Preview

War On Mexico: The Influence Of James Polk

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
324 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
War On Mexico: The Influence Of James Polk
James Polk who was president at the time pushed for us to get land from the Mexicans. When Polk sent someone to offer 25 million max to buy it they refused, so he later sent troops under Zachary Taylor to the disputed border of Texas and Mexico. The Mexicans were angered by this and fighting broke out which led Polk to declare war on Mexico. All of the fighting could have been prevented had James Polk and his need of Manifest Destiny taken over. Most Americans supported the war but some in the north thought the south was going to try and make it a slave state and didn’t want that. Many Whigs question if the Mexicans had actually hurt anyone on American soil like Polk said they did. In the end the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo confirmed the annexation

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is an agreement, signed on February 2, 1848, at Guadalupe Hidalgo, which is a city north from the capital of Mexico, between the United States and Mexico that marked the end of the Mexican War. With the defeat of the troops and the fall of the Mexican capital on September 1847, the Mexican government surrendered to the United States and wanted negotiations between the United States to end the war. Signing the treaty was only the beginning of the process because it still had to be approved by the congresses of both the United States and Mexico. No one could tell how the Polk administration would receive a treaty negotiated by an unofficial agent, and could they know the goods and the negative things of the Mexican political scene for the next few months. In both the U.S. and Mexican governments there was opposition to the treaty. In the United States, the northern abolitionists opposed the annexation of Mexican territory. In the Mexican congress, a sizable minority was in favor of continuing the fight. Both countries ratified the document. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo marked the end of the war.…

    • 966 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Mexican war was mainly a war that President Polk wanted in effort to obtain more land for the United States. The people who wanted the war were mostly Democrats and Southerners. Southerners supported the war because they were in hope that more land would be acquired meaning more states would be admitted into the union as slave states. For this same reason the Whig Party opposed the war because they were abolitionists.…

    • 334 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    What happened that caused the Mexicans to sign The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo? Texas wanted to be it’s own country but was under Mexican rule, thats where America stepped in. President Polk promised to take Mew Mexico from Mexico and make it part of the US. Polk and the American army travelled by boat to the precise spot that Hernando Cortez had docked 500 years heretofore. President…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In my opinion I think it was just a war,I’m not saying that what the US did was the right way to go about gaining the land.It had been many wars prior and many more to come about land/territories .At this time I think the US was just land hungry and when James K. Polk became president he was able to annexed Texas.Through his actions this made Mexico mad which lead the the Mexican-American War.At the end of the war american gained the land but still had conflicts about slavery and it being a free territory.Mexico should of been careful with welcoming in American immigrants because sometimes you cannot trust everybody.But in all fairness Texas became better because the Mexico government was already…

    • 124 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The war with Mexico was in 1846 to 1848 at Texas. Polk was just elected president and had some ideas of what he wanted to do; he wanted to go to war with Mexico. There were many events that lead up to it but the main ones were that Mexico was trying to take back Texas, Mexico was invading America, and Mexico has killed sixteen Americans on American land.…

    • 989 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mexican American War DBQ

    • 528 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A huge contributor to this war was the Lone Star Republic of Texas. Mexico refused to recognize the annexation of Texas. Mexico even stated that if the United States were to admit Texas to the Union it would be considered an act of war. The fact that Mexico refused to recognize the annexation of Texas, and threatened to go to war over it shows one of the justifications that the war was neither unjustified nor unprovoked.…

    • 528 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Mexican American War

    • 409 Words
    • 2 Pages

    On May 9th, 1846 President James K. Polk delivered a war message to Congress, stating that "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood upon the American soil." Four days later, Congress declared war against Mexico, and across the nation large shows of support for the action followed. So began the Mexican-American War that resulted in acquiring of lands that today make up the American southwest; the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.…

    • 409 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    James Knox Polk was born near the Little Sugar Creek in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina in 1795. His childhood was tumultuous and unconventional, and several events and themes in his childhood undoubtedly helped shape the powerful personality of the future president. One thing is certain, however- his early life was highly influential in his political beliefs; they initially mirrored that of his family, but then matured into their final form- Jacksonian Democracy. (Seigenthaler 11)…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Mexican-American War

