“Nothing Is Talked of but the Halls of the Montezumas”: Connecting Masculinity and Conquest in the New York Sun’s and New York Herald’s Coverage of the US-Mexican War

This paper compares how Moses Yale Beach, publisher of the New York Sun, and James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, hyped the U.S.-Mexican War through illustrations that linked conquest with the fulfillment of certain masculine ideals.  Both wanted the United States to take Mexican land, but they differed in opinion on how much.  Beach advocated taking only the sparsely-populated northern portion whereas Bennett backed conquering Mexico in its entirety.  Consequently, there were important differences in the types of illustrations they published.  Both included illustrations using racialized and gendered imagery to depict Mexicans as inferior to Americans to help promote and justify conquest.  However, because Beach mostly published illustrations that focused on who Americans were fighting, providing more pictures of battles and the Mexican population that would come with conquered land, he emphasized certain drawbacks of conquest.  Only the most militant men would find a war to bring the entire population of Mexico within U.S. borders desirable.  Thus his view of Mexico primarily appealed to men who subscribed to martial manhood – which idealized strength, aggression, and violence – and idolized the wilderness explorer, the icon of American manhood who served as the vanguard of U.S. expansionism.  Comparatively, Bennett emphasized what Americans would gain.  He depicted Mexico as full of rich farmland and potentially prosperous towns and cities, suggesting total conquest was beneficial in that it could provide men with economic opportunities to support themselves and families as yeoman farmers, the farmer being the other icon of American manhood who civilized the frontier in the course of U.S. expansion.  Hence Bennett also made Mexico appear appealing to men who subscribed to restrained manhood – those who were not drawn to the violence of war but supported spreading civilization and domesticity, which Bennett implied they could take to Mexico.