My wife is Filipina and the thought of being considered Hispanic is insulting (her family considers themselves Asian first and foremost); so no, a bit more Spanish cultural influence won't change how Filipinos view themselves (especially since Hispanic culture is founded on the near obliteration and then assimilation of native cultures both genetically and socially with Spanish culture so short of genocide and mass intermarriage nothing changes).
AHC: More Hispanic USA
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that POD would actually work to get the op's objectives
annexing it in 1848? there would have been time for enough assimilation/mixing to happen for there not to be a seperate "hispanic" pressure group. mexico as a distinct region with a few states being like canada's quebec in language politics if not secessionism sure, but that'd be more seen as a semi-distinct "white" group as opposed to OTL's hispanic' grouping
This really belongs in pre-1900 but here is why I am still skeptical of the plausibility of All Mexico (at least in 1847-8).
(1) First of all, virtually all the proponents were Democrats and mostly northern Democrats (Cass, Buchanan, Dallas). The Whigs were overwhelmingly opposed not only to taking all Mexico but to taking any new territory (though a majority eventually were willing to ratify the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to end the war and head off the possibility of more annexations or even All Mexico). Given that the Whig party actually controlled the House (whose assent would be required for any Texas-style annexation by joint resolution) and had enough votes to block ratification in the Senate (even without the aid of the Calhounites), it is a trifle misleading to consider the prospect of All Mexico without taking their viewpoint into account!
The best treatment of the movement I have read is Frederick Merk's Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History. Merk wrote in large part as a corrective to John D. P. Fuller's Movement for the Acquisition of All Mexico, 1846-48. (At least twice in the book Merk specifically criticizes Fuller as one of those historians who fell for the notion that the All Mexico agitation was bipartisan. https://books.google.com/books?id=GhYJTaZiuxwC&pg=PA156 and see also p. 218.) To Merk, the All Mexico agitation was a project of the northeastern penny press (with a few echoes in the Northwest like the Illinois State Register). These newspapers served a cosmopolitan readership, largely immigrants, some of them Catholics. "As poyglots they tended to be tolerant of recent arrivals from abroad, and not unwilling to add a few Latin American strains to the promising mixtures already in the nation's melting pot." https://books.google.com/books?id=GhYJTaZiuxwC&pg=PA145 (This was a view not necessarily shared in the rest of the country, especially the South...) In the northwest there were also All Mexico newspapers but more typical were those like the Cincinnati Enquirer that took a more moderate line. https://books.google.com/books?id=GhYJTaZiuxwC&pg=PA148 (Roughly, "we need indemnity, and maybe that can only be obtained by annexing some northern Mexican territories that Mexico can't exercise more than nominal control of, anyway.") Even the Detroit Free Press, a Cass organ, merely said on November 29, 1847 that there would be time enough to decide whether Mexico should become part of the Union "when the actual resident population of Mexico shall seek such a connexion, and when they shall be prepared for it, both morally and politically." https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1832&bih=758&tbm=bks&ei=Qd0LXenZCMi8tgWwm6HoDg&q="shall+seek+such+a+connexion,+and+when+they+shall+be+prepared+for+it"&oq="shall+seek+such+a+connexion,+and+when+they+shall+be+prepared+for+it"&gs_l=psy-ab.3...3217.4857.0.5037.4.4.0.0.0.0.159.526.0j4.4.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.y7qty38n_vM It later argued that all Mexico was "a ridiculous assertion put forth by the whig prints, to furnish whig members of Congress an excuse for refusing to vote supplies. The destruction of the national independence of Mexico was never thought of." https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1827&bih=758&tbm=bks&ei=FOQLXdDmHsi7tgWmvKLIDQ&q="+whig+members+of+Congress+an+excuse+for"++indepndedence&oq="+whig+members+of+Congress+an+excuse+for"++indepndedence&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i10k1.167451.177499.0.178793.19.18.0.0.0.0.359.2629.0j9j2j2.13.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..6.7.1477...33i299k1.0.CWQgAyHw7Fw
In the South (apart form Baltimore, where the press was really an extension of the northeastern penny press) Merk finds little enthusiasm in the press for All Mexico--but also much less "not an inch of territory from this unjust war" characteristic of northern Whig and abolitionist papers. Even in the Southwest, where newspapers like the New Orleans Delta, the New Orleans Mercury, and the St. Louis Union "recommended lusty bites of sparsely settled Mexican territories as far southward as the Sierra Madre Mountains" "[n]one had a sustained taste for all Mexico." https://www.google.com/search?biw=1821&bih=758&tbm=bks&ei=tPcLXYXtDI6uswXbw72IDQ&q="none+had+a+sustained+taste+for+all+mexico"++sierra+sparsely&oq="none+had+a+sustained+taste+for+all+mexico"++sierra+sparsely&gs_l=psy-ab.3...8799.16632.0.16889.15.15.0.0.0.0.209.2104.0j11j2.13.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..2.4.636...33i299k1.0.WlnTZrnFcWg
