The Texas Moment: Breakaway Republics and Contested Sovereignty in North America, 1836-1846

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THE TEXAS MOMENT: BREAKAWAY REPUBLICS AND CONTESTED SOVEREIGNTY IN NORTH AMERICA, 1836-1846

A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

by Thomas W. Richards, Jr. December 2016

Examining Committee Members:

Andrew Isenberg, Advisory Chair, Department of History Travis Glassson, Department of History Jessica Roney, Department of History David Waldstreicher, External Member, CUNY Graduate School Rachel St. John, External Member, University of California-Davis

T hom as W. Richards, Jr.

ii ABSTRACT

Between 1845 and 1848, the United States doubled the size of its land holdings in

North America, as Texas, Oregon, California, New Mexico, and other western regions were placed under the umbrella of U.S. sovereignty. Echoing John L. O’Sullivan’s famous phrase, historians have deemed these acquisitions “Manifest Destiny,” and have assumed that U.S. expansion – whether for good or ill – was foreordained. Yet this understanding fundamentally fails to take into account the history of the decade prior to

1846, when Americans throughout the continent believed that it was more likely that the

United States would not expand beyond its borders. Examining five groups of Americans operating at the nations geographic and/or social margins, this dissertation argues that these groups hoped to achieve sovereignty outside of the United States. Nurtured by

Jacksonian rhetoric that celebrated local government and personal ambition, and wary of

– and at times running from – a United States mired in depression and uncertainty, these

Americans were, in effect, forming their own “breakaway republics.”

To validate their goal of self-sovereignty, breakaway republicans looked to the independent Republic of Texas, often referring to Texas to explain their objectives, or looking to Texas as an ally in achieving them. Between 1836 and 1845 – what this dissertation defines as “the Texas Moment” – Texas’ independent existence presupposed a different map of North America, where peoples of the northern, southern, and western borderlands carved out polities for themselves. With Texas in mind, even Americans who did not share the goals of breakaway republicans believed that independent

American-led polities on the continent were likely, acceptable, and perhaps even desired.

iii However, to a cabal of Democratic expansionists and James K. Polk in particular, this future was unacceptable. After winning the presidency after an unlikely series of contingencies in 1844, Polk and his allies laid the groundwork for a dramatic expansion of the U.S. state – and thereby a dramatic expansion of U.S. territory. Their actions ended the Texas Moment, thereby subsuming the actions of breakaway republicans and hiding their collective existence from later historians. Ultimately, the events of the mid-

1840s were hardly the logical culmination of America’s expansionist destiny, but a profound rupture of the status quo.

To Fran.

v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While I am officially the sole author of this dissertation, this hides the reality of writing any work of some length. In truth, this dissertation is a collaborative work, as countless individuals dedicated an immense amount of time and gave significant me support to see the work to completion. Thanks must begin with my committee. Drew

Isenberg was a dedicated advisor, and provided ceaseless encouragement of my work from its infancy. It is no coincidence that the germ of this dissertation began in his research class on the American West, where his assignments and provocations started me thinking about alternatives to the Manifest Destiny narrative. These provocations continued through the final days of writing, and have continued to strengthen my arguments. It was Drew who first argued that Western History is simply a different way of asking questions about American History, and this insight is at the heart of this work.

This dissertation could not have been written without him.

David Waldstreicher has been a stalwart guide and mentor, and has acted as an unofficial second advisor. If Drew provoked me to “face west,” then David was my inspiration to turn around and also “face east.” My intrigue with American politics and interest in American nationalism began in his class on the American Revolution, and he offered tremendous encouragement when I told him I was going to address all these issues in a place and time seemingly far different from the Revolutionary era (but perhaps not so different after all!). In all likelihood I made more intellectual progress towards completing this dissertation during our meetings at the City Line Deli than I did at any

vi other time or place over the past five years. This dissertation could not have been written without him either.

The rest of my committee both guided me and challenged me in so many different and helpful ways. Travis Glasson was a committed mentor during my five years at

Temple, and he always was willing me listen to me and offer advice. I began investigating issues of empire in his class on 18th-century Britain, and during the dissertation-writing stage he always helped me see the bigger picture. Jessica Roney was adept at seeing the holes in my arguments, and her pointed questions made me a significantly better scholar. Jonathan Wells took the time to read and comment on every chapter before his departure for Michigan. Although Jon’s name does not appear as a committee-member, he was integral nonetheless, particularly in helping me tighten my writing, and helping me see how my work fits into the larger field. Finally, Rachel St.

John was the ideal outside reader. She agreed to read my massive tome with eagerness, and her advice in regards to both substance and process has been invaluable.

This dissertation is also a product of the classes and connections I made during my five years at Temple. In addition to the Temple professors named above in my committee, several more must be mentioned. Harvey Neptune asked more provocative questions than I thought could exist, some of which this dissertation has tried to answer.

Gregory Urwin always offered significant support, and never allowed me to forget that military power is one crucial aspect of this work. Long before I returned to school fulltime, Joseph Foster provided my first introduction to American historiography in my first Temple class. Petra Goedde ran a wonderful colloquium that allowed me to share a chapter of my dissertation for the very first time in a public forum. David Thomas was

vii my fellow muse in the Temple community, and so many of my thoughts about American history emerged through our daily conversations, car rides, and trips to local watering holes. Catherine Murray’s encouragement and feedback was unfailing. Despite investigating current events, the rest of my cohort of “historians” offered ceaseless support of my “ancient” historical inquiries, especially John Worsencroft, Jess Bird, Seth

Tannenbaum, and Tom Reinstein. Grant Scribner, Steve Hausman, Sam Davis, Larry

Kessler, Elliott Drago, and all members of the Temple dissertation colloquium all read portions of my work, and offered important insights.

For the past year, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies provided a rigorous but welcoming atmosphere, and its collection of scholars helped my ideas come to fruition. The McNeil Center truly became my home away from home, and the place where I made the most strides in my scholarship. For this, I have many to thank. As a scholar, leader, teacher, and mentor, Dan Richter was a boon to my work. Fellow

Temple graduate Brenna Holland provided my opening into the McNeil Center community; not only did she read and comment on my work, but was remarkably patient with my constant badgering about any and all Ph.D. questions. Sarah Rodriguez and

Kevin Waite helped me place my work among western historians, and Max Dagenais helped me integrate Canada into the broader project. The cohort of 2015-2016 McNeil fellows were always there for me to test ideas, and daily discussions with them taught me how to become a historian – and thus it is appropriate to name them all: Jessica Blake,

Daniel Couch, Lori Daggar, Elizabeth Eager, Rachel Engl, Alex Finley, Nick Gliserman,

Andrew Inchiosa, Christopher Jones, Lauren Kimball, Alex Manevitz, Don James

McLaughlin, Tony Perry, Gabriel Rocha, Laura Soderberg, and Rachel Walker.

viii Over the past five years, historians of various interests and background have read portions of my work, and offered me comments and encouragement. Brent Rogers took the time to read and comment on Chapter Five, and also provided an introduction to the archives at the LDS Church History. Along with Brent, fellow Joseph Smith Paper colleagues Gerrit Dirkmaat and Matthew Grow were supportive of my integration of

Mormon scholarship with U.S. history. At various SHEAR annual conferences, Michael

Morrison, Jason Opal, Frank Towers, and Robert Richard read and commented on portions, and at the WHA conference Dael Norwood did the same. At the Western

History Dissertators Workshop, held at SMU’s Taos campus and sponsored by SMU, I received valuable suggestions and critiques of the project from countless western historians, particularly from Andy Graybill, Josh Reid, Louis Warren, John Faragher, and

Bill Deverell.

This dissertation was based on information gathered at the collections of a great many research libraries across North America, all of which possessed dedicated archivists who assisted me on a daily basis: the Latter-Day Saints Church History Museum, the

Bancroft Library, the Oregon Historical Society, the University of Puget Sound’s archives, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Buffalo and Erie County Historical

Society, the Detroit Public Library, the William P. Clements Library, the Bentley

Historical Library, the Ontario Archives, and St. Lawrence University’s archives. The

Charles Redd Center for Western History and the Bancroft Library also provided generous financial support for my research.

Finally, this dissertation could not have been completed without the unparalleled love and encouragement I have received from my family and friends. My Shipley

ix friends, my Penn friends, my rugby friends, and my other-walks-of-life friends (you all know who you are) always knew I wanted to be a historian from day one, and have always offered support (more or less…) to help me achieve my goal. My in-laws, in particular Deanne Lawless, Johnnie Lawless, and Beth Lawless, as well as the entire

Gosselin and Lawless clans, cheered me on while also making sure my head remained in the real world. My extended family of Fifers, Stricklers, and Safnauers were incredibly supportive, particularly fellow academics Gaynor Strickler and Sam Slike, who always offered me pep talks and solidified my confidence. My brother Will, as well as his girlfriend Taylor Cannon, provided me with positive energy on a regular basis, while my brother Corey provided me with sarcastic motivation just as often. I probably engaged in more deep thinking while on solitary walks with my dog Struan than at any other time during the writing process, so I owe him my thanks, and know that he understands in some fashion. My parents Tom and Sandi have always been a source of love and inspiration. My dad first took me to Gettysburg at age three, Antietam at age four, and

Lexington and Concord at age five, and he always cultivated my love of history. My mom was just as integral, never questioning my decision or ability to pursue a Ph.D., constantly being there to uplift me.

Last but not least: my wife Jill has been a friend, companion, partner, and guiding light in this whole process. When I told her in 2011 that I was going to stop teaching high school and pursue a PhD, she never questioned me (at least, outside her own head), and has always had faith in my abilities. She has offered never-ending love and support during the tough times, and reminded me to stay grounded during the good times. She is, in spirit, a co-author of this dissertation. Sixteenth months before I defended this work,

x she gave birth to our son Francis, and his presence has been a joy in my life during the final stages of the writing process. When I have gotten stuck or have become downtrodden, Jill and Fran keep me working and keep me inspired. Jill told me very directly: I must dedicate my first book to her. She has certainly earned it. Thus, for this dissertation I choose to spread the wealth, and dedicate it to Fran.

xi TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT ...... iii

DEDICATION ...... v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... vi

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………...1

The Conditions of Texas Independence…………………………………...... 10

The Amorphous Patriotism of Breakaway Republicans…………………………24

Texas as Diplomatic and Rhetorical Ally………………………………………..44

The End of the Texas Moment…………………………………………………..49

2. WASHINGTON POLITICS AND CONTINENTAL VISIONS: THE TEXAS

MOMENT IN THE U.S. EAST, 1836-1846…………………………………….64

The Improbable Road to Texas Annexation, 1837-1846………………………...69

The Many Visions of an American Continent…………………………………...91

James K. Polk and the End of the Texas Moment……………………………...108

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...128

3. THE LURE OF A CANADIAN REPUBLIC, 1837-1840………………………….131

The Persistent Northern Borderland……………………………………………136

The Patriots against the British…………………………………………………144

The Pull of Breakaway Republicanism: American Patriots against the

United States……………………………………………………………160

xii

The Memory and Legacy of the Patriot War…………………………186

Conclusion……………………………………………………………201

4. THE AUTONOMOUS CHEROKEE REPUBLIC, 1838-

1846………………………………………………………………….203

Dependence versus Autonomy: Visions and Rhetorics of Cherokee

Sovereignty…………………………………………………………...209

The Lines and Borders of Indian Territory: On the Ground

Implications of Cherokee Autonomy…………………………………246

Securing Prosperity, Removing Autonomy: The Polk Administration

and the Cherokee Nation…………………………………………...... 259

Conclusion…………………………………………………………….271

5. MANIFESTING MORMON DESTINY, 1844-1846……………………..273

The Apotheosis of Joseph Smith’s Political Dreams………………….279

The Lamanite Redemption and the Mormon-Indian Alliance………...299

Navigating U.S. Expansion……………………………………………314

Conclusion: The Breakaway Republic of Deseret………………….....335

6. VISIONS AND REALITIES OF A

CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC, 1836-1846………………………………340

A Remote and Divided Territory………………………………………342

California Libre? Halting Steps Towards Independence……………...348

Texas on the Pacific: American Immigration and Plans for an

Anglo-American California Republic………………………………….357

xiii

Hints of a Multiethnic California Republic…………………………….375

The Bear Flag Revolt: Manifest Destiny as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy…387

Conclusion…………………………………………….………………..409

7. THE UBIQUITY OF BREAKAWAY REPUBLICANISM:

INDEPENDENCE SENTIMENT IN

AMERICAN OREGON, 1842-1846….....……………………………..412

Oregon before the Overland Migration………………………………...416

Facing East and West from Missouri…………………………………...422

The Defeat of Oregon Independence, Part I……………………………431

The Defeat of Oregon Independence, Part II…………………………...447

Conclusion: The Lessons of Oregon…………………………………....470

8. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………...... 474

REFERENCES CITED……………………………………………………...... 501

xiv

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

In 1836, American artist Thomas Cole completed his famed five-piece series of paintings The Course of Empire in New York City, revealing the arc of a Western civilization. The paintings progressed from The Savage State, which depicted the natural world and the light tread of native peoples, to the idyllic The Arcadian or Pastoral State.

The next painting then showed civilization at dizzying heights in The Consummation of

Empire, which then regressed to an apocalyptic Destruction, and finally Desolation, in which civilization only existed as ruins. Cole, a Whig, meant his paintings to serve as a warning of the dangers of Jacksonianism. Cole believed that the vulgar excesses of

Jacksonian democracy – and Andrew Jackson himself – threatened the survival of the

American republic, which could only be cured by Whiggish moral and economic reforms.

Unfortunately many observers did not get the message, believing that Cole’s narrative arc of civilization did not apply to the United States, but instead reflected the perils of civilization in the Old World. To them, the United States, with its abundant land and

“go-ahead” people, would always remain at the pinnacle of civilization. Meanwhile, far from New York, Americans who had never heard of Thomas Cole or seen The Course of

Empire shared Cole’s fears for the future of the republic, but unlike Cole, they did not believe the U.S. needed to be reformed from within. Instead of stopping the United

States at the Consummation stage with moral reform, they envisioned an entirely

2 different solution: re-start the narrative. Return to The Pastoral State – by moving beyond U.S. borders.

* * * * *

On a map of the modern world, the continent of North America appears to be a geopolitical anomaly. While every other continent save Australia is composed of a multiplicity of nations in all shapes and sizes, most of North America consists of three enormous, contiguous countries. In the case of the United States, this geographic composition is taken for granted, as the nation’s very shape has achieved the status of patriotic symbol alongside the American flag and the bald eagle. Certainly this attitude appears logical. Americans remember a history of linear, outward expansion, where no political alternative to U.S. sovereignty was ever possible – the Confederacy standing as the all-important exception. Historians have complicated this narrative, but few have countered it – especially after 1815, when the U.S. emerged intact from the War of 1812, its “Second War of Independence.” For the Jacksonian era, historians have defined this preordained growth with terms such as “Manifest Destiny” and “American expansion.”

Whether they denigrate or celebrate this history, historians use these terms to explain both ideology and process: John L. O’Sullivan’s creed corresponded with James K.

Polk’s methods, which in turn supported American settlers’ desires and actions. Thus migration and military conquest reinforce one another: if Americans left U.S. borders, they undoubtedly longed for the eventual embrace of the U.S. state, and their presence often facilitated U.S. military involvement. Even if Americans lived beyond U.S.

3 borders, their true loyalty lay with the United States – and any other American- created republic was simply a farce.1

To this typical narrative, recent historians of the Texas Republic have a ready retort: many Anglo-Texans did not view U.S. expansion as foreordained, and acted to ensure the survival and perhaps expansion of their newly created state. Perhaps

1 This assumption is present in most works that narrate U.S. expansion in the 1830s and 1840s. Importantly, it is often present only as an assumption: of course Americans in the West desired U.S. conquest, so the actions of these Americans do not need to be fully explained – thus, some of thee works cited below simply they ignore they even existed. This lack of analysis demonstrates the ubiquitous tendency to tether together U.S. actions as a state, and the actions of Americans on the ground. Even the most careful analyses that incorporate recent borderlands historiography follow this pattern, such as Anne Hyde’s excellent synthesis. Notice the very title of the final section of her book: “From Nations to Nation: Imposing a State, 1840-1865.” If Americans were indeed imposing a state before 1846, it was not that of the United States. See Anne Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 348-407. General syntheses of U.S. history and U.S. expansion that follow this trend include Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families; Richard W. Etulain, Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006); Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion (New York: Knopf, 2008); Richard Kluger, Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (New York: Knopf, 2007); Gregory Nobles, American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), 135-172; Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 28-65; Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of my Own”: A History of the American West (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 61-84; Steven E. Woodworth, Manifest Destinies: America’s Westward Expansion and the Civil War (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2010), 57-150; David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1973); Thomas Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (New York: Vintage Books, 1963); Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935). Additionally, many other works on local history make the same conclusions as more national historians about the desire of American settlers for U.S. conquest (e.g. of course Oregonians wanted U.S. annexation). I will cite these works when I relate the local historiography of each breakaway republic, in the chapter summaries below. There are some exceptions to the above works. Several studies distinguish between the agrarian goals of American settlers and the commercial goals of the United States: Norman Graebner, Empire on the Pacific: A Study in American Continental Expansion (New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1955); Lloyd Garner, Walter LaFeber, and Thomas McCormick, Creation of the American Empire: U.S. Diplomatic History (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1973), 120-156; D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, Vol. 2: Continental America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 169-217; R. W. Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 100-123. Several other works also critique the foreordained expansion of the United States from a cultural perspective: Stephanie LeMenager, Manifest and Other Destinies: Territorial Fictions of the Nineteenth-Century United States (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008); Anne Baker, Heartless Immensity: Literature, Culture, and Geography in Antebellum America (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2006); Thomas Allen, A Republic in Time: Temporality and Social Imagination in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

4 demographics made it inevitable that Americans would overrun much of the continent, but not all American expatriates in Texas hoped the expansion of Americans as a people equated to the expansion of the United States as a state.2 Although most Texans desired U.S. annexation immediately following their victory at San Jacinto in order to protect Texas from a vengeful Mexico, U.S. rejection of annexation made many Texans quickly embrace permanent Texas independence. Soon Texans wanted migrants from the

United States to come to Texas and add to its already overwhelmingly American-born population, but they did not desire U.S. oversight – or if they did, they only desired it on

Texas’ terms. Yet, historians of the U.S. early republic have not yet integrated this scholarship on Texas into the broader narrative of U.S. history. Certainly, Texas has always mattered a great deal to this history in two respects. First, Texas’ growth, revolution, and eventual annexation to the United States epitomized the ideologies of

Manifest Destiny and Anglo-Saxonism, and Texas annexation was a crucial component to the United States’ continental expansion. Second, the U.S. annexation of Texas inaugurated the inexorable march to the Civil War. However, concentrating solely on

Texas’ implications for Manifest Destiny and the Civil War has distracted historians from

2 Recent work on Texas has revealed that Texans were not simply awaiting U.S. annexation. See Eric Schlereth, “Privileges of Locomotion: Expatriation and the Politics of Southwestern Border Crossing,” The Journal of American History 4 (March 2014), 995-1020; Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Andrés Reséndez, National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Andrew Cayton, “Continental Politics: Liberalism, Nationalism, and the Appeal of Texas in the 1820s,” in Beyond the Founders, ed. Pasley, Robertson, and Waldstreicher (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005); Sarah Rodriguez, “‘Children of the Great Mexican Family’: American Immigration to Northern Mexico, 1810-1861,” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2015). These works have built upon and expanded earlier works that do not assume the inevitability of Texas annexation: David Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The U.S. Southwest under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,1982); Stanley Siegel, A Political History of the Texas Republic, 1836-1845 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1956); William Binkley, The Expansionist Movement in Texas, 1836-1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1925).

5 the specific geopolitics of the Texas Republic’s existence. The sustained independence of Texas threw into question the future geopolitical shape of North

America. The borders of North America had always been contingent, but now this contingency was amplified, as thousands of North Americans wondered what the continent’s future would be. Would the United States continue to expand, or would it be

Texas that expanded to the Pacific? Or would some other polity – or polities – claim sovereignty over the American West? Texans asked these questions, as did United States politicians. So too did tens of thousands of less famous Americans, and their answers led them to journey beyond U.S. borders. Once there, they could do what the Texans had already done: create their own independent republics.

This dissertation argues that Americans in Canada, California, Indian Territory, the Salt Lake Valley, and Oregon were not vanguards of U.S. expansion, but important actors with their own political goals. Moving beyond U.S. borders at a time when few on the continent assumed the United States’ inevitable expansion, they contemplated a different political future than a U.S. that stretched from to the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, while their reasons and methods often differed from one another, all these American expatriates sought to create sovereign polities outside U.S. borders, what this study defines as “breakaway republics.” Rather than embodying U.S. expansion, their visions and actions ran counter to it. Moreover, the goals and actions of these groups of

Americans were tethered to the question of Texas independence and Texas annexation.

As would-be breakaway republicans, they looked to Texas as the breakaway republic.

Texas’ continued independence presupposed a different map of North America, one where peoples living in the borderlands of North America carved out polities for

6 themselves. These visions of independence grew in the late 1830s with the federal government’s rejection of Texas’ request for annexation, and then reached their height in the early 1840s, when the U.S. annexation of Texas appeared increasingly unlikely. They then diminished in 1845, when the United States annexed Texas, thereby calling into question the viability of other breakaway republics. When the United States rapidly conquered the West in 1846, these dreams were squelched for good.3

Historians have defined these breakaway republicans with other terms, although no term applies to all of them. Breakaway republicans who eventually resorted to violence have been deemed “filibusters.”4 While technically correct, this term hides the demographic process at work in these would-be republics. Unlike the filibusters of the

1850s who planned to seize immediate power by force, the breakaway republicans of the

1830s and 1840s believed they would gain power through the natural increase of the

American population – via both continued migration and Anglo-American fecundity – and perhaps even accommodation with those who currently held power. Even the

American Patriots who invaded Canada in 1838, seemingly the most definitive filibusters, did so because of their decades of contact with Canadians directly across the northern border, whom they regarded as Anglo-American brethren sharing their republican goals. Their assessment of most Anglo-Canadians was incorrect, but

3 This geographic outlook owes a debt to Daniel Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). While Richter focuses on very different subjects during a different era, this work is indebted to the concept of “facing east” – for breakaway republicans were doing just that, and facing south, north, and even farther west.

4 On American filibusters, see Robert May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Frank Owsley, Jr. and Gene Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800-1821 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004).

7 nevertheless their ambitions still depended on popular support as much as military success.

Of course, demographic victory still implies an eventual assumption of power of the original occupants of the land, and therefore historians have also termed these actors

“settler colonists.”5 Certainly breakaway republicans were settler colonists in their ambitions, but not necessarily in their immediate actions. In almost all cases, breakaway republicans settled in regions that were at best sparsely populated by native peoples, whether because of disease (the Willamette Valley in Oregon), conquest by others (the

Sacramento Valley in California), or by sheer happenstance (the Salt Lake Valley). With the exception of Texas, with its much larger population and much longer period of independence, breakaway republicans did not fight native peoples on a large scale. This lack of violence does not mean breakaway republicans were necessarily more righteous than their former American countrymen, but that Indian expulsion was simply not their initial practice.

Additionally, historians have used terms like “exiles” and “refugees” to describe the Mormons and Cherokees, two groups of breakaway republicans forcefully expelled from the United States. These designations, however, imply that neither group had any geopolitical options in the West, and hide the fact that with current tragedy lay future opportunity.6 Finally, although this study will also use “migrants” and “settlers” to refer

5 On Americans as settler colonialists, see Aziz Rana, The Two Faces of American Freedom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 99-175; James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-American World, 1783-1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Walter L. Hixson, American Settler Colonialism: A History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

6 The Cherokee occupy an anomalous place in this dissertation as the only group of non-Anglo-American breakaway republicans. In this regard, I aim to treat the Cherokee (at least leaders like John Ross) as they viewed themselves: Indians who had assimilated aspects of Anglo-American governance and culture, and

8 to breakaway republicans for the sake of narrative, even these terms are imperfect, for they hide the independent political goals of these actors. Moreover, these terms also conceal the ways in which breakaway republicans inspired one another and interacted with one another as geopolitical players. As Texas made other breakaway republics viable, so too did breakaway republics make each other viable, creating visions of a West where Americans undoubtedly achieved sovereignty, but in forms other than U.S. conquest.

Of course, a North American continent composed of multiple American- dominated republics was hardly a novel vision in the first decades of the early republic.

Thomas Jefferson himself had contemplated such a future for North America, in which

“sister republics” operated alongside and in alliance with the United States.7 So too had much less famous Americans, and some had acted upon their vision, as demonstrated by would-be republics in Vermont, Franklin, West Florida, and Texas (the 1819 Long

Rebellion and the 1826 Fredonian Rebellion).8 Yet, all of these potential republics lasted

made it fundamentally their own. They were certainly not the only natives peoples in North America striving for self-sovereignty, but they did it in different terms than peoples like the Comanche or Sioux. As I argue in Chapter Three, other removed Indians also may have conceived of themselves as breakaway republicans, but the sources are not as clear as they are with the Cherokee. On the Cherokee conception of themselves, see William McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).

7 Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville; London: University Press of Virginia, 2001), esp. 53-80. “Sister republic” was a rather loose term that could – but more often did not – imply fellow Anglo-American heritage. Thus, France was a sister republic, as were the South American republics; see Caitlin Fitz, Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of Revolutions (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2016).

8 On these movements for independence, see, for example, Andrew McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008); Kevin T. Barksdale, The Lost State of Franklin: America’s First Secession (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009); Jessica Choppin Roney, “1776, Viewed from the West,” unpublished manuscript, email to the author Jan. 21, 2016; Charles Miner Thompson, Independent Vermont (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1942); Frederic Franklin Van de Water, The Reluctant Republic: Vermont, 1724-1791 (New York: The John Day Co., 1941). Although non-scholarly, James Erwin’s encyclopedia of secessionist movements is

9 for only a brief period of time and were all comparatively small. By contrast, the

Republic of Texas’ sovereignty was sustained for almost a decade, and its independence was recognized by not only the U.S., but the “Great Powers” of Britain and France.

Many Texans held visions of potential empire that stretched all the way to the Pacific. Of course, the realities of Texas were much less glamorous: never recognized by Mexico,

Texas independence was always precarious, and as a state it was semi-functional at best.

However, Texas mattered as a symbol – especially if Texas independence continued indefinitely. After all, American history could already point to many polities that seemed on the verge of collapse, but nonetheless found a way to survive and even flourish:

Virginia, Plymouth, and, of course, the early United States. Many breakaway republicans knew this history, and hoped to recreate it beyond U.S. borders.9

The Republic of Texas’ independence defined the existence of the rest of the breakaway republics of this study. Texas’ victory over Mexico in 1836 inaugurated the era, which was then closed by the U.S. annexation of Texas in 1845 and subsequent conquest of the West the following year. I define this decade as “the Texas Moment.” also helpful in its comprehensiveness: Erwin, Declarations of Independence: Encyclopedia of American Autonomous and Secessionist Movements (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007).

9 Works on American memory and American historiography in the early republic tend to focus on North and South, and rarely delve into how westerners – from where most breakaway republicans originated – perceived the same history. Michael Kammen noted briefly that many westerners were unconcerned with American history in general, and were future oriented, which strengthens this study’s argument that westerners believed that other American republics were possible. However, he also pointed out that in general, Americans had some knowledge of their history, even if its purpose was for purposes of morality rather than ensuring accuracy; thus it would make sense that breakaway republicans had some knowledge of the colonies and the Revolution, and imagined they were recreating these events in the West. Indeed, both the Patriots and Texans imagined themselves as heirs to the soldiers of the Revolution, and Oregonians routinely called themselves colonists. On historical memory among the American public in the 1830s and 1840s, see Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991); Fred Somkin, Unquiet Eagle: Memory and Desire in the Idea of American Freedom, 1815-1860 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 91-130; Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (New York: Atheneum, 1985), 107-208.

10 My use of the expansive but ambiguous term “moment” is deliberate, for while

Texas independence defined the era, it was not necessarily the primary driver of the actions of other breakaway republicans. Rather, Texas independence was just as much a symptom of the Texas Moment as a cause. The geopolitical conditions in North America that made Texas independence possible also made other breakaway republics not only seem possible, but desirable. Once breakaway republicans decided to pursue self- sovereignty, Texas acted as an ally in their struggles. Some made diplomatic contact with Texas, hoping the Texas government would facilitate their own political goals; others used the geopolitical vacuum in the American West of which Texas was a part as a space to foster their own breakaway republics; a third group, particularly those living far from Texas, used Texas as a reason to justify their own actions, arguing they were doing nothing more than the Texans had done. Unfortunately for all these breakaway republics, the rapid expansion of the United States in 1845-6 subsumed any hope for political independence on the continent, marking the end of the Texas Moment.

The Conditions of Texas Independence

As recent historians of Texas have demonstrated, the conditions for Texas independence began not in the United States, but in Mexico.10 In 1835 Mexican centralists overthrew the federalist government, and imposed Las Siete Leyes – the Seven

Constitutional Laws – that inaugurated a powerful, unitary central government. Over the following years, multiple Mexican states with strong federalist leanings rebelled against this centralization, taking advantage of the continuously severe political and economic

10 Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier; Weber, The Mexican Frontier.

11 dysfunction of the Mexican government.11 For U.S. historians, the most crucial of these states was Texas, but rebellions also erupted in the Yucatán, Zacatecas, Tabasco,

New Mexico, and the several states that comprised the brief Republic of the Rio Grande.

The Mexican government had little control over its northern borderlands before these rebellions; it had almost none after. In addition to fostering the birth of the Republic of

Texas, this power vacuum expanded opportunities for alternative political formulations throughout these borderlands: In California, local californios staged several rebellions, in each case aided by American migrants looking out for their own political interests; in

U.S. Indian Territory, the Cherokee and other removed Indians imagined themselves as an autonomous buffer state separating the U.S. from Texas to the south and the Plains

Indians farther west; Mormon leaders looked to northern Mexico as a perfect place to establish a Mormon empire; and, in New Mexico, local federalist leaders also rebelled against the centralist government – although, unlike Texas, they were defeated. Beyond these western-style polities, of course, native peoples who already possessed much of the power in the American Southwest further increased their territory and influence.12 Space for political experimentation had always been available in this vast region – indeed, to

Mexican federalists, the distance from central Mexico made this experimentation necessary – but now these opportunities were amplified.

11 The meaning of “federalist” in Mexico is nearly the opposite of “Federalist” in the United States. Whereas Federalists in the United States hoped to strengthen the national government in the first few decades of independence, federalists in Mexico wanted the national government weak, with most power residing in the states and territories.

12 On the power of native peoples in northern Mexico, see especially Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Weber, The Mexican Frontier; Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

12 Mexico was not the only North American country that possessed limited sovereignty over its borderlands.13 The United States’ military presence in the West was minimal, consisting of several thousand troops strung out along a vast frontier, often living in dilapidated and disease-ridden forts. The small U.S. Army was by no means completely ineffective, and at times did assert some semblance of U.S. sovereignty, but overall it simply could not cope with the vastness of the territory, the continued power of native peoples, and the unruliness of western settlers.14 Tellingly, the U.S. Army took seven years to defeat the Seminoles in peninsular Florida; how much more difficult would it be to achieve victory over the republic’s enemies in the more expansive regions of the continent?15 This inability to assert power in the West had plagued the U.S. ever since the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. It was only with fits and starts that the U.S. effectively incorporated French-settled Lower Louisiana; farther west would be much more difficult.16

13 For recent work on the patchwork implementations of sovereignty in the nineteenth century, see Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788-1836 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); Lauren Benton, A Search For Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

14 Work on the U.S. Army in the West before 1846 generally argue for both the Army’s extreme difficulties in enforcing its duties, and simultaneously the remarkable job the Army did with such few resources: Samuel Watson, Peacekeepers and Conquerors: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1821- 1846 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2013); Robert Wooster, The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 78- 117; Francis Paul Prucha, The Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783-1846 (London: The Macmillan Co., 1969), 233-396; R. Douglas Hurt, The Indian Frontier, 1763-1846 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), 103-243.

15 John Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2010).

16 Peter Kastor, The Nation’s Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

13 If the U.S. hold over its western territory was tenuous before 1837, it became even more precarious after the Panic of 1837. Indeed, from a certain perspective, the federal government’s hold over the nation itself diminished. The Panic of 1837 initiated the worst depression in U.S. history thus far, and devastated the lives of a significant portion of the American population.17 While it is difficult to ascertain the level of devastation, several studies at the time suggested children born in the 1840s were on average five centimeters shorter than those born in the 1830s, demonstrating not just financial but immense nutritional hardship18 In many ways, the Texas Moment was also a “Panic Moment,” for the depression reinforced Texas independence. Tens of thousands of Americans migrated to Texas in the late 1830s and early 1840s, in order to flee debts they could no longer pay. This migration greatly increased Texas’ population – and thereby its legitimacy – and, because most of these migrants were white southern slaveholders and their slaves, made Texas an increasingly secure area for a slave economy to flourish.19 Yet not all Americans saw Texas as the best option. Along the northern border, economic devastation added another incentive for Americans to join

Patriot armies to liberate Canada – which, if the Patriots had won, would also have

17 There has been a renaissance of sorts in work on the Panic of 1837 and its aftermath – particularly after the 2009 recession. See Jessica Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Alasdair Roberts, The First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder in the United States, 1837-1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012); Edward Balleisen, Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 32-41, and passim; Scott Reynolds Nelson, A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Disasters (New York: Knopf, 2012), 117-136; Edward E. Baptist, “Toxic Debt, Liar Loans, and Securitized Human Beings,” Common-Place, Vol. 10, No. 3 (April, 2010), < http://www.common-place-archives.org/vol- 10/no-03/baptist/>

18 Lepler, Many Panics, 231-2.

19 Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 50-66; Torget, Seeds of Empire, 194-199.

14 become a major destination for migrants. In the Midwest, depression spurred thousands of other Americans to migrate to Oregon and California. Less obviously but still significantly, “hard times” furthered disenchantment with various “others”:

Americans who coveted Cherokee lands and despised Mormon power only felt more strongly. Certainly, the United States was not Mexico. The Panic did not lead to rebellion, and U.S. sovereignty never collapsed entirely, but it undoubtedly destabilized

American society.

Importantly, for many of these breakaway republicans, the depression was simply confirmation of a longer and even more disturbing trend in the United States: the emergence of a market economy. Their concern went beyond simple economics.

Capitalism eroded many of the traditional familial and societal structures of the post-

Revolutionary period, in both North and South.20 By the 1830s, wage labor dominated northern cities, while wealthy southerners doubled-down on their slave society by exponentially increasing slave output and speculating in southwestern lands.21

Americans responded to these dramatic shifts in different ways. Generally, those who

20 For the North, the historiography on the restructuring of society in response to the growing market economy is vast, and touches every facet of northern society. See, among dozens of works, Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Jonathan Prude, The Coming of the Industrial Order: Town and Factor Life in Rural Massachusetts, 1810-1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Recent historians have demonstrated that the South was not as static a society as has been previously portrayed: Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013); Edward Baptist, The Other Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2013).

21 On the rise of wage labor in the North, see Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium; Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 1991). For capitalism in the South, see Baptist, The Other Half Has Never Been Told; Johnson, River of Dark Dreams.

15 identified with the Whig Party were more comfortable with the changes.22 Not wanting to turn back the clock, they sought to ease the transition into capitalism by emphasizing both continued economic growth and moral improvement. Economic growth necessitated federal-sponsored internal infrastructure, a national bank, and a high tariff to foster fledging American industry; moral improvement was enshrined in the evangelical religious movements of the Second Great Awakening, and the many reform movements (abolitionism, temperance) with which they often overlapped.23 Many

Democrats, by contrast, did want to turn back the clock. Romanticizing the agrarian yeoman farmer, Democrats viewed abundant land as a pathway to return to this

Jeffersonian ideal. Agrarian families in both North and South moved and moved again in search of cheap land. The desire for land even emerged in cities, as evidenced by the

Land Reform movement that began in the late 1830s.24 Unfortunately, the seemingly abundant land in the western United States was less abundant than supposed. Wealthy speculators bought much of the prime real estate, and squatters were often uprooted from

22 For party attitudes during this era, see Lawrence Kohl, The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Joel Silbey, The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); John Ashworth, “Agrarians” & “Aristocrats”: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846 (New Jersey: Humanities Press Inc., 1983); Major Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom: The Quest for Nationality and Irrepressible Conflict, 1815-1861 (Westport, CT: The Greenwood Press, 1974).

23 Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium; Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Stephen Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

24 Mark Lause, Young America: Land, Labor, and the Republican Community (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 2005).

16 their small farms.25 Even after Congress guaranteed the squatter’s right to land in the 1841 Preemption Act, it limited claims to 160 acres, not enough for a would-be patriarch to divide among many sons.26 Moreover, although this law was an improvement on paper, in reality the power over land remained with speculators and loan sharks. Much more often than achieving ownership of the land on which they worked, would-be land owners were reduced to tenancy or forced to take out loans at usurious rates.27 Thus, many Americans began to look to areas beyond U.S. borders: Texas,

Canada, Oregon, and California. Perhaps there they could claim the land unavailable in the U.S. Although their exodus was much more dramatic and much more forced, the

Mormons, too, fell into this category. In contrast to the individualist and largely secular vision of most other migrants, the Mormons were communal and religious, but they too saw western land as a solution to American capitalism and newly corrupt American society.28

25 Paul Wallace Gates, “Land Policy and Tenancy in the Prairie States,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (May, 1941), 60-82; John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven: Yale Uniersity Press, 1986), 181-186.

26 On the struggle for preemption rights, see Reeve Huston, “Land Conflict and Land Policy in the United States, 1785-1841,” in Andrew Shankman, ed., The World of the Revolutionary American Republic: Land, Labor, and the Conflict for a Continent (New York: Routledge, 2014), 324-345; John R. Van Atta, Securing the West: Politics, Public Lands, and the Fate of the Old Republic, 1785-1850 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); Roy Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1936 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942), 3-118.

27 See Gates, “Land Policy and Tenancy in the Prairie States”; Faragher, Sugar Creek, 181-186; Jeremy Atack, “Tenants and Yeomen in the Nineteenth Century,” Agricultural History, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Summer, 1988), 31.

28 The recent corruption of the United States was an important theme in Joseph Smith’s final years, and continuing through the Brigham Young-led exodus. Smith celebrated American history through Jackson’s presidency, but then believed Van Buren’s policies marked a decided shift – particularly because he blamed Van Buren for ignoring the growing Mormon plight in Missouri. See Joseph Smith, “Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States,” in History of the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-Day Saints, ed. B.H. Roberts (7 Vols., Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1950), 6: 197-209.

17 There was undoubtedly a gendered component to this pursuit of free land. It was men, and men alone, who chose to seek out economic and political opportunities beyond U.S. borders. Their wives and families then had to follow them.29 These male expatriates believed that acquiring a substantial amounts land would allow them to provide for their families for future generations, for they would be able to bestow all of their sons with substantial holdings. Thus, a male head-of-household could once again assume the position of a traditional patriarch – a role that was increasingly under siege in the new market economy in the United States.30 Moreover, moving beyond U.S. borders promised adventure and glory, which also seemed to be diminishing in the U.S. With the tiny size of the U.S. Army (approximately 8000 men), the militia system on the wane, and most Indians either subdued or pushed into Indian Territory, prospects for military fame appeared minimal.31 Unsurprisingly some American men leapt at the chance to join the Texas and Patriot Armies, while others accepted the quasi-military challenge of journeying thousands of miles to California, Oregon, and the Salt Lake Valley.

Accepting these manly challenges was a legacy of the American Revolution, built into

29 For the lack of female agency in the decision to migrate to Oregon and California, see John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 163-168.

30 Kathleen Neils Conzen, “A Saga of Families,” in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Milner, O’Connor, and Sandweiss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 315-358; Cynthia Culver Prescott, Gender and Generation on the Far Western Frontier (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2007), 5- 10 and passim.

31 See Robert May, “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as Cultural Mirror,” The Journal of American History, No. 78, Issue 3 (Dec., 1991), 874-875. George Forgie has identified the 1830s as the “post-heroic age,” in which many Americans lamented the lack of drama in comparison with the age of the Revolutionary generation: Forgie, Patricide in the House Divided: A Psychological Interpretation of Lincoln and his Age (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1979), 55-88.

18 the fabric of these men’s American heritage – as many acknowledged. Beyond

U.S. borders, they would recreate the struggles – and achievements – of their forefathers.

Not only would western land solve the many problems of American capitalism, but also it would solve the problems of American slavery. Slavery was not yet the political issue it would become following the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, let alone the full- blown crisis of the 1850s, but by the late 1830s the controversy over slavery had reemerged in its most visible form since the 1820 Missouri Crisis. The rise of

Garrisonian abolitionism in the North and abolitionists’ subsequent petitions to Congress led to the passage of the first Gag Rule in 1836. While many white northerners despised both African-Americans and abolitionists, they also despised the Gag Rule’s attack on freedom of petition in the nation’s capital. In the South, meanwhile, slavery and the slave economy expanded at an unprecedented rate, until the Panic of 1837 burst the slavery bubble.32 Even before this bubble burst, however, the South’s slaveholding but capitalist society had already left many poor whites by the wayside. In light of these developments, many Americans saw slavery as a growing problem, and breakaway republics offered various solutions. For non-slaveholders from both the North and South,

Canada, Oregon, California, and Mormon Deseret would become free soil havens, which prohibited the twin evils of slavery and all black residents.33 Meanwhile, for

32 Baptist, The Other Half Has Never Been Told, 270-292.

33 On the idea of the West as anti-black free soil haven, see John Dippel, Race to the Frontier: “White Flight” and Westward Expansion (New York: Algora Publishing, 2005), 259-277; Eugene Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967); Jonathan Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 17-48. Mormon theology in regard to slavery was essentially free soil in practice, denouncing slavery while prohibiting blacks from joining the church. Joseph Smith attacked both slavery and abolitionism in his 1844 presidential platform: Smith, “Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States.”

19 slaveholders, Texas would become an “empire for slavery,” in which slavery would be forever protected as a national institution – which, with the rise of abolitionism, slaveholders feared would not be the case in the U.S.34 In essence, wherever they went, breakaway republicans believed they could permanently solve the issue of slavery, although this solution differed depending on the breakaway republic.

Beyond economic depression, the market economy, and slavery, there were many other reasons to be displeased with the United States. Riots plagued eastern cities, and although most breakaway republicans were not urbanites, they could read about this continuous disorder in the burgeoning penny press.35 Moreover, American politics appeared increasingly dysfunctional: the Van Buren administration could not solve the depression, and William Henry Harrison’s death in 1841 led to a four-year impasse between John Tyler and the Whig-dominated Congress. Partisanship was at its height, but to most breakaway republicans, this partisanship had not solved anything.36

Revealingly, political parties and explicit partisanship were absent in almost every fledging breakaway republic – although political disagreements certainly were not – as

34 For Texas as slaveholder haven, see Torget, Seeds of Empire, 206. More generally, John Craig Hammond has demonstrated that slaveholders generally did not see the federal government as their ally, and the expansion of slavery in the West was the result of local control winning out over a weak federal government’s antislavery efforts: Hammond, Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007). In regards to slavery, the Cherokee do not fit the pattern of breakaway republics. They often contemplated journeying beyond Indian Territory, into Texas, Mexico, or Mexican California. However, their slave society could not sustain itself during the distant journey to California, and it would be prohibited in Mexico anyway. As Indians, meanwhile, the Cherokee were not welcome in slaveholding Texas. Thus they needed to remain within U.S. borders

35 On rioting, see David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

36 On antipartyism, see Mark Voss-Hubbard, “The ‘Third Party Tradition’ Reconsidered: Third Parties and American Public Life, 1830-1900,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 86, No. 1 (June, 1999), 121- 150. Voss-Hubbard focuses on third parties’ antiparty rhetoric, not on Americans leaving the country, but this rhetoric was remarkably similar. In this sense, breakaway republicanism acted as a sort of third party during the era (when, coincidentally, no third party existed in large numbers).

20 many breakaway republicans remarked on the virtues of their antipartyism.

Additionally, the spectacular growth of Mormonism appeared to threaten American values, while to the Mormons it was Americans who had turned away from these values.

Although violence between Mormon and non-Mormon only emerged around subsequent

Mormon settlements in Missouri and Illinois, the penny press routinely printed news of

“the Mormon War,” present for all Americans to read.

Thus it was a range of issues – economic depression, capitalism, slavery, a crisis of manhood, riots, partisanship, and Mormonism – that induced thousands of Americans to contemplate and/or create breakaway republics. While the depression was the most significant of these factors, it more the general combination of so many factors that added up to the Texas Moment. When Americans looked at the United States, they did not like what they saw. As one observer lamented, “American freemen are dead, they live no longer… ‘Every man for himself and the devel [sic] take the kind mass,’ is the motto of the present age.”37 Some even predicted disunion, which in the late 1830s did not necessarily imply a division between north and south, but any number of fractures that could split apart the United States.38 Such was the attitude of Winfield Scott, who witnessed both Cherokee removal and Patriot activity firsthand. Scott listed what he believed were the “moral distempers” of American society: “Canadian excitement among

37 Anonymous to William Mackenzie, Dec. 19, 1839, William Mackenzie Papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.

38 Elizabeth Varon, Disunion!: The Coming of the Civil War, 1789-1859 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 127-164, 338. Varon demonstrates that slavery eventually becomes the primary threat of disunion, but it was not the only one – and, as she writes, slavery never displaced other disunion threats, “it encompassed them” (338). This attitude was particularly present in American culture, embodied in Thomas Cole’s series of paintings The Course of Empire. On Cole and his artistic cohort’s concern with the 1830s, see Angela Miller, The Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, 1825-1875 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 37-39.

21 our people…peace societies, antimasonry, nullification, Mormon difficulties, and abolitionism…”39 Because Scott’s military profession necessitated the U.S. state, his solution also involved the state: only a “good and sufficient cause of a foreign war,” Scott believed, could “save the union.”

Clearly Scott was committed to the survival and resurgence of the United States, as were most other Americans in the country – particularly those living in the thickly- settled eastern states. Most of those who were devastated by “hard times” had no means to move anywhere other than the burgeoning, squalid, industrializing cities; moving beyond U.S. borders was simply never an option. Yet, those who lived on the geographic margins of the Union did have this option. Their commitment to U.S. resurgence was not as strong, for other political options were available. Americans living along the northern border could look to Canada, those in the southwest could look to Texas, and those in western states could look towards the vast territories of Mexican California and Oregon

Country. Perhaps in these places, they could found alternative American-style republics that mimicked the best qualities of the United States, while discarding the factors they disliked. While by no means a majority of the population – even in the regions from which they originated – these breakaway republicans numbered over one hundred thousand. Importantly, this broad estimate does not include those who thought about migrating but never did, either because they did not have the means, or because they ran out of time, as the possibilities for political experimentation ended in 1846.40 In this

39 Winfield Scott to Joel Poinsett, Jan. 12, 1839, Joel Poinsett Papers, 11-150, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

40 More precise numbers can be found in within each chapter, but a rudimentary estimate includes: 80,000 Texans (not including slaves); 20,000 American Patriots (2000 soldiers, 18,000 die-hard Hunters Lodge

22 sense, breakaway republics were both cause and symptom of the Texas Moment, as the disaffection of the era may have penetrated much deeper into American society than just numbers suggest.

Great Britain was not immune to the convulsions that afflicted Mexico and the

United States. In Lower Canada, tensions between the French Canadian-dominated

Patriotes and the Lower Canadian colonial government had been increasing for almost a decade, and they exploded in 1837 with the outbreak of the Lower Canadian Rebellion.

In Upper Canada, Anglo-Canadian Patriots followed suit, although not in as significant numbers as their Lower Canadian counterparts.41 As in the U.S., both colonies had been afflicted by the Panic of 1837, and economic distress was certainly an important contributing factor in both rebellions. Unlike the U.S., however, Great Britain was a great power, and had the ability to quickly weather the political storm, sending thousands of troops that, with the aid of loyal Canadian militia, rapidly crushed both rebellions. By

1842 Britain had altered the political structure of both Canadas, and created conditions for lasting – albeit, militarily enforced – peace. Although the window for political change was remarkably brief, during these few years Canada too looked like an members, although this latter number could be much higher or lower); 18,000 Ross Party Cherokee; 20,000 Mormons; 6000 Americans in Oregon; 1500 Americans in California.

41 Important English-language works on the Canadian Rebellions include Michel Ducharme, The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776-1838, trans. Peter Feldstein (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014); Michael Mann, A Particular Duty The Canadian Rebellions, 1837-1839 (The Chantry, UK: Michael Russell, 1986); Allan Greer, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Elinor Kyte Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes (Ottawa: Canada’s Wings, 1985); Jack Verney, O’Callaghan: The Making and Unmaking of a Rebel (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994); J.I. Little, Loyalties in Conflict (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) 57-99; Colin Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada, 1837-8: The Duncombe Revolt and After (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982); Colin Read and Ronald J. Stagg, “Introduction,” in The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada: A Collection of Documents, ed. Read and Stagg (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1985), xix-lxxxiii; Betsy Dewar Boyce, The Rebels of Hastings (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992); Gerald Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784-1841 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 226-251.

23 opportunity for political experimentation, as thousands of Americans rallied to support the failed Canadian rebels. With the outbreak of the Canadian Rebellions, the

Texas Moment was truly a continent-wide phenomenon, even if it closed much more rapidly in British Canada than in the U.S. or Mexico.

Thus, within only two years of one another, all three major North American polities reached a period of crisis. For Mexico, the crisis was certainly the most dramatic, violent, and prolonged, continuing through the 1850s.42 For Britain, the crisis was also dramatic, but brief; British power ensured that neither the Upper or Lower Canadian

Rebels, nor their American allies, would find any military success. For the United States, this crisis was more subdued: economic depression coupled with a general malaise in

American society, with Americans anxious for both their current prospects as individuals, and for the present and future of the republic itself.43 The perceived weakness of the U.S. state did not help matters, particularly in the aftermath of the Panic of 1837 when federal and state finances were crippled.44 This perfect storm of diminished sovereignty across

42 I do not count the American Civil War as a continuation from the crisis of the late 1830s and early 1840s, although it certainly had antecedents in this previous crisis. Rather, I argue that Polk’s military and diplomatic solutions to the earlier crisis fostered a very different type of crisis. See “1846: The End of the Texas Moment,” below.

43 Other historians have used the word “anxious” to describe this period: Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America; John Duffy and Nicholas Muller, An Anxious Democracy: Aspects of the 1830s (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982).

44 I deliberately write perceived weakness here, because I do not necessarily believe the U.S. state was fundamentally weak, and I am not interested in wading into the old weak vs. strong state debate. The state’s strength varied from year to year, and from region to region, depending on the policies of both the federal government and the many state governments. In this sense, it was an eminently flexible state (a term Ira Katznelson used in regard to the early republic’s military capabilities), neither definitively weak nor strong. I do argue that during the Texas Moment, the U.S. state was weaker than it had been previously – and its citizens perceived this – but it still was not weak by definition. Ira Katznelson, “Flexible Capacity: The Military and Early American Statebuilding,” in Katznelson and Shefter, ed., Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 82-110. In general, I believe most analyses of the U.S. state during the early republic fail to take into account the year-by-year nuances of American government. This treatment is demonstrated in

24 North America fostered the conditions for Americans throughout the continent to create various breakaway republics, thereby achieving sovereignty for themselves.

The Amorphous Patriotism of Breakaway Republicans

It would be tempting to read the actions of these thousands of breakaway republicans as fundamentally anti-American. After all, they were first expatriating themselves from the United States, and then forming polities that would potentially counter U.S. expansion. Yet breakaway republicans did not see themselves as anti-

American, nor did most of those Americans who remained within the United States who watched breakaway republics emerge from afar. Americans widely accepted expatriation as a legitimate practice, and they believed in the fundamental right for migrants to accept or reject national identity and citizenship depending on where their allegiances lay. This belief was at the heart of the impressment issue with Great Britain in 1812, as Americans maintained that any man could be American if he so desired. In contrast, Britain claimed that once a British subject, always a British subject – and thus the British had every legal recourse to impress British subjects working on American ships despite their claims to

American citizenship.45 Yet this fluidity worked both ways. If a man could expatriate himself from another country and become an American, then he also had the right to cast

Brian Balogh, A Government out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 113, No. 3 (June, 2008), 752-772; Jeff Pasley, “Midget on Horseback: American Indians and the History of the American State,” Common-place, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Oct., 2008), < http://www.common-place-archives.org/vol-09/no-01/pasley/>.

45 Alan Taylor has identified this ideal as a key reason for the War of 1812. In the case of Texs, Eric Schlereth has demonstrated that most Americans widely understood and accepted migrants to Texas as willful expatriates. Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Vintage, 2011); Schlereth, “Privileges of Locomoation.”

25 off his American citizenship and embrace another country. Thus there was nothing inherently antipatriotic in hundreds of Americans accepting land grants in Upper Canada in the early 1800s, or Stephen Austin’s acceptance Mexican citizenship in the 1820s. A core principle of American citizenship was to cast off this citizenship and embrace another.

Indeed, in the view of breakaway republicans themselves during the Texas

Moment, their actions were a quintessential form of American patriotism and American nationalism. Their expatriation was a representation of this nationalism. For them – and for many other Americans who did not leave U.S. borders – their identity as Americans and their allegiance to other Americans was divorced from allegiance to the U.S. as a nation-state. Instead of a connection to the U.S. polity, breakaway republicans’

American nationalism was predicated on certain core principles that were steeped in U.S. history, but could be practiced just as easily beyond U.S. borders.

The first of these principles was republicanism. While, in examining breakaway republicans, this study often privileges the “breakaway” over the “republic” in the narrative, the latter was just as important as the former for the actors of this study.

Wherever Americans went, they formed republican governments. Indeed, such was the importance of republicanism to these men that it was never debated, but existed as a given. To be an American patriot was to be a republican. Engaging in republican practices was something that Americans simply did, and never needed to be justified or explained to one another, or for that matter to other peoples with whom they came in contact. Such was the ubiquity of republicanism that its presence only revealed itself when Americans came into contact with those who did not subscribe to the same

26 republican ethos. In Oregon, the Chief Factor of the Hudson Bay Company John

McLoughlin did his best to maintain the HBC’s sway over the Willamette Valley and keep his employees from engaging in American migrants’ republican government. He failed. Within only a few years of Americans’ arrival in Oregon, not only HBC settlers but McLoughlin himself joined the government, in order to maintain some influence in the fledgling settlement. In California, Swiss settler John Sutter also failed to stem the tide of republicanism. While he tried to maintain his fort of New Helvetia as a private fiefdom, soon he found his autocratic values did not mesh with the hundreds of American migrants. By 1845, Sutter still held profound economic power, but his political and military power had become defunct as countless Americans simply ignored his writ.

Thus, as McLoughlin and Sutter knew all too well, wherever Americans went, they brought republicanism with them. And, when they arrived in substantial numbers, this republicanism was nearly unstoppable.46

Although seemingly counterintuitive, the United States need not fit into this republican ideology in the nationalism of American migrants. While the U.S. federal government was undoubtedly an important manifestation of republicanism, it was the most distant form of republicanism in the lives of most Americans. As Brian Balogh has argued, the federal government may have been active and influential in various ways, but

46 Republicanism is a loaded term, but several historians have applied the term to describe actors similar to the ones found in this study, emphasizing the importance of local control for this version of republicanism. See Thomas Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); John Murrin, “The Jeffersonian Triumph and American Exceptionalism,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), 1-25; Andrew Cayton, The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780-1825 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986); Cayton, Frontier Indiana (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996); Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire, esp. 53-79.

27 it remained “out of sight” to most Americans.47 Towns, counties, and states all mattered more – or, at least, were more present in daily life. Indeed, local and state republican governments existed before the Constitution and its peculiar – and, to some, overly-centralized – form of republicanism. Certainly this was the case with most of the breakaway republicans of this study, most of whom came from rural regions distant from

U.S. power centers. When these American migrants worked to govern themselves, they exemplified a quintessential form of American nationalism, despite their separation from the United States as a polity.

Coupled to this republicanism was a second principle: the importance of land and land ownership. As described above, there were undoubtedly economic and social reasons for breakaway republicans to covet land, but land ownership also held a political component.48 Owning land was a core aspect of American citizenship, one that predated this citizenship itself by over a century.49 After the Revolution, this settler ethos was given renewed ideological emphasis by Thomas Jefferson and large swaths of his

Republican constituency, which by the 1830s had largely become the Democratic Party.50

Thus, when Americans lost land during the Panic of 1837, or had never able to acquire it in the first place, it threatened their self-definition of themselves as Americans – and so they moved. This ideology led to a counterintuitive development: in the eyes of

47 Balogh, A Government Out of Sight.

48 Thus, they were both classical liberals and republicans. This is a debate I am largely seeking to avoid.

49 See Craig Yirush, Liberty and Empire: The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675-1775 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

50 On Jefferson’s original conception, see Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire. Many works detail the importance of land for the Democratic Party, for example Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom; Kohl, The Politics of Individualism. On the importance of land in American cultural more generally, see Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (New York: Vintage Books, 1950), 138-164.

28 breakaway republicans – and many observers – their pursuit of land ownership outside U.S. borders made them American patriots, even though they were not trying to expand the United States.

The desire to secure permanent ownership of land drove all of the breakaway republicans of this study. When titles to land seemed secure, breakaway republicans were willing to accommodate to the government currently in power; when titles were in flux, they protested and often resorted to violence to keep the land they claimed.

Breakaway republicans’ uncompromising stance in regard to land titles led them to change allegiances with remarkable rapidity. For example, one hundred Americans in

California joined the Mexican Army in 1844 out of the belief that their service would grant them land titles. Only two years later, however, several dozen of these settlers rebelled against Mexican rule in California because they no longer believed their access to land was secure. In this case, as in the cases of other breakaway republicans, political allegiance followed economic security.

Crucially, when the U.S. government seemed to prohibit land ownership, breakaway republicans turned against U.S. interests. Indeed, these were the moments when breakaway republicans had, in effect, broken the farthest away from the United

States. Along the Canadian border, American Patriots countered U.S. actions aimed at curbing their invasions of Canada, which, if successful, would give them land titles in the future Canadian republic. In Indian Territory, Cherokee leaders convened with other removed native peoples when it seemed like the U.S. was encroaching on their autonomy.

The Mormons considered waging war against the U.S., until the creation of the Mormon

Battalion ensured that the U.S. would acquiesce, at least temporarily, to their settlement

29 in the West. Even settlers in Oregon, who were the most loyal to the United States of all breakaway republicans, began contemplating an independent republic when it appeared their land holdings were not secure. Ultimately, breakaway republicans gave their loyalty to whatever political settlement allowed them to keep or gain land – which, in many cases, was the fledgling breakaway republic itself.51

One must ask: what mattered more, republicanism or land? If given extensive land by an autocratic government, would breakaway republicans throw off their republicanism? Or, would they privilege republican government over their acquisition of land? This question, however, represents an anachronistic choice that did not exist in

North America in the 1830s and 1840s. Republicanism and land ownership were tethered together. During the Texas Moment, land equaled republican power, and republican power ensured the right to land ownership. It was the Mexican republic that offered

Stephen Austin his colony in the late 1820s, while in contrast the British prohibited

American migration to Canada – and thus American land ownership in Canada – precisely because of the dangers of American republicanism. The closest Americans came to siding with a (perceived) autocratic government in order to gain land was their volunteering for the Mexican Army in California in 1845, in order to suppress a local californio rebellion. They joined an army aimed with upholding the power of the infamous Mexican president Santa Anna. Yet, in the end, these Americans switched to

51 The federal government acquired an enormous amount of public land in the first half of the nineteenth century, and tried to simultaneously raise money from its sale, and populate it with an American population. As G. Edward White has pointed out, these twin goals were fundamentally incompatible; no wonder the federal government’s schizophrenic and contradictory attitude towards land policy resulted in American settlers’ schizophrenic and contradictory attitudes towards the federal government: White, Law in American History, Vol. 1: From the Colonial Years through the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 276.

30 the californio side, having been persuaded that the distant Mexican government had no power to maintain a distant autocratic government over local republicanism. Good republicans themselves, their belief in the power of local republicanism and its guarantee of land to all its citizens soon overrode the empty promises of the distant Mexican government. For these men, and for the rest of breakaway republicans, interest and ideology reinforced one another, and fundamentally could not be separated.52

Of course, Americans moving to secure land was hardly a new development.

Americans’ pursuit of land ownership was built into the early history of the United States

– indeed, it is one of the dominant themes of American history as far back as Jamestown and Plymouth.53 Yet, historians have forgotten this long history when examining the era of Manifest Destiny. Instead, they portray the migration of the 1830s and 1840s as a new era in the nation’s development, where Americans’ pursuit of land was tethered to the interests of the United States, and seemingly the driver of its foreign and domestic politics. Taking the long perspective, there is no reason to assume this was the case.

During the colonial era, British migrants did not journey to the North America for British interests – although they could later argue that their actions actually served the interests of the crown. During the early decades of the republic, Americans journeyed into

Canada, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, rarely having the interests of the U.S. in mind.54

Some of the famous western Americans were hardly forerunners of the U.S. nation-state.

52 For this story, see pages 377-384.

53 See Smith, Virgin Land.

54 This has become a recent theme in U.S. historiography. On Louisiana, see Kastor, A Nation’s Crucible; on West Florida, see McMichael, Atlantic Loyalities; on Texas, see especially Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier; on Canada, see Taylor, Civil War of 1812.

31 Daniel Boone became a Spanish citizen in Missouri before the U.S. acquired

Louisiana, and Stephen Austin embraced Mexican citizenship until the final two years of his life.55 Americans in Canada became British subjects in the early 1800s, and

American merchants in California readily entered californio society in the 1820s.56 In all of these cases, it was land that caused the shift in allegiance. Thus, the Texas Moment was, in many ways, simply a replay of centuries of British-cum-American migration in pursuit of land.

Yet, there were two crucial differences between the earlier migration and the migration of the Texas Moment. The first was the sheer volume of migrants who were willing to travel over massive distances, to regions beyond U.S. borders. Americans had journeyed west by the thousands in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but they generally traveled to regions in relatively close proximity to older white settlements – to soon-to-be western states like Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois.57 At best, only a few hundred traveled further to places beyond U.S. borders. In this regard, Stephen Austin’s

Texas migration was the exception that proved the rule, for no other migration resembled this before the late 1830s. However, by the 1840s, Americans were leaving U.S. borders

55 On Boone’s expatriation, see John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), 285; on Austin’s expatriation, see Greg Cantrell, Stephen Austin: Empresario of Texas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 132-328.

56 While the New Englanders who acculturated to californio society in the 1820s made their living as merchants, they still valued the land they acquired in California.

57 Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Stephen Aron, How the West was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Faragher, Sugar Creek.

32 by the thousands.58 Part of this phenomenon can be explained by the severe economic depression in the United States and migrants’ unhappiness with the nation’s current outlook, as detailed above. Part of this can be explained by the United States’ exponentially increasing population, along with the apotheosis of the penny press (which helped awaken Americans to potential migrant destinations) and improvements in roads and other means of travel throughout the United States (facilitating easier transport to these other destinations).59 The result was that Americans no longer had to journey into non-American territories without other Americans. Either they traveled as a united group, as was the case of the Mormons, or they traveled as individuals and families with many other individuals and families, as was the case of Oregon and California overlanders. Traveling and settling alongside hundreds of fellow Americans meant that migrants no longer needed to assimilate to the prevailing culture.

And they did not want to. Their unwillingness to assimilate represented the second crucial difference between migration of the Texas Moment and earlier migration, and the third crucial principle of their American patriotism – essentially, they were

American patriots. To a certain extent, they were willing to accommodate if the existing government facilitated their access to land, but they were not willing to assimilate. The

United States had existed for over a half century by the time of the Texas Moment, and thus most of the thousands of Americans who expatriated themselves from the United

58 For American migration as the story of a larger phenomenon of Anglo-American “exploding wests,” see James Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 82-83, 223-260.

59 Ibid., 227-244; Howe, What Hath God Wrought?, 211-236; Meinig, The Shaping of America, Vol. 2: Continental America, 216-233. Of course, internal improvements within the U.S. did not facilitate transport beyond its borders, as thousands of overlanders knew all to well. Yet it did allow Americans to reach jumping off points such as Independence, Missouri, with much greater ease.

33 States had deep affection for their former country.60 Far beyond the borders of the

United States, Americans in California and Oregon chose the Fourth of July as an appropriate date to convene republican meetings, while Americans on the Canadian border chose the Fourth as opportune time to launch a surprise invasion (which, predictably, did not surprise anyone). Even the Cherokee and the Mormons, both of whom disliked the current U.S. government, regularly invoked the American past in revelatory fashion. The Cherokee praised George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as

Cherokee heroes, and the Mormons believed Andrew Jackson’s presidency represented the apogee of the United States. More generally, all breakaway republicans held tight to their customs, culture, religion, and language. They settled amongst one another, shunning older settlements founded by non-American populations. No wonder historians have portrayed migrants as patriotic Americans expanding the borders of the United

States, for they defined themselves as patriotic Americans. Crucially, however, their

American patriotism was divorced from expanding the borders of the United States.

After republicanism, land ownership, and an attachment to American culture and

U.S. history, breakaway republicans were committed to a fourth principle: whiteness. To these breakaway republicans, to be American meant to be white. Common whiteness was a tool that allowed strangers to trust one another and enter into republican governments with one another. Whiteness bound these breakaway republics together, and helped determine who could be included in the body politic, and who could not. For

60 On the development of American nationalism, see David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Francois Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Penguin, 2006).

34 most white Americans, it was easier to determine who could not: blacks and native peoples. For proslavery breakaway republicans, blacks could and should be enslaved; for antislavery breakaway republicans, blacks should be prevented from ever coming to their settlements. In both cases, the presence of free blacks was unacceptable. Indians, too, should not be present in or anywhere the fledgling republics. Like blacks, they were dangerous “others,” and while some Americans in California experimented with forms of

Indian labor, most breakaway republicans wanted nothing to do with natives.61

This fear and hatred of Indians helps explain why the Cherokee, of all the breakaway republicans, were undoubtedly the most conservative in their ambitions. Like white breakaway republicans, they valued republicanism, American culture, and the importance of land. Other than their race, there was little to differentiate the elite

Cherokee from white southern planters. Yet, in the eyes of whites, race was crucial: no matter how “civilized” they became, the Cherokees would always be Indians, and therefore they never would be trustworthy.62 It was of course this racism – coupled with

Georgians’ desire for Cherokee land – that forced the Cherokee to migrate west in the first place, but it continued in the West. Once there, the Cherokee did not possess any ability to ally with the many groups of white breakaway republicans, which fundamentally circumscribed their actions and ambitions. Indeed, it was the breakaway republic of Texas, and not the United States, that most threatened the Cherokee. For most of its existence, the Republic of Texas embraced what one historian has termed

61 On the importance of whiteness and “others” in American expansion, see Rana, Two Faces of American Freedom, 1-164.

62 On the racial “hardening” of Americans’ attitude towards Indians in general and the Cherokee in particular, see McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic, xv-xix and passim.

