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What was the Mexican American War?
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This is a list of wars involving the United Mexican States. Mexico has been involved in numerous different military conflicts over the years, with most being civil/internal wars.
ConflictCombatant 1Combatant 2ResultsSpanish conquest of the Tarascan empire ...Spain New Spain Indian auxiliariesVictory Incorporation of the territory ...Spanish conquest of Chiapas (c. 1523 – c.Spain New Spain Indian auxiliariesZoque people Chiapaneca people ...Victory Incorporation of Chiapas into the ...Spanish conquest of Guatemala (1524–1667) ...Spain New Spain Indian auxiliariesIndependent indigenous kingdoms and ...Victory Creation of the Captaincy General ...Spanish conquest of El Salvador ...Spain New Spain Indian auxiliariesIndigenous peoples of El Salvador, ...VictoryThe Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War, and in Mexico as the United States intervention in Mexico, was an invasion of Mexico by the United States Army from 1846 to 1848.
- April 25, 1846 – February 2, 1848, (1 year, 9 months, 1 week and 1 day)
- Overview
- “American blood on American soil”: Polk and the prelude to war
- Spot Resolutions and Civil Disobedience: American opposition to the war
The Mexican-American War was a conflict between the United States and Mexico, fought from April 1846 to February 1848. Won by the Americans and damned by its contemporary critics as expansionist, it resulted in the U.S. gaining more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 square km) of Mexican territory extending westward from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Ocean. It stemmed from the annexation of the Republic of Texas by the U.S. in 1845 and from a dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River (the Mexican claim) or the Rio Grande (the U.S. claim).
What did the Mexican-American War have to do with Manifest Destiny?
The concept of Manifest Destiny held that the United States had the providential right to expand to the Pacific Ocean. In 1845 the U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas, which had won de facto independence from Mexico in the Texas Revolution (1835–36). When U.S. diplomatic efforts to establish agreement on the Texas-Mexico border and to purchase Mexico’s California and New Mexico territories failed, expansionist U.S. Pres. James K. Polk found a rationale to justify an attempt to take that land by force when U.S. and Mexican troops skirmished north of the Rio Grande on April 25, 1846.
Manifest Destiny
Read more about Manifest Destiny.
James K. Polk
Mexico severed relations with the United States in March 1845, shortly after the U.S. annexation of Texas. In September U.S. Pres. James K. Polk sent John Slidell on a secret mission to Mexico City to negotiate the disputed Texas border, settle U.S. claims against Mexico, and purchase New Mexico and California for up to $30 million. Mexican Pres. José Joaquín Herrera, aware in advance of Slidell’s intention of dismembering the country, refused to receive him. When Polk learned of the snub, he ordered troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor to occupy the disputed area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande (January 1846).
On May 9, 1846, Polk began to prepare a war message to Congress, justifying hostilities on the grounds of Mexican refusal to pay U.S. claims and refusal to negotiate with Slidell. That evening he received word that Mexican troops had crossed the Rio Grande on April 25 and attacked Taylor’s troops, killing or injuring 16 of them. In his quickly revised war message—delivered to Congress on May 11—Polk claimed that Mexico had “invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil.”
Congress overwhelmingly approved a declaration of war on May 13, but the United States entered the war divided. Democrats, especially those in the Southwest, strongly favoured the conflict. Most Whigs viewed Polk’s motives as conscienceless land grabbing. Indeed, from the outset, Whigs in both the Senate and the House challenged the veracity of Polk’s assertion that the initial conflict between U.S. and Mexican forces had taken place in U.S. territory. Further, legislators were at odds over whether Polk had the right to unilaterally declare that a state of war existed. Principally at issue was where the encounter had actually taken place and the willingness of Americans to acknowledge the Mexican contention that the Nueces River formed the border between the two countries. Active Whig opposition not only to the legitimacy of Polk’s claim but also to the war itself continued well into the conflict. In December 1846 Polk accused his Whig doubters of treason. In January 1847 the by-then Whig-controlled House voted 85 to 81 to censure Polk for having “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally” initiated war with Mexico.
Britannica Quiz
A History of War
Among the most-aggressive challenges to the legitimacy of Polk’s casus belli was that offered by future president Abraham Lincoln, then a first-term member of the House of Representatives from Illinois. In December 1847 Lincoln introduced eight “Spot Resolutions,” which placed the analysis of Polk’s claim in a carefully delineated historical context that sought to
obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil at that time.
Ultimately, the House did not act on Lincoln’s resolutions, and Polk remained steadfast in his claim that the conflict was a just war.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Nov 9, 2009 · 19th Century. Mexican-American War. By: History.com Editors. Updated: August 10, 2022 | Original: November 9, 2009. copy page link. Print Page. Universal History Archive/Getty Images. The...
The Wall Street Journal‘American Civil Wars’ Review: The Era of Continental Divides
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- New York Times
Let’s Not Do Another Civil War if We Can Help It, OK?
As we approach this November’s presidential election, “blood bath” is quickly becoming one of Donald Trump’s favorite new terms. If he does not take the White House, there will be a “blood bath ...
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Following its original plan for the war, the United States sent its army from the Rio Grande, under Taylor, to invade the heart of Mexico while a second force, under Col. Stephen Kearny, was to occupy New Mexico and California.
United States Army - Mexican-American War, Civil War: One significant aspect of the Mexican-American War was the virtual abandonment of the militia concept for war purposes. The regular army was increased to more than 30,000 troops, and approximately 60,000 additional volunteers were recruited.
Dec 6, 2023 · The war also contributed to the outbreak of later civil wars in both countries: the Civil War in the United States (1861–1865) and the War of Reform in Mexico (1857–1860).
