Essay on the Literature of the Mexican War

by W. T. Lawson

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

W. T. LAWSON,

Class of ’82, Columbia College, New York.

ESSAY.

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.

The time has not yet come when the war with Mexico can be treated with the philosophic dignity of which it is worthy, embellished with the imagination of poetry, and its events appropriated by the historical novelist. Certain it is, whether strange or not, that no hand has been put forth to extract the philosophy of its history, to direct our opinions of its events and its men, to trace the connections of its causes and effects, and to draw from its occurrences and results general lessons of political wisdom. Almost all the histories and sketches of it were written soon after its close, and may be considered almost contemporaneous with it, when the authors of the period could not avail themselves of the mass of material which time has now made accessible. The party passions of the hour, intensified by the slavery struggle, so tinged all efforts at the philosophical discussion of it that its great, enduring, and far-reaching consequences were not foreseen, much less appreciated, and are only just now beginning to be felt under the influence of the material development of the vast regions that were added to the country at its termination. Numerous books have been written about it, many of which will have some value to him who shall in the future assume the task of illustrating this brilliant period of American history, and there is appended to this essay a list of those volumes which have been examined and seem worthy of study. So little, however, is the history of this portion of the nation’s life appreciated that President Porter, of Yale College, in the list of historical studies in his work upon “Books and Reading” omits all reference to works upon the Mexican War, and gives but bare mention to that valuable authority upon the subject, “Benton’s Thirty Years View,” a work of which William Cullen Bryant has said: “Its literary execution, the simplicity of its style, and the unexceptionable taste which tempers all its author’s allusions to his contemporaries have been the subject of universal admiration.” For a clear and dispassionate discussion of the causes of the war, for just judgment of the motives of the actors in it, and the impartial statements of the facts that are given, Col. Benton’s chapters on the Mexican War cannot be commended too highly to the student or the historian. It is worthy of mention that the chapter which contains his address of welcome to Doniphan and the Missouri Volunteers at St. Louis on their return from the war is a masterpiece of dignified and graphic eloquence, worthy of a place as a classic model, and calls to mind the days when Athens witnessed the most splendid exhibitions of oratory the world has ever known. Since most of the histories of this war have been written a valuable addition has been made to the stores of knowledge on the subject in an admirable translation by Col. Albert E. Ramsey of a Mexican history of the conflict, which has been published under the title, “The Other Side.”

For the limited purposes of this essay it will be sufficient to select for rapid review those volumes which are esteemed the best types of all that has been written, and present them for consideration.

THE WAR WITH MEXICO. By R. S. Ripley, Brevet-Major in the United States Army, &c. New York. 1849. 2 vols., 8vo.