Sectional Tension In The US War With Mexico

The Mexican-American War began in May 1846, over a territorial dispute with Texas. Mexicans suffered heavily from American expansion, and more specifically the Mexican War. In some cities, thousands of Mexican people, even children were killed at a time. The war quickly turned disgusting and barbarous. Cases of rape began to multiply and American soldiers robbed and killed Mexican civilians. The Mexican-American war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of course which was in favor of the United States. This treaty was signed on February 8, 1848. Due to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that Mexico signed, Mexico had to obey the terms, which was to “sell” their land to the United States, hints the name Mexican Cession. The Manifest Destiny of the United States had a relatively negative effect on Mexico, more specifically all the casualties and the loss of all their

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1948, ended the Mexican-American War. The treaty doubled the size of the United States and halved the size of Mexico, as it stated that Mexico give the United States Texas and accept the Rio Grande as Texas’s boundary, as well as sell New Mexico and Upper California to the United States for fifteen million dollars. Conditions of the treaty included that any Mexicans currently living in the territories that were now owned by the United States could become U.S. citizens and gave the U.S. power to deal with any “problematic” Native Americans on the U.S. side of the border. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo sparked many lasting controversies and political/social issues still present today. Some of the effects of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo are the end of slavery in the United States and the negative stereotypes of Mexicans held by Americans.

The annexation of Texas by the U.S. angered Mexican Government. Mexico never acknowledged Texas as independent and felt the U.S. had no right to take its territory. Mexico did not acknowledge the treaty of Velasco which set the southern border of Texas as the Rio Grande. The loss of Texas will inevitably result in the loss of New Mexico and the Californias. Little by little the territory will be absorbed until only an insignificant part is

When Americans wanted to move to Texas, which had been owned by Mexico, they had to agree to certain terms. The terms were that they had to be moral and hardworking, they had to become Mexican citizens and they had to join the Catholic church. By 1830, there were 25,000 Americans and only 4,000 Tejanos. Americans and the Tejanos had many complaints about each other and did not get along, so the Mexican government closed Texas to further U>S> immigration, and sent troops to enforce the laws.Americans were angry, and when Stephen Austin went to negotiate with the new head of government General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, he put him in jail. Texas rose up in revolt in 1835, and then the battle of Alamo was fought. In the end, all the Alamos were killed. Sam Houston came up with a strategy to move east to make it harder for Santa Anna’s men to get supplies and keep them battle-ready. Santa Anna kept his men up, and when they finally rested, Sam Houston’s men attacked. Santa Anna was captured and was forced to sign a treaty giving Texas its freedom. Texas was later annexed to the United States. This land was well-suited growing cotton, which was the South’s most valuable cash crop. Getting Texas also gave us a lot more land for farming and settling. By defeating Mexico, we showed other countries we were strong and smart, and that we were not a country to mess with.

The annexation of Texas is said to be “ The most dramatic event in the history of relations between Mexico and the United States …” (Doc B). One might be thinking how does a piece of land lead to a war it was not just about the land it was about Mexico thinking that the annexation of Texas was “inadmissible for both legal and security reasons” (Doc B).

The U.S.-Mexican War was a violent and shattering event for Mexican citizens that lasted from 1846-1848 in what is now the state of Texas. It drastically altered the course of Mexican and American history for years to come. It occurred because of the unsettled disputes about the borders of newly annexed Texas. Once the debilitating battle ended, the United States emerged a world power having acquired more than 500,000 square miles of valuable territory. There are many potentially feasible explanations on the cause of the war; including, fault laying with American slaveholders for conquest of Mexico, the war as an American plot and responsibility lying with President Polk of the United States. However, this paper focuses on the three

With the end of the Mexican war, the United States seized a tremendous amount of land from Mexico, about one third of the country, half a million square miles to be exact. The hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Indians who continued to live there became strangers in their own homes. This take over of land and the spirit of manifest destiny intensified the political conflict of slavery. Taking over this land intensified racism as some viewed this as signifying the superiority of the “Anglo-Saxon race.” This new idea proved to be detrimental to race relations in these new territories. When these territories still belonged to Mexico, slavery was illegal and Mexicans, Indians and blacks were all equal. When the territory of Texas, once a part

The United States nearly doubled in size due to the purchase of Louisiana; it extended to the Rocky Mountains. Mexico stretched from Guatemala to Oregon making it nearly equal in size to the United States. Mexico, seeing as though there was barely anyone settled in the northern lands, encouraged and welcomed American farmers to settle in its province of Texas. Both America and Mexico had two very opposing views as far as religion, slavery and, politics in general;thus, creating inevitable conflict. The United States, who were first against it in order to keep peace with Mexico,voted to annex Texas, which Mexico considered to be a part of their country. The decision to go into war with Mexico was quite unjustified. Americans only supported

The Mexican American War ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 which gave the United States a large piece of Mexican land now known as the states of; Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and small regions in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. Not only did this country loose almost half of its territory, but it was also forced to give Texas some of its property and was obligated to perceive the Rio Grande as a boundary to southern America.

recognizes the annexation of Texas and has agreed to sell California and the territory north of the Rio Grande for fifteen million dollars (“Mexican-American War”, 2009). The signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo marked the end of the war it also marked the beginning of United States political debates over slavery in the territories and the conflict continued with Mexico over boundaries. There was a political debate between the Northerners and Southerners on whether the new acclaimed land would be free or slave states.

