INTRO NOTE BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
The plight of Mexican illegals has a long and mostly forgotten history.
James K. Polk (11th president), THE IMPERIALIST SCOURGE OF MEXICO, a Democrat, was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina on November 2, 1795. He was the first President born in North Carolina.
Editor's Note
MOST AMERICANS DON'T KNOW IT, AND PROBABLY, DO NOT CARE, ALTHOUGH DECENCY ALWAYS BEATS IN MANY AMERICAN HEARTS, BUT THE FACT REMAINS THAT, AS MANY "MEXICAN ILLEGALS" OR "NO DOCUMENTADOS" HAVE OFTEN REMINDED THEIR UNWELCOMING HOSTS, THEY DID NOT SO MUCH CROSS THE BORDER AS THE BORDER CROSSED INTO THEIR OWN BACKYARDS. YES, AT LEAST ONE-THIRD OF THE LOWER 48 STATES TERRITORY WAS PLAINLY STOLEN FROM MEXICO IN "WARS OF CHOICE" WAGED BY AN INTERNALLY EXPANDING AMERICAN IMPERIALISM. AND THIS HUGE LAND GRAB, AS WAS AND WOULD BE THE CASE WITH INDIGENOUS AMERICANS, WAS ALSO DEEPLY ROOTED IN RACISM AND CONTEMPT FOR THE "MIXED", SUPPOSEDLY INFERIOR, RACES INHABITING SO MUCH OF THE VIRGIN CONTINENT WHICH THE EUROPEAN HORDE SO GREEDILY COVETED.—PG
A true believer in and ruthless implementer of America’s “Manifest Destiny.”
[dropcap]J[/dropcap]ames Polk’s imperialist philosophy (shared by many other influential figures in US ruling circles and a natural thing for White Europeans who saw Native Americans as less than human) was well known in his time, and so was his legendary determination. Polk attended the University of North Carolina. When he was 17 he had urinary stones. He needed surgery. Dr. McDowell performed the operation. The legs were secured with straps. He was cut open without any pain killer except whisky.
Polk was 5′ 8″ tall. He was a colonel in the Tennessee militia. James Knox Polk met Sarah Childress in 1821, proposing in 1823. He was a workaholic who worked long, long hours. Polk owned slaves. He continued to buy and sell slaves even after he was elected President. Polk won seven straight terms in the House and became Speaker of the House. He was called “Young Hickory” because Andrew Jackson, “Ole Hickory,”was his mentor and both were from Tennessee. Caracas-born liberador Simon Bolivar, who as a cosmopolitan and highly educated man admired the American experiment, also saw quite clearly that the new nation could grow to represent a grave danger to the actual independence of Latin America. It is for that reason that he strove hard, as much a his health allowed him (he died from tuberculosis at 37, in 1830), to concretize the idea of a “United States of Latin America.” In Polk he would have immediately recognized the incarnation of his fears. “The United States,” he once declared, “appears to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” On another occasion, he lamented, “Poor Latin America, so far from God and so close to the United States.” His views were well known to most Latin American leaders, and certainly to Mexico’s. Not surprisingly, seeing the writing on the wall, and the constant stream of lies and provocations designed to pick a fight with a clearly unprepared Mexico, the government of Mexico broke off relations with the United States right after Polk was elected.
Area Mexico ceded to the United States in 1848, minus Texan claims. The Mexican Cession consisted of present-day U.S. states of California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, about half of New Mexico, about a quarter of Colorado, and a small section of Wyoming.
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The war on Mexico was one of the most controversial events during Polk’s administration. Polk had sent General Taylor to southern Texas to stop Mexico from taking land from Texas. There was a small battle between Taylor’s troops and the Mexican Army. Polk said American blood had be shed on American Soil. Some people including John Quincy Adams thought the American Troops were south of the American border and were sent their to start the war. Some people called the Mexican War: Mr. Polk’s War.
The vote for war with Mexico was 19 Senators for war and 13 Senators against the war. It was the closest vote for war in American History. The vote in the House was 79 to 49 for war. It did not take too long for the US to establish its military superiority. Eventually the conflict fabricated by the US ended with a treaty.
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The Mexican Cession of 1848 is a historical name in the United States for the region of the modern day southwestern United States that Mexico “ceded” to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, but had not been part of the areas east of the Rio Grande which had been claimed by the Republic of Texas, though the Texas annexation resolution two years earlier had not specified Texas’s southern and western boundary. The Mexican Cession (529,000 sq. miles) was the third largest acquisition of territory in US history. The largest was the Louisiana Purchase, with some 820,000 sq. miles, followed by the acquisition of Alaska (about 586,000 sq. miles). It is this abject war and ensuing US policies designed to keep corrupt governments in Mexico in power to this day that constitutes the backdrop for the immense human drama of forced Mexican emigration to “the North” which so outrages the native racists. As usual, those who don’t care to learn the historical context of a social issue are bound to be easy prey for demagogs and their own deep-seated prejudices.
