Mercury Rising: US–Mexican Conflict in Alexander Edouart's Blessing of the Enrequita Mine.

This article examines Alexander Edouart's 1860 painting *Blessing of the Enrequita Mine*, which commemorates the discovery of a mercury (quicksilver) vein at New Almaden, California, and situates it within the broader geopolitical and economic conflicts between the United States and Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century. The artwork depicts Anglo-American mine administrators and primarily Mexican miners during a Catholic Mass, reflecting ethnic hierarchies and labor dynamics amid contested land claims framed by the US–Mexican War (1846–48) and the protracted legal case United States v. Castillero (1857–63). The painting, commissioned by Anglo-American stakeholders involved in the mine's ownership dispute, participates in legitimizing US imperialist expansion and capitalist exploitation of natural resources, while also encoding the environmental and social transformations wrought by mercury mining. Edouart's career and the visual culture surrounding New Almaden reveal the intersection of territorial conflict, labor migration, and transpacific trade that shaped the region's contested history.