Introduction

1. The Geographic and Cartographic Legacy of the U.S.-Mexican War Richard V. Francaviglia

2. "But What Will England Say?"--Great Britain, the United States, and the War with Mexico Sam W. Haynes

3. Causes of the War with the United States Josefina Zoraida Vázquez

4. "Will the Regiment Stand It?" The 1st North Carolina Mutinies at Buena Vista Richard Bruce Winders

5. The War Between the United States and Mexico Miguel A. González Quiroga

6. Journalism and the U.S.-Mexican War Mitchel Roth

7. A View of the Periphery: Regional Factors and Collaboration During the U.S.-Mexico Conflict, 1845-1848 Douglas W. Richmond

8. Young America and the War with Mexico Robert W. Johannsen

INTRODUCTION

On October 25 and 26, 1996, the University of Texas at Arlington hosted a symposium marking the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the U.S.-Mexican War. Lasting from 1846 to 1848, the war permanently affected the relationship between the two countries. As stated in the symposium literature, our goal was not to celebrate or glorify the conflict, but to look back upon it from 150 years of historical perspective. We attempted to view the war dispassionately, but soon realized that the war is still capable of generating much passion. The symposium, which was jointly sponsored by the National Park Service as part of their annual Palo Alto Conference, thus endeavored to promote a better understanding of the war's significance and its impact upon the people who live along both sides of today's border. The symposium focussed on the social history of the war because we felt that it had been neglected. Although scholars over the years have made great strides in interpreting the U.S.-Mexican War, much of their emphasis has been on the military aspects of this conflict. Thus, the international group of speakers at the symposium spent much time emphasizing the social and cultural effects of the conflict in addition to the more traditional themes.

The articles in this anthology represent selected papers from the symposium. The studies herein attempt to shed light on previously obscure themes. They reveal that the U.S.-Mexican War remains an unplowed field in many respects, and the scholars who came to Arlington have whetted the appetite for new interpretations. Approximately 170 people attended and many of them asked the presenters for additional information; others who attended absorbed the ideas they heard quietly but they, too, learned about the most dramatic episode in U.S.-Mexican relations.

We have rearranged the essays in this book so that they first introduce the reader to the subject on a geographical basis, then explore in detail that which has often been overlooked. To help readers better envision the immense size of areas affected by the war, Richard Francaviglia begins by analyzing the historical and geographical factors that affected both operations and broader political developments associated with the war. Francaviglia reveals the stunning geographic panorama of the borderlands in the mid-nineteenth century, and how the physical landscape not only affected the movements of armies but also helped shape national identities. Francaviglia concludes that one major outcome of the war, the border, was a true intercultural frontier rather than a demarcated barrier. Just as the Río Grande, or Río Bravo del Norte, often changes course so, too, has the border between the United States and Mexico during the nineteenth century. The cartographic materials that help illustrate Francaviglia's article demonstrate the changing knowledge of and agreement concerning the border throughout a critical period in United States and Mexican history.

Once readers understand the geography of the war, they are better prepared to understand how its history has been shaped by the conflict. We felt that the underlying causes of the war needed to be considered and interpreted from the perspectives of both Mexico and the United States. While the basic causes of the war are fairly well known, the complexicities that also propelled the conflict into taking place are the subject of the initial essays. Professor Sam Haynes discusses the United States' motivation for the war in the context of U.S.-British relations. Here it becomes clear that the struggle engaged British and French diplomats who were eager to check U.S. expansionism. The problem was that Mexico had a difficult time recognizing its loss of Texas. Mexico continued to insist that the boundary between it and the Texas Republic was the Nueces River and not the Río Grande. Britain offered to guarantee Mexico's northern border largely by means of her independent-minded representative in Texas. Slippery diplomatic maneuvers only raised the fears of many U.S. citizens. Indeed, Haynes contends that anti-British sentiment, largely owing to a belief that Britain intended to seize Mexican lands, became an underlying factor in shaping the sentiments of Manifest Destiny that circulated throughout the 1840s.

One of Mexico's most renowned historians and undoubtedly the leading expert on the U.S.-Mexico War, Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, interprets the causes of the war within the context of a comprehensive domestic and international framework. Mexico's inability to colonize its northern frontier resulted in a lack of population in the regions sought by President James Polk. Although the United States was hardly a bastion of political stability at the time, neither was Mexico: that young nation suffered from a fierce dispute between federalists, who wanted self-rule as much as possible, centralists, who felt that a strong central state was the best course for Mexico to follow, and moderates who sought compromise. Here even Spain became involved in the partisan struggles by attempting to place a Spanish prince on a Mexican throne. The British and French supported this monarchist scheme quietly before abandoning Mexico just as the war broke out. Yet political sectarianism continued; the national government had to send out troops to crush domestic revolts as U.S. forces fought with Mexican soldiers in the north. The war became a tragedy for Mexico because her institutions failed at a critical time when President James K. Polk was determined to seize the Southwest, either by purchase or by provoking armed conflict. Why Mexico lost the war is an elusive theme, which other authors have confronted.

