Why didn't the USA annex all of Mexico in 1848?
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1) in the US Constitution it is the Senate that has the authority to ratify treaties, not the House. While the Whig party did control the House (barely, 116 seats out of 230, the Democrat Party controlled the Senate with 38 seats out of 60. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified by a vote of 38-14.
2) I think if we looked at it honestly, brown and Spanish speaking weren't really big issues of the treaty, which gave all residents of the ceded territory one year to choose American or Mexican citizenship, and 90% would opt to become American citizens. The big issue was the Catholicism, since the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party had been founded just four years earlier and was near the height of its popularity.
Date: 2022-10-15
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Comments and reviews: 14
BillyTheKid
TLDR: Racism, we didn't annex the entire of Mexico because that's where the Mexicans live. Which scared the crap out of the US.
I'm going to be painfully honest, I too wanted to manifest our destiny through Mexico but we let the traitors in the south stop us.
With murder Yeah ok, good point it is clearly for the best we didn't take the entire thing, I'm just a land greedy american ok? To be fair I also argue we should make Mexicans US citizens to this day. Did you know more then a million US citizens were illegally deported after WWI? If you were brown and didn't have immigration papers we'd kick you out. We didn't start issuing immigration papers until just a decade prior or so. So yeah. clearly you're going to end up illegally deporting an insane number of americans.
All children of americans are american, therefore we must assume all mexicans are also american citizens by right of the wrong committed previously.
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TLDR: Racism, we didn't annex the entire of Mexico because that's where the Mexicans live. Which scared the crap out of the US.
I'm going to be painfully honest, I too wanted to manifest our destiny through Mexico but we let the traitors in the south stop us.
With murder Yeah ok, good point it is clearly for the best we didn't take the entire thing, I'm just a land greedy american ok? To be fair I also argue we should make Mexicans US citizens to this day. Did you know more then a million US citizens were illegally deported after WWI? If you were brown and didn't have immigration papers we'd kick you out. We didn't start issuing immigration papers until just a decade prior or so. So yeah. clearly you're going to end up illegally deporting an insane number of americans.
All children of americans are american, therefore we must assume all mexicans are also american citizens by right of the wrong committed previously.
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Брендан
Many Mexicans are white but most aren t, at least not fully. Most Mexicans are a mix of White European Spanish and Native Indigenous peoples. Given the One Drop Rule Americans still culturally believe in, for example, a biracial person is usually only seen as the non-white side ie, Barack Obama being seen as just black despite being bald white, it s no surprise they viewed even the racially whitest, most European Mexicans as Other. Add the fact they were Catholic and not of English stock, and you have a doozy.
So it wasn t that they weren t white, it s that they weren t either white enough or not the right white (ie, southern European and Catholic)
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Many Mexicans are white but most aren t, at least not fully. Most Mexicans are a mix of White European Spanish and Native Indigenous peoples. Given the One Drop Rule Americans still culturally believe in, for example, a biracial person is usually only seen as the non-white side ie, Barack Obama being seen as just black despite being bald white, it s no surprise they viewed even the racially whitest, most European Mexicans as Other. Add the fact they were Catholic and not of English stock, and you have a doozy.
So it wasn t that they weren t white, it s that they weren t either white enough or not the right white (ie, southern European and Catholic)
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USonuMabeaCh
Makes me wonder, if we had decided to go for all of Mexico, and gotten it, would we really have stopped there? Why wouldn't they go all the way to the edge of Columbia and control the entire isthmus of central America? Would it even stop there? If the locals weren't overly obstinate, at what point would controlling both continents be a bigger problem than it was worth, especially with the Monroe doctrine?
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Makes me wonder, if we had decided to go for all of Mexico, and gotten it, would we really have stopped there? Why wouldn't they go all the way to the edge of Columbia and control the entire isthmus of central America? Would it even stop there? If the locals weren't overly obstinate, at what point would controlling both continents be a bigger problem than it was worth, especially with the Monroe doctrine?
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Edward
It's one thing to take newly conquered land and administer it as a Territory from Washington and then play political games with deciding whether to grant status as States when said land is sparsely populated. They would have had a much harder time with more densely populated regions that also had long histories of political identity. Look at what happened in the Philippines and to some extent in Puerto Rico.
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It's one thing to take newly conquered land and administer it as a Territory from Washington and then play political games with deciding whether to grant status as States when said land is sparsely populated. They would have had a much harder time with more densely populated regions that also had long histories of political identity. Look at what happened in the Philippines and to some extent in Puerto Rico.
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stischer47
What is also interesting is that when the US occupied Mexico City, the Mexican government had evacuated and passed a law that anyone who surrendered would be considered a traitor and the treaty they signed would be null and void. After much scrambling, the US found someone who would sign (some undersecretary) because there was true fear that if Mexico didn't surrender, the US would annex all of it.
