Was The Mexican-American War Justified?

After James Polk was inaugurated as President in 1845, he immediately set his sights on extending the U.S.’s borders to Mexico. In 1845 when Texas was annexed into the U.S. there was much debate on its border with Texas claiming it was the Rio Grande while Mexico believed it was the Nueces River. Polk saw that war with Mexico could acquire California and Mexico and sent American troops to the Rio Grande to provoke the Mexicans.In the end, Polk got what he wanted, we gained California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Historians, present and past, have argued about whether the war was justified or not. To determine this, we must investigate why the war was not justified. Therefore, the Mexican-American War was not justified because of the expansion of …show more content…
As mentioned before the border of Texas, after it was annexed, was greatly disputed on whether it was the Nueces river or the Rio Grande. In the “War Message of President James Polk”, he states “ I had ordered an efficient military force to take a position ‘between the Nueces and Del Norte (Rio Grande).’ This had become necessary to meet a threatened invasion of Texas by the Mexican forces.” The U.S. had invaded Mexico making the first move on the road to war. According to Jesús Velasco-Márquez, in “A Mexican Viewpoint on the War with the United States”, people in Mexico called the war “The U.S. Invasion.” They saw it as a threat to their country. Márquez tells us that “In the eyes of the (Mexican) government, the mobilization of the US army was an outright attack on Mexico…. As a consequence, the Mexican government reaffirmed the instruction to protect the border, meaning the territory located between the Río Grande and the Nueces River—an order which led to the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma.” Mexico did not want to go to war but were forced to protect their country and their rights from the United