35 “ethnic cleansing” of Indians, and therefore all Cherokees in Texas had to flee back into U.S. Indian Territory for protection.63 The Cherokee were the exception to the rule: for the rest of the actors of this study breakaway republicanism operated as a form of white separatism, for breakaway republicans believed their lily-white settlements would improve on the racial intermixing of the United States.

After their goal of keeping out or suppressing African Americans and Indians, white breakaway republicanism became more complicated – or, more precisely, who could be defined as white became more complicated. Undoubtedly blacks and Indians were not white, but were Mexicans? Were californios? Or tejanos? What about the

French Canadians rebelling against the British in 1837? For these people, the answer was ambiguous, and depended on the circumstances. When they were allied to Americans within respective breakaway republics, they were mostly white, but some Americans still viewed them with suspicion. However, when they became the enemies of Americans, then their racial ambiguity provided for a complete reversal of American attitudes: these people were not white, and therefore white Americans could unite against them based upon racial solidarity. This was the case with Anglo-Texans and tejanos, and Anglo-

Californians and californios. In both of these relationships, former allies became enemies. This was also the case, albeit less overtly, in the case of French Canadians, whom Americans readily abandoned them after their military setbacks during the Lower

Canadian Rebellion. In contrast, Americans did not abandon Anglo Upper Canadians in the same manner, despite their much more disastrous military failures.

63 Gary Clayton Anderson, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005).

36 While Hispanics and French Canadians remained suspect, many other

European peoples were already white – and thus they could become American. Of course, this had been the case for quite some time in the United States, as Britons,

Germans, Irish Protestants, and many others assimilated in the decades before and after the American Revolution. Yet the immigrant percentage of the population was even greater in breakaway republics, where a substantial minority of migrants came from

Northern Europe. Britons, Germans, and Danes, among others, settled in California,

Texas, and Oregon. British converts made up thousands of Mormon settlers in the Salt

Lake Valley. To Americans across the border, Anglo Upper Canadian rebels were essentially fellow American brethren. As long as these white people subscribed to republicanism, embraced various aspects of American culture, and – crucially – gained ownership of land themselves, they too could be American.64 The importance of

European migrants is a missing component in much of the historiography of pre-1846

American expansion, as historians have simply ignored that many of the people participating in this process were not American.65 How, then, were they truly representatives of the United States’ manifest destiny? Yet, in historians’ neglectfulness there is an aspect of unintended truth: although not representatives of the United States, these foreigners could become American in the West. Thus the American identity of

64 Ryan Dearinger has demonstrated that Americans did not conceive of the Irish and Mormon laborers (on canals and railroads as white, but this conception was in regard to unskilled labor. Immigrants who did acquire land could be easily assimilated into the ideal of the Anglo-American yeoman farmer. Dearinger, The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 4-9.

65 “Proto-Americans” is Rachel St. John’s helpful phrase describing these foreigners (email to the author, March 8, 2016).

37 breakaway republicans was mutable, as those foreigners whom Americans deemed fellow whites could readily embrace breakaway republicanism themselves.66

The racial and ethnic dynamics of American expansion have been examined before, most notably by historian Reginald Horsman. In what he defined as “racial

Anglo-Saxonism,” Horsman noted that Americans from all backgrounds believed in the demographic victory of an Anglo-Saxon population, which would inevitably overspread

North America.67 Yet Horsman failed to differentiate the crucial difference between western migrants and Americans in the East. To western migrants, breakaway republics provided a solution to the racial problems in the United States. For antislavery breakaway republicans, their future republics would be explicitly opposed to both slavery and the sheer presence of African Americans, both of which polluted the United States.

For slaveholding breakaway republicans in Texas, in contrast, their republic would explicitly protect slavery, and avoid the dangerous presence of abolitionists. From a certain perspective, both groups anticipated and agreed with Lincoln’s famous “House

Divided” speech: to them, a nation divided over slavery boded for a precarious future, so they created nations beyond the United States that were from the outset, as Lincoln later said, “all one thing or all the other.” Thus race was crucial in shaping the designs of breakaway republicans.

66 Scholars have scarcely explored this dynamic, focusing on the post-1848 period of immigration to the American West, when immigrants were entering the United States, e.g. Frederick Luebke, ed., European Immigrants in the American West: Community Histories (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).

67 Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny. Nicole Eustace details the American belief in demographic victory, albeit during an earlier time, in 1812:War and the Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 1-35. It is worth noting that there was some reality to this belief. As James Belich has recently argued, Anglo-Saxon demographic growth was exceptional, dwarfing even the rapid population growth of developing nations in the late-twentienth century. Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 85 and passim.

38 In sum, the American nationalism of breakaway republicans was predicated on four principles: republicanism, land ownership, a connection to and celebration of

American culture and U.S. history, and the importance of whiteness. What, then, was the role of the state in this picture? What did breakaway republics provide that the United

States could or would not? Most breakaway republicans, whether invading Texas or

Canada, migrating to Oregon or California, espoused a more minimalist view of the ideal role of the state. A significant number of migrants had been supporters of the Democratic

Party before their migration, and they brought this ideology beyond U.S. borders.68 To these people, the state needed to fulfill two crucial roles: first, facilitate the acquisition of land, and second, provide security for titles over this land – which, in practice, meant protecting landholders from Indians and other threats (this was even true for the

Cherokee, who wanted protection from the “wild” Plains Indians).69 The U.S. had failed to do the former, which led land hungry migrants to expatriate themselves in the first place; beyond its borders the U.S. would not and could not do the latter. In a sense, then, breakaway republicanism emerged from necessity: American migrants banded together to protect their landholdings, and protect themselves from Indians and other potential enemies. For the small minority of Whiggish and business-oriented breakaway republicans, the state should also facilitate transport via internal improvements, and it

68 Evidence for this can be found in individual chapters, but it rests primarily on two general facts: first, most breakaway republicans came from regions that were heavily Democratic (both in terms of state politics, and their local agrarian origins), and second, when they eventually rejoined the United States, their new states were also heavily Democratic.

69 Despite the number of works on the U.S. state in the nineteenth century, these works spend little time examining what exactly Americans wanted the national state to do: e.g. Balogh, A Government Out of Sight, 3-4; David F. Ericson, Slavery and the American Republic: Developing the Federal Government, 1791-1861 (Lawrence, KN: University Press of Kansas, 2011); Katznelson, “Flexible Capacity”; Leonard White, The Jackonsians: A Study in Administrative History (New York: University of Chicago, 1956).

39 was these men who were the most eager to embrace annexation by the United

States. For most, however, once their land was secure in law and from Indians, they simply wanted to be left alone. With this view of the role of the state, it is unsurprising that many breakaway republicans never embraced U.S. expansion after 1846, for U.S. oversight often led to unwanted interference in local matters, while it egregiously failed to protect settlers from Indians. The story of the American West in the 1850s is that of the U.S. state interfering where it was unwanted, and failing to intervene where settlers clamored for intervention.

An obvious question remains: breakaway republicans embraced republicanism, land ownership, American culture, whiteness, and a minimalist government – but so too did many Americans who never became breakaway republicans. What, then, was the difference between the two? Certainly there was a rather large political chasm between breakaway republicans and most Whigs. Men like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John

Quincy Adams, and Winfield Scott desired a government that actively intervened in U.S. society, and privileged national union over state and local government. Clay in particular loathed the idea of granting free or cheap western land to squatters, and wanted the state to organize western settlement from the top-down, a stance squarely opposed to that of breakaway republicans.70 The divide was not as wide with nationally-minded Democrats like Andrew Jackson, whom many breakaway republicans celebrated. Yet the ideology of Jackson and his ilk still ran through the federal government, even though this ideology sought to keep the federal government out of most affairs. As his famous toast to

70 John R. Van Atta, “ ‘A Lawless Rabble’: Henry Clay and the Cultural Politics of Squatters’ Rights, 1832-1841,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), 337-378.

40 Calhoun demonstrated – “Our Federal Union, it must be preserved” – clearly

Jackson celebrated and sought to maintain the Union, as did Democrats like Martin Van

Buren and Thomas Hart Benton. Even the arch-sectionalist John C. Calhoun hoped to maintain the Union as long as slavery was protected and southern “rights” respected. In contrast, while breakaway republicans were not disunionists, they were simply ambivalent or unconcerned with the Union as an ideology.71 They had other priorities.72

Of course, it seems commonsense that any national politician would differ in political ideology than that of breakaway republicans. The more intriguing question – and one impossible to answer with certainty – is the extent to which breakaway republicans differed from the thousands of other agrarian and Democratic-minded

Americans who never left the United States. We of course cannot determine the number of Americans who would have migrated if the Texas Moment continued, let alone of the number who supported breakaway republicanism as a practice but did not want to risk undertaking such actions themselves. Certainly geography played a part in breakaway republicanism. The closer Americans lived to a potential breakaway republic, the easier it was for them to embrace it tenets. This importance of proximity held true for

Americans across the republic – for those Americans invading Canada in the North, migrating to Texas in the South, or leaving Missouri in the West. Very few breakaway republicans came from the eastern seaboard. Geography may have influenced ideology; it should not surprise us that Americans living far from the center of federal power would

71 On “Union” as an ideology during this period, see Rogan Kersh, Dreams of a More Perfect Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 104-152.

72 In this belief, they echoed Jefferson, who saw union – in John Murrin’s words – as a “means to an end,” and thus had little trouble with the idea of sister republics. Murrin, “The Jeffersonian Triumph and American Exceptionalism,” 23.

41 be the most likely to cast if off. In these more distant regions, those that migrated may have been the proverbial tip of the iceberg: perhaps thousands more Americans would have journeyed west regardless of whether the U.S. expanded in the late 1840s.

While U.S. expansion alleviated some concerns of later migrants, it is unlikely that a non-

U.S. West would have deterred a significant number of people from migrating to the region. Thousands of would-be yeomen would have still traveled to Oregon, thousands of Mormon converts would have still traveled to Utah, and tens of thousands of fortune- seekers would have still journeyed to California in 1849.73 Thus, the ideology of breakaway republicanism may have been woven into the fabric of American society, and what separated breakaway republicans from many other Americans were simply their individual practical circumstances rather than their larger ideas concerning the United

States and other republics. With United States’ unprecedented expansion in 1846, we can never know for certain.

It is important to note one final but crucial aspect of breakaway republicans’

American patriotism: its flexibility vis-à-vis the U.S. state meant that founding a breakaway republic did not necessitate this republic’s permanence. Rather, breakaway republicans believed their polities might join the United States at some point in the near or distant future, depending on both the changing geopolitical circumstances in North

America and the internal developments within the breakaway republic itself. At the heart of this question of if and when a breakaway republic would join the United States was a

73 As their respective chapters to these regions will demonstrate, it was quite clear by 1846 that immigration to the West was only going to increase regardless of the intervention of the United States.

42 calculation of self-interest: when would joining the United States offer more benefits than remaining outside of it?

The Republic of Texas demonstrated how this worked best. After San Jacinto, most Anglo-Texans longed for U.S. annexation, if only to secure greater military protection from a potentially vengeful Mexican government. With such desperation, they requested annexation without any preconditions. However, once the U.S. spurned them, they went their own way. Almost a decade later, when annexation was once more on the table, Texan officials were able to negotiate a remarkably favorable deal with the United

States. If Texas agreed to annexation, it would come into the U.S. as a state – and thereby govern itself. Texas would also get military protection, while still being allowed to control its public lands. Although the U.S. would not pay Texan debts – of which there were many – maintaining control of its public lands would allow the Texas government to raise revenue. From the perspective of Texas residents, Texas was beset with many internal crises at the time of annexation, but few outside observers – including breakaway republicans – understood Texas’ dire straits. From an outsider perspective, the Texans had essentially held out for ten years for a better deal. They helped dictate the terms of annexation, and the decision was ultimately theirs, as U.S. officials nervously awaited their answer. In 1836, it was the Texans who had been suitors for annexation to the United States; in 1844, it was the United States.

This understanding was undoubtedly at work among breakaway republicans in

Oregon and California, who calculated what they could get from the United States if they became legitimate international states. Indeed, the infamous instigators of the Bear Flag

Revolt became outraged when they realized that they were not getting any personal

43 benefits from U.S. annexation. To the Bear Flaggers, they had conquered

California (a ridiculous assertion), but the U.S. was not recognizing their “Bear Flag

Republic” in the same manner as the Republic of Texas.74 Mormon leaders made similar calculations upon their western exodus, although from a much more theological bent: when the U.S. eventually joined with the Mormons in the West, it would do so because the Kingdom of God was at hand. The Cherokee, too, followed this pattern, but unlike other breakaway republicans, they realized that the benefits of remaining autonomous within U.S. borders outweighed the costs of leaving – once again making their breakaway republicanism the most conservative of any in this study. All breakaway republicans believed the future was fluid: they could join the United States soon, eventually, or never.

They never assumed U.S. expansion, but neither they did they assume their permanent independence. In this sense they were, above all, pragmatists, yet it was a pragmatism circumscribed by and embedded within a broad and flexible republican ideology. Thus, they were both pragmatic republicans and republican pragmatists, and this ethos dictated their political decisions during the entire decade of the Texas Moment.

Texas as Diplomatic and Rhetorical Ally

While the “Texas Moment” was bred by internal crises in each of the three major

North American polities, it was strengthened by the continued existence of Texas as an independent republic. Of course, in the first years of Texas’ existence, this status was more a product of outside circumstances than it was Texans’ desire to remain

74 See the polemical work of William Ide, one of the original Bear Flag rebels: William Ide, Who Conquered California?, ed. Simeon Ide (Claremont, NH, 1880).

44 independent. With Mexico unwilling to recognize Texas independence, an endemic state of war remained between the two nations, and many Texans longed for the protective military embrace that U.S. annexation would seemingly provide.

Unfortunately, neither Presidents Andrew Jackson nor Martin Van Buren were willing or able to push for annexation, for two reasons that both point back to the internal crises of the United States. First, they and others feared a war with Mexico; although most

Americans believed that the U.S. would win the war, they questioned if it were worth the cost in both men and money – the latter gaining in significance during the depression.

Second, the politics of slavery militated against annexation, for annexing such a large slave territory would bode ill for the tenuous balance of slaveholders and non- slaveholders in the Democratic Party. Moreover, most of the Whig Party, including most southern Whigs, believed rapid expansion would make the Union unwieldy. Therefore, although the Texas government requested annexation immediately after independence, which was then formally proposed in Congress by committed expansionists, it did not pass. By 1838, the Texas government realized annexation was not on the immediate horizon, and withdrew its request.

For the next six years, annexation was a nonstarter in the federal government.75

Indeed, as late as 1844 it looked like Texas independence would be sustained for many years, and perhaps become permanent. In May of that year, it appeared that the likely nominees for president would be Martin Van Buren and Henry Clay, and neither desired the immediate annexation of Texas. Even when James Polk won the Democratic

75 Joel Silbey, Storm Over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1-79. See below, on the historiography of chapter one, for a longer list of works relating to party politics and international diplomacy during these years.

45 nomination on an expansionist agenda, many expected a Clay victory, meaning as late as November the prospects for permanent Texas independence appeared not only possible, but probable. Thus, it was during these six years (1838-1844) when the “Texas

Moment” was at its height, and it was during these years that many breakaway republicans looked to Texas as an ally to achieve their own goals.

What kind of ally Texas would be depended on both the location of the would-be breakaway republic and the receptiveness of the Texas government. In 1844, following an increase in violence in Nauvoo, Mormon leaders believed they could contract with the

Texas government to settle somewhere in southern Texas, and perhaps act as an autonomous buffer state against Mexican and Indian aggression. In this case, Texas acted as a formal diplomatic ally, as Mormon emissaries met with Sam Houston and held productive talks. Unfortunately for the Mormons, Joseph Smith’s murder put negotiations on hold, and by the time Brigham Young and the rest of the Mormon leadership resumed talks, the United States had annexed Texas.76

No other breakaway republic crafted diplomatic ties with Texas, although the

Cherokee may have desired such ties if the Texas government would have been receptive.77 Unfortunately, Texas was more hostile to Indians than the U.S., and while

76 Michael Scott Van Wagenen gives the best synopsis of these negotiations: Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2002). Next year, the LDS Church will publish the previously unavailable minutes of the Council of Fifty, the political arm of the Mormons in the final year of Smith’s life, which will likely add significant unknown details of these negotiations.

77 The case of New Mexico also fits this paradigm to a certain extent, for nuevomexicanos rebelled in the late 1830s, and some hoped Texas would become a political ally during this revolt (and some Texans hoped to annex New Mexico). At the present, I do not investigate the politics of New Mexico, simply because this study is focused on the actions of Americans; in New Mexico, nuevomexicanos were the great majority, and Americans remained a tiny minority. Nevertheless, New Mexico demonstrates the international aspects of the Texas Moment, and I am contemplating whether to expand my study into New Mexico for the ultimate book project.

46 one thousand Cherokee had found homes in Texas in the 1820s, they were expelled in the late 1830s – and thus the 20,000 Cherokee in U.S. Indian Territory were of course unwelcome. However, the Cherokee, along with breakaway republicans in California and even far-off Oregon, used the geopolitical space that Texas created to their advantage. Permanent Texas independence implied that the U.S. western border would not be the Pacific Ocean, but would only reach as far as the Rocky Mountains. In this geopolitical vacuum, Cherokee leaders believed they could create an autonomous Indian polity between the U.S. and Texas, while both residents of California and Oregon envisioned a Pacific Republic. After their negotiations with Texas failed, Mormon leaders too believed they could create a Mormon polity that stretched from the Salt Lake

Valley to the Pacific. In these cases Texas existed as a geopolitical ally; one sister republic on the continent implied other sister republics on the continent, as the U.S. border stopped at the Rockies.78

Texas also existed as a rhetorical ally. To many Americans, Texas independence demonstrated that creating other republics was not only feasible, but morally legitimate.

Far from Texas geographically, American Patriots living along the U.S.-Canada border contended they were close to the Texans ideologically and politically, for they were essentially creating a northern Texas. Their aid to the Canadian rebels, so they argued, was nothing more than Americans had done the previous year in Texas, and thus the

United States had no right to intervene. The Patriots needed to justify their actions against a U.S. government fundamentally opposed to them, and therefore were the most

78 D.W. Meinig visualizes an example of how this would look geographically (The Shaping of America, 215).

47 vociferous in their Texas analogies, but other breakaway republicans also used

Texas as a rhetorical ally. Hispanic and American residents in California who envisioned a California republic believed they were following the example of the Texans, and to a lesser extent so did Oregon settlers. Texas’ existence, in essence, validated breakaway republicanism as an honorable political goal.

While the other breakaway republicans viewed Texas as an ally in various ways, they also viewed one another as potential allies. During the Texas Moment, a sort of quasi-international diplomacy emerged – or, at least, was envisioned – in the North

American West. The Mormons looked to unite with the Cherokee, contemplated an alliance with Mexico, and proposed moving to both Oregon and coastal California. The

Cherokee hoped to unite other removed Indian peoples and form an Indian polity.

Oregonians and Californians looked to each other, seeing Oregon-California unification as the best means of creating a lasting Pacific Republic. One observer even proposed settling previously captured American Patriots, who had just recently returned from their exile in Van Diemen’s Land, in California to fight for California’s independence.79 Of course, international diplomacy had always existed in the West, first among native peoples alone, then between native peoples and early Spanish settlers, and by the 1820s, involving the Hudson Bay Company and influential American traders like the Bent family. Yet the fledging diplomacy of the late 1830s and early 1840s was not of the same ilk, for it mirrored western-style diplomacy among international states – not, as Anne

Hyde termed the American West in her excellent synthesis, interactions among “empires,

79 William Hooper to Thomas Larkin, April 29, 1845, The Larkin Papers, Vol. 3, ed. George P. Hammond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), 158.

48 nations, and families.” If this diplomacy was akin to anything, it would be the world of the Latin American republicans during the first decades of their independence – notably, the same time period as the Texas Moment. In this world, multiple “sister republics” sharing similar histories and cultures interacted with one another as equals, while still-powerful native peoples continued to exert influence both against and within these republics.80 Of course, whatever diplomacy occurred in North America was inchoate and remarkably brief. Ultimately this alternative American West was truncated by the unprecedented expansion of the United States in 1845-1846, which marked the end of the Texas Moment.

1846: The End of the Texas Moment

That 1846 was a watershed year in American history is undoubtedly a truism among U.S. historians. Following the controversial annexation of Texas in 1845 via a congressional joint resolution, the United States declared war on Mexico, conquered the

Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico, and concurrently annexed the southern portion of Oregon Country via a treaty with Great Britain. 1846 was indeed, in

Bernard DeVoto’s famous words, the “year of decision,” and secured the United States a transcontinental empire – which in turn vastly increased the likelihood of civil war.81

Yet, most scholars have missed the addendum to this decisive year: by conquering the

American West, the United States foreclosed the decisions of many western actors,

80 Admittedly, this was more a vision of early postcolonial Latin America than reality, as most postcolonial states were politically unstable and economically impoverished. For this “sister republic” concept among Latin American states, see James Sanders, The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

81 Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision: 1846 (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1942).

49 including many Americans.82 In the mid-1840s, Mormons had chosen the Salt Lake

Valley as the location of their future polity, while the Cherokee and Choctaw had convened many other removed Indians in Indian Territory in order to establish the basis for permanent Indian autonomy. In California, californios and Americans alike convened in Santa Barabara to discuss their political future, while in Oregon the sentiment for independence was growing stronger with every month. Clearly, from their perspective in the West, these breakaway republicans did not share John L. O’Sullivan’s view – written from New York – that it was the United States’ manifest destiny to expand across the continent.83 If the U.S. did expand, westerners believed it would expand gradually, by their own acquiescence.

Of course, their prediction was wrong, but it was not illogical, for 1846 was not the preordained culmination of the United States’ Manifest Destiny. There was nothing inevitable about the many dramatic events of that year. If 1846 was the culmination of anything, it was the culmination of the political skills of James Polk. In 1844, Polk cobbled together a diverse group of Democratic expansionists to unexpectedly gain the

Democratic nomination for president, and then barely won the election against Henry

82 Of course, native peoples of the West continued their struggles for self-sovereignty on their own terms for decades after 1846 (and, in legal terms, to the present day), which have been well-covered by historians. I differentiate their goals from those of the breakaway republicans, for the breakaway republicans were trying to craft nation-states along European-style lines – meaning they were essentially mimicking the United States in the first decades of independence, and trying to create what Eliga Gould has defined as “treaty worthy nations”: Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).

83 O’Sullivan’s famous essay has been misconstrued by many historians, as it is often grafted onto Polk’s expansionist program, and both combine into the definition of Manifest Destiny. In fact, O’Sullivan did not believe in such rapid military expansion. If the U.S. were to expand, it would come via Anglo- American demographic victory. O’Sullivan eventually became a critic of the U.S.-Mexican War, and supporter of the Confederacy’s right to secede. See Robert D. Sampson, John L. O’Sullivan and his Times (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003); Robert Johansen, “The Meaning of Manifest Destiny,” in Manifest Destiny and Empire: Antebellum American Expansion, ed. Sam Haynes and Christopher Morris (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 7-20.

50 Clay. Upon Polk’s assumption of the presidency, the U.S. had largely weathered the severe depression of the 1830s, which, along with a Democratic majority in both houses of congress, gave Polk breathing space to fulfill his goals. Employing political promises, appointments, and manipulations, by 1846 Polk had gained enough support from politicians and the general public to wage war against Mexico, and bluster Britain into the Oregon Treaty. Importantly, Polk personally drove many of the major events of this year. While many Americans generally desired the annexation of Texas and/or

Oregon, it was Polk who was behind the joint resolution vote on Texas at the end of John

Tyler’s presidency, and it was Polk who sent the U.S. Army into the disputed Nueces

Strip, thereby maneuvering the U.S. into a “defensive” war. Less famously, Polk also created a Mormon alliance via the Mormon Battalion, which, in Polk’s words, “prevented this singular sect from becoming hostile” to the U.S. during the precarious early months of war with Mexico. Polk also forced the potentially hostile Ross Party of the Cherokee

Nation into terms with the pro-U.S. Treaty Party – terms that eliminated the armed

Cherokee Light Horse as a threat to U.S. sovereignty in Indian Territory. Finally, whether Polk was behind John Fremont’s actions in California in early 1846 remains uncertain, but he was undoubtedly behind Stephen Kearny’s Army of the West, which conquered California later that year. Most Americans at the time did not value

California, but Polk certainly did.84 In many ways, Polk’s actions as commander-in-chief

84 On Polk, see Charles Sellers, James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843-1846 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966); William Dusinberre, Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Tom Chaffin, Met His Every Goal?: James K. Polk and the Legends of Manifest Destiny (Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennesee Press, 2014); Robert W. Merry, A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, The Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009); Amy Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 Invasion of Mexico (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012); Paul Bergeron, The Presidency of James K. Polk (Lawrence, KN: University Press of Kansas, 1987). Importantly, most of these studies give short shrift to the Mormon

51 made him the first modern president; as historian Leonard White once wrote, “Polk gave the country its first demonstration of the administrative capacities of the presidency as a war agency. He proved that a President could run a war.”85 And, to add, manipulate the country into war.

During 1846, Polk’s political skills were at their high point, but they were temporary. By 1847, many of Polk’s former allies turned against him, as Polk’s promises proved empty and his manipulations caustic. The dislike many contemporaries soon held for Polk has only increased over time, as historians have added a laundry list of criticisms to Polk’s personality and legacy.86 Most of these criticisms are all too true, but there are two that need to be challenged. The first, most eloquently argued by David Pletcher but seconded by many other historians, concerns Polk’s method of expansion: war and/or the threat of war. Regardless of whether or not expansion was a wise course to pursue, so this argument goes, there was no need to wage war to do so; given only a few years, the

U.S. could have peacefully purchased much of Polk’s coveted territory, or at least wait for demographics in these territories to make annexation a more organic process.87 The second critique concerns the reasons for expansion. As Thomas Hietala and others have

Battalion, and all of them ignore Polk’s relations with the Cherokee entirely. For Polk’s negotiations with the Mormons, see Will Bagley and David Bigler, ed., Army of Israel: Mormon Battalion Narratives (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000), 32-49. For Polk’s involvement with the Cherokee Nation, see Bethany R. Berger, “ ‘Power Over this Unfortunate Race’: Race, Politics and Indian Law in United States v. Rogers,” William and Mary Law Review, Vol. 45, Issue 5 (2004), 1960-2052.

85 White, The Jacksonians, 50. Italics in original.

86 E.g. Polk’s slave trading and slave owning; his desire to expand slave territory over free territory; his micromanagement and unwillingness to delegate; his willingness to lie egregiously to achieve political victory and his general manipulative behavior; his rather dry personality and complete absence of a sense of humor; and, most importantly, his lack of foresight in seeing that expansion could lead to civil war. He was, in many ways, Abraham Lincoln’s doppelganger.

87 Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation, 609-611.

52 contended, Manifest Destiny was driven not by a robust confidence in American power, but out of anxiousness found within American society, particularly regarding the future of slavery and growing industrialization.88 The latter argument requires modification, which in turn challenges the former argument.

In the 1840s, many Americans certainly were anxious about the future of the

United States. Indeed, as detailed above, this study argues this anxiousness helped drive the ambitions of breakaway republicans. Yet, for Polk and other national expansionists, there was another reason to be anxious: western actors were well on their way to forming independent – and potentially permanent – republics. Even in Oregon, which was the breakaway republic most supportive of U.S. annexation, the desire for independence was steadily increasing after 1843, while the desire for U.S annexation was decreasing. Many

Oregonians – along with California residents, the Cherokee and other removed Indians, most Mormons, and many Texans – felt they could hold their own in the West, and questioned whether attaching themselves to the United States was a wise decision. In some cases, they believed their independence would be underwritten by Great Britain, for the British welcomed any outcome that would prevent U.S. expansion.89 Moreover, they believed their power and influence would increase with every year, for the number of migrants was increasing exponentially with every year; if given only a short period of

88 Hietala, Manifest Design, vii-xii and passim.

89 Undoubtedly many western migrants brought their Anglophobia with them on their journeys, but this diminished over time, as it became increasingly clear that Britain would not intervene militarily in the region. Of course, the Mormons were much more anti-U.S. than they were anti-British, and so too were a great many of the Cherokee. The only breakaway republic where Anglophobia continued to play a decisive role was in Texas, as many slave owning Texans feared British abolitionist aims (Torget, Seeds of Empire, 235-244). On general American Anglophobia during this period, see Sam Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011).

53 time, Oregon, California, and Mormon Deseret would be populated by thousands more people. While the native population in Indian Territory was not increasing in such terms, leaders of the Cherokee and other removed tribes were beginning to form a permanent alliance. Because of these political developments, Polk and his allies were politically justified in their belief that speed was needed to complete expansion (whether they were morally justified is another matter). If the federal government waited only a few more years, the seemingly apolitical West would be filled with breakaway republics, many of which would be populated by Americans. To counter Pletcher, time was not on the side of the U.S. expansionists. Of course, whether this alternative vision of North

America helped drive Polk’s actions is more difficult to determine, but his restlessness did indeed prevent this vision from happening.

The end of the Texas Moment did not end the struggles of the breakaway republicans, but it drastically altered their range of possibilities. Whatever their unhappiness with the United States upon leaving its borders, most Americans who traveled to California and Oregon had never wanted to rebel against the U.S. Once back within U.S. borders after 1846, their displeasure with the U.S. returned, but they now voiced it through local politics – albeit rather ineffectively. The more anti-U.S. Mormon and Cherokee continued to seek autonomy, but now they had to do so completely isolated, and thus both struggles ultimately proved futile. For the ambitious few who continued to dream of breakaway republics, they turned to more aggressive and more violent means of fulfilling their dreams. Eschewing any organic demographic process, these breakaway republicans became the filibusters of the 1850s, who invaded Latin

American with the goal of immediately seizing power. Thus, when the Texas Moment

54 closed, so too did the window on an alternative political west – only to reemerge in

1861, when the Civil War once again portended a United States that stopped at the

Rockies.

* * * * *

Although breakaway republicans were united in their quest for self-sovereignty in

North America, their specific methods and political goals often differed widely from one another. Moreover, even though breakaway republicans connected with, or at least talked about, other breakaway republicans, this western diplomacy was fragmentary and inchoate, and in many cases they remained isolated from one another. For these reasons,

I have chosen to organize this dissertation in the form of case studies, whereby each chapter recounts the political struggles of one group of breakaway republicans. The exception to this approach is the first chapter, “Washington Politics and Continental

Visions: The Texas Moment in the U.S. East, 1836-1846.” This chapter provides a broad overview of the phenomenon of breakaway republics from the perspective of national politicians and major newspapers of the era, paying particular attention to those who argued against U.S. expansion and for the viability of other North American republics. It makes three interrelated arguments. First, until 1844 Texas annexation – and U.S. expansion more generally – was never destined. On the contrary, it seemed unlikely, and it was only because a series of improbably contingent events that annexation reemerged in American politics. Second, because Texas annexation seemed unlikely, many

Americans imagined a very different geopolitical future for North America. In effect, as

55 breakaway republicans acted out their political desires in the West, Americans imagined them in the East. Third, the end of the Texas Moment was not a natural development, but emerged due to the actions of President Polk. Polk feared breakaway republicans could permanently counter U.S. expansion, and thus worked to ensure they would remain marginalized as he initiated the expansionist process. In doing so, he employed novel political tactics, and became the first “modern” president.90

Chapter Two, “The Lure of Upper Canada, 1837-1840,” studies the outbreak and growth of the Patriot movement along the U.S. northern border among thousands of

Americans. The Patriots’ goal was to restart the failed Canadian Rebellions of 1837 and create a Canadian Republic, using U.S. territory as a safe haven to implement their plans.

Their actions were based upon continued borderland connections with Anglo-Canadians living in the Great Lakes region, which unsurprisingly witnessed the majority of

American-led Patriot activity. Fearing Patriot actions would spark war with Britain, the

Van Buren administration cracked down on the movement, but this only made the

Patriots more determined. Arguing they were following the example of Texas, American

Patriots went underground, forming illegal secret societies loyal to the Republic of

Canada, essentially expatriating themselves while remaining on U.S. soil. Ultimately several thousand Patriots invaded Canada, while tens of thousands provided moral and material support. Patriot persistence stemmed from their belief that a Canadian Republic would act as a solution to many problems engulfing American society: industrialization,

90 While there are many works on American politics that cover the entire second party system, several focus particularly on this decade: Silbey, Storm over Texas; Ashworth, “Agrarians” and “Aristocrats”; William Brock, Parties and Political Conscience: American Dilemmas, 1840-1850 (Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979).

56 economic depression, slavery and abolition, and a return to a certain ideal of manhood. Although, because they faced both Britain and the U.S., their cause proved hopeless, this chapter argues that the Patriot War was indeed an example of a northern

Texas, demonstrating that breakaway republicans were present just as much along the northern border as along the southern.91

Chapter Three, “The Autonomous Cherokee Republic, 1839-1846,” shifts the narrative to the American Southwest, and focuses on the post-removal Cherokee’s struggle for complete political autonomy in Indian Territory. By forming a Cherokee

Light Horse, expelling U.S. soldiers, and creating alliances with other removed native peoples, the dominant Ross Party asserted Cherokee sovereignty. Chief John Ross and his allies never termed their goal independence, for it would have undoubtedly provoked the United States, but nevertheless their actions and rhetoric demonstrated they hoped to

91 In general, Patriot War historiography has focused on the diplomacy between the U.S. and Britain. Works that detail the actions of the Patriots themselves are often superficial (concentrating solely on the military actions of the Patriots), and do not focus on the reasons Americans volunteered. Meanwhile, the few recent articles that have focused on Patriot motivations are useful, but still speculative: Andrew Bonthius, “The Patriot War of 1837-1838: Locofocoism with a Gun?” Labour/Le Travail 52 (Fall 2003), 9- 43; Donald E. Graves, Guns Across the River: The Battle of the Windmill, 1838 (Prescott, ON: The Friends of Windmill Point, 2013); Marc L. Harris, “The Meaning of Patriot: The Canadian Rebellion and American Republicanism, 1837-1839,” Michigan Historical Review 23 (April 1997), 33–69; Kenneth R. Stevens, Border Diplomacy: The Caroline and McLeod Affairs in Anglo-American-Canadian Relations, 1837-1842 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1989); Sam Watson, “U.S. Army Officers Fight the ‘Patriot War’,” Journal of the Early Republic 18 (Autumn 1998), 485-519; Reginald Stuart, United States Expansionism and British North America, 1775-1871 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 126-147; Stuart D. Scott, “The Patriot Game: New Yorkers and the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-1838,” New York History 68 (July 1987); Francis M. Carroll, A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783-1842 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 202-220; Cassandra Pybus and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, American Citizens, British Slaves: Yankee Political Prisoners in an Australian Penal Colony, 1839-1850 (Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2002), 7-45; Duffy and Muller, An Anxious Democracy, 43-86; Jean-Paul Bernard, “Vermonters and the Lower Canadian Rebellions of 1837-1838,” Vermont History 58 (Fall 1990), 250-263; Clarence Guillet, The Lives and Times of the Patriots; an Account of the Rebellion in Upper Canada, 1837-1838, and of the Patriot Agitation in the United States, 1837-1842 (Toronto: University of Toronoto Press, 1968); Oscar Arvle Kinchen, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956); Albert B. Corey, The Crisis of 1830-1842 in Canadian-American Relations (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1941), 27-101; Orrin Edward Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-1838 (Toronto: Coles Publishing Co., 1905).

57 create an autonomous Indian polity in the southwest borderlands. The location of

Indian Territory helped foster their ambitions, for the region was a geopolitical vacuum between the borders of the U.S., Texas, and the Comanche. The Ross Party understood that the United States simply could not assert its power in Indian Territory unless the federal government drastically changed its measures. However, Texas annexation ensured Indian Territory was surrounded on all sides by the United States, and thus the

Ross Party could no longer engage in borderlands diplomacy. Moreover, the minority

Treaty Party’s exhortations to the federal government for aid finally found a sympathizer in President Polk. Fearing the Cherokee would be a fifth column during the U.S.-

Mexican, Polk forced the Ross Party to disband the Light Horse and come to terms with the Treaty Party. The Cherokee would remain autonomous for several more decades – but only by the acquiescence of the United States.92

Chapter Four, “Manifesting Mormon Destiny, 1844-1846,” examines Mormon plans for an independent empire somewhere in the North American continent. In 1844,

Illinoisans became increasingly hostile to the power and influence of the Mormons and their capital of Nauvoo, which was essentially governed as an independent Mormon city- state. As violence increased, Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders contemplated a

92 While there has been excellent work on the post-removal Cherokee, much of this fails to place the Cherokee in the larger geopolitical framework of the West: William McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears: The Cherokees’ Struggle for Sovereignty, 1839-1880 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Andrew Denson, Demanding the Cherokee Nation: Indian Autonomy and American Culture, 1830- 1900 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004); Duane Champagne, Social Order and Political Change: Constitutional Governments among the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Creek (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 176-207. Works that do detail the geopolitics of the Cherokee include Grant Foreman, Advancing the Frontier, 1830-1860 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 1933); David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors: Southern Plains and Removed Indians in Indian Territory (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), John Bowes, Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007),122-151; Brad Agnew, Fort Gibson: Terminal on the Trail of Tears (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 185- 204.

58 new home for the Mormons, where they could implement their intertwined theological and political goals. Smith sent emissaries to Texas to inquire about creating an autonomous Mormon settlement. He also sent emissaries to the United States, in which he offered that the Mormons would act as an independent U.S. ally in the West by protecting American migrants. Smith’s tragic murder ended the Texas negotiations, while the U.S. never responded to Mormon overtures. However, Brigham Young continued Smith’s plans for Mormon independence. First he sent emissaries to the

Cherokee to form an anti-U.S. alliance, and when this plan failed, he decided to lead the

Mormons to the Salt Lake Valley – at the time, an extremely remote area in Mexican

California. On the journey west, the Mormons learned of the U.S.-Mexican War, and the ever-pragmatic Young decided to ally with the United States rather than fight against it, which led to the creation of the Mormon Battalion. As all of these plans and negotiations demonstrate, of all breakaway republicans the Mormons were the most sophisticated with their alternative political vision of the North American West, and did the most to implement it.93

While the Mormons envisioned their breakaway republic as a collaborative exercise, Americans migrants to both California and Oregon acted as individuals. Chapter

93 That the Mormons desired political independence has been established in the historiography for some time, but the Mormons are often treated as unique in their political goals. I believe they were indeed unique for the theological reasons they held these political goals, but not that they desired independence in itself. Mormon historiography is extensive, and given in significant detail in Chapter Four. Select work on the Mormon plans for empire includes Klaus Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God & the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967); D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994); D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997);Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Marvin S. Hill, Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989); Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister, Junius And Joseph: Presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2005).

59 Five, “Visions and Realities of a California Republic, 1836-1846,” examines the actions of the California migrants, as well as those of the californios already inhabiting the territory. American migrants to California desired land above all, and were willing to experiment with whichever political settlement guaranteed them legal title to that land.

Before 1845, it looked unlikely that the United States would acquire California in the near future, thus immigrants experimented with three options to secure their economic goals: first, ally with the Mexican state in the mode of Stephen Austin and early Texas empresarios; second, ally with the californios, who constantly expelled Mexican governors but remained wary of declaring complete independence; or third, seize

California for themselves and establish an Anglo-American republic. By the middle of

1845, most Americans had settled on the middle course, and a fledgling californio-

American alliance seemed to be in the making, one that had the potential to declare

California independent. However, later that year John C. Fremont’s force arrived in

California, which made Manifest Destiny a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now fearing

Americans in California had come as agents of the United States, californios took steps to limit American immigration, which in turn made a small minority of American immigrants try to seize northern California during the Bear Flag Revolt. Often portrayed as the logical culmination of American immigration, this chapter argues the Bear Flag

Revolt was an anomaly, for many more Americans fought in Mexican and californio forces the previous year, and remained largely indifferent to the U.S. acquisition of

California – an attitude they would hold even after the 1846 conquest.94

94 While scholars have interpreted California’s history in different ways, most generally portray U.S. conquest being preordained by the early 1840s. This interpretation has spread from specific works on California, to larger works on U.S. expansion, to recent syntheses. Examples include: Contested Eden:

60 Unlike migrants to California, the six thousand migrants to Oregon were seemingly more bent on facilitating the U.S. annexation of the territory, making Oregon an exception to the pattern of breakaway republics. Yet, as Chapter Six, “The Ubiquity of Breakaway Republicanism: Independence Sentiment in American Oregon, 1842-

1846,” argues, Oregonians support for U.S. annexation hinged on the precariousness of their own hold on the territory. In 1843, when the population of American settlers barely surpassed the population of Hudson Bay Company employees, Americans longed for

U.S. oversight that would ensure the Willamette Valley would not be permanently governed by the HBC. However, by 1845, when thousands of new American migrants dwarfed their British rivals, American control of Oregon was ensured, and thus U.S. annexation was no longer needed. Indeed, as the United States appeared to dawdle in settling the Oregon boundary with Britain, American settlers became increasingly unhappy with their former country. In the final two years before the Oregon Treaty, many Americans in Oregon believed that allying with Americans in California and forming a Pacific Republic represented a better alternative to U.S. annexation.

Oregonians reasoned that they had already formed a government – which, importantly, legalized all Oregon preemption land claims – and thus becoming a U.S. territory would

California Before the Gold Rush, ed. Ramón Gutiérres and Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982); General M.G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans: A Biography (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995); Harland Hague and David J. Langum, Thomas O. Larkin: A Life of Patriotism and Profit in Old California (Norman, OK.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990); Neal Harlow, California Conquered: War and Peace on the Pacific, 1846-1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Carlos Manuel Salomon, Pío Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 1-108; Albert L. Hurtado, John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 16-203; Robert Ryal Miller, Juan Alvarado: Governor of California, 1836-1842 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 3-129; Woodrow James Hansen, The Search for Authority in California, intro. Joseph Augustine Sullivan (Oakland: BioBooks, 1960)

61 represent a step back, ceding power to a too-distant power. However, with news of the U.S. conquest of California, Oregonians saw the writing on the wall, and acquiesced to U.S. annexation when they learned of it in late November. 95

While the events of 1846 represented the end of the Texas Moment, it was not entirely definitive, as the epilogue demonstrates. In various ways, the Texas Moment lingered for more than a decade after 1846, and reemerged entirely in the first years of the Civil War. Coveting their independence, many breakaway republicans harbored resentment against the federal government. In Mormon Utah, this resentment was so extreme that it led to open rebellion during the 1857 Utah War, but in 1857 – unlike 1846

– the Mormons were isolated, and eventually backed down in the face of the U.S. Army.

Less spectacularly, the Cherokee Ross Party also resented ceding much of their autonomy to the United States, but never resorted to arms. In seemingly more pro-U.S. California and Oregon, pre-1846 settlers resented their territorial status, believed the U.S. did

95 For a long time, Oregon historians portrayed the conflict over independence as an ethnic struggle, with Americans all favoring U.S. annexation, and the HBC employees favoring independence. Robert Loewenberg has since demonstrated this treatment was false, and that some Americans did long for independence, but he and others continually focus on 1843 alone. No historian has examined the strengthening sentiment for independence from 1844 to 1846: Robert Loewenberg, Equality on the Oregon Frontier: Jason Lee and the Methodist Mission, 1834-1843 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976), 140-169, 195-228; Loewenberg, “Creating a Provisional Government in Oregon: A Revision,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Jan., 1977), 13-24; Melinda Marie Jetté, At the Hearth of the Crossed Races: A French-Indian Community in Nineteenth-Century Oregon, 1812-1859 (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2015), 167-173; Richard Maxwell Brown, “Oregon,” in The New Encyclopedia of the American West, ed. Howard Lamar (New Haven: Yale University Press), 830. Works that portray the struggle as entirely ethnic include Dorothy Johansen and Charles Gates, Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest (Second Ed.; New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 189-194; Ray Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1830-1860 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1956), 156-157; Frederick Merk, The Oregon Question: Essays in Anglo-American Diplomacy and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 234-254; Will Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 191-192; Malcolm Clark, Eden Seekers: The Settlement of Oregon, 1818-1862 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1981), 139-176; John Hussey, Champoeg: Place of Transition: A Disputed History (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1967), 150-172; Hubert Howe Bancroft (ghostwritten by Frances Fuller Victor), History of Oregon, Vol. 1, 1834-1848 (San Francisco: The History Company Publishers, 1886), 292-445.

62 sufficiently look out for their interests, and became frustrated that slavery dominated the politics of the 1850s. Unsurprisingly, when the Civil War erupted in 1861, it proved an opportune time for breakaway republicans to reassert their sovereignty.

Independence movements of varying degrees emerged in Mormon Utah, the Cherokee

Nation, California, and even in southern Oregon, as political actors in these regions believed that if the South were to successfully secede, the United States’ ability to assert sovereignty in the West would also collapse. In this sense, Union victory did not just prevent a permanent north-south fracture, but also an east-west fracture; the South would remain a part of the nation, and so too would the West.

* * * * *

At the heart of this dissertation are several “what if” questions: what if the United

States postponed Texas annexation? This question, in turn, leads to many others: what if there were never a U.S.-Mexican War? What if the U.S. instead went to war with Britain over Oregon? Or, less spectacularly, simply waited several years to sign the Oregon

Treaty? The questions go on and on, and, by positing alternative history, they simply cannot be answered by historians. The problem, however, is not that historians have failed to answer them, but that historians have failed to realize that Americans themselves were asking themselves these same questions. Most historians take U.S. expansion for granted, but contemporary Americans did not. Indeed, during the Texas Moment, many

Americans believed that it was much more likely the United States would not expand – at least in the near future. The U.S. political climate seemed to make Texas annexation unlikely, perhaps impossible. Acting on these assumptions, many Americans sought sovereignty beyond U.S. borders, thereby joining the Texans as breakaway republicans.

63 James Polk, too, acted on these same assumptions. Clearly he did not think U.S. expansion was destiny; if it were destiny, then he would not have needed to act so decisively to ensure the U.S. conquest of the West. Ultimately, by ending the Texas

Moment, Polk guaranteed that the United States would bestride the continent – if it would survive.

CHAPTER 2

WASHINGTON POLITICS AND CONTINENTAL VISIONS: THE TEXAS MOMENT IN THE U.S. EAST, 1836-1846

Introduction

In December 1843, Henry Clay wrote a letter to his fellow Kentucky Whig

Senator John Crittenden, in which Clay responded to recent hints by President John Tyler that Texas would be more successful joining the American Union than remaining independent. Clay, however, in his letter to Crittenden, disagreed with Tyler’s position for three reasons: first, the U.S. already possessed enough territory; second, because annexation required the approval of two-thirds of the Senate and at present only half of

Senators supported it, it was utterly impracticable – and thus hardly worth discussion; third, if Texas entered the Union as a slave territory, then non-slaveholding expansionists would push for the annexation of Canada to maintain the section balance, leading the

U.S. into a precarious international position. After citing these arguments against annexation, Clay then laid out his vision for the future geopolitics of Texas and its relationship to the United States: “Texas is destined to be settled by our race, who will carry there, undoubtedly, our laws, our language, and our institutions, and that view of her destiny reconciles me much more to her independence than, if it were peopled by another and an unfriendly race. We may live as good neighbors, cultivating peace commerce and friendship.” To Clay, Texas and the United States would march into the future as allied – but separate – republics.1

1 Henry Clay to John J. Crittenden, Dec. 5, 1843, in The Papers of Henry Clay, 1797-1852, ed. Robert Seager II et al, Eleven Volumes (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1958-1992), 9: 897-899.

65 Clay’s vision would of course prove to be spectacularly wrong. Within a year Clay’s letter, Texas annexation was once again on the Democracy’s political agenda, and within two years it had been accomplished. From the perspective of hindsight,

Clay’s forecast appears stunningly naïve: of course southern Democrats and their allies would push to extend slavery, and use Texas annexation as a means of doing so – thereby initiating the inexorable march to the Civil War. Yet, from the perspective of 1843,

Clay’s reasons for believing in an alternative political future were entirely rational. His disdain for adding new territory to the Union was shared by most other northern and southern Whigs. Even more tellingly, even those who favored Texas annexation shared his two other assessments as to why Texas annexation would not come any time soon.

With Whigs opposing Texas annexation almost to a man, there were no immediate prospects for getting two-thirds of the Senate to approve annexation. Moreover, like

Clay, many prominent northern and western Democrats believed adding slave territory would prove destabilizing – not, as Clay believed, because the northern expansionists would then target Canada, but because they feared a sectional rift in their party over slavery’s expansion. One of these Democrats was Martin Van Buren, the party’s likely

1844 presidential nominee. Another was the preeminent western Democrat Thomas Hart

Benton. Both Van Buren and Benton commanded important factions of the Democratic

Party. Thus, with such political forces opposing Texas annexation, Clay’s prediction in late 1843 was eminently reasonable.

How, then, did Texas annexation happen, and, more generally, the U.S. conquest of the West that followed it? Many historians have answered this question, and most emphasize the many political and diplomatic contingencies of the mid-1840s: John

66 Tyler’s presidential ambitions that caused him to resurrect the annexation cause, the surprising emergence of James Polk as the dark horse candidate in the 1844 Democratic convention, and Polk’s extremely narrow victory over Henry Clay in that year’s presidential election.2 While influential Democratic newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan was claiming expansion was America’s “manifest destiny,” the small clique of pro- annexationists in Washington knew nothing was destined: only tireless political work would bring annexation to fruition. It is not my purpose to seriously challenge the many political and diplomatic historians who have revealed these contingencies; indeed, this chapter largely concurs with them.3 Moreover, this chapter does not challenge the

2 The politics of the 1830s and 1840s and the diplomatic maneuverings of the mid-1840s have been subjects for countless historians, and a list of all of them would stretch to several pages. In general, I have relied on the following works in my assessment of the politics of the period: Joel Silbey, Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 60-283; Norma Lois Peterson, The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas), 1989; Michael Morrison, Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 13-95; Leonard White, The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829-1861 (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1956), 50-66; Frederick Merk, Fruits of Propaganda in the Tyler Administration, 1843-1849 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); William Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Vol. 1: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 353-452; John Schroeder, “Annexation or Independence: The Texas Issue in American Politics,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vo. 89, No. 2 (Oct., 1985), 137-164; Harry Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Hill & Want, 1990), 198-254. For U.S. diplomacy, see David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1973); Frederick Merk, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansion, 1843-1849 (New York: Knopf, 1966); Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (New York: Vintage Books, 1963); Thomas Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Itacha, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985). For party ideology more generally during this period, see John Ashworth, “Agrarians and Aristocrats”: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, Inc. 1983); William Brock, Parties and Political Conscience: American Dilemmas, 1840-1850 (Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979), 3-183; Major Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom: The Quest for Nationality and the Irrepressible Conflict, 1815-1861 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974); Lawrence Kohl, The Politics of Individualism: Parties and American Character in the Jacksonian Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Many biographies echo the findings in the works above, but I will cite them where relevant in the chapter.

3 There is undoubtedly a tension in the literature between historians who focus on the intricate political and diplomatic maneuvers surrounding U.S. expansion, and those who focus on the on-the-ground events in the West. The former rarely use the phrase “Manifest Destiny” or assume the natural victory of the

67 conclusions of most historians that a significant number of Americans – particularly in the South and West, but in the North as well – remained ardent expansionists throughout the period of Texas independence, even during the years when the prospects for Texas annexation were moribund. Indeed, popular support for expansion was a crucial reason Tyler reopened the Texas issue, and explains why Polk embraced an even more ambitious expansionist agenda. Rather than contest these claims, my purpose in this chapter is to buttress the arguments of the chapters that follow it, all of which do challenge historians’ views about Americans moving to and settling in the West. I do so by making three arguments about American politics in the 1830s and 1840s that are often implied in studies of the era, but that historians rarely address directly. First, as noted above, that Texas annexation occurred in 1845 was the product of a remarkable series of contingencies; if any of them had gone the other way, Texas annexation would have been postponed for many more years, perhaps forever.4 Second, a crucial but unexplored reason why the odds were so long against Texas annexation was because few Americans felt any qualms over a second American republic on the continent. For many, it would be more beneficial for both U.S. and Texas prosperity if the two remained, as Clay wrote,

expansionists. For example, Joel Silbey devotes only one page to the expansionist ideal in his recent Storm over Texas (60). Western historians, meanwhile, assume that American expansion was a natural, even inevitable, occurrence. While this treatment is perhaps understandable because these historians want to concentrate on other issues, they inadvertently reify “Manifest Destiny” and “expansionism” to stand as the uncomplicated answer to an extremely complicated story. As Daniel Walker Howe wrote in his chapter that refreshingly did not portray Texas annexation as inevitable: “We too readily assume the inevitability of everything that has happened. The decisions that electorates and politicians make have real consequences”: Howe, What Hath God Wrought?: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 690.

4 I have been significantly influenced by the writings of William Freehling on the importance of contingency: Freehling, Road to Disnion, Vol. 1, and Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Vol. 2: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). See also Gary Kornblith, “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise,” Journal of American History, Vol. 90, No. 1 (June, 2003), 76-105.

68 “good neighbors, cultivating peace commerce and friendship.” Texas would be the first of a series of “sister republics” on the continent, and while the Republic of Texas’ existence may appear as an outlier in the broad sweep of U.S. history, it was not to

Americans living during the Van Buren and Tyler presidencies. Many were simply unfazed by permanent Texas independence. Third, the Texas Moment did not end – and

U.S. expansion did not begin – because of underlying ideological and/or social factors in the American republic. In this sense, U.S. conquest was neither manifest nor destined.

Rather, the responsibility for American expansion rested almost solely with President

Polk, who employed novel political tactics and took astute (at least for a time) political stances to force expansion onto an ambivalent and divided U.S. populace.5 Ultimately, at the heart of this chapter lies one central factor: the Texas Moment, during which peripheral Americans throughout the continent carved out polities for themselves, was just as real in Washington D.C. as it was in the many borderlands of the North American continent.

It is important to add: the Texas Moment was a Texas Moment. Particularly in its first section, this chapter privileges Texas above Oregon, California, or any other region that U.S. expansionists coveted, for that is how most expansionists imagined U.S. continental growth would proceed. This attitude was quite logical. Americans had lived in Texas in much larger numbers, for a significantly longer period of time, than they lived

5 Several works make similar points: White, The Jacksonians, 50-66; Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard, 1997), 155-176; Charles Sellers, James K. Polk: Continenalist, 1843-1846 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).

69 in any other North American region outside U.S. borders.6 Moreover, the Texas government – recognized as sovereign by the U.S., Britain, and France – had even petitioned the U.S. for annexation in 1836. It is unsurprising, then, that expansionists looked at Texas as the initial target area of expansion; if the U.S. was unable to annex

American-dominated Texas, then what could it annex? Of course, there were exceptions to this attitude. Some Americans in the Northwest valued Oregon over Texas, and some expansionists believed the U.S. could expand west without annexing Texas. Yet, for most expansionists, Texas came first, for it was only with Texas annexation that the

United States could turn its attention to more distant and more politically ambiguous territories to conquer.

The Improbable Road to Texas Annexation, 1837-1845

By the end of 1837, Texas officials understood that annexation to the United

States was not coming any time soon. Most Anglo-Texans themselves were willing partners. Since the Texan victory at San Jacinto in the spring of 1836, Texas had achieved de facto independence from Mexico. However, the Mexican government refused to recognize this independence, and maintained a state of war with what it viewed as a still-rebellious territory. No wonder, then, that Texans longed for annexation to the

United States almost immediately after San Jacinto. Already Americans as a people had provided Texas with vital men, money, and arms during the Texas Revolution; now the

United States as a country could do the same, but on a much larger and more effective

6 Depending on the definition of who constituted an American, Canada was perhaps an even older American settlement, but Canada was British, and few U.S. politicians were willing to risk war with Britain to annex Canada – as Chapter Three will demonstrate.

70 scale. Most Texans had once been Americans anyway, and the Texas Constitution was modeled after the U.S. Constitution. Joining the United States was both a practical and ideological solution to the many on-the-ground problems facing the Texas Republic.

Many Americans were also willing partners, particularly southern Democrats and

Calhounites who hoped to expand slave territory, as well as an emerging contingent of more general expansionists throughout the Union. In his final year in office, President

Andrew Jackson agreed with them on a personal level, but he feared that Texas annexation would split the Democracy along sectional lines, which would prove fatal to the election of his chosen successor Martin Van Buren. Thus Jackson urged Congress to recognize Texas independence, but did not push for annexation. When Van Buren was subsequently elected, he opposed annexation even more forcefully than Jackson. He, too, feared the sectional implications for the Democratic coalition of “planters and plain farmers.” Additionally, more so than Jackson, Van Buren pursued peace and moderation in his foreign policy, and Texas annexation potentially would initiate a war with Mexico, and therefore break an 1832 peace treaty between the U.S. and Mexico.7 Most importantly, within only weeks of Van Buren’s inauguration, the United States entered the most severe depression in its history.8 Even if Van Buren had no qualms about war

7 For Van Buren’s attitude towards annexation, see James Curtis, The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837-1841 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970), 152-169; Major Wilson, The Presidency of Martin Van Buren (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1984), 147-153.

8 On the Panic of 1837, see Jessica Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Alasdair Roberts, The First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder in the United States, 1837-1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012); Edward Balleisen, Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 32-41, and passim; Scott Reynolds Nelson, A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Disasters (New York: Knopf, 2012), 117-136; Edward E. Baptist, “Toxic Debt, Liar Loans, and Securitized Human Beings,” Common-Place, Vol. 10, No. 3 (April, 2010), < http://www.common-place- archives.org/vol-10/no-03/baptist/>

71 with Mexico – which he did – it was questionable whether war was worth the financial cost. Texas officials undoubtedly sensed the Van Buren administration’s decisive shift against annexation. As the Texas Secretary of State R.A. Irion wrote, “The prompt and decided refusal of the Government of the U. States to act in favor [of annexation], has had a tendency to fix opinions against admission of those who were wavering on the subject. So great has been the change of public sentiment that it is probable that should the vote be again taken at the next…election that a majority would vote against it.” Irion then made it clear that this attitude would not just shift with a change in presidents, maintaining “…I do not believe that any future administration will attempt such a negotiation.”9 Soon the Texas government withdrew its proposal for annexation, as Texans of all backgrounds put annexation out of their minds.10 They would now seek to build their own republic, permanently independent of the United

States. The Texas Moment had begun.

Within the United States, the Texas Moment was defined by the absence of talk about Texas annexation. For the next five years, the issue was hardly discussed among prominent politicians or in major newspapers.11 Indeed, as late as 1844, a meeting of pro-annexationists in St. Louis urged the rest of the country to awake from its “slumber

9 R.A. Irion to Memucan Hunt, Dec. 31, 1837, in Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas, Vol. 1, ed. George Garrison (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1908), 279.

10 On the Texan embrace on independence following their spurned annexation request, see Andrew Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 204-208; Sarah Rodriguez, “‘Children of the Great Mexican Family’: American Immigration to Northern Mexico, 1810-1861,” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2015), 326-381.

11 Schroeder, “Annexation or Independence,” 138.

72 on the subject.”12 Despite the lack of discussion, annexation undoubtedly remained popular among large swaths of Americans, particularly southern and western Democrats.

However, it was not worth discussing when it was politically impossible, as it seems politicians from all backgrounds realized. For politicians both for and against Texas annexation, other matters had become vastly more important, namely the Gag Rule, relations with Great Britain, and – above all – the ongoing economic depression.

Such was the extent of this depression that it swept William Henry Harrison into the White House and a Whig majority into both houses of congress. Before 1840, this type of political realignment had only been seen once before in U.S. history, during the

“Revolution of 1800” when Jeffersonian Republicans won both the presidency and congress from Federalist incumbents. Although older historiography emphasized the novel but issue-less tactics of the “Log Cabin Campaign” to induce voter turnout in the presidential contest, Michael Holt has shown that Whig voting in state contests matched the turnout for Harrison’s presidential contest, and in both cases this turnout was explained by the disastrous state of the U.S. economy. With over 80% of eligible voters casting a ballot, the American public yearned for a decisive shift in the priorities of both the national government, as well as in a majority of state governments of which Whigs also seized control. The election of 1840 seemed to portend a new Whig-dominated political era, one that marked a dramatic change from the Democratic policies of Andrew

Jackson and Martin Van Buren.13

12 St. Louis Old School Democrat, printed in The Madisonian [Washington, D.C.], Jan. 19, 1844. It is unsurprising the Madisonian reprinted this article, for it was the mouthpiece of the Tyler administration, and it was at this time that Tyler too wanted Americans to awake from their “slumber.”

13 For the importance of economic issues in the election, see Holt, The Rise and Fall of the Whig Party, 105-113; Holt, “The Election of 1840, Voter Mobilization, and the Emergence of the Second American

73 And yet, within their triumph the Whigs inadvertently sowed the seeds of their future defeat, although no Whig could have foreseen the series of contingent disasters that would lead to it. These disasters were threefold: first, the Whigs nominated William Henry Harrison over Henry Clay, thanks to Harrison’s greater support in the North and the decision by four southern states to not send any delegates to the Whig convention, whose presence would have likely tilted the nomination toward

Clay. If Clay had been nominated, he almost undoubtedly would have won the election; despite Whig fears that Clay had too many enemies, in 1840 Van Buren had many more.14 Second, the Whigs balanced Harrison’s northern appeal by nominating Virginian

John Tyler for vice president, a candidate who believed in few Whig ideals other than an abhorrence of Andrew Jackson. Third, after famously speaking for hours in the bitter cold during his inauguration, the elderly Harrison promptly contracted pneumonia and died. Remarkably, in order for John Tyler to become president, all three of these events needed to occur – and all three did.

While the various alternative histories surrounding the election of 1840 are scarcely examined by historians, in many ways they posit an alternative U.S. history more profound than imagining a Clay victory during the election of 1844.15 If Tyler had not become president, the Whigs would have passed their federally-active economic

Party System,” in A Master’s Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald, ed. William Cooper, Jr., Michael Holt, and John McCardell (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 16-58. For a critique of Holt that still admits that he makes compelling arguments, see Ronald Formisano, “The New Political History and the Election of 1840,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring, 1993), 661-682. For the traditional view of the Log Cabin Campaign, see Robert Gray Gunderson, The Log-Cabin Campaign (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1957).

14 Holt, “The Election of 1840,” 54.

15 Kornblith, “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War.”

74 program, giving them electoral momentum towards the future. Of course, considering that contemporary governments struggle to steer their economies despite possessing the tools of modern finance, prospects that the Whig program would have jump-started the U.S. economy were dubious. Yet perception mattered, and the Whigs’ failure to implement their policies in the face of Tyler’s intransigence cost them numerous state elections in the early 1840s, as frustrated Whigs stayed home on election day. More importantly for this study, if someone besides Tyler had become president,

Texas would have likely remained permanently off the American political agenda for quite some time. To a man, both Northern and Southern Whigs opposed Texas annexation, and with a Whig majority in congress, they would have spent time implementing their economic agenda – and not debating American expansion.16

Certainly their existed a significant number of southern and western Democratic politicians, reflecting a significant portion of the American populace, who would have remained adamant supporters of Texas annexation, but they would have been powerless in the face of Whig dominance of the government. The Texas Moment would have continued for an unknowable, perhaps indefinite, period of time.

Texas never entirely disappeared from the national discourse during the Van

Buren and Tyler presidencies, but from a perspective of hindsight the lack of Texas talk

16 While the issue of slavery would eventually bestride the Texas debate, as Clay’s quotation demonstrated in the introduction, southern Whigs were opposed to annexation for other reasons: they were ideologically opposed to the U.S. adding more territory, they disliked the moral implications of a the United States waging a war of aggression against Mexico, and they believed an annexed Texas would draw slaves from the Upper South, thus lessening the power of the current slave states. For the Whig argument against annexation, see especially Michael Morrision, “Westward the Curse of Empire: Texas Annexation and the American Whig Party,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), 221-249. See also Nolan Fowler, “Territorial Expansion – A Threat to the Republic?” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jan., 1962), 34-42.

75 during this era is remarkable. The issue of Texas and its subsequent ramifications – war with Mexico, the conquest of California, the debate over slavery’s expansion – would consume the United States from 1844 until the outbreak of the Civil War. Yet, between 1838 and 1844, Texas annexation was hardly mentioned. This lack of attention was even true for the most ardent supporters of annexation. Take the example of John

Calhoun. As the preeminent defender of slavery and Southern rights, Calhoun undoubtedly supported annexation, but before 1844 other proslavery priorities consumed him – namely, following the House’s example by trying to pass a gag rule in the Senate.

So too did international matters. Calhoun was always wary of British power – particularly but not solely because of Britain’s antislavery stance. Although he would soon fear British meddling in Texas, such was not the case before 1844. Rather, Calhoun feared British naval power, and recommended using the proceeds from the 1841

Preemption-Distribution Act to improve the United States’ coastal defenses.17

Meanwhile, the subject of Texas was almost entirely absent from his letters during this period.18 Remarkably, when once again Calhoun began to pursue his presidential ambitions in 1841, he never conceived Texas as an important or winning issue for his candidacy.19 Thus, even to the pro-annexationist Calhoun, Texas was consigned to at least temporary political oblivion.

17 John Calhoun, “Speech on the Bill to Distribute the Proceeds of the Sales of Public Lands to the States,” August 24, 1841, in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, 16: 728-729.

18 Texas only comes up as an issue half a dozen times in Calhoun’s letters, and Calhoun never pushed for it explicitly after Jan. 12, 1838: The Papers of John C. Calhoun, ed. Clyde N. Wilson, Vols. 14-16 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1981-1984). For his support annexation on Jan. 12, 1838, see 14: 99.

19 John Nivens, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 247-263.

76 That Texas emerged from this oblivion was almost solely because of John

Tyler. A defender of slavery and slavery’s expansion, Tyler had always supported Texas annexation, and in the first months of his administration he propositioned Secretary of

State Daniel Webster whether northerners could be reconciled to it.20 His suggestion went nowhere. Webster was fundamentally opposed, and more importantly, Tyler had more immediate international issues to confront in the first years of his administration – above all, the delicate negotiations with Britain over the northeastern boundary. Two years later, however, both continental geopolitics and Washington domestic politics had changed. The Texas government now looked to the intercession of Great Britain as a way to secure Mexican recognition of its independence, which augured for the future emancipation of Texas’ slaves. To a select number of proslavery politicians, this was an untenable situation that portended disaster for slave interests in the United States. The most significant of these politicians was Tyler confidant Abel Upshur, who replaced

Webster as Secretary of State in 1843. It was due almost solely to Upshur’s influence that Tyler reopened the annexation issue in order to prevent British interference in

Texas.21 Moreover, Tyler had become a president without a party, but Texas annexation was an issue that could potentially unite enough southern and western Democrats – and, in Upshur’s mind, southern Whigs – to create a base of support that would allow Tyler to

20 John Tyler to Daniel Webster, Oct. 11, 1841, in Letters and Times of the Tylers, Vol. 2, ed. Lyon G. Tyler (New York: De Capo Press, 1970), 126.

