon because ports in the Pacific Northwest would be gateways for trade with Asia. Southerners hoped that, in exchange for their support of expansion into the northwest, northerners would not oppose plans for expansion into the southwest.

President Polk—whose campaign slogan in 1844 had been “Fifty-four forty or fight!”—asserted the United States’ right to gain full control of what was known as Oregon Country, from its southern border at 42° latitude (the current boundary with California) to its northern border at 54° 40' latitude. According to an 1818 agreement, Great Britain and the United States held joint ownership of this territory, but the 1827 Treaty of Joint Occupation opened the land to settlement by both countries. Realizing that the British were not willing to cede all claims to the territory, Polk proposed the land be divided at 49° latitude (the current border between Washington and Canada). The British, however, denied U.S. claims to land north of the Columbia River (Oregon’s current northern border) ( Figure 11.13 ). Indeed, the British foreign secretary refused even to relay Polk’s proposal to London. However, reports of the difficulty Great Britain would face defending Oregon in the event of a U.S. attack, combined with concerns over affairs at home and elsewhere in its empire, quickly changed the minds of the British, and in June 1846, Queen Victoria’s government agreed to a division at the forty-ninth parallel.

In contrast to the diplomatic solution with Great Britain over Oregon, when it came to Mexico, Polk and the American people proved willing to use force to wrest more land for the United States. In keeping with voters’ expectations, President Polk set his sights on the Mexican state of California. After the mistaken capture of Monterey, negotiations about purchasing the port of San Francisco from Mexico broke off until September 1845. Then, following a revolt in California that left it divided in two, Polk attempted to purchase Upper California and New Mexico as well. These efforts went nowhere. The Mexican government, angered by U.S. actions, refused to recognize the independence of Texas.

Finally, after nearly a decade of public clamoring for the annexation of Texas, in December 1845 Polk officially agreed to the annexation of the former Mexican state, making the Lone Star Republic an additional slave state. Incensed that the United States had annexed Texas, however, the Mexican government refused to discuss the matter of selling land to the United States. Indeed, Mexico refused even to acknowledge Polk’s emissary, John Slidell, who had been sent to Mexico City to negotiate. Not to be deterred, Polk encouraged Thomas O. Larkin, the U.S. consul in Monterey, to assist any American settlers and any Californios , the Mexican residents of the state, who wished to proclaim their independence from Mexico. By the end of 1845, having broken diplomatic ties with the United States over Texas and having grown alarmed by American actions in California, the Mexican government warily anticipated the next move. It did not have long to wait.

WAR WITH MEXICO, 1846–1848

Expansionistic fervor propelled the United States to war against Mexico in 1846. The United States had long argued that the Rio Grande was the border between Mexico and the United States, and at the end of the Texas war for independence Santa Anna had been pressured to agree. Mexico, however, refused to be bound by Santa Anna’s promises and insisted the border lay farther north, at the Nueces River ( Figure 11.14 ). To set it at the Rio Grande would, in effect, allow the United States to control land it had never occupied. In Mexico’s eyes, therefore, President Polk violated its sovereign territory when he ordered U.S. troops into the disputed lands in 1846. From the Mexican perspective, it appeared the United States had invaded their nation.

In January 1846, the U.S. force that was ordered to the banks of the Rio Grande to build a fort on the “American” side encountered a Mexican cavalry unit on patrol. Shots rang out, and sixteen U.S. soldiers were killed or wounded. Angrily declaring that Mexico “has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil,” President Polk demanded the United States declare war on Mexico. On May 12, Congress obliged.

The small but vocal antislavery faction decried the decision to go to war, arguing that Polk had deliberately provoked hostilities so the United States could annex more slave territory. Illinois representative Abraham Lincoln and other members of Congress issued the “Spot Resolutions” in which they demanded to know the precise spot on U.S. soil where American blood had been spilled. Many Whigs also denounced the war. Democrats, however, supported Polk’s decision, and volunteers for the army came forward in droves from every part of the country except New England, the seat of abolitionist activity. Enthusiasm for the war was aided by the widely held belief that Mexico was a weak, impoverished country and that the Mexican people, perceived as ignorant, lazy, and controlled by a corrupt Roman Catholic clergy, would be easy to defeat. ( Figure 11.15 ).

U.S. military strategy had three main objectives: 1) Take control of northern Mexico, including New Mexico; 2) seize California; and 3) capture Mexico City. General Zachary Taylor and his Army of the Center were assigned to accomplish the first goal, and with superior weapons they soon captured the Mexican city of Monterrey. Taylor quickly became a hero in the eyes of the American people, and Polk appointed him commander of all U.S. forces.

General Stephen Watts Kearny, commander of the Army of the West, accepted the surrender of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and moved on to take control of California, leaving Colonel Sterling Price in command. Despite Kearny’s assurances that New Mexicans need not fear for their lives or their property, the region’s residents rose in revolt in January 1847 in an effort to drive the Americans away. Although Price managed to put an end to the rebellion, tensions remained high.

Kearny, meanwhile, arrived in California to find it already in American hands through the joint efforts of California settlers, U.S. naval commander John D. Sloat, and John C. Fremont, a former army captain and son-in-law of Missouri senator Thomas Benton. Sloat, at anchor off the coast of Mazatlan, learned that war had begun and quickly set sail for California. He seized the town of Monterey in July 1846, less than a month after a group of American settlers led by William B. Ide had taken control of Sonoma and declared California a republic. A week after the fall of Monterey, the navy took San Francisco with no resistance. Although some Californios staged a short-lived rebellion in September 1846, many others submitted to the U.S. takeover. Thus Kearny had little to do other than take command of California as its governor.

Leading the Army of the South was General Winfield Scott. Both Taylor and Scott were potential competitors for the presidency, and believing—correctly—that whoever seized Mexico City would become a hero, Polk assigned Scott the campaign to avoid elevating the more popular Taylor, who was affectionately known as “Old Rough and Ready.”

Scott captured Veracruz in March 1847, and moving in a northwesterly direction from there (much as Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés had done in 1519), he slowly closed in on the capital. Every step of the way was a hard-fought victory, however, and Mexican soldiers and civilians both fought bravely to save their land from the American invaders. Mexico City’s defenders, including young military cadets, fought to the end. According to legend, cadet Juan Escutia’s last act was to save the Mexican flag, and he leapt from the city’s walls with it wrapped around his body. On September 14, 1847, Scott entered Mexico City’s central plaza; the city had fallen ( Figure 11.16 ). While Polk and other expansionists called for “all Mexico,” the Mexican government and the United States negotiated for peace in 1848, resulting in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in February 1848, was a triumph for American expansion under which Mexico ceded nearly half its land to the United States. The Mexican Cession , as the conquest of land west of the Rio Grande was called, included the current states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Mexico also recognized the Rio Grande as the border with the United States. The United States promised to grant Mexican citizens in the ceded territory U.S. citizenship in the future when the territories they were living in became states, and promised to recognize the Spanish land grants to the Pueblos in New Mexico. In exchange, the United States agreed to assume $3.35 million worth of Mexican debts owed to U.S. citizens, paid Mexico $15 million for the loss of its land, and promised to guard the residents of the Mexican Cession from Native American raids.

As extensive as the Mexican Cession was, some argued the United States should not be satisfied until it had taken all of Mexico. Many who were opposed to this idea were southerners who, while desiring the annexation of more slave territory, did not want to make Mexico’s large mestizo (people of mixed Native American and European ancestry) population part of the United States. Others did not want to absorb a large group of Roman Catholics. These expansionists could not accept the idea of new U.S. territory filled with mixed-race, Catholic populations.

