ManyTruthsConstitutethePast_TheLegacyoftheU.S.-MexicanWar_PBS2 Electionof18602 MexicanAmericanWar2 ApuntesandtheLessonsofHistory_PBS2
Only use the pdf given and the video. just answer the question in paragraph form 2 paragraph is enough: What do the two articles suggest about the different ways Americans and Mexicans view the Mexican-American War? What do they suggest about the complications of history and how different countries see the same events differently? How does it add to or complicate the information in the Crash Course videos? What, in the assignment, particularly stands out to you and why? (Such as what interests you, upsets you, confuses you, etc. There is not a wrong answer to this last question, as long as you answer it in your own words.) video link 1-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
＝tkdF8pOFUfI video link 2-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v＝roNmeOOJCDY
2/27/2020 The U.S.-Mexican War . The Aftermath of War . Many Truths Constitute the Past: The Legacy of the U.S.-Mexican War | PBS
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The Aftermath of War
Many Truths Constitute the Past: The Legacy of the U.S.-Mexican War
A Conversation With David J. Weber
Southern Methodist University
As Americans, as we try to understand this war, we see it inevitably through the eyes of those sources that are
most intelligible to us — through English language sources, through the diaries and letters of soldiers who
fought at the time, and through our own newspaper accounts. Historically, we’ve had something of a one-sided
view of this war, largely because we’ve seen it through our own side. Increasingly though, we as historians and
as Americans have come to see that there are many different points of view about an event like this. We’ve
become more sophisticated reading Spanish and then talking to Spanish-speaking historians in Mexico.
Reading their sources, we start to see the war is much more multidimensional. It was not just about Mexico
versus the U.S., but within the United States there was a division of opinion — a minority opposed to the war.
Within Mexico, there were profound divisions of opinion as well. It’s only in seeing all of these different
viewpoints, all of these voices, that we can really understand the complexity of this event.
When we study history in school, we expect to find the truth of history. Our teachers demand it of us. We take
exams in which there’s a right answer — it’s either true or false.
Those of us who study history for a living understand very well that there are
many truths. There are many valid points of view about a historical event.
Not all of them may be right, but they may be valid. A person who sees only
a little part of an event may understand it the wrong way, because they’re
not privy to seeing the whole picture — someone else may have a bigger
picture. But the person who saw the event from one vantage point still saw it
and what they saw was real. So, I think it’s better to think many truths
constitute the past, rather than to think of a single truth.
This war between the United States and Mexico, about which Americans
have known and cared so little, made a profound difference in the United States’ future shape — in our wealth
with the discovery of gold in California and in our image of ourselves as an expansionist, transcontinental
empire, which later became a major player on the global stage. The war certainly shaped the area in which
many of us live today from Texas all the way to California. We would be tourists in those regions were it not for
the war.
For Mexicans, the reverse is certainly the case. Mexico lost the rich potential of California and its fabulous gold
mines, lost the potential of the agricultural potential and the water resources that this region might have offered
for what is today northern Mexico. And instead of a great pride in becoming an expansionist country that the
United States developed into, Mexico developed a massive inferiority complex as a result of that war, wondering
where they had gone wrong as a nation. How could it lose half of its national territory? The war became a scar
on the national psyche that would last well into this century and was quite in sharp contrast to our own loss of
memory, largely about this victorious moment for Americans.
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I think one reason why Americans have also forgotten about this war with Mexico is that much of it was fought
on Mexican soil, or it was fought in one corner of the U.S., which is now the American Southwest. Our national
history always seems to unfold in the 13 Colonies to the east of the Mississippi. The west has always been
regarded as a regional story. So this war appears to be regional, although its consequences are manifestly
national. And if we’re to write American history as being truly the history of all America, then the battles that took
place in this region, the peoples in this region and their stories need to be incorporated into that larger fabric of
American history.
I also think, in part, the U.S.-Mexican War was obliterated from the United States’ national memory by the Civil
War, which followed in its heels. The “great victory” began to crumble in the midst of sectional conflict, and then
Americans killing Americans, which became the great story if one wanted to think about conflict in the middle of
the century. The U.S.-Mexican War then was forgotten. One wonders a bit if the victory in a war that was, after
all, a war of aggression to seize territory was not conveniently forgotten by Americans, because it’s not one of
the more honorable moments in American history.
