At war with Mexico

the long version

"Employing fictional dispatches, articles, and letters, Bruce Cutler's extended poem At War with Mexico re-creates the transformation of America during the Mexican War. It portrays the years 1846-1848 as filled with hope, ambition, piety, incomprehension, and greed. When blind devotion to manifest destiny dovetailed with nineteenth-century arrogance, a national persona was born. Attitudes about the hierarchy of races jelled - under the approving eye of America's most respected scientists. Because the success of national events seemed divinely ordained, the white populace viewed itself as "chosen" in a new world age. For African Americans and American Indians, however, the future was bleak." "Cutler at once evokes and criticizes the dominant ideologies of the Mexican War period. An innovative work of literary history, At War with Mexico offers new insight into this volatile era."--BOOK JACKET.