The Lousiville Democrat is interesting in showing the explicit rejection of All Mexico by a southern newspaper that was neither Whig nor Calhounite but mainstream Democratic. On November 2, 1847 it wrote:
"Whenever organized resistance to our authority ceases, and the country is virtually peaceable, we can dictate our own terms. That they will be generous and beneficent to Mexico, no one doubts. As to the annexation of Mexico to the United States by force, it cannot be done. We don't take States into this Union until the inhabitants desire it, and present their republican constitution with a request for admission. We may annex territories, but the inhabitants must annex themselves by their own act. It will be time enough to annex a Mexican State, or discuss the expediency of it, when such a State applies for admission. This may not happen whilst the present population and influence govern the States of Mexico, but these will change."
On March 9, 1848, in discussing the Trist treaty projet:
"Besides, we have by this treaty, not the best boundary, but all the territory of value that we can get without taking the people. The people of the settled parts of Mexico are a negative quantity. We fear the land, minus the people, is not worth much. We think all Mexico will fall, piece by piece, into this government; but then it must first be settled by a different population, and the union effected by other means than the sword." (Merk, pp. 151-2)
"The people of the settled parts" were indeed the rub for Southerners including--as I will show below-- President Polk. Of course some dreamed of just removing the Indians and mestizos but most realized this was a pipe dream. (Removing seven million Mexicans is rather more difficult than removing 16,000 Cherokees. As for "regenerating" Mexico with intermarriage and immigration, again that would take a long time when you are dealing with the heavily settled parts of Mexico, as opposed to California and New Mexico. Some idealistic Northeasterners thought it could be done relatively quickly but that was certainly not a majority opinion.)
As a recent study notes,
"Most southerners feared that All Mexico was a ploy by northerners – Lewis Cass of Michigan and James Buchanan of Pennsylvania were two major northern politicians who supported All Mexico – to acquire territory, bar slavery, and thus surround the slave states with free states on all sides....All Mexico failed to garner much southern support because few believed forced removal was plausible. Therefore, the United States would be stuck with lands populated by “undesirable” races. The editors of the Pensacola Gazette countered All Mexico proponents by explaining that Mexicans were “not ripe for the blessings which we would confer upon them- the blessings of wise laws and a stable government.” The paper asked readers: “What shall we do? Carry on the war until we force them to be happy?” The nightmare of acquiring a large, mixed-race population would be a frightening reality if supporters of All Mexico had their way. Not only were the Mexicans not enslaved, they had already shown with their guerrilla tactics that they would not docilely submit to American rule. A North Carolina newspaper editorial opined that such an acquisition would “cost our Government a great deal of trouble and money, and, after all, what do we gain? A bankrupt country, with three millions of whites and five millions of stark-naked Indians to be supported.” When Secretary of State James Buchanan advised President Polk that the United States ought to secure the territory as far south as Tamaulipas, even Polk “expressed a doubt as to the policy or practicability of obtaining a country containing so large a number of the Mexican population.” Throughout the war the wholehearted belief by most southerners in the intellectual and moral inferiority of the Mexicans continued, and the thought of extending the liberties of the Constitution to them aroused concern in the South. Representative Edward Cabell of Florida doubted the “black, white, red, mongrel, miserable populations of Mexico- the Mexicans, Indians, Mulattoes, Mestizos, Chinos, Zambos, Quinteros” could ever become “free and enlightened American citizens.”57 Underlying these racist attacks of the All Mexico movement, of course, were fears for the southern social order." https://research.libraries.wsu.edu/...ll_wsu_0251E_11346.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
In short, southerners don't seem to have agreed with you that the issue of race was " overblown." Whatever their disagreements with Calhoun over other issues--including the war itself-- most Southern Democrats agreed with Calhoun when he said:
"I know further, Sir, that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race--the free white race. To incorporate Mexico would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a Union as that!...Are you, any of you, willing that your States should be governed by these twenty-odd Mexican states...a mixed blood equally ignorant and unfit for liberty, not as good as the Cherokees or Choctaws?" Calhoun also harped on the theme that administering Mexico would require precisely the kind of centralized national government the South feared (at least unless it was sure of controlling it!).
