to protect settlers in new mexico, the spanish paid comanche and navajo allies to attack the who

For Mexico, this was a provocation, but Polk went further, sending US Army troops to the area he also sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico to try to negotiate the sale of territory. Polk advocated expansion by either peaceful means or by armed force, with the 1845 annexation of Texas furthering that goal by peaceful means.

Polk was elected on a platform of expanding US territory in Oregon and Texas. In the 1844 United States presidential election, Democrat James K. Domestic sectional politics in the US were preventing annexation since Texas would have been a slave state, upsetting the balance of power between northern free states and southern slave states. The Republic of Texas was de facto an independent country, but most of its citizens wished to be annexed by the United States. It followed the 1845 US annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered Mexican territory since the government did not recognise the Velasco treaty signed by Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna when he was a prisoner of the Texian Army during the 1836 Texas Revolution. The Mexican-American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the Intervención Estadounidense en México (US intervention in Mexico), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 25 April 1846 to 02 February 1848.

To protect settlers in new mexico, the spanish paid comanche and navajo allies to attack the who