The Volunteer; or The Maid of Monterey

Ned Buntline was the pseudonym of the American publisher journalist and writer Edward Zane Carroll Judson Sr. who was an instigator of the Astor Place Riot the nativist riot in St. Louis and vocal member of the Know Nothing Party. Published in 1847 during the midst of the U.S.-Mexican war as one critic argued the author used the conventions of romance to turn the invasion of Mexico into a chivalric U.S. rescue mission. This novel highlights the politics and growth of nineteenth-century American imperialism and anti-immigration sentiment.