All of Mexico is seen through the eyes of Rimmon Squires, volunteer lieutenant on the staff of General Winfield Scott. Squires, a daguerreotypist, uses his skill with this breakthrough photographic technology to record the heroics and skullduggery of the United States first war of foreign conquest, following the old Cortez route to Mexico city. His lens captures Captain Robert E. Lee resting after his brilliant battle field reconnaissance at Cerro Gordo, the young artillery lieutenant, Tom Jackson, as he earns a brevet at Chapultepec and Sam Grant using a steeple emplaced howitzer with telling effect as the army assaults the Mexican capital. All of Mexico catches the defining moment in the ongoing history of our two neighboring republics. The army was led by men who were to become gray bearded heroes of the blue and gray forces of the Civil War. The Mexican war induced conflicting attitudes that still resonate today, shame at invading a sister republic, pride at gaining vast territories (what is now California and the southwestern states of the U. S.) and the realization of what was termed our national Manifest Destiny.