gilda_elise

Often forgotten and overlooked, the U.S.-Mexican War featured false starts, atrocities, and daring back-channel negotiations as it divided the nation, paved the way for the Civil War a generation later, and launched the career of Abraham Lincoln. Amy S. Greenberg’s skilled storytelling and rigorous scholarship bring this American war for empire to life with memorable characters, plotlines, and legacies.

This definitive history of the 1846 conflict paints an intimate portrait of the major players and their world. It is a story of Indian fights, Manifest Destiny, secret military maneuvers, gunshot wounds, and political spin. Along the way it captures a young Lincoln mismatching his clothes, the lasting influence of the Founding Fathers, the birth of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and America’s first national antiwar movement. A key chapter in the creation of the United States, it is the story of a burgeoning nation and an unforgettable conflict that has shaped American history.

To say that is war was a disgraceful episode in American history is putting it mildly. And Greenberg does an excellent job of showing why it was called “a wicked war,” (by no less than Ulysses S. Grant,) and bringing to life all the major players.

I wasn’t surprised to find Andrew Jackson, the genocide president, on the side of those who were all for taking the land, but I didn’t know much about his toady, James Polk. That he won the nomination for president by changing convention rules, and then the presidency with slander, seemed par for the course, him being the main instigator of the war. Here, too, he would lie and cheat his way to his goal.

On the other side, was Henry Clay, a complicated man who lost the election because of his rejection of annexing Texas, but who would ultimately be on the right side of history. His later speech against the war would help turn the tide of public opinion. Someone I hadn’t even heard of was Nicholas Trist. Sent with Polk’s demands to Mexico, which was basically for them to hand over the entire country, he would instead broker the fairest peace plan that he could. He would be recalled and hounded by Polk and his minion for most of the rest of his life. It would only be under Grant’s presidency that he would once again be welcomed into the government.

But I supposed even the worst circumstances can have a silver lining. Because of the war, Abraham Lincoln would learn the lessons of melding political and ethical considerations, lessons that, years later, would allow him to save the Union.

This is a book well worth reading by anyone interested in this era, and in how far dishonorable men will go to get what they want. And what honorable men will sacrifice to stop them.