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

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Oxford University Press, 1988 M01 21 - 662 páginas
For mid-19th-century Americans, the Mexican War was not only a grand exercise in self-identity, legitimizing the young republic's convictions of mission and destiny to a doubting world; it was also the first American conflict to be widely reported in the press and to be waged against an alien foe in a distant and exotic land. It provided a window onto the outside world and promoted an awareness of a people and a land unlike any Americans had known before. This rich cultural history examines the place of the Mexican War in the popular imagination of the era. 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--and adds a new dimension to our understanding of both the Mexican War and America itself.

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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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Página 109 - Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.
Página 70 - But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded ; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
Página 103 - Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, With such accursed instruments as these, Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices, And jarrest the celestial harmonies...
Página 38 - Not a single one over thirty years of age. •The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and massacred, it was beautiful early summer, The work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight. None...
Página 103 - Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts; The warrior's name would be a name abhorred!
Página 218 - They jest want this Californy So's to lug new slave-states in To abuse ye, an
Página 242 - ... the cloud? It is yet free and indestructible ; can as little be bound in chains as the aspiring flame ; and, when once generated, takes eternity for its guardian. We are the children and the heirs of the past...
Página 98 - Albany, from which place I had a good view of all that occurred. It was a ' sight to see!' The tall ships of war sailing leisurely along under their top-sails, their decks thronged in every part with dense masses of troops, whose bright muskets and bayonets were flashing in the sunbeams; the...

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