Author: Morse, Isaac E. (1809-1866), Louisiana Congressman and Attorney General.
Title: Speech of the Honorable Isaac E. Morse, of Louisiana, in Defence of the Mexican War. Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, December 22, 1846.
Description: Washington: Ritchie and Heiss, printers, 1846. 1846. - Octavo, 9 inches high by 5-1/2 inches wide. Softcover, printed self-wraps. There is offsetting as well as scattered foxing to the front and rear cover pages with minor chipping to the front edge of the front cover page. 16 pages, illustrated with a lithographic portrait of Isaac Morse by John Henry Bufford. There is a chip out from the top corner of the frontispiece. Ex-library, de-acquisitioned from The New York Public Library's "Myers Collection" with a stamp on the verso of the front wrapper. The edges of the pages are lightly darkened with occasional minor foxing. Good.

First edition.

The Mexican–American War (Apr 25, 1846 – Feb 2, 1848), known in Mexico as the Intervención estadounidense en México, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico that followed the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered Mexican territory. Morse expounds in favor of the war: "If this war was what you say it is, and waged wantonly, sinfully, by the President, from mere personal vanity, or a petty ambition, for the sake of letting the world know who James K. Polk was - if, for an end like this, all the seas of blood and millions and millions of its treasure, lavished all in violation of the constitution - if you make good this charge, then has the President of the United States been guilty, not of moral merely but of actual treason, and that of the deepest dye; not through ignorance, but with malice aforethought. If all this be true, then has he damned himself, indeed, to a depth of infamy where the hand of resurrection can never reach him. If you can persuade the widow and orphans of the murdered Cross, the gallant Watson, the chivalric Ridgely, and all the friends and relatives of the noble Ringgold, and the other gallant spirits whose lives have been given as a bloody sacrifice to their country's honor, that all this was done to glorify this administration and prove who James K. Polk was, then, sir, is your Chief Magistrate guilty of 'conduct so basely mean in a public character, that it is without precedent or pretence; an incendiary war upon society that nothing can excuse or palliate, emanating from a refinement of beggarly villany, made up between the venomous malignity of a serpent and the spiteful imbecility of an inferior reptile.'"

Isaac Edward Morse (1809-1866 was a Democratic politician from Louisiana who served in the House of Representatives from 1844-1851. He served as Louisiana's Attorney General from 1854-1856. President Franklin Pierce appointed him in 1856 to be a special commissioner to New Granada to negotiate safe passage of Americans across the Isthmus of Panama.

John Henry Bufford (1810-1870) was a Boston lithographer who often created his portraits after daguerreotypes. Among the artists he employed was Winslow Homer. Good .

Keywords: AMERICANA; MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR; SPEECH OF THE HONORABLE ISAAC E. MORSE, OF LOUISIANA, IN DEFENCE OF THE MEXICAN WAR; DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, DECEMBER 22, 1846; WASHINGTON; RITCHIE AND HEISS, PRINTERS; NINETEENTH CE

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