21 Crucial to Upshur’s assessment of Texas was the opinion of Duff Green, who was the first to claim that the British had abolitionist designs on Texas. On Upshur’s role, see especially Freehling, Road to Disunion Vol. II, 364-407. For Upshur’s important letter to Tyler spelling out the consequences of emancipation in Texas, see Upshur to Tyler, March 13, 1843, reprinted in full in William Freehling, “Unlimited Paternalism’s Problems: The Transforming Moment on My Road Toward Understanding Disunion,” in The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 125-129. For fears of the British “Iron Hoop,” see Sam Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville, VA; University of Virginia Press, 2010), 204-250.

77 win another presidential election.22 Thus, in 1843, Tyler directed Upshur to begin secret negotiations with the Texas government over annexation.

When these secret negotiations became public in early 1843, reaction among

American politicians varied. Thomas Hart Benton later remembered that it was like “a clap of thunder in a clear sky. There was nothing in the political horizon to announce or portend it.”23 Benton was a bit overdramatic; writing a decade later when sectional tensions had destroyed the political status quo, Benton unsurprisingly saw Texas annexation as a turning point. However, despite his use of hyperbole, Benton’s memory was accurate in that the reemergence of Texas annexation was indeed a surprise to many politicians, so close had Tyler held his cards on the issue. Yet, although surprised, few believed these negotiations would lead to any game-changing political developments.

Henry Clay believed Texas was simply Tyler’s desperate political gambit to find a new political constituency, and would come to nothing: “I do not remember to have heard lately a solitary voice in favor of or against Annexation. Let Mr. Tyler recommend it, if he please, and what of that? The whole world will see the motive, and impotency of the recommendation.” To Clay, Tyler was a “despicable traitor” to the Whig Party, and

Texas was his “last move.”24 Clay of course had reasons to believe (and hope) that Texas was a dead issue, but even Tennessee Representative and ardent annexationist Aaron

Brown believed nothing would come of it. Writing to his confidant James Polk, Brown

22 Edward P. Crapol, John Tyler: The Accidental President (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 218; Freehling, Road to Disunion Vol. 2, 388-401; Michael Morrison, “Martin Van Buren, the Democracy, and the Partisan Politics of Texas Annexation,” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Nov., 1995), 699.

23 Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View…Vol. 2 (New York, 1856), 581.

24 Clay to Leverett Saltonstall, Dec. 4, 1843, Papers of Henry Clay, 9: 896.

78 echoed Clay that Tyler was only bringing up Texas in order to buttress his political popularity, and it would go nowhere. Most Whigs and Democrats, Brown maintained, would quickly let the issue “die away.”25 Thus, politicians across the spectrum believed

Texas annexation would remain a nonstarter, Tyler’s efforts notwithstanding.

Of course, John Tyler and his small cadre of pro-annexationists did not want to let

Texas annexation “die away,” and during the first few months of 1844 they skillfully brought Texas back into the national consciousness. As Secretary of State Abel Upshur continued his negotiations with the Texas government, pro-annexationists launched a publicity campaign supporting their position. The most important piece in this campaign was Pennsylvania Senator Robert Walker’s series of pro-annexation letters in the

Madisonian, in which Walker argued that annexation would provide a safety-valve for an excess slave population, and actually help diminish the number of slaves in the Union.26

Walker’s letters laid the groundwork for some northern Democrats to jump onto the

Texas bandwagon by claiming annexation would weaken slavery, thereby appeasing their constituents who had previously been hesitant about embracing slavery’s expansion.

Walker’s thesis was the hingepoint that allowed northern Democrats to be both pro- annexation and (very moderately) antislavery.

Yet, while contingency had clearly benefited pro-annexationists by improbably making John Tyler president, contingency then handed anti-annexationists a window of

25 Aaron Brown to James Polk, Dec. 9, 1843, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 12 Volumes, ed. Hubert Weaver (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1969-2013), 6: 370.

26 Walker’s letters are reprinted in Merk, Fruits of Propaganda, 221-252. Many historians have portrayed this piece as a crucial moment that laid the groundwork for Texas annexation: Freehling, Road to Disunion, 418-424; Merk, Fruits of Propaganda, 95-120; Hietala, Manifest Design, 27-32; Sellers, Polk: Continentalist, 50-63; Schroeder, “Annexation or Independence,” 159-160.

79 opportunity. In February 1844, Tyler and much of his cabinet were on board the

USS Princeton when one of its massive guns exploded. While Tyler was safely below deck, Abel Upshur and five other men were killed. Upshur had displayed great political skill in his secret negotiations with the Texas government, but his unexpected death threw a wrench into Tyler’s annexation plans. Knowing that Upshur had frequently discussed the issue with John Calhoun, Tyler promptly nominated Calhoun to replace Upshur – and

Calhoun promptly made a mess of things. After reading Upshur’s diplomatic correspondence, Calhoun became convinced that the British sought Texas independence solely in order to foster the abolition of slavery in Texas. He then wrote a letter to the

British minister Richard Pakenham, in which Calhoun defended slavery as a benign institution, and tied Texas annexation to the preservation of slavery in the Union.27

Calhoun’s “Pakenham letter” had the reverse effect of Robert Walker’s carefully argued safety-valve letters, and cooled potentially expansionist northern Democratics on Texas annexation. As William Freehling has argued, Calhoun’s letter represented his best effort at wedding his proslavery sectional stance to a nationalist cause of expansion, but for pro- annexationists it was a disaster nevertheless.28 Momentum towards Texas annexation collapsed. In June, when Tyler finally brought a treaty of annexation to the Senate, some northern Democrats joined with all but one Whig to overwhelmingly defeat it by a vote of 35-16. With a treaty requiring two-thirds support to pass, this vote represented a crushing defeat for the annexationists.

27 Calhoun to Richard Pakenham, April 18, 1844, Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, 18: 273-281.

28 Freehling, Road to Disunion Vol. I, 408-410.

80 The stage was set for the dramatic and unexpected election of 1844. If the unforeseen assumption of John Tyler to the presidency in 1841 reignited Texas annexation as a political issue in 1843, then James Polk’s victory secured its completion.

Yet, in many ways the election of Polk was just as subject to whim and contingency as

Tyler’s presidency, although Polk would more skillfully seize the political moment than

Tyler had done – and he needed to, for in the early spring of 1844 all signs continued to portend against annexation, Tyler’s efforts notwithstanding. First came Calhoun’s disastrous Pakenham letter in April. Days later came another setback for the pro- annexationists. On the same day, Martin Van Buren and Henry Clay, the presumptive contestants for the 1844 presidential election, published letters opposing immediate annexation. Van Buren equivocated, maintaining he would accede to annexation once the Mexican government consented, but of course this consent was not coming any time soon. In contrast, Clay’s Whig ideology made him more adamantly opposed.29

Democratic expansionists were horrified with Van Buren’s stance, but Van Buren still commanded a majority of Democratic support going into the Democratic convention in

May. Clay’s nomination on the Whig ticket was practically certain, for he commanded overwhelming party support.30 Thus, as of late May it seemed the fall’s presidential contest would be between two men who both opposed immediate. Immediate annexationists were left without a candidate.

If we step back from the politics of the moment, it is clear that, as late as mid-

1844, the dynamics of Texas annexation had changed little since 1837. On the political

29 Washington Daily National Intelligencer, April 27, 1844; Washington Daily Globe, April 27, 1844.

30 Robert Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1991), 644-645.

81 spectrum lay two extremes. One side was composed of a small clique of proslavery

Southern expansionists represented by Tyler and Calhoun, who desired Texas immediate annexation. As in 1837, they were opposed by a significant number of antislavery New

Englanders like John Quincy Adams, who objected to Texas annexation under any circumstances.31 Between these poles lay a vast center of what can be termed

“conditional annexationists,” men who would support annexation under the right circumstances. To Whigs, there were many more conditions to meet, most of which revolved around the improvement of American society within U.S. borders – and thus annexation represented a distant future. Even Henry Clay, generally hostile to annexation, agreed that it could proceed after the Whig vision for the U.S. was enacted.32

For most Democrats, the conditions were fewer, but one crucial implied condition was the continued unity of the Democratic Party. Many Democrats, most especially Van

Buren, continued to believe that Texas annexation would sunder the precarious sectional alliances that bound the party together. Walker’s thesis was certainly helpful, but it was no panacea for avoiding a party rupture. All together, the forces opposing immediate annexation were quite formidable, represented by a vast majority of the preeminent politicians of the era: Clay, representing southern and western Whigs; Van Buren, the preeminent northern Democrat; Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams, New England’s foremost advocates; and Thomas Hart Benton, the leading Democrat from the West.

31 Freehling notes that the supporters for Texas annexation were a very tiny group until Tyler reopened it as an issue: Road to Disunion Vol. 1, 355-356.

32 Clay tried to hedge his bets, first arguing against annexation outright, then trying to appease southerners by arguing that annexation could come eventually, under the right circumstances. See Clay’s “Second Alabama Letter”: Clay to Thomas Peters and John Jackson, July 27, 1844, Papers of Henry Clay, 10: 89- 91.

82 Their pro-annexation opposition was not nearly as illustrious, represented by Tyler and Calhoun, both men who had made themselves anathema to many in their own political parties, and supported annexation for predominantly sectional reasons. Other, more nationally minded expansionists agreed with them, of whom Andrew Jackson was the most prominent. Jackson, however, was retired, and it was widely known his health was failing. The odds seemed stacked against the annexationists.

And yet, within only six months, the Democrats nominated immediate annexationist James K. Polk over Van Buren. Polk then defeated Clay in the presidential election, thus permanently shifting the trajectory of American politics. The crucial development in Polk’s improbable victory was the introduction of Oregon as an expansionist goal. By grafting the “re-occupation” of Oregon onto the “re-annexation” of

Texas, Polk and his allies de-sectionalized expansion. In essence, they created an entirely new center of American politics. Importantly, for most Democratic expansionists,

Oregon remained a minor issue in the grand scheme of the campaign. Even in the

Northwest, where the issue loomed the largest, Oregon was scarcely discussed.33 Rather,

Oregon acted as a counterweight to Texas, by proving that expansionists were not bent on expanding slavery. Instead, they argued, they were simply hoping to enlarge the area of freedom for all white Americans, a core Democratic ideology since the party’s inception.34 Moreover, wedding Oregon to Texas allowed Anglophobic Democrats to resurrect the British as a specter haunting Americans everywhere, not just – as Calhoun’s

Pakenham letter argued – slaveholders in particular. The individual who first conceived

33 See Edwin A. Miles, “ ‘Fifty-Four Forty or Fight’: An American Political Legend,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Sept., 1957), 291-309.

34 Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom, esp. 108-112, and passim.

83 of Texas and Oregon as interrelated issues is uncertain, although surely it was not

Polk himself.35 However, while Polk did not originate the combined Texas-Oregon stance, he undoubtedly understood its dynamics, and rapidly embraced it as part of his appeal as the potential Democratic nominee.36

On a more process-oriented political level, Polk and his allies played a skilled political game at the Democratic Convention, particularly because Polk’s career was at a lowpoint. Between 1835 and 1839, Polk had been a successful if not necessarily memorable Speaker of the House, and then won the Tennessee governorship in 1839.

However, he then lost his reelection bid in 1841, and lost again in 1843. By 1844, Polk’s hopes lay with somehow securing the vice presidency, but he and his allies also envisioned a narrow path to the presidential nomination – even though they realized the odds were highly against such a development. At first Polk’s men at the Democratic

Convention worked to secure the vice-presidential nomination for Polk, and supported

Van Buren for the presidency until it was clear that Van Buren did not have the two- thirds support he needed to secure the nomination.37 This early and stalwart support of

35 I have not encountered any works that identify an originator of the idea, and perhaps there was not a sole originator, as both Texas and Oregon were issues that were discussed frequently among many politicians. In the Polkian orbit, it seems the first to grasp that combining the two was a winning issue was Cave Johnson, who believed it would unite South and West for the Democrats. Before the convention, he suggested to Polk that Polk should embrace both issues, for this strategy would make him an attractive member for the next cabinet: Johnson to Polk, March 10, 1844, in The Correspondence of James K. Polk, ed. Wayne Cutler (12 Volumes; Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969-2013), 7: 87.

36 Miles, “ ‘Fifty-Four Forty or Fight’,” 293-294.

37 Some historians have portrayed the implementation of the Two-thirds Rule as a southern, proslavery maneuver, arguing that southerners wanted deny the northerner Van Buren the nomination. With this reading, southerners realized Van Buren commanded majority support, so they passed the Two-Thirds Rule to deny Van Buren victory. However, other historians have noted the deep uneasiness about Van Buren’s candidacy even among those who explicitly supported him; in essence, while southerners did not like Van Buren, a great many other Democrats did not either. For a day-by-day account of the convention, see Sellers, Polk: Continentalist, 76-107. For Van Buren’s unpopularity within the party, see Morrison,

84 the Polk men for Van Buren proved crucial. Van Burenites were enraged when their candidate was denied the nomination, and refused to support any other candidate whose allies had voted against Van Buren. Polk’s men appealed to these disaffected Van

Burenites. When Polk’s name finally came up as a presidential nominee, the Van

Burenites were willing to acquiesce to his candidacy because of Polk’s earlier support for

Van Buren. All in all, Polk and his allies had played a skilled political game.

As Michael Morrison has documented, the new Texas-Oregon expansionist platform electrified Democrats throughout the country, and provided a convenient means to paper over all the disagreements, both sectional and economic, that had long threatened to destroy the party.38 And yet, most historians have failed to take Morrison’s findings to their logical conclusion: rather than expansionism driving partisanship, partisanship drove expansion. This rapid enthusiasm with which Democrats embraced expansion in the election of 1844 has often been read as proof that a majority of

Democratic voters had always been enthusiastic about the issue. With this view, it was only a matter of time until the United States conquered the continent – ergo conquest was indeed destiny. Yet one can read this rapid enthusiasm in precisely the opposite terms: it demonstrated the novelty of Polk’s expansionist platform. People embraced it because it offered something entirely new in the partisan climate of the 1840s. Moreover, enthusiasm derived from the Texas-Oregon unifying factor that now provided hopes for

Democratic victory, not the personal desire by individual Democrats to expand U.S. borders. For what did expansion actually offer individuals? For potential western

“Martin Van Buren, the Democracy, and the Partisan Politics of Texas Annexation”; Sellers, Polk: Continentalist, 78.

38 Morrison, “Martin Van Buren, the Democracy, and the Partisan Politics of Texas Annexation.”

85 migrants, perhaps easier access to free land. For most Americans, however, there were few tangible benefits. Certainly it offered a potentially inspirational ideology, and certain men embraced this ideology – of whom the best example was John L. O’Sullivan, who termed it Manifest Destiny. But ideology did not necessarily translate into policy, and ideology alone would not necessarily lead Americans to favor a war of aggression against Mexico and/or Great Britain. Ultimately, the primary goal of most Democrats who embraced expansion was to win the 1844 election, not to actually conquer the West.

Expansion remained secondary.

To claim that partisanship drove expansion and not vice versa is not to deny that thousands of Americans supported Texas annexation specifically and U.S. expansion more generally, and they did so long before Polk’s nomination. Yet, before 1844, there was no groundswell of support for Texas – let alone Oregon – that caused the Democratic

Convention to embrace it as an issue. Texas annexation and U.S. expansion more generally were topics that hovered within and around American politics, but – as I will argue below – these sentiments were both undeveloped and immensely diverse.

Expansion only became a specific campaign issue because Democratic politicians embraced it.39 As one anti-annexationist writer complained, Texas annexation had nothing to do with actual geopolitics, but was an “affair of party.”40 Democratic meetings unwittingly demonstrated this dynamic by their rhetoric. Predicted one Indiana

Democrat, “The prairies of the whole west will ring with loud shouts for Polk and Texas,

39 Charles Sellers also makes this argument: “Probably more voters favored annexation because they were Democrats than voted Democratic because they favored annexation.” Sellers, Polk: Continentalist, 159.

40 The Texas Question, Reviewed by an Adopted Citizen (New York, 1844).

86 Dallas and Oregon” [emphasis added].41 The use of the future tense suggests that the ringing for Texas and Oregon had not occurred before Polk’s nomination. Another meeting in Illinois proclaimed, “We assure the public, that all of us have the Young

Hickory, Texas, and Oregon fever! – It is very contagious…”42 The direction of the

“fever” was not stated outright, but obvious nonetheless: it moved to Illinois from Polk’s nomination. The Texas contagion never spawned from the grass roots.

Yet, what did spawn from the grassroots was another type of fever – “Oregon fever” – a term that did not refer to Americans’ desire to annex Oregon to the U.S., but rather the growing enthusiasm of thousands of western Americans to migrate to the region (see Chapter Seven). In what was the first interplay of U.S. politics and American migrants outside of Texas, Polk and his allies were able to graft Oregon onto Texas because of these Oregon migrants, even though they would play practically no role in

Polk’s blustering diplomacy with Britain that followed. Here, again, contingency and unintended consequences revealed themselves, in that Polk depended on an issue to which neither he himself, nor U.S. politics more generally, had any relation. The “Great

Migration” to Oregon, in which thousands left for Oregon, occurred in 1843, which prompted Democrats to argue for the first time that the U.S. needed to gain control of

Oregon. If the Great Migration occurred only one year later, expansionist Democrats would have been unable to fuse Texas with Oregon, and thus unable to mitigate slavery as a cause of expansion. In an ironic twist, migrants journeyed to Oregon because of their unhappiness with their economic prospects in American society, allowing U.S.

41 Washington Daily Globe, June 1, 1844, as quoted in Miles, “ ‘Fifty-Four Forty or Fight,’” 295. “Dallas refers to George Dallas, the vice-presidential nominee.

42 Illinois State Register [Springfield], July 12, 1844.

87 politicians to justify the annexation of Oregon, ultimately bringing these migrants back into the society they had left behind. Here was a prime example of influence flowing from the North American periphery back to Washington, but it certainly was not

– as many historians have argued – Oregon migrants’ clamor for annexation.

Certainly, expansionism was not only a convenient unifying platform for

Democrats. It was undoubtedly consistent with Democratic ideology, and it did hold out rewards to certain constituencies of the Democratic Party. To those holding Texas bonds and land scrip, these rewards were immediately tangible, as Texas annexation would raise the value of their holdings.43 To a select group of commercially-minded Democrats, expansion raised the hopes for new ports and additional markets on the Pacific.44 Less immediate but more important to the Democratic masses, expansion would provide access to vast amounts of cheap or potentially free land in a diverse array of regions, each offering differing incentives to the varied constituents of the overwhelmingly agrarian- based Democratic Party. Slaveholders and would-be slaveholders could find land in proslavery Texas, while non-slaveholding western yeomen could achieve land ownership in free soil Oregon. Of course, tens of thousands of Americans had already sought such gains during the Texas Moment, as they migrated – and thus expatriated themselves – to

Texas, Oregon, and California without any U.S. protection or oversight. Yet these migrations were risky, for the political fate of each destination was uncertain. This uncertainty likely diminished the numbers of migrants. To the more conservative farmers

43 See Elgin Williams, The Animating Pursuits of Speculation: Land Traffic in the Annexation of Texas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949).

44 Norman Graebner, Empire on the Pacific: A Study in American Continental Expansion (New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1955).

88 who desired land but were unwilling to take the risk of venturing into the political unknown, a United States Oregon and a United States Texas provided a blanket of security, as the jump in the numbers of western migrants after 1848 would prove.45

While the federal government passed the Log Cabin Bill in 1841, enshrining the right of preemption to squatters willing to pay for the land on which they squatted, this act did little to change the on-the-ground reality for many desperate western farmers.46 Perhaps free land in Oregon and California would change the reality – and thus westerners, and yeomen farmers more generally, embraced expansion.47

Of course, for all of the good Texas and Oregon did for the unity of the

Democratic Party and for the enthusiasm of its supporters, Polk still had to win the 1844 election. He did win – but barely. As the oft-told narrative goes, Henry Clay would have won the election if he had won New York, which he lost to Polk by only 5000 votes. For those looking for a logical and explainable drift towards the Civil War, this result has had much to offer, and leads to the following line of reasoning: Clay’s ambivalence on

45 Much of this emigration can be explained by the California Gold Rush, but even migration to Oregon vastly increased. In 1850, for example, roughly 6000 people traveled to Oregon, matching the number of total western migrants (to Oregon and California combined) between the years 1840 and 1846. Numbers: John Unruh, The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 119.

46 For the failures of preemption, and the continuing triumph of speculators, see Paul Wallace Gates, “Land Policy and Tenancy in the Prairie States,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (May, 1941), 60- 82; John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven: Yale Uniersity Press, 1986), 181-186. On the struggle for preemption rights more generally, see Reeve Huston, “Land Conflict and Land Policy in the United States, 1785-1841,” in Andrew Shankman, ed., The World of the Revolutionary American Republic: Land, Labor, and the Conflict for a Continent (New York: Routledge, 2014), 324-345; John R. Van Atta, Securing the West: Politics, Public Lands, and the Fate of the Old Republic, 1785-1850 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); Roy Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1936 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942), 3-118.

47 Both Democrats and Whigs increased their number of voters in most states, but Democrats did so by a much more massive margin, particularly in northwestern and southwestern states. Clearly expansion was a winning issue in these regions. See Holt, Rise and Fall of the Whig Party, 197.

89 slavery and slavery’s relationship to Texas annexation, represented in his two

“Alabama letters,” cost him proslavery votes in the South. Even more importantly, it cost him antislavery votes in the North. If Clay had captured only a third of the Liberty

Party’s tally of 15,000 votes in New York, he would have won the presidency. That he did not, that Polk won the presidency and initiated an expansionist agenda, which in turn initiated the march to the Civil War, has therefore a certain democratic logic to it: slavery and its relation to U.S. expansion led to disunion, for these were the issues on which

Americans voted.

And yet, as Michael Holt has meticulously analyzed, this logic does not hold up to scrutiny. In the South, most new Democratic voters were poor yeomen who desired

Texas for cheap land. While this cheap land might presumably have given these farmers the means to buy slaves, they did not desire to annex Texas to protect and/or expand slavery as an institution. Even more crucially, Clay’s ambivalence over slavery and

Texas actually helped drive Whig turnout in New York, and probably took away potential

Liberty Party voters who disliked its radical abolitionist stance. Like Clay, most Whig voters wanted to suppress slavery as a political issue, not abolish its existence in the

South. Moreover, Polk’s narrow victory in New York had nothing to do with either

Texas or annexation, but was caused by an influx of newly naturalized Irish and German voters, who were motivated by a clumsy, belated Whig attempt to rally nativist voters to its ranks.48 Additionally, the results may have been affected by the lingering effect of the

Patriot War along the state’s northern border. In 1840, American Patriots and their supporters – mostly Democrats – were disgusted with Van Buren’s anti-Patriot actions

48 Holt, Rise and Fall of the Whig Party, 194-206.

90 while president, and simply refused to vote in the election. In 1844, Polk engendered no such feelings, and former Patriots came out to vote for their party.49 In the end, it was not expansion that decided the presidential race, but a bevy of local issues.

Contingency had struck again.

Thus Polk won the presidency, which in turn gave Tyler a (supposed) mandate to push Texas annexation through Congress via a joint resolution. Although this method possessed dubious constitutional legality, it was the only way forward for annexationists, for they still could not achieve two-thirds Senate support for a treaty. Only after Polk’s election did Texas annexation become a foregone conclusion in U.S. history. While many American historians, particularly those writing syntheses, often skip over the events of the convoluted decade of Texas independence, portraying the U.S. annexation of Texas as just a matter of time, as demonstrated above it was hardly destined. Indeed, until the election of Polk it was much more likely that Texas would not become a matter of national importance on any kind of permanent basis. Or, to put it another way, the default position of the American republican from 1838 to 1844 was against Texas annexation in the near future; even many of those who favored annexation believed it could wait years, even decades.50 To give pro-annexationists political credit: when opportunities arose that allowed them to reignite the issue, they seized the moment.

49 For assessments that former Patriots voted for Polk in 1844 and did not vote for Van Buren in 1840, see Joel Sutherland to Polk, Nov. 9, 1844, Polk Correspondence, 8: 297; John Mumford to Polk, June 6, 1844, Polk Correspondence, 7: 230; Edwin Croswell to Polk, Nov. 30, 1844, Polk Correspondence, 8: 382; Gansevoort Melville to Polk, Oct. 26, 1844, Polk Correspondence, 8: 224. Democrats increased their voters in New York by over 24,000, the Whigs added 6500 (Holt, Rise and Fall of the Whig Party, 205). While undoubtedly some of these voters were newly naturalized immigrants, it seems likely that the many Patriots who maintained they were not voting for Van Buren in 1840 held to their word at the time, and then voted in 1844. Holt does not mention the Patriot War as a factor.

50 See Freehling, Road to Disunion Vol. I, 402, for a similar statement.

91 However, that these opportunities arose was the result of a remarkably contingent, almost improbable series of events. It was no wonder, then, that John Quincy Adams believed Texas annexation arose from an inimical slave conspiracy, part of “one great system” where the U.S. would also attack and occupy British Oregon, and attack Mexico and seize California.51 How else to explain such an unlikely series of events? How else to explain developments that the entire Whig party, as well as Democratic stalwarts such as Van Buren and Thomas Hart Benton opposed? Adams was of course wrong; slavery and expansion were related, but expansion did not occur solely because of slavery. There was no vast conspiracy, but rather a sequence of unlikely contingencies. For Adams – and, indeed, for a small but growing number of antislavery northerners – conspiracy seemed a more satisfying explanation, because it offered an explanation that was both coherent and consistent. Contingency – or, perhaps more appropriately, bad luck – did not.

The Many Visions of an American Continent

If the twin goals of “re-annexing” Texas and the “re-occupying” Oregon did not emerge out of the public consciousness, then what did the American public believe about

Texas and Oregon, or more general U.S. expansion, during the decade of Texas independence? Historians such as Major Wilson have demonstrated that Whigs and

Democrats did indeed differ on expansion as policy. Democrats longed to “expand

51 John Quincy Adams, May 25, 1843, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. 11, ed. Charles Francis Adams (New York: AMS Press, 1970), 346. In a fascinating development, Mexican papers reprinted Adams’ speeches, and led Mexican officials to echo Adams in his belief of a slave conspiracy: Torget, Seeds of Empire, 226-227.

92 across space,” while Whigs preferred to “improve over time.”52 Yet these immediate goals tell us little about how Americans of both parties envisioned the future geopolitical framework of the American continent if, as it appeared in the early 1840s,

Texas would remain independent for quite some time. Not only Texas, but also the fates of Oregon, Mexico, and – during the brief window of the Canadian Rebellions – Canada remained in doubt. Indeed, for the most pessimistic, even the maintenance of the United

States in its current geopolitical form was subject to question, as the specter of disunion continued to threaten the nation.53 North America’s future was a blank slate.

To term North America a blank slate did not mean Americans were ignorant of western geography. Unlike the geopolitical struggle for the continent in the eighteenth century that stemmed from European ignorance about the continent, by the early nineteenth century much of the region had been mapped at least rudimentarily.54

Certainly, American knowledge of the West remained sketchy in its details, but by the

1830s at least its broad outlines were clear.55 Beyond the expansive and unorganized

Nebraska Territory lay the “Great American Desert,” which stretched for hundreds of miles in the massive region of Upper California. Found within the Great American

52 Major Wilson, Space, Time and Freedom, passim.

53 See Elizabeth Varon, Disunion!: The Coming of the Civil War, 1789-1859 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 127-164, 338. Varon demonstrates that slavery eventually becomes the primary threat of disunion, but it was not the only one – and, as she writes, slavery never displaced other disunion threats, “it encompassed them” (338). Varon makes the point that while Americans viewed slavery as a potential source of disunion, they grafted slavery onto a wide variety of other issues that could also cause disunion.

54 For the importance of geographical ignorance in shaping European continental goals in the eighteenth century, see Paul Mapp, The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713-1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

55 See Peter Kastor, William Clark’s World: Describing America in an Age of Unknown (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 216-250.

93 Desert was a plethora of native tribes, although knowledge of native peoples became less certain the more distant they lived from the U.S. territory. West of the Great

American Desert lay “western” California and its scattered Mexican settlements, and to the north the vast Oregon Territory. To the South, Texas was roughly divided between its organized eastern region that stemmed from the original Mexican land grants, and its more immense but unsettled western region – unsettled primarily because the Comanche could be found somewhere out there. Mexico lay to the west and south of Texas, but often in contemporary maps it overlapped with Upper California. By making Upper

California separate from Mexico, American mapmakers demonstrated to other Americans that Mexico’s hold over the region was ambiguous. British Canada of course bordered the U.S. to the North. To anyone with this rudimentary outline, it was generally clear where this existed potential for settlement: central Texas; “western” California; and coastal Oregon. But who would settle there, and when, was unclear.56

With the continent’s future so ambiguous, it is unsurprising that the most definitive statement that describes Americans’ visions is this: there was no definitive vision. Americans imagined every geopolitical possibility, from a United States that spanned the entire continent, to a continent composed of three or four transcontinental republics (Canada, the U.S., Texas, and Mexico), to the emergence of a Pacific Republic on the west coast. The one broad similarity among all these visions was the continued

56 For the geographic knowledge of Americans, see Ibid.; John Rennie Short, Representing the Republic: Mapping the United States, 1600-1900 (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2001), 163-238; Martin Brückner, The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literary, and National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). For the maps available at the time, Walter Ristow, American Maps and Mapmakers: Commercial Cartography in the Nineteenth Century (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985), 456-452; James C. Martin and Robert Sidney Martin, Maps of Texas and the Southwest, 1513-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 123-140.

94 demographic – and thereby geographic – expansion of Anglo-Americans as a race.

Whigs and Democrats differed on whether it was proper for the United States as a polity to expand, but even the staunchly antislavery, anti-annexationist Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that the fate of North America’s distant future was sealed: “The question of the annexation of Texas is one of those which look very differently to the centuries and to the years. It is very certain that the strong British race which have now overrun so much of this Continent, must also overrun that tract & Mexico & Oregon also, and it will be in the course of ages be of small import by what particular occasions & methods it was done.”57

For Emerson, immediate U.S. political conquest was immoral, but future Anglo-

American racial conquest was still inevitable and undeniable.

John L. O’Sullivan agreed. However, where Emerson wrote of the “course of ages,” O’Sullivan’s vision was more immediate. Discussing Mexican California’s fate,

O’Sullivan maintained, “Already the irresistible army of Anglo-Saxon emigration has begun to pour down upon [California]…And they will have a right to independence…There can be no doubt that the population now fast streaming down upon

California will both assert and maintain that independence.”58 The anti-political Emerson and the avowed Democrat O’Sullivan were joined in their views by a diverse range of

Americans from all regions, espousing what historian Reginald Horsman has defined as

57 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Lectures,” in The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. 1: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, ed. Robert E. Spiller (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard, 1971), 220.

58 John L. O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” The United States Democratic Review, Vol. 7, Issue 85 (June-July, 1845), 9.

95 “romantic racial nationalism.”59 Horsman’s term, however, is imperfect, for there was nothing that was necessarily national about this belief; as even O’Sullivan noted, other Anglo-American-populated countries could and would arise that were not politically connected to the United States. This untethering of the Anglo-American race from the United States polity made particular sense in light of the times. With the U.S. undergoing the worst depression in its history, the rapid geographic expansion of its borders seemed unlikely. Indeed, one of Van Buren’s reasons for letting Texas annexation subside as a political issue was because he believed he needed to focus on fiscal matters.60 More broadly, Americans frequently lamented the disorder and depression within the United States, and feared for the survival of the Union. However, these lamentations did not necessarily conflict with visions of Anglo-American demographic dominance. The Anglo-American race did not need the United States to overrun the continent.

Yet if the racial conquest of North America was foreordained to most white

Americans, the borders of North America were not. Between 1838 and 1845, as the

Texans, American Patriots, the Mormons, the Cherokee, and overlanders in Oregon and

California worked towards creating their own breakaway republics, the American press essentially envisioned all of these political possibilities. Newspaper editors mixed these predictions with predictions about the United States’ geopolitical prospects, revealing a dizzying array of future North Americas.

59 Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 158-186.

60 Curtis, The Fox at Bay, 156.

96 Because Texas was already an independent republic, it received the most press. Moreover, because it was settled and founded by Anglo-Americans, the press could easily portray Texas’ growth as a logical example of Anglo-American racial expansion. In this vein, the New Orleans Bulletin, offered a stirring – and decidedly racist – prediction of Texas’ future: “Peopled with an intelligent, adventurous, bold, and fearless race…the career of this young republic will, it is probable, be fraught with future greatness and glory…Like the aboriginal inhabitants of America, the emasculate and unworthy Mexicans are doomed to recede before the certain and steady encroachments

[of the Texans]…Ere long, neither the Neces nor the Rio Grande will prove a sufficient boundary to the daring march of our sister Republic.”61 This vision echoed that of many

Texans themselves, who also embraced Texas’ expansion to the Pacific in the years following Texas independence.62

The New Orleans Bulletin failed to mention what the United States’ role on the continent would be if Texas conquered Mexico, but other newspapers did. In the

National Intelligencer, “A Traveller” celebrated, “To the two Anglo-Saxon masses of

North and Centre, we may add another, Texas to the South; and therefore, as the middle of this century approaches, we behold three immense colonies of this commanding family of nations fixed on Eastern North America, and all with very different physical force, and much difference of moral, increasing in mass, and spreading westward with a steadiness and force nothing can resist, and yet with almost the silence and omnipotence of time.”63

61 New Orleans Bulletin, printed in the Macon Georgia Telegraph, Aug. 6, 1839.

62 See especially Torget, Seeds of Empire, 202-212; Rodriguez, “‘Children of the Great Mexican Family’,” 326-381.

63 Daily National Intelligencer, July 22, 1839.

97 Here, then, was U.S. expansion without Texas; California and Oregon would presumably succumb to American migration and eventual annexation, but Texas would not. It was westward expansion at its most literal: the U.S. would expand west and only west.

Or, perhaps the United States would remain confined east of the Rocky

Mountains, and California and Oregon would go their own way – at least, that was the

Whig vision for the West. Daniel Webster thought as such about Oregon, which he envisioned as a “great Pacific Republic, a nation where our children may go for a residence, separating themselves from this government, and forming an integral part of a new government…”64 Because this republic would mostly be settled by Americans and

“some settlers…from England” – notice again the triumph of the Anglo-Saxon race – it would undoubtedly flourish. The pro-Whig New Orleans Bulletin believed Webster’s vision also described the fate of California. According to this view, Americans would soon plant a “colony” in California akin to the one they had established in Texas twenty years prior, and eventually seize the region from the impotent Mexican government.

Wrote the Bulletin, “To a harder and more civilized raced will belong the glory of founding an empire of Federal Republican States along the Pacific Coast…”65 Written in

1840 when Texas was independent, the Bulletin clearly foresaw this empire as separate from the United States. This development would be in the best interests of the United

States. Many Whigs were pessimistic about the value of the West, and believed it was it

64 Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics, Nov. 15, 1845. Webster’s speech was widely reprinted in many papers.

65 New Orleans Bulletin, quoted in The North American and Daily Advertiser [Philadelphia], March 26, 1840.

98 was best to leave the region to itself. The Louisville Journal, for example, wrote that “Russia has her Siberia, England has her Botany Bay, and if the United States should ever need a country to which to banish its rogues and scoundrels, the utility of…Oregon will be demonstrated.”66 Until that time, the paper urged the United States to leave

Oregon to Indians, trappers, and nature.

Democrats and Democratic papers argued vociferously against such visions, but that did not mean Democrats did not believe a North America composed of many republics was out of the realm of possibility. For example, in a response to Webster’s idea of a Pacific Republic, the Southern Patriot of Charleston countered, “…The day that declares [Oregon] a republic by itself, will find our continent a nest of little republics, spitting and snarling and spattering at each other from morning until night.”67 John

O’Sullivan agreed, at least in the long term. While he believed California would be independent for a period of time, eventually the railroad would knit together the East and the West, and the United States would bestride the continent. To O’Sullivan, anything but a continental U.S. was unthinkable and would lead to economic stagnation: “Away, then, with all the idle French talk of balances of power on the American Continent.

There is no growth in South America!”68 Only a continental U.S. would foster continuous economic growth, and be able to build the railroads and telegraphs necessary to connect east and west.

66 Louisville Journal [Kentucky], as quoted in the Daily National Intelligencer, Feb. 6, 1844.

67 The Southern Patriot [Charleston, SC], Nov. 22, 1845.

68 O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” 9.

99 Alongside Texas, Oregon, and California, Americans contemplated that

Canada too would soon become a “sister republic.” During the Canadian Rebellions, many presumed this republic to be imminent, and thousands of American “Patriots” flocked to the cause of the rebels As Chapter Two details, American Patriots often understood their struggle in relation to Texas, envisioning a Canadian republic as a northern counterpart to Texas. Canadian loyalists and the British Army soon crushed the

Patriots, yet many Americans continued to believe that a Canadian republic was on the near or at least distant horizon.69 Henry Clay, although an ardent opponent of Patriot activity in 1838, still believed in 1844 that soon Canada would become independent from

Britain, which would create a harmonious geopolitical situation for the United States:

“With the Canadian Republic on one side, that of Texas on the other, the United States, the friend of both, between them, each could advance its own happiness…They would be natural allies, ready, by cooperation, to repel an European or foreign attack upon either. Each would afford a secure refuge to the persecuted and oppressed driven into exile by either of the others.”70 At one point, in an interesting reversal of arguments,

Clay opposed the (theoretical) U.S. annexation of Canada because it would spur the clamor for Texas annexation.71 Like Clay, many other Americans tied Texas to Canada in their geopolitical visions. For example, the Albany Evening Journal agreed with Clay, claiming, “We neither want Texas nor Canada. But we do want sister Republics, and it

69 On the “convergence” of the U.S. and Canada, see Reginald Stuart, United States Expansionism and British North America, 1775-1871 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina, 1988), 164-165.

70 Henry Clay to the Daily National Intelligencer, April 17, 1844, Papers of Henry Clay, 10: 42-44.

71 Clay to Crittenden, Dec. 5, 1843, Papers of Henry Clay, 9: 897.

100 should be our aim to encourage their establishment.”72 These were of course Whig visions, and of course Democrats disagreed, many predicting in the mode of the Daily

Madisonian that Canada would be an “inevitable acquisition, sooner or later.”73 Clearly, however, Americans of all political persuasions believed that the entire continent’s geopolitics remained fluid.

This fluidity reached new heights when it took into account people who remained within U.S. borders. The federal government sent thousands of removed Indians to the western border by matter of policy, and until 1848 U.S. politicians contemplated a

“permanent Indian barrier” that stood between the United States and what was the “Great

Western Desert.”74 Some Americans even imagined some sort of Indian state in the

West, either as one of the many states of the American Union, or as a sort of quasi- autonomous polity that was still loosely connected to the United States.75 This belief was shared by whites living next to Indian Territory, many of whom feared native attacks, and often became hysterical over the federal government’s failure to control the region.

However, little changed along the border. Removed Indians were largely left to themselves, carving out a precarious sovereignty that they hoped would continue indefinitely.

72 Albany Evening Journal, March 28, 1844.

73 The Daily Madisonian [Washington, D.C.], March 28, 1844.

74 Robert Trennert, Jr., Alternative to Extinction: Federal Indian Policy and the Beginnings of the Reservation System, 1846-51 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1975), 1-9.

75 See Chapter Four for more on Indian autonomy. For a brief summary, see also Annie Abel, “Proposals for an Indian State, 1778-1878,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1907, Vol. I (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), 93-99.

101 Americans, too, predicted that the Mormons, currently inhabiting their city- state of Nauvoo in Illinois, possessed geopolitical goals beyond U.S. borders. According to the Richmond Enquirer, for example, “That the Mormons are determined to form the new empire in California, there is not the least doubt. Surely this is a remarkable age, and remarkable men are moving in it.”76 The Mormon exodus came late, after Texas annexation, but some papers predicted this would not affect Mormon goals. Revealingly, some even believed that the U.S should acquiesce to these goals, and leave the Mormons to create their own polity. For example, the New York Sun maintained that the Mormons

“never will annex themselves to any government on earth; nor is it desirable they should, as they are determined to be governed by their own laws.”77 Whether the Mormons would actually seize California from Mexico, the Sun did not say.

Again, it is worth reemphasizing that a large contingent of Americans, mostly

Democrats, disliked these potential futures, and believed in what John L. O’Sullivan would famously term “Manifest Destiny.” Yet, even Manifest Destiny, as O’Sullivan defined it, did not foreclose the possibility of other republics emerging on the continent, as he himself demonstrated with his anticipation of a future Pacific Republic, detailed above. The crucial point for O’Sullivan and his ilk was that the United States would expand sooner or later. After all, if expansion were truly destined, then speedy conquest was unnecessary. Breakaway republics could emerge and then join the United States as each saw fit. The great difference between Democrats like O’Sullivan and Whigs like

Clay was not over the emergence of breakaway republics – they agreed on that point –

76 Richmond Enquirer, Oct. 22, 1845.

77 New York Sun, as quoted in Ohio Statesman [Columbus], Nov. 26, 1845.

102 but that Democrats believed the U.S. should seize the opportunity to annex them within the near future. Whigs, in contrast, were either opposed to annexation outright, or at least would not countenance it until the Whig vision of the United States was enacted, and expansion proceeded naturally – which, of course, could take decades.

This general American attitude towards the emergence of breakaway republics explains the remarkable nonchalance with which both Democratic and Whig newspapers reported news from Texas. During the decade of Texas independence, papers printed news from the fledgling republic on almost a daily basis, about almost any subject – politics, war, economics, migration, etc. Often this news came without comment, underneath headings such as “From Texas” or “The Affairs of Texas,” demonstrating the normality of Texas’ existence. In this manner, news from Texas was treated like news from Europe or South America, although at times a paper would conclude with a glowing assessment of Texas’ prospects. For example, in 1840, after listing reports on many

Texas subjects – the policies of recently elected President Mirabeau Lamar, a new bill in the Texas congress, Texas’ war against the Comanche, and a host of other issues – the pro-annexation Baltimore Sun concluded, “To sum up, in fine every thing appears to be going on as well as the most sanguine of the well wishers of the Republic could desire.”78

In this manner, Democratic papers could implicitly support annexation by demonstrating that Texas’ success meant that annexation would not require substantial U.S. commitments – namely, waging war with Mexico. Interestingly, Whig papers also celebrated Texas’ success but for precisely the opposite reasons: success meant that there was no need for U.S. intervention, for Texas would “constitute a peaceable and good

78 Baltimore Sun, Jan. 15, 1840.

103 neighbor to the United States and Mexico.”79 In the South, Whig papers added an additional reason to celebrate Texas’ independence: because it was an explicitly slave owning republic, Texas would be a permanent haven from abolitionists, and therefore act as an international ally of southern slaveholders in the United States.80 In a great majority of cases, however, whether the paper was Whig or Democratic, Texas articles ended without editorial comment. Texas news was simply a broader aspect of international news that needed no editorializing. In this way, the ubiquity of these articles furthered the normalization of the permanent existence of the Republic of Texas, and at the same time offered proof that Texas independence was already normal to a broad swath of the American public.

And yet, for pro-expansionist papers, there lay two perils in the continued existence of an independent Texas – or for that matter any breakaway republic – and these perils needed to be addressed sooner rather than later. The first peril was discussed far more, and in significantly more dire terms: many expansionists believed the British were poised to intervene in Texas, as well as the many other potential breakaway republics of North America. If they did so, British power would encircle the United

States with what Andrew Jackson termed an “iron hoop.” It was crucial, therefore, for the federal government to act decisively to counter such a disastrous future. Importantly, the significantly more Anglophobic Democrats were far more concerned with British interference. Indeed, their vast range of predictions about the locations and methods of

79 Daily National Intelligencer, June 15, 1838.

80 See, for example, Southern [Jackson, MI], printed in Daily National Intelligencer, Feb. 6, 1844. In Texas itself, Mirabeau Lamar’s administration was making the same point: Torget, Seeds of Empire, 205- 212.

104 British meddling matched the array of potential geopolitical settlements envisioned by Whig papers, to such an extent that it is hard to find a place where expansionists did not think the British would soon interfere. Whether it was Texas, Oregon, California,

Indian Territory, east coast ports and cities, or an invasion from Canada, the British specter was everywhere. In some cases, observers put all of these possibilities together.

For example, writing from London in 1838, U.S. agent Richard Rush, upon learning that the removed Indians numbered over 45,000, warned that these Indians would ally with

Britain, putting the U.S. in “a state of blockade by the English navy on one side and the

Canadas, Mexico, and the Indians on the other.”81 This fear could be visualized. In early

1846 in the House of Representatives, Illinois Congressman John McClernand displayed a series of “several beautifully colored maps” displaying the potential British cordon around the United States, which prompted “numerous members” to crowd around the maps in excitement.82 McClernand noted that if the British prevented U.S. expansion on the continent, this would put a stranglehold on U.S. commerce in the Pacific. To

McLernand and other expansionist Democrats of his ilk, this development had to be prevented at any cost.

Frequently, many slaveholders in the South – as well as many racist non- slaveholders in the North and West – worried the British would use their abolition stance to partner with blacks in the United States and the Americas more generally, and incite them to prey on vulnerable U.S. borders. Many works have documented this fear in

81 Richard Rush to Joel Poinsett, Jan. 13, 1838, Joel Poinsett Papers, 9-168, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Others made similar statements. See, for example, Washington Daily National Intelligencer, Dec. 20, 1838.

82 Jan. 8, 1846, Congressional Globe, 29th Congress, 2nd Session, Appendix, 278.

105 regards to Texas specifically, but the racial anxieties were not limited to Texas.83

Canada too was regarded as an area from which the British could recruit African-

Americans (see Chapter Three), and one paper even warned of a British “scheme to colonize the Californias with negroes and mulattos,” thereby barring the U.S. west of the

Rocky Mountains.84 Thus the United States needed to expand into California – and

Texas and Oregon and almost everywhere on the continent – in order to counter this

British abolitionism schemes and their deadly ramifications.

Coupled to the British threat lay a second peril, one that was less discussed outright but was present as an underlying thread in fears of British encirclement. At its core, the peril was this: the only reason the British would be able to encircle the United

States was because of the existence of breakaway republics. Most Americans believed that the overwhelmingly mass of Anglo-Texans were wary of British influence and supported annexation to the United States. However, the sheer existence of an independent Texas created a group of people who would succumb to British intervention in order to preserve their power: Texas politicians. Annexation to the U.S. would curb their power significantly, while remaining independent – albeit under British auspices – would not. One such underhanded Texan was the newly elected president Anson Jones, whom the New Orleans Times-Picayune suspected of engaging in “secret intrigue [with

Britain] in order to defeat the popular will.”85 Jones and his pro-British allies were, in the

83 On the British, abolition, and Texas, see Haynes, Unfinished Revolution, 230-250; Hietala, Manifest Design, 10-54; Freehling, Road to Disunion Vol. 1, 372-425; Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas, 12-31; Merk, Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism, 9-39.

84 Pennsylvania Inquirer [Philadelphia], March 11, 1840.

85 New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 18, 1845.

106 words of Andrew Jackson, “ambitious aspirants,” and their numbers would grow if annexation did occur swiftly, as Britain held out more and more inducements for Texas to remain independent.86 To both the Times-Picayune and Andrew Jackson, Jones’ pro-

British stance was not legitimate, for it was thwarting the democratic will of the people of

Texas. Hidden in this criticism was an important but unsettling implication: Jones was a popularly elected president of an internationally recognized state, and thus any diplomacy he conducted with Great Britain was perfectly legitimate. In this way, breakaway republics provided a legitimate means for foreign powers to enter into continental affairs.

To a few observers, perhaps the problem with breakaway republics had not just to do with their leaders, but with the general mass of their American-born population. After all, as one letter-writer from Texas stated, it was the people of Texas who were electing such self-interested officials: “You would be surprised, and you would form a contemptible opinion of the citizens of Texas if you could see the members elect of some of the counties.”87 Noting that soon many “adventurous men” would travel to Oregon, the Milwaukee Weekly Sentinel hoped they would be “of better character, and for better purposes than many in Texas have had, or have been charged with.”88 In widely reprinted editorial, the St. Louis New Era took this concern to another level, noting the very nature of emigrants led them to take bold political action. Demonstrated by their departure from the U.S., these migrants were not enthusiastic about potential U.S. annexation. Instead, “The opinion is very freely expressed by persons who have lived in

86 Letter from Andrew Jackson, Jan. 1, 1845, quoted in The Ohio Statesman [Columbus], Jan. 21, 1845.

87 The Southern Patriot [Charleston, SC], Dec. 15, 1843.

88 Milwaukee Weekly Sentinel, May 27, 1843.

107 Oregon and California that the emigrants already look forward to separate independence…The bold restless spirits who have gone to Oregon and California are the very sort of men who are disposed to set up a new government.”89 This editorial was spawned by a letter from Oregon settler Peter Burnett – also frequently reprinted – who intimated that Oregon settlers desired a permanent political settlement, and would go their own way if the U.S. did not take notice in a prompt manner (for more on Burnett and this letter, see Chapter Seven). Thus, to some observers, American emigration would not pave the way for U.S. expansion, as vocal expansionists like John L. O’Sullivan claimed, but would in fact inhibit it. In essence, the character of American emigrants made their settlements predisposed towards becoming permanent breakaway republics.

As historians have demonstrated, it was primarily the first peril of British intervention that spawned the expansionist actions of U.S. politicians in the mid-1840s, particularly in regard to Tyler and Upshur’s fears of abolition in Texas.90 Moreover, it is important to recognize that while this perception was exaggerated, representing the logical culmination of decades of American Anglophobia coupled with U.S. economic depression and general international weakness, it was not outright paranoia. British officials were engaged in diplomacy with Texas, they were contemplating buying

California, and they were hoping to hold onto much of the Oregon Country.91 Yet historians have missed the important corollary to British intervention: the real and potential existence of breakaway republics on the continent. Breakaway republics

89 St. Louis New Era, quoted in the Evansville Journal, Sept. 11, 1845.

90 See especially Merk, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism, passim, as well as Haynes, Unfinished Revolution, 204-273;

91 See Chapter Six for the British in California. See Chapter Seven for the British in Oregon.

108 offered the presence of the British – and potential British expansion – significant legitimacy. Moreover, just as amplified fears of the British peril were based in some reality, so too were concerns about the character of breakaway republicans. As late as

1845, a majority of the Texas cabinet and the Texas congress opposed annexation to the

United States.92 The Texans were the tip of the iceberg. As the following chapters will demonstrate, many other Americans throughout the continent either opposed or were indifferent to a political connection with the United States.

Thus, the story of why U.S. expansion occurred in the 1840s is not one of two actors, but several: the United States, Great Britain, and breakaway republics. Could the

United States really cite the Monroe Doctrine and try to prevent British influence on the continent if people on the ground – most of whom were American migrants – asked the

British for aid? Did not these American migrants have a right to do so, by the very tenets of Jacksonian democracy? While it is uncertain how many Americans considered breakaway republics as a threat to the United States, James K. Polk certainly did – and he acted to ensure this future would not happen.

James K. Polk and the End of the Texas Moment

The Texas Moment began slowly – and, initially, contrary to the will of most

Anglo-Texans themselves – and gradually picked up steam over the course of the late

1830s and early 1840s, as increasing numbers of Americans sought political solutions beyond U.S. borders. Thus, during the year 1844, thousands of overlanders traveled to

92 Stanley Siegel, A Political History of the Texas Republic, 1836-1845 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1956), 246-254.

109 Oregon and created their own government, more than a hundred Americans in

California joined the Mexican Army in exchange for land grants, thousands of Mormons sought to establish their empire in the West, removed Indians convened an intertribal gathering to secure their land against the U.S. for perpetuity, and the Texas government was engaged in high-level diplomacy with the British in order to solidify Texas’ independence. In essence, the Texas Moment only fully flowered in its final years, between 1843 and 1845.

It did not end in the same manner. Instead, the Texas Moment – whether in Texas itself, among the Mormons and removed Indians, or in distant California and Oregon – was stopped in its tracks by the policies and methods of President James K. Polk.93

Acting with a speed and aggressiveness that troubled even many of those who shared his expansionist goals, President-elect Polk oversaw the annexation of Texas in late 1845 via behind-the-scenes discussions, then as president in 1846 maneuvered congress into declaring war on Mexico, facilitated the creation of the Mormon Battalion (thereby attaching the Mormons to U.S. interests in the West), inaugurated the conquest of

California, imposed a humiliating treaty on the Cherokee, and acquired Oregon to 49 degrees latitude. The Texas Moment that had taken so long to flourish ended within six months, and largely due to the policies of one man. To borrow a phrase from Civil War

93 The only exception was the Patriot War, essentially the Texas Moment as applied to Canada. Importantly, even in this case it was the federal government that was primarily responsible for ending the bid for independence (see Chapter 3), for President Van Buren feared a war with Great Britain and cracked down on Patriot activity. Considering the federal government was responsible for ending the Texas Moment in all cases, it begs the question whether this needed to be so.

110 historiography: written on the tombstone of the Texas Moment was not “killed by

Manifest Destiny,” but “killed by President Polk.”94

Polk’s aggressive methods were not those promoted by most Americans who argued for U.S expansion. Indeed, it is not difficult to describe a different, less aggressive path for expansion, for it was one envisioned by John L. O’Sullivan and enacted by John Tyler. First, Anglo-Americans would migrate throughout the entire continent of North America. Then, after a few years, their numbers would achieve such a critical mass that they would form their own independent republics. At some point in the future, these republics would voluntarily join the United States. Of course, this process could lead to controversies over international boundaries, but these could be solved through diplomatic channels.

Texas exemplified this process best – to such an extent that Americans even termed the process “the Texas game.”95 As expansionists saw it: Americans had moved to Texas, eventually seized power, governed Texas as an independent nation, and finally

94 By and large, most historians of Polk share this assessment to varying degrees, especially Charles McCoy, Polk and the Presidency (New York: Haskelly House Publishers, Ltd., 1973); White, “The Jacksonians,” 50-66; John Pinheiro, Manifest Ambition: James K. Polk and Civil-Military Relations during the Mexican War (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), 131-154; Robert Merry, A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 1-12. More general biographies of Polk also make this assessment, although more via narrative than argument. The best of these remains Sellers, Polk: Continentalist. See also Sam Haynes, James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse (New York: Pearson-Longman, 2006); Paul Bergeron, The Presidency of James K. Polk (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987). William Dusinberre offers a very different assessment in Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James K. Polk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

95 I have been unable to track down origin of this term (nor, from what I gather, have any other historians). However, it is clear that it had become ubiquitous soon after Texas annexation, for newspapers used the phrase without comment, implying that everyone who read the phrase knew what it meant. The earliest record I have found is in the Weekly National Intelligencer [Washington, D.C.], March 22, 1845, in reference to potential American actions in California. By May, California resident (but writing from New York City) Alfred Robinson used the phrase in a letter to U.S. consul Thomas Larkin, and implied that many papers were taken up with the idea: Alfred Robinson to Thomas Larkin, May 29, 1845, The Larkin Papers Vol. 3, ed. George P. Hammond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), 204-206.

111 petitioned the U.S. for annexation. All that was left was to resolve the issue of the

Nueces Strip, which both Texas and Mexico claimed. If Polk had been a president in the mode of John Tyler, he would have continued to work through diplomacy with Mexico despite the setbacks, even if these setbacks may have led to some skirmishes between

Texans and Mexicans on the ground. This was Tyler’s exact strategy with Britain in

1842, when he worked to cool the on-the-ground passions of the “Aroostook War,” in which Americans from Maine and Canadians from New Brunswick almost came to blows within territory claimed by both the U.S. and Britain.96 After successfully negotiating with Mexico over Texas, a more passive president would then watch the rest of the continent and wait. Expansion did not need to be hurried, for migrant Americans in both

California and Oregon would soon play the Texas game themselves, and declare themselves independent. After a few years or a few decades, these newly independent states would inevitably petition the U.S. for annexation. Perhaps other regions as far flung as New Mexico and Canada would mimic them in the more distant future.

Polk, however, dreaded leaving anything up to chance. For being known in U.S. history as the president embodying Manifest Destiny, in reality he wanted nothing to do with destiny. He believed not only that the British were bent on securing footholds across the continent, but – crucially – that these actions would be legitimized by the policymakers in actual and would-be breakaway republics. In essence, Polk feared the

Texas game, for he did not believe newly independent Americans would necessarily gravitate towards the United States. His concern was not actual distrust of the large

96 Tyler himself disliked Polk’s aggressiveness in regards to Mexico, and believed he should pursue a more diplomatic course: Tyler to Caleb Cushing, Oct. 14, 1845, in Letters and Times of the Tylers, 445-446.

112 number of Americans populating these breakaway republics, but rather that breakaway republics would be too weak to stand against the meddling of Great Britain.

Moreover, Polk feared delay on a political and partisan level. Because he pledged himself to one term, he had a finite amount of time to accomplish his stated goals, and he needed to accomplish these goals in order to maintain Democratic dominance of the national government. Here again partisanship helped drive expansion. The election of

1844 had provided Polk with a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate, but this would only last for two years. As a vociferous partisan, Polk loathed the prospect of any Whig political gain, for he believed the Whigs would destroy his agenda. Thus, the ever-anxious and conspiratorial Polk feared that not acting with aggression would lead to greater calamity than remaining patient.

We can witness Polk’s fear most prominently in his 1845 correspondence surrounding Texas annexation.97 While Tyler was a lame duck, president-elect Polk worked from behind the scenes to ensure that annexation proceeded as fast as possible.

Standing in his way was Thomas Hart Benton, who proposed that the United States reopen negotiations with the Texans instead of accept what he believed was a flawed annexation policy, for it made war with Mexico all but assured.98 Benton held the allegiance of many western Democrats, and his proposal offered an alternative for more conservative-minded expansionists who desired Texas, but only if war with Mexico were avoided. To Polk, however, reopening negotiations would be disastrous. Writing a few

97 This fear is decidedly underemphasized in most works on Polk, e.g. Sellers, Polk: Continentalist, 215- 220.

98 For more on Benton’s rationale, see Freehling, Road to Disunion Vol. 1, 446-449; Ken S. Mueller, Senator Benton and the People: Master Race Democracy on the Early American Frontiers (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014), 195-221.

113 months after these events, he explained, “If [Benton’s] alternative had been chosen,

I think we have now abundant evidence to prove that Texas would probably have been lost to the Union. If negotiations had been opened by commissioners great delay would necessarily have taken place, giving ample opportunity to British and French intrigue to have seriously embarrassed, if not defeated annexation.”99 Polk’s memory from several months later matched the attitude of incoming letters he received from his Texas agents and many other observers during the entire year preceding Texas annexation, all of which portrayed Sam Houston, Anson Jones, and a majority of the Texas cabinet as welcoming to British overtures.100 As to why Texas would prefer Britain over the U.S., most of

Polk’s correspondents emphasized the cunning of the British. A few, however, also cited annexation’s implications for the power of Texas officials. As one writer noted, Texas officials “conceive[d] that their own importance may be diminished by the transformation of that territory from a primary to a secondary position.”101 Here Polk’s correspondents shared the assessment of some other observers – most importantly Polk’s mentor Andrew

Jackson, quoted above – that Texas officials would thwart the will of the Texan people for the sake of their own power. In the end, Polk and Tyler’s allies in Congress worked

99 Polk to William Haywood, Jr., Aug. 9, 1845, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 10: 140. While Polk was writing about the past and may have been less than truthful (a common pattern during his presidency), in this case his statement seems to be a decidedly accurate depiction of what he thought at the time. His decisions, and more importantly all of his incoming letters from Texas, suggest as such. See the next footnote.

100 All letters come from Correspondence of James K. Polk: J. George Harris to Polk, June 5, 1844, 7: 199; Alexander Anderson to Polk, July 11, 1844, 7: 339-341; Andrew J. Donelson to Polk, Dec. 24, 1844, 8: 461; Jacob Martin to Polk, Jan. 25, 1845, 9: 72-73; Donelson to Polk, 9: 80; Thomas Ritchie to Polk, Feb. 17, 1845, 9: 113-114; James Hamilton to Polk, Feb. 23, 1845, 9: 129-130; Leonard Cheatham to Polk, March 7, 1845, 9: 179; Donelson to Polk, March 18, 1845, 9: 205-207; Donelson to Polk, March 19, 1845, 9: 207-208; Archibald Yell to Polk, March 28, 1845, 9: 227-228.

101 Peter Daniel to Polk, March 22, 1845, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 9: 223.

114 to write a joint resolution on Texas annexation that gave the president the choice of whether to reopen negotiations or not. Needing the support of the Bentonites to pass the resolution, Polk gave Benton the impression that he would reopen negotiations, thereby ensuring that the Bentonites would vote affirmative. When, with Polk’s acquiescence,

Tyler chose not to reopen negotiations, a rift opened between Polk and Benton that would never be repaired. In the moment, however, Polk had accomplished his immediate goal:

Texas was annexed.102

Thus, with a certain irony, James Polk – president of the United States of

America, population 17 million people – was at the mercy of the officials of the Republic of Texas – population 125,000, and a weak and isolated international state. If Texas refused annexation, Polk had little recourse; at no point would Americans countenance a war to conquer a fellow Anglo-American sister republic, even if that republic was underwritten by British dollars and diplomacy. Polk, therefore, ensured that no other

North American region that he coveted would follow the Texas model. If a legitimate – i.e. Anglo-American and republican – government arose in any of these regions, Polk would not and could not allow that government to remain independent for long. Of course, in 1845 Polk would not and could not say as such; instead, he had to pay lip service to the principle of self-determination, as he did in his 1845 inauguration, when he stated that “the people of this continent alone have the right to decide their own

102 Historians often downplay Polk’s crucial behind-the-scenes maneuvers while president-elect that ensured Texas annexation, e.g. Hietala, Manifest Design, 46-52; Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, 45-46. Yet, as Charles Sellers noted, Texas annexation would not have occurred before Polk’s inauguration without the actions of Polk himself: Sellers, Polk: Continentalist, 162-208.

115 destiny.”103 He then claimed that if people wanted to form an independent state or join the U.S., that was their concern, but Europe should not interfere. In this manner,

Polk used the Monroe Doctrine as the primary reason the United States would involve itself in the affairs of other regions, for it would be protecting both U.S. interests and the right of self-determination more generally.104

It is important to emphasize that Polk viewed Great Britain as the primary threat to U.S. expansion, as many historians have demonstrated. He was not unfriendly to the general concept of breakaway republics, but to what their existence would lead. Because they were weak and unstable, they could be easily corrupted and coopted by European influence. He never doubted that most Texans desired U.S. annexation, but he believed the British and their corrupt Texas lackeys would prevent the will of the people. In this way, breakaway republics created a backdoor to legitimate British expansion in North

America. Importantly, later in Polk’s presidency, after the U.S. had conquered California and annexed Oregon, he could be more honest in his assessment of breakaway republics.

In an 1847 message to Congress, Polk maintained that the United States could not afford to let other North American peoples, whether “inhabitants or foreigners,” choose their own political futures: “Such a government would be too feeble to long maintain its separate independent existence, and would finally become annexed to or be dependent

103 Polk’s First Annual Message, Dec. 2, 1845, in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the President, ed. James Richardson (1902)

104 For Polk’s decision to “reaffirm” the Monroe Doctrine, see Diary of James K. Polk, 1845-1849, ed. Milo Milton Quaife, (four volumes; Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1910), 70; Merk, Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism, 6, 66, 181-182, 208.

116 colony of some powerful state.”105 Therefore, he argued, the United States needed to keep the vast amount of territory it had conquered from Mexico.

It would be a welcome finding for this dissertation if the evidence demonstrated that Polk saw breakaway republics as a collective problem, and recognized that their existence challenged U.S. expansion and continental hegemony. Or, to put it more succinctly, it would be significant if the intellectual concept of breakaway republics precipitated Polk’s actions. It did not – or, at least, Polk never gave evidence as such.

While Polk was undoubtedly concerned with the consequences of established breakaway republics vis-à-vis U.S. expansion, it is uncertain whether he thought of breakaway republics as a collective entity. More precisely, it is uncertain whether Polk conceived of

Texas, California, Oregon, and other potentially independent polities as a collective group that shared the common characteristics of potential self-determination and a sizeable Anglo-American population. Rather, to Polk, they were places with people more than they were polities. The common denominator for all of them was that they provided

Britain a path into continental geopolitics, and therefore the U.S. needed to rapidly prod and coerce these regions into the Union. Yet action need not come from intellectual recognition. However Polk conceived of breakaway republics – as polities or places, individually or collectively – the real world effects were the same: Polk needed to snuff out breakaway republicanism before it could take root.

Understanding Polk’s attitude towards breakaway republics, whether conscious or not, provides a window onto his continued emphasis on speed and aggressiveness in both

105 Polk’s Third Annual Message, Dec. 7, 1847, in Messages and Papers of the Presidents, .

117 military and diplomatic matters. We can see this best in the case of California.

From the outset of his presidency, Polk had his eyes on the remote Mexican territory, and he urged Secretary of State James Buchanan to work towards facilitating U.S. annexation. Buchanan then wrote the U.S. consul in California Thomas Larkin that, if the oft-rebellious inhabitants of California (which included both californios and a substantial number of American and European merchants) chose to create, in Buchanan’s words, a “Sister Republic,” the United States would celebrate their accomplishment.

While Buchanan noted that the U.S. would welcome California into the Union if its inhabitants so desired, he also stated that the U.S. would also gladly accept California as a permanent ally on the continent. What the U.S. could not abide, Buchanan warned

Larkin, was if California opened itself to European influence, and he instructed Larkin to make the utmost effort to prevent such an occurrence.106 Larkin faithfully followed his instructions to the letter. In the spring of 1846, prominent californios met at Larkin’s house to decide the political fate of California, where Larkin and his californio allies argued for U.S. annexation.107 The meeting adjourned without a decision, but undoubtedly californio leaders knew that the U.S. would welcome both their independence and their request for U.S. annexation.

