IOWA ADMITTED.
Iowa was the first free State to be formed out of the Louisiana purchase. She had been admitted with Florida in 1845, but her people, being dissatisfied with the boundaries Congress had prescribed, refused to ratify the Act, so delaying her admission until the next year 1846.
THE WAR WITH MEXICO.
"You can do any thing with a bayonet but sit on it."
Those who said war would follow the annexation of Texas were right. It was soon seen that Mexico would not sit down quietly under her loss of territory, or lightly pass over the affront to her national honor. They who reckoned on her doing so forgot that if the Spanish race is indolent, it is also brave.
When nations are resolved on war a pretext is soon found for it.
Texas had brought with her into the Union a dispute with Mexico about her western boundary. She claimed to the Rio Grande, while Mexico claimed to the Nueces,[1] thus leaving in question a tract one hundred miles wide, extending between these rivers.
It is true the tract itself was worth little to either party, it being mostly barren prairie land, but in a military view the Rio Grande offered much the strongest line of defence, and for this reason Texas wanted her boundary fixed on it.
MEXICAN CART.