1. Foner Ch 13A The 1840s

2. Chapter Focus Questions
What was manifest destiny?
What were the major differences between the Oregon, Texas, and California frontiers?
What were the most important consequences of the Mexican-American War?

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Q: You’ve introduced a comparative dimension to the discussion of the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s and early 1850s. What important parallels do you see between that event and the simultaneous discovery of gold in Australia?
A: Of course it was a coincidence that gold was discovered in both places at the same time; it was not some global phenomenon. But in fact, these two gold rushes in the 1840s and the 1950s did play out in interestingly similar ways. The discovery of gold in California and part of southern Australia, first of all, led to an immense influx of population into both places of people seeking to get rich through gold. From all over the world, from Europe, from Latin America, from Asia, people streamed into these countries and in both places you developed this extraordinarily diverse population. San Francisco was probably the most racially and ethnically diverse city in the world in 1850, because everyone in the world had poured in there, and similarly Melbourne, Australia, had an incredibly diverse population for the same reason. On the other hand, in both places you got immediate racial tensions, and in the 1850s, efforts to push Asians, particularly the Chinese, out of the gold fields. California became very well-known for its anti-Chinese, anti-Asian policies, banning what they called foreign miners and things like that. Similarly in Australia you had efforts to push Chinese miners out of the gold fields. So I think the experience of Australia can reflect something back on our understanding of what happened in the United States to show how similar tensions and developments take place in this very hothouse atmosphere of everybody seeking to enrich themselves through gold.
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Q: What were the views of both southerners and northerners on the expansion of slavery into the new territories?
A: Southerners felt that slavery had the same right to expand in the new territory as any other form of property. Nobody was telling people they couldn't bring their livestock, their bank notes, their equipment, whatever it was. Any kind of property could be brought if somebody wanted. They said, Slaves are property, they aren't any different. The government doesn't have any rights to distinguish between forms of property. Moreover, southerners had fought in the American army in Mexico. They had died to gain this new territory; what right did the government have to tell them or their relatives that they could not bring slaves there? Northerners of course said, No, slavery is different; it's not just another form of property. Many of them thought slavery was immoral. Many who didn't care about morality said, Slavery retards economic growth. It restricts wide immigration. It creates a hierarchical society that is undemocratic. It stifles education. We don't want this kind of society spreading out into the new western territories. So over this question of whether slavery should be allowed to expand, there was what William Seward, the governor of New York, would later call an "irrepressible conflict" between the North and the South.
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Q: How did economic development in the period solidify the ties between the Northeast and the old Northwest, and with what political effect?
A: Until the 1840s, the old Northwest (and here we are talking about Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and states like that) was considerably tied to the South economically. They shipped their agricultural produce down the Ohio River, down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, and from there to other markets. Many of the early settlers in the old Northwest came from southern states, from Virginia, from Kentucky, etc., like Lincoln himself, who came from Kentucky and then went to Indiana and then to Illinois. But in the 1850s this was all reoriented; the railroads were now built connecting large eastern cities like New York with centers in the West. The railroads pulled the trade of the Northwest toward the East. No longer were goods being sent down the Mississippi River; they were being shipped much more quickly eastward along the great railroads. Moreover, the population of the old Northwest was changing. Far more northerners were moving there. New Englanders, people from New York, and people from Pennsylvania were now moving in, and fewer southerners. So the complexion of the population and the political complexion of the Northwest was changing radically and becoming much more like the East and much less like the South.
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Q: How would you characterize Lincoln's views on slavery and race at the time he took office as president?
A: Abraham Lincoln once said, "I think I have hated slavery as much as any abolitionist." Lincoln despised slavery, there's no question about that, but Lincoln was not an abolitionist. Abolitionists were willing to see the country broken up, the Constitution violated in order to attack slavery. Lincoln had too much reverence for the law, reverence for the Constitution. He was willing to compromise with the South. He said we must respect the constitutional arrangements. He said if the Constitution says they must get their fugitive slaves back, we must do that. Lincoln identified the westward expansion of slavery as the key issue. Abolitionists said, No, abolition is the issue. Lincoln said, No, the issue is whether slavery is allowed to expand to the West. Lincoln's racial views were typical of the time. He did not favor equal rights for the blacks in Illinois, he did not favor black suffrage, and he did not favor black and white intermarriage. On the other hand, he always said, blacks may not be equal of rights but they are entitled to the unalienable rights identified by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty (which is why slavery was wrong), and the pursuit of happiness. They have to have the right to compete in the marketplace, enjoy the fruits of their labor just like anyone else. So Lincoln was a creature of his time; he shared many of its prejudices, but what's interesting about Lincoln is, he wasn't an abolitionist. His views on slavery and race were such that it was his election that led the South to fear that slavery was in danger and leave the Union.
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7. The original and final designs for Thomas Crawford’s
Statue of Freedom Jefferson Davis, Sec of War, had liberty cap changed.

