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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Eagle and the Serpent fight a "most unjust war",
By Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (COMMUNITY FORUM 04) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)
This review is from: Texas and the War With Mexico (Hardcover)
The American Heritage Junior Library was published mostly in the Sixties but these informative and marvelously illustrated volumes still hold up today. "Texas and the War With Mexico" covers both the war for Texan independence, with the massacre at the Alamo and the battle at San Jancinto, along with the Mexican War and its major campaigns and engagements. Even in 1961 when this particular edition was printed the foreword to this volume could note that to most people of the United States the Mexican War was a dim, mildly disgraceful incident from the nation's past (Would it be considered the Vietnam of the 19th-century or would that distinction go to the Spanish-American War?). However, Fairfax Downey makes the case that even without answering the question of responsibility for the war and deciding whether the United States was the aggressor or if Mexico provoked a tolerant nation beyond endurance, the annexations of Texas and the Mexican War resulted in the United States adding enormously to its territory (California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona). The Mexican War made Zachary Taylor President and gave invaluable military experience to the young officers who would be the main generals in the Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant, George H. Thomas, George G. Meade, Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, and Thomas J. Jackson. However, "Texas and the War with Mexico" is clearly not a glorification of the military might of the United States. The book draws a strong parallel between the example of Nathan Hale's death in the American Revolution with the veneration accorded by the Mexican people to "Los Ninos," the boy cadets who gave their life in the defense of Chapultepec. Downey deals with the story of the war from both sides and provides a much better sense of how the war was actually fought than young readers will find in their standard American history textbook. The book makes excellent use of paintings and other illustrations from the period. There are several paintings presents as two-page spreads, a woodblock of Davy Crockett falling at the Alamo, dozens of primitive paintings down by soldiers and sailors, and one of the first daguerreotypes ever taken of American soldiers in wartime. You might be surprised at how much art depicting the Mexican War was done during this period. There are portraits of virtually every major figure talked about in the book. In the end Downey reinforces the idea that the Mexican War was "the most unjust war" the nation had fought, quoting Grant as the expert witness on that score, but also points out that this acquisition of territory meant the country stretched from sea to shining sea and that the idea of "Manifest Destiny" sprang from this period.
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