- published: 28 Jan 2012
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- author: HistoryFeed
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- Abraham Lincoln
- Albert J. Beveridge
- Alta California
- Ambrose Burnside
- American Civil War
- American Indian Wars
- American Old West
- Andrés Pico
- Apache
- Arizona
- Atlixco
- Baja California
- Banana Wars
- Battle of Cañada
- Battle of Chino
- Battle of Churubusco
- Battle of Contreras
- Battle of El Brazito
- Battle of Huamantla
- Battle of La Mesa
- Battle of La Paz
- Battle of Monterey
- Battle of Monterrey
- Battle of Mulege
- Battle of Natividad
- Battle of Olompali
- Battle of Palo Alto
- Battle of Veracruz
- Bay of Pigs Invasion
- Bear Flag
- Big Stick ideology
- Bleeding Kansas
- Blockade of Veracruz
- Bonus Army
- Boxer Rebellion
- Breech-loading
- Brooks–Baxter War
- Brown Bess
- California
- California Gold Rush
- California Republic
- California Trail
- Californio
- Camargo, Tamaulipas
- Capture of Santa Fe
- Carl Nebel
- Casus belli
- Category Mexico
- Chapultepec Park
- Chihuahua City
- Christopher Werner
- Cienega Affair
- Coahuila y Tejas
- Coal Creek War
- Colorado
- Colt Walker
- Comanche
- Comanches
- Compromise of 1850
- Congress of Mexico
- Congressman
- Corwin Amendment
- Covert operation
- Cristero War
- Cuban Missile Crisis
- Cuban Project
- Damon R. Eubank
- Daniel S. Dickinson
- Daniel Webster
- David Wilmot
- Dollar Diplomacy
- Dorr Rebellion
- Dragoons
- Edward A. Hannegan
- Farmland
- First Barbary War
- First Battle of Mora
- First Mexican Empire
- Fort Brown
- Fort Leavenworth
- Franklin Pierce
- Gabriel Valencia
- Gadsden Purchase
- George B. McClellan
- George Edmund Badger
- George Meade
- Georgia (U.S. state)
- Gila River
- Good Neighbor policy
- Guaymas
- Gulf of California
- Gulf War
- Hand to hand combat
- Harry S. Truman
- Henry David Thoreau
- Henry S. Burton
- Herschel V. Johnson
- History of Honduras
- History of Mexico
- History of San Diego
- Homestead Strike
- Hopi
- Horse artillery
- Illinois
- Indian wars
- Invasion of Grenada
- Iran–Contra affair
- Iraq War
- Ireland
- Izucar de Matamoros
- James K. Polk
- James Longstreet
- James Murray Mason
- Jefferson Davis
- Joaquin Rea
- Joaquín Rea
- John C. Calhoun
- John C. Frémont
- John D. Sloat
- John Drake Sloat
- John E. Wool
- John L. O'Sullivan
- John Quincy Adams
- John Salazar
- John Slidell
- John Tyler
- Jon Riley
- Joseph Lane
- Joshua Giddings
- Josiah Gregg
- José Castro
- José María Flores
- Kansas
- Kansas–Nebraska Act
- Ken Salazar
- Kirby Smith
- Kit Carson
- Korean Expedition
- Korean War
- La decena trágica
- La Década Perdida
- La Reforma
- Lancers
- Las Vegas Affair
- Latin America
- Lebanese Civil War
- Lewis Cass
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- Little Englander
- Lord Palmerston
- Los Angeles
- M1819 Hall rifle
- Major General
- Manifest Destiny
- Manifest destiny
- Manuel Armijo
- Manuel Pineda
- Mariano Arista
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- Matthew C. Perry
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- Mazatlán, Mexico
- Mexican Cession
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- Mexico
- Mexico 68
- Mexico City
- Millard Fillmore
- Missouri Compromise
- Moment of silence
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- Monterey, California
- Monterrey
- Mormon War (1838)
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- Moses Austin
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- Nathan Clifford
- Nathaniel Currier
- Navajo people
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- Nicholas Trist
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- Ostend Manifesto
- Owen Thomas Edgar
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- Percussion rifle
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- Philip Kearny
- Plan of Guadalupe
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- Portal Mexico
- Portal United States
- Pre-Columbian era
- Pre-Columbian Mexico
- Presidio of Sonoma
- Preston Brooks
- Project FUBELT
- Puebla, Puebla
- Pío Pico
- Quasi-War
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Ramón Eduardo Ruiz
- Reconquista (Mexico)
- Reform War
- Republic of Texas
- Revolvers
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- Rio Grande
- Rio Grande River
- Robert E. Lee
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- Roosevelt Corollary
- Río Frío de Juárez
- Salinas Valley
- Sam Houston
- San Diego
- Second Barbary War
- Second Opium War
- Sectionalism
- Shays' Rebellion
- Siege of Fort Texas
- Siege of La Paz
- Siege of Los Angeles
- Siege of Puebla
- Siege of Veracruz
- Skirmish at Atlixco
- Slave Power
- Slavery
- Somali Civil War
- Sonoma, California
- Sonoran Desert
- Spanish–American War
- Spot Resolutions
- Star of the West
- Stephen A. Douglas
- Stephen F. Austin
- Stephen W. Kearny
- Stephen Watts Kearny
- Stonewall Jackson
- Tampico Affair
- Tariff of 1828
- Texan Army
- Texan Independence
- Texas
- Texas Annexation
- Texas Campaign
- Texas Revolution
- Thomas Childs
- Thomas O. Larkin
- Thornton Affair
- Treaties of Velasco
- Treaty of Cahuenga
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Underground Railroad
- United States
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- Utah
- Utah War
- Veracruz, Veracruz
- Vietnam War
- Waddy Thompson, Jr.
- War of 1812
- Whiskey Rebellion
- William J. Worth
- William Mervine
- Wilmot Proviso
- Winfield Scott
- World War I
- World War II
- Wyoming
- Yellow fever
- Zachary Taylor
-
Alta California
Alta California (English: Upper California) was a province and territory in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and later a territory and department in independent Mexico. The territory was created in 1769 out of the northern part of the former province of Las Californias, and consisted of the modern American states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming. The territory passed to American control after the Mexican–American War and ceased to exist with the creation of the State of California in 1850.
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Atlixco
Atlixco (originally called Atrisco) is a city and a municipality in the Mexican state of Puebla. It is located only 24 km south of the city of Puebla, yet it is 300 meters lower in altitude, at 1840 m. This drop in altitude causes a noticeable change in the weather of the city compared to the surrounding regions of the "Sierra Nevada" (literally "Snowy Mountains"). This makes Atlixco renowned for its benign climate, which varies by only a few degrees Celsius year round.
Atlixco, which reported a population of 86,173 in the 2005 census, is located on the foothills of the Popocatépetl volcano. The city is the third-largest community in the state, after Puebla and Tehuacán. The municipality of Atlixco, which has an area of 229.22 km² (88.5 sq mi), reported a population of 122,149.
The city is an agricultural, commercial and industrial centre. Alfalfa, flowers, corn, wheat,and fruits are the main crops grown in the area. Textile factories, grain mills, and soft-drink plants are also located in the city, as well as several car dealerships.
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Baja California
Baja California (English /ˈbɑːhɑː kælɨˈfɔrnjə/, Spanish: [ˈbaxa kaliˈfornja]), officially Free and Sovereign State of Baja California (Spanish: Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California, literally: Lower California), is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico, but before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North Territory of Baja California. It has an area of 70,113 km2 (27,071 sq mi), or 3.57% of the land mass of Mexico and comprises the northern half of the Baja California peninsula, north of the 28th parallel. The state is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the east by Sonora, the U.S. State of Arizona, and the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), and on the south by Baja California Sur. Its northern limit is the U.S. state of California.
The state has a population of 2,844,469 (2005 census), and estimated 3,165,776 (June 2009) much more than the sparsely populated Baja California Sur to the south, and similar to San Diego County on its north. Over 75% of the population lives in the capital city, Mexicali, or in Ensenada and Tijuana. Other important cities include San Felipe, Rosarito and Tecate. The population of the state is composed of Mestizos, mostly immigrants from other parts of Mexico, and, as with most northern Mexican states, a large population of Mexicans of European ancestry, and also a large minority group of East Asian, Middle Eastern and indigenous descent. Additionally, there is a large immigrant population from the United States due to its proximity to San Diego and the cheaper cost of living compared to San Diego. There is also a significant population from Central America. Many immigrants moved to Baja California for a better quality of life and the number of higher paying jobs in comparison to the rest of Mexico and Latin America.
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Battle of Chino
The Battle of Chino, a skirmish of the Mexican-American War occurred on September 26–27, 1846, during which 24 Americans led by Benjamin D. Wilson, who were hiding in the adobe house of Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, were captured by a group of about 50 Californios.
In late September 1846, as war between Mexico and the United States was declared, about 20 Americans led by Benjamin Davis Wilson assembled at Isaac Williams' Rancho Santa Ana del Chino. Williams, originally from Pennsylvania, had become a Mexican citizen - a prerequisite for owning land - and married Maria de Jesus Lugo, daughter of Antonio Maria Lugo. The Californios doubted the loyalty of Wilson's men and set out to arrest them.
Serbulo Varela, Diego Sepulveda and Ramon Carrillo left Los Angeles with about fifty men, while José del Carmen Lugo with another fifteen to twenty men left from San Bernardino to converge upon Rancho del Chino. On the night of September 26, 1846, the adobe ranch house was surrounded by the Californios. At dawn, the following day, gunfire was exchanged resulting in one Californio (Carlos Ballesteros, son of the grantee of Rancho Rosa Castilla) dead with two wounded and three American wounded. When the Californios attempted to set fire to the roof of the house, Wilson surrendered to Varela. This brief engagement became known as the Battle of Chino.
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Battle of Churubusco
The Battle of Churubusco took place on August 20, 1847, in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Contreras (Padierna) during the Mexican-American War. After defeating the Mexican army at Churubusco, the U.S. Army was only 5 miles (8 km) away from Mexico City, the capital of the nation. A month later, the US forces captured Mexico City and the war was over.
Following their defeats at Contreras and San Antonio, the Mexicans fell back to the village of Churubusco. During retreat from San Antonio, the Mexican defenders (called the 1st Line of Defense or sometimes the "Army of the Centre", led by Gen. N. Bravo, with about 2,000 men: 700 "Hidalgo," 500 "Victoria" Natl. Guards Battalions, 800 others: under Cols. A. Zerecero & J. G. Perdigon Garay), were struck in flank by Clarke's Brigade of the division of Gen. William J. Worth. The US forces captured about 500 prisoners, including Acting Gen. Perdigon Garay, and about five guns. The U.S. forces began to merge with forces coming from Contreras for a further attack.
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Battle of Monterey
The so-called Battle of Monterey, at Monterey, California, was waged on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican-American War. The United States captured the town unopposed. The action made the ongoing Bear Flag Revolt superfluous.
Prior to the Mexican-American War the Californio forces had already driven the Mexican appointed Governor Manuel Micheltorena and most of his soldiers from Alta California. The Californio Governor, Pio Pico, with about 100 poorly armed and poorly equipped soldiers, was nominally in charge in Alta California and had consolidated his forces in Pueblo de Los Angeles—the largest city then in California with about 3,500 residents.
The main forces available to the United States in California were the about 400-500 bluejacket sailors and U.S. Marines on board the five ships of the Pacific Squadron there. Speculating that war with Mexico over Texas etc. was very possible, the U.S. Navy had sent several additional naval vessels to the Pacific in 1845 and 1846 to protect U.S. interests there and prevent possible British action. It took about 200 days, on average, for ships to travel the over-12,000 miles (19,000 km) trip from the East coast around Cape Horn to get to California. More ships assigned to the Pacific Squadron would continue to arrive from 1846 to 1847.
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Bonus Army
The Bonus Army was the popular name of an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand immediate cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Its organizers called it the Bonus Expeditionary Force to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Force, while the media called it the Bonus March. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant.
Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Each service certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment plus compound interest. The principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates.
Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, one of the most popular military figures of the time, visited their camp to back the effort and encourage them. On July 28, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two veterans were wounded and later died. Veterans were also shot dead at other locations during the demonstration. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the army to clear the veterans' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
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California
California (pronounced
i/kælɨˈfɔrnjə/) is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third most extensive (after Alaska and Texas). It is home to the nation's second- and sixth-largest census statistical areas (Los Angeles Metropolitan Area and San Francisco Bay Area), and eight of the nation's fifty most populated cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach and Oakland). The capital city is Sacramento.
California's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west, to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east – from the Redwood–Douglas-fir forests of the northwest, to the Mojave Desert areas in the southeast. The center of the state is dominated by Central Valley, a major agricultural area. California contains both the highest and lowest points in the contiguous United States (Mount Whitney and Death Valley), and has the third-longest coastline of all states (after Alaska and Florida). Earthquakes are a common occurrence due to the state's location along the Pacific Ring of Fire: about 37,000 are recorded annually.
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California Republic
The California Republic, also called the Bear Flag Republic, is the name used for a period of revolt against Mexico initially proclaimed by a handful of American settlers in Mexican California on June 14, 1846, in Sonoma. This was shortly before news of the Mexican–American War had reached the area. The participants declared independence from Mexico, but they did not form a functional provisional government. Thus, the "republic" never exercised any real authority, and it was never recognized by any nation. In fact, most of Alta California knew nothing about it. The revolt lasted 26 days, at the end of which the U.S. Army arrived to occupy the area. Once the leaders of the revolt knew the United States was claiming the area, they disbanded their "republic" and supported the U.S. federal effort to annex Alta California.
The California Republic is notable for creation of the "(Grizzly) Bear Flag", whose symbols were later incorporated into the California state flag — including the words "California Republic".
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Chapultepec Park
Chapultepec Park, more commonly called the "Bosque de Chapultepec" (Chapultepec Forest) in Mexico City, is the largest city park in Latin America, measuring in total just over 686 hectares. Centered on a rock formation called Chapultepec Hill, one of the park's main functions is to be an ecological space in the vast megalopolis. It is considered the first and most important of Mexico City's "lungs", with trees that replenished oxygen to the Valley of Mexico. The park area has been inhabited and held as special since the pre-Hispanic period, when it became a retreat for Aztec rulers. In the colonial period, the Chapultepec Castle would be built here, eventually becoming the official residence of Mexican heads of state. It would remain such until 1940, when it was moved to another part of the park called Los Pinos. Today, the park is divided into three sections, with the first section being the oldest and most visited. This section contains most of the park's attractions including its zoo, the Museum of Anthropology, Rufino Tamayo Museum and more. It receives an estimated 15 million visitors per year. This prompted the need for major rehabilitation efforts which began in 2005 and ended in 2010.
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Chihuahua City
The city of Chihuahua (Spanish pronunciation: [tʃiˈwawa]) is the state capital of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It has a population of about 825,327. The predominant activity is industry, including domestic heavy, light industries, consumer goods production, and to a smaller extent maquiladoras.
It has been said that the name derives from the Tarahumara language, meaning "between two waters", other accepted definitions are "place of the holed-rock" or "dry and sandy place". The name itself is older than the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The city was founded on October 12, 1709, by Blas Cano de los Rios and Antonio Deza y Ulloa, a Spanish explorer, as El Real de Minas de San Francisco el Cuéllar. The town was erected a Villa in 1718 with the name of San Felipe el Real de Chihuahua, and the name was shortened in 1823. The location was chosen because it is the intersection of the rivers Chuviscar and Sacramento. It is also the midpoint between the Río Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande) and the then-important mining city of Hidalgo del Parral.
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Coahuila y Tejas
Coahuila y Tejas (Coahuila and Texas) was one of the constituent states of the newly established United Mexican States under its 1824 Constitution.
It had two capitals: first Saltillo, and then Monclova. For administrative purposes, the state was divided into three districts: Béxar, comprising the area covered by Texas, Monclova, comprising northern Coahuila, and Río Grande Saltillo, comprising southern Coahuila.
The state remained in existence until the adoption of the 1835 "Constitutional Bases", whereby the federal republic was converted into a unitary one, and the nation's states, (estados), were turned into departments (departamentos). The State of Coahuila y Texas was split in two and became the Department of Coahuila and the Department of Texas. The latter eventually seceded and became the independent Republic of Texas, which is now the state of Texas within the United States of America.
Both Coahuila and Texas seceded from Mexico because of Santa Anna's attempts to centralize the government, with Texas forming the Republic of Texas and Coahuila joining with Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to form the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande.
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Colorado
Colorado (i/kɒləˈrædoʊ/ or /kɒləˈrɒdoʊ/) is the US state that encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, and the Mountain States. Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 22nd most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,116,796 on July 1, 2011, an increase of +1.74% since the 2010 United States Census.
The state was named for the Colorado River, which early Spanish explorers named the Río Colorado for the red colored (Spanish: colorado) silt the river carried from the mountains. On August 1, 1876, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation admitting Colorado as the 38th state. Colorado is nicknamed the "Centennial State" because it was admitted to the Union in 1876, the centennial year of the United States Declaration of Independence.
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Fort Brown
Fort Brown was a military post of the United States Army in Texas during the later half of 19th century and the early part of the 20th century.
In 1845, the U.S. Army began construction of a new fort (then known as "Fort Texas") on the northern side of the Rio Grande River. The next year, the fort played a role during the opening of the Mexican-American War. During the Siege of Fort Texas, two Americans were killed, including Major Jacob Brown. In honor of the fallen major, General Zachary Taylor renamed the post Fort Brown. In 1849, the city of Brownsville, Texas, was established not far from the fort's grounds.
In 1861 Confederate Col. John "Rip" Ford occupied the fort until 1863 when they were finally driven out by Union forces under General Nathaniel P. Banks, who then camped in tents erected at the fort site. This ended in 1864 when Confederate forces under General J. S. Slaughter and Colonel Ford reoccupied the area. They would hold the post until the end of the war.
From 1867–1869, a permanent fort was constructed under the supervision of Capt. William A. Wainwright.
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Fort Leavenworth
Fort Leavenworth is a United States Army facility located in Leavenworth County, Kansas, immediately north of the city of Leavenworth in the upper northeast portion of the state. It is the oldest active United States Army post west of Washington, D.C. and has been in operation for over 180 years. Fort Leavenworth has been historically known as the "Intellectual Center of the Army".
During the country's westward expansion, Fort Leavenworth was a forward destination for thousands of soldiers, surveyors, immigrants, American Indians, preachers and settlers who passed through. The garrison supports the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) by managing and maintaining the home of the United States Army Combined Arms Center (CAC). CAC's mission involves leader development, collective training, Army doctrine and battle command (current and future).
Fort Leavenworth is home to the Military Corrections Complex, consisting of the United States Disciplinary Barracks, the Department of Defense's only maximum security prison, and the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility. In addition, the Fort Leavenworth Garrison supports numerous tenant organizations that directly and indirectly relate to the functions of the CAC, including the United States Army Command and General Staff College and the Foreign Military Studies Office.
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Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia (i/ˈdʒɔrdʒⁱə/) is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. Named after King George II of Great Britain, Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788. It declared its secession from the Union on January 21, 1861, and was one of the original seven Confederate states. It was the last state to be restored to the Union, on July 15, 1870. Georgia is the 24th most extensive and the 9th most populous of the 50 United States. From 2007 to 2008, 14 of Georgia's counties ranked among the nation's 100 fastest-growing, second only to Texas. Georgia is known as the Peach State and the Empire State of the South.Atlanta is the state's capital and its most populous city.
Georgia is bordered on the south by Florida; on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and South Carolina; on the west by Alabama; and on the north by Tennessee and North Carolina. The northern part of the state is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mountain range in the Appalachian Mountains system. The central piedmont extends from the foothills to the fall line, where the rivers cascade down in elevation to the continental coastal plain of the southern part of the state. The highest point in Georgia is Brasstown Bald, 4,784 feet (1,458 m); the lowest point is the Atlantic Ocean.
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Guaymas
Guaymas (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈɡwajmas]) is a city and municipality located in the southwest part of the state of Sonora in northwestern Mexico. The city is located 117 km south of the state capital of Hermosillo, and 242 miles from the U.S. border, and is the principal port for the state. The municipality is located in the Sonora Desert and has a hot, dry climate and 117 km of beaches. The municipality’s formal name is Guaymas de Zaragoza and the city’s formal name is the Heróica Ciudad de Guaymas.
The city proper is mostly an industrial port, with nearby San Carlos being the major tourist attraction for its beaches. The city also has a well-attended annual carnival, which has been held since 1888.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, the areas now known as Guaymas was dominated by the Guaymas, Seri and Yaqui tribes. In 1539, two Spanish ships, the Santa Agueda and El Trinidad, arrived to Guaymas Bay. They were commanded by Francisco de Ulloa, who called the area “the port of ports.”
Some small Jesuit missions in the area were founded in the 1610s and 1620s, when Jesuits founded eight mission villages with the Yaqui. The Seri strongly opposed the settlement of Europeans and resisted fiercely until 1769.
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Gulf of California
Coordinates: 28°0′N 112°0′W / 28°N 112°W / 28; -112
The Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez or Sea of Cortés or Vermilion Sea; locally known in the Spanish language as Mar de Cortés or Mar Bermejo or Golfo de California) is a body of water that separates the Baja California Peninsula from the Mexican mainland. It is bordered by the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora, and Sinaloa with a coastline of approximately 4,000 km (2,500 mi). Rivers which flow into the Gulf of California include the Colorado, Fuerte, Mayo, Sinaloa, Sonora, and the Yaqui. The gulf's surface area is about 160,000 km2 (62,000 sq mi).
The Gulf is thought to be one of the most diverse seas on the planet, and is home to more than 5,000 species of macro-invertebrates. Home to over a million people, Baja California is one of the longest peninsulas in the world, second only to the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia. The Gulf of California is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the southern limit of the Gulf of California as: "A line joining Piastla Point (23°38'N) in Mexico, and the Southern extreme of Lower California".
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Illinois
Illinois (i/ˌɪlɨˈnɔɪ/ IL-i-NOY) is the 25th most extensive and the 5th most populous of the 50 United States, and is often noted as a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a broad economic base. Illinois is a major transportation hub. The Port of Chicago connects the state to other global ports from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean; as well as the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois River. For decades, O'Hare International Airport has ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics.
Although the state's largest population centers today are in northern Illinois, originally the state's population grew from south to north, with settlers arriving from Kentucky in the 1810s. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River, one of the few natural harbors on southern Lake Michigan. Railroads and John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois' rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmlands, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars. The Great Migration established a large community of African Americans in Chicago that created the city's famous jazz and blues cultures.
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Ireland
Coordinates: 53°20′N 08°00′W / 53.333°N 8°W / 53.333; -8
Ireland (pronounced [ˈaɪrlənd] (
listen); Irish: Éire [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen); Ulster Scots: Airlann or Airlan) is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth. To its east is the larger island of Great Britain, from which it is separated by the Irish Sea.
Politically, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, which covers just under five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, which covers the remainder and is located in the northeast of the island. The population of Ireland is approximately 6.4 million. Just under 4.6 million live in the Republic of Ireland and just under 1.8 million live in Northern Ireland.
Relatively low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain epitomise Ireland's geography with several navigable rivers extending inland. The island has lush vegetation, a product of its mild but changeable oceanic climate, which avoids extremes in temperature. Thick woodlands covered the island until the 17th century. Today, it is one of the most deforested areas in Europe. There are twenty-six extant mammal species native to Ireland.
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Izucar de Matamoros
Izúcar de Matamoros is a city and its surrounding municipality of the same name located in the southwestern part of the Mexican state of Puebla. The city serves as the municipal seat of the municipality. At the census of 2005 the city had a population of 41,042 inhabitants, while the municipality had a population of 69,413. The municipality has an area of 514.11 km² (198.5 sq mi), and stands at 1100 m above sea level. Its largest other communities are the towns of La Galarza and San Juan Raboso. It has many sights like the portales, and Santo Domingo, the biggest church in the city.
Coordinates: 18°36′N 98°28′W / 18.6°N 98.467°W / 18.6; -98.467
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Kansas
Kansas (i/ˈkænzəs/) is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind," although this was probably not the term's original meaning. Residents of Kansas are called "Kansans."
For thousands of years what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the Eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the Western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery issue. When officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine if Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists eventually prevailed and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state. After the Civil War, the population of Kansas grew rapidly, when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. Today, Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, sorghum and sunflowers. Kansas is the 15th most extensive and the 33rd most populous of the 50 United States.
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles (
i/lɒs ˈændʒələs/ loss-AN-jə-ləs; Spanish: [los ˈaŋxeles], which is written Los Ángeles; British pronounciation /lɒs ˈændʒəliːz/ loss-AN-jə-leez) with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in the state of California, and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of 468.67 square miles (1,213.8 km2), and is located in Southern California. Often known by its initials L.A., the city is the focal point of the larger Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan statistical area and Greater Los Angeles Area region, which contain 12,828,837 and nearly 18 million people respectively as of 2010, making it one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world and the second largest in the United States. Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated and one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the United States, while the entire Los Angeles area itself has been recognized as the most diverse of the nation's largest cities. The city's inhabitants are referred to as "Angelenos".
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Mazatlán, Mexico
Mazatlán (Spanish pronunciation: [maθaˈtɬan], locally: [masaˈtɬan] ( listen)) is a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa; the surrounding municipio (municipality) for which the city serves as the municipal seat is Mazatlán Municipality. It is located at 23°13′N 106°25′W / 23.217°N 106.417°W / 23.217; -106.417 on the Pacific coast, across from the southernmost tip of the Baja California peninsula.
Mazatlán is a Nahuatl word meaning "place of the deer.". The city was founded in 1531 by an army of Spaniards and Indian settlers. By the mid-19th century a large group of immigrants had arrived from Germany. These new citizens developed Mazatlán into a thriving commercial seaport, importing equipment for the nearby gold and silver mines. It served as the capital of Sinaloa from 1859 to 1873. The German settlers also influenced the local music, banda, which is an alteration of Bavarian folk music. The settlers also established the Pacifico Brewery on March 14, 1900.
With a population of 438,434 (city) and 489,987 (municipality) as of the 2010 census, Mazatlán is the second-largest city in the state. It is also a popular tourist destination, with its beaches lined with resort hotels. A car ferry plies its trade across the Gulf of California from Mazatlán to La Paz, Baja California Sur. The municipality has a land area of 3,068.48 km² (1,184.75 sq mi) and includes smaller outlying communities such as Villa Unión, La Noria, El Quelite, El Habal and many other small villages. Mazatlán is served by Gral. Rafael Buelna International Airport.
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Mexico
Mexico (i/ˈmɛksɨkoʊ/; Spanish: México, IPA: [ˈmexiko] ( listen)), officially the United Mexican States (Spanish: 
Estados Unidos Mexicanos (help·info)), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States of America; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometres (over 760,000 sq mi), Mexico is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the thirteenth largest independent nation in the world. With an estimated population of over 113 million, it is the eleventh most populous country and the most populous Spanish-speaking country. Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a Federal District, the capital city.
In Pre-Columbian Mexico many cultures matured into advanced civilizations such as the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, the Maya and the Aztec before the first contact with Europeans. In 1521, Spain conquered and colonized the territory from its base in México-Tenochtitlan, which was administered as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This territory would eventually become Mexico as the colony's independence was recognized in 1821. The post-independence period was characterized by economic instability, the Mexican-American War and territorial cession to the United States, a civil war, two empires and a domestic dictatorship. The latter led to the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system. Elections held in July 2000 marked the first time that an opposition party won the presidency from the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
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Mexico City
Mexico City ( /ˈmɛksɨkoʊ ˈsɪti/; Spanish: Ciudad de México [sjuˈðað ðe ˈmexiko], also known as México D.F., or simply D.F.) is the Federal District (Distrito Federal), capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole. Mexico City is the country's largest city as well as its most important political, cultural, educational and financial center.
As an "alpha" global city Mexico City is one of the most important financial centers in North America. It is located in the Valley of Mexico (Valle de México), a large valley in the high plateaus at the center of Mexico, at an altitude of 2,240 metres (7,350 ft). The city consists of sixteen boroughs.
The 2009 estimated population for the city proper was around 8.84 million people, and has a land area of 1,485 square kilometres (573 sq mi). According to the most recent definition agreed upon by the federal and state governments, the Mexico City metropolitan area population is 21.2 million people, making it the largest metropolitan area in the western hemisphere and the fifth largest agglomeration in the world.
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Monterey, California
The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on the southern edge of Monterey Bay, on Central California's Pacific coast. It stands at an elevation of 26 feet (8 m) above sea level, on a land area of &100000000000000084700008.47 sq mi (21.9 km2). The 2010 census recorded a population of 27,810.
Monterey was the capital of Alta California from 1777 to 1846 under both Spain and Mexico. It was the only port of entry for taxable goods in California. In 1846 the U.S. flag was raised over the Customs House, and California was claimed for the United States.
The city had California's first theatre, public building, public library, publicly funded school, printing press, and newspaper. The city and surrounding area have attracted artists since the late 19th century and many celebrated painters and writers have lived there. Until the 1950s, there was an abundant fishery.
Among Monterey's notable present-day attractions are the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Cannery Row, Fisherman's Wharf and the annual Monterey Jazz Festival.
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Monterrey
Monterrey (Spanish pronunciation: [monteˈrei] ( listen)), is the capital city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León in the country of Mexico. The city is anchor to the third-largest metropolitan area in Mexico and is ranked as the ninth-largest city in the nation. Monterrey serves as a commercial center in the north of the country and is the base of many significant international corporations. It is Mexico's second richest city, and the world's 63rd richest, with an economy that had a 2008 GDP of USD $102 billion. Monterrey is one of Mexico's most developed cities, with the highest per capita income in the nation, and is regarded as a highly developed city. Although rich in history and culture, Monterrey is often regarded as the most "Americanized" city in the entire country, even above the cities along the U.S-Mexico border.
Monterrey as an important industrial and business center hosts an array of Mexican companies, including Pemex, Lanix Electronics, CEMEX, Vitro, Zonda Telecom, Mercedes-Benz Mexico, OXXO, Mastretta, BMW de Mexico, Mabe Grupo Bimbo, DINA S.A., Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery (Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma), formerly fully owned by FEMSA now jointly owned with Heineken and Alestra Telecommunications. Monterrey is also home to international companies such as Sony, Toshiba, Carrier, Whirlpool, Samsung, Toyota, Daewoo, Ericsson, Nokia, Dell, Boeing, HTC, General Electric, Gamesa, LG, SAS Institute and Teleperformance, among others.
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Nevada
Nevada (i/nəˈvædə/ or /nəˈvɒdə/) is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. Nevada is the 7th most extensive, the 35th most populous, and the 9th least densely populated of the 50 United States. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in one single county, Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area, where the state's three largest incorporated cities are located. Nevada's capital is Carson City.
Nevada is largely desert and semiarid, with much of it located within the Great Basin. Areas south of the Great Basin are located within the Mojave Desert, while Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada mountains lie on the western edge. Approximately 86% of the state's land is owned by the US government under various jurisdictions, both civilian and military.
The name Nevada is derived from the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains, which means "snow-capped mountain range" in Spanish. The land comprising the modern state was inhabited by Native Americans of the Paiute, Shoshone, and Washoe tribes prior to European contact. It was subsequently claimed by Spain as a part of Alta California until the Mexican War of Independence brought it under Mexican control. The United States gained the territory in 1848 following its victory in the Mexican-American War and the area was eventually incorporated as part of Utah Territory in 1850. The discovery of silver at the Comstock Lode in 1859 led to a population boom that was an impetus to the creation of Nevada Territory out of western Utah Territory in 1861. Nevada became the 36th state on October 31, 1864.
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New Mexico
New Mexico (i/nuː ˈmɛksɨkoʊ/) is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. New Mexico is the 5th most extensive, the 36th most populous, and the 6th least densely populated of the 50 United States.
Inhabited by Native American populations for many centuries, New Mexico has also been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. Among U.S. states, New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanics, including descendants of Spanish colonists and recent immigrants from Latin America. It also has the second-highest percentage of Native Americans, after Alaska, and the fourth-highest total number of Native Americans after California, Oklahoma, and Arizona. The tribes in the state consist of mostly Navajo and Pueblo peoples. As a result, the demographics and culture of the state are unique for their strong Hispanic and Native American influences. The flag of New Mexico is represented by the red and gold colors, which represent Spain, as well as the Zia symbol, an ancient Native American symbol for the sun.