A symposium analyzing a war cannot overlook military perspectives so the organizers called upon Bruce Winders, whose essay revolves around the behavior of volunteers and the problems they presented when challenging an unpopular officer. Ever since the colonial period, the United States had depended upon a militia system based upon techniques developed in the days of Oliver Cromwell. Even though they were not always effective, militias continued to be the basis for U.S. land forces largely because of the minuteman legend and the fear of standing armies. Although the United States had learned much about military organization from the War of 1812, the war between Mexico and the United States demonstrated finally that professional army units would become the only sensible future. Even in the U.S.-Mexican War, however, the often disruptive presence of volunteers was palpable: As Winders demonstrates in his essay on the Paine Mutiny, headstrong volunteers caused a good deal of friction within the U.S. military.

It is probably fair to state that the evening address by Miguel González of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León moved the participants more than any other presentation. His discussion of the difficulties faced by the citizens of Monterrey is quite compelling. One learns that the pain of occupation under American forces affected Mexicans throughout the northeast in many ways that are still felt today. The horror of war is never pleasant, particularly when it harms innocent civilians.

Mitchell Roth emphasizes a major innovation of the period--the advent of modern war correspondence. Here the efforts of journalists demonstrate the insatiable appetite for news in the United States about its first war on foreign soil. Roth describes the technological advances that often enabled newspaper readers to receive dispatches covering major events before the secretary of war learned about them. During the war, the popular press came into its own and, like today's media coverage of modern issues, had a great effect on the way in which the public perceived the conflict. Although reporters portrayed Mexico as a weaker nation than the United States, Mexico fascinated U.S. readers. The proximity of Mexico made it an accessible landscape for high adventure, and the war provided the justification for young males to volunteer their services. Reports about the battles read like Gothic drama, and the Mexican people became an object of curiosity among the general public.

The regional dimensions of the conflict reveal the weaknesses that prevented Mexico from responding more forcefully. Douglas W. Richmond describes the various problems the Mexican government experienced in dealing with its southeastern and far northern possessions. Clearly the demand for autonomy was uppermost in the minds of those Mexicans farthest from Mexico City. But ethnic problems regarding the treatment of indigenous peoples and the desire for trade with Europe and the United States also motivated rebellion. Therefore collaboration often made it easier for U.S. forces to occupy critical areas of Mexico in Yucatán and in northern Mexico with little or no resistance. A caste dimension clearly emerges because most of the elite did not oppose U.S. forces while the guerrillas often received mass support.

In the United States, opinions about the war also had a strong regional basis. The northeast became the bastion of anti-war sentiment while the south and west supported Polk. This regional divisiveness contributed in some degree to the American Civil War. It can certainly be argued that the war between Mexico and the United States provoked civil wars in both countries, since the 1858-1860 civil war in Mexico emanated from the desire of the liberal faction to eradicate the privileges of the church and military, whom they considered negligent in their loyalty and ability to defend Mexico.

Intellectuals in the United States responded passionately to the war with Mexico. Professor Robert W. Johannsen describes eloquently how the fighting fit into the broader pattern of U.S. attitudes--both among the country's intellectual elite, as well as in the popular culture. Even egalitarians like Walt Whitman and Robert Longfellow considered the early triumphs of the U.S. military as a vindication of republican virtues over medieval, Hispanic traditions. Whitman supported the Democratic administration staunchly, convinced that the party was representative of the U.S. public. Whitman believed that because the public had elected Polk, the will of the people had become public. Whitman's strong support of the war began to wane, however, as he lost faith in the Democratic leadership and he saw the war in moral, rather than purely political, terms. And yet the idea that the lives of all peoples would be improved by the policies pursued in the name of republicanism by the United States prevailed in many of the pro-war writings. Because the exuberant confidence of the Jacksonian period had not ebbed away, Robert Johannsen's discussion of the literary response of U.S. thinkers captures the spirit of the times by emphasizing the generally positive reaction of the intellectuals.

Nevertheless, as Johannsen demonstrates, several literary luminaries--including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau--criticized the war eloquently. None of their anti-war writings, however, could stop the forces of war nor convince most U.S. citizens that the conflict was immoral. Because Emerson did most of his writing about the Mexican War in journals, his opinions did not reach the general public. Furthermore, a circle of colleagues sharing Emerson's views often felt that to speak publicly against the war would be either mistaken or futile because it was unable to convince the public that the war was unjust. Slavery was at the heart of the transcendentalist argument against the fighting, because abolitionists recognized that the outcome of the war would determine the future direction of democratic principles.

This, then, is a binational re-interpretation of important, but overlooked aspects of the U.S.-Mexican War. If , as our presenters hoped, these essays help shed new light on this pivotal historic event, then our purpose will have been served.

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In addition to the scholars who made presentations and prepared essays, several people and institutions deserve to be acknowledged for their support of this endeavor. Several commentators at the conference, particularly Peggy Cashion, Don Coerver, Pedro Santoni and Paul Vanderwood, provided stimulating insights while effectively improving the quality of these essays. The Summerlee Foundation of Dallas provided funding for the symposium, as did the Texas Committee for the Humanities, and the Arlington Star-Telegram. The University of Texas at Arlington's Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography and the Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site, as well as the Special Collections Division of the University of Texas at Arlington Library, sponsored the symposium. Lois Lettini and Darlene McAllister, administrative secretaries at the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography, helped organize many details and typed numerous drafts of this manuscript in preparation for publication.

Douglas W. Richmond
Professor of History

Richard V. Francaviglia
Director, Center for Southwestern Studies and Professor of History