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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. But remember,

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no treaties until after dinner.

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What should replace the underlined words below?

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The Mexican War had begun in 1846, and it ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

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For this question, we'll need to delve into the past. Fortunately, we don't need a Delorean...

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...and/or a hot tub...

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...to do so.

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First, let's take a look at choice (A), which claims that the original sentence is the picture

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of perfection.

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Uh, no. As is, the sentence uses the past perfect tense with "had begun."

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The past perfect tense can only be used to compare two events in the past, and this part

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of the sentence is talking about only one event.

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If it said, for example, "The Mexican War had begun by the time construction of the

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first Taco Bell on Mexican soil was complete," then it would be correct...

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...if not historically accurate.

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(B) is easy to eliminate because the past participle of a verb like "begun" always requires

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a helping verb like "had."

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What can we say? Some people, and verbs, are just needy.

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Choice (D) is incorrect as well, because "begin" is present tense.

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If the dates the sentence throws around aren't enough, the verb "ended" signals that both

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events began and ended in the past.

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This leaves us with (C), which correctly uses the past tense verb, "began," to let us know

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just when the Mexican War got going.

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Side note: we're kind of thinking about changing our name to

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Guadalupe Hidalgo.

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Thoughts?

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