INTRODUCTION

"After reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American Soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are at war."

President James K. Polk, May 11, 1846

The U.S.-Mexican War began on April 25, 1846. It ended two years later at the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848.

The War with Mexico is notable for a number of "firsts:"

The United States first foreign war.
The first war anywhere in the world to be photographed.
The first war in which steamboats played an important role.
The first war in which newspaper correspondents regularly reported from the seat of war.
The first war in which graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point participated.

Among these were a number of officers who would later face each other across the battlefields of the Civil War: Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, Braxton Bragg, Ulysses S. Grant, George Meade, George McClellan, and William T. Sherman, just to name a few.