Click and Explore

Explore the U.S.-Mexican War at PBS to read about life in the Mexican and U.S. armies during the war and to learn more about the various battles.

CALIFORNIA AND THE GOLD RUSH

The United States had no way of knowing that part of the land about to be ceded by Mexico had just become far more valuable than anyone could have imagined. On January 24, 1848, James Marshall discovered gold in the millrace of the sawmill he had built with his partner John Sutter on the south fork of California’s American River . Word quickly spread, and within a few weeks all of Sutter’s employees had left to search for gold. When the news reached San Francisco, most of its inhabitants abandoned the town and headed for the American River. By the end of the year, thousands of California’s residents had gone north to the gold fields with visions of wealth dancing in their heads, and in 1849 thousands of people from around the world followed them ( Figure 11.17 ). The Gold Rush had begun.

The fantasy of instant wealth induced a mass exodus to California. Settlers in Oregon and Utah rushed to the American River. Easterners sailed around the southern tip of South America or to Panama’s Atlantic coast, where they crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific and booked ship’s passage for San Francisco. As California-bound vessels stopped in South American ports to take on food and fresh water, hundreds of Peruvians and Chileans streamed aboard. Easterners who could not afford to sail to California crossed the continent on foot, on horseback, or in wagons. Others journeyed from as far away as Hawaii and Europe. Chinese people came as well, adding to the polyglot population in the California boomtowns ( Figure 11.18 ).

Once in California, gathered in camps with names like Drunkard’s Bar, Angel’s Camp, Gouge Eye, and Whiskeytown, the “ forty-niners ” did not find wealth so easy to come by as they had first imagined. Although some were able to find gold by panning for it or shoveling soil from river bottoms into sieve-like contraptions called rockers, most did not. The placer gold, the gold that had been washed down the mountains into streams and rivers, was quickly exhausted, and what remained was deep below ground. Independent miners were supplanted by companies that could afford not only to purchase hydraulic mining technology but also to hire laborers to work the hills. The frustration of many a miner was expressed in the words of Sullivan Osborne. In 1857, Osborne wrote that he had arrived in California “full of high hopes and bright anticipations of the future” only to find his dreams “have long since perished.” Although $550 million worth of gold was found in California between 1849 and 1850, very little of it went to individuals.

Observers in the gold fields also reported abuse of Native Americans by miners. Some miners forced Native Americans to work their claims for them; others drove them off their lands, stole from them, and even murdered them as part of a systemic campaign of extermination. Some scholars view the resulting loss of Native American life as a clear example of genocide in the United States. Foreigners were generally disliked, especially those from South America. The most despised, however, were the thousands of Chinese migrants. Eager to earn money to send to their families in Hong Kong and southern China, they quickly earned a reputation as frugal men and hard workers who routinely took over diggings others had abandoned as worthless and worked them until every scrap of gold had been found. Many American miners, often spendthrifts, resented their presence and discriminated against them, believing the Chinese, who represented about 8 percent of the nearly 300,000 who arrived, were depriving them of the opportunity to make a living.

Visit The Chinese in California to learn more about the experience of Chinese migrants who came to California in the Gold Rush era.

In 1850, California imposed a tax on foreign miners, and in 1858 it prohibited all immigration from China. Those Chinese who remained in the face of the growing hostility were often beaten and killed, and some Westerners made a sport of cutting off Chinese men’s queues, the long braids of hair worn down their backs ( Figure 11.19 ). In 1882, Congress took up the power to restrict immigration by banning the further immigration of Chinese.

As people flocked to California in 1849, the population of the new territory swelled from a few thousand to about 100,000. The new arrivals quickly organized themselves into communities, and the trappings of “civilized” life—stores, saloons, libraries, stage lines, and fraternal lodges—began to appear. Newspapers were established, and musicians, singers, and acting companies arrived to entertain the gold seekers. The epitome of these Gold Rush boomtowns was San Francisco, which counted only a few hundred residents in 1846 but by 1850 had reached a population of thirty-four thousand ( Figure 11.20 ). So quickly did the territory grow that by 1850 California was ready to enter the Union as a state. When it sought admission, however, the issue of slavery expansion and sectional tensions emerged once again.

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Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/1-introduction

Authors: P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Sylvie Waskiewicz, Paul Vickery
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A Nation on the Move: Westward Expansion, 1800–1860

The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848

OpenStaxCollege

[latexpage]

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Identify the causes of the Mexican-American War
Describe the outcomes of the war in 1848, especially the Mexican Cession
Describe the effect of the California Gold Rush on westward expansion

JAMES K. POLK AND THE TRIUMPH OF EXPANSION

A fervent belief in expansion gripped the United States in the 1840s. In 1845, a New York newspaper editor, John O’Sullivan, introduced the concept of “manifest destiny” to describe the very popular idea of the special role of the United States in overspreading the continent—the divine right and duty of white Americans to seize and settle the American West, thus spreading Protestant, democratic values. In this climate of opinion, voters in 1844 elected James K. Polk, a slaveholder from Tennessee, because he vowed to annex Texas as a new slave state and take Oregon.

President Polk—whose campaign slogan in 1844 had been “Fifty-four forty or fight!”—asserted the United States’ right to gain full control of what was known as Oregon Country, from its southern border at 42° latitude (the current boundary with California) to its northern border at 54° 40′ latitude. According to an 1818 agreement, Great Britain and the United States held joint ownership of this territory, but the 1827 Treaty of Joint Occupation opened the land to settlement by both countries. Realizing that the British were not willing to cede all claims to the territory, Polk proposed the land be divided at 49° latitude (the current border between Washington and Canada). The British, however, denied U.S. claims to land north of the Columbia River (Oregon’s current northern border) ( [link] ). Indeed, the British foreign secretary refused even to relay Polk’s proposal to London. However, reports of the difficulty Great Britain would face defending Oregon in the event of a U.S. attack, combined with concerns over affairs at home and elsewhere in its empire, quickly changed the minds of the British, and in June 1846, Queen Victoria’s government agreed to a division at the forty-ninth parallel.

A map of the Oregon territory during the period of joint occupation by the United States and Great Britain shows the area whose ownership was contested by the two powers. The uppermost region is labeled “Rupert’s Land (British),” which lies in between the “54° 40′- Extreme U.S. Claim” and “49°” lines. The central region, which lies in between the “49°” and “42° - Extreme British Claim” lines, contains Oregon Country. Beneath the “42° - Extreme British Claim” line lies Mexico.

WAR WITH MEXICO, 1846–1848

Expansionistic fervor propelled the United States to war against Mexico in 1846. The United States had long argued that the Rio Grande was the border between Mexico and the United States, and at the end of the Texas war for independence Santa Anna had been pressured to agree. Mexico, however, refused to be bound by Santa Anna’s promises and insisted the border lay farther north, at the Nueces River ( [link] ). To set it at the Rio Grande would, in effect, allow the United States to control land it had never occupied. In Mexico’s eyes, therefore, President Polk violated its sovereign territory when he ordered U.S. troops into the disputed lands in 1846. From the Mexican perspective, it appeared the United States had invaded their nation.

A map titled “Texas Claims” indicates the borders of Mexico, Texas, the United States, and “Disputed Territory,” as well as the Rio Grande, the Arkansas River, and the Nueces River.

