In Defense of General Pierce

In 1852, Franklin Pierce was nominated for the presidency by the Democratic Party.  As the Whigs had nominated General Winfield Scott, attacks on Pierce's military service became a popular topic.  Democrat newspapers soon responded to the attacks by publishing the accounts of fellow soldiers who held Pierce in the highest regard for his military service during the Mexican War.  Fellow veterans Major Isaac Stevens, Colonel Noah Smith, Colonel J F H Claiborne, Major General James Shields, Major Oscar Winship, General Gideon Pillow, Colonel Francis Wynkoop, Lt. Richard Drum, Lt. George Bowers, and Lt. Col. Benjamin Roberts each provided an account of Pierce's gallantry and meritorious service in Mexico. 

Though Pierce had not been a soldier beyond serving in the New Hampshire state militia, he volunteered for the Mexican War even though it was unpopular in New England.  He was briefly the commanding Colonel of the 9th Infantry Regiment, but President Polk elevated him to Brigadier General.  He arrived in Vera Cruz in June 1847 and, in July, he led 2500 soldiers to meet General Scott at Puebla.  He handily overcame the guerrillas that sought to impede his column's progress, even having his hat shot off his head during an engagement at the National Bridge.  Upon reaching Puebla, he proved popular among his fellow officers and worked well with General Scott.  In August, the army moved into the Valley of Mexico.

During the Battle of Contreras, Pierce led his men through a rocky and uneven area - a lava field - when his horse startled from Mexican artillery.  The horse fell on him, injuring his leg and knocking him unconscious.  General Scott suggested that he refrain from leading his men the following day and instead recover.  Pierce refused.  Believing that it might be the last battle of the war, he needed to be present to offset his embarrassing horse fall.

During the Battle of Churubusco, he had himself tied to his horse and set out to cut off the Mexican retreat.  His horse was soon stuck in a ditch.  Getting free of the horse, Pierce hobbled toward the objective but, overcome by pain, he feinted again.  That he was not laid low from gunfire, shrapnel, lance, or sword but rather his own inadequate horsemanship led to the nickname of 'Fainting Frank.'  He did not partake in later battles of the war.

There is no questioning Pierce's bravery.  He had demonstrated his willingness to expose himself to enemy fire and ride into combat.  His great misfortune was how he was injured.  Would the Whigs be able to convince the nation that Pierce was a coward?  Not by a longshot.  In the 1852 election, Pierce crushed General Scott, winning 27 states to Scott's 4.  Sadly, Franklin Pierce proved to be a better general than president.

Letters from Mexico

In March 1848, the Polk Administration provided a vast collection of correspondence related to the ongoing war in Mexico.  The letters included reports from the field, communications between the generals and the War Department, troop counts, financial reports, general orders, administration of martial law, and many other topics.  The letters provide details about the workings of the army, the jealousies among commanders, difficulties involved in fielding volunteer troops, and a close-up look at the personalities of the generals and officials.

Volunteer troops had a huge impact on the conduct of the war.  Initially, they were brought in for only 3- or 6-month tours.  Later, that was extended to 1-year and finally they were required to sign on until the end of the war.  As these troops were typically raw recruits, training was required.  The troops were sent to Camargo or Meir on the Rio Grande before finally being deployed.  By the time the volunteers were seasoned and competent, it was time to send them home and a new wave of neophytes replaced them.  As such, military victories were often not exploited.  General Scott crushed the Mexican Army at Cerro Gordo in April 1847 but then was unable to drive onto Mexico City until August because most of his volunteers left in May and June.

The squabbles among and between the generals and the Polk Administration are embarrassing.  Winfield Scott comes across particularly badly in his letters.  Though he certainly had cause to believe the administration didn't have his back, he proved to be paranoid, acting as if the administration was trying to make him fail.  On the other hand, Zachary Taylor came off well.  Though there is a clear current in his correspondence that he viewed himself as mistreated by having his army transferred to General Scott, he was not a whiner and comported himself professionally.  Of course, he had William W. S. Bliss as his adjutant, a man of tremendous ability who managed the general's paperwork.  The letters do not offer the homespun sound of Taylor.  Scott wrote or dictated his letters and it shows.

