No other image quite conveys the spirit of the times as this rare American Art Union engraving from 1853. During the war with Mexico, all people in the United States -- whether young or old, or literally and figuratively marginalized (as in the case of most blacks who were enslaved or women who could not vote) ? were caught up in the excitement of the news coming from the southwest. The war was one of the most intensively reported events up to that time, with war correspondents, eyewitness artists, steamboats, telegraphs, pony express riders, steam-powered presses, lithographs, engravings, illustrated newspapers, and even photographs (daguerreotypes) helping to relay information to the public from the seat of battle in record time ? often even before official word reached politicians in Washington, D.C. Woodville's original 1848 oil painting which the engraver Jones copied is now part of the collection of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