Among historians who have tried to assess the war and the degree of culpability on either side, the traditional
view is expressed early in the century by Justin Smith. This was a victorious and wonderful moment for
Americans. Today I think very few historians take that position. Most historians that I know, and I don’t think I
know an exception to this, view the war as a war of national aggression on the part of the United States, simply
to gain territory. It wasn’t that we wanted to fight a war to gain territory, but we do have the sense that Polk
bullied Mexico, pushed Mexico to a point where he thought it would cave in, and we would get what we wanted.
When Mexico didn’t cave in, we finally took what we wanted in a war.
When the war ended there were close to 75,000 Mexicans living in the conquered territory, from California to
Texas. And they had the choice of either going back to Mexico or staying in the United States. If they stayed,
they could choose Mexican or U.S. citizenship. If they didn’t declare their choice, after a year they would be
automatically citizens of the United States. Many of them discovered that they had become second-class
citizens — that American laws were not extended equally to them. Justice was delayed and therefore denied.
Many of them lost their rights to own land, for reasons that are quite complicated. But clearly in the end,
Mexicans from California to New Mexico lost their properties, and began to feel, as expressed by some of them,
that they had become foreigners in their native land.
Many of us who contemplate the past would like to have clear, unambiguous answers about the past. But the
answers are not ever to be unambiguous. The past, of course, exists. I’m not denying that there is an objective
past, but all that remains is in our memories or in the sources and our ability to use those sources. As a result,
we understand the past only in imperfect ways. Those ways often tell us as much about us and our
reconstructions of the past as they do about the past itself. It appears inevitable to me that we’re going to
continue to retell the story of the war between the United States and Mexico to future generations, and tell it
differently as the interests of each generation shift and as we use our memories selectively to get the kind of
answers from the past that we often wish to receive.
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Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course US History, and today we discuss one of the most
confusing questions in American history: What caused the Civil War?
Just kidding, it’s not a confusing question at all; slavery caused the civil war.
Past John: Mr. Green, Mr Green, what about, like, state’s rights, and nationalism, economics?
Present John: Me from the past, your senior year of high school, you will be taught American
Government by Mr. Fleming, a white Southerner who will seem to you to be about a hundred eight-
two years old, and you will say something to him in class about state’s rights, and Mr. Fleming will
turn to you and he will say
“A state’s right to what, sir?”
And for the first time in your snotty little life you will be well and truly speechless.
(Intro)
The Fugitive Slave Law (0:46)
The road to the Civil War leads to discussions of state’s rights (to slavery), and differing economic
systems (specifically whether those economic systems should involve slavery), and the election of
Abraham Lincoln (specifically how his election impacted slavery), but none of those things would
have been issues without slavery!
So lets pick up with the most controversial section of the Compromise of 1850: The Fugitive Slave
Law. Now, long time Crash Course viewers will remember that there was already a fugitive slave
law written into the United States Constitution, so what made this one so controversial?
Under this new law, any citizen was required to turn in anyone he or she knew to be a slave to
authorities, and that made, like, every person in New England into a sheriff, and it also required
them to enforce a law they found abhorrent.
So they had to be sheriffs, and they didn’t even get little gold badges. Thought Bubble, can I have a
gold badge? Aw… awesome, thank you.
This law was also terrifying to people of color in the North because even if you, say, been born free
in Massachusetts, the courts could send you into slavery if even one person swore before a judge
that you were a specific slave. And many people of color responded to The Fugitive Slave Law by
moving to Canada, which at the time was still technically an English colony, thereby further
problematizing the whole idea that England was all about tyranny, and the United States was all
about freedom.
But anyway, the most important result of The Fugitive Slave Law was that it convinced some
Northerners that the government was in the hands of a sinister “Slave Power.” Sadly, “Slave
Power” was not a heavy metal band, or Britney Spears’s new single, or even a secret cabal of
powerful slaves, but rather a conspiracy theory about a secret cabal of pro-slavery Congressmen.
That conspiracy theory is going to grow in importance, but before we get to that, let us discuss
railroads: underrated in Monopoly, and underrated in the Civil War. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble (2:26)
Railroads made shipping cheaper and more efficient, and allowed people to move around the
country quickly, and they had a huge backer, and also a tiny backer, in the form of Illinois
Congressman Stephen Douglas, who wanted a transcontinental railroad because: 1) He felt it would
bind the Union together (at a time when it could use some binding), and 2) He figured it would go
through Illinois, which would be good for his home state. But there was a problem.
