France invaded Mexico in 1861 on the pretext of collecting past-due debts. Their armies overran the country as Napoleon III imposed a new emperor, Austrian nobleman Maximilian, upon Mexico. The United States, busy with its Civil War, couldn’t provide much help. But following the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865, ex-Union soldiers, including members of the US colored troops, volunteered to … help Mexico fight the invaders. President Benito Juárez personally commissioned the American Legion of Honor, while Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Matías Romero, raised millions of dollars by selling Mexican bonds. Using advanced weaponry from the US, the ragtag Mexican guerrilla army became a formidable military force by 1867. Follow the tale of valiant volunteers who fought for Mexico against all odds to help defeat the last empire of the Americas.
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Michael Hogan’s latest book, Guns, Grit and Glory, picks up where his excellent book Abraham Lincoln and Mexico, published in 2016, leaves off. After a brief review of the relationship forged between the Mexican president in exile, Benito Juarez, his chief envoy to Washington DC, Matias Romero, and Abraham Lincoln, Hogan delves deep into the history of the Mexican fight to maintain an independent republic in the wake of the invasion and takeover of the country by French and allied forces culminating in the crowning of Austrian Archduke Maximilian as the new emperor of Mexico. He focuses on the emerging relationship between Benito Juarez and his Republican Army and numerous dignitaries, businessmen, and military personnel from the United States. He shows how, in the aftermath of the Civil War in the US, numerous military officers of the Union Army, including thousands of troops, aided Juarez in his fight to drive the Europeans out of power in Mexico. Some patrolled and fought skirmishes on the Texas-Mexico border. Others joined the American Legion of Honor and fought with the Mexican Army. Some helped to provide the Republican Army with the latest rifles, pistols, and artillery pieces of the sort used by the Union Army. Others helped sell Mexican bonds in the US to help fund the war effort. Hogan also describes the role the US Navy played in patrolling the Gulf of Mexico in the interest of disrupting the movement of trade. He then describes in detail many of the pivotal battles of the war against the forces of Maxmilian, such as Queretaro, where Maxmilian was captured, and the final battle for Mexico City, detailing for each the role of American soldiers, personnel, and equipment. His analysis extends beyond the military success of Juarez and his Republican Army to considerations of the aftermath of the war and how this period of Mexican history is viewed to this day in Mexico. His excellent summary at the end provides fair and balanced analysis of both Juarez and Maximilian as leaders of Mexico and their role in Mexican history. Much of the material he presents has not been previously covered in detail in any other publications. The materials in the appendices and bibliography offer a wealth of documentation to guide future studies in this area. This book comes at a time when we need more than ever to understand the complex history of the relationship between the US and Mexico, and its factual and fully documented analysis provides a much needed corrective to history that glosses over details in the interest of creating nationalistic mythologies. If you read and enjoyed Hogan’s Abraham Lincoln and Mexico, you will want to read “the rest of the story” in Guns, Grit and Glory.
A thrilling tale and beautifully written narrative.
How did a guerrilla army of 1000 ill-equipped Mexicans defeat the most colossal army of its time? Guns, Grit and Glory tells the story of how a small Mexican army managed to take back their country from a French imperial army 50 times its size.
This is a beautifully written and thrilling account of how the US and Mexico worked together to oust the French from Mexico in the 1860s. Meticulously researched, it contains many gems of untold history, including how a clever Mexican diplomat, Matías Romero, bringing Mary Todd Lincoln hat shopping in Washington, ensured that President Juarez received much need funds for his Mexican war effort, and how Egyptian camels transported weapons across the Mexican desert. It is also packed full of maps, photos, reproductions and intimate details from the time.
In an age of increased polarisation, Guns, Grit and Glory serves as a much needed reminder of the power of cooperation and respect. It asks us to rise above our prejudices and teaches us again the essential truth that united there is not much we cannot achieve.
Loved this book! Highly Recommend
As a citizen of Mexico and the USA this book was really appealing to me as it goes deep into the richness of the history of the collaboration and cooperation between both countries. It reads like a novel yet is factually accurate and takes the reader on a journey to discover the untold history of one of the most transcendental period of time for both countries. It is a must have for anyone wanting to learn the true history of both countries and for those that appreciate and love the bonds that Mexico and the USA have shared for hundreds of years. Loved it Doc. Hogan!
Is history still important in school and relevant in today’s social media world? It is for educator and historian Michael Hogan, who has been teaching in Latin American schools for three decades. For more than 20 of those years, he’s also been researching and writing about historical relationships between the USA and Mexico in the mid-19th century.
His latest book “Guns, Grit and Glory: How the US and Mexico came together to defeat the last Empire in the Americas,” could be considered the capstone of his efforts to help students and the public understand complex relationships between the two countries.
Using the same clear narrative style as his previous two history books, Hogan’s new book will delight readers and provide even more insights into historical relationships involving the USA, Mexico, and France. It draws on some material in his 2016 book “Abraham Lincoln and Mexico: A History of Courage, Intrigue and Unlikely Friendships” that used archival documents to examine Lincoln’s support for Mexico as congressman and president.
This new book goes further in researching and documenting details of how exiled Mexican President Benito Juárez benefited from help by key individuals in the US, including Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. That enabled Juárez to defeat French forces, which occupied Mexico until 1867 during the puppet monarchy of Maximilian of Austria installed by Napoleon III.
