The battles of the Mexican–American War include all major engagements and most reported skirmishes, including Thornton's Defeat, the Battle of Palo Alto, and the Battle of Resaca de la Palma, which took place prior to the official start of hostilities.
The Mexican–American War lasted from 1846 until 1848. It grew out of unresolved border disputes between the Republic of Texas and Mexico after the United States annexed Texas nine years after the Texas Revolution. It ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in which Mexico was forced to sell a vast tract of land that amounted to almost half its national territory to the United States.
List of United States military and volunteer units in the Mexican–American War
Combined official Mexican losses and the US estimates Northern Campaign (Palo Alto-Buena Vista): c. 1,031 Mexican killed. Valley Campaign (Cerro Gordo-Mexico City): c. 2,854 Mexican were killed. Or, c. 3,885 not including later died of wounds, died from disease, or the losses in the West.
The Mexican Cavalry Division (Army of the South) escaped the Valley Campaign largely intact (4,000 evacuated Mexico City). Of some 16,000 Infantry of the Armies of the East & North, only 5,000 evacuated Mexico City.
Bauer, K. Jack (1974). The Mexican War, 1846–1848. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-8032-6107-1.
Brooks, N.C. Complete History Of The Mexican War: Grigg, Elliot & Co.Philadelphia 1849
Ramsey, Albert C. The Other Side or Notes For The History of The War Between Mexico And The United States John Wiley New York 1850
The Occupation of New Mexico (Battle of Cañoncito)
A Continent Divided: The U.S. - Mexico War, Center for Greater Southwestern Studies, the University of Texas at Arlington
The Mexican-American War (1846–1848) grew from the annexation of Texas (1845) and a disputed border between Texas and Mexico at the Rio Grande. President James K. Polk ordered US troops under General Zachary Taylor into the contested zone; after a skirmish that killed American soldiers, Congress declared war in May 1846. US forces won a series of engagements — Palo Alto, Monterrey, Buena Vista — before General Winfield Scott led an amphibious landing at Veracruz and an overland campaign to Mexico City, which fell in September 1847. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 1848) transferred California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming to the United States in exchange for $15 million and assumption of $3.25 million in claims — roughly 525,000 square miles, a 67 percent expansion of US territory. The war's outcome immediately reopened the slavery question: the Wilmot Proviso, debated throughout the war, proposed banning slavery from any territory acquired from Mexico, foreshadowing the sectional crisis of the 1850s.
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