Mexican War Research Articles

The Pen Makes a Good Sword: John Forsyth of the Mobile Register (review)

T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 142 and perhaps inspired to open your own little Shop of Independence. It’s good not to have a boss. Take a look at the Bright Star book and then start recording what you know of the best and most deservedly cherished small businesses you know about. You just might be inspired to write your own book. JIM REED Birmingham, Alabama The Pen Makes a Good Sword: John Forsyth of the Mobile Register. By Lonnie A. Burnett. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. viii, 239 pp. $37.50. ISBN 0-8173-1524-1. The exceptionally long career of John Forsyth Jr., editor of the Mobile Register, provides a valuable insight into patronage and party politics in Alabama from the Jacksonian era to Reconstruction. The son and namesake of a Georgian who served as secretary of state to both Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, the younger Forsyth, as his biographer illustrates, “reaped personal financial rewards through party patronage ” (p. 4). Andrew Jackson appointed him U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama; James Knox Polk named him postmaster of Columbus, Georgia; Franklin Pierce chose him as minister to Mexico; and James Buchanan awarded him lucrative government contracts. Forsyth’s career inevitably raises the question of how federal patronage influenced his political decisions. When a Democrat occupied the White House, Forsyth opposed the extreme states’ rights faction in his political party. Nevertheless, when a Whig held the presidency during the struggle over the Compromise of 1850, Forsyth joined the faction in Alabama that favored secession. With the return of the Democrats to the White House after 1852, Forsyth again opposed the extreme states’ rights group. Regarded as a southern moderate, he advocated the candidacy of Stephen A. Douglas in the presidential election of 1860. In a letter to a fiery rival newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, Forsyth addressed the troubling issue of slavery in the territories. He warned that southern insistence on protection of territorial slavery would only insure the election of a Republican president. “And then . . . what becomes of your claim for protection in the Territories?” he asked (p. 102). Forsyth’s gloomy prophecy was fulfilled when Abraham Lincoln was elected President on a platform that closed the territories to slavery. To the dismay of many southern moderates, Forsyth then immediately abandoned the Union and advocated secession. Nonetheless, his biogra- A P R I L 2 0 0 8 143 pher argues that Forsyth was not contradicting his principles by his hasty switch. According to Burnett, throughout the 1850s “Forsyth presented a consistent stance on the issue of disunion” (p. 124). The author points out that Forsyth always had warned that hostile control of the presidency would be a reason for secession. On the above point, a cynical reviewer cannot help but question Forsyth’s motives more closely. While granting that Forsyth would be concerned, quite rightly, about the South’s loss of power and influence, would he not also feel considerable remorse about his own diminished position? Would he not regret, quite bitterly, the demise of the patronage that he had received from the federal government for approximately twenty-five years? And might he not plan to seek it again, early on, from a new constituency? In examining Forsyth’s extensive and wide-ranging career, Burnett has detailed quite carefully Forsyth’s participation in the Mexican War, his service as minister to Mexico, his struggles in the confused Democratic nominating conventions of 1860, and his frustrations on the commission that Jefferson Davis appointed to negotiate friendly relations between the United States and the Confederacy. In none of these endeavors did Forsyth cover himself with glory. Furthermore, he seems to have given impractical advice to Stephen A. Douglas in his political campaign of 1860 and to Braxton Bragg in his military campaign in Kentucky in 1862. At the beginning of the Reconstruction era, Forsyth had the reputation of being a southern moderate, but in his subsequent editorials in the Mobile Register he proved to be very immoderate indeed. Lonnie Burnett has written a first rate biography of John Forsyth, but, in...

Manifest Destiny and the expansion of America

In this unique reference, leading historians describe not only how the expansion of the American nation in the early 19th century was a turning point in U.S. history that led to the Civil War, but also alternative scenarios-what happened and almost happened. This volume poses what if questions about ten crucial tipping points in the history of U.S. expansionism between 1800 and the Civil War. It not only describes happened-in the case of Lewis and Clark, the War of 1812, the Monroe Doctrine, railroads and telegraphs, the Mexican War, the gold rush, the Compromise of 1850-it also offers alternative scenarios, essays on could have happened. In this exciting and imaginative approach to history, students not only develop analytical skills by tracing the causes and effects of crucial events; they are empowered by the knowledge that at moments when history hangs in the balance, many paths are possible, and that they, as citizens, can tip the scale. Each chapter presents the actual history along with a what if scenario of may have happened had a crucial point turned out differently Primary sources include the complete text of one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and a chronology details key events during the Era of Expansion

Reopen a joint school of military government and administration?

Today there are many calls for other elements of the government to do more to ‘do their part’, assist the military to restore order and stability and ‘win the peace’ in Iraq and Afghanistan, and prepare for similar roles in future conflicts. The authors here instead briefly review the history of US armed forces’ involvement in military governance operations from the Mexican War through World War II, and recommend the re-establishment of a School of Military Government similar to that created during the latter conflict.

Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea by Richard Kluger

gain a better understanding of this too-little studied area ofOregon. Thomas R. Cox Emeritus, San Diego State University SEIZINGDESTINY:HOWAMERICA GREW FROMSEATO SHININGSEA by RichardKluger Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007. Maps, notes, index. 667 pages. $35.00 cloth. It has been some time since an author has attempted such a sweeping narrative of the rapid expansion of theUnited Statesfrom the Revolution to the War of 1898and itsaftermath, including the finagled Panamanian Revolu tion,which, as theyalways did along thepath ofManifest Destiny, American promoters promised would bring theblessings of liberty to local inhabitants who now came under their protection. Historical trends for some timehave leaned away from Richard Kluger's approach,with itsemphasis on the individuals who manipulated foreign statesmen toyield to Washington D.C.'s desires. Still,thisisnot "Great Man" history in the sense ofMount Rushmore. The author's sketchesofAmerican leaders and theiropportunities arematched with equally well-accomplished portraits of foreign leaders and theirdifficulties.He is familiarwith, and uses awide range of, secondary sources inwhat must inevitablybe awork of synthesis.For the most part, he provides a near seamless narrative, if one that, on occasion, becomes a bit over ladenwith detail forthe average reader. Kluger sees the storyofAmerican expan sion as a nation filledwith land-hungry set tlers, who, while theypreached thevirtues of the hardy yeomen class toNative Americans (as Jefferson did before concluding they were incapable of absorbing the lesson, and turned to removal as theonly solution), failed to follow the most elementaryrulesof successfulfarming as practiced in Europe. In a sense, of course, the attitudewas: Why should we?With all the land stretchingout across the continent, it was easier toadd new territorythan toworry about depleting the soil with one-crop agriculture and by allowing fields to lie fallow.A related issue pertained to the cost of good farmlands. The political systemwould onlywork ifcost could be held down. In a somewhat oblique fashion, therefore,Kluger invokes Frederick JacksonTurner's thesis as an explanation for theway American democracy worked in the nineteenth century. Ruminating about his deal with Napoleon to secure the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson wrote years laterthathe had been among those who believed that great sizewas not compat iblewith a democratic system. But now, he wrote, "who can limit the extent towhich the federative principle may operate effectively? The largerour association, the lesswill itbe shaken by local passions" (p. 296). More ter ritory, observes Kluger, seemed to guarantee a safer nation and a more stable government. A special bonus about thepurchase, accordingly, offered the president the ability to reconcile his lost faith in acculturation of the native Americans, with a place to send them, "where theycould persist intheirStoneAge benighted ness" (p. 297). By the time of the Mexican War, thenation had completely convinced itselfof the righteousness of itscause, and presidents such as JamesK. Polk often found themselves trailingpopular opinion. BrooklynEagle editor Walt Whitman railed, "Yes:Mexico must be thoroughly chastised." The timehad come for the world to realize that"Americaknows how to crush ... as well as how to expand" (p. 444). Time and time again, however, thenation's destinywas shaped not only by its"go ahead" statesmen, who astounded their European counterparts with their audacity and energy, but also because of favorable circumstances that convinced Old World leaders to get out of theway andmake thebest deal theycould. This was especially true, of course, in terms Reviews 489 of theunfolding of events that led to thefirst great addition, the Louisiana Purchase. Had Napoleon not foundhis forcesbogged down in Haiti, forexample, howwould he have decided about pursuing an empire in theNew World? James K. Polk and theacquisition ofCalifornia throughwar with Mexico, and tough threats to London over Oregon, offervariations on the theme.Mexico would not back down, but London did. Kluger makes thepoint that the game had been played so successfully since Jefferson thatAmerican presidents grewmore and more emboldened, feeling theirpowers grow as the nation's territorygrew. Polk was perhaps the supreme blufferof thenineteenth century,but in reality,he read the auguries right. His outlandish demand foran expanded Oregon was intended forinternalpolitical con sumption tohold togetheraDemocratic Party already Assuring over thehopeless attempt to balance slaveandfree territory all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The British came around, and Polk had...

First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War (review)

Reviewed by: First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War Stephanie McCurry First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War. By Joan E. Cashin . ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. 312 $29.95.) Varina Howell Davis has been lucky in her biographer. In Joan Cashin, associate professor of history at Ohio State University, she has found an astute and sympathetic reader of the record of her life, and especially of her marriage, to Jefferson Davis, Mississippi senator, Confederate president, and embodiment of the Lost Cause. In this biography Varina Davis comes [End Page 422] fully to life, excavated from under the weight of her other half's much more public past. That is no small accomplishment. But the burden of the marriage still tells. The book has a revealing architecture: vibrant and engaging in the beginning, dull and slogging in the middle, as if marriage to Jefferson Davis dragged down author with subject. For much as Cashin labors to trace out "the unorthodox voice" (305) that is, to her, the true Varina, its full flowering comes late in life, the loyal widow's reward. The extended middle—a forty-four-year marriage to Jefferson Davis that spans the Civil War—is a study of repression, submission, betrayal (his), and endurance (hers). For good reason does Cashin hurry through the years of the Civil War. There is another war story she wants to tell. Varina Howell Davis fought a long "civil war," and, like the Confederates, she lost. Varina Howell was nineteen years old when she married Jefferson Davis. He was thirty-six and a widower—"a girdled tree" as she would later describe him and older men who remarried after losing their own first young loves (258). "Uncle Jeff," she called him (38). Davis emerges clearly from Cashin's brief treatment of her premarried life as a young woman of some substance, tried by her father's bankruptcy, buoyed by her intellect and wit, one who had already learned the critical lesson that "catastrophes could be survived" (30). She was also, as she would later describe herself, "a half breed," "Yankee on one side," by the New Jersey Howells, and "Confederate on the other" (11). Out of these scant materials Cashin successfully establishes Davis's singularity. No Southern belle she. But marriage to Davis would test his wife's fortitude and the biographer's resourcefulness. After a brief breaking-in period, Davis buckled under for forty-four long years, during which singularity, wit, intelligence, and fortitude were summoned to allow her survive the iron will and colossal selfishness of her husband. Cashin makes much, to the reader's benefit, of the opening rounds, when Varina Howell Davis went head to head with her brother-in-law Joseph over title to her husband's plantation and the right to run her own household affairs—and with Jefferson Davis, her new husband, whose loyalty remained with his brother and whose will acceded to her only a life interest in his property. "When attacked," she told her mother, "I can fight" (50). For three years she did, standing up for her rights "as a woman and a wife" (49). Throughout his time in service in the Mexican War and as Mississippi senator in Washington, D.C., they fought it out. "He stayed at the front, fighting one war, and she stayed home, fighting another" (45). Cashin's portrait of this crisis of her marriage is masterful indeed, a full-on [End Page 423] view into marriage as "so many holocausts of herself," as Varina Davis would later refer to the institution (131). Jefferson Davis conceded nothing. For three years he quarantined her on the plantation, refusing to let her join him in Washington and issuing clear ultimatums about his own total authority. In 1848, seeing no alternative but divorce, Varina bent the proverbial knee, making peace in a groveling letter. Still only twenty-two years old, her will to resist him was broken. And so the wife was made. The following forty years of marriage, and especially the four of the Civil War, prove a trial to Cashin the biographer. She struggles mightily in the middle section of...