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What is also interesting is that when the US occupied Mexico City, the Mexican government had evacuated and passed a law that anyone who surrendered would be considered a traitor and the treaty they signed would be null and void. After much scrambling, the US found someone who would sign (some undersecretary) because there was true fear that if Mexico didn't surrender, the US would annex all of it.
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david
I love how you don't mention in this 'overwhelming' victory that the US armed forces were NOT winning further south into Mexico until Santa Anna was called away because Congress and other factions couldn't get it together when the fate of their country was at hand. Additionally, the Californios (Mexican inhabitants of California) defeated US forces in California.
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I love how you don't mention in this 'overwhelming' victory that the US armed forces were NOT winning further south into Mexico until Santa Anna was called away because Congress and other factions couldn't get it together when the fate of their country was at hand. Additionally, the Californios (Mexican inhabitants of California) defeated US forces in California.
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Robert
2: 38 seems it would have been so much better though. Also, while the Northern Territories Mexico did get to keep had more of their population than the even smaller 5% Mexican population occupying the Northern lands the USA won (and also decided to pay for for some reason, it was still small enough to be easily assimilated I think.
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2: 38 seems it would have been so much better though. Also, while the Northern Territories Mexico did get to keep had more of their population than the even smaller 5% Mexican population occupying the Northern lands the USA won (and also decided to pay for for some reason, it was still small enough to be easily assimilated I think.
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maninredhelm
Nicholas Trist was an odd figure. A self-described Southerner by birth but Yankee by adoption, grandson-in-law to Thomas Jefferson, West Point dropout, (alleged) slave trafficker in Cuba, (alleged) saboteur of American expansionism in Mexico, and finally an anti-Confederate (yet still pro-slavery) supporter of Lincoln.
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Nicholas Trist was an odd figure. A self-described Southerner by birth but Yankee by adoption, grandson-in-law to Thomas Jefferson, West Point dropout, (alleged) slave trafficker in Cuba, (alleged) saboteur of American expansionism in Mexico, and finally an anti-Confederate (yet still pro-slavery) supporter of Lincoln.
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Catriam
In essence: The fact that Mexico still exists is due to the reason that one guy was ordered to be an asshole but just decided not to.
I wonder how it would've gone though. Would the USA have tried to eradicate spanish from their new territories or accepted that this would be bonkers?
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In essence: The fact that Mexico still exists is due to the reason that one guy was ordered to be an asshole but just decided not to.
I wonder how it would've gone though. Would the USA have tried to eradicate spanish from their new territories or accepted that this would be bonkers?
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JCM
The main weapon reason was not invaded because the tortillas, USA like bread instead tortillas, USA felt that tortillas was not elegant to eat with their fingers so it does not make sense instead of French bread, this weapon is still used as a psychological subversion warfare up to today.
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The main weapon reason was not invaded because the tortillas, USA like bread instead tortillas, USA felt that tortillas was not elegant to eat with their fingers so it does not make sense instead of French bread, this weapon is still used as a psychological subversion warfare up to today.
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SirReepicheep
The United States handily defeated Mexico in the war and took approximately one third of its territory. Yet the expansionists and pro-slavery faction wanted even more! It's easy to see why Mexicans and others condemn the US as greedy, we certainly were when it came to land!
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The United States handily defeated Mexico in the war and took approximately one third of its territory. Yet the expansionists and pro-slavery faction wanted even more! It's easy to see why Mexicans and others condemn the US as greedy, we certainly were when it came to land!
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Kal
The answer is plain and simple. American is a profoundly racist and white supremacist country. The main reason is because the majority of the part of Mexico they did not annexed where fleeing indigenous people and majority brown people. America only annexed the white part of Mexico.
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The answer is plain and simple. American is a profoundly racist and white supremacist country. The main reason is because the majority of the part of Mexico they did not annexed where fleeing indigenous people and majority brown people. America only annexed the white part of Mexico.
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history_matters
If USA took over Mexico then Mexico's Culture, Music, Language, Traditions and History will be gone also this would also impact Native Mexicans and Native Mexican cultures and racism would rise and Speedy Gonzales wouldn't exist if Mexico was annexed by USA
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If USA took over Mexico then Mexico's Culture, Music, Language, Traditions and History will be gone also this would also impact Native Mexicans and Native Mexican cultures and racism would rise and Speedy Gonzales wouldn't exist if Mexico was annexed by USA
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Preston
Easy: the North didn't want more slave states than necessary, and the South didn't want to risk more free states than necessary.
If we had just figured out if slavery was good or bad then we could have annexed Mexico and both nations would be better off.
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Easy: the North didn't want more slave states than necessary, and the South didn't want to risk more free states than necessary.
If we had just figured out if slavery was good or bad then we could have annexed Mexico and both nations would be better off.
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