To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination

Capa
Oxford University Press, 1985 - 363 páginas
"Our country has entered on a new epoch of its history," wrote a Whig Party journal in 1849, just after America's triumph in the Mexican War. Indeed, for that romantic generation of Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, the Mexican War was a grand exercise in self-identity: it legitimized the young republic's convictions of mission and destiny to a doubting world. It was easily one of the most popular wars the United States has ever fought. This rich cultural history examines the war's place in the popular imagination of the era. As Robert Johannsen notes, the Mexican War was the first American conflict to be widely reported in the press, as well as the first to be waged against an alien foe in a distant, strange, and exotic land. For mid-century Americans, Johannsen shows, the war provided a window onto the outside world, promoting an awareness--if not an understanding--of a people and a land unlike any they had known before. The war helped to dispel some of the mystery of Mexico, as it generated a huge flood of popular literature, poetry, songs, art, and stage plays. Would-be historians began chronicling the war almost as soon as the first shots were fired, and the war provoked myriad questions about the true nature and purposes of the republic. Drawing on military and travel accounts, newspaper dispatches, and a host of other sources, Johannsen vividly recreates the mood and feeling of the period--its unbounded optimism and patriotic pride. The book's unique perspective not only adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Mexican War; it offers new insights into American itself.--Publisher description.

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Índice

Washington July 4 1848
3
CHAPTER 1 Americas First Foreign War
7
CHAPTER 2 A DareDevil War Spirit
21
CHAPTER 3 The True Spirit of Patriot Virtue
45
CHAPTER 4 Visions of Romance and Chivalry
68
CHAPTER 5 A New Stock of Heroes
108
CHAPTER 6 Travelers in a Foreign Land
144
CHAPTER 7 A WarLiterature
175
CHAPTER 8 Poetry and the Popular Arts
204
CHAPTER 9 The Historians War
241
CHAPTER 10 The War and the Republic
270
A New Epoch in American History
302
Notes
313
Index
353
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