Palo Alto
Frida
Stanford
Frida
Stanford
Psalms 37:4
“Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”
Chess: "Palo Alto" "Frida Stanford"
The Mexican War was a brief yet significant event in the history of the United States. In eighteen months of fighting, the U.S. Army won a series of decisive victories and captured nearly half of Mexico's territory. In the end, the conflict added some one million square miles of land to the young nation, including the valuable deep-water ports of coastal California.
Introduction
The Mexican War (1846-1848) was the U.S. Army's first experience waging extended conflict in foreign land. This brief war is often overlooked by casual students of history since it occurred so close to the American Civil War and is overshadowed by the latter's sheer size and scope. Yet, the Mexican War was instrumental in shaping the geographical boundaries of the United States. At the conclusion of this conflict, the U.S. had added some one million square miles of territory, including what today are the states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, as well as portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. This newly acquired land also became a battleground between advocates for the expansion of slavery and those who fought to prevent its spread. These sectional and political differences ripped the fabric of the union of states and eventually contributed to the start of the American Civil War, just thirteen years later. In addition, the Mexican War was a proving ground for a generation of U.S. Army leaders who as junior officers in Mexico learned the trade of war and later applied those lessons to the Civil War.
The Mexican War lasted some twenty-six months from its first engagement through the withdrawal of American troops. Fighting took place over thousands of miles, from northern Mexico to Mexico City, and across New Mexico and California. During the conflict, the U.S. Army won a series of decisive conventional battles, all of which highlighted the value of U.S. Military Academy graduates who time and again paved the way for American victories. The Mexican War still has much to teach us about projecting force, conducting operations in hostile territory with a small force that is dwarfed by the local population, urban combat, the difficulties of occupation, and the courage and perseverance of individual soldiers. The following essay is one of eight planned in this series to provide an accessible and readable account of the U.S. Army's role and achievements in the conflict.
This brochure was prepared in the U.S. Army Center of Military History by Stephen A. Carney. I hope that this absorbing account, with its list of further readings, will stimulate further study and reflection. A complete list of the Center of Military History's available works is included on the Center's online catalog.
JOHN S. BROWN
Chief of Military History
Guns Along the Rio Grande
Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma
The Mexican War was a brief yet significant event in the history of the United States. In eighteen months of fighting, the U.S. Army won a series of decisive victories and captured nearly half of Mexico's territory. In the end, the conflict added some one million square miles of land to the young nation, including the valuable deep-water ports of coastal California.
A period of distrust and misunderstanding preceded the opening of hostilities between the United States and Mexico. After gaining its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico controlled most of the land north of the Rio Grande that encompasses the present-day states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Between the 1820s and 1840s, English-speaking settlers filtered into this area, which was only marginally controlled by the overextended government in Mexico City. Thousands of Americans, who changed their citizenship and received large tracts of land from the Mexican government, rebelled in Texas in 1835 for several reasons, including Mexico's abolition of the locally popular Texas provincial government and its inability to protect the settlers against Indian raids. These infringements prompted some of the Mexicans living in the region to side with the rebels. Additional causes of the independence movement include cultural differences springing from the Protestant beliefs of the American immigrants and Mexican demands that all become Catholic. Many settlers, moreover, were from the southern states and wanted to introduce slavery into territory that had been free since 1821, an anathema to most Mexicans. The rebels won their independence in 1836 and formed the Republic of Texas. Mexico, however, refused to honor Texas' independence granted by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna after the battle of San Jacinto. Consequently, during their years as an independent nation, the Texans did not have formal diplomatic relations with Mexico. Texans insisted that their southern border was the Rio Grande. That claim not only extended the nascent republic's borders some one hundred miles beyond the boundary sought by Mexico, but also added to Texas almost half of the present-day state of New Mexico by virtue of that river's northward turn west of El Paso. Mexico nevertheless continued a Spanish tradition of designating headlands between watercourses as boundaries and claimed that the line ran some hundred miles to the north on heights that separated the Rio Grande and the Nueces River watersheds. The Mexican approach made some sense, as waterways tend to change come over time.
