The Battle of San Jacinto, 1836. "Texians" defeat the Mexican Army.

The crushing Mexican defeat at San Jacinto paved the way for Texas's hard-won independence, but it also sowed the seeds of future conflict, culminating in the U.S. Mexican War two decades later. The annexation of Texas by the United States marked the first official expansion into the vast and untamed lands of western North America. Territory that would become the epicenter of a fierce and divisive controversy over slavery. This territorial acquisition, seemingly a triumph of Manifest Destiny,...