AHC: smaller Texas

I've toyed with a scenario where Texas is quickly crushed in 1836, followed by the Whigs winning 1844 or some other helping factors which combine to delay the Mexican-American War until the mid-1850s or so, at which point Santa Anna or (or someone like him) has become interested in settling the Mexican frontier to prevent more Texases from emerging. This is, of course, much too late to densely settle California and Texas, but he gets a moderately high Mexican population in the Rio Grande Valley and the San Diego region. A Mexican-American War happens in ~1855, possibly after a border incident as OTL, or something more fabricated, but it happens either way. After a war of roughly the same length and difficulty as OTL, the cession is somewhat smaller than OTL, with *Texas (which is now somewhat empty with a token settler population) having it's border at the OTL Nueces Strip or somewhere slightly more northerly, and *California largely being Alta California and Nuevo Mexico north of N35 to avoid the densely populated *San Diego region below. Too be terribly fair I'm not sure how much avoiding large Mexican cities was considered in OTL's cession but given that almost everything we took was nearly empty and neatly avoided running into areas with larger Mexican populations such as Sonora.

Texas, maybe, even the rest of Alta California south of a certain point, maybe too, but not getting the fine port of San Diego would be pretty stupid. Americans thought it was almost as important as San Francisco.
 
Texas keeps just the territory Mexico recognized as Tejas.
That was my thought for a realist scenario. IOTL the Mexican government that took over after they deposed Santa Anna after his debacle in Texas refused to treat with the Texas government. I think had they agreed to treat with Sam Houston's government, they could have re-negotiated the treaties of Velasco, recognizing Texas to the Nueces River.
 
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