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The 'Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo' is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States^[1] to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico, that ended the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). The treaty provided for the Mexican Cession, in which Mexico ceded 1.36 million km² (525,000 square miles) (55%^[2] of its pre-war territory) to the United States in exchange for US$15 million (equivalent to $313 million in 2006 dollars) and the ensured safety of pre-existing property rights of Mexican citizens in the transferred territories, the latter of which the United States subsequently failed to honor. The United States also agreed to take over $3.25 million ($68 million in 2006 dollars) in debts Mexico owed to American citizens.
The Treaty took its name from what is now the suburb of Mexico City where it was signed on 2 February 1848.
The cession that the treaty facilitated included parts of the modern-day U.S. states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming, as well as the whole of California, Nevada, and Utah. The remaining parts of what are today the states of Arizona and New Mexico were later ceded under the 1853 Gadsden Purchase.

Contents

Background

Treaty agreed upon

Protocol of Querétaro

Effects

See also

Footnotes

References

External links

Background

Under U.S. President John Tyler, Texas was admitted to the Union on March 1, 1845. It became the 28th state later that year under President James K. Polk. The Mexican government had long warned that annexation meant war with the United States. Britain and France, which recognized the independence of Texas, repeatedly tried to dissuade Mexico from declaring war against its neighbor. British efforts to mediate were fruitless in part because additional political disputes (particularly the Oregon boundary dispute) arose between Mexico, Britain and the United States.
Before the outbreak of hostilities, on November 10, 1845, the United States president James K. Polk had sent negotiator John Slidell to Mexico to offer the country around $5 million for the territory of Nuevo Mexico, and up to $40 million for Alta California.^[3] Mexican members of government had simply dismissed Slidell, refusing to even meet with him^[4] because they were greatly insulted by such an offer. This is because earlier that year Mexico had broken off diplomatic relations with the United States over the annexation of Texas, which Mexico had warned would be considered an act of war if passed by the US Congress. Mexico's basis for this was partly a condition of the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 between Spain and the United States in which the US had relinquished all claims to Texas.

After this snub Polk, an unashamed expansionist, himself took insult^[4] and actively sought to provoke war with Mexico to take by force what he could not obtain by diplomatic means.^[6][7]

He finally found an excuse to do this in the Thornton Affair an incident that took place on disputed territory near the Rio Grande (see the Treaties of Velasco). United States President Polk signed a declaration of war into effect on May 13, 1846, almost two months before the Mexican congress was forced to formally declare war on July 1.

Following Mexico's subsequent defeat in the Mexican-American war it left them with little choice but to accept the United States' demands, or risk total annexation of Mexico.^[4][9]

Treaty agreed upon

The treaty was signed by Nicholas Trist on behalf of the United States and Luis G. Cuevas, Bernardo Couto and Miguel Atristain as plenipotentiary representatives of Mexico on February 2 1848, at the main altar of the old Cathedral of Guadalupe at Villa Hidalgo (today Gustavo A. Madero, D.F.), slightly north of Mexico City as U.S troops under the command of General Winfield Scott were occupying Mexico City. It was subsequently ratified by the United States Senate by a vote of 38 to 14 on March 10, 1848 and by the Mexican government on May 19, 1848.

However, the version of the treaty ratified by the United States Senate eliminated Article X, which stated that the U.S. government would honor and guarantee all land grants awarded in lands ceded to the United States to citizens of Spain and Mexico by those respective governments. Article VIII guaranteed that Mexicans who remained more than one year in the ceded lands would automatically become full-fledged American citizens (or they could declare their intention of remaining Mexican citizens); however, this Article was effectively weakened by Article IX, modified by the U.S. Senate to significantly change the first paragraph of this article and exclude the last two, to ambiguously state that Mexican citizens would "be admitted at the proper time (to be judged of by the Congress of the United States)" instead of "admitted as soon as possible", which the original article agreed upon had stated.

Protocol of Querétaro

On May 26 1848, when the two countries exchanged ratifications of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, U.S. emissaries sought to reassure Mexico that civil and property rights were not threatened by the Senate's modifications. They attempted to do this by offering three explanations contained within the written protocol.

The protocol was signed in the city of the same name by A. H. Sevier, Nathan Clifford and Luis de la Rosa.

Effects

The main outcome of the treaty was the huge loss of Mexico's northern territories to the United States. In addition, the recognition of the Rio Grande as the boundary between the State of Texas and Mexico, and the legitimacy of the state of Texas itself, came about as a result of the treaty. Whereas before the Americans (who were known as anglos) were considered an unwelcome nuisance in the Mexican provinces of Nuevo Mexico and Alta California, who refused to obey Mexican law, the opposite now became true of the Mexicans in the eyes of American settlers, who now found themselves in newly created US Territories.
The amount of money given to Mexico for the territory annexed, half the amount the United States was willing to pay for it before the outbreak of war, was openly seen as a token gesture and a ploy to divert attention away from the fact that the U.S. had used military force to gain the Mexican land. A leading U.S. newpaper at the time, the Whig intelligencer sardonically concluded that;
Border disputes continued; the United States's desire to expand its territory continued unabated and Mexico's economic problems presisted, leading to the controversial Gadsden Purchase in 1854 and the obscure Republic of Lower California filibustering incident in that same year. The treaty of Mesilla, which concluded the Gadsden purchase of 1854, also reaffirmed the property guarantees of Guadalupe Hidalgo.^[10]
The shifting of the Rio Grande would much later cause a dispute over the boundary between Purchase lands and those of the state of Texas. (See Country Club Dispute)
The treaty extended U.S. citizenship to Mexicans in the conquered region, well before blacks, Asians and Native Americans were eligible. They weren't socially "white," but between 1850 and 1920, the U.S. Census counted ethnic Mexicans in the white column. ^[11]

See also

★ Gadsden Purchase

★ Treaty of Cahuenga

★ United States and Mexican Boundary Survey

★ 1848 in Mexico

★ Annexation Bill of 1866

Footnotes

1. War's End: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
2. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
3. Bronwyn Mills U.S.-Mexican war p. 23 ISBN 0816049327
4. James K. Polk's Third Annual Message, December 7th, 1847
5. James K. Polk's Third Annual Message, December 7th, 1847
6. "We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico should commence it." Personal memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume I. Chapter IV
7. "It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country(Mexico) as it chooses." Diary of Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock
8. James K. Polk's Third Annual Message, December 7th, 1847
9. Mexican Argument for Annexation, The Living age ... Volume 10, Issue 123, September 19, 1846 available by searching [1]
10. Bronwyn Mills U.S.-Mexican war p. 122 ISBN 0816049327
11. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez3sep03,0,3733464.column?coll=la-home-commentary

References

★ Griswold del Castillo, Richard. ''The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict.'' University of Oklahoma Press, 1990

★ Ohrt, Wallace. ''Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War'' Texas A&M University Press, 1997

★ Jesse S. Reeves, "The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo," The ''American Historical Review'', 10 (Jan. 1905), 309-324, full text online at JSTOR

External links

★ Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and related resources at the U.S. Library of Congress

★ Text of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

★ copy of Treaty, including sections stricken out by Senate

★ U.S. General Accounting Office report on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, June 2004

★ Library of Congress Guide to the Mexican War