Lincoln, Race and Slavery: A Biographical Overview

Locating Lincoln at a fixed place along the line of nineteenth-century thinking on race and slavery is not easy. Although he said much about slavery, he said little about race. Lincoln's statements about slavery leave little reason to doubt his assertion that “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel” (1). Slavery was “a monstrous injustice” and “the sum of all villanies” (2). He had seen plantation slavery firsthand in his twenties, probably while flatboating goods down the Mississippi, “and the horrid pictures are in my mind yet” (3). In 1837, while still a junior Illinois state representative, he joined with another like-minded Illinois representative to protest “resolutions” adopted by the state legislature, endorsing “domestic slavery” in the southern states. “The institution of slavery,” Lincoln declared, “is founded on both injustice and bad policy” (4). A decade later, as an Illinois congressman, he voted for the Wilmot Proviso—which banned slavery from the territory acquired in the Mexican War—“as good as forty times.” In January 1849, he proposed a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, a bill that ultimately failed. Lincoln explained the failure with the following: “finding that I was abandoned by my former backers and having little personal influence, I dropped the matter knowing that it was useless to prosecute the business at that time” (5). He considered “foreign slave traders” as “enemies of the human race,” and characterized “slave-breeders and slave-traders” at home as “a small, odious and detested class” (6). And given how contrary slavery was to both natural law and America's republican ideology, it was inconceivable to him that slavery could endure permanently in the United States, or was ever intended to by the Founders. Even in plain economic terms, slavery was doomed to extinction by self-suffocation, and Lincoln “was quite sure it would not outlive the century” (7).

The U.S.-Mexican War in James Russell Lowell's The Bigelow Papers

The U.S.–Mexican War in James Russell Lowell’s The Biglow Papers J. Javier Rodríguez One reading of the u.s.–mexican war leads to a sobering conclusion: the United States of America is an ordinary country in an ordinary place, given to ordinary national ambitions, and typically violent expansionist methods. With few exceptions, most American historians of the war avoid this interpretation, preferring instead to chart the politics that led up to the conflict, the progress of battles, or the internal tensions that followed it. Rarely do they delve into its particular and massive contradictions, an elision attesting to the persistent narrative power of American exceptionalism. In the 1840s, that political mythology framed a dubious war against a sovereign country as an act of self-defense, justified by moral obligations, and grounded in America's putative role as a light of freedom. Many Americans of the era, infused with a surging nationalism, saw the conflict's necessity and justice as self-evident. Jingoistic war supporters like Walt Whitman unquestioningly declared Mexico's European anachronism to be by definition opposed to America's globally redemptive purpose. But even before it began, contemporary politicians and writers were debating the war's morality and justice. Dubious at best, at worst a spectacularly unprovoked aggression, the war, fought from 1846 to 1848, required an imaginative re-arrangement into the framework of exceptionalist belief because it could so obviously demonstrate that America's national mythology could also be a veneer for greed and violence—perhaps not the redeeming enterprise of a republic dedicated to the advancement of democracy and freedom. Predictably, many writers [End Page 1] wrote single-minded and jingoistic screeds, enthusiastic conflations of history and destiny which saturated a great deal of the era's nationalist poetry, war fiction, and patriotic music. Intriguingly, the mythology so exuberantly produced quickly faded into historical obscurity. Unlike the Alamo battle of 1836, retold ad nauseam, Americans largely have boxed away the U.S–Mexican War's exceptionalist narrative in the national attic. The reasons for this are complex, but they are rooted in the way Mexico and Mexicans as national military antagonists foreground the historical and mundane origins of American mythic identity and thus redefine it as a denial of reality, a fabrication intended in part to obscure the often murderous actions of Europeans set loose in North America. When historians and others do investigate the war's more worldly causes and effects, they find themselves delving into an America at odds with prevailing notions of national supremacy, an America of limitations and mutabilities. This is not to deny the power and efficacy of national myths, only to note that American ideals are enmeshed in quotidian realities, continually evolving into new forms. Such complexity rarely finds itself in the histories, but it energizes much of the U.S–Mexican War's imaginative literature, which often grappled with national mutability, ideological contradiction, and cultural anxiety. Fervent nationalist poets, musical composers, dramatists, writers of pulp fiction, politicians and preachers all expressed optimistic variations of American triumphalism, but many others darkened their work with shadowing doubts and uncertainties. The war against Mexico generated not just the stabilizing narratives of racial or national dichotomies—not just monochromatic, racist American ethno-nationalism—but also intense counter-narratives wherein Mexico and Mexicans were either equivalent Americans defending their republic from invasion, or, in a further extension, and far more disturbing, agents of existential disturbance, standing against the very possibility of meaning itself. One of the clearest examples of this kind of agonistic U.S–Mexican War literature is The Biglow Papers of 1848, an anti-war satire by James Russell Lowell who, as a respected poet and literary critic, occupied a leading position among nineteenth-century Boston literati. The Biglow Papers are complicated and complicating, shaped as they are by a military collision that exposed American ideals not just as veils for hypocrisy, but also as evidence of mass delusion. At its core, Lowell's satire meditates somberly on national unease, a text situated perilously between America [End Page 2] and non-America. Moreover, its concerns about Mexico reach into the present moment because, seen from a particular point...

Stephen Crane's Sources and Allusions in “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” and “Moonlight on the Snow”

Without a doubt the idea of the frontier played a crucial role in the Ameri can mind in the late nineteenth century. Whether one was reading dime novels about legendary heroes, watching wild west shows, or participating in the debate about the significance of the frontier in American history, the frontier as an imaginative setting was clearly part of popular culture. In response to this interest, the Bachelier syndicate sent Stephen Crane in 1895 on an extensive tour of the West and Mexico in order to write feature articles on local events and conditions. As these articles and his Western fiction demonstrate, Crane was ambivalent about the movement of civilization across the American continent. Whereas he admired the rapid modernization of the West, he deplored a detestable superficial culture1 of the East. In two of his Western stories, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky and Moonlight on the Snow, written several years after his 1895 tour, Crane expresses his ambivalence about the significance of the development of the West by incorporating literary and historical allusions to well-known people, places, and events in contemporary popular culture. At the same time, the two stories dramatize his private anxieties regarding the tension between his professional lifestyle as an itinerant author and his responsibilities to his companion Cora Taylor.2 In The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, Crane relies on America's growing awareness of a commonly shared popular culture. Readers would have rec ognized the historic and literary context of the first and last names of the Texas marshal, Jack Potter. Both names had a longstanding connection with Texas in fact and fiction. Reuben Marmaduke Potter, a key figure dur ing the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War, immortalized San Antonio

The Army in Transformation, 1790-1860 (review)

