Gather with a small group of teachers from around the country for three days immersed in discussion and exploration of a single topic in American history. Multi-Day Seminars are a free opportunity for teachers hosted near an important historical site. Teachers will prepare ahead of time for seminars by reading selected historical documents in the provided course packet. Once the seminar begins, the discussion leader guides a peer-to-peer, text-based conversation among all participants. Meals, materials, double-occupancy rooms, and historical site visits are 100% covered by Teaching American History. At the end of each course, every teacher receives a letter of participation for fifteen contact hours of continuing education and a stipend of $600 to help defray travel costs.

The United States’s annexation of Texas in 1845 sparked an international crisis of sovereignty with neighboring Mexico. Each nation disputed precisely where the border divided both republics, producing a war waged between 1846 and 1848. With military triumph in 1848, the United States acquired from Mexico the vast western lands stretching from Texas to the Pacific Ocean. The swift procurement initiated a great national debate on whether slavery could spread into the new federal territories, leading to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ominous prediction, “Mexico will poison us.”