Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was the peace treaty that ended the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). The treaty provided for the Mexican Cession, in which Mexico ceded 1.36 million km² (525,000 square miles) to the United States in exchange for USD$15 million. The United States also agreed to take over $3.25 million in debts Mexico owed to American citizens.

The cession included parts of the modern-day U.S. states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming, as well as the whole of California, Nevada, and Utah. The remaining parts of what are today the states of Arizona and New Mexico were later ceded under the 1853 Gadsden Purchase.

The treaty was signed by John Nicholas on behalf of the United States and Luis G. Cuevas, Bernardo Couto and Miguel Atristain as plenipotentiary representatives of Mexico on February 2 1848, at the main altar of the old Cathedral of Guadalupe at Villa Hidalgo (today Gustavo A. Madero, D.F.), slightly north of Mexico City. It was subsequently ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848 and by the Mexican government on May 19, 1848; the countries' ratifications were duly exchanged on May 30 1848, at the city of Santiago de Querétaro. However, the version of the treaty ratified by the United States Senate eliminated Article 10, which stated that the U.S. government would honor and guarantee all land grants awarded in lands ceded to the United States to citizens of Spain and Mexico by those respective governments. Article 8 guaranteed that Mexicans who remained more than one year in the ceded lands would automatically become full-fledged American citizens (or they could declare their intention of remaining Mexican citizens); however, this Article was effectively weakened by Article 9, written into the treaty by the U.S. Senate, which stated that Mexican citizens would "be admitted at the proper time (to be judged of by the Congress of the United States).

See also

• Gadsden Purchase
• Treaty of Cahuenga
• United States and Mexican Boundary Survey
• 1848 in Mexico

References

• Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. University of Oklahoma Press, 1990
• Ohrt, Wallace. Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War Texas A&M University Press, 1997
• Jesse S. Reeves, "The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo," The American Historical Review, 10 (Jan. 1905), 309-324, full text online at JSTOR

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