The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Eight years later, in his final hours in office, Pres. John Tyler decided to write his own page in history by annexing the Texas republic, denying the honor to Jackson’s protégé, James K. Polk, who had won the White House on a pledge to bring Texas into the Union. An enraged Mexico now disputed the U.S. claim to all land north of the Rio Grande. To back up that claim, Polk sent Gen. Zachary Taylor to the north bank of the river. When Mexican soldiers crossed and fired on a U.S. patrol, spilling American blood on what Polk claimed was American soil, he demanded and got a swift congressional declaration of war. By 1848, soldiers with names like Grant, Lee, and McClellan were in Montezuma’s city. A humiliated Mexico was forced to cede all of Texas, the Southwest, and California. To ease the anguish of amputation, the U.S. gave Mexico fifteen million dollars.