D
island off Veracruz in 200 ships and ferried 67 boats in less
than 5 hours. Scott’s troops then set off for Mexico City,
which they captured on September 14, 1847. Covering 260
miles, Scott’s army had lost not a single battle.
America Gains the Spoils of War
For Mexico, the war in which it lost at least 25,000 lives and
nearly half its land marked an ugly milestone in its rela-
tions with the United States. America’s victory came at the
cost of about 13,000 lives. Of these, nearly 2,000 died in
battle or from wounds and more than 11,000 perished from
diseases, such as yellow fever. However, the war enlarged
U.S. territory by approximately one-third.
THE TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO
On February 2,
1848, the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico agreed to the Rio Grande
border for Texas and ceded New Mexico and California to
the United States. The United States agreed to pay $15 mil-
lion for the Mexican cession, which included present-day
California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, most of Arizona,
and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The treaty guaran-
teed Mexicans living in these territories freedom of reli-
gion, protection of property, bilingual elections, and open
borders.
Five years later, in 1853, President Franklin Pierce
would authorize his emissary James Gadsden to pay Mexico
an additional $10 million for another piece of territory
south of the Gila River. Along with the settlement of
Oregon and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Gadsden
Purchase established the current borders of the lower 48 states.
TAYLOR’S ELECTION IN 1848
In 1848 the Democrats nominated Lewis Cass
for president and hesitated about the extension of slavery into America’s vast new
holdings. A small group of antislavery Democrats nominated Martin Van Buren
to lead the Free-Soil Party, which supported a congressional prohibition on the
extension of slavery into the territories. Van Buren captured 10 percent of the
popular vote and no electoral votes. The Whig nominee, war hero Zachary Taylor,
easily won the election. Taylor’s victory, however, was soon overshadowed by a
glittering discovery in one of America’s new territories.
The California Gold Rush
In January 1848, James Marshall, an American carpenter working on John Sutter’s
property in the California Sierra Nevadas, discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill. Word
of the chance discovery traveled east.
THE RUSH BEGINS
Soon after the news reached San Francisco, residents trav-
eled to the Sacramento Valley in droves to pan for gold. Lacking staff and readers,
San Francisco’s newspaper, the Californian, suspended publication. An editorial
in the final issue, dated May 29, complained that the whole country “resounds
with the sordid cry of gold, GOLD, GOLD! while the field is left half-plowed, the
house half-built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and
pickaxes.”
Expanding Markets and Moving West 297
LOS NIÑOS HÉROES
Though most Americans know
little about the war with Mexico,
Mexicans view the war as a
crucial event in their history.
On September 14, 1847,
General Winfield Scott captured
Mexico City after the hard-fought
Battle of Chapultepec, the site of
the Mexican military academy.
There, six young cadets leaped
from Chapultepec Castle to com-
mit suicide rather than surrender
to the U.S. Army. A monument
(shown above) that honors los
Niños Héroes (the boy heroes)
inspires pilgrimages every
September.
