these factors, the United States had a
foreign policy stake in preventing other
nations from acquiring California, partic-
ularly Britain, which was then contesting
the United States for possession of the
Oregon Territory, just north of
California. For all these reasons, the
United States had a strong interest in
acquiring Mexico’s Far North, especially
California. For its part, Mexico—as New
Spain had done when settling California
and Texas a century before—viewed the
northern frontier as a defensive buffer
against its expansionist neighbor.
Therefore, even though its northern
frontier was still relatively sparse in pop-
ulation, Mexico had a strong interest in
not letting the United States have it.
As early as the 1820s, the United
States had offered to buy Texas, an offer
rejected as an insult by Mexico. In 1835
United States president Andrew Jackson
(1767–1845; president 1829–1837)
offered to buy San Francisco Bay. In 1845
President John Tyler (1790–1862) offered
to buy New Mexico and California. Such
offers only fueled Mexico’s distrust and
resentment of the United States.
At the same time, the Anglo-
American population in the remainder of
Mexico’s Far North kept growing. Just as
in Texas before the Texan Revolution,
Anglo-American immigrants poured into
California, attracted by such reports as
that of former New Mexican Louis
Robidoux, who called northern California
“the promised land where the arroyos run
with virgin honey and milk. Another
Texas.” Among those who came was
Baden-born John Augustus Sutter
(1803–1880), who settled in the
Sacramento Valley with a grant of 49,000
acres, to which he attracted many
American settlers. After the U.S.-Mexican
War (in which Sutter sided with the
United States), Sutter became even more
famous for the gold found on his lands.
The Mexican authorities tried the
same strategies for control that had failed
in Texas: clamping down with tougher
anti-immigration laws, sending more
troops, and trying to encourage immigra-
tion from outside the United States. The
strategies failed in California too—in part
because Californios, who welcomed the
local development the immigrants
brought and lacked the military strength
to expel them, tended not to enforce the
restrictions. One young Californio, Pablo
de la Guerra, said the foreigners “are
about to overrun us, of which I am very
glad, for the country needs immigration
in order to make progress.”
In New Mexico, Governor Manuel
Armijo had better luck restricting immi-
gration, but Anglo-Americans could turn
up anywhere. Even during the U.S.-
Mexican War, one determined group of
Anglo- Americans took up residence in a
Far Northern region as yet unsettled by
Hispanics: the Mormons, who, fleeing
persecution in the United States, estab-
lished their first colony in what is now
Utah in 1847.
The threat of war between the
United States and Mexico grew in
November 1844, when Democrat James
K. Polk (1795–1849) was elected presi-
dent. Polk was an expansionist committed
to territorial growth, beginning with
annexation of Texas and ideally extending
to California. The notion of annexing
Texas was becoming increasingly popular,
as southern states pressed for addition of a
new slave state to aid their cause in
Congress, and as British and French influ-
ence grew in Texas, making it possible that
the United States would permanently loseMANIFEST DESTINY AND HISPANIC AMERICA 89John Tyler (Library of Congress)Andrew Jackson (Library of Congress)