How to receive Extra Credit: Read my paper in its entirety. As you read, create a
brief outline of my paper. Start your outline by writing my paper’s thesis in your
own words, and then finish it with a list of the main topics of each numbered
paragraph.
A Historiographical Study
of the Mexican War
Susie VanBlaricum
January 12, 2007
History 1629:
Professor Johnson
Between the years 1846 and 1848 the United States waged a war with Mexico.
This war is known by many names; most popular among U.S. historians is “Mexican
War,” the name first popularized by contemporary American participants in the war.1
Additional frequently used titles are “Mexican-American War” and “United StatesMexican War.” Still, other historians refer to the war simply as the “conflict of 18461848.” In Mexico, the war has many alternative titles, including the Invasiόn de los Norte
2
. Each nomenclature denotes various perspectives of the war,
shifting or balancing blame and responsibility between those involved. For the purpose of
this paper, which seeks to outline and discuss the historiography of this conflict as
chronicled by writers of United States history, the title “Mexican War” will be used
without any presumption as to its meaning or innate bias, but simply because it is the
name most popularly used throughout the U.S. histories of the war.
While a large body of historical work exists which discusses the conflict from the
Mexican perspective, for the purpose of this essay, the perspective of the United States
will be privileged.
1)
As with any war, there is not one definitive historical work which describes the
conflict with perfect and indisputable precision. Since 1848, historians have examined the
war using various lenses. Influenced by current events, politics, and personal ideologies,
historians have interpreted the war to reflect their own experiences and biases.
Additionally, historians have narrowed the lens through which they view history further
by choosing to focus on specific aspects of the war. Some of the specific themes
Richard Bruce Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), xii.
2
Thomas R. Hietala, Manifest Design: American Exceptionalism and Empire, revised edition (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2003), vviii.
1
1
discussed in this paper will include the political, military, social, and cultural histories of
the Mexican War.
2)
This war, though short, has significantly impacted the history of the United States.
The Mexican War represented a number of “firsts” for the U.S. It was the first successful
offensive war, the first war fought almost exclusively on foreign soil, and the first
occupation of a foreign capital for the U.S.3 With the advent of the steam driven press
and the use of instantaneous communication via the telegraph, this was the first war in the
history of mankind which pervaded the mass media as news spread swiftly to all regions
of the U.S. and allowed virtually everyone to experience the war vicariously through the
penny-press.4 In addition to the many “firsts” the war with Mexico represented, the
Mexican War is distinguished in history because of the substantial amount of land the
U.S. amassed at the war’s conclusion. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago put the vast
territories of New Mexico and California in the possession of the United States, thus
setting the final boundaries of the continental United States (excluding Alaska).
3)
Despite the significance of this war in United States history, it has remained a
rather unpopular war with historians and the general reading public. As one historian
points out, “There are no Mexican War Round Tables, no Mexican War Book Clubs.”5
While the majority of Americans can name a handful of Civil War generals in the blink
of an eye, very few outside the historical profession, and some might argue few within
the profession, could do the same for the Mexican War. “It has almost become standard
for authors writing about the Mexican War to inform readers that the topic has been
3
Otis A. Singletary, The Mexican War (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960), 3.
Walter Johnson, “The Mexican War,” History 1629 Lecture, Harvard University, 15 Nov, 2006.
5
Singletary, The Mexican War, 4.
4
2
neglected,”6 states one historian; and indeed, few histories of the war begin without
making reference to the gap in historical literature on the subject. Though this historical
gap is dramatically less than it once was, why have historians been so slow to fill it?
4)
Many have postulated on why the Mexican War has been so neglected. Some
point to the war’s brevity or the fact that the war was rather isolated and never became a
“massive affair” or a “total war.” Many blame the simple fact that the Mexican War lives
in the shadow of one of the United States’s greatest wars of all time, the Civil War.7 Still,
others declare that Americans have been hesitant to dwell on the Mexican War because,
as the war is seen by many as a war of conquest, “there has been a certain moral
uneasiness about the origins of this war.”8 Unlike the Civil War, few will claim the
Mexican War was fought in the name of freedom and justice. Perhaps this last
explanation echoes some elements of truth as literature on the war dramatically increased
in the wake of the Vietnam Conflict, another war which invokes moral unease among
many. Many historians made clear comparisons between the Mexican War and the war in
Vietnam. Whatever the reason, the Mexican War has traditionally been, and continues to
be, an often overlooked war in the history of the United States. It is this oversight that
many of the historians discussed in this paper sought to overcome.