Note also the comments of Waddy Thompson, a South Carolina Whig who had spent some time as a diplomat in Mexico: "A friend said to me today that we will not take the people, but the land. Precisely the reverse will be the case; we shall take the people, but no land. It is not the country of a savage people whose lands are held in common, but a country in which grants have been made for three hundred and twenty-five years, many of them two and three hundred miles square...it is all private property, and we shall get no public domain which will pay the cost of surveying it. I speak of the country beyond the Rio Grande. We shall get no land, but we shall add a large population, alien to us in feeling, education, race, and religion..."
(2) What about the Whigs (apart from southern Whigs like Waddy Thompson I have already mentioned)? Merk writes (p. 153):
"Whigs were opposed not only to taking All Mexico, but to taking any, by force. They were consistent in that stand since they regarded the war as an iniquitous aggression against Mexico. One of their number, the eloquent Georgian John M. Berrien, brought a "no territory by conquest" resolution into the Senate early in 1847, for which every Whig present, except one, voted, to a total of 24. The one exception was a Senator from Louisiana. However, the Whigs would have been satisfied to take, in exchange for the assumption by the United States of the prewar damage claims, the Bay of San Francisco. In the Senate fight over the ratification of the peace treaty, Whigs showed a marked reluctance to take Mexican territory by force.
"In the press, the Whigs adhered, for the most part, to the "no conquered territory" stand. The National Intelligencer and the New York Tribune set the pattern. They were willing to have San Francisco in exchange for the assumption of damage claims, but nothing more. A few Whig editors, protesting always that Polk had begun the war, were yet willing to end it by accepting California and New Mexico. Prominent among these were the editors of the New York Courier, the Richmond Times, and the New Orleans Picayune. Their wanderings from the path of party rectitude were jeeringly approved by Democrats. The Baltimore American was even willing to take, in addition to the Californias, territory southward to the Sierra Madre Mountains"--but even that is far from All Mexico.
What about Whig journals that some historians like Fuller have listed as pro-All Mexico? Well, first Merk thinks entirely too much attention has been paid to a publication called the National Whig:
"A maverick among Whig journals was the National Whig, published in Washington. It is of special interest because it was so much cited by Democrats, has produced so much confusion among historians, and still creates dismay among those who would like as believe that the press is a medium of public enlightenment. The paper was ephemeral. It was established in April 1847, suspended publication for a time, and survived only to the spring of 1849. It was created to win the Whig presidential nomination for Taylor. His name appeared on its masthead from the outset, his achievements were glorified, his needs, as President, arranged for in advance. The Mexican War was denounced by the editor as a plot on the part of Polk to perpetuate himself and his party in power. Still, every American in wartime must rally to the flag. Polk had deliberately made the subjugation of Mexico inevitable. The Aztec empire must accordingly fall into our arms. It was not possible to undo the Gordian knot Polk had tied except by cutting it by annexation. "The whole of Mexico is upon us. It is already ours. We have it and we know it not." Congress should declare Mexico ours by right of conquest. It is our duty to close the war by the best method of pacification circumstances will allow. It would be desirable to get out of the war without a foot of Mexican territory, but "the popular voice will so demand the entire appropriation of Mexico that no man will think of opposing it." The virtue of American institutions is to sustain themselves over an indefinite extent of country. "If there is one thing for which they are fitted, it is this very principle." "
"Such a course of enlightenment, intended for Whigs, was unhappily used chiefly by Democrats who sought to convince the electorate,- by publishing well-chosen selections, that even Whigs were demanding All Mexico. These selections came, in later years, under the eyes of historians, and the myth became established that the All Mexico agitation was actually bipartisan."
