The Eventual Destiny of the North, West and South America Essay Example
The Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1847 was the first U.S. armed war fought on foreign soil. The American government fought against a politically divided and militarily inferior Mexico side. The fight began at the border which was accompanied by a series of American victories. The Mexican- American war was mainly caused by two issues. One major issue was the idea of “Manifest Destiny”; there was a belief that the U.S had a God-given right to take charge and civilize the entire continent (Reiter & Stam, 2002).
A large number of Americans increasingly migrated towards the west in to look for land ignoring the fact that some of the lands were already occupied and settled by the indigenous people. The belief that English speaking America will do better work running the lands than the Spanish-speaking Catholic M
...exicans prevailed. President Polk offered to buy much of the southwest land from the Mexicans. However, the Mexican government turned down the offer, and a fruitless hunger to fill those southwestern lands lead to fear and tension levels to increase. The second major cause was the Texas War of Independence and the subsequent inclusion of that area into the United States.
The Mexicans needed to populate the under populated northern lands and therefore allowed the Americans to settle the lands as long as they took the Catholic oath of allegiance. Many of the Americans accepted the deal and occupied the Mexican province of Texas. However, it did not take long and some of the new ‘Texanians’ were not happy with the way the province was being ran.in 1835 the Texas revolution began as the people of Texas both the new and
the original settlers began to fight for independence As a result, a treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was made to end the war. The treaty requested the US to pay $15 million to Mexico and also clear the needs of American citizens against Mexico up to $3.25 million. In addition, it also gave the US the ‘Rio Grande’ as a boundary for Texas.
The US was given ownership of California and nearly half of Mexico (Reiter & Stam, 2002).
References
Reiter, D., & Stam, A. C. (2002). Democracies at war.
Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
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