Research Feature: The Forgotten War

By Gigi Marino - Research/Penn State According to the book "Game Change," when political advisers sat down with Sarah Palin "to give her a potted history of foreign policy," they began with the Spanish Civil War, which, in fact, was not this country's first foreign war. The omission of the U.S-Mexican War from the list of U.S. engagements - in popular nonfiction, history books, or "Jeopardy!" questions - does not surprise historian Amy Greenberg , who seeks to bring this pivotal conflict into the frontal lobe of the American consciousness. The U.S.-Mexican War of 1846 was a horrific, bloody, 16-month battle predicated on greed, expansion and imperialism, said Greenberg, Penn State professor of American history and women's studies. "Though both its justification and consequences are dim to us now," she said, "this, our first war for empire, decisively broke with our past, shaped our future, and, to this day, affects how we act in the world." In a book she is writing on the subject, with the support of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship , Greenberg points to four key players who initiated, mediated and ended the war. President James K. Polk rallied for war against Mexico, claiming that our southern neighbors had killed American soldiers on American land. Senator Henry Clay publicly denounced the war, sparking what Greenberg calls "America's first national anti-war movement." Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln , who admired Clay and also opposed the war, learned invaluable lessons in power and morality.