A lithograph shows several members of the clergy fleeing the Mexican town of Matamoros on horseback. Each man has a young woman behind him; the horse in the foreground also carries a basket laden with bottles of alcohol. The caption reads “The Mexican Rulers. Migrating from Matamoros with their Treasures.”

General Stephen Watts Kearny, commander of the Army of the West, accepted the surrender of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and moved on to take control of California, leaving Colonel Sterling Price in command. Despite Kearny’s assurances that New Mexicans need not fear for their lives or their property, and in fact the region’s residents rose in revolt in January 1847 in an effort to drive the Americans away. Although Price managed to put an end to the rebellion, tensions remained high.

Scott captured Veracruz in March 1847, and moving in a northwesterly direction from there (much as Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés had done in 1519), he slowly closed in on the capital. Every step of the way was a hard-fought victory, however, and Mexican soldiers and civilians both fought bravely to save their land from the American invaders. Mexico City’s defenders, including young military cadets, fought to the end. According to legend, cadet Juan Escutia’s last act was to save the Mexican flag, and he leapt from the city’s walls with it wrapped around his body. On September 14, 1847, Scott entered Mexico City’s central plaza; the city had fallen ( [link] ). While Polk and other expansionists called for “all Mexico,” the Mexican government and the United States negotiated for peace in 1848, resulting in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

A painting depicts General Winfield Scott on a white horse leading troops into Mexico City’s Plaza de la Constitución as anxious residents of the city look on. One woman peers furtively from behind the curtain of an upstairs window. On the left, a man bends down to pick up a paving stone to throw at the invaders.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in February 1848, was a triumph for American expansionism under which Mexico ceded nearly half its land to the United States. The Mexican Cession , as the conquest of land west of the Rio Grande was called, included the current states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Mexico also recognized the Rio Grande as the border with the United States. Mexican citizens in the ceded territory were promised U.S. citizenship in the future when the territories they were living in became states. In exchange, the United States agreed to assume $3.35 million worth of Mexican debts owed to U.S. citizens, paid Mexico $15 million for the loss of its land, and promised to guard the residents of the Mexican Cession from Indian raids.

As extensive as the Mexican Cession was, some argued the United States should not be satisfied until it had taken all of Mexico. Many who were opposed to this idea were southerners who, while desiring the annexation of more slave territory, did not want to make Mexico’s large mestizo (people of mixed Indian and European ancestry) population part of the United States. Others did not want to absorb a large group of Roman Catholics. These expansionists could not accept the idea of new U.S. territory filled with mixed-race, Catholic populations.

Explore the U.S.-Mexican War at PBS to read about life in the Mexican and U.S. armies during the war and to learn more about the various battles.

CALIFORNIA AND THE GOLD RUSH

A promotional poster reads “For California!/Direct/Extraordinary Inducements!!/Thirty-Five Days to Gold Regions!/The California Steam Navigation Co./Will dispatch their first vessel from New-York, the NEW and SPLENDID/Steam Ship!/Nicaragua/On Friday, March 23d, 1849/The Quickest, Safest, and Cheapest!!/Price of Passage Through Ninety Dollars!”

A lithograph captioned “The Way They Go to California” shows a dock teeming with men holding picks and shovels. Several reach out or jump from the dock in an attempt to catch a ship that is departing, exclaiming “Hold on there. I’ve paid my passage and I ain’t aboard”; “Bill, I’m afraid we can’t get aboard”; and “I’m bound to go anywhere.” A man on a rocket ship labeled “Rocket Line” flies overhead with his hat blowing off, exclaiming “My hair!! how the wind blows.” Other men fly overhead in an airship, from which one man parachutes holding a pick and shovel.

Observers in the gold fields also reported abuse of Indians by miners. Some miners forced Indians to work their claims for them; others drove Indians off their lands, stole from them, and even murdered them. Foreigners were generally disliked, especially those from South America. The most despised, however, were the thousands of Chinese migrants. Eager to earn money to send to their families in Hong Kong and southern China, they quickly earned a reputation as frugal men and hard workers who routinely took over diggings others had abandoned as worthless and worked them until every scrap of gold had been found. Many American miners, often spendthrifts, resented their presence and discriminated against them, believing the Chinese, who represented about 8 percent of the nearly 300,000 who arrived, were depriving them of the opportunity to make a living.

Visit The Chinese in California to learn more about the experience of Chinese migrants who came to California in the Gold Rush era.

In 1850, California imposed a tax on foreign miners, and in 1858 it prohibited all immigration from China. Those Chinese who remained in the face of the growing hostility were often beaten and killed, and some Westerners made a sport of cutting off Chinese men’s queues, the long braids of hair worn down their backs ( [link] ). In 1882, Congress took up the power to restrict immigration by banning the further immigration of Chinese.

An illustration captioned “Pacific Chivalry. Encouragement to Chinese Immigration” depicts a white man, whose hat is labeled “California,” preparing to whip a Chinese man; he holds the man by his queue as the man attempts to flee, his characteristic hat having fallen beside him. Beside the railroad tracks running past the pair, a sign reads “Courts of Justice Closed to Chinese. Extra Taxes to ‘Yellow Jack.’” The Pacific landscape is visible in the background.

As people flocked to California in 1849, the population of the new territory swelled from a few thousand to about 100,000. The new arrivals quickly organized themselves into communities, and the trappings of “civilized” life—stores, saloons, libraries, stage lines, and fraternal lodges—began to appear. Newspapers were established, and musicians, singers, and acting companies arrived to entertain the gold seekers. The epitome of these Gold Rush boomtowns was San Francisco, which counted only a few hundred residents in 1846 but by 1850 had reached a population of thirty-four thousand ( [link] ). So quickly did the territory grow that by 1850 California was ready to enter the Union as a state. When it sought admission, however, the issue of slavery expansion and sectional tensions emerged once again.

A photograph shows an aerial view of the port of San Francisco. The streets are crowded with houses, and the water teems with ships.

Section Summary

President James K. Polk’s administration was a period of intensive expansion for the United States. After overseeing the final details regarding the annexation of Texas from Mexico, Polk negotiated a peaceful settlement with Great Britain regarding ownership of the Oregon Country, which brought the United States what are now the states of Washington and Oregon. The acquisition of additional lands from Mexico, a country many in the United States perceived as weak and inferior, was not so bloodless. The Mexican Cession added nearly half of Mexico’s territory to the United States, including New Mexico and California, and established the U.S.-Mexico border at the Rio Grande. The California Gold Rush rapidly expanded the population of the new territory, but also prompted concerns over immigration, especially from China.

Review Questions

Which of the following was not a reason the United States was reluctant to annex Texas?

According to treaties signed in 1818 and 1827, with which country did the United States jointly occupy Oregon?

During the war between the United States and Mexico, revolts against U.S. control broke out in ________.

Why did whites in California dislike the Chinese so much?

The Chinese were seemingly more disciplined than the majority of the white miners, gaining a reputation for being extremely hard-working and frugal. White miners resented the mining successes that the Chinese earned. They believed the Chinese were unfairly depriving them of the means to earn a living.

Brainpower and Brawn in the Mexican-American War

The United States Army had several advantages, but the most decisive was the professionalism instilled at West Point

William Rosen

Chapultepec Castle is not, by Mexican standards, particularly old. Though the 12 th -century Toltecs named the 200-foot-high outcrop on which the castle stands the “hill of the grasshopper”— chapoltepec in Nahuatl, probably for the huge numbers of the insects found there—the castle itself wasn’t built until 1775, as a residence for Spain’s viceroy. It was converted to a military academy in 1833, which was the extent of its martial history until September 13, 1847, when two armies faced off there in the climactic battle of the Mexican-American War.

