Today in History - February 2 - The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in the village of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, ending the Mexican War and extending the boundaries of the United States west to the Pacific Ocean. The terms of the agreement confirmed U.S. claims to Texas and established the border between the U.S. and Mexico at the Rio Grande and the Gila River. The treaty also granted the U.S. more than 525,000 square miles of former Mexican territory that includes present-day California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. In exchange, the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million for the territory and agreed to assume the claims of American citizens against the Mexican government, a sum of approximately $3 million. This treaty, along with the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, completed the continental expansion of the United States. Read the entire text of the treaty as published in the March 13, 1848 issue of The New York Herald. View as well, the area map used during the negotiations which is in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The Mexican War began with a dispute over the United States annexation of Texas. In January 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s forces, and Congress approved a declaration of war on Mexico on May 13, 1846. With the capture by General Winfield Scott of Mexico City on September 14, 1847, the fighting subsided. William T. Sherman caught war fever after hearing of Zachary Taylor’s victory at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma on May 8, 1846. He soon left his post as a recruiting officer in Pittsburgh and set out for New York, where he boarded a ship bound for California in hopes of joining the fighting. Sherman, who became a famous Union general in the Civil War, describes his journey and experiences of the Mexican War in Part I of his memoir, Recollections of California: 1846-1861. Lewis Adelbert Norton, a veteran of the Canadian rebellion of 1837-39, responded to the declaration of war by raising a volunteer regiment in Kane County, Illinois. He describes his war experiences in Chapters XI through XXIV of his story, Life and Adventures of Col. L. A. Norton.