As revealed in the 2016 book, Lincoln and his administration were preoccupied and constrained by the Civil War and thus careful to remain officially neutral when France violated the Monroe Doctrine by invading Mexico in 1861. Lincoln agreed to clandestine aid for Mexico partly due to an unlikely friendship between First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and Mexican Ambassador Matías Romero. That friendship opened doors for Romero in Washington and resulted in his close friendship with Grant, thus enabling Romero to raise $18 million from US financiers to aid Juárez. The financial aid paid for weaponry more advanced than what French forces had, including repeating rifles and rifled cannons accurate at greater distances.
The new book documents the financial arrangements and the weaponry, complete with archival documents and citations to relevant sources. One interesting tidbit is how forces loyal to Juárez obtained camels from Egypt and Tunisia to transport arms across deserts in northern Mexico to battlefields farther south. A detailed chronological timeline and maps of battlefields add perspective and quality to the handsome print edition, published by small press Henselstone Verlag LLC in Virginia.
But aid from the US went beyond money and weapons, as Dr. Hogan documents. After the Civil War ended, and after Lincoln’s assassination, many Union soldiers and officers joined the American Legion of Honor created by Juárez. The new book expands on the history of how 3,000 troops – many of them remnants of the US Colored Troops in the Union Army comprised of freed slaves – went to Mexico to fight the French. Their battlefield experience and tactics of commanding officers from the Union Army proved superior in key battles inside Mexico. A gravesite in Mexico City honors the fallen US soldiers.
In one sense, Hogan’s new book is the last book in a trilogy dating to his 1997 publication of “The Irish Soldiers of Mexico.” That book documented the valor of Irish soldiers who abandoned the US Army to join the Mexican Army during the Mexican-American War, were branded (literally) as deserters, and hanged for their actions. Mexico so loved the “San Patricios Battalion” that the country still honors the Irish soldiers with an annual event at a monument in Mexico City. The story also was the basis for the movie “One Man’s Hero” starring Tom Berenger, and the book has sold out 14 editions in English and 3 in Spanish. An audio book version is also available.
The second book in the trilogy, “Abraham Lincoln and Mexico,” earned high praise from historians and in academia and is in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and many university libraries around the world. Educators are also using it to stimulate classroom discussion in high school social studies curricula in more than 400 schools in 39 states across the USA, and in Mexico and other countries. It’s available in English and Spanish, and in an audio book version.
— Mikel Miller is co-founder of the Lincoln and Mexico Project (LAMP) that informs and educates the public and the academic community about Lincoln’s support for Mexico. See the LAMP blog at https://lincolnandmexicoproject.wordp…. His review is based on an Advance Reader Copy of “Guns, Grit and Glory” from the publisher.
In this current climate of inordinate ignorance, misinformation, and savage governmental aggression toward our complex and historically significant southern neighbor, Mexico, Michael Hogan – a prestigious academic thoroughly versed in the history of American/Mexican relations – sallies forth with a new book, Guns, Grit, and Glory, to remind us in a most scholarly and highly readable way that once we had a truly great President who valued and supported our friendly and mutually-beneficial partnership with a nation we once had horribly mistreated. Michael Hogan, Ph.D. continues the fascinating theme he began in his hugely popular treatment, Abraham Lincoln and Mexico – a MUST read on this subject – by delving into the aftermath of our Civil War, when Mexico was besieged by French invaders seeking to re-establish an overseas colony under monarchical rule in the so-called New World. Counting on the ambivalence and non-interference of a self-involved and self-distracted United States, the French conquest might have been successful if not for the intelligence and historical/political savvy of Mr. Lincoln, and equally important, the persistence and skill of the brilliant Mexican envoy, Matías Romero. The story of these two charismatic and powerful individuals turning the very tide of history (along with many more highly celebrated historical shakers and movers) provides a fascinating and enlightening study in international relations, both cooperative and antagonistic, patriotic and self-serving, and especially relevant now as a national wake-up call for contemporary sleepers and nay-sayers who forget our greatest long-term interests still align with those of our giant southern friend.
Freedom, Fighters, France, Frailties, Ferdinand, and Fido! Once again Dr. Michael Hogan informs and engages the reader as few historians are able to do. He makes the complex personalities, events, and issues involved in the US participation in the Franco-Mexican War understandable.
The thing I most appreciate is the even-handedness of his perspectives and portrayals. He takes the reader beyond what we think we know and challenges us with new insights that better reflect the human realities that so often are obscured behind the curtain of bias and preconceived notions.
The reader is reacquainted with the famous: Lincoln, Maximilian, Díaz, Juárez, Grant, and Sheridan. We are introduced to new and lesser-known figures such as Matías Romero, Prince Felix zu Salm-Salm, his faithful wife Princess Agnes, Lieutenant Thomas Carter, Colonel George Church, and many others including the hitherto unknown (at least to this historian) Fido!
On a more personal note, it is impossible to review a work of Dr. Hogan without highlighting the fact that not only is he a good historian and writer; he is more importantly a really good man. I highly recommend this book to all who like me, simply love a good tale told well by a good man!
Another fascinating historical account by Dr. Michael Hogan who also wrote Abraham Lincoln and Mexico. Dr. Hogan has meticulously researched the intertwined histories of the USA and Mexico and he has written a captivating account of how Mexico and the USA combined forces to oust the French Empire from their territories. Cheers Lynda L. Lock