Reviewed by: The Army in Transformation, 1790–1860 William B. Skelton The Army in Transformation, 1790–1860. By James M. McCaffrey. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. ISBN 0-313-33172-3. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xix, 187. $65.00. James M. McCaffrey's brief study of the army between 1790 and 1860 is the first volume to be published in a series entitled American Soldiers' Lives, intended to describe the everyday experiences of ordinary American soldiers throughout the history of the republic. The intended audience appears to be high school and college students and general readers, though the steep price and school text format will probably restrict the market mainly to libraries. McCaffrey, whose earlier works include a study of American soldiers in the Mexican War, briefly traces the army's early history, then provides chapters on key aspects of military life: recruitment and training; garrison duty and recreation; food, medical care, and clothing; military discipline; and campaigning and combat. The book is based on a commendable range of sources, including manuscript collections, published letters and diaries, [End Page 527] and a selection of secondary works, and the author provides an extensive and useful bibliography. The writing style is fast-paced, drawing heavily from soldiers' personal accounts and making extensive use of colorful anecdotes. While McCaffrey's book provides an engaging introduction for students, readers expecting an analytical and nuanced view of the soldier experience may find it disappointing. The coverage is uneven and rather quirky, with extended treatment of some topics—weaponry, uniform changes, the handful of women serving as soldiers—but with limited or no attention devoted to others, such as social backgrounds, promotion, retention, and the experience of noncommissioned officers. The author fails to differentiate systematically among the various categories of soldiers, intermingling evidence from regulars and volunteers, officers and enlisted men, raw recruits and old soldiers. Moreover, he draws material indiscriminately from across the entire time period to support his generalizations, though the army of the 1850s was a very different institution from that of the 1790s. In his unremitting reliance on anecdotes, McCaffrey largely ignores the extensive statistical data available on the social history of the early army, based on enlistment records and muster rolls, which might have given his account more structure. For example, he uses officers' descriptions to perpetuate the stereotype of regular army recruits as the dregs of society, whereas careful studies by J. C. A. Stagg, Dale R. Steinhauer, and others suggest a much more complex picture of enlistment patterns and their relationship to economic conditions in the broader society. The chapter on military discipline and punishment would have been enriched by sampling the army court-martial records, a vast reservoir of information on the most intimate aspects of army life. In particular, these files highlight officers' widespread use of arbitrary, degrading, and illegal corporal punishments, by far the most corrosive element in officer-enlisted man relations and a primary cause of "mutiny" and desertion. In sum, McCaffrey succeeds in his goal of presenting students and general readers with a fast-paced and colorful introduction to aspects of military life in the early national and antebellum eras. There remains a major need, however, for a balanced, nuanced, and sophisticated social history of the early army's enlisted soldiers. William B. Skelton Emeritus, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point Stevens Point, Wisconsin Copyright © 2007 Society for Military History

The Scrapbook in American life

An Introduction to the History of Scrapbooks - Katherine Ott, Susan Tucker, and Patricia P. Buckler Part I. Manuscripts of Learning and Knowledge 1. Between Person and Profession: The Scrapbooks of Nineteenth-Century Medical Practitioners - Katherine Ott 2. Daily Life on a South Carolina Plantation, 1855-1983: A Scrapbook Memory from Three Generations of Women - Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq 3. Letters, Scrapbooks, and History Books: A Personalized Version of the Mexican War, 1846-48 - Patricia P. Buckler 4. History in the Making: A Columbian Exposition Scrapbook - Jennifer A. Jolly 5. Scrapbook, Wishbook, Prayerbook: Trade Card Scrapbooks and the Missionary Work of Advertising - Ellen Gruber Garvey 6. Scrapbook Houses for Paper Dolls: Creative Expression, Aesthetic Elaboration, and Bonding in the Female World - Beverly Gordon 7. Souvenirs of Amerika: Hannah Hoch's Weimar-Era Mass-Media Scrapbook - Melissa A. Johnson Part II. Books of the Self 8. The Secret Scrapbook of a Soiled Dove - Carol Bowers 9. Inviting Narratives: Willa Cather's Childhood Scrapbook and My Antonia - Jennifer L. Bradley 10. In the Hands of Children: A Photographic Essay of Images from Children's Scrapbooks - Meredith Eliassen 11. Picturing Love and Friendship: Photograph Albums and Networks of Affection in the 1860s - Sarah McNair Vosmeier 12. Telling Particular Stories: Two African-American Memory Books - Susan Tucker 13. Maternal Records and Male Modernist Identities: The Family Albums of Ernest Hemingway and Christopher Isherwood - James Kelley 14. Miss Domestic and Miss Enterprise: Or, How to Keep a Photograph Album - Elizabeth F. Siegel 15. Horizons: The Scrapbooks of a Small-Town, Depression-Era Preteen - L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin

Hybrids and Others

Hybrids and Others Philip Gould (bio) The Making of Racial Sentiment: Slavery and the Birth of the Frontier Romance. Ezra Tawil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ix, 244 pp. Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, and Transatlantic Culture, 1756–1830. Tim Fulford. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. viii, 318 pp. One would think, in light of the wealth of critical literature out there on literary representations of Native Americans in nineteenth-century literature, that new and original readings on this subject would be difficult to pull off. The figure of the "Indian" has a long critical history in early American and nineteenth-century American studies, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, studies of the racial politics of whites writing about Native Americans (real or imagined) registers dispositions in literary studies writ large. In the 1960s and 1970s, the most influential work in the field derived methodologically from the myth-and-symbol school that originated in postwar liberalism. This was certainly true of the seminal work by Roy Harvey Pearce and Richard Slotkin, both of which analyzed race and racial conflict as a way of uncovering national myths that lay at the heart of the "American Mind" (see Pearce, Slotkin, and Berkhofer). And it was no less true of the more avowedly radical race studies shaped by the antiwar movement and cultural politics of the Vietnam War era (see, for example, Barnett and, especially, Takaki). In the decades to follow, studies concerned with literary representations of Native Americans and frontier violence usually focused [End Page 611] more specifically on the historical context of westward expansion and the national ideologies legitimating the U.S. government's policies of Indian Removal. Dana Nelson, Eric Sundquist, Jared Gardner, and numerous other scholars employed in unique and creative ways the methods of (what was then called) the "new historicism" to engage in ideology critiques with an eye focused on particular historical contexts (i.e., the Pequot War, the Missouri Compromise, Jacksonian removal policies, Supreme Court decisions, the Mexican War, and so on). This work has done much to demystify the discourses of frontier violence, contextualize the literary deployments of the very category of race, and reveal literature's messy and animating relations with other kinds of writing. Sometimes, however, it has reduced literary works to mere repositories of ideology and read them symptomatically. The works under review testify to the ongoing importance in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century literary studies of the contexts and rhetoric of Native American representations. They register the importance of recent developments in racial studies, and, notwithstanding their awareness of transnational writings and histories, the continued importance of the "nation" as the crucial category that makes sense of the literatures of race and racial conflict. The traditionally "Americanist" perspective on the literary subject of Native Americans—and indeed on the life and writings of Native Americans themselves—is Fulford's point of departure. His book attempts to remedy this imbalance by reexamining the subject through a transatlantic lens, a move that supposedly produces new understandings of both Native American writing and the rise of British Romanticism. As he explains, "One ends up with a different view of the literature and culture of the period 1756–1830, on both sides of the Atlantic" (15). The book accordingly is structured as a tripartite analysis that (1) first sets out to re-contextualize the literary and historical sources for British Romantic writing about race; (2) goes on to read a wide range of British writers and genres, though focusing on canonical luminaries such as Wordsworth and Coleridge; and (3) concludes by considering the lives and writings of an eclectic array of Native Americans (some of whom have dubious origins). Its major theoretical premise throughout is the ongoing importance of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American frontier as a dynamic "contact zone" or "middle ground" where dynamic kinds of cultural [End Page 612] encounters and exchanges took place, hence destabilizing British assumptions about the opposition between savage and civilized cultures (see Pratt and White). This is a persuasive model for thinking about the limits of colonialism in the eighteenth century, though it became less tenable, as he admits, later on. But early discussions of British-Native...

