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ABSTRACT
In 1874, American veterans of the U.S.–Mexican War 1846–1848 formed the National Association of Veterans of the Mexican War (NAVMW). Until the organization’s demise in 1897, NAVMW members crafted and celebrated a vision of their war with Mexico as a national triumph which had united Americans from all sections of the Union in a common cause. This article examines how, by promoting this particular memory of the war to the American public, NAVMW members sought to remind their countrymen of their shared national history, and so aid the process of reconciliation between North and South in the post-Civil War era.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Adam I. P. Smith and David Sim for their feedback on earlier versions of this article, and the two reviewers for their helpful suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Alys Beverton is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at University College London. Her research focuses on U.S. history from the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century. She is especially interested in how perceptions of the wider world, particularly Mexico, shaped the evolution of different group, regional, and national identities in the United States and so influenced the course of sectional reconciliation in the post-Civil War era.
Notes
1. Pike, “Poem,” in Proceedings 1874, 17.
2. On how fears of a second civil war haunted postwar Americans, see Summers, A Dangerous Stir.
3. For one of the earliest historical accounts of the Civil War, see Pollard, The Lost Cause. Pollard's defence of the Confederate cause set the tone for much of the historical work on the subject that followed.
4. Blight, Race and Reunion, 383. While he posits that many late-nineteenth-century white Americans subscribed to the reconciliationist reading of the Civil War, Blight is attuned to the contested nature of Civil War memory. See, for example, Blight, “Forgetting Why We Remember”.
5. See Buck, The Road to Reunion; Silber, The Romance of Reunion; Blum, Reforging the White Republic; and Smith, The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation.
6. Several strands of Civil War memory existed during this period. For studies on the mythology of the Lost Cause, see Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy; and Gallagher and Nolan, eds., The Myth of the Lost Cause. For emancipationist readings of the war, see Clark, Defining Moments.
7. Harris, Across the Bloody Chasm, 1.
8. For Confederate veterans' memories of the Civil War, see Wilson, Baptized in Blood; and Marshall, Creating a Confederate Kentucky. Historians have debated whether Union soldiers saw their wartime efforts principally as an anti-slavery crusade (see Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over), or as an effort to preserve the Union (see Gallagher, The Union War). Other important works on veterans’ Civil War memories include Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead; and Janney, Remembering the Civil War.
9. Greenberg, A Wicked War, 274. Mexicans suffered no such amnesia regarding their war with the United States. See Santoni, ““Where Did the Other Heroes Go?,” 807–44; and Rodriguez, The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War.
10. Pinheiro, Manifest Ambition, 165. Winders makes a similar argument in Mr. Polk's Army, 204.
11. There are, of course, some excellent studies on the war’s political significance and consequences. See Bauer, The Mexican War 1846–48; and Frazer, The United States and Mexico at War. For the war’s impact on 1840s popular culture, see Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas; and Streeby, American Sensations.
12. Van Wagenen Remembering the Forgotten War, 167. One of the only other studies on the NAVMW is Davies, “The Mexican War Veterans as an Organized Group,” 221–38. Although somewhat outdated, Davies’ article is a useful overview of the organisation’s structure and lifespan.
13. U.S. officers of the U.S.–Mexican War formed a society at the war’s end named the Aztec Club of 1847. Closely modelled on the Society of Cincinnati, the organisation’s elite membership included Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, and Ulysses S. Grant. It still exists today as a hereditary society. See Aztec Club of 1847. 2010. http://www.aztecclub.com.
14. For the role of veterans in the expansion of the nineteenth-century U.S. pension system, see McConnell, Glorious Contentment, 125–65; Bensel, Sectionalism and American Political Development, 1880–1980; and Logue, “Union Veterans and their Government,” 411–34. For analyses of the growth of the veterans' pension system as a social, rather than political phenomenon, see Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers; and McClintock, “Civil War Pensions and the Reconstruction of Union Families,” 456–80.
