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chapter฀two Tactical Expertise and the U.S. Army before the War with Mexico ฀฀ Wars do not win themselves; soldiers, generals, and armies must organize, train, equip, and finally fight their way to victory. The army of the United States did exactly that during the Mexican War, and it won the prize of Alta California with its fine harbors and increased the nation’s territorial landmass by a third. Furthermore, the war also provided the conquered territory over which Free-Soil and proslavery forces would contend for the next decade and a half, leading eventually to the Civil War in 1861. An outright American defeat or a less stunning military victory might not have prevented some other form of sectional tension from leading to civil war, but the actual historical Civil War of 1861 to 1865 was made possible only by a conquering American army marching into Mexico City like Cortez and his conquistadors returned. A host of factors lay behind American military victory—military, diplomatic, political, and cultural. One issue that historians have not examined as thoroughly as they might is the military effectiveness of the U.S. Army. Because of political imperatives born from Jacksonian ideology , which made Americans reluctant to spend large sums on war making, and a not inconsiderable amount of internal dissent in the United States, the administration of President James K. Polk could not fully deploy the country’s superior material resources against Mexico. Furthermore, Mexican military abilities and national will, which the Polk administration consistently underestimated, were quite substantial. Manifest Destiny could become manifest only if certain concrete conditions found fulfillment , one being an American military competent enough to use limited resources to good effect. That competence depended on the old army’s creation of three distinct infantry, cavalry, and artillery branches with standardized weapons and 35  tactical฀expertise tactics. The importance of establishing these three combat arms on a reasonably solid footing cannot be overstated. During the Mexican War, infantry formed the bedrock of an army as an all-purpose and cost-effective arm that could both defend and attack. Cavalry was of limited value in defending a position but possessed the mobility needed for reconnaissance and screening, while also (at least in theory) possessing sufficient shock and celerity to exploit decisive battlefield opportunities. Perhaps most important in the case of the Mexican War, artillery provided tremendous firepower, but lacked the solidity of a battalion of infantrymen standing fast with bayonets fixed.1 All three arms had their own strengths and weaknesses and worked best as the complementary pieces of a larger whole. The possession of these three combat arms along with a functioning staff system represented a bare minimum of organizational competence, which the United States had not possessed in 1812, despite having thirty years of peace after the Treaty of Paris to prepare for the War of 1812.2 The United States, then fighting a war on its own soil, had found the time to recover with respect to Great Britain; however, fighting a war of conquest on foreign soil thirty years after the Treaty of Ghent, Polk could not have afforded the two years of bungling allowed to President James Madison. In short, there was nothing automatic about the creation of a competent regular army after 1815. Indeed, the officers of the old army deserve much of the credit for the creation of the three combat arms. Two active and reformist secretaries of war, Calhoun and Joel R. Poinsett, provided crucial support in the political arena, but even they could not have done all the necessary spadework unaided. Professionally minded officers went to the time and trouble of translating foreign manuals, sitting on tactics boards, commenting on proposed tactical manuscripts, and even traveling to Europe to collect and adapt the professional expertise of the Old World. Without the completion of all of these sometimes-mundane tasks, the elaborate reforms of Calhoun and Poinsett would have gone for naught. Furthermore, these officers could not expect much public support from a polity still devoted to the citizen-soldier ideal. The old army persevered, however, and in 1846 the United States could boast of an army far better prepared for a Europeanstyle war at the commencement of hostilities than any other previous army in the history of the republic. What makes this achievement of the regular army even more impressive is that it spent most of this period engaged in taxing frontier duties [18.219.22.169] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...

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