Les héros anonymes de la Révolution Mexicaine sur papier glacé: le juan et la soldadera comme symboles de "mexicanité"

Au même titre que le muralisme des années vingt ou que la novela de la Revolución, les photographies de la guerre civile mexicaine de 1910 à 1920 ont contribué à la consolidation de l’idéologie post-révolutionnaire en offrant au lectorat des revues illustrées une représentation lissée et stéréotypée du conflit. Cet article se cantonne à l’analyse des images de juanes et de soldaderas publiées dans trois magazines de la Post-Révolution (1910-1920) afin de démontrer comment ces photographies enferment les acteurs de la guerre dans des "types" et les érigent en symboles de "mexicanité", relayant ainsi les discours simplificateurs des dirigeants post-révolutionnaires et gommant la complexité du conflit fondateur du Mexique du XXe siècle.

Rolling the Dice of War

strategic fact of historical experience is that once the dice of war are rolled, policy achievement is largely hostage to military performanceColin CrayModern StrategyHistory, of course, never repeats itself precisely, former secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in an op-ed last year examining the lessons of the Vietnam War as applied to the current insurgency in Iraq.' The Pentagon's political and military leadership repudiated such an analogue and so did US Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US-led occupation agency, according to journalist Thomas Ricks. In the summer of 2003, a retired Marine colonel, expert in small wars, went to Baghdad to advise Bremer on how to counter the growing insurgency. At a meeting between the two men, the colonel innocently suggested to the ambassador that some of the programs implemented in the Vietnam War might be useful. The suggestion set Bremer off, raging that Iraq was not Vietnam. As Ricks observes, [t]his was one of the early indications that US officials would obstinately refuse to learn from the past as they sought to run Iraq.2The refusal to learn from history actually began more than two years earlier when senior Defense Department officials ignored or dismissed case studies conducted by the RAND Corporation and the US Army Strategic Studies Institute on US experiences in postconflict occupation as well as the initial post-invasion planning Department of State experts conducted. Further, these officials marginalized former army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, when he provided his military judgement that the force required to occupy Iraq would be more substantial than his civilian superiors were admitting. Instead, using a variation on an operational plan used in Afghanistan, Pentagon leaders put a premium on technology and minimal force levels to attain victory because they confused military aims with political objectives.Such an indictment should not be imposed solely on the Pentagon's civilians-military leaders bear responsibility as well. In the immediate aftermath of tactical success, US military units failed to suppress the emerging anarchy and became estranged from the Iraqi population by guarding the oil Ministry while sanctioning the looting and destruction of the remaining fragile institutions and infrastructure of Iraq. Perhaps the inaction resulted from the US military's traditional unease with nation building, a role in which military and political aims are both complementary and interdependent. Regardless of the genesis, one of the lessons from Iraq is that a more expansive review of military effectiveness must be taken, not simply in terms of conducting combat operations but in administrating civil affairs. It requires an understanding of how military capability must be reconciled with military necessity. This is not only an imperative of international law but is dictated by common sense as well: some agency must plan for and assume this onerous responsibility in order to advance the nation's political interests. Thus, national policy compels more from the soldier than obedience to orders; it calls for statesmanship.THE BEGINNING OF NATION BUILDINGIf the battle streamers attached to the US army's official flag could give voice, they would tell of not only of the campaigns the organization has fought but also its role in military government, another name for nation building, which occurred after the Mexican War (1847-48), in the Confederate states during and after the American Civil War, in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba after the Spanish-American War, and in the Rhineland after World War I. In every instance, however, American politicians and intelligentsia were wary of the army assuming civil authority, an anxiety arising from the longstanding historical and legal traditions of the United States. Pragmatism dictated that the military undertake this role since no other government entity had the human and financial resources to perform it. …

