Changes

==The Landing at Vera Cruz==

==The Landing at Vera Cruz==

[[Image:Vera-crv.gif|right|240px|A shell exploding in a plaza of besieged Veracruz]]

[[Image:Vera-crv.gif|right|440px|A shell exploding in a plaza of besieged Veracruz]]

From a rendezvous at Lobos Island almost fifty miles south of Tampico, General Scott’s force of 13,660 men, of whom 5,741 were regulars, set sail on March 2, 1847, for the landing near Vera Cruz—the first major amphibious landing in the history of the U.S. Army. On March 5 the transports were off the coast of their target, where they met a U.S. naval squadron blockading the city. In a small boat, Scott, his commanders, and a party of officers including Lee, Meade, [[Joseph E. Johnston]], and [[Pierre G. T. Beauregard]] ran close inshore to reconnoiter and were almost hit by a shell fired from the island fortress of San Juan de Ulua opposite Vera Cruz. That shell might have changed the course of the Mexican War and the Civil War as well.  

From a rendezvous at Lobos Island almost fifty miles south of Tampico, General Scott’s force of 13,660 men, of whom 5,741 were regulars, set sail on March 2, 1847, for the landing near Vera Cruz—the first major amphibious landing in the history of the U.S. Army. On March 5 the transports were off the coast of their target, where they met a U.S. naval squadron blockading the city. In a small boat, Scott, his commanders, and a party of officers including Lee, Meade, [[Joseph E. Johnston]], and [[Pierre G. T. Beauregard]] ran close inshore to reconnoiter and were almost hit by a shell fired from the island fortress of San Juan de Ulua opposite Vera Cruz. That shell might have changed the course of the Mexican War and the Civil War as well.