The Mexican War

The Mexican War

The Mexican War wasn't about the nation’s defense from the Mexican people as President Polk made it out to be, but it was more about expansion of the United States manifest destiny. President Polk deceived the people in believing that the Mexicans had invaded the territory and shed blood on the American soil so that they would go to war to satisfy his own manifestations. From the very start of Polk's presidency he wanted to obtain Mexico's land. (California and New Mexico) First, by offering to buy the land then by taking the land by military force, which started the war with Mexico.

The American army marched into the Rio Grande, which just so happened to be Mexican land. Lincoln was aware of this, and Polk did everything in his power to persuade others that the land actually belonged to America. One key point of Lincoln's speech was that a clear boundary had never been established between the state of Texas and Mexico. Polk argued that the Rio Grande was the western boundary of Louisiana, as they purchased it from France in 1803, but he admittedly sold the whole country from the Rio Grande eastward, to the Sabine to Spain in the treaty of 1819. Polk claimed that Santa Anna declared this boundary in a treaty with Texas. Lincoln states that Santa Anna had no authority to make any treaty with the United States and never made mention of this boundary in any fashion in writing. Shouldn't our nation have checked with our neighbors before acknowledging this land as our own? " If I should claim your land, by word of mouth, that certainly would not make it mine; and if I were to claim it by a deed which I had made myself, and with which, you had had nothing to do, the claim would be quite the same, in substance—or rather, in utter nothingness." (Lincoln)

Lincoln says this about Polk’s reason’s for war, “all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof, if it had not...

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