response 3 questions about the atlantic slave trade (History)

6. Alamo, Alamo

Mexico’s president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna responded by sending troops against American colonists holed up at the Alamo mission in San Antonio, where he defeated them after a 13-day siege in March of 1836.

American colonists framed the conflict as a war for independence, while Santa Anna and other Mexican authorities called it a rebellion on the frontier.

In April of 1836, about a month after the crushing defeat at the Alamo mission, Sam Houston commanded a rebel army that completely surprised and defeated Santa Anna’s army while resting near the San Jacinto River.

The battle at the San Jacinto River was brutal and the racial animosity was tangible.

American fighters yelled “Remember the Alamo” as they shot at, stabbed, and bludgeoned Mexican troops, many of who were apparently taking an afternoon rest from the sun…eyewitness accounts from both sides describe how the Americans shot Mexicans who were trying to swim across the river, or beat their brains out with rocks even after the Mexicans raised their hands in surrender.

At San Jacinto Santa Anna was captured, and he was forced to sign a treaty recognizing Texas independence, and made the Rio Grande the new boundary between Texas and Mexico.

It seems likely that Santa Anna underestimated the Texas rebels, believing they lacked the will to continue fighting after the defeat at the Alamo.

7. Disputes Over the Mexico-Texas Border

After the defeat at San Jacinto, the Mexican Congress refused to recognize the treaty signed by Santa Anna with the Texas rebels.

In 1837 when Texas petitioned the United States Congress to enter the Union, Congress said “no”, because the anti-slavery faction in Congress did not want to admit another slave state to the Union; by this period there were 13 free states and 13 slave states in the Union.

Meanwhile in Texas, the native Tejano population began to lose large amounts of land under the assault of increased Anglo migration who continued to stream in by the thousands; South Texas was the only region where Tejanos remained the numerical majority.

Then in 1844 Democratic candidate James K. Polk won the presidential elections.

Polk was an expansionist and pro-Southern/slavery. Polk himself was a slave owner with roots in the American South.

In December of 1845 he welcomed Texas into the Union; it was the 28th state and the 15th slave state (Florida had been welcomed as a slave state earlier in 1845…Texas was the last slave state that entered the Union before 1865).

Under Polk’s administration, the US aggressively resisted the Mexican government’s on-going petitions to return Texas to Mexico.

In April of 1846 Polk directed army troops to take up positions along the Rio Grande, the recognized border between Texas and Mexico in the 1836 treaty.

Mexican troops on the other side of the river responded with similar defensive positions.

After a brief firefight broke out between the Mexican and American troops across the river, Polk declared to Congress that “Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil…War exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself.”

On May 13, 1846, US Congress declared war on Mexico.

8. The US-Mexico War

From its inception, the US-Mexico War took on political overtones for many Americans.

Whig party members in Congress, who were anti-Democratic, accused Polk of abusing his presidential powers and authority to push the nation over the brink into war.

According to one historian, the history of Congressional concern over the way presidents in the US have used their war powers begins here, with the war against Mexico. This issue emerged again for example during the 20th century when the conflicts in Korea (1950), Vietnam (1965), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) started.

During the US-Mexico War, many northerners in the US openly express their disagreement with the war.

For example, the Massachusetts legislature passed a resolution condemning president Polk’s actions as unconstitutional.

The transcendentalist writer and philosopher named Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was jailed after he refused to pay taxes that he believed would help the war effort.

After release from jail, Thoreau wrote his classic essay titled “Civil Disobedience” about why an individual had the moral right to disobey legitimate government authority if that authority was unjust.

(In the 1900s activists such as Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. borrowed many of the same ideas from Thoreau’s essay.)

By the end of 1846 the US army had invaded and occupied northern Mexico, taking Monterey, which was the largest city in the North.

But the Mexican government in Mexico City refused to negotiate.

In March of 1847 American troops under the command Winfield Scott landed several thousand troops at the coastal city of Veracruz, and after quickly capturing it, marched inland into Mexico City.

After months fighting the Mexican army and Mexican insurgents in the countryside, General Scott and his troops reached the outskirts of Mexico City on Sept. 12 of 1847.

By Sept. 14 Scott’s army occupied Mexico City and fighting ceased.

9. Outcome of the War

By war’s end, 13,000 American troops had been killed and 50,000 Mexicans, including many civilians, had been killed.

The US spent $97 million fighting the war.

$15 million of that money was paid to the Mexican government as restitution for taking ownership of the northernmost provinces of California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and parts of Colorado; meanwhile the Mexican Congress again recognized the Rio Grande as the border between Texas and Mexico.

Mexico officially agreed to the loss of the territories in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo signed in February of 1848, in which the US also agreed to recognize all the Mexican residents in those areas as US citizens.

Overnight because of this treaty, the size of the US doubled, and Mexico lost nearly half its territory.

Over the next few years, a team of cartographers and government officials from the US and Mexico charted the current 2000-mile border between the two nations, in many cases drawing the border straight through the middle of several towns and cities.

Today this history continues to tie Mexico and America together thru trade, politics, immigration, tourism, and environmental concerns too.

Responses (Due Monday April 13):

Why did the Mexican government agree to allow American settlers to create a colony in Texas in the 1820s?

What was a major factor pushing American settlers in Texas to desire more territory?

How was the US-Mexico border created?

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