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America's twelfth President, Zachary Taylor established his reputation as a tough and decisive soldier during the Indian Wars of the 1830's. He earned national fame as a general defending the recently annexed State of Texas during the Mexican War of 1846, then easily won the 1848 Presidential election as a Whig Party candidate (running on little more than his heroic military image). He died sixteen months into his term, and was succeeded into office by his Vice President, Millard Fillmore. |
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SANTA ANNA, ANTONIO LÓPEZ DE (1794–1876). Antonio López de Santa Anna Pérez de Lebrón, soldier and five-time president of Mexico, was born at Jalapa, Vera Cruz, on February 21, 1794, the son of Antonio López de Santa Anna and Manuela Pérez de Lebrón. His family belonged to the criollo middle class, and his father served at one time as a subdelegate for the Spanish province of Vera Cruz. After a limited schooling the young Santa Anna worked for a merchant of Vera Cruz. In June 1810 he was appointed a cadet in the Fijo de Vera Cruz infantry regiment under the command of Joaquín de Arredondo. He spent the next five years battling insurgents and policing the Indian tribes of the Provincias Internas. Like most criollo officers in the Royalist army, he remained loyal to Spain for a number of years and fought against the movement for Mexican independence. He received his first wound, an Indian arrow in his left arm or hand, in 1811. In 1813 he served in Texas against the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition, and at the battle of Medina he was cited for bravery. In the aftermath of the rebellion the young officer witnessed Arredondo's fierce counterinsurgency policy of mass executions, and historians have speculated that Santa Anna modeled his policy and conduct in the Texas Revolution on his experience under Arredondo. He once again served under Arrendondo against the filibustering expedition of Francisco Xavier Mina in 1817. The young officer spent the next several years in building Indian villages and in occasional campaigns, while he acquired debts, some property, and promotions. In 1820 he was promoted to brevet captain, and he became a brevet lieutenant colonel the following year. In March of 1821 he made the first of the dramatic shifts of allegiance that characterized his military and political career by joining the rebel forces under Agustín de Iturbide in the middle of a campaign against them. He campaigned for Iturbide for a time and was promoted to brigadier general. In December 1822 Santa Anna broke with Iturbide over a series of personal grievances, and he called for a republic in his Plan of Casa Mata in December 1822.
After serving as military governor of Yucatán, Santa Anna retired to civil life and became governor of Vera Cruz. In 1829 he defeated the Spanish invasion at Tampico and emerged from the campaign as a national hero. In the course of this campaign, he demonstrated several of his characteristic military strengths and weaknesses; he was able to pull an army together quickly and with severely limited resources, but he also combined elaborate planning with slipshod and faulty execution. He rebelled against the administration three years later and was elected president of Mexico as a liberal in 1833, but in 1834 he stated that Mexico was not ready for democracy and emerged as an autocratic Centralist. When the liberals of Zacatecas defied his authority and an attempt to reduce their militia in 1835, Santa Anna moved to crush them and followed up his battlefield victory with a harsh campaign of repression. In December 1835 he arrived at San Luis Potosí to organize an army to crush the rebellion in Texas. In 1836 he marched north with his forces to play his controversial role in the Texas Revolution. After his capture by Sam Houston's army, he was sent to Washington, D.C., whence he returned to Mexico. He retired to his estates at Manga de Clavo for a time, then emerged to join the defense of Mexico against the French in December 1838 during the so-called "Pastry War." He lost a leg in battle and regained his popularity. He was acting president in 1839, helped overthrow the government of Anastasio Bustamante in 1841, and was dictator from 1841 to 1845. Excesses led to his overthrow and exile to Havana.
At the beginning of the Mexican War, Santa Anna entered into negotiations with President James K. Polk. He offered the possibility of a negotiated settlement to the United States and was permitted to enter Mexico through the American blockade. Once in the country he rallied resistance to the foreign invaders. As commanding officer in the northern campaign he lost the battle of Buena Vista in February 1847, returned to Mexico City, reorganized the demoralized government, and turned east to be defeated by Winfield S. Scott's forces at Cerro Gordo. Secret negotiations with Scott failed, and when Mexico City was captured, Santa Anna retired to exile.
