Short, Offhand, Killing Affair : Soldiers and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American War.
Title:
Short, Offhand, Killing Affair : Soldiers and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American War.
Author:
Foos, Paul.
ISBN:
9780807862001
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (233 pages)
Contents:
Contents -- Tables, Illustrations, & Map -- Introduction -- Notes -- 1. The Regular Army and Antebellum Labor: Service and Servitude -- Wage Labor in the Antebellum Period -- Corpus Christi, 1845: The Regular Army to the Front -- Officers -- Common Soldiers -- Catholics and the Regular Army -- Notes -- 2. Citizens' Militias in the United States -- Militias and the Mexican War -- The Meaning of Militia Organization in the Republic -- Militia as Police -- The Decline of Universal Militias and the Rise of Volunteer Companies -- Notes -- 3. Volunteer Excitement among the Masses -- Cincinnati -- Illinois and Indiana -- New Orleans -- Notes -- 4. Forced toVolunteer: The Politics of Compulsion -- The Massachusetts Regiment -- Departure of the Regiment -- New York City -- The Political Clubs -- Mike Walsh -- The California Expedition -- The First Regiment -- Notes -- 5. Discipline and Desertion in Mexico -- The Volunteers in Mexico: ''To Dwell Together in This Place'' -- Campaigns -- The Negotiation of ''Wages'' -- The Negotiation of Discipline -- Immigrant Volunteers in Mexico -- African Americans -- Camp Followers -- Volunteers and Desertion -- The Regular Army in Mexico: Deserters -- Notes -- 6. Atrocity: The Wage of Manifest Destiny -- The Dirty War -- Bowery B'hoys and Sports -- Scorched Earth: Official and Unofficial Policy -- Violence and the Catholic Church -- Mexican Resistance -- Notes -- 7. Dreams of Conquest and the Limits of the White Man's Democracy -- Dreams of Personal Conquest -- A ''Scientific'' View of Herrenvolk Democracy -- The Peace Settlement and Annexation Plans -- Notes -- 8. Free Soil and the Heritage of the Citizen-Soldier -- Mexican War Soldiers and Free Soil -- Homecomings -- Free-Soil Stirrings in New York -- New Yorkers in California: Broken Promises -- Return of the Massachusetts Regiment: ''Almost Ashamed''.
The Irish Militias -- The Subsequent Career of the Citizen-Soldier -- The Spanish-American War: Resurgent Manifest Destiny -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A-C -- D-M -- N-R -- S-W -- Y-Z.
Abstract:
The Mexican-American War (1846-48) found Americans on new terrain. A republic founded on the principle of armed defense of freedom was now going to war on behalf of Manifest Destiny, seeking to conquer an unfamiliar nation and people. Through an examination of rank-and-file soldiers, Paul Foos sheds new light on the war and its effect on attitudes toward other races and nationalities that stood in the way of American expansionism.Drawing on wartime diaries and letters not previously examined by scholars, Foos shows that the experience of soldiers in the war differed radically from the positive, patriotic image trumpeted by political and military leaders seeking recruits for a volunteer army. Promised access to land, economic opportunity, and political equality, the enlistees instead found themselves subjected to unusually harsh discipline and harrowing battle conditions. As a result, some soldiers adapted the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny to their own purposes, taking for themselves what had been promised, often by looting the Mexican countryside or committing racial and sexual atrocities. Others deserted the army to fight for the enemy or seek employment in the West. These acts, Foos argues, along with the government's tacit acceptance of them, translated into a more violent, damaging variety of Manifest Destiny.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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