Transcriber’s Note: The cover image was created from the title page by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
ESSAY
ON THE
LITERATURE
OF THE
MEXICAN WAR
Class of ’82, Columbia College, New York.
The annexation of Texas and the consequent war with Mexicoresulted in adding to the United States eight hundred andeighty-six thousand four hundred and ninety square miles ofterritory, an area much greater than all that is comprised inthe States lying east of the Mississippi River, and almost equalto that embraced in the Louisiana purchase of President Jeffersonfrom Napoleon the First in 1803. The events of the warwhich added and confirmed to the Union this magnificentdomain have been obscured by the magnitude of the recentcivil war, and they have become almost as remote in thepopular imagination as the romantic incidents in the campaignsof Cortez in the sixteenth century. But as the firesof civil strife are almost dead, and peaceful industries are developingthe wonderful resources of our Mexican acquisitions,new interest is awakened in the circumstances of the conquestand the brilliant military achievements that attended them.By the enterprise of our own people millions of gold and silverhave been added to the world’s wealth from the mines andplacers of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, andthe plains of Texas are teeming with countless herds for thefeeding of Europe. A new but peaceful invasion of Mexicoby American capital has been begun, which arouses freshinterest in its history, its native wealth, and its destiny. Arailway under American management traverses the line ofScott’s march from Vera Cruz to the capital city, another willsoon pass over the fields made immortal by Taylor and his[4]handful of rough and ready soldiers; engineering skill proposesto cross the Isthmus of Tehuantepec with an iron highwayfor the transportation of ocean vessels from the Bay ofCampeche to the waters of the Pacific Ocean, and a line ofrailway following the track of Doniphan’s march will soonreach Chihuahua in its progress to the City of Mexico, beingbuilt with a rapidity almost equal to the speed of his littlearmy of victorious Missourians who first marked out this pathwayof improvement.
The time has not yet come when the war with Mexico canbe treated with the philosophic dignity of which it is worthy,embellished with the imagination of poetry, and its eventsappropriated by the historical novelist. Certain it is, whetherstrange or not, that no hand has been put forth to extract thephilosophy of its history, to direct our opinions of its eventsand its men, to trace the connections of its causes and effects,and to draw from its occurrences and results general lessons ofpolitical wisdom. Almost all the histories and sketches of itwere written soon after its close, and may be considered almostcontemporaneous with it, when the authors of the period couldnot avail themselves of the mass of material which time hasnow made accessible. The party passions of the hour, intensifiedby the slavery struggle, so tinged all efforts at the philosophicaldiscussion