Dispatches from the Mexican WarPioneering war correspondent George Wilkins Kendall (1809-67) wrote vividly from Mexico about America's first foreign war, which, after the victories of Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, enlarged our borders to include California, Texas, and New Mexico in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Noted military historian Lawrence Delbert Cress has collected and annotated Kendall's more than two hundred dispatches for the first time in this single volume. Kendall brought a keen eye, a good ear, and a critical voice to the war coverage, writing sometimes several times a day as he traveled with Taylor's army in northern Mexico and with the soldiers under Scott's command who defeated Santa Anna and occupied Mexico City. His cogent reports, published in the New Orleans Picayune, reveal a dry wit, an abiding faith in America's "manifest destiny", and a clear understanding that warfare involved much more than the marching of armies. They highlight military maneuvers and their attendant supply and communication problems, the machinations of American and Mexican politics, the burdens borne by common soldiers on both sides, and the hardships endured by Mexican civilians unable to escape the hostilities. These newspaper dispatches are indispensable for an understanding of the Mexican War, which trained the generals who later served on both sides in the Civil War. |
