Did we " steal " Texas, Arizona, N.Mex and Calif. from Mexico ? ( Vanity )

[sushiman]

My left-wing radical friend insists we stole all this land from Mexico . Any history buffs out there in Freeperland who can supply some ammo for me ?

[Rightly Biased]

< p>Several historians have given similar reports on the "Bloody arm flag of Goliad" said to have been made by Captain Phillip Dimmitt. On December 20 1835 the first declaration of Texas independence was signed at Goliad in the chapel of the Presidio by members of Dimmitt's command then stationed at La Bahia. After signing, the group went into the quadrangle and "amidst rapturous hurrahs, the flag of Texas Independence was hoisted and unfurled to the wintry wind".

The flag was described as being made of white domestic, two yards long and one yard wide. "In the center was a sinewy arm and hand, painted red, grasping a drawn sword of crimson." The flag pole was made from a tall sycamore tree found on the banks of the San Antonio River.

Most of the accounts on this flag ceremony quote as their source of information, the memoirs of John James and Nicholas Fagan.

The Dimmitt flag has now become the accepted flag of Goliad and is frequently displayed by business houses around the Goliad Square.

The Goliad Massacre

On Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, after being held captive for one week, the men were told to gather up their things. They thought that they were going to the port of Copano and then on to New Orleans. They were happy and singing. They knew that Colonel Fannin had returned from the Port of Copano the previous day. What they didn't know was that at 7:00 p.m. the pervious evening, Colonel Portilla had received word directly from Santa Anna to execute the men. About an hour after Portilla received the execution order from Santa Anna, he received another order from General Urrea to "Treat the prisoners with consideration, particularly their leader, Fannin, and to employ them in rebuilding Goliad."

At sunrise the able bodied men were formed in three groups and under very heavy guard taken out of the fort. One group was taken out on the San Antonio road, another on the Victoria road, and the other on the Copano road. The prisoners had little suspicion of their fate because each group had been given a different story as to where they were going. One group told that they were going to gather wood, another to drive up cattle and the they they were going to the port of Copano. At selected spots on each of the three roads from one half to three-fourths of a mile from the fort, the groups were halted. After they halted, the guards on one side stepped through the ranks so that all the guards were on one side, they turned and fired at very close range. Those men where not killed ran and were pursued by the cavalry.

The soldiers then came back to the fort and executed the wounded. There were about forty of them. Colonel Fannin was saved until last. He was taken outside the chapel, blind folded and seated in a chair. He made three requests, not to be shot in the face, his personal possessions sent to his family and that he be given a Christian burial. He was shot in the face, an officer took his personal possessions and his body was burned along with many of the other bodies. Not all bodies were burned, some were left where they died. There were 342 men who died in the Goliad Massacre, which is almost twice the number of men who died at the Alamo and San Jacinto combined. Twenty-eight men did escape from the three massacre sites and seventeen men's lives were spared. It is from the accounts of the men who escaped and were spared that we know what happened at Presidio La Bahia. Francita Alavez, the Angel of Goliad and the wife of General Urrea saved the lives of a number of the men.

Of the multiple banners that flew over DeWitt Colony territory and those under which DeWitt colonists served and died, this famous flag is one which originated solely within and is unique to the DeWitt Colony and a symbol of contribution of the region to the Texas Independence movement. The banner can be said to be the counterpart in concept and message of resistance as the early "Don't Tread on Me" flags of the American Revolution. Some say it was made from the white silk of the wedding dress of Empresario DeWitt's daughter, Naomi, and was flown by DeWitt Colonists reinforced by volunteers from the other settlements at the confrontation with the Mexican army in October 1835 over the Gonzales cannon (Battle of Gonzales). Other reports suggest it was made after the confrontation during the muster at Gonzales for defense of Texas and the assault on Bexar.

The Zavala Flag. Proceedings of the Texas Independence Convention of 11 Mar 1836: "On the motion of Mr. Scates, the Rainbow and star of five points above the western horizon; and the star of six points sinking below, was added to the flag of Mr. Zavala accepted on Friday last. Mr. Taylor introduced the following resolution: Resolved that the word "Texas" be placed, one letter between each point of the star on the national flag." The banner at left is most often depicted as the first official flag of the Texas Republic proposed by Vice-President of the new Republic of Texas, Lorenzo de Zavala. The proceedings appear to indicate that Zavala proposed a simple Lone Star flag which if white on blue was essentially that of Scott's flag of the War Party without the word "Independence," or the left part of Burnet's naval flag. It is unclear whether any of the proposed modifications including the indicated lettering were ever employed.

