Wars of Mexico and the United States, 1836–1848

Introduction

Conflicts between Anglo-Americans and Hispanics date back to the earliest contacts between the peoples of the United States and New Spain’s northern frontier. American filibusters had ventured into the region in the early 19th century, prompting both Spain and then Mexico to undertake efforts to colonize the lands north of the Rio Grande. But even Anglo-American colonists bridled at the obligations of Mexican citizenship, and in a few short years the growing expatriate community had risen up in open rebellion against the host government. The war for Texas independence thus provided the opening salvo in what would be a conflict between the two North American neighbors that would span a dozen years, ending with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Historians of the United States have traditionally viewed the Texas Revolution (1835–1836) and the US-Mexico War (1846–1848) as two separate events. But for Mexico and Texas, the war continued for a decade after Santa Anna’s defeat at the Battle of San Jacinto. And although historians have often stressed the role of the Polk administration in provoking the war, the conflict that began along the banks of the Rio Grande in 1846 would never have occurred had Mexico accepted the loss of Texas. Instead, it regarded the annexation of Texas by the United States in 1845 as nothing less than the seizure of a large part of its national domain. Little wonder then, that in Mexico the conflict with the United States was initially known simply as the “Texas War.”

General Overviews, the American Southwest

Several recent books on the American Southwest offer valuable insight into the causes of conflict between Mexicans and Anglo-Americans during this period. Although De la Teja 2010, Ramos 2009, Reséndez 2005, and Weber 1982 do not focus exclusively on the issue of ethnic conflict, each has sought to integrate the brief history of Mexican-held Texas into the larger structures of US borderlands scholarship.

De la Teja, F. Jesus, ed. Tejano Leadership in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of eleven biographical studies of Tejano political leaders who played prominent roles in Texas during the 1821–1836 period of Mexican rule.
Find this resource:
Ramos, Raúl. Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821–1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
While not a study of the Revolution itself, this work looks at the ways in which Tejanos adapted to the immigration of Anglo-Americans into Texas, and helps to shed light on their uneasy relationship to both the Mexican state and their new neighbors.
Find this resource:
Reséndez, Andrés. Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Attaching particular importance to the impact of American market forces on Mexico’s northern frontier, the author describes a highly fluid environment in which both groups, as well as indigenous peoples, tried to deal with the contest for hegemony over the region that was taking place between Mexico and the United States. Whereas the Mexican government sought to win the loyalty of northern frontier elites through political patronage, the United States offered greater economic advantages.
Find this resource:
Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A highly readable yet scholarly overview of Mexico’s northern borderlands during the twenty-five years prior to the war with the United States by one of the preeminent historians of the American Southwest. Describes a social environment of many separate frontiers, each with their own social and cultural dynamics, existing within the US-Mexico borderlands.
Find this resource:
General Overviews, The US-Mexico War

The overwhelming number of studies on the US-Mexico War examine the conflict from the US point of view. Many, such as Bauer 1974, Eisenhower 1989, Wheelan 2007, Woodworth 2010, and Winders 2002, draw primarily from sources published in English. Notwithstanding their US focus, Smith 1919 and Pletcher 1973 remain the most exhaustively researched overviews of the conflict, drawing upon source materials in both the US and Mexico. Christensen and Christensen 1998 and Clary 2009 tend to offer a more sympathetic account of the Mexican wartime experience.

Bauer, K. Jack. The Mexican War, 1846–1848. New York: Macmillan, 1974.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A dated but nonetheless solid, one-volume synthesis of the war.
Find this resource:
Christensen, Carol, and Thomas Christensen. The U.S.-Mexican War. San Francisco, CA: Bay Books, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Released as a companion text to the four-hour PBS documentary, The U.S.-Mexican War (1997). A well-illustrated and engagingly written history of the war for a general audience.
Find this resource:
Clary, David A. Eagles and Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle for a Continent. New York: Random House, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A general history, largely critical of the Polk administration and the conduct of the US Army. The author argues that Polk’s conquest of Mexico was unnecessary, and that US immigration into the Southwest would have made the Americanization of the region inevitable.
Find this resource:
Eisenhower, John S. D. So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848. New York: Random House, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Written for a general readership and relying primarily on published US sources, this book by a retired brigadier general focuses largely on US battlefield tactics.
Find this resource:
Pletcher, David M. The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An exhaustively researched and meticulous diplomatic history that examines US foreign policy as part of a much wider imperial struggle for dominance of the North American continent. The author demonstrates how seemingly unrelated territorial disputes—over Oregon, Texas, and California—each figured into the larger hemispheric strategies of the United States, as well as Great Britain, France, and to a lesser degree, Spain.
Find this resource:
Smith, Justin H. The War with Mexico. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1919.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published more than a century ago, Smith’s exhaustively researched history of the war reflected the racial biases common to the era, yet it remains the most comprehensive and thoroughly researched study of the 1846–1848 conflict. Reprint. Gloucester, MA: P. Smith, 1963.
Find this resource:
Wheelan, Joseph. Invading Mexico: American’s Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846–1848. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A general history of the war written for a popular audience. Limited use of published primary and secondary US sources.
Find this resource:
Winders, Richard Bruce. Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A brief survey for classroom use, this volume examines the war for Texas independence and the US-Mexico War that followed.
Find this resource:
Woodworth, Steven. Manifest Destinies: America’s Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A sweeping narrative written for general readers unfamiliar with the US westward expansion. Like a number of recent popular histories of the period, the book endorses the traditional view of an American “manifest destiny.”
Find this resource:
Readers and Anthologies

There are several documents-based readers that are useful for undergraduates. Chavez 2007, Greenberg 2011, Conway 2010 all provide primary source documents from both the US and Mexican sides of the conflict. Two anthologies, Francaviglia and Richmond 2000 and Richmond and Cutler 1986, feature essays from notable Mexican historians as well as historians of the United States

Chavez, Ernesto. The U.S. War with Mexico: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A useful primer of the US-Mexico War for undergraduates.
Find this resource:
Conway, Christopher, ed. The U.S.-Mexican War: A Binational Reader. Translated by Gustavo Pellon. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A brief reader, ideal for classroom use, which presents both US and Mexican primary source documents.
Find this resource:
Francaviglia, Richard V., and Douglas W. Richmond, eds. Dueling Eagles: Reinterpreting the U.S.-Mexican War, 1846–1848. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of essays by eight noted US and Mexican scholars of the 1846–1848 conflict.
Find this resource:
Greenberg, Amy S. Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford, 2011.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This reader, drawing upon American source materials, focuses on the policies and attitudes of US imperialism during the antebellum period.
Find this resource:
Richmond, Douglas W., and Wayne Cutler, eds. Essays on the Mexican War. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of five essays from US and Mexican scholars on the 1846–1848 conflict.
Find this resource:
Reference Works

There are a number of indispensable reference works on the US-Mexico War, which provide useful summaries of major participants, battles, and other events. Crawford 1999, Heidler and Heidler 2005, Moseley and Clark 1997, and Tucker 2012 provide handy published reference tools for the conflicts between Mexico and the United States. Works by Frazier 1998 and Hannings 2014 present the conflict between Anglos and Mexicans on the North American continent in broader chronological terms. Meier 1988 is useful for biographies of prominent Mexican-Americans during the 1830s and 1840s. Terraza y Basante and Lavalle 2012 and Tutorow 1981 offer bibliographies of Mexican and US source materials, respectively. A valuable online resource of the digitized holdings of the University of Texas at Arlington that includes archival source materials is A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War.

A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A joint project of the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the Library at the University of Texas at Arlington, the website contains primary source materials such as proclamations, letters, diaries, images, maps, music, and poetry. Supplementary materials include essays, biographies, and an interactive timeline.
Find this resource:
Crawford, Mark. Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A useful reference tool of major participants and key events of the war.
Find this resource:
Frazier, Donald S., ed. The United States and Mexico at War: Nineteenth-Century Expansionism and Conflict. New York: Macmillan, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A solid, encyclopedic reference work that examines not only the US-Mexico War but the conflict between Texas and Mexico.
Find this resource:
Hannings, Bud. The U.S.-Mexican War: A Complete Chronology. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Starting not in 1846 but in 1816, this reference work provides a month-by-month overview of relations between the United States and New Spain/Mexico.
Find this resource:
Heidler, David S., and Jeanne T. Heidler. The Mexican War. Westport CT: Greenwood, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A one-volume overview of the US-Mexico War that includes a general narrative, primary source documents and an annotated bibliography.
Find this resource:
Meier, Matt S. Mexican American Biographies: A Historical Dictionary, 1836–1987. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1988.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Includes biographical sketches of prominent Mexican-Americans during the struggle for the American Southwest between Mexico and the United States.
Find this resource:
Moseley, Edward H., and Paul C. Clark Jr. Historical Dictionary of the United States-Mexican War. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although not widely available, this reference tool on the US-Mexico War, remains one of the better resources on the conflict.
Find this resource:
Terraza y Basante, Marcela, and Gerardo Gurza Lavalle, eds. Las relaciones Mexico-Estados Unidos 1756–2010. Vol. 1, Imperios, republicas y pueblos en pugna por el territorio 1756–1867. Mexico City: UNAM, 2012.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A bibliography of US-Mexico relations; particularly useful as a guide to Mexican source materials on the war.
Find this resource:
Tucker, Spencer C., ed. The Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War: A Political, Social, and Military History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive three-volume encyclopedia of the war that not only includes biographical entries but a wide range of maps, tables, and more than 150 primary source documents.
Find this resource:
Tutorow, Norman. The Mexican-American War. An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Though dated, this remains a solid bibliography of extant primary source materials on the war.
Find this resource:
Texas and Mexico

Although the United States and Mexico did not go to war until 1846, hostilities between Anglo-Americans and Mexicans began more than a decade earlier. In the mid-1820s Mexico opened Texas to foreign settlement, prompting thousands of Americans, primarily from the Southern states, to migrate westward. Conflicts between Anglo colonists and the Mexican government began almost immediately, and in the fall of 1835 Texas rebelled, winning its independence at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836.

The War for Texas Independence, 1835–1836

Military aspects of the secession movement are examined in Barr 1990, Dimmick 2004, Hardin 1994, and Moore 2002; Lack 1992 presents a comprehensive political and social analysis of the struggle. Cantrell 2001, Haley 2002, and Henson 1996 offer important biographies of some of the major figures in the conflict with Mexico. Because Texas’ separation from Mexico occurred outside the borders of the United States, American historians have tended to cede the study of this event to historians of the state. US historians have made only a modest effort to link the rebellion in Texas to the larger story of Anglo-American expansionism. Notable exceptions are Long 1990 and Miller 2004, both of which stressed the role of the United States and American citizens, without whose aid the Texas Revolution could not have succeeded.

Barr, Alwyn. Texans in Revolt: The Battle for San Antonio, 1835. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The only serious study of the first major engagement of the Texas Revolution, also known as the siege of Bexar.
Find this resource:
Cantrell, Gregg. Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The first biography in more than half a century of the Texas empresario, this work examines Austin’s ultimately unsuccessful role as a cultural mediator between Anglo colonists and Mexican officials.
Find this resource:
Dimmick, Gregg J. Sea of Mud: The Retreat of the Mexican Army After San Jacinto: An Archeological Investigation. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Part history, part archaeological report, Dimmick’s study examines the retreat of the Mexican army under generals Urrea and Filisola following the defeat of Santa Anna at San Jacinto.
Find this resource:
Haley, James L. Sam Houston. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Seeking to appeal to general readers and scholars alike, this is a highly readable and thoroughly researched biography of Sam Houston.
Find this resource:
Hardin, Stephen. Texian Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution, 1835–1836. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An engagingly written military history of the Texas Revolution, told primarily from the Texas point of view.
Find this resource:
Henson, Margaret Swett. Lorenzo de Zavala: The Pragmatic Idealist. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A biography of the Mexican federalist and Texas empresario who played a prominent role in the 1835–1836 revolt. A signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, de Zavala served briefly as interim vice president of the new Texas Republic.
Find this resource:
Lack, Paul D. The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835–1836. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Challenging the conventional wisdom that Anglo-Texans stood in unison against Mexican centralist rule, the author describes a Texan community wracked by internecine conflict caused by factionalism, class and racial tensions, and a rampant, almost anarchic individualism. Lack argues that despite its fragmented character, the insurrection did manage to develop a revolutionary ideology, which manifested itself in the radical, populist character of the Texas army.
Find this resource:
Long, Jeff. Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo. New York: Morrow, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a book criticized by traditionalists for its stridently revisionist, anti-heroic tone, Long argues that the insurrection could not have succeeded without the active support of Americans and the US government.
Find this resource:
Miller, Edward L. New Orleans and the Texas Revolution. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the little-known but crucial role played by the New Orleans business community to raise and outfit volunteer companies for the Texas cause. Having already financed the launching of separatist filibustering enterprises into Mexico and South America, New Orleans business leaders wasted little time in forming a Texas committee to raise money, supplies, and volunteer regiments for the cause in 1835.
Find this resource:
Moore, Stephen L. Savage Frontier: Rangers, Riflemen, and Indian Wars in Texas. Vol. 1, 1835–1837. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The first in a four-part series on the early years of the Texas Rangers. This volume examines the emergence of militia companies in Texas, initially formed for the purpose of frontier defense, and their contributions in the Texas war of independence.
Find this resource:
Siege of the Alamo, 1836

The thirteen-day siege of the Alamo, an abandoned Spanish mission in San Antonio, in late February and early March, 1836, has attracted the most scholarship of any aspect of the Texas Revolution. Some authors, such as Davis 1998, Donovan 2012, and Wallis 2011, have focused on the Alamo’s most notable defenders, while others, such as Lindley 2003 and Tucker 2011, have focused on the battle itself. The extent to which the siege has captivated the American imagination has also attracted scholarly interest, from such works as Crisp 2005, Roberts and Olson 2001.

Crisp, James E. Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett’s Last Stand and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is not a history of the revolution but a study of some of its most iconic myths and legends. Among the most noteworthy in this collection of essays is the author’s examination of the provenance of the Enrique de la Peña diary/memoir, which some Alamo researchers had judged to be a forgery.
Find this resource:
Davis, William C. Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis. New York: Harper Collins, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Written for a general audience, this narrative of the lives of the three most famous Alamo defenders draws from recently opened archives in Mexico.
Find this resource:
Donovan, James. The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo—and the Sacrifices that Forged a Nation. New York: Little, Brown, 2012.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A recent history of the Alamo written for a popular audience. The author attempts to revive the legend of Travis’s “line in the sand.”
Find this resource:
Lindley, Thomas Ricks. Alamo Traces: New Evidence and New Conclusions. Dallas: Taylor Trade, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Seeks to challenge a number of popular assumptions about the Alamo. Particularly noteworthy is the author’s contention that the number of Alamo defenders was considerably larger than previous historians have suggested.
Find this resource:
Roberts, Randy, and James Stuart Olson. A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory. New York: Free Press, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Written for a general audience, this study presents a highly readable account of the Alamo siege, followed by an extensive examination of the event’s evolving place in American popular culture.
Find this resource:
Tucker, Phillip Thomas. Exodus from the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth. Philadelphia: Casemate, 2011.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A purportedly revisionist work that stresses the expansion of slavery as the principal reason behind the Texas Revolution. The author also highlights Mexican military reports that much of the fighting at the Alamo occurred outside the mission, after some of its defenders had made an attempt at escape.
Find this resource:
Wallis, Michael. David Crockett: Lion of the West. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of the former Tennessee congressman and Alamo defender by a journalist turned historian.
Find this resource:
Border Conflicts with Mexico, 1836–1846

Although Texas historians are in general agreement that Texas won its independence at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836, Mexico did not recognize the Texas Republic, regarding it in the years that followed as a province in revolt (not until the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo would Mexico formally accept the loss of Texas). As a result, the conflict between the newly created Texas Republic and Mexico continued sporadically in the years that followed. Nance 1963, Nance 1965, and Nance 1997, examined these border conflicts in exhaustive detail in a three-volume study of Texas-Mexico border relations. Haynes 1990 aimed to tie the border war into the larger theme of US expansionist diplomacy, situating the ill-fated Mier Expedition into the annexation gambit undertaken by the Houston administration in the mid-1840s. The Mexican side of Texas-Mexico border clashes in 1842 are examined by Sanchez Lamego 1972 and Vazquez 1986. The little known war at sea between the Texas Republic and Mexico is studied by Jordan 2007, while Moore 2010 examines the role of the Texas Rangers. Key figures in the conflict are the focus of studies by Chance 2006 and Spellman 1999.

Chance, Joseph E. Jose Maria de Jesus Carvajal: The Life and Times of a Mexican Revolutionary. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A useful biography of the Tejano and prominent federalist who fought alongside Anglo-Texans in the war for Texas independence, and later sought to create an independent breakaway government in northern Mexico, the Republic of the Rio Grande.
Find this resource:
Haynes, Sam W. Soldiers of Misfortune: The Somervell and Mier Expeditions. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of the border conflict between the Texas Republic and Mexico during the early 1840s. The author argues that the surrender and subsequent incarceration of a Texan expeditionary force at Ciudad Mier in December 1842 represented a nadir for the fortunes of the Lone Star Republic, setting in motion a new diplomatic initiative by the Houston administration that would ultimately lead to annexation by the United States.
Find this resource:
Jordan, Jonathan W. Lone Star Navy: Texas, the Fight for the Gulf of Mexico, and the Shaping of the American West. Washington, DC, Potomac, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A history of the makeshift Texas navy during the Revolutionary and Republic periods.
Find this resource:
Moore, Stephen. Savage Frontier: Rangers, Riflemen, and Indian Wars in Texas. Vol. 4, 1842–45. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The last in a four-part series on the early years of the Texas Rangers. This volume focuses largely on the border conflicts between Texas and Mexico during the years 1842 and 1843.
Find this resource:
Nance, Joseph Milton. After San Jacinto: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1836–1841. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A meticulous and thoroughly researched history of the border conflicts between the infant Texas Republic and Mexico following the formal defeat of the Mexican army at San Jacinto. Particular attention is given to the participation of Anglo-Texans in the secession movement led by Mexican federalists in the north, the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande.
Find this resource:
Nance, Joseph M. Attack and Counterattack: The Texas-Mexican Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A follow-up to After San Jacinto, this detailed work chronicles the turbulent border conflicts between Texas and Mexico in 1842, which saw the Mexican army twice seize San Antonio and prompted the Texas government to launch the so-called Somervell Expedition, an ill-fated retaliatory campaign into the lower Rio Grande valley.
Find this resource:
Nance, Joseph M. Dare-Devils All: The Texan Mier Expedition, 1842–1844. Fort Worth, TX: Eakin, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published posthumously as the last of a three-part study on Texas-Mexican border conflicts during the Republic period, this work focuses on the Texan attack on Ciudad Mier in December, 1842, and the subsequent incarceration of the survivors in Mexico.
Find this resource:
Sanchez Lamego, Miguel A. The Second Mexican-Texas War. Hillsboro, TX: Hill Junior College Press, 1972.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A brief history in both English and Spanish of the Mexican Army of the North’s two campaigns to take San Antonio in the spring and fall of 1842, and the Texas Republic’s retaliatory expedition of the Rio Grande Valley, which ended in December at the Battle of Mier. The volume also includes official reports of these engagements by Mexican military leaders.
Find this resource:
Spellman, Paul N. Forgotten Texas Leader: Hugh McLeod and the Texan Santa Fe Expedition. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A biography of the Texas leader who in 1841 led an ill-fated expedition to Santa Fe, with the goal of bringing New Mexico under the control of the Texas Republic.
Find this resource:
Vazquez, Josefina. “La Supuesta Republica de la Rio Grande.” Historia Mexicana 36.1 (July–September 1986): 49–80.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that the Republic of the Rio Grande was not a legitimate, indigenous secession movement, but an attempt by Texans to destabilize northern Mexico, a strategy which, if successful, would have served to protect the fragile Lone Star republic from Mexican attempts to reclaim it.
Find this resource:
The US-Mexico War

The US-Mexico War was the largest conflict ever fought between two nations in the western hemisphere. The war had its roots in an aggressive push westward by US leaders in the 1840s, as the nation began to define its strategic and economic interests in terms that extended beyond its own borders. An avowed expansionist, President James K. Polk sought to acquire the Rio Grande as the southern boundary of Texas and access to harbors of the Pacific. Initially popular at home, the first US war fought on foreign soil raised concerns that the administration was seeking to extend the territorial limits of slavery. Relying upon volunteer regiments to supplement the regular army, the War Department had accomplished its territorial goals by the end of 1846. In an effort to force Mexican leaders to the bargaining table, it launched a seaborne invasion of Veracruz in the spring of 1847 led by General Winfield Scott, who would seize Mexico City six months later. By the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the United States acquired more than 500000 square miles of Mexican territory. However, the war aggravated sectional divisions between North and South, and would leave a legacy of bitterness in Mexico that would help to shape US-Mexico relations in the years that followed.

Underlying Causes

Scholarship on the origins of the US-Mexico War has generally focused on the United States, tending to relegate Mexico to the role of hapless bystander, unable to prevent American territorial aggrandizement. Historians have therefore given special attention to the reasons behind Anglo-American expansionist appetites during the antebellum era. Works such as Weinberg 1935 and Horsman 1981 explained Americans’ pervasive disrespect for Mexican sovereignty in terms of their racial attitudes, while Merk 1963 and others have stressed the role of propaganda underpinning an American belief in a “manifest destiny” to extend US dominion over the continent. Graebner 1955 focused on the economic imperatives of access to the Pacific. More recently, Hietala 1985 and Haynes 2010 have emphasized the anxieties that fueled US expansion during this period. In an anthology on Manifest Destiny, Haynes and Morris 1997 presents the works of six historians of American territorial expansionism.

Graebner, Norman A. Empire on the Pacific: A Study in American Expansionism. New York: Ronald, 1955.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the economic motives behind American expansion of the 1840s, stressing the desire for deep water harbors as the primary factor behind the push westward. Although the author acknowledges the role played by westward moving settlers, the pursuit of a maritime empire, he argues, which was contingent on access to Puget Sound and the harbors of San Francisco and San Diego, dictated official US policy toward Great Britain and Mexico.
Find this resource:
Haynes, Sam W. Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author argues that US leaders of the period sought to expand the national domain to block what they perceived to be British interests in Texas, California, and Mexico. An irrational fear of British intrigues in Texas and California, he argues, prompted the Polk administration to take a hard-line approach with Mexico, ultimately leading to war in 1846.
Find this resource:
Haynes, Sam W., and Christopher Morris, eds. Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of essays by six US historians focusing on the many ways in which American political and military elites as well as ordinary citizens sought to advance US territorial aggrandizement during the antebellum period.
Find this resource:
Hietala, Thomas R. Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Hietala argues that Jacksonians were motivated by a wide range of anxieties to create an agrarian continental empire. Concerns over industrialization, population growth, the intensifying competition with European nations over international trade, and the need to expand the slave empire to acquire new markets for a growing slave population led Democratic leaders to embark upon a policy of defensive imperialism in the 1840s.
Find this resource:
Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Horsman charts the shift in Anglo-American attitudes toward non-whites from one of compassionate paternalism in the late 18th century to outright hostility by the 1840s. While Enlightenment ideals had at least served to temper American racialist attitudes when the republic was founded, during the first half of the 19th century, he argues, a set of new racial theories emerged to justify the need for slave labor and the desire for Indian and Mexican lands.
Find this resource:
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author argues that the expansionist views of John L. O’Sullivan and other jingoistic editors were not widely shared by most Americans, but prevailed as a result of their ability to manipulate public opinion. The desire for more territory did not abate until the close of the war with Mexico, when calls for the absorption of the entire country—the so-called “all-Mexico” movement—caused expansionists to balk at the prospect of incorporating eight million Mexicans into the body politic.
Find this resource:
Weinberg, Albert. Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1935.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Dated but still useful, this analysis of expansionist rhetoric argues that the language of empire employed by the antebellum apostles of Manifest Destiny was a consistent feature in American thought from the inception of the republic to the imperialism of the late 19th century. Weinberg identified several major rhetorical themes which served as rationales for conquest.
Find this resource:
James K. Polk and the War

In their analysis of the outbreak of the US-Mexico War, many historians have focused, naturally enough, on the decisions of President James K. Polk, who adopted an aggressive policy toward Mexico soon after taking office. For studies that explore various, narrow aspects of the decision to go to war, see Gleijeses 2005, Graebner 1980, Jonas 1992, and McAfee 1980. Sellers 1966 influenced a generation of scholars in presenting the case that Polk bullied Mexico into an attack on US troops along the Rio Grande, a view echoed by Haynes 1997. Recently, the debate over Polk’s war aims has been revived anew. Popular historians Borneman 2008 and Merry 2010 have sought to rehabilitate the eleventh president, arguing that Polk exercised decisive leadership at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history. Both credit him with establishing the United States as a continental power. In a readable but scholarly account, Greenberg 2012 offers a restatement of the orthodox view that Polk schemed to provoke Mexico into a war which he knew the United States would win. Winders 1997 (cited under US and Mexican Soldiers) and Pinheiro 2007 both examine the bitter partisan rivalry that unfolded between the Democratic administration and the nation’s top-ranking Whig generals.

Borneman, Walter R. Polk: The Man Who Changed the Presidency and America. New York: Random House, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A general biography of Polk, relying on secondary and published primary sources. Particular attention is given to Polk’s foreign policy and the war with Mexico.
Find this resource:
Gleijeses, Piero. “A Brush With Mexico.” Diplomatic History 29.2 (April 2005): 223–254.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7709.2005.00472.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focuses on the debate in Congress and the press over Polk’s decision to take the country into war. The author takes the novel view that the president’s opponents must bear some responsibility for the conflict. While steadfast in their denunciations of the war once it began, the complacency which they exhibited in the months before hostilities occurred allowed Polk to embark upon a belligerent policy.
Find this resource:
Graebner, Norman A. “The Mexican War: A Study in Causation.” Pacific Historical Review 49.3 (August 1980): 405–426.
DOI: 10.2307/3638563Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues against the view that Mexican intransigence was the cause of war, arguing that the Polk administration had far more options available to it than the Mexican government.
Find this resource:
Greenberg, Amy S. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Scholarly but written to appeal to a wide readership, this engaging narrative focuses on a somewhat disparate collection of Americans who came to oppose the war with Mexico, such as Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, Nicholas Trist, as well as lesser known figures such as John J. Hardin, an Illinois Whig congressman who died at Buena Vista.
Find this resource:
Haynes, Sam W. James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse. New York: Longman, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A concise history of the eleventh president, focusing on his presidential years and his expansionist agenda. The author stresses Democratic fears of Great Britain—specifically the concern that it might acquire California— as the principal reason behind Polk’s decision to go to war with Mexico.
Find this resource:
Jonas, Peter M. “William Parrott, American Claims, and the Mexican War.” Journal of the Early Republic 12.2 (Summer 1992): 213–240.
DOI: 10.2307/3124152Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An examination of the little-studied “claims issue,” which the Polk administration offered as one of the chief justifications for its war against Mexico.
Find this resource:
McAfee, Ward. “A Re-Consideration of the Origins of the Mexican-American War.” Southern California Quarterly 62.1 (Spring 1980): 49–65.
DOI: 10.2307/41170855Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Seeks to refute the view that Polk deliberately manipulated Mexico into a war, arguing that the president negotiated in good faith with the Mexican government, resorting to force only when diplomatic alternatives failed.
Find this resource:
Merry, Robert W. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Written for a general audience, this study credits Polk with acquiring a continental empire, dismissing the view that the eleventh president waged an immoral war against the United States’ southern neighbor.
Find this resource:
Pinheiro, John C. Manifest Ambition: James K. Polk and Civil-Military Relations during the Mexican War. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines President Polk’s management of the war, giving particular attention to his turbulent relationship with his Whig generals.
Find this resource:
Pinheiro, John C. Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican-American War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199948673.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Pinheiro examines the extent to which anti-Catholicism informed arguments both for and against the war, and how religious rhetoric shaped Americans’ experiences both at home and in the invasion of Mexico.
Find this resource:
Sellers, Charles G. James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843–1846. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The second of a two-volume biography of the eleventh president, this remains an excellent and thorough examination of Polk’s diplomacy leading up to the war with Mexico. A planned third volume dealing with the war years was never published.
Find this resource:
The US Invasion of Mexico

Ill-prepared to undertake its first foreign war, the United States was obliged to complement the regular army with a sizable volunteer force, drawing upon the militias of several states. The need to create and equip a greatly expanded army at short notice presented enormous logistical challenges, not to mention political ones. Dishman 2010 and Johnson 2007 examine specific campaigns against Mexico, while Reilly 2010 focuses on US wartime press coverage. Miller 1989 and Johnson 2012 examine the role of Irish immigrants in the US-Mexico War. Sandweiss provides a rare visual glimpse into the war and its participants, drawing from a collection of rare daguerreotypes at the Amon Carter Library, Fort Worth. Among the most useful biographies of major military leaders are Bauer 1993 and Johnson 1998.

Bauer, Jack K. Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Remains the best biography to date of the twelfth president, whose military victories in northern Mexico gave rise to a meteoric but brief political career.
Find this resource:
Dishman, Chris D. A Perfect Gibraltar: The Battle for Monterrey, Mexico, 1846. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An examination of the Battle of Monterrey in September 1846, the first major test of the newly created volunteer regiments which had been called into service following the declaration of war in May.
Find this resource:
Johnson, Timothy D. Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive biography of the most important US military leader of the early national period, drawing upon a wide range of archival materials.
Find this resource:
Johnson, Timothy D. A Gallant Little Army: The Mexico City Campaign. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this follow-up to Johnson’s biography of Winfield Scott, the author provides a thorough account, from the US perspective, of the 1847 invasion of Mexico—the final campaign of the US-Mexico War.
Find this resource:
Johnson, Tyler. Devotion to the Adopted Country: U.S. Immigrant Volunteers in the Mexican War. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2012.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focusing on Irish Catholic volunteers, the author examines how these immigrants saw the war with Mexico as an opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States. Although some would find social acceptance, others faced nativist intolerance, both during and after the war.
Find this resource:
Miller, Robert Ryal. Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick’s Battalion in the U.S.-Mexican War. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Though dated this remains the most comprehensive study of the St. Patrick’s Battalion—US deserters who fought on the side of Mexico.
Find this resource:
Reilly, Tom. War With Mexico! America’s Reporters Cover the Battlefield. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Written by a professor of journalism, this work examines the American reporters who covered the war for newspapers in the United States. Particular attention is given to the ways in which their accounts influenced public opinion at home.
Find this resource:
Sandweiss, Martha A. Eyewitness to War: Prints and Daguerreotypes of the Mexican War, 1846–1848. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published as a companion to a 1988 Amon Carter Museum exhibit on the war, this volume is the best pictorial history of the conflict, featuring a number of never before seen daguerreotypes taken in Mexico by photographers accompanying the US Army.
Find this resource:
The War in the West

On the conquest of what would later become known as the American Southwest, see the studies Chaffin 2002, Dawson 1999, Groom 2012, and Hughes 1997. The role of nomadic tribes, who had long fought Mexicans in the area, is the focus of Delay 2008. The conquest of California is examined by Haas 1997 and Harlow 1989.

Chaffin, Tom. Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire. New York: Hill & Wang, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An able biography of John C. Frémont, who helped secure California for the United States in 1846.
Find this resource:
Dawson, Joseph G. Doniphan’s Epic March: The 1st Missouri Volunteers in the Mexican War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of the fifty-five-hundred-mile march of Alexander Doniphan, whose Missouri regiment captured Chihuahua.
Find this resource:
DeLay, Brian. War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
By the mid-1830s, the author argues, the depredations of the Southern Plains tribes against Mexico’s northern frontier had become so severe, and the Mexican government’s response to them so inadequate and ineffectual, that the region did little to resist the invasion of US forces in 1846.
Find this resource:
Groom, Winston. Kearny’s March: The Epic Creation of the American West, 1846–47. New York: Vintage, 2012.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A general history of Stephen Watts Kearney’s campaign to secure US control over the American Southwest.
Find this resource:
Haas, Lisbeth. “War in California, 1846–1848.” California History 76.2/3 (Summer–Fall 1997): 331–355.
DOI: 10.2307/25161671Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focuses on the ways in which the war impacted the lives of Mexican and Native American Californians.
Find this resource:
Harlow, Neil. California Conquered: The Annexation of a Mexican Province, 1846–1850. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An authoritative and important study that places California at the forefront of US expansionist objectives, from efforts to acquire it in the early 1840s to statehood.
Find this resource:
Hughes, John Taylor. Doniphan’s Expedition: An Account of the Conquest of Mexico. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of Alexander Doniphan’s campaign from New Mexico to Chihuahua.
Find this resource:
US and Mexican Soldiers

Various aspects of the experiences of US troops are the focus of works by Chance 1991, Foos 2002, McCaffrey 1992, and Winders 1997. The best military history of the war from the Mexican perspective remains DePalo 1997, while Mexican historian Guardino examines how citizens of both countries viewed military service.

Chance, Joseph E. Jefferson Davis’s Mexican War Regiment. Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 1991.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A regimental history of the Mississippi volunteers who, led by Jefferson Davis, would play a crucial role in the Battle of Buena Vista.
Find this resource:
DePalo, William A., Jr. The Mexican National Army, 1822–1852. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Written by a retired US Army colonel with a PhD in Latin American History, this remains the only full-length monograph of the Mexican army during the war with the United States.
Find this resource:
Foos, Paul. A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict during the Mexican-American War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Views the war through the prism of class strife in an emerging American industrial society. Regular troops resented an abusive officer class, while volunteers expressed their dissatisfaction in a variety of ways, including insubordination and desertion. The postwar period brought further disappointments for US troops, who had expected tangible benefits for their military service in the form of free lands and new economic opportunities.
Find this resource:
Guardino, Peter. “Gender, Soldiering, and Citizenship in the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848.” American Historical Review 119.1 (February 2014): 3–46.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Guardino explores the topics of gender, soldiering, and citizenship in the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 through a comparative look at military recruitment on both sides of the war.
Find this resource:
McCaffrey, James M. Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846–1848. New York: New York University Press, 1992.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A highly useful study of the life of the US common soldier—both regular and volunteer—based on extensive archival research in US archives.
Find this resource:
Winders, Richard Bruce. Mr. Polk’s Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focuses on the many problems that the Polk administration faced in waging the first US war on foreign soil, examining such topics as political partisanship and the friction that existed between the regular army and the volunteer regiments.
Find this resource:
Mexico and the War

Valuable political studies that examine this turbulent period in Mexican history are Costeloe 1993, which focuses on the failure of conservative centralism, and Santoni 1996, which takes as its subject Mexico’s liberal federalists. Both studies paint a depressing picture of almost incessant political infighting in a time of national crisis. On the march toward war from the Mexican point of view, see Brack 1975, Henderson 2007, Cotner 1949, Vásquez 1997, and Wasserman 2000. On the intense localism that made it difficult for Mexicans to defend the homeland, see Reséndez Fuentes 1997. Levinson 2005 examines the little-known guerilla campaigns against US forces. On Santa Anna, the most important Mexican leader of the period, see Fowler 2007.

Brack, Gene M. Mexico Views Manifest Destiny, 1821–1846: An Essay on the Origins of the Mexican War. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Seeks to explain the reasons for Mexico’s inability to respond to an aggressive policy of US expansion that culminated in the loss of more than a third of its territory.
Find this resource:
Costeloe, Michael P. The Central Republic in Mexico, 1835–1846: Hombres de Bien in the Age of Santa Anna. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511529078Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the failure of conservative centralism following Santa Anna’s efforts to abolish the Constitution of 1824. Sheds new light on a pivotal and turbulent decade in Mexican history, in which many political elites opted to abandon republicanism in favor of centralism.
Find this resource:
Cotner, Thomas Ewing. The Military and Political Career of José Joaquín de Herrera, 1792–1854. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1949.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A useful biography of the Mexican leader who sought a negotiated solution to the crisis with the United States in 1845, for which he was deposed by conservatives in the Mexican army only months before the war began.
Find this resource:
Fowler, Will. Santa Anna of Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most comprehensive and balanced biography of the Mexican leader to date. Fowler characterizes the Mexican caudillo as a man who cared more for military laurels than politics, preferring to leave the day-to-day business of running the national government to subordinates.
Find this resource:
Henderson, Timothy J. A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
More a history of the events leading up to the Mexican war with the United States than the war itself, this concise narrative places particular emphasis on the Texas question as a cause of Mexico’s decision to go to war in 1846.
Find this resource:
Levinson, Irving W. Wars within War: Mexican Guerrillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, 1846–1848. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Drawing upon Mexican archival sources, this brief study examines a long-neglected aspect of the war—the guerilla campaign against US supply trains that continued for several months after the fall of Mexico City.
Find this resource:
Reséndez Fuentes, Andrés. “Guerra y Identidad Nacional.” Historia Mexicana 47.2 (October–December 1997): 411–439.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that the war was not a war of two nations, but a struggle between an invading army and a complex web of social groups that would only subsequently acquire a Mexican identity.
Find this resource:
Santoni, Pedro. Mexicans at Arms: Puro Federalists and the Politics of War, 1845–1848. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A valuable study of Mexican domestic politics during the war with the United States, examining the reasons why Mexican political elites proved unable to unite in the face of a threat from the United States.
Find this resource:
Vásquez, Josefina Zoraida. “El Origen de la Guerra con Estados Unidos.” Historia Mexicana 47.2 (October–December 1997): 285–309.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Seeks to refute the view that Mexican leaders deserved blame for the war, as well as the belief that American westward expansion was inevitable.
Find this resource:
Wasserman, Mark. Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico: Men, Women, and War. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although covering the broad sweep of 19th-century Mexican conflict rather than the war itself, Wasserman’s study provides a useful analysis of the ways in which the country’s political and economic problems shaped the lives of ordinary Mexicans prior to and during the US invasion.
Find this resource:
The War in the United States

Although Americans greeted news of the outbreak of hostilities along the Rio Grande with a burst of patriotic enthusiasm, they became deeply divided over the war as the conflict dragged on. As a result, scholarship on American public opinion during the war years has reflected this duality. While some historians, such as Fuller 1936 emphasized the seemingly insatiable appetite among American expansionists for new territories, others, such as Borit 1974 and Schroeder 1973, have stressed the reluctance of a large segment of the population to fully endorse the drive for a continental empire. This duality was particularly in evidence in the South, where, as noted by Hospodor 2000, a culture of masculine honor endorsed the war with Mexico, even as some Southern politicians, discussed by Lander 1980, balked at seizing large swaths of its territory. At the same time, the bitter debate over the status of slavery in the conquered territories lay over the horizon for most Americans, leading Johannsen 1985 to conclude that news of American victories in a distant land served to legitimize for many citizens their ideas about the republic’s “manifest destiny.”

