Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination by Robert W.JohannsenReview by: Donald S. SpencerJournal of the Early Republic, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 420-421Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmerican RepublicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3122609 .

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420 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC

Within a short time, however, production dropped off considerably and it never proved the source of wealth Calhoun needed to ease his financial difficulties.

One of the most troubling aspects of Calhoun's life was the dispute between his son, Andrew, and Thomas Clemson. An- drew was unable to pay back money he owed his brother-in-law, and their differences eventually led Clemson to declare that he hoped never again "to come in contact with him in any shape or way" (637). Deeply grieved, Calhoun replied "to do my duty towards both, & to lament your unkind feelings towards each other, is all that is left to me" (660).

Clyde Wilson and his staff deserve congratulations for this effort. Carefully transcribed, expertly edited and indexed, and

thoughtfully annotated, this volume, like the ones which have

preceded it in this series, is an important contribution to our

knowledge about Calhoun and his times. Historians owe thanks, as well, to the National Historical Publications and Records Com- mission, which provides invaluable assistance for this and many other documentary projects.

Texas Christian University Kenneth R. Stevens

To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American

Imagination. By Robert W. Johannsen. (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1985. Pp. xi, 363. Illustrations. $25.00.)

Most historians of the 1840s will admit an enduring fascination for the reckless spirit and unembarrassed hyperbole of that remarkable decade. The allure is almost hypnotic: twelve-for-a- dollar books and the penny press had inspired, as contemporaries noted, a "universal itch of authorship" (145), and the result was a popular literature "foaming with excitement," filled with "all the wind-instruments of rhetoric" (249). And if much of that prose was marked more by "balderdash and bad grammar" (178) than

by genuine profundity, that too was symptomatic of the age. Whether or not readers are convinced, as is Robert Johann-

sen, that this popular literature revealed the public mood more

accurately than did the pronouncements of the political elite, this is an impressive volume. Johannsen's purpose is to capture the

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BOOK REVIEWS 421

nation's "spirit" and "feeling" during the Mexican War (vii). That task is harder than it looks, for no era in American history has produced source materials of greater vigor or diversity. In- deed, the United States at mid-century represented an intellec- tual climate so eccentric that Americans could credit their bat- tlefield victories to phrenology, democracy, and the will of God, almost in the same breath. Only an historian with Johannsen's mastery of the primary sources-already established in his previous excellent studies of antebellum America-could successfully recreate the splendid intellectual chaos of that time.

One persistent theme in this book is the American people's preoccupation with their own emerging greatness. The slogan was

"Young America"'-the perception that the republic had passed, somehow collectively, from "the gristle into the bone" (201), prepared by its Anglo-Saxon roots and its new maturity to realize an unlimited potential for reforming the world. Yet the more im- portant subsidiary theme involves the generation's sometimes zany assumptions about what greatness really meant. There was, Johannsen notes, an emphasis on the biggest ("the largest Pic- ture ever executed by Man" impressed Americans because it con- sumed three miles of canvas), the fastest (a drama, based on false reports of the Battle of Matamoros, was written, rehearsed, and performed in Philadelphia in five hours), and the newest (the New-York Historical Society appointed a committee to choose a new national name to replace the dull, pedantic "United States of America"). There was also a self-absorbed conviction that all history had been mere prologue to the achievements of that genera- tion: how else could one explain a mural tracing humanity from the Garden of Eden to the bombardment of Vera Cruz, or the published claim that the events of 1848 ensured that Christ would return before the end of that year, or the almost endless varia- tions on that peculiarly American boast, "For the first time in the history of the world . ."?

None of these items, standing alone, would prove anything about American culture at midcentury. It is Johannsen's achieve- ment to have recaptured hundreds of such items in a sustained and interesting narrative. Sometimes, clearly, the plural of "anec- dote" is "data," and this book is evidence of that fact.

University of Montana Donald S. Spencer

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