Robert Anderson Wilson

Robert Anderson Wilson (1812–1872) was an American lawyer, journalist and historical writer, born in Pennsylvania and long associated with Rochester, New York. Travels in Mexico between 1851 and 1854 produced Mexico and Its Religion, a mixture of travel narrative, history and anti-clerical polemic dedicated to the American Party, and later A New History of the Conquest of Mexico, in which he attacked Prescott's account and argued that the Spanish chroniclers had grossly exaggerated the size and splendor of the Aztec cities. The second book provoked a sharp controversy with Prescott's defenders. Wilson also wrote on the history of Mexico in the colonial period.