March 22, 2021
Marines and the Battle for Los Angeles
After losing Los Angeles to rebels, Archibald Gillespie sent word north, triggering a chain of events that brought Marines, sailors, dragoons, and militia into a series of brutal fights to retake the city. What followed were weeks of poor leadership, failed assaults, and hard lessons, culminating in the bloody Battle of San Pascual. We'll walk through the breakdown in command, the resilience of the troops, and how wounded men like Gillespie kept pushing forward. The campaign wasn't clean, and it wasn't pretty. Supplies ran out, morale broke, and the U.S. took more losses than they expected. But after weeks of regrouping and a final push through San Gabriel, American forces entered Los Angeles for a second time.
References
- Emory, W. H. (1848). Notes of a Military Reconnoissance: From Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California, Including Parts of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers. United States: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, printers.
- Fulkerson, S. V., Stevenson, G. J., & Historical Society of Washington County, Virginia. (January 01, 1992). To the halls of Montezuma: Samuel Vance Fulkerson's journal kept during the Mexican War. Historical Society of Washington County, Va. Bulletin, 29.)
- Gillespie, A. H. (1845). Archibald H. Gillespie papers.
- Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly. (1901). United States: Historical Society of Southern California.
- Horsman, R. (2009). Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. United Kingdom: Harvard University Press.
- J. Gregg Layne Papers (Collection 188). Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.
- Johannsen, R. W. (1988). To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
- John Adam Hussey; The Origin of the Gillespie Mission. California Historical Society Quarterly 1 March 1940; 19 (1): 43–58. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25160859
- John O'Sullivan, "Annexation," The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Volume 17 (New York: 1845), 5-6, 9-10.
- Porter, V. M. (1911). General Stephen W. Kearny and the Conquest of California (1846-7): A Paper Read Before the Historical Society of Southern California, February 6, 1911. United States: (n.p.).
- Richard R. Stenberg, Archibald H. Gillespie; Further Letters of Archibald H. Gillespie: October 20, 1845, to January 16, 1846, to the Secretary of the Navy. California Historical Society Quarterly 1 September 1939; 18 (3): 217–228. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25160822
- Rives, G. L. (1913). The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848: A History of the Relations Between the Two Countries from the Independence of Mexico to the Close of the War with the United States. United States: C. Scribner's Sons.
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