Mexican-American War              Documents

Document A

Zachary Taylor, Letter on Mexico and Congress, 1847

I presume atrocity of some kind or other will grow out of our taking the city and laying it under contribution, which the Mexicans say has been done, and should they acquiesce in considerable of territory, it will produce great strife in the streets, when atrocity is laid before that body for their action. The Wilmot Proviso will shake that body to its center...but I hope some compromise will be entered into between the two parties slavery and anti slavery which will have the effect of allying violent passions on both sides, which will have the effect of perpetuating...or shortening the Union.

Document B

Abraham Lincoln, Speech on Kansas-Nebraska Act, March 21, 1854

"Slavery pressed entirely up to the old western boundary of the State, and when, rather recently, a part of that boundary, at the north-west was, moved out a little farther west, slavery followed on quite up to the new line . . .Will the disposition of the people prevent it?

The facts of its presence, and the difficulty of its removal will carry the vote in its favor . . .

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories."

Document C

Trist Treaty, April, 1846

"The boundary line between the two Republics shall commence in the Gulf of Mexico, three leagues from land, opposite the mouth of the Rio Grande . . .from thence . . .to the point where it strikes the southern boundary of New Mexico . . .westwardly, along the whole southern boundary of New Mexico . . .northward, along the western line of New Mexico until it intersects the first branch of the river Gila . . .down the middle . . .until it empties into the Rio Colorado . . .across the Rio Colorado . . .to the Pacific Ocean.

Mexicans now established in territories belonging to Mexico, and which remain for the future within the limits of the U.S., as defined by the present treaty, shall be free to continue where they now reside . . ."

Document D

James K. Polk, Declaration of war against Mexico, 1846

"In my message at the commencement of the present session I informed you that upon the earnest appeal both of the Congress and convention of Texas I had ordered an efficient military force to take a position "between the Nueces and Del Norte." This had become necessary to meet a threatened invasion of Texas by the Mexican forces, for which extensive military preparations had been made. The invasion was threatened solely because Texas had determined, in accordance with a solemn resolution of the Congress of the United States, to annex herself to our Union, and under these circumstances it was plainly our duty to extend our protection over her citizens and soil."

Document E

 Map of Compromise of 1850

Document F

 James Shields, Letter on the Compromise of 1850, 1850

The Compromise is not a pro-Slavery measure. It is opposed most violently by the South, and it will be beat by the South -- and not least because they consider it a virtual enactment of the Wilmot provision -- as it is -- but what will turn up after it is beat God only knows.

Document G

Charles Sumner, On the Crime against Kansas, 1856

But not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was " measured," the Senator in the unrestrained chivalry of his nature, has undertaken to apply opprobrious words to those who differ from him on this floor. He calls them "sectional and fanatical;" and opposition to the usurpation in Kansas he denounces as "an uncalculating fanaticism." To be sure these charges lack all grace of originality, and all sentiment of truth; but the adventurous Senator does not hesitate. He is the uncompromising, unblushing representative on this floor of a flagrant sectionalism, which now domineers over the Republic, and yet with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position unable to see himself as others see him -- or with an effrontery which even his white head ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who resist his sectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men who strive to bring back the Government to its original policy, when Freedom and not Slavery was sectional, he arraigns as sectional. This will not do. It involves too great a perversion of terms. I tell that Senator that it is to him self, and to the "organization" of which he is the "committed advocate," that this epithet belongs. I now fasten it upon them. For myself, I care little for names; but since the question has been raised here, I affirm that the Republican party of the Union is in no just sense sectional, but, more than any other party, national; and that it now goes forth to dislodge from the high places of the Government the tyrannical sectionalism of which the Senator from South Carolina is one of the maddest zealots.

Document H

Congress Resolution for the Admission of Texas into the Union, 1845

Therefore-
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States
of America in Congress assembled, That the State of Texas shall be one,
and is hereby declared to be one, of the United States of America, and
admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in
all respects whatever.