I Used to Know That_ Stuff You Forgot From School - Caroline Taggart [38]
☞ 1846-48: THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR
The bankrupt Mexican government had a loose hold on Texas and its northern and western provinces (the West) after it won its own independence from Spain. American settlers in the Texas region, such as a group led by Colonel Davy Crockett, fought a war of independence from Mexican forces in the area (remember the Alamo?). With many losses the Texas settlers eventually won this war and proclaimed annexation from Mexico in 1845, but Mexico did not recognize this secession. The Texans and Western states obtained support from the U.S. government. Although many Whigs in the United States opposed the war, many southern Democrats, who wished to gain territory and expand slavery, held the belief of Manifest Destiny, proclaiming that the United States was somehow divinely destined to expand from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. Mexico and the United States disagreed regarding borders, and after more skirmishes and battles the United States declared war on Mexico in May 1846. Author Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his taxes as a protest to the war and was put in jail for a night as a result—an incident that inspired him to write an essay that was later dubbed “Civil Disobedience,” which stated that individuals should not allow the government to sway or overrule their own sense of conscience, especially in true matters of injustice. Ultimately, the United States won the war and signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which required Mexico to secede not only Texas but also parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming as well as all of California, Nevada, and Utah in return for $15 million.
☞ 1861-65: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Eleven breakaway Confederate states objected to the antislavery sentiments of the North. These sentiments (and eventual policies) had their roots in the Abolitionist Movement, which was spearheaded by Northern Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott, and in large part by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The Southern plantations had become well off from the extremely profitable combination of slavery and the Cotton Gin (Eli Whitney’s then recent invention). This fact, combined with Southern fears regarding the North’s control of the banking system, would lead to the idea of states’ rights, from which was born the Confederacy of the Southern states.
A few decades earlier, a geographic border divided the North from South, and it became known as the Mason-Dixon Line. The Confederate secession was led by Jefferson Davis, and the war began with a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina (the first state to secede from the Union). Later key encounters included the Confederate victory at Bull Run, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson’s campaign in Shenandoah, and the Union victories in the Seven Days’ Battle and at Gettysburg (where Lincoln delivered the famous Gettysburg Address).
The Battle of Gettysburg lasted for three days and is still considered the largest battle in the history of the Western Hemisphere. The casualties of the war were horrific, with as many as 23,000 dead and wounded at the Battle of Antietam alone, which to this day remains the single bloodiest day in American history. After this battle, President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed “all people.” After Union general William T. Sherman’s brutal march through the South in 1864 and the capture of Atlanta and Savannah, much of the South would soon be in Union control. Within months Confederate general Robert E. Lee (who commanded the feared army of Northern Virginia), would surrender to future president Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Following the Union victory and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, there was a painful reconstruction period in the South, where some cities, such as Vicksburg, would not celebrate the Fourth of July until 1938.
☞ 1880-81 and 1899-1902: BOER WARS
These were revolutionary wars fought by the Afrikaners (Boers, descended