Another Whig publication--the National Era--was also sometimes listed as pro-All-Mexico, but its editor, Gamaliel Bailey, an antislavery Whig, always denied that he should be grouped together with the Democrats who thought Mexico should be taken by force. Merk, p. 218: "Again and again the editor repudiated with horror the allegations of irresponsible Democrats that he favored an All Mexcio program such as they favored." As I once summed up Bailey's proposal:
"It might be thought that if proslavery Southerners opposed All Mexico as a menace to slavery, antislavery Northerners should have supported it for the same reason. However, the closest thing I have been able to find to this is the proposal of the antislavery *National Era* that the United States should unilaterally declare peace and should *invite* nineteen Mexican states (the ones with sufficient population) to enter the Union as states. That newspaper was convinced that doing this would fatally undermine the Slave Power. The people of these new states would all see to it that their states would remain non-slaveholding, and they were at least as fit for self-government as the hordes of immigrants now pouring into the US from Europe...But in the first place, the *National Era* emphasized that the entrance into the Union had to be voluntary; second, despite this qualification, the idea was denounced by other antislavery forces as "pandering" to the robber spirit of conquest; and third, as one might expect, it was unanimously denounced by Southerners..." https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/us-annexes-mexico.333172/#post-9891475
(Bailey, under attack, claimed that even John Quincy Adams favored the admission of the Mexican states to the Union in order to get new free states which would undermine the power of the South. Actually, "Adams wanted none of Mexico." The gossip that he favored All Mexico originated, characteristically in the irresponsible New York Sun. Merk, pp. 171-2)
In short, where the slavery issue was concerned All Mexico had the worst of both worlds. The majority of Southerners rejected it because they feared it would give votes to an anti-slavery colored race; yet with very few exceptions anti-slavery men from the North opposed it too. Meanwhile moderate Whigs, North and South, thought No Territory was the only way to avoid the explosive debate over the Wilmot Proviso which could otherwise tear the party--and the Union--to pieces .
(3) In my opinion, Polk was not a supporter--"secret" or otherwise--of All Mexico. Obviously it was in the Whigs' interest to allege that he was and in the interest of All Mexico proponents to hope that he was on their side. But while his anger at Mexico's failure to agree to his original peace terms did lead him to seek more (e.g., Baja California and a right of transit to build a canal across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec) that is still a considerable distance from All Mexico. Daniel Walker Howe in What Hath God Wrought summarizes the politics of peacemaking as follows:
"Two other possible scenarios for ending the war found advocates among Democrats outside the administration. Calhoun proposed withdrawing to some easily defensible line, such as that of the Rio Grande. The land north of the chosen line would be annexed, and (he argued) it would not much matter whether the rest of Mexico signed a peace treaty or not, since she would be unable to reconquer the lost provinces.17 The administration disliked Calhoun’s plan because it seemed to acquiesce in sporadic guerrilla fighting along the border, even for generations to come. The most drastic suggestion came from certain wild-eyed northern Democratic imperialists like Robert Stockton, Lewis Cass, and some editors of the northern Democratic penny press. They called for the annexation of all Mexico to the United States. Like Calhoun’s plan, this one also avoided the difficulty of obtaining a peace treaty, since there would be no Mexican Republic left to sign one. Mexico’s natural resources, particularly her silver mines, held considerable attraction. But most southerners abhorred the idea of “All