U. S. presidents and foreign policy
by Carl Cavanagh Hodge, Cathal J. Nolan. 
Page 155

Former colleagues of President Hayes such as William S. Rosecrans – also former U.S. Minister to Mexico under President Johnsons (1868-1869) – pressured Hayes to promote mining and railroad interests in Mexico.  He even tried as an annexationist to urge American purchase of parts of northern Mexico:  Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and the Territory of Lower California.  While Hayes had made remarks to the effect that the annexation of adjacent territory both north and south “seems to be, according to the phase of 1844, our ‘manifest destiny.’ He was “not in favor of artificial stimulants to this tendency.”  Neither Hayes nor Diaz was willing to go to war over these vexing border problems, even though Hayes’s antagonist James Blaine claimed Hayes was an aggressive annexationist.  On July 6, 1977, President Hayes made clear that “nothing hostile to Mexico or detrimental to her interests is intended.  As to annexing any part of the Mexican territory, there is no thought of it, and the United States dies nit want any territory in that direction even if offered as a gift.”

(02/20/2011)