1. See “Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,” in U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Oscar J. Martinez (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1996), 26.

2. Neil Foley The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 13, 15.

3. I take the phrase “irresistible romance” from Doris Sommer Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

4. Thomas Bangs Thorpe The Taylor Anecdote Book: Anecdotes and Letters of Zachary Taylor (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1848), 42.

5. Dale Knobel Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in antebellum America (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1986), 60–62, 90–95.

6. Cited in Sister Blanche Marie McEniry American Catholics in the War with Mexico (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1937), 126.

7. [Luther Giddings]. Sketches of the Campaign in Northern Mexico by an Officer of the First Regiment of Ohio Volunteers (New York: George P. Putnam and Co., 1853), viii.

8. See Noel Ignatiev How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995), 162: “Nativism had subsided with the outbreak of the Mexican War, but it rose up again in the mid-1850s with the sudden appearance of the Know-Nothing Movement.” Studies of nativism in the mid–nineteenth century include Ray Allen Billington The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (1938; Chicago: Quadrangle, 1964); Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and Dale Knobel “America for the Americans”: The Nativist Movement in the United States (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996).

9. Charles Averill The Mexican Ranchero: or, The Maid of the Chapparal. A Romance of the Mexican War (Boston: F. Gleason, 1847), 91–92. Hereafter cited in text.

10. David Roediger The Wages of Whiteness (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 141.

11. Ibid., 133–63. For more on the Irish and whiteness, see Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White;Theodore Allen The Invention of the White Race. Vol. 1, Racial Oppression and Social Control (London and New York: Verso, 1994); Michael Paul Rogin Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 56–58; Eric Lott Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 71, 75, 94–96, 148–49, 237; Matthew Frye Jacobson Whiteness of a Different Color (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 4, 5, 13, 15–19, 38, 41, 46, 48–56, 68, 70, 159; Foley, The White Scourge, 97–98.

12. T.B. Thorpe, Our Army on the Rio Grande (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1846), 132. See also Thorpe, Our Army at Monterey (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1847), 96; John Kenly Memoirs of a Maryland Volunteer (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1873), 299; Richard McSherry El Puchero: or, A Mixed Dish from Mexico (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1850), 90.

13. See Jacobson, Whiteness, 38.

14. Dale Steinhauer, “The Immigrant Soldier in the Regular Army during the Mexican War,” in Papers of the Second Palo Alto Conference, ed. H. Joseph, A. Knopp, and D. Murphy (Brownsville, Tex.: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1997); and Robert Ryal Miller, “Introduction,” in Frederick Zeh, An Immigrant Soldier in the Mexican War, ed. Orr and Miller, trans. Orr (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995). On the U.S. Army during the war, see James McCaffrey Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846–1848 (New York: New York University Press, 1992); and Richard Winders Mr. Polk's Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997). On war mobilization and the idealization of the volunteer, see Robert Johannsen To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 21–67.

15. Franchot, Roads to Rome, 100, 109; David H. Bennett The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 40.

16. Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st session, Appendix, 100.

17. Zeh, Immigrant Soldier in the Mexican War, 4.

18. Ibid., 4, 5.

19. When Zeh criticizes his fellow soldiers for vandalizing a Catholic church, for instance, he adds: “[In] this land which is as lovely as it is wretched, there is not the slightest trace [of Christian civilization], notwithstanding all the anxious devotion to ritual” (48).

20. Ibid., 79.

21. Ibid., 55.

22. Michael Hogan The Irish Soldiers of Mexico (Guadalajara: Fondo Editorial Universitario, 1997), 41, 112. Other studies of the San Patricios include Robert Ryal Miller's Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick's Battalion in the

23. For fascinating examples of how war can intensify social antagonisms in ways that encourage imaginative and actual alliances with the national so-called enemy, see George Lipsitz The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 184–210; and George Mariscal, “Aztlán in Vietnam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 36–46, 84–96, 126–32, 168–69, 242–43.

24. Hogan,Irish Soldiers, 92.

25. Ibid., 160.

26. George Davis Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo. T.M. Davis (New York: Published by his legal representatives, 1891), 227–28.

27. Raphael Semmes Service Afloat and Ashore During the Mexican War (Cincinnati: W.H. Moore, 1851), 428.

28. Many soldiers' personal narratives and histories include anecdotes about the San Patricios, often noting their spectacular punishment and execution. See, for instance, Samuel Chamberlain My Confession (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956), 228: “The execution of the last number was attended with unusual and unwarrantable acts of cruelty. … Colonel Harney, on account of the proficiency he had acquired as an executioner in hanging Seminoles in Florida, was selected to carry out the sentence.”

29. Daniel Ullmann, “The Course of Empire: An Oration Delivered Before the Order of United Americans” (New York: William B. Weiss, 1856), 5. Here-after cited in text. For more on Ullmann, see Jacobson, Whiteness, 70–72.

30. See also Amy Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity,” American Literature 70, no. 3 (September 1998): 585.

31. Congressional Globe, 29th Congress, 2d Session, 109.

32. Ibid., Appendix, 301; and 30th Congress, 1st Session, 120. Most of the Whigs, on the other hand, adopted a “No Territory” position in order to stop “an immoral war of aggression by making its prolongation pointless,” as well as to sidestep the sectional controversies provoked by the Wilmot Proviso, which stipulated that slavery and other forms of involuntary servitude should be out-lawed in any territory acquired from Mexico. See Michael Holt The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 253.

