Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Papers of the Bi-National Conference on the War Between Mexico and the United States: Matamoros, Tamaulipas/Brownsville, Texas, February 10-11 1995
The spirit of this conference has been somewhat more difficult to capture on paper. During the gathering, the conference organizing committee invited participants to submit their presentations for possible publication. As papers came in, there was a marked absence of papers that demonstrate Mexican perspectives on the war. Fortunately, several excellent papers by Mexican scholars now seem headed for print in a separate Mexican collection. Of those papers that did arrive, some were rejected on the basis of length, some lacked proper documentation, and several interesting oralpresentations simply did not transfer well to the written word. These will not appear here, although several may emerge at a later date in a different collection. What does remain is a compilation of ten papers of various lengths and styles, representing a range of academic interest and experience, and selected without a conscious eye toward developing a specific theme or subtopic. Despite these limitations, the final product is an interesting series of glimpses of American political and military life during the formative years of the United States.
As a whole, these pieces offer a view of a confident United States, sure of its destiny but, at the same time, weighed with insecurity and still defining the bounds of its democracy. Robert Johannsen points to the war as a defining moment of the Republic, a time when America proved its strength and demonstrated itself to be a model for the world. Others back this view, showing that nation and its confidence were not necessarily so strong in the years leading up to the con?ict. Wesley Riddle, for example, shows a country in an uncertain courtship with Texas, with union achieved only when Texans determined a merger to be in their best interest. Likewise, Lawrence Taylor shows a nation eager to expand, but responding to fear of British domination as it proclaimed its vaguely-defined destiny to conquer the continent. Indeed, as Taylor points out, Democratic politicians in the United States played upon fears of British intrigues in Texas, California, and throughout Mexico, to rally support for annexation and war against a sister republic. At the same time, President James Polk toned down his rhetoric and settled the Oregon issue to avoid a second showdown against a more equal military foe.
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