The Mexican War

The U.S.-Mexican War, although it took place more than 160 years ago, continues to shape the destinies of both the countries caught up in the conflict. For Mexico, the many problems of sharing a border with the U.S. had their origins with this war. And for the United States, the dilemmas posed by the incorporation of large populations of non-English-speaking, mestizo peoples continues to challenge the meaning of what it means to be an American. This book is a solid and useful tool for students of Latin America, who will see in this conflict a lesson of what happens when leadership gives in to ethnocentric notions of nationalism.The authors succeed in giving a clear narrative of events without overpowering us with the many details of diplomacy and war. They have done a masterful job of synthesizing the most important interpretations of the conflict, its origin, and course. They have given us valuable resources, a detailed chronology, copies of key primary documents of the period, and an annotated bibliography that is organized to help researchers.This is more than just a chronicle of the war. The authors give a good deal of background information about both the United States’ and Mexico’s political evolution prior to the conflict. The chapter discussing the Texas Revolution gives a deep background to understanding how it was that the Americans came to separate from Mexico. The writing is free from jargon and explains complicated events and their causes incisively.The authors’ goal is to look at the conflict from both American and Mexican perspectives, but this is a very difficult task for North American scholars. The problem is that the Mexican scholars’ deeply critical perspective on U.S. motives and conduct in the war does not fit readily into a narrative approach. The title of the book indicates a problem from the start. Mexican scholars would call it the “War against Mexico” or the “U.S.-Mexican War,” not the “Mexican War,” which has different implications. The stories of the Tejanos who died inside the Alamo, of the Polk-Stockton scheme in Texas, of the execution of the Haro twins in California, of the atrocities committed by the Texan irregulars who were with the U.S. Army, and of the U.S. summary execution of the Taos rebels are not in this narrative. A Mexican perspective would excoriate U.S. expansionist motives, from the annexation of Texas to the starting of the war on Mexican soil up to the forced annexation of half of its national territory. Unfortunately, the chapter on legacies does not mention the U.S. failures to live up to the Treaty of Guadalaupe Hidalgo and the loss of civil and property rights by former Mexican citizens in the United States.Several years ago, a binational discourse about the U.S.-Mexican War appeared in a two-hour PBS presentation entitled “The U.S.-Mexican War.” This program gave Mexican scholars a chance to discuss their perspectives about the war, alongside those of U.S. historians, including Chicano historians. The related Web site, with companion documents, is available for those who want a balanced view of the conflict (http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/mainframe.html). This kind of approach could serve as a framework for larger book presenting Mexican and U.S. interpretations of the war. Until then, The Mexican War will provide the interested public with a readable and factual, but ultimately one-sided, view of the conflict.

Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 (review)

Reviewed by: Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 Kathleen Duval (bio) Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850. By Steven W. Hackel. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005, published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Pp. xx, 476. Illustrations, maps. Paper, $22.50.) In the 1930s, Indians from the Monterey Bay region still came every year on the feast day of San Carlos to the ruins of Mission San Carlos Borromeo. Standing amidst the rubble, they celebrated mass, chanted in Latin, and elected one of their own to serve as captain of the celebration. [End Page 489] Mission San Carlos was the place where Franciscan priests shackled and whipped these people's ancestors. When Mexican officials ended the mission system in the 1820s, they viewed mission Indians as slaves who needed emancipating. How, then, do we explain their descendants' commemoration and devotion? Steven Hackel explores the complexities of power and religion at Mission San Carlos. His extensive research on that mission and on the larger history of Alta California and his use of the methods of ethnohistory and the new Indian history provide insights far beyond one community. Hackel begins before the missions when more than 2,500 people lived in small communities in the Monterey region. They belonged to two linguistic groups, Costanoan and Esselen. Unlike almost all Native North Americans, California Indians were not agricultural at the time of European arrival, not because they were "backward," as most Europeans viewed them, but because they had found other means of supporting a fairly dense population, including trading with neighbors and manipulating their environment through irrigating and pruning the berry bushes and nut trees from which they gathered. The Spanish had claimed Alta California since the sixteenth century, but proving their claim became urgent in the late 1760s, as the British expanded west after winning the Seven Years' War and as Russian trade grew in the north Pacific. The Enlightenment-influenced Spanish crown wanted to decrease the role of priests, but the empire was spread too thinly across the hemisphere to deny the Franciscan request to establish a string of missions along the coast of Alta California. In 1769, university professor Junípero Serra began with Mission San Diego, and, by the time of the Mexican War of Independence, his priests had baptized more than 70,000 of Alta California's Indians. To explain why Indians came to missions, Hackel identifies the "dual revolutions" of European diseases and European plants and animals. A devastating loss of life combined with ecological changes to undercut the region's economy. In large part, Costanoans and Esselens moved to missions because they were hungry, and the missions efficiently organized Indian labor into agricultural production. Franciscans facilitated Indians' decision to settle in missions by focusing on practice more than belief. Elsewhere, revolts at some missions and disappointingly incomplete conversions at most had taught Europeans that missionizing was a long-term process, and their assumption of California Indians' primitiveness made them think converting them would [End Page 490] take even longer. As Hackel vividly demonstrates, religious art, priests' vestments, music, and elaborate processions on holy days bound mission Indians and Franciscans in a shared sense of the sacred, whether or not they agreed on the meanings. But when the Franciscans drew the line, they drew it hard. As Hackel shows, in matters of sexuality, they were strict and often vicious. Hackel balances Indian subjection and Indian power with the compelling argument that "Indians pursued a variety of survival strategies rooted in their cultures" but, in so doing, they "often unintentionally reinforced colonists' hold on the region" (1). Because Spaniards did not have complete power over Indians, Indians influenced the missions, but their involvement helped the mission system to succeed and gradually become a dominant institution in their homeland and an instrument of cultural change. In discussing the painting of the archangel Raphael at Santa Inés Mission, reproduced on the book's cover, Hackel illustrates this tension. The Chumash Indian artist painted wings on the archangel that look like the California condor...

"To Forget and Forgive": Reconstructing the Nation in the Post-Civil War Classroom

