In October 1846, Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan of the First Regiment Mounted Missouri Volunteers was ordered by United States Army General Stephen W. Kearney to rendezvous with General John E. Wool inside Mexico at the city of Chihuahua. En route to this objective, Doniphan's regiment encountered Mexican forces, leading to the engagement at El Brazito on December 25, 1846.
The battle occurred approximately thirty miles from El Paso del Norte and about 9 miles south of Las Cruces, New Mexico, at Bracito on the Rio Grande. Doniphan had halted his men's march at 1 pm on Christmas Day when they spotted a dust cloud indicating a Mexican scouting party to the south. The Mexican force was commanded by Major Antonio Ponce de Leon and consisted of three components: the Chihuahua infantry on the left, the El Paso militia with a howitzer in the center, and the Veracruz lancers on the right. Before the engagement, the Mexican commander demanded the Americans surrender, to which Colonel Doniphan responded with the order, "Charge and be damned!"
The battle represented a significant encounter during the Mexican-American War as American forces under Doniphan continued their campaign toward Chihuahua to link up with General John E. Wool's forces. This engagement demonstrated the effectiveness of American forces in combat operations deep within Mexican territory during the broader conflict.
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.
US: 0 killed, 7 wounded; Mexico: ~43 killed, ~150 wounded
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