Posted on 01/12/2004 4:59:06 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK
In November 1835, the northern part of the Mexican state of Coahuila-Tejas declared itself in revolt against Mexico's new centralist government headed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna. By February 1836, Texans declared their territory to be independent and that its border extended to the Rio Grande rather than the Rio Nueces that Mexicans recognized as the dividing line. Although the Texans proclaimed themselves citizens of the Independent Republic of Texas on April 21, 1836 following their victory over the Mexicans at the Battle of San Jacinto, Mexicans continued to consider Tejas a rebellious province that they would reconquer someday. In December 1845, the U.S. Congress voted to annex the Texas Republic and soon sent troops led by General Zachary Taylor to the Rio Grande (regarded by Mexicans as their territory) to protect its border with Mexico. The inevitable clashes between Mexican troops and U.S. forces provided the rationale for a Congressional declaration of war on May 13, 1846.
Hostilities continued for the next two years as General Taylor led his troops through to Monterrey, and General Stephen Kearny and his men went to New Mexico, Chihuahua, and California. But it was General Winfield Scott and his army that delivered the decisive blows as they marched from Veracruz to Puebla and finally captured Mexico City itself in August 1847.
Mexican officials and Nicholas Trist, President Polk's representative, began discussions for a peace treaty that August. On February 2, 1848 the Treaty was signed in Guadalupe Hidalgo, a city north of the capital where the Mexican government had fled as U.S. troops advanced. Its provisions called for Mexico to cede 55% of its territory (present-day Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Colorado, Nevada and Utah) in exchange for fifteen million dollars in compensation for war-related damage to Mexican property.
Other provisions stipulated the Texas border at the Rio Grande (Article V), protection for the property and civil rights of Mexican nationals living within the new border (Articles VIII and IX), U.S. promise to police its side of the border (Article XI), and compulsory arbitration of future disputes between the two countries (Article XXI). When the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in March, it deleted Article X guaranteeing the protection of Mexican land grants. Following the Senate's ratification of the treaty, U.S. troops left Mexico City.
The boundary line established by this article shall be religiously respected by each of the two republics, and no change shall ever be made therein, except by the express and free consent of both nations, lawfully given by the General Government of each, in conformity with its own constitution
Not relevant perhaps but interesting.
February 2nd, 1848 - THE TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO - This treaty ended the U.S.-Mexican War. Ambassador Nicholas Trist was given the dangerous assignment of finding the Mexican Government fleeing the American assault on Mexico City,then convince them to sign away California and the Southwest, approximately 40% of their national territory. Just when negotiations in the little village of Guadalupe Hidalgo were about to conclude successfully, he got a message from Washington to break off talks and return.
President Polk had changed his mind and now wanted the complete conquest of Mexico down to the Yucatan! Trist knew if he did this the War party in Mexico would keep up a guerrilla war for decades afterwards, so he ignored the message, signed for the U.S. and fixed our southern border. When Trist got home instead of thanks he was immediately arrested for treason. But President Polk couldn't convince his war weary Congress or the public to continue fighting so the treaty was upheld. The French tried conquering Mexico twenty years later and got the national uprising and guerrilla war Trist avoided.
Nicolas Trist was eventually released from prison but he never got his back pay until Lincoln gave it to him on his deathbed 16 years later
But, of course, they are. Mexico has claimed no US territory as their own, and the illegal aliens dang sure know when they've crossed the border. It is their goal.
The border is not in question.
I like to rile them sometimes.
Last month a few of them tried to claim that Florida was origionally property of Mexico. I argued against them, but they wouldn't believe it till I found proof online and brought a copy of it printed out in Spanish that the US bought it from Spain for 5 mil.
They were quiet for a while after that.
However, for those Mexicans now under US rule, we screwed, blued, and tattoed'em on the property rights issue. That one is STILL in court, as present day New Mexicans research the original royal land grants and later Mexican affirmations to their communities. US officials in New Mexico used official files as kindling, which complicated matters somewhat! OTOH, there were only 75,000 Mexicans living in the whole area.
Inquiring minds, and all that.
This whole thing seems curiously (but not entirely) similar to the Israeli/muslim arab brouhaha.
They could care less about the treaty of GH (except when they are talking about the Spanish Land Grant provisions).
If we are going to go down that road, we need to give all of the Americas back to the Indians.
And then they can begin to argue over which tribe stole the land from which other tribe over the last ten to forty thousand years.
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