To build a railroad, the territory through which it ran need to be organized, ideally as states, and if
the railroad was gonna run through Illinois, then the Kansas and Nebraska territories would need to
become state-like, so Douglas pushed forward the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act formalized the idea of popular sovereignty, which basically meant that
white residents of states could decide for themselves whether the state should allow slavery.
Douglas felt this was a nice way of avoiding saying whether he favored slavery. Instead, he could
just be in favor of letting other people be in favor of it.
Now, you’ll remember that the previously bartered Missouri Compromise banned slavery in new
states north of this here line, (3:28) and since in theory, Kansas or Nebraska could have slavery if
people there decided they wanted it under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, despite being north of that
there line, this in practice repealed the Missouri Compromise. As a result, there was quite a lot of
violence in Kansas, so much so that some people say the Civil War really started there in 1857.
Also, the Kansas-Nebraska Act led to the creation of a new political party: The Republicans. Yes,
those Republicans. Thanks, Thought Bubble.
Northern Opinions, and the Republicans (3:54)
So Douglas’s law helped to create a new coalition party dedicated to stopping the extension of
slavery. It was made of former Free Soilers, Northern anti-slavery Whigs, and some Know-Nothings.
It was also a completely sectional party, meaning that it drew supporters almost exclusively from
the free states in the North and West, which, you’ll remember from like two minutes ago, were tied
together by common economic interests, and the railroad.
I’m telling you, don’t underestimate railroads. By the way, we are getting to you, Dred Scott.
And now, we return at last to Slave Power. For many Northerners, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which
repealed the Missouri Compromise, was yet more evidence that Congress was controlled by a
sinister slave-power group, doing the bidding of rich plantation owners. Which, as conspiracy
theories go, wasn’t the most far-fetched.
In fact, by 1854, the North was far more populous than the South – it had almost double the South’s
Congressional representation – but in spite of this advantage, Congress had just passed a law
extending the power of slave states, and potentially, because two new states meant four new
senators, making the Federal Government even more pro-slavery! And to Abolitionists, that didn’t
really seem like democracy.
The other reason that many Northerners cared enough about Kansas and Nebraska to abandon
their old party loyalties was that having them become slave states was seen as a threat to
Northerners’ economic self-interest.
Remember, the West was seen as a place where individuals, specifically white individuals, could
become self-sufficient farmers. As Lincoln wrote, “The whole nation is interested that the best use
be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be,
to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them… New free States are the places
for poor people to go to and better their condition.”
So the real question was, would these Western territories have big, slave-based plantations, like
happened in Mississippi, or small family farms full of frolicking free white people, like happened in
Thomas Jefferson’s imagination?
So the new Republican party ran its first presidential candidate in 1856, and did remarkably well –
John C. Frémont, from California, picked up 39% of the vote, all of it from the North and West, and
lost to the Democrat James Buchanan, who had the virtue of having spent most of the previous
decade in Europe, and thus not having a position on slavery.
I mean, let me take this opportunity to remind you that James Buchanan’s nickname was “The Old
Public Functionary.”
Bleeding Kansas (6:08)
Meanwhile, Kansas was trying to become a state by holding election in 1854 and 1855. I say
“trying”, because these elections were so fraudulent that they would be funny, except that
everything stopped being funny, like, 12 years before the Civil War, and it doesn’t get really funny
again until Charlie Chaplin. Ah, Charlie Chaplin, thank you for being in the public domain and giving
us a much needed break from a nation divided against itself, discovering that it cannot stand.
Right, so part of the Kansas problem was that hundreds of so-called “Border Ruffians” flocked to
Kansas from pro-slavery Missouri, to cast ballots in Kansas elections. Which led to people coming
in from free states, and setting up their own rival governments. Fighting eventually broke out and
more than 200 people were killed; in fact, in 1856, pro-slavery forces laid siege to anti-slavery
Lawrence, Kansas, with cannons.
One particularly violent incident involved the murder of an entire family by an anti-slavery zealot
form New York, named John Brown. He got away with that murder, but hold a minute – we’ll get to
him.
