The Mexican War: frontier expansion and selective incursion

ABSTRACT

Mexico’s defeat in the war that (in the U.S.) takes the country’s name resulted as much from the strategic context created by unrealized nation-building that followed independence as it did from American tactical supremacy. Three centuries of Spanish empire did not translate into national military excellence due to the decades of revolutionary upheaval that followed the sudden decapitation occasioned by Napoleon’s ouster of the monarchy in Madrid. That the occupation which followed major combat provided salutary lessons learned in dealing with guerrillas rather than a Vietnam-like litany of quagmire eventuated from the conscious designs of military leadership steeped in the same Napoleonic dynamic that had produced our opponent. The United States wisely chose to leave issues of state-building and governance to the Mexicans themselves, while annexing the sparsely populated northern remnant of Spanish empire.

KEYWORDS:

• Mexico
• Mexican War
• irregular war
• Santa Anna
• James K. Polk
• Gen. Winfield Scott
• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
• Gen. Zachary Taylor

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. One of the best treatments may be found in Fehrenbach, Lone Star, Pt. II, ‘Blood and Soil: The Texans.’

2. Winders, Polk’s Army, 4–5.

3. For example, Lewis, Trailing Clouds of Glory; and Johnson, Winfield Scott.

4. Weigley, The American Way of War, 56.

5. For an evenhanded treatment, see Merry, A Country of Vast Designs; for a decidedly more critical approach, Greenberg, A Wicked War

6. Williams, The History of American Wars, 144.

7. Map downloaded from Creative Commons. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War_%28without_Scott%27s_Campaign%29-en.svg

8. Weigley, xx.

9. Ibid., 142–154.

10. Winders, 187.

11. Bauer, The Mexican War, 294.

12. Major-General Winfield Scott, at Mexico City, to William L. Marcy, Secretary of War, at Washington, D.C. Dispatch communicating Scott’s report of the battles for, and occupation of, Mexico City; available at: http://www.dmwv.org/mexwar/documents/mexcity.htm.

13. Ibid.

14. Mahin, The Olive Branch and the Sword, 2.

15. Michael and Scott, The Enduring Legacies of the U.S.-Mexican War, 2.

16. Singletary, The Mexican War, 5.