After more than a year and a dozen engagements on land and sea, the U.S. had yet to suffer a defeat. General Zachary Taylor had crossed the Rio Grande with an expeditionary force of a little more than 2,000 men and defeated much larger Mexican armies at Monterrey and Buena Vista. Winfield Scott, America’s most senior general and the hero of the War of 1812, had taken Veracruz with a brilliant amphibious assault and siege, and defeated Mexico’s caudillo and president Antonio López de Santa Anna at Cerro Gordo. Then he had taken Puebla, Mexico’s second-largest city, without firing a shot.

There are any number of reasons why the Americans dominated the fighting. They had better artillery in front of them (rockets, siege weapons and highly mobile horse-drawn howitzers that could fire canister—20 or more lead balls packed in sawdust and cased in tin, which turned the American six-pounder cannons into giant shotguns). They also had a stronger government behind them (in 1846 alone, the Mexican presidency changed hands four times). However, the decisive American advantage was not in technology or political stability, but in military professionalism. The United States had West Point.

Though neither Scott nor Taylor nor their division commanders learned the military art at the U.S. Military Academy, virtually every junior officer in the Mexican campaign—more than five hundred of them—had. Under Sylvanus Thayer, who became superintendent in 1817, and his protégé Dennis Hart Mahan, the academy became more than just a fine engineering school. In accord with legislation Congress passed in 1812, the course of studies at West Point required cadets to master all the skills not only of an officer, but of a private and a noncommissioned officer as well.

It made for a revolution in military education. Mahan, an advocate for turning the military into a profession equal to that of physicians or attorneys, had completed a fundamental study of the art of war, which he would publish in 1847. The first American professional military journals—the Army and Navy Chronicle, the Military and Naval Magazine and the Military Magazine —all started publication between 1835 and 1839.

This environment produced the staff and line officers who accompanied Taylor across the Rio Grande and Scott from Veracruz to Chapultepec. One of them, Ulysses S. Grant (USMA Class of 1843), wrote, “A better army, man for man, probably never faced an enemy than the one commanded by General Taylor in the earliest two engagements of the Mexican War.” Scott shared his “fixed opinion that but for our graduated cadets the war between the United States and Mexico might, and probably would, have lasted some four or five years with, in its first half, more defeats than victories falling to our share, whereas in two campaigns we conquered a great country and a peace without the loss of a single battle or skirmish.”

The academy graduates proved extraordinary in Mexico (and even more so in their subsequent careers in a far more bloody conflict). When Scott landed at Veracruz, his junior officers included not only Grant, but also Robert E. Lee (USMA 1829; commanding general, Army of Northern Virginia, 1862). Captain Lee led his division through the “impassible ravines” to the north of the Mexican position at Cerro Gordo and turned the enemy’s left flank. The path to Mexico City, over the 10,000-foot pass of Río Frío, was mapped by First Lieutenant P.G.T. Beauregard (USMA 1838; general, Army of the Mississippi, 1861) and First Lieutenant George Gordon Meade (USMA 1835; commanding general, Army of the Potomac, 1863). Captain (soon enough Major) Lee found the best route to the relatively undefended southwestern corner of Mexico City, through a huge lava field known as the pedregal that was thought to be impassible; American engineers—accompanied by First Lieutenant George McClellan (USMA 1846; commanding general, U.S. Army, 1861)—improved it into a military road in two days, under regular artillery fire. The Molino del Rey, a mill that Scott mistakenly thought was being converted into a cannon foundry during a cease-fire, was occupied, after some of the bloodiest fighting of the war, by Lieutenant Grant and First Lieutenant Robert Anderson (USMA 1825).

So it’s scarcely surprising that when the final attack on Chapultepec Castle began on that September morning in 1847, one of the columns was led by Lieutenant Colonel Joe Johnston (USMA 1829; commanding general, Army of Tennessee, 1863). Or that, when the Americans were pinned down after they’d fought to the top of the hill, Second Lieutenant Thomas J. Jackson (USMA 1846; lieutenant general and corps commander, Army of Northern Virginia, 1862), commanding two six-pounder cannon at the far left of the American line, rushed forward in support. As he did so, a storming party of 250 men reached the base of the castle wall and threw scaling ladders against the 12-foot-high fortification. There, Captain Lewis A. Armistead (USMA, 1838, though he never graduated; brigadier general, Army of Northern Virginia, 1863) was wounded; so was the officer carrying the regimental colors of the 8 th Infantry, First Lieutenant James Longstreet (USMA 1842; lieutenant general, Army of Northern Virginia, 1862), which were then taken by Second Lieutenant George E. Pickett (USMA 1846; major general, Army of Northern Virginia, 1862). In an hour, the castle was taken.

And, in less than a day, so was Mexico’s capital. Jackson, who had been under fire for more than 12 hours, chased more than 1,500 Mexicans down the causeway that led into the capital “for about a mile…. It was splendid!” Grant, commanding a platoon-sized detachment, dragged a six-pound howitzer to the top of a church belfry, three hundred yards from the main gate to the city at San Cosmé, and put a withering fire on the Mexican defenses until he ran out of ammunition. A day later, Scott rode into the Grand Plaza of Mexico City at the head of his army. Though the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo would not be signed until February of 1848, the battles of the Mexican-American War were over.

Not, however, the battle over the war’s narrative: its rationale, conduct and consequences. Los Niños Heroes—six cadets who from the Chapultepec military academy who refused to retreat from the castle, five of them dying at their posts and the sixth throwing himself from the castle wrapped in the Mexican flag—synthesize the Mexican memory of the war: brave Mexicans sacrificed by poor leadership in a war of aggression by a neighbor who, in one analysis, “offered to us the hand of treachery, to have soon the audacity to say that our obstinacy and arrogance were the real causes of the war.”

The enlargement of the United States of America by some 500,000 square miles, plus Texas, was certainly a valuable objective, but it’s uncertain that achieving it required a war, any more than the 800,000 square miles of the Louisiana Purchase did. Grant himself opined that the Mexican war was “the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” Even more uncertain is the argument, voiced by Grant, among others, the American Civil War “was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War.” The sectional conflict over the expansion of slavery might have been different without Monterrey, Cerro Gordo and Chapultepec, but no less pointed, and the Civil War no less likely—or less bloody.

However, it would have been conducted very differently, since the men who fought it were so clearly marked by Mexico. It was there they learned the tactics that would dominate from 1861 to 1865. And it was there they learned to think of themselves as masters of the art of war. That, of course, was a bit of a delusion: The Mexican army was no match for them. They would prove, tragically, a match for one another.

What the Mexican War created, more than territory or myth, was men. More than a dozen future Civil War generals stood in front of Chapultepec Castle in 1847—not just the ones already named, but First Lieutenant Simon Bolivar Bruckner (USMA 1844; brigadier general, Army of Central Kentucky, 1862), who fought alongside Grant at Molino del Rey and would surrender Fort Donelson to him in 1862; Second Lieutenant Richard H. Anderson (USMA 1842; lieutenant general, Army of Northern Virginia 1863); Major John Sedgwick (USMA 1837; major general, Army of the Potomac 1863), the highest-ranking Union Army officer killed during the Civil War; Major George B. Crittenden (USMA 1832; major general, Army of Central Kentucky, 1862); Second Lieutenant A.P. Hill (USMA 1846; lieutenant general, Army of Northern Virginia, 1863); and Major John C. Pemberton, (USMA 1837; lieutenant general, Army of Mississippi, 1862), who joined Grant in the steeple of the church at San Cosmé and defended Vicksburg against him 16 years later.

