The concept of Manifest Destiny held that the United States had the providential right to expand to the Pacific Ocean. In 1845 the U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas, which had won de facto independence from Mexico in the Texas Revolution (1835–36). When U.S. diplomatic efforts to establish agreement on the Texas-Mexico border and to purchase Mexico’s California and New Mexico territories failed, expansionist U.S. Pres. James K. Polk found a rationale to justify an attempt to take that land by force when U.S. and Mexican troops skirmished north of the Rio Grande on April 25, 1846.
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