One humorous exchange was between Scott and General Gideon Pillow.  Initially, Scott wrote to Pillow and requested that he 'correct' his account of a recent battle.  Pillow had arrogated to himself credit for several aspects of the battle.  It comes as no surprise that Pillow was later arrested by Scott, who demanded a court martial.  With all this bickering among the generals, it's a wonder that the war was won.

Scott's most dramatic letter was in answer to his recall.  He composed a laundry list of mistreatments he had received from the Polk Administration.  Indeed, from his perspective, it looked as though the President wanted him to fail.  However, his claims sounded surprisingly convincing.  Was Polk trying to sink his lead general and thus lose the war?  The reply from War Secretary William Marcy was devastating, answering most - though not all - of Scott's claims, often disproving them with copies of Scott's reports.  Ouch!

Highly entertaining for those interested.

Oh, Now I Understand

Any regular reader of this blog will realize that I have read a great deal about the Mexican-American War.  One thing that has repeatedly puzzled me was the treatment of Nicholas Trist, the man who negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.  Here was a man who had been a personal secretary for Thomas Jefferson, a private secretary for Andrew Jackson, and the number two man at the State Department.  Nonetheless, President Polk excoriated the man.  Why?  Trist comes across as such a reasonable fellow and yet so many figures of the time hated him.  What gives?

Recently, I started reading some primary documents, notably the correspondence between General Winfield Scott and Nicholas Trist.  When Trist arrived in Vera Cruz, General Scott was already in Jalapa in the wake of his victory at Cerro Gordo, so Trist was forced to correspond with general until he could tag along with a supply train to the Mexican interior.  It is hard to describe just how full of himself Trist is when reading his letters.  In one particular letter, his average sentence was 57 words long.  The average sentence.  The longest proved to be 224 words.  One sentence.  Here it is:

Now, sir, in reply to this, all I have to do is to deliver to you— as I hereby do in writing—(and this for the second time, unless my first letter was far more enigmatical than I believe it could seem to any honest men, who, upon their conscience and honor, should be called to respond to the questions, whether you had or had not, in this instance, been guilty of a wanton contempt of orders; and whether this offence had or had not been aggravated by the character of the pretenses under which the contempt was indulged in, and the contumacy sought to be covered up)—I have, I say, sir, to deliver you this message from your commander-in-chief, the President to of the United States, to wit: “When the communication, bearing the seal of the Department of State, and addressed ‘to his excellency the minister of foreign relations of the Mexican republic,’ shall be placed in the hands of the general-in-chief of the United States army in Mexico, it is the will, order, and command of the President of the United States, that the said communication shall forthwith be transmitted to its destination under flag of truce; which flag of truce is to proceed from the head-quarters of the army, and is to be a flag of truce from the general-in-chief.  

This one sentence is more than a fifth of the entire letter.  The tone is consistent throughout.  Trist berates General Scott like one might a willful child.  This is the sort of letter that could convince the recipient to challenge the writer to a duel.  After reading the letter, I had a strong dislike for Trist.  Trist's correspondence with Secretary of State James Buchanan contains similarly overlong sentences, though not the insults.  Ah, now I see.

An Immigrant Soldier in the Mexican War

Frederick Zeh (Tsay) was an educated immigrant from Germany who found himself working as a farm laborer in Pennsylvania. He had been a book seller in Europe.  Discouraged by his status, he tried to join a volunteer regiment that was headed to Mexico.  One regiment had already been filled, and it had many Germans.  The 2nd regiment had few, if any, Germans and Zeh was refused.  However, he discovered that the regular army was recruiting for a special unit, the Mountain Howitzer and Rocket Company.  The mountain howitzer could be disassembled and loaded on three mules, which allowed it to be placed in locations too difficult for regular guns.  Then there were the Hale's rockets, an improvement on the Congreve rocket from the War of 1812.  The company recruited a hundred soldiers, half of whom were German or Irish, and three officers.

