Abraham Lincoln is in aggregate ranked as America's greatest president

Quote: kenarman

Paco why was Lincoln honoured with a statue in Tijuana?

Lincoln was a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 7th district In office (March 4, 1847 - March 3, 1849). The Mexican American war was from (April 25, 1846 - February 3, 1848). So there was an overlap of about a year.

Lincoln was an outspoken critic of the M-A war. In general the war was not very popular in the north, who believed that the southern states were looking for land for future slave states. But still to speak out against a war while it is ongoing on is not normally very popular for a politician. Lincoln only served one two year term as representative.

Emperor Maximilian started his rule of Mexico only one year before the end of the American civil war, and obviously Lincoln was assassinated shortly after the war was over. So Lincoln could not really spend much effort helping out Benito Juarez in his battle against France. However, even in the midst of the civil war, he still made some arrangements to "leave" caches of valuable rifles where they were "stolen" by the Mexican resistance. President Andrew Johnson (Lincoln's VP) did try and honor Lincoln's wishes and provided aid to Juarez after Lincoln died.


The wife of President Juarez lived in Washington DC during the French occupation where she was very popular and attended dinners at the White House. She lobbied Abraham Lincoln for support for her husband. Lincoln and Juarez never met each other face to face.

Benito Juarez is still the only indigenous man elected to the presidency of Mexico. Juarez did not even grow up speaking Spanish, just Zapotec. Margarita herself was white.

"Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." - Abe Lincoln
"Between individuals, as between nations, peace means respect for the rights of others." - President Benito Juarez

Thank you Paco I know very little Mexican history.

Quote: kenarman

Thank you Paco I know very little Mexican history.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Benito Juarez, nd Porfirio Diaz are the three most important presidents of 19th century Mexico.
Francisco I. Madero, and Lazaro Cardenas are probably the most significant of 20th century presidents.

And USA was the aggressor in the Mexican American War. It is a historical fact, but it is also a fantasy to think we will give back the land we took. USA was also the aggressor in Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

Quote: Pacomartin

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Benito Juarez, nd Porfirio Diaz are the three most important presidents of 19th century Mexico.
Francisco I. Madero, and Lazaro Cardenas are probably the most significant of 20th century presidents.

I'd put Carranza ahead of Madero through no significant fault of the latter. After all, he was assassinated before he could really do much. But Carranza ended the Revolution and put the 1917 Constitution in place.

Quote:

And USA was the aggressor in the Mexican American War. It is a historical fact, but it is also a fantasy to think we will give back the land we took.

Actually the US paid a pittance for that land. No question of giving it back, but how about paying royalties from the 1850s to, oh, 2217? 0.02% of accumulated GDP should be enough, plus 1% GDP from 2017 onwards.

The North American mainland was a relatively minor destination in the global slave-trading network. Less than 4% of all African slaves were sent to North America. The vast majority of enslaved people ended up in sugar-producing regions of Brazil and the West Indies. On the mainland British colonies, the demand for labor varied by region. In contrast to the middle and New England colonies, the Southern colonies chose to export labor-intensive crops: tobacco in Chesapeake (Virginia and Maryland) and rice and indigo in South Carolina, which were believed to be very profitable.

Although slaves had been sold in the American colonies since at least 1619, slave labor did not come to represent a significant proportion of the labor force in any part of North America until the last quarter of the 17th century. After that time, the numbers of slaves grew exponentially. By 1776, African Americans comprised about 20% of the entire population in the 13 mainland colonies.

Quote: Nareed

Actually the US paid a pittance for that land. No question of giving it back, but how about paying royalties from the 1850s to, oh, 2217? 0.02% of accumulated GDP should be enough, plus 1% GDP from 2017 onwards.

I suspect back wages for slaves (plus interest) would dwarf the money owed to Mexico.

Quote: Pacomartin

I suspect back wages for slaves (plus interest) would dwarf the money owed to Mexico.

That would be good, too.

And it might starve the Trump beast as well. It's win-win.

I think California has a GDP of $600+ billion or so. That would mean, just from CA alone, a payment of $6+ billions per year to Mexico. I think Texas has some valuable commodity as well...

Quote: Nareed

Actually the US paid a pittance for that land. No question of giving it back, but how about paying royalties from the 1850s to, oh, 2217? 0.02% of accumulated GDP should be enough, plus 1% GDP from 2017 onwards.

Actually, the US forgave $20 million of Mexican debt in return for the Mexican Cession. At a time when a solder was lucky if he made $10 a month and hotel rooms rented for 25 cents a night, you can figure that amount as being somewhere around $2-3 billion equivalent in today's money. Maybe not even close to the value of the land, but hardly a pittance. The gross domestic product of the US in 1850 was roughly $750 million (hard to estimate precisely).

