Britain's Secret Role in Ending the U.S.-Mexican War: Palo Alto's Document Project

Thanks to dedicated volunteers, Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park can now tell a little-known story: Great Britain's part in the final negotiations of the U.S.-Mexican War. British businesses in Mexico suffered during the war, so British officials opened secret negotiations with both Mexican and U.S. officials to end it. Much of this is not found in official U.S. documents.

Where the documents came from

In 2018, NPS volunteer David Davenport gave the park six boxes of war-related primary documents. He had traveled to London, searched the British archives, and photocopied handwritten letters and reports about the secret talks.

The park was delighted — but had no time to decipher reams of 19th-century cursive. So it turned to the U.S. State Department's Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS), which recruits college students to volunteer on government projects during the school year. Six VSFS volunteers have worked on the project so far, reading and transcribing each document and recording its metadata.

The latest interns

Outreach coordinator Karen Weaver chose two political science majors — Alena Buckley of Illinois College and Jenna Lugo of Pennsylvania State University — to read the documents and work out how each relates to the war. They catalogued the date, author, subject, recipient and a summary of each.

Buckley said the work built her skills with metadata and reading cursive — useful for her job at the National Archives in St. Louis. Lugo, now in the McNair Scholars Program preparing for doctoral study, said she was grateful for the chance to research and to get better at reading 19th-century handwriting.

The letters and documents will join the Palo Alto research archives in the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley–Brownsville Special Collections library.

Sources

Based on "Palo Alto Battlefield Continues British Document Project," National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words. A photograph credited to an intern is not reproduced.