“We take nothing by conquest…Thank God,” wrote the National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser, an influential Washington newspaper, in February 1847.
The United States had just purchased 55 per cent of Mexico for US$15 million as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The pact concluded the bloody Mexican-American War, which claimed thousands of lives.
Despite the loss of life, and American ambitions to take all of Mexico, the treaty painted the whole experience as a rightful “cession” of land rather than a conquest.
Every Canadian needs to pay attention to this bit of American history. In one treaty, the U.S. annexed the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming. It subsequently illegally invaded Indigenous territory in the west.
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Canada could be next — perhaps not immediately as the 51st state, but quite possibly as a U.S. territory that would deny Canadians any voting rights for Congress or the presidency, allow only some autonomy and make questions of citizenship ambiguous. The constitutional architecture exists in the U.S. to make it happen.
Impossible? Unthinkable? Many pundits dismiss Trump’s bellicose rhetoric as hot-headed bargaining. It’s just tough talk, they say. Some have argued his bluster is simply part of his favoured “art of the deal” negotiating tactics.
That’s the wrong reading. How Trump could make good on the threat can be found in the U.S. Constitution. There is both potential and precedent for the U.S. to acquire territory through cession or subjugation.
The War Plan Red of 1930 was also drummed up by the U.S. Department of War on how to invade Canada if ever needed.
It included shocking details about kicking off the attack in Halifax with poison gas, quickly invading New Brunswick and then occupying Québec City and Montréal before claiming Niagara Falls.
Historically, America has made many Canadian leaders nervous. Queen Victoria felt that Ottawa, as a capital, would be sheltered from U.S. invasions. John A. Macdonald worried about Union forces attacks on Canada, as U.S. Confederacy spies and raiders were permitted to hole up in Montréal during the civil war.
In 1911, the Liberal Party railed against free trade with the U.S.
Hypothetical paranoia aside, the ability of the U.S. to acquire territories is ingrained in the U.S. Constitution. It is straightforward. First, start with Article II, Section 2 of the constitution:
“He [The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur…”.
Treaties are the tools the U.S. uses to take “nothing by conquest” after the Senate ratifies those treaties by a two-thirds majority.
In 1848, President Zachary Taylor proposed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to Congress to annex Mexican lands. Even though some wanted to take all of Mexico, Congress ratified the treaty.
In 1898, Congress passed House Joint Resolution 259. It ratified President William McKinley’s treaty of the annexation of Hawaii. Due to protest, petition and dissent, it took 60 years for Hawaii to become an official state in 1957.
The American origin story of a country born in revolution only applies to a small piece of the country. The rest of the place came to exist through annexation. The U.S. expanded to 50 states and 14 overseas territories through a mix of cession, occupation and purchase.
From the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 — which saw 827,987 square miles pass from France to the United States — to the cession of the Marshall Islands from Japan in 1947, Manifest Destiny, the belief that the expansion of the U.S. throughout the Americas was both justified and inevitable, is built into the spine of the U.S. Constitution.
But so, too, is dissent.
Once the U.S. legally acquires territories, Article IV, Section 2 of the constitution grants Congress the authority to manage them or dispose of them:
“The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting Territory and other Property belonging to the United States.”
If a territory was unjustly acquired through a treaty, through unlawful means or if it challenges American interests, then it can be disposed of. The Marshall Islands is case in point.
After serving as a U.S. nuclear testing ground, the country ratified a constitution in 1979 and is now in a compact of free association with the U.S.
President Ulysses S. Grant proposed the annexation of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic in 1870, thinking it would be a good place for freed Black slaves to establish themselves to escape discrimination in southern States while protecting the Dominican Republic from invasion by Haiti. Congress had none of it, and failed to ratify the treaty.
In 1898, the U.S. declared war on Spain by invading Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. Within six months, Spain surrendered and treaties of annexation by cession were drawn for each territory. The U.S. gained sovereignty over all except Cuba, although the Philippines won back its independence in 1946.
Cuba’s exclusion was thanks to Sen. Henry Teller of Colorado, who worried about Cuban sugar flooding the American market. He painted his ambitions in flowery rhetoric about the importance of autonomy, self-governance and the rights of man.
But in fact, Teller wanted to keep Cuba out to protect domestic sugar beet growers. The Senate passed the amendment excluding Cuba. Four years later, however, another amendment by Connecticut Sen. Orville Platt established Guantanamo Bay as a permanent U.S. military base on the island and gave the U.S. the right to invade Cuba whenever it saw fit.
It seems hard to fathom that discussions about U.S. annexation efforts against Canada are actually unfolding. Alarming indeed, but it would be a mistake to ignore history, overlook the U.S. Constitution and try to outwit the art of the deal.
Trump’s calls for Canada to join the U.S. could only happen by drafting a treaty demonstrating that a process of cession, purchase or occupation is legal. Only then could Congress approve it, and only with a two-thirds majority of the Senate. Trump does not have two-thirds of the Senate.
The correct move is to get Canadian voices to Congress. The strength of Canada–U.S. relations has always been through person-to-person relations in a deeply intertwined stew of familial and business relations.
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Trump does not see the value in that. Congress, however, might, especially if annexing Canada proves expensive.
This is why Canadian politicians at federal, provincial and even municipal levels need to open lines of communication with Congress, especially in economically strategic states.
Congressional representatives need to view annexing Canada as a ridiculous burden, both politically and financially, rather than as a prize.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Robert Huish, Dalhousie University
Read more: Why Donald Trump is threatening to take control of the Panama Canal Trump’s Greenland bid is really about control of the Arctic and the coming battle with China Canada-U.S. history provides lessons on how Canada can deal with a hostile Donald Trump
Robert Huish received funding from The Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council 
