1836-1848

The “Lone Star Republic”
• The Texas Revolution
1. Texas belonged first to Spain
2. after 1821, to Mexico.
3. Mexican government opened Texas to settlers from the U.S.
4. Americans received generous land grants at low prices. In exchange they agreed to become Roman Catholics and citizens of
Mexico.
5. By 1830, there were about 30,000 people in Texas, ninety percent of whom were Anglo-Americans.
6. Friction developed between the Mexican government and the
American settlers.
7. Few converted to Catholicism or applied to become Mexican citizens.
8. The rapid growth of the American population of Texas alarmed
Mexican officials.
9. In 1830, the Mexican government announced that slaves could no longer be brought into any part of Mexico and that Americans could no longer settle in Texas.
10. the Texans rebelled and declared their independence on March
2, 1836.

The “Lone Star Republic”
11. The Texas
Revolution lasted less than two months. After suffering defeats at the Alamo and
Goliad, Texan forces led by Sam
Houston destroyed the
Mexican army at the Battle of San
Jacinto on April
21, 1836.

The “Lone Star Republic”
• The annexation issue
1. Sam Houston, the hero of San Jacinto, was elected President of the newly founded Republic of
Texas in 1836. Houston and most Texans wanted to join the United States.
2. Many Americans opposed admitting Texas into the Union b/c the Texas constitution allowed slavery.
3. Northern antislavery Whigs opposed admitting another slave state into the Union.
4. Other opponents of annexation warned that this might provoke a war with Mexico.
5. President Jackson resisted admitting Texas into the Union. He feared that a prolonged debate over the admission of a slave state would ignite a divisive campaign issue that could cost the
Democrats the presidential election.
6. Jackson postponed annexation and Texas remained an independent “Lone Star Republic.””

Polk and Manifest Destiny
• The expansionist spirit
1. During the 1820s many Americans thought the United States would not go beyond the Rocky Mountains. The quest for land, opportunity, and adventure excited a new generation By 1860, over 4 million people lived west of the Mississippi River.
2. John L. O’Sullivan, the editor of the Democratic Review, gave the nation’s expansionist spirit a name when he coined the term Manifest Destiny . O’Sullivan declared that America’s right to expansion lay in “our manifest destiny to occupy and to possess the whole of the Continent which Providence has given us.”
3. proponents of manifest destiny believed that expansion was necessary to extend democratic institutions and American agriculture and commerce to sparsely populated regions. America had a
God-given destiny to extend its civilization across the continent and create a country that would serve as a shining example to the rest of the world.

Polk and Manifest Destiny
• Polk’s election
1. The annexation of Texas and territorial expansion were the key issues in the 1844 presidential campaign. The Whig Party nominee Henry Clay refused to support the annexation of Texas. The Democrat candidate James K. Polk ran on a platform demanding the annexation of Texas and asserting America’s right to all of Oregon.
2. Polk won a narrow electoral victory. As an expansionist he used manifest destiny as an argument to justify annexing Texas, claiming Oregon, purchasing California, and displacing Native American tribes.

Polk and Manifest Destiny
• Texas and Oregon
1. Following the election, Congress approved a resolution annexing
Texas as the nation’s 18 th state. President Tyler signed the resolution three days before Polk took office.
2. Acquiring Oregon proved to be more difficult. Both the United
States and Great Britain claimed the territory. The Democrat’s campaign slogan “Fifty-four forty or fight” meant that the U.S. would go to war with Britain in order to obtain the entire Oregon territory.
3.Despite his campaign slogan,
Polk proposed a compromise that would divide Oregon at the 49 th parallel.
4. The British accepted Polk’s proposal thus averting a war with the United
States.

The Mexican War
• The outbreak of war
1. the Texas question remained to be settled with Mexico. Outraged by the annexation of Texas, Mexico broke off diplomatic relations with the United States.
2. Polk exacerbated (worsened) tensions by supporting Texas’ claim to the Rio Grande River as its southwestern boundary. The Mexican government insisted that Texas went no farther than the Nueces River.
3. On April 25, 1846 a large Mexican force crossed the Rio
Grande and attacked a small American reconnaissance party.
In the fight eleven Americans were killed and the rest wounded or captured.
4. Polk demanded that Congress declare war on Mexico, declaring the “Mexico has…shed American blood upon
America soil.” Congress agreed and approved a declaration of war on May 13, 1846.

The Mexican War
• Opposition to the Mexican War
1.
New England abolitionists denounced the
Mexican War as an unjust conflict designed to extend slavery into new territories.
2.
Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his state poll tax as a gesture of opposition. He then wrote a classic essay “Civil Disobedience” urging passive resistance to laws that require a citizen “to be an agent of injustice.”
Thoreau’s essay later influenced Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violent protest.
3. Whig leaders also opposed the war with Mexico.
Abraham Lincoln, then an obscured Whig congressman from Illinois, challenged Polk to identify the exact spot on American soil where
American blood had been shed.
4. Like other Whigs, Lincoln believed that Polk used the skirmish as a pretext (excuse) for declaring war so that he could claim new territories.

The Mexican War
The conquest of Mexico
1. Led by General Zachery Taylor,
American forces won a series of victories in northeastern Mexico.
Taylor became a national hero when he defeated a much larger
Mexican army at the
Battle of Buena Vista.

The Mexican War
2. Led by Colonel Stephen W.
Kearny, American forces captured
Santa Fe, New Mexico and then helped secure California.
3. Led by General Winfield Scott,
American forces landed at Vera
Cruz and then battled their way to
Mexico City. Scott entered and took control of the Mexican capital on September 14, 1847.

The Mexican War
• The Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo
1.
Under the terms of this treaty Mexico lost about one-third of its territory. It ceded New Mexico and
California to the United
States and accepted the
Rio Grande as the Texas border.
2.
It is important to remember that New
Mexico actually included present-day Arizona,
Nevada, and Utah, as well as parts of Colorado and
Wyoming.
3. The United States acquired more than 500,000 miles of new territory. In return the U.S. agreed to pay Mexico $15 million and pay all the claims American citizens had against the Mexican government.

The Mexican War
• The war’s consequences
1. The Mexican War gave combat experience to a group of junior officers that included Robert E. Lee and Ulysses
S. Grant.
2. The Mexican War transformed
America into a continental nation that spanned from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
3. The Mexican War added vast new territories thus igniting an increasingly bitter dispute about the extension of slavery. The Mexican War marked a key step in the road to disunion.