Texas
... plotting the eventual occupation of California by the British. Polk kept a watchful eye on that possibility. In mid-June 1845, Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor of the United States Army to go near the Rio Grande. By August 1, General Taylor's forces had moved near Corpus Christi at the mouth of the Rio Nueces. But they did not go farther south to the Rio Grande, as Polk had directed. In September, Polk appointed John Slidell as his "Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary" to Mexico. The title meant that Slidell was Polk's diplomatic representative. Slidell tried to buy the provinces of New Mexico and California, but the offer was rejected. He then sent naval support to the Pacific coast as well as an exploring party of heavily armed soldiers into California's Sacramento Valley. Hoping to instigate a war, Polk sent U.S. troops under Zachary Taylor into the disputed area between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River. When skirmishes broke out between the Mexican and American forces, Polk claimed that U.S. territory had been invaded and won a declaration of war from Congress. To avoid a simultaneous war with Great Britain, he and the Senate agreed to divide Oregon with the British at the forty-ninth parallel....