#mexicanamericanwar #battles #history
In this episode we study the Occupation of Matamoros by the United States Army of Occupation under General Zachary Taylor. After the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, the siege of Fort Texas was lifted. The Mexican Army of the North, retreated to the south bank of the Rio Grande. Mexican General Mariano Arista gathered the remains of the Army of the North in Matamoros, opposite to Fort Texas. On May 17, Arista started the withdrawal of his troops towards Linares. The next day, Zachary Taylor's troops crossed the Rio Grande and captured Matamoros.
The Mexican–American War, was an invasion of Mexico by the United States Army from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory. Mexico refused to recognize the Treaties of Velasco, because they were signed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna while he was captured by the Texian Army during the 1836 Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas was de facto an independent country, but most of its Anglo-American citizens who had moved from the United States to Texas after 1822 wanted to be annexed by the United States.
Sectional politics over slavery in the United States were preventing annexation because Texas, formerly a slavery-free territory under Mexican rule, would have been admitted as a slave state, upsetting the balance of power between Northern free states and Southern slave states. In the 1844 United States presidential election, Democrat James K. Polk was elected on a platform of expanding U.S. territory to Oregon, California (also a Mexican territory), and Texas by any means, with the 1845 annexation of Texas furthering that goal. However, the boundary between Texas and Mexico was disputed, with the Republic of Texas and the U.S. asserting it to be the Rio Grande and Mexico claiming it to be the more-northern Nueces River. Polk sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico in an attempt to buy the disputed territory, together with California and everything in-between for $25 million (equal to $785,178,571 today), an offer the Mexican government refused. Polk then sent a group of 80 soldiers across the disputed territory to the Rio Grande, ignoring Mexican demands to withdraw. Mexican forces interpreted this as an attack and repelled the U.S. forces on April 25, 1846, a move which Polk used to convince the Congress of the United States to declare war.
Beyond the disputed area of Texas, U.S. forces quickly occupied the regional capital of Santa Fe de Nuevo México along the upper Rio Grande. U.S. forces also moved against the province of Alta California and then turned south. The Pacific Squadron of the U.S. Navy blockaded the Pacific coast in the lower Baja California Territory. The U.S. Army, under Major General Winfield Scott, invaded the Mexican heartland and captured the capital, Mexico City, in September 1847.
In Mexico, the war worsened domestic political turmoil. Since the war was fought on home ground, Mexico suffered large losses of life from both the military and civilian population. The nation's financial foundations were undermined, and more than half of its territory was lost. Mexico felt a loss of national prestige, leaving it in what a group of Mexican writers, including Ramón Alcaraz and José María del Castillo Velasco, called a "state of degradation and ruin... As for the true origin of the war, it is sufficient to say that the insatiable ambition of the United States, favored by our weakness, caused it.
Timecodes
0:00 - Intro
0:51 - The Occupation of Matamoros
1:17 - Mexican withdrawal
2:59 - The state of the Mexican Army
5:30 - Nerve-wracking waiting game
8:27 - Taylor gets ready to cross the Rio Grande
9:47 - Last minute negotiations
13:33 - The fall of Matamoros
15:32 - The arduous Mexican retreat
17:29 - Conclusion
Thank you for watching!
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