Why didnt the USA conquer Mexico when it had the chance?

...

Why would they want to? Real life isn't a game of risk.

It was never in their interest.

>when it had the chance
are you implying something?

The south was scared of having a ton of states that wouldn't have slavery and pretty much nobody in the country at the time wanted an extremely large non-white voterbase that could easily sway elections and influence congress. The demographics change in the country would have been huge.

American only fights wars in self-defense

We could have multiple times.

This is true. Pretty much all of US foreign before the civil war was tiptoeing around the cultural divide between the north and south, as well as the issue of slavery.

Probably for the same reason people are bitching about non-illegal Mexicans now.

The original plan was to annex only northern Mexico, not the whole state a that would have been impossible. So basically nuevo Leon, Chiuaha, Sonora, and Baja California.

>White fifth column takes Texas from Mexico
>hundreds of years later
>Mexican fifth column slowly taking US from white americans

Is Karma real?

we could now if we wanted to, we've always had the chance its just not worth taking

when you've got the world's strongest army conquering is easy, holding onto it is another matter

My point still stands. The demographics change still would be big(definitely not as influential though) and all of those places would become non-slave states. Look at what happened after the Mexican American war. The fighting over whether or not the newly conquered states would allow slavery was intense and was only partially solved after the compromise of 1850.

Because taking in a shitload of catholics who speak a different language would've been awful news for both groups

Because securing Texas to California in a single war was enough
US accomplishes manifest destiny in one war
Gets a fuck ton more land with very little settlement
Why would they want to bother with the huge cost of occupying Mexico or integrating a foreign culture that would substantially alter US politics

The US was extremely divided over waging the Mexican-American war. New England had opposed every single territorial acquisition made by the US at least a little bit, thinking that the bigger the US got the more diluted their influence in their own country became. During this war that opposition became the no-territory movement. Most elections during this period had this as their central issue.

When the war ended and the peace was being negotiated the diplomat who was already in Mexico happened to be a No-Territory New Englander and he pushed through a more lenient peace than what he had been instructed.

It wasn't politically worth doing it all again so they just went with what they got. Though the Southern planter class, who had started the war to expand land open to slavery, had still greater ambitions and were planning on continuing to conquer Central America and the Caribbean. They ended up getting tied up in the Civil War buildup and missing those opportunities though.

Too many beaners

the only real shame about that is that we didn't take the Baja peninsula

Also fun fact some Mormons discovered gold in California the exact same day that the peace was signed. This ended the chronic shortage of capital that had held back New England since the country was founded, ironically dooming the South.

Who will then pay for THE WALL

Essentially because they were not white. We could have after saving Texas but slavery politics prevented it

Canada

>we're gonna build a wall and Mongolia will pay for it

Why didnt they just trail of tears them?

>be james k polk
>want california
>offer mexico monies
>they refuse
>take mexico city
>still offer to pay for the land

He was one cool fucking customer.
>i could take your whole shit fourth world country but its cool senpai.

didn't want them desu

still don't

Because Mexico south of Texas actually had a population and was mountainous as fuck on top of being culturally and politically fractured. Occupying it and americanizing it would have sucked and to top it off they never would have been ok with slavery and it would have upset the slave-free state balance.

The southwest though was nice flat and empty, except for Indians but no one gives a fuck about them anyway.

indeed, the dubious vacant land claims that mexico appropriated from the spanish were put to use by capable hands

It took like 1/3 of it's territory, what more would they want?

Yeah. I mean we could always use more sun drenched blistering hot deserts that have little to no value until the non-sucky area north of it becomes rich and populous so as to actually give the hit flinging peninsula a tourist population to exploit.

1848 baja was a isolated wasteland and you'd have to be an idiot to want that mess.