Non-fiction: Message Transmitting the Gadsden Purchase Treaty and Documents

Overview
President Franklin Pierce’s 1854 message transmits to the Senate the treaty negotiated by U.S. Minister James Gadsden with the Republic of Mexico, together with correspondence, maps, and departmental reports. Pierce presents the agreement as a practical settlement of a vexed boundary and as a means to secure peace, improve commerce, and facilitate a southern route to the Pacific. He requests the Senate’s advice and consent to ratification and frames the convention as a limited, clearly defined adjustment rather than a broad scheme of aggrandizement.

Background and Boundary Friction
Pierce recounts persistent disputes arising from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, especially the uncertain demarcation near the Rio Grande and the Mesilla Valley. Differing surveys and interpretations had produced overlapping civil jurisdictions, military incidents, and tension between local authorities. The message argues that a boundary merely traced on imperfect maps was insufficient for lasting peace. A new, explicit line on the ground, susceptible of ready identification and maintenance, would prevent recurrent controversies and remove temptations to local agitation.

Negotiation Aims and Conduct
He explains Gadsden’s instructions: to extinguish ambiguity, reconcile conflicting claims, and, if practicable, acquire a tract that would secure the most direct and feasible railroad line to the Pacific. The correspondence shows the Mexican government’s willingness to settle long-standing questions in return for fair compensation and a prompt infusion of funds. Pierce emphasizes that negotiations avoided any demand for seaports or extensive cessions, concentrating instead on a narrow belt adequate for a defensible boundary and a practicable communication corridor.

Strategic and Economic Reasons
The message stresses the military and fiscal advantages of a straightened frontier. A clearer line reduces border garrisons, eases supply, and enables concerted action against raiding parties. Commercially, it would stabilize land titles, regularize customs, and encourage lawful trade. Above all, it would secure access to passes and valleys thought best suited for a southern transcontinental railroad, minimizing grades and winter impediments. Pierce appends War Department reconnaissances indicating that the most economical route lay south of the existing boundary, and he warns that leaving the matter unsettled would postpone national improvements and perpetuate costly uncertainty.

Financial Terms and Claims
Pierce describes the pecuniary consideration paid to Mexico as moderate in view of the territory’s value for communication and defense. He presents the sum not as a mere purchase price but as the means to compose related controversies. The convention revises prior obligations touching cross-border depredations by Indian tribes, substitutes practical cooperation for theoretical liabilities, and supplies a structure to terminate pending claims and complaints. By closing these accounts in a single instrument, the two republics remove a fertile source of irritation.

Security and Frontier Management
The treaty commits both parties to restrain tribes within their limits, to pursue and punish offenders, and to return captives and stolen property when recovered. Pierce argues that this approach is more honest and more workable than abstract indemnities, which neither treasury nor army could satisfy under prevailing conditions. He also underscores that the agreement furnishes the legal basis for joint patrols, extradition of criminals, and mutual assistance along a line that can be patrolled and marked without dispute.

Implementation and Local Rights
Pierce calls for prompt appropriation to carry the treaty into effect, including surveys to monument the line. He notes provisions respecting inhabitants of the ceded district: protection of property, freedom to retain Mexican nationality within a stated period, and, in default of such election, admission to the rights of citizens under U.S. law. Immediate, orderly transfer would encourage settlement, quiet fears, and prevent abuses that attend prolonged provisional authority.

Tone and Significance
Throughout, Pierce adopts a restrained, legal tone, presenting the convention as a fair bargain that restores clarity where confusion reigned. He insists that peace, predictable jurisdiction, and open avenues of commerce are the true objects sought. Ratification, he contends, will secure the railroad’s natural pathway, reduce military expense, settle claims that have embittered relations, and replace a theoretical boundary with one that both nations can see, survey, and keep.