The Duke of Wellington spent his life denying he had ever said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Much more apt to say that the Battle of Chapultepec was won on the parade grounds of West Point, and that the Battles of Shiloh, Antietam and Gettysburg were won—and lost—in the same place.

Alexander, J. H. (1999). The Battle History of the U.S. Marines. New York: Harper Collins.

Coffman, E. M. (1986). The Old Army: A Portrait of the Army in Peacetime, 1784-1898. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cullum, G. W. (1891). Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy (3 volumes). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Dufour, C. L. (1968). The Mexican War: A Compact History. New York: Hawthorn Books.

Elliott, C. W. (1939). Winfield Scott: The Soldier and the Man. New York: Macmillan.

Freeman, D. S. (1991). Lee: An Abridgment by Richard Harwell of the Pulitzer-Prize Winning 4-Volume Biography. New York: Scribners.

Grant, U. (1990). Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. NY: Library of America.

Jones, W. L. (2004). Generals in Blue and Gray, Volume II. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books.

McDermott, J. D. (1997). Were They Really Rogues? Desertion in the Nineteenth Century US Army. Nebraska History , 78 , 165-174.

McFeely, W. S. (1981). Grant. New York: W.W. Norton.

Millett, A. R. (1991). Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Ramsey, A. C. (1850). The Other Side: Or Notes for the History of the War Between Mexico and the United States . New York: John Wiley.

Robertson, J. I. (1997). Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend. New York: Macmillan.

Rohter, L. (1987, Dec 18). Chapultepec Park: Mexico in Microcosm. New York Times .

Smith, J. E. (2001). Grant. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Stevens, D. F. (1991). Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Thomas, E. M. (1995). Robert E. Lee: A Bioography. NY: W.W. Norton.

Weigley, R. (1967). History of the United States Army. NY: Macmillan.

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Last updated: August 4, 2022

Stanford University

SPICE is a program of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Mexican Perspectives on the Mexican–U.S. War, 1846–1848

This fall, Stanford’s Center for Latin American Studies and SPICE released a new video lecture by Professor Will Fowler , a renowned expert on Mexican history who teaches at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. In the lecture, Fowler presents Mexican perspectives on the Mexican–U.S. War of 1846–1848 and the resulting Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which most Mexicans regard as the most tragic chapter in their history. Professor Fowler also reflects on the consequences of the war for Mexico and how the country remembers the war.

In Mexico, this war is usually referred to as “ la intervención estadounidense en México ” or “ la guerra mexicano-estadounidense ,” which translates into English as the “U.S. Intervention in Mexico” or “the Mexican–U.S. War.”

The video is an excerpt from a longer lecture that Professor Fowler gave on the Mexican–U.S. War of 1846–1848 for the Center for Latin American Studies on July 27, 2021. A free classroom-friendly discussion guide for this video was developed by SPICE Curriculum Consultant Greg Francis and is available for download here . The objectives of the video lecture and curriculum guide are for students to:

gain an understanding of Mexico’s experience of the Mexican–U.S. War and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo;
examine what led to Mexico’s defeat in the war;
discuss the consequences and legacy of the war from a Mexican perspective; and
learn the importance of thinking critically about perspectives in their textbooks and classes.

Among the topics of Fowler’s lecture is the legend of the six boy heroes, or the Niños Héroes , that has become the main symbol and memory of the war in Mexico. The two most well-known depictions of the event are a mural on the ceiling of Chapultepec Castle and the Altar a la Patria (Altar to the Homeland) monument, more commonly called the Monumento a los Niños Héroes , both in Mexico City. The guide presents an activity that engages students in an examination of the Niños Héroes .

In addition, the guide engages students in a review of how their history textbooks treat the U.S.–Mexico War. After reading the textbook excerpt, students respond to these questions.

According to the textbook passage, how did U.S. leaders and the general public react to the U.S. victory in the war?
What was most surprising or novel to you about the textbook passage?
Which actors does the U.S. textbook emphasize? How do these differ from the actors that Professor Fowler emphasized?
Which perspectives does the textbook cover that Professor Fowler did not, and vice versa?

The video lecture and guide were made possible through the support of U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center funding under the auspices of Title VI, Section 602(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

Video Lecture: Mexican Perspectives on the Mexican–U.S. War, 1846–1848

Joe garcia kapp: chicano/latino football trailblazer, teaching diverse perspectives on the vietnam war, visualizing the essential: mexicans in the u.s. agricultural workforce.

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Art of the Americas to World War I

Course: art of the americas to world war i > unit 7, the mexican-american war: 19th-century american art in context.

The Missouri Compromise and the dangerous precedent of appeasement
Nativism and the Know-Nothing Party
The World’s Columbian Exposition: Introduction
The World’s Columbian Exposition: The White City and fairgrounds
The World’s Columbian Exposition: The Midway
Nast and Reconstruction, understanding a political cartoon final
John Brown’s “tragic prelude” to the U.S. Civil War

A forgotten war with unforgettable consequences

Comparing mexican and american societies before the war, cotton, texas, and manifest destiny, the war begins, the progress of the war, “a wicked war”.

“I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico.” —Ulysses S. Grant, 1879

Consequences of the Mexican-American War

War dead as a percentage of total U.S. population. .057% of the U.S. population died as a result of the Mexican-American War.
See the Historical Marker Database for estimates.
For Grant’s quote concerning the “wicked war,” see John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant (New York: American News, 1879), 2:447–48.
James Oles, Art and Architecture in Mexico (Thames and Hudson, 2013), 155.

Additional resources:

Want to join the conversation.

To Go to War with Mexico?

Written by: A. James Fuller, University of Indianapolis

By the end of this section, you will:.

Explain the causes and effects of westward expansion from 1844 to 1877

Suggested Sequencing

Use this Decision Point alongside the Chapter 7 Introductory Essay: 1844–1860 and the Debating the Mexican-American War, May 1846 Primary Source to explore the United States’ and James K. Polk’s decision to declare war on Mexico.

On May 11, 1846, President James K. Polk sent a special message to Congress asking for a declaration of war against Mexico. In his message, the president outlined a series of grievances, including the complaint that the government of Mexico had refused to receive an envoy from the United States whom he had sent to try to negotiate a peaceful solution to the problems between the two countries. Worse, he said, the Mexicans, “after a long series of menaces, have at last invaded our territories and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil.” Polk pointed to an alleged attack made on American soldiers in southern Texas and argued that the Mexicans had started a war. Now the United States had no choice but to defend itself. Congress responded by declaring war two days later, but the debate over whether to fight Mexico had been going on for some time, and the conflict was not simply an American response to an unprovoked Mexican attack.

The question whether to go to war with Mexico was rooted in the American idea of Manifest Destiny. This concept had deep roots but flourished within the dynamic society and culture of the early American republic. It held that the United States was fated to spread across the continent of North America and extend the ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy into new territories. Different people pointed to different origins for this national purpose. Some believed it was God’s plan for the country, whereas others preferred to see it as part of a natural design, and still others thought of it as continuing the historical march of progress. Manifest Destiny also stemmed from economic considerations. The United States had experienced rapid population growth in the decades after the American Revolution, and Americans had an insatiable desire for more land for agriculture. Thus, it seemed to many both necessary and right that a bigger population needed more territory.

