Manifest Destiny & The Mexican-American War

1. Manifest Destiny & The Mexican American War

2. Intro • In 1845 John O. Sullivan’s phrase, "the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly expanding millions." became the American mantra for justifying westward expansion at whatever cost to the native populations, environment and international diplomacy. • By this time US Government policy towards Native Americans had deteriorated relatively quickly from Washington’s presidency to Jackson’s in order to keep up with the massive progress in industry and technological innovations that allowed Americans to move further, faster, and in ever increasing numbers. • Manifest Destiny then became the justification for all land grabs well into the 19th century, Texas Annexation (1845), the Mexican War (1846–48), the Alaska Purchase (1867), and the Spanish- American War (1898)—all of which resulted in territorial gains for the United States.

3. Revolutions in Latin America • Columbus's voyage west across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 initiated European interest in the Americas. In the years that followed, Spain claimed most of Latin America. Portugal acquired Brazil. There they established colonies, from which they extracted resources that brought them great wealth. They held on to those colonies for some three centuries, until a string of revolutions rocked the entire region. • HaitiIn 1791, inspired by the French Revolution, slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue revolted. In this sugar- and coffee-producing colony on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, slaves far outnumbered the dominant whites. A third class included freed people of color and mulattos, or people of mixed black and European ancestry. This class lacked social and political equality with the whites. • A free black, Toussaint L'Ouverture, joined the rebels and helped lead what became known as the Haitian Revolution. It was a combined slave rebellion and anti- colonial uprising. By 1800, L'Ouverture and his army had eliminated their opponents and taken control of the colony.  After Napoleon gained power in France, he sent a French force to the colony to suppress the revolt. Mulattos joined with black leaders to defeat the French troops in 1804, declaring their independence from France and massacring thousands of French colonial administrators and their families.  They founded the first black republic in modern history, which they renamed Haiti.

4. Revolution in the Spanish Colonies • Social tensions within Spanish America's multiracial societies also played a role in the drama that unfolded there. After the Haitian Revolution, whites feared that rebellions might arise among the lower classes of Indians, enslaved Africans, and people of mixed blood. The minority white population dominated politically. It consisted of Creoles and peninsulares.  • Creoleswere American-born descendants of Spanish colonists. Peninsulares were Spanish-born settlers. No major slave rebellions took place. But a series of Creole-led revolutions resulted in the founding of new nations throughout Spanish America. • Creoles had once played a leading political role as colonial officials. But in the late 1700s, Spain's leaders decided to exert greater control over their colonies. They introduced reforms that took the right to rule their own areas away from the Creoles. From then on, Spain entrusted important political and military positions to the Peninsularesand generally snubbed the Creoles. .

5. In 1808, French forces under Napoleon invaded and occupied Spain, severing the link between Spain and its colonies. Many Creoles saw this as an opportunity to restore their position in colonial society—both political and economic. The more radical among them, influenced by Enlightenment ideas and motivated by the American Revolution, sought to free themselves from Spanish rule. Wherever these liberal-minded patriots could gain control, they set up local councils to govern themselves. • The peninsulares, too, established councils. But these Spanish citizens were not revolutionaries or liberals. They were royalists—they, along with a significant number of Creoles, remained loyal to the Spanish king. They fully expected Spain to restore its control of the colonies one day. • These differing visions collided throughout Spanish America as the revolutionary movement grew. Spain had divided its colonial territory into regions, called viceroyalties. New Granada occupied northwestern South America. Río de la Plata, present-day Argentina, was located in the south. Peru lay between them. New Spain included Mexico and most of Central America, as well as Spain's Caribbean colonies. The story of the revolutions in Spanish America varied from one viceroyalty to another.

6. San Martín in Río de la Plata • The first solid achievement for the Creole patriots occurred in Buenos Aires. They established self-rule in this southeast coastal city and maintained it in spite of several assaults by royalists. Buenos Aires became a base for spreading the revolution throughout the southern part of South America. In 1816, patriot groups within the viceroyalty joined together to form the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and declared their independence from Spain. They chose Buenos Aires as the new country's capital. • The patriots realized that their country could not be secure until the Spanish had been driven from power throughout the continent. The viceroyalty of Peru, a key royalist stronghold, had to be conquered. In 1817, patriot leader José de San Martín formed and trained an army in Río de la Plata. It included blacks, mulattos, and mestizos —people of mixed Indian and European ancestry.  He led this 4,000-man army across the Andes on a bold mission against royalist forces in Peru.

7. First, Martín's Army of the Andes marched into Chile, south of Peru. In 1814, a Peruvian army had stamped out the revolutionary movement in this province. San Martín restored the Chilean patriots to power in 1818 by defeating the royalist forces. • In September 1820, San Martín and his army headed north, by sea, to Peru. By July of the next year, the Army of the Andes had carried the revolution all the way to Lima, Peru's capital. The royalist army fled into the mountains. In July 1821, San Martín declared Peru independent.  • The patriots had succeeded in taking control of the towns, but a powerful royalist army still had support in the countryside. To plan his next move, San Martín decided to consult with another great patriot commander, SimónBolívar.

