Beyond the comment form

I've already linked to Blog Them Out of the Stone Age once ... and kicked myself for failing to alert friend Barbour to its existence earlier.

Right now, Mark Grimsley (a professor at Ohio State) is on the third part of a series called "Too Monstrous for Remorse," covering the Mexican War. This particular post is an excerpt from an entry the author wrote for the Encyclopedia of War and American Society.

On the one hand, Whigs extolled the achievements of the American armies, particularly since the two principal field commanders, Taylor and Scott, were members of their party. On the other, they savaged the Polk administration for causing the war, for misrepresenting the truth in its request for a declaration of war, for mismanaging the war, and for pursuing a war aim—territorial expansion—that was at odds with American values. Republican institutions should expand by example, not coercion, some argued. Others, playing the race card, pointed out that expansion would entail the annexation of a morally degraded people who were “unfit . . . to sustain a free government.”

I like this article. Beyond that, however, if you read the rest of the series and other parts of the blog, you will see why I love Grimsley's approach to academic blogging.

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