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War With Mexico

Welcome to the Hidden History of Texas. This is Episode 44 – War With Mexico –  As always, brought to you by Ashby Navis and Tennyson Media Publishers, producers of  high quality games, productivity, mental health apps, and  a comprehensive catalog of  audiobooks. Visit AshbyNavis.com for more information.

The 1846-1848 conflict known in the United States as the Mexican-American War was called the U.S. Invasion by Mexico. It was fueled by the expansionist views of President James Polk and was an example of his belief in the ‘Manifest Destiny’. He firmly believed that the United States was destined by God to own all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

After he became President and oversaw the annexation of Texas into the union as a State, he realized that since Mexico controlled everything west of Texas, it  was standing in his way. Initially he  tried to have Mexico agree to several small issues. After the Battle of San Jacinto, even though Texas and the United States claimed Texas was independent the fact was that Mexico had never officially signed a peace treaty. Polk wanted Mexico to recognize that the boundary between the United States and Mexico was the Rio Grande. He also wanted Mexico to sell Northern California to the United States. He did his best to pressure Mexico into accepting these terms, but he failed because nobody in Mexico would agree to giving up any territory to the United States and that especially included Texas.

Polk was not a person to take no for an answer, and he grew increasingly frustrated by Mexico. On January 13, 1846, he ordered the army that was under the control of Gen. Zachary Taylor’s, which was in Corpus Christi, to move to the Rio Grande. Needless to say, the Mexican government took this to be an act of war. The Mexicans responded by crossing the Rio Grande on April 25 at Matamoros and  ambushed an American patrol.

Much like President Johnson would do later with the Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify further involvement in Vietnam, on May 13^th, Polk used this to convince Congress to declare war on Mexico. He claimed that this was because “American blood had been shed upon American soil.”  On May 8 and 9, even before the official declaration of war Taylor’s army defeated a force of 3,700 Mexican soldiers under Gen. Mariano Arista in the Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma

Initially the American forces tried to use the time-honored plan of blockading Mexican coastal cities and also occupying the Mexican states that bordered Texas. These plans were based on a very unrealistic belief that this would somehow coerce Mexico into giving up territory. In September General Taylor, accompanied by a significant number of volunteers that included many Texans, seized Monterrey. He then declared that General Arista had agreed to an armistice. Taylor succeeded in large part due to the role that  Col. John Coffee Hays’s Texas Mounted Rifles played during the attack on the city.

 Polk, however, was not satisfied with the armistice and he denounced it, forcing Taylor to drive further south to Saltillo and then east to Victoria. Meanwhile Gen. John E. Wool lead more troops from San Antonio with the initial intention of threatening Chihuahua, instead he turned and ended up joining Taylor’s forces. Not content with just Texas and Mexico, President Polk sent Gen. Stephen W. Kearny from Fort Leavenworth with instructions to seize New Mexico.

Finally in July, as Taylor’s forces were gathering, the navy sent its Pacificsquadron under Commodore John D. Sloat to occupy Monterey and San  Francisco, California. From that post they joined a force of Anglo settlers who  at the urging of the explorer John C. Frémont had established their own government. Although an August incursion into southern California failed, the area was eventually secured by a joint army-navy expedition under Kearny and Commodore Robert F. Stockton in January 1847.

Meanwhile, our old friend Santa Anna had returned to power in Mexico and since he still was bitter over how his incursion into Texas had ended, plus the fact that he didn’t really have much power in Mexico there was no progress on negotiations. That gave the Polk administration time and the desire to build a new army under Gen. Winfield Scott whose orders were  to march from the coast to the capital Mexico City. Santa Anna, became aware of the movement of Scott’s forces and he tried to defeat Taylor’s troops in the north before  returning to face Scott in the heart of Mexico.

His plan failed because Taylor’s largely amateur 4,600-man army beat him in a battle at Buena Vista even though Santa Anna had a force of 15,000 Mexicans. Many historians attribute much of the American  victory to information supplied by Maj. Benjamin McCulloch’s spy company.

Meanwhile, on March 9, 1847 Naval Commodore David Conner was able to land Scott’s 10,000-man army near Veracruz. This was the first time America ever tried a large-scale amphibious assault. It was successful and once the port had been secured, Scott led his army inland. On April 17-18 the American army completely destroyed Santa Anna’s hastily gathered eastern force of nearly 17,000 men at Cerro Gordo. Scott’s forces then advanced to Puebla where in May things came to a halt  after the volunteers who made up more than half of his force returned to civilian life. The stranded American army stayed at Puebla, with no help from its main base at Veracruz, until Texas Rangers under Hays, reinforced them in August.

His campaign successful, Scott then turned his attention to Mexico City. In mid-August, during the battles of Contreras and Churubusco Scott succeeded in driving a force of approximately 24,000 Mexican solders back into the Mexican capital. Even this did not convince Santa Anna to sue for peace so Scott resumed his assault on the city. He began on September 8^th with an attack at Molino del Rey. Then on September 13–14, he took control of the heights of Chapultepec and finally breached the inner defenses.

This caused  Santa Anna to abandon the city but he had managed to salvage enough of his army to counter-attack at Puebla. This proved unsuccessful and the Mexicans were unable to prevent the Americans from occupying  other cities in central and eastern Mexico. At the same time along the Pacific coast the American navy, commanded by Commodore W. Branford Shubrick, captured the port of Mazatlán, neutralized Guaymas, and eliminated Mexican authority in Baja California.

With the fall of Mexico City, the Mexican government also fell which meant that Scott and Nicholas P. Trist, an agent of the State Department were forced to wait until February 1848 when a government was formed that agreed to peace. At that time, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States gained California, Arizona, New Mexico, and set the Rio Grande as the boundary for Texas, as well as portions of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado.

And Manifest Destiny was in full motion.

So that’s going to do it for this episode. Please subscribe to the podcast, I try to keep posting new episodes, sometimes though life gets in the way and there’s a gap between. If you want more information on Texas History, visit the website of the Texas State Historical Association. I also have four audiobooks on the Hidden History of Texas, The Spanish Bump Into Texas 1530s to 1820s,  Here Come The Anglos 1820s to 1830s, Years of Revolution 1830 to 1836. And, A Failing Republic Becomes a State 1836-1850. You can find the books pretty much wherever you download or listen to audiobooks. Just do a search for the Hidden History of Texas by Hank Wilson and they’ll pop right up. Or visit my website https://arctx.org. By the way if you like audiobooks, visit my publisher’s website there’s an incredible selection of audiobooks there. In addition to mine you’ll find the classics, horror, science fiction, mental-health, and much more. Check it out visit https://ashbynavis.com

Thanks for listening y’all