Mexicans were thrown together with blacks and Indians and contemptuously dismissed by Americans in general as a “mongrel race.” “Mongrel” was just another word for “half-breeds” or “mulattoes,” those of a “polluted” lineage. In 1844, Pennsylvania senator and future president James Buchanan crudely described an “imbecile and indolent Mexican race,” insistent that no Anglo-Saxon should ever be under the political thumb of his inferior.