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| After a period in private life, he was recalled to active duty just before the outbreak of the Mexican War, was ordered to command the Army of the North, and was in command of Mexican troops in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palmaqqv on May 8 and 9, 1846. After suffering defeat in both engagements and being criticized by subordinates, he relinquished his command to Francisco Mexía, requested trial by a court-martial. |
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| With the outbreak of the Mexican War Brown and his regiment were ordered to the Rio Grande with Gen. Zachary Taylor's army of occupation. When Mexican general Mariano Arista's army crossed the Rio Grande on April 1, 1846, Taylor ordered the strengthening of Fort Texas, on the north bank opposite Matamoros. By May 1 the fortification was complete, and Taylor marched the bulk of his army toward Point Isabel to protect his supply line, leaving Brown in command of Fort Texas. Brown's garrison consisted of elements of the Seventh Infantry, Capt. Allen Lowd's four eighteen-pounder cannons, and Capt. Braxton Bragg's battery of field artillery, about 500 men in all. At 5:00 a.m. on May 3, Arista began his attack on Fort Texas with a bombardment from Matamoros and investment by Gen. Pedro Ampudia's infantry brigade. Lowd's eighteen-pounders quickly silenced the Mexican artillery, but a second battery downriver and out of range of the lighter American guns soon took up the bombardment. Hearing the sound of the guns, Taylor dispatched Texas Ranger Samuel H. Walker with instructions to Brown to defend Fort Texas to the last man. Although he outnumbered Brown's garrison by several thousand men, Ampudia determined that his artillery could not breach the fort's dirt walls and that an assault would be too costly and so settled into a formal siege. He posted Gen. Antonio Canalesqv's irregular cavalry on the road to Point Isabel to block American reinforcements and supplies, then continued his bombardment and waited for starvation to compel Brown's surrender. At about 10:00 a.m. on May 6, 1846, Brown was mortally wounded by an enemy shell; he died on May 9. Command of the fort devolved upon Capt. Edgar S. Hawkins, who refused Ampudia's surrender demand on the afternoon of the sixth and held his lines until Arista withdrew Ampudia's command beyond the Rio Grande on May 8. Major Brown was one of the only two American fatalities in the siege. Fort Texas was renamed Fort Brown in his honor, and the city of Brownsville derived its name from that of the fort. |
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| At the outbreak of the Mexican War he raised a command of Texas Rangers that became Company A of Col. Jack Hays's First Regiment, Texas Mounted Volunteers. He was ordered to report to the United States Army on the Rio Grande and was soon named Zachary Taylor's chief of scouts. As such he won his commander's praise and the admiration of the nation with his exciting reconnaissance expeditions into northern Mexico. The presence in his company of George Wilkins Kendall, editor of the New Orleans Picayune, and Samuel Reid, who later wrote a popular history of the campaign, The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch's Texas Rangers, propelled McCulloch's name into national prominence. Leading his company as mounted infantry at the battle of Monterrey, McCulloch further distinguished himself, and before the battle of Buena Vista his astute and daring reconnaissance work saved Taylor's army from disaster and won him a promotion to the rank of major of United States volunteers. |
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| . During the Mexican invasions of 1842, Dancy served in the First Regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers under John Coffee Hays. From May to July 1847 he served as a private in a spy company of Texas mounted volunteers commanded by Benjamin McCulloch |
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| During the Mexican War his company saw action against United States forces. At the end of the war he decided to return to Texas despite the consequences. |
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| President James K. Polk and Secretary of State James Buchanan sent Nicholas P. Trist, from the Department of State, to join him in the hope that with plenipotentiary powers and full instructions the two could take advantage of any crack in Mexican resolve to push through negotiations |
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| Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo |
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| The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, ended the Mexican War, recognized the annexation of Texas to the United States (consummated nearly three years before), and ceded to the United States Upper California (the modern state of California) and nearly all of the present American Southwest between California and Texas. The treaty traced the boundary between the United States and Mexico from the Gulf of Mexico up the main channel of the Rio Grande to the southern boundary of the Mexican province of New Mexico. |
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| At that point, because of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which terminated the Mexican War, the Rio Grande becomes the international boundary between the United States and Mexico. |
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| The Battle of Veracruz was a 20-day siege of the key Mexican seaport of Veracruz, during the Mexican-American War. Lasting from March 9 to March 29, 1847, it began with the first large-scale amphibious assault conducted by United States military forces, and ended with the surrender and occupation of the city. U.S. forces then marched inland to Mexico City. |
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| the belief or doctrine, held chiefly in the middle and latter part of the 19th century, that it was the destiny of the U.S. to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to extend and enhance its political, social, and economic influences. |
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| to yield or formally surrender to another |
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| a deliberative body of persons, usually elective, who are empowered to make, change, or repeal the laws of a country or state; the branch of government having the power to make laws, as distinguished from the executive and judicial branches of government. |
