The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

by Edward E. Baptist

the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the result of negotiations with the representatives of defeated Mexico. In addition to confirming Texas annexation, the treaty gave the United States 525,000 additional square miles of the conquered nation-state—13 acres for each of the 23 million people in the Union. This was the third-biggest acquisition of territory in US history, after the Louisiana Purchase and Alaska. The Senate eliminated an article that promised recognition of land claims granted by the Spanish or Mexican governments. The treaty opened the new southwest to a massive Anglo real-estate grab. If that wasn’t enough incentive for settlers to start dispossessing Mexicans and Indians, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, California, in January 1848.