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 in our last episode, which was the first in the series on the Mexican-American War,

Sean and I talked about the events that occurred primarily within the Republic of Texas

and within the Republic of Mexico between the end of the Texas Revolution and the time

when the United States got very serious about annexing Texas.

We saw that there was kind of a cold war of sorts between the Republic of Texas and Mexico.

Occasionally some skirmishes broke out.

The Mexicans invaded Texas a couple times, but didn't stick around.

There were several ill-fated Texan invasions, if you will, often of not even organized

by the Texan government, just private individuals. But for the most part, there wasn't a ton of

fighting between the two nations. But now we are going to see that the Americans are going to get

serious about annexing Texas, and that is going to

cause trouble. And that's what we're going to talk about this time in our second episode,

which I'm calling the Texas annexation crisis and the start of the war. We'll be going

roughly from 1844 to 1845 or 46. Okay, Sean, are you ready to go? I'm ready.

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