Mexico,” which by incorporating millions of Mexican people, mainly of mixed race, and presumably granting them citizenship, would seriously compromise the nature of the United States as an exclusively white republic. “Ours is the government of the white man,” protested Calhoun in opposition to taking All Mexico.18 The penny press propagandized the cause of All Mexico to immigrant readers who saw no difficulty in ethnic pluralism; the grandiose proposal seemed a logical consequence of the national aggrandizement the papers had touted as a manifest destiny. Several editors claimed the annexation of All Mexico by the United States would “regenerate” the Mexican people.19 Polk had no intention of taking over the entire Mexican population, but tolerated the cause of All Mexico within the Democratic Party; it made his own plans for extensive territorial acquisitions seem modest by comparison. [my emphasis--DT] Within his cabinet the arch-expansionist Robert Walker sympathized with All Mexico, and James Buchanan tried to exploit the movement to promote his presidential prospects..." https://books.google.com/books?id=TTzRCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA798 https://books.google.com/books?id=0XIvPDF9ijcC&pg=PA799
I think Howe's explanation is the most logical one. I already referred to Polk's expressing "a doubt as to the policy or practicability of obtaining a country containing so large a number of the Mexican population." Also note that when Buchanan wanted to add to Polk's statement on war aims a warning to Mexico that if it were stubborn in refusing to make peace, then "we must fulfill that destiny which Providence may have in store for both countries.," Polk rejected it. (His own formulation that if Mexico did not make peace, "our troops must enforce the terms which our honor demands" was admittedly vague, but less ominous.) Finally, when Trist (exceeding his authority) refused to return and got Mexico to agree to the original terms, Polk was disappointed but knew he had to submit the Trist projet to the Senate (he thought that Buchanan also knew that this was inevitable and was only objecting to further his own presidential candidacy). Polk thought that the Whigs, who controlled the House, might argue that this proved their accusation that Polk had started the war for conquest and might refuse grants of more money or men. The army would have to be withdrawn, and if the Whigs won the next presidential election, the US might not even get California or New Mexico.
As Merk remarks (p. 187) Polk's reasons say something about US public opinion--at least as Polk saw it. "They reflect a national reluctance to take more territory than the sparsely populated provinces of California and New Mexico. They suggest Polk's fear that the war's prolongation might imperil retention of even these two. They reflect anxiety in his mind concerning the revolt in his own party against taking more. The picture drawn here differs considerably from the one editors of Manifest Destiny journals were painting of a public desire to annex All Mexico. It casts doubt on the inevitability of any such annexation if the war had continued, which some historians have assumed. It weakens the defenses of Trist by his biographers, who credit him with having preserved the nation from such a disaster..."
Polk's fears may have been warranted. As Howe notes, "By other actions too, the House served notice on the president that he would find it difficult to prolong the war. It refused to pass the excise tax and land-sale measures that Polk hoped would raise some money to prosecute the war, and it never acted on his two requests for more troops. The House also authorized a lower ceiling on federal borrowing than he requested. On the other hand, a radical Whig motion to call off the war unilaterally and simply bring the troops home gained support from only about half the Whig membership and went down to defeat, 41 to 137." https://books.google.com/books?id=TTzRCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA797 But obviously support for that motion could increase dramatically if Polk made All Mexico an object of the war.
