Skip to main content
SWStudyWalks Search

History of the United States I / Unit 11   USH1 1533 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds

The Treaty Mexico Would Not Honour

Captions available

The idea

Santa Anna grudgingly signed a peace treaty as a prisoner, travelled to Washington, met President Jackson, and agreed to recognise an independent Texas with the Rio Grande as its south-western border. Once he was out of power, the Mexican Congress refused to be bound by his promises and went on claiming Texas.

In practice

A border agreed by a captured general whose own government repudiated him.

Where people slip

This is the direct cause of the war ten years later. The Rio Grande boundary exists only in that repudiated treaty. Everything President Polk later calls American soil rests on it, and Mexico had never at any point accepted it. When entry 1543 sets the Nueces against the Rio Grande, this is where the disagreement came from.

Your place on the trail

Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.

Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it  ·  Sources for History of the United States I