I read about 15 history books per year. The Mexican government soon had reason to regret this policy. Magazine Subscribers (How to Find Your Reader Number). Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Polk’s case for starting the war was trumped up. He is a fascinating character in his own right, and he left voluminous correspondence about his experiences both as a politician and an officer in the U.S. Mexican War. The “Manifest Destiny” of the United States was to possess the whole of North America, proclaimed John L. O’Sullivan of The Democratic Review in 1845. Death came to both Clay and Hardin at the Battle of Buena Vista in northern Mexico in February 1847. Despite most Americans holding to a sense of Manifest Destiny, “few in the 1830s felt that territorial expansion should proceed at the cost of war with a neighboring republic.”, Avoiding war with Mexico was one reason politicians did not push to annex Texas, but the issue of slavery was another deciding factor. | It is impossible to describe them. If my mom's book club could read history, I'd even recommend it for that, as there is a lot to think about, and it's very accessible. ‘A Wicked War’ reveals how frequently volunteer and regular soldiers, as well as their officers, expressed their own ambivalence toward the conflict.” More than anything, though, it was Clay, then 70 years old, who, speaking in November 1847 in his home state of Kentucky “where pro-war fervor still ran high,” gave the most eloquent expression to the wrongs his beloved country had committed in the name of self-interest: “The Sage of Ashland,” Greenberg asserts, “. There has been some talk recently about how America stole Texas, New Mexico, and California from Mexico. .

I'd never realized Trist's noble stand and defiance of Polk as he unilaterally negotiated the peace treaty after being recalled by Polk.

Marion Wiesel, by In addition, Mexico claimed that the border between Texas and Mexico was the Nueces river – a few hundred miles north of the Rio Grande.

GENERAL HISTORY, by A great book for understanding the importance of an often ignored part of North American history. He worked himself to death in what he saw as America’s cause.

Congressional Democrats attached the declaration that war existed by the act of Mexico as a preamble to a bill to authorize funds and supplies for American soldiers who were now in harm’s way. Lincoln opposed it and made a speech in congress which would come back to haunt him as he sought the presidency in 1860 while memory of the success of the war made it popular. The book talks about the course of the war and southern politicians support of it in hopes of bringing more slave states in the union to oppose growing northern power. Refresh and try again. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. translated by On the front cover of this book is the review, "If one can read only a single book about the Mexican-American War, this is the one." I thought it was a very biased account of the Mexican-American War. His dispatches indicated a growing softness toward Mexico and an unwillingness to go beyond the original territorial goals he had been instructed to achieve.

Just a very sad chapter in American History that too few Americans know about in detail. All plants here have thorns, all animals stings or horns and all men carry weapons and all deceive each other and themselves.". Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published In addition, Mexico claimed that the border between Texas and Mexico was the Nueces river – a few hundred miles north of the Rio Grande. Most of the reading I do is about the Civil War yet I discovered new information about Lincoln's congressional career in this book. Caught up in the conflict and the political furor surrounding it were Abraham Lincoln, then a new congressman; Polk, the dour president committed to territorial expansion at any cost; and Henry Clay, the aging statesman whose presidential hopes had been frustrated once again, but who still harbored influence and had one last great speech up his sleeve. Trist became increasingly unsettled about the American intervention in Mexico, and he and Polk did not see eye to eye as to how peace should be negotiated.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

It was an unnecessary war. If Texas was admitted to the Union, it would be as a slave state, upsetting the slave state vs. free state balance. This book looks at the political history of a war that was opposed by an antiwar movement before it was even declared. Annexation sentiment was especially strong in the South, which welcomed the prospect of a huge new slave state.

Both Clay and Van Buren came out against annexation of Texas in letters published simultaneously on April 27, 1844. Polk hoped this move would provoke an incident that would enable the United States to declare war and seize the territory that Mexico refused to sell. By the time Lincoln made it to Congress stories of American atrocities against Mexican civilians were widespread, and Lincoln heard Henry Clay give a widely-reported speech opposing the war. “Were it not for her political skills, James Polk might never have won office,” writes Greenberg with perhaps a touch of hyperbole. Furthermore, on account of listening to the audiobook, I don’t have access to the footnotes to validate any claims made in it. Often forgotten and overlooked, the U.S.-Mexican War featured false starts, atrocities, and daring back-channel negotiations as it divided the nation, paved the way for the Civil War a generation later, and launched the career of Abraham Lincoln.