104. Congressional Globe , 29th Cong., 1st sess., 796 (Calhoun), 798 (Benton), 803–4 (votes). See also John Schroeder, Mr. Polk’s War (Madison, Wisc., 1973), 20–26.
105. Polk, Diary , I, 397–99 (May 13, 1846).
1. Ulysses Grant, Personal Memoirs , ed. Mary and William McFeely (1885; New York, 1990, 65.
2. Zachary Taylor to Thomas Butler, June 19, 1846, in Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready” Speaks His Mind (New Haven, 1960), 5.
3. On Palo Alto/Resaca de la Palma, see John Eisenhower, So Far from God (New York, 1989), 71–85; K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War (New York, 1974), 49–63; Charles Dufour, The Mexican War (New York, 1968), 64–83; William DePalo, The Mexican National Army, 1822–1852 (College Station, Tex., 1997), 100.
4. See Donald Houston, “The Superiority of American Artillery,” in The Mexican War , ed. Odie Faulk and Joseph Stout (Chicago, 1973), 101–9; Waldo Rosebush, Frontier Steel: The Men and Their Weapons (Appleton, Wisc., 1958), 111–136.
5. Brantz Mayer, Mexico as It Was and as It Is (New York, 1844), 300–301.
6. David Weber, “The Spanish-Mexican Rim,” in The Oxford History of the American West , ed. Clyde Milner et al. (New York, 1994), 73; Justin Smith, The War with Mexico (1919; Gloucester, Mass., 1963), II, 7.
7. Brian Delay, “Independent Indians and the U.S.-Mexican War,” AHR 112 (2007): 35–68.
8. Alfred Bill, Rehearsal for Conflict: The War with Mexico (New York, 1947).
9. Eisenhower, So Far from God , 72–73.
10. Elizabeth Salas, Soldaderas in the Mexican Military (Austin, Tex., 1990); Robert Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas (New York, 1985), 137–41, quotation from 137.
11. James McCaffrey, Army of Manifest Destiny (New York, 1992), 112.
12. Kenneth Silverman, Lightning Man (New York, 2003), 276–79; Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas , 17–19.
13. Zachary Taylor to R. W. Wood, Sept. 3, 1846, Letters of Zachary Taylor from the Battlefields (Rochester, N.Y., 1908), 51.
14. Richard Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army (College Station, Tex., 1997), 34.
15. Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View (New York, 1856), II, 680.
16. See Marcus Cunliffe, Soldiers and Civilians (Boston, 1968), 305–18; Jeffrey A. Smith, War and Press Freedom (New York, 1999), 94–98.
17. Josefina Zoraida Vazquez, “War and Peace with the United States,” in The Oxford History of Mexico , ed. Michael Meyer and William Beezley (New York, 2000), 362; DePalo, Mexican National Army , 97, 127; Robert Ryal Miller, Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick’s Battalion in the U.S.-Mexican War (Norman, Okla., 1989), 39.
18. Peter Stevens, The Rogue’s March: John Riley and the St. Patrick’s Battalion (Washington, 1999), 83, 110, 221. My estimate of the number of U.S. deserters in the Mexican army derives from Stevens, 241–42, and Dennis Wynn, The San Patricio Soldiers (El Paso, Tex., 1984), 20.
19. Miller, Shamrock and Sword , 23, 159, 165, 174. Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair (Chapel Hill, 2002), 109.
20. Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army , 139–40.
21. Diary of James K. Polk , ed. Milo Quaife (Chicago, 1910), I, 437–40.
22. On the planning of the two-pronged enterprise, see Russel Nye, George Bancroft (New York, 1944), 152.
23. Quoted in Neal Harlow, California Conquered (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), 62.
24. Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire (New York, 2002), 291.
25. For an extended discussion of these orders, see Frederick Merk, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism (New York, 1966), 111–32.
26. Ibid., 112–15; David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation (Columbia, Mo., 1973), 593.
27. John C. Frémont, Memoirs of My Life (Chicago, 1887), 489; Harlow, California Conquered , 83, 85.
28. See Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld (Chapel Hill, 2002).
29. Dufour, Mexican War , 138.
30. Harlow, California Conquered , 97–114.
31. Bauer, Mexican War , 172.
32. William Dofflemyer, “Juan Flaco: The Paul Revere of California,” Pacific Historian 13 (1969): 5–21.
33. Lisbeth Haas, “War in California, 1846–1848,” California History 76 (1997): 331–55.
34. Stockton’s proclamation is quoted in Dale Walker, Bear Flag Rising (New York, 1999), 254.
35. On Frémont’s personality, see Andrew Rolle, John Charles Frémont: Character as Destiny (Norman, Okla., 1991).
36. See Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision, 1846 (Boston, 1943), 455–67.
37. William Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West (New Haven, 1959), 109–11.
38. Bauer, Mexican War , 127–34.
39. Stanley Kimball, Heber C. Kimball (Urbana, Ill., 1981), 151.
40. Howard Lamar, The Far Southwest (New York, 1970), 56–65; Stephen Hyslop, Bound for Santa Fe (Norman, Okla., 2002) 294–310.
41. Benton, Thirty Years’ View , II, 682–84; Daniel Tyler, “Governor Armijo’s Moment of Truth,” in Faulk and Stout, The Mexican War , 137–43; Brooke Caruso, The Mexican Spy Company (London, 1991), 99–100.
42. Lamar, Far Southwest , 63; see also Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850 (Cambridge, Eng., 2005).
43. There is a vivid account of Doniphan’s exploits in DeVoto, Year of Decision , 382–407, a more sober assessment in Hyslop, Bound for Santa Fe , 404–23.
44. Norma Ricketts, The Mormon Battalion (Logan, Utah, 1996).
45. David Dary, The Santa Fe Trail (New York, 2000), 194.
46. James Crutchfield, Tragedy at Taos (Plano, Tex., 1995), 144; Hyslop, Bound for Santa Fe , 381–402, Garrard quoted on 400.
47. Lamar, Far Southwest , 71, 82.
48. “Speech at Wilmington, Delaware” (June 10, 1848), Collected Works of AL , I, 476.
49. New York Tribune , May 13, 1846, quoted in Frederick Merk, “Dissent in the Mexican War,” in S. E. Morison, F. Merk, and F. Freidel, Dissent in Three American Wars (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 40–41.
50. Daniel Webster, “Public Dinner at Philadelphia” (Dec. 2, 1846), Writings and Speeches (Boston, 1903), IV, 31–32.
53. Writings of Albert Gallatin , ed. Henry Adams (New York, 1960), III, 555–91.
54. See Michael Morrison, “New Territory Versus No Territory,” Western Historical Quarterly 23 (1992): 25–51.
55. Polk, Diary, II, 459 (April 5, 1847).
56. Robert Sampson, John L. O’Sullivan and His Times (Kent, Ohio, 2003), 201–4; Gilman Ostrander, Republic of Letters (Madison, Wisc., 1999), 220.
57. Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (New York, 1999), 232–37; John Dix to Martin Van Buren, May 16, 1846, quoted in John Schroeder, Mr. Polk’s War (Madison, Wisc., 1973), 21.
58. Benton, Thirty Years’ View , II, 680–82; Polk, Diary , III, 329 (Feb. 7, 1848).
59. Polk, Diary , II, 76–77 (Aug. 10, 1846).
60. “Filibuster,” derived from a Dutch word for “freebooter,” had two distinct meanings in this period: adventurers undertaking illegal expeditions, and the obstruction of legislative action by endless debate.