Mexican-American War or US-Mexican War
Note that how you refer to this war can indicate your perspective:
Was the United States the aggressor in the US-Mexican War or
was Mexico restricting the freedoms of Americans in Texas in the
Mexican-American War? Regardless of its name, at its conclusion
in 1848, this war added what would become the states of Arizona,
California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah to the
territory of the United States (525,000 square miles) and with the
1845 annexation of Texas enlarge the nation by nearly 50
percent. The California Gold Rush resulted in California's
statehood in 1850 as part of a compromise that set the stage for
the Civil War.
Your textbook covers the background to this conflict including the
Texas Revolution and the war itself. Take note of the role of
Tejanos both in the Texas Revolution and US-Mexican War.
"Tejanos," as we will use the term in this class, refers to the
Spanish-speaking residents of what became Texas. They
descended from 18th-century Mexican settlers on the northern
frontier of Spanish Mexico and included wealthy
landowners/rancheros as well as cowboys/vaqueros and the
peons/tenant farmers. Far removed from the center of
government in Mexico City, the Tejanos welcomed the American
settlers such as Sam Houston and Stephen Austin and their plans
for economic development in the 1820s because of the instability
of the newly independent Mexican state. [Mexico achieved
independence from Spain in 1821.]
Here's a map of military movements during the Mexican-American
War:
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Credit: From American Military History, United States Army Center of Military
History, 1989. Scanned image provided by Perry-Castañeda Library Map
Collection, University of Texas Libraries (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/)
Explore Different Perspectives on the US-Mexican War
You can explore a map and timeline that provide different
perspectives on the Mexican-American War (or the US-Mexican
War if you live south of the border) at the Website of a PBS
program U.S.-Mexican War. Choose the Timeline from the lefthand on that site. Look at the different segments of the timeline
and click on the "Read Biography" link available in many of the
popups from the timeline.
http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar
Tejano Juan Nepomuceno Seguin fought with the Americans
against Mexico in the Texas Revolution of 1835-36. After Texas
became an independent republic, Seguin became mayor of San
Antonio. But soon he confronted Americans spitting anti-Mexican
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sentiments that questioned Tejano loyalties. Many Americans
eyed Tejano property enviously. A foreigner in his native land of
Texas, Seguin feared for his family's safety and fled south to
Mexico in 1842. He returned to Texas after the US-Mexican War
and in his memoir wrote about his service for Texas during the
fight for independence and his subsequent exile to Mexico: "my
services paid by persecutions, exiled and deprived of my
privileges as a Texan citizen, I was in this country a being out of
the pale of society, and when she could not protect the rights of
her citizens, they seek protection elsewhere." Source: Juan
Nepomuceno Seguin, Personal Memoirs of John N. Seguin (San
Antonio, TX: Ledger Book and Job Office, 1858), 32. From History
Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web, American Social
History Project/Center for Media & Learning, City University of
New York, and the Center for History and New Media, George
Mason University, 1998. Web. 4 April 2011.
You can read more from Seguin's memoir here:
historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6531/
How did American actions in this conflict illustrate the
idea of "Manifest Destiny" and emerging ideas about
"race"?
Although invited by the Mexican government to settle in Texas,
the Americans became badly mannered guests. Sam Houston, for
example, saw the struggle for Texas independence as one
between a glorious Anglo-Saxon race and an inferior Mexican
rabble. The Texans and those sympathetic to their cause in the
United States increasingly depicted Mexicans as a mongrel race.
The Texas Revolution was a racial clash not just a revolt against
an unjust government. Those touting Manifest Destiny in the
United States in the 1840s turned to racial categorizations.
"Anglo-Saxon" was never a racial term before then. Beginning in
the sixteenth century, it referred to the non-Celtic inhabitants of
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England. Later it came to mean British-related peoples. In the
United States in the 1840s, Anglo-Saxon referred to the superior
race of white American natives as distinct from blacks, American
Indians, and in the 1840s the Irish and German immigrants.
Those touting Manifest Destiny dehumanized those who were to
be misused or destroyed. They lumped Mexicans with American
Indians and blacks as inferior races to rationalize American
behavior toward them and so justified the annexation of Texas
that precipitated the war as the just expansion of the Anglo-Saxon
American race.
©Susan Vetter 2008, rev. 2011
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