15. Kenaday, Proceedings 1874, 5.
16. Negley, “Oration of General J. S. Negley,” in Proceedings 1874, 14.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 13.
20. Ibid., 13–4.
21. Ibid., 13.
22. Ibid.
23. Kenaday, Proceedings 1874, 21.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Davies, “The Mexican War Veterans,” 223.
27. Ibid. The NAVMW was persistently plagued with financial issues. Kenaday often used The Vedette to implore readers to keep up to date with their subscription and membership fees. See, for example, “Important Notice to Delinquent Subscribers.” The Vedette, April 1880, 16. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951p01056965j;q1=national%20association%20of%20veterans%20of%20the%20mexican%20war.
28. Davies, “The Mexican War Veterans,” 223.
29. States which were not represented were Nebraska, Maine, Vermont, Delaware, and Florida. Both Washington, DC and Washington Territory sent delegates to the 1876 reunion. “Centennial Reunion,” 4.
30. Verifying this claim is difficult since, as far as this author can find, Kenaday kept no consistent membership records which still exist today. In Proceedings of the 1877 Reunion, Kenaday published the numbers of enrolled members listed according to their 1846 and 1847 state regiments. According to these records, 1274 members had enlisted in states which would later go on to form the Confederacy. 2044 hailed from states which would remain in the Union during the Civil War, including Kentucky and Missouri. The numbers for Virginia (40 members in 1877) have been left out of these calculations, due to that state's split into Virginia and West Virginia in 1861. Of course, these figures do not tell us how many of these men saw military service during the Civil War. Proceedings 1877, 12–4.
31. General Gideon Pillow to the NAVMW, Proceedings 1874, 10.
32. Ibid.
33. “The Abolition of Negro Slavery One of the Results of the Mexican War.” The Vedette, December 1879, 8.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Silber identifies a similar notion of patriotism emerging in the North during the 1890s. Silber, Romance of Reunion, 180.
38. Denver, “Address,” in “Centennial Reunion,” 1876, 12.
39. Cadwalader, “Address,” in Proceedings 1874, 28.
40. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, 63–152.
41. During this time, estimates of how many U.S.–Mexican War veterans were still living varied. In 1874 the Bureau of Pensions reported that there were 39,000 survivors. The NAVMW claimed that the number was 9000. The reality is most likely somewhere in between. Between 1887 and 1902, after the bill had become law, the Bureau of Pensions granted 20,533 pensions to U.S.–Mexican War veterans. Van Wagenen, Remembering the Forgotten War, 68.
42. Congressional Record, 46th Cong., 1st sess. (1880), 4479.
43. Democratic senator from Indiana Daniel Wolsey Voorhees made this argument in the Senate in May 1880. See “Senator Voorhees on Mexican War Pensions.” National Tribune, May 1, 1880, 5. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016187/issues/.
44. Congressional Record, 46th Cong., 1st sess. (1880), 4482.
45. National Democratic Committee, The Campaign Textbook, 362.
46. Ibid.
47. “Proceedings of the Washington City Veterans.” The Vedette, July 1880, 8.
48. For more on the intersection of racial and sectional issues with postwar U.S. politics, see Calhoun, From Bloody Shirt to Full Dinner Pail.
49. “It Will Lighten the Tax-Payer's Burdens.” National Tribune, January 1, 1885, 4.
50. “Rally on the Mexican Pension Bill.” National Tribune, November 27, 1884, 4.
51. Ibid.
52. Grand Army of the Republic, Journal of the Nineteenth Session, 350.
53. Van Wagenen, Remembering the Forgotten War, 76.
54. McConnell, Glorious Contentment, 18–83.
55. Cleveland explained in his message to the House that, while the Mexican Pension Bill imposed an age restriction on its recipients, the Dependent Pension Bill proposed to pension all disabled Union veterans, and so would mark an extravagant liberalization of the existing pension system. Grover Cleveland, “Veto of Military Pension Legislation.” February 11, 1887, Miller Center, University of Virginia. http://millercenter.org/president/cleveland/speeches/veto-of-military-pension-legislation1.
