FOOTNOTES
[1] The Nueces had been the acknowledged line between the provinces of Coahuila and Texas, before the latter achieved her independence, as shown by maps of the time.
[2] The War Unpopular. Placards calling for volunteers were posted in the streets, headed with the words "Ho for the Halls of the Montezumas!" The attempt of the administration party to kindle a war spirit, however, fell flat.
The regiment raised in Massachusetts was not even cheered when passing through the streets of Boston on its way to the front, and on its return home its flags were refused a place in the State Capitol.
But in Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi the war fever ran so high that fifty thousand men could have been furnished by these States alone. In some districts the rush was so great that it was feared there would be too few whites left to keep the negroes quiet.
CONQUEST OF NEW MEXICO.
While the heaviest fighting was going on in Old Mexico, the Government easily took possession of New Mexico and California, by means of expeditions organized on the remote frontiers.
New Mexico was wanted for the emigration to the Pacific. If we were to have California we must also have the right of way to it. In the hands of the Spaniards, New Mexico barred access to the Pacific so completely that the oldest travelled route was scarcely known to Americans at all, and but little used by the Spaniards themselves.
If now we consult a map of the United States it is seen that the thirty-fourth parallel crosses the Mississippi at the mouth of the Arkansas, cuts New Mexico in the middle, and reaches the Pacific near Los Angeles. It was long the belief of statesmen that the great tide of emigration must set along this line, because it had the most temperate climate, was shorter, and would be found freer from hardship than the route by way of the South Pass. This view had set on foot the exploration of the Arkansas and Red rivers. But if we except the little that Pike and Long had gathered, almost nothing was known about it. Yet the prevailing belief gave New Mexico, as related to California, an exceptional importance.
These considerations weighed for more than acquisition of territory, though the notion that New Mexico contained very rich silver-mines undoubtedly had force in determining its conquest. Otherwise it was held to be a poor country, with little arable land, mostly mountainous, and scarcely fertile in the valleys, while in consequence of its great elevation the winters were severe.