Invading Mexico : America's Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846-1848

by Wheelan, Joseph

• ISBN13: 9780786717194
• ISBN10: 078671719X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-03-07
• Publisher: Public Affairs

Summary

"Popular historian Joseph Wheelan recounts James Polk's strategy of last resort for prying California away from Mexico. He had tried to buy it; he had instructed his agents to encourage a settlers' revolt. When these measures failed, the impatient president, while cynically condemning Mexico's anger over America's annexation of Texas, sent General Zachary Taylor's army to the Rio Grande River, into territory that Mexico claimed as hers. By provocatively sending Taylor to the Rio Grande River, the president got his war - and, as bitter corollaries, the scathing criticism of congressional leaders on moral grounds, and Mexico's lasting distrust of its powerful northern neighbour. The Mexican War was America's first truly modern war. Steamships ferried troops, daguerreotypes captured the spectacle of infantry and cavalry marching off to battle, newspapermen reported from the front lines for the first time, and telegraphs helped speed news of victories to eager readers back home. For the first time, large numbers of the regular Army's field-grade officers were West Point-trained - and performed superbly. Weapons technology advances such as the mobile field artillery, the Colt six-shooter and the Sharp's Rifle gave the U.S. Army daunting firepower. Coupled with the Americans' superior training, these advantages ensured victory even when Mexican troops outnumbered Americans by as much as 4-to-1. Yet, the Mexican War quickly became a very unpopular war. Henry David Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax that he believed would help underwrite the war, and went to jail for one night; thus was born his essay "Civil Disobedience,"" and in January 1848, the U.S. House adopted a resolution stating that war had been "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president." Opponents contemptuously referred to the war as "Mr. Polk's War," and "The President's War." Nevertheless, the war yielded California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. Indeed, after the Mexican War, America truly spanned the continent, from "sea to shining sea." Including the addition of Texas and the Oregon Territory - the future states of Oregon and Washington - the United States grew by 1.2 million square miles, or more than 60 percent, during Polk's single term in office, an achievement unmatched by any other president. And as one of the final events of the Antebellum era, the Mexican War provided several future Civil War generals their baptisms by fire: Lee, Grant, Joseph Johnston, George McClellan, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, George Meade, James Longstreet, George Pickett, and Albert Sidney. Johnston. Combining riveting battle scenes, smart political analysis, and enlightening social history, The Invasion of Mexico is a treasure for the armchair historian, and an extremely topical examination of our fraught relationship with Mexico, flaring in headlines again today."

Author Biography

Joseph Wheelan, a graduate of the University of Wyoming and University of Colorado, Denver, was for twenty-six years an editor and reporter for the Associated Press and the Casper Star-Tribune (Wyoming). He is the author of Jefferson’s War and Jefferson's Vendetta, each available from Carroll & Graf. He lives in Cary, North Carolina, with his wife, Pat.

Table of Contents

"The hole"	p. 1
The dynamo	p. 14
The Pacific dream	p. 25
The lone star republic	p. 41
To manufacture a war	p. 53
The army and the border	p. 61
The negotiations that never were	p. 70
The war begins	p. 81
"A state of war exists"	p. 93
The explorer and the marine	p. 103
Testing the enemy	p. 127
A question of "peculiar delicacy"	p. 150
Zachary Taylor's army	p. 160
Monterrey	p. 179
The war in the west	p. 204
America's xenophon	p. 226
Planning a second front	p. 243
Dissent, patriotism and the press	p. 258
Buena Vista	p. 271
The war in Congress	p. 296
Scott's epic march begins	p. 309
Planning the end game	p. 333
Closing in on the prize	p. 347
The halls of Montezuma	p. 362
Frustration	p. 382
Peace last	p. 396
Afterword	p. 413
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