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Northeastern Mexico
Northeastern Mexico, is a geographic region of Mexico, composed of the states of Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. The Northeast is one of the wealthiest and most industrialized regions of Mexico; with Nuevo León having the highest GDP per capita among the Mexican states, closely followed by Coahuila ranked third, and Tamaulipas ranked eighth. It also accounts for approximately 15% of Mexico's nominal gross domestic product, while its population represents only about 8.4% of the population of the whole country. The inhabitants from Northeastern Mexico are often known and referred themselves as "Norestenses" (Spanish for Northeasterns), they might be also referred as "Norteños", a term which they share with people of Northwestern Mexico applied to the inhabitants of all over Northern Mexico.
Northeastern Mexico, contains a wide variety of landscapes, ranging from pine and oak tree forests to prairie, snow covered mountains in winter to diverse types of deserts. The region, is predominantly mountainous. The Sierra Madre Oriental, sometimes considered an extension of the Rocky Mountains, is one of the largest mountain ranges in Mexico. It runs from Northwest of Coahuila to southeast through a great part of Nuevo León and to a lesser extent Tamaulipas.
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Nueces River
The Nueces River is a river in the U.S. state of Texas, approximately 315 miles (507 km) long. It drains a region in central and southern Texas southeastward into the Gulf of Mexico. It is the southernmost major river in Texas northeast of the Rio Grande. Nueces is Spanish for nut or nuts; early settlers named the river after the numerous pecan trees along its banks.
The Nueces rises northwest of San Antonio in the Edwards Plateau, in Real County approximately 50 mi (80 km) north of Uvalde. It flows south through the Texas Hill Country, past Barksdale and Crystal City, approaching to within 35 mi (56 km) of the Rio Grande on the border with Mexico. East of Carrizo Springs it turns to the east, flowing through the scrub plains of South Texas, across rural Dimmit, La Salle,and McMullen counties. In La Salle county the river hardly ever flows except for when it rains. In central Live Oak County it is joined from the northwest by the Frio River, then flows southeast along the coastal plain past Mathis, where it is impounded to form the Lake Corpus Christi reservoir. It enters Corpus Christi Bay on the Gulf of Mexico at Corpus Christi.
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Oklahoma
Oklahoma (i/ˌoʊkləˈhoʊmə/) (Pawnee: Uukuhuúwa , Cayuga: Gahnawiyoˀgeh ) is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. Oklahoma is the 20th most extensive and the 28th most populous of the 50 United States. The state's name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning "red people", and it is known informally by its nickname, The Sooner State. Formed by the combination of Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory on November 16, 1907, Oklahoma was the 46th state to enter the union. Its residents are known as Oklahomans or, informally "Okies", and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
A major producer of natural gas, oil, and agriculture, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. It has one of the fastest growing economies in the nation, ranking among the top states in per capita income growth and gross domestic product growth. Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahoma's primary economic anchors, with nearly 60 percent of Oklahomans living in their metropolitan statistical areas.
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Oregon
Oregon (i/ˈɔrɨɡən/ ORR-ə-gən) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern boundaries, respectively. The area was inhabited by many indigenous tribes before the arrival of traders, explorers, and settlers who formed an autonomous government in Oregon Country in 1843. The Oregon Territory was created in 1848, and Oregon became the 33rd state on February 14, 1859.
Oregon is the 9th most extensive and the 27th most populous of the 50 United States. Salem is the state's capital and third-most-populous city; Portland is the most populous. Portland is the 29th-largest U.S. city, with a population of 583,776 (2010 US Census) and a metro population of 2,241,841 (2009 estimate), the 23rd-largest U.S. metro area. The valley of the Willamette River in western Oregon is the state's most densely populated area and is home to eight of the ten most populous cities.
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Oregon Country
The Oregon Country was a predominantly American term referring to a disputed ownership region of the Pacific Northwest of North America. The region was occupied by British and French Canadian fur traders from before 1810, and American settlers from the mid-1830s, with its coastal areas north from the Columbia River frequented by ships from all nations engaged in the maritime fur trade, most of these from the 1790s through 1810s being Boston-based. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 ended disputed joint occupancy pursuant to the Treaty of 1818 and established the British-American boundary at the 49th parallel.
Oregon was a distinctly American term for the region. The British used the term Columbia District instead. The Oregon Country consisted of the land north of 42°N latitude, south of 54°40′N latitude, and west of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The area now forms part of the present day Canadian province of British Columbia, all of the US states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming. The British presence in the region was generally administered by the Hudson's Bay Company, whose Columbia Department comprised most of the Oregon Country and extended considerably north into New Caledonia and beyond 54°40′N, with operations reaching tributaries of the Yukon River.
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Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.
At 165.2 million square kilometres (64.1 million square miles) in area, this largest division of the World Ocean – and, in turn, the hydrosphere – covers about 46% of the Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of the Earth's land area combined. The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres (35,797 ft).
The eastern Pacific Ocean was first sighted by Europeans early in the 16th century. Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and named it Mar del Sur (South Sea). The ocean's current name was given by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish expedition of world circumnavigation in 1521, who encountered favourable winds as he reached the ocean and called it Mar Pacifico in Portuguese, meaning "peaceful sea".
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Parras
Parras de la Fuente (English: Grapevines of the Fountain) is a city located in the southern part of the Mexican state of Coahuila. At the census of 2010, the population was 45,423. There are a large number of factories that produce denim, including a Dickies factory, and Parras is also a wine-making place. The city serves as the municipal seat of the surrounding municipality of the same name, which has an area of 9,271.7 km2 (3,579.8 sq mi).
Parras fue fundado oficialmente el 18 de febrero de 1598 por el capitán Antón Martín de Zapata, quien era Justicia Mayor de Las Parras y Lagunas, paraje que también había fundado 20 años antes. La primera estancia española del lugar fue establecida por el capitán Francisco de Urdiñola, en la que posteriormente se construiría la hacienda El Rosario, propiedad del marquesado de San Miguel de Aguayo.
The former Hacienda del Rosario is the place were Parras de la Fuente was founded in 1598. There, the revolutionary and President of Mexico Francisco I. Madero was born in 1873.
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Project FUBELT
Project FUBELT (also known as Track II) is the code name for the secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations that were to prevent Salvador Allende rise to power before his confirmation, and promote a military coup in Chile.
The highlights of Project FUBELT are cited in declassified U.S. government documents released by the National Security Archive on September 11, 1998, 25 years after the coup, as well as in papers uncovered by a 1975 congressional inquiry.
CIA memoranda and reports on Project FUBELT include meetings between United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of secret action in 1970 — detailing decisions and operations to undermine the election of Salvador Allende in September 1970 and promote a military coup.
Among the revelations in the formerly secret documents were the following:
Coordinates: 38°57′06″N 77°08′48″W / 38.95167°N 77.14667°W / 38.95167; -77.14667
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San Diego
San Diego /ˌsæn diːˈeɪɡoʊ/ is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round climate, natural deep-water harbor, extensive beaches, long association with the U.S. Navy, and recent emergence as a healthcare and biotechnology enclave. The population was 1,301,617 at the 2010 census.
Historically home to the Kumeyaay people, San Diego was the first site visited by Europeans on what is now the West Coast of the United States. Upon landing in San Diego Bay in 1542, Juan Cabrillo claimed the entire area for Spain, forming the basis for the settlement of Alta California 200 years later. The Presidio and Mission of San Diego, founded in 1769, were the first European settlement in what is now California. In 1821, San Diego became part of newly independent Mexico, and in 1850, became part of the United States following the Mexican-American War and the admission of California to the union.
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Sonoma, California
Sonoma is a historically significant city in Sonoma Valley, Sonoma County, California, USA, surrounding its historic town plaza, a remnant of the town's Mexican colonial past. It was the capital of the short-lived California Republic. Today, Sonoma is a center of the state's wine industry for the Sonoma Valley AVA Appellation, as well as the home of the nationally recognized Sonoma International Film Festival. Sonoma's population was 10,648 as of the 2010 census.
The region of Sonoma was originally the home of Native American Coast Miwok tribes as well as the Pomo people and Wintuns. Many of the Native Americans still remain, even after seven changes in government since the Spanish first explored and took over the region (see Sonoma County for governments.)
The town of Sonoma began with the foundation of Mission San Francisco Solano in 1823 by Father José Altimira of the Franciscan Order. This mission was the farthest north of all 21 California missions, and was connected to the others by the Camino Real (Royal Road). Mission San Francisco Solano was the last of the California missions to be established, and the only one founded after Mexico's independence from Spain.
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Sonoran Desert
The Sonoran Desert is a North American desert which covers large parts of the Southwestern United States in Arizona, California, Northwest Mexico in Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur. It is one of the largest and hottest deserts in North America, with an area of 311,000 square kilometers (120,000 sq mi). The western portion of the United States-Mexico border passes through the Sonoran Desert.
In phytogeography, the Sonoran Desert is within the Sonoran Floristic Province of the Madrean Region in southwestern North America, part of the Holarctic Kingdom of the northern Western Hemisphere. The desert contains a variety of unique and endemic plants and animals, such as the Saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) and Organ Pipe cactus (Stenocereus thurberi).
The Sonoran desert wraps around the northern end of the Gulf of California, from Baja California Sur (El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve in central and Pacific west coast, Central Gulf Coast subregion on east to southern tip), north through much of Baja California, excluding the central northwest mountains and Pacific west coast, through southeastern California and southwestern and southern Arizona to western and central parts of Sonora.
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Texas
Texas (i/ˈtɛksəs/) (Alibamu: Teksi ) is the second most populous and the second most extensive of the 50 United States, and the most extensive state of the 48 contiguous United States. The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in East Texas. Located in the South Central United States, Texas shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south, and borders the US states of New Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, and Louisiana to the east. Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles (696,200 km2), and a growing population of 25.7 million residents.
During the Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas: La Provincia de Texas. Antonio Margil de Jesús was known to be the first person to use the name in a letter to the Viceroy of Mexico in July 20, 1716. The name was not popularly used in daily speech but often appeared in legal documents until the end of the 1800s.
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United States
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
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Utah
Utah (/ˈjuːtɔː/ ori/ˈjuːtɑː/) (Arapaho: Wo'tééneihí' ) is a state in the Western United States. It became the 45th state admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896. Utah is the 13th-most extensive, the 34th-most populous, and the 10th-least-densely populated of the 50 United States. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,817,222 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the sixth most urbanized in the U.S. The name "Utah" is derived from the name of the Ute tribe and means "people of the mountains" in the Ute language. Utah is bordered by Arizona on the south, Colorado on the east, Wyoming on the northeast, Idaho on the north and Nevada on the west. It also touches a corner of New Mexico.
Utah is the most religiously homogeneous state in the Union. It is home to the Salt Lake Temple, and approximately 60% of Utahns are reported to be members of LDS Church which greatly influences Utah culture and daily life.
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Wyoming
Wyoming (i/waɪˈoʊmɪŋ/) is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. Wyoming is the 10th most extensive, but the least populous and the 2nd least densely populated of the 50 States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High Plains. Cheyenne is the capital and the most populous city of Wyoming with a population of nearly 60,000 people within its city proper.
As specified in the designating legislation for the Territory of Wyoming, Wyoming's borders are lines of latitude, 41°N and 45°N, and longitude, 104°3'W and 111°3'W (27° W and 34° W of the Washington Meridian), making the shape of the state a latitude-longitude quadrangle. Wyoming is one of only three states (along with Colorado and Utah) to have borders along only straight latitudinal and longitudinal lines, rather than being defined by natural landmarks. Due to surveying inaccuracies during the 19th century, Wyoming's legal border deviates from the true latitude and longitude lines by up to half of a mile (.8 km) in some spots, especially in the mountainous region along the 45th parallel. Wyoming is bordered on the north by Montana, on the east by South Dakota and Nebraska, on the south by Colorado, on the southwest by Utah, and on the west by Idaho. It is the ninth largest state in the United States in total area, containing 97,818 square miles (253,350 km2) and is made up of 23 counties. From the north border to the south border it is 276 miles (444 km); and from the east to the west border is 365 miles (587 km) at its south end and 342 miles (550 km) at the north end.
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Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincolni/ˈeɪbrəhæm ˈlɪŋkən/ (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union while ending slavery, and promoting economic and financial modernization. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated. He became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator in the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives in the 1840s. After a series of debates in 1858 that gave national visibility to his opposition to the expansion of slavery, Lincoln lost a Senate race to his arch-rival Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln, a moderate from a swing state, secured the Republican Party nomination. With almost no support in the South he swept the North and was elected president in 1860. His election was the signal for seven southern slave states to declare their secession from the Union and form the Confederate States of America. The departure of the Southerners gave Lincoln's party firm control of Congress, but no formula for compromise or reconciliation was found. And the war came.
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Albert J. Beveridge
Albert Jeremiah Beveridge (October 6, 1862 – April 27, 1927) was an American historian and United States Senator from Indiana.
Albert J. Beveridge was born October 6, 1862 in Highland County, Ohio and his parents moved to Indiana soon after his birth. Both of his parents were of English descent. His childhood was one of hard work. Securing an education with difficulty, he eventually became a law clerk in Indianapolis. He was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1887 and practiced law in Indianapolis.
Beveridge graduated from Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) in 1885, with a Ph.B. degree. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He was known as a compelling orator, delivering speeches supporting territorial expansion by the U.S. and increasing the power of the federal government.
Beveridge entered politics in 1884 by speaking on behalf of Presidential candidate James G. Blaine and was prominent in later campaigns, particularly in that of 1896, when his speeches attracted general attention. In 1899, Beveridge was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican and served until 1911. He supported Theodore Roosevelt's progressive views and was the keynote speaker at the new Progressive Party convention which nominated Roosevelt for U.S. President in 1912.
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Californio
Californio (historic and regional Spanish for "Californian") is a term used to identify a Spanish-speaking, mostly Roman Catholic people, or of Latin American descent, regardless of race, born in California before 1848. The much larger population of indigenous peoples of California were not Californios because they did not speak Spanish and/or were not Catholic. Neither were the significant numbers of non-Spanish speaking California-born children of resident foreigners (primarily U.S. and British).
The military, religious and civil components of pre-1848 California society were embodied in the thinly populated presidios, missions, pueblos and ranchos. Until they were secularized in the 1830s, the twenty-one Spanish Missions of California, with their thousands of more or less captive native converts, controlled the most (about 1,000,000 acres (4,000 km2) per Mission) and best land, had large numbers of workers, grew the most crops and had the most sheep, cattle and horses. After secularization, most of the Mission lands were divided up into new ranchos and granted to Mexican citizens (including many Californios) resident in California.
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Carl Nebel
Carl Nebel (March 18, 1805 – June 4, 1855) was a German engineer, architect and draughtsman, best known for his detailed paintings of the Mexican landscape and people and of the battles of the Mexican-American War.
Nebel was born at Altona, today a part of Hamburg. After studies in Hamburg and Paris, he travelled to America, where he was a resident of Mexico from 1829 until 1834. In 1836, he published in Paris his renowned illustrated work on that country—Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dans la partie la plus intéressante du Méxique, with 50 lithographs made from his paintings, twenty of which were hand-colorized, and an introduction written by Alexander Humboldt.
In 1851, he published together with George Wilkins Kendall some of his paintings of the events of the Mexican-American War in the book The War between the United States and Mexico Illustrated. The book contained twelve color lithographs done by Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot and was printed by Joseph Lemercier - a leading lithographic team of the time. In both cases, Nebel's illustrations were enhanced by his making use of the newest printing developments in France.
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Cristero War
The Cristero War (1926-29) also known as the La Cristiada was an uprising and counter-revolution against the Mexican government. The rebellion was set off by the persecution of Roman Catholics and a ban on their public religious practices. More specifically, the strict enforcement of the anti-clerical provisions by atheist and former President of Mexico Plutarco Elias Calles through the Mexican Constitution of 1917 along with the further expansion of anti-clerical laws exacerbated the conflicts. The rebellion is particularly known for the women and children who assisted the rebels in smuggling guns and ammunition in secret and certain priests who were tortured and murdered in public, as later canonized by Pope John Paul II.
After a period of peaceful resistance by select citizens, a number of skirmishes took place in 1926 while the formal violent rebellions began on 2 January 1927, with the rebels who called themselves Cristeros, invoking the name of Jesus Christ under the title of "Cristo Rey" or Christ the King. The rebellion eventually ended by diplomatic means brokered by the United States Ambassador to Mexico, Dwight Whitney Morrow, with the assistance of the Knights of Columbus.
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Damon R. Eubank
Damon R. Eubank (born 1959) is an historian at Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Kentucky, principally known for his study of the family of U.S. Senator John J. Crittenden, In the Shadow of the Patriarch: The John J. Crittenden Family in War and Peace.
Eubank was born to Ralph Eubank of Vine Grove near Elizabethtown in Hardin County, Kentucky, and Elizabeth D. Eubank (1928–1992). Since his mother's death, his father remarried, and Eubank's stepmother is Louise Eubank.
In 1977, Eubank graduated from North Hardin High School in Radcliff in Hardin County. He then procured his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1981 from the then Campbellsville College, having studied under Professors Bobby Russell Himes (1931–2008) and William Edward Bennett (1943–2006) in history and political science, respectively. He then obtained his Master of Arts in College Teaching from Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama.
Eubank is a member of Campbellsville Baptist Church. He and his wife, the former Lori Jadwin, have two children, Lorin and Micah.
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Daniel S. Dickinson
Daniel Stevens Dickinson (September 11, 1800 – April 12, 1866) was a New York politician, most notable as a United States Senator from 1844 to 1851.
Born in Goshen, Connecticut, he moved with his parents to Guilford, Chenango County, New York, in 1806. He attended the common schools, was apprenticed to a clothier, and taught school at Wheatland, New York from 1821 on. In 1822, he married Lydia Knapp. He also engaged in land surveying, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1828. He commenced practice in Guilford, and served as Postmaster of Guilford from 1827 to 1832. He moved to Binghamton, New York and served as the first President of the City of Binghamton in 1834.
He was a member of the New York State Senate (6th D.) from 1837 to 1840, sitting in the 60th, 61st, 62nd and 63rd New York State Legislatures. He was Lieutenant Governor of New York from 1843 to 1844. In 1844, he was a presidential elector, voting for James K. Polk and George M. Dallas.
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Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852) was a leading American statesman and senator from Massachusetts during the period leading up to the Civil War. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests. Webster's increasingly nationalistic views, and his effectiveness as a speaker, made him one of the most famous orators and influential Whig leaders of the Second Party System. He was one of the nation's most prominent conservatives, leading opposition to Democrat Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. He was a spokesman for modernization, banking and industry, but not for the common people who composed the base of his enemies in Jacksonian Democracy. "He was a thoroughgoing elitist, and he reveled in it," says biographer Remini. During his 40 years in national politics, Webster served in the House of Representatives for 10 years (representing New Hampshire), in the Senate for 19 years (representing Massachusetts), and was appointed the Secretary of State under three presidents.
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David Wilmot
David Wilmot (January 20, 1814 – March 16, 1868) was a U.S. political figure. He was a sponsor and eponym of the Wilmot Proviso which aimed to ban slavery in land gained from Mexico in the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848. Wilmot was a Democrat, a Free Soiler, and a Republican during his political career. His opposition to slavery did not include the abolitionist position of ending slavery in the entire country, and his views on race, by today’s standards, could be classified as racist.
David Wilmot was born in Bethany, Pennsylvania to Randall (1792–1896) and Mary Grant Wilmot (1792–1820). His father was a well to do merchant, and David’s early life was a comfortable one. He was educated at the local Beech Woods Academy and later at the Cayuga Lake Academy in Aurora, New York. Moving to Wilkes-Barre in 1832, he read law under George W. Woodward and was admitted to the bar in Bradford County, Pennsylvania in August 1834. In 1836 he married Anna Morgan and the couple had three children, none of whom survived childhood.
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Edward A. Hannegan
Edward Allen Hannegan (June 25, 1807 – February 25, 1859) was a United States Representative and Senator from Indiana.
Born in Hamilton County, Ohio, he moved with his parents to Bourbon County, Kentucky the same year. He attended the public schools, studied law at Transylvania University, taught school, and worked as a farm hand. Hannegan moved to Fountain County, Indiana about 1825 where he worked as a farm hand and as a school teacher. He was admitted to the bar in April 1828 in Fountain County. Moving the following year, he was admitted to practice law in Warren County, Indiana on May 27, 1829, settling in Williamsport. A few months later, he moved to Covington, where he continued the practice of law. At some unknown time, Hannegan became a Freemason. On April 4, 1829, he married Margaret Chambers Duncan in Knox County, Indiana; they had one son, Sellman Key Hannegan, born January 20, 1832.
Hannegan was a member of the Indiana House of Representatives 1832–1833 and 1841–1842. He was elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1833 – March 4, 1837. Hannegan was not a candidate for renomination in 1836 and resumed the practice of law; he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1842 and served from March 4, 1843 to March 4, 1849. He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1849, losing to Governor James Whitcomb.
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Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869) was the 14th President of the United States (1853–1857) and is the only President from New Hampshire. Pierce was a Democrat and a "doughface" (a Northerner with Southern sympathies) who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War and became a brigadier general in the Army. His private law practice in his home state, New Hampshire, was so successful that he was offered several important positions, which he turned down. Later, he was nominated as the party's candidate for president on the 49th ballot at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. In the presidential election, Pierce and his running mate William R. King won by a landslide in the Electoral College. They defeated the Whig Party ticket of Winfield Scott and William A. Graham by a 50 percent to 44 percent margin in the popular vote and 254 to 42 in the electoral vote.
He made many friends, but he suffered tragedy in his personal life; all of his children died when young. As president, he made many divisive decisions which were widely criticized and earned him a reputation as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Pierce's popularity in the Northern states declined sharply after he supported the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which replaced the Missouri Compromise and renewed debate over the expansion of slavery in the American West. Pierce's credibility was further damaged when several of his diplomats issued the Ostend Manifesto. The historian David Potter concludes that the Ostend Manifesto and the Kansas-Nebraska Act were "the two great calamities of the Franklin Pierce administration.... Both brought down an avalanche of public criticism."[citation needed] More importantly, says Potter, they permanently discredited Manifest Destiny and "popular sovereignty" as political doctrines.
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Gabriel Valencia
Gabriel Valencia (1799–1848) was a Mexican soldier in the early years of the Republic. From December 30, 1845 to January 2, 1846 he served as interim president of Mexico.
Valencia joined the Spanish colonial army before Mexican independence, but transferred his allegiance to the Mexican army in 1821. He made friends in the military and government, becoming a power in Mexican politics. He forged an uneasy alliance with Antonio López de Santa Anna, a powerful figure repeatedly in and out of the presidency during this period.
In 1840 and 1841 there were several related rebellions against Anastasio Bustamante, then in his third period as president of Mexico. Bustamante was an adherent of the centralist party. On July 15, 1840, soldiers led by rebellious General José Urrea and Valentín Gómez Farías took the presidential palace and captured President Bustamante, later releasing him. The chief of the general staff, General Gabriel Valencia, helped subdue the revolt.[1]
Shortly thereafter, Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga rose against Bustamante in Guadalajara, Juan N. Álvarez in the south, and López de Santa Anna in Perote, Veracruz. This time, on September 4, 1841, Valencia joined the rebellion by publishing the Plan de la Ciudadela.
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George B. McClellan
George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826 – October 29, 1885) was a major general during the American Civil War and the Democratic Party candidate for President in 1864. He organized the famous Army of the Potomac and served briefly (November 1861 to March 1862) as the general-in-chief of the Union Army. Early in the war, McClellan played an important role in raising a well-trained and organized army for the Union. Although McClellan was meticulous in his planning and preparations, these characteristics may have hampered his ability to challenge aggressive opponents in a fast-moving battlefield environment. He chronically overestimated the strength of enemy units and was reluctant to apply principles of mass, frequently leaving large portions of his army unengaged at decisive points.
McClellan's Peninsula Campaign in 1862 ended in failure, with retreats from attacks by General Robert E. Lee's smaller Army of Northern Virginia and an unfulfilled plan to seize the Confederate capital of Richmond. His performance at the bloody Battle of Antietam blunted Lee's invasion of Maryland, but allowed Lee to eke out a precarious tactical draw and avoid destruction, despite being outnumbered. As a result, McClellan's leadership skills during battles were questioned by President Abraham Lincoln, who eventually removed him from command, first as general-in-chief, then from the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln offered this famous evaluation of McClellan: "If he can't fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight." Indeed, McClellan was the most popular of that army's commanders with its soldiers, who felt that he had their morale and well-being as paramount concerns.
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George Edmund Badger
George Edmund Badger (April 17, 1795 – May 11, 1866) was a Whig U.S. senator from the state of North Carolina.
Badger was born on April 17, 1795 in New Bern, North Carolina. Following a partial college education at Yale University, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1814. Badger practiced law in North Carolina, was active in state politics, and served as a state superior court judge. A supporter of Andrew Jackson from the 1820s, he separated with him in the mid-1830s, became a leader of the Whig party and helped carry the Whigs to victory in the 1840 Presidential election.
Upon taking office, President William Henry Harrison appointed Badger as his Secretary of the Navy, and he continued in that post when John Tyler succeeded to the Presidency upon Harrison's death. Badger's brief term as Secretary was marked by efforts to strengthen the Navy in the face of tension with Great Britain, the establishment of the Home Squadron and continued interest in steamships.
Badger resigned in September 1841, during a general cabinet shakeup. He was elected to the Senate in 1846 to fill the unexpired term of William Henry Haywood, Jr. and remained a Senator until 1855. He was nominated by President Millard Fillmore as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1853, but was not confirmed by the Senate. John Archibald Campbell instead got the position. He was a Unionist during the secession crisis but thereafter supported the Confederate war effort. Badger died in Raleigh, North Carolina on May 11, 1866.
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George Meade
George Gordon Meade (December 31, 1815 – November 6, 1872) was a career United States Army officer and civil engineer involved in coastal construction, including several lighthouses. He fought with distinction in the Second Seminole War and Mexican-American War. During the American Civil War he served as a Union general, rising from command of a brigade to the Army of the Potomac. He is best known for defeating Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
Meade's Civil War combat experience started as a brigade commander in the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battles, including the Battle of Glendale, where he was wounded severely. As a division commander he had notable success at the Battle of South Mountain and assumed temporary corps command at the Battle of Antietam. His division was arguably the most successful during the assaults at the Battle of Fredericksburg. During the Gettysburg Campaign, he was appointed to command the Army of the Potomac just three days before the Battle of Gettysburg, but was able to organize his forces to fight a successful defensive battle against Robert E. Lee. This victory was marred by his ineffective pursuit during the Retreat from Gettysburg, by the inconclusive campaigns in the fall of 1863, and by intense political rivalries within the Army, notably with Daniel Sickles.
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Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953). As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States (1945), he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his unprecedented fourth term.
During World War I, Truman served in combat in France as an artillery officer in his National Guard unit. After the war, he joined the Democratic Party political machine of Tom Pendergast in Kansas City, Missouri. He was elected a county official and in 1934 United States senator. After he had gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman Committee, Truman replaced vice president Henry A. Wallace as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944.
Truman faced many challenges in domestic affairs. The disorderly postwar reconversion of the economy of the United States was marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the passage of the Taft–Hartley Act over his veto. He confounded all predictions to win election in 1948, helped by his famous Whistle Stop Tour of rural America. After his election, he passed only one of the proposals in his liberal Fair Deal program. He used executive orders to end racial discrimination in the armed forces and created loyalty checks that dismissed thousands of communist supporters from office.
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Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.
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Henry S. Burton
Henry Stanton Burton (1819–1869) was a graduate of West Point, a career American Army officer who served in the Second Seminole War, Mexican American War and the American Civil War.
Henry Stanton Burton was born at West Point, New York on May 9, 1819. Recommended from Vermont, Burton graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point on July 1, 1839 and was appointed 2nd Lieutenant, U.S. 3rd Artillery Regiment. From 1839 to 1842, he served in the Florida Indian War and on November 11, 1839 was promoted 1st Lieutenant. From 1843 to 1846 he was assistant instructor of infantry and artillery tactics at West Point.
During the Mexican American War he became Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st New York Volunteer Regiment in 1846. Accepted by the U. S. Army on August 1846 it was transported around Cape Horn to California where it served as garrisons. Elements of the Volunteers under Lt Colonel Burton were involved in operations of the Pacific Coast Campaign in Baja California, fighting in the Battle of La Paz, Siege of La Paz and in the final defeat of the Mexican forces at the Skirmish of Todos Santos. His command remained as a garrison in Baja California until the peace treaty returned it to Mexico. On September 22, 1847 the U. S. Army promoted him Captain.
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Herschel V. Johnson
Herschel Vespasian Johnson (September 18, 1812 – August 16, 1880) was an American politician. He was the 41st Governor of Georgia from 1853 to 1857 and the vice-presidential nominee of the Douglas wing of the Democratic Party in the 1860 US presidential election.
Johnson was born near Farmer's Bridge in Burke County, Georgia. In 1834, he graduated from the University of Georgia and passed his bar examination. He moved to Jefferson County in 1839 and began to practice law in Louisville, Georgia. In 1844, he moved to the state capitol, Milledgville, and continued to practice law.
He unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1843 and for Governor in 1847, and was finally appointed to fill the United States Senate seat vacated by the resignation of Walter T. Colquitt. Johnson served in the Senate from February 4, 1848 to March 3, 1849, but was not a candidate for election to the seat. He returned to Georgia and served as a circuit court judge from 1849 to 1853. In 1853, he was elected Governor of Georgia, then re-elected in 1855. After he finished his term as governor in 1857, Johnson County, Georgia was named in his honor. In 1860, when the Democratic Party refused to add the support of extending slavery to the western territories, the party split. To try to recapture some southern votes, Johnson was chosen as the northern Democrats' nominee as the running mate of presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas.
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Hopi
The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of Native American people, who primarily live on the 2,531.773 sq mi (6,557.26 km2) Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. The Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
The Hopi Reservation is entirely surrounded by the much larger Navajo Reservation. The two nations used to share the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area, but this was a source of conflict. The partition of this area, commonly known as Big Mountain, by Acts of Congress in 1974 and 1996, has also resulted in long-term controversy.
The Hopi and Zuni are believed to have been descended from the ancient Puebloan cultures who constructed large apartment-house complexes in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. They lived along the Mogollon Rim, especially from the AD1100s through the 1300s, when they abandoned their large villages. No researchers have been able to determine the reason, although it is likely that a drying of watercourses would have forced the peoples away.
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James K. Polk
James Knox Polk ( /ˈpoʊk/ "poke"; November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th President of the United States (1845–1849). Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and Governor of Tennessee (1839–1841). Polk was the surprise (dark horse) candidate for president in 1844, defeating Henry Clay of the rival Whig Party by promising to annex Texas. Polk was a leader of Jacksonian Democracy during the Second Party System.
Polk was the last strong pre–Civil War president, and he is the earliest of whom there are surviving photographs taken during a term in office. He is noted for his foreign policy successes. He threatened war with Britain over the issue of which nation owned the Oregon Country, then backed away and split the ownership of the region with Britain. When Mexico rejected American annexation of Texas, Polk led the nation to a sweeping victory in the Mexican-American War, which gave the United States most of its present Southwest. He secured passage of the Walker tariff of 1846, which had low rates that pleased his native South, and he established a treasury system that lasted until 1913.
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James Longstreet
James Longstreet (January 8, 1821 – January 2, 1904) was one of the foremost Confederate generals of the American Civil War and the principal subordinate to General Robert E. Lee, who called him his "Old War Horse." He served under Lee as a corps commander for many of the famous battles fought by the Army of Northern Virginia in the Eastern Theater, but also with Gen. Braxton Bragg in the Army of Tennessee in the Western Theater. Biographer and historian Jeffry D. Wert wrote that "Longstreet ... was the finest corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia; in fact, he was arguably the best corps commander in the conflict on either side."
Longstreet's talents as a general made significant contributions to the Confederate victories at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chickamauga, in both offensive and defensive roles. He also performed strongly during the Seven Days Battles, the Battle of Antietam, and until he was seriously wounded, at the Battle of the Wilderness. His performance in semiautonomous command during the Knoxville Campaign resulted in a Confederate defeat. His most controversial service was at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he disagreed with General Lee on the tactics to be employed and reluctantly supervised the disastrous infantry assault known as Pickett's Charge.
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Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history. Davis was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane (Cook) Davis. After attending Transylvania University, Davis graduated from West Point and fought in the Mexican–American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment. He served as the United States Secretary of War under Democratic President Franklin Pierce. Both before and after his time in the Pierce administration, he served as a Democratic U.S. Senator representing the State of Mississippi. As a senator, he argued against secession, but did agree that each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.