Zeh sailed from Philadelphia to Virginia, where he received military training.  Then, they set out for Mexico.  The company landed on the beaches near Veracruz and setup their battery.  The howitzers were underpowered for siege warfare but were kept busy.  Zeh's job was to keep the battery supplied with ammunition.  After the surrender of Veracruz, the company marched inland and fought at Cerro Gordo.  In fact, the portability of the mountain howitzers resulted in them being emplaced on a nearby hill to engage the Mexican defenses.  Captain Robert E Lee had blazed the trail to place the howitzers.  From there, the company continued to Jalapa and then Puebla, mostly to while away the summer.  In August, the army marched on Mexico City and the company was engaged in the battle of Contreras & Churubusco.  Mostly unsupported, the howitzers drew a lot of fire and many of the men were killed or wounded, including Zeh.

Zeh found himself in the hospital and worried he might die.  He willed his worldy goods, such as they were, to a fellow German in the company.  He survived.  The doctors arranged for him to stay on at the hospital since he could speak fluent English and German, very useful skill when many of the German soldiers couldn't speak English.  Thus, he missed out on the final battles of the war.

The account was written decades after the events but many of his details lined up with history.  It was interesting that the Germans didn't much like the Irish and the two groups often clashed.  Zeh mentioned that the officers were not keen on foreigner soldiers, but this was most especially the case in volunteer units.  Regular units were more tolerant.

The Mountain Howitzer and Rocket Company was an oddball unit.  Though fielding artillery, it was not part of an artillery regiment; it was an Ordnance company.  Like the Voltigeurs, it was an experimental unit that, despite its contributions during the war, was disbanded upon returning to New Orleans in 1848.

At just over a hundred pages, this is a quick read and a different account of Winfield Scott's campaign into Mexico.  Recommended.

Mixed Blessing: Texas Rangers in the Mexican War

As part of his Masters in Military Science degree, Major Ian Lyles discussed the Texas Rangers as part of Compound Warfare in the Mexican-American War.  Texians - as they were called at the time - had spent a decade fighting both Mexicans and Comanche.  During that time, they developed a mode of fighting that was particularly suited to those opponents.  This made the Rangers an ideal addition to the US Army.  Long exposure to Mexican armies taught them that surrender likely meant execution (e.g., Alamo, Goliad, Mier) and white flags were more likely to be a ruse than an honest request to surrender or parley.  Rangers had long operated far from support and thus came heavily armed, typically with a rifle, one or two revolvers, and a Bowie knife.  They proved to be outstanding scouts, excellent skirmishers, effective cavalry, and even competent infantry when needed.

On the other hand, they brought some grudges with them.  Their scouting missions might make detours to capture or kill Mexican bandits.  The Rangers had learned from the Comanche not to take prisoners.  When not actively in the field, they often caused trouble while in the various Mexican cities and towns.  They had rarely been given quarter and were thus inclined not to give it.  Both General Taylor and General Scott learned to keep the Rangers active to avoid the troubles that were stirred up among the Mexican civilians.  However, neither wanted to send the Rangers home; they were extremely effective at countering the guerrilla activity in both the northern theater and on the road from Vera Cruz to Mexico City.

The quality of Texian troops was often equal to the quality of their leader.  When John Hayes, Ben McColloch, or Samuel Walker was in charge, the Rangers caused few problems while resolving many.  When lesser men were in charge, the Rangers could wreak havoc on the locals and incite the local populace.  However, more often than not, it was volunteer troops who caused trouble and Texas Rangers who got the blame.

Lyles returns to the idea of Compound Warfare frequently.  Though Texas Rangers were newly-minted American citizens (and virtually all of them had migrated from the US anyway), they did not operate as either state volunteer units or regular army units.  This irregular force thus became a unique unit that brought skills and abilities unavailable in other forces.  Lyles mentioned the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan as compound warfare.

The paper is available online.  Recommended.