5)
Early historians of the Mexican War seemed to be obsessed with placing blame.
Their histories are quick to point fingers and declare tyrants and victims in the war. In the
earliest histories, personal opinions are not hidden, but blatantly sprawled across the
page. Hubert H. Bancroft, who published his six-volume History of Mexico, 1824-1861 in
Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army, xi.
Singletary, The Mexican War, 4.
8
John D. Eisenhower, “Polk and His Generals,” from Essays on the Mexican War. edited by Douglas W.
Richmond (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), 4.
6
7
3
the 1880s, makes it abundantly clear that the United States, and the pro-slavery and landhungry men who controlled it, should be held entirely to blame for the war. He states,
without subtlety and no shame in name-calling:
It was a premeditated and predetermined affair….it was the result of a
deliberately calculated scheme of robbery on the part of a superior power.
There were at Washington enough unprincipled men high in office…who
were only too glad to be able in any way to pander to the tastes of their
supporters – there were enough of this class, slave-holders, smugglers,
Indian-killers, and foul-mouthed, tobacco-spurting swearers upon sacred
Fourth-of-July principles to carry spread-eagle supremacy from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, who were willing to lay aside all notions of right
and wrong in the matter and unblushingly to take whatever could be
secured solely upon the principle of might. Mexico, poor, weak,
struggling to secure for herself a place among the nations, is now to be
humiliated, kicked, cuffed, and beaten by the bully on her northern
border…9
6)
James Ford Rhodes followed in the footsteps of Bancroft; however, instead of
placing the blame on the United States as a whole, he points his finger firmly at the
Southern slave-holding majority. Writing his epic seven-volume work titled History of
the United States from the Compromise of 1850, he published his account of the Mexican
War in 1893. Rhodes was a Northerner who sympathized with the “old whigs” and
“nineteenth century writers who had not forgiven the South for the holocaust of 1861”10
In his mind all the sins of the era were solely in the hands of the South, and thus there too
lies the blame for the Mexican War. By his account it was the “aggressive southern
slavocracy” who planted the seeds for war when they promoted the annexation of Texas.
These “slave power” hungry Southerners then deliberately took advantage of the disputed
9
Hubert H. Bancroft, “The War as an American Plot,” from The Mexican War: Was it Manifest Destiny?
edited by Ramon Eduardo Ruiz (Hinsdale, Illinois: The Dryden Press, 1963), 85.
10
Bancroft, “The War as an American Plot,” 3
4
border between Texas and Mexico, and bullied Mexican leaders into war in order to
conquer land which they could use to establish even more slave states.11
7)
In 1920, one reviewer for the Political Science Quarterly wrote, “If there is one
tradition more firmly established than any other in American historical writing, it is that
the Mexican War was a disgrace to our country.”12 As shown with the work of Rhodes
and Bancroft, it had become custom for historians dealing with the Mexican War to
condemn the Polk administration for “bullying poor, weak Mexico into war by its
aggressive imperialism in the interest of slavery.”13 Skeptical as to whether or not these
early histories were “correct and complete”, Justin H. Smith set out to write his own
comprehensive history of the war.14 Smith conducted extensive research for his project.
His complete two-volume work published in 1919 is approximately 1200 pages long with
350 of those pages dedicated to notes. Smith made it a point to look at all he could
access, and consequently used a majority of sources overlooked by previous historians.15
As Smith boasts in his preface, “probably more than nine-tenths of the material used in
the preparation of this work is in fact new. [For example] no previous writer on the
subject had been through the diplomatic and military archives of either belligerent
nation.”16
8)
Smith’s extensive research led him to form a new and dramatically different
conclusion about the war. “As a particular consequence of this full inquiry, an episode
that has been regarded both in the United States and abroad as discreditable to us, appears
Bancroft, “The War as an American Plot,” 9.
David S. Muzzey, “Review of The War with Mexico, by Justin H. Smith,” Political Science Quarterly 35,
no. 4 (December 1920): 646.
13
Muzzey, “Review of The War with Mexico, by Justin H. Smith,” 646.
14
Justin H. Smith, The War with Mexico, vol. I, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919), x.
15
Muzzey, “Review of The War with Mexico, by Justin H. Smith,” 646.
16
Smith, The War with Mexico, viii.
11
12
5
now to wear quite a different complexion.”17 In response to prior historians’ shouts of
“Blame America!”, “Blame Polk!”, and “Blame the South!”, Smith argued that we should
“Blame Mexico!” Smith argues that America is not to be held responsible for the war
and, instead, all responsibility lies with Mexico. As Smith wrote, “No other course than
that taken by Polk would have been patriotic or even rational.”18 Published at the close of
the First World War, a period of high nationalism, Smith’s nationalistic theme was
adored by reviewers. One reviewer wrote, “Those students of American history who, like
the reviewer, have been unwilling to accept the traditional interpretation of the Mexican
War as a disgraceful episode in our country’s annals, will derive comfort from Professor
Smith’s volumes. And those who are still minded to cast the blame….will find it difficult
to deal with material which the author furnishes…”19
9)
While Smith’s two-volume work remained the definitive work on the Mexican
War for many decades (one history, publishing in 1960, began his “Suggested Reading”
with the affirmation, “By far the best general account of the war is Justin H Smith’s twovolume The War with Mexico”20), mid-twentieth century historians began to take a
renewed interest in the war as they sought to fill the void of scholarly works on the
subject. These historians sought to write summaries of the war, pieces that provided
background information without too much in-depth analysis of one particular aspect of
the war. Seeing the war as being unjustly neglected, Otis Singletary published his
summary of the war, titled appropriately, The Mexican War, in 1960. As he states in his
prologue, his short work will fulfill its purpose “if it succeeds in conveying to the reader
17
Smith, The War with Mexico, ix.
Muzzey, “Review of The War with Mexico, by Justin H. Smith,” 650.
19
Muzzey, “Review of The War with Mexico, by Justin H. Smith, 650-651.
20
Singletary, The Mexican War, 166.
18
6
some interest in and appreciation of the wider implications of this unique event,” one
which he saw as having a “profound influence upon the future course of American
history.”21 Though his focus was on writing a summary accessible to the masses,
Singletary does offer his own new interpretation of who is to blame for the war. Unlike
the majority of earlier historians, Singletary does not point fingers at one side or the
other, but instead holds both parties accountable. “The bad feelings that had slowly but
surely grown out of the encroachments of one power and the brutalities of the other set
the stage for war; political instability increased its probability; the failure of diplomacy
made it inevitable.”22 Singletary’s summary ends simply and aptly with the sentence,
“The war with Mexico was over,”23 offering little more analysis beyond his introductory
comments.
10)
In 1972, historian K. Jack Bauer gave a nod to Smith’s “classic,” as Bauer refers
to it, but also justified why his current summary was necessary and appropriate.
Admitting that few Mexican War sources have passed into the public domain without
first passing the eyes of Smith, Bauer justifies his “trespass[ing] on Smith’s preserve” by
citing the “truism that every generation must reinterpret history in the light of its own
experience.”24 Bauer’s experiences, writing in the wake of the war in Vietnam, were
indeed quite different from Smith who had the First World War as his reference point.
With the contemporary conflict in Vietnam on his mind, Bauer makes many comparisons
between the Vietnam War and the Mexican War. Highlighting the force of manifest
destiny as the igniter of the conflict with Mexico, a conflict he views as unavoidable,
21
Singletary, The Mexican War, 4.
Singletary, The Mexican War, 20.
23
Singletary, The Mexican War, 162.
24
Jack K. Bauer, The Mexican War: 1846-1848 (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1974), xx.
22
7
Bauer states, “The story of the application of that force by James K. Polk, like that of
America’s recent experience in Vietnam, depicts the dangers inherent in the application
of graduated force. It is the story of an American administration which wished to live in
peace with her neighbors but edged closer and closer to the abyss of war because it did
not understand that the logic which it perceived so clearly was not equally evident in
Mexico City.”25 Bauer also compares U.S. diplomacy surrounding the Mexican War’s
conclusion with that of Vietnam. “As in Vietnam, much of the diplomatic story of the
conflict swirls around the failure of the efforts of the American government to initiate
negotiations to bring the war to a close.”26 Bauer’s main argument regarding the war,
which makes no direct reference to Vietnam, is that the Mexican War was unavoidable.
As he states, “The whole thrust of America’s physical and cultural growth carried her
inexorably westward toward the setting sun and the Great Ocean.” 27 In other words,
Bauer does not hold a nation responsible for the Mexican War, but simply the force of
manifest destiny.
11)
In the second half of the twentieth century, historians of the Mexican War, still
writing with the aim of filling in the gap of scholarly work on this often neglected topic,
have sought to do so, for the most part, in a way dramatically different from the historians
discussed above. Instead of summarizing the war as a whole, many more modern
historians have chosen to narrow their foci, looking closely at particular sub-topics within
the Mexican War.
12)
One sub-topic often analyzed is the politics and diplomacy of war. As earlier
historians tried to make broad statements about the U.S. motivations for war, these later
25
Bauer, The Mexican War: 1846-1848, xix.
Bauer, The Mexican War: 1846-1848, xx.
27
Bauer, The Mexican War: 1846-1848, xix.
26
8
histories aimed to take a closer look at the Polk administration to offer new
interpretations of what motivated the political maneuvers of men in high office. In his
book, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism: 1843-1849, Frederick Merk
argues that the Polk administration, fearful of Europeans taking over North American
territory, initiating schemes to interfere with slavery within the U.S., and imposing
monarchic forms of government on young struggling republics, called for a renewal of
Monroe Doctrine policies to protect North America, but more importantly to protect
United States interests there.28 Merk states, “In messages to Congress, in cabinet
consultations, in instructions to diplomats abroad, and in discussions with political
associates, the defensive theme of the Monroe message was extended so as to unite with
the theme of advance.” 29 To prove his argument, Merk weaves a dialogue between the
Polk administration and its opposition, as well as a “dialogue between European and
American commentators on Polk’s ideas,” throughout his work to show to what extent
the “Polk-Monroe doctrine” benefited from universal approval.30
13)
Thomas Hietala’s Manifest Design: American Exceptionalism and Empire
examines the motivations of the Polk administration as well, but makes a rather
contradictory argument to that of Merk’s. Arguing not that it was “threats from abroad or
demands from pioneers”31 that influenced U.S. foreign policy, Hietala argues instead that
“foreign policy in the 1840s was primarily a response to internal concerns.”32 Interested
in the Asian market, anxious about overproduction on domestic farms and plantations,
28
Frederick Merk, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism: 1843-1849 (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1966), ix.
29
Merk, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism: 1843-1849, viii.
30
Merk, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism: 1843-1849, xi.
31
Hietala, Manifest Design, xvii
32
Hietala, Manifest Design, xiii.
9
and aware that U.S. producers had to expand their trade,33 “Democrats (and Tyler Whigs)
preferred new land and markets over extensive federal regulation and reform.”34 Hietala
infers that “the news of the Mexican assault on American forces came as a great relief to
Polk and his advisers, for it provided an opportune justification for a course they had
already plotted.”35 When first published in 1985, Hietala’s argument was criticized by
many who still followed the more nationalistic line of thought first promoted by Smith,
which dispelled notions of U.S. greed and selfishness governing foreign policy. One
particular critic said his book was really about the Vietnam War and not the Mexican.
Aware that his line of argument irritated many, in the preface to Hietala’s revised edition,
published in 2003, he includes a response to his opposition. As he states, his “perspective
rankles because it is inconsistent with American exceptionalism – the belief that the
nation’s politics and diplomacy have been uniquely altruistic, open, and therefore beyond
reproach.”36 What Hietala represents is a historical shift away from the patriotic
interpretations of the Mexican War argued by Smith and others, and a move toward a
much more critical look at the motivations and actions of those involved in the war at
every level.
14)
Another sub-topic, or genre, of the historiography of the Mexican War is military
history. Historians have looked at the military history of the Mexican War in many
different ways. John Eisenhower, in an essay titled “Polk and His Generals”, chose to
look at the war with a focus on the relationship between Polk and the generals who
commanded troops in the war. What Eisenhower found was that the relationship between
33
Hietala, Manifest Design, 84.
Hietala, Manifest Design, xiii.
35
Hietala, Manifest Design, 86.
