What Hath God Wrought (133 page)

The greatest historian of the Oregon controversy was Frederick Merk; see especially his
Manifest Destiny and Mission
(1963),
The Oregon Question
(1967), and
Fruits of Propaganda in the Tyler Administration
(1971). Also valuable are Bradford Perkins,
The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations
, vol. I (1993) and David Dykstra,
The Shifting Balance of Power: American-British Diplomacy in North America
(1999). For the settlers, see Julie Jeffrey,
Converting the West
(1991); Michael Golay,
The Tide of Empire
(2003); and David Dary,
The Oregon Trail
(2004). On the British side, see John S. Galbraith,
The Hudson’s Bay Company as an Imperial Factor
(1957) and Kenneth Bourne,
Britain and the Balance of Power in North America
(1967).

The causes of the war between the United States and Mexico are treated in Sellers,
James K. Polk, Continentalist
; Pletcher,
Diplomacy of Annexation
; Perkins,
Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations
, vol. I (all cited above); and Gene Brack,
Mexico Views Manifest Destiny
(1975). Polk’s statesmanship is defended in Justin Smith’s classic
The War with Mexico
(1919), vol. I, and by Seymour Connor and Odie Faulk,
North America Divided
(1971). Norman Graebner offers a judicious assessment of causality in “The Mexican War,”
Pacific Historical Review
49 (1980): 405–26. Scott Silverstone, a political scientist, analyzes how Polk provoked a war, then framed the issue so Congress would vote for it:
Divided Union: The Politics of War in the Early American Republic
(2004).

The U.S.-Mexican War has not attracted as much attention as so momentous a conflict deserves from either historians or the American public, but see Charles Dufour,
The Mexican War
(1968); Odie Faulk and Joseph Stout, eds.,
The Mexican War
(1973); K. Jack Bauer,
The Mexican War
(1974); John Weems,
To Conquer a Peace
(1974); and John Eisenhower,
So Far from God
(1989). For contemporary illustrations, see Martha Sandweis et al.,
Eyewitness to War
(1989) and Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen,
The U.S.-Mexican War
(1998). On the army, see Richard Winders,
Mr. Polk’s Army
(1997); James McCaffrey,
Army of Manifest Destiny
(1992); Marcus Cunliffe,
Soldiers and Civilians: The Martial Spirit in America, 1775–1865
(1968); and Richard Uviller and William Merkel,
The Militia and the Right to Arms
(2002). For the seamy side, see Paul Foos,
A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair
(2002). On the navy, see John Schroeder,
Shaping a Maritime Empire
(1985). On the
sanpatricios
, see Robert Ryal Miller,
Shamrock and Sword
(1989) and Peter F. Stevens,
The Rogue’s March
(1999). A superb reference work is Donald Frazier, ed.,
The United States and Mexico at War
(1998).

Attitudes of the U.S. public toward the war are treated in Robert Johannsen,
To the Halls of the Montezumas
(1985); John Schroeder,
Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent
(1973); Shelley Streeby,
American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture
(2002); and Joel Silbey,
The Shrine of Party: Congressional Voting Behavior, 1841–1852
(1967). Works in English illuminating the Mexican perspective on the war include Ramon Alcarez et al.,
The Other Side
, trans. Albert Ramsey (1850); Charles Hale,
Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora
(1968); William DePalo,
The Mexican National Army, 1822–1852
(1997); Ruth Olivera and Liliane Crété,
Life in Mexico Under Santa Anna
(1991); and Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, “War and Peace with the United States,” in
The Oxford History of Mexico
, ed. Michael Meyer and William Beezley (New York, 2000). Readers with a command of Spanish can benefit from Laura Herrera Serna, ed.,
México en guerra, 1846–1848
(1997).

