"Guns Along the Rio Grande-Palo Alto and Resaca ..." Topic

… de la Palma.

"The Mexican War was a brief yet significant event in the history of the United States. In eighteen months of fighting, the U.S. Army won a series of decisive victories and captured nearly half of Mexico's territory. In the end, the conflict added some one million square miles of land to the young nation, including the valuable deep-water ports of coastal California.

A period of distrust and misunderstanding preceded the opening of hostilities between the United States and Mexico. After gaining its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico controlled most of the land north of the Rio Grande that encompasses the present-day states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Between the 1820s and 1840s, English-speaking settlers filtered into this area, which was only marginally controlled by the overextended government in Mexico City. Thousands of Americans, who changed their citizenship and received large tracts of land from the Mexican government, rebelled in Texas in 1835 for several reasons, including Mexico's abolition of the locally popular Texas provincial government and its inability to protect the settlers against Indian raids. These infringements prompted some of the Mexicans living in the region to side with the rebels. Additional causes of the independence movement include cultural differences springing from the Protestant beliefs of the American immigrants and Mexican demands that all become Catholic. Many settlers, moreover, were from the southern states and wanted to introduce slavery into territory that had been free since 1821, an anathema to most Mexicans. The rebels won their independence in 1836 and formed the Republic of Texas. Mexico, however, refused to honor Texas' independence granted by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna after the battle of San Jacinto. Consequently, during their years as an independent nation, the Texans did not have formal diplomatic relations with Mexico. Texans insisted that their southern border was the Rio Grande. That claim not only extended the nascent republic's borders some one hundred miles beyond the boundary sought by Mexico, but also added to Texas almost half of the present-day state of New Mexico by virtue of that river's northward turn west of El Paso. Mexico nevertheless continued a Spanish tradition of designating headlands between watercourses as boundaries and claimed that the line ran some hundred miles to the north on heights that separated the Rio Grande and the Nueces River watersheds. The Mexican approach made some sense, as waterways tend to change come over time…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Tango et al,

This is a better, more encompassing link to the above and so much more:

link

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

On the Prairie of Palo Alto is the best book on the battle.