    • 844 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “America’s wars have often been controversial” (Roden 317). The Mexican- American War was not an exception to this rule. Many Mexicans felt that they were cheated their land. On the other hand, the US felt it was their destiny to conquer the whole North American continent and Mexico was in the way of their greatness (Roden 317). The belief in Manifest Destiny, that the USA started the conflict, and that the US had no right to Texas are all reasons that the US was not justified in taking about half of Mexico.…

    • 844 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mexican War Dbq

    • 789 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The war with Mexico came at a time when much of the country had strong feelings of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is the belief that fate had preordained the US to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans and from Canada to the Rio Grande. “the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles….it shall be a hemisphere – its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens…” (Document 1). This ideal had strong influence and was one reason that there was so much popular support for the US expansion west. This ideal, while nationalistic, did not give Polk the right to go into Mexico and seize land which was rightfully theirs. The US vision of manifest destiny helped to win the public’s support for the Mexican war (Doc 2). Yet the public was misled by this sense of Manifest Destiny and those that did support it supported an unjust war.…

    • 789 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Even though there was a peace treaty wrote up before the fighting began Mexico did not consider it much of a compromise. They would lose all of Texas, Oregon and California. From the Mexican view point it looked like that had no choice but to fight the matter out. If they did not stand up for themselves they would look like a weak country. It seemed to them that the Americans were not treating them fairly. So, they started taking action. Which ended in an all out war.…

    • 594 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    1850's Dbq

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Mexican War was one of the most influential events that contributed the increasing separation of the union. Much conflict arose on whether Texas and California should be free or slave states. One of the men who tried to resolve this conflict was Henry Clay. Along with Stephen Douglas, he drafted what came to be known as the Compromise of 1850. It declared California a free state, abolished the slave trade in D.C, gained the New Mexico territory (which was to be organized through popular sovereignty), rearranged the Texas boundary, and passed the Fugitive Slave Law. Although it seemed like a good plan, it had flaws, which disappointed and angered many people. The people of Texas were angered because, a large portion of their land had been taken for New Mexico (Document A). It seemed that what angered one group, made the other happy. This was all because of the growing disunity over the ridiculous question of slavery.…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Around the 1840s, the US aspired to annex Texas and incorporate it as a state within the Union. However, gaining Texas had its consequences as it lead a war with Mexico. William Ellery Channing, an abolitionist and pacifist, saw that the policy regarding obtaining Texas would led the “nation into war” as it severed as “encroachment,” and a way “to propagate the curse of slavery.” (Doc 2) The annexation of Texas was seen invading Texas’ link to Mexico as in document one, the American Review stated the annexation “shall dissolve the slight bounds that now link the province to Mexico” (Doc 1) This served as a situation for Mexico, who had refused to recognize Texas’ independence and its takeover by the United States, although President James Polk, a strong supporter of the annexation of Texas as seen in his Inaugural Address- where he stated “none can fail to see the danger to our safety and future peace if Texas remains an independent states,” attempted to aid Mexico in coming to an understanding. Therefore, the Mexican War broke out, out of the effort for Texas to break free its bond to Mexico. Eventually, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war, and came to an agreement that included setting boundaries for Texas and the acquisition of new territory- California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona,…

    • 1065 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Furthermore, the expansion of slavery brought the criticisms of the Mexican War from some Northern politicians like Abraham Lincoln. In order to seize the land from Mexico, Polk…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Webster's War With Mexico

    • 625 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Webster argued that the war with Mexico and the admission of new states would be horrible. This was his own opinion, but many individuals during this time period felt the way that he did. Webster talks of what the president has his mind set on and how that mindset cannot be changed. This is viewed as a problem that Webster can not get over, he feels that the president should listen to the people and not be caught up in his own mindset. The mindset of the president was one that was given to him by many of the people of the United States, but was it the majority of the people? Webster never discusses this with his readers. This may be for certain reasons; maybe the majority did feel the need for expansion. Webster would have hurt his own argument for him to put that in this article.…

    • 625 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays