Mexican Cession

Examples of Mexican Cession in the following topics:

• The Mexican Borderlands

  • Mexico and the Republic of Texas engaged in an ongoing border dispute for several years that eventually led to the Mexican-American War.
  • This quickly led to the Mexican-American War, during which the U.S. captured additional territory (known as the Mexican Cession of 1848), extending the nation's borders all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
  • Taylor moved into Texas, ignoring Mexican demands to withdraw.
  • The Mexican government regarded this action as a violation of its sovereignty.

• The Mexican–American War, 1846–1848

  • On April 25, 1846, a Mexican cavalry detachment routed the patrol, killing 16 U.S. soldiers.
  • From Alta California, Mexican General José Castro and Governor Pío Pico fled southward.
  • The Mexican forces under General Pedro de Ampudia eventually surrendered.
  • The Mexican Cession, as the conquest of land west of the Rio Grande was called, included the current states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming.
  • In exchange, the United States agreed to assume $3.35 million worth of Mexican debts owed to U.S. citizens, paid Mexico $15 million for the loss of its land, and promised to guard the residents of the Mexican Cession from American Indian raids.

• Victory in Mexico

  • American victory in the Mexican–American war yielded huge acquisition of land and increased domestic tensions over slavery.
  • The acquired lands west of the Rio Grande are traditionally called the Mexican Cession in the United States, as opposed to the Texas Annexation 2 years earlier.
  • The suggestion that slavery be barred from the Mexican Cession caused a split within the Democratic Party.
  • The first page of the handwritten Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican–American War.
  • Identify the territories that the United States acquired at the end of the Mexican–American War

• Conclusion: The Effects of Westward Expansion

  • In the mid-19th century, the quest for control of the West led to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War.
  • The acquisition of additional lands from Mexico, a country many in the United States perceived as weak and inferior, was not so bloodless and culminated in the Mexican–American War.
  • After U.S. victory, the Mexican Cession added nearly half of Mexico’s territory to the United States, including New Mexico and California, and established the U.S.

• The Breakdown of Sectional Balance

  • The Mexican–American War was a source of conflict in the 1840s, compounding the sectional divides that already split political coalitions.
  • Mexico's cession of Alta California and Nuevo México and its recognition of U.S. sovereignty over all of Texas north of the Rio Grande formalized the addition of 1.2 million square miles of territory to the United States, with a final territorial adjustment between Mexico and the U.S. made with the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.
  • Map of the Mexican-American War, with routes of both Taylor and Scott's campaigns.
  • Mexican territorial claims relinquished in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, depicted in white.
  • Examine the role that the Mexican American War played in increasing sectional tension

• Polk and Expansion

  • The annexation angered Mexico, which had lost Texas in 1836, and Mexican politicians had repeatedly warned that annexation would lead to war.
  • The Mexicans refused to receive him, citing a technical problem with his credentials.
  • This action soon led to the Mexican–American War, which the United States won.
  • The Mexican Cession (in red) was acquired through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican–American War.

• In the West: The Native Americans

  • To encourage permanent settlement, the Mexican government began to attract American settlers to Texas with generous terms.
  • Austin, became an "empresario," receiving contracts from the Mexican government to bring in immigrants.
  • Mexico, however, viewed the US annexation of Texas as a direct attack on Mexican sovereignty, which precipitated the Mexican War in the 1840s.
  • The completed Mexican cession covered over half a million square miles, increased the size of the U.S. by nearly twenty percent, and included the states-to-be of California, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming—expanding the United States frontier to its present-day continental size.

• The Politics of Slavery

  • Many of its supporters turned to the Free-Soil Party in the aftermath of the Mexican Cession.

• The End of the Frontier

  • For the next century, the expansion of the nation into these areas, as well as the subsequently acquired Louisiana Purchase, Oregon Country, and Mexican Cession, attracted hundreds of thousands of settlers.

• Land Policy

  • President James Madison declared West Florida a U.S. possession in 1810, while the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 legitimized Spain's cession of East Florida and the surrender of any claims to the Oregon Country.
  • In the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848, the Mexican government acknowledged the loss of Texas and New Mexico and agreed to most of the present-day boundaries between the United States and Mexico, except for the Gadsen Purchase.