Painting showing a much larger-than-life woman in the center with a star on her head and wearing a flowing white garment. She moves from the light-skied east to the dark west, leading white settlers who follow her either on foot or by stagecoach, horseback, Conestoga wagon, wagon train, or riding steam trains. She lays a telegraph wire with one hand and carries a school book in the other. As she moves westward, indigenous people and a herd of buffalo are seen fleeing her and the settlers.

This allegorical painting by John Gast, titled American Progress , shows Lady Columbia leading American civilization westward. It is one interpretation of the idea of Manifest Destiny.

Many American Indians and Mexicans disagreed that the destiny of the United States was so manifest, and some Americans saw U.S. expansion as conquest. This was certainly the view among the leaders of the Mexican republic in regard to Texas, California, and other regions in northern Mexico. In the 1820s, thousands of Americans had moved south to Texas, welcomed by the Mexicans who wanted them to help develop the area and serve as a buffer against attacks by American Indian tribes like the Comanche. But the Texans rose up against the Mexican government and won their independence in 1836. Soon there were calls for the new Texas republic to be annexed to the United States. Several attempts to do so failed, but President John Tyler led a successful annexation effort, and Texas joined the Union in 1845.

There was disagreement over the location of the southern border of the new state. The Mexicans argued that it was the Nueces River, and the American settlers insisted it was farther south at the Rio Grande. When Democrat James K. Polk took office as president in 1845, he promised to acquire more land from Mexico and also hoped to settle the boundary issue in favor of the United States. Meanwhile, more American settlers were making their way into Mexican territories, including California, where there was talk of a revolution to establish an independent Bear Flag Republic. Settlers were also increasingly interested in New Mexico, and many Mormons had moved to Utah. Certainly, the Mexicans had reason to be wary of their northern neighbor.

Although most Americans favored westward expansion, many were not convinced it was a good thing. Some northerners, in particular, worried that territorial expansion was the goal of southerners who actually wanted to preserve their interest in expanding and protecting slavery. Southern planters did require more land for their ever-expanding cotton kingdom. Cotton was the foundation of the American economy: it accounted for some two-thirds of the nation’s exports, and northern industrialists relied on the crop for their textile mills. To grow cotton in the early 1800s required land and labor. Slavery provided the labor and territorial expansion provided the land. Although many northerners happily supported expansion into new territories like Oregon, they feared movement into Mexican lands to the south meant the expansion of slavery, especially when Texas joined the union as a slave state.

White southerners enthusiastically supported taking more land from Mexico, and some of them also wanted to expand into the Caribbean and Central America. Adding new territory south of 36°30’ latitude, which had marked the boundary between free and slave states since the Missouri Compromise in 1820, indeed, would allow for the expansion of the South’s plantation economy and slavery. It would also give southerners more political power. New slave states would have at least one seat in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate, which would allow the South to protect slavery against the growing criticism in the North. No wonder, then, that so many antislavery northerners feared a war with Mexico would be fought to build an empire for slavery.

With tensions mounting, President Polk sent troops to the Rio Grande under General Zachary Taylor to protect the border. The Mexicans saw this as an invasion, and so did some Americans. Ulysses S. Grant, an officer under Taylor’s command, saw the coming conflict as an unjust war being fought to expand slavery. Although he did his duty, he later said, “We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico should commence it. It was very doubtful whether Congress would declare war; but if Mexico should attack our troops,” then the president could say that the war had already begun and Congress would support the conflict. In other words, Polk wanted political cover for his actions, and he sent Taylor into the disputed territory in hope the Mexicans would attack and he could blame them for starting the war. And that was exactly what happened.

An 1840s daguerreotype of General Zachary Taylor, made a few years before the beginning of the Mexican-American War.

At first, the Mexicans did not respond to the American troops moving into the disputed territory south of the Nueces River, although the Mexican government declared it would fight a defensive war against the United States. General Taylor had his men build a fort on the banks of the Rio Grande across from the Mexican town of Matamoros. On April 25, 1846, a large force of Mexican soldiers attacked a U.S. Army patrol and killed 11 Americans. A few days later, Mexican artillery began to bombard the U.S. fort on the Rio Grande. Taylor retaliated, and hostilities commenced. When news of the fighting reached Washington, DC, President Polk had what he wanted. He asked the members of Congress to declare war, and they did.

Although the war had now begun, not everyone went along with the decision. Poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau went to jail for refusing to pay taxes that would help fund the war and wrote his famous essay, later known as “Civil Disobedience,” to assert the freedom of the individual to resist government policy. Some tried to stop the war from expanding slavery. In 1846, David Wilmot, a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, tried to prohibit slavery in any territory taken from Mexico, with a rider attached to a bill funding part of the war. The Wilmot Proviso passed the House of Representatives, but it failed in the Senate. Another antiwar representative was Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, who entered Congress after the combat was essentially over but who still delivered a scathing attack on the president in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives on January 12, 1848. Lincoln denounced the plan to take the northern half of Mexico, saying he hoped that Polk realized that “the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him”. But the United States had clearly won the war and gained a huge swath of territory in the final treaty negotiations, taking in California, New Mexico (which included what is now Arizona), and Utah (which included what later became Nevada).

Lithograph showing a battle between two groups of soldiers. American flags fly on the left and soldiers are shown retreating on the right; some have fallen and are wounded or dead.

A hand-tinted 1847 lithograph by John Cameron showing a battle during the Mexican-American War.

As the war was ending, gold was discovered in California. Many Americans saw the ensuing Gold Rush as evidence of the validity of Manifest Destiny, because the wealth of California had not been fully discovered until it became part of the United States. It seemed that the war was truly a triumph. But things did not turn out as expected. As the poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted, “The United States will swallow Mexico, but it will be as the man who swallows arsenic, which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us.” California’s population soon grew large enough for the territory to become a state. Its application to enter the union as a free state set off a political firestorm between the North and the South, however, because part of it lay south of the 36°30’ line. Although the Compromise of 1850 had temporarily eased political tensions over the territorial expansion of slavery, the issue remained unresolved. Ironically, although it started in the name of the nation’s collective destiny, the Mexican-American War helped set the stage for the Civil War that ripped the country apart.

Review Questions

“The untransacted destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent—to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean—to animate the many hundred millions of its people, and to cheer them upward—to set the principle of self-government at work—to agitate these herculean masses—to establish a new order in human affairs”.

Address to the U.S. Senate (March 2, 1846); quoted in Mission of the North American People, Geographical, Social, and Political (1873), by William Gilpin, p. 124.

This quotation best summarizes the concept of

republican motherhood
Manifest Destiny
imperialism

2. Critics of the Mexican-American War believed the conflict was escalated a war for the purpose of

expanding slavery
acquiring land
acquiring mineral resources
gaining access to water

“Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are now at war. As war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself, we are called upon by every consideration of duty and patriotism to vindicate with decision the honor, the rights, and the interests of our country.”

President Polk’s message to Congress, 1846

In this excerpt, President Polk is asking Congress to

ignore the Mexican government’s actions along the border
reconsider the annexation of Texas
exercise its constitutional authority to declare war
recognize the Mexican request to adjust territorial boundaries

Cartoon of a man in the attire of an admiral sitting atop a pile of skulls. Below the pile of skulls is the text “An available candidate. The one qualification for a Whig president.”

A political cartoon published before the Whig party convention in 1848. Consider who the candidate is and why there are so many skulls in the picture.

4. Refer to the image provided. The sentiment portrayed in the cartoon suggests that a leading Whig presidential nominee was negatively viewed because of his connection to the

Mexican-American War
Kansas-Nebraska Act
opening of Japan to U.S. trade
settlement of the Oregon Territory

Map of the United States depicting the region from the eastern seaboard and continuing west to the middle of the country.

