Dispatches from the Mexican War (review)

The United States-Mexican War (1846-1848) was the first foreign conflict covered extensively by U.S. journalists; perhaps the finest and most widely known of these correspondents was George Wilkins Kendall, coeditor of the New Orleans Picayune . This volume, edited by Lawrence Delbert Cress, Professor of History at Willamette University, brings together Kendall's detailed and perceptive reports from the northern and eastern theaters of the war. Readers in the twenty-first century can now share the excitement that Kendall's original audience must have derived from his accounts of the conflict.

Kendall's highly accurate dispatches are instructive for various reasons. First, they reveal the immense transportation difficulties that the U.S. army faced in the war with Mexico. Kendall vividly described how inclement weather (i.e., extreme heat and torrential rains) often adversely affected troop movements and/or increased their discomfort during the campaigns. In addition, he strongly criticized the parsimonious way in which U.S. President James K. Polk and his administration managed the war effort. Kendall noted that the government's failure to provide General Winfield Scott with sufficient ordnance forced him to delay his March 1847 attack on the port of Veracruz, and that Scott would have marched into Mexico City by early July had President Polk provided him with enough men and the necessary means to transport them.

Kendall's writings also shed light on domestic affairs in Mexico. He noticed several of that country's military shortcomings, including the lack of civilian support for the Mexican war effort, especially in the state of Nuevo León. Kendall also provided a particularly skillful assessment of General Antonio López de Santa Anna's political resiliency, his relations with Congress, and the ways in which that relationship affected diplomatic negotiations and the war's outcome. His dispatches on Mexico, however insightful, made evident the disdain that many Americans in the 1840s had for all things Mexican. Kendall, for instance, never understood Mexico's dogged determination to continue fighting.

Cress has done an excellent job of editing and putting Kendall's writings in proper historical context. His introductory essay provides the necessary background information on Mexican politics and diplomacy with the U.S., a brief overview of newspaper coverage in the U.S. during the 1840s, and a biographical sketch of Kendall. A concise introductory segment precedes each of the book's eight chapters; each one contains numerous footnotes that provide additional information on the events, locales, troops, and U.S. and Mexican army officers that Kendall mentions in his dispatches.

A number of factual errors, however, have crept into the book. For instance, Cress states that in 1845 puro leader Valentín Gómez Farías joined with General Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga to overthrow the regime of General José Joaquín Herrera (pp. 5-6); while pragmatic reasons led Gómez Farías to make such an overture to Paredes that October, the alliance never materialized. Another mistake appears on page 191 (note 78) when Cress states that in 1847 the Diario del Gobierno de la República Mexicana had monarchist leanings. That newspaper only displayed a preference for that type of regime when General Paredes y Arrillaga served as president between January and August 1846 (it was known at the time as the Diario Oficial del Gobierno Mexicano ). Then, on page 232 (note 20) Cress errs when he asserts that the polko national guard battalions that fought at the Battle of Churubusco had puro political leanings. In reality, those units supported the moderados .

Despite these minor flaws, the book will appeal to specialists in nineteenth-century Mexican and United States history. This work would be useful in the classroom, particularly because it captures the harsh reality of war as well as the uncertainties that U.S. troops and their leaders faced on a daily basis. Making undergraduates aware of these developments is often difficult...