There's another consideration. Mexico was hardly using that land at all. California in particular was barely settled. That's due in large part to the geographical isolation of the area from the rest of Mexico--you had to cross the Sonoran desert or go around the Baja peninsula to get there. The Mexican government had been unwilling or unable to establish railroad or road links with the region. It was actually considerably easier (though no picnic, obviously) to get there from the rest of the US.

In any event, though we may have been negotiating from a position of strength, one should remember that back then, and for a long time after that, winners of wars simply kept the territories they had seized, without any talk of compensation. Thus, our stance, for the time (which is the only way we can judge anyone's actions in a historical context), was fairly liberal. And any consideration of a "royalty" would have to be balanced against what the interest on that $20 million would have been for the last 160+ years had they not paid it off.

Also, I would compare the present state of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and the rest of the region to that of the northern Mexican states (Durango, Sonora, Baja Norte, etc.) and ask if a person of Hispanic descent would rather be an American or a Mexican...interesting question.

Quote: stinkingliberal

In any event, though we may have been negotiating from a position of strength, one should remember that back then, and for a long time after that, winners of wars simply kept the territories they had seized, without any talk of compensation. Thus, our stance, for the time (which is the only way we can judge anyone's actions in a historical context), was fairly liberal.

One of the sacks of Rome involved a barbarian army roaming the streets, while their leaders negotiated with the Senate (by then more of a municipal body; the real Senate was in Constantinople) how much gold and silver they'd cough up, in exchange for not letting their army plunder and pillage at will. Their stance at the time, placed in a historical context, was fairly benevolent.

Quote:

And any consideration of a "royalty" would have to be balanced against what the interest on that $20 million would have been for the last 160+ years had they not paid it off.

A lot less than 0.1% GDP of California since then, plus interest. When was gold discovered in California?

Quote:

Also, I would compare the present state of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and the rest of the region to that of the northern Mexican states (Durango, Sonora, Baja Norte, etc.) and ask if a person of Hispanic descent would rather be an American or a Mexican...interesting question.

Oh, sure.

But Mexico is now 100% Trump-free.

Quote: Nareed

One of the sacks of Rome involved a barbarian army roaming the streets, while their leaders negotiated with the Senate (by then more of a municipal body; the real Senate was in Constantinople) how much gold and silver they'd cough up, in exchange for not letting their army plunder and pillage at will. Their stance at the time, placed in a historical context, was fairly benevolent.
A lot less than 0.1% GDP of California since then, plus interest. When was gold discovered in California?
Oh, sure.
But Mexico is now 100% Trump-free.

Well, yeah. My point is that we could have simply taken Northern Mexico, and we wouldn't have been thought of any differently by the world. We could have taken the entire country, for that matter, given that we won the war with what, a 400-man army? I was also saying that it's wrong for us to judge how our 19th-century forbears should have acted from our modern perspective. Another example is that our treatment of the Plains Indians, though awful and dishonorable, was pretty middle-of-the-road, and maybe even fairly benevolent, by the standards and sensibilities of the time. The British, for example, were reciting Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" while wiping out and/or enslaving entire native populations. The truth is, until quite recently, everybody treated everybody else like shit--which, judging from the recent election results, is something a lot of people today are nostalgic for.
The gold that was discovered in California did not contribute one iota to the actual wealth of the nation. Spain had already found that out three centuries before. As far as California's productivity since then, well, I venture to say that a Mexico-administered California would not have been as productive or prosperous as the actual version--by a factor of maybe ten. I think you could compare GDP per capita of the two nations to get some idea. Not to put too fine a point on it, but while our social, economic, and political systems are far, far from perfect, Mexico's, for most of its history, have been utter crap. I don't agree for a second with the "we run the place better, so we should be the ones owning it" argument. But you can't say that Mexico would necessarily have made California what it is now. For one thing, there would be far fewer Taco Bells.
Mexico is NOT Trump-free. Trump will be repurposing nuclear missiles that were formerly aimed at Moscow--after all, he doesn't want to annoy Gospodin Putin, his bare-chested buddy. One day, Trump could have a bad taco bowl served to him and decide to wipe out Mexico City in retaliation. I don't see Trump aiming ICBMs at any American cities...oh crap, I just realized that most cities voted for Hillary--maybe I should move to Ignorant Flats, Nebraska for my own safety.

Quote: stinkingliberal

There's another consideration. Mexico was hardly using that land at all. California in particular was barely settled.

1870 census
818,579 Texas
560,247 California
91,874 New Mexico
86,336 Utah
42,491 Nevada
9,658 Arizona

Well the term "hardly using" is relative. The population of the 6 states was 1.6 million in 1870 relative to 38.6 million for the USA and 9.2 million for Mexico.

The native people would, in modern terms, have the strongest claim on the land, anyway.