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John C. Calhoun
John Caldwell Calhoun (/kælˈhuːn/; March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was a leading politician and political theorist from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century. Calhoun eloquently spoke out on every issue of his day, but often changed positions. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. After 1830 he switched to states' rights, limited government, nullification and free trade. He is best known for his intense and original defense of slavery as something positive, his distrust of majoritarianism, and for pointing the South toward secession from the Union.
Devoted to the principle of liberty (though not for slaves) and fearful of corruption, Calhoun built his reputation as a political theorist by his redefinition of republicanism to include approval of slavery and minority rights—with the white South the minority in question. To protect minority rights against majority rule he called for a "concurrent majority" whereby the minority could sometimes block offensive proposals. Increasingly distrustful of democracy, he minimized the role of the Second Party System in South Carolina. Calhoun's defense of slavery became defunct, but his concept of concurrent majority, whereby a minority has the right to object to or even veto hostile legislation directed against it, has been incorporated into the American value system. Calhoun asserted that Southern whites, outnumbered in the United States by voters of the more densely-populated Northern states were one such "minority" deserving special protection in the legislature.
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John C. Frémont
John Charles Frémont (January 21, 1813 – July 13, 1890), was an American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder. He is sometimes called The Great Pathfinder. He retired from the military and moved to the new territory California, after leading a fourth expedition which cost ten lives seeking a rail route over the mountains around the 38th parallel in the winter of 1849.
He became one of the first two U.S. Senators elected from the new state in 1850. He was soon bogged down with lawsuits over land claims between the dispossessions of various land owners during the Mexican-American War, and the explosion of Forty-Niners immigrating during the California Gold Rush. He lost the 1856 presidential election to Democrats James Buchanan and John C. Breckenridge when Democrats warned his election would lead to civil war.
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John D. Sloat
John Drake Sloat (July 6, 1781 – November 28, 1867) was a commodore in the United States Navy who, in 1846, claimed California for the United States.
He was born at the family home of Sloat House in Sloatsburg, New York, of Dutch ancestry, and was orphaned at an early age, his father, Captain John Sloat, having been mistakenly shot and killed by one of his own sentries two months before he was born, and his mother dying a few years later. Sloat was brought up by his maternal grandparents.
Appointed midshipman in the Navy in 1800, he was sailing master of the frigate United States under Commodore Stephen Decatur during the War of 1812, and was promoted to lieutenant for conspicuous gallantry in the capture of the frigate HMS Macedonian. Sloat then commanded the schooner Grampus during which he fought the Action of 2 March 1825 against the pirate ship of Roberto Cofresí. He later served on the ships Franklin and Washington, and from 1828 commanded the sloop St. Louis with the rank of master commandant, to which he had been promoted in 1826. He was promoted to captain in 1837, and from 1840 to 1844 was in charge of the Portsmouth Navy Yard.
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John Drake Sloat
John Drake Sloat (July 6, 1781 – November 28, 1867) was a commodore in the United States Navy who, in 1846, claimed California for the United States.
He was born at the family home of Sloat House in Sloatsburg, New York, of Dutch ancestry, and was orphaned at an early age, his father, Captain John Sloat, having been mistakenly shot and killed by one of his own sentries two months before he was born, and his mother dying a few years later. Sloat was brought up by his maternal grandparents.
Appointed midshipman in the Navy in 1800, he was sailing master of the frigate United States under Commodore Stephen Decatur during the War of 1812, and was promoted to lieutenant for conspicuous gallantry in the capture of the frigate HMS Macedonian. Sloat then commanded the schooner Grampus during which he fought the Action of 2 March 1825 against the pirate ship of Roberto Cofresí. He later served on the ships Franklin and Washington, and from 1828 commanded the sloop St. Louis with the rank of master commandant, to which he had been promoted in 1826. He was promoted to captain in 1837, and from 1840 to 1844 was in charge of the Portsmouth Navy Yard.
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John E. Wool
John Ellis Wool (February 20, 1784 – November 10, 1869) was an officer in the United States Army during three consecutive U.S. wars: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War. By the time of the Mexican-American War, he was widely considered one of the most capable officers in the army and a superb organizer.
He was one of the four general officers of the United States Army in 1861, and was the one who had the most Civil War service. When the war began, Wool, age 77 and a brigadier general for 20 years, commanded the Department of the East. He was the oldest general on either side of the war.
John Ellis Wool was born in Newburgh, New York. He was orphaned at a young age but attended local school. He read the law with an established firm in order to learn and be admitted to the bar.
At the outbreak of the War of 1812, Wool was a practicing attorney in Troy, New York. When he volunteered at the age of 28, he was commissioned as a captain in the 13th United States Infantry Regiment. He fought at the Battle of Queenston Heights in 1812, where he was wounded. During the action, he led a group of American soldiers up a fisherman's path to the British artillery stationed on top of the heights. In the face of an infantry charge led by famed British general Isaac Brock, he rallied his men and they held their ground. The attack was repulsed, in which action Brock died. However, the Americans eventually lost the battle.
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John L. O'Sullivan
John Louis O'Sullivan (November 15, 1813 – March 24, 1895) was an American columnist and editor who used the term "Manifest Destiny" in 1845 to promote the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Country to the United States. O'Sullivan was an influential political writer and advocate for the Democratic Party at that time and served as US Minister to Portugal during the administration of President Franklin Pierce (1853–1857), but he largely faded from prominence soon thereafter. He was rescued from obscurity in the twentieth century after the famous phrase "Manifest Destiny" was traced back to him.
John L. O'Sullivan was born on the North Atlantic Ocean during the War of 1812, his mother having taken refuge on a British ship to avoid plague in Gibraltar, where his father was engaged in business. His father, also named John, was a naturalized American citizen of Irish ancestry; his mother Mary Rowly was English. His paternal great-grandfather was Sir John O'Sullivan, who fought with the Jacobites for the cause of Charles Edward Stuart. O'Sullivan attended Columbia College in New York City. O'Sullivan's father had been a devout Catholic, and O'Sullivan himself was politically associated with the Catholics in New York City, but there is no evidence that he was a practicing Catholic before the 1860s, and then the evidence is unclear. Adelaide, his youngest sister was a Catholic nun, and was nominated for sainthood.
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John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adamsi/ˈkwɪnzi/ (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was the sixth President of the United States (1825–1829). He served as an American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former President John Adams and Abigail Adams. As a diplomat, Adams played an important role in negotiating many international treaties, most notably the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. As Secretary of State, he negotiated with the United Kingdom over America's northern border with Canada, negotiated with Spain the annexation of Florida, and authored the Monroe Doctrine. Historians agree he was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history.
As president, he sought to modernize the American economy and promoted education. Adams enacted a part of his agenda and paid off much of the national debt. He was stymied by a Congress controlled by his enemies, and his lack of patronage networks helped politicians eager to undercut him. He lost his 1828 bid for re-election to Andrew Jackson. In doing so, he became the first President since his father to serve a single term.
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John Salazar
John Tony Salazar (born July 21, 1953) is the former Congressman for Colorado's 3rd congressional district, serving from 2005 until 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Following his service in Congress, he was appointed as Commissioner of the Colorado Department of Agriculture in the Cabinet of Governor John Hickenlooper in 2011.
Salazar was born in Alamosa, Colorado.
Salazar served in the U.S. Army from 1973 to 1976, and is a farmer and rancher. His formal education includes a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Adams State College in 1981. Salazar was the owner of an internet company, Spudseed.com, which marketed potatoes, as well as serving as a director of Monte Vista Production Credit Union and Agro Engineering, Inc.
Salazar served on several Colorado public bodies including the Governor's Economic Development Advisory Board, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and the Colorado Agricultural Leadership Forum. He also served on the Colorado Agricultural Commission from 1999 to 2002 before being elected to the Colorado House of Representatives from 2003 until 2004.
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John Slidell
John Slidell (1793 – July 9, 1871) was an American politician, lawyer and businessman. A native of New York, Slidell moved to Louisiana as a young man and became a staunch defender of southern rights as a U.S. Representative and Senator. He was the older brother of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a US naval officer.
He was born to the merchant John Slidell and the former Margery Mackenzie, a Scot. He graduated from Columbia University (then College) in 1810. In 1835, Slidell married the former Mathilde Deslonde, and they had three children, Alfred Slidell, Marie Rosine (later comtess de St. Roman), and Marguerite Mathilde (later baronness Frederic Emile d'Erlanger).
Slidell was in the mercantile business in New York before he relocated to New Orleans. He practiced law in New Orleans from 1819-1843. He was the district attorney in New Orleans from 1829-1833. He also served in the state's House of Representatives. Though he lost an election to the United States House in 1828, he was elected in 1842 and served a term and a half from 1843–1845, as a Democrat. He served as minister plenipotentiary to Mexico from 1845-1846.
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John Tyler
John Tyler (29 March 1790 – 18 January 1862) was the tenth President of the United States (1841–1845), after being the tenth Vice President of the United States (1841). A native of Virginia, Tyler served as a state legislator, governor, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator before being elected Vice President in 1840. He was the first to succeed to the office of President on the death of the incumbent. Tyler's opposition to nationalism and emphatic support of states' rights endeared him to his fellow Virginians but alienated him from most of the political allies that brought him to power in Washington. His presidency was crippled by opposition from both parties. Near the end of his life, he supported the secession movement in the southern states, and was elected to the Congress of the Confederate States of America.
Tyler was born to an aristocratic Virginia family of English descent and he came to national prominence at a time of political upheaval. In the 1820s, the nation's only political party, the Democratic-Republicans, split into factions, most of which did not share Tyler's strict constructionist ideals. Though initially a Democrat, his opposition to Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren led him to alliance with the Whig Party; he was elected Vice President In 1840 on the Whig ticket. Upon the death of President William Henry Harrison on 4 April 1841, only a month after his inauguration, a short Constitutional crisis arose over the succession process. Tyler immediately moved into the White House, took the oath of office, and assumed full presidential powers, a precedent that would govern future successions and eventually be codified in the Twenty-fifth Amendment.
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Jon Riley
Jon Patrick Riley (Irish: Seán Pádraic Ó Raghallaigh), also known as John Patrick O'Riley, (c. 1805 – August 1850), a United States Army private, was one of the several hundred immigrant Catholic Irishmen who defected from the US Army and formed the Saint Patrick's Battalion to fight for Mexico in the 1846-48 Mexican-American War. Riley led the battalion as a brevet major commissioned by Mexico.
Riley was born in Clifden, County Galway, Ireland about 1805; his name in the original Irish Gaelic is Seán O' Raghailligh. Riley served with the British Army before emigrating to Canada. Connemara and other rural regions suffered greatly during the Irish Potato Famine, and millions of people emigrated by ship from Ireland to Canada and the United States to survive.
Soon after his arrival in the United States in Michigan, Riley enlisted in the US Army. Many immigrants were recruited in the 1840s; some served just to earn some money, as they had usually fled famine and severe poverty in their home countries.
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Joseph Lane
Joseph Lane (December 14, 1801 – April 19, 1881) was an American general during the Mexican-American War and Oregon Territory's first governor. Later, when Oregon became a state, he became one of her first United States Senators.
Lane was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina on December 14, 1801. He moved to Kentucky at a young age, and then moved to Indiana, where he was engaged in farming for a while. Lane and his wife, Polly Hart Lane, had ten children. While in Indiana, he served in the State House of Representatives and the Indiana Senate from 1822 to 1846.
At the outbreak of hostilities with Mexico, Lane was appointed colonel of the 2nd Indiana Volunteer Regiment and served along the border. The same year he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers and commanded the Indiana Brigade at the Battle of Buena Vista. After the battle he was appointed major general of volunteers and led the relief force which lifted the Siege of Puebla defeating Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Battle of Huamantla along the way.
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Joshua Giddings
Joshua Reed Giddings (October 6, 1795 – May 27, 1864) was an American statesman and a prominent opponent of slavery. He represented Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1838-59. He was at first a member of the Whig Party and was later a Republican.
He was born at Tioga Point, now Athens, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, on 6 October 1795. In 1806 his parents, Joshua Giddings and Elizabeth Pease, moved the family to Ashtabula County, Ohio, then sparsely settled and almost a wilderness. Here they settled on Ohio's Western Reserve, where Giddings lived for most of the rest of his life. It was perhaps here that Giddings had his first stirrings of passion for antislavery, as the Reserve was widely famous for its radicalism.
Giddings worked on his father's farm and, although he received no systematic education, devoted much time to study and reading. For several years after 1814 he was a schoolteacher. In February 1821 he was admitted to the bar in Ohio and soon built up a large practice, particularly in criminal cases. From 1831 to 1837 he was in partnership with Benjamin Wade, a future U.S. Senator. The Panic of 1837, in which Giddings lost a great deal of money, caused him to cease practicing law, but indirectly led to his decision to run for federal office.
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Josiah Gregg
Josiah Gregg (19 July 1806 – 25 February 1850) was a merchant, explorer, naturalist, and author of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico regions. He is most famous for his book Commerce of the Prairies.
Josiah Gregg was born on 19 July 1806 in Overton County, Tennessee. When he was six years old, his family moved to Missouri. Gregg was educated in both law and medicine and practiced both with distinction before tuberculosis forced him to retire from urban life.
In 1831 he joined a caravan for Santa Fe, New Mexico, on a new trail beginning at Van Buren, Arkansas. Gregg then settled in New Mexico Territory, starting work as a bookkeeper. He made a tour of Indian Territories - Oklahoma Territory.
Josiah Gregg's book, "Commerce of the Prairies," which came out in two volumes in 1844 was an account of his time spent as a trader on the Santa Fe Trail from 1831 to 1840 . He describes the geography, botany, geology, and culture of New Mexico. Gregg wrote of some locals, such as Maria Gertrudis Barceló, a Santa-Fe saloon owner. The book established Gregg's literary reputation, and he was hired as a news correspondent and interpreter during the Mexican-American War. In this capacity, he traveled through Chihuahua.
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José Castro
José Antonio Castro (1808 – February 1860) was acting governor of Alta California in 1835-1836, and Commandante General of the Mexican army in Alta California at the time of the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt and the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848.
Castro was born in Monterey, California, the son of Jose Tiburcio Castro, who was a soldier, member of the diputacion (legislature), administrator of secularized Mission San Juan Bautista, and grantee of Rancho Sausal. Jose Castro's first public office was as secretary to the Monterey ayuntamiento (town council).
In 1830, Castro was arrested for his opposition to the Mexican governor of Alta California. By 1835 he was the First Member (Vocal Primero) of the legislature and acting governor. Along with Juan Bautista Alvarado, he was a vocal opponent of Mexican governors and sought a semi-independent status for Alta California. He was a chief participant in the overthrow of Governor Nicolás Gutiérrez in 1836, becoming Commandante General and Governor, as president of the legislature.
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José María Flores
General José María Flores (1818, New Spain – 1866) was an officer in the Mexican Army and was a member of la otra banda. He was appointed Governor and Comandante General pro tem of Alta California from 1846 to 1847.
The American occupation would have gone smoothly if Commodore Robert F. Stockton had accepted José Castro’s peaceful surrender during the Mexican-American War. However, Stockton did not trust the Californios and placed Archibald Gillespie in charge of Los Angeles. This decision would bring about a rebellion led by General José María Flores.
Captain José María Flores arrived in California in 1842. He was a secretary for Governor Manuel Micheltorena. He was a captain in Comandante General José Castro's military army. Castro sent Flores to deliver a message to Stockton stating that Castro was going to accede to the wishes of the United States. Stockton did not recognize Castro’s authority and rejected it. Castro, seeing no alternative, fled California. Governor Pío Pico followed shortly thereafter. Flores and other military officers were left behind in Los Angeles.
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Ken Salazar
Kenneth Lee "Ken" Salazar (pronounced /ˈsæləzɑr/; born March 2, 1955) is the current United States Secretary of the Interior, in the administration of President Barack Obama. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a United States Senator from Colorado from 2005 to 2009. He and Mel Martinez (R-Florida) were the first Hispanic U.S. Senators since 1977; they were joined by Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) in January 2006. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, he served as Attorney General of Colorado from 1999 to 2005.
On December 17, 2008, President-elect Obama announced he would nominate Salazar as U.S. Secretary of the Interior. The environmentalist movement's reaction to this nomination was mixed. Previously, Salazar supported the nomination of Gale Norton to Secretary of the Interior, President George W. Bush's first appointee who preceded Salazar as Colorado Attorney General. On January 20, 2009, Salazar was confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate.
Ken Salazar was born in Alamosa, Colorado, the son of Emma M. and Henry (Enrique) S. Salazar. He grew up near Manassa, in the community of Los Rincones in the San Luis Valley area of south-central Colorado. Salazar attended St. Francis Seminary and Centauri High School in La Jara, graduating in 1973. He later attended Colorado College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1977, and received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. Later Salazar was awarded honorary degrees (Doctor of Laws) from Colorado College (1993) and the University of Denver (1999). After graduating, Salazar started private law practice.
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Kirby Smith
Edmund Kirby Smith (May 16, 1824 – March 28, 1893) was a career United States Army officer and educator. He served as a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, notable for his command of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy after the fall of Vicksburg.
After the conflict ended Smith worked in both the telegraph and railway business, and also served as a college professor until his death.
Smith was born in St. Augustine, Florida, to Joseph Lee Smith and Frances Kirby Smith. Both his parents were natives of Connecticut, and moved to Florida in 1821 shortly before the elder Smith was named a U.S. District Judge there. In 1836, his parents sent him to a military boarding school in Virginia, which he attended until his enrollment in the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
On July 1, 1841, Smith entered West Point and graduated four years later, standing 25th out of 41 cadets. While there he was nicknamed "Seminole" after his native state, and brevetted a second lieutenant in the 5th U.S. Infantry on July 1, 1845. He was promoted to second lieutenant on August 22, 1846, now serving in the 7th U.S. Infantry.
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Kit Carson
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a mountain man and trapper in the West. Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. He was hired by John C. Fremont as a guide, and led 'the Pathfinder' through much of California, Oregon and the Great Basin area. He achieved national fame through Fremont's accounts of his expeditions. He became the hero of many dime novels.
Carson was a courier and scout during the Mexican-American war from 1846 to 1848, celebrated for his rescue mission after the Battle of San Pasqual and his coast-to-coast journey from California to deliver news of the war to the U.S. government in Washington, D.C.. In the 1850s, he was the Agent to the Ute and Jicarilla Apaches. In the Civil War he led a regiment of mostly Hispanic volunteers at the Battle of Valverde in 1862. He led armies to pacify the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. He is vilified for his conquest of the Navajo and their forced transfer to Bosque Redondo where many of them died. Breveted a general, he is probably the only American to reach such a high military rank without being able to read or write, although he could sign his name.
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Korean War
The Korean War (Korean: 한국전쟁 or 조선전쟁, Hanja: 韓國戰爭 or 朝鮮戰爭; 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was a war between the Republic of Korea (supported primarily by the United States of America, with contributions from allied nations under the aegis of the United Nations) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (supported by the People's Republic of China, with military and material aid from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The Korean War was primarily the result of the political division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. The Korean Peninsula was ruled by the Empire of Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. Following the surrender of the Empire of Japan in September 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th parallel, with U.S. military forces occupying the southern half and Soviet military forces occupying the northern half.
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Lebanese Civil War
The Lebanese Civil War (Arabic: الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية) was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon. The war lasted from 1975 to 1990 and resulted in an estimated 150,000 to 230,000[citation needed] fatalities. Another one million people (a quarter of the population) were wounded,[citation needed] and today approximately 350,000 people remain displaced within Lebanon.[citation needed] There was also a mass exodus of almost one million people from Lebanon.
It has been argued that the antecedents of the war can be traced back to the conflicts and political compromises reached after the end of Lebanon's administration by the Ottoman Empire. The Cold War had a powerful disintegrative effect on Lebanon, which was closely linked to the polarization that preceded the 1958 political crisis. The establishment of the state of Israel and the displacement of a hundred thousand Palestinian refugees to Lebanon (around 10% of the total population of the country) changed the demographics of Lebanon and provided a foundation for the long-term involvement of Lebanon in regional conflicts. By 1975, the presence of a foreign armed force in the form of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas, who exercised a veto on Lebanese politics, had a serious effect on Lebanon. The militarization of the Palestinian refugee population, with the arrival of the PLO guerrilla forces, sparked an arms race amongst the different Lebanese political factions.
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Lewis Cass
Lewis Cass (October 9, 1782 – June 17, 1866) was an American military officer and politician. During his long political career, Cass served as a governor of the Michigan Territory, an American ambassador, a U.S. Senator representing Michigan, and co-founder as well as first Masonic Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Michigan. He was the losing nominee of the Democratic Party for president in 1848. Cass was nationally famous as a leading spokesman for the controversial Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, which would have allowed voters in the territories to determine whether to make slavery legal instead of having Congress decide.
Cass was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he attended Phillips Exeter Academy. His parents were Major Jonathan Cass and Molly Gilman. In 1800 he moved with his family to Marietta, Ohio. On May 26, 1806, he married the former Elizabeth Spencer. Interested in "passing knowledge forward" Cass joined the Freemasons on May 7, 1804 and was later elected as the third Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ohio on January 4, 1808. Later he went on to co-found the Grand Lodge of Michigan being elected as its first Grand Master on July 21, 1826.
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Lord Palmerston
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, KG, GCB, PC (20 October 1784 – 18 October 1865), known popularly as Lord Palmerston, was a British statesman who served twice as Prime Minister in the mid-19th century. Popularly nicknamed "The Mongoose", he was in government office almost continuously from 1807 until his death in 1865, beginning his parliamentary career as a Tory and concluding it as a Liberal.
He is best remembered for his direction of British foreign policy through a period when Britain was at the height of its power, serving terms as both Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. Some of his aggressive actions, now sometimes termed liberal interventionist, were greatly controversial at the time, and remain so today. Indeed, historian A.J.P. Taylor has summarized his career by emphasizing the paradoxes:
He was the most recent British Prime Minister to die in office.
Henry John Temple was born in his family's Westminster house to the Irish branch of the Temple family on 20 October 1784. Henry was to become the 3rd Viscount Palmerston. His family derived their title from the Peerage of Ireland. His father was Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston (1739–1802), and his mother Mary (1752–1805), daughter of Benjamin Mee, a London merchant. From 1792 to 1794, the young future Lord Palmerston accompanied his family on a Continental tour of France, Switzerland, Italy, Hanover and the Netherlands. Whilst in Italy Palmerston acquired an Italian tutor, Signor Gaetano, who taught him to speak and write fluent Italian.
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Manuel Armijo
Manuel Armijo (c. 1793–1853) was a New Mexican soldier and statesman who served three times as governor of New Mexico. He was instrumental in putting down the Revolt of 1837, he led the force that captured the Texan Santa Fe Expedition and he surrendered to the United States (U.S.) in the Mexican-American War.
Manuel Armijo was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and apparently made himself wealthy and prominent. He may have been born in Casa de Armijo, which is now a restaurant in Old Town Albuquerque.
According to George Wilkins Kendall, he became wealthy by working for a sheep rancher and stealing and selling the sheep, often to his own employer; but Kendall was writing about his experience as Armijo's prisoner in 1841 and his biographical sketch of Armijo is scurrilous. The historian Marc Simmons ascribes the story of sheep theft to "tradition". Armijo became the alcalde (mayor) of Albuquerque and militia lieutenant in 1822 and 1824.
In 1827, he was appointed governor of New Mexico, but in 1828 he returned from Santa Fe to Albuquerque as a wealthy merchant in sheep and wool blankets, acting as alcalde again. Some have it that he left the governorship to avoid a Federal investigation.
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Mariano Arista
Mariano Arista (26 July 1802 – 7 August 1855) was a noted veteran of many of Mexico's nineteenth-century wars who served as president of Mexico from 15 January 1851 to 6 January 1853.
He was born in the state of San Luis Potosí. Originally an officer in the Spanish Army, Arista later joined the revolutionary army of Agustín de Iturbide. Later, he served under Antonio López de Santa Anna, Mexico's on-again/off-again dictator during the attempt to put down the 1836 Texas Revolution.
In 1846, Arista was given command of the Army of the North and sent to expel American troops from Mexican territory in Texas. The resulting engagement ignited the bloody Mexican-American War of 1846–1848. Arista was in command of Mexican forces during the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Resaca de la Palma.
Personally quite brave, Arista was a dedicated republican – a member of Mexico's liberal faction, and therefore the natural enemy of his largely conservative general staff. At both the Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, Arista was ill served by the political division among his staff.
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Mariano G. Vallejo
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (4 July 1807 – 18 January 1890) was a Californian military commander, politician, and rancher. He was born a subject of Spain, performed his military duties as an officer of Mexico, and shaped the transition of California from a Mexican district to an American state. Vallejo, a city in California that he founded, is named for him, and the nearby city of Benicia is named for his wife (née Francisca Benicia Carrillo).
Mariano Vallejo was born in Monterey, California, the eighth of thirteen children and third son of Ignacio Vicente Ferrer Vallejo (July 29, 1748 – May 10, 1832) and María Antonia Lugo (September 1, 1776 – May 7, 1855).
There is controversy over Vallejo's exact date of birth. According to Vallejo himself, and his family bible, he was born on 7 July 1807. His baptismal certificate, however, signed by Fr. Baltasar Carnicer states that he was baptized on 5 July 1807, and born the previous night (4 July 1807). Other sources state a birthdate of 7 July 1808. Of these, the baptismal record seems the most reliable[according to whom?], but the question should be further researched.
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Matthew C. Perry
Matthew Calbraith Perry (April 10, 1794 – March 4, 1858) was the Commodore of the U.S. Navy and served commanding a number of US naval ships. He served several wars, most notably in the Mexican-American War and the War of 1812. He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Perry was very concerned with the education of naval officers and helped develop an apprentice system that helped establish a naval curriculum at the United States Naval Academy. With the advent of the steam engine he was also a leading advocate of modernizing the U.S. Navy and came to be considered The Father of the Steam Navy.
Matthew Perry was the son of Navy Captain, Christopher R. Perry and the younger brother of Oliver Hazard Perry. Matthew Perry received a midshipman's commission in the Navy in 1809, and was initially assigned to the USS Revenge, under the command of his elder brother. Under his brother's command, Matthew was a combatant in The Battle of Lake Erie aboard the Flagship Lawrence and the replacement flagship, Niagara.
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Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution (Spanish: Revolución mexicana) was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz, and lasted for the better part of a decade until around 1920. Over time the Revolution changed from a revolt against the established order to a multi-sided civil war. This armed conflict is often categorized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century.
After prolonged struggles, its representatives produced the Mexican Constitution of 1917. The Revolution is generally considered to have lasted until 1920, although the country continued to have sporadic, but comparatively minor, outbreaks of warfare well into the 1920s. The Cristero War of 1926 to 1929 was the most significant relapse into bloodshed.
The Revolution led to the creation of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario ("National Revolutionary Party") in 1929; it was renamed the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party) (PRI) in 1946. Under a variety of leaders, the PRI held power until the general election of 2000.
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Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th President of the United States (1850–1853) and the last member of the Whig Party to hold the office of president. As Zachary Taylor's Vice President, he assumed the presidency after Taylor's death.
Fillmore opposed the proposal to keep slavery out of the territories annexed during the Mexican–American War in order to appease the South and so supported the Compromise of 1850, which he signed, including the Fugitive Slave Act ("Bloodhound Law") which was part of the compromise. On the foreign policy front, he furthered the rising trade with Japan and clashed with the French over Napoleon III's attempt to annex Hawaii and with the French and the British over the attempt of Narciso López to invade Cuba. After his presidency, he joined the Know-Nothing movement; throughout the Civil War, he opposed President Abraham Lincoln and during Reconstruction supported President Andrew Johnson. He is consistently included in the bottom 10 of historical rankings of Presidents of the United States.
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Moses Austin
Moses Austin (October 4, 1761 – June 10, 1821) played a large part in the development of the American lead industry and is the father of Stephen F. Austin, a leading American settler of Texas. He was the first to be allowed to gather Anglo Americans for settlement in Spanish Texas. After receiving a land grant from the Mexican government, he became the first to establish an English American settlement in what was then a sovereign Mexico. His son, would continue the practice of reselling land at 12 cents per acre, and the U.S. born settlers, many of them slaveholders in a slave-free Mexico, demanded autonomy and won Independence from the Mexican ruler Santa Anna in 1837.
Austin was born in Durham, Connecticut to a family that can be traced back to Richard Austin, who arrived on the ship "Bevis" in Massachusetts colony in 1738, only a few years after the colony was founded.
In 1784, he moved to Philadelphia to enter the dry goods business with his brother, Stephen. He then moved to Richmond, Virginia to open a second dry goods store.
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Nathan Clifford
Nathan Clifford (August 18, 1803 – July 25, 1881) was an American statesman, diplomat and jurist.
Clifford was born of old Yankee stock in Rumney, New Hampshire, to farmers, the only son of seven children (His great-great-grandmother, Ann Smith, wife of Israel Clifford, was the accuser of Goody Cole.) He attended the public schools of that town, then the Haverhill Academy in New Hampshire, and finally the New Hampton Literary Institute (now known as the New Hampton School). After teaching school for a time, he studied law in the offices of Josiah Quincy III and was admitted to the bar in Maine in 1827, establishing his first practice in Newfield, Maine.
He served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1830 to 1834 and served as Speaker of that house the last two years. He was then Maine Attorney General from 1834 until 1838, when he was elected as a Democrat to the 26th and 27th Congresses, serving March 4, 1839 through March 3, 1843, and representing the Second and then the Third District. He was not a candidate for re-election in 1842.
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Nathaniel Currier
Nathaniel Currier (March 27, 1813 – November 20, 1888) was an American lithographer, who headed the company Currier & Ives with James Ives.
Currier was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts to Nathaniel and Hannah Currier. He attended public school until age fifteen, when he was apprenticed to the Boston printing firm of William and John Pendleton. The Pendletons were the first successful lithographers in the United States, lithography having only recently been invented in Europe, and Currier learned the process in their shop. He subsequently went to work for M. E. D. Brown in Philadelphia, in 1833. The following year, Currier moved to New York City, where he was to start a new business with John Pendleton. Pendleton backed out, and the new firm became Currier & Stodart, which lasted only one year. In addition to being a lithographer, he was also a volunteer fireman in the 1850s.
In 1835, Currier started his own lithographic business as an eponymous sole proprietorship. He initially engaged in standard lithographic business of printing sheet music, letterheads, handbills, etc. However, he soon took his work in a new direction, creating pictures of current events. In late 1835, he issued a print illustrating a recent fire in New York. Ruins of the Merchant's Exchange N.Y. after the Destructive Conflagration of Decbr 16 & 17, 1835 was published by the New York Sun, just four days after the fire, and was an early example of illustrated news. In 1840, Currier began to move away from job printing and into independent print publishing. In that year, the Sun published his print Awful Conflagration of the Steam Boat 'Lexington' in Long Island Sound on Monday Eveg Jany 13th 1840, by Which Melancholy Occurrence Over 100 Persons Perished, another documentation of a news event, three days after the disaster; the print sold thousands of copies.
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Navajo people
The Navajo (Navajo: Diné or Naabeehó) of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the Four Corners area of the United States. The Navajo language is spoken throughout the region, although most Navajo speak English as well.
Until they came into contact with the Spanish and Pueblos, the Navajo were hunters and gatherers. They adopted farming techniques and crops from the Pueblo people, growing mainly corn, beans, and squash. As a result of Spanish influence, they began herding sheep and goats, depending on them for food and trade. They spun and wove sheared wool into blankets and clothing which could be used for personal use or trading. They also depended on their flocks of sheep for meat. Their lives depended on sheep so much that, to the Navajo, sheep were a kind of currency and the size of the herd was a mark of social status.
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Nicolás Bravo
Nicolás Bravo (10 September 1786 – 22 April 1854) was a Mexican politician and soldier. He distinguished himself in both offices during the 1846–1848 U.S. invasion of Mexico.
During the War of Independence (1810–21), Bravo fought alongside Hermenegildo Galeana and after alongside José María Morelos in the campaign of the south. In 1811 with Hermenegildo Galeana, Bravo obtained the military command of the province of Veracruz. He was also involved in the defense of the Congress of Chilpancingo.
In 1817 the royalists took him prisoner and it was only in 1820 that he was able to recover his freedom. He allied himself with the Plan de Iguala and, on 27 September 1821, he entered Mexico City with the trimphant Ejército Trigarante (in the "Army of the Three Guarantees").
When independence was attained, he was named advisor of state by the constituent congress.
When Agustín de Iturbide was crowned emperor, he took up arms in opposition and formed a governing body in Oaxaca. Bravo created an army and marched on Mexico City, by way of Puebla. When Iturbide was overthrown, Bravo, Guadalupe Victoria and Pedro Celestino Negrete governed the country until in 1824 there was elections, Bravo lost the elections and held the position of vice-president of the republic under the presidency of Guadalupe Victoria (1824–29).
