Use the primary source material on pages 3–5 of this document and the information in Chapter 16 to help you answer the question and provide support for your answer.
Refer to the scoring rubric on the last page to see how your essay will be scored.
(100 points)
Score
Write an essay that answers the following question: Was the United States justified in going to war against Mexico in 1846?
Answer:
I think that the United States wasn’t justified in going to war with México. The United States didn’t have any proper justification to act with violence against México. It was also a product of the beliefs that the United States had of the manifest destiny. And what also probably played some major factor to start the war with Mexico was Polk’s over ambition to gain more territory from the Mexicans and how he was disappointed when the Mexicans refused to sell him California. The United States following president Polk provoked México to attack US troops. These reasons show that the war against México for territory that is from them wasn’t justified.
The war against México took place when a lot of the country was thinking of Manifest Destiny, and that’s one reason why must of the population supported the expansion of the US to the west. The United States vision of the manifest destiny was a major factor that helped win the peoples support for the war with México.
The biggest of all reasons why it was not fair to start a war with México was when Polk sent US forces into the territory that was being disputed to make the Mexicans start the war and make it look like they were the ones that started the war and that the United States only took action against it. The United States commanded their troops to go over the Nueces River to the Rio Grande, hoping that the Mexicans would attack in a territory that was from both countries. But when