We Did Not Steal Land From Mexico

02The next time you hear someone prattling on about how the US stole all the southwestern United States from Mexico, set them straight.  Tell them its bunk.  The land was bought  and paid for. .  If they refuse to believe you refer them to the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty and the Gadsden’s Purchase a few years later.  It’s all there.  It’s a part of history — a part of history students in the American government schools apparently never hear about.

Of course, the left’s revision of history is all part of the propaganda, the unmitigated garbage, being employed to saddle Americans with more undeserved guilt.  As with so many leftist agendas, if they can make people feel guilty enough, they will oft times respond in the way those prodding them wish them to respond. 

The  War between the United States and Mexico began with a Mexican attack on American troops along the southern border of Texas on April 25, 1846. Fighting ended when U.S. Gen. Winfield Scott occupied Mexico City on September 14, 1847. 

Under a treaty  signed on Februry 2, 1848, at Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded to the United States  Upper California and New Mexico (including Arizona) and recognized U.S. claims over Texas, with the Rio Grande as its southern boundary. The United States in turn paid Mexico $15,000,000, assumed the claims of American citizens against Mexico, ($3.25 Million), recognized prior land grants in the Southwest, and offered citizenship to any Mexicans residing in the area.  Today that would amount to $460 billion.

After the end of the Mexican-American War, border disputes remained unsettled.  Land that now comprises lower Arizona and New Mexico was part of a proposed southern route for a transcontinental railroad, so President Franklin Pierce was convinced by Jefferson Davis, the US Secretary of War, to send James Gadsden (who had personal interests in the rail route) to negotiate the Gadsden Purchase with Mexico.   Under the resulting agreement, the U.S. paid Mexico $10 million ($240 Billion today).  There was a problem with the money, however: Even though the agreement specified $10 million, the US Congress only agreed to pay $7 million. When the money finally arrived in Mexico City, $1 million was found to be lost, thus making $6 million the amount Mexico actually got for the sale of that land. 

Run the numbers and you will find that the US paid Mexico $24,250,000.00 (24 million, two-hundred-and-fifty thousand) US dollars for the land in the Southwest US which many claim, today, we stole!

Groups pushing amnesty aided by the left-wing media continue to publish those claims without counterbalancing them with the truth.  That does two things – It emboldens those perpetrating those false claims against the US – and — it is accepted as truth by our woefully undereducated citizenry.

Source:  Omega Dispatch

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3 comments for “We Did Not Steal Land From Mexico

  1. gino
    November 19, 2014 at 3:16 am

    This article is full of bullshit. How would you feel if I went to your house and raped your family and then I gave you some money for the “damage”? and then we pretended that everything is okay, no hard feelings, right? The US DID steal that land from Mexico, is it too hard to accept your history? You stole california and the southwest from mexico just like you stole Hawaii.

  2. Rretta
    December 5, 2014 at 11:32 am

    And what is your basis for claiming that we stole land from Mexico. Surely you are not relying on that racist radical group La Raza’s claim that New Mexico, Oregon, California, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, and Utah are part of some fictional land called Aztlan, the home of the Aztecs? Mexicans have no more claim to lands in the U.S. than Hebrews, Egyptians, Chinese, the Phoenicians, the Vikings, etc. There is evidence throughout the country of these peoples visiting what we now call America long before Columbus set sail and maybe even before the Aztecs knew this land existed.

  3. B. Ball
    June 3, 2020 at 3:44 am

    Suggesting that this article is incorrect or is “full of bullshit” is intentionally ignoring history. It was mutually agreed upon. We didn’t force their hand. They made the decision. And we paid what was the equivalent of BILLIONS of dollars for the land we acquired. So, no. We did NOT “steal” the southern US from Mexico. We paid for it. It is rightfully ours. Crying out with lies doesn’t change that. Or maybe it’s just too hard for YOU to accept history? That would make a lot of sense.

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