Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, An Essay
By Matthew
Biggers
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
was the treaty that ended the
Mexican-American War, but its conception and adoption was much
more complicated than it appears in most textbooks. During the
first eleven months of the war, President James K. Polk attempted
to bring about peace by secret diplomacy with both
Santa Anna who
was exiled in Cuba and with the Paredes government in Mexico
City. When none of this secret diplomacy succeeded, Polk
appointed Nicholas Trist as commissioner to Mexico. Trist was
sent to Mexico with a draft treaty to serve as a guide for his
negotiations. This draft demanded the cession of Alta and Baja
California and New Mexico, the right of transit across the Gulf
of Tehuantepec, and the Río Grande as the southwestern
border of Texas in exchange for 15 million dollars and assumption
of 3 million dollars in American citizens claims against the
Mexican government. Trist was instructed that neither Baja
California nor the rights of navigation of the Gulf of
Tehuantepec were sine qua non.
Trist
arrived in Vera Cruz on May 6, 1847 and promptly angered his
host, General Winfield Scott. The two reconciled their
differences and worked together in communicating with Santa Anna,
now the Mexican president, who declared an armistice after
Scott's army captured the outer defenses of Mexico City.
Santa Anna suggested this move to encourage the Mexican Congress
to discuss peace. Upon declaration of the armistice, Santa Anna
appointed lawyers Bernardo Couto and Miguel Atristain, General
Ignacio Mora y Villamil, and former President José Joaquín
Herrera as peace commissioners to treat with Trist. These
commissioners already knew the terms of Trist's
instructions and refused to cede Baja California when they
received the draft treaty. They also had received instructions
ordering them to give up Texas only to the Nueces River and to
refuse the other terms of the treaty. The agreement reached by
Trist and the Mexicans allowed some of the terms of the draft
treaty but held that the Nueces River was the boundary of Texas.
Acceptance of this boundary would be akin to the United States
admitting responsibility for starting the war. Both Santa Anna
and Polk rejected this agreement. Santa Anna counter proposed
that the United States would receive San Francisco and all of
California north of that city but would not receive New Mexico or
the Río Grande boundary. Polk never received a formal
proposal, but he was angered that Trist would even submit it.
This anger was officially shown on October 6, 1847, when Trist
received his recall notice from the State Department. Trist was
disappointed because he had several friends in the Moderado
faction that desired peace, and he did not want to waste the
opportunity to make peace with them before the Puro (war) faction
regained power.
Many
officials urged Trist to disobey this summons and continue the
peace process, but Trist wrote that newspaper correspondent and
friend James Freaner's arguments were what eventually
convinced him to stay in Mexico. Trist had four reasons he
decided to remain in Mexico: he believed the United States
government desired peace; he thought that if the opportunity at
hand passed then hope for a treaty was lost; he thought that the
boundary negotiations were the minimum the Mexicans would accept;
and he believed his recall was based on a supposed state of
affairs that was opposite the real one. Trist was now an
unofficial diplomat, but that fact did not deter the Mexican
government from opening final negotiations January 2, 1848. The
Mexicans ceded San Diego and all of California north of that port
along with New Mexico and the Río Grande boundary in
return for the Gila River as the southern boundary of New Mexico,
the abandonment of United States rights to cross the isthmus of
Tehuantepec, and 15 million dollars. Trist was happy to have
negotiated a treaty on the terms of his original instructions. He
had rabidly opposed the ideas of American annexation or
occupation of Mexico on the grounds that such acts would lead to
a larger standing army, more presidential patronage, and more
corruption. He also felt that incorporation of the
inferior Mexican race into the United States would poison
American society.
President
Polk was angry about Trist's refusal to return to the
United States, but he eventually agreed to present the treaty to
the Senate due to the rising anti-war sentiment and growing Whig
opposition in Congress. The treaty was insignificantly modified
except for Article IX, which was stricken and replaced with
language from the earlier Louisiana Purchase and Adams-Onís
treaties that was more ambiguous regarding citizenship and
property rights of people who lived in the ceded territories.
Article X was also stricken because the American government did
not wish to recognize the land grants issued by the Mexican
government. The United States Senate ratified the treaty on May
10, 1848. Secretary of State James Buchanan was among many
Americans who thought these changes would result in a rejection
of the treaty by the Mexicans.
Many
Mexicans opposed the treaty on the grounds that it economically
subordinated Mexico to the United States. In his "Observations on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,"
Manuel Crescencio Rejón argued that his government had
exceeded its authority in ceding territory and in negotiating the
treaty in secret. In response, Bernardo Couto wrote that the
treaty had prevented the destruction of the Mexican
nation.
After
an address on the bleak military situation and several days of
debate, both houses of the Mexican Congress agreed to the
ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Before the
ratifications were exchanged, the Mexican minister of foreign
relations, Luis de la Rosa, met with American commissioners and
with Couto and Cuevas to discuss the deletion of Article X and
the re-wording of Article IX. They drafted the Protocol of
Querétaro to secure the rights of Mexican citizens in the
ceded territories. Buchanan asserted that the protocol was
worthless and was not part of the treaty at all. Mexicans in the
ceded areas could remain Mexican citizens or could become United
States citizens.
The
United States government has largely ignored the parts of the
treaty guaranteeing these property rights. Many court cases have
been fought over the rights Mexican-Americans are entitled to
under this treaty. The treaty is still invoked by Mexicans in
discussing modern issues such as immigration, the Mexican debt,
and drug smuggling.
Bibliography
Griswold
del Castillo, Richard. The
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict
. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1990.
Farnham, Robert J. "Nicholas Trist
and James Freaner and the Mission to Mexico."
Arizona and the West
11, no. 3 (1969):
247-260.
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