A two thousand-man Mexican cavalry detachment crosses…

April 1846 CE

A two thousand-man Mexican cavalry detachment crosses into the disputed territory on April 25, 1846, and attacks a seventy-man U.S. patrol under the command of Captain Seth Thornton, which had been sent into the contested territory north of the Rio Grande and south of the Nueces River.

This sparks the "Thornton Affair", an ambush that takes place twenty miles west upriver from Zachary Taylor's camp along the Rio Grande.

The Mexican cavalry routs the patrol, killing eleven American soldiers.

Regarding the beginning of the war, Ulysses S. Grant, who opposes the war serves as an army lieutenant in Taylor's Army, claims in his Personal Memoirs (1885) that the main goal of the U.S. Army's advance from Nueces River to Rio Grande was to provoke the outbreak of war without attacking first, to debilitate any political opposition to the war.

Locations
Brownsville Cameron Texas United States View →

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James K. Polk View → Mariano Paredes View → Ulysses S. Grant View → Zachary Taylor View →

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United States of America (US, USA) (Washington DC) View → Alta California View → Mexico, Centralist Republic of View → Texas, State of (U.S.A.) View →

Topics
Party System, Second (United States) View → Oregon Trail View → “Manifest Destiny” and American Expansion; 1840-1851 View → Mexican-American War View →

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Slaves View →

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Commerce View → Labor and Service View → Government View → Custom and Law View →

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