Texas and the Mexican War

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt addressed the American Historical Association to call for American history to be written as compelling stories of literary quality. Editor Allen Johnson of Yale University responded by publishing the Chronicles of America series: 50 succinct volumes on regional and thematic American history. These books, intended for secondary schools and college students, are expository works of American history composed by competent historians in the 1920's, well before the special pleading and upending of social norms typical of histories after 1970. This series is focused on the mainstream of American political life and leadership from its initial volumes on Native Americans and European colonists to its final volumes on Woodrow Wilson, Canada, and the Hispanic Republics to our South. Texas and the Mexican War, Volume # 24 of the Chronicles of America Series, concerns the dramatic expansion of Anglo-American settlement in the Southeast which resulted first in the independent Republic of Texas and then in the annexation of Texas and the resulting war with Mexico. The improbable Texian victory at San Jacinto and the capture of the Mexican dictator General Santa Anna is one of the great heroic moments of American history, and the leadership of Sam Houston and President James Polk finally secured Texas, California, and the territory in between for the American Union. This volume includes as an appendix documents related to the story of Texas, including select correspondence of Stephen Austin, the Texas Declaration of Independence and selected speeches of Houston and Polk. This work has been formatted and reprinted for Tall Men Books. It is not a facsimile reprint.