The Super Summary of World History (40 page)

Mexican-American
War

1846
to
1848

1846 brought another war. It all started with
Texas
revolting and separating from Mexico in 1836. A small army of Texans led by Sam Huston defeated a large invading Mexican army under General Santa Anna.
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Texas then applied to join the United States, and the application was accepted which admitted Texas as a territory in 1845. The United States attempted to purchase Texas and other areas of the southwest, including California, but the Mexican government was in no mood to bargain. Mexico warned that accepting Texas into the Union would mean war. Mexico also claimed the territorial boundary between itself and Texas was150 miles north of the Rio Grande River. Texas and the United States said the boundary was the Rio Grande. After the annexation of Texas, Mexico sent troops to enforce its boundary line; hence, the United States sent troops to establish the Rio Grande as the boundary and to protect Texas. After a small clash between the two armies, Congress declared war on Mexico on May 13, 1846. The US president,
James
K.
Polk,
was a driven personality wanting to acquire territories claimed by Mexico. Polk was preparing for, and fomenting, the Mexican conflict to achieve his purpose. Polk was a one term president, but his impact on American history is considerable.

Polk wanted Mexico to relinquish claims to the southwest and California, but so far the Mexicans refused to bargain. Early fighting in California and New Mexico was indecisive, so President Polk decided to invade Mexico by sea. General Scott would land at Vera Cruz, defeat the Mexican forces there, and then move to attack Mexico City if necessary. Under the leadership of General Zachary Taylor (a future president), a small US blocking expedition moved to northern Mexico. General Santa Ana, in charge of the Mexican forces, knew an American sea expedition under General Scott was on its way to Vera Cruz. The Mexican general moved north planning to defeat Taylor’s small force first then hurry south and defeat Scott. This was a good plan, but Santa Anna’s troops executed it poorly. Taylor advanced into Northern Mexico and occupied a defending position in the mountain pass of Buena Vista when General Santa Ana, with an army of about 15,000 men, assaulted the Americans on February 22, 1847. The Americans held, although only after a timely artillery bombardment by Captain Braxton Bragg and a desperate charge by Mississippi riflemen, led by Jefferson Davis, drove off the nearly victorious Mexicans. That was about it for the northern Mexico campaign. Santa Ana broke contact to hurry south as Scott’s force of 8,500 men was landing at Vera Cruz.

Figure 35 The Mexican American War

General Winfield Scott conducted a brilliant campaign, defeating the larger Mexican Army and capturing Mexico City. The march on Mexico City took place after an amphibious landing at the city of Vera Cruz. This was the first amphibious landing in US history. After a twelve-day siege the coastal city fell. Scott then marched toward the Mexican capitol. In all, Scott would win seven battles on his way to Mexico City. In one of the larger confrontations General Santa Ana, with over 12,000 men, entrenched in a good defensive location near the town of Cerro Gordo and attempted an ambush; however, poor discipline among Mexican troops gave away their positions. Even so, the Mexican positions were formidable. Scott skillfully flanked General Santa Ana thus defeating Mexico’s forces. The Mexican Army fell back on Mexico City and the protection of its bastion at Chapultepec. A determined assault by US Army and US Marine forces captured the protective citadel and Mexico City fell immediately thereafter. In US Marine tradition, the Corps captures Chapultepec after the US Army failed in two assaults. The Marines discovered and stormed a lightly guarded gate, captured the fort, and then advanced to Mexico City ahead of the US Army. Thus, the US Marine Corps hymn contains the following words, “
From
the
Halls
of
Montezuma
to the shores of Tripoli . . .”
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The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ended the war in 1848 and ceded the southwest and California to the United States for a payment of 15 million dollars and the assumption of over 3 million in claims.
The
extensive
territorial
gain
led
to
the
controversy
over
extending
slavery
to
the
new
territories,
and
then
the
US
Civil
War.
At least a few commentators say
if
the Mexican-American War never occurred avoiding the Civil War would have been much easier. Some of the lower-ranking American officers who contributed to this campaign became well known later: Robert E. Lee, US Grant, Stonewall Jackson (not known as Stonewall then), and George Meade were just a few.

In 1853, the United States finished out its southwest boundaries with the Gadsden Purchase of the Gila River Valley from Mexico. Americans rejoiced over the victories of the war with Mexico, but the next American war would spill only American blood on American land.

The
American
Civil
War 1861
to
1865

(The First Modern War)

This may be the saddest time in the history of the United States of America. The emotions stirred by the Civil War remain with America today. It was the bloodiest and hardest war the nation ever fought.
All
the dead were Americans, and every bit of land and property devastated was American.