Anyway, in the end, Kansas passed to two constitutions, because, you know, that’s a good way to
get started as a government. The pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution was the first that went to the
U.S. Congress, and it was supported by Stephen Douglas as an example of popular sovereignty at
work – except that the man who oversaw the voting in Kansas called it a “vile fraud.”
Congress delayed Kansas’ entry into the Union – because Congress’ primary business is delay –
until another, more fair, referendum took place, and after that vote, Kansas eventually did join the
U.S. as a free state in 1861, by which time it was frankly too late.
Dred Scott v. Sanford (7:32)
All right, so while all this craziness was going in Kansas and Congress, the Supreme Court was
busy rendering the worst decision in its history. Oh, hi there, Dred Scott!
Dred Scott had been a slave, whose master had taken him to live in Illinois and Wisconsin, both of
which barred slavery, so Scott sued, arguing that if slavery was illegal in Illinois, then living in Illinois
made him definitionally not a slave.
The case took years to find its way to the Supreme Court, and eventually, in 1857, Chief Justice
Roger B. Taney from Maryland handed down his decision. The Court held that Scott was still a
slave, but it went even further, attempting to settle the slavery issue once and for all.
Taney ruled that black people “had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an
inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political
relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and
that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
So, that is an actual quote, from an actual decision by the Supreme Court of the United States of
America. Wow.
I mean, Taney’s ruling basically said that all black people anywhere in the United States could be
considered property, and that the Court was in the business of protecting that property. This meant
that a slave owner could take his slaves from Mississippi and Massachusetts, and they would still
be slaves.
Which meant that technically, there was no such thing as a free state – at least, that’s how people in
the North, especially Republicans, saw it. But the Dred Scott decision helped convince even more
people that the entire government – Congress, President Buchanan, and now, the Supreme Court
– were in the hands of the dreaded Slave Power.
Mystery Document (9:13)
Oh, we’re going to do the Mystery Document now? Stan, I am so confident about today’s mystery
document, that I am going to write down my guess right now… and I’m going to put it in this
envelope, and then when I’m right, I want a prize! All I ever get is punishment, I want prizes!
Ok, the rules here are simple: I guess the author of the mystery document. I already did that. And
then I get rewarded for being right.
Alright, total confidence, let’s just read this thing. And then I get my reward.
“I look forward to the days when there shall be a servile insurrection in the south, when the black
man… shall assert his freedom and wage a war of extermination against his master; when the torch
of the incendiary shall light up the towns and cities of the South, and blot out the last vestige of
slavery. And though I may not mock at their calamity, nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet I will
hail it as the dawn of a political millennium.”
I was right! Right here, guessed in advance, John Brown! [buzz indicating John was wrong] What?!
STAN! Ohio congressman Joshua Giddings? Seriously, Stan?
Whatever, I’m going to talk about John Brown anyway.
John Brown(10:25)
In 1859, John Brown led a disastrous raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry hoping capture
guns and then give them to slaves who would rise up and use those guns against their masters. But
Brown was an awful military commander and not a terribly clear thinker in general and the raid was
an abject failure. Many of the party were killed, he was captured, and he stood trial and was
sentenced to death. Thus he became a martyr to the abolitionist cause which is probably what he
wanted anyway. On the morning of his hanging, he wrote: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain
that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
Well, he was right about that. But in general, any statement that begins “I, comma, my name”
nyihhh.
Presidential Election(11:05)
And so the state was set for one of the most important presidential elections in American history:
dun duh duh dun duh daaaaaaa! [holding Lincoln’s head]
In 1860, the Republican party chose as its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whose hair and upper
forehead you can see here. He’d proved his eloquence, if not his electability, in a series of debates
with Stephen Douglas when the two were running for the Senate in 1858. Lincoln lost that election,
but the debates made him famous and he could appeal to immigrant voters because he wasn’t
associated with the Know-Nothings.
The Democrats on the other hand, were, to a historian term, a hot mess. The Northern wing of the
party favored Stephen Douglas but he was unacceptable to voters in the Deep South so Southern
Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, making the Democrats, the last remaining
truly national party no longer truly a national party. A third party, the Constitutional Union Party,
dedicated to preserving the Constitution, quote “as it is”, i.e. including slavery, nominated John Bell
of Tennessee. Abraham Lincoln received zero votes in nine American states but he won 40% of the
overall popular vote, including majorities in many of the most populous states, thereby winning the
Electoral College. So anytime a guy becomes president who literally did not appear on your ballot,
there is likely to be a problem.
