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The Thornton Affair, also known as the Thornton Skirmish, Thornton's Defeat, or Rancho Carricitos, [2] was a battle in 1846 between the military forces of the United States and Mexico 20 miles (32 km) west upriver from Zachary Taylor's camp along the Rio Grande.
The Mexican War, 1846–1848. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-8032-6107-1. Brooks, N.C. Complete History Of The Mexican War: Grigg, Elliot & Co.Philadelphia 1849; Listing of 1846–1848 US Army Casualties; Ramsey, Albert C. The Other Side or Notes For The History of The War Between Mexico And The United States John Wiley New York 1850
The location where the initial bloodshed (known as the Thornton Affair) occurred in April 1846 is located in present-day Cameron County, Texas, just north of the Rio Grande which represented the American claim for Texas's boundary with Mexico (as well as the current international border).
On April 25, 1846, a 2,000-man Mexican cavalry detachment attacked a 70-man U.S. patrol commanded by Captain Seth Thornton, which had been sent into the contested territory north of the Rio Grande and south of the Nueces River. In the Thornton Affair, the Mexican cavalry routed the patrol, killing 11 American soldiers and capturing 52. [12]
It was named in honor of George Thomson Mason, a United States Army second lieutenant killed in the Thornton Affair during the Mexican–American War near Brownsville, April 25, 1846. At various times from 1856 to 1861, this was the home fort for Albert Sidney Johnston, George H. Thomas, Earl Van Dorn, and Robert E. Lee.
The Mexican War overview map. The Mexican–American War began after Thornton's Defeat in 1846. This same year a battalion of Mormon men was recruited by the United States Army in western Iowa and dispatched with General Steven Watts Kearny's "Army of the West" across what they considered the "Great Western Desert".
Guns Along the Rio Grande: Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, CMH Pub 73-2, Center of Military History Archived 2020-07-27 at the Wayback Machine; A Continent Divided: The U.S. – Mexico War, Center for Greater Southwestern Studies, the University of Texas at Arlington
Following the Thornton Affair, Mexican forces under General Mariano Arista crossed the Rio Grande and then besieged Fort Texas, [1]: 49 after realizing that on 1 May Taylor had taken most of his forces to Fort Polk on Point Isabel to protect his supply depot.