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CHAPTER VII.

CAPTURE OF THE CITY OF MEXICO—1847. three decades from the close of the war with Great Britain in 1812-15 the United States of America remained at peace with the rest of the world. In the early part of the third decade there was imminent danger of another conflict with Great Britain, growing out of a dispute about the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick; an appeal to arms was averted mainly through the efforts of General Winfield Scott, and the quarrel was effectually ended by the Ashburton treaty of 1842. While this dispute with the mother country was in progress, another and more serious quarrel, so far as results were concerned, arose concerning our southwestern boundary. The present State of Texas was formerly a province of Mexico, having been ceded to Spain in 1819, before the separation of Mexico from the kingdom of Castile and Leon. Many American citizens settled in Texas while it was a Mexican possession, but owing to the difference in the laws of the two countries they earnestly desired to come under the protection of the United States flag. The United States endeavored to purchase the territory as far as the Rio del Norte, but the Mexican government rejected the proposal. In 1830 the Mexicans forbade further colonization of Texas by foreigners, but by this time the foreigners in Texas, chiefly Americans, far outnumbered the Mexican inhabitants. The bad state of feeling between Mexicans 91