The U.S. Government was driven, in large part, by opportunism during the Mexican American War. They desired more territory and were willing to go to war to obtain it. However, they were not the only ones being motivated by opportunism. Paul Foos’ A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair argues that men were enticed to become volunteer soldiers with the hope of achieving personal gain, specifically by looting Mexican villages—war propaganda was “nakedly opportunistic and expressly promised plunder as the right of the volunteer” (113). By analyzing the military, Foos intends to reveal the less “heroic” story of the war and how differently men grappled with the layers of manifest destiny.

Central to Foos’ argument is the distinction between the two opposing poles of military organization—the regular army and the volunteer militia. These two factions were not only treated differently by the public, but also within their own ranks. On the one hand, the regular army officers “were notoriously quick to resort to the lash or other humiliating physical punishments against miscreant soldiers” (13). They rarely received any recognition from the government or the public and when they did it was frequently negative. On the other hand, the volunteer militia elected their own officers, were unaccustomed to the harsh punishments endured by the regular army, and were revered as heroes in the public sphere. Foos states, the volunteer army was “lionized as an effective example of republic soldiers defending their country’s honor in time of peril” (25). They were the true patriots—fighting for the “love” of their country and not simply money.

Class and racial strife added another layer to the volunteer and regular armies. Lower-class men who volunteered were keen on the idea of their supposed racial superiority over Mexicans. While they might typically have been at the bottom of the social hierarchy in the United States, in Mexico they were able to act as the oppressors. These men raped, plundered and murdered Mexican people and to make matters worse, volunteers were not usually held accountable for their behavior and they could rescind their oath of service at the sign of punishment. Foos argues, “[t]heir proclivity for racist, religious, or nationalist rationales for their crimes took up the language of Manifest Destiny, suffusing their criminal activity with the heroism and comradeship implicit in that cause” (113). Moreover, the volunteers made a conscious effort to emulate the romanticized Texas volunteers, the Texas Rangers. The Texas Rangers had a reputation for being “fiercely independent . . . [and] protecting their own territory against savage Mexicans and Indians” (90).

Men in the regular army were less likely to explain their own atrocities against Mexicans in this way because they were only marginally attached to these racist and nationalist tendencies. Their crimes were, instead, justified by the oppressiveness of their officers who they sought to distance themselves from. Thus regular soldiers crimes often consisted of desertion, desertion to the enemy, and—like the volunteers—some degree of foraging upon civilians.

Through correspondence, diaries, newspapers and propaganda Foos sheds light on the varying perspectives and experiences of regular and volunteer military men. Unfortunately, I am not sure how clear a picture Foos’ actually paints. For starters, his evidence and his entire monograph revolve around three regiments deriving from New Orleans, New York City, and Boston—all metropolitan areas. He does not engage with any rural regiments nor does he present an argument for why these three particular cities would be most representative of the military experiences in the Mexican American War. We are also left with very little understanding of how Mexicans responded to their American oppressors or how Mexicans who lived in the United States were affected by the flourishing racist ideologies.

In short, Foos left me wanting more—a pro and con in this case.