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Owen Thomas Edgar
Owen Thomas Edgar (June 17, 1831 – September 3, 1929) was, according to data from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the longest surviving U.S. veteran of the Mexican-American War.
He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the United States Navy as a 2nd-class apprentice on February 10, 1846, and was discharged August 8, 1849. Edgar saw service on the frigates Potomac, Allegheny, Pennsylvania and Experience.
After the war, he worked at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for 21 years, then worked at a bank for another 31 years. He spent his last 10 years living at the John Dickson Home in Washington, D.C. Edgar died September 3, 1929 at the age of 98 after suffering a fall from a chair that fractured his leg, and was buried in Washington's Congressional Cemetery.
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Pedro de Ampudia
Pedro de Ampudia (1803–1868) was born in Havana, Cuba and served Mexico as a Northern army officer for most of his life. He was also governor of the state of Nuevo León in 1846 and from 1853 to 1854.
Ampudia began his career in the Spanish army, and emigrated to Mexico following the Mexican War of Independence. In 1836, Ampudia served with the Mexican artillery at the Siege of the Alamo and later saw heavy combat at the Battle of San Jacinto. During border skirmishes with Texas in the early 1840s, Ampudia commanded the 350 man garrison of Ciudad Mier which was attacked on December 26, 1842 by Texan militia. In a bloody two day battle over 600 Mexicans were killed but they eventually forced the enemy too surrender, earning the grudging respect of the Texans across the border.
Briefly appointed as commander-in-chief of the Mexican Army of the North in 1846, Ampudia was removed from command following the brutal public execution of a local guerrilla leader on his personal orders. As a conservador (a member of Mexico's conservative faction), Ampudia was quickly relegated to a staff position in favor of his liberal rival, General Mariano Arista. At the Battle of Palo Alto, Ampudia harshly criticized Arista for what he saw as "unacceptable tactical blunders" and continued his criticism at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma – a defeat for which Arista partially blamed him.
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Philip Kearny
Philip Kearny, Jr. (/ˈkɑrniː/; June 2, 1815 – September 1, 1862) was a United States Army officer, notable for his leadership in the Mexican-American War and American Civil War. He was killed in action in the 1862 Battle of Chantilly.
Kearny was born in New York City to a wealthy family. His father and mother were Philip Kearny, Sr., and Susan Watts. His maternal grandfather John Watts, the last Royal Recorder of New York City, was one of New York's wealthiest residents, who had vast holdings in ships, mills, factories, banks, and investment houses. Kearny's father was a Harvard-educated, New York City financier who owned his own brokerage firm and was also a founder of the New York Stock Exchange.
Early in life, Kearny desired a career in the military. His parents died when he was young, and he was consequently raised by his grandfather. Against the younger Kearny's wishes, his guardian insisted that Kearny pursue a law career. Kearny attended Columbia College, attaining a law degree in 1833. His cousin John Watts de Peyster, who had also attended Columbia, wrote the first authoritative biography on Kearny.
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Porfiriato
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori (15 September 1830 – 2 July 1915) was a volunteer in the Reform War and then a leader of the successful rebellion against French intervention, an accomplished general and the President of Mexico continuously from 1876 to 1911, with the exception of a brief term in 1876 when he left Juan N. Méndez as interim president, and a four-year term served by his political ally Manuel González from 1880 to 1884. Commonly considered by historians to have been a dictator, he is a controversial figure in Mexican history. The period of his leadership was marked by significant internal stability (known as the "paz porfiriana"), modernization, and economic growth. However, Díaz's regime grew unpopular due to repression and political stagnation, and he fell from power during the Mexican Revolution, after he had imprisoned his electoral rival and declared himself the winner of an eighth term in office. The 35 years in which Díaz ruled Mexico are referred to as the Porfiriato.
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Pre-Columbian era
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during the Early Modern period.
While the phrase "pre-Columbian era" literally refers only to the time preceding Christopher Columbus's voyages of 1492, in practice the phrase usually is used to denote the entire history of American indigenous cultures until those cultures were conquered or significantly influenced by Europeans, even if this happened decades or centuries after Columbus's first landing. For this reason the alternative terms of Pre-Colonial Americas or Prehistoric Americas are also in use. In areas of Hispanic America the term usually used is Pre-Hispanic.
Many pre-Columbian civilizations established hallmarks which included permanent settlements, cities, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, major earthworks, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European arrivals (c. late 15th–early 16th centuries), and are known only through archaeological investigations. Others were contemporary with the colonial period, and were described in historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya, had their own written records. Because most Christian Europeans of the time viewed such texts as heretical, they destroyed many texts in pyres. Only a few hidden documents have survived, giving modern historians glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge.
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Preston Brooks
Preston Smith Brooks (August 5, 1819 – January 27, 1857) was a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina during the period just prior to the US Civil War.
Brooks is primarily remembered for severely beating Senator Charles Sumner with a metal-tipped gutta-percha cane on the floor of the United States Senate. Brooks' attack, assisted by fellow Southerner Rep Laurence Keitt, was delivered as revenge (or "punishment", in Brooks' words) in response to a virulent abolitionist speech by Sumner in which he mocked Brooks' relative, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, and likened Southern slaveholders to pimps. Sumner, who was known for his scathing abolitionist speeches, was severely injured by the attack, suffering head trauma that would cause him chronic pain and symptoms consistent with what would now be called traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, and spent three years convalescing before returning to his Senate seat. Brooks and Keitt were not prosecuted or censured for the attack, and both were overwhelmingly re-elected by their South Carolina constituents.
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Pío Pico
Pío de Jesús Pico (May 5, 1801 – September 11, 1894) was the last Governor of Alta California (now the State of California) under Mexican rule.
Píco was a third-generation Californio. He was born at the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel to José María Pico and his wife María Eustaquia Gutiérrez, with the aid of midwife Eulalia Pérez de Guillén Mariné. His paternal grandmother, María Jacinta de la Bastida, was listed in the 1790 census as mulata, meaning mixed race with some African ancestry. His paternal grandfather, Santiago de la Cruz Pico, was described as a Mestizo (Native American-Spanish) in the same census. He was one of the soldiers who accompanied Juan Bautista de Anza on the expedition that left Tubac, Arizona for California in 1775 to explore the region and colonize it. Pio Pico was thus of Spanish, African and Native American ancestry.
After the death of his father in 1819, Pico settled in San Diego, California. He married María Ignacia Alvarado there on February 24, 1834.
In 1821 Pico set up a tanning hut and dram shop in Los Angeles, selling drinks for two Spanish bits (US 25 cents). His businesses soon became a significant source of his income.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.
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Reform War
The Reform War (Spanish: Guerra de Reforma) in Mexico is one of the episodes of the long struggle between Liberal and Conservative forces that dominated the country’s history in the 19th century. The Liberals wanted a federalist government, limiting traditional Catholic Church and military influence in the country. The Conservatives wanted a centralist government, even a monarchy with the Church and military keeping their traditional roles and powers. This struggle erupted into a full civil war when the Liberals, then in control of the government after ousting Antonio López de Santa Anna, began to implement a series of laws designed to strip the Church and military, but especially the Church, of its rights, powers and property. Conservative resistance to this culminated in the Plan of Tacubaya, which destroyed the government of President Ignacio Comonfort and caused the remaining Liberals to move their government to the city of Veracruz. The Conservatives controlled Mexico City and much of central Mexico, but the rest of the states chose whether to side with the Conservative or Liberal government. Being less experienced militarily, the Liberals lost most of the early battles, but the tide turned when Conservatives twice failed to take Veracruz. Liberal victories accumulated thereafter until Conservative forces surrendered in December 1860. While the Conservative forces lost the war, guerrillas remained active in the countryside for years after, and Conservatives in Mexico would conspire with French forces to install Maximilian I as emperor during the following French Intervention in Mexico.
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Richard Pakenham
Sir Richard Pakenham (19 May 1797 – 28 October 1868) was a British diplomat.
Pakenham, the fifth son of Admiral Sir Thomas Pakenham, by his wife, Louisa, daughter of the Right Hon. John Staples, was born at Pakenham Hall, Castlepollard, in County Westmeath.
He completed his education at Trinity College, Dublin, and, apparently without waiting to take a degree, entered the foreign office on 15 October 1817 as attaché to his uncle, the Earl of Clancarty, at the Hague. His next appointment was as secretary to the legation in Switzerland (26 January 1824). Promoted on 29 December 1826 to the same position in Mexico, he was made minister plenipotentiary to the United Mexican States on 12 March 1835. In this capacity he seems to have been popular and efficient.
Perhaps the most troublesome of his negotiations was for the abolition of the slave trade: the Mexican government objected to the right of search, and the negotiations dragged on for four years, but he obtained the treaty in 1841. He was in Mexico during the Pastry War between that kingdom and France, and in February 1839 was despatched to Veracruz, with the object of trying to effect a reconciliation between the two countries.
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Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War.
The son of Revolutionary War officer Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III and a top graduate of the United States Military Academy, Robert E. Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional officer and combat engineer in the United States Army for 32 years. During this time, he served throughout the United States, distinguished himself during the Mexican-American War, served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, and married Mary Custis.
When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his personal desire for the Union to stay intact and despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln had offered Lee command of the Union Army. During the Civil War, Lee originally served as a senior military adviser to President Jefferson Davis. He soon emerged as a shrewd tactician and battlefield commander, winning numerous battles against larger Union armies. His abilities as a tactician have been praised by many military historians. His strategic vision was more doubtful, and both of his invasions of the North ended in defeat. Union General Ulysses S. Grant's campaigns bore down on Lee in 1864 and 1865, and despite inflicting heavy casualties, Lee was unable to force back Grant. Lee would ultimately surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. By this time, Lee had been promoted to the commanding officer of all Confederate forces; the remaining armies soon capitulated after Lee's surrender. Lee rejected the starting of a guerrilla campaign against the North and called for reconciliation between the North and South.
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Robert F. Stockton
Robert Field Stockton (August 20, 1795 – October 7, 1866) was a United States naval commodore, notable in the capture of California during the Mexican–American War. He was a naval innovator and an early advocate for a propeller-driven, steam-powered navy. Stockton was from a notable political family and also served as a U.S. Senator from New Jersey.
He was born at Morven, Stockton Street, Princeton, New Jersey into a political family; his father Richard Stockton was a U.S. Senator and Representative, and his grandfather, Judge Richard Stockton was Attorney General for New Jersey and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Stockton was appointed a midshipman in the U.S. Navy at the age of 16, serving at sea and ashore during the War of 1812. After that conflict, Lieutenant Stockton was assigned to ships operating in the Mediterranean, in the Caribbean and off the coast of West Africa. He was the first naval officer to act against the slave trade and captured several slave ships. Stockton along with Dr. Eli Ayers of the American Colonization Society negotiated a treaty that led to the founding of the state of Liberia.
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Robert Letcher
Robert Perkins Letcher (February 10, 1788 – January 24, 1861) was a politician and lawyer from the US state of Kentucky. He served as a U.S. Representative, Minister to Mexico, and the 15th Governor of Kentucky. He also served in the Kentucky General Assembly where he was Speaker of the House in 1837 and 1838. A strong supporter of the Whig Party, he was a friend of Henry Clay and John J. Crittenden.
Letcher's family came to Kentucky around 1800. Letcher attended the private academy of Joshua Fry, then studied law. He was briefly a judge advocate in John Allen's volunteer militia during the War of 1812. He began his political career in 1813, representing Garrard County in the Kentucky House of Representatives. In 1823, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served for more than a decade. During the 1824 presidential election, he acted as an intermediary between John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. Adams' opponent, Andrew Jackson, charged that, through these negotiations, Clay agreed to support Adams for president in exchange for being named Secretary of State.
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Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846. While Home Secretary, Peel helped create the modern concept of the police force, leading to officers being known as "bobbies" (in England) and "Peelers" (in Northern Ireland). While Prime Minister after 1841, Peel repealed the Corn Laws and issued the Tamworth Manifesto (1834), leading to the formation of the Conservative Party out of the shattered Tory Party.
Peel was born in Bury, Lancashire, England, to the industrialist and Member of Parliament Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet. His father was one of the richest textile manufacturers of the early Industrial Revolution. Peel was educated first at Hipperholme Grammar School, then at Harrow School and finally Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a double first in classics and mathematics. He is also believed to have attended Bury Grammar School. While living in Tamworth, he is credited with the development of the Tamworth Pig by breeding Irish stock with some local Tamworth pigs.
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Robert Toombs
Robert Augustus Toombs (July 2, 1810 – December 15, 1885) was an American and Confederate political leader, Whig Party Senator from Georgia, a founding father of the Confederacy, its first Secretary of State, and a minor Confederate general in the Civil War. He feuded bitterly with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Clawson says he was "a bullish politician whose blend of acerbic wit, fiery demeanor, and political tact aroused the full spectrum of emotions from his constituents and colleagues....[he] could not balance his volatile personality with his otherwise keen political skill."
Born near Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia, Robert Augustus Toombs was the fifth child of Catherine Huling and Robert Toombs. He was of English descent. His father died when he was five, and he entered Franklin College at the University of Georgia in Athens when he was just fourteen. During his time at Franklin College he was a member of the Demosthenian Literary Society, which honors him as one of its most legendary alumni to this day. After the university chastised him for unbecoming conduct in a card-playing incident, Toombs continued his education at Union College, in Schenectady, New York, from which he graduated in 1828. Toombs went on to study law at the University of Virginia Law School in Charlottesville. Shortly after his admission to the Georgia bar, he married his childhood sweetheart, Julia A. Dubose, with whom he had three children.
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Sam Houston
Samuel "Sam" Houston (March 2, 1793–July 26, 1863), was a nineteenth-century American statesman, politician, and soldier. He was born in Timber Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, of Scots-Irish descent. Houston became a key figure in the history of Texas and was elected as the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, U.S. Senator for Texas after it joined the United States, and finally as a governor of the state. He refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy when Texas seceded from the Union in 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War, and was removed from office. To avoid bloodshed, he refused an offer of a Union army to put down the Confederate rebellion. Instead, he retired to Huntsville, Texas, where he died before the end of the Civil War.
His earlier life included migration to Tennessee from Virginia, time spent with the Cherokee Nation (into which he later was adopted as a citizen and took a wife), military service in the War of 1812, and successful participation in Tennessee politics. Houston is the only person in U.S. history to have been the governor of two different states (although other men had served as governors of more than one American territory).
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Somali Civil War
The Somali Civil War is an ongoing civil war taking place in Somalia. It began in 1991, when a coalition of clan-based armed opposition groups ousted the nation's long-standing military government.
Various factions began competing for influence in the power vacuum that followed, which precipitated an aborted UN peacekeeping attempt in the mid-1990s. A period of decentralization ensued, characterized by a return to customary and religious law in many areas as well as the establishment of autonomous regional governments in the northern part of the country. The early 2000s saw the creation of fledgling interim federal administrations, culminating in the establishment of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2004. In 2006, the TFG, assisted by Ethiopian troops, assumed control of most of the nation's southern conflict zones from the newly formed Islamic Courts Union (ICU). The ICU subsequently splintered into more radical groups, notably Al-Shabaab, which have since been fighting the Transitional Federal Government and its AMISOM allies for control of the region. In 2011, a coordinated military operation between the Somali military and multinational forces began, which is believed to represent one of the final stages in the war's Islamist insurgency.
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Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen Arnold Douglas (23 April 1813 – 3 June 1861) was an American politician from Illinois. He was a U.S. Representative, a U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee for President in the 1860 election, losing to Republican Abraham Lincoln. Douglas had previously defeated Lincoln in a Senate contest, noted for the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. He was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because though short in physical stature, he was a forceful and even dominant figure in politics.
Douglas was well known as a resourceful party leader, and an adroit, ready, skillful tactician in debate and passage of legislation. He was a leading proponent of democracy, and believed in the principle of popular sovereignty: that the majority of citizens should decide contentious issues such as slavery and territorial expansion. As chairman of the Committee on Territories, Douglas dominated the Senate in the 1850s. He was largely responsible for the Compromise of 1850 that apparently settled slavery issues. However, in 1854 he reopened the slavery question with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened some previously prohibited territories to slavery under popular sovereignty. Opposition to this led to the formation of the Republican Party.
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Stephen F. Austin
Stephen Fuller Austin (November 3, 1793 – December 27, 1836) was an American empresario born in Virginia and raised in southeastern Missouri. He was known as the Father of Texas, led the second, but first legal and ultimately successful colonization of the region by bringing 300 families from the United States. The capital of Texas, Austin in Travis County, Austin County, Austin Bayou, Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Austin College in Sherman, and a number of K-12 schools are named in his honor.
Stephen F. Austin was born in the mining regions of southwestern Virginia (Wythe County), in what is now known as Austinville some 195 miles (314 km) west of Richmond, Virginia. He was the second child of Moses Austin and Mary Brown Austin, the first, Eliza Austin, having lived only one month. On June 8, 1798, when he was four years old, his family moved 40 miles west of the Mississippi River to the lead-mining region in present-day Potosi, Missouri. His father Moses Austin received a Sitio from the Spanish government for the mining site of Mine à Breton, established by French colonists.
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Stephen W. Kearny
Stephen Watts Kearny ( /ˈkɑrni/ KAR-nee; surname also appears as Kearney in some historic sources; August 30, 1794 – October 31, 1848), was one of the foremost antebellum frontier officers of the United States Army. He is remembered for his significant contributions in the Mexican–American War, especially the conquest of California. The Kearny code, which sought to regulate government behavior toward Californios, was named after him.
Kearny was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Philip Kearny, Sr. and Susanna Watts. His maternal grandparents were the wealthy merchant Robert Watts of New York and Mary Alexander, the daughter of Major General "Lord Stirling" William Alexander and Sarah "Lady Stirling" Livingston of American Revolutionary War fame. Stephen Watts Kearny went to public schools. After high school, he attended Columbia University in New York City for two years. He joined the New York Militia soon after he left school, setting the course of the rest of his life.
In the late 1820s after his career was established, Kearny met, courted and married Mary Radford, the stepdaughter of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The couple had eleven children, of whom several died in childhood.
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Stephen Watts Kearny
Stephen Watts Kearny ( /ˈkɑrni/ KAR-nee; surname also appears as Kearney in some historic sources; August 30, 1794 – October 31, 1848), was one of the foremost antebellum frontier officers of the United States Army. He is remembered for his significant contributions in the Mexican–American War, especially the conquest of California. The Kearny code, which sought to regulate government behavior toward Californios, was named after him.
Kearny was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Philip Kearny, Sr. and Susanna Watts. His maternal grandparents were the wealthy merchant Robert Watts of New York and Mary Alexander, the daughter of Major General "Lord Stirling" William Alexander and Sarah "Lady Stirling" Livingston of American Revolutionary War fame. Stephen Watts Kearny went to public schools. After high school, he attended Columbia University in New York City for two years. He joined the New York Militia soon after he left school, setting the course of the rest of his life.
In the late 1820s after his career was established, Kearny met, courted and married Mary Radford, the stepdaughter of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The couple had eleven children, of whom several died in childhood.
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Stonewall Jackson
Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (January 21, 1824 – May 10, 1863) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War, and one of the best-known Confederate commanders after General Robert E. Lee. His military career includes the Valley Campaign of 1862 and his service as a corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee. Confederate pickets accidentally shot him at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863; the general survived with the loss of an arm to amputation. However, he died of complications from pneumonia eight days later. His death was a severe setback for the Confederacy, affecting not only its military prospects, but also the morale of its army and of the general public.
Jackson in death became an icon of Southern heroism and commitment, joining Lee in the pantheon of the "Lost Cause".
Military historians consider Jackson to be one of the most gifted tactical commanders in U.S. history. His Valley Campaign and his envelopment of the Union Army right wing at Chancellorsville are studied worldwide even today as examples of innovative and bold leadership. He excelled as well in other battles: the First Battle of Bull Run (where he received his famous nickname "Stonewall"), Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Jackson was not universally successful as a commander, however, as displayed by his weak and confused efforts during the Seven Days Battles around Richmond in 1862.
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Thomas Childs
Thomas Childs was a U.S. soldier who served with distinction during the Mexican-American War.
Childs was born on March 16, 1796, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the son and grandson of Revolutionary War veterans. He graduated from West Point in 1814 and fought in the Niagara campaign during the War of 1812 as an officer of artillery.
He was later sent to Florida where he fought against Indians during the Seminole Wars. For his distinguished services there he received a brevet promotion of lieutenant colonel in 1841. Sent to Texas, he took command of an artillery battalion which he commanded at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. He received a brevet to colonel for these two battles. At the battle of Monterrey, General William J. Worth placed Childs in charge of an attacking column composed of infantry and artillery. He successfully attacked the Bishop's Palace on the western end of the city. He transferred to Winfield Scott's army with the rest of the division and was Worth's chief-of-staff during the Siege of Veracruz. After the Battle of Cerro Gordo General Scott appointed Childs military governor of Jalapa and once Scott moved into the Valley of Mexico Childs was then appointed military governor of Puebla. He held this post during the battles for Mexico City. The day before Mexico City surrendered, Childs' garrison at Puebla came under siege. During the following siege of Puebla Childs repeatedly refused to surrender and was able to successfully repulse the Mexican attacks until a relief force under General Joseph Lane arrived and defeated the besiegers. For his defense of the city Childs was made brevetted to brigadier general.
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Thomas O. Larkin
Thomas Oliver Larkin (September 16, 1802 - October 27, 1858) was an early American emigrant to Alta California and a signer of the original California Constitution. He was the United States' first and only consul to the California Republic.
Larkin was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of Thomas O. Larkin and Ann Rogers, and a grandson of the Deacon John Larkin who provided the horse for Paul Revere's famous ride. Larkin's mother was widowed three times - her first husband was named Cooper and her third husband was named Richardson.
At the age of 15, Larkin went to Boston to apprentice as a bookbinder but decided against the business. In 1821 he sailed to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he worked as a clerk and experienced a disastrous partnership with a dishonest merchant. He visited Bermuda in 1822 and relatives in New England in 1824. In 1825 he opened a store in Duplin, North Carolina. The fortune he made on the store he lost on a sawmill operation, and in 1830 he returned to Massachusetts, destitute. Here he learned that his half-brother, John Bautista Rogers Cooper, needed his assistance with a business in California, and in September 1831 Thomas left Boston on the ship Newcastle. After a stopover in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), he landed in San Francisco, in April 1832.
wn.com/Thomas_O._Larkin -
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant; April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877) following his dominant role in the second half of the Civil War. Under Grant, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and effectively ended the war with the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army at Appomattox. As president he led the Radical Republicans in their effort to eliminate all vestiges of Confederate nationalism and slavery; he effectively destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in 1871. His reputation was marred by his repeated defense of corrupt appointees, and by the deep economic depression (called the "Panic of 1873") that dominated his second term. Although his Republican Party split in 1872 with reformers denouncing him, Grant was easily reelected. By 1874 the opposition was gaining strength and as he left the White House in March 1877, conservative white Southerners, as federal troops were withdrawn, regained control of every state in the South and Reconstruction ended on a note of failure as the civil rights of blacks were not secure.
wn.com/Ulysses_S._Grant -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other anti-communist countries. The Viet Cong (also known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The Vietnam People's Army (North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes.
The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of their wider strategy of containment. The North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong viewed the conflict as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state. American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned international borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, at the time of the Tet Offensive. After this, U.S. ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a policy known as Vietnamization. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued.
wn.com/Vietnam_War -
Waddy Thompson, Jr.
Waddy Thompson, Jr. (January 8, 1798 - November 23, 1868) was a U.S. Representative from South Carolina.
Born in Pickensville (now in Pickens County), Ninety-Six District, South Carolina. Thompson moved to Greenville with his parents in his infancy. He received his early education in neighboring schools, and was graduated from South Carolina College in 1814.
He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1819, beginning practice in Edgefield, South Carolina. He moved to Greenville, South Carolina, and continued the practice of law. He served as member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1826 to 1829. Thompson was elected solicitor of the western circuit in 1830.
Brigadier general of militia in 1832.
Thompson was elected as an Anti-Jacksonian to the 24th United States Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Warren R. Davis. He was reelected as a Whig to the 25th and 26th Congresses and served from September 10, 1835, to March 3, 1841.
He served as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs (26th Congress). He was not a candidate for renomination in 1840.
wn.com/Waddy_Thompson,_Jr. -
William J. Worth
William Jenkins Worth (March 1, 1794 – May 7, 1849) was a United States general during the Mexican-American War, War of 1812, and Second Seminole War.
Worth was born in 1794 in Hudson, New York, to Thomas Worth and Abigail Jenkins. Both of his parents were Quakers, but he rejected the pacifism of their faith. He received common schooling as a child and moved to Albany where he was working as a merchant when the War of 1812 began.
During the war he served as an aide to (then brigadier general) Winfield Scott, and developed a friendship with him. Worth later named his son Winfield Scott Worth. He distinguished himself at the battles of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane during the Niagara campaign. In the latter battle, he was seriously wounded by grapeshot in the thigh. He was not expected to survive, but after a year's confinement he emerged with the breveted rank of Major—though he would remain lame for the rest of his life. Also as a brevet Major Worth uttered his most famous words that now inscribed in West Point's "Bugle Notes", a book of knowledge all cadets must know by heart. They are as follows:
wn.com/William_J._Worth -
William Mervine
William Mervine (14 March 1791 – 15 September 1868) was a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy, whose career included service in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War.
Born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Mervine was appointed midshipman in January 1809. Serving on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812, he later cruised off Africa and South America, in the West Indies and in the Pacific.
While in command of the Savannah during the war with Mexico, 1846–47, he led a detachment of sailors and United States Marines against Monterey, California, and on 7 July 1846, took possession and hoisted the American flag over the city. On 7–9 October 1846, Mervine led 203 U.S. Marines, 147 American sailors, and volunteers in the invasion of Los Angeles where he lost the Battle of Dominguez Rancho. Fourteen Marines were killed. José Antonio Carrillo, a Californio rancher, led 50 Spanish Californio lancers in that defeat of Mervine and the American forces.
Serving also during the Civil War, he commanded the Gulf Blockading Squadron from 6 May 1861, until obliged by ill health to give up the command on 22 September 1861. He died at Utica, New York.
wn.com/William_Mervine -
Winfield Scott
Winfield Scott (June 13, 1786 – May 29, 1866) was a United States Army general, and unsuccessful presidential candidate of the Whig Party in 1852.
Known as "Old Fuss and Feathers" and the "Grand Old Man of the Army," he served on active duty as a general longer than any other man in American history, and many historians rate him the best American commander of his time. Over the course of his forty-seven-year career, he commanded forces in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Black Hawk War, the Second Seminole War, and, briefly, the American Civil War, conceiving the Union strategy known as the Anaconda Plan that would be used to defeat the Confederacy. He served as Commanding General of the United States Army for twenty years, longer than any other holder of the office.
A national hero after the Mexican-American War, he served as military governor of Mexico City. Such was his stature that, in 1852, the United States Whig Party passed over its own incumbent President of the United States, Millard Fillmore, to nominate Scott in the United States presidential election. Scott lost to Democrat Franklin Pierce in the general election, but remained a popular national figure, receiving a brevet promotion in 1856 to the rank of lieutenant general, becoming the first American since George Washington to hold that rank.
wn.com/Winfield_Scott -
World War I
World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.
wn.com/World_War_I -
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was the 12th President of the United States (1849–1850) and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass. He was a planter and slaveholder based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Known as "Old Rough and Ready," Taylor had a 40-year military career in the United States Army, serving in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, and the Second Seminole War. He achieved fame leading American troops to victory in the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Monterrey during the Mexican–American War.
As president, Taylor angered many Southerners by taking a moderate stance on the issue of slavery. He urged settlers in New Mexico and California to bypass the territorial stage and draft constitutions for statehood, setting the stage for the Compromise of 1850.
Taylor died July 9, 1850, 16 months after his inauguration; the third-shortest tenure of any President. He is thought to have died of gastroenteritis. President Taylor was succeeded by his Vice President, Millard Fillmore.
wn.com/Zachary_Taylor
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The Mexican-American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 88:53
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way.
http://wn.com/The_Mexican-American_War
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way.
Mexican American War - 1of6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:22
- Updated: 06 Dec 2012
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_1of6
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
- published: 29 Sep 2009
- views: 121961
- author: AllHistories
The Mexican American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 12:07
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
A look at the causes and effects of the Mexican-American War
http://wn.com/The_Mexican_American_War
A look at the causes and effects of the Mexican-American War
- published: 29 Oct 2012
- views: 498
- author: damasquack
Mexican American War - Manifest Destiny Choose Your Own Adventure
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:57
- Updated: 03 Dec 2012
A brief overview of the Mexican-American War, the Mexican Cession, and a little more...we'll look at the California Gold Rush, missionaries, and Mormons and how it all relates to the concept of Manifest Destiny.
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_Manifest_Destiny_Choose_Your_Own_Adventure
A brief overview of the Mexican-American War, the Mexican Cession, and a little more...we'll look at the California Gold Rush, missionaries, and Mormons and how it all relates to the concept of Manifest Destiny.
- published: 29 Jan 2012
- views: 2996
- author: Ryan Canton
Mexican American War - 2of6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:48
- Updated: 29 Nov 2012
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_2of6
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
- published: 29 Sep 2009
- views: 70408
- author: AllHistories
Mexican American War - 3of6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:19
- Updated: 13 Nov 2012
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_3of6
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
- published: 29 Sep 2009
- views: 56499
- author: AllHistories
The Mexican-American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:23
- Updated: 12 Nov 2012
Timeline of the Mexican-American War
http://wn.com/The_Mexican-American_War
Timeline of the Mexican-American War
- published: 28 Jan 2008
- views: 25935
- author: glendale92
Mexican American War - 4of6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:37
- Updated: 17 Nov 2012
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_4of6
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
- published: 29 Sep 2009
- views: 50326
- author: AllHistories
Mexican American War Documentary
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 15:00
- Updated: 04 Dec 2012
For Mahtomedi Apush 2011 Works Cited is at the end of video
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_Documentary
For Mahtomedi Apush 2011 Works Cited is at the end of video
- published: 17 May 2011
- views: 6796
- author: MMA9587
Mexican American War - 5of6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:36
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_5of6
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
- published: 29 Sep 2009
- views: 45068
- author: AllHistories
Glenn Spencer - The Second Mexican-American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:45
- Updated: 02 Nov 2012
American Renaissance conference, 2000. Please visit amren.com to order the full-length videos of these historic speeches, and watch this space for how you can download mp3 audio.
http://wn.com/Glenn_Spencer_The_Second_Mexican-American_War
American Renaissance conference, 2000. Please visit amren.com to order the full-length videos of these historic speeches, and watch this space for how you can download mp3 audio.
- published: 30 Jun 2008
- views: 7425
- author: AmRenVideo
Mexican American War - 6of6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:54
- Updated: 08 Nov 2012
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_6of6
One of the most controversial conflicts in US history, the Mexican-American War erupted as President James K. Polk sought to extend the borders of the nation to the Pacific, taking by force whatever territory stood in the way. This History Channel special, hosted by Oscar de la Hoya, looks at the war from the perspective of both countries, and chronicles the fighting from its inception to its conclusion with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
- published: 30 Sep 2009
- views: 54789
- author: AllHistories
Halo: Mexican American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:22
- Updated: 28 Nov 2012
A cool Halo movie made as a history project for school on the Mexican American War. if u make it full screen it will be easier to read.
http://wn.com/Halo_Mexican_American_War
A cool Halo movie made as a history project for school on the Mexican American War. if u make it full screen it will be easier to read.
- published: 28 Mar 2007
- views: 5257
- author: hipposaretasty
Mexican American War Documentary Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:22
- Updated: 13 Jul 2012
Watch Free Full YouTube Documentaries at hotdocumentaries.com It's the Biggest Documentary Website In The World. They Uploaded 3160 Documentaries in just three months. "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use."
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_Documentary_Part_1
Watch Free Full YouTube Documentaries at hotdocumentaries.com It's the Biggest Documentary Website In The World. They Uploaded 3160 Documentaries in just three months. "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use."
