Grace Delgado - The U.S. War with Mexico: Imperialism on the Borderland

The front cover has the text U S History at the top, The U S War with Mexico: Imperialism on the Borderland, at the center, and the authors name, Grace Delgado, and Bedford Document Collections at the bottom.

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Bedford Document Collections

Grace Pea Delgado, University of California, Santa Cruz

What does the contest for lands at the U.S. border with Mexico reveal about Americas imperialist ambitions?

This unit challenges the idea that the War of 1898 was the first act of American imperialism and instead looks at the earlier U.S. war with Mexico (18461848) as a contest for lands occupied by Mexico and indigenous nations. Through careful analysis of the documents produced in the decades leading up to the war, you will learn about Mexicos shifting attitudes toward Americans, Americas visions of empire, and both countries attitudes toward the indigenous people who had long occupied these borderlands. You will also learn how the war was experienced by Texans of Mexican descent (tejanos). By analyzing texts and images with such different perspectives, you will gain an understanding of how historians interpret, assess, and contextualize primary sources. This unit will also add to your understanding of the diversity of the American experience at its southern border and of the present in a historically based context.

At its most basic level, imperialism can be understood as an act of aggression by a nation seeking sovereignty or dominion over another independent political entity. Nations gain authority over other nations mostly through wars or through treaties designed to avoid wars over disputed territorial boundaries. Imperialism works alongside an ideology of racial supremacy that views subject people of different ethnicities and cultures as racially inferior.

The U.S. war with Mexico has its origins in American westward expansionism. Prior to the decades of the 1830s and 1840s covered in this unit, the United Statesonce it had secured its own sovereignty from Great Britainacquired one-third of its land mostly through treaty agreements with imperial powers such as France and Spain. In 1803, for example, the United States purchased 827,000 square miles west of the Mississippi River from the French government for $15 million, a deal known as the Louisiana Purchase. In making the purchase, President Thomas Jefferson argued that the prosperity of the American republic depended upon the availability of land for small farmers whose wholesome, self-sufficient, and simple lives made them good honest citizens. However, plantation owners, who ran large-scale agricultural operations with the labor of enslaved people, also saw opportunity in the lands Jefferson purchased, setting the stage for the contest over free versus slave states that would culminate in the Civil War.

Beginning in the 1830s, U.S. diplomacy gradually gave way to the use of direct military force to acquire land. With the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the United States began the process of seizing Indian lands for Anglo-Americans, focusing at first on indigenous lands east of the Mississippi and using the military to enforce compliance. The idea of the United States as a transcontinental nation took hold in the American imagination, despite the fact that the Southwest and West largely belonged to Mexico. A series of events, from the Texas rebellion to establishment of Dragoons (cavalry troops) on the western border to the growing western migration of Americans by way of the overland trails, saw Americans push deeper into Mexican space. With the election of James K. Polk as president in 1844, an expansionist agenda took center stage.

The U.S.-Mexico War, 18461848

The U S movements are as follows.

From Fort Leavenworth Kearney troops moved west across unorganized territory then south to Santa Fe. From Santa Fe they then split into two routes, one toward the Rio Grande through disputed territory, into Chihuahua, then moved southeast to Buena Vista. Another moved west to San Pasqual and north to San Gabriel. Friemont began in unorganized territory northwest toward Oregon Territory then veered southwest to Sonoma. Another offensive by Scott traversed from New Orleans along the coast of Louisiana and Texas via the Gulf of Mexico to Corpus Christi then south to Tampico. Scott then moved on to Mexico City via Veracruz. Taylor began at Corpus Christi south to Palo Alto, then west to Monterey. The U S Navy navigated from the west coast of Mexico around the coast landing at Monterey. From there, they moved south to Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and San Diego. Troops also left Monterey to go north to Oregon territory and turned back south.