Mexican American War 1848

This was the most engaging book I have read about an episode of US History, one that was incredibly impactful but also one that we have decided to engage in a collective amnesia about, likely because it was so "wicked" (Grant's words, not mine).


It is the only foreign war without a memorial in DC. The daughter of a hero martyr (John Hardin), decided to honor US history though founding the DAR, embracing her grandfather's Revolutionary War heroism. She distanced herself from her father's noble legacy, though he was an honored fallen at the Battle of Buena Vista, personally blameless in the atrocities committed by so many wearing the US uniform, although the offenders were primarily volunteers rather than the professional military - the still suspect "standing army".


James Polk lied us into the war, though he did not deceive the nation into a course it was not already on. Instead, he tapped into a racist frenzy of Manifest Destiny to an upset victory over Henry Clay. Clay failed to timely realize the public's desire for a war that could not be justified under oft cited "American republican" principles, principles he mistakenly thought would discipline his fellow citizens' fever to expand. But the American spectrum of opinion thought Mexicans were an inferior race and were intolerably Catholic. These inferiors could not be permitted to stand in the way of destiny - white Protestant domination of the continent. Clay later helped lead pubic pressure to end the war in his final days after the death of his own son, also at the Battle of Buena Vista.


Polk was also "wicked" in his performance as CinC. Zachary Taylor was replaced by Winfield Scott for political reasons and because he was more hesitant to cross lines. Scott's siege of the whole population at Veracruz with indiscriminate shelling was horrendous.


Taylor became President after the war as a result, and Lincoln's career was truly launched after almost being derailed by opposition to the war while troops were in the field.


Grant and many Civil War generals cut their teeth there. Twice the advancing US troops encountered seemingly impenetrable defensive fortifications manned by superior numbers of Mexican troops. Both times a young Colonel named Robert E. Lee discovered unseen passes in the terrain that allowed US troops to sneak through and flank Mexican troops.


It was a wicked war and completely unjustifiable. But significant parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming, as well as California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Utah, would not be part of the United States but for that war of pure conquest, although Lincoln thought we could easily buy the territory without war, and we likely could have. Nicholas Trist, who negotiated and signed the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on behalf of the United States, stated privately:


"My feeling of shame as an American was far stronger than the Mexicans' could be." US Grant, also in his later years, went further:


“With a soldier the flag is paramount . . . I know the struggle with my conscience during the Mexican War. I have never altogether forgiven myself for going into that. I had very strong opinions on the subject. I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign. I had taken an oath to serve eight years, unless sooner discharged, and I considered my supreme duty was to my flag. I had a horror of the Mexican War, and I have always believed that it was on our part most unjust. The wickedness was not in the way our soldiers conducted it, but in the conduct of our government in declaring war. The troops behaved well in Mexico, and the government acted handsomely about the peace. We had no claim on Mexico. Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed it. I am always ashamed of my country when I think of that invasion.”


Truly fascinating and indispensable read for anyone who cares about US history.