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Bill Richter · 05-27-2013, 05:59 PM

And the point of all this is. . . ?

Mark Twain said the US Grant's memoirs were well written, he did not say that they were correct. Grant was 40 years too late.

Mexico wanted a war and got one. That the US won was against all expectations, including those of the Duke of Wellington, was surprising to everyone including Mexico. It was the better gunnery of the West Point trained artillerymen that made the big difference.

Like the Native Americans of yore and the US today, Mexico had a lousy immigration policy. She settled the Goths along her borders, expecting them to keep their compatriots out. They did not.

The first mention of the Rio Grande as the border of Texas was in the 1836 Treaty of Velasco. Signed under duress? Many claimed that Sam Houston saved Santa Ana when he gave the distress sign of a Mason as a rope was being thrown over a nearby tree limb. He was glad to give Texas the Rio Grande in exchange. He also surrendered all the Mexican army in Texas--or at least he ordered it back to the Rio Grande. Lesson to the wise--do not lose a war and expect a whole lot of sympathy from the winners. Lincoln's Spot Resolution was a Whig attempt to politicize the war over slavery, a move first started by Mexico's deposed minister to the US (recently ousted by another of Mexico's constant revolutions at home) Juan Almonte. The "Spot" was irrelevant.

My one point was that both sides goaded each other into a fight. Bullying had nothing to do with it. The US was not the nation in size and power as we are in the 21st century. Mexico took us on and lost. C'est la guerre.

But do not panic! My other point was that we are cruising for our own loss of the Great Southwest back to Mexico or to the independent Spanish-speaking Republica de Aztlan. After all we are settling the Goths along our border, too. Que viva! No one seems to learn from history. Or to quote that paragon of American History, Jimmy Durante, "everybody's trying to get in on the act!"