In John Bonner's A Child's History of the United States, published in 1866, schoolchildren read about the brave actions freedmen took on behalf of the Union cause. They read, for instance, about a "black man, Tillman, a steward on board a [Union] vessel seized by a rebel privateer, and left on board of her with the prize crew, [who] rose one dark night, . . . and killed the prize captain and mate with an axe, and brought the vessel safely to the port of New York." Students were also introduced to a freedwoman washing the floors at a Union hospital who saved the life of a wounded and sick Union soldier whom doctors insisted was going to die. After days and weeks of caring for him "carefully and tenderly," feeding him with a spoon "as though he had been a baby," and sleeping on the floor while the sick soldier occupied her bed, the woman "had the pleasure of seeing her soldier completely restored to health." These and other events, Bonner explained, "dispel[led] the prejudice" against freedmen and opened the door for freedmen to serve as soldiers. Stories of brave freedmen and women convinced wartime Americans, and presumably Bonner's young readers, that "there was something manly in the negroes after all."1 [End Page 282] Written in the heady days after Appomattox, Bonner's classroom history was similar to many texts written in the North before and immediately after the American Civil War. In the midst of heated political battles about the Mexican War and slavery's expansion, slavery played a central role in classroom histories of the nation. Texts sought to establish an emancipationist legacy for the nation, and Bonner's history celebrated the realization of this legacy in the wartime enlistment of black soldiers. Samuel Goodrich had similar intentions in his Pictorial History of the United States. A picture portraying the arrival of the first slaves to Virginia in 1619 is included in the 1846 edition (fig. 1). The accompanying text describes the slave trade and the emancipationist energy that followed the Revolutionary war and suggests that resistance to slavery grew in proportion to the extension of the trade. Recognizing slavery's central role in the narrative of American history, Goodrich wanted young schoolchildren to remember their ancestors who worked to end slavery and to block colonization schemes to send freedmen back to Africa.2 But whereas the images and stories of individual slaves—and Northern abolitionists—grace the pages of antebellum Northern texts and texts written in the first decade after the war, slaves and slavery are conspicuously absent from later classroom histories. Indeed, the image of the first slaves arriving in the colonies was unceremoniously removed from the 1877 edition of Goodrich's Pictorial. Later editions of the text eliminated slavery altogether, an editorial decision that gave Goodrich the space to add glowing predictions for the nation's future rather than burdening his history text with the weight of the nation's slave past. In the 1877 edition of Pictorial, all images of slaves and slavery were gone, and Goodrich applauded national reconciliation efforts, because "the time had come to bury the past [for] both North and South were ready to forget and forgive."3 In the thirty-one years between editions of Goodrich's popular school history, Americans on the battlefield and on the home front argued about the end of slavery and the meaning of American nationalism. Wartime government policies such as emancipation and freedmen's civil rights, the wartime draft, and the income tax extended the scope and the powers of the federal government, permanently redefining the relationship between the individual citizen and the nation. The postwar nation that emerged held great possibilities for freedmen. Congress considered legislation requiring [End Page 283] Click for larger view Figure 1 [End Page 284] federal monitoring of elections and a generous aid to education bill...

Leaders for Manifest Destiny: American Volunteer Colonels Serving in the U.S.‐Mexican War

As regimental commanders, American volunteer colonels were vital to their nation’s effort in the U.S.‐Mexican War, raising volunteer soldiers who agreed to serve outside U.S. boundaries. Fourteen of 63 colonels belonged to the Whig party, indicating that Whigs were not monolithic in opposing the war. The colonels accumulated a mixed wartime record of leadership, and their backgrounds varied greatly. Some had no military experience prior to 1846, but others had graduated form West Point, served in the Regular Army, seen combat in war or on the frontier, or held rank in a state militia. The colonels also varied widely in holding political office before and after the war. Several of them were experienced politicians before 1846 and later held notable offices after the war, showing that most colonels were recognized figures in their state.

Kentucky's Last Cavalier: General William Preston, 1816-1887 (review)

Reviewed by: Kentucky’s Last Cavalier: General William Preston, 1816-1887 Stuart Sanders Kentucky’s Last Cavalier: General William Preston, 1816-1887. By Peter J. Sehlinger. (Lexington: Kentucky Historical Society [distributed by the University Press of Kentucky], 2004. Pp. 309. $33.95.) Kentuckian William Preston was a lawyer, soldier, politician, and diplomat. He served President James Buchanan as minister to Spain, and was, during the Civil War, named the Confederate "envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the court of Emperor Maxmilian of Mexico" (168). Because of Preston's diplomatic duties, his biographer needs an extensive knowledge of nineteenth-century Latin American and North American history. Fortunately, Peter J. Sehlinger, professor emeritus of Latin American and United States history at Indiana University, has ably captured Preston's varied career in Kentucky's Last Cavalier: General William Preston, 1816–1887. "For three decades," Sehlinger writes, Preston "defended the interests of the antebellum South, both in Kentucky and in Washington" (xiv). A wealthy Mexican War veteran, Preston was a prominent Whig and Democratic politician who supported the rights of immigrants and Catholics while advocating a stringent pro-slavery platform in Congress. As Buchanan's minister to Spain, Preston negotiated Amistad claims and failed to purchase Cuba for the United States. "However," the author asserts, "Preston's appeal to the Monroe Doctrine, when protesting Spain's occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1861, marked one of the first times that the United States would invoke this doctrine abroad to assert its foreign policy" (98). Although unsuccessful in acquiring Cuba, which was his primary goal, Preston laid the foundations for future American diplomatic policies. When the Civil War erupted, Preston fled Kentucky to avoid arrest and joined the Confederacy. He became an aide-de-camp to his brother-in-law, Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, and held Johnston in his arms when that general bled to death at the Battle of Shiloh. Given command of a Confederate brigade, Preston was recognized for his bravery at Stones River and Chickamauga. After becoming embroiled in the officer corps feud against Army of Tennessee commander General Braxton Bragg, Preston was transferred to southwestern Virginia. Preston's diplomatic experience was soon needed, however, and the Kentuckian was appointed minister to Mexico, where he worked to secure foreign recognition. His lack of success in acquiring Cuba and his wartime failure to induce Maximilian to recognize the Confederacy made him "a diplomat of lost causes" (xv). He ended the war exiled in Canada, but eventually he returned to Kentucky to become a state legislator and Democratic political activist. Kentucky's Last Cavalier is a comprehensive look at Preston's life. Rich in details and ably researched in archives from five different countries, the study does not solely rest upon Preston's Civil War service. While there is a strong analysis of Preston's role during the Battle of Chickamauga, which proved to be the "high point" of his military career (153), more details are needed about his actions during the Battle of Stones River and his presence in his native state during the 1862 Kentucky campaign. Furthermore, as a prominent ringleader [End Page 204] of the anti-Bragg factions, further analysis of his role against Bragg's leadership would strengthen the book. While information about Preston's Civil War service could be expanded, Sehlinger's research is particularly interesting regarding Preston's diplomatic career and the stumbling blocks he faced while negotiating the purchase of Cuba or for Confederate recognition. In addition, there is excellent analysis pertaining to Preston's postwar activism and his role in forging a compromise that gave the 1877 presidential election to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Sechlinger's broad study also presents an intriguing portrait of Preston's wife, Margaret Wickliffe Preston. Economically and socially independent and a friend of Mary Todd Lincoln, Mrs. Preston was a compelling figure in her own right. As the daughter of Robert Wickliffe Sr., Kentucky's largest slave owner, who "possessed perhaps the greatest fortune in antebellum Kentucky" (35), Margaret gave her husband both unwavering support and, in later life, great conflict. In the end, the debt-ridden couple separated. Sehlinger's book fills a void in the study of the Civil...

Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (review)

Reviewed by: Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire Mark Jaede (bio) Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire. By Amy S. Greenburg. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii, 323. Illustrations. Paper, $25.99.) This book is a study of Manifest Destiny, imperialism, and especially filibustering in the period between the end of the U.S.–Mexican War and the Civil War. Its chief focus is on how the ideology of gender in the United States shaped views of conquest, expansion, and adventuring in Latin America and the Pacific. Greenburg points out that, while it is self-evident that filibustering was a gendered phenomenon, historians of Manifest Destiny have until now failed to take gender into account as a category of analysis (22). This book fills that gap admirably. It is deeply informed by the existing scholarship on Manifest Destiny by historians such as Charles Brown, Reginald Horsman, Robert E. May; the gender history of Elizabeth Varon and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg; and a wealth of other scholarship in race, gender, and literary theory. One of the book's greatest strengths is the way it synthesizes a huge range of previous work and brings gender analysis into dialogue with the scholarship on race, class formation, religion, [End Page 325] sectionalism, and politics. It is no ghettoized study of gender alone. Even the most traditionalist political and diplomatic historians will find this book accessible because it is so deeply engaged with the questions they study. Yet this is far more than a synthesis of previous work. Greenburg has made an extensive study of antebellum texts. She examines travel narratives, novels, newspaper articles, political speeches, geographies, cartoons, maps, personal letters, and the bombastic speeches of the filibuster boosters. From this she concludes that the debate over expansionism was shaped by a contest between two visions of masculinity. One, which she calls "restrained manhood," advocated self-control, moral uprightness, and devotion to family. This version of masculinity could lend itself to expansionism, but expansionism through the peaceful means of trade and religious missions. The other masculinity—"martial manhood"—emphasized glory, personal independence, and redemption through violence. It was this version of manhood, Greenburg argues, that sustained the filibustering captains and won them thousands of followers and supporters. She applies this argument convincingly to the overall logic of expansionism and to the specific cases of the greatest filibusters, William Walker and Narciso López. Greenburg's gender thesis is clear and robust, and she argues persuasively for its explanatory power. For example, she shows the close connection between the rhetoric of territorial annexation and the rhetoric of the "personal annexation" of Latin American women by white U.S. men (19). Still, her book never lapses into reductionism. She acknowledges the existence of other visions of manhood, and at all points she emphasizes the complexities of the interplay among race, class, party, section, and gender. The construction of martial manhood is not placed in opposition to the construction of whiteness, Southernness, or Americanness, but integrated with them. Because of this, the book has the potential to inform the future scholarship of all these other aspects of the antebellum experience. In contrast to the manifest strengths of this book, its weaknesses are modest. One shortcoming is its failure to come to grips with the slippery concept of "America" in a hemispheric context. Though she entitles one chapter "An American Central America," she never addresses the screaming irony of that phrase. Her treatment of expansion into the Pacific is another weak point. The one brief chapter devoted to Hawaii and Japan is not sufficiently developed to make useful comparisons with expansionism directed at Latin America. Greenburg argues that the gendered [End Page 326] logic of expansion was not fully applied to the Pacific before 1860, but she does not support this claim with the same depth of evidence she musters for her study of Latin America. Another limitation, though not really a fault, is the book's tight focus on the period 1848–1860, with only brief discussion of other periods. The same analysis of restrained and martial manhood might have been profitably applied to the filibusters of 1810–1836, and the study of the 1850s...

Two Samuels of Hartford: Clemens, Colt, and the Unification of a Disjointed Mysterious Ending

Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, less than six weeks after Samuel Colt obtained English patent for his first revolver. In time, Twain's innovative use of language would drastically revise face of American fiction, just as Colt's invention had already moved world of weaponry a great step forward. Previous pistols had fired only twice before they needed to be reloaded; Colt's five-shot revolver minimized reloading time and therefore offered a significant advantage in life or death situations. A six-shot adaptation quickly followed, winning Colt a government contract during Mexican War, which enabled him to buy building land in Hartford, Connecticut, where Twain would day choose to live. (1) There, Colt planned to build the largest and most perfectly organized armory in world, and by 1856 his company was producing 150 weapons a day. Soon he one of ten wealthiest businessmen in US. (2) Colt died prematurely at age of forty-seven, nine years before Twain moved to Hartford. The two men never met, but several of Twain's texts suggest Colt's legacy often on his mind, and indeed may hold key to of most elusive of his works. Twain first visited in 1868 and clearly impressed with what he saw. In a letter to Alia California he wrote: I think this is best built and handsomest town I have ever seen.... They have broadest, straightest streets in Hartford, that ever led a sinner to destruction, and dwelling houses are amplest in size, and shapeliest, and have most capacious ornamental grounds about them.... This is centre [sic] of Connecticut wealth. dollars have a place in half great moneyed enterprises of union. His letter goes on to describe Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company--by that time, prospering in hands of Colt's widow--as greatest industry in and a veritable Hartford institution. The birthplace of six-shooters was, he claimed, of particular interest because [he] had seen so many graceful specimens of their performances in deadfalls of Washoe and California. (3) At time of Twain's visit, Colt's factory manufacturing and further developing Gaffing gun, which had been adopted by US government two years earlier. (4) Twain described weapon as a cluster of six to ten tubes that carry great conical pellets of lead, with unerring accuracy, a distance of two and a half miles. It feeds with cartridges, and you work it with a crank like a hand organ; you can fire it faster than four men can count. When fired rapidly, reports blend together like clattering of a watchman's rattle. It can be discharged four hundred times a minute! I liked it very much, and went on grinding it as long as they could afford cartridges for amusement--which not very long. (5) The comic humor of final sentence is subverted by Twain's pointed reference to running costs, while his choice of savage to describe gun's components and his reference to weapon feed[ing] itself connote something more ominous than mere machinery. Sixteen years later, Twain would recall weapon's capability as he noted an idea to be included in what would become of bloodiest of his books: Have a battle between a modern army, with gatling guns--(automatic) 600 shots a minute, ... [and] Middle Age Crusaders. (6) Twain moved to in 1871 declaring his intention to concentrate on writing books, but on July 12, 1872, he wrote to Colt's factory from New Saybrook, Connecticut: Gentlemen: A friend of mine who is connected with an insignificant foreign government, officially, writes me to call upon you & inquire cost of a Gattling [sic] gun complete, including duplicates of certain portions necessary (in a country where repairs will be impossible,) & 25,000 rounds of ammunition comprising different cartridges used. …