Synopses & Reviews
The war between the United States and Mexico was decades in the making. Although Texas was an independent republic from 1836 to 1845. Texans retained an affiliation with the United States that virtually assured annexation at some point. Mexico's reluctance to give up Texas put it on a collision course with the United States. In Crisis in the Southwest, Richard Bruce Winders provides a concise, accessible overview of the Mexican War and argues that the Mexican War led directly to the Civil War by creating a political and societal crisis that drove a wedge between the North and the South. While on the surface the enemy was Mexico, in reality Americans were at odds with one another over the future of the nation, as the issue of annexation threatened to upset the balance between free and slave states. Virtually every important commander in the Civil War--including Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Grant, McClellan, and Longstreet--gained his introduction to combat in Mexico. These connections are enormously significant to the study of how these generals waged war, since it was in the Mexican War that they learned their trade. Crisis in the Southwest provides readers with a clear understanding of the Mexican War and its relationship to the chain of events that ultimately led to the Civil War.