[Star Traveler]

You can get an overview of the situation at —

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_-_american_war

It started with the country — the Republic of Texas — being taken in as a state in the United States. Since Mexico refused to recognize the new country of the Republic of Texas (after they defeated General Santa Ana at San Jacinto), this (annexation) caused the declaration of war with the United States.

From that point forward, everything went *downhill* for Mexico and they lost a lot of territory to the United States. In the end, the U.S. did compensate Mexico (monetarily) for the “acquisitions” - but they were also the “spoils of war” you could say.

That doesn’t go over very well with Mexicans, even to this day and it’s a source of a lot of hard feelings (which I guess is natural).

AND, remember — there was Manifest Destiny — which was a *big driving force* in the United States, a conviction that we were to have a country from “coast to coast” and have no other nation interfering or dividing our land...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny

—

At least that’s a starting point for understanding what was going on...

[raptor29]

Screw the Mexicans. They have a whole bunch of resource-rich land south of our borders and what have they done with it? Made a complete mess out of all of it. As a culture, they are a joke, an uneducated, mentally lazy, unproductive, corrupt joke, barely more impressive than most of the Arab countries. The clearest contrast you could possibly imagine is the comparison between what has happened up here, versus what has happened down there. Screw them and let’s pull all benefits to these illegals and drive them back home.

Hey Mexico: It ain’t this land that made this place far more successful than your country, it’s the people who managed it for the past 300 or so years. And it’s not all that coincidental that with many of you now coming up here, our country is beginning to falter under the weight of having to support all you dead asses.

[BradyLS]

At the very least, we purchased Gadsden!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_Purchase

[steelyourfaith]

I’m more concerned with the liberals stealing the USofA from the Constitution, frankly.

[swordfishtrombone]

I live in Los Angeles

I was not aware that Mexico no longer owned this part of California

Thank you for that news

[Deaf Smith]

Yep, we took the area with the best roads and lake systems. /sarc

We kicked Santa Anna's butt fair & square and then the Comanche's. Winner takes all.

[passionfruit]

We bought it. Fair and square.

Read about it here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Cession

[Rightly Biased]

And another thought did we steal these United States from the American Indians that lived here before us no we won it from them as well.

It sucks to be the weaker country or defender.Shear firepower and force will help you win every time.

Liberals don’t understand that. Heck they want Isreal to return land that they won in battle as well.

[wolfcreek]

Is he/she an American (N or S) Indian? *Not to be confused with American/Indian*

[LatinaGOP]

It's my understanding that the New Mexico Territory (which included parts of present day New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah) was ceded to the United States as war spoils under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the Mexican-American War.

Up to that time Mexico City had largely ignored New Mexico due to its distance from the capital and the territory had pretty much been left to fend for itself. The land on the east bank of the Rio Grande was at that time a part of Texas. Because the United States had originally planned for the railroad to be built along the far southern portion of New Mexico, the U.S. purchased the "boot heel" of southern New Mexico and the southern portion of Arizona from Mexico as part of the Gadsden Purchase. The government also purchased the land on the east bank of the Rio Grande from Texas to form the modern Texas/New Mexico border, though I'm not sure of the timeframe of this purchase.

[BradyLS]

A long while ago, a co-worker fumed about how the US stole the western US from Mexico, too.

Once I reminded them that Spanish is a European language and not a Native American one, they shut up about it.

[count-your-change]

You could always say those native American areas were “liberated” from the foreign oppressors.

[sushiman]

Both his parents of Polish ancestry and he was born in CT .

[driftdiver]

Its called the big lie, repeated often enough and people start to believe it.

Works for Obama why not your friend and La Raza

[sushiman]

He wrote this to me yesterday :

” I don’t know what to say....i think you are way out in never-never land. there is no Communist threat...there’s an American threat of their own making.

Immigration...we stole Texas, Arizona, NMex and Calif from Mexico....and we killed Native Americans...and sold slaves from Africa as big business and Christian law. Since the Calvinists thought blacks weren’t human so therefore they had no spirits. “

[Zionist Conspirator]

It's always nice to see how left wing radicals can drop their "internationalism" for a bit of fanatical, rightwing irredentist nationalism, isn't it? Perhaps after this they'd like to join the Maoist Scottish National Liberation Army in its move to expel all "alien" Anglo-Saxons from the pure Gaelic homeland.

It's true that the battle that triggered the Mexican War took place on disputed territory (as Abraham Lincoln pointed out). This means that Mexico's and the USA's claims to the spot were of equal worth.

However, the war being commenced we first conquered the territories which were ceded by Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Then after that we paid Mexico for the territory we had conquered (followed by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853).

