WI: The Southwest, Land of the American Republics?

Don't beat me if this is ASB, but I've had this idea for a while, so I might as well post it for scrutiny.

What if rather than absorbing the Mexican cession area into the Union, the American Southwest became a region of American republics (IE, the Republic of Texas, Republic of California, Deseret) independent of but friendly to the United States government?
 
How would you stop US-American pioneers and the like from settling in these ATL republics, becoming a majority or very vocal minority, and then yammering for annexation as per OTL?
 

maverick

Banned
That'd require a lot more immigration, I'm guessing white, to these regions, yet at the same time mixed with enough Mexican immigration that the United States Government won't want to annex the region.

So let's go with the easy answer and say that Gold is Discovered in the 1820s-1830s, and we first see a wave of internal migration from central Mexico to northern Mexico, coupled with immigration from the Southern United States to Texas that later starts to bypass Texas for California and maybe Utah. If we could combine this with an earlier Mormon Exodus and Whig Presidencies in the 1840s that don't want to fight a war with Mexico, then between 1848 and 1855 you could see people in Northern Mexico who are either opportunistic enough or oppressed by Santa Anna or his successors, to try and break Mexico apart, declaring a Republic in California under British Protection, then Independence in Texas, Utah and the Rio Grande.
 
How would you stop US-American pioneers and the like from settling in these ATL republics, becoming a majority or very vocal minority, and then yammering for annexation as per OTL?

Quite simply, when Jefferson looks at buying the whole of Louisiana, have enough opposition in the government to declare such a purchase/expansion of the United States Unconstitutional.

This might get overturned later, but it gives an opportunity for those areas to get more independent-minded settlers. And since France is off doing her thing, and the USA won't be on Mexico's doorstep, those areas will be more buffer states until those settlers decide (like OTL Texans) to go all Patriot on Mexico.
 
How would you stop US-American pioneers and the like from settling in these ATL republics, becoming a majority or very vocal minority, and then yammering for annexation as per OTL?
The point is that American pioneers move into these areas and settle them (as they did with the Texas), but that they don't yammer for annexation, or at least not successfully.
 
There was an article I once saw thru JSTOR in a journal of American history about the prospects of a Henry Clay as president and it included a map with the independent republics of Texas and California. Undoubtedly, given that this week was the 200 anniversary of the founding of the Republic of West Florida we could have seen a continental patchwork of republics.

One could probably throw in a little more Thomas Hart Benton and his proposal that the US ended at the continental divide and that friendly republics fill the rest of the area to the Pacific. Or the west is never annexed in order to keep the balance of free and slave states equal.

We would have Texas (Including OTL eastern New Mexico), California (OTL California and Nevada), Oregon (OTL Washington, Idaho and Oregon), Deseret (OTL Utah, Arizona and western New Mexico).
 

Teleology

Banned
When the Irish Potato Famine hits, Nativists are in control in the East and the Irish end up getting dumped in New Orleans and with no opportunities but to head West?

That would give you non-annexationist settlers, wouldn't it?

Though the idea of a Know Nothing America is frightening :eek:
 
Top