8. The Fur Trade Greatest spur to exploration in North America
Not until 1820s could American companies challenge the British.
Trappers known as mountain men:
accommodated themselves to local Indians,
rarely came in contact with whites and,
might be viewed as advance guard of market revolution.

9. The Fur Trade (cont'd)
By the 1840s, however, the beaver was virtually trapped out.

10. Government-Sponsored Exploration
Federal government promoted western expansion by sending out exploratory & scientific expeditions that mapped the West and brought back artists’ re-creations.
Easterners avidly followed the explorations and the books and maps they published, fueling national pride and expansionism.

11. MAP 14.2 Indian Territory before the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
Indian Territory lay west of Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa and east of Mexican Territory. Most of the Indian peoples who lived there in the 1830s and the 1840s had been “removed” from east of the Mississippi River. The southern part (now Oklahoma) was inhabited by peoples from the Old Southwest: the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. North of that in what is now Kansas and Nebraska lived peoples who had been removed from the Old Northwest. All these Indian peoples had trouble adjusting not only to a new climate and a new way of life but also to the close proximity of some Indian tribes who were their traditional enemies.
Indian Territory before the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

12. Expansion and Indian Policy
Government policy
West as a refuge for removed eastern Indians
Encroachment on new Indian territory
Further land concessions from western tribes, though tribes in Oklahoma held on to their lands until after Civil War

13. Expansion and Indian Policy
The major battles between whites and Indians in the West occurred after Civil War.

14. Manifest Destiny, an Expansionist Ideology
1845: journalist John O’Sullivan
“manifest destiny”—Americans had a God-given right to spread across the continent and conquer.

15. Manifest Destiny, an Expansionist Ideology
Democrats saw expansion as cure for national ills by providing new opportunities in West.
Whigs feared expansion would bring up slavery issue.

16. The Overland Trails The great trails started at the Missouri River.
The Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails followed the Platte River into Wyoming.
The 2,000-mile Overland Trail was a long, expensive, and hazardous journey.
Pioneers traveled in groups and often hired a pilot who knew the terrain.

17. Oregon The mid-1840s “Oregon Fever”—promise of free land.
1846: Canadian border redrawn to current location

18. MAP 14.3 The Overland Trails, 1840
All the great trails west started at the Missouri River. The Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails followed the Platte River into Wyoming, crossed South Pass, and divided in western Wyoming. The much harsher Santa Fé Trail stretched 900 miles southwest across the Great Plains. All of the trails crossed Indian Territory and, to greater or lesser extent, Mexican possessions as well.

19. Fruits of Manifest Destiny
Continental Expansion
1840s - slavery moved to center stage of American politics because of territorial expansion.
Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821.
The northern frontier of Mexico was California, New Mexico, and Texas.
Slavery moved to the center of national politics in the 1840s because of territorial expansion. By the 1840s, nearly all land east of the Mississippi was in white hands, and economic crisis pushed many settlers west. Several thousand traveled nearly 2,000 miles to Oregon in the far northwest. During the 1840s, the United States and Great Britain jointly administered Oregon. Nearby Utah was part of Mexico. But national boundaries mattered little to Americans who settled these regions. The idea that Americans had a divine mission to settle the continent, known by the end of the 1840s as “manifest destiny,” intensified in these years.
America’s acquisition of part of Mexico directly raised the issue of slavery. When Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, it was almost as large as the United States in territory and population.

20. The Santa Fé Trade
After independence, Mexico welcomed American trade along Santa Fé Trail.
American trappers and traders assimilated into local population.
Society of mixed race and culture was typical of early frontier.
Profits were high.

