Restraining Columbia: Mexico’s War Termination and the Limits of US Power

The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo seemingly secured the ascent of the United States’ territorial dominion and has been used by generations of historians as evidence of an American policy of unencumbered militaristic expansion. However, recent reappraisals of the Mexican-American war challenge this understanding. Notably, this paper argues that Mexico’s resilient diplomacy frustrated the United States’ already limited strategy despite the success of American military operations. Whither the Polk Administration’s narrow objectives in launching the “wicked war,” such ends still proved exceedingly difficult to accomplish and offer a salient case study on the perturbations of restraint.