Page:The Story of Mexico.djvu/345

Rh "Indemnity for the past and security for the future," is the watchword of the United States in its wars with foreign nations. As indemnity for the wrongs inflicted by Mexico,—that is, her objection to the admission of Texas to the Union, it was determined to cross her boundary line and seize upon her territory.

California, then sparsely settled, and comparatively unknown, at a long distance from the central and civilized part of Mexico, had been explored already by American travellers, who brought back accounts of its climate, fertile soil, and mineral resources that showed it to be worth having. The harbors on its coasts were known to be the only good ones on the shores of the Northern Pacific Ocean. California lay immediately south of the United States territory of Oregon, with no defined natural boundary between them. Many Americans were already settled there, and altogether it seemed well to transfer this goodly region to the keeping of the United States. New Mexico, another department of the Mexican Republic, lying upon the direct route to California, and in great part included in the boundaries claimed by Texas upon her admission to the Union, was also another territory that claimed attention.

It would be too much to say that the United States began hostilities with a neighboring republic, shaken by internal discord, its government little better than anarchy, and weak from continuous civil war, for the sake of snatching from that country a large part of its territory to enlarge its own already