Colonel Alexander Doniphan’s Epic March in Mexico, 1846-1847
Alexander William Doniphan is well known among Mormons for his saving Joseph Smith from certain death in the 1838 Mormon War, but his Mexican-American War expedition covering swaths of the Southwest was hailed at the time as a military achievement. In the fall of 1846 Doniphan, an attorney-turned-colonel in the expansionist war, led the 1st Regiment of Mounted Missouri Volunteers out of occupied Santa Fe, New Mexico, into hostile lands of the Navajo and northern Mexican states including Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon.
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A Traitor’s Justice: The Execution of the St. Patrick’s Battalion in the Mexican-American War, 1847
Despite overtures to the Catholic Church by American political and military leaders during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), the need to enforce discipline in theater was paramount to the U.S. Army’s success. When more than seventy Irish-American deserters, known as the Saint Patrick’s Battalion (San Patricios), were captured by U.S. forces in late August of 1847 following the Battle of Churubusco on the outskirts of Mexico City, they were summarily court-martialed. The former U.S. soldiers had been induced by Mexican incentives of free land and money to switch sides and fight for Mexico. Eventually their numbers reached a few hundred. They also fought well and were therefore doubly hated by U.S. Army officers. In contrast, the San Patricios are remembered as heroes in Mexico.
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