The Mexican American War was mainly driven by the idea of “Manifest Destiny”; the belief that the U.S had a God-given right to occupy and civilize the whole continent. As increasingly large number of Americans migrated towards the west in search of land, the fact that most of those areas already had people living in them was ignored. Instead, an attitude and belief that democratic English-speaking America would do a better job of running the lands than the Native Americans or Spanish-speaking Catholic Mexicans prevailed. President Polk shared and led the vision of Manifest Destiny, and did offer to buy much of the southwest land from Mexico. However the Mexican government refused the offer, and an unyeilding desire to populate those southwestern lands caused tensions to continue to rise.

After the Mexican American War, the Northern and Southern regions were no longer able to find a compromise over the issue of slavery, leading to the first steps of a divergence between the two regions. Between 1846-1848, Mexico and the United States fought over the annexation of Texas into the United States and the legal borders between the two countries, as well as the the want to maintain peace, and disregard war. A debate between the nation occurred on whether or not Texas should join the union. Some believed that Texas should have stayed an independent territory separate from the US because many did not want the addition of yet another slave state. However, others believed that it was the manifest destiny for the Union to expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Since the Texas territory was not a part of the Missouri Compromise, many were conflicted on whether or not Texas should be added, and if it was, if it would be a free state or not.The idea of annexing Texas was very popular in the South, but widely opposed in the North. The North did not want Texas to join the union particularly

Mexico boundary are to be found in the imperial competition between Spain, France, and Britain for possessions in North America. Lack of agreement between the three imperial powers over the location of the boundaries separating their territories in North America led to disagreement between Mexico and an expansionist U.S. After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, many U.S. leaders argued for taking part or all of Mexico's territory. Numerous prominent U.S. politicians, driven by the ideology of Manifest Destiny, considered taking Mexico "a divine right." (Acuna, 1988) As tensions mounted between the U.S. and Mexico over Texas, the U.S. deliberately provoked Mexico by sending troops into territory claimed by Mexico in early 1846. Battles between U.S. and Mexican troops ensued, quickly resulting in full-scale war. The war raged on for two years, largely in favor of the U.S., and ended with the U.S. taking over Mexico City. On February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed, and Mexico was forced to cede half of its territory to the U.S. Under the treaty's terms, the U.S. annexed a territory equivalent in size to that of Western Europe, and absorbed 100,000 Mexican citizens and 200,000 Native Americans living in the territory. (Herzog, 1990) The decades following the imposition of the new U.S. -- Mexico boundary saw widespread violence as U.S. authorities and non-State actors established their dominance. The Mexican Revolution and the accompanying

Two years and thirteen thousand American deaths later, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed and ratified by Congress. Despite its unethical beginning, the spoils reaped by the Americans from the Mexican War were tremendous. The terms of the treaty had granted the United States the entire Mexican Cession territory, which consisted of modern day Nevada, California, New Mexico, Utah, Most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Wyoming. Many were outraged by the war, but many more were too busy celebrating in the face of their defeated Mexican neighbors. This is understandable considering that many earnest Americans believed that Mexico was the aggressor in the confrontation. In the end the appealing lie voiced much louder than the abhorring truth.

As a result, in the 1840s the US became interested in acquiring territory in the northern Mexico (southwest). In 1846 tensions arose between the Mexican and American government and gave way to the Mexican-American War. The US was able to defeat Mexico and acquire several key areas of the Southwest (AZ, TX, UT, CO, NV, CA) under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Gutiérrez, R., 2016, 97-99). Under the treaty, Mexico acknowledged the Rio Grande as the border with Texas and surrendered the southwest to the US. Under Article 7, Mexican citizens living in the US had the option to leave or to become American citizens and their property would be respected. In addition, Article 9 guaranteed that the ceded territories would be incorporated into the US. Overall, the Mexican-American war established the modern-day border between Mexico and the US (Gutiérrez, R., 2016, 99). This chapter will help me analyze the complexities that resulted from the Mexican-American war and the long-lasting effects these have had on Mexican immigrants traveling to the US.