An English Soldier in the United States Army

In the summer of 1845, George Ballantine arrived in New York.  Born in Scotland, skilled as a weaver, and a veteran of the British Army, he sought work.  His best offer was to become a whaler, which did not appeal to him.  Instead, he joined the US Army.  He details his life as a soldier from induction at Governor's Island in New York, to his training at Fort Adams in Rhode Island, his transfer to Fort Pickens at Pensacola, then to Tampa Bay.  The Mexican-American War began less than a year after he joined.

Corporal Ballantine served in the First Artillery Regiment, Company I.  The regiment was sent to Tampico, Mexico, as part of General Winfield Scott's invasion force.  In February 1847, the regiment has shipped south but did not land until March 9.  To George's surprise, the Mexicans did not contest the landing on the beaches south of Vera Cruz.  Assigned to General David "Old Davey" Twiggs Division, he took part in the siege of Vera Cruz, and the battles of Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec.

Where most of the memoirs of the war were written by officers (q.v., Lt. Francis Collins, Lt. Henry Benham, Lt. John Hollingsworth, Lt. Harvey Neville, Lt. Albert Brackett), this one was written by a man in the ranks.  As such, it has a very different point of view.  He discusses the discomforts of a soldier's life, the frequent waiting even during the heat of battle, the harsh punishments meted out by officers which contributed to the high desertion rate, the high mortality rate from illness, and the constant quest for alcohol.

Occasionally, he discusses the generals.  He indicates that the men liked Old Davey, but also knew he was not much of a strategist.  Had General Patterson not intervened to prevent it, Twiggs intended to throw his division into a frontal assault at Cerro Gordo.  The men knew it would result in heavy casualties, but Twiggs was raring to go.  When Scott arrived the following day, he sent scouts to find a way around the Mexican strong points.  The men knew that Scott was stingy with their lives, thus his popularity despite his Fuss and Feathers reputation.

Very readable and highly recommended.

The War with Mexico, Volume II

In the second volume of The War with Mexico, Justin H Smith opens with a discussion of Mexican politics.  The country had been ill-managed since its founding and had succeeded in chasing its entrepreneurial, wealth-generating class back to Spain.  The country had been stripped of most wealth, with the exception of the Catholic Church.  Unable to secure loans thanks to its long history of financial mismanagement, the government looked to plunder the church.

Meanwhile, Winfield Scott landed his army virtually unopposed on the beaches south of Veracruz.  Over the next 7 months, Scott's relatively small army trekked across Mexico in a path not unlike Hernan Cortes.  Veracruz was pounded into submission with artillery by early March.  Santa Anna was once again sent retreating to Mexico City after the Battle of Cerro Gordo in April.  Though some of his generals argued for an immediate assault into the capitol, Scott wanted more troops, supplies, and money.  The campaign stalled until August when he resumed his march to Mexico City and captured it.

The differing viewpoints of the Americans and the Mexicans is one of the more interesting parts of the book.  Where the Americans would willingly halt after a victory to discuss peace, the Mexicans - especially Santa Anna - viewed this as just an opportunity to rebuild his shattered army and somehow appropriate more money to take another crack at defeating the Americans.  Nicholas Trist, the plenipotentiary minister for the United States, had many conferences during the lulls in fighting and nothing ever emerged.  It was not until the Americans captured and occupied Mexico City and Santa Anna was forced to flee the country that real peace talks could take place.

Where the first chapter discussed politics in Mexico City, the final chapters look at the politics of Washington, from financing the war to lobbying for or against it, to international relations regarding it.  The overwhelming victory by American forces was in spite of, rather than thanks to, the machinations of DC.  Polk had wanted an inexpensive war but the costs grew rapidly and the Congress was not eager to provide funding, thus explaining Scott's halting advance.  Arguments about how much of Mexico to annex ran the gamut from virtually nothing to all of Mexico.  Polk himself was leaning toward a much larger chunk than was ultimately secured if only to justify the expense.  However, Trist's unauthorized treaty - though not to Polk's liking - was an opportunity to end the war as soon as possible.  As for international relations, Mexico had not won itself the allies it had expected because it had so often reneged on loans and harassed foreign merchants.  The US earned grudging respect for winning what many - even Lord Wellington! - thought was an unwinnable campaign.