33. Robert J.C. Young Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (New York: Routledge, 1995), 9.

34. Congressional Globe, 29th Congress, 2d Session, 301. According to historian Reginald Horsman, “[T]he Whig press constantly reiterated its fears of racial amalgamation.” See Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 238–39.

35. Congressional Globe, 29th Congress, 2d Session, 516. R.M.T. Hunter went even further: “I do not want their people. … But I have many reasons for desiring to acquire a portion of their territory contiguous to us which is so nearly unoccupied that the influence of these people could not be sensibly felt, as a political element in our system.” See ibid., 30th Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, 276.

36. Ibid., 30th Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, 273.

37. Ibid., 29th Congress, 2d Session, Appendix, 132.

38. Ibid., 29th Congress, 2d Session, Appendix, 218.

39. Ibid., 29th Congress, 2d Session, Appendix, 278.

40. The following novels were read for this chapter: The Prisoner of Perote: A Tale of American Valor and Mexican Love (Boston: F. Gleason, 1848); Arthur Armstrong's The Mariner of the Mines: or, The Maid of the Monastery (Boston: F. Gleason, n.d.); Charles Averill's The Secret Service Ship, or, The Fall of San Juan D'Ulloa (Boston: F. Gleason, 1848) and The Mexican Ranchero: or, The Maid of the Chapparal (1847); Buntline's Magdalena, the Beautiful Mexican Maid (New York: Williams Brothers, 1847) and The Volunteer: or, The Maid of Monterey (Boston: F. Gleason, 1847); Alice Cleveland's Lucy Morley: or, The Young Officer (Boston: F. Gleason, 1846); Newton Curtis's The Hunted Chief: or, The Female Ranchero (New York: Williams Brothers, 1847), The Vidette, a Tale of the Mexican War (New York: Williams Brothers, 1848), and The Prairie Guide: or, The Rose of the Rio Grande (New York: Williams Brothers, 1847); Robert Greeley's Arthur Woodleigh, A Romance of the Battle Field in Mexico (New York: William B. Smith, 1847); Harry Halyard's four novelettes, The Mexican Spy: or, The Bride of Buena Vista (Boston: F. Gleason, 1848), The Ocean Monarch: or, The Ranger of the Gulf (Boston: F. Gleason, 1848), The Heroine of Tampico: or, Wildfire the Wanderer (Boston: F. Gleason, 1847), and The Chieftain of Churubusco, or, The Spectre of the Cathedral (Boston: F. Gleason, 1848); J.H. Ingraham's The Texan Ranger: or, The Maid of Matamoras (New York: Williams Brothers, 1847); and Harry Hazel's [Justin Jones], Inez, the Beautiful: or, Love on the Rio Grande (Boston: Justin Jones, 1846). Citations from each will be cited parenthetically in the text.

41. Antonia Castañeda, “The Political Economy of Nineteenth Century Stereotypes of Californianas,” in Between Borders: Essays on Mexicana/Chicana History, ed. Adelaida del Castillo (Encino, Calif.: Floricanto Press, 1990), 220, 225. See also Castañeda, “Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769–1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family,” in Contested Eden: California before the Gold Rush, ed. Ramón Gutiérrez and Richard Orsi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 230–59; Tomás Almaguer Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 46, 57–62; Rosaura Sánchez Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 188–267; David Montejano Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 37, 49.

42. Castañeda, “Political Economy,” 220, 223.

43. On the disruptive effects of female masculinities, see Judith Halberstam Female Masculinity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).

44. See also Elizabeth Young Disarming the Nation: Women's Writing and the American Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 167–70. Young argues that in Loreta Velazquez's The Woman in Battle, a Civil War–era text about cross-dressing, “military masquerade” provides “a symbolic frame for the representation of male homoeroticism”; she also observes that “the homosocial world of the military afforded new opportunities for the expression and representation of homoerotic desire” (169).

45. For a brief discussion of how the “demasculinization of colonized men and the hypermasculinity of European males represent principle assertions of white supremacy,” see Ann Laura Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia,” in Feminism and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 215.

46. Young, Colonial Desire, 109.

47. See also José Limón American Encounters: Greater Mexico, the United States, and the Erotics of Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 136–37.

48. Alexander Saxton The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London and New York: Verso, 1990), 249.

49. Ibid., 337, 201.

50. Ibid., 184.

51. Ibid., 113.

52. Ibid., 184–85.

53. Amy Bridges, A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 154.

54. Saxton, Rise and Fall, 119.

55. Ibid., 338.

56. On marriage contracts in the United States during this period, see Amy Dru Stanley From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 175–217. See also Norma Basch In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property in Nineteenth-Century New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982).

57. Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, 87.

58. Ibid., 29th Congress, 2nd Session, Appendix, 232.

59. Carole Pateman The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 83.

60. Carl Gutiérrez-Jones Rethinking the Borderlands: Between Chicano Culture and Legal Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 44.

61. See Lott, Love and Theft; Rogin , Blackface, 19–44; and Alexander Saxton, “Blackface Minstrelsy, Vernacular Comics, and the Politics of Slavery in the North,” in The Meaning of Slavery in the North, ed. David Roediger and Martin Blatt (New York: Garland, 1998), 157–75.

62. Lott, Love and Theft, 194.

63. Michael Holt The Political Crisis of the 1850's (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978), 42–43.

64. Michael Paul Rogin Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Her-man Melville (New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1983), 106.

65. Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, 262.

66. Ibid., 349.

67. Ibid., 87.

68. See Lucy Maddox Removals: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Politics of Indian Affairs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3–49.

69. Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, 197.