Texas And The Manifest Destiny

In 1836 Texas declared themselves independent from Mexico, but of course Mexico does not recognize this at first. In 1837 Texas asked the United States to be annexed into their country, but at the time the United States could not accept a new state because of two reasons. The first reason for this was that The States had just reached a balance between Slave States and Free States and with Texas wanting to be a Slave State they would upset that balance. The second reason is that Mexico made it so that if the United States annexed Texas then they would cut off all diplomatic relations. In that The United States basically ignores Texas’s requests to be annexed. In 1844 Texas begins asking to be annexed again but in 1845 Mexico and Texas signs …show more content…
O’Sullivan coined the term Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was the ideology that it was America’s God given right to conquer all the land from “sea to shining sea” which was from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This term came about at the time that Texas seceded from Mexico and Americans wanted to annex both Texas and California. President James K. Polk tried to buy California from Mexico but Mexico refused. It was because of this refusal that the theory arose that James K. Polk sent Zachary Taylor and his troops to the disputed area of the Nueces strip with the intention for fighting to break out, thus allowing him to have an excuse to entice the idea of war with Mexico to the American people and have a reason to ask congress to declare war. With the victory of this war, this would allow James K. Polk to get the border lines that he wanted and obtain the California territory making it so The United States would stretch from sea to shining sea and fulfill the American dream of Manifest …show more content…
Polk asked congress on May 11, 1846 to declare war on Mexico. The letter covered many of things that Mexico had done to cease diplomatic relations with the United States. One of them being the conflict that happened in the Nueces Strip between United States and Mexican soldiers. The event in the letter claimed that James K. Polk sent the Congressman John Slidell to Mexico in order to negotiate the boundaries between The United States and Mexico and come to terms concerning the ambiguity of ownership over the Nueces Strip and Mexico refused to even meet with John Slidell. Mexico was also portrayed as a weaker nation whose government was overtaken by the military and that this new Mexican military regime was not willing to carry on diplomatic relations with the United States. James K. Polk also made it sound like diplomatic relations with the Mexico were not worth it since they were making trading hard for merchants in the United States by committing acts of extortion and other crimes that made it hard for them to do their