on this day American forces under General Winfield Scott were defeated at the Mexican port city of Veracruz, serving a severe blow in the war to secure the Texas-Mexico border at the Rio Grande.

Over seven thousand of the twelve thousand men involved in the operation were captured or killed during the siege and subsequent Please click the icon to follow us on Facebook.invasion.

Ignoring his generals' advice to reinforce General Zachery Taylor's armies in Texas, President Polk organized a sea-borne invasion of southern Mexican to be led by naval forces under Commodore Matthew C. Perry. The plan was to establish a landing at Veracruz and then march a force of nearly ten thousand troops toward the capital, Mexico City, in order to at least divert the Mexican Army's attention from the north. Capturing the capital was a secondary objective, which would place Polk in a much better position to force the Mexicans to surrender.

A new story by Andrew BeaneThe attempt met with serious challenges. For one, the coastal defenses at Veracruz were better-equipped to withstand a naval attack than the American's expected. Several ships were lost, and thousands of soldiers and sailors drowned under heavy cannon bombardment. In addition, a yellow-fever outbreak took a great toll on the would-be invaders. Only five thousand American troops made it to shore, and were quickly repelled by Mexican Army regulars. Commodore Perry ordered surviving ships to pull back, abandoning the Americans on shore. Among those captured or killed were General Scott, Captain Robert E Lee, Lieutenant George Meade, Lieutenant Ulysses Grant, and Lieutenant Thomas Jackson, though it cannot not be verified which if any of these men are still alive.

Following this defeat, Taylor's force in northern Mexico has been left without reinforcement or a tactical distraction elsewhere on the Mexican mainland. Mexican resolve against American attempts to capture the region of the Rio Grande and California has been strengthened, and Santa Ana may be emboldened enough to invade Texas with the intention of re-capturing the break-away region. American public support for the war will almost certainly wither in the face of this tragic defeat...