"Mexico" didn't even exist originally. "Mexico" is the name of a Spanish colony that won its independence from Spain just as we won ours from Britain. So if we stole these territories from Mexico, then they "stole" them from Spain, who in turn "stole" them from the "indigenous pipples."

Tell your radical friend that the real lefty nationalist cause of the day is for the indigenous Cajun people (whose ancestors were Communists long before Marx) to be granted independence in Louisiana--and the paltry little state of that name today, but the whole Louisiana Territory! [/sarcasm]

[quadrant]

Texas won its independence from Mexico; that is, the people in Texas revolted against Mexican rule, defeated the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto, and were an independent republic for nearly a decade. Texas entered the US by treaty between two sovereign states.

Its true that parts of the West were once part of Mexico but only for about a quarter of a century as Mexico did not exist as an independent country until the mid 1820’s. Before than, the area was New Spain. People must remember that in the 19th Century (and before) territory changed hands frequently; for example, France lost Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871 and gained it back in 1918.

The territory that Mexico lost was sparsely populated and poorly governed, if governed at all. No one with an ounce of sense believes that Mexico - given the political situation existing in Mexico and the lack of communications between say Mexico City and San Francisco - could have maintained sovereignty over so vast an area. Anyone who looks at a map can see the area is far more contiguous to the US than to Mexico. Lincoln was an opponent of the Mexican War but he came to see that the outcome was necessary for the US. As he put it, the temperate zone of North America could sustain but one country, which was one reason for his opposition to secession by the South.

Finally, one can argue that the loss of territory by the US created the modern Mexican state. Mexico could not govern these areas, any more than the Ottomon Empire could govern the Egypt or the Arabian Peninsula. When Ataturk cast off the useless appendages of the Sultan and proclaimed the Turkish Republic, the new state was concentrated on its Anatolian core. So with Mexico. By cutting loose areas that it could not govern, Mexico became a country and not a pitiful remnant of New Spain.

If liberals ask, tell them they need to imagine the areas annexed by the US as gangrenous appendages to Mexico that were surgically removed to save the life of the patient. I'm not a physician but I'm told that when a gangrenous leg is cut off, the patient’s health improves almost immediately, as his system is no longer poisoned by gangrene.

[wolfcreek]

He don’t have a horse in this race. Ignore him!

[Star Traveler]

You said — “Texas was being ‘policed’ by Mexico using ex-cons, is something I read once. That was one problem. The Texas farmers were also not allowed to see any of there crops anywhere but to Mexico first, which sort of makes sense but it was a rather remote territory from Mexico proper, sort of like the Yukon is to Canada. Not a lot of support from Mexico and so close to the colonies .. and since Texans were predominantly English speaking ... well that’s what lead to the revolution and the domino’s fell west.”

Ummm..., I don’t know about that. It doesn’t sound right or familiar with the Texas history that we had (nor with what I have studied since then).

You have to remember that all the people going to Texas, in those beginning years of the well-known and recognized names moving there — were all agreed on being Mexican citizens. They did not move there to become the Republic of Texas. That’s something that grew out of a bad situation and a changing situation, after many years.

Those initial “big names” were “impresarios” receiving huge land grants from the Mexican government to build up the region (and to act as a buffer between the U.S. and Mexico). These impresarios, receiving the large land grants from Mexico, gained a lot of wealth in the process — which is part of the reason why they were drawn there, to do that in the first place.

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In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain, and assumed the responsibility of colonizing the Texas region. Unable to secure the land with Mexican citizens, the government turned to the United States. Moses Austin was awarded a land grant from the Mexican government, and was entitled an Impresario. His task was to settle 300 families in his colony. After his death, his son Stephen F. Austin fulfilled his fathers contract by settling the colony with 300 families from the United States. The “Old 300” were the first permanent Anglo-American settlers in Texas. Other impresarios would receive land grants, and soon thousands of Americans had immigrated to Texas.

According to the Mexican Constitution of 1824, these settlers were granted land, allowed to own slaves, and were to be free of taxes for seven years. The only requirements were that they become Mexican citizens, practice the Roman Catholic religion, and secure Texas for the Mexican government. Austin became the leading spokesperson for the “Texians” for all affairs with Mexico. Texas was a part of the territory known as Coahuila y Tejas. Many times Austin petitioned the government for separate statehood for Texas, all to no avail.

[ http://www.dallashistory.org/history/texas/colonization.htm ]

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You see, they all came there to be citizens of Mexico and to eventually become *another state* within Mexico (as opposed to being part of an already existing state). And therein was part of the problem...

Don’t misread this — “Many times Austin petitioned the government for separate statehood for Texas, all to no avail.” This was petitioning to *Mexico* to become another *state within Mexico* and not the United States...

Of course, there are a lot of other details... and it’s interesting history.