Creating the Line 13 tells us, that “with a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace.” Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own lead- ers, and trusting in our protection, to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace telling us that “this may become the only mode of obtain- ing such a peace.” But soon he falls into doubt of this too, and then drops back on to the already half abandoned ground of “more vigorous prosecution.” All this shows that the President is in no wise satisfied with his own positions. First, he takes up one, and, in attempting to argue us into it, he argues himself out of it then seizes another, and goes through the same process and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off. His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease. Again, it is a singular omission in this message, that it no where intimates when the President expects the war to terminate. At its beginning, General Scott was, by this same President, driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes— every department, and every part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought men could not do after all this, this same Presi- dent gives us a long message, without showing us that, as to the end, he himself has even an imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscious more painful than all his mental perplexity! Source: Congressional Globe, Thirtieth Congress, First Session, New Series, No. 10, 154–56. Available at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-war -with-mexico-speech-in-the-united-states-house-of-representatives. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 The signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, represented the signal historical moment that defined the border between the United States and Mexico. Under its terms Mexico ceded to the United States the northern half of its country, the result of a war that, however questionable its origins and purpose, opened the way for an onrush of settlement that signaled the beginning of border- lands relations between the two countries and all of their concomitant ramifica- tions. The following is an extract of this iconic document. TREATY OF PEACE, FRIENDSHIP, LIMITS, AND SETTLEMENT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMER I CA AND THE UNITED MEXICAN STATES CONCLUDED AT GUADALUPE HIDALGO, FEBRUARY 2, 1848 RATIFICATION
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