A Wicked War

A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico by Amy S. Greenberg, Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. 

Manifest Destiny

President James K. Polk started the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) in order to steal the southwest from Mexico. He needed an excuse. So he made a big deal about where exactly the border was between Texas and Mexico. Was it the Rio Grand River or the Nueces River? The Nueces River was further to the North, and the true extent of Texas, which had been admitted to the union in late 1945. There were almost no Texans living below the Nueces River south to the Rio Grand. So President Polk didn’t have a leg to stand on, but he went ahead anyway. He argued the the Nueces Strip, the land between the two rivers, belonged to Texas, and that Mexico was not respecting this position. In order to preserve the honor of the United States, Polk claimed we had to go to war against Mexico.