A map of the westward expansion of the United States.

5. Refer to the map provided. The map best illustrates the United States’ continental expansion in the aftermath of

the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory
the annexation of Texas
the conclusion of the Mexican-American War
the resolution of the Oregon Territory boundary

6. Which of these expressed overwhelming support for acquiring territory from Mexico?

Henry David Thoreau
Abraham Lincoln
David Wilmot

Free Response Questions

Explain why expansion into the Oregon Territory had more support in the North than expansion into areas held by Mexico in the 1840s.
Explain the connection between the decision to go to war with Mexico and the concept of Manifest Destiny.

AP Practice Questions

“The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. . . . Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849

Refer to the excerpt provided.

1. This excerpt was written in response to the

annexation of Texas
admission of California as a free state
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act

2. What group would most likely agree with the point of view expressed?

Expansionists
Northern Whigs
Southern slaveholders

Primary Sources

Lincoln, Abraham. “The War With Mexico: Speech in the United States House of Representatives. January 12, 1848.” http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-war-with-mexico-speech-in-the-united-states-house-of-representatives/

Polk, James K. “President James K. Polk, To the Congress of the United States: A Special Message Calling for a Declaration of War against Mexico, Washington, May 11, 1846.” https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/Lesson%201%20Polk%20Message%20Complete.pdf

Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience.” 1849. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper2/thoreau/civil.html

Suggested Resources

Dusinberre, William. Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk . New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Frangaviglia, Richard V., and Douglas W. Richmond, eds. Dueling Eagles: Reinterpreting the U.S-Mexican War, 1846-1848 . Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press, 2000.

Greenberg, Amy S. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico . New York: Knopf, 2012.

Merry, Robert W. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, The Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

Military Records

Mexican War

Pre-World War I U.S. Army Pension and Bounty Land Applications

Search Records Online

Service records.

Scan your Mexican War records in our DC Scanning Room!

Index To Compiled Service Records Of Volunteer Soldiers Who Served During The Mexican War (Microfilm Roll #M616, Record Group 94)

FamilySearch.org (free)

Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers Who Served During the Mexican War for the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and in Mormon Battalion (Microfilm Rolls #M1028, M278, M351, M638, M863, M1970, Record Group 94)

National Archives Catalog (NAID: 654520) (free)
Ancestry.com (free from NARA computers) | Ancestry.com ($ - by subscription)
FamilySearch (free)
Fold3: Service Records for Arkansas , Mississippi , Pennsylvania , Tennessee , Texas , and Mormon Battalion

Pension Records

Index to Mexican War Pension Files, 1887-1926 (Microfilm Roll #T317, Record Group 15)

FamilySearch.org (free)

Selected Pension Application Files Relating to the Mormon Battalion, Mexican War, 1846-1848 (Microfilm Roll #T1196, Record Group 15)

National Archives Catalog (NAID: 1104361) (free)

Case Files of Mexican War Pension Applications, ca. 1887 - ca. 1926 (Microfilm Roll #T317, Record Group 15)

National Archives Catalog (NAID: 1104361) (free)

Index to Pension Application Files of Remarried Widows Based on Service in the War of 1812, Indian Wars, Mexican War, and Regular Army before 1861 , (Microfilm Roll #M1784, Record Group 15)

FamilySearch.org (free)

Killed and Wounded

Returns of Killed and Wounded in Battles or Engagements with Indians, British Troops, and Mexican Troops, compiled 1850 - 1851, documenting the period 1790 - 1848 (Microfilm Roll #M1832, Record Group 94)

Other Resources

" Monuments, Manifest Destiny, and Mexico " Michael Dear's article which tells the story of the survey of the U.S.-Mexico border following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. From NARA's publication Prologue .

Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo Digitized version of the original document that ended the Mexican-American War.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo A Teaching with Documents lesson plan about the treaty that ended the Mexican-American War.

A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexican War A web site created by a collaboration between the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the Library at the University of Texas at Arlington for both scholars and teachers.

A Guide to the Mexican War This guide provides links to digital materials related to the Mexican War that are available on the Library of Congress web site.

The Mexican-American War "This web site presents a historical overview of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), as well as primary documents and images related to the conflict."

Mexican War The Texas State Historical Association offers this chapter from The Handbook of Texas .

Mexican War Dead or Veterans From the American Battle Monuments Commission, this site remembers soldiers from the Mexican War who are buried in the Mexico City National Cemetery.

Robert E. Lee Mexican War Maps An online exhibit of 30 original military maps owned by Robert E. Lee from the holdings of the Virginia Military Institute.

U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848) This PBS site chronicles the events of the border disputes through multiple points of view to provide an enlightened perspective on the subject. Includes histories, articles, essays, a timeline, and a moderated discussion area for visitors.

U.S.-Mexican War A site rich in the history of the war, by the Descendants of Mexican War Veterans. Read battle plans and orders, peruse letters, and see images of the war and veterans.

U.S.-Mexican War: The Zachary Taylor Encampment in Corpus Christi Created by volunteers at the Corpus Christi Public Libraries, this informational site offers images, letters, newspaper accounts, and more, of the Mexican War in the Corpus Christi, Texas, area.

Texas history museum dissects treaty that ended Mexican American War and changed the world

Be honest: What do you really know about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?

The accord that formally ended the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) radically altered the destinies of both countries. So crushing was the defeat of Mexico that the United States demanded and received Texas, California, Nevada and Utah as well as big slices of Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico.

Imagine the U.S. without all that territory. Imagine Mexico with it.

And yet how did the 1848 treaty come about? What does it actually say? And how did it affect those living on both sides of the new border, including Native Americans and African Americans, whose destinies were decided without their consent?

A new pop-up exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum helps clear the air. Located on the second floor, it includes pages — originals and copies — of the treaty, which are on loan from the National Archives.

How a pop-up show fits into the long-term museum plan

"Legacies of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo" represents a relatively new type of show for the Bullock, which opened as the premier museum on the subject of Texas history in 2001. As the Bullock slowly updates and upgrades its permanent exhibit — the modernized rooms on the ground floor dedicated to early Texas were unveiled in 2018 — the more recent curatorial work upstairs has been completed incrementally.

As senior curator Kathryn Siefker explains, revisions on the second floor are moving forward one room at a time. The treaty popup show, which lasts through Feb. 16, 2025, allows Siefker the opportunity to rethink what will permanently fill that gallery — which typically covers the Texas statehood period.

"We had been talking about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo for a long time," Siefker says. "And we've been working with the National Archives to borrow some actual pages from the treaty."

A reminder: By design, the Bullock does not own any of the artifacts it displays. Even the elaborate exhibit on the shipwrecked La Belle, which transported the doomed colony of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, does not belong to the state museum, but rather to the French government.

Everywhere you look, it's all on loan.

Like the refreshed historical exhibits downstairs, the "Guadalupe Hidalgo" pop-up feels more like part of a grown-up museum than an amusement park. Sure, one can be entertained by the uniforms, weapons, maps and so forth, but the goal is to help visitors understand the history better.

To that point, all the texts are translated into Spanish, part of a recently completed museum-wide project to make history more accessible to a wider swath of the state's residents and tourists.

What will I see at the Bullock?

In a blue-tinted room under low general lighting, the sharply defined individual displays of "Legacies of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo" examine the times before, during and, especially, after the world-changing agreement.

