A CAMPAIGN IN NEW MEXICO WITH COLONEL DONIPHAN

When the Mexican American War broke out in spring 1846, Frank S. Edwards joined a volunteer artillery company in St. Louis, Missouri. Attached to the Army of the West, Edwards's company marched over the Santa Fe Trail to help capture and occupy New Mexico. The young soldier then joined Colonel Alexander Doniphan's Missouri volunteers, who defeated superior Mexican forces at the Battles of Bracito near El Paso and of Sacramento farther south in Chihuahua. After a brief stay in American-occupied Saltillo, Doniphan's volunteers returned to the Rio Grande and thence to New Orleans. The march of these Missouri volunteers was the most epic of any American troops during the Mexican-American War.
Appearing first in fall 1847, Edwards's highly readable volume is one of the earliest and best accounts of the Mexican-American War. A Campaign in New Mexico is an excellent source for nineteenth-century frontier soldiering and life on Mexico's far northern frontier. Mark L. Gardner's introduction discusses Edwards's life, the southwestern campaign, and the public reception of A Campaign in New Mexico.