(4) On the question of whether the Mexicans would agree to annexation (and remember that the National Era had insisted that this condition be met) certainly the guerrilla warfare suggests the contrary. The All Mexico forces had an answer to that--the Puros were only fighting the Americans to make sure that the US didn't withdraw its troops and to assure that it annexed Mexico! Merk recognizes that some Puros despaired of ever getting the secularization and other reforms they wanted done without annexation by the US, and were therefore willing to accept such annexation, but questions how many of the Puros actually felt this way:
"Their patriot leader, Gomez Farias, was certainly not among them. Quislings usually do not advertise their views, for they fear that the conqueror may depart and that his identifiable friends, who cannot flee with him, will become uncomfortable. Their number in Mexico was naturally thought to be high by expansionists, such as Breese, who were eager for the absorption of Mexico. It was thought to be low by non-expansionists. Too much reliance was not placed by the Polk administration on hopes that the true feelings of the Mexican people were heard in the whisperings of these elements. American reenforcements were sent to Scott's army even after the Trist projet had been approved, to prepare for the contingency of rejection by the Mexican Congress of the changes made in the projet by the American Senate and of a subsequent long guerrilla war, supported by all Mexican elements. Thus the theory of annexation by consent cheerfully given, was less successful in the heart of Mexico than it had been in California and in New Mexico. " https://books.google.com/books?id=GhYJTaZiuxwC&pg=PA224
I notice that to support your contention that the Puros favored annexation, you cite p. 215 of Pedro Santoni, Mexicans at Arms: Puro Federalists and the Politics of War, 1845-1848 who quotes Colonel Hitchcock and Commissioner Trent to this effect. But consider what Santoni writes just three pages later!:
"The opinions of contemporary observers like Colonel Hitchcock and Trist about the puros are also flawed. They failed to recognize the factionalism—which puzzled many politically conscious Mexicans—within the party in late 1847. For example, moderado leader Mariano Rica Palacio com-mented that he did not understand the double conscience of the puro party, in Mexico in favor of annexation and in Queretaro for a war without respite."65 Although some of Gomez Farias' backers harbored annexationist ideas as 1847 came to an end, most puros followed Gpmez Farias' leadership. Gomez Farias' contingent made every effort to insure that hostilities continued with the United States to avoid what they considered to be a dishonorable peace.
"Gomez Farias' Yankeephobia, in fact, remained as resolute in the fall of 1847 as in the more visionary days of 1845. He indicated in an undated letter (probably written in September 1847) that the armistice's failure filled him with joy. Nonetheless, he would be more content if no new negotiations were held until United States troops left Mexican soil. It was preferable to perish, according to Gomez Farias, than to accept a compromise. Gomez Farias later wrote that only a 'continous and determined war, a war without respite, and an eternal war if necessary' would restore Mexican honor and 'remove the stigma' that hung over his people." https://books.google.com/books?id=oDxScBxn-v4C&pg=PA218
Sorry, he doesn't sound like a closet annexationist to me... (And yes, I am sure that some upper-class residents of Mexico City assured General Scott that they would love to become part of the US, but again the question is how representative they were. Getting on well with the occupier has been good business for the well-to-do throughout history. Howe notes that "The early days of the occupation proved harrowing even for hardened veterans. Although the city’s middle class and ruling elite had acquiesced in the surrender, the poorer people, perhaps having less to lose, rose up against the intruders as people in California and New Mexico had done. Those without weapons threw stones and imprecations. After several days of fighting the mob, the army imposed order by a combination of sternness and conciliation, but yanquis who wandered into unfamiliar neighborhoods always did so at some risk..." https://books.google.com/books?id=0XIvPDF9ijcC&pg=PA789)
Anyway, I am not saying whether annexation of Mexico might have been possible under other circumstances. What I am saying is that the All Mexico movement of OTL, which flourished briefly in late 1847 and early 1848, had very little chance of succeeding. This is not to deny that many Americans who rejected All Mexico in 1847-8 believed that in the long run Mexico would enter the Temple of Freedom; but any attempt to force her in prematurely would be disastrous. The ease with which most All Mexico newspapers accepted the final treaty suggests that there was something superficial about their enthusiasm for immediate annexation. (BTW, Merk questions whether even the readers of the northeastern penny press were necessarily pro-All Mexico. After all, people read newspapers for many reasons other than their political views, and maybe readers were just attracted by these papers' lively style, sensationalistic crime news, etc.)
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That's very detailed & well-reasoned, & extremely informative to somebody (like me
{ } ) who knows next to nothing about this. Thx!