Of particular note, Smith paints a picture that is mostly approving of the US arguments for the war.  The US invasion of the 1840s for unpaid debts was not unique. France invaded during the Pastry War of 1838 and again during the Franco-Mexican War (1861-1867), which initially saw Great Britain and Spain as French allies.  Smith argues that Mexico brought most of its troubles upon itself.

The final chapters are dreary reading.  Where the marches of Taylor and Scott offered a strong narrative that drew the reader along, the jump among various politicians and their disparate goals was often hard to follow and not very interesting.  However, the footnoting is spectacular and so expansive as to make one wonder how one man could have gone through so much material for this work.  Of course, he won the Pulitzer Prize for The War with Mexico.

Recommended.

Hunted Like a Wolf

In this brief book, Marvin Meltzer describes how the Seminoles came to live in Florida, their lifestyle, and how they soon became an obstacle to white expansion into the state.  The book mostly details the Second Seminole War, which started at the end of 1835 and didn't conclude until August 1842.  After a series of clashes between Seminole Indians and whites, the US government foisted treaties on the Seminoles.  The Seminoles were mostly helpless observers where these treaties were concerned.  One of the big issues with the Seminoles was that they had become a haven for runaway slaves.  That nearly half of Seminole warriors were escaped slaves or free blacks was a closely guarded secret.  The war might look too much like a slave revolt than just another Indian war.  By 1835, Florida was a powder keg.  President Jackson had already arranged for moving the various tribes from the east and into Oklahoma.  The Seminole proved the most intransigent and attacked US forces in December 1835.  Francis Dade and his column of around 100 soldiers were almost complete wiped out; only one survivor to tell the tale.  The Seminole War was on!

President Jackson dispatched General Winfield Scott to bring the Seminoles to heel.  His plan for converging columns didn't work well in the trackless swamps of Florida.  He was soon replaced by General Call, the territorial governor.  His efforts proved no more effective than Scott's.  General Thomas Jesup was given the command and admitted it was tougher than he expected.  He resorted to treachery, asking chiefs to come discuss peace only to then toss these very chiefs into prison.  Osceola, one of the most effective Seminole leaders, was captured this way and died a few months later in a military prison.  Zachary Taylor was the next to take command and he fought the largest engagement of the war, the Battle of Lake Okeechobee.  However, Taylor was just as unable to tame the Seminole as his predecessors.  Next, General Armistead took his turn, providing the same mediocre results.  Colonel William Jenkins Worth was given the command and made it a policy to always be pursing the Seminoles.  Where other generals had taken the summers off, Worth kept the men in the field.  Though he had some success and managed to nab the last of the notable leaders, there were still Seminoles hiding in the Everglades.  Worth suggested leaving them there, which is what several of his predecessors had also advised.  President Tyler, the 4th president to preside over the war, agreed.

Drawing heavily on John Mahon's account of the war, this is a shorter treatment.  The tone is very harsh toward the Americans, which may be entirely justified.  Clearly, the Americans displaced the Seminoles from lands they had long inhabited and offered comparatively little compensation and bad justification.  Of course, 19th century attitudes were very different from 20th century attitudes.  Every culture took advantage of the weaker cultures.  Such goes back millennia.

Just okay.  Even so, I recommend reading Mahon's History of the Second Seminole War instead.

General William Jenkins Worth - The American Murat

In his PhD dissertation, Edward Seccomb Wallace researched the life of General William Jenkins Worth, hero of the Battle of Monterrey.  That battle was the high watermark of Worth's career.