Yet Buchanan and Larkin’s efforts to facilitate the peaceful U.S. annexation of

California were not good enough for Polk – even though Buchanan had consulted with

Polk, and Buchanan’s letter to Larkin represented Polk’s stated wishes. Polk felt the need to force the issue beyond gentle prodding through diplomatic backchannels. At the same

106 James Buchanan to Thomas Larkin, Oct. 17, 1845, Larkin Papers Vol. 4, 44.

107 For a longer account of this meeting and an assessment of the historiography surrounding it, see pages 393-394.

118 time as Buchanan sent his letter to Larkin, Polk dispatched Lieutenant Archibald

Gillespie to California on what Polk described as a “secret mission.”108 Gillespie was carrying a copy of Buchanan’s letter to Larkin, but he was also given verbal “secret instructions” to relay to both Larkin and John C. Fremont. At the time, Fremont was leading another U.S. exploring trek to the Pacific Coast, and was presumed to be somewhere around California. After a nine-month journey, Gillespie reached California and consulted with Larkin. He then traveled in pursuit of Fremont, then currently leaving the region for Oregon. Once Gillespie caught up with Fremont in far northern California, he gave him the same letter that Buchanan sent to Larkin, as well as other letters from

Fremont’s wife Jesse and his father-in-law Thomas Hart Benton. He then relayed Polk’s verbal “secret instructions” that still remain unknown. The following day Fremont and his small force turned south, taking an aggressive posture towards the californios that would eventually precipitate the Bear Flag Revolt. Whether Polk, via Gillespise, urged

Fremont to undertake such action is impossible to ascertain, and historians have been debating the contents of the “secret instructions” for over a century. However, what is certain that Fremont only turned south because of Gillespie’s verbal instructions from

Polk.109 While Polk may not have ordered Fremont to undertake outright rebellion, at the very least he must have been instructed Fremont to remain in California, and use the threat of his force to ensure the californios would not make any rash – i.e. pro-British –

108 Oct. 30, 1845, Polk Diary, I: 83-84.

109 For a good summary of the historiography surrounding the secret orders, see Robert Utley, A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Path to the Pacific (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1997), 362, note 30.

119 political moves.110 Ultimately, Polk could not allow the californios to decide their own political fate, for it could counter U.S. expansionism.

Even in Oregon, to which the United States already possessed a legitimate legal claim, Polk worried about the actions of its inhabitants, a vast majority of whom were

Americans. In his first inaugural message, Polk expressed a keen grasp of developments in the region. While he praised Americans in Oregon as “ever ready to defend the soil” for the United States, this statement did not square with his other comments on the region. Because the U.S. had not yet extended jurisdiction over Oregon, Polk mentioned how American settlers were forced to create their own government, and had “just cause to complain of our long neglect.” In response, the federal government should make

“liberal grants” of land to Oregon settlers to reward them for making such a difficult journey. Additionally, Polk recommended the federal government erect a series of blockhouses and raise a regiment of riflemen to protect future overlanders from Indians, and more generally create an Indian agency in Oregon to manage native-Oregon affairs.111 The implications of these statements were subtle, but clear: despite Polk’s claim that Americans in Oregon were “read to defend the soil,” they may require some incentives to do so. If they were already completely committed to the United States, then why mention their “complaints of neglect”?

110 It seems highly unlikely that Polk authorized Fremont to explicitly use military force, for this would been out of character with Polk’s methods of manipulation. Indeed, Fremont’s aggressive and potentially foolish actions in California were exactly the opposite of Polk’s methods in Texas, where he hoped Mexico would precipitate violence and give the United States moral cover to wage war. Perhaps Gillespie told Fremont to take a similar stance as Zachary Taylor did in Mexico, and wait for hostilities to commence, which the impulsive Fremont failed to follow. I deal more with this story in Chapter Six.

111 Polk’s First Annual Message, Dec. 2, 1845, Messages and Papers of the President,

120 Of course, Oregon differed from Texas and California in that Britain already legally claimed a portion of it, and American settlers in Oregon saw British sovereignty as a potential threat to their rights, not a possible solution to their vulnerable potential independence.112 Therefore Polk did not need to work with the haste he employed with

Texas and California; international diplomacy with Britain, not secret orders and secret agents, would presumably solve the “Oregon Question.” Yet it is clear from his diary that Polk was fully committed to raising the contingent of riflemen to guard the overland route.113 There is little reason to doubt that Polk’s primary purpose in doing so was to protect overland migrants, nor is there reason to doubt his more general desire to facilitate increased migration to Oregon. However, the ever-manipulative Polk likely had a secondary reason for raising such a force. If, as Polk noted, Americans in Oregon were

“complaining” about U.S. neglect, then undoubtedly Polk knew that there was an underlying unhappiness in the fledgling settlement. Indeed, the Washington Daily Union, the organ of the Polk Administration, maintained that there may be “little men” in

Oregon as there had been in Texas. These men, the Globe ventured, cared more about their personal gain than they did the good of the American people, and insinuated that they would work against U.S. interests to preserve their power. As such, if Oregon did declare independence, then “many difficulties would be created [for annexation] which do not now exist.”114 To counter this problem, a rifle contingent would serve as a

112 Oregon settlers frequently petitioned the U.S. government to claim Oregon and “extend jurisdiction” over them, and politicians who desired immediate annexation of Oregon frequently cited their petitions. See Chapter Seven.

113 Entries from Oct. 24, 1845; May 16, 1846; May 21, 1846, May 22, 1846, May 25, 1846, in Diary of James K. Polk, 70, 404, 414, 416, 424.

114 The Daily Union [Washington, D.C.], Oct. 9, 1845.

121 powerful demonstration of U.S. power on the journey to Oregon, as would the creation of an Indian Agency within the territory. “Liberal” land grants would validate

U.S. beneficence. All of these measures, in essence, tethered Oregon settlers more firmly to the United States, without actually having the U.S. claim Oregon and provoke Great

Britain. Ultimately, Polk’s actions demonstrate that while he publicly voiced that

Americans in Oregon would defend U.S. interests, he may have been less sure in private.

Thus, even pro-U.S. Americans in Oregon needed to be lightly and deftly coerced into acceding to U.S. annexation.

Undoubtedly, in the case of Texas, California, and Oregon, Polk dreaded British meddling in each region to a much greater degree than he distrusted the actions of real (in the case of Texas) or potential (in the case of California and Oregon) breakaway republicans themselves. Indeed, Polk consistently maintained that emigrating Americans were “patriotic pioneers,” and expressed admiration for their accomplishments and risk- taking.115 Even californios, he believed, would choose U.S. annexation so long as the

British did not intervene. This was not the case for the Mormons or the Cherokee, two groups of breakaway republicans significantly more hostile to the United States. In the case of the Mormons, Polk worried that this “singular sect” would “become hostile to the

U.S.” while on their western exodus, which would greatly complicate Polk’s plans to conquer California.116 Moreover, like other breakaway republicans, the Mormons could ally with Britain or Mexico, which would, in the case of Britain, provide the British an excuse to extend their influence on the continent. Jesse Little, the head of the Eastern

115 Polk’s First Annual Message, Dec. 2, 1845, in Messages and Papers of the President, .

116 June 2, 1846, and June 3, 1846, Diary of James. K Polk, 444, 446.

122 States Mission and de facto Mormon ambassador in Washington, played on such fears when he wrote to Polk, “We would disdain to receive assistance from a foreign power – although it should be proffered – unless our government shall turn us off in this great crisis and will not help us, but compel us to be foreigners.”117 While Little did not explicitly mention Britain, the reference was hardly oblique, and it was this letter that provided the impetus for Polk to take the Mormons seriously as a potential threat. He then engineered the creation of the Mormon Battalion, attaching the Mormons to U.S. interests – at least for the time being.118

Polk did not make comparable statements to the Cherokee, but is clear from his correspondence before his presidency that he disdained the majority John-Ross-led faction that worked against removal and now sought autonomy in the West.119 Moreover, while the aloof Polk possessed few legitimate friends, one of these few was former

Arkansas governor Archibald Yell. For years, Yell had been hysterical over the

Cherokee and other removed native peoples, warning that the United States government had effectively placed thousands of dangerous and hostile Indians on the undefended

Arkansas border.120 Polk corresponded with Yell over Cherokee affairs generally, and while he never voiced the same concerns as Yell of a massive Indian war on the Arkansas border, it seems unlikely that he did not at least give some credence to Yell’s fears.121

117 Little to Polk, June 1, 1846, in Will Bagley and David Bigler, ed., Army of Israel: Mormon Battalion Narratives (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000), 34.

118 Chapter Five details the Mormon Battalion in greater detail.

119 Polk to Martin Van Buren, Aug. 8, 1838, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 4: 526.

120 See Chapter Four more detail on Yell and this attitude more generally. For an example of Yell’s hysterics, see April 18, 1838 and Nov. 11, 1840, in the Arkansas Gazette [Little Rock].

121 Yell to Polk, Sept. 5, 1845, Papers of James K. Polk, 10: 487.

123 Moreover, in 1845, as the tension increased between both the U.S. and Mexico and the U.S. and Britain, several observers knowledgeable in Cherokee affairs wrote Polk letters warning of that removed Indians in general, and the Ross faction more specifically, posed danger to U.S. sovereignty in the West.122 These men were wrong; the

Ross faction of the Cherokee had no intention of allying with a foreign power or fighting the United States. Nevertheless, while Polk never responded to these letters, and never mentioned the potential danger the Cherokee represented, his actions demonstrate that he recognized the threat. Only two weeks before the U.S. declared war against Mexico,

Polk recommended to Congress that the U.S. permanently separate the Cherokee.

Through this action, Polk imposed a humiliating treaty on the Ross faction, whose leaders agreed to accept all U.S. demands in exchange for not permanently separating the tribe.123

In essence, with war with Mexico imminent, Polk ensured that the Cherokee – like the

Mormons, another potential fifth column – would remain quiet.

Thus, Polk facilitated federal government interventions in California and Oregon, as well as with the Mormons and the Cherokee. As president-elect, he was integral in fast-tracking Texas annexation through Congress. Once Texas was a part of the Union, he facilitated federal intervention there as well – famously so, when he sent Zachary

Taylor’s army into territory disputed with Mexico. The sheer number of interventions testifies to the fascinating combination of paranoia and vision in Polk’s assessment of

North American geopolitics. To Polk’s paranoia: Texas, Oregon, and California were not going to be imminently and irrevocably lost to Great Britain; moreover, it is unlikely that

122 William S. Coodey to Polk, July 8, 1845, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 10: 36; John Howard Payne to Polk, Feb. 5, 1846, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 11: 70-72.

123 See Chapter Four for more on Polk’s actions.

124 the Mormons, and absolutely certain the Cherokee, were going to intervene against the U.S. in the war against Mexico. Moreover, his Whig domestic opponents were not trying to secretly undermine the war effort or the United States more generally; criticism of “Mr. Polk’s War” was not anti-American, but a form of American patriotism. Thus, to countless historians, Polkian Manifest Destiny was a violent, aggressive, racist, and fundamentally immoral project; under the President Polk, the United States waged a war of conquest against Mexico, and attempted to bully Great Britain, neither of which were necessary even for those who believed U.S. expansion was both a moral policy and essential to U.S. interests.124 From a domestic standpoint, he did all of these things in a manner that only further divided the country along partisan – and increasingly sectional – lines. Instead of uniting around a patriotic and moral struggle, Americans divided over a jingoistic war of conquest. As John L. O’Sullivan envisioned Manifest Destiny, it would be both peaceful and natural; under Polk, it was violent, aggressive, and – perhaps most damning – needless.

Yet, we must also give credence to Polk’s vision that went hand-in-hand with his paranoia – indeed, perhaps they were one and the same. Great Britain was meddling in continental affairs. In most cases, the British were not as influential as Polk thought they were, but neither was British interference a figment of Polk’s imagination or simply an excuse he used to justify U.S. aggression. The British were involved in Texas,

California, and Oregon, and even maintained diplomatic relations with the Mormons.

More importantly for this study, the on-the-ground inhabitants of these regions did

124 Such arguments can be found in such works as Hietala, Manifest Design; Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation; Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission.

125 provide a backdoor for British involvement, and if they were allowed to go their own way as breakaway republics, there was no certainty that these republics would join the United States. Indeed, if John Tyler had not reopened negotiations with Texas when he did, Texas authorities would have continued to pursue Mexican recognition of their independence through British intermediaries.125 By 1846, inhabitants of both California and Oregon discussed declaring independence, while Mormon leaders contemplated a

Mormon empire ensconced somewhere in northern Mexico. The concept Whigs had at the time – and that historians continue to echo today – that U.S. expansion was inevitable because of American demographic dominance was not born out by facts on the ground.

And, to that point, the Whigs were not anti-American, but they were decidedly anti-Polk, and were trying to counter his geopolitical goals. Indeed, until the very moment news of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo arrived in Washington, Whigs united around the policy of “no territory” – i.e., the United States should not take any land from Mexico. Polk, almost uniquely of U.S. politicians at the time, recognized these facts, and sought to counter them through federal action. For that he deserves political credit. Whether his actions were also morally justifiable? That is a different matter.126

Why Polk acted with such aggressiveness is clear, but how Polk, as president, was able to simultaneously intervene in so many different regions, employing a federal government that hitherto had shown little ability to control its borders, is another story.

Polk’s success is explained by both his luck and his skill. Certainly Polk was

125 Torget, Seeds of Empire, 235-244; Rodriguez, “Children of the Great Mexican Family,” 342-349.

126 Many historians have critiqued the Mexican War as an immoral struggle. For a recent example, see Amy Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (New York: Vintage, 2013).

126 exceedingly lucky to become president at the time he did. By 1845, the United

States had finally weathered the ongoing economic depression, and, for the first time in almost a decade, could turn its attention to continental matters.127 He also lucked into a

Whig party in disarray from the debacle of John Tyler’s presidency, which led to significant Democratic victories in the 1844 elections. These victories provided Polk with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, and these majorities supported his larger strategic vision – albeit not necessarily his day-by-day tactics. Yet it is important to state that, his luck notwithstanding, Polk was both particularly skilled and innovative as president, particularly in his first two years in office. By promising to fulfill all of the key domestic and international Democratic Party goals, and giving all of them equal weight, he ensured cooperation from the party’s vastly diverse elements. By selecting able men for his cabinet, but then wielding his presidential power over them, he turned the cabinet into an effective arm of his policy-making. Most importantly, by maneuvering the United States into a seemingly defensive war, he then employed his role as commander-in-chief to exercise power far beyond the scope of any previous president.

His remarkable work ethic, and desire to have a hand in practically every administrative decision – no matter how small – ensured that his opportunity as the first true wartime president would not go to waste.128 Thus, for Polk, his ability to shut down practically all

127 Coincidentally, one of the other consequences of the end of the depression was a great diminishment in emigration to Texas, which led Texas leaders to reconsider their attempt to go it alone as an international state. See Torget, Seeds of Empire, 232-235.

128 Of course, James Madison was president during the War of 1812, but Madison’s actions did not anticipate the phenomenon of the “wartime presidency,” and his contemporary critics often blasted him for weak executive leadership. This point is summarized in Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 696-699.

127 breakaway republicanism throughout the continent in a rapid amount of time was part and parcel of his larger presidential achievements.129

Importantly, Polk’s remarkable political acumen was decidedly temporary. Polk could write a political script, but was unable to improvise when events diverged from this script. He could not make good on all his political promises, both policy-wise (e.g. he could not actually gain all of Oregon) and appointment-wise (particularly with the Van

Buren-ites). Nor, no matter how hard he tried, could he control the battlefield hundreds of miles away, and when Mexico refused to surrender despite many defeats, Polk’s hopes for a short war were dashed. As the war lengthened, opposition to Polk increased from practically every quarter, even from supposed Democratic allies (many of whom were angrier with Polk’s broken promises on appointments than with the state of the war itself). In the end, Polk had to rely on the abilities of two men whom he had come to loathe – Winfield Scott and Nicholas Trist – to salvage his original war aims. It is unsurprising, then, that Polk died soon after he left office, from what most historians believe was essentially complete exhaustion from his late-term failures. Of course, more tragic than any of these immediate results in Washington were the long-term ramifications of Polk’s expansionist policies. The U.S.-Mexican War left thousands dead, and continental expansion paved the way for more Indian wars and subsequent confiscation of native lands. Moreover, while Polk tried to please both slaveholder and non-slaveholder, and desired to keep the slavery issue out of politics, few shared his

129 Most biographies of Polk implicitly acknowledge his presidential innovations, e.g. Sellers, Polk: Continentalist; Merry, A Country of Vast Designs. However, two works make this argument explicitly, and have greatly influenced my understanding of Polk’s presidency: White, The Jacksonians, 50-66; Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 155-176.

128 neutral stance.130 As Polk closed an era of U.S. history in 1846, David Wilmot and his famous Wilmot Proviso opened another.131 Within only a decade of his death, Polk’s greatly expanded Union would destroy itself over the expansionist achievements of his presidency. In the end, Polk’s long-term failures of strategy and vision outweighed his short-term tactical successes.

Conclusion

Or, at least this is how most historians assess Polk’s presidency and the entire era of Manifest Destiny more generally. How could Polk and his allies, they ask, not have foreseen the consequences of western conquest in regards to the stability of the Union?

How could expansionists privilege short-term gains before long-term survival? Were

Texas and California truly worth a civil war, the Civil War? Yet these questions fail to envision the future over which Polk and other expansionists fretted. In this future, the

130 This is the conclusion of almost every historian of the period with the exception of William Dusinberre, who portrays Polk as a “slavemaster president” in both his personal life and his policies. While I agree with Dusinberre on Polk’s personal life, and laud his remarkable ability to uncover the life of Polk’s slaves and unveil the amount of interest Polk took in slaveholding as a business, I do not share Dusinberre’s assessment of Polk’s pro-slavery politics. Dusinberre’s primary argument stems from his belief that if Polk had survived until the Civil War, he would have sided with the Confederacy, thus making his neutral stance on slavery anything but. He was, in Dusinberre’s eyes, much more akin to Calhoun on slavery than other historians acknowledge. Yet Calhoun exemplified vision and depth of thought (albeit, all to strengthen and propagate slavery in the Union) far surpassing the immediate practical goals of Polk; in a sense, Dusinberre gives too much credit to Polk’s thought in comparing him to Calhoun. Pro-slavery results do not necessarily imply pro-slavery politics, to which Stephen Douglas could decidedly attest. See Dusinberre, Slavemaster President, 119-175, esp. 167-175.

131 Many other historians have portrayed the Wilmot Proviso (and not Texas annexation) as a dividing line between eras, particularly because its introduction provided the first instance where section trumped party. For an elegant summary, see Michael Holt, The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Want, 2004), 20-21. For an interesting by-the-numbers argument that demonstrated that Texas annexation did not inaugurate sectionalism over partisanship, see Rachel A. Shelden, “Not So Strange Bedfellows: Northern and Southern Whigs in the Texas Annexation Controversey, 1844-1845,” in A Political Nation: New Directions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Political History, ed. Gary W Gallagher and Rachel A. Shelden (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 11-36.

129 United States was beset from all sides by hostile forces. Underwritten by British funds, a Republic of Texas that embraced gradual emancipation expanded west at a rapid rate, pushing Texas’ Indians into U.S. territory. Supported by the British navy, californios declared an independent republic, buttressed by new American immigrants that gained land in exchange for political loyalty. Some of these Americans were

Mormons, who settled as a powerful community in remote areas of the vast region of

Alta California, thereby providing a bulwark against U.S. expansion. Frustrated by U.S. dalliance, Oregon settlers declared an independent republic, granting free land to any

American settler who would travel overland and join their experiment in western republicanism. Canada remained a steadfastly loyal member of the British Empire.

Hemmed in on all sides, the U.S. economy stagnated, and its people became increasingly discontent. The thousands of yeomen farmers who left for the non-U.S. West in the early

1840s became tens of thousands in the 1850s. Only the filthy eastern cities remained vibrant economic engines, thereby further urbanizing the country and creating an urban

United States that Jefferson and Madison would have abhorred. This, not civil war, was what Polk and his allies feared.

This dystopian future was of course not that envisioned by the likes of John L.

O’Sullivan, who believed sheer Anglo-American demographics and racial superiority would ensure – eventual – U.S. continental dominance. But O’Sullivan did not understand the underlying reality of Texas. Nor, for that matter, have most historians.

As demonstrated at various points over the final years of the Republic of Texas’ existence, an American-born population did not ensure loyalty to the United States, particularly during years when the United States was mired in economic depression and

130 political dysfunction. And if Anglo-Americans in Texas were not always yearning for annexation, neither were Americans in other regions throughout the continent.

Manifest Destiny was not just a chimera in that it concealed the violent conquest of westward “expansion,” but because it assumed that Americans and the United States were one and the same. They were not – as the following chapters will prove.

131 CHAPTER 3

THE LURE OF A CANADIAN REPUBLIC, 1837-1840

Introduction

In the era of breakaway republics, never was there such a gap between a republic’s rhetoric and its reality as the 1837 Republic of Canada. On paper this proclaimed state had all the trappings of legitimacy, possessing a provisional government, a declaration of rights, and a national bank. Its president William Lyon

Mackenzie had extensive experience in the politics of British Canada, and its commander-in-chief Rensselaer Van Rensselaer came from a renowned New York military family, as his name emphasized. The republic even possessed an impressive army – over five hundred men from both Canada and the United States, equipped with arms largely stolen from U.S. arsenals. Yet the extent of the Republic of Upper Canada’s jurisdiction was miniscule. Its flag flew over 300-acre Navy Island, situated on the

Niagara River along the U.S.-Canadian border, and while the island was officially a part of British Canada, the republic’s writ ended at the water’s edge. Across the river in

Canada proper thousands of British soldiers and loyal Canadian militiamen awaited an expected attack, while on the U.S. side Winfield Scott cajoled U.S. officials to remain neutral. After a month, realizing the obstacles they faced, the republicans revised their strategy and abandoned the island to fight another day. Today the Republic of Upper

Canada is so little remembered that only private boats can access Navy Island, and only a small plaque commemorates the republic’s existence. Few Canadians, Americans, or historians of either country take it seriously.

132 Yet the hundreds of Americans who volunteered to fight for Canadian freedom during what has been termed the “Patriot War” were deadly serious. They not only volunteered at Navy Island in late 1837, but also fought in several pitched battles against British forces in Canada in 1838. Buttressing these soldiers were thousands more

Americans who donated money and arms, and gave rhetorical support. All American

Patriots hoped to revive the failed Canadian Rebellions of 1837. That year French

Canadian Patriotes in Lower Canada, followed by Anglo-Canadians in Upper Canada, rebelled against British rule. Quickly defeated, the failed rebel leaders fled across the

U.S-Canadian border to carry on the struggle. Although these Canadians provided the impetus, soon Americans dominated Patriot ranks. Largely due to the Patriots’ abject military failure, few historians have investigated the Patriot War, even fewer the Patriots themselves. Canadian historians have seen the Patriot War as an important if tragic coda to the Canadian Rebellions, where the rebels carried on a hopeless cause.1 Most U.S. historians, including those of U.S. expansion, have largely ignored the Patriot War;

1 For a valuable treatment of the historiography of the Canadian Rebellions until 1995, see Allan Greer, “1837-38: Rebellion Reconsidered,” Canadian Historical Review 76, no. 1 (March 1995), 1-18. For treatment of the Patriot War as an aftermath of the Canadian Rebellions, see Edwin Clarence Guillet, The Lives and Times of the Patriots; an Account of the Rebellion in Upper Canada, 1837-1838, and of the Patriot Agitation in the United States, 1837-1842 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968); Michael Mann, A Particular Duty: The Canadian Rebellions, 1837-1839 (Wiltshire, UK: Michael Russell, 1986), 62-158; Colin Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada, 1837-8: The Duncombe Revolt and After (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 115-163; Joseph Schull, Rebellion; the Rising in French Canada 1837 (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1971), 150-180; William Kilbourn, The Firebrand: William Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion in Upper Canada (London: J. Cape, 1958), 218-252; Allan Greer, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 1837 In Rural Lower Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 338-356; Elinor Kyte Senior, Red Coats and Patriotes: The Rebellions in Lower Canada 1837-38 (Stittsville, Ont.: Canada’s Wings, 1985); Michel Ducharme, “Closing the Last Chapter of the Atlantic Revolution: The 1837-38 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada," in Liberty! Égalité! Independencia!: Print Culture, Enlightenment, and Revolution in the Americas, 1776-1838: papers from a Conference at the American Antiquarian Society in June 2006 (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 2007); Donald E Graves, Guns Across the River: The Battle of the Windmill, 1838 (Montréal: Robin Brass Studio, 2013); J.I. Little, Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion, 1812-1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 77-90.

133 generally they examine only the North American regions that the U.S. eventually conquered.2 The few historians who have focused on the Patriot War concentrate on the diplomacy between the U.S. and Britain, while a few have connected the conflict to social issues of the 1830s.3 Certainly the Patriot War was both a diplomatic crisis and a

2 One major exception is Reginald C Stuart, United States Expansionism and British North America, 1775- 1871 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). Both Amy Greenberg and Walter Nugent mention Canada in their studies (in Greenberg’s case, this includes the Patriot War), but do not focus on it: Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire (New York: Vintage, 2008), 73-92; Amy S Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 30, 33. Histories of expansion that ignore Canada entirely include Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: a Study of Nationalist Expansionism (New York: Quadrangle Books,1935); Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963); Robert Walter Johannsen and Christopher Morris, Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 1997); Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Mark S. Joy, American Expansionism, 1783-1860: a Manifest Destiny? (New York: Longman, 2003); Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996); Frederick Merk, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism (New York: Vintage Books, 1966).

3 For the diplomatic importance of the Patriot War, see Francis M Carroll, A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783-1842 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 202-220; Kenneth R. Stevens, Border Diplomacy: The Caroline and McLeod Affairs in Anglo-American- Canadian Relations, 1837-1842 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989); Albert B. Corey, The Crisis of 1830-1842 in Canadian-American Relations (Toronto: The Ryerson press, 1941), 27-101; Orrin Edward Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-1838 (1905; repr. Toronto: Coles Pub. Co, 1972); Howard Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo- American Relations, 1783-1843 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 20-68.

Beyond the diplomatic crisis, historians have used the Patriot conflict to shed light on many different aspects of Jacksonian America. John Duffy and Nicholas Muller connect the Patriot War to larger social unrest in Vermont: John J. Duffy and H. Nicholas Muller, An Anxious Democracy: Aspects of the 1830s (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982). Andrew Bonthius sees it as an experiment in radical democracy and social levelling: Andrew Bonthius, “The Patriot War of 1837-1838: Locofocoism with a Gun?,” Labour / Le Travail 52 (Oct. 2003), 9–43. T.P. Dunning believes the Patriot War reveals a northern borderland: T.P. Dunning, “The Canadian Rebellions of 1837-38: An Episode in Northern Borderland History,” Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 14 (Dec. 1995). Marc Harris connects the Patriot motivations to traditional republicanism: Marc L. Harris, “The Meaning of Patriot: The Canadian Rebellion and American Republicanism, 1837-1839,” Michigan Historical Review 23 (April 1997), 33–69. Oscar Kinchen wrote a short monograph on the Hunter’s Lodges, the secret Patriot organization that arose in mid- 1838: Oscar Arvle Kinchen, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956). Donald Graves gives an excellent military account of the Battle of the Windmill, the most famous Patriot battle: Donald Graves, Guns Across the River: The Battle of the Windmill, 1838 (Prescott, Ont.: The Friends of Windmill Point, 2001). Roger Rosentreter supplies important information on the Patriots on the Michigan frontier in his dissertation: Roger Lynn Rosentreter, "To Free Upper Canada: Michigan and the Patriot War, 1837-1839" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1983). Sam Watson looks at the Patriot War through the eyes of the U.S. army officers who were charged with subduing the Patriots, first in an article

134 window on U.S. society, but no historian has examined the dynamics of the Patriot cause itself.4 To most historians, the Patriot War remains an obscure, localized, and marginal movement of delusional and desperate men – and thus it can be ignored.

This ignorance reads history backwards. It assumes the unchangeable existence of British Canada and permanently tethers Americans to the U.S. state. From the perspective of 1838, however, Americans living along the northern border believed the creation of a Canadian republic was imminent, and felt their allegiance should lie with their Anglo-Canadian brethren across the border – not with the distant U.S. federal government. American Patriots envisioned their future within this new republic. While the reasons they joined Canadian Patriots were myriad, they all revolved around one central factor: a potential Upper Canadian republic represented a political, economic, and social alternative to the United States, where Americans could achieve political power and financial gain that seemed no longer possible in a U.S. riven with depression and uncertainty. The Patriot War was, in essence, a northern counterpart to the Texas

Revolution, and a Canadian Republic was the northern counterpart to the breakaway republic of Texas.

American Patriots made this comparison themselves, often as a way to criticize

U.S. interference in their struggle – in contrast to the federal government’s laissez-faire policy with the Texas Revolution. Yet their self-serving rhetoric contained a great degree then in his longer book: “U.S. Army Officers Fight the ‘Patriot War’,” Journal of the Early Republic 18 (Autumn 1998), 485-519; Watson, Peacekeepers and Conquerors: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1821-1845 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas , 2013).

4 The possible exception to this statement is Oscar Kinchen’s monograph on the Hunter’s Lodges, which does examine the motivations and social composition of the Patriots. His larger concern, however, is detailing the scope of the Lodges, and as such his concentration on the Patriots themselves is brief. See Kinchen, Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters, 53.

135 of historical truth. In both cases, Americans invaded neighboring countries in order to aid people whom they perceived as fellow Americans. In both cases, volunteers sought the distinction of military glory and potential political power. In both cases, participants believed free land awaited them after military victory. In both cases, the hundreds who invaded Texas and Canada were augmented by thousands of Americans who donated money and arms to the struggle, but never crossed the border themselves.

Even the sheer number of American participants – roughly 4000 – was remarkably similar. Ultimately, the crucial difference between the Patriot War and the Texas

Revolution was not one of internal difference, but the nature of the enemy and the geographic landscape of the extended battlefield. Texans could defeat a divided and untrained Mexican army, using the vast expanse of the Texas prairie to their advantage when they confronted military setbacks; the Patriots had little hope against British forces along the thickly-settled northern border, especially when the United States also cracked down on Patriot activity out of fear of war with Britain. Despite its remarkable persistence in the face of almost ceaseless setbacks, the Patriot movement was bound for inevitable failure.

Yet it is the movement’s persistence and popularity that matter for this chapter.

The Patriot War proves that the Texas Moment was truly a continent-wide phenomenon.

When an opportunity to create a breakaway republic arose, Americans responded in a similar fashion, in similar numbers, for similar reasons – whether they lived in the South,

West, or North. If the Patriot War stands as the northern anomaly of this dissertation, it is because the geopolitical situation in North America made it so – not because northern breakaway republicanism was more marginal or less dynamic. Moreover, the federal

136 government’s crackdown on the Patriots provides a crucial window on the ideology of breakaway republicanism, both in terms of breakaway republicanism itself, and its relationship to the United States. When this crackdown occurred, instead of abiding U.S. law, thousands of Americans went underground to continue the struggle. For a time,

American Patriots’ desire for a breakaway republic in Canada outweighed their allegiance to the United States.

The Persistent Northern Borderland

The War of 1812 separated Americans and Anglo-Canadians into two distinct peoples – or so historians tell us. The war’s battles along the border augmented nationalism on both sides, and from then on Americans and Canadians went there separate ways. In the years after the war the Great Lakes region went form borderland to

“bordered land,” largely at the expense of the area’s natives.5 Historians who make this claim are not entirely wrong. By the 1817 Rush-Bagot Convention the Indians had indeed been marginalized, and the U.S. republic and the British Empire maintained unchallenged authority on their respective sides of the international border.

Accommodation and hybridity gave way to uncontested sovereignty and imperial

5 Works that make this point include Richard White, The Middle Ground Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (New York: Vintage, 2010); Robert Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defence of Canada 1774- 1815 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2012); Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,” The American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (June 1, 1999): 814–841.

137 rivalry.6 Yet these historians are not entirely correct, either: while the structures of power along the border were no longer fluid, the economic and social connections between Americans and Canadians remained so. If the U.S. and British Canada were now “bordered,” it was a leaky border, and its permeability would have ramifications in

1837.

Before 1837 this porous border was hardly a secret, and was especially acute along the Upper Canada-U.S. border. At the far western end of the St. Lawrence River,

Upper Canada (roughly the southern portion of modern Ontario) was the most isolated of

Britain’s North American colonies. Encircled on three sides by an economically booming United States, the colony was unsurprisingly much more a part of the U.S. than

British economic orbit.7 Most goods to Upper Canada traveled through New York via the Erie Canal, and American towns along the Canadian border acted as transport hubs for people and goods moving to and from the colony.8 The Great Lakes facilitated easy transport, tying the burgeoning cities of Buffalo, Detroit, and Cleveland to the smaller towns of Upper Canada.9 Social ties augmented these economic ones. While British authorities largely prohibited American immigration to Upper Canada after 1810, even in

6 My definition of borderlands derives from Adelman and Aron’s 1999 AHR article, and Hamalainen and Truett’s recent follow-up: Pekka Hamalainen and Samuel Truett, “On Borderlands,” The Journal of American History Vol. 98, No. 2 (Sept., 2011), 338-361.

7 Here Upper Canada’s situation was similar to the one Andrés Reséndez portrayed in Texas before the Texas Revolution, where Texas fit within the U.S. economic orbit, but remained socially and culturally tied to Mexico. See Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 93-123.

8 Stuart D. Scott, and Patricia Kay Scott, An Archaeological Survey of Artpark Lower Landing, Lewiston, New York (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellon Press, 1993) 155.

9 Marcus Lee Hansen, The Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 105-112; Stuart, United States Expansionism and British North America, 109-110.

138 1837 a majority of Upper Canadians were either American migrants or their descendants.10 These people read easily obtained American newspapers, followed

American politics, traded with Americans, and married Americans.11 Americanization was something British authorities in Upper Canada constantly feared, and in the 1820s they took steps to disenfranchise all Canadians of American background.12 Across the border, Americans had no need to reciprocally orient themselves north as the Upper

Canadians did south due to Upper Canada’s rather marginal economy, but the sheer number of social and economic connections with Canadians meant that Upper Canada was not a foreign land to those Americans who lived along the Great Lakes.13

Unlike Upper Canada, Lower Canada did not fit as squarely within the American orbit. With its French-speaking majority, its traditional Catholic culture, and its proximity to the Atlantic, Lower Canada was more isolated both socially and economically from the U.S. Vermont and Maine’s small cities were far from the border, and their economies hardly matched those of New York, Ohio, or even Michigan (which only achieved statehood in 1837).14 While some Lower Canadian trade traveled south

10 Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada, 23.

11 Adam Fergusson, Practical Notes Made during a Tour in Canada and a Portion of the United States in MDCCCXXXI (Edinburgh, 1833) 148-149; Jane Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Univesity Press, 1987), 121-125; Bonthius, Locofocoism with a Gun?, 19; Stuart, United States Expansionism and British North America, 106-124.

12 Indeed, this conflict over voting was one of the catalysts that eventually led to 1837 rebellion. Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 451-453; Carol Wilton, Popular Politics and Political Culture in Upper Canada, 1800- 1850 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 38-42; Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada, 166-184.

13 Jane Dorothy Baglier, “The Niagara Frontier: Society and Economy in Western New York and Upper Canada, 1794-1854” (Ph.D. Dissertation, State University of New York-Buffalo, 1993), 178-252.

14 In fact, Vermont’s population was shrinking, and its economy was stagnant even prior to the Panic of 1837: Duffy and Muller, An Anxious Democracy, 21.

139 along the Richelieu River-Lake Champlain corridor between New York and

Vermont, most went north via the St. Lawrence. Maine’s border with Lower Canada, while extensive, was mostly uninhabited on the American side. Certainly Lower Canada was not entirely disconnected from the United States, for much of the shared border had no geographic barrier. Yet while travel between Lower Canada and the U.S. was not difficult, the two places remained separate. Only the Lower Canadian Eastern

Townships, where New Yorkers had settled in the 1810s, broke from this pattern. This region, however, was an exception to a land that was largely bordered.15

Such was the situation along the U.S.-Canada border in 1837, when both Lower and Upper Canada rebelled against British rule. The Lower Canadian Rebellion in particular possessed deep roots and revolutionary potential. For over a decade significant numbers of radical Patriotes had unsuccessfully struggled to overturn the oligarchic structure of Canadian governance. When reform from within the government failed, the

Patriotes organized peaceful extra-parliamentary assemblies to push for change. After continued British intransigence, peaceful assemblies gave way to armed opposition, as the Patriotes formed the paramilitary group Société des Fis de la Liberté (Society of the

Sons of Liberty). Although a majority of the Patriotes were French Canadian, they were joined by influential Anglo-Canadians. Thus, while there was certainly an ethnic dynamic to the escalating conflict, the issues at stake were not solely ethnically driven –

15 Duffy and Muller, An Anxious Democracy, 21; Bernard, "Vermonters and the Lower Canadian Rebellions," 251-252; Little, Loyalties in Conflict, 57-77. Maine’s border with New Brunswick remained disputed, and led to the border squabble between the two known as the “Aroostook War” of 1838-1839, which was not related to the Patriot War.

140 although Americans would perceive the rebellion in such terms. By the fall of

1837, tensions were so high that an armed struggle seemed inevitable.

Meanwhile, in Upper Canada the Patriot cause was less popular and driven more by personality, propelled primarily by Scottish immigrant and newspaper publisher

William Mackenzie. Despite their fewer numbers, like their Lower Canadian counterparts Mackenzie and other Upper Canadian Patriots were also frustrated with their inability to implement democratic reforms in the colony. Also as in Lower Canada, the conflict in Upper Canada was not ethnically motivated, but did have an ethnic component: a majority of the radicals were descendants of Americans or American migrants themselves. Unsurprisingly it was in the more volatile Lower Canada where the first violence began, as the Patriotes rebelled and gained one victory, only to be crushed by British forces in two subsequent battles. William Mackenzie feared the British would use the Lower Canadian conflict to justify a political crackdown in Upper Canada, and therefore preemptively launched his own rebellion in Toronto. In Western Upper Canada another group of radicals followed his lead. Both groups of Upper Canadian rebels were defeated, even more thoroughly than their Lower Canadian counterparts. In the days after their defeat, large numbers of Canadian rebels from both colonies crossed the U.S. border. At first they simply hoped to escape capture, but many rebel leaders also believed that they could carry on the struggle inside American territory, using the United

States as a staging point to restart the abortive rebellions. The Patriot War had begun.16

16 This is an admittedly truncated summary of the Canadian Rebellions, which have a rich historiography. Canadian historians have long debated the depth of the crisis, the goals and ideologies of the rebels (recently emphasizing their republicanism), the ethnic dynamic of the conflicts (particularly but not exclusively in Lower Canada), and the relationship between the two rebellions. For this chapter I have explicitly focused on Americans who participated in the Patriot War, either as soldiers or supporters. As

141 When the failed rebels crossed the border, American-Canadian social and economic connections, so long hidden to U.S. if not British authorities, immediately surfaced. In cities and towns along the Canadian border Americans welcomed

Mackenzie and other rebels with open arms, pledging to support their cause by any means necessary. In Buffalo some were ready to assist Mackenzie even before he launched the rebellion in Toronto, pointing to the ubiquitous communication between the

U.S. and Upper Canada.17 Mackenzie himself sent a note to the Buffalo press on

December 6, the day before the Toronto uprising, requesting aid.18 On December 11, after Mackenzie crossed the border, Buffalo citizens, in support of the Canadian Patriots, held the largest meeting ever assembled in the city.19 Americans also promised support

such, I have deliberately ignored important aspects of the Canadian Rebellions that do not intersect with the American story, even if they are important for Canadian history and historiography. For a summary of the historiographical debates and trends, see Allan Greer’s influential article, “1837-1838: Rebellion Reconsidered,” Canadian Historical Review, No. 1 (March 1995), 1-18. For the rebellions considered together, see Michel Ducharme, The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776-1838, trans. Peter Feldstein (Ithaca, NY: Queen’s-McGill University Press, 2014); Michael Mann, A Particular Duty The Canadian Rebellions, 1837-1839 (The Chantry, UK: Michael Russell Publishing Ltd., 1986). For the Lower Canadian Rebellion, see Allan Greer, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Elinor Kyte Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes (Ottawa: Canada’s Wings, 1985); Jack Verney, O’Callaghan: The Making and Unmaking of a Rebel (Ottawa: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994); J.I. Little, Loyalties in Conflict, 57-99. For the Upper Canadian Rebellion, see Colin Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada, 1837-8: The Duncombe Revolt and After (Toronto: University of Toronoto Press, 1982); Colin Read and Ronald J. Stagg, “Introduction,” in The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada: A Collection of Documents, ed. Read and Stagg (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), xix-lxxxiii; Betsy Dewar Boyce, The Rebels of Hastings (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992); Gerald Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784- 1841 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 226-251. Much of the work on the Lower Canadian Rebellion is in French. For a brief summary of this French language historiography, see Ducharme, The Idea of Liberty, 160. See also note one, above, for works that relate the Canadian Rebellions to the Patriot War that followed. On the ethnicity of the Upper Canadian rebels, see Read and Stagg, “Introduction,” lvi; Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada, 78-184.

17 “Memorandum on the Formation of the Buffalo Committee of 13,” December 1837, MS 516, Mackenzie-Lindsey Fonds, Ontario Archives (hereafter MLF).

18 Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-1838, 27.

19 Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, Dec. 12, 1837; Buffalo Daily Star, Dec.12, 1837; Mary D. Taber to Mrs. Richard Williams, Dec. 17, 1837, Hawes-Taber family letters, William L. Clements Library, University of

142 in other New York towns, to the delight of rebel refugees.20 A few days later, after the rebels in Western Upper Canada crossed into Michigan, Detroit too broke into frenzy.

Detroit resident Wilson Brooks wrote his wife, “Canada – Canada, is in the mouth of every one, even the women have caught the torch of liberty and are passing it on from the other with as much enthusiasm as the most devoted Canadian revolutionist.” Brooks detailed revolutionary meetings and hospitality for the rebels, and then explained how this came to pass: “Why? Because many of the citizens of this city and the adjoining country are Canadians, or have been, they have many friends there, and to a man they are opposed to the General Government…”21 The final ambiguous “they” in this statement

(Americans? Canadians? both?) revealed just how much Americans identified with the

Canadian cause. With such support the rebels regrouped, and planned to free Upper

Canada for a second time.

The Lower Canadian Patriotes also hoped for similar American aid, and in certain respects they also found it, but not to the extent seen for the Upper Canadians. When the

Patriotes crossed the Vermont border, they too were heartily welcomed with rhetorical support. American newspapers praised both rebellions as struggles for liberty against the tyrannical British, and Americans provided safe havens for both sets of Canadian rebels.

Most Vermonters living across from Lower Canada, like their fellow Americans living across from Upper Canada, did not question the international impropriety of harboring

Michigan (CL-UM). For reports of this meeting, see also Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38, 27-28; Guillet, Lives and Times of the Patriots, 71-72.

20 C.H. McCollom to William Mackenzie, Dec. 22, 1837, MLF; John Henderston to William Mackenzie, Dec. 28, 1837, MLF.

21 Nathaniel Wilson Brooks to Caroline Brooks, Dec. 29, 1837, Nathaniel Wilson Brooks Papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library (hereafter BHC-DPL).

143 British rebels within miles of British territory. Only across from Upper Canada, however, did Americans themselves join Patriot ranks in any significant numbers. The

Patriote armies that would congregate along the Vermont border over the following year were predominantly composed of French Canadian refugees. Very few Americans enlisted in these forces, and those that did deserted before fighting began.22

Importantly, the American propensity to join the Upper Canadian rebels and not their Lower Canadian counterparts was not based upon any rational military assessment.

On the contrary, the Patriotes were more organized than the Upper Canadian rebels, had achieved a battlefield victory, and were acutely more dangerous to British sovereignty in

Canada. If Americans wanted to volunteer for the cause that had more chance of success, they should have joined the Patriotes. That they did the exact opposite reveals that their commitment to the two conflicts was related to their social and cultural connections to each; they would fight with and for Upper Canadians, and cheer on the Lower Canadians from the sidelines. The borderland nature of the Great Lakes region meant that the Upper

Canadian Rebellion was not isolated to Canada; Americans along the border saw it as their struggle as well. An Upper Canadian Republic would become another Anglo-

American republic. In contrast, while Vermonters and eastern New Yorkers lauded the

Lower Canadian Rebellion, they never made it their own. They may have sympathized with the French Canadian rebels, but Lower Canada remained a foreign land. Indeed, as several historians have demonstrated, it is more appropriate therefore to view the

22 For a summary of the attitude of the Vermont press, see Duffy and Muller, An Anxious Democracy, 59- 72, esp. 59-60. Duffy and Muller, An Anxious Democracy, 64-65; Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 152-152; Greer, The Patriots and the People, 345; Jean-Paul Bernard, “Vermonters and the Lower Canadian Rebellions of 1837-1838,” Vermont History 58 (Fall 1990), 250-263. For a contrast between New York and Vermont, see Tiffany, The Relations of the United Stats to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38, 85-86.

144 Patriote-British battles that occurred across the Vermont border in 1838 as a second

Lower Canadian Rebellion. In contrast, due to significant American participation, the

Great-Lakes-centered Patriot War was a different type of conflict than the Upper

Canadian Rebellion that preceded it.23

The Patriots against the British

In the weeks after their arrival in the U.S., Canadian Patriots in Buffalo, Detroit, and Vermont organized their mushrooming forces, as Americans all along the border flocked to the cause. While Detroit and Vermont were important sites of anti-British activity in the following months, it was outside Buffalo, on Navy Island, where the largest number of Patriots assembled.24 As a place to proclaim the provisional government of the Canadian Republic, Navy Island offered several advantages. Lying in the middle of the Niagara River, the island was officially British territory, thus giving the

Patriots an aura of political legitimacy. Moreover, the island actually lay closer to the

United States than British Canada, facilitating easy transport from the U.S. but making any attack by the British extremely difficult. In late December, Americans from the

23 Several historians, by including both Upper and Lower Canada into their studies, implicitly define the Patriot War as all of the border battles and skirmishes that occurred after both Canadian Rebellions. These studies define the Patriot War by place (the entire U.S.-Canada border) and not people (Guillet, Lives and Times; Kinchen, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters; Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellions). I have followed several historians of Lower Canada by separating the second Lower Canadian Rebellion from the Patriot War: Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 149-163; Greer, The Patriots and the People, 332-356.

24 The Patriot War was conducted on four fronts: the Vermont border near St. Albans; northern New York between Watertown and Ogdensburg; Buffalo; and Detroit. It would be impossible to detail here all of the battles and raids in what was an extremely complicated conflict. Despite some inconsistencies, the best general outline of the military conflict remains Guillet, The Lives and Times of the Patriots. See also Kinchen, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters and Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-1838. For the entire Navy Island campaign, see Ernest A. Cruikshank, “The Invasion of Navy Island,” in Papers and Records: Ontario Historical Society (1937), 7-84.

145 surrounding counties and Canadian refugees gathered on the island, enlisting in the newly created Patriot Army. Soon the army grew to hundreds, or perhaps even one thousand men, and Mackenzie and the other Patriot leaders in Buffalo selected

Rensselaer Van Rensselaer its commander-in-chief.25 Van Rensselaer’s appointment was the first of many poor choices by Patriot leaders. Editor of the Albany Daily Advertiser, a paper that had predicted a rebellion in Canada as early as 1831, Van Rensselaer was a scion of New York’s renowned Dutch family. Members of the Van Rensselaer clan had served in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, and now Rensselaer Van

Rensselaer hoped to follow in their footsteps. When rumors of the rebellion reached

Albany, he had set off for Buffalo, enthusiastic to help.26 However, his enthusiasm and family name seem to be the only reasons for his appointment, for Van Rensselaer had no military experience himself. He would spend the next month on Navy Island drunk, unhinged, or both.

Yet despite his incompetence, Van Rensselaer’s role as an American leading a multinational force offers a starting point to examine exactly who joined the Patriots, and

25 It is impossible to pin down the exact size of this army. Because reports from the time vary, secondary works also vary their estimates. Unfortunately no document exists from Navy Island that lists the volunteers in total. In all likelihood numbers were fluid, increasing during the end of December, reaching their high point in early January after the burning of the Caroline (more below), and diminishing in mid- January as the cause looked more and more hopeless. For example, the Buffalo Daily Star reported 6-700 men on December 16, while Augustus Porter reported to his brother Peter Porter that there were 1000-1200 men on January 10. See Buffalo Daily Star, Dec. 16, 1837; Augustus Porter to Peter Porter, Jan. 10, 1838, Reel 10, Peter Porter Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society (hereafter BECHS).

26 How Van Rensselaer became appointed general remains a matter of doubt. He later portrayed himself as simply passing through Buffalo, when he was urged to take command by Patriot leaders looking for a famous name to lead the cause. Yet, as Lillian Gates astutely points out, the coincidence of his arrival in Buffalo at the exact moment of the arrival of the rebel refugees suggests some sort of prior involvement – or at least the desire to become involved. See Catharina V. R. Bonney, A Legacy of Historical Gleanings, Second ed. (Albany, 1875), 63-80; Lillian F. Gates, After the Rebellion: The Later Years of William Lyon Mackenzie (Dundurn, 1988), 18–19. Bonney’s work is a collection of Van Rensselaer family letters and memoirs, including those of Rensselaer Van Rensselaer.

146 why they did so. Some Patriots were of course Canadian. Having failed to overthrow the British in Canada itself, famous rebel leaders such as Mackenzie, John

Rolph, Robert Nelson, and Donald McLeod carried on the struggle in U.S. territory.

Other less famous Canadians also continued to fight. From the outset, however,

Americans like Van Rensselaer made up a majority of the Patriot forces, as multiple sources attest. One Buffalo paper estimated the Navy Island force was two-thirds

American and one-third Canadian, and Winfield Scott, sent to Buffalo in January to restore order, also noted the preponderance of Americans.27 In Michigan a letter-writer who opposed American involvement lamented that it was not Canadians but “Americans citizens” who were “creating warfare.”28 Over the following year this American dominance of the movement only increased. By November 1838 a Patriot convention held in Cleveland consisted mostly of Americans, and Americans outnumbered

Canadians by six to one in a major Patriot battle a few weeks later.29 Mackenzie and other Canadian rebels eventually perceived this American majority as a problem. Hoping a Patriot invasion would lead to the rising of Canadians who had remained silent during the first rebellion, they realized that an American-majority army looked much more like invasion than revolution.30 It was perhaps this development that led William Johnson, a

Canadian Patriot known as the “Pirate of the Thousand Islands,” to start rejecting

27 Detroit Free Press, quoting the Buffalo Daily Commercial Advertiser, Dec. 27, 1837; Winfield Scott to Joel Poinsett, Feb. 2, 1838, Folder 10, Number 23, Joel Poinsett Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter HSP).

28 John Anderson to Alexander Anderson, Jan. 15, 1838, John Anderson Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

29 Donald McLeod to William Mackenzie, Nov. 1, 1838, MLF; Graves, Guns Across the River, 227.

30 Lillian Gates, “Mackenzie’s Gazette: An Aspect of W.L. Mackenzie’s American Years,” Canadian Historical Review 46 (Dec. 1965), 331-336.

147 American volunteers for the “Patriot Navy” in July 1838.31 He and other Canadians perceived that, while Canadians had started a war for Canadian freedom, Americans had taken it over.32

And Canadian freedom was what these American Patriots fought for – or at least that is how they explained why they volunteered. As one soldier from Rochester wrote

Mackenzie, “I am for liberty. My whole soul is in it and if I am called to defend it I am willing to shed the last drop of blood in my veins rather than surrender this glorious boon.”33 Americans at a Patriot meeting collectively expressed their desire to help the rebels in their “difficult and arduous, but honorable and praiseworthy task to plant and sustain the tree of liberty.”34 Van Rensselaer himself later wrote that he agreed to lead the Patriots because of his “hatred of tyranny,” which led him to join a cause “so desirable to all the republican world.”35 Statements such as these were ubiquitous, both during and after the conflict.36 Certainly the fact that the Patriots were fighting the

British only added to the motivation. Many American Patriots imagined themselves as heirs to the Revolutionary generation, none more than the aptly named Thomas Jefferson

31 Mackenzie’s Gazette, July 14, 1838.

32 One Canadian Patriot who fled to the U.S. felt the need to write letters pretending to be in Canada, in order to inspire more Canadians to rebel: E.B. O’Callaghan to Mackenzie, Sept. 9, 1838, MLF.

33 J. Woolsey Burchard to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dec. 22, 1837, MLF.

34 Lemuel Cook, Jr. to William Mackenzie, Dec. 28, 1837, MLF.

35 Bonney, A Legacy of Historical Gleanings, 2: 79.

36 Statements supporting Canadian freedom occur too frequently in both letters and the American press to all be named here. A good sampling appear in the letters to Navy Island in December 1837 – January 1838 in the Mackenzie-Lindsey Fonds: George Clinton Westcott and Beakes Rossell to William Mackenzie and Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dec. 28, 1837; John Gates to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dec. 29, 1837; George Washington Morgan to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dec. 30, 1837; E. St. John to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Jan. 1, 1838; Robert McMullen to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Jan. 2, 1838; George Russell to William Mackenzie, Jan. 3, 1838. See also Harris, “The Meaning of Patriot.”

148 Sutherland. Like Van Rensselaer, Sutherland was a newspaper printer who quickly assumed a leadership position among the Patriots, and also like Van Rensselaer, he would quickly disappoint, as his actions rarely matched his rhetoric. Sutherland frequently compared himself and other Patriots to “Lafayette, DeKalb, Steuben, Pulaski, Kosciusko, and other illustrious foreigners” who aided Americans during the Revolution.37

Sutherland believed his mission was two-fold: first, to spread democracy throughout

North America, and second, to “oppose British influence” wherever it appeared.38 Other volunteers noted that their fathers and grandfathers – or in a few cases, they themselves – had fought the British in the past, and now they would do so again.39 Clearly the combination of a fight for liberty, from the British, struck a chord for American Patriot volunteers.

Yet spreading liberty and opposing the British were not the sole explanations for why Americans joined the Patriots. If they were, then we should expect Americans throughout the country to also volunteer, for they too hoped to spread liberty, and they too disdained the British.40 These feelings were widespread beyond the northern

37 Thomas Jefferson Sutherland to editor of the New York Daily Express, April 26, 1838, MLF.

38 Thomas Jefferson Sutherland, “The Sword and the Pen: A Journal of Literature, Politics, and Military Science” (New York, 1840), 1-2.

39 Oliver Brodier to William Mackenzie, Nov. 26, 1838, MLF; Edwin Stacy to Nathaniel Stacy and Susan Clark Stacy, Nathaniel Stacy papers, CL-UM; L.S. Martin to William Mackenzie, MLF; Lemuel Cook, Jr. to William Mackenzie, Dec. 29, 1837, MLF; John Henderston to William Mackenzie, Dec. 28, 1837, MLF; John Gates to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dece. 29, 1837, MLF.

40 While of course no poll exists that shows American support for the Canadian rebels, newspapers reported the popularity of the struggle, and many of them jumped on the pro-Patriot bandwagon. The National Intelligencer reported that 99 out of 100 people from New York City supported the rebels: National Intelligencer, Dec. 7, 1837. The Democratic National Review, organ of the Democratic party, heartily wished the rebels success: The United States Democratic Review. Vol. 1, Issue 2 (Jan. 1838), 215-220. For the American attitude towards the British during this era, see Sam W. Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), especially 118-126 and 209-210.

149 borderland, and became even more acute after British soldiers, fearing a steamship named the Caroline would be used by the Patriots to cross into Canada, attacked and burned it in U.S. waters. In the melee the British killed one American sailor, although some presses printed that casualties reached a dozen or more.41 Along the border, the burning of the Caroline was immediately appropriated as a symbol that represented the perfidy of the British – and by extension the righteousness of the Patriot cause.

“Remember the Caroline” became a Patriot rallying cry, and when the Patriots burned the

British ship Robert Peel in July, many viewed it as justified revenge.42 However, despite their public outcry, privately American Patriots wrote little on the Caroline in weeks immediately following the incident.43 At its core the Patriot uproar over the Caroline

Affair was propaganda, designed to induce Americans outside the Great Lakes region to

41 For example, the Buffalo Daily Star printed 12-20 dead on December 29th, which was then picked up by other papers. For example, the Albany Evening Journal cited this figure on January 2nd, and Niles’ National Register reported twelve dead on January 6th.

42 Sentiments of revenge for the Caroline appear in B.A. Hill to William Mackenzie, June 3, 1838, MLF; Detroit Morning Post, quoting the Rochester Democrat, Dec. 29, 1838; Winfield Scott to Joel Poinsett, January 12, 1839, 11-150, Poinsett Papers, HSP; Edwin Stacy to Nathaniel Stacy and Susan Clark Stacy, Nathaniel Stacy papers, CL-UM; William Upjohn diary, January 8, 1838, BHC-DPL; Lucy Williams Hawes to Lawrence Grinnell, Dec. 30, 1837, Hawes-Taber Family Letters, CL-UM; C. Hudson, “Poem: For the Volunteer,” Sept. 1838, MLF; Buffalo Daily Commercial and Advertiser, Jan. 2, 1838; Baltimore Sun, quoting the Albany Argus, June 6, 1838.

43 Out of dozens of letters to Mackenzie and Van Rensselaer during the Navy Island Campaign, only one mentions the Caroline. The Caroline Affair represented a legitimate reason to be angry at Britain, and letter-writers had no reason to hide their anger to Mackenzie, who himself was fighting the British. Their lack of expression over the outrage suggests that the Caroline Affair could not have induced large numbers of people to volunteer. Reports exist before the Caroline Affair that put the number of volunteers at the hundreds, even one thousand. See Cruikshank, “The Invasion of Navy Island,” 36-38. See above footnote for later references to the Caroline. The only document that mentions the Caroline during the Navy Island Campaign is: Account of a Patriot Meeting, Jan. 4, 1838, MLF. For differing opinions that portray the Caroline Affair as pivotal in inducing volunteers, see Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-38, 42; Guillet, Lives and Times of the Patriots, 82. Both authors cite Van Rensselaer for this information, but give no page numbers in Bonney (their only source for his letters). While Van Rensselaer did mention that Navy Island was “rapidly reinforced” to 7-800 after the Caroline Affair, this number is only slightly larger than his pre-Caroline force. Bonney, Legacy of Historical Gleanings, 2: 83.

150 also join the cause. Unfortunately it was ineffective; while the Caroline Affair outraged Americans outside the Great Lakes region, notably few clamored for war, and fewer still acted on their impulse by enlisting in the Patriot cause. To them, the Caroline

Affair was an international incident, and necessitated a response by the United States – not Americans on the border. Thus the Caroline Affair neither initiated nor enlarged the

Patriot War, and explaining the Patriot War as a response to the incident hides the complexity of the Patriot cause.44 It was only after significant Patriot failures, when

Patriot actions took the appearance of petty acts of violence, when “revenge for the

Caroline” became a justification.

44 Newspapers reported the popularity of the struggle, and many of them jumped on the pro-Patriot bandwagon. The National Intelligencer reported that 99 out of 100 people from New York City supported the rebels: National Intelligencer, Dec. 7, 1837. The Democratic National Review heartily wished the rebels success: The United States Democratic Review 1 (Jan. 1838), 215-220. For the American attitude towards the British during this era, see Sam W. Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville, VA, 2010), especially 118-126 and 209-210. Caroline Affair: The Buffalo Daily Star printed 12-20 dead on December 29th, which was then picked up by other papers. For example, the Albany Evening Journal cited this figure on January 2nd, and Niles’ National Register reported twelve dead on January 6th. Sentiments of revenge for the Caroline appear in B.A. Hill to William Mackenzie, June 3, 1838, MLF; Detroit Morning Post, quoting the Rochester Democrat, Dec. 29, 1838; Winfield Scott to Joel Poinsett, January 12, 1839, 11-150, Poinsett Papers, HSP; Edwin Stacy to Nathaniel Stacy and Susan Clark Stacy, Nathaniel Stacy papers, CL-UM; William Upjohn diary, January 8, 1838, BHC; Lucy Williams Hawes to Lawrence Grinnell, Dec. 30, 1837, Hawes-Taber Family Letters, CL-UM; C. Hudson, “Poem: For the Volunteer,” Sept. 1838, MLF; Buffalo Daily Commercial and Advertiser, Jan. 2, 1838; Baltimore Sun, quoting the Albany Argus, June 6, 1838. Out of dozens of letters to Mackenzie and Patriot general Rensselaer Van Rensselaer during the Navy Island Campaign, only one mentions the Caroline (Account of a Patriot Meeting, Jan. 4, 1838, MLF). The Caroline Affair represented a legitimate reason to be angry at Britain, and the lack of expressed outrage suggests that the incident did not induce large numbers of people to volunteer. Estimates of the numbers at Navy Island reach into the hundreds, even one thousand, before the Caroline Affair. See Cruikshank, “The Invasion of Navy Island,” 36-38. However, many works maintain the Caroline Affair was pivotal for Patriot recruitment: Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-38, 42; Guillet, Lives and Times of the Patriots, 82. Both authors cite Rensselaer Van Rensselaer for this information, but give no page numbers in his published letters. While Van Rensselaer did mention that Navy Island was “rapidly reinforced” to 7- 800 after the Caroline Affair, this number is only slightly larger than his pre-Caroline force. Van Rensselaer’s letters and memoirs: Catharina V. R. Bonney, A Legacy of Historical Gleanings, Second ed. (Albany, 1875), 2: 83. For a thorough account of the diplomacy surrounding the Caroline Affair, see Stevens, Border Diplomacy.

151 If the Caroline Affair did little to induce Americans to join the Patriots, desire for U.S. annexation of Canada was even more insignificant. American Patriots were not acting as early harbingers of Manifest Destiny. There is simply no evidence to suggest that American Patriots longed to expand the United States. No Patriot expressed an interest in the U.S. seizure of Canada. Certainly many believed a “convergence” between the U.S. and Canada was possible down the road. In the Jeffersonian conception of the nation, independent republics throughout North America would join the United

States peacefully, becoming equal states in an ever-expanding “empire of liberty.”45 For

American Patriots, Canada – especially Anglo Upper Canada – would perhaps fit into this pattern eventually, but not immediately.46 There was never any mention of a U.S.-

Canada union among the Patriots until September 1838, when Mackenzie broached the subject in his newspaper, and the circumstances behind his article demonstrate just how unusual this topic was.47 Mackenzie published it only after he had been marginalized within the Patriot movement, and was clearly grasping at straws to reassert his leadership.

Few, if any, Patriots took to this idea, nor did the idea of U.S.-Canadian union have any evidential increase on Patriot recruitment. In response to the article, one American sympathetic to the Patriots admonished Mackenzie that there was no reason that two

45 For Jefferson’s conception of the American empire, see Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville; London: University Press of Virginia, 2001), esp. 53-80.

46 This was the attitude of John L. O’Sullivan’s Democratic National Review: Democratic National Review, Vol. 1, Issue 2 (Jan. 1838), 217-218. For the idea of a peaceful convergence of the U.S. and Canada, see Stuart, United States Expansionism and British North America, 97-99, passim.

47 Mackenzie’s Gazette, Sept. 1, 1838.

152 separate republics could not exist side by side.48 A republican Canada would become a “sister republic,” not a piece of territory for the U.S. to annex.49

While Americans did not simply volunteer for the Patriots out of a desire for revenge for the Caroline or for U.S. annexation, they also had more complicated reasons than fighting for Canadian liberty. Interests augmented rhetoric: while the Patriots desired a free Canadian Republic, they also saw an opportunity for themselves within that republic – perhaps glory and fame, perhaps wealth and personal independence, or a combination of both. Many Americans who volunteered did so with the caveat that they assume a certain rank in the Patriot army. One volunteer with medical experience desired to be a surgeon of a brigade or regiment, or some other position of “reputable standing,” while an officer in the New York militia requested to be a lieutenant-colonel – the position he already held in the militia.50 Many other Americans with military backgrounds also wished for the same rank they had held in the past, or currently held at the present.51 Generally these requests were embedded alongside support for the cause, subsuming personal interest within statements praising freedom and human rights. Ohio

Brigade Major George Russell succinctly tied the two together when he wrote, “[The

48 John Smyles to Mackenzie, Sept. 4, 1838, MLF.

49 Indeed, in this era territorial aggression was more state-driven than nation-driven. For example, Ohio and Michigan disputed territory during the “Toledo War” of 1835-6, and it was Maine’s intransigence against Britain during the “Aroostook War” that needed to be restrained by the United States. In the South, Georgia’s actions against the Cherokee (and the Supreme Court) and Florida’s actions against the Seminoles also fall into this pattern of state expansionism.

50 A. Chappell to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dec. 1837 or Jan. 1838; Robert McMullen to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Jan. 2, 1838, MLF.

51 Stephen Nateson to William Mackenzie, Dec. 26. 1837; George Clinton Westcott and Beakes Rossell to William Mackenzie and Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dec. 28, 1837; John Gates to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dec. 29, 1837; George Washington Morgan to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dec. 30, 1837; Eleaser Lewis to Rensselaer or Mackenzie, Jan. 5, 1838, MLF.

153 commanding officer] and his staff are at your command, providing you can give them the same rank in your army, that they now hold in the militia of Ohio. Our reasons for tendering you our services are, that we are willing to aid in the cause of LIBERTY.”52

Whether Russell would fight for “LIBERTY” if he did not receive a proper rank, he did not say. Others who did not seek an appointment themselves at least sought, as good republicans, to vote for their own officers, which at least gave them more power than they would have in a traditional hierarchical army.53

Because the Patriots failed so completely, it is impossible to pinpoint exactly what these men hoped to ultimately gain by their service. Perhaps some envisioned, after defeating the British, they would return to the U.S. as American Lafayettes, and achieve national fame and universal acclaim. Perhaps others planned to remain as heroes in the

Canadian Republic among friendly republican Canadians, a place and people already familiar to border-state Americans. The most ambitious may have hoped this fame would translate into a higher military rank or a prominent political position, in either the U.S. or

Canada. Clearly those who were already officers in state militias believed their prospects were greater in the Patriot Army than in their current position. This ambition for glory and power, coupled with what John William Ward termed an “activistic temper,” fit squarely with the ideals of the Jacksonian Age, indeed with the actions of Andrew

Jackson himself; in 1817 he too had taken military matters into his own hands, illegally

52 George Russell to William Mackenzie, Jan. 3, 1838, MLF.

53 Bushnell Strong to Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, Dec. 26, 1837; Stephen Nateson to William Mackenzie, Dec. 26, 1837, MLF.

154 crossing into Florida to counter British and Spanish influence.54 Hoping to mimic

Jackson, American Patriots sought military glory, which could then translate into political power down the road.55

For these would-be Jacksons, war alone provided enough reason to join the

Patriots. The examples of both Jackson and Washington taught Americans that war launched careers, yet these opportunities for glory had faded since the War of 1812. This was particularly the case on the northern border, where even Indian warfare had dwindled. Now the Patriot War provided a new opportunity that many had sought. Such was the case for Rensselaer Van Rensselaer. As a member of New York’s wealthy Van

Rensselaer clan, he clearly had little financial incentive to join the Patriots. Instead, looked for glory, claiming he joined because he hoped to emulate “the chivalrous example of the South in the Case of Texas.” Explicitly Van Rensselaer’s citation of

Texas was an attempt to portray the Patriot cause as a similar fight for liberty and republicanism, yet his comparison was also revealing in a way he did not intend. For some soldiers in Texas, most famously Sam Houston and David Crockett, the conflict offered an opportunity to rebuild failed or failing lives in the United States. Canada could do the same thing for Van Rensselaer. Van Rensselaer had a drinking problem, and, judging by his letters, a continued insecurity about not living up to his family’s

54 John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol of an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 58. For the Jacksonian ethos, see also Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (Stanford, Cali.: Stanford University Press, 1957).

