Many of the American field commanders who participated in the invasion of Mexico supported total annexation. Brigadier General William J. Worth, a rabid expansionist and racist, was quite explicit:
That our race is finally destined to overrun the whole continent is too obvious to need proof.... After much reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that it is our decided policy to hold the whole of Mexico -- The details of occupation are comparatively unimportant -- I mean by occupation, permanent conquest and future annexation....
However, internal contradictions in the United States stymied the movement for the annexation of all Mexico.
The U.S. War on Mexico proved to be devastating enough without total annexation. The thirty-five year campaign against Spain and Mexico brought to a climax in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed slavery in Texas and expanded the United States from the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Americans like to dress up the land-grab and call it "Manifest Destiny", but history shows it for what it really was -- naked aggression by a superior power that robbed the Mexican people of their birthright in North America and crippled the future of their young republic.
The struggle for the ownership of the land in the stolen territories did not end with the conclusion of the war. Although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo recognized the legitimacy of Spanish and Mexican land grants and offered the Mexican inhabitants in the ceded territories American citizenship, the influx of land-hungry and ruthless whites resulted in widespread oppression that sparked mass exile and repatriation. The exile of Mexican citizens from Texas that began after the Anglo takeover of 1836 intensified after the war in 1848. Besieged refugees abandoned their farms and ranches and moved across the Rio Grande to the old Mexican towns of Paso del Norte, Guerrero, Mier, Camargo, Reynosa, and Matamoros and established the new towns of Nuevo Laredo, Mesilla, and Guadalupe.
the mexican had legal land and it was stolen too, correct?
http://www.houstonculture.org/hispanic/conquest4.html
Tags: