Sample Lecture
Introduction (This lecture would be delivered after students have read A Short, Offhand,
Killing Affair by Paul Foos in the 1301 History survey course.)
(Open lecture with a question that compares how class and race factored during the US War with
Mexico according to Foos.)
Questions: According to Foos, how did Americans’ racial stereotypes of Mexicans help justify
the U.S. military actions against Mexico? How did class status factor during the military
campaign?
(Ask question to several students. Help students as needed.)
Overview of lecture content
“Today we will look at the US War with Mexico and in particular we will be examining how the
concepts of class and race played in an important part in the American designs for further
expansion across North America. Recall how Foos interpreted the concept of race (and white
supremacy) in his book. Also keep in mind that there also existed variations of class within
Mexican society and in the American army. Make note of how class differences factored in the
war.”
“As we move forward keep in mind the recurring themes of class and race. Understanding how
Foos interpreted US class and racial ideologies during the US War with Mexico will help you to
evaluate other US military interventions abroad and find that they will be quite applicable. When
you are broken down into groups for discussion you will be required to apply these author’s
interpretations in analyzing distinct events during the war."
(Keep walking through aisles maintaining direct eye contact.)
Body of Lecture
(Talk about Foos and how race and class concepts were used in his book. Bring in other
literature to enhance discussion and supplement your point. Mention historiographical
connections to other works. Remember to allow for some flexibility to respond to student
questions and comments.)
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Speak of Manifest Destiny and how the expansion of the US was believed to be
preordained by God him/herself. (*Reginald Horsman introduced to set the tone.)
So Foos starts off by providing detailed descriptions of the regular Army soldier and the
volunteers at the onset and the period prior to the war with Mexico. Racialized statements
against the enemy “Mexican” are printed in US newspapers. “Must make the mongrel
race pay for spilling American blood on American soil.” (Elaborate on how this was
actually contested soil.)
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Foos focuses on the clear class distinctions between the officers and the ordinary soldiers,
the latter composed of a significant number of immigrants and plagued with illiteracy and
still trying to prove their “Americanism.” (Elaborate on the concept of citizenship.)
In places like Ohio, Illlinois, Indiana, New Orleans, and Massachusetts recruitment
campaigns by the national government had to resort to compulsory enlistment and
implied promises of aggrandizement through “spoils of war” (e.g.; open season for
looting and rape) as voluntary sign ups were not meeting the numerical needs for the
campaign. Many are forced to join the cause. (Elaborate on how racializing the enemy
made looting and rape acceptable as forms of payment for war services.)
Gang members, construction work crews, and recent immigrants were brought onboard
as in 1847 Fort Monroe, Virginia where 50 Irish and German ditch diggers were
signed.(page 61) For the regular soldier the conditions and discipline were harsher than
they were for the volunteer units so desertion was widespread especially before reaching
Mexico.
How about the country the US was about to engage in war? 1840s Mexico was a place of
high political instability and this hindered the invasion-repelling effort. The Mexican
elites turned down requests by northern serranos for funding to continue the repelling
effort but the elites would rather concede defeat to a foreign invading force than give up
their control of the country to the lower classes.
The difference in class saw the regulars and volunteer “lower class” seeing how much
better the officers had it became disgruntled and “deprived” and began having their way
with the Mexican citizenry (mongrel race) by looting, murdering, desecrating, burning
and raping at will as occurred on Christmas Day 1846 in rancho Agua Nueva’s “orgy of
rape.”(page 124)
The realization of the deeply embedded social and class differences not only in the troops
fighting in Mexico but across U.S. and Mexican society came to the forefront as ordinary
working-class soldiers and volunteers saw the arrogance of both American officers and
the Mexican upper-class. These upper class elites had actually attended college together
in the US and in Mexico were now patronizing and even marrying one another during
this time of conflict. The ordinary troops, volunteer and regular, learned that they were in
fact a part of a deemed lower class of servants for a transnational elite class all the while
also galvanizing deeply racist ideologies.
“We find in A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair that the concepts of nationalism and racism and
how these intertwined in U.S. imperial ambitions. The idea of white supremacy and its relation
to ethnic cleansing on the fringes of American empire is central to this work by Paul Foos. We
also see how class status came into play and became fully exposed when the haves or social
elites sought each others friendly company while the have nots or working class fought against
one another. (Historiography points: This places his book in line with Gary Anderson’s The
Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875 and Mark Rifkin’s
Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space which are works that
also examine genocide as an imperial modus operandi.)
*“Another author that discusses this idea of “whiteness” is Reginald Horsman in his book Race
and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo Saxonism from 1981.”
Quick Summary: Racialized thinking in the U.S. was based on a belief that the Anglo-Saxon
race (British and later Euro Americans) derived from a pure Arian and Teutonic stock that came
out of Germany. This romantic conceptualization of racial origin was tinged with a belief in the
superiority of the Anglo-Saxon over all other races. Dr. Horsman argues that the Western
European, and especially English, notion of an ever westward expansion of enlightened
civilization carried across the Atlantic to the Americas in the sixteenth century with the many
settler communities. In the eighteenth century after the American Revolution this mentality
became more entrenched in the Anglo (Saxon) people of the U.S. as the victory over the
powerful British Empire served as proof a divine purpose for American expansion west. The
western expansion across the continent saw the Anglo American further shape, and solidify, its
identity vis-à-vis the African slaves and the indigenous peoples that they came in contact with.
The encounter with the Mexican “impediment” on the march to the Pacific Ocean in the
nineteenth century provided even more fodder for the ever growing blaze of the feeling of
superiority in relation to “colored” and inferior groups. This precedence laid the ground for a
global expansion of the American way, not as a colonial entity but more as an “interpenetrator”
of foreign markets. In order to keep the race pure less interaction with inferior others is
preferable. “We see how the ideologies of race intertwine with those of expansionism. (Manifest
Destiny) "Who can describe in his/her own words what was meant by Manifest Destiny?"
Closing Lecture
"So we have looked at how class and race, according to Foos, factored in the US War with
Mexico. Don’t forget that these are key concepts that will relate to material we have discussed in
the past and will continue to be viable in future sections.
1) “Now let’s break into your discussion groups and discuss what we have learned.”
Daily Minute Paper: At the class students pair up and talk about and analyze distinct
events during the US War with Mexico using the interpretations learned in class today.
Also discuss any topic, issue, or concept you had trouble grasping in the lecture. Write
details on both (in paragraph form) and then submit it to the professor as a group/pair.
Topics, issues, and concepts not understood will be reviewed first thing in the next class
meeting.