The Beginning of the Civil War(12:19)
And indeed Lincoln’s election led to a number of southern states seceding from the Union. Lincoln
himself hated slavery but he repeatedly said he would leave it alone in the states where it is existed.
But the demographics of Lincoln’s election showed Southerners and Northerners alike that slave
power, to whatever extent it had existed, was over.
By the time he took office on March 1, 1861, seven states had seceded and formed the
Confederate States of America and the stage was set for the fighting to begin, which it did when
Southern troops fired upon the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12,
1861.
So that’s when the Civil War started but it became inevitable earlier, maybe in 1857 or maybe in
1850 or maybe in 1776 or maybe in 1619 when the first African slaves arrived in Virginia. Because
here’s the thing: In the Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Taney said that black Americans had “no
rights which the white man was bound to respect.” But this was demonstrably false! Black men had
voted in elections and held property including even slaves, they’d appeared in court on their own
behalf, they’d had rights, they’d expressed those rights when given the opportunity! And the failure
of the United States to understand that the rights of black Americans were as inalienable as those
of white Americans is ultimately what made the Civil War inevitable. So next week, it’s off to war we
go. Thanks for watching.
Outro (13:41)
CrashCourse is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko, the
show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself. Our associate producer
is Danica Johnson and our graphics team is Thought Café.
Usually there’s a libertage but there wasn’t one this week because of stupid Chief Justice Roger
Taney. However, please suggest captions in the comments where you can ask questions about
today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians.
Thank you for watching CrashCourse: US History and as they say in my hometown of Nerdfighteria,
don’t forget to be awesome.
Hi, I’m John Green. This is Crash Course US History, and today we’re gonna discuss how The
United States came to acquire two of its largest States – Texas, and there is another one.
Past John: “Mr. Green! Mr. Green! I believe the answer you’re looking for… is Alaska.”
Present John: Oh, me from the past, as you can clearly tell from the globe, Alaskan statehood never
happened. No, I am referring, of course, to California.
Stan, are we using your computer today? Doh, Stan!
We talked about Western expansion a few of times here on Crash Course, but its usually about,
like, Kentucky or Ohio. This time we’re going really West, I mean, not like Hawaii west, but sea to
shining sea West.
[intro music]
Manifest Destiny (0:41)
So you might remember that journalist John O’Sullivan coined the phrase “manifest destiny” to
describe America’s God given right to take over all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans regardless of who might be living there. Sorry, Native Americans, Mexicans, French fur
trappers, beavers, bison, prairie dogs, passenger pigeons.
I’m not gonna give so far as to give God credit about America’s internal imperialism but I will say
our expansion had a lot to do with economics, especially when you consider Jefferson’s ideas
about the empire of liberty. Dan, did I just say “liberty?” That means technically I also have to talk
about slavery but we’re gonna kick the slavery can down the road until later in the show, just like
American politicians did in the 19th century.
By 1860 nearly 300,000 people had made trip that has since then been immortalized by the classic
educational video game Oregon Trail, which by the way is inaccurate in the sense that a family of
six, even a very hungry one, cannot eat a buffalo. But is extremely accurate in that a lot of people
died of dysentery and cholera. Frickin’ disease.
So Oregon at the time was jointly controlled by the US and Britain. Northern Mexico at the time
included what are now Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and California. But New Mexico
and California were the only two, with like big settlements – about 30,000 Mexicans lived in New
Mexico and about 3,500 in California, and in both places they were outnumbered by Native
Americans. Ok. let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble (1:59)
When Mexico became independent there were only about 2,000 Tejanos there, so, to encourage
economic development, Mexico’s government granted a huge tract of land to Moses Austin.
Austin’s son Steven made a tidy profit selling off smaller parcels of that land until there were 7,000
American Americans there. This made Mexico nervous, so, backpedaling furiously, Mexico annulled
the land contracts and banned further immigration into Texas.
Even though slavery was already abolished in Mexico, up to now they had allowed Americans to
bring slaves. Austin, joined by some Tejano elites demanded greater autonomy and the right to use
slave labor. Thinking the better of it, Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna decided to
assert control over the rest of the territory with an army turning the elites’ demand for autonomy
into a full-scale revolt for independence.
