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Show ACQUISITION OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN 83 taken, because of the many shady and questionable tricks of finance to which Texans had been compelled to resort. By leaving the lands in the possession of Texas, the burden of financing the debts could also be left to it.13 Texas not only retained its huge supply of public lands (from which, as has been seen, it sold a part to the United States) but it was also to share generously in Federal public lands elsewhere. Under the Morrill Land Grant Act for the aid of agriculture colleges, Texas was given scrip for 180,000 acres which, when sold, could be used to acquire public lands anywhere they were open to cash or preemption entry. This netted the state $156,000 for its A & M institution, a sum greater than some other states received.14 In 1887 Texas was promised $15,000 annual income from Federal land sales for the establishment of an agricultural experiment station. Then in 1890, the second Morrill Act made available to each state out of public land revenues $15,000, to be increased by $1,000 annually for the next 10 years, for the A & M institutions. Furthermore, in common with all states Texas has drawn its share of benefit from the $175 million the Federal government received from its public land sales before Congress provided that the bulk of the income should go into reclamation development. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Annexation shifted responsibility for maintaining the Texas boundary dispute with Mexico to the United States. We need not enter deeply into the involved controversy concerning the western boundary of Texas, except to say that Mexico's claim to the 13 On Texas land policy I have used Aldon S. Lang, Financial History of the Public Lands in Texas (Waco, Tex., 1932); Curtis Bishop, Lots of Land (Austin, Tex., 1949); and Elgin Williams, The Animating Pursuite of Speculation. Land Traffic in the Annexation of Texas (New York, 1949). 14 Vernon Carstensen (ed.), The Public Lands (Madison, Wis., 1963), p. 404. Nueces River is generally regarded as superior to that of the United States to the Rio Grande. Texan and national feelings were deeply involved in the dispute just at the time when President Polk and the expansionists were becoming anxious to acquire California from Mexico. Polk had tried to buy California and to pay Mexico a fair price for the disputed territory between the Rio Grande and the Nueces Rivers, but, having lost Texas, no official of Mexico dared to favor sale of any part of its territory. There were numerous issues between the two countries in addition to the boundary disputes that were exasperating both sides. They were sufficient, Polk thought, to justify the declaration of war for which he was preparing when Mexican troops crossed into the disputed territory, fired on American troops that were already there, and gave Polk a better pretext. War was promptly declared. Generals Scott and Taylor proceeded to defeat the Mexican armies, captured Mexico City, and were in a position to compel surrender of the country and make a peace acceptable to the Americans. All that Polk and the moderate expansionists wanted was gained in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, though some politicians were disappointed that a larger part of Mexico was not gained. Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as the boundary separating Texas from Mexico, and agreed to sell for $15 million all of what is now California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona north of the Gila River, New Mexico west of the Rio Grande, and parts of southwestern Wyoming, and southwestern Colorado. Included in this great area containing 334,479,360 acres were the enormously rich mineral and agricultural regions of California, the Interior Basin that the Mormons were just beginning to develop, and some of the most spectacular scenery in the world, such as the Grand Canyon, and the site of Hoover Dam, present day Bryce and Zion National Parks, and the locale of past and present Indian cultures so absorbing to anthropologists. |