US_and_West_2

CIVIL WAR AND LATE
19TH CENTURY
1861 to 1865 and afterwards
The American Civil War
 1861 to 1865.
 Seven Southern slave states declare secession and formed
the Confederate States of America ("Confederacy" or the
"South").
 The states that remained in the Union were known as the "
Union" or the "North".
 Origin: issue of slavery, especially in the western territories.
 No foreign powers intervene.
 600,000 soldiers dead. South's infrastructure much damage.
Confederacy collapse, slavery is abolished, and the
Reconstruction process starts.
 Consequences are still visible today.
 Abraham Lincoln, President of the Union from 1861 to 1865,
when he was assassinated.
The Confederate States of
America
 1861 to 1865
 Capital: Montgomery,
Alabama and Richmond,
Virginia.
 President: Jefferson Davis.
 Vice-President: Alexander
Stephens.
 States: Republic of South
Carolina, Republic of
Mississippi, Republic of
Florida, Alabama Republic,
Republic of Georgia,
Republic of Louisiana and
the Republic of Texas.
Reconstruction (1863-1877)
The years following the Civil War saw the intense and controversial days when
the nation had to make an effort to accept and acknowledge the changes,
especially conflictive was the transformation of those Southern States which had
gathered in the Confederacy. Ulysses S. Grant, General of the Army and one of
the main leaders of the Union during the Civil War became President of the
United States in 1869. The Panic of 1873, a strong economic crisis was a heavy
burden during his second term. Rutherford B. Hayes became the new president
in 1877.
Westward expansion
 After the Civil War.
 Reconstruction finished.
 Again looking to the West.
Westward the Course of Empire Takes
Its Way (1861)
Emanuel Leutze
The Land
 East Coast (Europeans)
 True America – West of the Appalachians,
even West of the Mississippi River (it was
later known as the Wild West, but mainly
after Civil War)
 Open land after the Treaty of Paris, the
Lousiana Purchase, Florida taken by
Andrew Jackson, Texas Independence
and Mexican War and the rest of the
process that I already explained.
The People
 Americans are restless (mobility)
 1850 (majority of the people are under
30)
 American identity is linked to attributes
such as individualism and self-
sufficiency. There we find the source for
understanding the pioneers, their
wagons and log cabins.
 Families, Mormons, entrepreneurs,
adventurers, businessmen, artists…
Reasons
 Farming (squatters) (1830s-1840s)
 Paid for land improvements in four years.
 The Homstead Act (1862). Needed to be 21 years
old and they would give you 160 free acres.
 Gold and Silver Mining:
California Gold Rush (1846), Comstoack Load (silver) in Virginia
City, Nevada (1859), Black Hills in Colorado (1870s)
 Other: religion, business, land
speculation, health.
Transportation
 Clipper ship (600 dollars per person). You
had to go around Cape Horn. It would
usually take more than five or six
months.
 Wagon trails (600 dollars for four
people). Probably, around 5-6 months
again. 100 miles per week. The itinerary
was through the prairies, followingthe
trails, right to Oregon and California.
 Mormons were a good example.
Willie and Martin handcart tragedy
 One of these companies, under James G. Willie, left Iowa City on July 15, crossed Iowa to
Florence (Omaha), Nebraska, then, after a week in Florence, headed out onto the plains. The last
company, under Edward Martin, departed Florence on August 25. Three independent wagon
companies, carrying 390 more immigrants, also started late.
 (…)
 Two weeks later, one of the earliest blizzards on record struck just as both the handcart
companies and the independent wagon companies were entering the Rocky Mountains in central
Wyoming. After several days of being lashed by the fierce blizzard, people in the exposed
handcart companies began to die.
 (…)
 Grant's rescue party found the Willie Company on October 21-in a blinding snowstorm one day
after they had run out of food. But the worst still lay ahead, when, after a day of rest and
replenishment, the company had to struggle over the long and steep eastern approach to South
Pass in the teeth of a northerly gale. Beyond the pass, the company, now amply fed and free to
climb aboard empty supply wagons as they became available, moved quickly, arriving in Salt
Lake City on November 9. Of the 404 still with the company, 68 died and many others suffered
from severe frostbite and near starvation.
 (…)
 But now warmed and fed, with those unable to walk riding in the wagons, the company moved
rapidly on. The Martin Company, in a train of 104 wagons, finally arrived in Salt Lake City on
November 30. Out of 576, at least 145 had died and, like the Willie Company, many were
severely afflicted by frostbite and starvation.
Howard A. Christy “Handcart Companies”
The Trails
 Santa Fe Trail (from Independence, Missouri to Santa
Fe)
 Oregon Trail (from Independence, Missouri to Oregon