For the war in California, see Neal Harlow,
California Conquered
(1982); Andrew Rolle,
John Charles Frémont
(1991); Tom Chafin,
The Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire
(2002); Dale Walker,
Bear Flag Rising
(1999); and Alan Rosenus,
General M. G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans
(1995). On the war in New Mexico, see Stephen Hyslop,
Bound for Santa Fe: The Road to New Mexico and the American Conquest
(2002); Howard Lamar,
The Far Southwest
(1966); Dwight Clarke,
Stephen Watts Kearny
(1961); David Lavender,
Bent’s Fort
(1954); and Norma Ricketts,
The Mormon Battalion
(1996). James Crutchfield,
Tragedy at Taos
(1995) covers the uprising from the U.S. point of view. Hampton Sides,
Blood and Thunder
(2006), a novel-like history of Kit Carson and the Navajo, includes a vivid account of the U.S. conquest of the Southwest.

On Nicholas Trist and the treaty of peace, see Robert Drexler,
Guilty of Making Peace
(1991); Wallace Ohrt,
Defiant Peacemaker
(1997); Richard Griswold del Castillo,
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
(1990); and Matt Meier and Feliciano Ribera,
Mexican Americans/American Mexicans
(1993). On the election of 1848, see Michael Morrison,
Slavery and the American West
(1997); Joseph Rayback,
Free Soil: the Election of 1848
(1971); Frederick Blue,
The Free Soilers
(1973); and Yonatan Eyal,
The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party
(2007).

Interest in the first year of the California Gold Rush flourishes. Recent, well-written works include Rodman Paul and Elliott West,
Mining Frontiers of the Far West,
rev. ed.(2001); H. W. Brands,
The Age of Gold
(2001); Brian Roberts,
American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture
(2000); Susan Johnson,
Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush
(2000); Malcolm Rohrbough,
Days of Gold
(1997), Paula Mitchell Marks,
Precious Dust
(1994); and Joanne Levy,
They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush
(1990).

Conventional historiography treats the Irish immigrants of 1845–54 as helpless victims of oppression, premodern in their worldview. See Oscar Handlin,
Boston’s Immigrants
(1972; first pub. 1941) and Cecil Woodham-Smith,
The Great Hunger
(1962); a version of this interpretation can be found in Kerby Miller,
Emigrants and Exiles
(1985). Revisionist and other recent historians emphasize the resolution and resourcefulness of the migrants and the foundation they laid for the economic success of their descendants. See, for example, Donald Akenson,
The Irish Diaspora
(1996); Cormac O’Grada,
The Great Irish Famine
(1995); George Boyce and Alan O’Day, eds.,
The Making of Modern Irish History
(1996); David Fitzpatrick,
Irish Emigration
(1984); and P. J. Drudy, ed.,
The Irish in America
(1985). For reactions to the Irish immigrants, see Dale Knobel,
Paddy and the Republic
(1986). For illustrations, see Michael Coffey and Terry Golway,
The Irish in America
(1997). Nativism badly needs an up-to-date historical treatment. Until then, the principal account will remain Ray Billington,
The Protestant Crusade
(1938, rpt. 1964). New treatment should take account of the new Catholic history and reconceive the subject as Protestant-Catholic interaction. Nancy Schultz,
Fire and Roses
(2000) is a well-written narrative of the burning of the Charlestown convent in 1834. Mark Voss-Hubbard,
Beyond Party: Cultures of Antipartisanship in Northern Politics before the Civil War
(2002) includes a sophisticated discussion of the rise of political nativism.

The definitive account of the women’s rights convention of 1848, if such a thing were possible, would be Judith Wellman,
The Road to Seneca Falls
(2004). For the context of the convention, see Nancy Isenberg,
Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America
(1998) and Lori Ginzberg,
Untidy Origins: A Story of Women’s Rights in Antebellum New York
(2005). Biographies of Elizabeth Cady Stanton include Lois Banner,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(1980) and Elisabeth Griffith,
In Her Own Right
(1984). Ann Gordon has edited
Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
(1997). For the larger picture, see Ellen DuBois,
Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights
(1998). The international dimension of the women’s rights movement is emphasized in Margaret McFadden,
Golden Cables of Sympathy: Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism
(1999) and Bonnie Anderson,
Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement
(2000).