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Polk was worried that other nations, such as England or France, might take California if the United States did not act. While Texas was ratifying its annexation to the United States, an American naval officer apparently tried to provoke a war with Mexico. Commodore Robert Stockton attempted to persuade Texas officials to move their militia into the disputed land between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers.

This move would have resulted in a military clash with Mexican troops, which would have led to war with the United States when Texas was officially annexed.

The objective was to quickly defeat the weaker nation and demand that it hand over its California and New Mexico territories. But the scheme failed when the president of the Republic of Texas objected and negotiated a peace treaty with Mexico.

Historians disagree on whether President Polk was involved in this adventure. Mexican officials, however, refused to meet Slidell. Even so, military opponents of the Mexican president considered Slidell's mere presence in Mexico City an insult. They overthrew the president and installed a new regime that favored war with the United States.

When Slidell reported on his failed mission to President Polk early in , Texas had become the 28th U. He ordered American troops to cross into the contested land as a "defensive" act. When Mexicans objected, Taylor positioned his troops across the river from the Mexican town of Matamoras. A few days later, some Mexican soldiers crossed the Rio Grande and attacked Taylor's men, killing When news came of the clash with Mexican soldiers, President Polk announced that the United States had been attacked.

With Polk's party in the majority, Congress voted for war after two days of debate. Some members of Congress believed it was the "manifest destiny" of the United States to occupy all the land from the Atlantic states to the Pacific Ocean.

Southerners saw an opportunity to create more slave states. American forces defeated the Mexicans in California and New Mexico within a few months. The Mexicans did not win one battle in this war, but they fought fiercely and stubbornly refused to surrender. The war was popular in the South and with Americans who believed in manifest destiny. But the war aroused great opposition. He later wrote his essay "Civil Disobedience" explaining his action.

In April , amid increasing criticism of "Polk's War," the president sent a State Department official to Mexico to try to negotiate a peace treaty. Nicholas Trist was an unusual negotiator. He not only strived to end the war, but even sympathized with Mexico's grievances against Polk. Nevertheless, he was a professional diplomat who was determined to achieve his president's minimum goals of settling the border dispute and acquiring California and New Mexico. The negotiators could not reach agreement, and the war resumed.

President Polk decided to recall Trist to Washington. But Trist disobeyed his orders and remained to try one more round of negotiations. These succeeded, and a peace treaty was signed at the city of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, Citizenship and Land Grants. The peace treaty was vague about the citizenship of Mexicans remaining in California and New Mexico.

The treaty stated that Mexicans had the right to became American citizens who would be "admitted at the proper time" by Congress. In the meantime, their rights to liberty, property, and religion were to be "maintained and protected. He left office the most successful President since George Washington in the accomplishment of his goals. On the other hand, Polk's critics charge that his underestimation of the Mexican War's potential for disunion over the issue of slavery and his lack of concern with matters relating to the modernization of the nation contributed greatly to the sectional crisis of and, in the early s, to the fragmentation of both major parties.

Polk's critics accuse him of being too partisan to understand the dangerous depth of the emotions that might erupt over the expansion of slavery westward. He left the nation at the end of his term facing its greatest political and social crisis since the American Revolution.

That crisis would progressively tear the nation apart in the twelve years between and Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Haynes, James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse , 3d ed. New York: Pearson Longman, , Thomas R. John C. Pinheiro, Manifest Ambition: James K. Norman A. Norton, , John H. Schroeder, Mr. David M. Images: Detail of engraving made from R. Commander of Mexican forces at the Battle of the Alamo, Santa Anna was a man hated by Texans and distrusted by his own countrymen.

When Santa Anna arrived in Mexico City, however, the new government named him supreme commander of the army and president of the republic. He immediately raised a new army and marched north in early to attack Taylor's force at Monterrey. In the meantime, Polk was growing increasingly worried about Taylor's popularity.

Angry with the general for having declared an armistice without his approval after capturing Monterey, Polk transferred half of Taylor's army to General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, whom Polk ordered to lead an invasion of central Mexico. Taylor, a Whig who suspected political intrigue on Polk's part, met in battle Santa Anna's fifteen-thousand-man army at Buena Vista on February 22, When the smoke cleared, Taylor's five thousand Americans had defeated Santa Anna's army in a fierce battle marked by the courageous counterattack of a Mississippi regiment commanded by young Jefferson Davis.

When news of Taylor's victory reached back home, his popularity soared and Whigs began publicly to mention his name as a possible candidate for the presidency. In a daring and unprecedented amphibious landing, Scott captured the port of Veracruz in March Then, in one of the riskiest field maneuvers in the books, he launched a five-month, hard-fought campaign over the two hundred miles to Mexico City.

Most European military strategists predicted disaster, because not only was Scott's army outnumbered three to one, it was cut off from its supply bases, filled with ill-trained volunteers, and operating in unknown terrain. But in the end, and after bloody hand-to-hand fighting, Scott's army stood in possession of Mexico City on September 14, With Mexico's capital in American hands, Polk sent diplomat Nicholas Trist to negotiate the terms of Mexican surrender with yet another new government, this one having overthrown Santa Anna after his loss of Mexico City.

Expansionist fever at home in his own party pressured Polk to wring every possible concession from Mexico. Some even called for the annexation of "All Mexico," although all Polk really wanted was California.

Trist resisted Polk's instructions, however, and so the President recalled him. In spite of this, the diplomat continued to negotiate with Mexico, and on February 2, , he signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which authorized U. With the treaty in hand, Polk wisely decided to submit it to the Senate.

After a short debate, the Senate approved the treaty on March 10, , by a vote of thirty-eight to fourteen. Half of the opposition came from Democrats who wanted more Mexican territory, and half from Whigs who wanted none at all. Mexico, in what was called the Mexican Cession, ceded over one-third of its territory to the United States, increasing the latter's size by one-fourth.

Just before leaving office, Polk created the Department of the Interior in an effort to help organize and administer these vast new western lands. American deaths in the Mexican War surpassed 13,, although only 2, of this number died in battle or from wounds received in combat—the rest died from disease.

Another 4, Americans were wounded. Mexico suffered nearly 50, casualties.