Mexican American War Research Paper

This all couldn’t have been finalized without the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo officially ended the Mexican-American War in 1848. After the treaty was signed, the United States received more than 500,000 square miles of Mexican territory and emerged as a world power. The land that was included in Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo were present-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The United States paid 15 million dollars to Mexico for all the acquired land. From the acquired land, the United States increased its size by most 25% compared to itself before the war.

In 1836 Texas declared its independence. (O’Sullivan 323) The war with Mexico happened in Mexico and the US. It started in 1846. (Roden 315) To start the war, Mexicans fired on Americans. People who believed Manifest Destiny believed that it is God’s plan to expand America to the Pacific Ocean.

Although the United States war against Mexico resulted in the gaining of America’s most valuable land, the war itself was unjust because their goal was to expand slavery, Texas was wrong from the beginning, and the war was based on false pretenses. To begin, the war waged against Mexico was unjustifiable because their goal was to expand slavery in the United States. In Document E, house representative Joshua Giddings states his stance on the war, “Mexico has

In the Mexican-American war of 1846 the United States of America was justified in going to war with Mexico because of many reasons. First Texas decided that did not want to part of Mexico they wanted to be part the Union (United States). It was America’s Manifest Destiny to go out and conquer the land, and the Mexican government wasn’t stable enough to handle their lands. “Texas had determined…to annex herself to our Union” because of the increasing numbers of American settlers that filled the northern part of the Rio Grande. This led Texans to successfully go for an annexation causing a war between the United States and Mexico.

The big debate across the growing United States was the debate of slavery and which states would come in as free or slavery states. The Mexican-American War was a major turning point in this debate because it settled the debate over which states would become free or slavery states. This war lasted a little over a year and 9 months long on the border of the United States and Mexico (Texas and Mexico City). This war would helped settle many disputes, but the main debate it would settle would be the huge slavery debate. The Mexican-American War helped the United States gain new territory is the south-western part of the United States.

During the year leading up the war with mexico the united states used major disputes and reasons for going to war being manifest destiny, Rio grande boundary dispute, and slidell 's mission. Manifest Destiny was the word used throughout the 1840s which is the belief that Americans had the right and the duty, to expand westward across the North American, from the Ocean to Ocean.In order to have this destiny, Americans would have to go to war with Mexico. so in 1844, James K. Polk who won the election, He and the Democrats went with Manifest Destiny, a concept that stated that the U.S. was destined to expand across the continent and get as much land as possible. In Polk prestindestce he promised in his four step plan to get land westward and he did getting california and oregon. But in the process of wanting California he found it was difficult due to strained U.S. and Mexican relations.

When Mexicans saw this they took it as an act of war. Bear in mind, tensions before the United States and Mexico were high because of border disputes. United States wanted the border to be at Rio Grande River while Mexico wanted the border to be the Nueces River. General Zachary Taylor was the one to go to Texas and claim the Rio Grande River as the border. Mexico taking this as an act of aggression caused shots to be fired sending Mexican troops across the Rio Grande.

The Mexican-American war altered the United States environmentally, culturally and politically. First, on February 2, 1848, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo two years post the beginning of the war. The treaty not only achieved President Polk’s goal to achieve California from Mexico but also granted the U.S. over 500,000 square miles of new territory. The new land caused approximately 90,000 spanish speaking, mostly Catholic Mexicans under American jurisdiction. Second, Nativism, a rising anti-catholic and anti-immigrant deemed the Mexicans inferior.

But, before Texas was an American state, there was tension amongst Texans and . Due to the empresario system hundreds of slave-holding farmers settled into Mexico’s northern territory and by 1836 the population ratio in Coahuila y Texas was ten whites to every one Spanish-speaker. This caused some conflict because slavery was against the law in Mexico, yet there were hundreds of slave-holding families settled on Mexican territory. This conflict caused the Texas Revolution and the creation of the “Lone Star Republic.” But Sam Houston, the first president of Texas, wanted the United States or Great Britain to annex Texas in order to assume the debts of Texas. As a result,

ome of the reasons why it was unjust is because according to the website Just-War Theory Applied to US-Mexico War, the Americans declared war after being attacked by the Mexican military when they settled in Texas. They said that the Mexicans ìInvaded our territory.î The Americans like to call it the Mexican War or the Mexican American War but actually Mexicans like to call it ìThe US invasion.î This shows us how Mexico saw the war as more of an invasion than just both of them fighting for land. One big event that happened during this time is when the Americans started to move into Texas. The Mexicans decided to stop slavery and the Americans started getting mad since most of the people were American slave owners. This caused the

“Texas won their independence in 1836”(Roden 317). Texas needed to prove that they were independent from Mexico without dragging the U.S. into it. In the battle of the Alamo, many Americans helped, however, the war was not ours, so why should this war be any different (Roden 269)? In Polk 's message to Congress asking them to declare war on Mexico he states: “I had ordered an efficient military force to take a position between the Nueces river and the Rio del Norte. This had become necessary to meet a threatened invasion of Texas.” Mexico was invading Texas not the U.S.

When President James K. Polk arrived in office in 1845, his ideal was determined to acquire the additional territory from Mexico. Polk believed that obtaining the lightly inhabited Mexican land that stretched from Texas to California was vital to the future of the United States. After the trouble that occurred while trying to buy the land from Mexico, Polk ordered American troops under Zachary Taylor to march to the Rio Grande River. When fighting erupted, Polk, claiming that Mexico fired first, went to congress to declare war on Mexico. Numerous Americans, as well as at the time Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln, opposed the war and questioned whether the fight began on American soil and was provoked by Polk’s men.

Nugent’s thesis is that Polk is to blame for the war; Graebner’s thesis is that it isn’t Polk’s fault. I believe that Graebner’s fence sitting means that he believes in his own argument and shouldn’t be consider a genuine argument. Graebner believes that diplomatic and cultural factors –like the manifest destiny- forced the war and that it was out of Polk’s hands. Graebner believed that the US military in Texas pushing towards Mexico was part of

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Mexican Soldiers gained upon us, and fired. The attack led with surprised war cries... The Mexican American War impacted many lives. It determined if Mexico was able to keep California and Texas away from America’s grasp. In 1821, Mexico won it’s independence from Spain.

Congress Debate on War with Mexico,” by Joshua Giddings, “It has therefore become necessary to extend our dominions into Mexico in order to render slavery secure in Texas.” The author is saying that the Americans in Texas were trying to show that they are superior to Mexico. They showed this by trying to convert the laws in Texas to their laws, or rules and to have them follow their ways. The Mexican & American war was immoral because Texas did unnecessary things and did not follow any of Mexico’s