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ISSUES FOR DISCUSSION OR INVESTIGATION
- Look at Whitman's 1855 Preface or Song of Myself to see how he imagines the physical shape of "America." Where does it begin and end? Do you see him responding in any way to the rapid changes in the national map that had happened since his boyhood?
- What seems to be Whitman's conception of "destiny"? Does he speak about fate-- and if so, what force
seems to guide it? Does he imagine a God who interferes with, or has specific plans for, national entities? Find instances in the poems where he seems to be using a prophetic voice. What kind of future does he prophesy, and on what grounds?
- Research the range of popular responses to the Mexican War, either in the U.S. or in Mexico.
FURTHER READING
- Robert Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the Popular Imagination
(Oxford UP, 1995). Excellent study, with engaging illustrations
- Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism
(Harvard UP, 1981). links attitudes born during the Mexican War to Reconstruction-era social problems, as well as imperial ventures at the turn of the century
- Cecil Robinson, ed. The View from Chapultepec: Mexican Writers on the Mexican-American War
(Tucson: U Arizona P, 1989). Excellent introduction summarizes events leading to the War and describes changes in historiography in the field
- Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease,eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Duke UP, 1995)
- David Reynolds, Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Knopf, 1995). Overview
of political and social conditions during Whitman's lifetime helps place Mexican War in biographical context
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