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73 7 The Kellogg Brothers’ Images of the Mexican War and the Birth of Modern-Day News elisabeth hodermarsky  While prints had served for many decades to popularize America’s wars and heroes, to rally citizens around patriotic causes, or to incite public dissent against a common enemy, it was the sheer number of images and speed of their production during the Mexican War (May 13, 1846 to February 2, 1848) that made it the first fully “illustrated” military conflict in the United States.1 In a very real sense, modern-day news reporting began with the Mexican War, which whetted the public appetite not just for firsthand written accounts from the front, but for images as well—for words and pictures that together conveyed a fuller, more comprehensive story. Since the war predated the establishment of illustrated journals, such as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly (1855), Harper’s Weekly (1857), and the New York Illustrated News (1859), it was the handful of established northeastern lithography firms that fed the national desire for images from the battlefront. Based on news accounts issuing on practically a daily basis from the seat of war, these largely interpretive lithographs did not purport to be literal renderings of the actual events but, rather, artists’ simulations of how each battle may have appeared to an eyewitness.2 Lesser known today, yet preeminent among the firms actively publishing Mexican War prints in a timely manner was the establishment of E. B. & E. C. Kellogg of Hartford, Connecticut—a firm that capitalized on the public demand by issuing dozens of modestly sized, single-sheet lithographs that illustrated the war’s most noteworthy battles, glorified its greatest heroes, and provided sentimental scenes of soldiers leaving for battle or returning to the comfort of their homes.3 The Mexican–American War—or simply the Mexican War, as it is known in the United States4—was the first major American conflict fought primarily on foreign land. It was an overwhelmingpoliticalsuccessfortheUnitedStates,garneringforthecountryavastamount of new territory—second only to that acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803—more than 500,000 square miles that stretched America’s borders south to the Rio Grande and west to the Pacific Ocean. The Mexican War success affirmed America’s political aspirations as it confirmed the country’s belief in a God-willed Manifest Destiny. The causes of the Mexican War were complex and multifaceted, yet clearly the most immediate stemmed from diplomatic hostilities between Mexico and the United States when, in 1845, the United States annexed Texas and a boundary dispute arose (Mexico claiming the Nueces River as the border and the United States claiming the Rio Grande). In January 1846, President James Polk stepped up U.S. claims when he ordered Major General Zachary Taylor to lead a small army to the north bank of the Rio Grande. On April 25, 1846, 74  e l i s a b e t h h o d e r m a r s k y a clash occurred between Mexican and American troops on soil claimed by both countries. Congress formally declared war on May 13. Bookended by the completion of the first commercial telegraph wire in the country in 1846 and the discovery of gold in northern California in early 1848, the Mexican War played out at a pivotal time in America’s cultural history. The erection of a transnational telegraph system that made possible the transmittal of stories from the battlefield in record time was fueled by the advent of the highly competitive and opportunistic “penny press” that churned out firsthand written accounts of news from the front almost daily. The New York Sun, the most successful of the New York–based penny press newspapers with by far the broadest circulation, was at the forefront of efforts to expedite the transmission of news from the front to the North.5 In an 1884 article published in the New York World, Moses Sperry Beach (son of Moses Yale Beach, owner and operator of the Sun throughout the Mexican War years) reminisced about being sent by his father to New Orleans at the outbreak of the war to establish a system for ferrying news reports from New Orleans, where they first arrived by steamer, on to Mobile, Alabama, overland to Montgomery by pony express, and then approximately seven hundred miles by U.S. mail stagecoach to the southern terminus of the telegraph line near Richmond, Virginia. “We never used the telegraph much until the Mexican War . . . when the...

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