In the thirty day period of Could, two crucial anniversaries that spurred the Civil War into movement happened between the United States and Mexico around a conflict that centered on Texas.

The Mexican-American War grew to become the very first massive-scale achievements of a U.S. armed forces drive on foreign soil, in accordance to the National Structure Center.

The unbiased Republic of Texas founded its independence from Mexico a decade before becoming a member of the U.S. as aspect of the nation’s embracing of Manifest Destiny.

A timeline of the Mexican-American War, based on information from the National Park Service. (Background image courtesy of Amon Carter Museum of American Art)

President James K. Polk noticed the Union’s acquisition of Texas, California, Oregon and seven other territories as spreading democracy about the continent. Mexico thought of the annexation of Texas as an act of war.

Soon after a collection of border skirmishes and a unsuccessful offer to buy Texas and California from Mexico, on May perhaps 8, 1846, U.S. and Mexican troops clashed on the prairie of Palo Alto, Texas — the initial fight in a two-year long war that modified the map of North The us.

President Polk requested the U.S. Congress to go to war, which was declared on Might 13, 1846.

Exeter, New Hampshire, volunteers leaving for the Mexican War]; ca. 1846; Daguerreotype, quarter-plate;

Street scene in Durango, Mexico, with the Church of Santa Ana and the Cerro de Mercado in distance]; ca. 1847; Daguerreotype, quarter-plate;

Unknown [Burial site of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Clay, Jr.] 1847 Daguerreotype with applied color, sixth-plate Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas P1981.65.41

The largely-volunteer U.S. army secured manage of Mexico immediately after a collection of battles, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848. Two yrs after the war had started, on Could 26, 1848, both sides ratified the peace treaty that finished the conflict, and the territorial sizing of Mexico was minimize in 50 percent.

The pact set a border in between Texas and Mexico and ceded California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming to the U.S.

The acquisition of this expansive territory with the difficulty of slavery unresolved “lit the fuse that eventually set off the Civil War in 1861,” according to the Palo Alto Battlefield Nationwide Historic Park.