Mexican War

Mexican War, mainly precipitated by the annexation of Texas by the U.S. (Dec. 1845), but other contributing factors included the claims of U.S. citizens against Mexico, the desire to acquire California, and the ambition of imperialists for an increase in slaveholding territory. Hostilities began in April 1846, when the Mexicans resisted an advance at the disputed boundary of southern Texas by American troops under Zachary Taylor. War was declared the following month, when President Polk announced the U.S. territory had been invaded. Santa Anna, temporarily President of Mexico, led his country's forces, while various U.S. expeditions were led by Sloat, Stockton, and Frémont in California; Kearny in New Mexico; Taylor, Wool, and Doniphan in northern Mexico; and Winfield Scott, the commander in chief, who captured Vera Cruz (March 1847) and led a long inland march to Mexico City, which capitulated after the Battle of Chapultepec (Sept. 1847). By the treaty of Guadalupe‐Hidalgo (Feb. 2, 1848), Mexico ceded two‐fifths of her territory to the U.S., receiving in return an indemnity of $15,000,000 and the cancellation of certain American claims.

So much writing has been related to the war that Justin H. Smith stated in his Pulitzer Prize‐winning The War with Mexico (2 vols., 1919) that his work was based on 1200 books and pamphlets. Many Civil War generals began their careers in this war and wrote about it in their autobiographies, as Grant did in his Personal Memoirs. The Diary of James K. Polk During His Presidency (4 vols., 1910) also provides an intimate view from a war leader. The literature was various, ranging from the views of those who opposed the war as a means to extend slavery territory, such as Lowell's Biglow Papers and Whittier's The Angels of Buena Vista, to those who saw the war as a subject of patriotic romance, such as the poetry of Simms's Lays of the Palmetto (1848) and C.F. Hoffman's Monterey, and the popular fiction that included Lippard's Legends of Mexico (1847) and Mayne Reid's The Rifle Rangers; or, Adventures of an Officer in Southern Mexico (1850).