AHC: The United States includes all of North America

Okay... and, theoretically, if some things in history happened in an alternate way, those things could happen, whether or not they would be good for the USA? There are very good reasons several things in history either didn't happen or almost didn't happen. That doesn't mean those things happening would be ASB.
It does when those things happening can significantly alter beyond recognition the polity concerned. General suspicion of Catholics and hostility toward mixed race peoples in the nineteenth century make taking much more of Mexico unlikely, and the circumstances surrounding Cuba would have to probably be very different too.
 
It does when those things happening can significantly alter beyond recognition the polity concerned. General suspicion of Catholics and hostility toward mixed race peoples in the nineteenth century make taking much more of Mexico unlikely, and the circumstances surrounding Cuba would have to probably be very different too.
Exactly. But unlikely =/= ASB. ASB is shorthand for "this could only happen if alien space bats literally came down from the sky with this as their sole objective."
 
It does when those things happening can significantly alter beyond recognition the polity concerned. General suspicion of Catholics and hostility toward mixed race peoples in the nineteenth century make taking much more of Mexico unlikely, and the circumstances surrounding Cuba would have to probably be very different too.

I've yet to read up on the Catholicism concerns, but from what I've read on the mixed race thing suggests such concerns are rather overblown. The most vocal of attacks on this point was from Calhoun and his allies who, by 1847, were strenuously against large annexations for fear of their effect on slave power , and used the mixed race bit as a means of appealing to White Northerners via racial solidarity. If you look outside of this bloc, you see the general view of the whole affair appears fairly neutral to outright in favor of such a thing: Boston Newspapers made erotic poetry concerning it, The Democratic Review essentially did the same, and after the war there developed a large upper class as a result of marriages between Anglo men and native Hispanic women in the new territories. The United States Army in Mexico City, by Edward S. Wallace (Military Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Autumn, 1949), pp. 158-166) also spends quite a bit of time talking about the socialization that occurred during the occupation, in particular how common courtships via dances and such were.
 
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