Professor Benjamin Johnson

Well, he realizes that there's now weaponry that means that you can actually fire from horseback.

And so he changes the tactics of frontier warfare.

He adopts many native tactics as well.

But the other reason is he's kind of counter type, right?

You know, these pictures of rangers, especially that are taken in the 20th century, are these big, larger than life figures.

Hayes is a very diminutive, short, soft spoken man.

But, you know, he really deals very effectively in violence.

And so I think it's that contrast that helps.

and his objective importance to the development of frontier warfare that gives rise to him as a legend.

There's a county named after him still in Texas, so that tells you something about what an impression he made.

That's right.

And, you know, the Rangers have a kind of throwback vibe to them, right, as people who live in the past, who live in rougher, more frontier conditions.

And that's true.

But in a way, they've always been on the cutting edge.

And they were certainly early adopters of firearms technology coming out of particularly New England and particularly the Colt Firearms Company.

Sure.

So the annexation of Texas in 1845 is really the cause for the U.S.-Mexican War, right?

Because Mexico does not accept this breakaway province joining the United States, and the American president uses this as a pretext to start a war that will end up lopping off the

you know, north 40% or so of Mexico and giving the United States the contemporary states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and parts of Wyoming.

And so the U.S.-Mexican War is, you know, a war of conquest.