Before Vietnam, many said America never lost a war. This is not true. The
Confederate
States
of
America
(CSA) fielded an American army, and they fought for their view of freedom with a fury and determination seldom seen in the history of the world. Nevertheless, the South lost; therefore, the first war lost by Americans was the Confederate States of America in the Civil War.
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Southerners always contended they were fighting another American Revolution, claiming they only wanted the powerful North to leave them alone. The North astutely claimed it was fighting a continuation of the American Revolution, saying they were fighting to set men free from slavery and oppression. Either way, the problems of the United States came down to a clash of arms. Legislation and compromise failed, only death and destruction would answer the issue.

Figure 36 American Civil War

Black—Union State (no slavery)

Light Grey—Deep South, Left Union Before 4/15/1861

Dark Grey—States that left Union soon after 4/15/1861

White—Union States Permitting Slavery

Causes

The causes of the Civil War are legion. Most try to boil it down to slavery, but that generalization avoids a lot of history and a lot of thinking. By 1860, there were deep cultural, economic, and political differences between the North and the South. Fundamentally, the North was a highly urbanized industrial manufacturing powerhouse, and the South was a rural patriarchal agricultural region. Trade, for example, became a considerable unresolved issue between the industrial North and the agricultural South. The North wanted tariffs to protect its industries, but the South wanted zero tariffs so it could sell its cash crops of cotton and tobacco to Europe without facing retaliatory foreign tariffs.
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The South actually exported much more, in terms of monetary value, than the North; thus, any tariff would harm the South greatly even while it protected the North’s industries. Because the economic interests of the North and South were so divergent, continuing clashes were predestined over a wide range of economic and social issues. In fact, these two regions are still clashing over economic and social issues.

Perhaps the greatest divide between the North and South was cultural. The North was an urban society attracting the wealthy, inventive, and liberal social thinkers of the era. In urban societies social movement, from poor to middle class or uneducated to educated, was common and somewhat easily done. There was far more opportunity for advancement on merit in metropolitan areas where race, class, ethnicity, and the like did not totally determine one’s place in the world. The South’s rural society determined status by birth, and change over the course of one’s lifetime was unlikely. Landowners controlled the wealth, with a few exceptions, and the middle class was small. This was a stratified rural society, much like the society of the Dark Ages, divided chiefly into the wealthy and the poor.
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The South was populated mostly by poor white farmers who were either sharecroppers or held small farms on poor ground. The rich folk’s families had arrived first, acquiring the best land and building large plantations. These extraordinarily wealthy landowners became the slaveholders. Owing to their menial economic situation, Southern hardscrabble farmers could not own slaves. Thus, the solid majority of southerners were NOT slave owners.

The stratified society of the South broke along more than racial lines. Whites were not to mix with blacks; the poor did not mix with the rich; the educated avoided the uneducated; men and women were highly regulated in their conduct with one another, and one always held their “place.” This kind of separation is common in agricultural societies because large landowners are set apart from common soil tillers by a large economic gap. The dirt poor vastly outnumbered the superbly rich; thus, keeping the poor in their place, both black and white, was critical for elite landowners.

These two societies, Northern urban and Southern rural, could not live in harmony unless they left one another alone. If each side ran separate societies, without the federal overlap, peace might prevail. For example, the South could have abolished tariffs while the North kept them; however, the nature of federalism demanded one must destroy the other unless each ignored the other. But interference happened. The radicals of the North roared that slavery, this outrage to humanity, deserved destruction no matter what the cost. As the furor of the language increased, trust decreased. The South distrusted the North on regional issues. If the North gained control of the Senate, by even one vote, they would use it to pass legislation harming southern regional interests, including the abolition of slavery and raising tariffs.

Because the landed elites ran the South (as usual—money talks), slavery was a major factor in every regional dispute in Congress. The northern states banned slavery by 1860. There was a virtual tie in the Senate between slave states and free states, and the South recognized maintaining the balance as new states came into the Union was vital, otherwise, they could not protect their regional interests. The Mexican-American War and the following land acquisitions made the problem acute. The timing and method of allowing states into the Union created a “perfect storm” where compromise broke down.

Another problem was the
emotional
nature
of the slavery issue. Southerners wanted the North to go away and leave them alone. Why should northerners be able to order them around? Why were the northerners so adamant about ending an institution not in their area and causing them no harm? Northern propaganda concerning mistreatment of slaves galled the South. Why would slave owners mistreat their property? Would they mistreat their horses? Northerners must know slaves were valuable, and mistreatment caused their value to decrease. The southerners believed that just because families might endure separation at slave sales or some slaves required physical punishment to keep them in line was no cause for concern on behalf of those not owing slaves. In the North, abolitionists were crying out for justice. In newspapers and speeches across the North, the abolitionists’ cause drew ever more attention to ending slavery.
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