1848---Mexico Will Poison Us

FEBRUARY 2, 1848: 

 

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ends the Mexican War of 1846-1848. 

 

Although ostensibly a war to protect Anglo-American settlers in the northern Mexican Province of Alta California from supposed depredations and harassment by corrupt Mexican officialdom, the Mexican War was a baldly expansionist war allowing the United States to reach the Pacific coast as “Manifest Destiny” decreed. 

 

Although President Polk (amongst others) were agitating for even more land claims (in Baja California and Sonora, for example), the Mexican Cession as it was finalized ceded fully 55% of Mexican territory to the United States. 

 

American settlers in Texas had already set up an independent Republic that had become a State in 1845, and Americans in California did the same during the war (1846). 

 

Besides California (and Texas) the former Mexican territories acquired eventually birthed entire the States of Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, and Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma (in portion). 

 

The absorption of the new territory, much of which lay below 36’30” reignited the “Slave State versus Free State” debate that had been quiescent if not settled since the Missouri Compromise. 

 

“Mexico will poison us” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, and history, sadly, proved him correct.