Transcript Manifest Destiny and the Mexican American Warx

An Empire of Liberty?

Stephen A. Douglas – Senator from Illinois (1845): “would
blot out the lines on the map which now marked our national
boundaries… and make the area of liberty as broad as the
continent itself.”

New York Morning News (1845): “Our way lies, not over
trampled nations, but through desert wastes.”

John L. O’Sullivan – editor of Morning News(1845): “The
American claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to
overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which
Providence has given us for the development of liberty.”

American expansion was promoted based on the belief that it
brought with it progress and civilization.
American Progress – John Gast
(1872)
The Texas ?

Texas wanted annexation, but
abolitionists (anti-slavery protestors)
didn’t want another slave state
added to the union.
 Election of 1844
 James K. Polk: Democratic
Party (expansionist)
 Henry Clay: Whig Party (focus
on internal improvements)
 Polk wins with just 49.6%
 Before he is sworn in,
congress votes to annex
Texas.
A Border Dispute

Mexican President, Antonio Lopez de
Santa Ana notified the U.S. that
annexation would be “equivalent to a
declaration of war.”

After the vote to annex, Mexico cuts
off diplomatic relations.

Both counties move toward the border
area between Texas and Mexico, but
there was a disagreement: Was the
border the Nueces River or Rio
Grande?
A Border Dispute

To provoke a war, Polk sent General Zachary
Taylor to move troops into the disputed area
between the rivers.

In response, Mexican soldiers crossed the Rio
Grande and killed 11 Americans

Polk’s War Message to Congress


“Mexico passed the boundary of the United
States… has invaded our territory and shed
American blood on the American soil.”
Some, like Abraham Lincoln, doubted the
President; Lincoln demanded to know if “the
particular spot on which the blood of our citizens
was so shed was or was not at the time our own
soil.”



House of
Representative
s vote: 174 to
14 for war
Senate vote: 40
to 2 for war
Pro-war rallies
encourage
young men to
enlist, and they
did.
Fremont, Vallejo,
Benicia and
Stockton

American settlers, led by John
C. Fremont, invaded the home
of General Mariano Vallejo
and raised a flag with a lone
star and bear, declaring a
California Republic.

Commodore Robert Stockton
helped to secure southern
California at the battle of San
Pasqual.
America’s first amphibious assault

To force a treaty, Polk ordered General
Winfield Scott to launch the first
amphibious assault in American
military history.

Americans landed at Vera Cruz

Months later American soldiers
reached Mexico City and raised the
American flag at the National Palace.
Opposition to War

First war covered by Samuel Morse’s telegraph
system (1844)

More information divided opinion in the U.S. as
Americans learned more

Ulysses S. Grant: “some volunteers seem to think it
perfectly right to impose on the people of a
conquered city… and event to murder them…. And
how they seem to enjoy acts of violence too!”

Abraham Lincoln (1848): “marching an army into the
midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening
the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops
and other property to destruction, to you may appear
a perfectly amiable, peaceful, unprovoking
procedure; but it does not appear so to us….”
The “All-Mexico”
Movement

Some Americans were so angry that
Mexico dared to put up a fight that
they demanded all of Mexico as
payment for the lost American lives
and treasure.

Racists actually pushed against this
idea; they didn’t want another dark
race being introduced to the United
States, but Polk seemed to want all
of Mexico.

Polk’s representative to Mexico,
Nicholas Trist, agreed to a treaty,
that the president probably didn’t
want.
The Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo

In January 1848, Mexico…
 Acknowledged the annexation of
Texas.
 Gave up California and its
province of New Mexico (the
present-day states of New Mexico,
Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and
southern Colorado).
 Established the Rio Grande as the
border between the two countries.
 Received $15 million
When the law is unjust, where
does a just man belong?

Rather than pay taxes that would support the war,
Henry David Thoreau chose jail.

When a friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, asked Thoreau,
“What are you doing in there?” Thoreau replied,
“What are you doing out there?”