21. A watercolor of a scene on a ranch near Monterey

22. Map 13.1 The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–1840s

23. Texas: From Mexican Province to U.S. State
MAP 14.4 Texas: From Mexican Province to U.S. State
In the space of twenty years, Texas changed shape three times. Initially part of the Mexican province of Coahuila y Tejas, it became the Republic of Texas in 1836, following the Texas Revolt, and was annexed to the United States in that form in Finally, in the Compromise of 1850 following the Mexican-American War, it took its present shape.

24. Mexican Texas
In Texas, multiethnic settlements revolved around the presidio, mission, and rancho.
Vaqueros, often mixed-race mestizos, were model for American “cowboy.”
Mexican authorities sought American settlement as way of providing buffer between its heartland and the Comanche.

25. Americans in Texas
Starting in 1821, Mexico granted land to American settlers.
Stephen F. Austin promoted American emigration.
Generally, slaveholders came to grow cotton in their self-contained enclaves.
Americans viewed Texas as extension of Mississippi and Louisiana.

26. Americans in Texas (cont’d)
For brief period Texas was big enough to hold Comanche, Mexican, and American communities:
Mexicans maintained ranches and missions in the South.
Americans farmed eastern and south central sections.
Comanche held their hunting grounds on the frontier.

27. Commanche Village Life
Painted by George Catlin in about 1834, this scene, Commanche Village Life, shows how the everyday life of the Comanches was tied to buffalo. The women in the foreground are scraping buffalo hide, and buffalo meat can be seen drying on racks. The men and boys may be planning their next buffalo hunt.

28. Mexican Frontier: New Mexico & California
Indians vastly outnumbered non-Indians in California in 1821.
The Texas Revolt
First part of Mexico to be settled by significant numbers of Americans was Texas.
Moses Austin
But Mexico’s northern provinces of California, New Mexico, and Texas were remote, sparsely populated, and bordered by Indian country. In New Mexico and California, a minority of Mexican landowners and church officials lived among larger Indian populations, sometimes compelling them to work. By the 1840s, California was linked to the United States by American ships that traded in the region.
Texas was the first region of northern Mexico to be settled by significant numbers of Americans. The Mexican government, hoping to develop the area, accepted an offer by Moses Austin to colonize the area with Americans. He received a large land grant in 1820 which his son, Stephen Austin, sold to American settlers.

29. Texans and Tejanos Alliance between Americans and Tejanos
Tejano elite welcomed U.S. entrepreneurs and shared power with them.
The Mexican state was unstable and the conservative centralists decided Americans had too much power and tried to crack down on local autonomy.

30. The Texas Revolt
Alarmed that its grip on the area was weakening, in 1830 the Mexican government annulled existing land contracts and barred future emigration from the United States.
Stephen Austin led call from American settlers demanding greater autonomy within Mexico.
General Santa Anna sent an army in 1835 to impose central authority.
By 1830, when Americans outnumbered the Tejanos, the Mexican and Indian peoples of the area, Mexico annulled existing land contracts and prohibited future American immigration to Texas. Led by Stephen Austin, American settlers demanded autonomy within Mexico. Slavery exacerbated tensions. Mexico had abolished slavery, but in Texas local authorities had allowed American settlers to bring slaves with them.
Mexico’s ruler, General Antonio de Lopez Santa Ana, sent an army in 1835 to impose the central government’s authority on the region, causing rebels there to form a provisional government and call for Texan independence.

31. Texans and Tejanos
Tejanos played key roles in the Texas Revolution, though once independence was secured they were excluded from positions of power.
Frontier pattern of dealing with native people was:
first, blending with them
second, occupying the land
third, excluding or removing native settlers.

32. The Texas Revolt
Rebels formed a provisional government that soon called for Texan independence.
Texas desired annexation by the United States, but neither Jackson nor Van Buren took action because of political concerns about adding another slave state.
In March 1836, Santa Ana’s army stormed the Alamo in San Antonio and killed all its defenders. But soon forces under Sam Houston routed Santa Ana’s army and forced him to recognize Texan independence. In 1837, the Texas government called for the U.S. to annex the territory, but President Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren rejected the offer, fearing addition of a slave state would spark sectional conflict.

33. Americans in Texas (cont’d)
War broke out in 1835.
The Mexican army overwhelmed Americans at the Alamo.
At San Jacinto River, Sam Houston’s victory led to a treaty granting independence to Republic of Texas and fixing southern boundary at the Rio Grande.

