The Battle of the Salado was a decisive engagement in 1842 which repulsed the final Mexican invasion of the Republic of Texas. Colonel Mathew Caldwell of the Texas Rangers led just over 200 militia against an army of 1,600 Mexican Army soldiers and Cherokee warriors, and defeated them outside of San Antonio de Bexar along Salado Creek. As a result of this action, French-Mexican commander General Adrián Woll retreated south and back into Mexico.
On January 9, 1842 word came from General Mariano Arista in Monterrey that Mexico was planning to invade and retake Texas. He stated that all who would not resist would be given amnesty and protection during this invasion. Texian invasions of a year earlier, in which the Texians attempted to annex New Mexico during the Santa Fe Expedition, had stirred up Mexico's interest in retaking Texas.
General Ráfael Vásquez occupied Goliad, Refugio, Victoria and captured San Antonio in March. The surprised Texians, without a force large enough to hold the town, evacuated to Seguin without a fight. The invaders held San Antonio, raising the Mexican flag over the city, for a few days before returning to Mexico. A Texian force was organized at the Manuel N. Flores ranch in Seguin that pursued and ensured Vasquez's flight from Texas.
In June a smaller force under the command of Colonel Antonio Canales Rosillo raided southern Texas until being repulsed in an engagement near Fort Lipantitlan, west of Corpus Christi.
In August 1842 the Mexican army crossed the border intent on invading and retaking Texas. French Mexican General Adrián Woll commanded the September expedition which included 500 cavalry, 900 infantry, 200 Cherokee scouts and two artillery pieces. On September 11, 1842 the Mexicans arrived in San Antonio. Mayor John William Smith assigned Captain Salvador Flores to command 100 local Tejanos against the Mexican invaders. However, the larger Mexican forces captured the city after a skirmish with Chauncy Johnson's force of sixty-two Texians positioned in houses facing the town plaza. Woll had orders to hold the city, wait for reinforcements, and withdraw from San Antonio by mid October.
The alarm was quickly raised and Texian militias began assembling to fight Woll's troops. Colonel Mathew Caldwell, a veteran of the Texas Revolution who had just recently been released after capture during the Santa Fe Expedition, began forming a contingent in Seguin. With 140 Texian volunteers, Caldwell marched for Cibolo Creek, twenty miles from San Antonio. A little later Caldwell moved his camp thirteen miles closer to the city along Salado Creek near the Prescot House. Altogether, about 220 Texians were assembled to fight the Mexicans.
The early republic period saw the United States move from the weak Articles of Confederation to the federal Constitution ratified in 1788, with the Bill of Rights added in 1791. George Washington served two terms as president (1789–1797), establishing precedents for executive authority, and the federal capital moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1800. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's territory for roughly $15 million, opening vast trans-Mississippi lands to American expansion. The War of 1812 against Britain ended inconclusively but produced a surge of American national identity and eliminated most British support for Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi. The Northwest Indian Wars (1785–1795) and the Creek War (1813–1814) broke Indigenous confederacies that had resisted US expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily balanced slave and free states as the nation expanded westward, but embedded the contradiction of slavery in every subsequent territorial debate.
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