Mexican American War

At the request of the Federal Government Pennsylvania raised two volunteer infantry regiments during the Mexican American War.  Assigned to General Winfield Scott’s command in Central Mexico various elements of the First and Second Pennsylvania Regiments participated in the Siege of Vera Cruz, the defense of Puebla, and the battles of Cerro Gordo, La Hoya, Huamantla, Chapultepec, and Mexico City. Their courage and determination under fire garnered them a reputation of being reliable and skilled soldiers, much to the surprise of many career officers, including General Scott, who adhered to the commonly held belief that state militia units were completely unreliable and lacked any sort of discipline. A great deal of their success could be attributed to the fact that both regiments were composed of the better trained and more motivated uniformed militia companies instead of state organized militia companies.

In 1874, American veterans of the U.S.–Mexican War 1846–1848 formed the National Association of Veterans of the Mexican War (NAVMW). Until the organization’s demise in 1897, NAVMW members crafted and celebrated a vision of their war with Mexico as a national triumph which had united Americans from all sections of the Union in a common cause. This article examines how, by promoting this particular memory of the war to the American public, NAVMW members sought to remind their countrymen of their shared national history, and so aid the process of reconciliation between North and South in the post-Civil War era.

The way an army thinks about and understands warfare has a tremendous impact on its organization, training, and operations. The central ideas of that understanding form a nation's way of warfare that influences decisions on and off the battlefield. From the disasters of the War of 1812, Winfield Scott ensured that America adopted a series of ideas formed in the crucible of the Wars of the French Revolution and epitomized by Napoleon. Reflecting American cultural changes, these French ideas dominated American warfare on the battlefields of the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I. America remained committed to these ideas until cultural pressures and the successes of German Blitzkrieg from 1939 - 1940 led George C. Marshall to orchestrate the adoption of a different understanding of warfare. Michael A. Bonura examines concrete battlefield tactics, army regulations, and theoretical works on war as they were presented in American ...

This paper studies Mexican Americans and Native Americans, whose situation as the other was the result of their exposure to the colonial and racial laws of the 19th century United States. Although these two marginalized groups were the already resident people uprooted by the colonial power of the United States and their ties to the lands that once belonged to them were broken by laws of displacement and education, the American political system aimed more as it tried to break down the cultural identity of the mentioned groups. I look at three literary works to analyze how these systems are represented in literature of Mexican Americans and Native Americans as these works dwell on similar subjects that focus on law and education with an emphasis on Mexican American and Native American identities. María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don, John Rollin Ridge's The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta and Gertrude Bonnin's (Zitkala-Ša) American Indian Stories a...