Eastern American Correspondents and the Othering of Mexicans in the Nineteenth-Century Popular Press

EASTERN AMERICAN CORRESPONDENTS AND THE OTHERING OF MEXICANS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY POPULAR PRESS MICHAEL J. FUHLHAGE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION. CHAPEL HILL 2010 Approved by: Frank E. Fee Jr., Ph. D. Lucila Vargas, Ph. D. Barbara Friedman, Ph. D. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Ph. D. William L. Barney, Ph. D. © 2010 Michael J. Fuhlhage ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT American correspondents from distinct regions of the United States brought the cultural strains of those regions with them to areas of the West long settled by Mexicans. This dissertation demonstrates the role these distinct cultural strains played in generating stereotypical notions about Mexicans that reflected American settlers’ material needs — rooted in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny — and conditioned correspondents to project the inverse of their core values onto Mexicans. As Mexicans from distinct regions of the Southwest were racialized and stripped of their individual distinctiveness in the white Anglo-Saxon mind, regionally specific othering that played a part in the process of Latinos’ subordination merged into nationally known stereotypes that have prevailed since the turn of the twentieth century. This dissertation uses the methods of cultural history to examine the ways correspondents’ religious and political beliefs, first-hand and second-hand knowledge about Mexicans, and personal trajectories combined to generate media images that othered Mexicans. This othering during the nineteenth century laid the foundations for stereotyping about Latinos in the twentieth century. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is the harvest of many hands. My professors, the administrative staff, and my fellow students in the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Departments of History and Anthropology provided a rich environment in which to bring this project to fruition. My classmates Erin Coyle, Lynette Holman, Carolyn Edy, and Dean C. Smith provided an endless stream of encouragement. Kenan Professor Donald L. Shaw has been a mentor and friend who encouraged me to apply agenda-setting theory to historical study. William Lachicotte and my fellow students in his Cultural Production/Reproduction seminar in UNC’s Anthropology Department were instrumental in helping me grasp the theoretical work of Pierre Bourdieu, while Louise McReynolds of the History Department ushered me into the world of cultural history. My chair, Frank Fee, guided me in the best spirit of his adviser, Peggy Blanchard, encouraging me, prodding me to polish the writing, sending me back to the stacks for more sources to corroborate my interpretation, and occasionally chiding in his direct but gentle way. He has been a thorough teacher and unfailing friend and all anyone could hope for in a dissertation director. I am also grateful for Barbara Friedman’s input. She kept me fired up about history, shared my excitement about my finds in the archives, and never failed to encourage me about the value of my research. Lucila Vargas provided deft direction on the connections between identity, culture, and communication that allowed me to build theoretical heft into a largely narrative project. Fitz Brundage helped me grasp the broader historical context surrounding the construction of Latino identity in the broader scheme of American race relations and provided a great model for historical scholarship. William Barney contributed greatly to my understanding of sectional American thinking about politics, economics, and race in the antebellum period. To all on my committee, I owe a debt of gratitude. Grounded in primary research as this dissertation is, I would have been lost without the help of several archivists and other scholars who helped me find my way at a number of research libraries across the United States. George Miles, curator of the Western Americana Collection at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, shared with me his insights on the importance of the work of Timothy Flint and James Ohio Pattie. Ben Huseman, of the Special Collections staff at the University of Texas at Arlington, was most helpful in my quest to understand the mindset of George Wilkins Kendall. Ezra Greenspan, with whom I crossed paths in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, knows more about nineteenth-century print culture than anyone I know. He provided valuable advice about authors and publishers whose papers are housed in the Houghton manuscript collections. This project benefited from a number of monetary benefactors. I would like to thank the Triad Foundation and the Roy H. Park