—Patrice Greanville is editor in chief of The Greanville Post
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BELOW: A special historical compilation prepared by Chris Schefler
Historical background to the theft of Mexican territory.
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Did you know that until 1848 California, New Mexico and other portions of the Southwest were internationally recognized provinces of free Mexico, until the U.S. decided it wanted those provinces, declared war on Mexico, and stole them? Read on for the chronology of these events, and then ask yourself : "Who are the real illegals in California?"
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| Prior to 1822 |
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What is today Mexico, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and California are all Spanish colonies.
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| 1822 |
Mexican colonists, following the American revolution, rebel against Spain and win their own revolutionary war, making Mexico a free nation just like America.
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| 1844 |
James Polk campaigns for the U.S. presidency, supporting expansion of U.S. territories into Mexico.
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James Polk, on his inauguration night, confides to his Secretary of the Navy that a principal objective of his presidency is the acquisition of California, which Mexico had been refusing to sell to the U.S. at any price.
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Early 1845
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The Washington Union, expressing the position of James Polk, writes: "...who can arrest the torrent that will pour onward to the West? The road to California will be open to us. Who will stay the march...?" "A corps of properly organized volunteers...would invade, overrun, and occupy Mexico. They would enable us not only to take California, but to keep it."
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| Early 1845 |
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John O'Sullivan, editor of the Democratic review writes, "It is Our manifest destiny to overspread the continent ...for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."
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| Early 1845 |
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James Polk promises Texas he will support moving the historical Texas/Mexico border at the Nueces river 150 miles south to the Rio Grande provided Texas agrees to join the union. "The traditional border between Texas and Mexico had been the Nueces River...and both the United States and Mexico had recognized that as the border." (Zinn, p. 148)
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James Polk orders troops to march south of the traditional Texas/Mexico border into Mexican inhabited territory, causing Mexicans to flee their villages and abandon their crops in terror.
"Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into territory inhabited by Mexicans, was clearly a provocation." (Zinn, p. 148)
"President Polk had incited war by sending American soldiers into what was disputed territory, historically controlled and inhabited by Mexicans." (John Schroeder , "Mr. Polk's War")
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| Early 1846 |
Colonel Hitchcock, commander of the 3rd Infantry regiment, writes in his diary: "...the United States are the aggressors....We have not one particle of right to be here....It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it chooses....My heart is not in this business."
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| May 9, 1846 |
President Polk tells his cabinet: "...up to this time...we have heard of no open aggression by the Mexican Army."
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| May 10, 1846 |
Violence erupts between Mexican and American troops south of the Nueces River. Of course Polk claims Mexicans had fired the first shot, but in his famous "spot resolutions" congressman Abraham Lincoln repeatedly challenges president Polk to name the exact "spot" where Mexicans first attacked American troops. Polk never met the challenge.
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| May 11, 1846 |
President Polk urges Congress to declare war on Mexico.
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| May 12, 1846 |
Horace Greeley writes in the New York Tribune: "We can easily defeat the armies of Mexico, slaughter them by thousands, and pursue them perhaps to their capital; we can conquer and "annex" their territory; but what then? Who believes that a score of victories over Mexico, the "annexation" of half of her provinces, will give us more Liberty, a purer Morality, a more prosperous Industry...?
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| 1846 |
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After war is underway, the American press comments:
February 11, 1847. The "Congressional Globe" reports: "...We must march from ocean to ocean....We must march from Texas straight to the Pacific ocean....It is the destiny of the white race, it is the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon Race."
The New York Herald: "The universal Yankee Nation can regenerate and disenthrall the people of Mexico in a few years; and we believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."
American Review writes of Mexicans "yielding to a superior population, insensibly oozing into her territories, changing her customs, and out-living, exterminating her weaker blood."
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| 1846-1848 |
U.S. Army battles Mexico, not just enforcing the new Texas border at the Rio Grande but capturing Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and California (as well as marching as far south as Mexico City).
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| 1848 |
Mexico surrenders on U.S. terms (U.S. takes over ownership of New Mexico, California, an expanded Texas, and more, for a token payment of $15 million, which leads the Whig Intelligencer to report: "We take nothing by conquest....Thank God").
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General Ulysses S. Grant calls the Mexican War "the most unjust war ever undertaken by a stronger nation against a weaker one."
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| SOURCES |
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Primary Source: "We take nothing by conquest, Thank God", in A People's History Of the United States, 1492-Present, Howard Zinn, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. (This book is available on the shelf at virtually every bookstore in America. The New York Times Book Review says it "...should be required reading for a new generation of students...." )
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And now for your main feature…
NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS
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What will it take to bring the American nation to live according to its own propaganda?