Book Review: A Country of Vast Designs

Last summer, I passed A Country of Vast Designs in the book store, and it immediately caught my eye. I've wanted to learn more about the Mexican War and the politics behind it, yet most of the books I'd read on this topic (such as What Hath God Wrought) have done so only as part of a more general overview of the Antebellum years. What I REALLY want to read is a book that focuses on the military history of the war (the one currently on the wish list is The Training Ground) - but I've had surprising difficulty finding books that really in-depth cover that material. I wasn't sure if A Country of Vast Designs would be that book (as it turns out, it's not - it gives some treatment to the war but only in broad outlines), but it looked very interesting, so a few months after I first spotted it, I decided to pick it up, and I finally got around to reading it!

Review

Merry, Robert W. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, The Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. 2009. 576p. Photographs, bibliography, index. ISBN: 9780743297448.

James K. Polk is one of the more forgotten presidents in US History, at least among the general public. Merry (journalist, Wall Street Journal and others) sets out to rectify this ignorance and highlight how Polk, in office from 1844 to 1848, was one of the most successful and important presidents of the 19th century. Merry demonstrates how, at the onset of Polk's presidency, the Jacksonian protege had four primary goals: treat with the British to settle the controversy over the Oregon territory; acquire California from Mexico; implement a more balanced tariff; and develop an independent treasury. These four goals, reflecting foreign policy ambitions that could add as many as half a million square miles of territory to the United States, and domestic policy that would change the way the government handled it's money for almost a hundred years, were very ambitious, and Polk was determined to see them all accomplished in just one term. Merry then clearly and lucidly explains how, through politicking, force of personality, a bit of luck, and a lot of hard work, Polk managed to accomplish all of these goals despite challenges from both his own Democratic party and the Whig opposition, an unpopular war, a resistant Secretary of State with ambitions of his own, and other challenges. Even more impressively, Merry accomplishes this assessment without elevating Polk to a position of hero-worship, instead developing for the reader an understanding of the complex man, his strengths, his weaknesses, his successes, and his failures. The writing in the book is excellent and engaging, and all of the complex threads of foreign and domestic affairs come together, leaving the reader with a clear idea of the events of the time, their causes, their effects, and the colorful personalities - such as John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, future president James Buchanan, General Winfield Scott, and many others - whose actions aided and hindered the achievement of the United States' perceived "Manifest Destiny," and capped the last great age of national expansion.

Presenting a complex and thorough view of only a few short years, this book is partly a biography of Polk, but more an in-depth look at four years that transformed the United States. After reading it, one is left with a clear understanding of how America grew to stretch from "sea to shining sea," how this attitude built on national events from the previous 20 years, and how the way events unfolded caused sectional controversies to grow worse and eventually lead to the US Civil War, 13 years later. It's rare to find a book both this scholarly yet easy to read, and even more rare to find a work of non-fiction history that can be described as a "page turner," yet I found this book to be so.

Rating: 5 out of 5.