In our universe, the parts of the United States that used to be part of Mexico provided a lot of mineral and agricultural wealth for the developing economy of USA. So how crucial were those resources?
I'm not really interested here in whether person A gets person a gets elected over person B, or the progress of a timeline like we normally do in a what is, just the broader implications.
Was the true wealth of something like California that resource wealth that is contributed to the union? Or was the true wealth the people and the economic activity they still would have carried out?
For example, if you were to take the population number of OTL USA in the 1890s, but put that in an ATL USA that does not have Texas to California, would this ATL USA have an economy equal to OTL USA at the same time. Simply because it has the same number of people? Let's call that our Benchmark for the purpose of this discussion.
Or does the lack of that territory and those resources mean this ATL USA is economically weaker, and by how much? Does this eventually prevent the United States from being the global power that we know it to be today and after World War One? Or does it just delay the rise of the USA has an economic power? (Natural resources like mineral deposits in oil are arguably just as extensive in the old Louisiana Territory and north of the 42nd parallel as they are in the southwest, just more difficult to get at.)