family, whose generosity made possible my study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Additional support that went directly into primary dissertation research came from the kind sponsors of the Joseph L. Morrison Award for Excellence in Mass Communication History, the William Francis Clingman Jr. Ethics Award, and the Margaret Blanchard Dissertation Support Award. Last, I owe thanks to my family and friends across the country for convincing me that I was indeed cut out for the academic life — as well as for providing sanctuary from it when needed. In particular, the Rev. Lisa Jo Bezner has indulged my many questions about denominational difference and the history of religion and thus provided invaluable help in understanding the influence of the varied strains of American Protestant belief on journalists’ interpretation of Mexican Catholic faith and culture. For her moral and spiritual support, I am indebted. Her friendship has never failed me. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………...1 II. LITERATURE REVIEW AND METHODS…………………………..…8 The Mexican West in the eyes of Eastern journalists……………………10 Informing the East about California during the Gold Rush ……….........17 Cultural approaches to journalism history……………………………….19 Cultural theory…………………………………………………………...23 Research questions and method……………………………………….....37 Time boundaries: two generations of sectional correspondents …….…..38 Evidence gathering and analysis ………………………………………...40 Occidental Others, Anglo writers, and the seeds of Mexican stereotypes………………………………………………......46 III. BACKGROUND: PREJUDICE, THE PRESS, AND SECTIONAL CULTURAL VALUES.…………………………………………………49 Print culture in the mid-nineteenth century……………………………...50 Race thinking, cultural and physical difference, and “othering”…….…..56 Sectional competition and Manifest Destiny………………………….....65 Ideology, conflict, and the communication system: Prejudice blossoms in print.…………………………………………………………………...75 Making the case for acquiring Mexican territory………………………..86 Sectionalism, Manifest Destiny, and print culture and the Mexican Image……………………………………………………………………..99 IV. EARLY NORTHERN CORRESPONDENTS: RICHARD HENRY DANA JR. AND W. W. H. DAVIS……………...102 Richard Henry Dana Jr.: Two Years Before the Mast………………….104 W. W. H. Davis, El Gringo, and the perfectibility of Mexicans..……...115 Dana and Davis: Parallel thinking on race, religion, rusticity, and government...………………………………………….…………..……144 V. LATE NORTHERN CORRESPONDENTS: BAYARD TAYLOR AND ALBERT DEANE RICHARDSON………………………...……148 Bayard Taylor: Genteel observer of Manifest Destiny……….………...150 Albert Deane Richardson: Abolitionism meets anti-Mexicanism….…..183 The Quaker and the Puritan: Explaining the late Northern correspondents .…...……………………………………………………211 VI. EARLY SOUTHERN CORRESPONDENTS: JOSIAH GREGG, GEORGE WILKINS KENDALL, AND J. D. B. DEBOW’s COMMERCIAL REVIEW…………………………………………......215 Josiah Gregg: Roving observer of the Santa Fe Trail………………......218 George Wilkins Kendall: Writer-warrior of the Borderlands……….....249 The construction of the Mexican imaginary in DeBow’s Review…….....274 Commerce and conquest: The logic of Gregg, Kendall, and DeBow......291 VII. LATE SOUTHERN CORRESPONDENTS: G. DOUGLAS BREWERTON, J. ROSS BROWNE, AND J. D. B. DEBOW’S COMMERCIAL REVIEW………………………………………………….....293 G. Douglas Brewerton: A Know-Nothing soldier’s view of Mexicans...294 J. Ross Browne: Capitalism’s advance scout in the mining regions...…320 DeBow’s Review during the late antebellum and early Reconstruction.355 Brewerton, Browne, and DeBow: Promoters of Southern capitalism.…367 VIII. CONCLUSION: INTERTEXTUALITY, CULTURAL IDENTITY, AND THE SCAFFOLDING OF MEXICAN OTHERING IN THE POPULAR PRESS………………………………………………………….……….369 Unearthing the prehistory of stereotypes about Mexicans……….…….374 Culture as reflector and director of the othering of Mexicans….………376 Cross-sectional and cross-generational intertextuality……...….………381 Directions for future research ...………………………………………..385 APPENDIX……………………………………………………………………………..388 REFERENCES ...………………………………………………………………………391 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Charles Ramírez Berg and Arthur G. Pettit, among other media scholars, have traced modern American stereotypes of Hispanics to the dawn of film at the turn of the twentieth century.1 But a look at what whites in the American Southwest wrote and said about Mexicans in the nineteenth-century mass media reveals a much earlier origin. By the time the first Kinetoscopes brought moving pictures to the American people, negative representations of Mexicans had been congealing into conventional wisdom for a half- century. It is posited here that Eastern correspondents on the trail of Anglo-American empire-building in the mid-nineteenth

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