36
Hietala, Manifest Design, xvii.
34
10
President Polk and his two principal generals, Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, were
“unbelievably bad.”37 He argues, “this unhappy situation, the antagonism between Polk
and his generals, affected the conduct of the war,”38 sometimes going so far as to cause
“near disaster.”39 Placing the military leadership in the context of America’s experiences
in other wars, Eisenhower refers to the clashes between these three men as unique in
American history (note that he wrote and published this article in 1986). In attempting to
explain how such conflicts and mis-management could have occurred between “three
good men from the same region of the country,” Eisenhower points to the fact that
“military professionalism, that attitude which separates the military from the mainstream
of American Affairs, had not yet come of age,” as a leading factor.40 While Eisenhower
maintains that military professionalism had not reached maturity during the Mexican
War, many other historians argue that it was during the Mexican American War when
military professionalism truly developed. As Singletary points out, “it was…the first of
our [U.S.] wars in which a significant number of West Pointers played an important
role.”41 For the first time, generals were able to truly surround themselves with “capable,
competent, well-trained junior officers.”42 While Eisenhower may concede that West
Pointers played a key role in the war, his conclusion is that the U.S. did not benefit from
these trained soldiers, as the leadership from the top was so poorly managed. As
Eisenhower concludes, “What all this boils down to, then, is that our principal antagonist
in the Mexican War was ourselves….the U.S. was lucky.”43
Eisenhower, “Polk and His Generals,” 34.
Eisenhower, “Polk and His Generals,” 35.
39
Eisenhower, “Polk and His Generals,” 63.
40
Eisenhower, “Polk and His Generals,” 63.
41
Singletary, The Mexican War, 3.
42
Singletary, The Mexican War, 3.
43
Eisenhower, “Polk and His Generals,” 35, 36.
37
38
11
15)
While many other historians have chosen to look at the military history of the
Mexican War through the traditional lens of leadership - looking at the Commander-inCheif and his generals - there has been a recent shift toward looking at the war through
the eyes of the common soldier. Who were these men fighting in Mexico? What were
their motivations to fight? How did they experience the war? James McCaffrey was one
of the first to recognize the lack of scholarship on the common Mexican War soldier. As
he writes in the preface to his Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the
Mexican War, 1846-1848, “there has been little attempt to address the day-to-day
activities of all the American soldiers involved. The present study, then, attempts to fill
this gap.”44 McCaffrey places the history of the Mexican War in the context of other U.S.
wars as well, stating, “American soldiery during the Mexican War was not very different
from the volunteer soldiers throughout American history.”45 Where McCaffrey does
make a distinction between the Mexican War and other U.S. wars is in the Mexican
War’s relative brevity and unparalleled number of victories. “This unbroken string of
triumphs made the war much more palatable to both the American public and the
soldiers” and “made it difficult for any sort of popular antiwar movement to get
started.”46 This historian also marks the short successful war as a contributing factor to
the way in which the U.S. troops maintained such low opinions of their enemy – the
soldiers simply did not have any time or opportunity to gain respect for the military
prowess and skills of the Mexicans.47 This theme of U.S. relationships with, and views
44
James A. McCaffrey, Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846-1848
(New York: New York University Press, 1992), xviii.
45
McCaffrey, Army of Manifest Destiny, 210.
46
McCaffrey, Army of Manifest Destiny, 206.
47
McCaffrey, Army of Manifest Destiny, 207.
12
of, the Mexican enemy will become an important sub-topic of its own, one to which
several historians dedicate their entire work.
16)
Crediting McCaffrey as filling a “notable void,” Richard Bruce Winders sees his
own book, Mr. Polk’s Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War, as
building on the historical movement which seeks to examine the daily life of the common
soldiers involved in the war. Winders sees his book as being a part of the evolving
category known as “ ‘new’ military history,” a genre of histories which seek, as Winder’s
book seeks, to link “the army to the society that produced it.”48
17)
Winders argues that the “American participants in the Mexican War shared a
common experience.”49 The experience he is referring to is not simply the experience of
fighting a war on foreign land, but the overall state-of-mind – the way these soldiers
understood their experiences. Playing a key role in shaping these soldiers’ world views
was nineteenth century U.S. society. As Winders argues, the soldiers “carried their
cultural baggage with them” and “saw events through ‘Jacksonian’-colored glasses.”50
Winders expands his argument by making the claim that “many soldiers were concerned
with serious political issues of the day.”51 Soldiers were proud of their political
affiliations, making great displays of their political beliefs. As Winders came to
understand the importance of politics and political affiliations to the soldiers, he
expanded his argument to address the relationships between politicians and common
soldiers, combining the social history of the common soldier with the more traditional
Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army, xii.
Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army, xi.
50
Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army, xii.
51
Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army, xii.
48
49
13
military history which examines those men in power who were making the strategic
military and political maneuvers. Winders states:
Democrats and Whigs alike struggled for control of the army, because
each group realized that military victory on the battlefield was linked to
political victory at the polls. The war and the effort to raise thousands of
troops gave President James K. Polk and his party an excellent
opportunity to reward loyal supporters with commissions and fill the
officer corps with Democrats.
Viewed in this way, “the army that fought the Mexican War was indeed ‘Mr. Polk’s
Army’.”52
18)
Paul Foos began writing his history, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers
and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American War, with the goal to form an
understanding of “American society and thought in the 1840s.” Like McCaffrey and
Winders before him, Foos chose the military, specifically the common soldier, as “the
lens through which to view American society.”53 However, unlike the historians
discussed above, Foos did not see all members of the army as sharing a common
experience. Foos argues that it is “crucial to understand the two opposing poles of
military organization and philosophy, the regular army and the volunteer militia.”54 Foos
asserts in the introduction to his book that his history of the Mexican War “examines
alternative perspectives.”55 For his research method, Foos purposely sought out “newly
uncovered and long-ignored” sources on the topic. As he states, “as much as possible
these sources offer[ed] commentary that eschews the heroic mode so common in
Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army, xii.
Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American
War (Chapel Hill: the University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 9.
54
Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 9.
55
Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 4.
52
53
14
personal and public accounts of the 1840s.”56 Foos’s goal was to not simply add to the
existing collection of Mexican War histories, but to enhance and, in many cases, call into
question existing arguments regarding the war and the men who fought in it.
19)
Contradicting McCaffrey’s argument that the relative shortness of the Mexican
War coupled with the war’s consistent military victories helped maintain high soldier
morale and prevent any strong opposition from forming, Foos dedicates a large portion
of his book to describing the more brutal reality of war. As demonstrated by the dismal
title he chose for his book and the topics of his chapters (Examples are “Discipline and
Desertion in Mexico” and “Atrocity: the Wage of Manifest Destiny”), Foos paints a
much darker picture of the average soldier’s life than the bright optimistic portrait
painted by McCaffrey.
20)
Contradicting Winders’s argument that the majority of soldiers viewed the war
and the world through “ ‘Jacksonian’-colored glasses,” Foos argues that “the experiences
of Americans as occupiers of Mexico shook the foundations of Jacksonian ideas and
practices.”57 Foos pays particular attention to how the principle of herrenvolk democracy
– a principle which, according to Foos “envisioned landed equality for whites, with
servile subject races” - was reconsidered and assessed by these soldiers.58 As Foos sees
it, the Mexican War “provided Americans with a venue to confront their own internal
conflicts” as they fought a war widely promoted as a war fought in the name of white,
Anglo-Saxon supremacy.59 While all soldiers confronted these issues, not all came to the
same conclusions regarding race relations. As Foos summarizes,
56
Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 4.
Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 5.
58
Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 5.
59
Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 5.
57
15
The naked opportunism of the 1846-1848 war, the class conflict that the
army brought with it to Mexico, and face-to-face experience with the
Mexican people would bring about changed racial thinking: some
individuals and groups became more exploitive than ever, but others
rejected the cant of racial destiny.60
21)
As with other wars, historians are often inspired by specific battalions and many
histories have been written examining closely individual U.S. Army regiments fighting in
the Mexican War. Many of these much narrower military histories examine issues of
identity and race as Foos did. For example, Robert Ryal Miller’s Shamrock and Sword:
The Saint Patrick’s Battalion in the U.S.-Mexican War and Peter Stevens’s The Rogue’s
March: John Riley and the St. Patrick’s Battalion take a close look at how this group of
Irishmen experienced the war, while Sherman Fleek’s History May Be Searched in Vain:
A Military History of the Mormon Battalion looks at the war from the perspective of
some of its Mormon participants.
21)
The Mexican War was both a conflict over a border and a war between two
ethnically diverse and racially complex nations. Because of this, social themes - issues of
identity, popular culture, and ideologies represented in and shaped by the conflict – are
popular themes for historians to look at. Histories which focus on such issues are a
relatively recent phenomenon in the historiography of the Mexican War, as they are in
historiography in general.
22)
One modern historian, Andre
a complex and rarely
discussed perspective to the historiography of the Mexican War in his Changing National
Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850. Understanding the
60
Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 5.
16
Mexican War as “unquestionably a war of conquest,”61
U.S. citizens living on the border between Mexico and Texas experienced the war. He
argues that, “from the perspective of the frontier residents, it was a conquest mediated by
Mexico’s pre-existing core-periphery tensions and a tangle of economic interests linking
Mexico’s far north with the United States.”62 For these residents living on the border the
Mexican War was not a one-time event that determined their fate but a “catalyst that
rekindled longstanding national identity struggles” complicated by continuous “structural
transformations.” For these frontiersmen the war was not a straightforward conflict that
was distinctly right or wrong, but a war which “entailed both imposition and
acquiescence, rivalry and complicity.”63
23)
In his landmark work The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and
Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, historian Alexander Saxton examines the
way in which white racism was shaped by and, in return, shaped U.S. politics and culture
during this time. Saxton’s work has influenced many historians, including Mexican War
historian, Shelley Streeby. Streeby’s book, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the
Production of Popular Culture, expands on Saxton’s work. While a discussion of
national expansion and the expropriation of Western lands plays a key role in The Rise
and Fall of the White Republic, Streeby was troubled that Saxton “had little to say about
white U.S. America’s racial confrontations with Latinos or cultural production that
focuses on Mexico and the Americas.”64 As she sees it, “class and racial formations and
61
Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 240.
62
Changing National Identities at the Frontier, 240.
63
Changing National Identities at the Frontier, 240.
64
Shelley Streeby, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), 15.
17
popular and mass culture in North-eastern U.S. cities are inextricable from scenes of
empire-building in the U.S. West, Mexico, and the Americas.”65 Streeby’s book,
therefore, was written to fill this void. She sees an examination of the Mexican War, a
war she points out is often a “forgotten war,”66 as central to this purpose. She views the
Mexican War, along with various other U.S. imperial schemes throughout the Americas,
as having “crucially shaped U.S. politics and culture.”67 The dual meaning of the word
American in the title of her book illustrates her complicated historical purpose. The use
of the word American in American Sensations refers to both the “hemispheric
dimensions” of the U.S. imperial activity and the “process whereby U.S. Americans
appropriated the term ‘American’ for themselves.”68
23)
The methodology which guided Streeby’s examination of the Mexican War and
the way it shaped U.S. popular thought and ideologies was to use popular sensational
literature from the time as her principal sources. Streeby found that “languages of labor
and race were shaped in significant ways by inter-American contact and conflict”69 and
that this evolving language was best represented in popular sensational literature. The
word Sensation in American Sensations therefore refers to what she views as the “culture
of sensation,”70 the prevalence of popular literature which exploited the American
adventures in the Southwest and encounters with Latino culture. As Streeby discovered,
her sources “both reveal[ed] and struggle[d] to conceal the role of U.S. imperialism in the
Americas in the nineteenth century,” they both “bolstered and complicated” ways in
65
Streeby, American Sensations, 15.
Streeby, American Sensations, xi.
67
Streeby, American Sensations, xi.
68
Streeby, American Sensations, 7.
69
Streeby, American Sensations, 15.
70
Streeby, American Sensations, 7.
66
18
which Americans came to understand themselves and their relation to their Latino
neighbors.71 Many of the ideological ways of viewing whiteness and race formed during
this time because of encounters between the white U.S. and Latino populations, Streeby
argues, are still prevalent today, making an understanding of this period, and the Mexican
War in particular, immensely significant to studies of race relations and culture within the
U.S.
24)
Streeby’s method of examining popular literature as a way to interpret broader
issues and themes within U.S. society is one often used by historians. Because of the
advent of the steam driven press, and the dramatic increase in printed and published
works, popular culture was truly able to flourish during this period. There were literally
hundreds of dime novels inspired by the war, and several historians have taken advantage
of these works as valuable sources. One such historian is Robert W. Johannsen.
