To the halls of the Montezumas : the Mexican War in the American imagination /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Johannsen, Robert W. (Robert Walter), 1925-2011.
Imprint:New York : Oxford University Press, 1985.
Description:1 online resource (xi, 363 pages) : illustrations, map
Language:English
Subject:
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11151094
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780195049817
0195049810
9780195035186
0195035186
1423736184
9781423736189
9780195364187
019536418X
0190281472
9780190281472
9786610440016
6610440018
1601296614
9781601296610
0195049810
0195035186
Digital file characteristics:data file
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-352) and index.
Restrictions unspecified
Electronic reproduction. [Place of publication not identified] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2011.
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212
English.
digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve
Print version record.
Summary:"Our country has entered on a new epoch of its history," wrote a Whig Party journal in 1849, just after America's triumph in the Mexican War. Indeed, for that romantic generation of Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, the Mexican War was a grand exercise in self-identity: it legitimized the young republic's convictions of mission and destiny to a doubting world. It was easily one of the most popular wars the United States has ever fought. This rich cultural history examines the war's place in the popular imagination of the era. As Robert Johannsen notes, the Mexican War was the first American conflict to be widely reported in the press, as well as the first to be waged against an alien foe in a distant, strange, and exotic land. For mid-century Americans, Johannsen shows, the war provided a window onto the outside world, promoting an awareness--if not an understanding--of a people and a land unlike any they had known before. The war helped to dispel some of the mystery of Mexico, as it generated a huge flood of popular literature, poetry, songs, art, and stage plays. Would-be historians began chronicling the war almost as soon as the first shots were fired, and the war provoked myriad questions about the true nature and purposes of the republic. 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. The book's unique perspective not only adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Mexican War; it offers new insights into American itself.--Publisher description
Other form:Print version: Johannsen, Robert Walter, 1925- To the halls of the Montezumas. New York : Oxford University Press, 1985