- published: 18 Apr 2012
- views: 247
- author: hdlive60
The Mexican-American War.avi
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:45
- Updated: 03 Nov 2012
http://wn.com/The_Mexican-American_Waravi
- published: 25 Oct 2011
- views: 385
- author: damasquack
Warfare Through The Ages: The Mexican-American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:08
- Updated: 30 Oct 2012
Though Mexican-American War was occurred between 1846 and 1848, the majority of the fighting took place between April 1846 and September 1847. Causes: The causes of the Mexican-American War can be traced back to Texas winning its independence from Mexico in 1836. After the end of the war, Mexico refused to acknowledge the new Republic of Texas, but was prevented from taking military action due to the United States, Great Britain, and France conferring diplomatic recognition. For the next nine years, many in Texas favored joining the United States, however Washington did not take action due to fears of increasing sectional conflict and angering the Mexicans. In 1845, following the election of the pro-annexation candidate, James K. Polk, Texas was admitted to the Union. Shortly thereafter, a dispute began with Mexico over the southern border of Texas. Both sides sent troops to the area, and on April 25, 1846, a US cavalry patrol, led by Captain Seth Thornton, was attacked by Mexican troops. Following the "Thornton Affair," Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war, which was issued on May 13. Taylor's Campaign in Northeastern Mexico: On May 8, 1846, US General Zachary Taylor was moving his 2400-man army to relieve Fort Texas, when he was intercepted at Palo Alto by 3400 Mexicans commanded by General Mariano Arista. In the battle that ensued Taylor defeated Arista, forcing his army from the field. The battle continued the next day at Resaca de la Palma, with Taylor's men ...
http://wn.com/Warfare_Through_The_Ages_The_Mexican-American_War
Though Mexican-American War was occurred between 1846 and 1848, the majority of the fighting took place between April 1846 and September 1847. Causes: The causes of the Mexican-American War can be traced back to Texas winning its independence from Mexico in 1836. After the end of the war, Mexico refused to acknowledge the new Republic of Texas, but was prevented from taking military action due to the United States, Great Britain, and France conferring diplomatic recognition. For the next nine years, many in Texas favored joining the United States, however Washington did not take action due to fears of increasing sectional conflict and angering the Mexicans. In 1845, following the election of the pro-annexation candidate, James K. Polk, Texas was admitted to the Union. Shortly thereafter, a dispute began with Mexico over the southern border of Texas. Both sides sent troops to the area, and on April 25, 1846, a US cavalry patrol, led by Captain Seth Thornton, was attacked by Mexican troops. Following the "Thornton Affair," Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war, which was issued on May 13. Taylor's Campaign in Northeastern Mexico: On May 8, 1846, US General Zachary Taylor was moving his 2400-man army to relieve Fort Texas, when he was intercepted at Palo Alto by 3400 Mexicans commanded by General Mariano Arista. In the battle that ensued Taylor defeated Arista, forcing his army from the field. The battle continued the next day at Resaca de la Palma, with Taylor's men ...
- published: 16 Sep 2011
- views: 2583
- author: RevBillyRayCollins
Effects of the Mexican American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:14
- Updated: 07 Apr 2011
History project
http://wn.com/Effects_of_the_Mexican_American_War
History project
- published: 07 Apr 2011
- views: 317
- author: 15Eagle22Raptor35JSF
Mexican American War Start
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:13
- Updated: 14 Oct 2012
History Teachers - Buy history resources for your classes including worksheets, homeworks, tests, and presentations at: www.teacherspayteachers.com Find extra credit materials for your own classroom and make a donation at: mrgrayhistory.blogspot.com
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_Start
History Teachers - Buy history resources for your classes including worksheets, homeworks, tests, and presentations at: www.teacherspayteachers.com Find extra credit materials for your own classroom and make a donation at: mrgrayhistory.blogspot.com
- published: 08 Mar 2011
- views: 958
- author: mrgrayhistory101
Marine Corps Birthday Pageant- The Mexican American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:47
- Updated: 21 Nov 2011
The Marine representing The Mexican American War in the annual Kaneohe Marine Corps Base Hawaii (KMCBH) Marine Corps Birthday Pageant on November 6, 2009.
http://wn.com/Marine_Corps_Birthday_Pageant_The_Mexican_American_War
The Marine representing The Mexican American War in the annual Kaneohe Marine Corps Base Hawaii (KMCBH) Marine Corps Birthday Pageant on November 6, 2009.
- published: 04 Dec 2009
- views: 1278
- author: sarahinhi
13-3 Mexican-American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:32
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
This episode looks at the causes, course and consequences of the Mexican-American War.
http://wn.com/13-3_Mexican-American_War
This episode looks at the causes, course and consequences of the Mexican-American War.
- published: 31 Jul 2012
- views: 224
- author: jgatfhs
Mexican American War Buena Vista
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:01
- Updated: 09 Apr 2012
http://wn.com/Mexican_American_War_Buena_Vista
- published: 08 Mar 2011
- views: 175
- author: mrgrayhistory101
ep4 Vicky2 AHD: Mexican - American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 32:38
- Updated: 12 Nov 2012
We got to war with Mexico to acquire our remaining cores. Victoria 2: www.paradoxplaza.com A House Divided Expansion: www.paradoxplaza.com STEAM (Vicky and A House Divided) store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com
http://wn.com/ep4_Vicky2_AHD_Mexican_American_War
We got to war with Mexico to acquire our remaining cores. Victoria 2: www.paradoxplaza.com A House Divided Expansion: www.paradoxplaza.com STEAM (Vicky and A House Divided) store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com
- published: 16 Mar 2012
- views: 473
- author: ShinEmperor
The Mexican - American War
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:20
- Updated: 17 Dec 2011
this is a thing i did for a history project enjoy!
http://wn.com/The_Mexican_American_War
this is a thing i did for a history project enjoy!
- published: 15 Feb 2008
- views: 3824
- author: AnBcreations
photo: AP / Bullit Marquez
06 Dec 2012
NEW BATAAN, Philippines - A powerful typhoon that washed away emergency shelters, a military camp and possibly entire families in the southern Philippines has killed almost 350 people with nearly 400 missing, authorities said Thursday. More bodies were retrieved from hardest-hit Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental provinces and six others impacted by Tuesday's storm, the Office of Civil Defense reported ... "It was horrible ... --- ... Location....(size: 8.0Kb)
photo: AP / Photo
06 Dec 2012
Lionel Messi missed out on a chance to match Gerd Mueller's record of 85 goals in a calendar year as he was injured during Barcelona's draw with Benfica. Messi, who hurt his left knee in a collision with Benfica keeper Artur, was taken off 30 minutes after coming on as a second-half substitute. Benfica knew a win would see them finish second behind Barca in Group G ... FC Barcelona's official Twitter account tweeted after the Benfica game....(size: 2.5Kb)
photo: US Navy / Matthew Stroup
05 Dec 2012
ISAF today issued an operational update on combat operations in Afghanistan. It noted, among other things, that Afghan and coalition security forces conducted an operation in Watahpur district yesterday that resulted in the “death of insurgent leader Mohammad Yar Gul.” ... Mohammed Yar Gul coordinated the movement of insurgent fighters throughout Kunar province ... ....(size: 1.7Kb)
photo: White House / Pete Souza
06 Dec 2012
Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday that the administration believes budget deficits are so large that they cannot be closed without boosting tax rates on the highest-earning two per cent of Americans ... "There's no prospect in an agreement that doesn't involve those rates going up on the top two per cent of the wealthiest Americans," Geithner said in an interview on CNBC....(size: 19.2Kb)
Sacramento Bee
08 Dec 2012
My dad's Mexican and my mom is black ... I went to a mostly Hispanic elementary school, and when I was around his side of the family, I looked Mexican ... When someone asks the oddly worded question, "What are you?" I reply with "Black and Mexican." ... But by embracing my Latina heritage, I'm not shirking my African-American heritage. I grew up with a Mexican father in a Mexican neighborhood ... Race? Black/African American....(size: 6.4Kb)
CNN
08 Dec 2012
"We know each other really well and it's going to be a war," predicted Marquez after the weigh-in ... He is anxious to get his career back on track, with the prospect of a showdown with American superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr ... But his words were drowned out by the Mexican supporters for Marquez, who is 54-6-1 with 39 KOs in his lengthy career ... War on drugs a trillion-dollar failure....(size: 9.2Kb)
Yahoo Daily News
08 Dec 2012
They have been forcibly resettled through the ages and were imprisoned and executed in concentration camps during the Second World War ... It's not entirely clear how Derby Line and Stanstead became the focus for Roma, but until repeated crossings like the one in October led the Canadians to beef up security on their side, agents didn't have the resources available to their American counterparts....(size: 7.4Kb)
Sacramento Bee
08 Dec 2012
Kennedy High School, Chicago, senior John Gonzalez, who identifies himself as Mexican and white, feels that being multiracial is to his advantage since each race has its perks. "I know that if I put down Mexican, I'll have a better chance getting into some schools than if I would say I'm (only) white." ... White + Black or African American ... White + American Indian and Alaska Native ... Black or African American + Some other race....(size: 6.8Kb)
The Dallas Morning News
08 Dec 2012
One is an El Paso novelist. The other lives in Juárez but crosses the border on weekends to care for his dying uncle ... They blather about who is the “real Mexican,” the hyphenated American or the Mexican national whose Iraqi grandfather immigrated to the country from Israel ... At worst, it was a bothersome and porous security apparatus, and Americans especially had a free pass to travel between the two cities and countries ... TOP PICKS ... ....(size: 4.1Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
08 Dec 2012
At the table, surrounded by dozens of friends, Pacquiao stuck a fork in a leg of chicken and bit down as one friend remarked how angry Marquez looked — the residue perhaps of warring with the Filipino through 36 rounds with two losses and a draw to show for it. Marquez, 39, has bulked up as never before for this final battle, raising the question of how the Mexican's punches will affect Pacquiao....(size: 36.6Kb)
Japan Times
08 Dec 2012
Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited a museum in Tokyo on Thursday to view an exhibition of artifacts and everyday objects created by Japanese-Americans during World War II at their internment camps in the United States....(size: 1.1Kb)
MSNBC
08 Dec 2012
CHILLICOTHE Ill -- It's been 71 years since thousands of Americans were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. World War II Veterans looked back on the tragic day and their personal experience serving our country ... More than 2,000 Americans were killed with more than 1,000 injured ... "What did I know about world policies or the war ... Another World War 2 ......(size: 2.6Kb)
Belfast Telegraph
08 Dec 2012
Psy has formally apologised for rapping incendiary lyrics about the death of Americans at a show years ago. The South Korean Gangnam Style YouTube star was part of a concert in 2004 in the midst of widespread anti-American sentiment throughout his country ... thousands of troops to aid America in the war....(size: 1.5Kb)
The Washington Post
08 Dec 2012
South Korean rapper and Internet sensation PSY is apologizing to Americans for participating in anti-U.S ... military presence in South Korea during the early stages of the Iraq war ... The 34-year-old rapper says the protests were part of a “deeply emotional” reaction to the war and the death of two Korean school girls, who were killed when a U.S ... He noted anti-war sentiment was high around the world at the time....(size: 4.5Kb)
CNN
08 Dec 2012
Korean pop star PSY -- who rose to fame through his YouTube record-breaking video "Gangnam Style" -- apologized Friday for anti-American lyrics he rapped back in 2004 ... It included lyrics calling for the death of American troops serving in Iraq, not long after news of the brutal slaying of a South Korean hostage by Iraqi insurgents -- an incident which sparked anti-American sentiment in South Korea....(size: 6.7Kb)
my SA
08 Dec 2012
South Korean rapper and Internet sensation PSY is apologizing to Americans for participating in anti-U.S ... military presence in South Korea during the early stages of the Iraq war ... The 34-year-old rapper says the protests were part of a "deeply emotional" reaction to the war and the death of two Korean school girls, who were killed when a U.S ... "And I hope they and all Americans can accept my apology," he wrote....(size: 3.6Kb)
NZ Herald
08 Dec 2012
South Korean rapper and internet sensation Psy has apologised to Americans for participating in anti-US protests several years ago. Park Jae-sang, who performs as Psy, issued a statement after reports surfaced that he had participated in concerts protesting the US military presence in South Korea during the early stages of the Iraq war ... "And I hope they and all Americans can accept my apology," he wrote....(size: 3.9Kb)
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The Mexican–American War, also known as the First American Intervention, the Mexican War, or the U.S.–Mexican War,[4][5] was an armed conflict between the United States of America and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 1836 Texas Revolution.
Combat operations lasted a year and a half, from spring 1846 to fall 1847. American forces quickly occupied New Mexico and California, then invaded parts of Northeastern Mexico and Northwest Mexico; meanwhile, the Pacific Squadron conducted a blockade, and took control of several garrisons on the Pacific coast further south in Baja California. After Mexico would still not agree to the cession of its northern territories, another American army captured Mexico City, and the war ended in victory of the U.S.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo specified the major consequence of the war: the forced Mexican Cession of the territories of Alta California and New Mexico to the U.S. in exchange for $18 million. In addition, the United States forgave debt owed by the Mexican government to U.S. citizens. Mexico accepted the Rio Grande as its national border, and the loss of Texas.
American territorial expansion to the Pacific coast had been the goal of President James K. Polk, the leader of the Democratic Party.[6] However, the war was highly controversial in the U.S., with the Whig Party and anti-slavery elements strongly opposed. Heavy American casualties and high monetary cost were also criticized. The political aftermath of the war raised the slavery issue in the U.S., leading to intense debates that pointed to civil war; the Compromise of 1850 provided a brief respite.
In Mexico, terminology for the war include (primera) intervención estadounidense en México (United States' (First) Intervention in Mexico), invasión estadounidense a México (The United States' Invasion of Mexico), and guerra del 47 (The War of 1847).
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Background[link]
Having just attained Independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico was fraught with internal struggles that verged on civil war, however it was relatively united in refusing to recognize the independence of Texas. Mexico threatened war with the U.S. if it annexed Texas.[citation needed] Meanwhile, President Polk's spirit of Manifest Destiny was focusing U.S. interest on westward expansion.
Designs on California[link]
In 1842, the American minister in Mexico Waddy Thompson, Jr. suggested Mexico might be willing to cede California to settle debts, saying: "As to Texas I regard it as of very little value compared with California, the richest, the most beautiful and the healthiest country in the world ... with the acquisition of Upper California we should have the same ascendency on the Pacific ... France and England both have had their eyes upon it." President John Tyler's administration suggested a tripartite pact that would settle the Oregon boundary dispute and provide for the cession of the port of San Francisco; Lord Aberdeen declined to participate but said Britain had no objection to U.S. territorial acquisition there.[7]
For his part, the British minister in Mexico Richard Pakenham wrote in 1841 to Lord Palmerston urging "to establish an English population in the magnificent Territory of Upper California," saying that "no part of the World offering greater natural advantages for the establishment of an English colony ... by all means desirable ... that California, once ceasing to belong to Mexico, should not fall into the hands of any power but England ... daring and adventurous speculators in the United States have already turned their thoughts in this direction." But by the time the letter reached London, Sir Robert Peel's Tory government with a Little England policy had come to power and rejected the proposal as expensive and a potential source of conflict.[8][9]
Republic of Texas[link]
In 1810, Moses Austin, a banker from Missouri, was granted a large tract of land in Texas, but died before he could bring his plan of recruiting American settlers for the land to fruition. His son, Stephen F. Austin, succeeded and brought over 300 families into Texas, which started the steady trend of American migration into the Texas frontier. Austin's colony was the most successful of several colonies authorized by the Mexican government. The Mexican government intended the anglophone settlers to act as a buffer between the existing Mexican residents and the marauding Comanches, but the anglo colonists tended to settle where there was decent farmland and trade connections with American Louisiana, rather than eastward where they would have been an effective buffer. In 1829, as a result of the large influx of American immigrants, the Americans outnumbered Mexicans in the Texas territory. The Mexican government decided to reinstate the property tax, increase tariffs on U.S. shipped goods, and prohibit slavery. The settlers and many Mexican businessmen in the region rejected the demands, which led to Mexico closing Texas to additional immigration. However, Americans continued to flow into the Texas territory.
In 1834, General Antonio López de Santa Anna became the centralist dictator of Mexico, abandoning the federal system. He decided to quash the semi-independence of Texas, having succeeded in doing so in Coahuila (in 1824, Mexico had merged Texas and Coahuila into the massive state of Coahuila y Tejas). Finally, Stephen F. Austin called Texans to arms; they declared independence from Mexico in 1836, and after Santa Anna defeated the Texans at the Alamo, he was defeated by the Texan Army commanded by General Sam Houston and captured at the Battle of San Jacinto and signed a treaty recognizing Texas independence. Texas consolidated its status as an independent republic and received official recognition from Britain, France, and the U.S., which all advised Mexico not to try to reconquer the new nation. Most Texans wanted to join the U.S. but annexation of Texas was contentious in the U.S. Congress, where Whigs were largely opposed. In 1845 Texas agreed to the offer of annexation by the U.S. Congress. Texas became the 28th state on December 29, 1845.[10]
Origins of the war[link]
The Mexican government had long warned the United States that annexation of Texas would mean war. Because the Mexican Congress had refused to recognize Texan independence, Mexico saw Texas as a rebellious territory that would be retaken. Britain and France, which recognized the independence of Texas, repeatedly tried to dissuade Mexico from declaring war. When Texas joined the U.S. as a state in 1845, the Mexican government broke diplomatic relations with the U.S.
The border of Texas as an independent state had never been settled. The Republic of Texas claimed land up to the Rio Grande based on the Treaties of Velasco, but Mexico refused to accept these as valid, claiming the border as the Nueces River. Reference to the Rio Grande boundary of Texas was omitted from the U.S. Congress' annexation resolution to help secure passage after the annexation treaty failed in the Senate. President Polk claimed the Rio Grande boundary, and this provoked a dispute with Mexico. In June 1845, Polk sent General Zachary Taylor to Texas, and by October 3,500 Americans were on the Nueces River, prepared to defend Texas from a Mexican invasion. Polk wanted to protect the border and also coveted the continent clear to the Pacific Ocean. Polk had instructed the Pacific Squadron to seize the California ports if Mexico declared war while staying on good terms with the inhabitants. At the same time he wrote to Thomas Larkin, the American consul in Alta California, disclaiming American ambitions in California but offering to support independence from Mexico or voluntary accession to the U.S., and warning that a British or French takeover would be opposed.[11]
To end another war-scare (Fifty-Four Forty or Fight) with Britain over Oregon Country, Polk signed the Oregon Treaty dividing the territory, angering northern Democrats who felt he was prioritizing Southern expansion over Northern expansion.
In the winter of 1845–46, the federally commissioned explorer John C. Frémont and a group of armed men appeared in California. After telling the Mexican governor and Larkin he was merely buying supplies on the way to Oregon, he instead entered the populated area of California and visited Santa Cruz and the Salinas Valley, explaining he had been looking for a seaside home for his mother.[12] The Mexican authorities became alarmed and ordered him to leave. Fremont responded by building a fort on Gavilan Peak and raising the American flag. Larkin sent word that his actions were counterproductive. Fremont left California in March but returned to California and assisted the Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma, where many American immigrants stated that they were playing “the Texas game” and declared California’s independence from Mexico.
On November 10, 1845,[13] Polk sent John Slidell, a secret representative, to Mexico City with an offer of $25 million ($671,538,462 today) for the Rio Grande border in Texas and Mexico’s provinces of Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México. U.S. expansionists wanted California to thwart British ambitions in the area and to gain a port on the Pacific Ocean. Polk authorized Slidell to forgive the $3 million ($81 million today) owed to U.S. citizens for damages caused by the Mexican War of Independence[14] and pay another $25 to $30 million ($672 million to $806 million today) in exchange for the two territories.[15]
Mexico was not inclined nor able to negotiate. In 1846 alone, the presidency changed hands four times, the war ministry six times, and the finance ministry sixteen times.[16] However, Mexican public opinion and all political factions agreed that selling the territories to the United States would tarnish the national honor.[17] Mexicans who opposed direct conflict with the United States, including President José Joaquín de Herrera, were viewed as traitors.[18] Military opponents of de Herrera, supported by populist newspapers, considered Slidell's presence in Mexico City an insult. When de Herrera considered receiving Slidell to settle the problem of Texas annexation peacefully, he was accused of treason and deposed. After a more nationalistic government under General Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga came to power, it publicly reaffirmed Mexico's claim to Texas;[18] Slidell, convinced that Mexico should be "chastised", returned to the U.S.[19]
Conflict over the Nueces Strip[link]
President James K. Polk ordered General Taylor and his forces south to the Rio Grande, entering the territory that Mexicans disputed. Mexico laid claim to the Nueces River—about 150 mi (240 km) north of the Rio Grande—as its border with Texas; the U.S. claimed it was the Rio Grande, citing the 1836 Treaties of Velasco. Mexico, however, under the leadership of General Lorenzo Chlamon,[20] rejected the treaties and refused to negotiate; it claimed all of Texas. Taylor ignored Mexican demands to withdraw to the Nueces. He constructed a makeshift fort (later known as Fort Brown/Fort Texas) on the banks of the Rio Grande opposite the city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Mexican forces under General Mariano Arista prepared for war. On April 25, 1846, a 2,000-strong Mexican cavalry detachment attacked a 70-man U.S. patrol that had been sent into the contested territory north of the Rio Grande and south of the Nueces River. The Mexican cavalry routed the patrol, killing 16 U.S. soldiers in what later became known as the Thornton Affair, after Captain Thornton, who was in command.[21]
Declaration of war[link]
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Polk received word of the Thornton Affair, which, added to the Mexican government's rejection of Slidell, Polk believed, constituted a casus belli (case for war).[22] His message to Congress on May 11, 1846 stated that "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil."[23][24] Congress approved the declaration of war on May 13, with southern Democrats in strong support. Sixty-seven Whigs voted against the war on a key slavery amendment,[25] but on the final passage only 14 Whigs voted no,[25] including Rep. John Quincy Adams. Congress declared war on Mexico on May 13, 1846 after only having a few hours to debate. Although President Paredes's issuance of a manifesto on May 23 is sometimes considered the declaration of war, Mexico officially declared war by Congress on July 7.
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna[link]
Once the U.S. declared war on Mexico, Antonio López de Santa Anna wrote to Mexico City saying he no longer had aspirations to the presidency, but would eagerly use his military experience to fight off the foreign invasion of Mexico as he had before. President Valentín Gómez Farías was desperate enough to accept the offer and allowed Santa Anna to return. Meanwhile, Santa Anna had secretly been dealing with representatives of the U.S., pledging that if he were allowed back in Mexico through the U.S. naval blockades, he would work to sell all contested territory to the United States at a reasonable price.[26] Once back in Mexico at the head of an army, Santa Anna reneged on both agreements. Santa Anna declared himself president again and unsuccessfully tried to fight off the U.S. invasion.
Opposition to the war[link]
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In the U.S., increasingly divided by sectional rivalry, the war was a partisan issue and an essential element in the origins of the American Civil War. Most Whigs in the North and South opposed it;[27] most Democrats supported it.[28] Southern Democrats, animated by a popular belief in Manifest Destiny, supported it in hope of adding slave-owning territory to the South and avoiding being outnumbered by the faster-growing North. John O'Sullivan, the editor of the "Democratic Review", coined this phrase in its context, stating that it must be "Our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."[29] Northern anti-slavery elements feared the rise of a Slave Power; Whigs generally wanted to strengthen the economy with industrialization, not expand it with more land. Democrats wanted more land; northern Democrats were attracted by the possibilities in the far northwest. Joshua Giddings led a group of dissenters in Washington D.C. He called the war with Mexico "an aggressive, unholy, and unjust war," and voted against supplying soldiers and weapons. He said:
In the murder of Mexicans upon their own soil, or in robbing them of their country, I can take no part either now or here-after. The guilt of these crimes must rest on others. I will not participate in them.[30]
Fellow Whig Abraham Lincoln contested the causes for the war and demanded to know exactly where Thornton had been attacked and American blood shed. "Show me the spot," he demanded. Whig leader Robert Toombs of Georgia declared:
This war is nondescript .... We charge the President with usurping the war-making power ... with seizing a country ... which had been for centuries, and was then in the possession of the Mexicans .... Let us put a check upon this lust of dominion. We had territory enough, Heaven knew.[31]
Northern abolitionists attacked the war as an attempt by slave-owners to strengthen the grip of slavery and thus ensure their continued influence in the federal government. Acting on his convictions, Henry David Thoreau was jailed for his refusal to pay taxes to support the war, and penned his famous essay, Civil Disobedience.
Former President John Quincy Adams also expressed his belief that the war was primarily an effort to expand slavery in a speech he gave before the House on May 25, 1836.[32] In response to such concerns, Democratic Congressman David Wilmot introduced the Wilmot Proviso, which aimed to prohibit slavery in new territory acquired from Mexico. Wilmot's proposal did not pass Congress, but it spurred further hostility between the factions.
Defense of the war[link]
Besides alleging that the actions of Mexican military forces within the disputed boundary lands north of the Rio Grande constituted an attack on American soil, the war's advocates viewed the territories of New Mexico and California as only nominally Mexican possessions with very tenuous ties to Mexico, and as actually unsettled, ungoverned, and unprotected frontier lands, whose non-aboriginal population, where there was any at all, comprised a substantial—in places even a majority—American component, and which were feared to be under imminent threat of acquisition by America's rival on the continent, the British.
President Polk reprised these arguments in his Third Annual Message to Congress on December 7, 1847,[33] in which he scrupulously detailed his administration's position on the origins of the conflict, the measures the U.S. had taken to avoid hostilities, and the justification for declaring war. He also elaborated upon the many outstanding financial claims by American citizens against Mexico and argued that, in view of the country's insolvency, the cession of some large portion of its northern territories was the only indemnity realistically available as compensation. This helped to rally Congressional Democrats to his side, ensuring passage of his war measures and bolstering support for the war in the U.S.
Opening hostilities[link]
The Siege of Fort Texas began on May 3. Mexican artillery at Matamoros opened fire on Fort Texas, which replied with its own guns. The bombardment continued for 160 hours[34] and expanded as Mexican forces gradually surrounded the fort. Thirteen U.S. soldiers were injured during the bombardment, and two were killed.[34] Among the dead was Jacob Brown, after whom the fort was later named.[35]
On May 8, Zachary Taylor and 2,400 troops arrived to relieve the fort.[36] However, Arista rushed north and intercepted him with a force of 3,400 at Palo Alto. The Americans employed "flying artillery", the American term for horse artillery, a type of mobile light artillery that was mounted on horse carriages with the entire crew riding horses into battle. It had a devastating effect on the Mexican army. The Mexicans replied with cavalry skirmishes and their own artillery. The U.S. flying artillery somewhat demoralized the Mexican side, and seeking terrain more to their advantage, the Mexicans retreated to the far side of a dry riverbed (resaca) during the night. It provided a natural fortification, but during the retreat, Mexican troops were scattered, making communication difficult. During the Battle of Resaca de la Palma the next day, the two sides engaged in fierce hand to hand combat. The U.S. cavalry managed to capture the Mexican artillery, causing the Mexican side to retreat—a retreat that turned into a rout.[34] Fighting on unfamiliar terrain, his troops fleeing in retreat, Arista found it impossible to rally his forces. Mexican casualties were heavy, and the Mexicans were forced to abandon their artillery and baggage. Fort Brown inflicted additional casualties as the withdrawing troops passed by the fort. Many Mexican soldiers drowned trying to swim across the Rio Grande.
Conduct of the war[link]
See also: Mexican–American War campaigns
After the declaration of war, U.S. forces invaded Mexican territory on two main fronts. The U.S. War Department sent a U.S. cavalry force under Stephen W. Kearny to invade western Mexico from Jefferson Barracks and Fort Leavenworth, reinforced by a Pacific fleet under John D. Sloat. This was done primarily because of concerns that Britain might also try to seize the area. Two more forces, one under John E. Wool and the other under Taylor, were ordered to occupy Mexico as far south as the city of Monterrey.
California campaign[link]
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Although the U.S. declared war against Mexico on May 13, 1846, it took over a month (until the middle of June 1846) for definite word of war to get to California. American consul Thomas O. Larkin, stationed in Monterey, on hearing rumors of war tried to maintain the peace between the States and the small Mexican military garrison commanded by José Castro. U.S. Army captain John C. Frémont, with about 60 well-armed men, had entered California in December, 1845, and was slowly marching to Oregon when he received word that war between Mexico and the U.S. was imminent. So began his chapter of the war, the "Bear Flag Revolt."[37]
On June 15, 1846, some thirty settlers, mostly American citizens, staged a revolt and seized the small Mexican garrison in Sonoma. They raised the "Bear Flag" of the California Republic over Sonoma. The republic was in existence scarcely more than a week before the U.S. Army, led by Frémont, took over on June 23. The California state flag today is based on this original Bear Flag and still contains the words, "California Republic".
Commodore John Drake Sloat, upon hearing of imminent war and the revolt in Sonoma, ordered his naval and marine forces to occupy Monterey, the capital, on July 7 and raise the flag of the U.S.; San Francisco, then called Yerba Buena, was occupied on July 9. On July 15, Sloat transferred his command to Commodore Robert F. Stockton, a much more aggressive leader, who put Frémont's forces under his orders. On July 19, Frémont's "California Battalion" swelled to about 160 additional men from newly arrived settlers near Sacramento, and he entered Monterey in a joint operation with some of Stockton's sailors and marines. The word had been received: war was official. The U.S. forces easily took over the north of California; within days they controlled San Francisco, Sonoma, and the privately owned Sutter's Fort in Sacramento.
From Alta California (the present-day American state of California), Mexican General José Castro and Governor Pío Pico fled southward. When Stockton's forces, sailing southward to San Diego, stopped in San Pedro, he sent 50 U.S. Marines ashore; this force entered Los Angeles unresisted on August 13, 1846. With the success of this so-called "Siege of Los Angeles", the nearly bloodless conquest of California seemed complete.
Stockton, however, left too small a force in Los Angeles, and the Californios, acting on their own, and without help from Mexico, led by José María Flores, forced the American garrison to retreat, late in September. The rancho vaqueros who had banded together to defend their land fought as Californio lancers; they were a force the Americans had not anticipated. More than three hundred American reinforcements, sent by Stockton and led by Captain William Mervine, U.S.N., were repulsed in the Battle of Dominguez Rancho, fought from October 7 through 9, 1846, near San Pedro. Fourteen American Marines were killed.
Meanwhile, General Stephen W. Kearny, with a squadron of 139 dragoons that he had led on a grueling march across New Mexico, Arizona, and the Sonoran Desert, finally reached California on December 6, 1846, and fought in a small battle with Californio lancers at the Battle of San Pasqual near San Diego, California, where 22 of Kearny's troops were killed.
Kearny's command was bloodied and in poor condition but pushed on until they had to establish a defensive position on "Mule" Hill near present-day Escondido. The Californios besieged the dragoons for four days until Commodore Stockton's relief force arrived. The resupplied, combined American force marched north from San Diego on December 29 and entered the Los Angeles area on January 8, 1847,[38] linking up with Frémont's men there. American forces totaling 607 soldiers and marines fought and defeated a Californio force of about 300 men under the command of Captain-general Flores in the decisive Battle of Rio San Gabriel.[39] The next day, January 9, 1847, the Americans fought and won the Battle of La Mesa. On January 12, the last significant body of Californios surrendered to U.S. forces. That marked the end of armed resistance in California, and the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed the next day, on January 13, 1847.
Pacific Coast campaign[link]
USS Independence assisted in the blockade of the Mexican Pacific coast, capturing the Mexican ship Correo and a launch on 16 May 1847. She supported the capture of Guaymas, Mexico, on 19 October 1847 and landed bluejackets and Marines to occupy Mazatlán, Mexico on 11 November 1847. After upper California was secure most of the Pacific Squadron proceeded down the California coast capturing all major Baja California cities and capturing or destroying nearly all Mexican vessels in the Gulf of California. Other ports, not on the peninsula, were taken as well. The objective of the Pacific Coast Campaign was to capture Mazatlan, a major supply base for Mexican forces. Numerous Mexican ships were also captured by this squadron with the USS Cyane given credit for 18 captures and numerous destroyed ships.[40] Entering the Gulf of California, Independence, Congress and Cyane seized La Paz captured and burned the small Mexican fleet at Guaymas. Within a month, they cleared the Gulf of hostile ships, destroying or capturing 30 vessels. Later on their sailors and marines captured the town of Mazatlan, Mexico, on 11 November 1847. A Mexican campaign under Manuel Pineda to retake the various captured ports resulted in several small clashes (Battle of Mulege, Battle of La Paz, Battle of San José del Cabo) and two sieges (Siege of La Paz, Siege of San José del Cabo) in which the Pacific Squadron ships provided artillery support. U.S. garrisons remained in control of the ports and following reinforcement, Lt. Col. Henry S. Burton marched out, rescued captured Americans, captured Pineda and on March 31, defeated and dispersed remaining Mexican forces at the Skirmish of Todos Santos, unaware the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been signed in February 1848. When the American garrisons were evacuated following the treaty, many Mexicans that had been supporting the American cause and had thought Lower California would also be annexed like Upper California, were evacuated with them to Monterey.
