Essay on the Literature of the Mexican War

Transcriber’s Note: The cover image was created from the title page by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
W. T. LAWSON,
Class of ’82, Columbia College, New York.

The annexation of Texas and the consequent war with Mexico resulted in adding to the United States eight hundred and eighty-six thousand four hundred and ninety square miles of territory, an area much greater than all that is comprised in the States lying east of the Mississippi River, and almost equal to that embraced in the Louisiana purchase of President Jefferson from Napoleon the First in 1803. The events of the war which added and confirmed to the Union this magnificent domain have been obscured by the magnitude of the recent civil war, and they have become almost as remote in the popular imagination as the romantic incidents in the campaigns of Cortez in the sixteenth century. But as the fires of civil strife are almost dead, and peaceful industries are developing the wonderful resources of our Mexican acquisitions, new interest is awakened in the circumstances of the conquest and the brilliant military achievements that attended them. By the enterprise of our own people millions of gold and silver have been added to the world’s wealth from the mines and placers of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, and the plains of Texas are teeming with countless herds for the feeding of Europe. A new but peaceful invasion of Mexico by American capital has been begun, which arouses fresh interest in its history, its native wealth, and its destiny. A railway under American management traverses the line of Scott’s march from Vera Cruz to the capital city, another will soon pass over the fields made immortal by Taylor and his handful of rough and ready soldiers; engineering skill proposes to cross the Isthmus of Tehuantepec with an iron highway for the transportation of ocean vessels from the Bay of Campeche to the waters of the Pacific Ocean, and a line of railway following the track of Doniphan’s march will soon reach Chihuahua in its progress to the City of Mexico, being built with a rapidity almost equal to the speed of his little army of victorious Missourians who first marked out this pathway of improvement.