Flag Quiz #8

This flag represents a company that had basically absolute control, by authority of the government it represented, over a good portion of the present United States. Can you name the company or country and the area it controlled?

Answer to Quiz 7: Yes, it was indeed Mexico. Mexico had it's country's size cut in half by two American wars - the Texas/Mexican War and the Mexican War. In the Texas war we encouraged the break-away from Mexico and would have admitted Texas to the Union but several factors, including anti-slavery sentiments by Northern members of Congress, put Texas statehood on hold - hence its independent country status. We also, as a nation, later prompted a war with Mexico in order to make a major land grab - the biggest plum being California just before gold was discovered in 1848. Fort Alcatraz, on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, was built partly because the United States wanted to prevent the Mexicans from trying to regain California. The United States made additional land purchases from Mexico but never got the California Peninsula which we wanted in order to build a U.S. port on the Sea of Cortez. The Mexicans held out against this one or today the Baja Peninsula would probably be a part of California.

Did you know?

That Ulysses S. Grant, who served during the Mexican War, once said that our nation's Civil War was God's punishment for what we had done to the Mexicans.

The Zimmerman Telegram of WWI was a coded message to the Mexicans from Germany that if the U.S. were to enter the war, the Germans would be willing to enter an alliance with Mexico and provide assistance in getting back it's former lost territories to the United States.