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Poor relations between Texas and Mexico intensified in 1844 when Texas applied to become an American state. Mexico declared that it would consider U.S. annexation of the region an act of war. Concerned, President John Tyler directed the U.S. Army to assemble a force called the Army of Observation at Fort Jesup, Louisiana, near the Texas border. After the United States officially annexed Texas on 4 July 1845, the newly elected President James K. Polk ordered the troops to advance into Texas. Polk's decision served as the catalyst for the opening battles of the Mexican War at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma in the disputed borderlands.
The United States had interests beyond the Texas issue in Mexico's northern territory. By 1840, the population of the United States had reached approximately thirteen million and was growing rapidly. Looking westward to expand, the nation justified its demand for land with the concept of Manifest Destiny, the notion that God willed the United States to control the entire North American land mass. As expounded by newspaper editor John L. O'Sullivan, the idea became a key part of American ideology in the mid-1840s. Economics also played a central role in the concept. American explorers in California such as 2d Lt. John C. Fremont had reported deepwater ports along the area's coast. These would be valuable when the United States sought to open trade between America's growing industry and lucrative markets in Asia.
In an attempt to settle the Texas border question and secure California, the United States offered to purchase both regions from Mexico several times between 1842 and 1845. Mexico refused all overtures. Mexican popular opinion insisted that the government preserve all of the territory that their nation had wrested from Spain.
Strategic Setting
In 1845 Mexico controlled more than one-third of the North American continent. Its population consisted of nearly seven million people. A geographically diverse land with topographic extremes, its highest point soared to 18,700 feet above sea level while its lowest stood below sea level. Coastal plains dominated much of eastern Mexico, but the terrain rapidly inclined into a region of central plateaus and interior mountains. The nation's largest population center, Mexico City, was situated in a volcanic highland region in the center of the country.
Northern Mexico, where most military operations occurred in 1846, shared many of these characteristics. The Gulf area consisted of coastal flats, while wide flood plains encompassed both banks of the Rio Grande. The topography ascended southward into stretches of arid lowlands, which gradually gave way to cool highlands. The Sierra Madre towered over most of the region. North of the Rio Grande, Mexico's holdings extended from the western borders of the states of Louisiana and Arkansas in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. They included more than one million square miles of land in the present-day states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The geography of this sparsely populated territory included parts of the jagged Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, the craggy Intermountain Region, and the rugged Coast Ranges. In addition, stretches of largely uninhabited desert contrasted with such potentially valuable agricultural lands as California's Central Valley.
As with the terrain, Mexico's climate presented huge variations, ranging from oppressive humidity in heavily jungle, tropical regions on the coasts to extreme winter conditions in the interior mountains. Much of the plateau region was desert land that suffered from prolonged droughts.
On the brink of conflict, Mexico appeared better prepared for war than the United States. Its Army numbered 18,882 regular troops, 10,495 active militiamen, and 1,174 irregulars. In comparison, the U. S. Army's authorized strength was 8,613 and its actual establishment only 7,365.
Both the American and Mexican armies shared a similar organization based on European models, with specialized corps
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of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers. Organized to guard the frontier and to fight small unit actions against American Indians, the U.S. Army of the 1840s was scattered across America's coastal regions and frontier in small posts manned by units of company size or less. Because entire regiments rarely assembled, the force hardly ever practiced large unit tactics. The Mexican army was little different. It had five territorial divisions, each of which covered a different geographical region out of necessity. That organization required the deployment of small detachments across huge areas. Few of those units had ever served with others in their divisions. Thus neither side had much experience with conventional warfare involving larger units of different arms.
The U.S. infantry consisted of eight regiments, each containing ten companies. Each company supposedly possessed fifty-five men, but at the onset of the war most were understrength, averaging only thirty-five. Battalions, along with brigades and divisions, were employed frequently during the Mexican War. A battalion denoted an ad hoc collection of companies that assembled to perform a special task during a campaign and then dissolved when the mission was over. Brigades consisted of multiple regiments, while divisions contained several brigades. These larger formations were also temporary organizations.
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