Northeastern Mexico[link]
The defeats at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma caused political turmoil in Mexico, turmoil which Antonio López de Santa Anna used to revive his political career and return from self-imposed exile in Cuba in mid-August 1846.[41] He promised the U.S. that if allowed to pass through the blockade, he would negotiate a peaceful conclusion to the war and sell the New Mexico and Alta California territories to the U.S.[42] Once Santa Anna arrived in Mexico City, however, he reneged and offered his services to the Mexican government. Then, after being appointed commanding general, he reneged again and seized the presidency.
Led by Taylor, 2,300 U.S. troops crossed the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo) after some initial difficulties in obtaining river transport. His soldiers occupied the city of Matamoros, then Camargo (where the soldiery suffered the first of many problems with disease) and then proceeded south and besieged the city of Monterrey. The hard-fought Battle of Monterrey resulted in serious losses on both sides. The American light artillery was ineffective against the stone fortifications of the city. The Mexican forces were under General Pedro de Ampudia and repulsed Taylor's best infantry division at Fort Teneria. American soldiers, including many West Pointers, had never engaged in urban warfare before and they marched straight down the open streets, where they were annihilated by Mexican defenders well-hidden in Monterrey's thick adobe homes.[43] Two days later, they changed their urban warfare tactics. Texan soldiers had fought in a Mexican city before and advised Taylor's generals that the Americans needed to "mouse hole" through the city's homes. In other words, they needed to punch holes in the side or roofs of the homes and fight hand to hand inside the structures. This method proved successful and Ampudia eventually surrendered.[44]
Eventually, these actions drove and trapped Ampudia's men into the city's central plaza, where howitzer shelling forced Ampudia to negotiate. Taylor agreed to allow the Mexican Army to evacuate and to an eight-week armistice in return for the surrender of the city. Under pressure from Washington, Taylor broke the armistice and occupied the city of Saltillo, southwest of Monterrey. Santa Anna blamed the loss of Monterrey and Saltillo on Ampudia and demoted him to command a small artillery battalion. On February 22, 1847, Santa Anna personally marched north to fight Taylor with 20,000 men. Taylor, with 4,600 men, had entrenched at a mountain pass called Buena Vista. Santa Anna suffered desertions on the way north and arrived with 15,000 men in a tired state. He demanded and was refused surrender of the U.S. Army; he attacked the next morning. Santa Anna flanked the U.S. positions by sending his cavalry and some of his infantry up the steep terrain that made up one side of the pass, while a division of infantry attacked frontally along the road leading to Buena Vista. Furious fighting ensued, during which the U.S troops were nearly routed, but managed to cling to their entrenched position. The Mexicans had inflicted considerable losses but Santa Anna had gotten word of upheaval in Mexico City, so he withdrew that night, leaving Taylor in control of part of Northern Mexico. Polk distrusted Taylor, whom he felt had shown incompetence in the Battle of Monterrey by agreeing to the armistice, and may have considered him a political rival for the White House. Taylor later used the Battle of Buena Vista as the centerpiece of his successful 1848 presidential campaign.
Northwestern Mexico[link]
On March 1, 1847, Alexander W. Doniphan occupied Chihuahua City. He found the inhabitants much less willing to accept the American conquest than the New Mexicans. The British consul John Potts did not want to let Doniphan search Governor Trias's mansion, and unsuccessfully asserted it was under British protection. American merchants in Chihuahua wanted the American force to stay in order to protect their business. Gilpin advocated a march on Mexico City and convinced a majority of officers, but Doniphan subverted this plan, then in late April Taylor ordered the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers to leave Chihuahua and join him at Saltillo. The American merchants either followed or returned to Santa Fe. Along the way, the townspeople of Parras enlisted Doniphan's aid against an Indian raiding party that had taken children, horses, mules, and money.[45]
The civilian population of northern Mexico offered little resistance to the American invasion possibly because the country had already been devastated by Comanche and Apache Indian raids. Josiah Gregg, who was with the American army in northern Mexico, said that “the whole country from New Mexico to the borders of Durango is almost entirely depopulated. The haciendas and ranchos have been mostly abandoned, and the people chiefly confined to the towns and cities.”[46]
U.S. press and popular war enthusiasm[link]
During the war inventions such as the telegraph created new means of communication that updated people with the latest news from the reporters, who were usually on the scene. With more than a decade’s experience reporting urban crime, the “penny press” realized the voracious need of the public to get the astounding war news. This was the first time in the American history when the accounts by journalists, instead of the opinions of politicians, caused great influence in shaping people’s minds and attitudes toward a war. News about the war always caused extraordinary popular excitement.
By getting constant reports from the battlefield, Americans became emotionally united as a community. In the spring of 1846, news about Zachary Taylor's victory at Palo Alto brought up a large crowd that met in a cotton textile town of Lowell, Massachusetts. At Veracruz and Buena Vista, New York celebrated their twin victories in May 1847. Among fireworks and illuminations, they had a “grand procession” of about 400,000 people. Generals Taylor and Scott became heroes for their people and later became presidential candidates.
Desertion[link]
The desertion rate was a major problem for the Mexican army, depleting forces on the eve of battle. Most of the soldiers were peasants who had a loyalty to their village and family, but not to the generals who conscripted them. Often hungry and ill, never well paid, under-equipped and only partially trained, the soldiers were held in contempt by their officers and had little reason to fight the Americans. Looking for their opportunity, many slipped away from camp to find their way back to their home village.[47]
The desertion rate in the U.S. army was 8.3% (9,200 out of 111,000), compared to 12.7% during the War of 1812 and usual peacetime rates of about 14.8% per year.[48] Many men deserted to join another U.S. unit and get a second enlistment bonus. While some deserted because of the miserable conditions in camp, it has been suggested that others used the army to get free transportation to California, where they deserted to join the gold rush.[49] This, however, is unlikely as gold was only discovered in California on January 24, 1848, less than two weeks before the war concluded. By the time word reached the eastern U.S. that gold had been discovered, word also reached it that the war was over.
Several hundred deserters went over to the Mexican side; nearly all were recent immigrants from Europe with weak ties to the U.S., the most famous group being Saint Patrick's Battalion, about half of whom were Catholics from Ireland. The Mexicans issued broadsides and leaflets enticing U.S. soldiers with promises of money, land bounties, and officers' commissions. Mexican guerrillas shadowed the U.S. Army and captured men who took unauthorized leave or fell out of the ranks. The guerrillas coerced these men to join the Mexican ranks. The generous promises proved illusory for most deserters, who risked being executed, if captured by U.S. forces. About 50 of the San Patricios were tried and hanged following their capture at Churubusco in August 1847.[50]
Scott's Mexico City campaign[link]
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[edit] Landings and Siege of Veracruz
Rather than reinforce Taylor's army for a continued advance, President Polk sent a second army under General Winfield Scott, which was transported to the port of Veracruz by sea, to begin an invasion of the Mexican heartland. On March 9, 1847, Scott performed the first major amphibious landing in U.S. history in preparation for the Siege of Veracruz. A group of 12,000 volunteer and regular soldiers successfully offloaded supplies, weapons, and horses near the walled city using specially designed landing craft. Included in the invading force were Robert E. Lee, George Meade, Ulysses S. Grant, James Longstreet, and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The city was defended by Mexican General Juan Morales with 3,400 men. Mortars and naval guns under Commodore Matthew C. Perry were used to reduce the city walls and harass defenders. The city replied the best it could with its own artillery. The effect of the extended barrage destroyed the will of the Mexican side to fight against a numerically superior force, and they surrendered the city after 12 days under siege. U.S. troops suffered 80 casualties, while the Mexican side had around 180 killed and wounded, about half of whom were civilian. During the siege, the U.S. side began to fall victim to yellow fever.
Advance on Puebla[link]
Scott then marched westward toward Mexico City with 8,500 healthy troops, while Santa Anna set up a defensive position in a canyon around the main road at the halfway mark to Mexico City, near the hamlet of Cerro Gordo. Santa Anna had entrenched with 12,000 troops and artillery that were trained on the road, along which he expected Scott to appear. However, Scott had sent 2,600 mounted dragoons ahead, and the Mexican artillery prematurely fired on them and revealed their positions. Instead of taking the main road, Scott's troops trekked through the rough terrain to the north, setting up his artillery on the high ground and quietly flanking the Mexicans. Although by then aware of the positions of U.S. troops, Santa Anna and his troops were unprepared for the onslaught that followed. The Mexican army was routed. The U.S. Army suffered 400 casualties, while the Mexicans suffered over 1,000 casualties and 3,000 were taken prisoner. In August 1847, Captain Kirby Smith, of Scott's 3rd Infantry, reflected on the resistance of the Mexican army:
They can do nothing and their continued defeats should convince them of it. They have lost six great battles; we have captured six hundred and eight cannon, nearly one hundred thousand stands of arms, made twenty thousand prisoners, have the greatest portion of their country and are fast advancing on their Capital which must be ours,—yet they refuse to treat [i.e., negotiate terms]![51]
Pause at Puebla[link]
In May, Scott pushed on to Puebla, the second largest city in Mexico. Because of the citizens' hostility to Santa Anna, the city capitulated without resistance on May 1. During the following months Scott gathered supplies and reinforcements at Puebla and sent back units whose enlistments had expired. Scott also made strong efforts to keep his troops disciplined and treat the Mexican people under occupation justly, so as to prevent a popular rising against his army.
Advance on Mexico City and its capture[link]
With guerrillas harassing his line of communications back to Vera Cruz, Scott decided not to weaken his army to defend it but, leaving only a garrison at Puebla to protect the sick and injured recovering there, advanced on Mexico City on August 7, with his remaining force. The capital was laid open in a series of battles around the right flank of the city defenses, culminating in the Battle of Chapultepec. With the subsequent storming of the city gates, the capital was occupied. Winfield Scott became an American national hero after his victories in this campaign of the Mexican–American War, and later became military governor of occupied Mexico City.
Santa Anna's last campaign[link]
In late September 1847, Santa Anna made one last attempt to defeat the Americans, by cutting them off from the coast. General Joaquín Rea began the Siege of Puebla, soon joined by Santa Anna, but they failed to take it before the approach of a relief column from Vera Cruz under Brig. Gen. Joseph Lane prompted Santa Anna to stop him. Puebla was relieved by Gen. Lane October 12, 1847, following his defeat of Santa Anna at the Battle of Huamantla October 9, 1847. The battle was Santa Anna's last. Following the defeat, the new Mexican government led by Manuel de la Peña y Peña asked Santa Anna to turn over command of the army to General José Joaquín de Herrera.
Anti guerrilla campaign[link]
Following his capture and securing of the capital, General Scott sent about a quarter of his strength to secure his line of communications to Vera Cruz from the Light Corps and other Mexican guerilla forces that had been harassing it since May. He strengthened the garrison of Puebla, and by November established 750 man posts at Perote, Puente Nacional, Rio Frio, and San Juan along the National Road and detailed an antiguerrilla brigade under Brig. Gen. Joseph Lane to carry the war to the Light Corps and other guerillas. He also ordered that convoys would travel with at least 1,300-man escorts. Despite some victories over General Joaquín Rea at Atlixco (18 October 1847) and Izucar de Matamoros (in November) by General Lane, guerrilla raids on the supply route continued into 1848 until the end of the war.[52]
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo[link]
Main article: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
File:Wpdms mexican cession.png
The Mexican Cession, shown in red, and the later Gadsden Purchase, shown in yellow.
Outnumbered militarily and with many of its large cities occupied, Mexico could not defend itself and was also faced with many internal divisions. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, by American diplomat Nicholas Trist and Mexican plenipotentiary representatives Luis G. Cuevas, Bernardo Couto, and Miguel Atristain, ended the war and gave the U.S. undisputed control of Texas, established the U.S.-Mexican border of the Rio Grande River, and ceded to the United States the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. In return, Mexico received US $18,250,000[53] ($490,223,077 today)—less than half the amount the U.S. had attempted to offer Mexico for the land before the opening of hostilities[54]—and the U.S. agreed to assume $3.25-million ($87,300,000 today) in debts that the Mexican government owed to U.S. citizens.[14]
The acquisition was a source of controversy then, especially among U.S. politicians who had opposed the war from the start. A leading antiwar U.S. newspaper, the Whig Intelligencer sardonically concluded that "We take nothing by conquest .... Thank God."[55][56]
Jefferson Davis introduced an amendment giving the U.S. most of northeastern Mexico, which failed 44–11. It was supported by both senators from Texas (Sam Houston and Thomas Jefferson Rusk), Daniel S. Dickinson of New York, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, Edward A. Hannegan of Indiana, and one each from Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, and Tennessee. Most of the leaders of the Democratic party, Thomas Hart Benton, John C. Calhoun, Herschel V. Johnson, Lewis Cass, James Murray Mason of Virginia, and Ambrose Hundley Sevier, were opposed.[57] An amendment by Whig Senator George Edmund Badger of North Carolina to exclude New Mexico and California lost 35–15, with three Southern Whigs voting with the Democrats. Daniel Webster was bitter that four New England senators made deciding votes for acquiring the new territories.
The acquired lands west of the Rio Grande are traditionally called the Mexican Cession in the U.S., as opposed to the Texas Annexation two years earlier, though division of New Mexico down the middle at the Rio Grande never had any basis either in control or Mexican boundaries. Mexico never recognized the independence of Texas[58] prior to the war, and did not cede its claim to territory north of the Rio Grande or Gila River until this treaty.
Prior to ratifying the treaty, the U.S. Senate made two modifications, changing the wording of Article IX (which guaranteed Mexicans living in the purchased territories the right to become U.S. citizens), and striking out Article X (which conceded the legitimacy of land grants made by the Mexican government). On May 26, 1848, when the two countries exchanged ratifications of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, they further agreed to a three-article protocol (known as the Protocol of Querétaro) to explain the amendments. The first article claimed that the original Article IX of the treaty, although replaced by Article III of the Treaty of Louisiana, would still confer the rights delineated in Article IX. The second article confirmed the legitimacy of land grants under Mexican law.[59] The protocol was signed in the city of Querétaro by A. H. Sevier, Nathan Clifford, and Luis de la Rosa.[59]
Article XI offered a potential benefit to Mexico in that the US pledged to suppress the Comanche and Apache raids that had ravaged northern Mexico and pay restitutions to the victims of raids it could not prevent.[60] However, the Indian raids did not cease for several decades after the treaty, although a cholera epidemic reduced the numbers of the Comanche in 1849.[61] Robert Letcher, US Minister to Mexico in 1850, was certain "that miserable 11th article" would lead to the financial ruin of the US if they could not be released from its obligations.[62] The US was released from all obligations of Article XI five years later by Article II of the Gadsden Purchase Treaty of December 30, 1853.[63]
Results[link]
Mexican territory, prior to the secession of Texas, comprised almost 1,700,000 sq mi (4,400,000 km2), which was reduced to just under 800,000 by 1848. Another 32,000 were sold to the U.S. in the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, for a total reduction of more than 55%, or 900,000 square miles.[64] The annexed territories, comparable in size to Western Europe, were essentially unsettled, containing about 1,000 Mexican families in Alta California and 7,000 in Nuevo México,[citation needed] as well as large Native American nations such as the Navajo, Hopi, and dozens of others. A few relocated further south in Mexico; the great majority remained in the U.S. Descendants of these Mexican families have risen to prominence in American life, such as United States Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and his brother, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, both from Colorado.
A month before the end of the war, Polk was criticized in a United States House of Representatives amendment to a bill praising Major General Zachary Taylor for "a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States." This criticism, in which Congressman Abraham Lincoln played an important role with his Spot Resolutions, followed congressional scrutiny of the war's beginnings, including factual challenges to claims made by President Polk.[65][66] The vote followed party lines, with all Whigs supporting the amendment. Lincoln's attack won luke-warm support from fellow Whigs in Illinois but was harshly counter-attacked by Democrats, who rallied pro-war sentiments in Illinois; Lincoln's Spot resolutions haunted his future campaigns in the heavily Democratic state of Illinois, and was cited by enemies well into his presidency.[67]
In much of the U.S., victory and the acquisition of new land brought a surge of patriotism. Victory seemed to fulfill Democrats' belief in their country's Manifest Destiny. While Whig Ralph Waldo Emerson rejected war "as a means of achieving America's destiny," he accepted that "most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means."[68] Although the Whigs had opposed the war, they made Zachary Taylor their presidential candidate in the election of 1848, praising his military performance while muting their criticism of the war.
Many of the military leaders on both sides of the American Civil War had fought as junior officers in Mexico, including Ulysses S. Grant, George B. McClellan, Ambrose Burnside, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, George Meade, Robert E. Lee, and the future Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
In Mexico City's Chapultepec Park, the Monument to the Heroic Cadets commemorates the heroic sacrifice of six teenaged military cadets who fought to their deaths rather than surrender to American troops during the Battle of Chapultepec Castle on September 13, 1847. The monument is an important patriotic site in Mexico. On March 5, 1947, nearly one hundred years after the battle, U.S. President Harry S. Truman placed a wreath at the monument and stood for a moment of silence.
Grant's views on the war[link]
President Ulysses S. Grant, who as a young army lieutenant had served in Mexico under General Taylor, recalled in his Memoirs, published in 1885, that:
Generally, the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.[69]
Grant also expressed the view that the war against Mexico had brought punishment on the United States in the form of the American Civil War:
The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.[70]
Combatants[link]
On the American side, the war was fought by regiments of regulars and various regiments, battalions, and companies of volunteers from the different states of the union and the Americans and some of the Mexicans in the territory of California and New Mexico. On the West Coast, the U.S. Navy fielded a battalion in an attempt to recapture Los Angeles.[71]
United States[link]
At the beginning of the war, the U.S. Army had eight regiments of infantry (three battalions), four artillery regiments and three mounted regiments (two dragoons, one of mounted rifles). These regiments were supplemented by 10 new regiments (nine of infantry and one of cavalry) raised for one year's service (new regiments raised for one year according to act of Congress Feb. 11, 1847).[72]
State Volunteers were raised in various sized units and for various periods of time, mostly for one year. Later some were raised for the duration of the war as it became clear it was going to last longer than a year.[73]
U.S. soldiers' memoirs describe cases of looting and murder of Mexican civilians, mostly by State Volunteers. One officer's diary records:
We reached Burrita about 5 pm, many of the Louisiana volunteers were there, a lawless drunken rabble. They had driven away the inhabitants, taken possession of their houses, and were emulating each other in making beasts of themselves.[74]
John L. O'Sullivan, a vocal proponent of Manifest Destiny, later recollected:
The regulars regarded the volunteers with importance and contempt ... [The volunteers] robbed Mexicans of their cattle and corn, stole their fences for firewood, got drunk, and killed several inoffensive inhabitants of the town in the streets.
Many of the volunteers were unwanted and considered poor soldiers. The expression "Just like Gaines's army" came to refer to something useless, the phrase having originated when a group of untrained and unwilling Louisiana troops were rejected and sent back by Gen. Taylor at the beginning of the war.
The last surviving U.S. veteran of the conflict, Owen Thomas Edgar, died on September 3, 1929, at age 98.
1,563 U.S. soldiers are buried in the Mexico City National Cemetery, which is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission.
Mexico[link]
At the beginning of the war, Mexican forces were divided between the permanent forces (permanentes) and the active militiamen (activos). The permanent forces consisted of 12 regiments of infantry (of two battalions each), three brigades of artillery, eight regiments of cavalry, one separate squadron and a brigade of dragoons. The militia amounted to nine infantry and six cavalry regiments. In the northern territories of Mexico, presidial companies (presidiales) protected the scattered settlements there.[75]
One of the contributing factors to loss of the war by Mexico was the inferiority of their weapons. The Mexican army was using British muskets (e.g. Brown Bess) from the Napoleonic Wars. In contrast to the aging Mexican standard-issue infantry weapon, some U.S. troops had the latest U.S.-manufactured breech-loading Hall rifles and Model 1841 percussion rifles. In the later stages of the war, U.S. cavalry and officers were issued Colt Walker revolvers, of which the U.S. Army had ordered 1,000 in 1846. Throughout the war, the superiority of the U.S. artillery often carried the day.
Political divisions inside Mexico were another factor in the U.S. victory. Inside Mexico, the centralistas and republicans vied for power, and at times these two factions inside Mexico's military fought each other rather than the invading American army. Another faction called the monarchists, whose members wanted to install a monarch (some even advocated rejoining Spain), further complicated matters. This third faction would rise to predominance in the period of the French intervention in Mexico. The ease of the American landing at Vera Cruz was in large part due to civil warfare in Mexico City, which made any real defense of the port city impossible. As Gen. Santa Anna said, "However shameful it may be to admit this, we have brought this disgraceful tragedy upon ourselves through our interminable in-fighting."
Saint Patrick's Battalion (San Patricios) was a group of several hundred immigrant soldiers, the majority Irish, who deserted the U.S. Army because of ill-treatment or sympathetic leanings to fellow Mexican Catholics. They joined the Mexican army. Most were killed in the Battle of Churubusco; about 100 were captured by the U.S. and roughly ½ were hanged as deserters. The leader, Jon Riley, was merely branded since he had deserted prior to the start of the war.
Impact of the war in the U.S.[link]
Despite initial objections from the Whigs and abolitionists, the war would nevertheless unite the U.S. in a common cause and was fought almost entirely by volunteers. The army swelled from just over 6,000 to more than 115,000. Of these, approximately 1.5% were killed in the fighting and nearly 10% died of disease; another 12% were wounded or discharged because of disease, or both.
For years afterward, veterans continued to suffer from the debilitating diseases contracted during the campaigns. The casualty rate was thus easily over 25% for the 17 months of the war; the total casualties may have reached 35–40% if later injury- and disease-related deaths are added.[citation needed] In this respect, the war was proportionately the most deadly in American military history.
During the war, political quarrels in the U.S. arose regarding the disposition of conquered Mexico. A brief "All-Mexico" movement urged annexation of the entire territory. Veterans of the war who had seen Mexico at first hand were unenthusiastic. Anti-slavery elements opposed that position and fought for the exclusion of slavery from any territory absorbed by the U.S.[76] In 1847 the House of Representatives passed the Wilmot Proviso, stipulating that none of the territory acquired should be open to slavery. The Senate avoided the issue, and a late attempt to add it to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was defeated.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was the result of Nicholas Trist's unauthorized negotiations. It was approved by the U.S. Senate on March 10, 1848, and ratified by the Mexican Congress on May 25. Mexico's cession of Alta California and Nuevo México and its recognition of U.S. sovereignty over all of Texas north of the Rio Grande formalized the addition of 1.2 million square miles (3.1 million km2) of territory to the United States. In return the U.S. agreed to pay $15 million and assumed the claims of its citizens against Mexico. A final territorial adjustment between Mexico and the U.S. was made by the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.
As late as 1880, the "Republican Campaign Textbook" by the Republican Congressional Committee[77] described the war as "Feculent, reeking Corruption" and "one of the darkest scenes in our history—a war forced upon our and the Mexican people by the high-handed usurpations of Pres't Polk in pursuit of territorial aggrandizement of the slave oligarchy."
The war was one of the most decisive events for the U.S. in the first half of the 19th century. While it marked a significant waypoint for the nation as a growing military power, it also served as a milestone especially within the U.S. narrative of Manifest Destiny. The resultant territorial gains set in motion many of the defining trends in American 19th-century history, particularly for the American West. The war did not resolve the issue of slavery in the U.S. but rather in many ways inflamed it, as potential westward expansion of the institution took an increasingly central and heated theme in national debates preceding the American Civil War. Furthermore, in doing much to extend the nation from coast to coast, the Mexican–American War was one step in the massive migrations to the West of Americans, which culminated in transcontinental railroads and the Indian wars later in the same century.
See also[link]
- Battles of the Mexican–American War
- Christopher Werner, maker of the "Iron Palmetto" commemorating the loss of South Carolinians in the War
- History of Mexico
- Reconquista (Mexico)
- List of conflicts in the United States
- List of wars involving Mexico
- Republic of Texas – United States relations
- Mexico-United States relations
Notes[link]
- ^ The American Army in the Mexican War: An Overview, PBS, 14 Mar 2006, http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/war/american_army.html, retrieved 13 May 2012
- ^ The U.S.-Mexican War: Some Statistics, Descendants of Mexican War Veterans, 07 Aug 2004, http://www.dmwv.org/mexwar/mwstats.htm, retrieved 13 May 2012
- ^ The Organization of the Mexican Army, PBS, 14 Mar 2006, http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/war/mexican_army.html, retrieved 13 May 2012
- ^ Christensen and Christensen, The U.S.–Mexican War, Bay Books, San Francisco, 1998
- ^ Brian DeLay (2008). War of a thousand deserts: Indian raids and the U.S.–Mexican War. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11932-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=Mot8hkMa0nkC&dq=%22U.S.-Mexican+War%22.
- ^ See Rives, The United States and Mexico, vol. 2, p. 658
- ^ Rives, ''The United States and Mexico'' vol. 2, pp 45–46. Books.google.com. 2007-09-28. http://books.google.com/books?id=vfhAAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA45. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ Rives, pp. 48–49
- ^ http://www.jstor.org/pss/25139106 Proposals for the colonization of California by England, California Historical Society Quarterly, 1939
- ^ See "Republic of Texas"
- ^ Rives, vol. 2, pp. 165–168
- ^ Rives, vol. 2, pp. 172–173
- ^ Smith (1919) p. xi.
- ^ a b Jay (1853) p. 117.
- ^ Jay (1853) p. 119.
- ^ Donald Fithian Stevens, Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico (1991) p. 11.
- ^ Miguel E. Soto, "The Monarchist Conspiracy and the Mexican War" in Essays on the Mexican War ed by Wayne Cutler; Texas A&M University Press. 1986. pp. 66–67.
- ^ a b Brooks (1849) pp. 61–62.
- ^ Mexican War from Global Security.com.
- ^ Gilbert, Joseph. The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press Books, 2002, p. 652
- ^ James M. McCaffrey, Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1994) p 7
- ^ Smith (1919) p. 279.
- ^ Faragher, John Mack, et al., eds. Out Of Many: A History of the American People. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2006.
- ^ "Message of President Polk, May 11, 1846". http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/messages/polk01.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-20. "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are now at war."
- ^ a b Bauer (1992) p. 68.
- ^ see A. Brook Caruso: The Mexican Spy Company. 1991, p. 62-79
- ^ Jay (1853) pp. 165–166.
- ^ Jay (1853) p. 165.
- ^ See O'Sullivan's 1845 article, "Annexation," [1] United States Magazine and Democratic Review
- ^ Giddings,Joshua Reed, Speeches in Congress [1841–1852], J.P. Jewett and Company, 1853, p.17
- ^ Beveridge 1:417.
- ^ Speech of the Hon. John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, on the state of the nation: delivered May 25, 1836, Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org/details/speechofhonjohnq00adam, retrieved 13 May 2012
- ^ "James K. Polk: Third Annual Message – December 7, 1847". Presidency.ucsb.edu. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=29488. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ a b c Brooks (1849) p. 122.
- ^ Brooks (1849) pp. 91, 117.
- ^ Brooks (1849) p. 121.
- ^ See Captain John Charles Fremont and the Bear Flag Revolt.
- ^ Brooks (1849) p. 257.
- ^ Bauer (1992) pp. 190–191.
- ^ Silversteen, p42
- ^ Bauer (1992) p. 201.
- ^ Rives, George Lockhart, The United States and Mexico, 1821–1848: a history of the relations between the two countries from the independence of Mexico to the close of the war with the United States, Volume 2, C. Scribner's Sons, New York, 1913, p.233. Books.google.com. 2007-09-28. http://books.google.com/books?id=vfhAAAAAIAAJ&pg=233. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ "Urban Warfare". Battle of Monterrey.com. http://www.battleofmonterrey.com/urbanwarfare.html. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ Dishman, Christopher, A Perfect Gibraltar: The Battle for Monterrey, Mexico," University of Oklahoma Press, 2010 ISBN 0-8061-4140-9
- ^ Roger D. Launius (1997). Alexander William Doniphan: portrait of a Missouri moderate. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-1132-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=xhneotO7Xg8C&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162.
- ^ Hamalainen, Pekka, The Comanche Empire New Haven: Yale U Press, p.232
- ^ Douglas Meed, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (Routledge, 2003), p. 67.
- ^ McAllister, Brian. "see Coffman, ''Old Army'' (1988) p. 193". Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0195045556?v=search-inside&keywords=desertion. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair (2002) pp. 25, 103–6.
- ^ Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair (2002) pp. 105–7.
- ^ Eisenhower, John S. D. (1989). So Far from God: The U.S. War With Mexico, 1846–1848. New York: Random House. p. 295. ISBN 0-8061-3279-5.
- ^ Stephen A. Carney, U.S. Army Campaigns of the Mexican War: The Occupation of Mexico, May 1846-July 1848 (CMH Pub 73-3), U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 2005; pp.30-38
- ^ Smith (1919) p. 241.
- ^ Bronwyn Mills U.S.-Mexican war p. 23 ISBN 0-8160-4932-7.
- ^ Kenneth C. Davis, “Don’t Know Much About History” (Avon Books, New York 1995) p. 143.
- ^ Howard Zinn, “A People’s History of the United States” (HarperCollins Publishers, New York 2003) p. 169.
- ^ George Lockhart Rives (1913). The United States and Mexico, 1821–1848. C. Scribner's Sons. pp. 634–636. http://books.google.com/books?id=vfhAAAAAIAAJ.
- ^ PBS, "US-Mexican War" paragraph 3, line 2 http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/prelude/md_boundary_disputes.html
- ^ a b Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Full text (including Protocol) from academic.udayton.edu. Retrieved October 25, 2007.
- ^ http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/guadhida.asp#art11
- ^ "Treaty with Mexico (Feb 2, 1848) http://www.mexica.net/guadhida.php; Hamalainen, 293-341
- ^ DeLay, Brian. War of a thousand deserts: Indian raids and the U.S.-Mexican War. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.) p. 302
- ^ http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/mx1853.asp
- ^ "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo". www.ourdocuments.gov. http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=26. Retrieved 27 June 2007.
- ^ "Congressional Globe, 30th Session (1848) pp. 93–95". Memory.loc.gov. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=020/llcg020.db&recNum=102. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ "House Journal, 30th Session (1848) pp. 183–184/". Memory.loc.gov. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(hj04321)). Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. (1995), pp. 124, 128, 133.
- ^ Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1860). The Conduct of Life. p. 110. ISBN 1-4191-5736-1.
- ^ "Ulysses S Grant Quotes on the Military Academy and the Mexican War". Fadedgiant.net. http://www.fadedgiant.net/html/grant_ulysses_s_quotes_west_po.htm. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant — Complete by Ulysses S. Grant.
- ^ "William Hugh Robarts, "Mexican War veterans : a complete roster of the regular and volunteer troops in the war between the United States and Mexico, from 1846 to 1848 ; the volunteers are arranged by states, alphabetically", BRENTANO'S (A. S. WITHERBEE & CO, Proprietors); WASHINGTON, D. C., 1887". Archive.org. 2001-03-10. http://www.archive.org/details/mexicanwarvetera00roba. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ Robarts, "Mexican War veterans" pp.1–24
- ^ Robarts, "Mexican War veterans" pp.39–79
- ^ Bronwyn Mills U.S.-Mexican war ISBN 0-8160-4932-7.
- ^ René Chartrand, ''Santa Anna's Mexican Army 1821–48'', Illustrated by Bill Younghusband, Osprey Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1-84176-667-4, ISBN 978-1-84176-667-6. Books.google.com. http://books.google.com/books?id=YImnue0ORwAC&source=gbs_navlinks_s. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ John Douglas Pitts Fuller, ''The Movement for the Acquisition of All Mexico, 1846–1848'' (1936). Books.google.com. 2008-06-12. http://books.google.com/books?id=Y0JnAAAAMAAJ. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
- ^ Mexican–American War description from the Republican Campaign Textbook.
References[link]
Bibliography[link]
Reference works[link]
- Crawford, Mark; Jeanne T. Heidler; David Stephen Heidler (eds.) (1999). Encyclopedia of the Mexican War. ISBN 1-57607-059-X.
- Frazier, Donald S. ed. The U.S. and Mexico at War, (1998), 584; an encyclopedia with 600 articles by 200 scholars
Surveys[link]
- Bauer, Karl Jack (1992). The Mexican War: 1846–1848. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-6107-1.