8. Bolívar in New Granada • Simon Bolívar, a wealthy Creole, had led the revolution in New Granada. That revolution began in his home state of Venezuela. He and his small Army of the North supported independence movements there and elsewhere in the viceroyalty. For his success in freeing various regions, he received the title “The Liberator.” • However, the road to independence was not easy. Bolívar suffered many defeats along the way, and the rule of key cities often shifted back and forth between patriot and royalist forces.  Patriots in Caracas, Venezuela, for example, twice established a republic only to later lose control.  • The second republic was overturned in 1815 by a large army sent from Spain. That army forced Bolívar to flee to Jamaica. From there he sailed to Haiti, which provided him the resources needed to continue the fight for independence.

9. Still, the Army of the North made little headway in New Granada until 1819. By then, Bolívar had changed his strategy. He and his army had relocated to the Venezuelan countryside to escape Spanish forces. They engaged in guerrilla warfare[an approach to warfare that relies on mobility, hit-and-run tactics, and the element of surprise to harass a larger, stronger opponent], living off the land and making quick, hit-and-run strikes against the enemy. Bolívar's army now consisted of not only Creoles but also a number of British and Irish troops and, for the first time, mulattos. In addition, Bolívar had help from an unlikely source, the llaneros. He persuaded these horse-riding cattle herders of the plains to switch sides after being poorly treated as mounted soldiers in the royalist army. • In the spring of 1819, Bolívar led his diverse army on a long and perilous march west across the Andes into present-day Colombia.  There he launched a surprise attack on the Spanish force. It was the first in a series of patriot victories that, by May 1822, had brought independence to New Granada.

10. Resistance to Revolution in Peru and Mexico • In July 1822, Bolívar and San Martín met in Ecuador. There San Martín decided to step aside and let Bolívar take the lead in the effort to liberate Peru. Bolívar and his army accomplished this task in a series of battles starting in August 1824. By April 1825, he had tracked down and defeated the remaining royalist forces in the region then called Upper Peru. The nation formed from Upper Peru would rename itself Bolivia in honor of their Liberator. • Mexico, like Peru, remained staunchly loyal to Spain. Peninsulares there ran the government and blocked attempts by Creoles to introduce liberal reforms. In 1810, a radical Creole priest, Miguel Hidalgo, called for independence. He inspired a nationalist uprising of Indians and mestizos across the Mexican countryside. Their goal was to force the Spanish out of Mexico.  Hidalgo's followers killed many peninsulares and destroyed much property. The independence movement threatened to become a social revolution. Fearing that, many Creoles joined Mexico's royalist army.

11. The army finally overpowered the rebel forces and executed Hidalgo and his successor, José María Morelos. But the movement for independence did not die. In 1821, in an unexpected turnabout, Creole soldiers conducted a successful coup d'état against their Spanish officers. They achieved independence and the promise of a constitutional monarchy. But their leader, the former royalist Agustín de Iturbide, declared himself emperor. His reign lasted less than a year, as Mexicans from across the political spectrum opposed him. • Mexico remained unstable in the years that followed, as political, economic, and social ills plagued the country. This was the case in many of the nations to which the revolutions of Latin America gave birth. Liberals and conservatives continued to clash. Military strongmen—known as caudillos—vied for control at the local, provincial, and national levels. They promised order but often used oppressive measures to secure it. Economies wrecked by revolution could not bring about the prosperity that people hoped for. Also, hostility among the various social classes persisted.

12. Brazil • Napoleon's invasion of Portugal in 1807 did not set off a major uprising in Brazil, a Portuguese colony. It did, however, cause a reversal in the relationship between the mother country and the colony. The French army's conquest of Portugal forced the nation's royal family to flee to Brazil. They arrived in the city of Rio de Janeiro in March 1808, along with thousands of members of their court. • The Portuguese ruler enacted economic reforms that pleased Brazil's privileged class and helped keep liberal-minded Brazilians in check. Brazil quickly became the political center of the Portuguese empire. When the king finally returned to Portugal in 1821, he put his son, Dom Pedro, in charge of the colony. The following year, faced with growing calls for political reform by republicans, Dom Pedro declared Brazil's independence.

13. The Mexican-American War • You might think that Texas and Oregon were sufficient new territory for any president, but not for Polk. This humorless, hardworking president had one great goal of expanding the United States as far as possible. • Polk's gaze fell next on the huge areas known as California and New Mexico. He was determined to have them both—by purchase if possible, by force if necessary. • These areas were first colonized by Spain but became Mexican territories when Mexico won its independence in 1821. Because both were thinly settled and long neglected by the Mexican government, Polk hoped that they might be for sale. He sent a representative to Mexico to try to buy the territories, but Mexican officials refused even to see Polk's representative.

