War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's

founding right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased

its size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Hello and welcome back to Key Battles of the Mexican-American War.

This is your host, James Early, as always.

And I've got Sean McIra with me, also as always.

In our last episode, we talked about three major battles that the Americans fought against the Mexican Army,

and the American Army was under the command of General Zachary Taylor.

We saw the Battle of Palo Alto, then the Battle of Rosacad de la Palma, and then the Battle of Monterey.

And those were all-American victories. The first two were pretty easy victories for the Americans.

They routed the Mexican Army, but the third one was much tougher.

And we didn't have time to do any more of the battles that the Americans fought under General Taylor.

We just ran out of time. We didn't have enough time to go into the next ones, but now we any more of the battles that the Americans fought under General Taylor.

We just ran out of time.

We didn't have enough time to go into the next ones, but now we're going to do that.

So we're going to wrap up Zachary Taylor's campaign.

And then once we're done with that, we're going to go out west and see what the Americans did in New Mexico and California.

So here we go.

Sean, Santa Ana, our old friend that's been with us for so

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