WAR IN CENTRAL MEXICO

MEXICANS: Vera Cruz is already in the power of the enemy. It has succumbed, - not under the influence of American valour, nor can it be said that it has fallen under the impulses of their own good fortune. To our shame be it said, we ourselves have produced this deplorable misfortune by our own interminable discords."

  Before the end of 1846, President Polk came to the realization that if the war with Mexico was to be brought to a successful conclusion, U.S. forces would have to occupy or threaten Mexico City and that it would be best to approach it from the Gulf coast, rather than from the north, taking the same route Cortez followed three centuries earlier when he conquered the Aztecs. Consequently, in November, Major-General Winfield Scott received orders from Polk to head an invasion of Central Mexico. Shortly afterward, Scott wrote to General Zachary Taylor, first from New York and again from New Orleans, detailing his plans and apologizing to Taylor for the need to take troops away from him.

  The U.S. Navy had already been busy in the Gulf of Mexico since before the war began, assisting Taylor in the movement of supplies and blockading the mouth of the Rio Grande. Later, after the war began, the Navy set up a blockade of the entire Mexican Gulf coast, lifting it long enough to allow a British vessel bearing General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, previously in exile in Cuba, to enter the harbor of Vera Cruz. Santa Anna, having communicated to President Polk that he would head a peace party if he was able to come back into power in Mexico, immediately betrayed Polk's trust.