The book details the Worth family and how the son of a whaler became a soldier rather than a sailor.  Joining the army during the War of 1812, Worth found himself serving with Winfield Scott.  The two would become fast friends for the next 30 years.  Worth was seriously wounded in the leg and had a limp for the remainder of his life.  He became the first Commandant of Cadets at West Point, a position he held while Robert E. Lee was a cadet.  The man who succeeded him, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, became a lifelong antagonist.  From West Point, Worth became the commanding officer of the newly formed 8th Infantry.  The 8th was posted along the Great Lakes to prevent a Canadian independence movement from using the US as a hideout and also to prevent Americans from supporting the rebels; a very peculiar situation.  He was later sent to Florida, where he became the leader who finally 'won' the Second Seminole War (1835-1842).  The annexation of Texas in 1845 saw Worth and the 8th Infantry posted in Corpus Christi and later marching to the Rio Grande.  Thinking that there would be no fighting and having been disrespected by the military (as he saw it), Worth resigned.  A month later, the war had commenced and his men had fought both Palo Alto and Resaca de La Palma without him.  Chagrined, Worth withdrew his resignation and hastened to the Rio Grande again.  Now he had to somehow restore his tarnished reputation.  He intended to achieve promotion or death.  His standout performance at Monterrey in September 1846 earned him the promotion he desired.  He served with Windfield Scott again during the march to Mexico City, but they were no longer friends.  After the war, he was posted in San Antonio, TX, where he died from cholera in 1849.

The most interesting part of the book is the political rivalry among the generals.  Though often mentioned in books on the Mexican-American War, it is generally told from Hitchcock's perspective.  As such, Worth is often seen as one part of a spiteful triumvirate of officers.  Here, that story is flipped on its head and Ethan Allen Hitchcock comes across as a devious manipulator.  Hitchcock had been Worth's subordinate at West Point.  Later, he was given the rank of major in Worth's 8th Infantry but did not report for duty.  No, he was on long term detached assignment, something fairly common at the time.  However, that left Worth without a major.  Later, when the 8th was in Florida, Hitchcock somehow wrangled repeated extended leaves from duty.  Worth developed a very low opinion of Hitchcock.  However, Hitchcock was a master of regulation and the lawyerly side of the military.  Both Worth and Hitchcock were on the Rio Grande in April 1846.  Worth, who had a brevet rank of brigadier general but a lineal rank of colonel, viewed himself as the obvious second in command to General Taylor.  However, Colonel David Twiggs had only the lineal rank of colonel but this pre-dated Worth's lineal rank.  Hitchcock argued on Twiggs side (behind the scenes, of course) despite the fact that he well knew that Worth was the far more competent commander.  Taylor dodged a decision on the matter by sending it to Washington.  Washington, lobbied by Hitchcock, favored Twiggs.  When word returned to the Rio Grande that Twiggs outranked him, an indignant Worth resigned.  A few days later, Hitchcock requested leave and also departed.  This was not the last clash between Worth and Hitchcock.  As Worth died in 1849 and Hitchcock lived until 1870, history mostly remembers Hitchcock's point of view.  Hitchcock was a prolific writer and diarist.  By contrast, there is only correspondence to tell Worth's side of things.

Unsurprisingly, my opinion of Worth was greatly improved by this book.  Though certainly possessed of an inflated ego - he wasn't called "Haughty Bill" for nothing - he was a competent and diligent leader who could be relied upon to get the job done.  Here is an outstanding biography of a now little known general.  Fort Worth, Texas was named in his honor.

Media and Military Relations during the Mexican War

In this master's thesis, Major Metzel details the impact of the media on the military and vice versa.  He delves into several topics which made the Mexican War different from those before on account of the media.  The Mexican War was the first to see reporters traveling with the army and sending dispatches to their respective papers.  Most of the reporters were from various New Orleans papers, but reporters from the New York Sun also found their way to Mexico.  Not only did they report the news, but they also sometimes sought to influence it.  Moses Beach of the NY Sun tried to engineer a peace deal and later claimed responsibility for triggering a revolution in Mexico City.  When President Polk recalled his peace envoy, Nicholas Trist, James Freaner of the New Orleans Delta convinced him to stay, which Trist did.  The treaty that Trist thereafter negotiated was not what Polk wanted.  However, the continued bad press over the war had him accept it as good enough.  General Zachary Taylor was repeatedly lionized by media reports and was soon viewed as a contender for the presidency.  He had never had presidential aspirations but was nonetheless carried to the office in the 1848 elections.  By contrast, General Winfield Scott, who had already made a run at the presidency in 1840, was given mixed reviews by the media.  Despite being the better general, Scott was viewed as less heroic because fewer of his soldiers died in combat.  Scott had a long history with the press and was able to use it to his advantage by disseminating misinformation about his strategy.  By the end of the war, he used the media to transport news, because they were faster than the military/government mail service.