34. Americans in Texas (cont’d)
BUT the Mexican Congress refused to ratify the treaty and continued to claim Texas.

35. Republic of Texas
The Texas Republic developed after the United States rejected admission for fear of rekindling slave state/free state conflicts.
Within the republic, conflicts between Anglos and Tejanos grew as Americans assumed themselves to be racially and culturally superior.

36. Election of 1844
James Polk, a Tennessee slaveholder and friend of Jackson, received the Democratic nomination instead of Van Buren.
Supported Texas annexation
Supported “reoccupation” of all of Oregon
Clay received the Whig nomination, but at the Democratic convention southerners bent on annexation dumped Van Buren for James K. Polk, a former Tennessee governor and ardent annexationist. Polk was a slave holder. The Democrats’ platform called for the “reannexation” of Texas, which wrongly implied that Texas had been part of the Louisiana Purchase, and the reoccupation of Oregon.
Polk narrowly defeated Clay in the election. If Liberty Party candidate James G. Birney had not received 16,000 votes in New York, Clay would have been elected. In March 1845, right after Polk’s inauguration, Congress annexed Texas.

37. Polk Elected 1844
President Tyler raised issue of annexation in early with hopes of re-election—debate over the ramifications of annexation ensued.
Polk won 1844 election after calling for “the re-occupation of Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable period.”

38. 1844 Election
1844 election was widely interpreted as a mandate for expansion.
Texas became a state in 1845, becoming twenty-eighth state of the Union and fifteenth slave state.

39. The plaza in San Antonio not long after the
United States annexed Texas in 1845

40. The Road to War Polk had four clearly defined goals:
Reduce the tariff
Reestablish the Independent Treasury system
Settle the Oregon dispute
Bring California into the Union
Polk initiated war with Mexico to get California.
Polk had four goals: reduce the tariff, reestablish the Independent Treasury, settle the Oregon dispute, and bring California into the United States. Congress enacted the first two goals, and the third was secured through an agreement with Britain dividing up Oregon. Polk offered to buy California from Mexico, but Mexico refused to negotiate. By early 1846, Polk planned for war. In April, U.S. soldiers sent into the disputed area between Texas and Mexico inevitably came to blows with Mexican troops. Polk claimed that Mexicans had shed blood on American soil, and he called for a declaration of war.

41. The Mexican-American War

42. Origins of the War
James K. Polk was committed to expanding U.S. territory.
He peacefully settled the Oregon controversy.
Increasing tensions with Mexico led that nation to break diplomatic relations with the United States.

43. Origins of the War (cont'd)
Polk wanted to extend U.S. territory to the Pacific and encouraged takeover of California.
A border dispute led Polk to order troops to defend Texas.

44. Mr. Polk’s War
The dispute with Mexico erupted into war after that nation refused to receive Polk’s envoy and a brief skirmish occurred on Texas-Mexico border.
The war was politically divisive, particularly among opponents of slavery and northerners.
Mass and individual protests occurred.

45. MAP 14.5 The Mexican-American War, 1846–48
The Mexican-American War began with an advance by U.S. forces into the disputed area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande in Texas. The war’s major battles were fought by General Zachary Taylor in northern Mexico and General Winfield Scott in Veracruz and Mexico City. Meanwhile Colonel Stephen Kearny secured New Mexico and, with the help of the U.S. Navy and John C. Frémont’s troops, California.

46. Map 13.2 The Mexican War, 1846–1848

47. General Winfield Scott’s amphibious attack on the Mexican coastal city of Veracruz in March 1847
General Winfield Scott’s amphibious attack on the Mexican coastal city of Veracruz in March 1847 was greeted with wide popular acclaim in the United States. It was the first successful amphibious attack in U.S. military history. Popular interest in the battles of the Mexican-American War was fed by illustrations such as this in newspapers and magazines.

48. Mr. Polk’s War (cont’d)
Polk planned the war strategy, sending troops into northern provinces of Mexico, conquering New Mexico and California. Victories in Mexico came hard.
Fierce Mexican resistance was met by American brutality against Mexican citizens.
When General Scott captured Mexico City, war ended.

