Question
Can anyone please tell me what were President James K. Polk's motivations about the war with Mexico? What were his views on the war as opposed to the general American public view in the 1840s?
Answer
George Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy under Polk, recalled many years later that Polk had announced in 1845 near the beginning of his presidency that the acquisition of California was one of "four great measures" he hoped to accomplish while in office. Historian Sam W. Haynes has identified Polk as a "fitting representative" of the "expansionist impulse" known as Manifest Destiny. As a condition of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War, the government of Mexico ceded to the U.S. a vast amount of territory that included the present state of California.
