Eyewitness to War; Prints and Daguerreotypes of the Mexican War, 1846-1848

Fort Worth, Texas and Washington, D.C.: Amon Carter Museum and The Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. Format is approximately 11 inches by 10.25 inches. x, 368, [2] pages. Illustrations (some in color). Notes. Index. DJ has minor wear and soiling. Some top edge soiling. Published on the occasion of the exhibition November 18, 1989 -- January 14, 1990 Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. Martha A. Sandweiss is a historian of the United States, with particular interests in the history of the American West, visual culture, and public history. She received her Ph.D. in History from Yale University and began her career as a photography curator at the Amon Carter Museum in Ft. Worth, TX. She later taught American Studies and History at Amherst College for twenty years before joining the Princeton faculty in 2009. Sandweiss is the author or editor of numerous books on American history and photography. Her publications include Eyewitness to War (1989), Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception across the Color Line (2009), and Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (2002), winner of the Organization of American Historians' Ray Allen Billington Award for the best book in American frontier history and the William P. Clements Award. Her other works include Laura Gilpin: An Enduring Grace (1986), winner of the George Wittenborn Award for outstanding art book, and the co-edited volume The Oxford History of the American West (1994), winner of the Western Heritage Award and the Caughey Western History Association prize for the outstanding book in western history. Rick Stewart was formerly director of the Amon Carter Museum who became Chief Curator to focus on research and scholarly pursuits. Ben W. Huseman was the Cartographic Archivist at The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Libraries Special Collections and has curated dozens of exhibits of rare maps, prints, books, paintings and drawings over a long curatorial career that includes, in addition to 13 years at UTA: 4 years at the DeGolyer Special Collections Library at SMU in Dallas, 2 years at Riddell Rare Maps and Prints in Dallas and 13 years at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. The Mexican-American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the Intervención Estadounidense en México (U.S. intervention in Mexico), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. In the 1844 United States presidential election, Democrat James K. Polk was elected on a platform of expanding U.S. territory in Oregon and Texas. Polk advocated expansion by either peaceful means or by armed force, with the 1845 annexation of Texas furthering that goal by peaceful means. However, the boundary between Texas and Mexico was disputed, with the Republic of Texas and the USA asserting it to be the Rio Grande River and Mexico claiming it to be the more-northern Nueces River. Both Mexico and the USA claimed the disputed area and sent troops. Polk sent U.S. Army troops to the area; he also sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico to try to negotiate the sale of territory. U.S. troops' presence was designed to lure Mexico into starting the conflict, putting the onus on Mexico and allowing Polk to argue to Congress that a declaration of war should be issued. Mexican forces attacked U.S. forces, and the United States Congress declared war. Beyond the disputed area of Texas, U.S. forces quickly occupied the regional capital of Santa Fe de Nuevo México along the upper Rio Grande, which had trade relations with the U.S. via the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and New Mexico. U.S. forces also moved against the province of Alta California and then moved south. The Pacific Squadron of the U.S. Navy blockaded the Pacific coast farther south in the lower Baja California Territory. The Mexican government refused to be pressured into signing a peace treaty at this point, making the U.S. invasion of the Mexican heartland under Major General Winfield Scott and its capture of the capital Mexico City a strategy to force peace negotiations. Although Mexico was defeated on the battlefield, politically its government's negotiating a treaty remained a fraught issue, with some factions refusing to consider any recognition of its loss of territory. Although Polk formally relieved his peace envoy, Nicholas Trist, of his post as negotiator, Trist ignored the order and successfully concluded the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It ended the war, and Mexico recognized the Mexican Cession, areas not part of disputed Texas but conquered by the U.S. Army. These were northern territories of Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México.