{"id":291,"date":"2013-09-10T05:45:39","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T05:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/?p=291"},"modified":"2013-09-10T05:45:39","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T05:45:39","slug":"mexicos-independence-texas-sovereignty-and-more-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/2013\/09\/10\/mexicos-independence-texas-sovereignty-and-more-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico’s Independence, Texas Sovereignty, and More War"},"content":{"rendered":"

None of these things were explained in the Heritage Series 3 book.\u00a0 The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 got scarcely 3 sentences before the text moved on & spent 3 pages discussing the gold rush of 1849.\u00a0 Not a single mention of the Alamo, or the Texas Revolution, or even Davy Crockett to be seen.\u00a0 While that is just fine for a textbook written with one of its biggest customers, California, in mind – it doesn’t cut it for my standards.\u00a0 So instead, I gave my kids a brief run down of the history.<\/p>\n

In order to understand the reasons behind the Mexican-American War, we need to go back to the Texas Revolution, which has its roots in the War for Mexican Independence.\u00a0 PBS has a great resource for all of this here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain, but was flat broke. So they enticed American settlers into the Texas area with promises of tax breaks and land. A few years later, those promises were rescinded, which prompted trouble between the American settlers and the Mexican government.\u00a0 The conflict came broke loose in October 1835.\u00a0 The Texans won, and won often, against Mexican President Santa Ana’s brother-in-law, General Martin Cos.\u00a0 By December 11, 1835, General Cos was forced to surrender and leave Texas.\u00a0 The Texans thought it was over, after all, they had won!<\/p>\n

\"alamo_small1\"Davy Crockett arrived in Texas in January 1836.\u00a0 Unlike today’s celebrities (I’m looking at you Alec Baldwin!), Crockett had kept his promise to leave the country if Martin Van Buren was elected President.\u00a0 He signed up with the Texas Militia on the promise of land (he was hoping to bring his family to Texas as soon as he a place for them), and was sent to the Alamo.\u00a0 He arrived at the Alamo on February 8, 1836<\/a>.\u00a0 15 days later, Santa Ana surrounded the Alamo<\/a>, and began his 13-day siege.<\/p>\n

Ultimately Santa Ana killed everyone at the Alamo, except for a handful of women, including Susanna Dickinson<\/a>, and a slave named Joe.\u00a0 The few that had tried to surrender were executed.\u00a0 Dickinson & Joe were allowed to return to the Americans, to spread the word of Santa Ana’s vast army.\u00a0 Soon after, Santa Ana’s army massacred American forces at Goliad.\u00a0 Instead of instilling fear, as Santa Ana wanted, these actions only served to deepen the resolve of the Texans.<\/p>\n

Sam Houston led the Army in the “Runaway Scrape.”\u00a0 Houston knew he needed help, and that the Americans wouldn’t send it.\u00a0 He hoped to draw Santa Ana across the border into Louisiana.\u00a0 If he could get Santa Ana to attack him on American soil, his friends in New Orleans would be able to help him out.\u00a0 The civilians fled in front of Houston’s Army, and Houston burned everything behind him to keep Santa Ana from getting the supplies.<\/p>\n

The Texans managed to stay hidden for a long time.\u00a0 Eventually, Santa Ana split his force again, and rode out to look for them.\u00a0 At that point, Houston broke off from his runaway strategy and attacked Santa Ana.\u00a0 Defeated, Santa Ana signed a peace treaty, and was forced to go to Washington DC for his own protection.\u00a0 While he was gone, the Mexican government deposed him & refused to ratify his treaty.\u00a0 They continued to provoke the Texans, who had declared their sovereignty after the treaty was signed.<\/p>\n

\"64961-004-0FCD63B1\"The Texans knew they needed help.\u00a0 They appealed to the American government.\u00a0 Finally, after several tries, the United States Congress accepted Texas’s request for statehood in 1845 – an act that triggered the Mexican-American War. The Americans rolled in, and didn’t just kick the Mexicans out of Texas, we took California, Nevada, Arizona, & New Mexico too.<\/p>\n

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo<\/a> was signed in February 1948.\u00a0 The Americans had won a decisive victory, and gained a lot of territory for Western Expansion.\u00a0 A short time later, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Fort, and the 1849 Gold Rush was triggered.\u00a0 But that’s for another post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

None of these things were explained in the Heritage Series 3 book.\u00a0 The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 got scarcely 3 sentences before the text moved on & spent 3 pages …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/alamo_small1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/aprendemosacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}