14. War Breaks Out in Texas • When Congress voted to annex Texas, relations between the United States and Mexico turned sour. Mexico considered the annexation of Texas an act of war, and to make matters worse, Texas and Mexico could not agree on a border. Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its border on the south and the west, whereas Mexico wanted the border to be the Nueces (new-AY-sis) River, about 150 miles northeast of the Rio Grande. • On April 25, 1846, Mexican soldiers fired on U.S. troops who were patrolling along the Rio Grande. Sixteen Americans were killed or wounded. This was just the excuse for war that Polk had been waiting for. Mexico, he charged, “has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil.” • Two days after Polk's speech,  Congress declared war on Mexico, starting the Mexican-American War [the war with Mexico from 1846 to 1847 that resulted in Mexico ceding to the United States a huge region from Texas to California] .

15. The Fall of New Mexico and California • A few months later, General Stephen Kearny led the Army of the West out of Kansas with orders to occupy New Mexico and then continue west to California. Mexican opposition melted away in front of Kearny's army, and the Americans took control of New Mexico without firing a shot. “Gen'l Kearny,” a pleased Polk wrote in his diary, “has thus far performed his duty well.” • Meanwhile, a group of Americans launched a rebellion against Mexican rule in California. The explorer John C. Frémont heard about the uprising and gave his support to the Americans. The Americans arrested and jailed General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (vuh-YAY-oh), the Mexican commander of northern California. Then they raised a crude flag showing a grizzly bear sketched in blackberry juice and declared California the Bear Flag Republic. • When Kearny reached California, he joined forces with the rebels.  Within weeks, all of California was under U.S. control.

16. The United States Invades Mexico • The conquest of Mexico itself was far more difficult. U.S. troops under General Zachary Taylor battled their way south from Texas. Taylor was a no-nonsense general who was known fondly as “Old Rough and Ready” because of his backwoods clothes. After 6,000 U.S. troops took the Mexican city of Monterrey, their old enemy General Santa Anna stopped them by marching north to meet Taylor with an army of 20,000 Mexican troops. • In February 1847, the two forces met near a ranch called Buena Vista (BWEY-nuh VIS-tuh). After two days of hard fighting, Santa Anna reported that “both armies have been cut to pieces.” Rather than lose his remaining forces, Santa Anna retreated south, ending the war in northern Mexico.

17. A month later, U.S. forces led by General Winfield Scott landed at Veracruz (ver-uh-CROOZ) in southern Mexico. Because Scott was a stickler for discipline and loved fancy uniforms, he was given the nickname “Old Fuss and Feathers.” For the next six months, his troops fought their way to Mexico City, Mexico's capital. • Outside the capital, the Americans met fierce resistance at the castle of Chapultepec (chuh-PUHL-tuh-PEK). About 1,000 Mexican soldiers and 100 young military cadets fought bravely to defend the fortress. Six of the cadets chose to die fighting rather than surrender, and to this day, the boys who died that day are honored in Mexico as the NiñosHéroes (NEEN- yosEHR-oh-ace), the boy heroes. • Despite such determined resistance, Scott's army captured Mexico City in September 1847. Watching from a distance, a Mexican officer muttered darkly, “God is a Yankee.”

18. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo • In early 1848, Mexico and the United States signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico agreed to give up Texas and a vast region known as the Mexican Cession. (A cession is something that is given up.) This area included the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, as well as parts of Colorado and Wyoming. • Under this agreement, Mexico gave up half of all its territory, and in return, the United States agreed to pay Mexico $15 million. It also promised to protect the 80,000 to 100,000 Mexicans living in Texas and the Mexican Cession. Most of these promises, however, were not kept.

19. In Washington, a few senators spoke up to oppose the treaty. Some argued that the United States had no right to any Mexican territory other than Texas because the Mexican-American War had been unjust and the treaty was even more so. They said New Mexico and California together were “not worth a dollar” and should be returned to Mexico. • Other senators opposed the treaty because they wanted even more land and believed the Mexican Cession should include a large part of northern Mexico as well. To most senators, however, the Mexican Cession was a manifest destiny dream come true. The Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of 38 to 14.

20. The Mexican Cession is the region in the modern-day southwestern United States that Mexico ceded (surrendered) to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 after the Mexican–American War.

21. The Gadsden Purchase •  A few years later, the United States acquired still more land from Mexico. In 1853, James Gadsden arranged the purchase of a strip of land just south of the Mexican Cession for $10 million. Railroad builders wanted this land because it was relatively flat and could serve as a good railroad route. The acquisition of this land, known as the Gadsden Purchase, created the present-day border of the southwestern United States with Mexico. • Most Americans were pleased with the new outlines of their country, but not everyone rejoiced in this expansion.  Until the Mexican-American War, many people had believed that the United States was too good a nation to bully or invade its weaker neighbors. Now they knew that such behavior was the dark side of manifest destiny.

22. How the Mexican-American War Affected Slavery: The Abolitionists • War with Mexico provided more land for there to be a slavery issue over. • 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. 

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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. 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 whereJohn Brown, famous for his 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry, used violence to enact his Radical abolition vision.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. PBS Video • https://mpt.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/amex25.socst.ush.mexwar/how-the-mexican-american-war-affected-slavery/