49. Mr. Polk’s War (cont'd)
Polk had ambitions of taking more territory, but strong opposition made him accept the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

50. MAP 14.6 Territory Added, 1845–53 MAP 14.6 Territory Added, 1845–53
James K. Polk was elected president in 1844 on an expansionist platform. He lived up to most of his campaign rhetoric by gaining the Oregon Country (to the 49th parallel) peacefully from the British, Texas by the presidential action of his predecessor John Tyler, and present-day California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and part of Colorado by war with Mexico. In the short space of three years, the size of the United States grew by 70 percent. In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase added another 30,000 square miles.

51. The Press and Popular War Enthusiasm
Mexican-American War was first conflict featuring regular, on-the-scene reporting made possible by the telegraph.
War reports united Americans into a temporary, emotional community.
Popular war heroes like Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott later became presidential candidates.

52. War News from Mexico
Are you surprised at the extent of political commentary in this painting? Are paintings an appropriate media for political opinion?
War News from Mexico
SOURCE: Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, Oil on canvas. Manovgian Foundation on loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. © Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

53. The War and Its Critics
Although majority of Americans supported the war, vocal minority feared the only aim of war was to acquire new land for expansion of slavery.
Henry David Thoreau wrote “On Civil Disobedience.”
Abraham Lincoln questioned Polk’s right to declare war.
The Mexican War was the first American war fought largely on foreign soil, and most Americans, believing America was a selfless guardian of freedom, supported the war. But a large minority of northerners opposed it, believing that the Polk administration hoped to secure new lands for slavery and slave states. Henry David Thoreau was jailed in Massachusetts for refusing to pay taxes, and he wrote an essay, “On Civil Disobedience,” defending his actions, which later inspired Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Abraham Lincoln, a Whig representative from Illinois, also opposed the war.

54. Combat in Mexico Combat took place on three fronts:
California and the “bear flag republic”
General Stephen Kearney and Santa Fe
Winfield Scott and central Mexico
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848
In June 1846, American rebels in California declared independence from Mexico, and American troops soon occupied that region. American forces secured New Mexico at the same time. Most of the fighting occurred in central Mexico. In early 1847, after defeating Santa Ana’s army at Buena Vista, and following Mexico’s refusal to negotiate, American forces marched to and captured the capital, Mexico City. In February, 1848, the two governments agreed to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which confirmed the annexation of Texas and ceded California and present-day New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah to the United States. The United States paid Mexico $15 million for the land. This established the nation’s present territorial boundaries, except for the Gadsden Purchase, bought from Mexico in 1852, and Alaska, purchased from Russia in 1867.

55. Race and Manifest Destiny
A region that for centuries had been united was suddenly split in two, dividing families and severing trade routes.
“Male citizens” were guaranteed American rights.
Indians were described as “savage tribes.”
Territorial expansion gave a new stridency to ideas about racial superiority.
America’s absorption of one-third of Mexico’s total territory split in two a region that had been united for centuries, and incorporated into the nation nearly 100,000 Spanish-speaking Mexicans and even more Indians. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed male citizens their liberty, property, and all the rights of American citizens, while regarding Indians only as “savage tribes.” Manifest destiny invigorated American notions of white racial supremacy. In the 1840s, territorial expansion began to be seen as showing the inherent superiority of the “Anglo-Saxon race,” a mythical identity defined by its opposites: blacks, Indians, Hispanics, and Catholics. Nineteenth-century concepts of race drew together ideas about color, culture, national origin, class, and religion. American writers linked American freedom and the allegedly natural freedom-loving characteristics of Anglo-Saxon Protestants. For many Americans, Texas’s annexation and the conquest of Mexico were victories of civilization, progress, and liberty over the Catholic Church’s tyranny and the natural incapacity of “mongrel races.” Some opposed expansion because they feared the nation could not assimilate the large non-white Catholic population, whom they believed unfit for citizenship in a republic.

56. Redefining Race
Mexico had abolished slavery and declared persons of Spanish, Indian, and African origin equal before the law.
Texas constitution adopted after independence not only included protections for slavery
but denied civil rights to Indians and persons of African origin.
American racial relations harmed many in the new American territories. While Mexico had abolished slavery, Texas gave it constitutional protections and denied civil rights to Indians and blacks. In Texas, only whites could buy land, and free blacks were barred from entering the state. Residents of Indian and Mexican origin in New Mexico were held to be “too Mexican” to be allowed democratic self-government; the territory was not allowed to become a state until it had enough whites, in 1912.

