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 as always, I'm joined by my friend Sean McIver.

In our last episode, we, in fact, the last two episodes, which were the first two in this series,

Sean and I laid the groundwork for the war.

We gave you the background going all the way back to the end of the Texas Revolution,

and we filled you in on some of the major diplomatic and political events and the march toward war,

if you will. And we saw at the very end of the last episode, there were some conflict that broke

out. We'll mention that again in this episode. But for those of you who really love battles,

you just want to do military history all the time. You're going to love this

episode because we're finally getting into some serious combat. We're going to look at three

key battles of the war. And so, Sean, how does that sound? Ready for some cannonballs to fly

and some muskets to fire? Yes, let's jump into the fray.

Yep, that's what Sean and I love best.

But of course, as I always say, you can't jump right into the battles.

We can't just start with, you know, Palo Alto because there's so much important background.

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