55 Although he does not include the Patriot War in his study, Robert May identifies filibustering as a more attractive military endeavor than joining the antebellum U.S. Army, because it promised more glory, excitement, and possibility for advance. See Robert May, “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as Cultural Mirror,” The Journal of American History, No. 78, Issue 3 (Dec., 1991), 874-875.

155 reputation. Presumably this would all be changed after he led the Patriot Army to victory.56

Unlike Van Rensselaer and his type, many American Patriots sought more immediately tangible incentives, namely land and money. From the outset Patriot leaders promised volunteers 300 acres in Canada after the British were overthrown.57 During the

Navy Island campaign Mackenzie also offered $100 in silver by May 1st. Left unsaid of course was the prerequisite of Patriot victory to make good on this offer.58 Later the

Patriots formed a “Bank of Upper Canada,” with a proposed capital of $7.5 million, from which some funds could be used to pay Patriot soldiers their promised salary of $10 per month, about the same pay as a day laborer in the region.59 Unsurprisingly the volunteers themselves left out these baser requests from their letters to Mackenzie and Van

Rensselaer, although one police constable requested a “small salary” to become a recruiting agent.60 Whether this writer did become a recruiting agent is unknown, but actual Patriot recruiters knew tangible incentives were needed. One recruiter wrote to

Van Rensselaer that more men would come with “a little assistance,” and another advised

56 Bonney, A Legacy of Historical Gleanings, 79. On Van Rensselaer, see Bonney, A Legacy of Historical Gleanings, 63-80; Lillian F. Gates, After the Rebellion, 18–19. For his drinking, see C.H. Graham to “Daniel Brooks” (aka Mackenzie), Feb. 10, 1838; Graham to Mackenzie, March 8, 1838; Van Rensselaer to Mackenzie, Dec. 18, 1838, all in MLF. For evidence of Van Rensselaer’s insecurities, see Rensselaer Van Rensselaer to Solomon Van Rensselaer, Jan. 8, 1838, in Bonney, Legacy of Historical Cleanings, 74- 75; “Rensselaer’s Van Rensselaer’s Own Notes on his Military Life,” in Bonney, 77.

57 As the cause became more desperate, this promise increased to 400 acres. Gates, After the Rebellion, 22; “Regulations and Pay of the Northwestern Army, On Patriot Service in Upper Canada,” Sept. 24, 1839, Broadsides, CL-UM.

58 Gates, After the Rebellion, 22.

59 S.C. Frey to Mackenzie, Oct. 9, 1838, MLF; “Regulations and Pay of the Northwestern Army, On Patriot Service in Upper Canada,” Sept. 24, 1839, Broadsides, CL-UM; Patrick Shirreff, A Tour through North America… (Edinburgh, 1838), 16.

60 H.L. Allen to Mackenzie, Dec. 26, 1837, MLF.

156 him to “keep [the men] happy.”61 Unsurprisingly Americans who denounced the

Patriots claimed money was the sole reason Patriots volunteered, and they feared the effects of failure on the hundreds of armed men who had been promised rewards.62 As one Detroiter who witnessed Patriot activity firsthand wrote, the Patriots wanted to

“plunder neighboring Canada or ourselves.”63 The British authorities in Canada agreed, calling the Patriots “brigands” and “rabble.”64 This denigration of the Patriots served an important purpose for both unsympathetic Americans and the British: it allowed

Americans to disassociate themselves from the Patriots, and it allowed British authorities to delegitimize the real causes of the rebellion. Although their rhetoric was inflated, both anti-Patriot Americans and the British used it because it possessed an important truth: the

Patriot cause was just as much about personal interest as it was republican ideology.

While freedom, fame, and fortune were all factors that pulled Americans into the

Patriot ranks, there was also one crucial push factor: the Panic of 1837, which began in the spring of that year.65 Buffalo was hit hard, as was Michigan, the latter experiencing a spate of undercapitalized “wildcat” banks.66 In the midst of “hard times,” Americans

61 James Brewer to RVR, Dec. 27, MLF; K. Henry Van Rensselaer to RVR, Dec.1837 or Jan. 1838, MLF.

62 See for example the Philadelphia Public Ledger, June 16, 1838;

63 E.B. Ward to Eben Ward, January 18, 1838, Ward Family Papers, BHC-DPL.

64 John Prince, December 10, 1838, Order Book, John Prince Papers, Burton; the Pennsylvania Inquirer quotes the Coubour Star calling the Patriots “godless American rabble”: Pennsylvania Inquirer [Philadelphia], Sept. 12, 1838. Other examples denigrating the Patriots include the New London Gazette, July 11, 1838; Richmond Enquirer, Dec. 4, 1838; New York Spectator, Dec. 3, 1838. See also Watson, “United States Army Officers fight the ‘Patriot War’,” 501-502 and 501, note 18.

65 On the Panic, see Jessica M. Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Alasdair Roberts, The First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder in the United States, 1837-1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012).

66 H. Perry Smith, History of Buffalo & Erie Co., New York, vol. I (Syracuse: D. Mason & Co., 1884), 213.

157 joined the Patriots in the hope that somehow they could get out of financial distress if the Patriots took Canada – even though Canada too suffered depression. Unlike the

Van Rensselaer-types, for these men it was not the war itself, but what happened after that truly mattered. They hoped Patriot service would eventually provide a financial restart, representing a northern counterpart to the concurrent “Gone to Texas” phenomenon in the South. Michigan Patriot officer W.W. Dodge illustrates the point. A

Patriot officer from Michigan, Dodge likely entered Patriot service to pay his debts, although the amount of his indebtedness is unspecified. Over a two-year period he was captured by the British, made a spectacular escape from Quebec, returned to Michigan, and then fled the state to abscond on his debtors. He traveled to New York, where he was eventually arrested – again, for not paying his debts. Whether these were newly incurred or old debts from Michigan is unknown.67 For Dodge, and for many other American

Patriots, we can imagine that if Canada already provided opportunities for cheap land and debt evasion before the Patriot War, then they would have already “Gone to Canada” to rebuild lives decimated by the depression. Americans had done exactly that in the aftermath of the Revolution, when the British had welcomed American immigration.

However, unlike Canada in the 1790s or Texas in 1837, Canada in 1837 did not welcome

Americans – unless the Patriot War was won and a Canadian republic was consummated.

More broadly, a subtle but underlying theme of hardship appears throughout Patriot

67 Dodge can be traced across three sets of letters, beginning in Michigan, continuing in New York, and ending with a letter from Dodge himself in 1839 where he admits he cannot pay his debts: Matilda Anderson to John Anderson, Jan. 24, 1838; John Anderson to Alexander Anderson, Feb. 4, 1838; Eliza Wing to Alexander Anderson, Feb. 25, 1838; John Anderson to Alexander Anderson, June 9, 1838; all in John Anderson Papers, BHC-DPL. J.S. Neysmith to Mackenzie, Nov. 12, 1838, MLF. W.W. Dodge to J.R. Field, July 20, 1839, Hugh Brady Papers, BHC-DPL. Dodge’s escape was widely printed in U.S. papers. See for example Detroit Morning Post, November 26, 1838.

158 letters.68 Indeed, Patriot leaders hoped economic distress would lead to more recruits in both the U.S. and Canada.69 Hard times created men desperate for something

– anything – that would propel them out of distress, and the Patriot Army provided this opportunity.

Yet the push factor of the Panic and the economic opportunism of many Patriots should not be used to downplay the dynamism of the Patriot movement on the northern border. Certainly those charged with defeating the Patriots attempted such downplaying.

Sir George Arthur, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, constantly raged against the

Patriots, variously defining them as “vagabonds,” “ruffians,” and “atrocious banditti,” and U.S. general Winfield Scott believed American Patriots possessed a “moral distemper.”70 One letter writer summed up the general anti-Patriot feeling when he called

68 Albert Corey calculated that out of 157 Patriots captured at the Battle of the Windmill, 140 were day laborers: Corey, The Crisis of 1830-1842 in Canadian-American Relations, 78, also 27-43 for a general characterization of the Patriots as from the laboring ranks, with some “gentlemen” leaders. Andrew Bonthius concurs with Corey’s assessment of the Patriot War arising from class motives, but believes the ideas of the Patriots were much more compelling and sophisticated than Corey portrays: Bonthius, “Locofocoism with a Gun?” Many historians use financial distress as the sole explanation for Patriot volunteering: Taylor, The Civil War of 1812, 455-457; Corey, The Crisis of 1830-42 in Canadian-American Relations, 27-43; Walker, What Hath God Wrought, 518. Others have noted that there was quite a bit of economic diversity in Patriot ranks: Duffy and Miller, An Anxious Democracy, 51; Kinchen, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters, 19-20; Bonthius, “Locofocoism with a Gun?,” 15-16. Greer, “Rebellion Reconsidered,” 14. On American emigration to Canada in the late 1790s and early 1800s, see Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 45-73. On the “Gone to Texas” phenomenon, see Mark E. Nackman, “Anglo-American Migrants to the West: Men of Broken Fortunes? The Case of Texas, 1821-1846,” The Western Historical Quarterly 5 (Oct., 1974), 441-455; Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 287-288.

69 Eleaser Lewis to Mackenzie, Jan. 5, 1838, MLF; J.S. Neysmith to Mackenzie, Nov. 9, 1838, MLF; Thomas Storrow Brown to Mackenzie, 1838, MLF. Albert Corey calculated that out of 157 Patriots captured at the Battle of the Windmill, 140 were from laborers: Corey, The Crisis of 1830-1842 in Canadian-American Relations, 78, also 27-43 for a general characterization of the Patriots as from the laboring ranks, with some “gentlemen” leaders. Andrew Bonthius concurs with Corey’s assessment of the Patriot War arising from class motives, but believes the ideas of the Patriots were much more compelling than Corey gives them credit for: Bonthius, “Locofocoism with a Gun?”.

70 Sir George Arthur to Lord Fitzroy, Dec. 20, 1838, The Arthur Papers, ed. Charles R. Sanderson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), 1: 475; Arthur to Lieut.-Col. Dundas, June 22, 1838, Arthur Papers, 1: 204; Guillet, Lives and Times of the Patriots, 106; Winfield Scott to Joel Poinsett, Jan. 12,

159 the Patriots “poor, miserable, deluded creatures.”71 Historians have largely echoed this treatment, which has allowed them to quickly dismiss the Patriots as unimportant, or ignore them altogether.72 This treatment is wrong for three reasons. First, from a larger historical perspective, revolutions often begin with economic hardship, and the impoverishment of some Patriots should by no means make their movement somehow less legitimate.73 Second, more specifically related to the Patriots, there were significant numbers of “respectable” Americans who joined their ranks.74 While individual volunteers may have been, the Patriots collectively were not a “rabble.”

Third, and the most important reason the Patriots should not be ignored, is because a Canadian Republic was by no means delusional in early January 1838, when

Patriot forces on Navy Island reached their highpoint. From the viewpoint of Van

Rensselaer and Mackenzie, the situation must have appeared promising. On the

Canadian side of the river were thousands of silent but sympathetic Reformers (or so the

Patriots thought). The bungled nature of the rebellion in Toronto meant that these

1839, Folder 11, Letter 150, Poinsett Papers, HSP. For an overview of the U.S. Army’s interactions with the Patriots, see Sam Watson, “United States Army Officers Fight the ‘Patriot War’”: Responses to Filibustering on the Canadian Border, 1837-1839.”

71 Kelley to Peter Porter, January 16, 1838, Roll 10, Volume 6, Peter Porter Papers, BECHS.

72 Historians who dismiss the importance of the Patriots because they were a product of economic hardship include Taylor, The Civil War of 1812, 455-457; Corey, The Crisis of 1830-42 in Canadian-American Relations, 27-43. In terms of larger surveys, Sean Wilentz ignores the Patriots entirely, while Daniel Walker Howe focuses on the Caroline alone: Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: Norton, 2005); Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press, 2007), 518–519. Andrew Bonthius exhaustively details the ignorance of the Patriots in modern textbooks: Bonthius, Locofocoism with a Gun?, 11-12, footnote 6.

73 Modern historians who dismiss or ignore the Patriots because of economic factors should know better. Decades of neo-progressive historiography on the American Revolution has taught us that economic factors precipitate revolution, and make it more dangerous and more revolutionary. Indeed, the Continental Army was mostly composed of American “rabble.”

74 Duffy and Miller, An Anxious Democracy, 51; Kinchen, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters, 19-20; Bonthius, “Locofocoism with a Gun?,” 15-16.

160 sympathizers never had a chance to join the rebels, but with a successful landing in

Canada they would rally to the cause. Moreover, the Patriots faced only Canadian militia of dubious loyalty (or so the rumors went), for the British Army was quelling insurrection in Lower Canada.75 Across the Niagara River in the U.S. were thousands of supporters, in addition to those who had already joined the Patriot Army. Some of these men might join the Patriots in the future, while others would at least aid the Patriots with financial and rhetorical support. The cause had united a cross-border region whose inhabitants were intimately familiar with one another. The momentum seemed to be with the

Patriots. Revolution would not be stopped. In early January the Patriots were by no means delusional. Then, on January 10th, Winfield Scott and other U.S. Army officers arrived in Buffalo. Their presence would drastically change the situation for the Patriots, and force Americans all along the border to decide where their allegiance lay: with the

U.S. federal government, or with the potential breakaway republic of Upper Canada.

The Pull of Breakaway Republicanism: American Patriots against the United States

Sent by President Martin Van Buren, Winfield Scott came to establish order and maintain peace along the border. Van Buren had learned of the Caroline Affair and the

Patriot build-up at Navy Island in early January, and rightfully feared war with the British

– a war for which the United States, with a standing army of 8000 men ineffectively fighting Seminoles in Florida and guarding the western frontier, was by no means

75 Greer, “Rebellion Reconsidered,” 14.

161 prepared.76 While Van Buren played on Americans’ Anglophobia by denouncing

Britain’s violation of U.S. waters, simultaneously he issued a proclamation to American citizens, directing them to avoid involvement. He then sent Scott to the border to enforce neutrality.77 Scott’s arrival marked a transition in the Patriot War, changing the dual

British-Patriot struggle to a more complicated tripartite U.S.-British-Patriot conflict.

Over the next few years Scott and other army officers would use all manner of influence to prevent Patriot activity within the northern United States. These army officers never had the luxury of overwhelming military might. Initially, Scott and his fellow officers only possessed a handful of new recruits, and no professional soldiers.78 Yet they had the power of persuasion and access to U.S. funds. As one Patriot noted, Scott’s methods included a system of “bullying” and a system of “buying.”79 These measures would prove consequential.

Scott’s “bullying” and “buying” in Buffalo led to a cession of supplies to Navy

Island. Without further supplies, and with substantial numbers of British militia dug in across the water, Van Rensselaer and Mackenzie had little hope in even maintaining their force on the island, let alone achieving victory. Scott himself met with Van Rensselaer to persuade him to give up the cause.80 By January 14th Rensselaer agreed, and the Patriots

76 Tiffany, The Canadian Rebellion, 70; Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieutenant General Scott (New York, 1864), 308.

77 For Van Buren’s response, Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 16-20, and passim; James C. Curtis, The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 187-1841 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), 170-181; Major L. Wilson, The Presidency of Martin Van Buren (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984), 157-163.

78 Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieutenant General Scott , 308.

79 Anonymous to Mackenzie, Jan. 21, 1838, MLF.

80 Winfield Scott to Joel Poinsett, Feb. 3, 1838, 10-23, Poinsett Papers, HSP.

162 dispersed from Navy Island, many going west to continue the struggle along the

Michigan frontier.81 The failure of the Navy Island campaign, along with defeats across the Michigan and Vermont borders, marked an end to the first phase of the Patriot War.

Now the United States government would attempt to hinder Patriot activity wherever it sprung up.

Yet, remarkably, many American Patriots continued their armed struggle, and many of their yet-to-volunteer supporters continued contributing rhetorical and financial help. Certainly some did abandon their encouragement when they realized the United

States now opposed the Patriot movement. A majority of Patriots, however, remained

Patriots. Instead of ceasing Patriot activity, they simply went underground, forming a secret society throughout the border region known as “Hunters Lodges.” The name and idea was drawn from a Lower Canadian secret society (the “Freres Chasseurs” –

“Hunter Brothers”) designed to prepare the colony for a second rebellion. Here again we can witness the differing responses to each rebellion in the United States. The Freres

Chasseurs became a significant presence in Lower Canada itself, demonstrating the continued vitality of the Patriotes in the colony, yet it seems few lodges were formed on the American side of the border. Meanwhile, the Hunters Lodges were widespread throughout the American side of the Great Lakes borderland, but had little presence in

Upper Canada itself. The struggle for Lower Canadian liberty remained centered in

Lower Canada, while the Upper Canadian cause had shifted permanently to the United

States. In regard to the Upper Canadian struggle, the formation of the Hunters Lodges marked a new phase of the struggle.

81 Gates, After the Rebellion, 24.

163 It is impossible to pin down the number of men who joined the lodges, but estimates ranged from 15,000 to 200,000.82 All approximations are highly inexact for two reasons. First, most estimates came from opponents of the Hunters, either British or

U.S. officials, who likely inflated numbers to serve their purposes. Exaggerating the size of the Hunter’s Lodges helped secure officials more resources to suppress the Hunters, and served as proof these officials were doing their duty in the face of difficult odds.83 It seems unlikely membership reached as high as 200,000, although as we shall see the number of sympathizers may have been significantly higher. Second, and more problematically for understanding who joined the organization, the Hunters destroyed all of their documents after their final defeats, which served a dual purpose of both erasing their illegal activity and their involvement in what had become an embarrassing cause.84

Yet there is enough evidence from outside sources to attest to the Hunters’ numerical and geographical scope – tens of thousands of men joined from Vermont to Michigan, a few from as far as Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.85 Of these members possibly 4000 bore arms, and half of these actually fought in battle.86 Evidence also shows that the Hunters

82 Guillet, Lives and Times of the Patriots, 179-180; Kinchen, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters, 35- 45.

83 Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 36.

84 This claim is made by Oscar Kinchen, citing a 1911 article: Elisabeth S. Smith, “Historic Attempts to Annex Canada to the United States,” Journal of American History 5 (1911), 224. Unfortunately Smith’s article is uncited, so it is impossible to trace this claim back to its origins. Yet Kinchen and Smith’s claim seems reasonable: there is too much evidence given by outsiders of the extent of the organization, that the dearth of evidence from insiders points to an active destruction of the evidence. See also Harris, “The Meaning of Patriot,” 53, who notes exiles were forced to defend their actions, while those in the Hunters Lodges – like Ohio politician Lucius Bierce – could simply avoided mentioning their involvement.

85 Thomas Fitnam to Mackenzie, Feb. 13, 1838, MLF; Mackenzie to E.B. O’Callaghan, Nov. 22, 1838, MLF.

86 Again these numbers are rough estimates. During each campaign Patriot soldiers came and went so often that no accurate assessment is possible unless Patriots were captured. For example, at the Battle of the

164 held allegiance to each other and their planned Canadian Republic – and decidedly not to the United States.

To gauge how the Hunters thought of themselves within the U.S., it is helpful to view the border region inhabitants on a continuum from completely anti-Patriot to entirely pro-Patriot. On the far end of the continuum lay those who, from the outset, fully supported Scott and the army’s mission to suppress the Patriots. These local citizens, like the officers themselves, desired to uphold national honor and international treaties, and were disgusted by the lawlessness they perceived in the Patriot cause.87 Although anti-

Patriot Americans would prove helpful as the struggle continued, at first they were decidedly in the minority.88 Next to these men on the continuum were those who supported the Patriots within the first month of the Patriot War, but changed their tune when they perceived both the hostility of the U.S. government to the Patriots and the huge obstacles preventing Patriot success. The editor of the Detroit Free Press was one

Windmill, 189 Patriots were captured or killed, and of these 151 were Americans. However, during the battle possibly 100 men deserted as the campaign soured, another 100-200 men gathered across the St. Lawrence River to join in if the battle went well, and another few hundred were unable to rendezvous due to U.S. interference. I have relied on Donald Graves, a Canadian military historian, for numbers. See Graves, Guns Across the River, 70, 227.

87 Sam Watson details these views splendidly, defining this attitude as “Whiggish” – although not necessarily Whig. See Watson, “U.S. Army Officers Fight the ‘Patriot War’,” 494, note 8, for defining “Whiggish” affinity versus Whig ideology. Watson’s larger book details the evolution of these ideals over the long term: Sam Watson, Peacekeepers and Conquerors: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1821-1845 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013).

88 Unsurprisingly evidence for this attitude is usually found in letters to national authorities begging for more men and money to enforce order. See for example Henry Hill to Joel Poinsett, Dec. 23, 1837, 9-143, V.H. Swayne to Poinsett, Nov. 23, 1838, 11-86, both in Poinsett Papers, HSP; George H. McWhorter to Secretary of the Treasury, Sept. 14, 1838, reprinted in Kinchen, Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters, 125- 126. E. Brooks to John Allen, Jan. 15., 1838, William Woodbridge Papers, BHC-DPL. The editor of the Detroit Daily Advertiser also attacked the Patriots from the moment of their arrival: Detroit Daily Advertiser, Dec. 23, 1837.

165 such example, urging the Patriots on until mid-January, and then retracting his support.89 New York governor William Marcy and Michigan governor Stevens Mason may also have fit this category. According to various sources, while they both openly professed neutrality from the outset, they were simultaneously in secret collusion with the

Patriots.90 Although their involvement remains uncertain, both men were career politicians, and knowing the widespread sympathy for the Patriots in their respective states, they tried to remain pro-Patriot for as long as possible. Marcy refused to arrest

Mackenzie per British wishes, and only began enforcing neutrality when he belatedly traveled with Scott to the frontier.91 When the British asked Mason to enforce neutrality,

Mason essentially responded that, because he was a state official and neutrality was a federal matter, the British should contact the federal district attorney.92 Yet after the initial Patriot defeats, Van Buren’s proclamation of neutrality, and the serious possibility of a U.S.-British war, Marcy, Mason, and many others along the border turned against the

Patriots.

But many more did not. With so few U.S. soldiers on the border, officials charged with enforcing order (and who were willing to do so) required local citizens to support them – juries in local courts, state and local officials, and local militia.

Unfortunately for these officials, all were undependable. On March 10th Congress passed

89 Detroit Free Press, Jan. 16, 1838.

90 Buffalo Daily Star, quoting the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 22, 1838; Kinchen, Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters, 41. For Masons’ conduct, see Don Faber, The Boy Governor: Stevens T. Mason and the Birth of Michigan Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 102-110. For Marcy’s conduct, see Ivor D. Spencer, The Victor and the Spoils: The Life of William L. Marcy (Providence: Brown University Press, 1959), 105-107

91 Gates, After the Rebellion, 24-25.

92 Detroit Free Press, Jan. 11, 1838.

166 an updated Neutrality Act, strengthening a law first passed in 1818. This updated version gave U.S. officials more leeway in arresting men who were crossing U.S. borders to fight in a foreign country.93 However, in many cases state officials refused to enforce the law, and when they did so juries oftentimes refused to convict – facts widely known to the Patriots.94 As one Patriot commented, juries would not convict because “young and old, and all classes…are advocates of Canadian freedom.”95 Patriot arms came almost exclusively from U.S. arsenals, where state officials left weapons “just where they might be stolen” by the Patriots. If this did not work, Patriots forged letters from U.S. officials ordering for the weapons to be released.96 State militias were entirely unreliable, so much so that Winfield Scott requested militias from non-border states that were

“uninfected” with Patriot sympathies.97 U.S. officer William Worth also deemed the border state militias “infected,” and mused to Secretary of War Joel Poinsett whether the militia would not only refuse to obey orders, but “openly ally themselves with the insurgent cause.”98 Such an event never occurred, but undoubtedly most border-state inhabitants were pro-Patriot.

93 The best explanation of the Neutrality Act appears in Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 27-30, and Corey, The Crisis of 1830-1842 in Canadian-American Relations, 49-57.

94 B. Bagley to Mackenzie, June 14, 1838, MLF; William Worth to Joel Poinsett, December 25, 1838, 11- 114, Joel Poinsett Papers, HSF; Arthur to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Oct. 30, 1838, Arthur Papers, 1: 335; Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 42-43.

95 Thomas Storrow Brown to Mackenzie, May 23, 1838, MLF.

96 Lucy Williams Hawes to Richard Williams Sr. and Jr., December 29, 1837, Hawes-Taber Family Letters, CL-UM; Buffalo Daily Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 22, 1838.

97 Scott, Memoirs, 308.

98 Worth to Poinsett, Jan. 30, 1838, 9-159, Poinsett Papers, HSP; Worth to Poinsett, Feb. 17, 1838, Gilpin Papers, HSP.

167 A Patriot sympathizer, however, did not make a Patriot. The allegiance of the vast majority of Patriot sympathizers was ambiguous – they supported the Patriots up to a point, but their support always remained passive. While willing to look the other way when the Patriots broke national laws, they did not actively counter the United

States. Allegiance to the U.S. was strained but did not break. The actual Patriots, on the furthest end of the continuum of allegiance, volunteered for a cause that directly contradicted the laws of the United States and the wishes of a majority of Americans outside the northern border region. In essence, the Hunters Lodges represented a breakdown of nationality, where dedication to Canadian republicanism outweighed obedience to the laws of the United States. Many observers noted these skewed allegiances. As the anti-Patriot National Intelligencer stated, the Patriots “hovered between the two countries, not deserving the name of United States citizens, or subjects of Great Britain.” Daniel Webster observed, “If war breaks out [between the U.S. and

Britain], [American Patriots] do not propose to join the forces of the United States, but to unite themselves with the disaffected in Canada, declare the province free, and set up another government.” The Patriots’ dedication to Canadian republicanism was impressive and resolute. Despite several defeats by British forces and the opposition of the United States, their work continued unabated for almost a year. They clandestinely planned a three-front invasion of Canada, formed a provisional government for the

Republic of Canada in Cleveland, opened pro-Patriot presses throughout the border region, and frustrated U.S. officials who hoped to stop their actions. Eric Schlereth has recently demonstrated that Americans who moved to Texas in the 1820s and early 1830s were consciously expatriating themselves from the United States, drawn to Texas by the

168 economic and political opportunities it offered. While dedicated American Patriots had not yet physically expatriated themselves as the Anglo-Texans had done, their membership in the Hunters Lodges represented a preliminary ideological expatriation.

An Upper Canadian republic, like Mexican-cum-independent Texas, represented a political and economic alternative to the United States. Although an Upper Canadian republic existed only as an idea, once the British were driven from Canada the expatriation would be consummated, and the idea would become reality.99

Here, then, was the power of breakaway republicanism at work. Canada was not yet – and would never be – an actual breakaway republic, for British power stood in the way. Yet, to the thousands of Hunters Lodge members, the very idea of a Canadian republic propelled the Patriot movement to continue for more than a year, despite repeated military defeats at the hands of British arms and persistent opposition by the

U.S. federal government. Indeed, in regard to the U.S. struggle against Patriot activity, the Patriots effectively won – at least for a time. For over a year they wrested the entire border region from U.S. control. By October 1838, it was clear to federal authorities that

Winfield Scott and other military officials were not a substantial enough presence to curb

Patriot activity, and thus Van Buren sent 2,000 troops to the border to escalate the pressure on the Patriots.100 Yet even these troops failed to assert federal sovereignty.

During Patriot highpoints, such as the November 1838 gathering of Patriot soldiers in the

99 Washington Daily National Intelligencer, June 11, 1838. Webster’s report was written in 1842, when the MacLeod Affair threatened to reignite passions on the border. The Hunters Lodges reemerged during the hysteria, and President Tyler sent Webster, then Secretary of State, to report on their activity. Despite its later date, Webster’s statement holds true for the Lodges in 1838, when they were even more popular and powerful than they were in 1842: Webster to Tyler, Letters of Daniel Webster, ed. C.H. Van Tyne (New York, 1902), 132-133. Schlereth, “Privileges of Locomotion.”

100 Kinchen, Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters, 85.

169 New York town of Ogdensburg prior to another invasion of Canada, it was the

Patriots, not the United States, who controlled the town. Clearly breakaway republicanism was a force to be reckoned with.

The power of breakaway republicanism rested not just with a general American desire to further the cause of liberty and help out neighbors oppressed by the hated

British – although this was certainly part of the attraction. Yet the power of the Patriot cause went much deeper. A potential Canadian republic attracted Americans because this republic promised opportunity, whereas the U.S. in its current state did not. By their actions, American Patriot volunteers thought their prospects were better fighting for and living in a Canadian republic than they were remaining in the United States. An Upper

Canadian republic would solve many of the issues that the United States increasingly looked unable or unwilling to solve. Canada would become the ideal republic that the

United States no longer was.

Part of the reason an Upper Canadian republic was so enticing stemmed from the

U.S. reaction to the Patriots. American Patriots believed that, by trying to suppress them, the U.S. was betraying the principles of the Union, and now it was the Patriots, not the

U.S., who held true to American values. Central to their argument were the twin

Jacksonian defenses of democratic majority rule and the sanctity of individual liberty.

With a majority of Americans along the border not necessarily joining but at least supporting the Patriot cause, the imposition of federal power looked decidedly anti- democratic and authoritarian, especially when it came at the hands of two thousand federal troops. Although the number of U.S. regulars did not compare to the ten thousand

British soldiers across the border, it was a remarkable number by American standards.

170 By comparison, 700 troops were placed in South Carolina during the Nullification

Crisis, and only during the Whiskey Rebellion had more regulars been deployed against

American citizens.101 Indeed, both the Nullification Crisis and the Whiskey Rebellion are apt comparisons to the Patriot War; like them, the Patriot War represented a complete breakdown of federal authority, to which the federal government was forced to respond militarily.

The Patriots attacked this display of federal power. For example, Benjamin

Kingsbury, editor of the Detroit Morning Post and a not-so-secret Patriot, maintained federal troops had no right to arrest any Patriots, for the Patriots commanded majority support in the city – as Kingsbury maintained, “The people are sovereign.” 102 If not the people, then at the least federal authorities had no right to supersede state power. As one

Patriot wrote, “…We shall not let the U.S. authorities wrest the few rights which as a sovereign state we possess.”103 Moreover, federal imposition was a violation of constitutional rights and represented “shameful conduct of a free government.”104 At a

Hunters Lodge meeting in Detroit, one Patriot proclaimed that, while he understood that the U.S. did not want war with Britain, there were “constitutional privileges” that could not be violated for any reason. Hunters at that same meeting issued a series of resolutions that condemned U.S. actions on the border, reiterated the importance of state sovereignty, free speech, and the right to bear arms, and warned of the dangers of

101 Robert W. Coakley, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1798-1878 (Washington, DC: Center for Military History, 1988), 50-53, 98, 110-119.

102 Detroit Morning Post, Dec. 6, 1838.

103 E.A. Theller to Mackenzie, Jan. 5, 1839, MLF.

104 George Herron to Mackenzie, Dec. 5, 1838, Mackenzie Papers, BHC.

171 “consolidation.” Importantly, these resolutions expressed that allegiance to the

United States was conditional on U.S. actions: “…We are for sovereignty of the states, and for the union of the states; but we will not submit to martial law in a time of peace.”

To American Patriots federal actions revealed a new, overly centralized, possibly dangerous United States, and it was the Patriots who were the true representatives of the nation.105

This language mirrored that of the radical Locofoco wing of the Democratic

Party, and it was not surprising that a majority of American Patriots were Democrats.

They were drawn to William Mackenzie’s radical agrarian ideology and espousal of egalitarian principles, rhetoric that became more potent amidst the devastating depression. If radical Democrats could not form the type of republic they desired in the

United States, then why not create it in Canada? U.S. actions against the Patriots only solidified their willingness to create a republic elsewhere. The Patriots’ appropriation of

Democratic ideology proved a problem for Democratic papers that condemned the Patriot

War, for they had difficulty countering the Patriots’ conception of the American Union – unlike Whig papers, which consistently maintained the supremacy of federal law. Not wanting to admit they feared war with Britain, and unable to debate the Patriots ideologically, Democratic papers effectively ceded to American Patriots their valid constitutional arguments and changed tactics. Instead of attacking American Patriots for their illegal actions vis-à-vis U.S. laws, they attacked them for their alliance with the

Canadian rebels, contending that the weakness of Canadian rebels mandated staying out

105 E.A. Theller, Canada in 1837-38: Showing, By Historical Facts, the Causes of the Late Attempted Revolution, and of its Failure… (New York, 1841), 2: 304, 308-310.

172 of the conflict. If the Canadians were really meant to have freedom, so the argument went, then they would have taken it for themselves. Yet the Canadian rebels had shown themselves “subservient” and “leaderless.” By not rising up en masse, the

Canadians did not deserve freedom – and therefore did not deserve American help.

Judging by the continued popularity of the Patriots into the fall and winter of 1838, these arguments were not persuasive.106

Yet, despite the prevalence of this radical Democrat language and ideology,

American Patriots deliberately portrayed their movement as nonpartisan. As the Patriot newspaper The Canadian proclaimed at the heading of its first (and seemingly only) issue: “The Canadian is edited by a refugee – published by a Democrat – printed by a

Whig, and read by the whole world.”107 One Detroit official even wrote Secretary of War

Poinsett that the Patriots comprised a political party of their own.108 Proclaiming their explicit nonpartisanship was not necessarily a propaganda ploy by the mostly Democratic

Patriot movement to portray the popularity of the cause. In fact, nonpartisanship rested

106 Democrat majority in the Patriots: Ronald Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 189-190; Bonthius, Locofocoism with a Gun? Of the many Democratic papers I have surveyed, only one argued for suppressing the Patriots due to a potential war with Britain: Albany Argus, quoted in Detroit Daily Commercial Advertiser, Dec. 25, 1837. Whig papers that made the argument that the Canadians did not deserve help include: New York Spectator, Dec.7, 1837; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, Dec. 21, 1837; Detroit Daily Advertiser, Jan. 31, 1838. See Detroit Free Press, Dec. 10, 1838, for a collection of Democratic papers making this same argument, including the New York Sun, Albany Argus, and Onondaga Standard. This attitude parallels the findings of Francois Furstenburg on the Jacksonian justification of slavery: only slaves who fought for freedom deserved freedom. See Furstenburg, In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (New York, 2007), 218. For the politics of “Anglophobia” – where the Democrats usually proved more belligerent – see Haynes, Unfinished Revolution, 106-132.

107 The Canadian, Jan. 1, 1838. Although printed “1838,” the date was actually 1839, the Patriot War events of 1838 mentioned explicitly in the text. Newspaper reports on the Hunters Lodges also reported their nonpartisan stance. See, for example, Detroit Free Press, Dec. 19, 1838. For a differing attitude towards the Patriots, which emphasizes their partisanship, see Bonthius, “Locofocoism with a Gun?”

108 J. Doty to Poinsett, April 30, 1839, 12-97, Poinsett Papers, HSP.

173 on a key truth: although outnumbered by Democrats, there were many Whig

Hunters. Although these men may not have identified as much with Patriot politics, as already noted there were other factors to entice them. For a prominent Whig like

Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, for example, this was military glory and potential political power. For many other Whigs, it was the Great Lakes borderland: American political stances became irrelevant when Canadian friends and business partners’ very liberty was at stake. Patriots on both sides of the political spectrum valued this cross-party nature of the struggle, as evidenced with the outrage expressed towards Mackenzie when he began openly engaging in U.S. party politics. Mackenzie had stepped down from his leadership position after Navy Island, believing his own talents would best be used starting a pro-

Patriot press to rally more supporters. By the summer of 1838 Mackenzie could not help his political nature, and began lambasting Whig policies in his paper, arguing Whigs were no different than British Tories.109 The blowback was immediate, as outraged Whig

Patriots canceled their subscriptions, while frustrated Democratic Patriots admonished him for getting involved in American politics. Even Mackenzie’s son James, living in the

New York town of Lockport, pointed out to his father that, while the Whigs in the federal government in Washington were unsympathetic, the Whigs in New York were “our best friends.”110 One Patriot from Watertown put it more succinctly: “The die is cast, and you are cursed by all good patriots, both Jackson and Whig.”111 The writer was correct;

109 Mackenzie’s Gazette [New York, NY] Aug. 4, 1838, Aug. 12, 1838, Aug. 18, 1838, Aug. 25, 1838, Sept. 1, 1838. Gates, After the Rebellion, 44-45; Duncan Koerber, “Political Operatives and Administrative Workers,” Journalism History 36 (Fall 2010), 164-165.

110 James Mackenzie to William Mackenzie, Oct. 2, 1838, MLF.

111 D. Hungerford to Mackenzie, Aug. 9, 1838, MLF.

174 subscriptions to Mackenzie’s Gazette dropped dramatically, as the nonpartisan

Patriot movement left the Democrat Mackenzie by the wayside.112

Beyond the simple fact that many Whigs did join the Hunters, the Patriots’ emphasis on their nonpartisanship suggests something more was at work than trying not to alienate these members: the Patriots hoped U.S. partisanship would not follow them into a Canadian republic. In 1838 the American Patriot disenchantment with party politics was not surprising. Between the dreadful depression and the combined efforts of both national Democrats and Whigs to destroy the Patriots, partisanship offered little.

William Mackenzie’s son James, an astute observer of the political climate, described this feeling of antipartisanship: “Neither of the political parties of the day will assist or countenance equal rights and privileges” for monopoly had become “so deeply rooted.”113

Moreover, it was a Democratic president who was primarily responsible for anti-Patriot actions. Therefore, while Democratic Hunters could argue for their actions on traditionally Democratic grounds, they did not want to link them to the Democratic Party.

The geography of the Patriot War gives further hints of this disillusionment. Throughout the Jacksonian era, counties along the northern border, especially those in New York and

Ohio, were especially prone to populist third party candidates that offered answers to

112 It is important to note that though the Patriots themselves were nonpartisan, their cause was used for partisan purposes throughout the Great Lakes region. Both Democrats and Whigs tried to tie their opponents to the U.S.-British side. Democrats proclaimed Whigs were the same as British Whigs – and Tories. Whigs pointed out that it was Van Buren, a Democratic president, and Marcy, a Democratic governor, who were responsible for cracking down on the Patriots. It seems the Whigs had the better argument; both Van Buren and Marcy were defeated in New York in 1840, and anecdotal evidence suggests it was due to their hostility to the Patriots. See Chapter One, page 22. See also Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-1838, 102-112; Carroll, A Good and Wise Measure, 207-208; Ernest Muller, “Preston King: A Political Life” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1957), 241.

113 James Mackenzie to William Mackenzie, Aug. 6, 1838, MLF. James Mackenzie would have a successful career in Ohio politics as a Free Democrat in the Ohio congress in the 1850s.

175 problems neither major party could. It was in these counties that the Anti-Masonic

Party in the late 1820s and especially the Free Soil Party in the 1840s drew support. In

1838, the third party was represented by the Patriot movement, which would create in

Upper Canada the ideal – nonpartisan – republic.114

The popularity of the Free Soil Party in 1848 in northern New York and Ohio points to another important aspect of the vision of a Canadian Republic ten years earlier: it would be explicitly free soil. William Mackenzie had always been a vehement opponent of slavery, and he included a clause in his proposed constitution for Upper

Canada acknowledging that the colony had been a haven for escaped slaves in the past

(“People of Colour, who have come into this State, with the design of becoming permanent inhabitants thereof”).115 This attitude clearly resonated with individuals like

Preston King, a Democratic congressmen from northern New York who was one of the catalysts behind the Wilmot Proviso, and who would be elected as a Free Soiler in 1848.

Many other Patriots also expressed antislavery sentiments.116 Due to the dearth of Patriot sources, it cannot be known how many American Patriots eventually became Free Soilers

114 On antipartyism, see Mark Voss-Hubbard, “The ‘Third Party Tradition’ Reconsidered: Third Parties and American Public Life, 1830-1900,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 86, No. 1 (June, 1999), 121- 150; Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin, Rude Republic: Americans and their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 14-46. Most of Altschuler and Blumin’s evidence came from western New York where Patriot activity was rampant, but they do not mention the Patriot War. On the Anti-Mason Party, see Ronald P. Formisano, For the People: American Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 91- 158, esp. 91-115 for New York. On Free Soil, see Jonathan H. Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery: The Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 49-77 on New York, 144- 162 on Ohio; Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 149-185.

115 “Mackenzie’s Constitution,” in Read and Stagg, ed., The Rebellion in Upper Canada, 97. Mackenzie’s egalitarianism: Mackenzie, Selected Writings, 156, 173.

116 William Gates, Recollections of Life in Van Diemen’s Land (1850), 14-15; Sutherland, “The Sword and the Pen”; Detroit Morning Post, Dec. 3, 1838.

176 on a mass scale. However, considering both movements drew their support from the same segment of society in the same region, crossover clearly existed. And, like the

Free Soil movement, the Patriot movement did not harbor sentiments of abolitionism or racial equality. Upper Canada would be free soil, white, republic. At first this assertion seems to contradict several of Mackenzie’s statements expressing remarkable racial egalitarianism, where he blamed perceived uncivilized qualities in the black population in

North America on the effects of slavery. Yet the loyalism of the Canadian black population grated on him. Less than a year before the rebellion, he stated: “[Blacks] are so extravagantly loyal to the Executive, that to the utmost of their power they uphold all the abuses of government, and support those who profit by them.”117 In the days before the rebellion, Mackenzie played on white Canadian fears of loyalist blacks, claiming

British authorities would unleash them – as well as Indians – on a defenseless populace if

Canadians did not swiftly revolt. His paranoia was even expressed in his constitution.

To remain in Canada, blacks would be required to take an oath to the new republic, something no white person was required to do. While Mackenzie primarily disliked blacks for their loyalism, his racial rhetoric could also play well with racist American

Patriots who disliked blacks simply because they were black. The Patriot movement was, in essence, united by whiteness – antislavery whiteness, but whiteness nonetheless.118

117 “Fourth Annual Report of the American Anti-slavery Society,” ed. Elizur Wright, The Quarterly Anti- Slavery Magazine 2 (1837), 350.

118 Read and Stagg, “Introduction,” in Read and Stagg, ed., The Rebellion of 1837, xl, lvi; Gerald Horne, Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire fight the U.S. before Emancipation (New York: NYU Press, 2012), 116. For other anti-black statements, see Detroit Daily Advertiser, Jan. 1, 1838; Mackenzie’s Gazette, Nov. 3, 1838; Mackenzie’s Gazette, June 9, 1838. See also Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada, 62, 71, 73. On the racism of white laborers in the northern U.S., see David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 1991), Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class, Politics, and Mass

177 The Patriots never explicitly expressed this racial unity; considering the population of the Great Lakes region on both sides of the border was overwhelmingly white, the lack of overt racial rhetoric was unsurprising. Nevertheless, when racial

“others” entered the discourse, it was evident that race played a role in the conflict.

Patriots often directed racism towards British-allied blacks, which, in a certain respect, was logical, for Canadian blacks joined the loyal militia in percentages far exceeding other Canadians. As Mackenzie understood even before the rebellion, Canadian blacks were ready and willing to fight for an empire that protected their freedom from the slaveholding republic to their south, and British officials often praised them for their loyalty. Yet the Patriots did not just condemn Canadian blacks; American blacks were also suspicious. They represented a potential British fifth column on American soil, who would stop at nothing to destroy the Patriot cause. In the first weeks at Navy Island, rumors spread among the Patriots that black cooks planned to poison them, leading

Thomas Jefferson Sutherland to warn Van Rensselaer, “For God’s sake look out for the negroes.”119 In Detroit, reports circulated that the “negroes are destroying things” across

Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Verso, 1990). On Preston King’s feelings of antislavery and racism, see Muller, “Preston King: A Political Biography,” 265-266, 335-336, 378-379. On the federal level, it was slavery that kept most southerners vehemently opposed to the Patriot War, for it brought with it a potential war with Great Britain. Whatever the outcome it would be poor for southerners. In the worst-case scenario, Britain would incite slave rebellions; if the war were won, Canada would be annexed, adding more free territory to the Union. See John Calhoun to James Edward Colhoun, Jan. 8, 1838 and Calhoun to Micah Sterling, Feb. 26, 1838, both in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Vol. 14, ed. Clyde Wilson (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1981), 70, 160; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. 9, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Philadelphia, 1876), 467. Radical abolitionists were also opposed to the Patriot War, not only because they deplored violence, but also because the British represented the pinnacle of antislavery sentiment in North America. Expelling them from Canada would only hurt the abolitionist cause. See The Liberator, Sept. 28, 1838 and Dec. 7, 1838. David Shields has made this point: Remarks at “The American Revolution Reborn” (conference, Philadelphia, June 1, 2013).

119 Sutherland to RVR, Dec. 1837 or Jan. 1838.

178 the river in Canada, and would soon loose their destruction on Detroit itself.120

Some Patriots uttered frustration with abolitionists who were so concerned with black slaves, but cared nothing for the “white slaves” in Canada.121 The Patriots also demonized Indians. Rumors of a British-incited Indian invasion arose on a regular basis.

Like the animosity towards blacks, these rumors also had some rationale: Canadian natives, like Canadian blacks, proved overwhelmingly loyal to the British during the rebellion. One letter-writer even feared the British would unleash both blacks and

Indians in a multi-pronged attack on the Patriots, arming slaves in the South and inviting them north, and simultaneously rousing Indians in the West to attack east.122 Of course, these reports were outlandish. While both Canadian blacks and natives were indeed overwhelmingly loyal to the British, at no point did their small numbers merit the panic of Patriot imagination. Nevertheless, behind the inflated rumors was an important truth: from the very outset of the conflict the Patriots were united by their whiteness. By preserving Upper Canada as a white republic, they would avoid completely and therefore solve the racial issues increasingly engulfing the United States.

120 Eliza A. Wing to Alexander Anderson, Jan. 5, 1838, John Anderson Papers, BHC.

121 Anonymous to Mackenzie, Sept. 8, 1838, Mackenzie Papers; J.A. Vail to Mackenzie, Dec. 7, 1838, MLF. Samuel C. Frey to Mackenzie, Jan. 4, 1838, MLF. For similar sentiments, see also Wilson Brooks to Caroline Brooks, Dec. 29, 1837, Brooks Papers, BHC, MLF; A. Barber to RVR, Dec. 28, 1837, MLF; Lucy Hawes to Richard Williams, Jan. 1, 1838, Hawes-Taber Family Letters, CL-UM. For the black defense of Canada during the Canadian Rebellions, see Horne, Negro Comrades of the Crown, 114-119; Van Gosse, “ ‘As a Nation, the English are Our Friends’: The Emergence of African American Politics in the British Atlantic World, 1772-1861,” American Historical Review 113, (Oct. 2008), 1012-1013; Fred Landon, “Canadian Negroes and the Rebellion of 1837,” The Journal of Negro History 7 (Oct. 1922), 377- 379. Praise of black loyalty: Arthur to Colborne, May 28(?), 1838, Arthur Papers, 1: 126. Lucy Hawes to Richard Williams, Dec. 29, 1837, Hawes-Taber Family Letters, CL-UM; S.C. Frey to Mackenzie, Jan. 4, 1838, MLF; Detroit Morning Post, November 15, 1838.

122 Chippewa Chiefs to S.P. Jarvis, Dec. 21, 1837, in The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada, 328; Adam Hope to his father, Dec. 11, 1846, in Letters of Adam Hope 1834-1845, ed. Adam Crerar (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 2007) 241; Graves, Guns Across the River, 46.

179 While this racial dynamic of shared whiteness was not the primary driver of the Patriot movement in the Great Lakes region, it certainly was a factor. To understand its importance, compare the Patriot War along the Upper Canadian border to the concurrent struggle in Vermont, where the Lower Canadian Patriotes planned to restart their rebellion. In Upper Canada, Anglo-American and Anglo-Canadian Patriots fought the British, blacks, and Indians – the three bête noires of the early republic. In Lower

Canada, by contrast, the conflict was French against British – or at least that is how

Americans perceived it. In reality, the Patriotes drew crucial support and leadership from Anglo-Canadians such as the brothers Wolfred and Robert Nelson, but nonetheless

Americans believed the conflict was ethnically driven. As one American explained the causes of the rebellion, the French population had a “considerable spice of national prejudice and hatred” towards the British.123 This perception helps explain why the marginal Upper Canadian Rebellion garnered several thousand American recruits, while the potentially revolutionary Lower Canadian Rebellion acquired several dozen. The dearth of American volunteers for the Patriotes did not mean Americans along the Lower

Canadian border were anti-French – quite the opposite, for many wished the Patriotes victory. Yet, in contrast to their attitude towards Anglo Upper Canadians, Americans perceived French Canadians as fundamentally different; unlike themselves, French

Canadians were not a revolutionary people – a sentiment that became more prevalent as rebel victory became increasingly doubtful. As one letter-writer put it, “The ‘habitants,’ generally, are an illiterate and peaceably disposed body of men, rather inclined to be penurious, and caring more for their ‘peculiar habits of life’ than for the kind of

123 Pennsylvania Inquirer, Dec. 15, 1837.

180 government under which they live.”124 Moreover, as the conflict wore on, it did assume the ethnic dynamic that Americans had placed upon it at the outset, as the French

Patriote rank-and-file in rural Lower Canada increasingly targeted English farmers. That

Robert Nelson’s proposed Lower Canadian Declaration of Independence called for the equality of all Canadian Indians could only have further alienated Americans from the struggle.125 While it had been several generations since joint French-Indian invasions had terrorized northern New England, these invasions remained in the public memory, and were recently revisited by James Fenimore Cooper in his first three Leatherstocking

Tales.126 Thus it is unsurprising that few Americans joined the Patriote armies that coalesced in northern Vermont and southern Lower Canada. Ultimately Americans could envision a future for themselves in Anglo Upper Canada, but not in French Lower

Canada; only Upper Canada would become a white – particularly Anglo – republic.127

Additionally, Upper Canada would be a masculine republic, a place where traditional understandings of manhood would triumph. From the outset, issues of masculinity permeated the Patriot movement, starting with the role of the Hunters

124 Plattsburgh Republican, Dec. 1, 1838.

125 Nelson’s Declaration: New-Hampshire Gazette, Nov. 20, 1838. The same translation of Nelson’s Declaration was reprinted in many American newspapers.

126 Ian Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the ‘Massacre’ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 149-176. Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales: The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827). The Prairie was set years later in the Midwest, but still referenced earlier events. See also Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier (Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 466-516

127 Articles explaining the conflict as French vs. English were numerous. See, for example, Connecticut Herald, Dec. 5, 1837; Pennsylvania Inquirer, Dec. 4, 1837; The Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiser, Dec. 16, 1837. See also Duffy and Muller, An Anxious Democracy, 43-86, 113; Greer, The Patriots and the People, 345; Little, Loyalties in Conflict, 101. On the lack of Americans in Patriote ranks: Duffy and Muller, An Anxious Democracy, 64-65; Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 152-152; Greer, The Patriots and the People, 345.

181 Lodges. Needless to say, these were strictly male organizations. Modeling themselves on Masonic Lodges – at first one region of lodges were known as the “Patriot

Masons” – the Hunters reportedly established elaborate initiation rituals, secret signs and passwords, and a complicated hierarchy of rank ranging from “Snowshoe” (the lowest) to

“Patriot Hunter (the highest).128 It is uncertain how many Hunters were also Freemasons, but during a time when the Masons were under attack, the Hunters provided an alternative, more legitimate form of organization.129 They also offered large feasts and copious alcohol to their members, providing what historian Mary Ann Clawson defined as a “culture of fraternalism.”130 Moreover, the Patriot War also provided something deeper: validation of their manhood. The Patriots believed their belligerence demonstrated masculinity, mirroring the masculinity of their fathers and grandfathers who fought in the Revolution. Even dead Patriots were deemed “manly corpses.”131 In contrast, the federal government’s pro-British measures represented a fundamental shift away from a masculine United States; in this too, the U.S. had lost its way. As one

American Patriot wrote, "We think more of the establishment of Banks, the price of stocks... prosperity of our foreign trade, the preservation of our ledges, bales and silks, than the preservation of that ennobling and glorious spirit of manly independence, that

128 For Patriot rituals, see Kinchen, Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters, Appendix II, 127-131; Thomas Fitnam to Mackenzie, Feb. 13, 1839, MLF, T.R. Preston, Three Years Residence in Upper Canada, from 1837 to 1839…(London, 1840), 1:159-166.

129 The end of the Hunters Lodges coincided with the revival of Freemasonry in the 1840s, although this could be more correlation than causation. See Steven Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 316.

130 Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 109.

131 “Mrs. Lount’s Letter,” in The Canadian, Jan. 1, 1838.

182 guided and directed the conduct of our fathers in the ‘age of revolution’.”132 Van

Buren received particular opprobrium. To one observer, unlike his predecessor Andrew

Jackson, Van Buren had “not acted with manly forwardness.”133 That Van Buren was deferring to Queen Victoria of all people was especially galling to some; she was, in one writer’s eyes, a “two legid strumpet” to whom no “states men or soldier” should

“bow.”134 To the Patriots, they were masculine, and – to an even greater degree – the

United States was not.135

Not only did the Patriots believe they were demonstrating their masculinity, but on a deeper level both the fight for Canadian freedom and life in the future Canadian republic promised a return to a conception of manhood currently disappearing in

American society. As the increasingly market-oriented North eroded many men’s personal independence, the Patriots gave this ideal renewed life. Patriot volunteers could prove their martial prowess at a time when both state militias and the U.S. Army seemed to offer diminishing prospects for glory and personal advancement. Additionally, they could acquire a significant amount of free land in a Canadian republic that still possessed ample undeveloped regions, which would allow them to maintain the custom of bestowing all of their sons with significant landholdings. To preserve this traditional economic custom, thousands of American families would move west in the early 1840s, but in 1838 this option seemed available in much closer Canada. The economic plans of

132 Hobart Berrian to Mackenzie, Nov. 21, 1838, MLF.

133 John Tracey to Mackenzie, Aug. 29, 1838, MLF.

134 John Griffon to Mackenzie, Jan. 28, 1839, MLF.

135 Portraying Van Buren as feminine was a frequent strategy for his opponents: Haynes, Unfinished Revolution, 122-123. On the relationship between filibustering and manhood, see Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 12-13.

183 Mackenzie and his radical Democratic allies pointed to just such a system, where men would be less beholden to the market and more in charge of their own – and their family’s – future. One British official even believed that many Americans who failed in the west now “looked to the Canadas” for similar remedies.136 Therefore, whether it came from their fighting prowess during the conflict or their acquisition of land after, the

Patriot cause provided a means to reassert the ideal of manhood in a world of increasingly unsettled gender categories.137

The many deep-seated reasons for joining the Patriots explain the Patriots’ remarkable persistence in the face of U.S. opposition. In the nine months after the Navy

Island campaign, Patriot plans within the Hunters Lodges proceeded at pace. Although small raids continued throughout the spring and summer, Patriot leaders had larger goals: a full-scale three-pronged invasion after the rivers froze, facilitating large-scale border crossing. A predominantly French Canadian army would revolt in Lower Canada, while

American-dominated Patriot armies would invade from northern New York and Detroit.

Successful invasions would be followed – it was hoped – by the mass uprisings of Upper and Lower Canadians within Canada, and the Canadian Revolution would begin anew.

Anticipating victory, Patriots in Cleveland – most of whom were American – organized a provisional government for Upper Canada, while the French-Canadian-dominated

136 Sir George Arthur to John Colbourne, March 20, 1839, Charles Burow Papers, BHC.

137 Robert May, “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny,” 874-875. On the desire to pass down land to all sons and its relationship to western migration, see Kathleen Neils Conzen, “A Saga of Families,” in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Milner, O’Connor, and Sandweiss (New York, 1994), 315-358. On manhood and the threat of the market revolution, see Joshua R. Greenberg, Advocating the Man: Masculinity, Organized Labor, and the Household in New York, 1800- 1840 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 49-118; Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 5-13; David Pugh, Sons of Liberty: The Masculine Mind in Nineteenth-Century America (Westport, CT, 1984), 3-44; E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 167-221.

184 Patriote exiles in Vermont did the same for Lower Canada. Yet U.S. officers and loyal state officials, backed by the recently arrived 2000 federal troops and wielding the powers of the Neutrality Act, increasingly hindered the Patriots. While they seemed to be able to hold meetings without interference – there is, for example, no evidence of the

United States intervening in the not-so-secret Cleveland convention – the Patriots were unable to organize along the border itself. And, of course, the British had been preparing for months for these invasions.

Facing British arms in Canada and American laws in the United States, the result was never in doubt: the Patriot armies were defeated piecemeal – first in Lower Canada, then on the New York border, and finally at Windsor, across the river from Detroit. At each battle it was British soldiers who proved decisive; the Patriots were primarily defeated by British might, not U.S. interference. Yet at each battle U.S. actions solidified

Patriot disasters, as U.S. officials patrolled their side of the border, preventing Patriot reinforcements from reaching Canada, and preventing the Patriot armies from retreating into the U.S. to fight another day. The Battle of the Windmill, fought near today’s

Prescott, Ontario, illustrates the point.138 A 300-man Patriot Army had disembarked from

Ogdensburg, New York, to cross the St. Lawrence River and occupy Prescott, but fearing

U.S. authorities, the army left hurriedly without waiting for reinforcements. The Patriots then attacked Prescott, but were easily repulsed by Canadian militia who had been warned by British spies in the U.S. Their next stop was a stone windmill downriver,

138 The Battle of Windmill is the most famous of all the Patriot battles, and as such many books narrate the battle. I have mostly relied on Graves, Guns Across the River, for it is both the most recent and most extensive of the accounts. See also Guillet, Lives and Times of the Patriots, 132-142; Tiffany, The Canadian Rebellion, 66-68; Kinchen, Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters, 70-78.

185 which acted both as defensive protection and a place to await reinforcements from both Canadians in the surrounding region and American Patriots across the river.

Canadian rebels never materialized, but some Americans did gather in Ogdensburg to aid the Patriots – at least until U.S. Colonel William Worth arrived.139

For a day Ogdensburg had been in complete control of the Patriots. When Worth reached the town, he immediately issued warrants to arrest the Patriot commanders for violating the Neutrality Act. These leaders were of course across the border at the time, but undoubtedly the purpose of the warrants was just as much about warning potential

Patriots from involvement as it was about arresting those already fighting. Then, with the aid of a few loyal local officials, he seized several schooners that had been supplying the

Patriots across the river. Now the Patriots in the windmill were alone. There was no longer any possibility of reinforcement or resupply. A few American sympathizers did undertake a rescue mission, possibly with the tacit approval of Worth, but it ended in failure.140 For several days the Patriots held out in the windmill as more and more British troops surrounded their position. Across the river hundreds of people Ogdensburg cheered on their endeavors from the town rooftops, but this only added insult to injury: as one Patriot remembered bitterly, these hundreds of spectators never had the “moral courage” to aid the Patriots, although it seems unlikely any could have reached the

Patriots with Worth patrolling the river.141 Once the British heavy guns arrived and

139 The Patriots chose their landing spot poorly. The Prescott region had been settled by Loyalists from the Revolution, who then fought against the U.S. during the War of 1812. Graves, Guns Across the River, 101.

140 According to several authors, the mission failed because the man sent to deliver the message to the besieged Patriots actually urged them to hold out. Guillet, Lives and Times of the Patriots, 137; Graves, Guns Across the River, 135.

141 Stephen Wright, Narrative and Recollections of Van Dieman’s Land…(1844), 7.

186 started pummeling the windmill, the Patriots had no choice but to raise the white flag. In the end 161 Patriots surrendered to the British; in the weeks that followed sixty were exiled to Van Diemen’s Land, and eleven were executed.

The Memory and Legacy of the Patriot War

The November 1838 invasions of Canada marked the apogee of the Patriot movement. After three crushing defeats most American Patriots – meaning by now most of the Patriots in general – gave up the struggle. Some Patriots changed their strategy, and through border raids hoped to provoke a war between the U.S. and Britain. These diehards, however, were actually desperate and deluded (anti-Patriot rhetoric finally matched reality), and former leaders such as Mackenzie perceived as much.142 For several years Patriot activity persisted on a low level, ebbing and flowing depending on

U.S.-British relations. Briefly the Hunters Lodges saw a marked resurgence during the trial of Alexander McLeod. McLeod was a Canadian sheriff involved in the Caroline

Affair, and while in New York in 1840 he was arrested for the murder of the one

American sailor who had been killed. Patriots hoped a guilty verdict for McLeod, followed by his execution, would lead to war between Britain and the U.S., but effective and discreet management by the federal government led to an innocent verdict, further damping Patriot hopes.143 In 1839 Lord Durham issued his famous report recommending responsible government for Canada, and in 1842 the U.S. and Britain signed the Webster-

142 Theller to Mackenzie, Nov. 27, 1838, MLF; Theller to Mackenzie, Dec. 10, 1838, MLF; Gates, “Mackenzie’s Gazette,” 127.

143 For a detailed explanation of the McLeod case, see Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 71-156.

187 Ashburton Treaty, settling the Caroline Affair and all other border controversies.

These measures killed the Patriot movement for good.

Thus the Patriots stand as an anomaly in this dissertation. Unlike the many other breakaway republicans of this study, the Patriots were not incorporated by the unprecedented U.S. expansion of the mid-1840s and the backdoor manipulations of

President Polk. Instead, they were countered directly by the U.S. state in the late 1830s – and defeated directly. The reason for this was easily explainable, and had nothing to do with the ideology of American expansion. Rather, it was a simple calculation of realpolitik: no matter how many federal officials loathed the British, almost all realized the United States could ill afford a war with them. Between the tiny size of the U.S.

Army and the devastating depression, coupled with the massive British troop buildup in

Canada due to the rebellions, the United States’ immediate prospects in this war were terrible, and not much better over the long term. No wonder the Van Buren administration cooperated with the British in crushing Patriot activity. Importantly, these direct U.S. countermeasures and the subsequent Patriot defeat provide a contemporary historical lens on the imagined breakaway republic of Canada that is unavailable with the other breakaway republicans of this study. In this case, Americans were forced to contemplate the meaning of the Patriot movement – and breakaway republicanism more generally – in ways they did not have to in 1846, when unprecedented U.S. expansion subsumed all in its path.

Contemplation began with the nature of the Patriot movement itself. As the

Patriots and their Hunters Lodges disappeared, most former members tried to forget their involvement. The cause of a Canadian Republic had been an embarrassing failure, and

188 involvement in the Hunters proof of illegal activity, and it seems most American participants simply returned to their lives, destroying evidence of their connection to the

Hunters in the process.144 However, famous Patriot leaders and those exiled to Van

Diemen’s Land could not hide their participation, and wrote several memoirs justifying their actions. One novel strategy in their justifications was internationalizing the scope of the Patriot War by comparing the struggle to the 1836 Texas Revolution, which created the breakaway republic of the era. Importantly, this comparison was one of hindsight.

The Patriot War had arose out of localism, as Americans and Canadians who knew each other intimately fought in and for the region where they lived; no Patriot cited Texas during the struggle. Yet an after-the-fact comparison to Texas achieved two important goals. First, it provided a veil of legitimacy to what had become an illegitimate movement. Van Rensselaer demonstrated this when he explained his actions as a northerner in Canada “emulating the chivalrous example of the South in the case of

Texas.”145 In essence, Van Rensselaer was not a discredited vagabond (as many began to portray him), but a northern Sam Houston, and thus deserved praise for his noble actions.

In this case the Texas comparison attempted to restore honor to the Patriot cause.

More often, the Texas comparison shifted the blame for Patriot defeat away from the Patriots themselves and to the United States government, without the bitter pill of giving credit to the strength of British loyalism or the potency of the British military.

Daniel Heustis, one of the exiles to Van Diemen’s Land, lamented that, in the case of

Upper Canada, “Troops were sent to the frontier, not to punish our insatiable foe, but to

144 See note 84, above.

145 Bonney, Legacy of Historical Gleanings, 79.

189 assist her in crushing the republican spirit which threatened to uproot British power in Canada.” Yet, during the Texas Rebellion troops came and went “without molestation” by the American government.146 Other Patriots took this narrative one step further, claiming the differing U.S. policies towards the northern and southern borders reflected the dominance of slave interests in the government.147 Of course these statements were both self-serving and inaccurate: differing U.S. actions with Texas and

Canada had little to do with slavery and everything to with vastly different capabilities of

Mexico and Great Britain. Despite their inaccuracy, however, these statements tapped into a larger national debate within the United States that also compared Texas and

Canada, and spoke to the relationship between the United States as a state and Americans as a people.

Despite their drastically different outcomes, it was logical for Americans to compare the Texas Revolution and the Patriot War, for they did mirror one another in important ways. In both, due to a combination of personal interests and republican ideology, Americans left the United States to fight for a foreign cause. Cross-border ties added additional impetus, as Americans felt they were fighting for people who were just like themselves; indeed, Anglo-Texans and older Upper Canadians were once Americans.

Americans volunteered to fight for each cause in eerily similar numbers – several thousand actually fought, but were buttressed by tens of thousands who donated money

146 Daniel D. Heustis, A narrative of the adventures and sufferings of Captain Daniel D. Heustis and his companions in Canada and Van Dieman's land during a long captivity [microform]: with travels in California and voyages at sea (1848) 55-56.

147 William Gates, Recollections of Life in Van Diemen’s Land (1850), 14-15; Sutherland, “The Sword and the Pen,” 25; Mackenzie’s Gazette, July 21, 1838;

190 and arms.148 Most importantly, Americans who fought envisioned futures for themselves within these new republics. In Texas, the evidence for this assertion is obvious: thousands of Americans remained in Texas after the war ended.149 In Canada, where defeat prevented American settlement, evidence is found in the American letters requesting high rank and pay, and in Mackenzie’s inducement of free land. Yet differing outcomes pointed to the crucial difference between the two when it came to national opinion: rapid Texas victory meant the United States never had to confront the meaning of Americans leaving the U.S. to fight for a foreign cause. Whigs attacked U.S. actions – or, rather, inaction – as a stain on national honor for violating an international treaty, but no one was forced to examine the meaning of Americans emigrating and fighting for a breakaway republic, a would-be foreign country.150 In contrast, Patriot endurance in spite of initial defeats, coupled with British power and U.S. interference, compelled consideration of such a phenomenon.

This exploration of the nation began from almost the moment the Patriots occupied Navy Island. The Buffalo Daily Commercial Advertiser outlined the conflict in one of the most perceptive editorials of the entire conflict, worth quoting in full:

We are naturally a warlike people, we love a fight, and have so much of John Bull in our composition, that a broil cannot occur near our borders, without us feeling an earnest desire to exchange a few blows with one or the other side. Each man feels a

148 Paul Lack estimates 3,685 soldiers fought in the Texas Army, of whom approximately half came from the U.S. within a year of the revolution. This compares to the numbers Graves estimated for the Patriots, note 86 above. See Paul D. Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835-1836 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1995), 129.

