Mexican-American War Dbq Analysis

The United States war with Mexico was over 160 years ago and still continues to be a divisive and widely debated topic, was it justifiable or not? The first war to be fought mostly on foreign land, was the Mexican-American War that started in 1846. America, lead by President Polk, who believed the U.S had a “manifest destiny”, fought against Mexico who had a weak military and was politically divided. After the war ended in 1848, Mexico lost one-third of its territory which included present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. Although the United States war against Mexico resulted in the gaining of America’s most valuable land, the war itself was unjust because their goal was to expand slavery, Texas was wrong from the beginning, and the war was based on false pretenses. To begin, the war waged against Mexico was unjustifiable because their goal was to expand slavery in the United States. In Document E, house representative Joshua Giddings states his stance on the war, “Mexico has

However, this is an invalid argument. The land that Polk tried saying was invaded was actually land that was being disputed between Mexico and America. As, at the time they were having disagreements on where their borders were. Joshua Giddings wrote, “the army was within the United States they could not commit violence upon Mexico… It seems that the President expected General Taylor to find Mexican citizens located within the United States.” Thus, if the land being “invaded” was U.S. territory why would Mexican citizens be found there? They wouldn’t be, and they weren’t. In reality, Mexican citizens were in disputed land that was inhabited by Mexicans long before the U.S. came along thinking it was theirs. To reiterate, to argue the war was just because our land was invaded by Mexico is imprecise as in actuality the land was being