This is a membership badge of the National Association of Veterans of the Mexican War. It was worn by men who had served in the Mexican War (1846–1848).

The badge has a top, hanger bar of copper or bronze and reads: “NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF VETERANS” inside a framed panel. Above it is “PATENTED MARCH 7th 1876,” which dates the design. A spring safety pin is attached to the bar. Remnants of the original red, white, and blue silk ribbon connects the bar and the suspended shield. It is frayed but still present. The shield features the imagery of the combined services and the main theaters of the war: a three-masted warship; crossed muskets, sabers, and a pistol; a cannon. In the center is “MEXICO” above an agave plant and cactus symbols. A turreted castle and “1846” is below these and the whole is surrounded by a laurel wreath. Under the wreath is a banner naming “PERRY, SCOTT, TAYLOR.” The suspended shield features a border with battle honors: Tobasco (Tabasco), Vera Cruz, Palo Alto, Buena Vista, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Chepultepec (Chapultepec), and San Pascual. The spellings “Tobasco” and “Chepultepec” are period variants and appear on all examples of this badge.

On the reverse is hand-engraved, “Charles Millon,” and the second line appears to read “10th La. Inf.” Louisiana’s Mexican War volunteers were organized as a handful of short-term regiments in 1846, raised in the rush after General Gaines’s call, followed by a few later regiments and battalions. None was designated the “10th.” The engraving may refer to a Mexican War unit by a local or informal name.

The association was organized in the early-to-mid 1870s, largely through the efforts of Alexander M. Kenaday, a veteran and Washington, D.C. activist. Its central purpose was political: winning federal pensions for Mexican War veterans. Unlike veterans of the Revolution, the War of 1812, or the Union Army, Mexican War veterans had no general service pension. The campaign ran into a serious obstacle. Many Mexican War veterans had served the Confederacy, including Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, who had all been junior officers in Mexico. Northern congressmen resisted pensioning men who had “gone South,” so the issue stayed tangled in Reconstruction-era sectional politics for over a decade. The association lobbied persistently, and Congress finally passed the Mexican War Pension Act of January 29, 1887. It granted pensions to surviving veterans aged 62 or older, and to their widows. [jet] [ph:L]

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