Mexican–American War
| Mexican–American War | |||||||||
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Clockwise from top: Winfield Scott entering Plaza de la Constitución after the Fall of Mexico City, U.S. soldiers engaging the retreating Mexican force during the Battle of Resaca de la Palma, U.S. victory at Churubusco outside of Mexico City, Marines storming Chapultepec castle under a large U.S. flag, Battle of Cerro Gordo | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| United States | Mexico | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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| Strength | |||||||||
| 73,532[2] | 40,000[2] | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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Total: 18,130 |
Total: 35,000
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| Including civilians killed by violence, military deaths from disease and accidental deaths, the Mexican death toll may have reached 25,000[2] and the American death toll reached 13,283.[4] | |||||||||
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The Mexican–American War,[a] also known in the United States as the Mexican War,[b] (April 25, 1846 – February 2, 1848) was an invasion of Mexico by the United States Army. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory because it refused to recognize the Treaties of Velasco, signed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna after he was captured by the Texian Army during the 1836 Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas was de facto an independent country, but most of its Anglo-American citizens who had moved from the United States to Texas after 1822 wanted to be annexed by the United States.[5][6]
Sectional politics over slavery in the United States had previously prevented annexation because Texas would have been admitted as a slave state, upsetting the balance of power between Northern free states and Southern slave states.[7] In the 1844 United States presidential election, Democrat James K. Polk was elected on a platform of expanding U.S. territory to Oregon, California (also a Mexican territory), and Texas by any means, with the 1845 annexation of Texas furthering that goal.[8] However, the boundary between Texas and Mexico was disputed, with the Republic of Texas and the U.S. asserting it to be the Rio Grande and Mexico claiming it to be the more-northern Nueces River. Polk sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico in an attempt to buy the disputed territory, together with California and everything in between for $25 million (equivalent to $778 million in 2023), an offer the Mexican government refused.[9][10] Polk then sent a group of 80 soldiers across the disputed territory to the Rio Grande, ignoring Mexican demands to withdraw.[11][12] Mexican forces interpreted this as an attack and repelled the U.S. forces on April 25, 1846,[13] a move which Polk used to convince the Congress of the United States to declare war.[11]
Beyond the disputed area of Texas, U.S. forces quickly occupied the regional capital of Santa Fe de Nuevo México along the upper Rio Grande. U.S. forces also moved against the province of Alta California and then turned south. The Pacific Squadron of the U.S. Navy blockaded the Pacific coast in the lower Baja California Territory. The U.S. Army, under Major General Winfield Scott, invaded the Mexican heartland via an amphibious landing at the port of Veracruz on March 9 and captured the capital, Mexico City, in September 1847. Although Mexico was defeated on the battlefield, negotiating peace was politically complex. Some Mexican factions refused to consider any recognition of its loss of territory. Although Polk formally relieved his peace envoy, Nicholas Trist, of his post as negotiator, Trist ignored the order and successfully concluded the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It ended the war, and Mexico recognized the cession of present-day Texas, California, Nevada, and Utah as well as parts of present-day Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The U.S. agreed to pay $15 million (equivalent to $467 million in 2023) for the physical damage of the war and assumed $3.25 million of debt already owed by the Mexican government to U.S. citizens. Mexico relinquished its claims on Texas and accepted the Rio Grande as its northern border with the United States.
The victory and territorial expansion Polk had spearheaded inspired patriotism among some sections of the United States, but the war and treaty drew fierce criticism for the casualties, monetary cost, and heavy-handedness. The question of how to treat the new acquisitions intensified the debate over slavery in the United States. Although the Wilmot Proviso that explicitly forbade the extension of slavery into conquered Mexican territory was not adopted by Congress, debates about it heightened sectional tensions. Some scholars see the Mexican–American War as leading to the American Civil War. Many officers who had trained at West Point gained experience in the war and later played prominent leadership roles during the Civil War. In Mexico, the war worsened domestic political turmoil and led to a loss of national prestige, as it suffered large losses of life in both its military and civilian population, had its financial foundations undermined, and lost more than half of its territory.
- ^ Cataliotti, Joseph (November 21, 2023). "Mexican–American War | History, Causes & Results". study.com. Archived from the original on April 22, 2024. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
The war was a decisive victory for the US, which secured the northern half of Mexico as a result of the conflict.
- ^ a b c d e Clodfelter 2017, p. 249.
- ^ "Official DOD data". Archived from the original on February 28, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- ^ White, Ronald Cedric (2017). American Ulysses: a life of Ulysses S. Grant (Random House trade paperback ed.). New York: Random House. p. 96. ISBN 9780812981254. OCLC 988947112.
The Mexican War of 1846–1848, largely forgotten today, was the second costliest war in American history in terms of the percentage of soldiers who died. Of the 78, 718 American soldiers who served, 13,283 died, constituting a casualty rate of 16.87 percent. By comparison, the casualty rate was 2.5 percent in World War I and World War II, 0.1 percent in Korea and Vietnam, and 21 percent for the Civil War. Of the casualties, 11,562 died of illness, disease, and accidents.
- ^ Edmondson, J.R. (2000). The Alamo Story: From History to Current Conflicts. Plano: Republic of Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-55622-678-6.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link) - ^ Tucker, Spencer C. (2013). The Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War: A Political, Social and Military History. Santa Barbara. p. 564.
- ^ Landis, Michael Todd (October 2, 2014). Northern Men with Southern Loyalties. Cornell University Press. doi:10.7591/cornell/9780801453267.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-8014-5326-7.
- ^ Greenberg, Amy (2012). A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico. Vintage. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-307-47599-2.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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Stenberg-1935was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Clevenger, Michael (2017). The Mexican-American War and Its Relevance to 21st Century Military Professionals. United States Marine Corps. p. 9.
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