stands as an important work in the literature of the Manifest Destiny. At the time of its release, the book was considered such a valuable source of information on Texas and Mexico that some of the first copies were delivered to President James K. Polk and members of his cabinet.44

After his escape from Perote, the prodigal adventurer arrived in Texas in the fall of 1843, whereupon he was immediately elected to a seat in the House of Representatives from Brazoria County. Long a bitter critic of the Houston administration, Green had become convinced during his sojourn in Mexico that the president was personally responsible for the suffering of the Mier prisoners. Specifically, he charged that Sam Houston had privately conceded to the British chargé d'affaires in Texas that the Mier men were not legitimate prisoners of war, an admission that, Green claimed, was ultimately made known to Mexican authorities, greatly augmenting the captives' suffering. Green used his position as a member of the foreign affairs committee to harp constantly upon this theme, and also to help secure passage of a bill appropriating the sum of $15,000 for the relief of the prisoners, most of whom were now languishing at Perote.45 Several months would pass before these funds were put at the disposal of the incarcerated Texans, prompting Green to charge that the vindictive chief executive had deliberately withheld the money. Green hounded the president with a perseverance bordering on monomania, emerging as Houston's most fervent and vitriolic detractor, no small distinction in a crowded and distinguished field that included some of the Republic's most prominent figures.

Upon completion of his Mier Expedition narrative, Green traveled to the United States in 1845, to be reunited with his son Wharton, whom he had not seen in almost a decade, and to supervise publication of his manuscript.46 The book was published by Harper & Brothers later that year. Two other books written by Mier participants appeared in 1845. A brief volume by Thomas W. Bell, A Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of the Mier Prisoners in Mexico, appears to have enjoyed only a limited readership. Much more widely read was The Prisoners of Perote by William Preston Stapp. Although Stapp's prose seems florid and overwrought today, no other chronicler of the Mier Expedition has so poignantly described the Texans' trials as prisoners in Mexico. In his hurry to publish the book, however, many passages on Mexico were extensively plagiarized from Brantz Mayer's Mexico As It Was and As It Is.47

Reviews of Green's history of the expedition were decidedly mixed. William Fisher complained of the book's "vain and arrogant" tone and predicted that readers would find it of little interest.48 The influential United States Magazine and Democratic Review gave the book only passing reference when it was first published, but later criticized Green's account of his escape from Perote for not giving full credit to his accomplice, Daniel Drake Henrie, noting that the