• In the mid-nineteenth century the United States acquired large tracts of land from Mexico, including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The wars that were settled with these transfers were controversial even in their day, and in both Mexico and the United States some people justified government policies while others condemned them. Newspapers, which covered the events in both Mexico and the United States, played an important part in shaping opinion. Other Americans, especially those opposed to slavery and its expansion, were dubious about the war from the start.

José Joaquín de Herrera, President of Mexico, Asking the Governors of the Mexican States for Their Support in Accepting the Loss of Texas, December 1845

“In order to start a war, politicians agree that three questions must be examined: 1st, that of justice, 2nd, that of availability of resources, 3rd, that of convenience. . . . If, for launching war, one would only have to consider our justice, any hesitation in this matter would be either a crime or a lack of common sense. But next come the questions of feasibility and convenience for starting and maintaining hostilities with firmness and honor and all the consequences of a war of this nature.

A foreign war against a powerful and advanced nation that possesses an impressive navy and a . . . population that increases every day because of immigrants attracted to its great . . . prosperity, would imply immense sacrifices of men and money — not to assure victory, but simply to avoid defeat. Are such sacrifices possible for the Mexican Republic in her present state of exhaustion, after so many years of error and misadventure?”

Manuel Crescencio Rejón, Minister of the Interior and Foreign Affairs Under Two Mexican Presidents, Arguing Against Ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848

“The social advantages which would accrue to us by accepting a peace now have been exaggerated, as well as the ease with which we would be able to maintain our remaining territories. It would be necessary, in order to sustain such illusions, to underestimate the spirit of enterprise of the North American people in industrial and commercial pursuits, to misunderstand their history and their tendencies, and also to presuppose in our own spirit less resistance than we have already shown toward the sincere friends of progress. Only through such illusions might one maintain that the treaty would bring a change that would be advantageous to us — as has been claimed.”

Walt Whitman, Editorial in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 11, 1846

“We are justified in the face of the world, in having treated Mexico with more forbearance than we have ever yet treated an enemy — for Mexico, though contemptible in many respects, is an enemy deserving a vigorous “lesson.” . . . Let our arms now be carried with a spirit which shall teach the world that, while we are not forward for a quarrel, America knows how to crush, as well as how to expand!”

Ulysses S. Grant, Looking Back on His Participation in the War, 1885

“Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory. . . . The occupation, separation and annexation [of Mexico] were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union.”

Sources: Carol and Thomas Christensen, The U.S. Mexican War (San Francisco: Bay Books, 1998), p. 50; Ernesto Chávez, The U.S. War with Mexico: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008), pp. 127, 83; Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs, chap. 3, accessed through Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5860/5860-h/5860-h.htm.

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