57. Gold-Rush California
California’s gold-rush population was incredibly diverse.
Explosive population growth and fierce competition for gold worsened conflicts among California’s many racial and ethnic groups.
California had few non-Indians and Americans in the 1840s until 1848, when gold was discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. A gold craze spread throughout the world, and tens of thousands of migrants swarmed to California by sea and land. By 1860, California’s non-Indian population had risen to 360,000. The gold-rush population was very diverse, with migrants coming from Mexico, South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, including 25,000 Chinese who signed long-term labor contracts and were hired out to mining, railroad, and other employers. San Francisco became a boomtown and one of the world’s most racially and ethnically diverse cities.
The transition from surface mining to underground mining required large capital investments and exacerbated conflicts between diverse California gold-hunting groups. Occasionally vigilantes seized San Francisco, established courts, and executed accused criminals. White miners organized extralegal groups that expelled “foreign miners,” such as Mexicans, Chileans, Chinese, French, and American Indians.

58. Map 13.4 Continental Expansion through 1853

59. Russian-Californio Trade
In 1841 Russia gave up Ft. Ross and abandoned the California trade.

60. Fruits of Manifest Destiny
California and the Boundaries of Freedom
The boundaries of freedom in California were tightly drawn.
Indians, Asians, and blacks were all prohibited basic rights.
Thousands of Indian children, declared orphans, were bought and sold as slaves.
While California long symbolized opportunity, for many the state restricted freedoms. The state constitution limited rights to vote and testify in court to whites. The Indian population was devastated by the miners, ranchers, and vigilantes of the gold rush era, and the state government paid bounties to private militias to attack the natives. Although California was a free state, thousands of Indian children were bought and sold into slavery. A simultaneous gold rush occurred in Australia in the 1850s, bringing many of the same dynamics, and Australian whites even modeled their racial policies on those of California.

61. Gold! January 1848 discovery Few miners struck it rich
Triggered massive gold rush of white Americans, Mexicans, Chinese
Few miners struck it rich
Entry port and supply point, San Francisco grew from village of 1,000 in 1848 to city of 35,000 in 1850.

62. Gold! (cont'd) California’s white population grew by nearly tenfold.
California gained enough residents to become a state in 1850.

63. FIGURE 14.2 Where the Forty-Niners Came From
Americans drawn to the California gold rush of 1849 encountered a more diverse population than most had previously known. Nearly as novel to them as the 20 percent from foreign countries was the regional variety from within the United States itself.
Where the Forty-Niners Came From

64. Gold! (cont'd) Chinese first came to California in 1849.
They were often forced off their claims.
The Chinese worked as servants and in other menial occupations.
Shunned by whites, Chinese retreated to “Chinatown” ethnic enclaves, especially in San Francisco.

65. Chinese first came to California in 1849 attracted by the gold rush.
Chinese first came to California in 1849 attracted by the gold rush. Frequently, however, they were forced off their claims by intolerant whites. Rather than enjoy an equal chance in the goldfields, they were often forced to work as servants or in other menial occupations.

66. Mining Camps
Mining camps were generally miserable, squalid, temporary communities where racism was widespread.
Most of the miners were young, unmarried, and unsuccessful.

67. Mining Camps
Much more reliable way to earn wealth was to supply the miners.
Levi Strauss (Blue jeans, etc., profited from supplying miners

68. Mining Camps
In the quest for gold, California Indians and Hispanics were shoved aside.

69. MAP 14.7 California in the Gold Rush
This map shows the major gold camps along the mother lode in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Gold seekers reached the camps by crossing the Sierra Nevada near Placerville on the Overland Trail or by sea via San Francisco. The main area of Spanish-Mexican settlement, the coastal region between Monterey and Los Angeles, was remote from the goldfields.
SOURCE: From The Historical Atlas of California by Warren A. Beck and Ynez Hasse. Copyright 1974 University of Oklahoma Press. Reprinted by permission.