Territory)
 Mormon Trail (from Nauvoo, Missouri to Utah Valley,

or from Florence, Iowa, then Winter Quarters)
 These trails saw many families and individuals moving West

and they were the reason why the country entered war for
territories such as Utah, New Mexico or California.
Along the Santa Fe Trail
 Cowboy Song. It
was recorded by
John Lomax.
 This is The Sons
of Pioneers
(1963)
 Glenn Miller did
also make a very
famous cover
 Angels come to paint the desert nightly
While the moon is gleaming brightly
Stardust scattered all along the highway

On a rainbow colored skyway
Beside you I'm riding every hill and dale

While shadows hide you just like a pretty purple veil
Thereby hangs a tail.
I've found you and the mountains that surround you

Are the walls I built around you
[Instrumental]
I've found you and the mountains that surround you

Are the walls I built around you
Westward expansion: Oregon County
 Oregon Country (British: Columbia District, now part of

Canada’s British Columbia, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, parts of
Montana and Wyoming)
- Occupied by British and French Canadian fur traders from before 1810
- American settlers from the mid-1830s
- Coastal areas north frequented by ships from all nations.
- Claimed by England, Spain, Russia and USA (Lewis & Clark). Spain and
Russia, no interest. English and USA, conflict.
- By 1844: Henry Clay (Whig), James K. Polk (Democrat) elections and
Oregon a pretty big issue.
The Oregon Treaty of 1846 establishes the British-American boundary at

the 49th parallel.
It became an important destination for those immigrants looking

success in their dreams about the American West.
Westward Expansion: Homestead Act
 United States federal laws giving ownership (cheap or just for