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| to regain possession, under claim of title of property through legal procedure, or to assert one's right to possession |
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| to take vengeance or exact satisfaction for |
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| arrangement or preparation beforehand, as for the doing of something |
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| a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles |
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| a person who advocated or supported the abolition of slavery in the U.S |
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| With annexation and the Mexican War in 1846, the rangers achieved worldwide fame as a fighting force. After acquitting themselves admirably during the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palmaqv on May 8–9, 1846, they became Gen. Zachary Taylor's "eyes and ears." Superbly mounted, "armed to the teeth" with a large assortment of weapons, and obviously at home in the desert wastes of northeastern Mexico, they found the "most practical route" for the American army to Monterrey. Late in September the rangers rashly set the tempo and style for Taylor's successful storming of the city. Although furloughed in October after a brief armistice, they returned early in 1847 in time to provide the general enough military information to help win the battle of Buena Vista in February. In March 1847, the theater of war shifted. An American army under Gen. Winfield Scott landed at Veracruz and quickly muscled its way into the Valley of Mexico. For the next five months the rangers under Jack Hays and Samuel Walker figured prominently in American victories. In fact, so ruthless and lethal were they against Mexican guerrillas that a hostile but fearful populace called them "los diablos Tejanos" |
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The battle of Resaca de la Palma was the second engagement of the Mexican War. It was fought on May 9, 1846, a few miles north of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, the day after the retreat of the Mexican army at Palo Alto. The Mexican troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Mariano Arista and the Americans under Maj. Gen. Zachary Taylor had fought to a draw at the battle of Palo Alto on May 8
Of an estimated force of 4,000, the official records show the Mexican losses as 154 killed, 205 wounded, and 156 missing, many probably drowned trying the cross the Rio Grande at night. Taylor claimed to have buried 200 Mexican dead |
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The battle of Palo Alto, the first major engagement of the Mexican War
fought north of Brownsville on May 8, 1846, between American forces under Gen. Zachary Taylor and Mexican troops commanded by Gen. Mariano Arista
Arista's commissary reported 102 killed, 129 wounded, and 26 missing, including deserters. Lt. George Meade, who interrogated captured Mexican officers, concluded that Mexican losses numbered 400 men. The American army, which totaled over 2,200 soldiers, reported five dead and forty-three wounded |
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At Cerro Gordo on April 17–18 the Americans destroyed Santa Anna's hastily gathered eastern force of nearly 17,000 men
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| (Nov. 13, 1846) the armistice granted at Monterey was at an end. General Worth marched, with 900 men, for Saltillo, the capital of Coahuila, and was followed the next day by Taylor, who left Gen. W. O. Butler, with some troops, to hold the conquered city of Monterey. Saltillo was taken possession of on Nov. 15 |
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| During July, while Taylor's forces gathered, the navy's Pacific squadron under Commodore John D. Sloat occupied Monterey and San Francisco, California |
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| Stephen W. Kearny led another column from Fort Leavenworth to seize New Mexico |
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| Taylor's largely untested 4,600-man army won a closely contested battle against 15,000 Mexicans at Buena Vista on February 22–23, 1847 |
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| In the final assault on September 13–14, Scott's force seized the heights of Chapultepec and breached the inner defenses. Santa Anna abandoned Mexico city but salvaged enough of his army to attack Puebla unsuccessfully later in the month |
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| The “Mexican Cession” refers to lands surrendered, or ceded, to the United States by Mexico at the end of the Mexican War. The terms of this transfer were spelled out in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 |
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| By the 1840s a significant proportion of the enlisted men in the United States Army were Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany. The Mexican government, aware of prejudice against immigrants to the United States, started a campaign after the Mexican War broke out to win the foreigners and Catholics to its cause. The Mexicans urged English and Irish alike to throw off the burden of fighting for the "Protestant tyrants" and join the Mexicans in driving the Yankees out of Mexico. Mexican propaganda insinuated that the United States intended to destroy Catholicism in Mexico, and if Catholic soldiers fought on the side of the Americans, they would be warring against their own religion. Using this approach, the Mexicans hoped to gain 3,000 soldiers from the United States Army |
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| Prior to the Mexican-American War, Slidell was sent to Mexico, by President James Knox Polk, to negotiate an agreement whereby the Rio Grande River would be the southern border of Texas. He also was instructed to offer, among other alternatives, a maximum of $30 million for California by Polk and his administration |
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| The line followed the southern boundary of New Mexico to its western boundary and north to the first branch of the Gila River, then down the Gila to its intersection with the Colorado River, and finally along the old Spanish-Mexican division line between Upper and Lower California. The exact boundary was to be surveyed and marked by a joint commission to be appointed by the two governments within a year. |
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| A speech that Abraham Lincon gave |
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