- De Voto, Bernard, Year of Decision 1846 (1942), well written popular history
- Henderson, Timothy J. A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States (2008)
- Meed, Douglas. The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (2003). A short survey.
- Merry Robert W. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent (2009)
- Smith, Justin Harvey. The War with Mexico, Vol 1. (2 vol 1919), full text online.
- The War with Mexico, Vol 2. (1919). full text online.
Military[link]
- Bauer K. Jack. Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest. Louisiana State University Press, 1985.
- Dishman, Christopher, A Perfect Gibraltar: The Battle for Monterrey, Mexico," University of Oklahoma Press, 2010 ISBN 0-8061-4140-9.
- Eisenhower, John. So Far From God: The U.S. War with Mexico, Random House (1989).
- Eubank, Damon R., Response of Kentucky to the Mexican War, 1846–1848. (Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), ISBN 978-0-7734-6495-7.
- Foos, Paul. A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict during the Mexican-War (2002).
- Fowler, Will. Santa Anna of Mexico (2007) 527pp; a major scholarly study
- Frazier, Donald S. The U.S. and Mexico at War, Macmillan (1998).
- Hamilton, Holman, Zachary Taylor: Soldier of the Republic, (1941).
- Huston, James A. The Sinews of War: Army Logistics, 1775-1953 (1966), U.S. Army; 755pp online pp 125-58
- Lewis, Lloyd. Captain Sam Grant (1950).
- Johnson, Timothy D. Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory (1998)
- McCaffrey, James M. Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1994)excerpt and text search
- Smith, Justin H. "American Rule in Mexico," The American Historical Review Vol. 23, No. 2 (Jan., 1918), pp. 287–302 in JSTOR
- Smith, Justin Harvey. The War with Mexico. 2 vol (1919). Pulitzer Prize winner. full text online.
- Winders, Richard Price. Mr. Polk’s Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War (1997)
Political and diplomatic[link]
- Beveridge; Albert J. Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1858. Volume: 1. 1928.
- Brack, Gene M. Mexico Views Manifest Destiny, 1821–1846: An Essay on the Origins of the Mexican War (1975).
- Fowler, Will. Tornel and Santa Anna: The Writer and the Caudillo, Mexico, 1795–1853 (2000).
- Fowler, Will. Santa Anna of Mexico (2007) 527pp; the major scholarly study excerpt and text search
- Gleijeses, Piero. "A Brush with Mexico" Diplomatic History 2005 29(2): 223–254. Issn: 0145-2096 debates in Washington before war.
- Graebner, Norman A. Empire on the Pacific: A Study in American Continental Expansion. (1955).
- Graebner, Norman A. "Lessons of the Mexican War." Pacific Historical Review 47 (1978): 325–42. in JSTOR.
- Graebner, Norman A. "The Mexican War: A Study in Causation." Pacific Historical Review 49 (1980): 405–26. in JSTOR.
- Henderson, Timothy J. A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States (2007), survey
- Krauze, Enrique. Mexico: Biography of Power, (1997), textbook.
- Mayers, David; Fernández Bravo, Sergio A., "La Guerra Con Mexico Y Los Disidentes Estadunidenses, 1846–1848" [The War with Mexico and US Dissenters, 1846–48]. Secuencia [Mexico] 2004 (59): 32–70. Issn: 0186-0348.
- Pinheiro, John C. Manifest Ambition: James K. Polk and Civil-Military Relations during the Mexican War (2007).
- Pletcher David M. The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War. University of Missouri Press, 1973.
- Price, Glenn W. Origins of the War with Mexico: The Polk-Stockton Intrigue. University of Texas Press, 1967.
- Reeves, Jesse S. "The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo," American Historical Review, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jan., 1905), pp. 309–324 in JSTOR.
- Rives, George Lockhart. The United States and Mexico, 1821–1848: a history of the relations between the two countries from the independence of Mexico to the close of the war with the United States (1913) full text online
- Rodríguez Díaz, María Del Rosario. "Mexico's Vision of Manifest Destiny During the 1847 War" Journal of Popular Culture 2001 35(2): 41–50. Issn: 0022-3840.
- Ruiz, Ramon Eduardo. Triumph and Tragedy: A History of the Mexican People, Norton 1992, textbook
- Schroeder John H. Mr. Polk's War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846–1848. University of Wisconsin Press, 1973.
- Sellers Charles G. James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843–1846 (1966), the standard biography vol 1 and 2 are online at ACLS e-books
- Smith, Justin Harvey. The War with Mexico. 2 vol (1919). Pulitzer Prize winner. full text online.
- Stephenson, Nathaniel Wright. Texas and the Mexican War: A Chronicle of Winning the Southwest. Yale University Press (1921).
- Weinberg Albert K. Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935.
- Yanez, Agustin. Santa Anna: Espectro de una sociedad (1996).
Memory and historiography[link]
- Faulk, Odie B., and Stout, Joseph A., Jr., eds. The Mexican War: Changing Interpretations (1974)
- Rodriguez, Jaime Javier. The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War: Narrative, Time, and Identity (University of Texas Press; 2010) 306 pages. Covers works by Anglo, Mexican, and Mexican-American writers.
- Benjamin, Thomas. "Recent Historiography of the Origins of the Mexican War," New Mexico Historical Review, Summer 1979, Vol. 54 Issue 3, pp 169–181
- Vázquez, Josefina Zoraida. "La Historiografia Sobre la Guerra entre Mexico y los Estados Unidos," ["The historiography of the war between Mexico and the United States"] Histórica (02528894), 1999, Vol. 23 Issue 2, pp 475–485
Primary sources[link]
- Calhoun, John C. The Papers of John C. Calhoun. Vol. 23: 1846, ed. by Clyde N. Wilson and Shirley Bright Cook. (1996). 598 pp
- Calhoun, John C. The Papers of John C. Calhoun. Vol. 24: December 7, 1846 – December 5, 1847 ed. by Clyde N. Wilson and Shirley Bright Cook, (1998). 727 pp.
- Conway, Christopher, ed. The U.S.-Mexican War: A Binational Reader (2010)
- Grant, Ulysses S. (1885). Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. New York: Charles L. Webster & Co. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4367/4367-h/4367-h.htm.
- Kendall, George Wilkins (1999). Lawrence Dilbert Cress. ed. Dispatches from the Mexican War. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.
- Polk, James, K. (1910). Milo Milton Quaife. ed. The Diary of James K. Polk: During his Presidency, 1845–1849. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. http://books.google.com/books?id=FxgOAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:james+inauthor:knox+inauthor:polk&lr=&num=30&as_brr=0.
- Robinson, Cecil, The View From Chapultepec: Mexican Writers on the Mexican War, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, 1989).
- Smith, Franklin (1991). Joseph E. Chance. ed. The Mexican War Journal of Captain Franklin Smith. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.
- George Winston and Charles Judah, ed. (1968). Chronicles of the Gringos: The U.S. Army in the Mexican War, 1846–1848, Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Combatants. Albuquerque, New Mexico: The University of New Mexico Press.
- Webster, Daniel (1984). Charles M. Wiltse. ed. The Papers of Daniel Webster, Correspondence. 6. Hanover, New Hampshire: The University Press of New England.
- "Treaty of Guadalope Hidalgo". Internet Sourcebook Project. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1848hidalgo.html. Retrieved 26 November 2008.
- "28th Congress, 2nd session". United States House Journal. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(hj040T000)):. Retrieved 26 November 2008.
- "29th Congress, 1st session". United States House Journal. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(hj041T000)):. Retrieved 26 November 2008.
- "28th Congress, 2nd session". United States Senate Journal. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(sj036T000)):. Retrieved 26 November 2008.
- "29th Congress, 1st session". United States Senate Journal. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(sj037T000)):. Retrieved 26 November 2008.
- William Hugh Robarts, "Mexican War veterans: a complete roster of the regular and volunteer troops in the war between the United States and Mexico, from 1846 to 1848; the volunteers are arranged by states, alphabetically", BRENTANO'S (A. S. WITHERBEE & CO, Proprietors); WASHINGTON, D. C., 1887.
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mexican-American War |
Guides, bibliographies and collections[link]
- Library of Congress Guide to the Mexican War
- The Handbook of Texas Online: Mexican War
- Reading List compiled by the United States Army Center of Military History
- Mexican War Resources
- The Mexican–American War, Illinois Historical Digitization Projects at Northern Illinois University Libraries
Media and primary sources[link]
- Robert E. Lee Mexican War Maps in the VMI Archives
- The Mexican War and the Media, 1845–1848
- Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and related resources at the U.S. Library of Congress
- Letters of Winfield Scott including official reports from the front sent to the Secretary of War
- Franklin Pierce's Journal on the March from Vera Cruz
- Mexican–American War Time line
- Animated History of the Mexican–American War
Other[link]
- PBS site of US-Mexican war program
- Battle of Monterrey Web Site – Complete Info on the battle
- A Continent Divided: The U.S. - Mexico War
- Manifest Destiny and the U.S.-Mexican War: Then and Now
- The Mexican War
- Smithsonian teaching aids for "Establishing Borders: The Expansion of the United States, 1846–48"
- A History by the Descendants of Mexican War Veterans
- Mexican–American War
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http://wn.com/Mexican–American_War
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Guerra messicano-statunitense
http://cs.wn.com/Mexicko-americká válka
http://id.wn.com/Perang Meksiko-Amerika
http://es.wn.com/Intervención estadounidense en México
http://ru.wn.com/Американо-мексиканская война
http://nl.wn.com/Mexicaans-Amerikaanse Oorlog
http://pt.wn.com/Guerra Mexicano-Americana
http://pl.wn.com/Wojna amerykańsko-meksykańska
http://fr.wn.com/Guerre américano-mexicaine
http://de.wn.com/Mexikanisch-Amerikanischer Krieg
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| 300px 1st row: Bill Richardson • Salma Hayek • Roy Benavidez • Hilda Solis 2nd row: Rosa Gumataotao Rios• Carlos Santana Jessica Alba • César Chávez |
| Total population |
|---|
| Mexican Americans 31,689,000 10.3% of the U.S. population.[1] |
| Regions with significant populations |
| Southwest, West Coast, Upper Midwest. There are also emerging populations in the South and Northeast. |
| Languages |
|
Spanish, American English, Spanglish, and a minority of Indigenous Mexican languages. |
| Religion |
|
Predominantly Roman Catholic; large minority of Protestants and small percentage Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormon |
Mexican Americans are Americans of Mexican descent. As of July 2009, Mexican Americans make up 10.3% of the United States' population with over 31,689,000 Americans listed as of Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans comprise 66% of all Hispanics and Latinos in the United States.[2] The United States is home to the second largest Mexican community in the world second only to Mexico itself comprising nearly 22% of the entire Mexican origin population of the world. Canada is a distant third with a Mexican origin population of 37,000 as of 2001 although increasing to 61,505 as of 2006.[3][4] In addition, as of 2008 there were approximately 7,000,000 undocumented Mexicans living in the United States which if included in the count would increase the US share to over 28% of the world's Mexican origin population (Note that some of the undocumented would be captured in the US Census count depending on their willingness to provide information).[5] Over 60% of all Mexican Americans reside in the states of California and Texas.[6] Most Mexican Americans are the descendants of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico and/or Europeans, especially Spaniards.[7][8]
Contents
|
History of Mexican Americans[link]
Main article: History of Mexican Americans
Mexican American history is wide-ranging, spanning more than 400 years and varying from region to region within the United States. In 1900, there were slightly more than 500,000 Hispanics living in New Mexico, California and Texas.[9] Most were Mexican Americans of indigenous Mexican, Spanish, and other hispanicized European settlers who arrived in the Southwest during Spanish colonial times. Approximately ten percent of the current Mexican American population can trace their lineage back to these early colonial settlers.[10]
As early as 1813 some of the Tejanos who colonized Texas in the Spanish Colonial Period established a government in Texas that looked forward to independence from Mexico. In those days, there was no concept of what a Mexican was. Many Mexicans were more loyal to their states/provinces than to their country as a whole. This was particularly true in frontier regions such as Zacatecas, Texas, Yucatan, Oaxaca, New Mexico, etc.[11] As revealed by the writings of colonial Tejano Texians such as Antonio Menchaca, the Texas Revolution was initially a colonial Tejano cause. By 1831, Anglo settlers outnumbered Tejanos ten to one in Texas.[12] The Mexican government became concerned by their increasing numbers and restricted the number of new Anglo-American settlers allowed to enter Texas. The Mexican government also banned slavery within the state, which angered slave owners.[13] The American settlers along with many of the Tejanos rebelled against the centralized authority of Mexico City and the Santa Anna regime, while others remained loyal to Mexico, and still others were neutral.[14][15]
Author John P. Schmal wrote of the effect Texas independence had on the Tejano community:[16]
"A native of San Antonio, Juan Seguín is probably the most famous Tejano to be involved in the War of Texas Independence. His story is complex because he joined the Anglo rebels and helped defeat the Mexican forces of Santa Anna. But later on, as Mayor of San Antonio, he and other Tejanos felt the hostile encroachments of the growing Anglo power against them. After receiving a series of death threats, Seguín relocated his family in Mexico, where he was coerced into military service and fought against the US in 1846–1848 Mexican-American War. Although the events of 1836 led to independence for the people of Texas, the Hispanic population of the state was very quickly disenfranchised to the extent that their political representation in the Texas State Legislature disappeared entirely for several decades."
Californios were Spanish speaking residents of modern day California who were the original Hispanics (Mexicans (regardless of race) and local Hispanicized Indians) in the region (Alta California) before the United States acquired it as a territory. Relations between Californios and Anglo settlers were relatively good until military officer John C. Fremont arrived in Alta California with a force of 60 men on an exploratory expedition in 1846. Fremont made an agreement with Comandante Castro that he would only stay in the San Joaquin Valley for the winter, then move north to Oregon. However, Fremont remained in the Santa Clara Valley then headed towards Monterey. When Castro demanded that Fremont leave Alta California, Fremont rode to Gavilan Peak, raised a US flag and vowed to fight to the last man to defend it. After three days of tension, Fremont retreated to Oregon without a shot being fired. With relations between Californios and Anglos quickly souring, Fremont rode back into Alta California and encouraged a group of American settlers to seize a group of Castro's soldiers and their horses. Another group, seized the Presidio of Sonoma and captured Mariano Vallejo. William B. Ide was chosen Commander in Chief and on July 5, he proclaimed the creation of the Bear Flag Republic. On July 9, US forces reached Sonoma and lowered the Bear Flag Republic's flag then replaced it with a US flag. Californios organized an army to defend themselves from invading American forces after the Mexican army retreated from Alta California to defend other parts of the country. The Californios defeated an American force in Los Angeles on September 30, 1846, but were defeated after the Americans reinforced their forces in what is now southern California. The arrival of tens of thousands of people during the California Gold Rush meant the end of the Californio's ranching lifestyle. Many Anglo 49ers turned to farming and moved, often illegally, onto the land granted to Californios by the old Mexican government.[17]
The United States first came into conflict with Mexico in the 1830s, as the westward spread of Anglo settlements and of slavery brought significant numbers of new settlers into the region known as Tejas (modern-day Texas), then part of Mexico. The Mexican-American War, followed by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, extended U.S. control over a wide range of territory once held by Mexico, including the present day borders of Texas and the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California.
Although the treaty promised that the landowners in this newly acquired territory would enjoy full enjoyment and protection of their property as if they were citizens of the United States, many former citizens of Mexico lost their land in lawsuits before state and federal courts or as a result of legislation passed after the treaty.[18] Even those statutes intended to protect the owners of property at the time of the extension of the United States' borders, such as the 1851 California Land Act, had the effect of dispossessing Californio owners ruined by the cost of maintaining litigation over land titles for years.
While Mexican Americans were once concentrated in the Southwest – California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Texas – they began creating communities in St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and other steel producing regions when they obtained employment during World War I. More recently, Mexican illegal immigrants have increasingly become a large part of the workforce in industries such as meat packing throughout the Midwest, in agriculture in the southeastern United States, and in the construction, landscaping, restaurant, hotel and other service industries throughout the country.
Mexican-American workers formed unions of their own and joined integrated unions. The most significant union struggle involving Mexican-Americans was the United Farm Workers' long strike and boycott aimed at grape growers in the San Joaquin and Coachella Valleys in the late 1960s. Its struggle propelled César Chávez and Dolores Huerta into national prominence changing from a workers' rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance to that of a union of farmworkers almost overnight.
Mexican American identity has also changed markedly throughout these years. Over the past hundred years Mexican Americans have campaigned for voting rights, stood against educational and employment discrimination and stood for economic and social advancement. At the same time many Mexican Americans have struggled with defining and maintaining their community's identity. In the 1960s and 1970s, some Latino/Hispanic student groups flirted with nationalism and differences over the proper name for members of the community—Chicano/Chicana, Latino/Latina, Mexican Americans, or Hispanics became tied up with deeper disagreements over whether to integrate into or remain separate from mainstream American society, as well as divisions between those Mexican Americans whose families had lived in the United States for two or more generations and more recent immigrants. During this time rights groups such as the National Mexican-American Anti-Defamation Committee were founded. The states with the largest percentages and populations of Mexican-Americans are California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. There has also been very high increasing populations in Oklahoma. Pennsylvania and Illinois.[19]
Race and ethnicity[link]
Main article: Mexicans
The Mexican population is mainly conformed by Mestizos, individuals with a genetic background consisting of Amerindian, European and African contributions. Genetic heterogeneity in Mexicans results from a complex demographic history that started with the peopling of North and Central America about 15,000 yrs ago, including the settlement of at least 60 different indigenous groups in Mexico. Source
File:Admixturehispanicswest.jpg
Admixture graphic of the Hispanic population.
Per the 2000 U.S. Census, a plurality of 47.3% of Mexican Americans self identify as being of White race, closely followed by Mexican Americans who self identify as "Some other race", usually Mestizo (Native American/European) with 45.5%.<.[20] Respondents who claim two or more races accounted for 5.1%, Blacks for 0.7%, and all other races for 1.4%. Mexican Americans are predominantly of Native American and European descent. Mexicans are the product of the mixture of 35 ethnic groups. According to the Mexican Genome Project, the overall gene pool of the Mexican population was calculated to be 65 percent indigenous and 35 percent non-indigenous (European, African, Asian). According to the last Mexican census to record race (which was in 1921), 10 percent of the Mexican populace identified itself as white, 59 percent as Mestizo (Native American-European mixture), 29 percent as Native American, and 2 percent as "other", foreigner (regardless of race), or did not specify a race.[21] Before the United States' borders expanded westward in the 19th century, New World regions colonized by the Spanish Empire since the 16th century held to a complex caste system (casta) that classified persons by their fractional racial makeup and geographic origin.[22][23]
As the United States' borders expanded, the United States Census Bureau changed its racial classification methods for Mexican Americans under United States jurisdiction. The Bureau's classification system has evolved significantly from its inception:
- From 1790 to 1850, there was no distinct racial classification of Mexican Americans in the U.S. census. The only racial categories recognized by the Census Bureau were White and Black. The Census Bureau estimates that during this period the number of persons that could not be categorized as white or black did not exceed 0.25% of the total population based on 1860 census data.[24]
- From 1850 through 1920 the Census Bureau expanded its racial categories to include all different races including Mestizos, Mulattos, Amerindians and Asians, and classified Mexicans and Mexican Americans as "White"[24] All Mexicans were legally (though not normally socially, ecomically or politically) considered "White" either because they were considered to be of full Spanish heritage, or because of treaty obligations to Spaniards and Mexicans that conferred citizenship status at a time when whiteness was a prerequisite for U.S. citizenship.
- The 1930 U.S. census revoked generic "white" status for Mexican Americans due to protests from Anglo Americans nativists. The new form asked for "color or race" and census workers were instructed to "write ‘W’ for White; ’Mex’ for Mexican."[25]
- In the 1940 census, Mexican Americans were re-classified as White, due to widespread protests by the Mexican American community. Instructions for enumerators were "Mexicans – Report 'White' (W) for Mexicans unless they are definitely of indigenous or other non-white race." During the same census, however, the bureau began to track the White population of Spanish mother tongue. This practice continued through the 1960 census.[24] The 1960 census also used the title "Spanish-surnamed American" in their reporting data of Mexican Americans, which included Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans and others under the same category.
- From 1970 to 1980, there was a dramatic population increase of Other Race in the census, reflecting the addition of a question on Hispanic origin to the 100-percent questionnaire, an increased propensity for Hispanics to NOT identify themselves as White, and a change in editing procedures to accept reports of "Other race" for respondents who wrote in Hispanic entries such as Mexican, Cuban, or Puerto Rican. In 1970, such responses in the Other race category were reclassified and tabulated as White. During this census, the bureau attempted to identify all Hispanics by use of the following criteria in sampled sets:[24]
-
- Spanish speakers and persons belonging to a household where the head of household was a Spanish speaker
- Persons with Spanish heritage by birth location or surname
- Persons who self-identified Spanish origin or descent
- From 1980 on, the Census Bureau has collected data on Hispanic origin on a 100-percent basis. The bureau has noted an increasing number of respondents who mark themselves as Hispanic origin but not of the White race.[24]
For certain purposes, respondents who wrote in "Chicano" or "Mexican" (or indeed, almost all Hispanic origin groups) in the "Some other race" category were automatically re-classified into the "White race" group.[26]
Politics and debate of racial classification[link]
| Part of a series on |
| Chicanos and Mexican Americans |
|---|
| Chicano · La Raza · Latino Mexican American · Hispanic |
| Pre-Chicano Movement |
| Mexican-American History Mexican-American War Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Mutualista · San Elizario Salt War Sleepy Lagoon trial · Zoot Suit Riots |
| Chicano Movement |
| Chicanismo · Aztlán Plan Espiritual de Aztlán Plan de Santa Bárbara Land grant struggle Chicano Blowouts Chicano Moratorium Farm worker rights campaign Católicos por La Raza |
| Supreme Court cases |
| Hernandez v. Texas Plyler v. Doe Mendez v. Westminster |
| Organizations |
| MEChA · United Farm Workers Brown Berets Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional American GI Forum National Council of La Raza |
| Language |
| Chicano Spanish Chicano Spanish words / phrases Chicano English New Mexican Spanish Spanish in the United States |
| Music |
| Chicano rap · Chicano rock Tejano music |
| Culture |
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Since the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which granted citizenship rights to Mexican people in the newly conquered US territory of the South West, Mexican Americans have been legally considered "White." Since legal citizenship in the United States required "white" racial status, new Mexican "Americans" had to be classified as White, whether or not they were considered white in "reality". Thus Mexican Americans were white by law, but not usually classified as such socially (depending on class and whether an individual had any degree of perceived indigenous ancestry). According to legal scholars, "Anglos rarely distinguished between Mexicans and Mexican Americans and painted a picture of 'Mexicans' as an economic and cultural threat to America. In [the early 1900s], Mexican Americans increasingly were denied many of the rights of citizens. Like the African American population, many were placed in segregated schools with inferior educational resources, barred from restaurants, movie theaters, bathrooms, and public swimming pools, and denied the possibility of living in white neighborhoods," in addition to being barred from serving on juries in most of the Southwest; yet none of this segregation was formally encoded in law. Thus while for legal purposes, Mexican Americans were counted as White, in everyday reality most Mexican Americans were not considered "white," did not enjoy "white" status or privileges, and were in fact typically subjected to systematic discrimination and "Jim Crow" style racial segregation. The legal designation of white racial status actually worked against Mexican American civil rights in law suits claiming racial discrimination. Such suits were typically denied on the basis that Mexican Americans were not subject to racial discrimination, despite all evidence to the contrary, because they were legally white.[27]
In times and places where Mexicans were allotted white status, they were permitted to intermarry with what today are termed "non-Hispanic whites", though social customs typically only approved of such marriages if the Mexican partner was not of any discernable indigenous heritage.[28] Legally, Mexican Americans could vote and hold elected office, though they were also constrained from voting in most places by literacy tests and poll taxes. While Mexicans of Spanish descent ran the state politics and constituted most of the elite of New Mexico since colonial times, property requirements and English literacy requirements were imposed in Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas in order to prevent Mexican Americans from voting. Some eligible voters were intimidated with the threat of violence if they attempted to exercise their right to vote.[29]
Mexicans were also allowed to serve in all-white units during World War II. However, many Mexican American war veterans were discriminated against and even denied medical services by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs when they arrived home.[30]
In the past, Mexicans were legally considered "White" because either they were considered to be of full Spanish heritage, or because of early treaty obligations to Spaniards and Mexicans that conferred citizenship status to Mexican peoples at a time when whiteness was a prerequisite for U.S. citizenship.[31][32] Although Mexican Americans were legally classified as "White" in terms of official federal policy, many organizations, businesses, and homeowners associations and local legal systems had official policies to exclude Mexican Americans. Throughout the southwest discrimination in wages were institutionalized in "white wages" versus lower "Mexican wages" for the same job classifications.[30][33][34][35]
Mexican Americans legally classified as "White", following anti-miscegenation laws in most western states until the 1960s, could not legally marry African or Asian Americans (See Perez v. Sharp). However, most were not socially considered white, and therefore, accoding to Historian Neil Foley in the book The White Scourge Mexicans and Mexican Americans did marry non-whites typically without reprisal.
Economic and social issues[link]
Immigration issues[link]
See also: 2006 United States immigration reform protests and Illegal immigration to the United States
Since the 1960s, Mexican immigrants have met a significant portion of the demand for cheap labor in the United States.[36] Fear of deportation makes them highly vulnerable to exploitation by employers. Many employers, however, have developed a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude toward hiring undocumented Mexican nationals. In May 2006, hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, Mexicans and other nationalities, walked out of their jobs across the country in protest to support immigration reform (many in hopes of a path to citizenship similar to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted citizenship to Mexican nationals living and working without documentation in the US).
In the United States, in states where Mexican Americans make up a large percentage of the population, such as California and Texas, undocumented as well as legal immigrants from Mexico and Central America in addition to Mexican Americans combined often make up a large majority of workers in many blue-collar occupations: the majority of the employed men are restaurant workers, janitors, truck drivers, gardeners, construction laborers, material moving workers, or perform other types of manual or other blue collar labor (Source, U.S. Census Bureau, American community survey data.). Many women also work in low wage service and retail occupations. In many of these places with large Latino populations, many types of blue-collar workers are often assumed to be Mexican American or Mexican or other Latino immigrants (Although a large minority are actually not. -Source, U.S. Census Bureau, American community survey data.) because of their frequent dominance in those occupations and stereotyping. Occasionally, tensions have risen between Mexican immigrants and other ethnic groups because of increasing concerns over the availability of working-class jobs to Americans and immigrants from other ethnic groups. However, tensions have also risen among Hispanic American laborers who have been displaced because of both cheap Mexican labor and ethnic profiling. African American workers in lower-wage jobs have been displaced by undocumented Mexican laborers and their neighborhoods have been transformed from majority black to majority Latino, which has caused some racial tensions between African Americans and Mexicans in the Southwest US. Even legal immigrants to the United States, both from Mexico and elsewhere, have spoken out against illegal immigration. However, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in June 2007, 63% of Americans would support an immigration policy that would put illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship if they "pass background checks, pay fines and have jobs, learn English", while 30% would oppose such a plan. The survey also found that if this program was instead labeled "amnesty", 54% would support it, while 39% would oppose.[37]
Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has said that the growth of the working-age population is a large factor in keeping the economy growing and that immigration can be used to grow that population. According to Greenspan, by 2030, the growth of the US workforce will slow from 1 percent to 1/2 percent, while the percentage of the population over 65 years will rise from 13 percent to perhaps 20 percent.[38] Greenspan has also stated that the current immigration problem could be solved with a "stroke of the pen", referring to the 2007 immigration reform bill which would have strengthened border security, created a guest worker program, and put illegal immigrants currently residing in the US on a path to citizenship if they met certain conditions.[39]
Discrimination and stereotypes[link]
Main articles: Anti-Mexican sentiment and Hispanophobia
Throughout U.S. history, Mexican Americans have and continue to endure various types of negative stereotypes which have long circulated in media and popular culture.[40][41] Mexican Americans have also faced discrimination based on ethnicity, race, culture, poverty, and use of the Spanish language.[42]
Since the majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S. have traditionally been from Latin America, the Mexican American community has been the subject of widespread immigration raids. During The Great Depression, the United States government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their will. More than 500,000 individuals were deported, approximately 60 percent of which were actually United States citizens.[43][44] In the post-war McCarthy era, the Justice Department launched Operation Wetback.[44]
During World War II, more than 300,000 Mexican Americans served in the US armed forces.[18] Mexican Americans were generally integrated into regular military units, however, many Mexican American war veterans were discriminated against and even denied medical services by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs when they arrived home.[30] In 1948, war veteran Dr Hector P. Garcia founded the American GI Forum to address the concerns of Mexican American veterans who were being discriminated against. The AGIF's first campaign was on the behalf of Felix Longoria, a Mexican American private who was killed in the Philippines while in the line of duty. Upon the return of his body to his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas, he was denied funeral services because of his race.
In the 1948 case of Perez v. Sharp, Andrea Perez—a Mexican-American woman listed as White—and Sylvester Davis—an African American man—the Supreme Court of California recognized that interracial bans on marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.
In 2006, Time magazine reported that the number of hate groups in the United States increased by 33% since 2000, primarily due to anti-illegal immigrant and anti-Mexican sentiment.[45] According to the annual Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Hate Crimes Statistics Report,[46] in 2007, Hispanics comprised 61.7 percent of victims of crimes motivated by a bias toward the victims’ ethnicity or national origin. Since 2003 the number of both victims of anti-Hispanic crimes and incidents increased by nearly 40 percent. In 2004, the comparable figure was 51.5 percent. In California, the state with the largest Mexican American population, the number of hate crimes committed against Latinos has almost doubled.[47][48]
Social status and assimilation[link]
Barrow (2005) finds increases in average personal and household incomes for Mexican Americans in the 21st century. U.S. born Mexican Americans earn more and are represented more in the middle and upper-class segments more than most recently arriving Mexican immigrants.
Most immigrants from Mexico, as elsewhere, come from the lower classes and from families generationally employed in lower skilled jobs. They also are most likely from rural areas. Thus, many new Mexican immigrants are not skilled in white collar professions. Recently, some professionals from Mexico have been migrating, but to make the transition from one country to another involves re-training and re-adjusting to conform to US laws —i.e. professional licensing is required.[citation needed]
According to James P. Smith of the Research and Development Corporation, the children and grandchildren of Latino immigrants tend to lessen educational and income gaps with native whites. Immigrant Latino men make about half of what native whites do, while second generation US-born Latinos make about 78 percent of the salaries of their native white counterparts and by the third generation US-born Latinos make on average identical wages to their US-born white counterparts.[50]
Huntington (2005) argues that the sheer number, concentration, linguistic homogeneity, and other characteristics of Latin American immigrants will erode the dominance of English as a nationally unifying language, weaken the country's dominant cultural values, and promote ethnic allegiances over a primary identification as an American. Testing these hypotheses with data from the U.S. Census and national and Los Angeles opinion surveys, Citrin et al. (2007) show that Hispanics generally acquire English and lose Spanish rapidly beginning with the second generation, and appear to be no more or less religious or committed to the work ethic than native-born non-Mexican American whites. However, the children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants were able to make close ties with their extended families in Mexico, since United States shares a 2,000 mile border with Mexico. Many had the opportunity to visit Mexico on a relatively frequent basis. As a result, many Mexicans were able to maintain a strong Mexican culture, language, and relationship with others.[51]
South et al. (2005) examine Hispanic spatial assimilation and inter-neighborhood geographic mobility. Their longitudinal analysis of seven hundred Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban immigrants followed from 1990 to 1995 finds broad support for hypotheses derived from the classical account of assimilation into American society. High income, English-language use, and embeddedness in American social contexts increased Latin American immigrants' geographic mobility into multi-ethnic neighborhoods. US citizenship and years spent in the United States were positively associated with geographic mobility into different neighborhoods, and coethnic contact was inversely associated with this form of mobility, but these associations operated largely through other predictors. Prior experiences of ethnic discrimination increased and therefore decreased the likelihood that Latino immigrants would move from their original neighborhoods, while residing in metropolitan areas with large Latino populations led to geographic moves into "less Anglo" census tracts.[52]
Segregation issues[link]
In 2000, over nine million Mexicans Americans lived in areas considered highly segregated socially.[53]
Segregated neighborhoods[link]
Neighborhoods with a high percentage of individuals who claim Latino ancestry are commonly referred to as "barrios" or "colonias." When translated from Spanish to English, barrio signifies "district" or "quarter" while colonia is the corresponding Mexican Spanish word.