25)
Johannsen approached the history of the Mexican War with one simple question,
“What did the Mexican War mean to Americans in the mid-nineteenth century?”72 His
historical goal was to decipher the “spirit” and “feeling” of the American people. As he
uncovered this “spirit” and “feeling” he hoped to gain insight into how Americans’
perceptions of the war “revealed some of the characteristics of mid-nineteenth century
American thought and culture.”73 While conducting research for his social history of the
Mexican War, To The Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American
Imagination, Johannsen purposely avoided what he viewed as “conventional… political
utterances of the time” because he viewed them as overused sources which, because of
71
Streeby, American Sensations, 7.
Robert W. Johannsen, To The Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), viii.
73
Johannsen, To The Halls of the Montezumas, vii.
72
19
their political nature, might easily cloud popular attitudes.74 Instead Johannsen used
popular literature, music, drama, and art to form his interpretations.
26)
To the Halls of the Montezumas
in the way that it looks at U.S. society as a whole. Johannsen does not seek to discover
the different ways Irish-working class immigrants, freed black men, women, and frontier
residents viewed the war. Instead he seeks to discuss the perceptions of the war which
relationships between the majority, or those with the majority of power, and minorities,
Johannsen paints a broader portrait of American society, looking at the issues which were
openly discussed and apparent on the surface and in mass culture. What Johannsen
concludes in his study is that the “spirit” that shaped popular attitudes toward the war was
generally optimistic, patriotic, and romantic. “For a time and for some people, the war
with Mexico offered reassurance by lending new meaning to patriotism, providing a new
arena for heroism, and reasserting anew the popular assumptions of America’s romantic
era.”75 At the war’s conclusion, Johannsen argues that the U.S. perceived itself to be on
the verge of a “new epoch in American history.”76 Americans were optimistic about a
bright future for their nation, a nation Americans proudly viewed as a model nation. The
“spirit” Johannsen claims Americans shared had no room for fears of civil unrest.
Americans saw only progress and prosperity. Modern observers know better, for in little
over a decade these U.S. citizens would find themselves involved in a bloody civil war.
27)
Histories of the Mexican War have changed drastically over the years, varying
both in the themes examined and the interpretations of how these themes played out in
74
Johannsen, To The Halls of the Montezumas, viii.
Johannsen, To The Halls of the Montezumas, viii.
76
Johannsen, To The Halls of the Montezumas, 301.
75
20
the war. Many of the historians discussed here disagree with each other, and new
contradicting interpretations are entering the field every year. As Foos reminds us,
“Scholars of the Mexican-American War have been hard-pressed to remain objective in
the face of the contentious politics of the 1840s, using them - intentionally or
unintentionally – as a sounding board for the latter day political debates.”77 It was not
simply the early historians, those who wore their bias proudly on their sleeve, who have
allowed personal experiences and values to influence their interpretation of the war. PostVietnam interpretations of the Mexican War varied significantly from those written in the
wake of World War I. Just as personal feelings on the morality of imperialism have
shaped the way historians have portrayed the actions of the Polk administration, personal
values have shaped the way people interpret who should be held responsible for the war,
and consequently the differing ways in which people refer to the war. Was it the
“Mexican War,” the “U.S. – Mexican War,” or the “North American Invasion of
Mexico”? In the end, perhaps Hietala said it best when he wrote, “The events of the
1840s and their legacy remain controversial, and no author can satisfy avid partisans of
any particular nation, party, leader, or people.”78
28)
This paper began with an examination of the way in which the Mexican War has
traditionally been a war neglected in the scholarly sphere. Historians today continue to
express the need to fill gaps in the historiography of the Mexican War. Who knows when,
if ever, the Mexican War will have as many scholarly works dedicated to it as those
dedicated to more popular wars involving the United States of America. We can be
77
78
Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 9.
Hietala, Manifest Design, xvii.
21
certain of one thing - historians will continue to research this war for generations to
come, with each individual bringing something new to the field.
22
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1967), 231-232.
Bauer, Jack K. The Mexican War: 1846-1848. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co.,
Inc., 1974.
Eisenhower, John D. “Polk and His Generals.” From Essays on the Mexican War. edited
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