In a reading of sources regarding the U.S.-Mexican War, the reader is struck by certain portrayals of the U.S. and Mexico, the former as a powerful nation and the latter as underdeveloped, weak, and disorganized. These portrayals are apparent in both secondary and primary sources dealing with the war, for varying reasons in each case. In the primary sources, most of which are American (at least those used by researchers from the …showed first 75 words of 759 total…

…showed last 75 words of 759 total…the “eve” of an event yet to come? Certainly, the fragmentation of the Mexican-U.S. border was going on amid rising tensions, but one can only refer to the eve of the war from a retrospective perspective, and this choice of phrasing contributes little to our understanding of the time from the perspective of the people who lived it, a perspective much more valuable than one of reflection after-the-fact. Unfinished, but that's what you get.