Chapter 14: National Expansion, Sectional Division
Images
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Painting by Woodville "War News" 1848Click the thumbnail to view full-size image- Painting by Woodville "War News" 1848 Worksheet
As Richard Caton Woodville’s painting "War News" (1848) illustrates, newspapers served as a major source of information at the time of the Mexican-American War. In small towns, as the painting reveals, many Americans continued to receive information in town centers or markets, where a newspaper would be shared, often read aloud, and discussed. By 1850, there were over two thousand newspapers in the United States, with over two hundred dailies. This number is more remarkable when compared with the only two hundred newspapers available nationwide in 1800. Newspapers often were founded by one political party, and the reporting boldly privileged the view of that party. The Postal Acts of 1792 and 1794 granted cheap mailing rates for newspapers, which allowed news to travel to the hinterlands more readily. By the 1830s, in major cities young men on the streets sold daily newspapers for a penny, a marked change from the six cents previously charged. Big city newspapers, such as the New York Herald, took pains to be the first to get news from European ships just entering port, and in the 1840’s created an express service from Washington and New York that would beat the mails with the latest information. The Mexican-American War marked the first full use of the telegraph by major newspapers in New York and Philadelphia. What do you think was the impact of speedy news on the politics of the time?
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Picture of African-American minerClick the thumbnail to view full-size image- Picture of African-American miner Worksheet
In December 1848, Colonel Mason of the U.S. Army confirmed the existence of large pockets of gold in California, discovered the previous winter. He wrote President Polk that he had "no hesitation in saying there is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers than will pay the cost of the war with Mexico a hundred times over." Into the early months of 1849, newspapers printed stories of the mass emigration of fortune seekers, later known as "Forty-Niners." Among the migrants were four thousand African Americans. Some were slaves accompanying southern masters, but many were free men seeking their fortune. Like many of the white miners, they tended to be males with intentions of returning to their families with their newfound gains. (Consider that women formed less than ten percent of California’s population in 1850.) Former slaves also saw mining as an opportunity to find a way to buy relatives out of slavery. Letters miners wrote home revealed that gold-seekers did not leave the question of slavery behind; they debated the issue even as they crossed the plains. In an impassioned letter home, a miner from upstate New York, William Swain, described his anti-slavery feelings: "[T]hey may rest assured that not one foot of California will ever be the land of the slave. Freedom waves her banner here and that banner will never be replaced by the black banner of oppression. . . . Calhoun, Davis, and the host of Southerners may rave, but their peculiar institutions must and will wane before the frown of universal sentiment of mankind. . . ." Many miners opposed slavery for reasons that were not entirely altruistic, since slave-owning miners would possess an advantage over individual free miners. The illustration depicts a diverse group of miners in 1852. What does the picture tell you about labor in the gold fields?
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Lithograph of Campo Seco, Tuolumne County, California, 1853Click the thumbnail to view full-size image- Lithograph of Campo Seco, Tuolumne County, California, 1853 Worksheet
Hundreds of new towns and camps dotted the landscape as gold-seeking migrants entered California beginning in 1848. By the end of 1849, California’s population swelled by approximately 90,000 people – including those just arrived from China and Hawaii. 6,000 Mexicans also sought gold in California in the first year. By 1852, the largest ethnic minority was the Chinese, numbering 25,000. Towns bearing names such as "Chinese Camp" and "French Camp" indicated miners’ origins. Ethnic minorities often faced violence from competing white miners, and by 1850, they also faced discriminatory legislation. In 1850 a law taxing foreign miners required those who were not American citizens to pay $20 a month to work the fields; many Chinese and Mexican miners gave up prospecting as a result. An 1853 lithograph of Campo Seco and Quartz Mountain in Tuolumne County depicts a typical mining town; today the town, at one time located near Sonora, no longer exists. As the Chinese were driven out of mining, what would have motivated them to remain in California?
Additional Images
- Thomas Corwin: Against the Mexican War (1847).
- Timothy H. O'Sullivan: Constructing Telegraph Lines, April 1864 (1864)
- J.H. Bunnell: Abridged Catalogue and Manual of Telegraphy (1900).
- Samuel F. B. Morse: Colored Sketch of Railway Telegraph (ca. 1838).
- First telegraph message, 24 May 1844.
- Samuel F. B. Morse: Changes in Morse Code Notation (ca. 1830-1840).
- Simon Knaeble: General Taylor Storming Monterey
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