70. A Dose of Arsenic The Wilmot Proviso
In 1846 Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed a resolution prohibiting slavery in all territory acquired from Mexico.
In 1848 opponents of slavery’s expansion organized the Free Soil Party.
The acquisition of the vast Mexico territory raised a fatal issue that would disrupt America’s political system and drive the nation to Civil War—whether slavery would expand into the West. Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that if the United States took part of Mexico, “it will be as the man who swallows arsenic Mexico will poison us.” Events proved him right.
Before 1846, the status of slavery throughout the United States had been settled by state law or the Missouri Compromise. But the conquest of Mexico reignited the question of slavery’s expansion. In 1846, Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot introduced a bill prohibiting slavery from the territory acquired from Mexico. Party lines collapsed. Every northerner, Whig and Democrat, supported the Wilmot Proviso. Almost all southerners opposed it. The measure passed the House, which had a northern majority, but stalled in the Senate, which was evenly split between free and slave states. In 1848, opponents of slave expansion organized the Free Soil Party and nominated Martin Van Buren for president. Democrats that year nominated Lewis Cass, who suggested that settlers in new territories be allowed to vote on the slavery question (an idea later called “popular sovereignty”). Van Buren received 14 percent of the North’s total votes. Whig candidate and Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor won the presidential election. But the Free Soil Party made anti-slavery a political force to be reckoned with.

71. The Wilmot Proviso
Northern Whigs opposed expansion on antislavery grounds.
The Wilmot Proviso caused a controversy by seeking to ban slavery in the new territories.
A bitter debate on the Proviso raised serious sectional issues and caused the first breakdown of the national party system.

72. The Free Soil Party
The Free Soil position had a popular appeal in the North because it would limit southern power in the federal government.
The Free Soil platform of 1848 called for barring slavery from western territories and for the federal government to provide homesteads to settlers without cost.
The Free Soil position was far more popular in the North than abolitionist demands for immediate emancipation and equal rights for blacks. While Congress had no constitutional power to abolish slavery within a state, precedents existed for keeping territories free of slavery, such as the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise. Many in the North long resented what they saw as southern domination of the federal government. Preventing the creation of new slave states appealed to those who wanted policies, such as the tariff and government aid to internal improvements, which most southern political leaders opposed.
For many northerners, western territories promised economic advancement and prosperity. Economic crisis in the 1840s reinforced the old link between land ownership and economic freedom. Some in the labor movement saw access to western land as a means of fighting unemployment and low wages in the East. If slave plantations took up western lands, free northern migration would be blocked. “Free soil” had a double meaning. The Free Soil platform of 1848 called on the federal government to both bar slavery from western lands and offer free homesteads to settlers in the new territories. Unlike abolitionism, “free soil” did not challenge widespread northern racism.

73. A Dose of Arsenic The Free Soil Appeal
Many southerners considered singling out slavery as the one form of property barred from the West to be an affront to them and their way of life.
Admission of new free states would overturn the delicate political balance between the sections and make the South a permanent minority.
To many in the white south, barring slavery from the territories seemed a violation of the equal rights of southerners, some of whom had fought and died in the Mexican War. They complained that the federal government had no right to keep them from bringing one kind of property—their human property—into the territories. With older slave states suffering from soil exhaustion, southern leaders believed that slavery needed to expand to survive. They opposed the admission of new free states that would overturn the balance between sections in Congress and make free states a permanent majority.

74. The Politics of Manifest Destiny
Between 1845 and 1848, the U.S. expanded by 70 percent.
These new territories led directly to sectional debates and brought slavery to the forefront of national politics.

75. Campaign poster
In 1848, the Whigs nominated a hero of the Mexican-American War, General Zachary Taylor, who ran on his military exploits. In this campaign poster, every letter of Taylor’s name is decorated with scenes from the recent war, which had seized the popular imagination in a way no previous conflict had done.

76. The Free-Soil Movement
The growth of the Liberty Party indicated northern public opinion was shifting toward an antislavery position.
The Free-Soil Party offered a compromise for northern voters by focusing on stopping the spread of slavery.

77. The Free-Soil Movement
Free-Soilers appealed to northern values of freedom and individualism, as well as racism, for they would ban all African Americans from the new territories.

78. The Election of 1848 (cont'd)
In election of 1848, candidates had to discuss their views on the slavery expansion.
Taylor won the election.
Taylor died in office.

79. Conclusion

80. Territorial Expansion of the United States, 1830s-1850s
The national expansion of the 1840s seemed to confirm the promise of manifest destiny but, as the election of 1848 revealed, also revealed political problems that, unresolved, would lead to civil war. Expansion, rather than uniting the nation, nearly destroyed the one community all Americans shared in the federal Union.