free) of land ("homestead“).
 160 acres (65 hectares, or one-quarter section) of unappropriated
federal land within the boundaries of the public land states.
 First of the acts, that of 1862, was signed into law by Abraham
Lincoln.
 Several additional laws were enacted in the latter half of the 19th
and early 20th centuries (the Southern Homestead Act of
1866, the Timber Culture Act of 1873, the Kincaid
Amendment of 1904, the Enlarged Homestead Act in 1909 or
the national Stock-Raising Homestead Act in 1916)
 All of them gave a reason for many people to move West in
search of a future that was officially bound. On the other side, the
Federal Government was making sure that those territories would
be settled.
The Theory
 The American Frontier and the Frontier Thesis.
 Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932).
Professor at Wisconsin and Harvard.
 “The Significance of the Frontier in American
History”
 Moving West and changing the frontier line
was the main element in the shaping of
American democracy and American character
from the colonial period to the year 1890
when the frontier was said to be closed (based
on US Census 1890).
The Theory
 Evolutionary model.
 The West, and not the East, as the place where
the distinctive American character emerges.
 Idea of conquering: taming the Wild,
individualism, settlement, the idea of civilization
and wilderness (where the real and unique
American character was built)
 Turner’s frontier thesis influenced popular
histories, movies, novels… that shaped the idea
of the West that we inherited.
 Icon of what the West meant.
The Theory: Criticism
 Ignoring gender, race and class
 No interest in victims, it is just a story for winners.
 Exceptionalism, colonialism, imperialism. Minority
group oppression.
 New Western History (2nd half of the 20th century)
with scholars such as Richard White and Patricia
Nelson Limerick: they criticized the abscence of
certain angles and perspectives (ethnicity,
directions, the West as land more than as ideal, the
continuity, why did he stop in 1890?...)
 Native Americans.
 The closing…
Manifest Destiny
 American settlers were destined to expansion. It was their
destiny, they have a mission (to redeem and remake, in a way)
and there was a strong belief in the specialty of their enterprise.
 It was contested and rejected from the very beginning, but it was
also widely used as the rhetorical backup for the acquisition of
land and the justification of certain conflicts.
 There wasn’t any closed or fixed definition for it. It was always a
flexible and general notion with no set of principles, either written
or acknowledged. This gave place to a variety of meanings and
interpretations, not all of them compatible but many always being
based on idealization, exceptionalism and nationalism.
 Moral overtones.
 XVII-XVIII: we already find here the seed for these ideas on the
works by people such as John Winthrop (“City upon a Hill”) or
Thomas Paine.
Trails
 Book published in 1991
 The movement was coming from before
 From the preface: “Perhaps most important, the New Western
History offers a more balanced view of the western past. It
includes failure as well as success; defeat as well as victory;
sympathy, grace, villainy, and despair as well as danger,
courage, and heroism; women as well as men; varied ethnic
groups and their differing perspectives as well as white Anglo-
saxon Protestants; an environment that is limiting, interactive,
and sometimes ruined as well as mastered and made to bloom; a
parochial economy alternately fueled and abandoned by an
interlocking national and world order; and, finally, a regional
identity as well as a frontier ethic. Frederick Jackson Turner,
father of the frontier thesis, comes in for hard criticism for having
bequeathed what many historians regard as an interpretative
straitjacket” (xi).
Manifest Destiny
 John O’Sullivan coined the term (1839-1845) in
a couple articles.
 It was “our manifest destiny to overspread the
continent allotted by Providence for the free
development of our yearly multiplying
millions” (in relation to the annexation of
Texas).
 Justification of territorial expansion.
 Native Americans: removal and consequences.
 Essence: Monroe Doctrine, the treaties, Oregon
territory or Homstead Act.
American Progress by John Gast (circa
1872)
MAPS AND
PROTAGONISTS
From the 13th Colonies to Coming of

WWI
Main characters
 Expeditions.
 Before, there were Spaniards coming North, buckaroos, fur
traders, adventurers and even religious groups moving to the
West.
 John Wesley Powell.

US Soldier and geologist, professor at Illinois State. Famous for
the 1869 Powell Geographic Expedition: three months traveling
through the rivers trip Green and Colorado and first passages
through Grand Canyon
 Tradition:
 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (Corps of Discovery
Expedition). First American expedition to cross the West (from
Saint Louis to the Mississippi River and then westward through to
the pacifc coast). As soon as 1804 1806
Consequences-Conclusions
 True and myth.
 The shaping of identity, the creation of a
mythology and thus of beliefs. Nationalism,
patriotism.
 Ethnicity: racial issues, slavery, mexican-
americans, borders.
 East-West: mythic and now, difference, distance,
conflict. The Federal Government and the States.
 Landscape: rural and urban. Utopia and dystopia.
 Individualism vs. community

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CIVIL WAR AND LATE

 Oregon Trail (from Independence, Missouri to Oregon

 Mormon Trail (from Nauvoo, Missouri to Utah Valley,

 These trails saw many families and individuals moving West

Stardust scattered all along the highway

Beside you I'm riding every hill and dale

I've found you and the mountains that surround you

I've found you and the mountains that surround you

 Oregon Country (British: Columbia District, now part of

The Oregon Treaty of 1846 establishes the British-American boundary at

It became an important destination for those immigrants looking

 United States federal laws giving ownership (cheap or just for

From the 13th Colonies to Coming of

 John Wesley Powell.

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