149 Technically Texans did not stop fighting Mexico until 1848, but after San Jacinto the fighting was much more sporadic and never threatened the existence of the Texas Republic itself.

150 National Intelligencer, for example, called the U.S. involvement in the Texas Revolution a “war in disguise,” which drew praise from many other Whig presses. See National Intelligencer, July 26, 1836; Aug. 10, 1836.

191 right to cock his beaver [i.e. aim his gun] as independently as a king, and when we hear of people who are fighting for liberty, we are almost irresistibly impelled to join, without stopping very nicely to examine whether they have the right or not. This feeling induced thousands to engage in the Texas contest. They cared nothing for the laws of nations, neither did they take the trouble to inquire with what justices Texas raised the standard of independence. A field for wild adventure and distinction was opened - this, together with a rude love of liberty in the abstract, and perhaps an eye to main chance - for Yankees, whether at the south or north, rarely forget that - induced them to espouse hear and soul the cause of Texas. The Canada contest presents the same motives for action, and we see that it daily produces similar effects. The whole country is alive with a feeling in favor of the Canadians, and bands of from five to ten, fifty, and one hundred persons, from the interior towns and villages, are very little while marching towards the frontier, all fully armed and burning for active service.151

The paper’s list of American motivations for volunteering – “adventure,” “distinction,”

“love of liberty,” and “an eye to main chance” – was a succinct and remarkably accurate description of American motivations for joining the Patriots. Despite this relatively sympathetic description of American participation, the paper made two pleas. First, while individuals may want to fight in Canada, national self-interest necessitated peace, especially in the wake of the Panic of 1837. In essence, the U.S. nation superseded

American individuals. Additionally, if war did come, it should come as a national war between the U.S. and Britain, proclaimed “openly and above board,” with the U.S. espousing the Patriot cause as its own. This, rather than “sneaking aid to the insurgents,” was a “more manly course.”152 Thus the people must follow the flag, and the nation must either be completely neutral or totally committed to war – half measures were unacceptable.

151 Buffalo Daily Commercial Advertiser, Dec. 21, 1837.

152 Here is a good example of the other form of manhood Greenberg cites, what she terms “restrained manhood,” that valued national honor, commerce, and reform: Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 11-12.

192 The Buffalo Daily Commercial Advertiser was not alone in describing

Americans at war while the U.S. was at peace.153 Other observers of the Patriot War echoed this theme. John Brooks, a Detroit merchant, was unsure how he felt about this phenomenon. On the one hand the Patriots were a “damn pack of rascals,” but on the other hand the “General Government” was leaving American citizens to be “kicked, cuff’d, kill’d, and kidnapped” by the British. Ultimately he decided that, if the state would not protect the people, he was “glad to see that the people are trying to take redress without regards to the General Government.”154 Henry Clay took a different stance, writing to Buffalo politician Peter Porter, “It is a monstrous spectacle to behold our government at peace and our people at war.”155 A firsthand observer of the Battle of the

Windmill echoed Clay: the Patriot War was “a war of people without government.”156 Of course the Patriots would have retorted that it was nothing of the sort, for a provisional government had been planned in detail (twice!). Outside of the border region, however, few were sympathetic to their arguments, especially in the halls of Congress.

In January 1838, in response to events on Navy Island and along the northern frontier, Congress began debating a proposed Neutrality Act. As noted above, this act strengthened an 1818 neutrality law by giving officials on the border more leeway to prevent armed men and supplies from crossing U.S. borders. The law expanded the definition of what could be seized, and allowed officials to temporarily act without a

153 The Easton (Md.) Gazette printed a very similar editorial that noted Americans were good at “keeping busy,” both in their own country and across their borders: Dec. 23, 1837.

154 John Brooks to Wilson Brooks, Jan. 23, 1838, Brooks Letters, BHC-DPL.

155 Clay to Porter, Dec. 25, 1837, Roll 12, Clay-Porter Correspondence, BECHS.

156 Thomas Russell to his father, Nov. 18, 1838, Canada Rebellion Papers, St. Lawrence University.

193 warrant if they suspected the men and goods were going to violate U.S. neutrality.157 James Buchanan from Pennsylvania proposed the law in the Senate, leading one paper to deem it “Buchanan’s neutrality bill.”158 In his proposal, Buchanan maintained that it was against all “reason and justice” that American citizens should be allowed to cross U.S. borders and engage in war. He went on, “If this be tolerated, then it is in the power of the people along the borders of our country to force the whole nation into war…”159 Buchanan’s general message was clear: U.S. borders needed to be controlled. Seemingly lost on Buchanan was the irony that U.S. borders had been porous for more than half a century, but the lack of state control had actually facilitated U.S. expansion. American settlers had poured over the western border into French Louisiana and the southern border into Spanish Florida, putting pressure on both Spain and France to eventually cede the territories. More recently in the southwest, porousness had helped wrest Texas away from Mexico, and although it was not yet U.S. territory, it was at least a fellow Anglo-American republic. Along the northern border, where the British stood ready, this long-ignored border-crossing pattern was now unacceptable. The Senate never acknowledged this irony or substantially challenged Buchanan’s assertions, speedily passing the bill.

In the House the Neutrality Act was a tougher sell, but largely because several congressmen tried to strengthen the bill. For a week the House debated the minutia of individual words that had been added, finally rejecting it 88 to 76. This rejection,

157 See Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 27-8; Corey, The Crisis of 1830-1842 in Canadian-American Relations, 49-57.

158 Washington Daily National Intelligencer, Jan. 22, 1838.

159 Congressional Globe, 25 Congress, 2nd Sess., 103-4.

194 however, was not one of general principle – as one congressmen noted after the vote, no one disagreed about preventing Americans from invading a neighboring country, but only on its details.160 Despite the bill’s general acceptance, the debates in the House are instructive for how congressmen viewed the United States. Unsurprisingly, past events and possible future events in Texas constantly entered the discussion. Multiple congressmen engaged in theoretical discussion of just what, exactly, Americans had a right to do on the border. Did Americans have a right to leave the U.S. with arms? If so, what if these arms were going to be used to fight the country they entered? And if they were, should this alter U.S. policy? After a few days of debate, John Crockett, son of

Alamo martyr David Crockett, had had enough of the Texas talk, and rose to defend the actions of Americans in Texas. Key to his defense was the goal of Americans who had left for Texas. Because these men planned to become citizens of Texas, they were only exercising their “unquestionable rights” in leaving the United States as armed, private citizens. James Garland, a Democrat from Virginia, countered Crockett: “It would be…an anomaly in the history of nations, that your citizens could be at war, while your

Government was neutral. [I do] not believe in this doctrine, that your citizens can fit out expeditions against other Governments on the plea that they were going to expatriate themselves.”161 Of course this “anomaly” was just what the Patriots argued for, hoping the U.S. would simply leave them alone to plan their Canadian invasions. One week

160 Ibid., 199.

161 Ibid., 199. For a more in-depth discussion of the prevalence and acceptability of expatriation in the early republic, see Eric R. Schlereth, “Privileges of Locomotion: Expatriation and the Politics of Southwestern Border Crossing,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 100, No. 4 (March 2014), 995- 1020.

195 later, however, more congressmen sided with Garland than Crockett (and the

Patriots), and passed the Neutrality Act.

From a modern perspective it is easy to impugn the Neutrality Act. It increased the power of U.S. agents on the border, but it remained limited in both scope and duration: officials could only arrest violators after they returned to U.S. soil, and it expired after two years. However, the federal government placed 2,000 troops on the border (out of a total of 8,000 in the entire U.S.), and appropriated $625,000 for border security, measures that added some teeth to the bill’s limitations.162 Judging by the statements of the Patriots, many of whom were arrested under the law’s statute, its effects were very real.163 A few years later, after the McLeod case caused a resurgence of Patriot activity, Winfield Scott bemoaned its expiration for restricting his powers.164 Beyond the immediate goal of curbing the Patriots, the Neutrality Act held a larger importance that went unnoticed at the time. The nonpartisan Patriot movement was met by a bipartisan and multi-sectional response from the U.S. government: Whigs and Democrats, northerners, southerners, and westerners – most supported the bill. For Whigs, the traditional proponents of a strong state, this support was unsurprising. Jacksonian

Democrats, however, had always defended the rights of states and the actions of individuals vis-à-vis the federal government. Indeed, Andrew Jackson himself epitomized this attitude when he illegally invaded Spanish Florida in 1817. By 1837, however, a majority of Democrats in Congress, pushed by the Democratic Van Buren

162 U.S. Statues at Large, Vol, 5, ed. Richard Brown (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1856) 209-210.

163 G.H. McCotton to Mackenzie, Feb. 21, 1838, Anonymous to Mackenzie, May 29, 1838, BHC-DPL; A.K. McKenzie to Mackenzie, Feb. 1, 1839, MLF.

164 Scott to Captain Monroe, July 8, 1841, Winfield Scott Collection, CL-UM.

196 Administration, voted to enforce U.S. borders and prevent individual Americans from waging war as they saw fit. Democrat James Buchanan shepherded the Neutrality

Act through the Democratic-majority Senate, while fellow Democrat James Polk, as

Speaker of the House, oversaw its passage through the Democratic-majority House.

Eight years later, President Polk, with the support of Secretary of State Buchanan, would provoke a border war himself, sending the United States Army across the disputed U.S.-

Mexican border.

In contrast to 1846, United States’ officials in 1837 were much less sure of themselves. The congressional debate on the Neutrality Act revolved around themes of rampant movement, violence, and lawlessness – themes that other Americans expressed when they contemplated the Patriot War and its relevance to the larger United States. For many, the Patriot War was but a representation of the turbulent times, especially when coupled with the ongoing depression. Thomas Love, former congressmen from northern

New York, wrote a long diatribe against the Patriots, and then bemoaned the state of the

U.S.: “Our own country is laboring with a spirit of disunion – of revolution both social and sectional, of anarchy and violence which want let loose, as by a foreign war [with

Britain] it must be, would be followed by intestine convulsions…”165 Other observers of the Patriot War also predicted some sort of national calamity.166 The conflict provided evidence that the U.S. simply could not control its own citizens, a phenomenon also

165 Thomas Love to James Shedden, Jan. 17, 1838, Thomas Love Letters, BECHS.

166 Eben Ward to Emily Ward, Ward Family Papers, BHC-DPL; William Upjohn Diary, Dec. 31, 1838, BHC-DPL.

197 exemplified during the Texas Revolution.167 Indeed, to Kentucky Representative

Richard Menifee, one begat the other, for allowing Americans to enter Texas at will led to a “lawless” feeling among American citizens along the northern border.168 The editor of the Detroit Free Press, observing the Patriots firsthand, believed that Americans had

“degenerated to the spirit of mobocracy.”169 To many, the Patriot War was but one part of a larger malaise afflicting a United States mired in depression and unrest.

While some Americans believed the Patriot War indicated uncertain times, others believed it was uncertain times that caused the Patriot War; the conflict was just as much a product as a symptom of the era. Statements that tied the Patriot War to depression, the

Texas Revolution, and general unrest point back to the motivations of American Patriots themselves. For outside observers the Patriot War represented one part of a restless and uncertain United States. American Patriots, in contrast, volunteered to fight for a

Canadian Republic because of this uncertainty.170 Whatever it was that Patriots sought, it was no longer available in the United States. Depression and population increase diminished access to money and land – but these were available in a Canadian Republic.

With an army of 8,000 men, fighting for the United States hardly promised glory in war – but glory was possible in a Canadian Revolution. The factories and proto-factories in the north only guaranteed dependence and drudgery – but excitement could be found in

167 James Ronaldson to Poinsett, Mar. 2, 1838, 10-61, Poinsett Papers, HSP. Here the British would have decidedly agreed. British officials constantly diagnosed Americans as lawless, or, in the words of one Canadian paper, “unadulterated sovereign rascals.” Upper Canadian Herald, quoted in the Detroit Morning Post, Nov. 22, 1838.

168 Congressional Globe, 25 Congress, 2nd Session, 83.

169 Detroit Free Press, Nov. 21, 1838.

170 Here I echo the findings of Duffy and Muller, who diagnosed an “anxious” democracy by looking at Vermont in the 1830s, including Vermonters in the Patriot War: Duffy and Muller, An Anxious Democracy.

198 Canada. A Canadian Republic promised many things the American Republic no longer could in 1837. Thus joining the Patriots was a logical gamble on the future.

Despite their logic, the Patriots faced insurmountable odds, even before U.S. interference. Britain’s potent military routed the Patriots at every engagement. U.S. involvement augmented the impossibility of Patriot success. By preventing the Patriots from organizing and reinforcing, the U.S. made each Patriot invasion a one shot deal. In this latter explanation lies the final and perhaps most important meaning of the Patriot

War for the Americans involved. Despite a plethora of anti-U.S. rhetoric, American

Patriots never fought the United States – or, more accurately, fellow Americans. Some expressed a desire to, and U.S. and British officials worried they would, but no Patriot-

U.S. battle – or even violence – ever occurred.171 In spite of widespread disaffection, the

United States survived the crisis intact because American Patriots were unwilling to attack fellow Americans. Undoubtedly American Patriots committed treason against the

U.S. They stole weapons, and local and state militia constantly betrayed U.S. plans, but this never translated to violence against Amerians. In the few instances where the

Patriots confronted a sizeable number of U.S. troops, their peaceful submission to U.S. authority can be explained as self-preservation. More often, however, Patriot numbers dwarfed the few federal officials and U.S. soldiers present, but nonetheless the Patriots disbanded when ordered. Such was the case when Colonel Worth arrived in Ogdensburg

171 For example, one Patriot on Navy Island expressed his willingness to fire on both American and British authorities. John Mitchell to RVR, Jan. 10, 1838, MLF. Daniel Webster, investigating the Hunters Lodges in 1842 as the McLeod case came to a climax, believed that if war broke out between the U.S. and Britain, the Hunters would unite with the Canadian rebels as a third, independent force. Daniel Webster to John Tyler, July, 1841, in Letters of Daniel Webster, ed. C.H. Van Tyne (New York, 1902), 232-233. George Arthur, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, believed that the Hunters’ Lodges to “revolutionize” the United States. Sir George Arthur to W.H. Hamilton, Jan. 2, 1838, The Arthur Papers, 2: 4.

199 during the Battle of the Windmill. His presence singlehandedly changed the situation, as Patriots who planned to aid their comrades across the river acceded to

Worth’s demands. Despite widespread disaffection with U.S. actions and extensive economic hardship caused by the Panic, the continued identity of American Patriots as

Americans prevented even the potential for civil war.

Perhaps it was this lack of American-on-American violence that ensured most contemporary Americans quickly forgot about the Patriot War. For those on the border, however, the Patriot War remained a vivid memory, despite what seems to be an unofficial policy of silence in the decades that followed.172 For over a year fervor to free

Canada had reigned on the border. Thousands of Americans had volunteered, and ultimately over a hundred Americans died in the struggle. Many, such as Ogdensburg postmaster and future Democratic and Free Soil congressman Preston King, simply could not forget. King was a prominent Ogdensburg citizen with many family connections to

Canada, and, as detailed above, in the aftermath of the Canadian Rebellions he became a staunch promoter of the Patriot cause.173 However, initial Patriot failures caused King to actively abandon the struggle. Over the next year he remained a passive supporter, judging by his continued subscription and support for Mackenzie’s Gazette.174 During the

Battle of the Windmill it was King who provided the impetus to rescue the besieged

172 See the letters to the editor in Robert Ross, “The Patriot War,” Michigan Historical Collections XXI (Lansing, Mich.: 1894), 601-609. Indeed, Ross’ entire account was written largely from memoirs of the citizens of Michigan – both Patriot and not-Patriot.

173 There is no published biography of King, although his influence over three decades of politics suggests the need for one. The most recent full-length study is Ernest Muller, “Preston King: A Political Life” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1957.) See pages 200-238 for King’s involvement in the Patriot War.

174 Preston King to Mackenzie, Oct. 2, 1838; King to Mackenzie, Oct. 5, 1838, MLF.

200 Patriots, but when he arrived at on the Canadian shore one of his companions told the Patriots that 500 reinforcements were coming. With this news, the Patriots refused to leave the windmill. Soon the British fired on King’s boat from the shore, forcing him to return to Ogdensburg empty-handed.

Despite his efforts on the behalf of the Patriots, King was subject to a smear campaign by the Patriot press in the weeks that followed. This vindictiveness, coupled with executions of the Patriots whom King had hoped to rescue, caused him to spiral into depression.175 Eventually he checked himself into a Hartford asylum, emerging three months later a seemingly cured man. King would go on to be an influential Democratic congressmen in the 1840s. His free soil principles caused him to leave the Democrats and join the Republicans, serving as a Republican senator from 1857 to 1863. In 1865

President Lincoln appointed King the Collector of the New York City Port, a post King did not seek or want. He was soon overwhelmed by the duties of the job, prompting him to fall into a “morbid state,” according to a friend.176 On November 12th King rowed out into the middle of the East River, weighed himself down with rocks, and jumped overboard. His suicide prompted New York papers to equate his recent state of depression with his behavior after the Battle of the Windmill almost three decades prior.177 The Albany Argus turned this comparison into an attack, claiming that this was

175 It seems King’s nephew was also killed in the Battle of the Windmill, fighting for the loyal Canadian militia – King’s sister lived in Canada. However, it is unknown whether King was close to his nephew, and this fact seems to never have been mentioned by King himself. King’s family tree is discussed in Richard P. Eckels, “Preston King: A Preliminary Memoir,” in Folder 60A, Preston King/Simeon Smith Papers, St. Lawrence University.

176 New York Times, Nov. 26, 1865

177 New York Herald, Nov. 15, 1865; New York Times, Nov. 26, 1865. See also Ross, “Recollections of the Patriot War,” 606-607.

201 the second time he suffered from a “cause deserted and companions betrayed,” for his suicide was simply a repetition of his actions during the Patriot War.178 The New

York press had clearly not forgotten the Patriot War. It seems Preston King had not forgotten either; although no paper noticed, the day of King’s suicide was the anniversary of the Battle of the Windmill.

Conclusion

The Patriot War proved that breakaway republicanism could happen anywhere

Americans lived – or hoped they could live. For a brief time, it was just as much a northeast phenomenon as it was a western or southern one. In the end British strength – which defeated the Patriots directly, and indirectly forced the United States to crackdown on Patriot activity – ensured that breakaway republicanism would not flourish on the

United States’ northern border. The Patriots’ failure demonstrated breakaway republicanism needed two components to flourish: ideology and geopolitical space.

Undoubtedly the Patriots possessed the former, to which their remarkable persistence attests, but they never had the latter. Because of British arms and the strength of

Canadian loyalism, Canada was never welcoming territory, and by the end of 1838 neither was the United States. Ultimately, British power along the northern border ensured that breakaway republicanism would become a southern and western phenomenon. There, breakaway republicans possessed both the ideology of breakaway republicanism and geopolitical space. Ironically, the Cherokee were the first breakaway republicans to understand this, but had never meant to move to the west in the first place.

178 Daily Albany Argus (New York), Nov. 20, 1865.

202 However, as the following chapter will demonstrate, once in the West Cherokee leaders understand that their new home brought with a geopolitical opportunity – the opportunity to create a breakaway republic for themselves.

203 CHAPTER 4

THE AUTONOMOUS CHEROKEE REPUBLIC, 1838-1846

Introduction

In February 1844, John Elliott and James Hose pleaded with Cherokee Agent

Pierce Butler for assistance. Elliott and Hose were members of the Cherokee Nation, and lived in the portion of Indian Territory that the U.S had designated for the Cherokee.

According to Elliott and Hose, they had been minding their own business when a company of Cherokee “police guard” arrived at their homes and arrested them. The

Cherokee police suspected Elliott and Hose of plotting to rescue George West, another

Cherokee who had been arrested for murdering Isaac Bushyhead. Bushyhead and the

Cherokee police were members of the “Ross Party,” the supporters of John Ross who deplored the 1835 Treaty of New Echota that had eventually forced the Cherokee to move west on what later was termed the “Trail of Tears.” West, Elliott, and Hose were members of the “Treaty Party,” a minority faction that supported removal and opposed

Ross’ leadership. The Cherokee police imprisoned Elliott, Hose, and many other Treaty

Party men for several days without charge, eventually releasing them due to lack of evidence. Yet the Treaty Party men feared continued harassment, writing to Butler:

“…We pray you will do something for us, if it is to send us to the mountains among the wild and savage Indians and fall victim to the tomahawk or prey for the wild beasts…or send us from our country…where we will have none but our God and ourselves to look too for protection.” Any of these options were “preferable,” for living under the Ross

204 Party meant living under “tyrannical power and oppression.” To the Treaty Party,

Ross was effectively a dictator.1

Although its hysteria was inflated – the Treaty Party had no plans to die among the “wild Indians” in the far west – Elliott and Hose’s letter nevertheless reveals important truths about the nature of sovereignty in the Cherokee Nation, a territory composed of 4000 square miles in the northeast corner of Indian Territory (today’s

Oklahoma).2 John Ross and his allies enjoyed the wide support of a significant majority of the 20,000 Cherokee living in the nation, making his rule essentially republican.

However, behind the Ross Party’s democratic legitimacy lay the threat of real force. To administer the Cherokee Nation, the Ross Party deployed the Cherokee Light Horse against all those that challenged its power, whether it was Treaty Party opponents, hostile whites across the Arkansas border, or any individual who broke the nation’s laws.

During moments of heightened violence, a force of several hundred men guarded John

Ross, matching the number of U.S. troops garrisoning the Arkansas frontier.3

Importantly, the Ross Party never intended this force to be used against U.S. soldiers themselves, and steadfastly maintained a policy of peace with the federal government – although many neighboring whites argued the contrary. The very existence of the Light

Horse, however, was a powerful real world authentication of the Cherokee Nation’s continued rhetorical assertion of its sovereignty. While Ross and his allies never

1 John Elliott and James Hose to Pierce Butler, Feb. 12, 1844, Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, M234: Cherokee Agency, National Archives, Washington D.C. (hereafter OIA).

2 For a further breakdown of the borders and acres of the Cherokee Nation, see William McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears: The Cherokees’ Struggle for Sovereignty, 1839-1880 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 388, note 2.

3 Butler to Thomas Crawford, Aug. 12, 1843, OIA.

205 contemplated full independence for the Cherokee Nation, they believed the nation possessed a significant level of autonomy, essentially full domestic sovereignty.

Importantly, this level of sovereignty guaranteed that the Cherokee were not subject to the jurisdiction of any U.S. officials within the Cherokee Nation itself. The Cherokee would govern themselves.

American historians, even many of those who concentrate on the Cherokee, have either ignored the story of Cherokee sovereignty in the West, or relegated it to a tragic coda of Indian removal. Both general U.S. surveys and specific works on the Cherokee often end the Cherokee story with the Trail of Tears, overlooking the resurgence of

Cherokee power in Indian Territory.4 Works that do continue the story often focus on the internal dynamics of Cherokee society, and rarely delve into the Cherokees’ relationship with their neighbors.5 They have missed an important political story. By placing the

4 Works on the Cherokee that either ignore the post-removal period or relegate it to secondary importance include William McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Thurman Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy: The Story of the Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1971); Duane H. King, ed., The Cherokee Nation: A Troubled History (Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1979); Stanley W. Hoig, The Cherokees and their Chiefs: In the Wake of Empire (Fayetteville, AK: University of Arkansas Press, 1998). General surveys that ignore the post-removal Cherokee and removed Indians more generally include Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005); Daniel Walker Hower, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Anne Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011); Clyde Milner, Carol O’Connor, and Martha Sandweiss, ed., The Oxford History of the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

5 Works that fail to place the Cherokee into the larger geopolitics of the American West – at least before the Civil War – include Gregory D. Smithers, The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015); McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears; Andrew Denson, Demanding the Cherokee Nation: Indian Autonomy and American Culture, 1830- 1900 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004); Duane Champagne, Social Order and Political Change: Constitutional Governments among the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Creek (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 176-207. Works that do detail the geopolitics of the Cherokee include Grant Foreman, Advancing the Frontier, 1830-1860 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 1933); David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors: Southern Plains and Removed Indians in Indian Territory (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), John Bowes, Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007),122-151; Brad

206 Cherokee on the western border of the United States, the federal government inadvertently made the Cherokee geopolitical players. Until the United States’ 1845 annexation of Texas, the Cherokee Nation was situated in “advance of the frontier,” as historian Grant Foreman once described.6 Because the Cherokee now lived outside all

U.S. states and far from American population centers, the dominant Ross Party could assert itself against U.S. officials, engage in pan-Indian diplomacy, and envision a future where the Cherokee Nation possessed effective sovereignty.

In essence, the Cherokee could – and did – become breakaway republicans.

During the same years that Anglo-Texans carved out a republic in the Southwest, and

Americans along the northern border tried to carve out a republic in Canada, the

Cherokee seized the same window of opportunity to create a republic for themselves west of the Arkansas border. Despite the vast geographic scope, these moments ran together.

After the Patriots went underground in early 1838, it seemed that peace had returned to the northern frontier, so the Van Buren administration sent the indispensable Winfield

Scott from New York to Georgia to oversee Cherokee removal. As he mistrusted the militia along the northern border, so too did Scott mistrust the local Georgia militia, for

Georgians wanted Cherokee land and cared little for ensuring Cherokee survival. He requested federal troops, but – as along the northern border – there were none available, and he had to make do with the militia. By the summer Scott’s forces had succeeded in forcing the Cherokee into camps, but then Scott was called back to the northern border to deal with the resurgent Patriots and their Hunters Lodges. Scott’s departure meant the

Agnew, Fort Gibson: Terminal on the Trail of Tears (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 185- 204.

6 Grant Foreman, Advancing the Frontier.

207 Cherokee proceeded without federal supervision. Scott’s journey from Canada to

Georgia and back to Canada epitomized the Texas Moment on a personal level: the

United States simply did not have enough troops to control its borders and the movement of peoples within them.7

No wonder the Ross Party saw a chance to claim sovereignty in the West. From a sheer demographic stance, the vastly outnumbered Cherokee could not compete with

Georgian whites, and thus had little choice to move. Demonstrated by Scott’s travails, however, federal power over the Cherokee fluctuated, particularly when the Cherokee moved west of the Arkansas border into Indian Territory. Unlike their previous homeland within the confines of Georgia, their new home was part of a vast geopolitical vacuum in the American Southwest, where the Cherokee now had space to reassert their sovereignty. Many U.S. officials and neighboring whites in Arkansas feared this development, and with their Treaty Party allies worked to ensure the Cherokee Nation remained as dependent on and subordinate to the United States as possible. For almost a decade the two sides countered one another, until decisive diplomacy by the Polk

Administration forced the Ross Party to capitulate in the summer of 1846, a time when

Texas annexation and the U.S-Mexican War ensured the Cherokee were once again surrounded by the U.S. state. After the 1846 treaty, the Ross Party still maintained political control, but only with the acquiescence of the federal government. No longer geopolitical players, the Cherokee were now permanently subordinate to the United

States.

7 Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott (New York, 1864), 301-354.

208 Importantly, by focusing on the Cherokee, I am not arguing that they were the only native people who struggled to maintain sovereignty in the West. On the contrary, all Indians attempted to retain sovereignty, and employed a variety of strategies to do so, which ranged from partnering with the United States to waging war against it.

Unlike most of these other native peoples, however, the Cherokee identified themselves as republicans, adopting and embracing previously western concepts of nation, state, and government.8 In this sense, the Cherokee pursuit of some form of autonomy was more closely akin to other breakaway North American polities of the era – Texas, Deseret,

California – than it was to that of the Comanche or Sioux. Indeed, like other breakaway republicans, the Cherokee also embraced local control, land ownership, and even

American history and heritage, often arguing that it was they, not Jacksonian whites, who exemplified the legacy of the Revolutionary generation. Of course, the Cherokee were only one of the Five Tribes that had assimilated many aspects of American culture and then had been forced west.9 Like the Cherokee, the Choctaw especially, but also the

Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole, incorporated aspects of American society, government, and law.10 Yet the Cherokee were the most sophisticated in their assumption of republican culture, as they themselves, many whites, and at times even other members of the Five Tribes recognized.11 In fact, it was partly their success in adopting American

8 McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence.

9 Here I adopt recent terminology that employs “Five Tribes” instead of “Five Civilized Tribes.”

10 For a brief comparison of these societies, see Champagne, Social Order and Political Change, 171-175.

11 Statements on Cherokee exceptionalism were ubiquitous. See, for example, Butler to Crawford, Feb. 26, 1842, OIA, in which Butler states, “It is universally concluded the Cherokee have made much further progress in [civilization and labor] than all the other tribes together.” For a similar statement from the Cherokee themselves, see Cherokee Advocate, April 3, 1845. According to one observer, other native peoples acknowledged Cherokee superiority at an intertribal council: Ethan Allen Hitchcock, First Letter

209 institutions that made their presence on the Arkansas border so threatening to neighboring whites. Finally, from a standpoint of practicality, I have also chosen to focus on the Cherokee simply because Cherokee sources are much richer than those of the rest of the Five Tribes. Thus, unless their story intersects with other native peoples, in this chapter I concentrate on the Cherokee alone.

Dependence versus Autonomy: Visions and Rhetorics of Cherokee Sovereignty

Cherokee removal is often portrayed as the culmination of the tragedy of the

Cherokee people. They had done everything the United States had told them to do. They had adopted American political, social, and economic customs. They had allied with the

United States against the Creeks during the War of 1812. Since then, they had remained at peace with neighboring whites, despite continuous harassment by both individual white settlers and Georgia’s government. They had even achieved victory in the U.S. Supreme

Court.12 Ultimately none of these achievements allowed the Cherokee to remain in their homeland, and the subsequent harsh journey west killed 4,000 men, women, and children in what became later known as the “Trail of Tears.” Yet, in many ways, the tragedy was not over, for removal did not bring relief, as the Cherokee remained fundamentally divided over the 1835 Treaty of New Echota that had ceded all Cherokee land in Georgia.

The signers of the treaty, most notably Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, Cherokee

Phoenix editor Elias Boudinot, and Boudinot’s brother Stand Watie, believed removal

(get dates), in Grant Foreman, ed., A Traveler in Indian Country: The Journal of Ethan Allen Hitchcock, foreword Michael Green (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1930; repr. 1996), 243. See also Denson, Demanding the Cherokee Nation, 47.

12 On the story of Cherokee acculturation, see McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence.

210 was inevitable, so they signed the treaty believing they had secured the best deal possible. However, John Ross and his supporters, representing a majority of the

Cherokee people, still resisted removal, and believed the Treaty of New Echota was a fraudulent betrayal of Cherokee sovereignty and republicanism. When they too were forced west by the terms of the treaty, they blamed the treaty signers.13

Therefore the Cherokee arrived in their new western homeland irrevocably divided. Ross supporters comprised two-thirds of the roughly 18,000 Cherokee who now resided in the nation, and were known by both supporters and opponents as the “Ross

Party,” “Patriot Party,” or the “National Party.” Countering the Ross Party were 4000 members of the “Treaty Party” or “Ridge-Boudinot Party.” Because they supported the

Treaty of New Echota, these Cherokee had voluntarily left for the west several years before the Trail of Tears. Finally, 2000 “Old Settlers” comprised a third faction. Hoping to avoid white encroachment and prevent acculturation to American society, these

Cherokee had left for the west far earlier, between 1810 and 1820 – although in the west they too adopted many aspects of American society.14 Although they welcomed their fellow Cherokee as refugees, the Old Settlers feared losing control of the Cherokee

Nation now that the arriving Ross Party heavily outnumbered them. Importantly, these three factions were not based upon social or religious differences, although these differences existed as well, as the Cherokee were also divided between a “modern” or

13 On the Trail of Tears, see Theda Perdue and Michael Green, The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears (New York: Viking, 2007).

14 For numbers, see Butler to Zachary Taylor, n.d., received June 6, 1842, OIA. There were also two more groups of Cherokee: approximately 1000 Cherokee who remained in North Carolina (and who descendants remain to this day), and close to 1000 Cherokee who lived in northern Texas, of whom more will be discussed later.

211 “Christian” faction and a “traditional” or “pagan” one.15 Yet the political rift over the Treaty of New Echota outweighed social differences, and Christians and traditionalists could be found on both sides of the Ross Party-Treaty Party divide. In general, the leaders of both sides were multiracial, English-speaking, and Christian, for they were better able to negotiate with the U.S. federal and various local governments.

Additionally, these leaders were also the wealthiest of Cherokee society, and frequently owned slaves. However, non-slaveholding “traditionalists” comprised a majority of the population for both the Ross Party and the Treaty Party, and thus the divide was truly one that engulfed the entire Cherokee Nation.

From 1839 to 1846 political strife and endemic violence convulsed the Cherokee

Nation, as all three factions struggled for power. The violence began in 1839, when, without his knowledge, several of John Ross’ supporters murdered Major Ridge, John

Ridge, and Elias Boudinot. The murderers justified their actions by invoking the

Cherokee Blood Law, which stated that any Cherokee who illegally sold tribal land was punishable by death.16 They also targeted Boudinot’s brother Stand Watie. However, because he had not been home when the murderers had arrived at his door, Watie survived. Like the Ridges and Boudinot, Watie was Christian, multiracial, and a slave owner, and his family ties and social position immediately made him the de facto leader of the Treaty Party. He sent his murdered brother’s family to safety in Connecticut, and vowed to take revenge on the perpetrators.

15 McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 5-6.

16 For a description of the murders, see Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy, 321-324; John Demos, The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic (New York: Knopf, 2014), 256-265.

212 Initially these infamous murders did not lead to outright civil war, as U.S. authorities and moderate Cherokee leaders were able to prevent further violence. By

1842, however, with the factions still unable to come to a permanent solution, violence again erupted, which this time continued unabated until 1846. Stand Watie led a band of fifty men against the numerically superior Ross Party, often using the Arkansas line as a refuge from Ross Party reprisals. At one point Watie’s band even took refuge in crumbling Fort Wayne, a U.S. fort that the Army had abandoned in 1842 due to a high rate of malaria at the site. Meanwhile, the pro-Ross Light Horse roamed the Cherokee

Nation in search of Watie and other Treaty Party guerrillas, at one point pursuing one group of outlaws as far as Choctaw territory.17 Cherokee political differences had degenerated into Cherokee civil war.

The stakes of this civil war were, ostensibly, which faction would wield ultimate power within the Cherokee Nation.18 Yet it was not just the internal government of the

Cherokee Nation that was in the balance, but the very nature of sovereignty between the

Cherokee Nation and the United States – even, on the extreme end, whether the Cherokee would possess any sovereignty at all. Because the Treaty Party and Old Settlers were the minority faction, they were almost completely dependent on the U.S. to sustain their power. Not only did they understand this dependence, but they embraced it. Moreover,

17 Joseph Coodey to John Ross, Dec. 20, 1844, in The Papers of Chief John Ross, ed. Gary Moulton Volumes 1-2 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 2: 256.

18 Historians of the Cherokee have amply detailed this struggle, yet most have failed to contemplate the forms of sovereignty each faction envisioned. See McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 1-58; Denson, Demanding the Cherokee Nation, 41-49; Hoig, The Cherokees and their Chiefs, 191-204; Gerard Reed, “Postremoval Factionalism in the Cherokee Nation,” in King, ed., The Cherokee Indian Nation, 148-163; Kenny Franks, Stand Watie and the Agony of the Cherokee Nation (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1979), 54-106; Gary Moulton, John Ross: Cherokee Chief (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1978), 107-153; Morris Wardell, A Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 1837-1907 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), 3-75.

213 for the Treaty Party, this stance was also ideological, for they had accepted permanent dependence when they signed the Treaty of New Echota. Treaty Party and Old

Settler language reflected this dependence, always appealing to the almighty federal government for redress. As early as 1839, well before the outbreak of civil war, the Old

Settlers wrote U.S. authorities that they were “thrown into the hands of the United

States.”19 This reliant language continued through the course of the conflict. Old Settler

Chief John Rogers pleaded with the federal government to intervene on his behalf because John Ross was “against our great father the President of the United States.”

Having fled the Cherokee Nation, Rogers requested “military authorities” to

“extend…protections to me whenever is required” so he could return.20 At times pleas assumed a piteous nature. In a long letter to President John Tyler, the Treaty Party beseeched, “In the name of humanity turn us not away!”21 While this appeal to dependence may have been partially strategic to gain access to U.S. aid, it seems to be how the minority factions did indeed see themselves. In a private letter to her brother

Stand Watie, Mary Boudinot referred to the Treaty Party as the “poor oppressed party,” and called the Polk Administration “our faithful friends.”22 Considering its private contents, there was no need to use this language of helplessness unless she actually believed it. Moreover, these words reflected reality: as they often wrote to U.S.

19 Old Settlers to William Armstrong, Aug. 19, 1839, Records of the Southern Superintendency, Record Group 75, Microfilm 640, National Archives.

20 John Rogers to Pierce Butler, Aug. 1, 1843, OIA.

21 Treaty Party Resolutions to John Tyler, 1844, OIA.

22 Mary Boudinot to Stand Watie, July 31, 1846, in Cherokee Cavaliers: Forty Years of Cherokee History as Told in the Correspondence of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot Family, ed. Edward Dale and Gaston Litton (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), 46-48. See also John Watie to Stand Watie, May 10, 1846, in Cherokee Cavaliers, 41.

214 authorities, the Treaty Party and their Old Settler allies needed the United States to sustain them, or they would be swamped by the numerical strength of the Ross Party.23

Ultimately, even if the Treaty Party had wanted some sort of partial sovereignty in the

West when they first signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, it was no longer an option when the Ross Party arrived.

Unsurprisingly, most U.S. authorities appreciated the plight of the Treaty Party and believed U.S. intervention was necessary. Partly this attitude reflected the history of the Treaty of New Echota. The United States needed to sustain the Treaty Party to maintain the fiction that the treaty represented the wishes of the entire Cherokee people.

To preserve the veneer of the moral high ground, it could not let the Treaty Party become an exiled and defeated Cherokee minority. Yet, more generally, not only did most U.S. officials appreciate the Treaty Party’s plight, but they also appreciated the Treaty Party’s dependence. Treaty Party supplications fit the mode of diplomacy between the United

States and most eastern natives, who, unlike the Cherokee, had become powerless and were supposed to be dependent. Indeed, by conquering eastern natives, U.S. authorities believed they earned the right to dictate intertribal and intra-tribal relations.24 The Treaty

Party’s appeals fit this pattern, the Ross Party’s recalcitrance did not. Unlike the Treaty

Party, Ross and his followers took matters into their own hands, which U.S. officials deplored. None other than Andrew Jackson blasted Ross for his “tyrannical conduct.”25

23 George Paschal, “Report on the Trial of Stand Watie,” 1843, in Cherokee Nation Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma; John Rogers, John Smith, and Dutch to Matthew Arbuckle, Dec. 27, 1839, OIA; Treaty Party Preamble and Resolutions, Aug. 20, 1839, OIA.

24 Bethel Saler, The Settlers’ Empire: Colonialism and State Formation in America’s Old Northwest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 75, 103.

25 Andrew Jackson to John Bell, Oct. 5, 1839, in Cherokee Cavaliers, 17.

215 Moreover, beyond acting like a tyrant, John Ross and his vision of sovereignty represented a distinct threat to U.S. interests in the West.

Clearly the Ross Party wanted more independence than the Treaty Party, but determining the Ross and his allies’ exact vision of Cherokee sovereignty is difficult.

Unlike the attitude of the Treaty Party and the U.S. government, both of which understood all too clearly who was dependent on whom, the Ross Party’s concept of the future was more ambiguous. In many ways, it is easier to determine what Ross and his allies opposed rather than what they supported. They opposed the Treaty Party’s vision of almost total dependence on the federal government, not only for the very practical reason that this meant Treaty Party ascendance, but also because it clashed with the long and proud tradition of Cherokee sovereignty – a tradition the Treaty Party had also embraced until its leaders came to the painful conclusion that Cherokee sovereignty was no longer tenable. The Ross Party also opposed the opposite extreme: total independence from the United States. Even if many Cherokee may have longed for independence – and, for some, revenge against the United States – it simply was not practical. Indian

Territory was officially within U.S. borders, and declaring independence would have meant war with the United States, which would have led to inevitable Cherokee defeat.

Neither John Ross nor any other Cherokee leader ever contemplated such a step, and despite the Ross Party’s anger at the United States, Ross and his allies always maintained a policy of peace.

However, between the poles of complete dependence and absolute independence lay a vast middle of sovereignty options. It seems John Ross himself looked to create a

Cherokee polity that was domestically independent, but subject to U.S. jurisdiction in

216 external affairs – although, as we shall see, in far off Indian Territory this too could be challenged. In practice, this meant the Cherokee Nation would wield effective sovereignty over themselves, and the U.S. state would be totally absent within the borders of the Cherokee Nation. All U.S. forts within the Cherokee Nation would be removed.26

All trade conducted within the Nation would be sanctioned by the Cherokee National

Council.27 Any white man who entered the Cherokee Nation would be subject to

Cherokee law, which would be enforced by the Cherokee Light Horse and Cherokee courts. U.S. authorities could not arrest any Cherokee within the borders of the Cherokee

Nation. U.S. law had no jurisdiction over the territory.28 At times Ross compared the political status of the Cherokee Nation to that of a state, noting that the U.S. did not interfere with internal state matters, and therefore had no right to interfere with internal

Cherokee Nation matters either. Written to Democratic politicians in power, this argument was perhaps calculated to appeal to their Jacksonian sensibilities, but it was a rather specious comparison.29 While the federal government stood mostly aloof from state affairs, it was not entirely absent – to which South Carolina Nullifiers, Northern

Patriots, and every state that counted a federal fort on its land could attest.30

26 George Hicks et al. to Ross, David Vann, and John Benge, July 8, 1841, Ross Papers, 2: 91; Ross et al to John Bell, Aug. 11, 1841, Ross Papers, 2: 96; Montfort Stokes to Armstrong, Aug. 9, 1839, RSS; Cherokee Advocate, July 31, 1845;

27 Ross et al to John Spencer, Aug. 12, 1842, Ross Papers, 2: 146.

28 Ross to Montfort Stokes, Aug. 7, 1839, Ross Papers, 1: 754; Ross to Armstrong, Aug. 27, 1838, Ross Papers, 1: 764; Ross to Stokes, Nov. 7, 1839, Ross Papers, 1: 765; Ross to Pierce Butler, Dec. 4, 1841, Ross Papers, 2: 109; Ross et al to Spencer, June 14, 1841, Ross Papers, 2: 134.

29 Ross et al to William Wilkins, July 17, 1844, Ross Papers, 2: 221; Ross et al to House and Senate, April 30, 1846, Ross Papers, 2: 295.

30 For the presence of the state in the early republic, see Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press,

217 In reality, the Ross Party wanted something more than state sovereignty. In particular, the federal government’s continued support of the Treaty Party galled the Ross

Party, for this meant continued – and illegal – interference in Cherokee affairs. Ross believed the U.S. had a deeper agenda than fomenting peace in the Cherokee Nation; rather, the U.S. was attempting to “create the semblance of a plea for official interposition, which it might have been convenient to keep unforeseen; to denationalize us under the pretext of necessity; to legislate us into nonentity.”31 Ross loathed such a development, and worked to ensure it would not happen.

It is difficult to tell how many Ross’ supporters shared his vision – or, to put it another way, it is difficult to gauge how republican this vision was. John Ross held his position as Principal Chief by democratic election, yet a vote for Ross did not necessarily mean that all supporters envisioned some sort of permanently autonomous Cherokee

Nation. In all likelihood, those Cherokee who shared Ross’ background – wealthy, slave- owning, multiracial, English-speaking, Christian, and literate – also longed for domestic independence. Many were co-signers of Ross’ stream of letters to U.S. authorities that asserted Cherokee sovereignty, and clearly understood John Ross’ stance. Gauging

Cherokee traditionalists’ attitudes towards Cherokee sovereignty is much more difficult.

Making up a majority of Ross followers and comprising three quarters of the Cherokee

Nation, most traditionalists had no white relatives or relations, were illiterate, poor, and did not speak English.32 Their poverty and uncertainty in the West meant they likely

2009), esp. 151-278; William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 113, No. 3 (June, 2008), 752-772.

31 Ross et al to Bell and the House Committee on Indian Affairs, April 20, 1840, Ross Papers, 2: 37.

32 McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 451; Denson, Demanding the Cherokee Nation, 12-13.

218 worried more about day-to-day survival than they did the future state of the

Cherokee polity. Yet issues of sovereignty affected them, such as when white traders illegally sold them liquor, or U.S. soldiers trespassed on their land. Perhaps these matters could be solved if the Ross Party gained entire domestic control of the Cherokee

Nation.33 Thus, while it cannot be stated that all 12,000 supporters of the Ross Party longed for complete political autonomy, their continued willingness to elect Ross and his cohort meant they embraced at least some aspects of his vision.

It is tempting to see the political sovereignty Ross envisioned for the Cherokee

Nation in the West as a recreation of the sovereignty that the Cherokee had once possessed in the East. After all, the Cherokee Light Horse was not a new development;

Light Horse companies had patrolled the Cherokee Nation in the East, and at times removed white intruders from the nation’s territory.34 Additionally, the Cherokee

National Council had forbidden states from making internal improvements on Cherokee land, at one point defending their sovereignty by claiming, “The Cherokee Nation can never surrender.”35 Seemingly, in both practice and rhetoric, the Cherokee Nation’s autonomy in the West mirrored its former situation in the East.

Yet, location mattered. John Ross and his allies realized that once the Cherokee arrived in Indian Territory, the ability of the United States to enforce its writ over the

33 For a good description of this class of Cherokee, see Ethan Allen Hitchock, A Traveler through Indian Country, 240. For evidence of conflicts between U.S. soldiers and individual Cherokees, see Butler to Crawford, Sept. 3, 1844, OIA; Butler to Crawford, Aug. 10, 1843. For evidence of the illegal liquor trade, see Ross to Butler, July 20, 1842, Ross Papers, 2: 143.

34 McLoughin, Cherokee Renascence, 280. See also Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788-1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 152-156.

35 Cherokee Nation to Hugh Montgomery, Dec. 18, 1826, as quoted in McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 375.

219 Cherokee Nation would be much more limited. No longer would the Cherokee be surrounded by populous – and covetous – white settlements, but situated on the far western edge of U.S. territory, far from American population centers. Indeed, it seems

Ross recognized this new geopolitical reality even before the Cherokee departed on the

Trail of Tears. Until removal became a certainty, Ross’ faction appealed to the United

States in terms that emphasized Cherokee weakness vis-à-vis American strength: “You have before you that unfortunate child in the weak and dependent Cherokees, with hands elevated towards the throne of grace and Mercy we all supplicate saying: Our Brothers, is it true you will drive us from the land of our nativity and form the booms of our Fathers and Mothers? We know you possess the power…”36 Yet, only two years later, during the final meeting of the Cherokee before they began their tragic journey to Indian

Territory, the Ross Party’s language shifted dramatically. In a series of resolutions made at the Aquohee Camp in Tennessee, the Cherokee National Council forcefully maintained that, first, the Cherokee still possessed the rights to their land in the East; second, their removal was illegal; and third, Cherokee sovereignty was inviolable, and therefore the

Treaty of New Echota was fraudulent. Furthermore, the United States was entirely to blame for removal, and as such “…all damages and losses, direct or indirect, resulting from the enforcement of the alleged stipulations of the pretended treaty of New Echota, are in justice and equity, chargeable to the United States.”37 Once the Cherokee arrived in their new homeland, these assertions of sovereignty continued, especially in regard to

36 Ross et al to the Senate, March 8, 1836, Ross Papers, 1: 413.

37 Aquohee Camp Declaration, Aug. 1, 1838, in Emmett Starr, Starr’s History of the Cherokee Indians, ed. Jack Gregory and Rennand Strickland (Fayetteville, AK: Indian Heritage Association, 1922), 105. See also McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 2-5.

220 the United States’ sustainment of the Treaty Party. When the United States tried to broker peace between the Cherokee factions, the Ross-led Cherokee Council maintained

U.S. interference was “utterly inappropriate and uncalled for…a violation of the rights and liberties of the Cherokees.”38 Such was the vehemence with which the Ross Party defended Cherokee sovereignty that at times it was as if the U.S. and Cherokee Nation were equals: “We think it our duty to say plainly that no finessing to impose an unwelcome government on us will succeed. No intrigue to dismember our possessions for the reward of individuals will be tolerated by the Cherokees.”39 In early 1846, in perhaps the most remarkable statement of Cherokee sovereignty, John Ross even defended the

Ridge-Boudinot murders as entirely legal, although Ross maintained his innocence in the proceedings. According to Ross, by ceding Cherokee lands, the Treaty Party leaders had violated the Cherokee Blood Law, and thus deserved death.40 Because the murders were legal in the Cherokee Nation, the U.S. should stop worrying about finding and persecuting the murderers, who, seven years after the murders, remained undiscovered.

Generally, the Ross Party’s message remained remarkably consistent over the first seven years after removal: the U.S. must stay out of Cherokee affairs.

U.S. authorities were stunned by both the rhetoric and actions of the dominant

Ross Party, beginning with the affront of the pre-removal Aquohee resolutions. When

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Crawford received a copy of the resolutions, he

38 Ross et al to William Armstrong, Aug. 27, 1839, Ross Papers, 1: 760. For other messages like this, see, for example, Ross to Arbuckle, July 9, 1839, Ross Papers, 1: 731, 734; Ross to Arbuckle, July 20, 1839, Ross Papers, 1: 739; Ross to Butler, Mason, and Jones, Dec. 23, 1844, Ross Papers, 2: 258.

39 Ross et al to John Bell and the House Committee on Indian Affairs, April 20, 1840, Ross Papers, 2: 38.

40 Ross et al to the House and Senate, April 30, 1846, Ross Papers, 2: 293-294.

221 was incredulous, stating the document was “remarkable for the pretension it advances, and utterly inconsistent with the rights of States, and the just authority of the

United States….The arrogance of this paper it is true wisdom, I think, to rebuke at the threshold.” Crawford was less angry at the disavowal of the Treaty of New Echota than he was by the statements on sovereignty, which were “totally inconsistent with the supreme power of this nation.” The Cherokee were no different than any other Indian people, and as such, “…The constitution and laws of the United States extend over all…and they must command obedience.”41 In the case of the Cherokee, this obedience meant that the Ross Party must submit to U.S. orders, which included the provision that the Treaty Party and Old Settlers assume a place as equals in Cherokee society. While most U.S. authorities seemed to have honestly cared for the plight of the minority factions, recognizing that leaving them under the Ross Party’s rule would lead to their marginalization, exodus, or even death, they were as much concerned with the precedent this would set in terms of U.S. power – or powerlessness. As Indian agent Matthew

Arbuckle wrote, “The United States must and ought to dictate the terms [of peace to the

Cherokees].”42 A friend of Secretary of War Joel Poinsett deemed Ross a “half-Scotch, half-Indian nullifier,” and believed the federal government needed to bring him to heel – presumably as it had done with South Carolina nullification.43 The Treaty Party played into this distrust of Ross by constantly portraying Ross as a tyrant who could inflame the entire West: “In the name of humanity, turn us not away! We speak for seven souls

41 Thomas Crawford, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Nov. 25, 1839 (Washington, D.C., 1840), 339.

42 Arbuckle to Joel Poinsett, Dec. 26, 1839, OIA.

43 O.H. Wells to Poinsett, Sept. 9, 1839, 10-179, Poinsett Papers, HSP.

222 among us – our petition will be seconded by every tribe and by your whole frontier states!”44 Both the U.S. and the Treaty Party had one simple belief: the Ross Party must not dictate the structure of sovereignty in the Cherokee Nation.

Enforcing this belief was a different matter. The United States was certainly not defenseless in Indian Territory, yet neither did the U.S. possess a monopoly on power.

This situation differed from the pre-removal era. In the East, despite the Cherokees’ victory at the Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia, the federal government, the State of Georgia, and neighboring whites were able to exert enough pressure on the Cherokee to force them from their lands – or, more technically, force a minority to cede their lands.

In the West, U.S. authorities wanted to apply this same pressure in order to depose Ross, empower the Treaty Party, disband the Cherokee Light Horse, and generally dictate the political structure of the Cherokee Nation. Importantly, their imposition of federal power was squarely in line with Chief Justice John Marshall’s ruling in Worcester v. Georgia.

Although Marshall ostensibly ruled against Georgia’s interference in Cherokee affairs, he did so because he maintained the Cherokee were “domestic dependent nation” under federal auspices.45 Thus, in the West, federal authorities had every right to levy power over the Cherokee.

Yet, however much the federal government wished to impose its – legally sanctioned – will – its means of doing so were limited. The United States possessed two

44 Treaty Party Resolutions to John Tyler, 1844, OIA.

45 Sidney L. Harring, Crow Dog’s Case: American Indian Sovereignty, Tribal Law, and United States Law in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 32-34. Harring makes the key point that Worcester v. Georgia was hardly the Cherokee victory that modern historians have made often portrayed it, for it was a narrow ruling, and like Marbury v. Madison was designed to strengthen federal authority over the states, rather than grant victory to the Cherokee.

223 forts within the Cherokee Nation. The primary fort, Fort Gibson, was considered the most important fort in the West, yet it still only housed several hundred troops, remained dilapidated until 1845, and was often disease-stricken.46 In 1838 the U.S.

Army built a secondary fort, Fort Wayne, but relocated it due to unsanitary conditions in

1840 to another site in the Cherokee Nation, which it completely abandoned in 1842.47

Needless to say, amidst thousands of potentially hostile Cherokee, the United States was not in a particularly strong military position. As Commissioner of Indian Affairs C.A.

Harris bluntly acknowledged in 1838, “The present force which the United States has on that frontier is not sufficient to hold the Indians in check.”48 Moreover, small forts could be liabilities rather than assets, potentially giving the Cherokee pretext for anger without offering significant protection. Major Ethan Allen Hitchcock, sent by the Tyler

Administration to report on the situation in Indian Territory in 1842, noted this potential problem: “The presence of a garrison here [in the Cherokee Nation] has thus made and not found excitement and difficulty, and its continuance here will not have the slightest influence in preventing outrage in the future, but is calculated to invite it.”49 Clearly, while the U.S. government made many demands on the Ross Party, its ability to enforce them was quite marginal.

46 On Fort Gibson, see Agnew, Fort Gibson, esp. 165-204, Foreman, Advancing the Frontier, 49-76; Michael Tate, The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 241-242.

47 On Fort Wayne, see Daniel Littlefield, Jr. and Lonnie Underhill, “Fort Wayne and the Arkansas Frontier, 1838-1840,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Winter, 1976), 334-359; Littlefield and Underhill, “Fort Wayne and Border Violence, 1840-1847,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 1977), 3-30.

48 Harris to Armstrong, May 4, 1838, Records of the Southern Superintendency.

49 Ethan Allen Hitchcock to John Spencer, Jan. 9, 1842, in A Traveler in Indian Territory, 246.

224 This limitation was not something U.S. authorities wanted to admit, but during more candid moments they voiced frustrations. In 1840, after several years where

John Ross had been able to fend off U.S. attempts to depose him, Secretary of War Joel

Poinsett lamented to Fort Gibson commander Matthew Arbuckle, “[The] Government regrets…[the] inability to carry into full effects the principles its desiring of establishing.” To Poinsett, the future would be different, for the period had “arrived when the active interference of the government has become necessary…”50 Yet Poinsett and his successors possessed few resources to give teeth to his statement. It would take more than a few hundred troops to “actively interfere” in the Cherokee Nation, and in

1840 none could be spared. In the aftermath of the Panic of 1837, the federal government did not have the resources to expand the small U.S. Army, and in fact reduced its size by one-third in 1842 due to budgetary constraints.51 Moreover, most of the Army was occupied in Florida, where the U.S. was attempting – and at first failing – to defeat the

Seminoles.52 Thus little changed between 1839 and 1846, as the Ross Party maintained its predominance over the Cherokee Nation.

Unlike Washington officials, Indian Agents who lived in the Cherokee Nation recognized the limits of federal power. Often given impossible demands by higher authorities, first Montfort Stokes (1837-1840), then Pierce Butler (1840-1846) did their best to obey, but often had to admit either that they could not do so, or if they did obey it

50 Poinsett to Arbuckle, March 7, 1840, OIA.

51 Alasdair Roberts, America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder after the Panic of 1837 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 112-114.

52 Francis Ford Prucha, The Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783-1846 (London: The Macmillan Co., 1969), 355.

225 would lead to disastrous consequences. In 1844, for example, at the height of

Cherokee violence that at times spilled across the Arkansas border, the state’s governor

Archibald Yell demanded Butler find and arrest the murderers of the Ridges and

Boudinot. Butler responded that this was not a new request, but one that had been

“repeatedly issued, and as repeatedly failed to be executed.” He then noted that, if the murderers were arrested, it would “arouse and excite the larger part of the Cherokee

Nation…The very mention of [the murders] act as a sort of talisman upon the Nation.”

He then brushed aside Yell’s request, claiming he would forward the letter to “those whose authority it is to ask” – presumably the War Department – and concluded by lecturing Yell, “We should be careful never to attempt an order that is not in itself altogether proper.”53 Although perhaps more blunt than most letters, the message was typical of many sent by both Stokes and Butler.54 Orders from above could not be translated to the on-the-ground reality in the Cherokee Nation.

Because the Cherokee Agents lived amidst the Cherokee and depended on their goodwill for survival, it is not surprising that, of all U.S. authorities, Stokes and Butler were by far the most sympathetic to John Ross and his allies.55 While both attempted to remain nonpartisan, they understood the realities of Cherokee politics: Ross’ removal or death would, in the words of Butler, “rouse his friends to the extermination of man,

53 Butler to Yell, Feb. 16, 1844, OIA.

54 See, for example, Stokes to Armstrong, Aug. 9, 1839; Butler to Crawford, Aug. 12, 1843; Butler to Crawford, Jan. 8, 1843; Butler to Crawford, Sept. 28, 1842; all in OIA.

55 On Montfort Stokes, see William Omer Foster, “The Career of Montfort Stokes in Oklahoma,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 18, No. 1, (March, 1940), 35-52. On Pierce Butler, see Carolyn Thomas Foreman, “Pierce Mason Butler,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 30, No. 1 (March, 1952), 6-29.

226 woman, and child of the [Treaty Party].”56 Over time Butler in particular became increasingly sympathetic with the Ross Party’s arguments, and increasingly impressed with John Ross himself, whom he described as a “modest and good man” privately, and

“as a public man has dignity and grace.” Reflecting the continued struggle for sovereignty between the Cherokee Nation and the United States, he believed Ross’ biggest weakness was his tenaciousness in putting the “rights of his people” above “what is expedient or what is to be obtained for them” – in essence, Ross cared more for abstract justice than pragmatic politics and material concerns.57 However, to Butler, Ross was not to blame for the Cherokee troubles. Instead, if anyone was at fault, it was white

Americans – hostile settlers on the Arkansas line, unruly soldiers at Fort Gibson, and policy-makers’ unrealistic expectations.58 Butler was even an initial proponent of forming the Cherokee Light Horse, believing the force was necessary to enforce order against criminals, white and Cherokee alike – an attitude clearly at odds with the federal government’s position.59 These pro-Cherokee attitudes were obviously not popular in

Washington, and, in typical bureaucratic fashion, federal authorities blamed Stokes and

Butler for their pro-Ross stances. By the time incoming president James Polk replaced

Butler, Butler understood all too clearly that his pro-Ross stance had angered almost all other American officials who dealt with Cherokee affairs: “The military…may use its influence against me, and the government may not give me its support, but I shall have

56 Butler to Crawford, Sept. 28, 1842, OIA.

57 Butler to Crawford, March 4, 1842, OIA.

58 See, for example, Butler to Crawford, Sept. 3, 1844; Butler to Crawford, Aug. 10, 1843; Butler to Crawford, Jan. 18, 1842; all in OIA.

59 Butler to Spencer, March 26, 1842, OIA.

227 the approbation of my own conscience and the favorable regards of an unpredujicious judgment.”60 Yet, even if Butler had not turned into a Ross partisan and sincerely attempted to fulfill federal goals in the Cherokee Nation, his power depended on the federal government’s power, and thus his influence in the Cherokee Nation was limited.

While the Cherokee Agents understood the structures of power in the Cherokee

Nation and made the best of their limited influence, neighboring whites in Arkansas also understood the structures of power, and became hysterical. Unlike many Americans in the rest of the country who viewed Cherokee removal as a problem finally solved (or, for a minority, injustice irrevocably accomplished), Arkansans believed the federal government had simply moved the problem to their backyards. Indeed, they thought removal made the problem worse, for now the Cherokee would want revenge. The

Arkansas Gazette’s warning in 1839 was typical: “The policy of concentrating on our borders large bodies of armed and hostile Indians, smarting under a sense of recent injury, was generally supposed to be rather dangerous to the quiet of the frontier; and a war that may arise, will probably last as long and prove as expensive as the Florida war.”61 Arkansans turned typical assumptions on their head: Cherokee removal had made the situation worse, not better, and Cherokee status as the most “civilized” Indians was something to be feared, not applauded. Cherokee exceptionalism rendered them particularly suited to forge an alliance among other Indian peoples, as Fort Gibson commander Matthew Arbuckle noted: “The Cherokee generally…have much less

60 Butler, 1845 Annual Report, n.d., received Nov. 16, 1846, OIA.

61 Arkansas Gazette [Little Rock], Dec. 11, 1839.

228 friendship for the United States, than other tribes in this quarter, and serious difficulties may be apprehended from then, provided the Nation is restored to harmony, and it can effect [sic] a suitable alliance with the neighboring tribes.”62 Those who believed a hostile alliance was imminent repeatedly used Indian numbers to ramp up hysteria; the Cherokee possessed “4000 fighting men” who could command “26,000 warriors” from other tribes, creating an intertribal alliance that numbered anywhere from

72,000 to over 100,000 natives.63 The higher estimate included natives from the “wild tribes” living west of Indian Territory, such as the Caddo and Comanche, all of whom would descend on defenseless white settlements at Cherokee instigation.

These numbers had a purpose: to obtain federal aid for the defense of the western frontier. Whites who lived near the Cherokee Nation intuitively understood that a few hundred soldiers at Fort Gibson could not protect the long, defenseless Arkansas border.

At various points Arkansas politicians, newspapers, and regular citizens petitioned for more federal troops, more military forts, and the increased enrollment of Arkansas militia.64 Among the most interesting proposals was an idea by Arkansas senator

William Fulton to create a buffer zone between Indian Territory and Arkansas by granting armed settlers free land on the frontier in return for their willingness to protect

62 Arbuckle to Gaines, Sept. 10, 1839, OIA.

63 Arkansas Gazette, April 18, 1838; Speech of Senator Linn, Arkansas Gazette, Nov. 10, 1841; Speech of Senator Fulton, Arkansas Gazette, March 14, 1838; Arkansas Gazette, May 9, 1938.

64 See, for example, Arkansas Gazette, Nov. 8, 1843, Sept. 8, 1842, and May 30, 1838; Armstrong to Edward Cross, July 3 1843, OIA. In contrast to the attitudes of Arkansans, prior to removal Georgians were critical of the United States for too much interference; they simply wanted the United States to get out of the way. On Georgian attitudes, see Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty, 183-203. On American settlers’ desire for a greater federal presence in the West, see Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of my Own”: A History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1991), 58 and passim.

229 the state.65 Moreover, as it was currently constituted, the U.S. Army was particularly useless, as the Arkansas Intelligencer pointed out: “What have the military done on this frontier during the few past years? Nothing. We do not want more troops to do nothing. But we want more troops to do something, to be actively employed. If we are not to have protection from the Army, we want it disbanded - the expense saved - and we will defend ourselves.”66 The editor of the Gazette spoke for a certain segment of

Arkansas society that was fed up with federal inaction.

This rhetoric was highly partisan. Arkansas Democrats, led by Governor

Archibald Yell, Senators William Fulton and Ambrose Sevier – also the chairman for the

Indians Affair Committee – and the Democratic Arkansas Gazette, beat the drum of

Indian invasion far more often, at far greater levels of panic, than their Whig counterparts.67 This trend made sense both ideologically and geographically: anti-Indian rhetoric resonated with the party of Jackson, particularly its constituency of poor yeomen farmers, and the western region of Arkansas that bordered Indian Territory was heavily

Democratic.68 The powerful Cherokee presence in Indian Territory was a particular affront to one of the Democracy’s core principles: the desire for the United States to

65 Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 11, 1839; Dec. 1, 1840

66 Arkansas Intelligencer, as quoted in Arkansas Banner [Little Rock], Nov. 18, 1843.

67 Compare, for example, the hysteria of the Democratic Arkansas Gazette with the Whig Batesville News. While the Gazette printed dozens of articles on potentially hostile Cherokee, the News printed only five articles on the Cherokee between 1840 and 1843, all of which were favorable. Additionally, the Gazette was bought by a Whig editor in 1844, at which point anti-Indian articles abruptly stopped. For Yell, see William Hughes, Archibald Yell (Fayetteville, AK: The University of Arkansas Press, 1988). For Ambrose Sevier, see Brian G. Walton, “Ambrose Hundley Sevier in the United States Senate, 1836-1848,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 1973), 25-60.

68 Arkansas was a heavily Democratic state, but in the northern and eastern areas the Whigs remained popular and formidable: Brian Walton, “The Second Party System in Arkansas, 1836-1848,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 1969), 126.

230 “expand across space” rather than, as Whigs argued, “improve over time.”69 This rhetoric was also sectional, pitting the aggrieved and besieged westerners of Arkansas against arrogant and effete easterners. In western eyes, eastern politicians had spent federal funds to remove Indians, but now, “secure from the apprehensions of midnight attack, and the startling war-whoop, savage yell, and nocturnal conflagrations,” could not

“imagine…the slumbering volcano upon which we repose.”70 Worst of all, easterners now refused to fund western defense because the threat had disappeared from the East.

In one instance, the Arkansas Banner even connected American migrants in Oregon to the Cherokee issue, lambasting eastern politicians for neglecting both Oregon and

Arkansas settlers. The Banner exclaimed in response, “Let the west unite, and rising up as one man, and with one voice, demand redress.”71 Written in 1844, this call for western action and unity is particularly fascinating for the light it sheds on American expansion – or lack thereof. Only two years before the onset of Polk’s expansionist program,

Arkansas settlers on the frontier felt that they were not the vanguard of U.S. expansion, but the afterthought of the U.S. government.

It is difficult to discern how much of this rhetoric was legitimate fear of a

Cherokee-led Indian alliance, and how much was a desire to score political points and federal dollars. As Pierce Butler noted, federal forts were centers of commerce on the frontier, and he believed the panic for more forts was actually a ploy to augment the local

69 Major Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom: The Quest for Nationality and the Irrespressible Conflict, 1815-1861 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974).