The Mexican War changed the press.  In order to get a scoop on the competition, the speed at which news was transmitted increased.  At the start of the war, it took 2 weeks for news to travel from the Rio Grande to Washington.  By the end of the war, it took 2 weeks for news to travel from Mexico City to Washington.  Several New York papers agreed to share expenses to get news from the war and created the Associated Press (AP) to accomplish this.  The AP is still in operation.

Written for those not familiar with the various personalities of the war, it sometimes drags with background information.  There is a lot of repetition with the intro - meat - outro format.  Nonetheless, this is an excellent paper and highly recommended.

The War with Mexico, Volume I

In 1919, Justin Smith published his Pulitzer Prize winning The War with Mexico.  Volume I covers the various causes of the war and then the various battles up to Buena Vista (February 22-23, 1847). A thoroughly researched book, Smith offers some well-supported arguments.  He opens by detailing event in Mexico from the war with Spain and the various efforts at self-government in the wake of independence. Of particular note, Mexico exiled many Gachupines, people from Spain.  This does not seem unusual in the wake of a war of independence from Spain but the Gachupines were the entreprenuer and educated class.  Ejecting them left the economy crippled.  Soon, other foreigners (e.g., British, French, American, etc.) moved in to mine the resources of Mexico.  The Mexican government sailed from one disaster to the next, often suffering the latest revolution that brought a new 'president' to power.  The judiciary ruled in favor of whomever offered the greater bribes.  This situation did not sit well with foreign powers who saw citizen's stripped of their property or imprisoned on trumped up charges.  In 1838, France invaded to settle financial disputes; this was the Pastry War where Santa Anna lost his leg in battle.  Like the other countries, the United States had suffered similar troubles with Mexico, but there was the counterbalancing issue of Texas.

One of the most interesting things that Smith details is the Texas border.  In the Adams-Onis Treaty (1819), Spain surrendered Florida and claims to Oregon in order to secure its claim to Texas.  In the wake of the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the US held that the Rio Grande was the border while Spain argued that the Calcasieu River was the border.  Thanks to the treaty, the border became the Sabine.  Therefore, the treaty recognized the Province of Tejas as extending from the Sabine to the Rio Grande.  When Texas became independent, this definition was the default.  However, Mexico argued both that the Nueces was the border of Tejas and that Tejas was still a province of Mexico.  Nine years of independence tended to nix the later argument and US prior claims to Tejas disputed the former.  As Mexico clearly could not govern the region, the US wanted to settle outstanding claims.  The US would pay any claims that American citizens had against Mexico and also pay for the land.  Mexico declined.

Polk had set out to determine both the northern border with Canada and the southern border with Mexico in his term.  With England, he entered into brinksmanship to get the border set at the 49th parallel.  A deal was struck.  He used virtually the same tactic with Mexico and there was war.  Where England looked at the issue on the basis of economic interest, Mexico had viewed it with national pride.  Had Mexico worked with the same thought process as England, there would have been no war.  Though Santa Anna had boasted that he would march on Washington if there was war, this was nonsense.  He had been unable to subdue Texas.  However, Mexico was compared to Spain during the Napoleonic Era.  The US would be unable to win in much the same way that France found Spain to be a quagmire.  Mexico could afford continual defeats and still not lose the war.  Eventually, a new president would be elected in the United States, anti-war sentiment would grow, and the border would be settled where Mexico wanted it.

The book concludes with the battle which Santa Anna pinned his hopes upon: Buena Vista.  He had assembled an army vastly larger than Taylor's.  He very nearly succeeded.  The battle was a draw.  Luckily for Taylor, a draw credits the defender.  Santa Anna made haste to face Winfield Scott's invasion, telling a tale of victory as he rode far ahead of his retreating army.  He had American banners and canon as symbols of his success.

Outstanding book with footnotes galore.  Highly recommended.