On March 13th, 1836, Santa Anna defeated the American defenders of the Alamo, killing 187 or
188, sources differ, Americans including Davy Crockett. The Texas rebels would “remember the
Alamo,” and come back to defeat Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, and Mexico was forced
to recognize Texas’ independence.
So Texas became the Lone Star Republic and quickly decided that it would much better to be a
less lonely star and join the United States. So in 1837 Texas’ congress called for union, but all they
heard back was “Not so fast, Texas.” Why? Because Texas wanted to be a slave state, and adding
another slave state would disrupt the balance in the Senate, so Jackson and Van Buren did what
good politicians always do: they ignored Texas.
And then after Martin Van Buren wrote a letter denouncing any plans to annex Texas on the
grounds it would probably provoke a war, Democratic convention southerners threw their support
behind slave-holding Andrew Jackson pal, James K. Polk. Polk just managed to get a presidential
victory over perennial almost-president Henry Clay and seeing the writing on the wall, Congress
annexed Texas in March of 1845, days before Polk took office. Congress then forged an agreement
with Britain to divide Oregon at the 49th parallel, which restored the slave state-free state balance
in the Senate. Thanks, Thought Bubble.
The Mexican-American War (3:58)
Hey Stan, can I get the foreshadowing filter? I wonder if we’re going to be able to keep that slave
state-free state balance… forever.
The land-hungry James K. Polk had another goal as president: acquire California from Mexico. He
tried to purchase it from Mexico, but they were like, “No,” which is Spanish for no. So, Polk decided
to do things the hard way. He sent troops under future president Zachary Taylor into this disputed
border region. As expected – by which I mean intended – fighting broke out between American and
Mexican forces. Polk, in calling for a declaration of war, proclaimed that the Mexicans had quote,
“shed blood upon American soil,” although the soil in question was arguably not American, unless
you think of America as being, you know, all of this.
The majority of Americans supported this war, although, to be fair, a majority of Americans will
support almost any war. I’m sorry, but it is – it’s true. At least at first!
It was the first war fought by American troops primarily on foreign soil, as most of the fighting was
done in Mexico. Among the dissenters was a Massachusetts transcendentalist, who was probably
better known than the war itself. Henry David Thoreau was in fact thrown in jail for refusing to pay
taxes in protest of the war, and wrote On Civil Disobedience in his defense, which many American
high schools are assigned to read and expected not to understand, lest they take the message to
heart and stop doing assignments like reading On Civil Disobedience.
Another critic was concerned about the increase in executive power that Polk seemed to show,
saying, “Allow the president to invade a neighboring country whenever he shall deem it necessary
to repel an invasion, and you allow him to make war at pleasure.” That critic was none other than
noted peacenik Abraham Lincoln, who would go on to do more to expand executive power than
any president in the 19th century, except maybe Andrew Jackson.
Right, so Santa Anna’s army was defeated in February 1847, but Mexico refused to give up, so
Winfield Scott, who had the unfortunate nickname “Old Fuss and Feathers,” captured Mexico City
itself in September. A final peace treaty – the Peace Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo – was signed in
1848, under which Mexico confirmed the annexation of Texas and further ceded California as well
as several other places that would later become states but we couldn’t fit on the map.
In return, the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million and agreed to a no-backsies deal in re: Texas, thereby
freeing Mexico from the shackles of Amarillo. I’m sorry, Amerillans. No, I’m not. I am. I’m – I am. I’m
not. I am!
This is great, Stan, the people of Amarillo hate me, also the people of New Jersey, Alaska is in the
green parts of not-America. We don’t even have Arizona and New Mexico on the chalkboard. Pretty
soon, I will have alienated everyone.
Nativism (6:20)
Anyway, thanks to the land from Mexico, our dream of expanding from the Atlantic to the Pacific
was finally complete, and as always happens when dreams come true, trouble started. After the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, between 75,000 and 100,000 Spanish-speaking Mexicans and
150,000 Native Americans were under the jurisdiction of the United States. Despite the fact that the
treaty granted Spanish-descended Mexican male citizens legal and property rights, the Mexicans
were still seen as inferior to Anglo-Saxons, whose manifest destiny was, of course, to overspread
the continent.
And the fact that these Mexicans were Catholic didn’t help either, especially because in the eastern
part of the United States, there was a rising tide of anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant sentiment known
as nativism. And there was a new political party, the American Party, dedicated entirely to such
sentiment. They were referred to as the Know-Nothings, because when you asked them about their
politics, they would answer that they didn’t know anything. And, indeed, they didn’t.
