Suffering Childhood in Early America: Violence, Race, and the Making of the Child Victim Book

This survey of public opinion of the US territorial expansion of the 1840s and 1850s contrasts that era's territorial expansion and the rationale behind it with the imperialism of the 1890s and the broader American mission of exemplifying and spreading good governance as a foreign policy objective. A good three quarters of the book offers the story of Manifest Destiny's appearance, meaning to its advocates, faults as seen by its critics, its fading from prominence, and its interrelations with related political issues like slavery, race, federalism, consent, and the Civil War that followed.

There are some unexpected revelations in the details of manifest destiny. Most interesting to me was the revelation that the annexation of Mexico was restrained to the sparsely populated areas because of a bizarre synchronicity of racist southern Democrats opposed granting US citizenship to non-white Mexicans and anti-slavery northern Whigs who opposed expanding slavery into Mexican states where slavery was abolished. Racism and anti-slavery as allies in a cause. Who would have thought?

I wish it had more material about the Mexican perspective on the Mexican-American War, and I wonder what new perspectives have developed since this book was published in the 1960s. But I found it informative, compelling, and persuasive. Lots of good stuff about the 1840s and the 1890s, and about the real substance of what being American is all about. For those who like American history, this is my endorsement: go read it.