Mexican Border Established

On this day in 1853, 154 years ago, the U.S. minister to Mexico, and General Santa Anna, then president of Mexico, signed the Gadsden Purchase in Mexico City. This treaty settled a dispute on the location of the Mexican border west of El Paso, Texas, and fixed the boundaries of the southern United States. Emissary James Gadsden, a South Carolinian disciple of President Andrew Jackson negotiated a price of $15 million, later reduced to $10 million, for the United States to acquire 30,000 square miles of land. This land became what is now parts of southern New Mexico and Arizona.
Jefferson Davis, then U.S. secretary of war, an future president of the Confederacy, under President Franklin Pierce, had sent James Gadsden to negotiate with Santa Anna for the land. The land was considered to have importance for the construction of the southern transcontinental railroad.
Gadsden went on to become an advocate of southern industrialization. This was frustrated by the growing sentiment for states rights which led to the Civil War.

• So, there you have it, shorty after the Mexican American War, in which the US forces kicked Santa Anna's bottom right through Mexico City, the Mexican General/President turned around and sold additional lands to their northern conquerors.
• For those of our illegal visitors hoping for a Californian succession and claiming theft of their homeland, just shut up.