They cover the basic contours of the Mexican-American War, which started in 1846 after 30 years of regional chaos. The U.S. insisted that Mexico's border with the recently annexed Texas ran along the Rio Grande, which the Republic of Texas had claimed, rather than the more northerly Nueces River, which Mexico recognized.

President James K. Polk dispatched Gen. Zachary Taylor to the Texas coast to secure the land between the rivers, the "Nueces Strip." Supplies and troops were funneled through Lavaca and Corpus Christi . In fact, a hilltop cemetery in the latter city, Old Bayview, laid out in 1845, is the oldest federal military graveyard in the state.

To Mexico, the military move into the strip represented a clear provocation.

The Battle of Palo Alto, just north of the Rio Grande, previewed later ones in Mexico's interior. The U.S. army generally dominated its opponents. Among the combatants, then- Lt. Ulysses S. Grant observed the stark brutality visited on Mexican civilians by the Texas Rangers, who joined the federal forces. Meanwhile, halfway across the continent, American explorer John Frémont was fomenting rebellion in California against Mexican rule.

After U.S. forces occupied Mexico City, the nation, already weakened by decades of infighting, was doomed. As peace negotiations began, many in Mexico resisted the loss of any of its sovereign territory. Yet the U.S. took half of it. The U.S. agreed to pay for Mexican damages in the war, among other concessions.

Pages of the treaty borrowed from National Archives — both early, "dirty" and later, "clean" copies, to demonstrate which articles were eventually left out — will be rotated during the run of the show. Currently on display is an excerpt stipulating that the U.S. end its blockade of Mexican ports and withdraw its troops from Mexico, especially from Mexico City.

The treaty's unintended consequences

The treaty was signed in a town outside Mexico City called Guadalupe Hidalgo on Feb. 2, 1848. It was ratified by the U.S. Senate on March 10, 1848, and approved by Mexico's Congress on May 30, 1848.

For any history buff concluding that the story ended there, a good deal of the context and detail of the treaty's legacy would be missed.

As the exhibit explains, for instance, some 44,000 soldiers on both sides died. It is somewhat surprising to learn that 88 percent of the American war deaths were due to infectious diseases. "The U.S. assault on Veracruz was initially planned to avoid the 'sickly season' when yellow fever and other diseases were known to be surging," one wall text reads. "When the peace treaty was written in 1848, Article IV included instructions on troop movements to avoid the sickly season to prevent more deaths as the soldiers returned home."

The exhibit demonstrates how the treaty included protections for Mexicans who would soon become Americans. And indeed, many of these former Mexican families thrived and even intermarried with European and American newcomers after the war. Later, however, land speculators and violent militias swooped in to deny these Mexican Americans their birthrights. (The book to read is "Stolen Heritage: A Mexican-American's Rediscovery of His Family's Lost Land Grant" by Abel Rubio.)

As for Mexico, the war showed how much a long period of political instability had fatally weakened the country. Although more turmoil followed the war, a generation of liberals united the country in the 1850s, and it was able to fight off the French during its Second Intervention during the 1860s. To some historians, this act of nationalist self-defense laid the foundation for modern Mexico.

For the U.S., the war proved the need for a permanent standing army. The military grew expansively after the war, especially once it began fighting Native Americans in the newly acquired territories. Officers who were West Point graduates and had seen action in Mexico and in the American West led both sides during the Civil War.

The treaty accelerated internal tensions in the U.S. As early as 1836, Americans had debated admitting Texas to the Union as a slave state. "They were concerned Texas would upset the Congressional balance of power between the states," reads one wall text, "and that its sheer size would spread slavery into the West." Soon after the treaty was signed, the Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state and reduced the size of Texas, a slave state.

The treaty, however, strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act, which required even free states to return enslaved fugitives and threatened with imprisonment anyone who helped them flee. This intensified the clash between abolitionists and backers of slavery, which contributed to the start of the Civil War not long afterward in 1861.

Perhaps the most eye-opening details of this exhibit deal with how the treaty affected sovereign Tribal Nations that had established diplomatic agreements with Spain and then later Mexico, Texas and the U.S. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo undermined all those accords. The new borders divided some nations and separated some tribes from vital resources.

The Mexican-American War and the subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo barely pierce the consciousness of most Texans today.

Yet the war and treaty "remain a profound scar for many," one wall text reads. "Mexico was left with the profound grief of losing over half its land to its neighbor and the shame of having been occupied by a foreign army. In the U.S., the acquisition of the Southwest changed the nationality of approximately 150,000 Mexicans overnight. Lands that had been their home for centuries were suddenly foreign.

"The losses to Mexico eventually created a nationalism that brought stability to the nation. In the U.S., a whole new culture came into being, that of the Mexican American, whose powerful identity has contributed to the richness of America."

'Legacies of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo'

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m daily through Feb. 16, 2025

Where: Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, 1800 Congress Ave.

Parking: Given the recently reconfigured Capitol Mall, the best parking is found below the museum. The entrance to that garage is on West 18th Street.

Tickets: $9-$13 for the museum, excluding the IMAX theater

Info: thestoryoftexas.com

Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached at [email protected]. Sign up for the free weekly digital newsletter, Think, Texas, at statesman.com/newsletters, or at the newsletter page of your local USA Today Network paper.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas history museum dissects treaty that ended Mexican American War and changed the world

Kathryn Siefker, senior curator at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, explains pages of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on display in a special pop-up exhibit.

The Mexican-American War: A Forgotten Conflict of the 1800s

The mexican-american war was a pivotal and often overlooked conflict..

name one war fought by the united states in the 1800s

On May 13, 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico, beginning the Mexican-American War. This war, often overshadowed by other conflicts in American history, was a pivotal moment in the expansion of the United States and had lasting impacts on both nations involved. The Mexican-American War is one of the least remembered wars fought by the United States in the 1800s, yet it played a significant role in shaping the country's borders and identity.

The war was sparked by a border dispute between the newly annexed state of Texas and Mexico. The United States claimed the Rio Grande as its southern border, while Mexico argued that the Nueces River was the true boundary. The conflict escalated into a full-blown war, with battles fought on Mexican soil as U.S. forces pushed southward.

One of the most iconic battles of the Mexican-American War was the Battle of Chapultepec, where a group of young cadets from the Mexican Military Academy fought bravely against overwhelming odds. The fall of Chapultepec marked the end of the war and the eventual capture of Mexico City by U.S. forces.

The Mexican-American War resulted in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded vast territories to the United States, including present-day California, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. This territorial expansion fueled tensions over the issue of slavery and laid the groundwork for the Civil War just over a decade later.

Despite its significance, the Mexican-American War is often overshadowed by other conflicts in American history, such as the Civil War and World War II. However, the war's impact on the United States cannot be understated, as it shaped the country's borders, identity, and relationship with its neighbors.

An 1870 engraving of the Battle of Gettysburg, possibly Pickett's charge, captures the intensity and chaos of 19th-century warfare. The image depicts soldiers charging into battle, with smoke and debris filling the air, highlighting the brutal realities of war.

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The Mexican-American War Essay

Mexican-American War

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Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

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The Impact of the Mexican American War on American Society and Politics

Hispanic-Americans in the Civil War

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14.2: The Mexican-American War

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Aftermath of the War

Technological Development and Manifest Destiny

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11.4 The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848

JAMES K. POLK AND THE TRIUMPH OF EXPANSION

WAR WITH MEXICO, 1846–1848

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CALIFORNIA AND THE GOLD RUSH

The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848

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JAMES K. POLK AND THE TRIUMPH OF EXPANSION

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