70 Arkansas Banner, Nov. 25, 1843.

71 Arkansas Banner, Jan. 2, 1844.

231 economy.72 Nevertheless, white hysteria should not be dismissed as only cynical fabrication, for two reasons. First, as we shall see, Cherokee internal violence did spill over the Arkansas line, and affected Arkansas citizens – even though, at times, the

Arkansans instigated the trouble. Second, the obsession with Indian violence – what

Peter Silver analyzed as the “anti-Indian sublime” – had a long history, and Arkansans’ rhetoric fit seamlessly into it.73 A writer with the nom-de-plume “Dupleix” recognized this history in a letter to the Arkansas Gazette, writing, “If we follow the footsteps of civilization, from the settlement of Jamestown to the wild-woods of the west, we shall see that every advance she made was through blood, til the word ‘frontier’ became coupled and almost synonymous with ‘Indian wars.’”74 To a certain segment of whites living near the Cherokee Nation, they were the next in line.

These white settlers were wrong. Despite possessing limited but still significant manpower at their disposal, Ross and his allies never contemplated waging war against the United States or American settlements. Partially this stance can be attributed to the pacific ideology of Ross himself, who always stressed justice through the courts rather than force of arms. Ross’ business acumen, respect for the rule of law, Christianity, and support for temperance exemplified what historian Amy Greenberg termed “restrained manhood.” As his actions during the Civil War would prove, Ross was no pacifist, but he believed in violence only as a last resort. His stance stood in marked contrast to the

72 Butler to Crawford, March 28, 1843; Robert Wooster, The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 108.

73 Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian Warfare Transformed Early America (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008), 81-90, passim.

74 Arkansas Gazette, Nov. 8, 1843.

232 bellicose “aggressive manhood” of many neighboring whites – and, in the case of the Ridge murderers, some of Ross’ Cherokee allies.75 While Ross may have often vehemently asserted Cherokee sovereignty, he was never belligerent. Perhaps too this stance was due to Ross’ understanding of the underlying realpolitik in Indian Territory: temporarily, the Cherokee possessed significant power vis-à-vis the United States, but this would drastically change if the U.S. brought its entire strength to bear against them in a full scale war. Although from afar many whites believed Ross secretly longed to avenge Cherokee removal, all of those who met him were convinced his political goals were peaceful.76 Pierce Butler in particular became exasperated with the notion that the

Cherokee hostilities were imminent, at one point writing, “There is a settled fashion in the neighboring country to cry out ‘defenceless frontier’ – and give cause – probable danger from the Cherokee…There is just amount as much probability of injury or invasion from the Cherokees, upon the whites at this time, as there is from the Pacha of

Egypt.”77 John Ross may have desired a domestically sovereign Cherokee Nation, but he would not resort to violence to make it happen.

Neither did Ross nor his allies seriously contemplate securing Cherokee independence in a different fashion, by leaving Indian Territory and moving farther west or south, beyond the borders of the United States. In 1835, at the height of his desperation to avoid removal, Ross did attempt to contact the Mexican government,

75 Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 11-12, 152.

76 Compare Ethan Allen Hitchcock’s initial assessment of Ross and the Cherokee with his later assessments: Hitchcock, A Traveler in Indian Country, 27, 216, 242-244, 247.

77 Butler to Crawford, Nov. 19, 1843, OIA.

233 hoping Mexican authorities would allow the Cherokee to settle within their borders.78 Yet nothing came of this, and the Mexican government never seems to have responded. Perhaps this Mexican precedent was what John Ross’ brother Lewis Ross had in mind immediately prior to removal, when he pondered whether “it may be possible that we may find a Country out of the United States which we may live in.”79 This discussion continued intermittently after the Cherokee arrived in Indian Territory. In

1841 rumors arose among both Cherokee and non-Cherokee alike that it was Ross’

“design to cross the Rocky Mountains.”80 Among those who believed the Cherokee may move farther west were the Mormons, who hoped the Cherokee would potentially join them in an anti-United States alliance beyond American borders.81 The federal government had no way to prevent a Cherokee exodus – even if it had wished to, which is uncertain. After all, the often-hysterical white settlers in Arkansas, not to mention many

Arkansas politicians, would have been overjoyed to see the Cherokee threat disappear from their border. While a few more perceptive authorities seemed to recognize that the

Cherokee, along with other removed Indians, provided a buffer between the “wild tribes” of the west and the U.S. western frontier, to many frontier Americans all Indians were the same, and all were unwanted anywhere near white settlements.82

While neighboring whites may have wished to see the Cherokee move farther west, the Cherokee themselves had a history of western resettlement. Cherokee removal

78 John Ross to Friedrich Ludwig Von Roenne, Ross Papers, 1: 330; Moulton, John Ross, 61-62.

79 Lewis Ross to John Ross, Jan. 4, 1838, Ross Papers, 1: 577.

80 John G. Ross to John Ross, June 3, 1841, Ross Papers, 2: 90.

81 See the section “The Lamanite Redemption and the Mormon-Indian Alliance” in Chapter Five.

82 LaVere, Contrary Neighbors, 106-107.

234 in 1838 and 1839 was simply the culmination of a series of western migrations that had begun decades before. As the majority of the Cherokee rapidly adopted American culture and customs in the early nineteenth century, a minority hoped to maintain the old ways.83 At first many settled in lands that would become Arkansas and Missouri, and those that remained became the Old Settlers who combatted with the arriving Ross Party in the late 1830s. However, pressure from both migrating whites and hostile Osages triggered a group of Cherokee to migrate again. Led by a Cherokee chief named Duwali

(known in earlier historiography as John Bowles or the Bowl), this group traveled south to the Red River Valley in Mexican Texas, where they joined other migrant Indians in a loose confederacy. In 1822, the Texas Cherokee numbered three hundred, but over the next decade further Cherokee immigration increased their numbers to eight hundred.84

Unfortunately, the Indian-hating President of Texas Mirabeau Lamar sought this group’s extermination, and after defeat at the hands of the Texans in 1839 most of the Texas

Cherokee fled to U.S. Indian Territory. Thus, as Gregory Smithers has noted, groups of

Cherokee had moved and resettled countless times in their past, and migration had

83 This statement is somewhat of a simplification, for many Cherokee traditionalists – most of whom were 100% Cherokee by blood – also resisted acculturation, but at the very least they acceded to the leadership of Americanized multiracial Cherokee, and believed Americanization was the correct strategy to combat American covetousness of their territory: McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 394-397.

84 On the Texas Cherokee, see Smithers, The Cherokee Diaspora, 54-55; Dianna Everett, The Texas Cherokees: A People Between Two Fires, 1819-1840 (Norman, OK: University Press of Oklahoma, 1990); Mary Whatley Clarke, Chief Bowles and the Texas Cherokees (Norman, OK: University Press of Oklahoma, 1971); Andrew Cayton, “Continental Politics: Liberalism, Nationalism, and the Appeal of Texas in the 1820s,” in Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, ed. Pasley, Robertson, and Waldstreicher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 310-312. Numbers: Everett, The Texas Cherokees, 24, 51, 67.

235 become a part of the Cherokee experience.85 Thus the migration of the majority

Ross Faction was not entirely novel, but the culmination of a decades-long process.

Yet it never did. Neither Ross nor his allies seriously considered a movement beyond Indian Country, either to Mexico, Texas, or farther west across the Rocky

Mountains. This willingness to remain in Indian Territory begs an important question.

If, as this dissertation argues, many Americans hoped to create breakaway republics, and many more believed their creation was entirely possible and not particularly troubling, then why did the Cherokee not also believe in this possibility? After all, the Cherokee had assimilated American culture and government, why should they not assimilate ideas about potential polities in the West? As “breakaway republicans,” the Cherokee were undoubtedly the least of the former, the most of the latter. Unlike most of the people discussed in this study, whose efforts to establish republican governance was truncated by U.S. expansion, the Cherokee republican government was fully functioning, possessed a written constitution, and was entirely ingrained in Cherokee ideology.86 Yet the Ross

Party’s quest for sovereignty never went beyond independent domestic sovereignty, essentially a Cherokee protectorate where the Cherokee ran their own internal affairs but deferred to the United States on an international level.87 Compared to the more ambitious

85 Smithers, The Cherokee Diaspora, 22-23 and passim.

86 Wardell, Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 44-46; McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 225-227, 284-289, 394-401. Many Cherokee letters, both those written by the Cherokee themselves and those written about the Cherokee by U.S. authorities, noted the importance of republicanism in the Cherokee Nation. See especially Ross to Mason, Dec. 6, 1837, Ross Papers, 1: 562; Ross to Arbuckle, July 9, 1839, Ross Papers, 1: 734; Old Settlers to Ross, Aug. 2, 1839, Ross Papers, 1: 752; Hitchchock to Spencer, Dec. 21, 1841, in Hitchcock, A Traveler in Indian Country, 238-239; Butler, 1843 Annual Report, OIA.

87 Sam Watson has deemed Indian Territory a U.S. “military protectorate”: Watson, Peacekeepers and Conquerors: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1821-1846 (Lawrence, KN: University Press of Kansas, 2013), 353.

236 goals of many breakaway republicans, the Ross Party’s vision of independence was rather modest.

There are multiple explanations for these modest political goals, some of which are immediately clear. First, the low-level Cherokee civil war prevented the Ross Party from contemplating a more ambitious migration; for Ross, Cherokee unity must come first. Second, the geopolitics of the West were more favorable to the Cherokee if they remained in Indian Territory than if they left. Within Indian Territory were native peoples like themselves: the rest of the Five Tribes to their west and south, and dozens of less populous removed native peoples to their north, such as the Potawatomi, Delaware, and Shawnee. Among these peoples the Cherokee considered themselves preeminent: they had become the most westernized and wealthy, and, thanks to this westernization, they had resisted removal the longest. As such, other removed Indians often deferred to their leadership when it came to inter-Indian matters.88 Farther west was a different situation. There, Plains Indians, particularly the Comanche, Kiowa, and Wichita, were in frequent conflict with the removed Indians on their borders.89 Thanks to their position on the far east of Indian Territory, the Cherokee did not feel the brunt of these conflicts, but undoubtedly their presence would not be welcome west of U.S. borders. Their

Americanization and “civilization” was at odds with the “savage” Plains peoples, and therefore it is unsurprising they never considered migrating west en masse.90

88 See, for example, Hitchcock to Spencer, Dec. 21, 1841, in A Traveler in Indian Country, 243.

89 LaVere, Contrary Neighbors, 62-136; Foreman, Advancing the Frontier, passim.

90 LaVere, Contrary Neighbors, 2-29; Samuel Watson, Peacekeepers and Conquerors, 354.

237 If the Cherokee were too Americanized for the native peoples to their west, they were too Indian for the Texans to their south. Unlike the Mormons, who, in the

1840s, held productive discussions with the Texas government to establish themselves within Texas borders, the Cherokees were unwanted in Texas.91 Indeed, in a small but telling aside two years prior to removal, Ross noted that the geographic location of Indian

Territory could be problematic, for the United States would be unable to defend it from hostile Texans. In Ross’ eyes, Texas was “made up of many of the old foes of the

Indians,” who would undoubtedly cause trouble.92 Ross was certainly prescient in regard to the Texan attitude towards native peoples, as the Texas government’s later actions against the Texas Cherokee demonstrated. Although Ross’ fear that the Texans would interfere with the Cherokee in U.S. Indian Territory was never realized, his statement and

Texan actions made if abundantly clear: the Cherokee could not migrate to Texas.

Although they could not migrate to the American plains or to the Republic of

Texas due to hostile populations, the Cherokee could have migrated to Mexico – at least in theory. Mexico had always been significantly more welcoming to native peoples than the United States, and clearly John Ross had banked on this hospitality when he had tried to contact the Mexican government in 1835. At the time this was just a flight of fancy, for the Cherokee still had hopes of remaining in the Southeast. However, a few years later they found themselves much closer to the Mexican border, and now much less trusting of federal authority, causing some Cherokee to take a migration to Mexico more seriously. While most of Texas Cherokee refugees went north to U.S. Indian Territory, a

91 On the Mormons and Texas, see Chapter Five.

92 Niles Register, July 2, 1836, in Ross Papers, 1: 447.

238 few went south to Mexico. There Cherokee Chief John Brown joined them. Brown was a recalcitrant Old Settler who refused to come to an agreement with the Ross Party, and hoped to lead the Old Settlers to Mexico.93 Very few followed, but one of these was the eminent Sequoyah, creator of the Cherokee alphabet. In 1843, Sequoyah sought out the small Cherokee band to try to reunite them with the rest of their people, but he died upon his arrival. Thus, although the number who migrated to Mexico was small, the reputation of John Brown and particularly Sequoyah made the Cherokee presence in

Mexico widely known among the larger population.

It was likely this knowledge that led Old Settler Chief John Rogers, in a letter to federal authorities, to express his willingness to contract with Mexico to settle in

California, where he would take his chances with the “wild men of the woods.”94 Yet

Rogers’ hysteria also demonstrated how Mexico functioned for most Cherokee. His language – “wild men of the woods” – suggests that his letter was premised more on getting attention than actually moving. Indeed, Rogers frequently employed hysterical language to get federal authorities to intervene in the Cherokee Nation on his behalf.

Despite citing Mexico, for Rogers – and for the vast percentage of Cherokee – Mexico was never really a feasible option, mostly due to simple logistics. A Mexican migration would be extremely difficult. Traveling to Mexico from Indian Territory required crossing both Texas and Comanche lands; Texas, at war with Mexico, would not want

Mexican forces augmented by 20,000 Cherokee, and would likely prevent the migration,

93 Interestingly, it was John Brown with whom the Mormons discussed an alliance in 1845, after he returned to the Cherokee Nation. See pages 308-312. For John Brown’s whereabouts, see Arbuckle to Poinsett, Dec. 11, 1839, OIA; Almonte to John Brown, June 20, 1840, OIA.

94 John Rogers to James Porter, May 18, 1843, OIA.

239 while traveling through Comanche territory was always a dubious prospect.95 It seems most Cherokee intuitively understood this, as the few eminent Cherokee who journeyed to Mexico never presaged a mass movement. In theory, Mexico seemed to welcome the Cherokee, but reality was another matter.

There were also deeper issues at work within Cherokee society that prevented a second migration, an examination of which reveals what separated the more ambitious breakaway republicans in North America from men like John Ross, who, although also ambitious, possessed comparatively more modest political goals. Ironically, the very success of Cherokee assimilation of American society – particularly southern society – mitigated against the prospects of a breakaway Cherokee republic. As noted above,

Cherokee society was not only divided politically, but socially. On one side were the traditionalists who resisted Americanization, most of whom were one hundred percent

Cherokee by blood. On the other side were the multiracial elite like John Ross and Stand

Watie, who adopted American customs wholesale – including chattel slavery. These elite numbered roughly 300 families and comprised 8% of the population. All of these elite possessed over 600 acres and – crucially – owned anywhere from 25 to 100 slaves, which meant roughly 3000 slaves inhabited the Cherokee Nation.96 Meanwhile the much larger percentage of traditionalists owned few slaves. Because their main goal was to be left

95 Pekka Hämäläinen notes that the Comanche readily adopted other natives into Comanche society, including many Cherokee. In return, however, the adoptees needed to throw off all traces of their former selves, and completely accept Comanche society and customs. Needless to say, the Ross Party’s stance on the importance of maintaining Cherokee identity was the antithesis of this: Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 174-178.

96 McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 66-79, 125; Theda Purdue, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540-1866 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1979), 99-106; R. Halliburton, Jr., Red Over Black: Black Slavery among the Cherokee Indians (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 61-92.

240 alone, and they recognized that the Cherokee elite had a better ability to navigate the American political world, they largely ceded leadership to this elite.97 Thus, the

Cherokee were essentially led by an Indian version of the southern planter class.

Significantly, this Cherokee planter class was not one that could easily leave the perimeter of American civilization. To maintain their lifestyles, men like John Ross did not necessarily need or want to be within the United States, but they needed to be close to the United States to access the market economy and continue their southern plantation lifestyle. Their Americanization prohibited making any risky political gambits, as Ethan

Allen Hitchcock noted in his journey through Indian Territory: “…[The Cherokee leaders] have intelligence enough to know a war would drive them from their homes to a mode of life in the woods which their acquired habits of civilized life would not permit them to sustain for three months.”98 A pro-Cherokee letter-writer to the Arkansas

Gazette put it more succinctly when trying to explain why the Cherokee were completely different from Plains Indians farther west: the Cherokee were “anchored by their interests.”99 The Cherokee elite’s need to stay put contrasted with the Cherokee who migrated to Texas in the early 1820s. The Texas Cherokee could make such a move because they hoped to avoid acculturation, and to them remoteness was an asset. By comparison, wealthy multiracial leaders required connections to the U.S. market. While they could no longer solely plant cotton in Indian Territory to the extent they did in the

97 Hitchcock to Spencer, Dec. 21, 1841, in,A Traveler in Indian Country, 240; McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, 326-330; Denson, Demanding the Cherokee Nation, 12-13, 19-20.

98 Hitchcock to Spencer, Dec. 21, 1841, in A Traveler in Indian Country, 242-243. For a similar statement, see Butler to Crawford, May 6, 1842, OIA.

99 “W. Byrd Powell” to the Arkansas Gazette, Feb. 9, 1842.

241 East (Indian Territory was slightly too far north), they still dabbled in it, and also raised wheat, corn, cattle, hemp, and tobacco. Most of these goods were then sent to the

Mississippi River via the Arkansas River, eventually creating a booming riverboat operation. Some wealthy Cherokee like Lewis Ross opened prosperous mercantile businesses to cater to elite needs, while others became steamboat owners to capitalize on the growing river trade. This booming trade all depended on chattel slavery.100

The importance of slavery among the Cherokee elite worked against any potential for a Cherokee breakaway republic. Just as the white planter class of the South desired internal improvements and an integrated national economy – and thus generally supported the Whig Party – so too did the Cherokee elite recognize the need for connections to the market.101 Moreover, slavery required a vigilant police state to flourish. Neither a sophisticated market economy nor a police state existed in the vast northern regions of Mexico.102 Indeed, slavery was illegal in Mexico, and even if the

Cherokee migrated to somewhere where Mexican power was impotent – e.g. California – it is doubtful they would have been able to maintain a slave system on the journey. There would be simply too many avenues for slaves to escape bondage, as a few Cherokee elite

100 In many ways, the Cherokees brought a version of “Appalachian slavery” from the Southeast to Indian Territory, with its emphasis on employing slave labor in transportation and commerce as much as on agriculture. On “Appalachian slavery” among the Cherokee, see Wilma A. Dunaway, Slavery the in the American Mountain South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 95, 101, 123, 148, 151, 225, 228-231.

101 For the Whiggish attitudes of the Southern planter class, see Michael Holt, The Fate of their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 30.

102 Slavery’s rapid expansion into the then-Southwest required large slave-trading firms that built high- walled jails, steamboats that brought slavery to the edge of all Mississippi Valley waterways (but at first no farther), and a vigilant slaveholding class. Even then, slave rebellions and slave escapes could not be prevented entirely. See Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 40-42, 45-72, 86-150; Edward Baptist, The Other Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 172-185.

242 knew all too well, for some of their slaves had escaped permanently during the journey from Georgia to Indian Territory.103 Importantly, no other breakaway republicans who traveled west – neither the Mormons, nor American immigrants to

California or Oregon – were slaveholders. Indeed, for many white Americans, escaping a slave-based economy was an added benefit of moving west, as later chapters will demonstrate. Shut out of the increasingly capitalist southern economy, southern overlanders could establish themselves in the West without being beholden to white planters or black slaves, both of whom they disliked. Texas, of course, was a standout exception, but slavery only flourished in Texas after Texan independence, when it finally became completely legal and fully institutionalized.104 Of course, as unwelcome Indians, moving to the burgeoning slave economy of Texas was not an option for the Cherokee.

When it came to slavery, the Ross Party was decisively allied with the U.S. state.105 For all the provocative rhetoric asserting their sovereignty, the Ross Party cooperated with any white owner searching for a potential runaway in the Cherokee

Nation.106 In this regard, the Cherokee stood in marked contrast to the Seminole, whose refusal to return slaves led directly to the seven-year Second Seminole War and – eventually – Seminole removal to Indian Territory. Undoubtedly federal policymakers

103 Thompson to Boudinot, Nov. 5, 1838, in Cherokee Cavaliers, 16.

104 Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 50-66. Significantly, Campbell notes that it was more difficult to expand slavery in regions of Texas in close proximity to Mexico (62-64).

105 On Cherokee slavery during this era, see Tiya Miles, Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 149-178; Perdue, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 70-118; Celia Naylor, African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 25-74.

106 McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 132.

243 wanted to keep the Cherokee as pro-slavery allies, and not turn them into another version of the Seminoles, while the elite Cherokee who reaped slavery’s profits had no reason to change their stance. Thus, federal officials always chose pro-slavery southerners to be Cherokee agents, and at times U.S. dragoons helped capture escaped slaves in the Cherokee Nation.107 Moreover, while U.S. authorities often protested the existence of the Cherokee Light Horse, they had no qualms about the Cherokee establishing slave patrols to capture runaways. In the most famous of these incidents, somewhere between 21 and 200 slaves from several Cherokee Nation plantations imprisoned their owners, procured weapons and horses, and as a group fled to Texas. On their journey south, several of the runaways killed two slave catchers – one white, the other a Delaware Indian. In response, the Cherokee National Council paid Light Horse

Captain John Drew and a hundred-man posse to capture them, which they did only seven miles from the Texas border.108 Significantly, although most slaves were returned to their Cherokee owners, the Light Horse turned over the few slaves who were suspected of killing the two slave catchers to Arkansas authorities for trial. Pierce Butler reported this incident to Arkansas Senator Ambrose Sevier; normally Sevier was outright hostile to displays of Cherokee power, but in this case he did not even bother to respond.109 This white-Cherokee alliance against black slaves was the most visible outgrowth of a decade of racial retrenchment within the Cherokee Nation, where, in an effort to reestablish

107 McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 136; Agnew, Fort Gibson, 143,

108 Butler to Crawford, Dec. 14, 1842 and Dec. 4, 1842, OIA. See also Daniel Littlefield and Lonnie Underhill, “Slave ‘Revolt’ in the Cherokee Nation, 1842,” American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Summer, 1977), 121-131; Miles, Ties That Bind, 169-173.

109 Butler to Sevier, Jan. 13, 1843, OIA.

244 control in the west after the chaos of the Trail of Tears, Cherokee leaders established a written black code that was significantly stricter than anything that had been enforced in the east.110 Clearly many wealthy Cherokee valued their slave society as much as they did their independent sovereignty.

Even the poorer, more traditional Cherokee relied on the U.S. state in some fashion. Even if they did not own slaves or actively participate in the market economy, traditionalists nevertheless needed American currency to purchase goods for survival, for the Cherokee never attempted to establish a currency of their own.111 Significantly, while the supporters of the Ross Party were hostile to the Treaty of New Echota, they still coveted its financial promises. The United States had promised to pay the Cherokee $5 million for their lands in the east, but how this would be appropriated was still subject for discussion. Indeed, the pursuit of U.S. funds represented one of the biggest conflicts between the Ross Party and its enemies, as each faction promised that it would secure more than the other side.112 To strengthen his popularity, Ross maintained that he could obtain a new treaty for the Cherokee, in which he could secure additional monies by proving that removal had cost significantly more than the federal government maintained.113 In this effort Ross badly miscalculated, and his inability to get any money

110 Perdue, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 84-90; Naylor, African Cherokees in Indian Territory, 27-31.

111 Technically, bank notes and selected state currencies, for the U.S. still had not established a national currency.

112 In contrast, the Mormons issued minted their own currency in 1849, 1850, and 1860, demonstrating how the Mormons went past the Cherokee in terms of their quest for sovereignty. See Leonard Arrington, “Coins and Currency,” in Utah History Encyclopedia, < www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/c/COINS_AND_CURRENCY.html>

113 McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 40-41.

245 to distribute, let alone increase its amount, led to a brief but significant decline in his reputation in the early 1840s.114 Without these funds – and, for that matter, food and provisions the U.S. also promised but rarely delivered – many Cherokee remained impoverished during the first post-removal decade.115

Thus, despite frequent assertions of Cherokee sovereignty, it is no mystery why the Ross Party never contemplated a fully independent Cherokee republic. By being forced west, the Cherokee gained many advantages in relation to the power of the U.S. federal government and individual states, for neither possessed the strength to assert complete control over the Cherokee without substantial efforts and – perhaps more importantly after the Panic of 1837 – significant expenditures. Yet the Ross Party was still dependent on the United States in several fundamental ways: for market access, for provisions, and for badly needed funds. Moreover, even if they had wanted to, the

Cherokee could not wage war against the U.S. with any long-term success, nor did they have good options for leaving U.S. borders altogether. Instead of total independence,

John Ross and his allies longed for an autonomous Cherokee Nation, domestically sovereign but internationally under U.S. auspices. Therefore the Cherokee Nation was only a partial breakaway republic.

114 Butler to Crawford, Sept 28, 1842, OIA; Butler to Crawford, Nov. 25, 1842, OIA; Ross to Cherokee National Council, Dec. 20, 1842, Ross Papers, 2: 158; John Ross, Annual Message, Nov. 14, 1842, Ross Papers, 2: 152; McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 40.

115 Major General Ethan Allen Hitchcock wrote of this neglect, and especially the rampant fraud practiced by suppliers with contracts to the federal government, in his 1842 report on Indian Territory. However, the report was so incendiary – and, crucially, may have hampered negotiations with the Cherokee – that the Tyler Administration suppressed it. For background on the report and its suppression, see the two forewards by Michael Green and Grant Foreman, respectively, in Foreman, ed. A Traveler in Indian Country, 3-13.

246 Nevertheless, even this partial breakaway status caused multiple political ramifications on the ground within and outside Indian Territory. For many U.S. authorities, in theory there was a seeming neatness to an autonomous Cherokee Nation lying in close to proximity to many other autonomous removed Indian peoples, all of whom were far away from most white population centers; in practice, even partial breakaway status countered U.S. expansionism.

The Lines and Borders of Indian Territory: On the Ground Implications of Cherokee Autonomy

Clearly rhetoric mattered a great deal in and around the Cherokee Nation.116

During the initial years after removal, the Ross Party forcefully argued for self- sovereignty, the Treaty Party and Old Settlers pleaded for U.S. aid, and white settlers in

Arkansas raised the cry of “Indian warfare.” Although U.S. authorities were cognizant of these discussions, the United States remained largely uninvolved in the real time decisions in the Cherokee Nation, allowing the same patterns of rhetoric to repeat themselves for almost a decade. Meanwhile, beyond rhetoric, smaller struggles over sovereignty continued on the ground. These never reached the outlandish epic proportions of the rhetoric: from the U.S. perspective, the Ross-led Cherokee never hoped to exterminate neighboring whites or the Treaty Party; from the Ross Party’s perspective, the federal government was not attempting to erase Cherokee autonomy entirely. Yet the autonomous nature of the Cherokee Nation – and Indian Territory more generally – mattered, and it caused significant political problems. Even if it was not a complete breakaway republic, the region was not simply another U.S. territory. The

116 The importance of Cherokee rhetoric is fully discussed in Denson, Demanding the Cherokee Nation.

247 ambiguous nature of sovereignty in the Cherokee Nation affected relations with neighboring white Americans, with fellow removed Indians, and even with the more distant Plains Indians and Texans.

To most Cherokee and neighboring whites, the most persistent and troublesome issue of sovereignty was the Arkansas-Cherokee Nation border. The border assumed such importance that both Cherokee and Arkansan alike simply deemed it “the line.”117

The term also unintentionally highlighted the major problem with this border: not based upon any geographic barrier, it was nothing more than an imaginary line, allowing both

Cherokees and whites to cross with ease. Legally, however, this imaginary line mattered a great deal, for it represented two entirely different jurisdictions.118 The State of

Arkansas oversaw the eastern side, while the Cherokee Nation governed the western side, which resulted in an unsustainable legal situation for both sides.

Initial problems arose over the issue of alcohol. Both the federal government and the Cherokee Nation prohibited selling alcohol within Indian Territory, but Arkansans easily avoided the issue by setting up whiskey distilleries that straddled the line.119

Merchants distilled whiskey on the Arkansas side, and then ran tubes projecting one foot into the Cherokee side, thus avoiding the illegality of selling whiskey on a technicality.

Presumably Cherokee consumers would hand over money to the distillerer in Arkansas, and then receive the whiskey in the Cherokee Nation, thereby separating money from

117 The first instance I have found using “the line” is Butler to Crawford, May 17, 1842, OIA. By 1846 the term had become prevalent enough that the Cherokee Advocate could simply issue reports “From the Line” (June 25, 1846).

118 For descriptions of the line, see Littlefield and Underhill, “Fort Wayne and Border Violence,” 3-30.

119 Ibid., 17-18; William McLoughlin, Champions of the Cherokee: Evan and John B. Jones (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 187.

248 product, and allowing distillerers to claim no whiskey was ever sold in the

Cherokee Nation. While the situation may have been absurd, it also demonstrated the very real legal power of the line. The “grog shops” that straddled it were hardly secret, but neither Cherokee authorities nor U.S. soldiers at Fort Gibson felt they had the right to shut down the shops directly. Instead, the Cherokee used their Light Horse to patrol the

Cherokee side of the line only.120 Even though the situation was farcical, the legal importance of the line could not be violated.

Whiskey, however, was the least of concerns, for the line potentially represented a crucial legal discrepancy between the United States and the Cherokee Nation. In 1841

Congress passed a law stating that the U.S. possessed jurisdiction over the Cherokee

Nation and other polities of Indian Territory, with the exception of crimes of one Indian against another. This seemingly straightforward jurisdictional issue was tested in 1845, when the United States brought William Rogers to trial for the murder of Jacob

Nicholson.121 Although they were white, both Rogers and Nicholson had lived in the

Cherokee Nation for years, and each had married a Cherokee woman. Rogers argued that the court had no jurisdiction over him, for both he and Nicholson had assumed the mantle of Cherokee citizenship, meaning Rogers’ trial should be held in the Cherokee Nation.

To Judge Ben Johnson of the Arkansas District Court in Little Rock, this argument was persuasive. A few days earlier, Johnson had ruled in similar case that a white

120 Suppressing the whiskey trade was actually the initial reason the light horse companies were formed, but soon they were used in the Cherokee factional squabbles. McLoughlin, Champions of the Cherokee, 187.

121 See especially Bethany R. Berger, “ ‘Power Over this Unfortunate Race’: Race, Politics and Indian Law in United States v. Rogers,” William and Mary Law Review, Vol. 45, Issue 5 (2004), 1960-2052. See also Harring, Crow Dog’s Case, 60-61; Wardell, A Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 100-101; McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 106-107.

249 counterfeiter who had moved to the Cherokee Nation and married a Cherokee woman could not be brought to U.S. court, for he had “expatriated” himself years ago.122

However, unluckily for Rogers, Supreme Court Justice Peter Daniel was making his rounds for appellate cases, and was also present in Little Rock at the time. Daniel profoundly disagreed with Johnson, arguing that it was not the Cherokee Nation’s decision whether or not Rogers was a Cherokee citizen, but that of the United States; if the U.S. wanted to try Rogers, it had the right to do so. The two judges’ disagreement meant that no verdict was rendered, and the case automatically went to the Supreme

Court.123

Both Cherokees and neighboring whites recognized the implications of this case, and unsurprisingly came down on different sides of the issue. For the Cherokee

Advocate, the Ross Party organ and only newspaper of the Cherokee Nation, if the

Supreme Court ruled against Rogers, then “bad disposed whites” who resided in the

Cherokee Nation would break the law with “impunity,” understanding that the Cherokee

Nation no longer had the right to put them on trial.124 This decision would create

“disastrous consequences” as Cherokee authority on the ground would become hollow.125

To the editor of the Arkansas Gazette, however, the Cherokee Nation’s attempt to try

“expatriated” whites was absurd, for it was not a “foreign, independent nation.” If the court ruled for Rogers, then “it would be an encouragement for our worthless citizens to

122 Arkansas Gazette, April 21, 1845; Berger, “ ‘Power Over this Unfortunate Race’,” 1991-1992.

123 Per the 1793 Judiciary Act: Berger, “ ‘Power Over this Unfortunate Race’,” 1991.

124 Cherokee Advocate, May 22, 1845.

125 Cherokee Advocate, June 5, 1845.

250 harbor among [the Cherokee], for the purpose of freeing themselves of the rigor of law of the United States…”126 Both papers’ use of the word “expatriation” hearkened back to discussions over Americans leaving the U.S. for Texas in the 1820s and 1830s, as well as discussion in Congress over the legality of the American Patriots in 1838. The question the U.S Circuit Court posed to the U.S. Supreme Court also delved into these issues: did becoming a citizen of the Cherokee Nation entail transferring allegiance away from the United States to another “government, State, or community”?”127 That this issue was even debated revealed the legal quandary of the Cherokee Nation and Indian

Territory more generally, and demonstrated the potentially expansive reaches of

Cherokee autonomy.

The Arkansas Gazette’s fear that the Cherokee Nation would become a haven for white criminals could not have been more wrong: it was not “worthless [American] citizens” in the Cherokee Nation, but Cherokee outlaws and their white allies in Arkansas who caused the major problems on the Arkansas-Cherokee line. Arkansas, not the

Cherokee Nation, was the criminal haven. The Cherokee Nation’s court system was sophisticated and effective, and the Light Horse proved an effective law enforcer within

Cherokee borders.128 Over the line, however, both of these organs were powerless, thus allowing suspected outlaws to use Arkansas as a refuge from Cherokee law. At first most of these outlaws were petty criminals, but as the Cherokee civil war escalated in the early

126 Arkansas Gazette, April 21, 1845.

127 Cherokee Advocate, June 5, 1845. On expatriation to Texas, see Eric Schlereth, “Privileges of Locomotion: Expatriation and the Politics of Southwestern Border Crossing,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 100, No. 4 (Sept., 2014), 995-1020; on the related discussion with the Patriots, see above, pages 167-169.

128 Berger, “ ‘Power Over this Unfortunate Race’,” 1997.

251 1840s, Arkansas became a shelter for the Ross Party’s enemies. In some cases the use of this haven was morally justified, as many Treaty Party and Old Settler families feared Ross Party retribution, and crossed the line as essentially political refugees. In other cases the line provided safety to genuine criminals, most notably with the infamous

Starr Gang, who used hatred of the Ross Party to justify indiscriminant murder and plunder.129 Although the Cherokee Light Horse outnumbered these banditti, the Light

Horse could not pursue them over the line, which allowed the chaos to persist unabated.

Whatever the reasons for Cherokee crossing the line, except for the few instances where Arkansas authorities intervened, there were no repercussions for whites who meddled in the conflict. Arkansans found numerous reasons for harboring Ross Party enemies. Some undoubtedly disliked and feared Ross’ ambition and potential power, and innately sympathized with what they deemed the “weaker party.”130 Others simply hoped to partake in the plunder.131 Some whites had lent money and supplies to the Treaty

Party refugees upon their arrival in Arkansas, and now had a financial incentive to see the

Treaty Party victorious; as the Cherokee Advocate put it, “Their only chance of getting a copper is to foment difficulties.”132 Ultimately, the existence of the line allowed the

Treaty Party to continue and escalate its opposition to Ross and his allies, despite their

129 Unsurprisingly the Ross Party portrayed all refugees as criminals, and the Treaty Party portrayed all criminals as refugees. See, for example, Cherokee Advocate, Jan. 15, 1846; Sarah Watie to John Bell, April 16, 1846, in Cherokee Cavaliers, 37; Lynch to Waite, Aug. 1, 1846, Stand Watie Papers; John Rogers to Porter, May 18, 1843; McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 49-50; Wardell, A Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 62-66.

130 Butler to Crawford, Nov. 19, 1843, OIA.

131 This was of course what John Ross believed. See, for example, John Ross, Annual Message, Oct. 3, 1843, Ross Papers, 2: 176-180.

132 Cherokee Advocate, Nov. 27, 1845.

252 minority status and deficiency of resources. Without the line, either there would not have been a Cherokee civil war, or the Ross Party would have won it in its first year.

While the Arkansas-Cherokee line was a problem on the Cherokees’ eastern border, the conglomerate of removed Indians offered a political opportunity to their west.

While the line demonstrated the very real problems that could – and did – ensue as the

Cherokee Nation acted as an autonomous political entity, a potential alliance of removed

Indians demonstrated how that autonomy could be secured. Removed Indians had always recognized commonalities they had with one another, and as early as 1837, prior to the arrival of the majority of the Cherokee, various removed Indians attended pan-

Indian councils in an effort to establish some sort of intertribal cooperation. While the natives who attended these councils discussed many issues, including land rights and education, their primary concern were the Plains Indians to their west. The Comanche,

Kiowa, and other plains native peoples routinely caused removed Indians problems through raiding, warfare, and general unwillingness to abide by American diplomatic norms that removed natives had also come to follow. Removed Indians hoped the Plains

Indians would attend these intertribal councils, where all parties could come to some sort of permanent diplomatic and economic agreement. Although each council differed, a general pattern ensued: if the council was held in close proximity to the Plains Indians, then few Cherokee attended, for the conference was comparatively far from the Cherokee

Nation; if the council was held in the Cherokee Nation – as it was in 1839 – Plains

253 Indians did not attend, for it was too distant from their territory. Thus the Cherokee had few relations with the Plains Indians inhabiting the borderland to their west.133

In late 1842, however, John Ross himself initiated an intertribal council, but this time the council had a different purpose. Gone was a westward orientation and diplomacy with the Plains Indians. Instead, Ross hoped to unify the removed Indians by adopting “international laws” that they could all follow, such as a settlement of boundaries, the extradition of criminals, and establishing parameters on trade.134

According to historian William McLoughlin, Ross’ initiative was also an attempt to restore his reputation among the Cherokee, which had been diminishing due to Ross’ failure to secure a more favorable financial settlement with the U.S.135 The timing of the council certainly supports McLoughlin’s claim, although his assertion is uncited.

Whatever his personal motivations, Ross and several other Cherokee leaders convened with Creek Chief Roley McIntosh in January 1843, in a meeting facilitated by Cherokee

Agent Pierce Butler. Butler’s presence attests to the peaceful intention of the proposed council, for he would not have a brokered an alliance whose target was the United

States.136 After preliminary discussion, Ross and McIntosh invited twenty-one other removed native peoples to convene at the Cherokee capital of Tahlequah in June.

Their proposal found a ready reception. Between three and four thousand natives representing eighteen tribes attended the “Great Council,” which lasted for over four

133 For a summary of these intertribal councils, see LaVere, Contrary Neighbors, 92-108; Bowes, Exiles and Pioneers, 137-151; Foreman, Advancing the Frontier, 195-216.

134 William H. Goode, Outposts of Zion, with Limnings of Mission Life (Cincinnati, 1864), 74.

135 McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 43.

136 Butler to Crawford, Jan. 16, 1843, OIA.

254 weeks.137 In general, the Cherokees and the Creeks took the lead in the proceedings, as both Ross and McIntosh gave extended speeches explaining their reasons for holding the council. Missionary William Goode observed the proceedings, and in his opinion the speeches and many others covered the same topics: “…Their lingering love for their former homes, respect for their ancestry, a cautiously-expressed sense of the injustice done them by their removal, a reluctant resignation to their fate, and a desire to cultivate the arts of peace and to provide for their offspring.”138 Goode’s summary was largely correct, for these were common themes of much of the council. As an attempt to open intertribal dialogue, speeches were weighted towards the generalities that Goode noted, and most did not address specific measures.

Yet Goode seemed to have missed some of the more provocative statements by

Ross and other native leaders amidst the general statements of nostalgia and regret. For example, in a preamble to eight concluding resolutions, the council stated that the “lands we now possess shall be the undisturbed homes of ourselves and our posterity forever.”139

Even more remarkable than this assertion of sovereignty was another resolution that stated: “We hereby solemnly pledge to each other, that no Nation, party to this compact, shall, without the consent of all other parties, cede, or in any manner alienate, to the

United States, any part of their present territory.”140 This statement represented an

137 Accounts of the Great Council are sparse. Missionary William Goode gives the most detailed account of this council: Goode, Outposts of Zion, 69-84. Secondary accounts include Moulton, John Ross, 134- 135; Bowes, Exiles and Pioneers, 141-147; McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 43.

138 Goode, Outposts of Zion, 76.

139 “Compact between the several Tribes of Indians,” in The Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Nation: Passed at Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, 1839-1851 (Tahlequah, 1852), 87.

140 Ibid., 88.

255 expansion of an older Cherokee law, in which the Cherokee National Council, not individual Cherokees, had the final authority over land sales. Now no tribe could cede land without the authorization of all other removed Indians, which provided a powerful check against any individual tribe that looked for immediate financial gain over long term native autonomy. Also remarkable, if more ambiguous, was Ross’ statement that he had pursued relationships with many more native peoples to the north and the south.141 As with the Great Council, these diplomatic overtures to far-off native peoples had entirely pacific intentions, yet they nonetheless demonstrated a significantly broader geographic scope than the already remarkable assemblage at the Great Council.

It is easy to take these statements as mere rhetoric. Indeed, in hindsight the prospects for forging an alliance of removed native peoples for the purpose of counteracting U.S. expansion appear ludicrous. Cherokee chief George Lowrey referenced Tecumseh in his speech to the Great Council, but Tecumseh’s era had long passed. Even if the council attendees mimicked Tecumseh and united their peoples, never again could they contest the United States on militarily advantageous terms on a medium- or long-term basis.142 The very fact that the removed Indians were removed demonstrated their military impotence, and clearly the leaders of the Great Council did not search for a military alliance – although, yet again, neighboring whites in Arkansas called out the militia fearing that is exactly what the council intended.143 However, from the geographical perspective of 1843, removed Indians had several advantages working

141 Goode, Outposts of Zion, 75.

142 Foreman, Advancing the Frontier, 210-211.

143 Petition of Arkansas Citizens, July 3, 1843, OIA.

256 in their favor that augmented the prospects for continued Indian autonomy that would last – in the words of the Great Council – “forever.” As the removed Indians knew all too well, the native peoples of the plains were inhospitable to encroachment on their lands, and would prevent American expansion. So too would basic environmental and geographic factors, particularly the lack of water in the “Great Western Desert” and the

Rocky Mountains.144 To the far west, California was distant Mexican territory, and

Oregon’s political fate remained ambiguous – and, at least for one more year, largely unpopulated by Americans. If these borders remained unchanged, then Indian Territory would remain an uninviting borderland on the United States’ far western periphery, potentially secure from the advancements of white encroachment.

Indeed, for a time the U.S. federal government believed Indian autonomy could and would be permanent, and attempted to establish measures that would provide adequate defense for such a situation, both in terms of guarding the U.S. border from enemies without, and guarding American settlers from removed Indians within. In 1836,

Secretary of War Lewis Cass proposed protecting the frontier by establishing a line of forts in along the United States’ western border, all linked by a military road to facilitate easy transport. These plans were modified and augmented by the next Secretary of War

Joel Poinsett, who also hoped to expand the army to occupy the new forts.145 In theory,

144 See above, pages 91-92.

145 Technically Poinsett was quite critical of Cass’ plan, for Poinsett believed a simple line of forts could be easily breached. He advocated two lines of forts, with internal forts perpendicular to their external counterparts. External forts would provide order in Indian Territory, and internal forts would be more heavily manned, and provide a place for retreat in case of hostilities. Joel Poinsett to Andrew Jackson, Sept. 19, 1837, Poinsett Papers, 9-19, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Prucha, The Sword of the Republic, 339-360; Wooster, The American Military Frontiers, 83, 90-95; Robert P. Wetteman, Jr., Privilege vs. Equality: Civil-Military Relations in the Jacksonian Era, 1815-1845 (Santa Barbara, CA:

257 these forts would provide a check for all parties: Plains Indians bent on invading

U.S. territory, removed Indians causing trouble in U.S. borderlands, and white Americans preying on removed Indians. Of course, natives like John Ross objected to all forts within Indian Territory, but both Ross and U.S. officials agreed with the principle that

Indian Territory would become some sort of permanent Indian zone. Indeed, beginning with Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, the idea of a permanent “Indian barrier” on the

United States’ western border had long been present in American history, and still seemed probable to many Americans in the early 1840s.146 Although the U.S. did build several forts within Indian Territory, the comprehensive Cass-Poinsett plan for a chain of forts was never realized. The Panic of 1837 made the plan financially unfeasible, and

Van Buren’s subsequent unpopularity made it politically impossible. The Van Buren administration had already struggled to bring the Patriots and the Seminole to heel, and thus the lack of federal power in far-off Indian Territory was hardly surprising. However, despite never being enacted, the plan nevertheless demonstrated how U.S officials foresaw the place of removed Indians within the borders of the nation – on the periphery of a United States that stopped at the Rockies.

Tellingly, most of the tribes present at the Great Council did not share the

Cherokee vision for permanent native independence. While it seems there was plenty of goodwill among all the natives who attended, only three tribes ultimately signed the

Praeger Security International, 2009), 124-125; J. Fred Rippy, Joel Poinsett: Versatile American (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1935), 190-191.

146 Robert Trennert, Jr., Alternative to Extinction: Federal Indian Policy and the Beginnings of the Reservation System, 1846-51 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1975), 1-9.

258 Great Council resolutions: the Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Osages.147 That the

Cherokees and Creeks were the two most populous and powerful of the removed tribes demonstrated the various dilemmas of the different native peoples. Smaller groups such as the Potawatomi were significantly more dependent on the U.S. government, and took seriously the warnings of both U.S. officials and American missionaries to avoid signing such a provocative document. They also did not want to cede the little autonomy they had left to their much more populous southern neighbors.148 In contrast, the Cherokee and Creek had large enough populations – and therefore potential military power – that they could sign such a bold statement, understanding that the U.S. would not (and could not afford to) intervene over provocative language alone. Yet Cherokee and Creek leaders recognized that their power was both limited and potentially temporary if the

United States expanded its territory and/or its military capabilities. By initiating the

Great Council, men like John Ross hoped to bring together as many removed native peoples as possible, thereby presenting a united front against any future American encroachment.

Thus, through the legal complications of “the line” and the potential ramifications of an intertribal Indian alliance, we have glimpses of a future for the Cherokee Nation specifically, and Indian Territory more generally, that differed from its ultimate fate as a surrounded polity entirely dependent on the goodwill of the United States.149 The

Cherokee would possess absolute control over their internal territory; Cherokee law

147 Bowes, Exiles and Pioneers, 146.

148 Ibid.

149 See below on post-1846 Indian Territory.

259 would govern all – including all whites who “expatriated” themselves from the

United States – and would be enforced by the Cherokee Light Horse. The Cherokees’ would buttress their internal power by allying with neighboring removed native peoples to the north and south. While they may retain separate governments, all the removed

Indians would present a united front again U.S. expansion, or any other polity, white or native, that threatened their autonomy. Perhaps Indian Territory would even become an

Indian state with representation in Congress, and some U.S. officials advocated this solution as a way to permanently civilize and integrate the Indians within U.S. borders.150

Thus Indian Territory would not become a breakaway republic, but it would become a permanent Indian borderland, governed by Indians for the well being of Indians. Of course, while men like John Ross did their best to make this vision a reality, they never got close to achieving its completion. Until 1846, however, its potential remained very real – until the outbreak of the U.S.-Mexican War and the decisive intervention of James

K. Polk and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Securing Prosperity, Removing Autonomy: The Polk Administration and the Cherokee Nation

Perhaps the best evidence that permanent Cherokee autonomy was a distinct possibility lies in the response of the Polk Administration to this potential autonomy. As we have seen, for almost a decade John Ross and his allies had worked to secure local sovereignty over the Cherokee Nation, while the Treaty Party and many Old Settlers

150 See Annie H. Abel, “Proposals for an Indian State, 1778-1878,” in Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1907 (Washington, 1908), 97-99. See also George Schultz, An Indian Canaan: Isaac McCoy and the Vision of an Indian State (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), 184-203.

260 worked against the Ross Party’s ascendancy. The United States was never uninvolved in this bitter struggle: delegations from both sides regularly pleaded their cases in Washington, while U.S. soldiers at Fort Gibson and Cherokee Agents attempted to bring about a peaceful settlement within the Cherokee Nation. Yet during these years

U.S. involvement was never decisive. In general, federal support for the Treaty Party allowed this minority faction to maintain the struggle against difficult numerical odds, but never prevented the Ross Party from maintaining its supremacy within the borders of the Cherokee Nation. By 1846 there were 750 Treaty Party refugees living in Arkansas, as the Cherokee Light Horse turned to vigilante justice, arresting and executing all those who opposed the Ross Party without trial.151 While John Ross himself seems to have deplored the violence, there was little doubt that his faction was winning the Cherokee’s civil war.

To many Democratic officials, the situation in the Cherokee Nation had always been untenable. In general, Whigs held more sympathy for the plight of the Cherokee and rule of John Ross, stemming from both their opposition to Cherokee Removal under

Jackson, and their tendency to hate and fear native peoples less than Democrats.152 To

Jacksonian Democrats, the Ross Party had always been hostile to the United States, and now was flouting American oversight of the Cherokee Nation. In a letter to Polk,

151 McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 52-56.

152 For examples of Whig sympathy for the Ross Party, see Butler to Crawford, March 3, 1842. Compare also Whig papers in Arkansas such as the Batesville News, with Democratic papers such as the Arkansas Gazette. Between 1840 and 1843, the Batesville News ran a total of five Cherokee articles, none of which portray the Ross Party as hostile (April 23, 1840; Oct. 21, 1841; Feb. 24, 1842; April 21, 1842; and April 28, 1842). The paper even argues that Ross would make a better Arkansas governor than current Democratic governor Archibald Yell (April 21, 1842). Meanwhile the Arkansas Gazette printed dozens of anti-Cherokee articles, until 1844 when a Whig editor purchased the paper, at which point the anti- Cherokee hostility abruptly ceased.

261 Georgia Senator Wilson Lumpkin ably summarized the Democratic position: “Since

Genl. Jackson left the Executive office…the tone of the Govt. has been too imbecile, to controul the conflicting elements of the Cherokee people…I will not assert, that the

Indian policy of Genl. Jackson, has intentionally been abandoned by the succeeding administrations. But you are apprized that much depends upon doing a right thing, in a right way….The murder of the Ridges and Boudinot is not only unavenged, but their friends & followers are an oppressed & down trodden people. The officers…of the U.S. have yielded quite too much to the assumptions of Ross. And if his life is spared, & his assumptions permitted to progress, we shall yet see trouble with our Indian population, who have emigrated to the west.”153 As Georgia’s governor during the removal era,

Lumpkin had dedicated much of his political career to defeat John Ross and his allies, and thus his desire to see Ross dead (“if his life is spared”) was more extreme than most.

However, the rest of his assessment was not, and certainly Polk certainly felt similar about who was to blame for chaos in the Cherokee Nation. In his longest diary entry on the Cherokee, Polk explained that “…[The Ross Party] constituted the majority of the

Nation, and since their removal West have pursued and persecuted the Treaty party…Many murders have been committed among them…”154 Of course, former

Democratic officials felt the same way, but unlike them Polk planned to solve the issue for good.

153 Wilson Lumpkin to James Polk, July 8, 1845, in Correspondence of James K. Polk, 12 Volumes, ed. Wayne Cutler (Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1969-2013), 10: 33.

154 James Polk, Aug. 13, 1846, in The Diary of James K. Polk during his Presidency, 1845 to 1849, 4 Volumes, ed. Milton Quaife (Chicago, 1910), 81-82.

262 Polk’s intervention in Cherokee affairs begs two questions, one of personality, and one of timing: Why Polk? And why now, in 1846? The former question is easier to answer. Although Polk wrote almost nothing on the Cherokee in his correspondence or diary – the above quotation standing as the single exception – he not only held to traditional Democratic anti-Indian beliefs, but his closest allies were consummate Indian haters.155 The most prominent of these allies was of course Andrew

Jackson, but Polk was also close with Arkansas governor Archibald Yell, who regularly stirred up hysteria over the Cherokee on his state’s border.156 It seems Polk, known as

Young Hickory, emulated Old Hickory – he would not let John Ross get the better of him. As to the timing, part of the reason Polk wanted to solve the Cherokee issue when he did reflected on-the-ground developments in the Cherokee Nation. By 1846 the violence in the Cherokee Nation was at its height, with thirty-four murders committed over a ten-month period, and, as we have seen, this violence was frequently spilling over the Arkansas border.157 If Polk’s 1844 opponent Henry Clay – or anyone else – had been elected instead of Polk, there is a chance that he too would have been forced to deal with the civil war in the Cherokee Nation in some fashion.

However, circumstantial evidence suggests that there was more to the timing than simply the spiraling chaos within the Cherokee Nation. Key to this evidence is the

155 The twelve volumes of Polk correspondence are largely silent on the Cherokee, perhaps explaining why all – yes, all – Polk biographers to entirely neglect the Cherokee in their works. For example: Charles Sellers, James K. Polk, Continentalist, 1843-1846 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966); Paul Bergeron, The Presidency of James K. Polk (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987); Sam Haynes, James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse (New York: Pearson Longman, 2006); William Dusinberre, Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James K. Polk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

156 On the friendship between Yell and Polk, see Hughes, Yell, 9-10; 60 for Yell’s frequent attempts to stir up anti-Indian hysteria.

157 Moulton, John Ross, 149.

263 progression of events in the spring and summer of 1846. First, in March, the Roger

Taney Supreme Court delivered its decision on Rogers v. United States, the case that asked whether the Cherokee had jurisdiction over any white person who had

“expatriated” himself from the U.S. by moving to the Cherokee Nation. Written by

Taney, the court’s decision could not have been more unequivocal: the United States still had jurisdiction over Rogers, for the Cherokee only occupied their land “under the assent of the United States, and under their authority.”158 This decision broke from judicial precedent, and was a crucial blow towards Cherokee sovereignty, for it diminished the ability of the Cherokee Nation to govern those within its borders. Indeed, the Rogers decision initiated the legal erosion of Indian sovereignty in federal courts more generally, as U.S. courts used Rogers as precedent to interfere in various disputes within Indian reservations.159

Rogers was a decidedly atypical Supreme Court case for its time. Considering

Rogers himself had died before the case reached the Supreme Court, there was no legal need for the court to reach a decision. Moreover, at a time when the Supreme Court often took a year to decide a case, in this instance the Court rendered a decision only one week after hearing arguments.160 These facts point to possible pressure from the Polk

Administration to deliver a rapid verdict for expanded federal authority and against native

158 United States v. Rogers, 45 U.S. 567 (1846).

159 Harring, Crow Dog’s Case, 60-61.

160 Berger, “ ‘Power over this Unfortunate Race,’” 1965-1966.

264 autonomy.161 Certainly Polk was invested in Cherokee affairs, for one month after the Rogers decision he sent his recommendations on the Cherokee to Congress, in which he proposed permanently separating the Ross Party from the Treaty Party and Old

Settlers.162 In effect, he would create two Cherokee Nations. Without mentioning the

Rogers decision, he also urged Congress to expand its power over not just whites in

Indian Territory, but to Indians themselves. Citing the Cherokee situation, he noted that

Indian law was simply ineffective in bringing criminals to justice, and therefore the federal government needed to step in. Taney, meanwhile, frequently placed, in the words of one historian, “expediency over doctrine,” and was willing to shape law to meet the needs of the era.163 While there is no evidence of collusion between Taney and Polk, it was certainly possible; certainly Taney’s later collusion with Buchanan on Scott v.

Sanford illustrated he was not adverse to the practice.164 Yet collusion was not necessarily needed for Taney to recognize that, in the spring of 1846, ruling against

161 Berger, “‘Power over this Unfortunate Race’,” 2008-2018. The compelling evidence of collusion between Polk and Taney lies, perhaps surprisingly, in Taney’s previous rather pro-Indian decisions. That Taney broke with precedent suggests outside factors were at work.

162 Polk to the Senate and House of Representatives, April 13, 1846, in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Vol. IV, Part III: James K. Polk, ed. James Richardson (1902), Project Gutenberg, < https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/2/4/6/12463/12463.txt>.

163 R. Kent Newmyer, The Supreme Court under Marshall and Taney (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1969), 113. Thus Taney’s later collusion with Buchanan in Scott v. Sanford was part and parcel with his larger jurisprudence.

164 Taney and Polk worked with each other during Polk’s tenure as speaker, and the Democratic Taney sent Polk a congratulatory message upon being elected president, but this is as much evidence as exists: Carl Brent Swisher, Roger B. Taney (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1935), 274, 435. The Rogers case is completely ignored in all works on Taney himself and the Taney court more generally, e.g. Swisher, Taney; Timothy S. Huebner, The Taney Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003); Newmyer, The Supreme Court under Marshall and Taney.

265 Cherokee autonomy would further U.S. interests in the continent, and help alleviate a potentially precarious geopolitical situation in North America.165

But what geopolitical interests, exactly, did Cherokee autonomy threaten at this moment – or, at least, perceive to threaten? Namely, war with Mexico and/or Great

Britain. Only two weeks after his Cherokee proposals, Polk asked Congress to declare war against Mexico. One month later, after repeated talk about war with Britain, the

United States signed a treaty settling the Oregon boundary dispute. While there is no direct evidence connecting U.S. relations with the Cherokee to these larger geopolitical issues, the proximity to one another suggests that there was one.166 Indian Territory lay in a newly contested geopolitical region, and observers feared the Cherokee threatened

U.S. interests on the continent. If Ross and his allies broadened their hostility to not just the Treaty Party, but to the United States as the key ally of the Treaty Party – a development whites in Arkansas claimed was imminent for almost a decade – then the

Cherokee represented a distinct backdoor threat to U.S. interests in the Southwest. In the years of the Texas Republic, Texan officials had beaten the drum of Cherokee hostility, often warning U.S. officials that the Cherokee would ally themselves with Mexico and attack Texas.167 From the perspective of racist whites this alliance was quite logical, as

165 There is almost no discussion of Polk’s relationship to Taney among historians. Sellers, for example, only mentions Taney once, when he administered the oath of office to Polk (Polk: Continentalist, 210).

166 Of all the works on the Cherokee, only McLoughlin, in a brief uncited paragraph, suggests there is a possible connection: McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 56-57.

167 Anson Jones to Joel Poinsett, copied in Crawford to Armstrong, Dec. 21, 1838; Crawford to Armstrong, July 25, 1839; Crawford to Armstrong, Nov. 29, 1839, all in OIA; John G. Ross to John Ross, ay 3, 1842, in Ross Papers, 2: 122;

266 they saw Mexicans as “mongrels” who possessed significant amounts of Indian blood.168 This belief was also rooted in a distorted version of reality, for, as we have seen, a few Cherokee did immigrate to Mexico.

Some observers believed that, if the Cherokee did not join with Mexico, then they could forge an alliance with Great Britain, which had been busy countering U.S. interests in both Oregon and Mexican California. John Howard Payne, who had lived with the

Cherokee in the 1830s but was now U.S. consul in Italy, warned Polk of exactly these developments in a letter from February, 1846: “…If we do not secure the good will of the masses concentrated in Indian Territory…we shall deplore the omission, and, upon the first disturbance which may arise with other countries, find out frontier involved in flame and massacre…”169 Not only could the Cherokee ally with Mexico or Britain, Payne believed their role as the most civilized of the Indian tribes would allow them to forge an alliance of with their “wilder brethren” to the west. Although Polk did not respond to

Payne, he thought in such strategic terms: at the same time as he attempted to shore up the Cherokee flank, he also intervened with the Mormons to “prevent this singular sect from becoming hostile to the U.S.”170 The Mormons, like the Cherokee, could potentially ally with Great Britain or Mexico to achieve self-sovereignty. In case of a continental war (or two), all potential fifth columns needed to be eliminated.

168 See especially Shelly Streeby, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002); also Robert Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

169 John Howard Payne to Polk, Feb. 5, 1846, Correspondence of James K. Polk, 11: 70-72.

170 Polk, Diary, 1: 443-450. See Chapter Five on the Mormon Battalion.

267 Polk’s suggestion of permanently splitting the Cherokee Nation in two was the ultimate threat to John Ross’ conception of Cherokee sovereignty. Ross’ life’s work had been to keep the Cherokee unified; division of Cherokee sovereignty would be the first step towards its final extinction. Polk had discovered the threat that would make the

Ross Party capitulate – and capitulate it did. Long opposed to recognizing the Treaty of

New Echota, now the Ross Party argued for the indivisibility of the Cherokee Nation based upon the terms of the Treaty of New Echota.171 Moreover, the Ross Party was now willing to accept the original $5 million settlement for ceding Cherokee lands in Georgia.

Most importantly, Polk’s threat of division forced the Ross Party to the negotiating table in a way no administration had done the decade prior. Over the summer of 1846 John

Ross and his allies sat down with Stand Watie and the Treaty Party in Washington, under the supervision of the federal government.172 By August, all parties had come to a conclusive agreement. To the relief of the Ross Party, the Cherokee Nation remained unified, and the United States recognized the Ross-led Cherokee National Council as the

Cherokees’ official government.173 However, on many other points the Ross Party was forced to yield. Ross and his allies had to recognize the validity of the Treaty of New

Echota, the rights of the Treaty Party, and the claims of the Old Settlers. Most significantly, the Ross Party agreed to abolish the Cherokee Light Horse. On August 7th,

171 Ross et al to the Senate and House of Representatives, April 30, 1846, Ross Papers, 2: 296-299.

172 Descriptions of these discussions can be found in McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 56-58; Wardell, Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 68-75; Reed, “Postremoval Factionalism in the Cherokee Nation,” 158-160; Hoig, The Cherokees and their Chiefs, 203-204; Moulton, John Ross, 149-154; Franks, Stand Watie, 100-106.

173 The terms of the treaty are reprinted in full in Starr’s History of the Cherokee Indians, ed. Gregory and Strickland, 137-142.

268 inveterate enemies John Ross and Stand Watie shook hands at a treaty signing ceremony in the U.S. Senate. Peace was secured; Cherokee sovereignty – at least as envisioned by the Ross Party – was not.

Most historians have emphasized the importance of peace over self-sovereignty.

Indeed, most have portrayed the Treaty of 1846 as a success, as the Cherokee achieved a remarkable level of prosperity for the next fifteen years, until the Civil War once again divided the nation.174 These historians echo the sentiments of John Ross himself, who proclaimed a day of national thanksgiving after the National Council ratified the treaty in

November.175 Undoubtedly all factions were relieved that the violence had ended. All sides were also relieved that finally the United States agreed to distribute per capita payments promised in the Treaty of New Echota – claims that had not yet been fulfilled due to the Cherokees’ internal divisions. Yet, for John Ross and his allies, there was an underlying tone of defeat. Ross did manage to put an overwhelmingly positive spin on the treaty in his message to the Cherokee Nation, but this reflected a need to sell it to many of his allies who likely saw little reason to make peace with their enemies. More honest was the pro-Ross Cherokee Advocate, which consistently defended the treaty with the uninspiring phrase: “The best that could be obtained under the circumstances.”176

These words reflected the reality of Cherokee sovereignty. While the Cherokee possessed self-government, thanks to the Rogers decision they had no jurisdiction over any intruding whites. While they possessed the rule of law, they no longer had the Light

174 See, for example, McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 59-122.

175 John Ross, Annual Message, Nov. 12, 1846, Ross Papers, 2: 320.

176 Cherokee Advocate, Oct. 8, 1846; Sept. 3, 1846.

269 Horse to enforce it. The Cherokee possessed sovereignty over their nation, but only by the leave of the United States.

A lingering question remains: why did Ross and his allies so quickly capitulate to the Polk Administration in 1846? After all, the Ross Party had successfully defended itself against U.S. encroachment on Cherokee sovereignty during the Van Buren and

Tyler years, even though both administrations were also largely hostile to Ross’ maneuvers.177 Of course, only Polk contemplated dividing the Cherokee Nation permanently, a threat that clearly got John Ross’ attention in a way no other had did beforehand. Yet Ross still could have pursued the same strategies he had employed with the United States previously: protesting, stalling, and ignoring. While there is no definitive answer, timing may have influenced the reason for the Ross Party’s capitulation. As the Mexican War likely played into Polk’s crackdown on Cherokee sovereignty, perhaps American expansion also played a part in the Ross Party’s rapid submission in the face of Polk’s maneuvers.

This expansion started with the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which converted

Indian Territory from a borderland on the edge of the U.S. state, to an internal region now circumscribed by American territory. Frontier whites in both Arkansas and Texas had long warned of an Indian-Mexican alliance; never actually an option for the removed

Indians, neither was it now a fear of suspicious whites.178 When the U.S. declared war against Mexico in May 1846, the soldiers garrisoning Indian Territory left for the front,

177 There was a brief period where the Tyler Administration supported the Ross Party, but it reversed itself within less than a year.

178 The last discussion of an Indian alliance with Mexico – in this case, a Cherokee alliance – occurred in the Arkansas Gazette, July 7, 1845.

270 replaced by volunteers from Arkansas.179 After almost a decade of hysteria over the seemingly defenseless western border, this news should have given paranoid Arkansans fits. However, the muscular military stance of the United States in the war against

Mexico seems to have quieted these fears. One week after it announced Zachary

Taylor’s victory at Monterrey, the Arkansas Gazette issued a call for more volunteers to go to Mexico, noting that they were no longer needed in Indian Territory. The paper noted, “[The Indians] show no disposition to engage in war with us. It is true there are heart-burnings between themselves, but we do not apprehend that they will materially affect the amicable relations existing between us.”180 In prior years, Arkansans had been apoplectic over Cherokee “heart-burnings” that spilled over the border. Manifest

Destiny, it seems, had quieted their fears.

Whether the Cherokee were as affected by U.S. expansion as neighboring whites is more difficult to determine. Cherokee leaders were practically silent over the war with

Mexico. When the U.S. declared war, the Cherokee Advocate announced the news in one short paragraph.181 Several weeks later, the paper pleaded with the Cherokee and all other Indians to avoid getting caught up in the war frenzy, and instead cultivate themselves at home.182 Over the next fifteen years, the Cherokee did just that. This relative silence about the U.S.-Mexican War was at odds with the Cherokee Advocate’s regular discussion of world events. Was U.S. conquest over and around Indian Territory

179 Richard Trotter, “For the Defense of the Western Frontier: Arkansas Volunteers on the Indian Frontier, 1846-1847,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), 394-400.

180 Arkansas Gazette, June 1, 1846.

181 Cherokee Advocate, June 4, 1846.

182 Cherokee Advocate, June 18, 1846.

271 simply too painful to print? The question is impossible to answer with any certainty. Yet the post-1846 Cherokee Nation, and Indian Territory more generally, entered a new geopolitical world – one where there was no longer any geopolitics to play.

In a sense, the Cherokee Nation in the West had reverted to its old status in the East; surrounded by the United States, it would also soon be surrounded and inundated with white Americans. As such, it would rely on U.S. goodwill to preserve and protect the limited sovereignty the Cherokee Nation still possessed. As in Georgia in the 1830s, so too in soon-to-be Oklahoma Territory in the 1880s: the goodwill would eventually run out.183

Conclusion

Unlike many white breakaway republicans in the late 1830s and early 1840s, the

Ross Party faction of the Cherokee did not believe that they could achieve complete sovereignty. They understood that, in some form, they would remain subordinate to the

United States. Yet they did believe that something else was possible besides absolute dependence on the U.S. Perhaps they could achieve complete local sovereignty over the

Cherokee Nation itself, to the point of regulating American citizens within the nation’s borders. Perhaps they could form an intertribal confederacy with other removed Indians.

