Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, formally the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement between the United States of America and the United Mexican States, was signed on 2 February 1848 in the town of Guadalupe Hidalgo, near Mexico City, ending the Mexican-American War. It was negotiated for the United States by the State Department clerk Nicholas Trist, who continued talks after his formal recall by President James K. Polk, and for Mexico by a delegation led by Luis Gonzaga Cuevas, Bernardo Couto and Miguel Atristain. Under its terms Mexico ceded roughly 55 percent of its pre-war territory to the United States, comprising most of present-day California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona along with parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming, and it recognized the Rio Grande, rather than the Nueces River, as the southern boundary of Texas, resolving the border dispute that had helped trigger the war. In exchange the United States paid Mexico 15 million dollars and agreed to assume roughly 3.25 million dollars in claims owed by the Mexican government to American citizens. The treaty's Article IX promised citizenship and property protections to Mexican residents of the ceded territory, guarantees that were often poorly honored in practice, and the roughly 525,000 square miles it transferred went on to form all or part of nine present-day American states.