Mexican-American War Question(s).

Two bits here...

One: I have read that some in Washington wanted the total annexation of Mexico after the American victory in the war. Is this true? And what Congressmen supported this idea?

Two: Would the loss of the Oregon Territory to the UK make the total annexation more or less likely?
 
One: I have read that some in Washington wanted the total annexation of Mexico after the American victory in the war. Is this true? And what Congressmen supported this idea?

IIRC, only a very few southern senators and representatives looking to angle for additional slave territory. Most were put off by the idea of adding millions of non-Anglophone Catholics to the US population, so the idea was never seriously considered by Congress at large.
 
Senator Edward Hannegan of Indiana seems to be the only one I can identify by name; most texts seem to airily talk about "Northern Democrats" wanting the whole country. Sam Houston and Jefferson Davis both insisted that the USA should take more territory than it did, but I can't find them explicitly saying the USA should annex the whole enchilada. The ringleader of the All-Mexico faction was Treasury Secretary Walker, and it is usually held that the entire administration was for it.

I would expect the loss of Oregon to make full annexation more likely. The entire Democratic Party would go berserk at the thought of Oregon slipping through their fingers and would be grabbing at anything. The Whigs would be opposed in varying degrees for varying reasons, but this is a period of Democratic ascendancy.
 
Two bits here...

One: I have read that some in Washington wanted the total annexation of Mexico after the American victory in the war. Is this true? And what Congressmen supported this idea?

Two: Would the loss of the Oregon Territory to the UK make the total annexation more or less likely?
i can answer 2: it would make the us try harder to annex mexico, but even if america did triumph over mexico in OTL i don't see an annexation as possible.

The mexicans, as i think we all know will fight til the death for their freedom
 
As the first question was thoroughly answered, I'll just add my two cents to the second.

Honestly, I can't see the end result changing much if Oregon went entirely British. American expansion from the time after the War of 1812 until the American Civil War revolved around the idea of a balance of power between the slave states and territories and the free states and territories. Without that huge chunk of territory which would obviously not admit slavery if/once the land became solely American, there would not only be a reluctance to directly annex the entirety of California (I imagine there being a proposal to leave the land south of 36 30, Virginia's southern border (nothing to do with the Compromise of 1850), Mexican, but there would definitely not be a push to annex further land following the Treaty of GH (IE. Gadsen Purchase or more) for a number of reasons. For one, that's more southern territory. Two, the north does not have Oregon (not only a geographic principal but a principal of morale as well -- likely embarrassed about the land being in British hands) and thus would be weaker, leading to more legislation for there to be but one trans-continental railroad in none other but the northern, free, territories despite the best southern efforts to create a second line. After all, the land annexed by Gadsen was for the sole purpose of opening a route for a southern line.

To address the question in a different manner, the fact of not having any bit of Oregon would not provide incentive to gain land elsewhere to compensate, but would instead provide disincentive to annex any more southern land than that which was necessary.

If you want America to gain all or more of Mexico for a scenario you are planning to write, have America either do overwhelmingly better in the War of 1812 or have America fight harder for the 54 40.

MAW Q Map.png

MAW Q Map.png
 
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At the time annexation-or-not was being debated, slave-or-free hadn't even entered the conversation yet. The fact that chattel slavery had been illegal in Mexico for 25 years (and that much of its land wasn't well suited to plantation agriculture) made plenty of northern abolitionists just as certain that Mexico would be free territory as southern slaveowners blithely assumed the Missouri compromise etc would apply to the new territories. In short, it's not a matter of not needing to compensate for "lost" free territory, it's a matter of having failed to achieve manifest destiny once, and being determined not to fail a second time.
 
What about all the Mexican congressmen? There have tob e at least 3 for each state, so they could outnumber American senators.
 
No way those states wouldn't be merged. Mexico had a much smaller comparative population back then, too.


True, New Mexico and AZ didnt enter the union until somewhere around 1910 so I imagine the rest of mexico coming even later. If the US encourages white settlement, which it would almost have to do to hold all of mexico, you might have a situation where white population in defacto control maintain s territory status longer than ususal because it's easier to keep the hispanic population in check. Wonder what the US capturing all of Mexico with the U.S. Canada boarder being where it is in our timeline would effect events leading up to the civil war and if it still progresses along the same as our time line do you have the Union dealing with the CSA as well as a mexican revolt at the same time?
 
Statehood required a minimum 60,000 people and it took Arizona and New Mexico until the 1910 census to meet the requirement which says quite a bit about how poorly populated the area was.
 
Total annexation was extremely unlikely, but it is possible that the Baja penninsula and the northern tier of sparsely populated Mexican desert and scrubland could also be annexed/purchased.
 
Statehood required a minimum 60,000 people and it took Arizona and New Mexico until the 1910 census to meet the requirement which says quite a bit about how poorly populated the area was.

At the time of annexation, New Mexico had 40,000 residents, not counting American Indians. Its population surpassed the 60K mark (which was more a general guideline than a strict requirement) well before 1910. The reason it didn't become a state before 1912 is that it didn't have a sufficiently large English-speaking population until then.
 
One: I have read that some in Washington wanted the total annexation of Mexico after the American victory in the war. Is this true? And what Congressmen supported this idea?

Some, yes. Few? Ludicrously so.

There was wider support, however, for a Tropic of Cancer border, and we would have gotten that were it not for Trist.

Two: Would the loss of the Oregon Territory to the UK make the total annexation more or less likely?

The loss of Oregon would make a larger annexation far more likely, but not the whole thing.
 
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