This was not an expert branding strategy, although they did manage to win an unexpected number
of local offices in a state heralded for its ignorance, Massachusetts. You thought I was going to say
New Jersey, but I’m trying to make nice with the New Jersey people because they take it pretty
personally.
Meanwhile, in California, there weren’t enough white, English-speaking American residents to apply
for statehood until gold was discovered in 1848, leading, of course, to San Francisco’s NFL team:
the San Francisco 48ers. By 1852, the non-Indian population in California had risen from 15,000 to
200,000 and it was 360,000 on the eve of the Civil War.
Now, not all of those migrants – mainly young men seeking their fortunes – were white. Nearly
25,000 Chinese people migrated to California, most as contract workers working for mining and
railroad companies. And there were women, too, who ran restaurants and worked as cooks and
laundresses and prostitutes, but the ratio of men to women in California in 1860 was 3 to 1.
Ahh, schmerg, it’s time for the Mystery Document?
Mystery Document (8:08)
The rules here are simple. I read the Mystery Document, and I’m either shocked by electricity or by
the fact that I got it right.
“We would beg to remind you that when your nation was a wilderness, and the nation from which
you sprung barbarous, we exercised most of the arts and virtues of civilized life; that we are
possessed of a language and a literature, and that men skilled in science and the arts are numerous
among us; that the productions of our manufactories, our sail and workshops, form no small share
of commerce of the world; and that for centuries, colleges, schools, charitable institutions, asylums,
and hospital shave been as common as in your own land (…) And we beg to remark, that so far as
the history of our race in California goes, it stamps with the test of truth that we are not the
degraded race you would make us.”
So, it’s someone who said “We had a great civilization when you were a wilderness,” plus they
called us barbarous, so it’s either ancient Rome or China. I’m gonna lean toward China. That only
gets me halfway there. Now I have to think of the name of the person and I [sings] don’t know any
famous people from mid-19th century China who lived in the U.S. People say I can’t sing.
Norman Asing?! Who the hell is Norman Asing? ‘S does is – ahhAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
Free Soil and the Missouri Compromise (9:20)
So these days, California is known for its groovy, laid-back, “Oh, your back hurts? Here’s some
pot” attitude, but that was not the case in the 19th century. The California constitution of 1850
limited civil participation to whites. No Asians, no black people or Native Americans could vote or
testify in court. Indians were kicked off their land if it had any mineral value, and thousands of their
orphaned children were sold as slaves. And all of this led to the Indian population of California
dropping from 150,000 to about 30,000 between 1848 and 1860.
So it wasn’t at all clear whether California was the kind of place to be admitted to the U.S. as a free
state or as a slave state. The Missouri Compromise was of no help here, because half of California
is below the 36°30′ line, and half is above it.
So, a new Free Soil Party formed in 1848 calling for the limiting of slavery’s expansion in the West
so that it could be open for white people to live and work. I just want to be clear that most of the
people who were for limiting slavery were not, like, un-racist. So they nominated the admirably
whiskered Martin Van Buren for the presidency, and Van Buren and Democratic nominee Lewis
Cass then split the northern vote, allowing the aforementioned Zachary Taylor to win.
So, in 1850, when California finally did ask to be admitted into the Union, it was as a free state.
Southerners freaked out, because they saw it as the beginning of the end of slavery, but then, to
the rescue came Henry Clay for his last hurrah. He said, “we can kick this problem down the road
once more” and brokered a four-part plan that became known rather anticlimactically as the
Compromise of 1850. Historians, can you name nothing?!
The four points were:
1) California would be admitted as a free state,
2) the slave trade – but not slavery – would be outlawed in Washington D.C.,
3) a new super harsh fugitive slave law would be enacted, and
4) popular sovereignty. The idea was that in the remaining territories taken from Mexico, the local
white inhabitants could decide for themselves whether the state would be slave or free when it
applied to be part of the United States. Ah, the Compromise of 1850. A great reminder that nothing
protects the rights of minorities like the tyranny of the majority.
There was a huge debate over the bill in which noted asshat John C. Calhoun was so sick that he
had to have his pro-slavery anti-Compromise remarks read by a colleague. On the other side, New
York Senator William Seward, an abolitionist, also argued against compromise, based on slavery
being – you know – wrong. But eventually, the Compromise did pass, thus averting a greater crisis
for 10 whole years.
Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that if the United States acquired part of Mexico, it would be like
swallowing arsenic. And indeed, arsenic can be a slow-acting poison. Now, I don’t think Ralph
Waldo Emerson was a good enough writer to have thought that far ahead, but he was right. Some
people say that manifest destiny made the Civil War inevitable, but as we’ll see next week, what
really made the Civil War inevitable was slavery.
But we see in the story of manifest destiny the underlying problem: the United States didn’t govern
according to its own ideals. It didn’t extend liberties to Native Americans or Mexican Americans, or
immigrant populations, or slaves. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next week… when things
will get much worse!
Credits (12:14)
Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko.
The show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself. Our associate
producer is Danica Johnson. And our graphics team is Thought Cafe.
If you’d like to contribute to the Libertage, you can suggest captions. You can also ask questions in
comments where they will be answered by our team of historians.
Thank you for watching Crash Course, and as we say in my home town, don’t forget to be
awesome.
2/27/2020 The U.S.-Mexican War . The Aftermath of War . ‘Apuntes’ and the Lessons of History | PBS
https://web.archive.org/web/20171027012251/http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/aftermath/apuntes.html 1/2
The Aftermath of War
“‘Apuntes’ and the Lessons of History”
A Conversation with Jesús Velasco-Márquez
Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México
Tell us about the group of writers who published a book on the war within just a few weeks of General
Winfield Scott’s departure from Mexico City?
These fifteen writers created a book called “Apuntes para la historia de la guerra entre México y los Estados
Unidos” (“Notes on the History of the War between Mexico and the United States”). They were young men who
had participated in the war, who had lived it. They had served in the National Guard and witnessed the capture
of Mexico City. Ideologically, they were all liberals.
After the U.S. Army occupied Mexico City, they fled to Querétaro with the
country’s provisional government. It was there that they decided to collect
material that not only included their personal experiences but also other
documents in order to examine the causes of the war. They wanted to
understand why Mexico had lost the war and the nation’s territory. They
wanted to present this study in the form of “Apuntes” so that the information
could serve as an example of how to preserve the nation in the future. That is
the great achievement of this work. That the writers hoped it would teach
other generations about the critical moments Mexico had experienced, about
what had led to them, and how we could correct our course in order to
preserve what remained of the territory and the nation.
Later they became politicians and worked together with the generation led by Benito Juárez. Their experiences
during the U.S.-Mexican war helped them when they had to face the French invasion in the 1860s. Eventually
they did carry out the work of consolidating Mexico.
What do you see as the effects of this war?
I think that the war had effects in both countries, both short-term and long-term. In the case of the U.S., I think
that it acquired the territory that it wanted, however, at the expense of laying the foundation for a conflict that
would come later, and that would be very costly: the Civil War. For Mexico, we lost our territory, but the
experience of being invaded gave us, as Mexicans, the necessary elements to think about how to recreate our
country…to consolidate our nation.
In the long-run, I think that the war should leave us with a lesson for both countries, which is that geographically
and historically we are intimately intertwined, and that we can affect each other greatly. Of course, given the
asymmetry of power, the U.S. affects Mexico more. But some Americans already have said it: I think that it is in
the best interest of the U.S. to have a partner who is strong, solid, trustworthy and stable.
I think that becoming familiar with this period of history is extremely important, because history not only helps to
explain the present, but also enables us to learn from the past. As George Santayana would say, those who are
ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20171027012251/http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/index.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20171027012251/http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/biographies/winfield_scott.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20171027012251/http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/war/entrance_to_city_of_mexico.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20171027012251/http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/biographies/benito_juarez.html
2/27/2020 The U.S.-Mexican War . The Aftermath of War . ‘Apuntes’ and the Lessons of History | PBS
https://web.archive.org/web/20171027012251/http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/aftermath/apuntes.html 2/2
When you think about the war, what do you feel?
Basically, I feel tremendously sad that we lost our original territory, and that
the experience of having an invader in our country was so brutal. But, on the
other hand, I do believe — and I agree with the writers of “Apuntes” — that,
as Mexicans, this painful experience forced us to reevaluate our country. I
think that in history nothing ever happens that is totally bad or totally good.
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