Texas, New Mexico, and California did not fall into American hands until they had passed from the Spaniard to his half-Indian sons.
Many decades went by after Spain had lost her foothold on the American continent, and she still held her West Indian empire.

She misgoverned the islands as she had misgoverned the continent; and in the islands, as once upon the continent, her own children became her deadliest foes.

But generation succeeded generation, and the prophecies of those far-seeing statesmen who foretold that she would lose to the northern Republic her West Indian possessions remained unfulfilled.

At last, at the close of one of the bloodiest and most brutal wars that even Spain ever waged with her own colonists, the United States intervened, and in a brief summer campaign destroyed the last vestiges of the mediaeval Spanish domain in the tropic seas alike of the West and the remote East.
We of this generation were but carrying to completion the work of our fathers and of our fathers' fathers.

It is moreover a matter for just pride that while there was no falling off in the vigor and prowess shown by our fighting men, there was a marked change for the better in the spirit with which the deed was done.