56. “Veterans! Make Reply.” National Tribune, February 24, 1887, 4.
57. “In Comparison with the Mexican War.” National Tribune, January 16, 1890, 4. The experience of American volunteers in Mexico differed widely. Some fought in battles, others never made it to Mexico at all, and a great many had the mundane task of guarding territory already won by the predecessors. See Winders, Mr. Polk's Army, 70–71.
58. Ibid.
59. For other Union veteran histories of the U.S.–Mexican War, see Morton, Sparks from the Campfire, 584; Lockwood, “Chapter VII,” 8.
60. McConnell, Glorious Contentment, 195–6.
61. Kenaday, Proceedings 1874, 29.
62. Ibid., 197.
63. Logan, The Volunteer Soldier of America, 478.
64. Ibid, 548.
65. Ibid, 555.
66. Ibid., 548–9.
67. Ibid., 555.
68. Some U.S. soldiers, particularly Whig officers, expressed reservations about the U.S.–Mexican war during the conflict itself. See Winders, Mr. Polk's Army, 206.
69. Harris, Across the Bloody Chasm, 9.
70. Logan, The Volunteer Soldier, 555.
71. Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead, 160.
72. Hill, “The Old South”. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000063006810;view=1up;seq=7. Other examples of similar histories of the U.S.–Mexican War printed in the Papers include General Evans, “Contributions of the South” and Wheeler, “Causes of the War”.
73. Hill, “The Old South,” 441.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid., 440.
76. Ibid.
77. Daniel, “Life, Services, and Character of Jefferson Davis”.
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid., 148.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. Of course, opinions regarding the U.S.–Mexican War did not always follow partisan lines. For more on the complexities of anti-war dissent in the 1840s, see Schroeder, Mr. Polk's War.
83. Harris, Across the Bloody Chasm, 67.
84. Several U.S.–Mexican War societies succeeded the NAVMW, although they mostly operated at the state level in places such as California and Texas. See Van Wagenen, Remembering the Forgotten War, 111.
85. This was certainly true on the national level. Various U.S.–Mexican War anniversaries were celebrated sporadically in parts of the Southwest and California during the late nineteenth century. See Van Wagenen, Remembering the Forgotten War, 101–127.
86. Historians have examined how postwar Americans forged a sense of national solidarity based on different values and cultural concepts, including religion, gender, political economy, and race. See, for example, Blum, Reforging the White Republic; Silber, The Romance of Reunion; and Richardson, West of Appomattox.
87. Harris, Across the Bloody Chasm, 7.
88. For more on the evolution of U.S. foreign relations during this period, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, see LaFeber, The New Empire and Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine. For studies on U.S.–Mexican relations in the post-Civil War era, see Schoonover, Dollars over Dominion and Hart, Empire and Revolution.
89. Silber, Romance of Reunion, 169–72.
90. Oswandel, Notes of the Mexican War, 638.
91. Ibid.
92. Concepts of modernity and civilization were, of course, malleable. In the late-nineteenth-century United States they were increasingly associated with economic liberalism, industrialization, and global commerce. See, Ninkovich, Global Dawn. For more on notions of modernity during the Porfiriato, see Overmyer-Velaquez, Visions of the Emerald City.
93. Scudder's view of the U.S.–Mexican War echoed the arguments made by the war's supporters at the time. See Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, 288–96.
94. Oswandel, Notes of the Mexican War, 642.
95. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 16.
96. Ibid.
97. “Mexico as Seen by Grant.” New York Times, May 7, 1880, 2.
98. Ibid.
99. Ibid.
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid.
102. Ninkovich, Global Dawn; Nugent, Habits of Empire; and Hendrickson, Union, Nation, or Empire.
103. Greenberg, A Wicked War, 274.