four battles in quick succession (Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey and Chapultepec) in
August and September and entered Mexico City on September 13, a marine unit running up the
flag over `the Halls of Montezuma.' Meanwhile, in California, John Charles Fremont (1813-90),
with a party of sixty American freebooters, had raised a flag with a grizzly bear and star on a
white cloth, and proclaimed the Republic of California (June 14, 1846). Fremont was an officer
in the US Topographical Corps who had surveyed the Upper Missouri and Mississippi rivers
(1838-41), eloped with Jessie Benton, pretty daughter of the US Senator, and headed three
expeditions to the West, which involved exploring and mapping more territory than any other
American-Western Wyoming (including Fremont Peak), all of California, the routes from Utah
to Oregon, and most of Nevada and Colorado.
A month later Commodore John D. Stoat of the Pacific Fleet raised the American flag and
proclaimed California US territory. The conquest of California was by no means bloodless, as in
the south the Mexican peasants and the Indians revolted against the new American regime and
had to be put down by force at the Battle of the Plains of Mesa outside Los Angeles, in January
- Nor was it easy to sign a peace treaty as there was no effective government in Mexico, by
this stage, to negotiate one. Polk also had trouble with his negotiator, Nicholas P. Trist (1800-
74), the Chief Clerk at the State Department, who disobeyed orders and was denounced by the
President as `an impudent and unqualified scoundrel.' However, he did succeed in finding a
Mexican government and got it to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago on February 2, 1848, so
Polk swallowed his wrath and accepted the fait accompli. By this agreement Mexico accepted
the Rio Grande frontier with Texas and handed over California and New Mexico. America
agreed to pay off the indemnities and give Mexico an extra $15 million.
It had not exactly been the cheap war Polk planned because he ended up with well over
100,000 men under arms, with 1,721 dead and another 11,155 wiped out by disease, and with a
bill for $97.7 million, plus the treaty payments. On the other side of the ledger, America got over
500,000 square miles of some of the richest territory on earth, making an extra million square
miles if Texas is counted in. Five years later, Gadsden, by now Secretary of State under
President Pierce, negotiated what is known as the Gadsden Purchase, whereby Mexico
surrendered another 29,640 square miles on the southern borders of Arizona and New Mexico,
for $1o million. This rounded off the Manifest Destiny program, but it was essentially complete
during Polk's presidency and he can fairly claim, when Oregon was counted in, to have added
more territory to the United States than any other president, Jefferson (with the Louisiana
Purchase) alone excepted.
California was an even greater prize than Texas. The name goes back to an imaginary island in a
romance by Ordonez de Montalvo published in 1510. It was known to Cortez; Cabrillo made his
way to San Diego in 1542; Drake touched there in 1579. But the permanent settlement by the
Spanish did not begin until 1769, when the first of many presidios and Franciscan missions were
established between San Diego and San Francisco. Considering the benevolence of its climate,
the fertility of its soil, and its vast range of obvious natural resources, it is astonishing that the
Spanish, then the Mexicans, did so little to make use of them. Other great powers had nosed
around. In 1807 the Russians formed a plan to establish settlements in California (and at the
mouth of the Colombia River and in Hawaii too), though nothing came of it. A few years later,
however, the Russian-American Company was working near the Golden Gate, hunting seals. The
British were interested too and, in the 1820s, had collaborated with the Americans in chasing the
Russians out of the area. American agents in the area repeatedly warned Washington of the