Faded Glory: A Century of Forgotten Texas Military Sites, Then and Now

1. The Mexican War

C h a p t e r 3 2 10 35 35 45 20 35W 37 10 G u l f o f M e x i c o Corpus Christi Beach Thornton’s Skirmish Brazos Santiago Fort Brown Corpus Christi Laredo San Antonio Brownsville Houston T E X A S Mexican War M E X I C O Map by Molly O’Halloran T H E C I V I L W A R 1 8 6 1 – 1 8 6 5 3 While all wars are controversial by nature, few have proved to be quite as lastingly contentious as the relatively brief but hugely significant war between the United States and Mexico. Beginning on the banks of the Rio Grande at the southern tip of Texas in May 1846, the often fierce conflict came to its close less than 18 months later when the victorious American army marched into Mexico City. The magnitude of the spoils of the war is beyond dispute. In defeat, Mexico forfeited more than 1 million square miles of its territory to the United States. In time, those vast lands became the states of California, Arizona, and New Mexico, with sizeable portions of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada included in the war-wrought transaction. Texas, then only recently annexed into the Union, was by treaty finally made free of the long-standing claim of ownership by Mexico. In addition, the defeated nation was forced to recognize the Rio Grande as the formal boundary separating it from the United States. For many politicians at the time, as well as for numerous historians since who have made the Mexican War their favorite subject, the controversy that still swirls around it has provided ample fodder for argument. For example, Abraham Lincoln, as a 38year -old freshman congressman from Illinois, railed against the rationale for going to Wars as such may best be forgotten, but the period of the Mexican War was an important era, one of upheaval, of passion, of heroism, of bitterness, and of triumph. —John S. D. Eisenhower 1 The Mexican War 1846-1848 3 war with Mexico so vehemently that his colleagues and supporters called into question his personal loyalty to the Union. As is always the case, the writing of the war’s history fell largely to the victor’s own historians. In this instance, however, some of these scholars have depicted the winning side as the villainous perpetrator of the whole affair. No less a military authority than Ulysses S. Grant, a participant in and a chronicler of the Mexican War, decried it as being “the most unjust war ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker nation.” His analysis, offered years after the Union general Grant himself had led the forces of a stronger nation in a war against a weaker one, puts his quote in clear perspective. With the passage of time, however, the American invasion of Mexico now seems to have taken refuge in the handy observation that the ends justify the means. In the case of the Mexican War, the ends were a weakened Mexico and an enlarged United States suddenly without any strong strategic challenger on the North American continent . It is not only the end, however, that has stirred the controversy over the years but the means as well. Just how and why this pivotal war came about remain the key questions. While it is not within the scope of this chapter to review in any depth the war’s causes and effects, we offer a short abstract of the more salient issues. Those seeking a comprehensive study of the conflict are urged to read John S. D. Eisenhower’s excellent book, So Far from God, as well as Robert Selph Henry’s equally compelling treatment, The Story of the Mexican War. In this short version of that story, the overarching reason for the Mexican War was American expansionism. The United States apparently had no desire to expand deeply into Mexico proper, but rather, slice across its northern territory in pursuit of what US president James Knox Polk saw as his nation’s manifest destiny. Like other presidents before him, he envisioned a United States that stretched the full 3,000 miles from the Atlantic Coast on the east to California’s Pacific shores on the west. A cursory glance at an 1840s-era map of North America reveals that the most expedient way...