States were mild to the extent of generosity.
Under the treaty the annexation of Texas was validated; New Mexico and
Upper California were ceded to the United States; the lower Rio Grande
was fixed as the southern boundary of Texas, and in considerations of
these additions to its territory, the United States agreed to pay Mexico
fifteen millions of dollars.

Under this plan, Mexico was paid for territory that she did not need and
could not use, while the United States gave a money consideration for
the title to land that was already hers by right of conquest, and of
which she was in actual possession.

The details of the treaty are relatively unimportant. The outstanding
fact is that Mexico was in possession of certain territory that the
ruling power in the United States wanted, and that ruling power took
what it wanted by force of arms. "The war was one of conquest in the
interest of an institution." It was "one of the most unjust ever waged
by a stronger against a weaker nation."[31]

Congressman A. P. Gardner of Massachusetts summarized the matter very
pithily in his debate with Morris Hillquit (New York, April 2, 1915),
"We assisted Texas to get away from Mexico and then we proceeded to
annex Texas. Plainly and bluntly stated, our purpose was to get some
territory for American development." (Stenographic report in the _New
York Call_, April 11, 1915.)

5. _Conquering the Conquered_

The work of conquering the Southwest was not completed by the
termination of the war. Mexico ceded the territory--in the neighborhood
of a million square miles--but she was giving away something that she
had never possessed. Mexico claimed title to land that was occupied by
the Indians. She had never conquered it; never settled it; never
developed it. Her sovereignty was of the same shadowy sort that Spain
had exercised over the country before the Mexican revolution.

The new owners of the Southwest had a very different purpose in mind. No
empty title would satisfy them. They intended to use the land. The
Indians--already in possession--resented the encroachments of the
invaders, but they fared no better than the Mexicans, or than their
red-skinned brothers who had contended for the right to fish and hunt
along their home streams in the Appalachians. The Indians of the
Southwest fought stubbornly, but the wars that meant life and death to
them were the merest pastime for an army that had just completed the
humiliation of a nati