The Texan War of Independence left the newly formed republic in deep debt. Only a year after forming, the Texan Government sold all lands North of 36-30 to the United States of America and everything East of the Sabine to the Confederation of Southern America. However, it was clear that these sales would not be enough to keep the nation afloat, especially with Mexico still restive.
Meanwhile, in the new Confederation of Southern America, the commander of the victorious Southern Forces, General Andrew Jackson, was elected first president of the CSA. It would be in his second term as president that the Texas issue would come to resolution.
The Republic of Texas faced crippling debts at the end of their War of Independence. While sales of territory north of 36-30 to the USA and of the Sabine strip to the equally newborn CSA helped, they were not nearly enough. Within a few years of independence, the forces of Southern Annexation gained ascendency in 1840 in the Texas Legislature, and the Jackson Administration was more than willing to oblige.
The Annexation of Texas led almost inexorably to the War of the Rio Grande, pitting the United States of Mexico against the Confederation of Southern America. Many military historians the world over use the Southron campaign as an example of brilliant military tactics and strategy in the 19th century, culminating in the conquest of Mexico City. The defeated forces of the Mexican government were forced to cede to the Confederation the land north of the Rio Grande and thence north of the 31st parallel running west to the 112th meridian and then following a line Northwest to where the paralllel 32-30 crosses the Colorado River, and thence due west along 32-30 to the Pacific. This gave Texas it's desired border at the Rio Grande, the Confederation of Southern America a Western corridor to the Pacific, and Mexico retention of most of its populated regions as well as a land corridor to Baja California, which it sought to keep out of Southron hands for fear of having the CSA along not only it's northern border but also western border, which might tempt the CSA towards further expansion south some day, or so the reasoning in Mexico City went.
Contemporaneously with the War of the Rio Grande, American expatriots in Northern Alta California rose up to declare their independence as the short lived Republic of California. The pro-American rebels in this region immediately sought their annexation by the USA, even writing it into their constitution.
Reaction to the Texan Annexation, War of the Rio Grande, and the Californian Republic was definitely mixed and threatened to lead to war between the USA and the CSA at one point.
While some Americans still longed to see the return of the Louisiana Purchase below 36-30, most Americans realized this was a forlorn hope, and Midwesterners were much more concerned with preservation of the Mississippi as an international waterway with Right of Deposit continuing in New Orleans, as had been ensconsed in the treaty ending the War of 1812 and reconfirmed by the CSA as part of the deal for recognition and aid by the USA during their successful revolution against Britain. The annexation of Texas, a fellow slave-owning republic with numerous Southron expatriots, was seen as a natural outcome and most Americans, if not thrilled with Southern expansion, accepted it after the Republic of Texas had sold their territory north of 36-30 to the United States. However, the treaty with Mexico ceding not only Texan claims but also Alta California en toto to the CSA was alarming to many Americans, to whom any extension of slavery north of 36-30 seemed unnatural. Thus many Americans were thankful and even enthusiastic when American expatriots declared the Republic of California and supported its annexation to the USA.
However, the CSA did not see why they should accept the closing of their Pacific corridor, ceded by treaty and won by Southron blood, to their neighbor to the north simply because of a few frontiersmen in the Sacramento River region and a few US warships in the Bay (an oversimplificated view of the CSA public as US troops had been on higher alert all along the border with the CSA and Mexico since the start of the War of the Rio Grande). While fire-eaters on both sides called for no compromise on California, cooler heads prevailed. On the Southron side it was recognized that the larger, more industrialized USA would be a more formidable opponent then it had been in 1812 and then Mexico had been in 1841, and that yet another war, this one likely more protracted, would be potentially ruinous to the CSA's finances. On the American side, the speed and ease with which the Confederation had brought Mexico to its knees was intimidating, and the potential closure of the Mississippi to Midwesterners untenable, even for the gamble of gaining all of California and maybe even the Louisiana region (the prospect of which also posed its own set of problems with how entrenched slavery had become there over the past generation).
So it was that cooler heads prevailed and the CSA and USA agreed to divide Alta California by extension of their natural border of 36-30. This allowed the Confederation the Pacific port at San Diego, and the United States the San Francisco Bay and points north, where the sentiment for American annexation were strongest. With this accord the final border between the CSA and USA emerged.
Jackson had been born in the Carolinas only weeks after his father's death, and was raised by his mother alongside his brother. After the Southern America Act of 1774, his family moved west of the Appalachians to take advantage of the new frontier. Like many others on the frontier, they abstained from participation in the American Rebellion, though it is said that the young Jackson followed news of the fighting most avidly, even then showing his penchant for matters martial.