A barrio has been defined as "a place where Latino immigrants can express communal culture and language within the larger American culture."[53] In other words, the barrio is a sort of sanctuary for Spanish-speaking immigrants who may not yet be fully adjusted to the United States. In the barrio, they can converse in their native language, allowing one to communicate, find a job, and seek help with less pressure of speaking a second language. It is a place where Latino culture thrives and a source of comfort to a recent immigrant, as it would offer him or her a place to work and live while perfecting fluency of the English language.
However, some argue that the barrio also represents the inequality faced by many Mexican Americans in the United States.[53] Barrios usually offer a lower quality of education, provide poorer jobs than other neighborhoods, and generally receive less government attention than wealthier more integrated Hispanic neighborhoods.
Housing market practices[link]
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Studies have shown that the segregation among Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants seems to be declining. One study found that Mexican American applicants were offered the same housing terms and conditions as Anglo Americans. They were asked to provide the same information (regarding employment, income, credit checks, etc.) and asked to meet the same general qualifications of their Anglo peers.[54]
However, in this same study, it was found that Mexican Americans were more likely than Anglo Americans to be asked to pay a security deposit or application fee.[54] Another interesting aspect of this study is that the Mexican American applicants were more likely to be placed onto a waiting list than the Anglo Americans applicants.[54]
Latino segregation versus Black segregation[link]
Historically, African Americans have faced much harsher treatment concerning segregation than any other racial, ethnic, or ancestral group. However, throughout the Southwest during the first fifty years of the 20th century, Mexican Americans faced segregation, despite being legally classified as "white" (The legal classification of all mexicans as white was a convention orginially enacted to enforce the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican American war in 1848. According to the Treaty Mexicans remaining in the new US territory would have the right of citizens, which at that time was only granted to "white" people.) According to legal scholar Claire Sheridan, referring to the legal, social and political status of Mexican Americans in the early 20th century: "Anglos rarely distinguished between Mexicans and Mexican Americans and painted a picture of "Mexicans" as an economic and cultural threat to America. In this period, Mexican Americans increasingly were denied many of the rights of citizens. Like the African American population, many were placed in segregated schools with inferior educational resources, barred from restaurants, movie theaters, bathrooms, and public swimming pools, and denied the possibility of living in white neighborhoods. Yet none of this segregation was formally encoded in law. For legal purposes, Mexican Americans were white. They were counted as white in the census and, unlike non-whites (other than those from Africa), were able to naturalize.7 However, law clashed with perceptions of racial "reality," creating a citizenship status for Mexican Americans that many considered to be legal fiction. This gap between their legal and social standing was reflected in local interpretations of the law and in the regulation of their political participation through mechanisms such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and blue ribbon jury commissions. This unequal treatment continued through the war years and into the 1950s. Mexican Americans' unequal status was especially evident in their representation on juries. While not prohibited by law from serving, they were almost universally excluded on the grounds that they were not qualified to serve."
When comparing the contemporary segregation of Mexican Americans to that of Black Americans, some scholars claim that "Latino segregation is less severe and fundamentally different than Black residential segregation."[53] Some studies suggest that contemporary segregation of Latinos is more likely to be due to factors such as lower socioeconomic status and immigration while the segregation of African Americans is more likely to be due to larger issues of the history of racism in the US.
Segregated schools[link]
During certain periods, Mexican American children sometimes were forced to register at "Mexican schools", where classroom conditions were poor, the school year was shorter, and the quality of education was substandard.[55]
Various reasons for the inferiority of the education given to Mexican American students have been listed by James A. Ferg-Cadima including: inadequate resources, poor equipment, unfit building construction, shortened school year (see below), failure to prevent drop out, limited access to high school, a watered down curriculum, poor instruction, disproportionate suspension, expulsion, harassment and non-enforced attendance rules.
In 1923, the Texas Education Survey Commission found that the school year for some non-white groups was 1.6 months shorter than the average school year.[55] This may be connected to the fact that minority labor was needed during this time. As the agricultural field required the cheap labor provided by exploited minorities, it has been suggested that the minority school year was shortened to allow for these students to work instead of receive the extra 1.6 months of education.
Some have interpreted the shortened school year as a "means of social control"[55] implementing policies to ensure that Mexican Americans would maintain the unskilled labor force required for a strong economy. A lesser education would serve to confine Mexican Americans to the bottom rung of the social ladder. By limiting the number of days that Mexican Americans could attend school and allotting time for these same students to work, in mainly agricultural and seasonal jobs, the prospects for higher education and upward mobility were slim.
Immigration and segregation[link]
Immigration hubs are popular destinations for Latino immigrants. They are increasing in size and continue to be highly segregated. The largest immigration hubs include Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The highly segregated areas of these cities have historically served the purpose of allowing immigrants to become comfortable in the United States, accumulate wealth, and eventually leave.[56] The historical view of immigration hubs sees these cities as temporary starting points for immigrants. They are not expected to live their entire lives within the United States inside segregated areas. Rather, they are expected to accumulate enough wealth to start a life within the larger society.
This model of immigration and residential segregation, explained above, is the model which has historically been accurate in describing the experiences of Latino immigrants. However, the patterns of immigration seen today no longer follows this model. This old model is termed the standard spatial assimilation model. More contemporary models are the polarization model and the diffusion model[clarification needed].
The spatial assimilation model posits that as immigrants would live within this country's borders, they would simultaneously become more comfortable in their new surroundings, their socioeconomic status would rise, and their ability to speak English would increase. The combination of these changes would allow for the immigrant to move out of the barrio and into the dominant society. This type of assimilation reflects the experiences of immigrants of the early twentieth century.[53] Recent, more contemporary, models of residential segregation are the polarization model and the diffusion model are described below.
Polarization model suggests that the immigration of non-Black minorities into the United States further separates Blacks and Whites, as though the new immigrants are a buffer between them. This creates a hierarchy in which Blacks are at the bottom, Whites are at the top, and other groups fill the middle.[56] In other words, the polarization model posits that Asians and Amerindians are less segregated than their African American peers because White American society would rather live closer to Asians or Amerindians than Blacks.
The diffusion model has also been suggested as a way of describing the immigrant's experience within the United States. This model is rooted in the belief that as time passes, more and more immigrants enter the country. This model suggests that as the United States becomes more populated with a more diverse set of peoples, stereotypes and discriminatory practices will decrease, as awareness and acceptness increase. The diffusion model predicts that new immigrants will break down old patterns of discrimination and prejudice, as one becomes more and more comfortable with the more diverse neighborhoods that are created through the influx of immigrants.[56] Applying this model to the experiences of Mexican Americans forces one to see Mexican American immigrants as positive additions to the "American melting pot," in which as more additions are made to the pot, the more equal and accepting society will become.
Overcrowding[link]
The issue of overcrowding is closely related to the issue of segregation and immigration.[citation needed] As immigrants enter the country, they are likely to settle in areas where their friends, family, or simply other who share their culture, have settled. It is not uncommon for many members of families, extended families, or friends, to live in what is considered "overcrowded" conditions.
A large aspect of the segregation of Latinos within the United States is overcrowding. Rates of overcrowding among Latinos, especially in American suburbs, are high. The U.S. Census Bureau considers a residence to be overcrowded if there is more than one person per room[57]
There are various explanations for overcrowding. One widely held belief about overcrowding is based on a stereotype of living in close proximity simply to cultural preference. To expand on that point, it is widely believed that immigrant Hispanic families live in dense households because of their desire to remain in close proximity with extended family. However, this view does not paint the entire picture. Some families may live under one roof by choice and it is possible that Hispanic people may have different cultural standards than other population groups, thus allowing them to be more comfortable living with extended family underneath the same roof. However, one cannot reduce all problems of Hispanic overcrowding to cultural preference, as this offers an incomplete understanding of the issue at hand.[57]
Hispanic people may live in overcrowded conditions out of economic necessity and simply because they choose to live differently than others. Lack of affordable housing and a poor selection of well-paying occupations may combine to create the necessity of many living close together.[57] Because one certain family may find very few opportunities for sufficient housing or find themselves without adequate funds for a house of their own, they may be forced to live in crowded conditions.
The Chicano movement and the Chicano Moratorium[link]
In the heady days of the late 1960s, when the student movement was active around the globe, the Chicano movement conducted actions such as the mass walkouts by high school students in Denver and East Los Angeles in 1968 and the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles in 1970. The movement was particularly strong at the college level, where activists formed MEChA, an organization that seeks to promote Chicano unity and empowerment through education and political action, but also espouses revanchist ideals centered around "taking back" the American southwest for Mexicans. The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based but fragile coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Vietnam War. The committee was led by activists from local colleges and members of the "Brown Berets", a group with roots in the high school student movement that staged walkouts in 1968, known as the East L.A. walkouts, also called "blowouts". The best known historical fact of the Moratorium was the death of Rubén Salazar, known for his reporting on civil rights and police brutality. The official story is that Salazar was killed by a tear gas canister fired by a member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department into the Silver Dollar Café at the conclusion of the August 29 rally.
Mexican-American communities[link]
Main article: List of Mexican-American communities
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2011) |
There are large Mexican American populations, by size or percentage, in the cities of:
- Los Angeles, California – the city proper home to over 1 million of Mexican ancestry, another 2 million throughout Los Angeles County, and a total of six million in the five-county Greater Los Angeles Area. Largest Mexican ancestry populated city in the United States.
(according to the 2010 census, L.A. is now under 20% are of Mexican descent now with equally numerous Central American national groups and the rest-10% other Latino).
-
- East Los Angeles, California – Unincorporated community totally (99%) Latino, about 66% are foreign-born with Mexican immigrants in the lead and 33% of Mexican descent.
- Culver City, California – Also the site of the infamous Zoot Suit Riots in 1943.
- Long Beach, California – Third largest city in Southern California, One of many cities in the region with a large Mexican/Hispanic population.
- Pomona, California[[2]] – over 70% of the city population is Mexican or Mexican American.
- La Puente, California – about two-thirds are of Mexican ancestry or Hispanic, one of the largest Hispanic (in percentage, the most Mexican-American community) populations in California. [58]
- Inland Empire, California (Riverside/ San Bernardino Counties- and the cities of that namesake) – About a third of the population are of Mexican descent.
- Riverside, California [59] and San Bernardino, California [60]
- Indio, California [61] and Coachella, California (primarily Mexican-American). [62]
- Southern California is the highest densely populated Mexican-American region, but by areas of percentage it is South Texas.
- Las Vegas, Nevada – 31% of the population of the city is Hispanic in which 25% of that is of Mexican descent.
- Chicago, Illinois – 1.4 million of Mexican ancestry in the Chicago metropolitan area[63] and the third largest Mexican community in the USA.[citation needed]
- Houston, Texas – second largest Mexican ancestry community in the United States.
- Phoenix, Arizona – fourth largest Mexican-American population.
- Tucson, Arizona – 30% of the almost 1 million people in the metro area.[64]
- Dallas/Fort Worth Area – fifth largest Mexican-American population and over 1.5 million Mexicans in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex (3rd largest foreign born Mexican population in the US per MSA).
- San Antonio, Texas – over half of the population in the city proper (52%, 685,000)[65]
- San Diego, California – slightly more than one-fourth of the city's population is Hispanic, primarily Mexican American; however, this percentage is the lowest of any significant border city.
- El Paso, Texas – largest Mexican-American community bordering a state of Mexico.
- South Texas – Heavily populated by Mexican-Americans, who are the ethnic majority, in a region spanning from Laredo to Corpus Christi to Brownsville.
- San Francisco Bay Area – also with over one million Hispanics, many of whom are Mexican Americans, both U.S. born and foreign-born (see also Oakland about 10–20% Hispanic and San Francisco – the Mission District section- the city is 10–20% Latino).
- Oakland – California's third largest Mexican-American city by percentage (over 25%) after Long Beach (about 30%).
- San Jose, California – Nearly one-third of the city's population is Mexican-American or of Hispanic origin; San Jose has the largest Mexican-American population within the Bay Area.
- Central Valley of California both the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys have majority Mexican American communities.
- Denver, Colorado – Colorado has the eighth largest population of Hispanics, seventh high percentage of Hispanics, fourth largest population of Mexican-Americans, and sixth highest percentage of Mexican-Americans in the United States. According to the 2010 census, there are over 1 million Mexican-Americans in Colorado.[66] Over one-third of the city's population is Mexican-American or Hispanic/Latino, as well as approximately one-fourth of the entire Denver Metropolitan area. About 17% of the cities population is foreign born, mostly from Latin America.[67]
- Greeley, Colorado – Over one-third of the cities population is Latino, mostly Mexican-American.[68]
- Garden City is Latino majority, and Evans has a very large Latino population as well.[69][70]
- Southern Colorado is home to many communities of Hispanics descended from Mexican settlers who arrived during Spanish colonial times. Roughly half of Pueblo's population is Latino, mostly Mexican-American.[71] Many other towns in southern Colorado have high proportions of Mexican-Americans. La Junta, Rocky Ford, Las Animas, Lamar, Walsenburg, and Trinidad all have large Mexican American communities.
- San Luis Valley – The San Luis Valley has many towns with large Mexican-American populations. Antonito, Blanca, Center, Del Norte, Fort Garland, Monte Vista, and Romeo are all Latino majority.[72]
- The Yakima Valley and Tri-Cities, Washington – This region of Washington contains many communities of Mexican-American majority thanks to high demand for agricultural labor.
A dynamic community[link]
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In the 1990s and 2000s, the Midwestern United States became a major destination for Mexican immigrants. But Mexican-Americans were already present in the Midwest's industrial cities and urban areas. Esp. Mexicans/Latinos came into states like Illinois (mostly in Chicagoland), Indiana esp. the Northern section, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan (i.e. the Detroit metropolitan area), Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and Wisconsin due to needs of the region's industrial manufacturing base.
Another destination of Mexican and Latin American immigration was the Northeastern United States, in places such as the Monongahela Valley, Pennsylvania; Mahoning Valley, Ohio; throughout Massachusetts and the state of Rhode Island; New Haven, Connecticut along with other Latin American nationalities; Washington, D.C. with Maryland and Northern Virginia included; the Hudson Valley and Long Island of New York state; the Jersey Shore region and the Delaware Valley, New Jersey.
Communities that consist mostly of recent-arrived immigrants from Mexico, are also present in other parts of the rural Southeastern United States, in states such as Georgia, Maryland, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma. A growing Mexican-American population is also present in urban areas such as Orlando, Florida with the Central Florida region included; the Atlanta metro area; Charlotte, North Carolina- with a majority Hispanic enclave of Eastland; New Orleans which increased after Hurricane Katrina in Sep. 2005; the Hampton Roads, Virginia area; the states of Maine, New Hampshire and Delaware; and Pennsylvania esp. in the Philadelphia metropolitan area – the area's largest Mexican community.
List of states by Mexican-American population[link]
| State/Territory | Mexican-Americans Population (2010 Census)[73] |
Percentage | |
|---|---|---|---|
 Alabama |
122,911 | 2.6 | |
 Alaska |
122,911 | 3.0 | |
 Arizona |
1,657,668 | 25.9 | |
 Arkansas |
138,194 | 4.7 | |
 California |
11,423,146 | 30.7 | |
 Colorado |
757,181 | 15.1 | |
 Connecticut |
50,658 | 1.4 | |
 Delaware |
30,283 | 3.0 | |
 District of Columbia |
8,507 | 1.4 | |
 Florida |
629,718 | 3.3 | |
 Georgia |
519,502 | 5.4 | |
 Hawaii |
35,415 | 2.6 | |
 Idaho |
148,923 | 9.5 | |
 Illinois |
1,602,403 | 12.5 | |
 Indiana |
295,373 | 4.6 | |
 Iowa |
117,090 | 3.8 | |
 Kansas |
247,297 | 8.7 | |
 Kentucky |
82,110 | 1.9 | |
 Louisiana |
78,643 | 1.7 | |
 Maine |
5,134 | 0.4 | |
 Maryland |
88,004 | 1.5 | |
 Massachusetts |
38,379 | 0.6 | |
 Michigan |
317,903 | 3.2 | |
 Minnesota |
176,007 | 3.3 | |
 Mississippi |
52,459 | 1.8 | |
 Missouri |
147,254 | 2.5 | |
 Montana |
20,048 | 2.0 | |
 Nebraska |
128,060 | 7.0 | |
 Nevada |
540,978 | 20.0 | |
 New Hampshire |
7,822 | 0.6 | |
 New Jersey |
217,715 | 2.5 | |
 New Mexico |
590,890 | 28.7 | |
 New York |
457,288 | 2.4 | |
 North Carolina |
486,960 | 5.1 | |
 North Dakota |
9,223 | 1.4 | |
 Ohio |
172,029 | 1.5 | |
 Oklahoma |
267,016 | 7.1 | |
 Oregon |
369,817 | 9.7 | |
 Pennsylvania |
129,568 | 1.0 | |
 Rhode Island |
9,090 | 0.9 | |
 South Carolina |
138,35 | 3.0 | |
 South Dakota |
13,839 | 1.7 | |
 Tennessee |
186,615 | 2.9 | |
 Texas |
7,951,193 | 31.6 | |
 Utah |
258,905 | 9.4 | |
 Vermont |
2,534 | 0.4 | |
 Virginia |
155,067 | 1.9 | |
 Washington |
601,768 | 8.9 | |
 West Virginia |
9,704 | 0.5 | |
 Wisconsin |
244,248 | 4.3 | |
 Wyoming |
37,719 | 6.7 | |
| USA | 31,798,258 | 10.3 |
US communities with high percentages of Mexican ancestry[link]
The top 25 US communities with various Mexican American populations are:[74]
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U.S. communities with the highest proportion of residents born in Mexico[link]
Top 25 U.S. communities with the highest proportion of residents born in Mexico are:[75]
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See also[link]
- Mexican people
- Chicanismo
- Chicano
- Chicano literature
- Chicano poetry
- Hyphenated American
- List of Mexican American writers
- List of Mexican Americans
- Mexicans abroad
- List of Mexican people
Notes[link]
- ^ US Census Bureau: Hispanic or Latino by Type: 2010 retrieved January 22, 2012
- ^ US Census Bureau 2009 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN BY SPECIFIC ORIGIN
- ^ Statistics Canada: 2001 Census: Ethnocultural Portrait of Canada
- ^ Statistics Canada 2006: "Ethnic origins, 2006 counts, for Canada, provinces and territories"
- ^ Pew Hispanic Center: "A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants to the United States" April 11, 2009
- ^ "Table 4. Top Five States for Detailed Hispanic or Latino Origin Groups With a Population Size of One Million or More in the United States: 2010". The Hispanic Population 2010. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf. Retrieved 22 May 2012.
- ^ "Mexico – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/379167/Mexico#tab=active~checked%2Citems~checked&title=Mexico%20--%20Britannica%20Online20Encyclopedia.
- ^ http://historiamexicana.colmex.mx/pdf/13/art_13_1938_16335.pdf
- ^ Latinos and the Changing Face of America – Population Reference Bureau
- ^ "Mexican Americans – MSN Encarta". Mexican Americans – MSN Encarta. Archived from the original on November 1, 2009. http://www.webcitation.org/5kx7M1c1J.
- ^ [1]
- ^ American Experience | Remember the Alamo | Timeline | PBS
- ^ (DV) Felux: Remember the Alamo?
- ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=ENPUSvf4Z3EC&pg=PA41&dq=%22tejano+community%27s%22+%22texas+independence%22&sig=sgeYJ9hGcg2Fg2WPZc4AoeTREZE#PPA21,M1
- ^ http://bexargenealogy.com/Tejanos.html[dead link]
- ^ The Hispanic Experience – Tejanos in the Texas Revolution
- ^ American Experience | The Gold Rush | People & Events | PBS
- ^ a b World Book Encyclopedia | Atlas | Homework Help
- ^ Census Bureau Home Page
- ^ Tafoya, Sonya (December 6, 2004). "Shades of Belonging" (PDF). Pew Hispanic Center. http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/35.pdf. Retrieved June 3, 2008.
- ^ Bertoni et al., Admixture in Hispanics: Distribution of Ancestral Population Contributions in the United States, Human Biology – Volume 75, Number 1, February 2003, pp. 1–11
- ^ "Racial Classifications in Latin America". http://www.zonalatina.com/Zldata55.htm. Retrieved December 25, 2006.
- ^ "A History of Mexican Americans in California: Introduction". http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/5views/5views5.htm.
- ^ a b c d e Gibson, Campbell; Jung, Kay (September 2002). "Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For The United States, Regions, Divisions, and States". Working Paper Series No. 56. http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056.html. Retrieved December 7, 2006.
- ^ "US Population in the 1930 Census by Race". 2002. http://www.genealogybranches.com/1930census.html. Retrieved December 7, 2006.
- ^ Surveillance Epidemology and End Results. Race and Nationality Descriptions from the 2000 US Census and Bureau of Vital Statistics. 2007. May 21, 2007.
- ^ Sheridan, Clare. "Another White Race:" Mexican Americans and the Paradox of Whiteness in Jury Selection. Law and History Review. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/21.1/forum_sheridan.html.
- ^ De Genova, Nicholas (2006). Racial Transformations: Latinos And Asians. Duke University Press. p. 96. ISBN 978-0-8223-3716-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=EypC4KRNR9oC&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=anti+miscegenation+mexican&source=web&ots=WSGVELWSM0&sig=JrAVv7bWJotQboswzLKUAgWp-JA#PPP1,M1.
- ^ History of Voting Rights in America » Cobb-LaMarche 2004 – Ballot Recount
- ^ a b c press3b
- ^ Haney-Lopez, Ian F. (1996). "3 Prerequisite cases". White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York University. p. 61.
- ^ Haney-Lopez, Ian F. (1996). "Appendix "A"". White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York University.
- ^ RACE – History – Post-War Economic Boom and Racial Discrimination
- ^ JS Online: Filmmaker explores practice of redlining in documentary[dead link]
- ^ Pulido, Laura. Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles. University of California Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-520-24520-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=CzarnBhJiZUC&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=history+residential+discrimination+%22mexican+americans%22&source=web&ots=E5sWzrye-1&sig=ASrRu7iGdrLIFEc6cNirTozixiU#PPA53,M1.
- ^ Scruggs, O. (1984). Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Labor History, 25(1), 135–137. Retrieved from America: History & Life database.
- ^ Summary of Findings: Mixed Views on Immigration Bill
- ^ FRB: Testimony, Greenspan-Aging population-February 27, 2003
- ^ "Immigration curbs hurting U.S., Greenspan says". USA Today. May 17, 2007. http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2007-05-17-greenspan-immigration_N.htm. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
- ^ Flores Niemann Yolanda, et al. ‘’Black-Brown Relations and Stereotypes’’ (2003); Charles Ramírez Berg, ’’Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, & Resistance’’ (2002); Chad Richardson, ‘’Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados: Class & Culture on the South Texas Border’’ (1999)
- ^ Life on the Texas-Mexico Border: Myth and reality as represented in Mainstream and Independent Western Cinema
- ^ Steven H. Wilson | Brown over "Other White": Mexican Americans' Legal Arguments and Litigation Strategy in School Desegregation Lawsuits | Law and History Review, 21.1 | The History Cooperative
- ^ 1930s Mexican Deportation: Educator brings attention to historic period and its effect on her family
- ^ a b Counseling Kevin: The Economy[dead link]
- ^ Ressner, Jeffrey (May 29, 2006). "How Immigration is Rousing the Zealots". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1198895,00.html. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
- ^ Hate Crime Statistics, 2007
- ^ Democracy Now! | FBI Statistics Show Anti-Latino Hate Crimes on the Rise
- ^ http://ccsre.stanford.edu/reports/exec_summary5.pdf
- ^ Southern California Quarterly "Cinco de Mayo's First Seventy-Five Years in Alta California: From Spontaneous Behavior to Sedimented Memory, 1862 to 1937" Spring 2007 (see American observation of Cinco de Mayo started in California) accessed Oct 30, 2007
- ^ Cowen, Tyler (June 18, 2006). "Assimilation of immigrants is not a problem in the U.S". Deseret News (Salt Lake City). http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20060618/ai_n16490113.
- ^ LeeAnne, Gelletly. Mexican Immigration. Philadelphia: Mason Crest.
- ^ South, Scott J.; Crowder, Kyle; and Chavez, Erick. "Geographic Mobility and Spatial Assimilation among U.S. Latino Immigrants." International Migration Review 2005 39(3): 577–607. Issn: 0197-9183
- ^ a b c d e Martin, Michael E. Residential Segregation Patterns of Latinos in the United States, 1991–2000. New York: Routledge, 2007.
- ^ a b c James, Franklin J., and Eileen A. Tynan. Minorities in the Sunbelt. New Jersey: The State University of New Jersey, 1984.
- ^ a b c Ferg-Cadima, James A. Black, White and Brown:. Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Apr. 28, 2008 <http://www.maldef.org/publications/pdf/LatinoDesegregationPaper2004.pdf>
- ^ a b c White, Michael J., Catherine Bueker, and Jennifer E. Glick. The Impact of Immigration on Residential Segregation Revisited. <http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Sociology/faculty/mwhite/documents/impact_of_immigration_on_residential_segregation_revisited.pdf>
- ^ a b c Roth, Benjamin J. The Latino Community in Suburban Chicago: an Analysis of Overcrowding. Latinos United. <http://www.latinopolicyforum.org/drupal55/files/Overcrowding_Report.pdf>
- ^ http://www.city-data.com/city/La-Puente-California.html
- ^ http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_SF1_QTP10&prodType=table
- ^ http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_SF1_QTP10&prodType=table
- ^ http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_SF1_QTP10&prodType=table
- ^ http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_SF1_QTP6&prodType=table
- ^ http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ADPTable?_bm=y&-context=adp&-qr_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_DP5YR5&-ds_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_&-tree_id=5309&-redoLog=true&-_caller=geoselect&-geo_id=31000US16980&-format=&-_lang=en
- ^ http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ADPTable?_bm=y&-context=adp&-qr_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_DP5YR5&-ds_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_&-tree_id=5309&-redoLog=true&-_caller=geoselect&-geo_id=31000US46060&-format=&-_lang=en
- ^ http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ADPTable?_bm=y&-context=adp&-qr_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_DP5YR5&-ds_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_&-tree_id=5309&-redoLog=false&-_caller=geoselect&-geo_id=16000US4865000&-format=&-_lang=en
- ^ http://dola.colorado.gov/dlg/demog/2010data/race%20and%20hispanic%20origin%20muni.pdf
- ^ http://www.city-data.com/city/Denver-Colorado.html
- ^ http://www.city-data.com/city/Greeley-Colorado.html
- ^ http://www.city-data.com/city/Garden-City-Colorado.html
- ^ http://www.city-data.com/city/Evans-Colorado.html
- ^ http://www.city-data.com/city/Pueblo-Colorado.html
- ^ http://scseed.org/wb/media/SLV%20Statistical%20Profile%2012-03-07.pdf
- ^ http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_SF1_QTP10&prodType=table US Census Bureau: Table QT-P10 Hispanic or Latino by Type: 2010] retrieved January 22, 2012 - select state from drop-down menu
- ^ "Ancestry Map of Mexican Communities". Epodunk.com. http://www.epodunk.com/ancestry/Mexican.html. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
- ^ "Top 101 cities with the most residents born in Mexico (population 500+)". city-data.com. http://www.city-data.com/top2/h141.html. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
References[link]
- Barrow, Lisa and Rouse, Cecilia Elena. "Do Returns to Schooling Differ by Race and Ethnicity?" American Economic Review 2005 95(2): 83–87. Issn: 0002-8282 Fulltext: in Ingenta and Ebsco
- Jack Citrin, Amy Lerman, Michael Murakami and Kathryn Pearson, "Testing Huntington: Is Hispanic Immigration a Threat to American Identity?" Perspectives on Politics, Volume 5, Issue 01, February 2007, pp 31–48
- De La Garza, Rodolfo O., Martha Menchaca, Louis DeSipio. Barrio Ballots: Latino Politics in the 1990 Elections (1994)
- De la Garza, Rodolfo O. Awash in the Mainstream: Latino Politics in the 1996 Elections (1999) * De la Garza, Rodolfo O., and Louis Desipio. Ethnic Ironies: Latino Politics in the 1992 Elections (1996)
- De la Garza, Rodolfo O. Et al. Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics (1992)
- Arnoldo De León, Mexican Americans in Texas: A Brief History, 2nd ed. (1999)
- Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, David R. Maciel, editors, The Contested Homeland: A Chicano History of New Mexico 2000, ISBN 0-8263-2199-
- Nancie L. González; The Spanish-Americans of New Mexico: A Heritage of Pride (1969)
- Hero, Rodney E. Latinos and the U.S. Political System: Two-Tiered Pluralism. (1992)
- Garcia, F. Chris. Latinos and the Political System. (1988)
- Samuel P. Huntington. Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity (2005)
- Kenski, Kate and Tisinger, Russell. "Hispanic Voters in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential General Elections." Presidential Studies Quarterly 2006 36(2): 189–202. Issn: 0360-4918 Fulltext: in Swetswise and Ingenta
- David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (1987)
- Pachon, Harry and Louis Desipio. New Americans by Choice: Political Perspectives of Latino Immigrants. (1994)
- Rosales, Francisco A., Chicano!: The history of the Mexican American civil rights movement. (1997). ISBN 978-1-55885-201-3
- Smith, Robert Courtney. Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants (2005), links with old village, based on interviews
- South, Scott J.; Crowder, Kyle; and Chavez, Erick. "Geographic Mobility and Spatial Assimilation among U.S. Latino Immigrants." International Migration Review 2005 39(3): 577–607. Issn: 0197-9183
- Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M. And Mariela M. Páez. Latinos: Remaking America. (2002)
- Villarreal, Roberto E., and Norma G. Hernandez. Latinos and Political Coalitions: Political Empowerment for the 1990s (1991)
Further reading[link]
- Martha Menchaca (2002). Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans. University of Texas Press. pp. 19–21. ISBN 978-0-292-75254-2.
- William A. Nericcio (2007). "Tex(t)-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the 'Mexican' in America"; utpress book; book galleryblog
- John R. Chavez (1984). "The Lost Land: A Chicano Image of the American Southwest", New Mexico University Publications[clarification needed].
External links[link]
- California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives – In the Chicano/Latino Collections
- California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives – Digital Chicano Art
- Calisphere > California Cultures > Hispanic Americans
- ImaginArte – Interpreting and Re-imaging Chican@Art
- Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race (book)
- Mexican-American.org – Network of the Mexican American Community
- Mexican Americans MSN Encarta (Archived 2009-11-01)
- Think Mexican – News, Culture, and Information on the Mexican Community
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http://wn.com/Mexican_American
Related pages:
http://nl.wn.com/Mexicaanse Amerikanen
http://de.wn.com/Mexican American
http://it.wn.com/Messicano-statunitensi
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_American
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
- For the baseball player see Glenn Spencer (baseball)
| Glenn Spencer | |
|---|---|
| Born | United States |
| Occupation | Political activist |
Glenn Spencer is an American political and illegal immigration activist, and president of American Border Patrol.
In the 2000s Spencer gained media attention, notably from Lou Dobbs of CNN, when he converted his ranch on the Arizona and Mexico border into a hi-tech security zone complete with infrared cameras, aerial drones and motion detectors. Spencer sought to show the American federal government how easy it was to halt illegal immigration and used his life savings to prove it.[1][2][3]
The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have accused American Border Patrol of being a hate group.[4][5][6]
See also[link]
References[link]
- ^ Alternet.org
- ^ Hispanic7.com
- ^ CNN
- ^ Tobias, Glen; Foxman, Abraham (2003). "Armed Vigilantes in Arizona". Border Disputes (Phoenix, New York: Anti-Defamation League) (PDF): 2–5. http://www.adl.org/extremism/arizona/arizonaborder.pdf. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
- ^ "Anti-Immigration Groups". Intelligence Report. Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center. 2001-05. http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=175. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
- ^ Berkowitz, Bill; Dobbs, Lou (2006-07-01). "Dubious Guest List". Rome: Inter-Press Service. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0701-08.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
External links[link]
- American Border Patrol
- A Border Stories profile of Glenn Spencer
- American Patrol Report Officially known as “Glenn Spencer’s American Patrol Report”
- Glenn Spencer's controversial letter Letter mentioned above.
- Civilian Patrols Along the Border: Legal and Policy Issues - Congressional Research Service
- They Keep Coming, and Coming, and Coming...material from the LA Times, 7/15/01
- Southern Poverty Law Center - The Nativists
- Hate or Heroism by the Border Action Network (BAN)
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Spencer, Glenn |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | |
| Place of birth | United States |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Glenn_Spencer
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Spencer
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
