In Mark E. Neely’s The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction he compares the War with Mexico with the Civil War in terms of the behavior of “volunteer” troops. Neely focuses on what he found to be the “brutal” treatment of Mexicans on the part of U.S. volunteers. When compared with volunteers in the American Civil War, he found that there was very little of this brutal behavior towards whites: rape, murder, ect. First off, I accept the premise as I already noted it a couple of years ago. And I like the dichotomy used, but I find it not flawless. Neely writes that the revenge factor was NOT in play during the Civil War, like it was during the Mexican War. (p.34) I’m not sure I agree with this, especially along the Trans-Mississippi region where Federal soldiers often spoke of revenge and acted on it when confronted with bushwhackers and guerrillas. Also, Neely fails to take into account one significant issue, that almost half of the volunteers in the Mexican war were foreigners (Robert Lackie, “The Wars of America,” p.328), compared to less than a 1/3 in the American Civil War. Race is a huge issue in American history, but problems arise here when the soldiers Neely cites were foreign born and therefore culturally and socially not “Americanized” in a sense.
Once again, I agree with the claims Neely makes, just that there are some issues I have with his reasoning and how he got there.