Borit, G. S. “Lincoln’s Opposition to the Mexican War.” In Special Issue: Abraham Lincoln. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908–1984) 67.1 (February 1974): 79–100.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the role of Lincoln’s famous “Spot Resolutions” on US public opinion.
Find this resource:
Fuller, John Douglas Pitts. The Movement for the Acquisition of All Mexico, 1846–1848. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1936.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Though dated, this remains the most thorough study of the effort by ultra-expansionists to annex all of Mexico following the capture of Mexico City.
Find this resource:
Hospodor, Gregory Scott. “Honor Bound: Southern Honor and the Mexican War.” PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Hospodor examines the ways in which the politics of honor framed the Southern response to the war, and shaped the ways in which white Southerners—men and women—defined their roles in it.
Find this resource:
Johannsen, Robert W. To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Unlike the many historians who have emphasized American race hatred as a conspicuous feature of the war, the author argues that citizens of the republic generally were fascinated by their encounter with a strange and exotic land, expressing an enthusiasm that was entirely consistent with the exuberance of the Romantic Age.
Find this resource:
Lander, Ernest M., Jr. Reluctant Imperialists: Calhoun, the South Carolinians, and the Mexican War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Though antebellum territorial expansion has traditionally been viewed as a Southern phenomenon, Lander’s study of South Carolina suggests that state leaders remained divided over the war from the outset. Determined to acquire Texas only a few years earlier, they balked at the incorporation of Mexico’s more populated territories, which would require granting citizenship to non-whites.
Find this resource:
Schroeder, John H. Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846–1848. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An examination of antiwar movement in the North among Whigs and some Democrats, which became more vocal despite an uninterrupted string of US military victories.
Find this resource:
Aftermath

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established the United States as the dominant power in the western hemisphere. Graebner 1978 and Ohrt 1998 examine the treaty negotiations that would lead to the US acquisition of almost one-third of Mexico’s national domain. The political and social consequences of the settlement were wide-ranging for both countries. For the United States, the war exacerbated the sectional controversy over the expansion of slavery, even as it fueled American imperial ambitions on a global stage. For the vanquished Mexico, the humiliation of defeat gave rise to a period of national introspection, as Mexican intellectuals decried the divisiveness and political infighting which had so greatly impeded the war effort. Thus a particularly fruitful field of study in recent years has been the war’s impact on mid-19th-century national identity in both Mexico and the United States. Streeby 2002 and Rodríguez 2010 both search for clues to that identity in the literature that emerged from the war. Van Wagenen 2012 discusses rituals of remembrance for both countries, and seeks to place the war in a broad historical context. Taking a narrower view, Dougherty 2007 examines the lessons learned by the US military during the war and the conflict’s impact on Civil War battlefield tactics. The war also had a direct impact on the lives of the residents of the American Southwest. Griswold del Castillo 1990 and St. John 2012 examine the long-term results of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which transformed the lives of Mexican-Americans and continues to define relations between the two North American neighbors.

Dougherty, Kevin. Civil War Leadership and the Mexican War Experience. Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the ways in which the war with Mexico shaped the military tactics of Civil War generals.
Find this resource:
Graebner, Norman A. “Lessons of the Mexican War.” Pacific Historical Review 47.3 (August 1978): 325–342.
DOI: 10.2307/3637470Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Credits President Polk with limited and precise goals, which enabled the United States to extricate itself quickly and easily from Mexican affairs, in contrast to subsequent Western interventions in the developing world.
Find this resource:
Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A thorough study of the treaty that ended the conflict between Mexico and the United States, with particular attention given to the consequences for Mexicans living above the Rio Grande after 1848.
Find this resource:
Ohrt, Wallace. Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the diplomatic mission of Nicholas Trist, who forged a peace treaty with Mexican diplomats despite being recalled by the Polk administration after the fall of Mexico City.
Find this resource:
Rodríguez, Jaime Javier. The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War: Narrative, Time and Identity. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An important study of the war from a literary and cultural perspective. The author examines both US popular literature, such as dime novels, and novelettes, as well as the writings of Mexican intellectuals, to situate the war in the development of national identity for both countries.
Find this resource:
St. John, Rachel. Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as its starting point, this book explores the many ways in which the cession of Mexico’s northern territories has shaped US-Mexico relations since 1848.
Find this resource:
Streeby, Shelley. American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Employs the many novels of the war, by George Lippard and others, to explain the role of imperialism in American popular culture during the mid-19th century.
Find this resource:
Van Wagenen, Michael. Remembering the Forgotten War: The Enduring Legacies of the U.S./Mexican War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A highly original work which seeks to explain why the US-Mexico War has become a forgotten war for Americans, but a seminal moment in the history of Mexico. Examining the tools of collective memory—books, popular culture, historic sites, heritage groups, commemorations, and museums—the author explores the choices Americans and Mexicans have made regarding what to remember and what to forget.