Perhaps they could keep U.S. oversight extremely distant and fundamentally weak. That these alternatives were possible reflected the geopolitical reality of Indian Territory,

183 The story of the Cherokee denationalization is a complicated one. With the rest of the Five Tribes, the Cherokee were exempted from the Dawes Act in 1887, but increased federal pressure through the 1886 Dawes Commission and the 1898 Custis Act ensured that Cherokee Nation was broken up. See Denson, Demanding Cherokee Sovereignty, 201-252; McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears, 367-380.

272 which occupied an ambiguous borderland between white American settlement, native peoples on the plains, and the Mexican and Texan Republics. The Polk

Administration irrevocably changed this borderland, both internally by forcing the Ross

Party to the negotiating table, and externally by expanding U.S. borders well beyond the former Indian borderland. The Cherokee Nation was no longer an autonomous republic.

273 CHAPTER 5

MANIFESTING MORMON DESTINY, 1844-1846

Introduction

In July 1847, in the midst of the U.S.-Mexican War, the New York Journal of

Commerce printed ominous news from California: “There is a remarkable letter…received by the western mail, with the startling intelligence that the Mormon regiment and the Mormon settlers, in California, have risen up and rebelled against the

American government…taken possession of the country, and established an independent government of their own…The Mormons, prior to the origin of the Mexican war, had designed to establish an empire in California, and had taken steps towards that enterprise.” 1 This news would have caused anxiety for the proponents of America’s

Manifest Destiny. As the war with Mexico continued with no end in sight, expansionists could at least rest easy knowing that Mexico’s Alta California province was safely conquered. Yet this conquest depended on the continued loyalty of the 500-man Mormon

Battalion. With only a few thousand troops to control the massive territory of Alta

California, and among a California population of dubious loyalty, U.S. officers in

California already had their hands full. A rebellion by the Mormon Battalion would wreak havoc on what had thus far been an easy U.S. conquest of California.

With the perspective of hindsight we can dismiss this article as a product of the hysteria-laden and rumor-filled Jacksonian press – and it was. A retraction several days later stated that the news was a product of someone in the west who had a “distrust of,

1 New York Journal of Commerce, quoted in the Farmer’s Cabinet [Amherst, NH], July 23, 1847.

274 and enmity to the Mormons.”2 No Mormon rebellion ever occurred. Yet while the article was specious, its premise was not. Before the U.S.-Mexican War, the Mormons had contemplated an independent empire, and during the war they privately remained hostile to the United States despite public statements to the contrary. At a time when the population of Los Angeles hardly exceeded one thousand people, the Mormons could point to over twenty-thousand converts alone in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, thousands more in the British Isles, and a well-drilled militia of four thousand men known as the

Nauvoo Legion.3 They represented a distinct geopolitical threat to U.S. interests in the

West, and Mormon leaders such as Brigham Young knew it – as did President Polk.

Ultimately both sides agreed to a temporary alliance based upon calculated realpolitik; the Mormons would agree to fight with the U.S. against Mexico, and in exchange the

U.S. would aid their migration west. For a brief time the Mormon-U.S. conflict had been resolved, only to erupt again in the mid 1850s, culminating with the 1857 Utah War.

In many ways, the Mormon experience in the United States paralleled the

Cherokee experience, to such an extent that the above newspaper article – and many others like it – echoed similar statements made by fearful Americans about Cherokee violence. Like the Cherokee, the Mormons were a coherent and separate political group living in a distinct geographical region. Like the Cherokee, the Mormons were socially and culturally American, but differed from Americans in a profound way that kept them fundamentally apart – although in the Mormon case this difference was religious rather than racial. And, like the Cherokee, the Mormons had been forced to migrate west

2 Baltimore Sun, July 29, 1847.

3 Gerrit John Dirkmaat, "Enemies Foreign and Domestic: U.S. Relations with Mormons in the US Empire in North America, 1844--1854," (Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, 2011), 123.

275 beyond U.S. borders, as their neighbors would no longer tolerate their presence within American territory. Indeed, as we shall see, the Mormons themselves recognized these parallels, and sought out the Cherokee as allies in their mutual struggles against the

Jacksonian excesses of the United States. Yet, if the Mormons and Cherokee were similar in their experiences with both Americans and the United States, they differed in their ambitions. Unlike the Cherokee in Indian Territory who desired effective sovereignty but not total independence, Mormon theology spurred the faith’s leaders to envision an “empire” in the West that would act as “Zion.” In the eschatological long term, this would presumably lead to the Second Coming of Christ; in the real-time short term, it meant the Mormons sought a politically independent state in the North American

West.

While the goal of political independence was relatively straightforward, where this independence would occur and how it would come about was not. Indeed, the

Mormon quest for independent sovereignty is a story with many twists and turns, where theology frequently clashed with realpolitik, and continental events ran in dialectic with

Mormon internal goals. It began with the outbreak of violence between Mormons and

“anti-Mormons” in Nauvoo in the spring of 1844, when Joseph Smith and his successors hoped to solve the crisis by establishing Mormon sovereignty in the North American

West. Key to their vision was the fluidity of the West’s political situation, in which

Mexico, the Republic of Texas, Great Britain, and various native tribes contested for power – and where U.S. conquest was still one of many possible futures. And, because the Mormons envisioned other powers maintaining or taking control of the West, they believed they could use them as allies. First they hoped to settle in Texas, then they

276 attempted to forge an alliance with the Cherokees, and finally they contemplated affiliating themselves with either Great Britain or Mexico against the United States.

Needless to say, all of these possibilities would directly counter U.S. expansion. While numerous historians have detailed various aspects of Mormon plans for the West, as well as Mormon relations with western polities, no historian has looked at Mormon geopolitical plans in total; to borrow Daniel Richter’s phrase, no historian has “faced west from Nauvoo” to present an all-encompassing picture.4 Doing so reveals that the

4 Mormon history is a crowded field, and unsurprisingly there are a plethora of studies that address some aspect of Mormon politics and geopolitics in the 1840s, although general Mormon histories generally save the geopolitical story for the 1850s and the outbreak of the Utah War: James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter Day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976); Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: a History of the Latter-Day Saints (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992). Works that focus on internal Mormon politics, but only briefly mention their outward manifestations include Klaus Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God & the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967); D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994); D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997). Several books detail the conflict between the Mormons and their neighbors within a political framework: Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Marvin S. Hill, Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989); Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister, Junius And Joseph: Presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2005). Other studies detail Mormon plans and actions for their journey to the Salt Lake Valley, although these works give much less attention to internal politics or other possible destinations: Lewis Clark Christian, “Mormon Foreknowledge of the West,” Brigham Young University Studies, Vol. 21 (Fall 1981), 403-415; Ronald K. Epsin, “A Place Prepared: Joseph, Brigham, and the Quest for Promised Refuge in the West,” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 9 (1982), 85-111; Richard Edmond Bennett, Mormons at the Missouri, 1846-1852: “And Should We Die” (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987). The Texas-Mormon story can be found in Michael Scott Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002); Melvin C. Johnson, Polygamy on the Pedernales: Lyman Wight’s Mormon Village in Antebellum Texas (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2006). Finally, Dale Morgan wrote an incredibly perceptive piece in 1940 that combined Mormon internal politics with plans for the Kingdom of God, but unfortunately it was never published until 2012: Dale Morgan, “Untitled Kingdom of God Manuscript,” in Richards Saunders, ed., Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier, Vol. 14: Dale Morgan on the Mormons: Collected Works, Part I, 1939-1951 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 99-149.

Both Mormon migration plans and their eventual journey to the Salt Lake Valley are part of the story of U.S. expansion, but historians of U.S. expansion largely ignore the Mormons. As Jan Shipps noted, the Mormon settlement defies traditional narratives of western history, and represents a “hole in the doughnut” in western historiography: Jan Shipps, “Gentiles, Mormons, and the History of the American West,” in Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 17-44. Patricia Limerick traced this neglect to Frederick Jackson Turner, for the Mormons simply did not fit into his “frontier thesis”: Patricia Limerick, Something in the Soil: Legacies

277 Mormons believed in the reality of their independence in a non-U.S. West, and so too did many of those with whom they corresponded. For the Mormons and many others, a Mormon sovereign state in North America was not only possible, but probable.

Unfortunately for the Mormons, however, while they did eventually achieve the breakaway republic of Deseret, it arose after the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, when U.S. conquest had suppressed all other political alternatives. Unable to find allies or play geopolitics in the West, the Mormons would eventually be forced to confront the U.S. alone.

One final caveat: the Mormon use of “empire” to describe their polity in the West begs a question about their status as breakaway republicans. Certainly their immense and persistent ambitions for independence made them the most “breakaway” of the many actors of this dissertation. In no other case did breakaway republicans openly resist the

United States by force of arms; American Patriots may have countered the United States by stealing weapons and misleading U.S. officials, but only the Mormons came to the verge of waging war against the Union itself. Yet if the Mormons were the most

and Reckonings in the New West (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2000), 235-237. Historians of westward expansion who completely ignore the Mormons include Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: a Study of Nationalist Expansionism (Quadrangle Books, n.d.); Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire, 1 edition (Vintage, 2008); Robert Walter Johannsen and Christopher Morris, Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism (College Station, Tex.: Published for the University of Texas at Arlington by Texas A&M University Press, 1997); Richard Kluger, Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (New York: Vintage Books, 2008); Amy S Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Several historians of U.S. expansion do describe the Mormon migration, but it stands apart from the rest of the narrative: Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision 1846 (New York: Macmillan, 2000); Steven E. Woodworth, Manifest Destinies: America’s Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War (New York: Random House, 2010). D.W. Meinig attempted to bridge this gap, but for a long time no one picked up his challenge: “The Mormon Nation and the American Empire,” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 22 (Spring 1996), 33-51. More recently, several historians have begun to address these long-dormant but important issues: Matthew J. Grow, “Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Dirkmaat, "Enemies Foreign and Domestic.”

278 “breakaway,” they were the least republican – at least to their detractors. At times both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young displayed autocratic tendencies. Indeed, it was both fear and loathing of Smith’s personal power that led neighboring Illinoisans to turn against the Mormons. Moreover, giving the Mormon perspective, several historians have argued that the Mormons fled to the Salt Lake Valley primarily to establish a theocratic empire. Yet it is important to note that Mormon’s supposed anti-republicanism was highly ambiguous, for Mormon leaders believed that they themselves, and not their enemies, were embodying the highest ideals of republicanism. Joseph Smith frequently praised the United States’ republican institutions, and maintained Mormonism was the theological perfection of the American republican experiment. His methods of governing, in particular his creation of the Council of Fifty, were predicated on republican principles, even if these principles were sometimes subsumed under Mormon theology and Smith’s personal magnetism. And, most importantly, both the Mormon city-state of Nauvoo and the Mormon state of Deseret reflected the distinctly republican desire for local control and local government, which would take the shape of – in Smith’s words – a “theodemocracy.” In the end, therefore, the Mormons may have not been quintessential American republicans, but American republicanism was so ubiquitous that they could not – and did not want to – shed its tenets.5

5 For the American belief that Mormons, and in particular Joseph Smith, were subverting republicanism, see John Hallwas, “Mormon Nauvoo from a Non-Mormon Perspective,” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 16, (1990), 53-69; Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty, 215-222. For the goal of theocratic empire, see Hansen, Quest for Empire; Hill, Quest for Refuge. Patrick Mason deemed Mormon political goals something between theocracy and republicanism: Patrick Mason, “God and the People: Theo-Democracy in Nineteenth Century Mormonism,” Journal of Church and State, Vol. 53, No. 3 (2011), 349-375. For the Mormon’s emphasis on their own republicanism, see Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty, esp. 170-173, and passim; Brent M. Rogers, “To the ‘Honest and Patriotic Sons of Liberty,’: Mormon Appeals for Redress and Social Justice, 1843-44,” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Winter 2013), 36-67; Mason, “God and the People.”

279

The Apotheosis of Joseph Smith’s Political Dreams

In the spring of 1844, Joseph Smith could boast of remarkable achievements for the faith he founded, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This unique

American religion was based upon the Bible and Smith’s revelatory Book of Mormon, which soon gave the name “Mormons” to his adherents.6 In an increasingly insecure

Jacksonian America, Mormonism offered reassurance and security – religiously, psychologically, economically, and politically.7 Thus, despite rising opposition from fellow Americans, Mormonism thrived, and its adherents grew exponentially. In its early years, Smith urged his followers to settle in Missouri, which he believed would be the

Mormon “Zion.” However, Missourians quickly turned against the Mormons, despising them as northern abolitionists (which they were not, although they were antislavery) and pro-Indian for their proselytizing among Missouri natives. Violence quickly increased in the mid-1830s, culminating with the 1838 “Mormon War” and the deaths of two-dozen

6 A note on terminology: The Mormons themselves referred each other as “Saints,” which then has been used by Mormon historians such as Leonard Arrington as the proper noun for the group. Because my take on the Mormons is decidedly an outsider’s viewpoint, and I am concerned with the Mormons as one of many political actors in the West, I have chosen to use “Mormons” rather than “Saints” throughout the chapter. Additionally, the Mormons referred to non-Mormons as “Gentiles”; I have employed this term more readily than “Saints,” simply to avoid the inelegance of consistently writing “non-Mormon.” When I refer to the “Quorum of the Twelve” or “Council of the Twelve,” I do so inexactly, i.e. if a majority of the Twelve were present during an important meeting, I will use the term, instead of specifying who was present and who was not. Additionally, “Quorum of Twelve” and “Council of Twelve” refer to the same body. Finally, when I use the term “Mormon leaders,” I am referring inexactly to those Mormon who were influential during the time described in that particular section of the chapter. For example, “Mormon leaders” in the spring of 1844 refers to the First Presidency (Smith and his counselors), the Quorum of the Twelve, and influential members of the Council of Fifty. By 1846, “Mormon leaders” refers to essentially the Quorum of Twelve alone, the First Presidency having been temporarily dissolved, and the Council of Fifty having been marginalized.

7 Of course this statement vastly oversimplifies the appeals of Mormonism in the 1830s. Arrington and Bitton provide an eloquent yet concise summary of the appeals of early Mormonism in The Mormon Experience, 20-43.

280 Mormons and several non-Mormons. During the war, Missouri governor Lilburn

Boggs issued an “extermination order,” which directed all Missourians to kill Mormons or drive them from the state. Without any other options, the refugee Mormons migrated to Illinois and founded the town of Nauvoo.

Nauvoo flourished, rapidly becoming the second largest city in the state.8 As

Nauvoo grew, so did Mormon power. The Mormons voted as a bloc, and when the population of Illinois numbered half a million, several thousand Mormon votes could – and did – prove decisive.9 Moreover, in the early days of Nauvoo, when the Mormon settlement appeared harmless and even desirable, the Illinois legislature granted the

Mormons an extraordinary charter. Among the many provisions that would become controversial, two specifically stood out. First, the charter allowed the Nauvoo municipal court the right to grant habeas corpus, ensuring that Smith or any other Mormon could not be dragged from Nauvoo for trial elsewhere.10 Second, the charter granted Nauvoo a militia that would be virtually independent from any state oversight, making it an anomaly not just in Illinois but in the entire United States.11 Joseph Smith was commissioned a lieutenant-general of the Legion, and by 1844 the force boasted over five

8 The classic on Nauvoo remains Robert Bruce Flanders, Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965); see also the essays in Roger D. Launius and John E. Hallwas, ed., Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996); the editors gives a valuable bibliographic essay of all works on Nauvoo: Ibid., 251-267.

9 Flanders, Nauvoo, 16; Wicks and Foister, Junius and Joseph, 46-47.

10 On the Nauvoo charter, see Flanders, Nauvoo, 92-106.

11 On the Nauvoo Legion, see Richard E. Bennett, Susan Easton Black, and Donald Q. Cannon, The Nauvoo Legion in Illinois: A History of the Mormon Militia, 1841-1846 (Norman, Okl.: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 2010); Hamilton Gardner, “The Nauvoo Legion, 1840-1845: A Unique Military Organization,” in Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited, ed. Launius and Hallwas, 48-61; Flanders, Nauvoo, 109-114.

281 thousand men. To compare, the United States Army numbered 8500.12 Nauvoo had become, for all intents and purposes, a prosperous, powerful, self-governing city- state.

To the Mormons, the founding and formulation of Nauvoo was a legitimate safeguard that protected them from the persecution they had experienced in Missouri, where Missouri governor Boggs had sanctioned and even initiated anti-Mormon violence.

To an increasing number of non-Mormons, however, these developments combined religion and politics in a disturbing fashion. Certainly politics and religion often went hand-in-hand in the American republic, and Mormonism was only one of a plethora of religious movements of the era that sought political change in some fashion. Some of these movements were predicated on reform of the existing American religious landscape. In this mode, evangelicalism swept through Baptist and Methodist congregations, and dynamic ministers like Lyman Beecher and Charles Grandison Finney offered a cross-denominational appeal to evangelicalism’s call. In general, these evangelicals voted for the Whig Party, for, like evangelism, Whigs advocated for the moral reform of American society. While Mormonism was rooted in some of the same issues as as what historians have termed the Second Great Awakening, Mormonism also offered a radical break with these movements, particularly in its adherence to the Book of

Mormon and its predication on continuing revelation.13

Meanwhile, other religious movements sought to remove from society entirely, and offered futures of communitarianism and utopianism for any who would heed their

12 Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 106.

13 For an astute of analysis of Mormonism’s break with Christianity, see Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1985).

282 call, among them Perfectionists, Owenites, Shakers, and Rappites.14 Like these communities, Mormonism decisively broke with commonly accepted Christian doctrine, but unlike these communities Mormons refused to withdraw from American society – and, crucially, refused to abandon participation in American politics. In their millenialist outlook, Zion would not be a refuge from the world but a participant of the world. As early as 1831 Smith had prophesied a millennial vision where he would lead the temporal

Kingdom of God – on earth, in America. The Mormons themselves would usher in this kingdom, and for a time this polity would coexist with other world governments.15

Nauvoo would function as Zion, a place of “gathering” where all followers would converge. The city would then become the “center stake” of an ever-expanding tent, as

Mormon missionaries constructed more stakes beyond its borders.16 While divinely inspired, Smith’s goals could only be temporally and politically realized.17 Thus, withdrawing from political participation would have been anathema to Mormon tenets as

14 A good summary of these movements can be found in Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 164-202, 285- 327; Howe, “Religion and Politics in the Antebellum North,” in Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s, ed. Mark A. Noll (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 121-145; Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 161-226. To summarize historiography of Mormon origins in a single sentence, some historians have placed Mormonism as a product of the Burned-Over District and thus representative of the Second Great Awakening, while others have emphasized Mormonism’s relationship to magic and the occult. See, among many works Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984); John Brooke, The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 149-208; D Michael Quinn, Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987); Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

15 Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 18-21.

16 Hansen, Quest for Empire, 45-71; Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 175-176, 404, 519.

17 Because I am focusing on the Mormons as political actors, I have glossed over the complexities and changing nature of Mormon theology in the 1840s. For a more in-depth discussion of the relationship between faith and politics among the Mormons, see Mason, “God and the People”; Andrew Ehat, “ ‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph Smith and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God,” BYU Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1980), 253-280.

283 they developed by the mid-1830s, and was not an option for Joseph Smith and other

Mormon leaders.18

It was Mormons’ unique melding of religion and politics that made them particularly threatening to their non-Mormon neighbors around Nauvoo. Of course, from a strictly a religious perspective, Mormonism’s tenets seemed bizarre to many

Americans. Yet religious prejudice by itself does not explain the rampant hostility towards Mormonism, for no other millennialist Christian sect engendered a similar reaction. Importantly, while much would be made of Smith’s doctrine of plural wives in the 1850s, in 1844 polygamy remained a carefully guarded secret among high-level

Mormon leaders, a vague rumor rather than a subject of major controversy.19 Instead of religion itself, the core problem for those who became known as “anti-Mormons” was

Mormons’ blending of politics and religion in a way that seemed to threaten American democracy itself.20 Because they always voted as a block, they rapidly became power brokers in Illinois, for their several thousand votes could swing an election to whichever side they – or, more accurately, Joseph Smith and Mormon leadership – chose.

Moreover, Joseph Smith wielded his religious authority to also accrue political authority

18 Indeed, Mormon history until the 1890s demonstrates the validity of this statement, for it was a long and painful process for the Mormons to accept U.S. leadership and their minority role within it: Arrington, The Mormon Experience, 183-184.

19 Older historiography has tended to emphasize polygamy as the roots of anti-Mormonism around Nauvoo (e.g. Arrington, The Mormon Experience, 77-78), but more recent historiography has pointed to anti- Mormonism as more of a political phenomenon, e.g. Hallways, “Mormon Nauvoo from a Non-Mormon Perspective.” Considering Anti-Mormons wrote very little on polygamy in this period, I am persuaded by the latter.

20 This statement is a necessary oversimplification of the roots of anti-Mormonism. For a more detailed analysis, see Terry Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 40-59; Hallwas, “Mormon Nauvoo from a Non-Mormon Perspective.” Also helpful is David Brion Davis, “Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Catholic, Anti-Masonic, and Anti-Mormon Literature,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Sept., 1960), 205-224.

284 for himself. Smith was not only lieutenant-general of the Nauvoo Legion, but he was mayor of the city and chief magistrate of its municipal court.21 To Nauvoo’s non-

Mormon neighbors, Joseph Smith appeared to be a quasi-monarch of a growing theocracy. As a result, by 1844 anti-Mormon vitriol in Illinois had become common, and violence steadily increased between Mormons and anti-Mormons. It looked like the beginnings of another Missouri-like “Mormon War.”

At this point Mormon leaders turned to the federal government for protection.

They had employed this strategy before. In 1839, after the end of the Missouri War, the

Mormons petitioned President Martin Van Buren for redress. Van Buren, however, felt this was a state matter that forbade federal interference – or, at least, that was his justification for refusing to involve the federal government. His quintessential

Jacksonian response – “Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you” – became an infamous phrase among the Mormons, and Van Buren became a bête noire.22 In

Nauvoo, therefore, the Mormons had come to believe that the United States was once a moral and godly nation that had devolved into “mobocracy,” but they still held out hope for its redemption.23 In 1843 and early 1844, Smith and other Mormon leaders sent out petitions to various and federal leaders, and state leaders and legislatures, appealing for aid against anti-Mormon violence. Their appeals rested on several principles. First, they

21 Hallwas, “Mormon Nauvoo from a Non-Mormon Perspective,” 59-60

22 Van Buren to Smith, History of the Church, 4: 80.

23 Joseph Smith aptly summarized this view in his “Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States,” detailed below. For a longer summary of Smith’s evolving views of government, see James B. Allen, “Joseph Smith vs. John C. Calhoun: The States’ Rights Dilemma and Early Mormon History,” in Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries, ed. Reid Neilson and Terry Givens (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 73-90.

285 maintained that they were quintessential Americans, and their fellow Americans should aid the based upon their mutual heritage of the American Revolution. Second, they argued that the federal government had a duty to protect American citizens if they were being abused by a state. Third, they appealed to the manhood of American men, claiming that Mormon women had been – and would be – abused by anti-Mormons, and thus intervention was necessary to protect female virtue and chastity.24 However, for the most part the Mormons were met with deafening silence, and were left to manage anti-

Mormon hostility on their own.

There is reason to believe that Smith and other Mormon leaders were prepared and even expected this lack of response, and wrote the petitions in order to rally the community behind Smith’s own ambitious political goals.25 Instead of withdrawing from political participation in an attempt to mollify anti-Mormon hostility, Smith in essence doubled down on political activity. Yet Smith’s immense ambitions were also carefully calculated. While Mormonism was a millennial religion, it was, in the words of historian

Patrick Mason, a “pragmatic millennialism,” and risking everything on an all-or-nothing political gambit was not in Smith’s character. 26 Indeed, while Mormon millennialism helps explain why the religion thrived, Smith’s pragmatism explains how it survived.

Repeatedly Smith was able to retreat and adjust in the face of overwhelming opposition.27

24 Rogers, “Mormon Appeals for Justice, 1843-44.”

25 Ibid., 39.

26 Patrick Q. Mason, “ ‘The Wars and Perplexities of Nations’: Reflections on Early Mormonism, Violence, and the State,” Journal of Mormon History Vol. 38 (Summer 2012), 87. D. Michael Quinn uses similar terms, calling the Mormons “realistic millenialists”: Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 18.

27 Most famously this occurred with the abandonment of Missouri and move to Illinois in 1839. This “pragmatic millennialism” was even stronger in Smith’s successors, especially Brigham Young, and later

286 Thus Smith pursued three political goals simultaneously, hedging his plans so that if one failed, another could still succeed. First, he declared himself a candidate for the 1844 presidential race, publishing a platform that combined an expansionist Democratic foreign agenda with a pro-bank, pro-tariff Whig domestic policy.28 Second, Smith petitioned the U.S. government for the authority to raise 100,000 men, and use them to protect the western and southern borders from any encroaching foreign power – namely,

Britain.29 The third solution was prompted by a letter from Lyman Wight, one of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve, the highest leadership body in the church. Wight wrote from the Wisconsin pineries, where he and several dozen Mormons were securing lumber to build the Nauvoo temple. Wight first mentioned the favorable response several

Wisconsin Indian peoples had given to Mormon outreach.30 He revealed that these native peoples contemplated moving to Texas where the game was more plentiful. Wight then made a bold suggestion: the Mormons should do the same. When in Texas the Mormons could convert Indians and southerners, making the region the Mormon “gathering place for all the South.”31 Ultimately all three plans all boiled down to Mormon relations with

Wilford Woodruff, who abandoned polygamy in 1890 to fully integrate the Mormons back into the American mainstream.

28 Joseph Smith, “Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States,” in History of the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-Day Saints, ed. B.H. Roberts (7 Vols., Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1950), 6: 197-209. The History of the Church is a collection of key Mormon documents from the beginnings of Mormonism to the year following Smith’s murder in June 1844. Many of these documents are also reproduced in the Journal History of the Church, a day-to-day account of the Church found in the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City, and also as originals within the library’s archives. For the sake of easy reference, I will only cite Journal History documents or archival documents as such if they do not appear in History of the Church.

29 “The Prophet’s Memorial to Congress,” in History of the Church, 6: 275-277.

30 Lyman Wight to Joseph Smith, Feb. 15, 1844, in History of the Church, 7: 257-261.

31 Ibid., 259.

287 the United States: either the Mormons would gain power as leaders of the United

States (Smith for president), as allies of the United States (protecting U.S. borders), or outside the United States (move to Texas).

Wight’s letter struck a chord with Joseph Smith. The following day he organized the secret Council of Fifty; unlike the religiously-oriented Council of Twelve, this organization would further the political goals of the Mormons – whatever they may be.32

Confirming the temporal nature of the body was Smith’s inclusion of several non-

Mormons. Although only nominally represented, these members demonstrated Smith’s belief that the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth was imminent, and it would encompass both Mormon and Gentile.33 Soon the Council sent out ambassadors to

Texas, the United States, Britain, France, and even Russia, in order to negotiate for

Mormon power somewhere North America.34 Over the next several months, the Council of Fifty would meet regularly to strategize how best to accomplish at least one of Smith’s ambitious political goals.

32 Long shrouded in secrecy, the Council of Fifty has been debated by numerous Mormon historians using only paltry evidence – cryptic references, after-the-fact letters, etc. However, the LDS Church History Library will publish the minutes of the 1844 Council of Fifty meetings in November of this year, which will illuminate the nature of the deliberations. According to several historians working on the minutes, they will not dramatically alter the interpretations of previous works; because the LDS Church as long kept them secret, many have believed they contain game-changing revelations, but this is not the reality: Author’s conversation with Brent Rogers and Gerritt Dirkmaat, June 10, 2014, Salt Lake City. The most comprehensive treatments of the Council of Fifty are Hansen, Quest for Empire and Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. Recently (after this chapter was initially written), Jedediah Rogers has compiled all of the evidence for the Council of Fifty that has been found outside the Church History Library in a single volume: The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History, ed. Jedediah Rogers (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2014). However, little in this book is new, and thus I have not attempted to recite information already found elsewhere.

33 On the Gentile members of the Council of Fifty, see Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 127-128.

34 Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 132; Joseph Smith, An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith, ed. Scott Faulring (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 459, 463, 477.

288 With hindsight, it is easy to disparage each of these three goals as at best impractical, at worst absurd. In 1844, however, all were logical from the Mormon perspective – and in some cases, in the eyes of many non-Mormons as well. Take

Smith’s presidential ambitions.35 The 1844 election occurred at height of American political partisanship, and Smith’s attempt to break down this divide seems improbable.

Yet Smith clearly depended on intense American partisanship to help him achieve victory. His platform called for U.S. expansion into Texas and Oregon, a cause dear to many Democrats.36 Meanwhile he pushed for Whig domestic policies, such as a national bank and a high tariff. He denounced slavery, but also denounced abolitionism, and called for compensation for Southern slaveholders if they freed their slaves. Outside the

Deep South, Smith’s platform offered policies that appealed to men across the political spectrum.37 Smith could also tap into the well-established and highly successful practice of Mormon missionary outreach, turning what had been religious missions into political ones. The organizing effort was extensive, with hundreds of missionaries sent out; only in 1895, when there were nine times as many Mormons, would the Church again send out

35 The debate over Smith’s candidacy has continued for over a century. B.H. Roberts, the renowned Mormon historian from the early twentieth century, believed Smith only put his name on the ballot so the Mormons could vote for someone in good conscience: B.H. Roberts, The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo (Provo, UT: Maasai Publishing, 2001), 250. More contemporary historians believe Smith had greater ambitions, but disagree on whether he believed he could actually win the presidency. See, for example, Flanders, Nauvoo, 334-340; Hill, Quest for Refuge, 137-140; Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty, 195-207; D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 119-124.

36 Joseph Smith, “Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States,” 206.

37 It is worth noting Smith published his pamphlet before both Whig and Democratic conventions, and even more importantly before Van Buren (the expected Democratic nominee) and Clay’s letters that both opposed immediate Texas annexation. Thus he embraced U.S. expansion well before the Democrats embraced the platform when they nominated Polk several months later.

289 as many missionaries at a single time.38 Moreover, Smith did not need to win the popular vote to win the election. If he could only capture a few states and deny the other candidates an electoral-vote majority, the House of Representatives would decide the election, as it had done only twenty years before in the election of John Quincy Adams.

In the House, just as in the nation-at-large, Smith’s platform offered cross-party appeal.

Even if it turned out Smith did not have enough support, he could perhaps extract political concessions from one of the major candidates; once snubbed by Van Buren during the Missouri War, the Mormons would no longer be ignored by the federal government. At minimum, Smith’s campaign would raise national awareness for the plight of the Mormons, and perhaps force the hand of the next president to intervene in the increasing violence around Nauvoo. Ultimately Joseph Smith, U.S. President, was unlikely, but not impossible – and certainly not delusional.

Neither was Smith’s proposal to guard U.S. borders, although its logic betrayed an inflated view of Mormon influence in the halls of Congress. In 1844 the North

American West remained in flux. Americans had recently begun emigrating in large numbers to both Oregon and California, but they traveled into territories with uncertain political futures. Oregon was still jointly controlled by the U.S. and Great Britain, and in

California the local californios had risen frequently in rebellion against Mexican sovereignty.39 By protecting emigrants, the Mormons could secure themselves power in the West with U.S. acquiescence, and perhaps U.S. funding. Considering the entire U.S.

Army numbered less than 10,000 men, perhaps the federal government would welcome

38 Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 117-118.

39 See respective chapters on California and Oregon, below.

290 what was, essentially, outsourcing its border protection.40 Smith took steps to make these plans a reality. In February, he proposed sending send men west to explore the possibility of settling in Oregon or California, but too many were at work on his presidential campaign to find enough volunteers.41 Smith did have national support for a

Mormon westward migration; both Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas had recommended the Mormons travel to Oregon as means of “redress.”42 Yet Smith did not simply want to settle in Oregon or California, but defend it – particularly from Britain – and it was here where Orson Hyde, the Mormon ambassador in Washington, reached an impasse with congressional leaders.43 While some Washington politicians could support a Mormon settlement in the West, they could not countenance a Mormon defensive force. If the

Mormons were seen as U.S. actors, their presence could lead to war with Britain. When

Hyde told members of Congress that the Mormon force would be independent from the

United States, several senators believed this would seen by the American public as favoring the Mormons in the West above other emigrants. Many other congressional leaders were even less sympathetic, and believed the entire maneuver was simply unconstitutional.44

40 Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 106.

41 Smith, An American Prophet’s Record, 446-447; Epslin, “Refuge in the West,” 93-94.

42 History of the Church, 6:188; Orson Hyde to Joseph Smith, April 26, 1844, in History of the Church, 6: 373-376.

43 Smith seems to have shared many Americans’ hatred and wariness of Britain in this era. As early as April, 1843, Smith recorded a dream where he defended the United States from Britain: Smith, An American Prophet’s Record, 340. Brigham Young shared his attitude: Brigham Young, April 9, 1844, in Journal History.

44 Hyde to Smith, April 25, 1844, History of the Church, 6: 369-373; Hyde to Smith, April 26, 1844, History of the Church, 6: 373-376.

291 Rejected by Congress, Hyde urged Mormon leaders to lead a migration to

Texas or Oregon, without the consent of the United States. He believed that national and international political developments had opened space for a Mormon migration, but this would not last. The Mormons must move fast. As Hyde wrote, “If the Saints possess the kingdom I think they will have to take it; and the sooner it is done the more easily it is accomplished.”45 Mormon leaders in Nauvoo doubted Hyde’s efforts, and castigated him for not fulfilling their directions to the letter, while Hyde pleaded that Mormon leaders did not understand Washington politics.46 By June the entire plan seemed to be off the table. Indeed, Lyman Wight told Hyde that the whole idea of a Mormon army overseeing

U.S. interests in the West had been a bluff to “tease” Congress from the Mormons actions elsewhere.47 In all likelihood, the original plan had not been not a bluff, but Wight’s rationalization of the failed second plan reflected the marked success with the third plan originally devised by Wight – Mormon migration to Texas.

When Smith sent Hyde to Washington, he simultaneously sent fellow Council of

Fifty member Lucian Woodworth to Texas to negotiate with Texas president Sam

Houston. Unlike Hyde, however, Woodworth received a welcome reception. He and

Houston held preliminary talks over a Mormon settlement in the Nueces Strip, a region on the Texas-Mexico border that both countries claimed.48 Houston’s readiness to

45 “Hyde’s Report of Labors in Washington,” April 25, 1844, History of the Church, 6: 372.

46 Hyde to Sidney Rigdon, June 9, 1844; Hyde to Rigdon, June 11, 1844, both in Journal History.

47 Hyde to Rigdon, June 9, 1844, in Journal History.

48 Unfortunately the details of the negotiations remain unknown. As mentioned previously, the Council of Fifty minutes remain closed, and no evidence has been found in Texas archives on the Houston- Woodworth meetings. This lack of documentation is not surprising – the talks appeared to be on a personal basis, and not with the Texas government as a whole. Moreover, once Texas joined the Union – or some time thereafter – Mormon-Texas connections would be only embarrassing for Houston. Information on the

292 negotiate with the Mormons was hardly an offer of humanitarianism, but a calculated geopolitical maneuver. As Chapter Two demonstrated, Texas annexation to the United States was still contested in 1844; indeed, if Clay had won the presidency that fall, annexation never would have occurred. Moreover, Texas was underfunded, under- populated, and still at war with Mexico. Therefore, a Mormon settlement in the disputed and remotely settled Nueces Strip would serve as a powerful buffer between Texas and

Mexico. The Mormons possessed potential military strength, especially compared to

Texas: the Nauvoo Legion in 1844 was four times the size of the Texan army at the

Battle of San Jacinto in 1837. Importantly, even if – as Houston privately hoped – Texas were soon annexed to the United States, both the Texans and the Mormons would still have found a Mormon settlement useful: Texas still would have had additional frontier protection, while the Mormons would be far from the growing disorder of Nauvoo and

American population centers more generally, and presumably their presence in Texas would be welcomed by its inhabitants. Thus, as both Houston and Woodworth perceived, a Mormon autonomous region on the Texas frontier could solve both Texas and Mormon political crises.

Thus, with the failure of Hyde in Washington, Smith’s three plans for Mormon power became two: a campaign for the presidency, or a mass migration to Texas. The

Houston-Woodworth negotiations comes largely from a letter Woodworth sent to Houston in July (Woodworth to Houston, July 14, 1844, in Journal History of the Church, LDS Church History Library), and the memoirs of George Miller, another member of the Quorum of Twelve and Council of Fifty who continued to advocate for move to Texas long after the plan was dead: George Miller, Correspondence of Bishop George Miller to the Northern Islander from his Acquaintance with Mormonism up to Near the Close of his Life…(Burlington, WI, 1855). The best secondary work on the negotiations is Michael Scott Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God, 38-51. When Houston became a U.S. Senator, he was incredibly supportive of the Mormons, an attitude entirely out of step with his fellow Congressmen, which perhaps (as Van Wagenen has argued) had its antecedents in the spring of 1844: Ibid., 64-70.

293 former remained the priority. As Council of Fifty member George Miller put it, if

Smith were elected, “…We would at once establish dominion in the United States, and in view of a failure we would send a minister to the then Republic of Texas to make a treaty…”49 In his diary, Joseph Smith made it clear that going to Texas would mean a decisive turn against the United States: “If Houston will embrace the gospel [we] can mend that constitution and make it the voice of Jehovah and shame the U[nited]

S[states].”50 Here again Smith mixed Mormon theology with politics. If the United

States were truly irredeemable, then perhaps the Kingdom of God would be realized in neighboring Texas. It was, after all, still an American republic, and therefore held many of the virtues the Mormons believed the U.S. had once held. While Smith believed the government created under the U.S Constitution was divinely inspired, perhaps the

“mended” Texas Constitution could become the constitution of the Kingdom of God itself, through the influence of Smith and other Mormon leaders.51 Of course, to the

Mormons, Texas slaveholding was not one of these American virtues, but Smith did not detail his plans as to the future of the institution if the Mormons did indeed migrate to

Texas. Perhaps Smith believed he could offer compensation for emancipation, in the mode of his U.S. presidential platform. Or perhaps he believed Mormons would arrive in such substantial numbers they would soon dominate Texas politics. Of course, at the

49 George Miller, Correspondence of Bishop George Miller to the Northern Islander, 20. See also Lucian Woodworth to Reuben Hedlock, in Journal History, May 3, 1844.

50 Smith, An American Prophet’s Record, 458..

51 For Smith’s views on the Constitution, see his “Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States.”

294 time Smith dealt with more immediate issues, but it seems that at the very least

Texas slaveholding did not pose a reason for the Mormons to avoid migrating there.

Thus, while Mormon leaders worked to elect Smith president, they also began laying groundwork for the Texas contingency. In April, Smith published a new revelation in which the entirety of North and South America was the Mormon Zion, divulging to all Mormons the real possibility of abandoning Nauvoo – and with it, the

United States.52 Mormon papers printed increased coverage of Texas, while British

Mormons contemplated a mass migration from the British Isles to Texas.53 Importantly

Lucian Woodworth, the Mormon ambassador to Texas, made it clear to British Mormon leaders that the migration plan must be kept quiet for several months, for they would need to travel to and through the United States for the move.54 For the time being, therefore, the Mormons must not cause U.S. authorities any concern. In June Joseph Smith investigated purchasing land from private Texas landowners instead of the Texas government. Smith’s exact intentions here remain unknown, but perhaps he was giving second thoughts to settling in the Nueces Strip, where conflict between Texas and

Mexico was ongoing.55 Of course, Smith had several more months to solidify the Texas plans, for the presidential election was not until November. If Smith failed to win the

52 Journal History, April 8, 1844; Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 1833-1898, Vol. II, ed. Scott Kenney (Midvale, Utah: 1984), 388-389.

53 For a list of all Texas articles in Nauvoo newspapers between 1842 and 1844, see Appendix B, in Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God, 77-86.

54 Lucian Woodworth to Reuben Hedlock, in Journal History, May 3, 1844.

55 John Walton to Joseph Smith, in Journal History, June 3, 1844; Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God, 47-48.

295 election or extract concessions – a sure thing to most contemporary Americans and to historians, though not to Smith himself – then the Texas migration would begin.

And then local politics intruded on national and international plans. As Smith’s ambitions grew, so did the opposition of “anti-Mormons,” and – even more importantly – a contingent of former Mormons. Deeming Smith a fallen prophet, several Mormon apostates, led by Smith’s former counselor William Law, made plans to publish the

Nauvoo Expositor, an exposé of Smith’s increasingly ambitious temporal plans.56 They first published a prospectus for the paper on May 10, in which they deemed Smith a

“SELF-CONSTITUTED MONARCH,” and promised to reveal details of Mormon political plans in the first issue.57 Events then moved fast. Smith convened the Nauvoo

City Council, where it was decided the Nauvoo Expositor was a public nuisance and ought to be silenced. Wielding his power as mayor of Nauvoo, Smith then ordered the city marshal to destroy the printing press, which the marshal accomplished that night by setting fire to the press’ headquarters. Smith had weathered years of hostility from

American citizens, but his decision to attack the cherished right of freedom of the press proved to be his undoing. Within weeks, Joseph Smith, his brother Hyrum, and two other

Mormon leaders, were arrested and taken to the neighboring town of Carthage. On the

56 Because the destruction of Nauvoo Expositor began the timeline to Smith’s death, countless historians have debated why Smith felt so threatened by the paper he felt the need to destroy it. Because Smith only declared that the paper was a “nuisance” and gave no further information, interpretations have differed widely. For Arrington and Bitton, it was the “inflammatory allegations” about Mormon sex lives (Arrington and Bitton, The Mormon Experience), 79-80. John Hallwas believed Smith could not tolerate American individualism and pluralism: John E. Hallways, “Nauvoo from a Non-Mormon Perspective,” in Launias and Hallwas, ed., Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited, 171. D. Michael Quinn maintained the Expositor represented a betrayal by someone in the Council of Fifty, which would then lead to revelations about Smith’s ambitious temporal plans: Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy Origins of Power, 138-140.

57 “Prospectus of the Nauvoo Expositor,” May 10, 1844, in Journal History. For detailed accounts of the events that led to Smith’s death, see Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 526-550; Wicks and Foster, Junius & Joseph, 132-179.

296 evening of June 27 a mob of one hundred men stormed the jail. When they reached

Joseph Smith’s cell, they proceeded to shoot him six times, and his brother Hyrum four times. Within minutes, both men were dead.

Joseph Smith’s unexpected death destroyed hopes for Mormon power within the

United States, but Texas still lay open to Mormon settlement. Two weeks after Smith’s death, Lucian Woodworth, the Mormon ambassador to Texas, sent a hurried letter to Sam

Houston to inform him of the murder. Woodworth then asked for Houston to respond if he still considered Mormon immigration “practicable.”58 There is no evidence if Houston ever replied. Even if he did, it would not have mattered. Although nineteenth century

Mormon historians would make it appear as if Brigham Young’s assumption of leadership was a natural, even divinely inspired development, the truth was much messier.59 Smith had never designated a successor, and within weeks several factions began to vie for control. This leadership crisis lasted for over year, until Young and most of the Quorum of the Twelve managed to gain the following of a majority of Mormons.

At no point during this time were the Mormons prepared to migrate to Texas or, for that matter, anywhere else. Moreover, for much of this time it appeared that a permanent exodus had become unnecessary. The brutality of Smith’s murder shocked Gentile communities around Nauvoo, causing many people to step back from the brink of open

58 Woodworth to Houston, in Journal History, July 14, 1844. Interestingly, Woodworth also noted in the letter that Smith’s murderers had in all likelihood fled to Texas themselves, showing how Texas acted as a safe haven for a variety of different people during its existence as an independent republic.

59 According to the History of the Church and other memoirs of the Quorum of the Twelve, Brigham Young spoke in the voice of Joseph Smith in an early meeting of church leaders after Smith’s death. While it is not for me to doubt matters of faith, it was only a small group who witnessed this event. To gain the trust of the thousands of regular Mormons – who of course did not witness this event – took significantly more time. Moreover, Young’s leadership was not yet absolute, even during the exodus from Nauvoo in early 1846. See especially Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 143-244.

297 warfare. For a time it appeared the Mormons could stay in Nauvoo after all – but this was only a mirage. In the autumn of 1845 the violence reignited, and this time

Young and the Twelve felt they had only one choice: they had to leave the United States entirely.

By 1845, however, the Mormons, however, would not go to Texas. The geopolitical situation in the West had shifted dramatically. As Chapter Two has demonstrated, Texas annexation rapidly moved from the realm of unlikely to possible, and then from possible to accomplished – all within the course of a year. It seems Young kept abreast of North American geopolitics, for no evidence suggests he ever contemplated Texas as a destination.60 Moreover, even if Texas had remained independent, it remains doubtful whether Young would have acceded to migrating there.

The pattern of persecution that culminated in Smith’s murder made Young much more cynical about his non-Mormon Americans than Smith had ever been. Wherever the

Mormons went, Young believed they must be the first – and hopefully only – settlers (a concept that will be further discussed below). Meanwhile, Lyman Wight continued to push for Texas; like Young, Wight was a member of the Council of Twelve, and his opinion could not be ignored. Moreover, in the months that followed Smith’s death

Young’s leadership position remained precarious. Perhaps not wanting to directly contradict Smith’s wishes only months after his death, Young allowed Wight to continue with his Texas plans. However, Young mandated the limited nature of Wight’s

60 Young wrote very little on Texas, and seemed to have dismissed a migration to Texas very early in his church presidency. As early as February 1845 Young thought the U.S. was going to annex Texas, which he believed might lead to a dissolution of the Union. If that happened, he presumably had other plans than moving into a secessionist state: Young to Wilford Woodruff, February 11, 1845, in Brigham Young Office Files (hereafter BYOF), CR 1234-1, LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter CHL).

298 expedition, writing that, besides Wight’s original company from the Wisconsin pineries, “not another soul has the consent of the Twelve to go with them…and I tell you in the name of Jesus Christ that if Lyman Wight and George Miller take a course contrary to our counsel and not act in concert with us, they will be damned and go to destruction.”61 In August Wight left for Texas with the 150 men, women, and children whom he had led in Wisconsin. He would never return.

The story of Wight’s schismatic Mormon colony in Texas is a fascinating coda to the Mormon-Texas plans – and as we shall see, one of several codas for Mormons who wished to settle elsewhere than the Salt Lake Valley. Yet his small following was hardly a breakaway republic, but rather an isolated frontier community, and as such will not be detailed here.62 Yet Wight’s decision to remain in Texas in 1845 buttresses the evidence for Texas’ importance to Joseph Smith in the spring of 1844. Known as the “Wild Ram of the Mountains” for his independence and stubbornness, Wight’s conversion to

Mormonism revolved around his personal affection for and loyalty to Joseph Smith. At one point during the Missouri troubles Wight had refused to testify against Joseph Smith despite the threat of death, reportedly yelling, “Shoot or be damned!”63 Wight clearly believed he was fulfilling Smith’s wishes when he moved to Texas, and despite his colony’s increasing destituteness and the growing success of the Mormon community in

61 “President Young’s Discourse,” August 18, 1844, History of the Church, 7: 254-255.

62 Wight’s community lived in Texas for twelve years, moving from time to time from one Texas frontier town to another. In 1858 Wight prophesied that it was time to leave Texas, but on his way north he died of illness. Without Wight’s leadership, his small group of followers scattered, some going to Utah, others to Iowa to join Joseph Smith III’s Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a few remaining in Texas. Wight’s colony is detailed in Johnson, Polygamy on the Pedernales; Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God, 52-63; and David Bitton, “Mormons in Texas: The Ill-fated Lyman Wight Colony, 1844-1858,” Arizona and the West, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1969), 5-26.

63 Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God, 42.

299 Utah, Wight never strayed from this position.64 He believed he was in Texas under the “sacred charge of Joseph Smith,” remaining accountable to Smith alone, and not to

“man Brigham.”65 According to Wight, Smith had told him that if the U.S. did not grant

Smith 200,000 men whom he could use to guard the western frontier, then Wight would gather 500,000 men and go to Texas.66 For over a decade, he tried to fulfill this mission, content with the knowledge that if he died, he would have no qualms giving “an account of his whereabouts” in the afterlife.67 Joseph Smith had clearly taken a Texas migration very seriously in 1844, and so would Wight until his death fourteen years later, regardless of the geopolitical changes that had taken place in the now-annexed U.S. state. To

Brigham Young and a majority of the Council of Twelve, however, Texas was no longer a tenable option; rather, it was “wild and visionary.”68 Highly practical, with an acute understanding of realpolitik, Young needed a plan that was not “visionary,” but achievable. He and the Mormons would build Zion elsewhere.

The Lamanite Redemption and the Mormon-Indian Alliance

64 Wight’s adherence to Smith’s wishes can be contrasted to George Miller’s decision to join Wight in Texas in 1847. Miller was also one of the Twelve, a member of the Council of Fifty, and Wight’s co-leader in the Wisconsin pineries. Miller maintained that Texas was a good destination because its agricultural prospects were much greater than the Great Basin. Although, like Wight, Miller challenged Young’s authority and disagreed with his assumption of leadership, he never cited Joseph Smith’s wishes as a reason to move Texas. See George Miller to Brigham Young, March 17, 1847, BYOF; Journal History, April 2, 1847.

65 Lyman Wight, An Address by the Way of an Abridged Account and Journal of My Life from February 1844 up to April 1848, with an Appeal to the Latter-Day Saints (Austin, 1848), 11; Lyman and Harriet Wight to Sanford Porter, Dec. 7, 1855, Lyman Wight Correspondence, CHL.

66 Ibid., 4.

67 Wight to The Northern Islander, July 1855, Lyman Wight Correspondence.

68 April 2, 1847, Journal History.

300 In 1844, when Lyman Wight had written his original Texas proposal from

Wisconsin, there was a crucial second component to his plan: the Texas move should be accompanied by a general outreach to the Indians.69 In fact, Wight noted, it was several

Wisconsin native peoples – the Menominee, the Chippewa, and the Winnebago – who had given him the idea of Texas in the first place. Living off U.S. government annuities amid dwindling game, these groups looked to Texas – “where game was more plentiful”

– as a place to reestablish their traditional way of life.70 However, they would only move to Texas under Mormon leadership, for, as Wight explained, “They have great confidence in us.”71 Wight’s proposal then became even more expansive. He believed that all

Indians “bordering on the United Territories from Green Bay to the Mexican Gulf, [were] all crying with one voice… ‘Give us an understanding of your doctrine and principles, for we perceive that your ways are equal…’”72 As the Mormons traveled to Texas, they could also send missionaries to the Cherokee and Choctaw, who were also “desirous to have an interview with the Elders of this Church…”73 Presumably Wight’s planned

Southern “gathering” would include vast numbers of converted native peoples.

To the Council of Twelve, Wight’s Indian references would not have come out of the blue. On the contrary, the American Indians were a crucial component of Mormon theology. The Book of Mormon relates the epic journey of a family of Israelites to the

69 Wight to the Twelve, Feb. 15, 1844, History of the Church, 6: 255-257; Wight to Smith, Feb. 15, 1844, History of the Church, 6: 257-260.

70 Ibid., 258.

71 Wight to the Twelve, Feb. 15, 1844, History of the Church, 6: 256.

72 Wight to Smith, Feb. 15, 1844, History of the Church, 6: 258.

73 Ibid., 259.

301 American continent, whose descendants eventually split into two warring peoples, known as the Nephites and the Lamanites.74 The Nephites were righteous, building great cities and retaining their white skin. The Lamanites, by contrast, were marked with dark skin because of their wickedness, and became nomads. Eventually the Lamanites destroyed the Nephites, and Lamanite ancestors became the American Indians. Yet the

Book of Mormon foretold that eventually the Mormons would redeem the Lamanites, who would then regain glory during the Last Days.75 Smith took steps to fulfill this prophecy. As early as 1830 he had sent a mission to Indians in Missouri, and

Missourians cited these Indian connections as a reason why the Mormons needed to be expelled from the state at the end of the decade.76 During the Nauvoo period, the

Mormons maintained several disparate connections to various native groups.77 Thus by

1844, Lyman Wight’s letter was based both on Mormon theology of the Lamanites and their real interactions with Indians since 1830.

Importantly, Mormon missionary outreach differed from typical evangelical missions to Indians during this period. Because the Lamanites were supposed to join with all Mormon believers during the Last Days, missionary work held political implications. Essentially Lamanite redemption in the future presupposed a more immediate Mormon-Indian alliance. Of course, this alliance was all very much

74 For a recent, short summary of Mormon beliefs about the Indians, see Jared Farmer, “Displaces from Zion: Mormons and Indians in the 19th Century,” Historically Speaking, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Jan., 2009), 40-42.

75 Ibid., 41.

76 Ibid.; Bushman, Joseph Smith, 122; Arrington and Bitton, The Mormon Experience, 146.

77 Pre-1847 Mormon-Indian relations remains a gaping historiographical gap. There is no published book on the subject. The best treatment is Lori Taylor, “Telling Stories about Mormons and Indians” (Ph.D. Diss., SUNY Buffalo, 2000). For a comprehensive list of articles that relate to the subject but do not address it specifically, see Taylor’s footnote 10 on page xii.

302 theoretical at first, but the concept existed nonetheless. Perhaps as early as 1840, and certainly by 1842, Smith expressed a hope to “unite with the Indians” somewhere beyond the Rocky Mountains.78 During the Nauvoo period Smith sent frequent missions to native peoples as far away as Canada, and received several Indian delegations in

Nauvoo.79 In the final months of Smith’s life, when he was both running a presidential campaign and preparing for a migration to Texas, the Indian alliance remained a vague afterthought. If and when the Mormons moved to Texas, then the Lamanite redemption could proceed, but it seems no concrete steps were taken. Clearly, however, the potential of an Indian alliance continued to hold allure for Smith. Only days before his death, as the crisis surrounding the Nauvoo Expositor intensified to the point of no return, Smith stated that believers would gather in the “strongholds of the Rocky Mountains” with the

“red men.” These “red men” would become the “strong arm of Jehovah, who will be a strong bulwark of protection for your [i.e. Mormon] foes.”80 It would be left to other

Mormon leaders to fulfill this vision.

The first to attempt the Lamanite redemption was James Emmett, a member of the

Council of Fifty. Emmett had gone on a mission to the Dakotas in 1840, and in the spring of 1844 he had volunteered to join a Mormon expedition slated to explore the

78 Oliver Olney diary entry, July 20, 1842, MS 8288, Item 8, CHL. By the time Olney wrote this entry he had been excommunicated from the church, and he would write a exposé of the Mormons in 1843, thus calling into question the veracity of the source. However, his statement is corroborated by later Mormon sources, which also mention Smith’s plans with the Indians. See, for example, William Clayton’s journal entry on March 1, 1845, in George D. Smith, ed., An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995), 158. See also Epslin, “A Place Prepared,” 90-91.

79 Taylor, “Telling Stories about Mormons and Indians,” 187-210.

80 William Bryan Pace, “Autobiography of William Bryan Pace,” Typescript, Harold Lee Library, Brigham Young University, available at http://www.boap.org/LDS/Early-Saints/WPace.html.

303 Rockies.81 Like Lyman Wight, Emmett was uncomfortable with Young’s growing power, and in August 1844, only a few months after Smith’s death, he left with one hundred followers for the west. Emmett’s Company would eventually meet with the

Sioux and Puncas peoples, but Emmett’s dictatorial leadership and Young’s repeated requests brought the company back to Nauvoo in the spring of 1846. Even more so than

Lyman Wight’s story, the history of the Emmett Company is a minor sidebar in Mormon history. Much of Emmett’s desire to leave stemmed from a power struggle with Brigham

Young. Yet clearly the Indian mission also influenced his decision.82 According to one follower, Emmett believed “he had been appointed before Joseph’s death to choose a few families and travel among the Indians; to go on to the Rocky Mountains; to preach to the

Indians along the way, and prepare them to receive the Saints in the Valley of the

Mountains.”83 Another follower later remembered that Emmett’s plan was to prepare a

“gathering place” in the wilderness for all the Mormons.84 Significantly, Emmett’s vision merged closely enough with Joseph Smith’s plans for an Indian alliance that one hundred fellow Mormons decided to follow him. Thus, while the events of Emmett’s expedition reveal little about Mormon-Indian relations, the Emmett Company’s very existence emphasizes the importance Joseph Smith had placed on redeeming the Lamanites.

81 Smith commissioned this expedition in the spring of 1844, perhaps as yet another possible solution to the growing political crisis. Because of Smith’s death – and perhaps the initial success with Texas diplomacy – the expedition never went beyond preliminary planning stages. More will be said below on this subject, in section three of this chapter.

82 For accounts of the Emmett Company, see Richard E. Bennett, “Mormon Renegade: James Emmett at the Vermillion, 1846,” South Dakota History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1986), 217-233; Taylor, “Telling Stories about Mormons and Indians,” 235-240.

83 James Holt autobiographical sketch, MS 8044, CHL.

84 John Winn statement, MS 3584, CHL.

304 In February 1845, as a portion Emmett’s Company (but not yet Emmett) journeyed back to Nauvoo, Brigham Young convened the Council of Fifty for the first time since Joseph Smith’s death the previous June.85 Still working to solidify his power,

Young called together only twenty-five members, deliberately excluding those who had opposed his leadership.86 The purpose of this first meeting seems to have been getting the Council to regain its function as an effective body. Without conducting any real business, the Council agreed to convene again at a “future time.”87 In the weeks that followed the Lamanite redemption became the talk among church leaders, perhaps spurred by the Emmett Company’s imminent arrival.88 On March 1 Young convened the

Council of Fifty a second time, with the primary purpose of organizing a mission to the

Indians.89 One missionary chosen for this task was Lewis Dana, an Oneida Indian and

Mormon convert. Significantly, he was inducted as a member of the Council of Fifty that same day, the first Indian to be inducted into any church body.90 Along with Dana, several other Mormons familiar with native missionary work were picked, including

Brigham Young’s brother Phineas. The background of the men sent on the mission confirms its importance: they were all over forty-years-old, members of the Council of

Fifty, and had previous experience among Indians.91 While the Council’s minutes remain

85 Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle, 157; Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, 176.

86 Ibid.

87 Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle, 157.

88 Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle, 158; Taylor, “Telling Stories of Mormons and Indians,” 242.

89 Ibid.

90 Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle, 158.

91 Taylor, “Telling Stories of Mormons and Indians,” 245-246.

305 unavailable, the purpose of the mission is revealed in Young’s decision to call the

Council of Fifty over any other leadership body, especially the Quorum of Twelve. The

Council of Fifty was, and always had been, an explicitly political body, marking the future missionaries as Mormon political ambassadors. William Clayton pointed to the political nature of the mission in his journal: “These brethren are expected to start immediately after the Conference and proceed from tribe to tribe, to unite the Lamanites and find a home for the saints” (italics added).92 The purpose of the mission was not simply conversion, but conversion with a political bent. The Mormons sought not simply converts, but allies.

But which Indians? Much of the trans-Mississippi West contained native peoples unconquered by the United States. Unfortunately there are few surviving letters of the missionaries, making it extremely difficult to trace their exact movements. Letters place the missionaries among the Stockbridge, the Seneca, and the Cherokee, all “removed” peoples from the East now living in the broad swath of “Indian Territory” that lay west of

Missouri and Arkansas.93 According to Stockbridge Chief Thomas Hendricks, the

92 Ibid., 159.

93 For the Stockbridge: May entries in the Phineas Young Journal, MS 2799, CHL, and Brigham Young to Thomas Hendrix, Stockbridge Chief, August 4, 1845, BYOF; for the Seneca: Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle, 181; for the Cherokee: Jonathan Dunham to Brigham Young, May 31, 1845, BYOF, and Lewis Dana to John Brown, July 5, 1845, Lewis Dana Correspondence, MS 15551, CHL. For a more specific discussion of their relations with each of these tribes, see Taylor, “Telling Stories of Mormons and Indians,” 240-252. The lack of evidence has led many Mormon scholars to simply pass this mission over. For example, Allen and Leonard, in The Story of the Latter-day Saints, give it two sentences: “The group’s departure in April was recorded in the official annals as a ‘mission to the Lamanites.’ Little is known of its efforts, except that the men were back in Nauvoo by summer’s end” (208-209). Leonard and Arrington give it only one: “Similar opposition frustrated other efforts to establish contact with the Indians before the Mormon hegira to the Great Basin in 1846” (The Mormon Experience, 146).

306 missionaries planned to travel through a total of twenty-one Indian nations.94

Judging by the distance separating the Stockbridge, Seneca, and Cherokee tribes, and the numerous groups that lay in between them, the missionaries may have accomplished their ambitious geographic goal. Of course, it is unknown how much – or if any – interaction occurred between the missionaries and each respective native group, but the geographic scope of the journey underlines the Mormons’ significant ambitions.

Sending the missionaries to removed Indians specifically was undoubtedly by design, and not simply due to Nauvoo’s relative proximity to their settlements. Cultural familiarity made removed Indians an easier target for Mormon outreach. This was particularly the case with the Cherokee, who, as Chapter Four has demonstrated, were even deemed by the rest of the Five Tribes as the most “civilized” of all native peoples.

Even those native peoples who had not embraced white American culture in the

Cherokee manner would at least have spoken English and been familiar with Christian missionaries from decades of contact, first in the East and now in the West. Removed

Indians, then, would appear more ready for conversion than any of the powerful native peoples that lived farther west.

Yet the Mormons targeted removed Indians for reasons beyond cultural familiarity. As early as 1836, Mormons had praised the U.S. policy of Indian removal, believing it paved the way for the anticipated “gathering.” Beyond United States borders the Indians could “form a happy union among themselves.”95 Mormon leaders went so far as to collect congressional population figures on the removed Indians. Of those

94 “Letter of Recommendation for Lewis Dana,” Thomas Hendricks to B. Fields, May 18, 1845, Lewis Dana Correspondence, CHL.

95 History of the Church, 2: 356-362.

307 removed, the Cherokee in particular received the most attention. Lyman Wight mentioned them, along with the Choctaw, in his original Texas letter, portraying them as potential converts lying en route of the Mormon migration to Texas.96 A few months later Orson Hyde, the Mormon ambassador in Washington sought out a meeting with

Cherokee leader John Ross. Hyde’s letters are full of explanations and excuses on his actions with regard to Congress, yet curiously he offered no explanation as to why he hoped to meet with Ross.97 In all likelihood, Cherokee relations had already been discussed among the Council of Fifty, and as such Hyde felt no need to explain himself.

Unfortunately for Hyde, John Ross left Washington before any meeting could take place.

In 1845, then, it was left up to Lewis Dana and the rest of the missionaries to initiate

Cherokee contacts.

Seeking a Cherokee alliance specifically, and an alliance of removed Indians more generally, was a rational geopolitical goal for the Mormons. Many of the removed

Indian tribes retained potential military strength, especially the Cherokee and the

Choctaw, who each numbered over 20,000 people. A political union among the removed tribes prior to a Mormon alliance would make them even more formidable, and the

Mormon leaders seem to have understood this. They sent their missionaries to an Indian

Grand Council at Council Bluffs in Iowa Territory, and a month later one missionary noted the location of the “General Council” among the southern removed tribes in a letter

96 Wight to Smith, Feb. 15, 1844, History of the Church, 6: 258.

97 “Orson Hyde’s Second Letter from Washington,” April 26, 1844, History of the Church, 6: 375; Orson Hyde to Joseph Smith, in Journal History, April 30, 1844.

308 to Brigham Young, demonstrating Young was clearly interested in the subject.98

Among natives, Lewis Dana represented himself both as a Mormon and an Oneida

Indian, and at times pushed his Oneida identity over his Mormon religion to argue for a pan-Indian alliance. For example, in a letter to Cherokee leader John Brown, Dana pushed for Indian unity before the Mormon alliance; he hoped the Cherokee and other

“southern nations” would unite with the Oneida and other “northern nations” somewhere in the West.99 For the Mormons, a Cherokee alliance also made sense psychologically and spiritually. Mormon leaders saw the Cherokee experience as akin to their own; both groups were loyal Americans who had been persecuted by “mobocrats” and tragically forced from their homes.100 In both cases, persecution began locally and then became national, as the U.S. Government acquiesced to and even facilitated the ongoing maltreatment. As Lewis Dana wrote to Brigham Young, the Cherokee, like the

Mormons, also wanted to gather away from “gentile oppression.”101 Thus, a Mormon-

Cherokee alliance, either in Indian Territory itself, or somewhere farther west, could serve as a bulwark against U.S. expansion and further persecution.

By the late summer of 1845, the Mormon missionaries believed they were having success. In early August Brigham Young baptized two more Indians into the church.102

98 Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle, 163; Dunham to Brigham Young, May 31, 1845, BYOF. It is uncertain whether Clayton and Dunham referred to the Ross-initiated Great Council discussed in Chapter Four, or another council that took place at a later date. For the Ross-initiated council, see pages 252-255, above.

99 Dana to John Brown, July 5, 1845, Lewis Dana Correspondence, CHL.

100 Parley Pratt to Brigham Young, June 5, 1845, BYOF. Pratt does not use “mobocrats” in his letter – I use quotations around it because this (and blasting a government of “mobocracy”) was the Mormon chosen term for any American who persecuted the Mormons.

101 Dana to Young, Dec. 15, 1845, BYOF.

102 Journal History, Aug. 3, 1845.

309 A month later, several missionaries returned to give a report to the Council of Fifty.

William Clayton described their report in his journal:

…[The Stockbridge] tribe manifested great kindness towards [the missionaries] and the Mormon people. They have considerable knowledge of the Mormons and of what is going on; their interest seems to be identified with ours. From Denay [Lewis Dana] they learned that the Che[r]okees have given permission for any number of our people to settle near by them and were willing to lend us any assistance they could or to go west with us to explore the country. George Herring has been with several tribes and says they are all friendly and seem to understand what is going on and are ready to render us any assistance they can.103

Clayton’s words are revealing for their political emphasis. “Interest” and “assistance” designated an alliance, not simply a religious conversion. The Cherokee were again singled out among all of the removed peoples, and Clayton’s journal entry makes it clear that the Mormons had contemplated moving south to Cherokee territory instead of traveling west. Clayton’s journal was of course private, and described the secret Council of Fifty meetings. Outside of these meetings the Mormons were not as open about the political nature of the mission, but expressed just as much optimism about its progress, as

Young revealed in a letter to Mormon missionaries on Hawaii: “The Gospel is spreading among the western natives, and they rejoice in it, some thousands have already embraced it and there are several elders of their own tribes, and several missionaries are among them teaching the principles of the gospel…”104 Even in this seemingly non-political statement, however, an Indian alliance was implied. The political nature of Mormon theology mandated that if the Indians did “embrace” the gospel, they would become de facto allies.

103 Sept. 9, 1845, in Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle, 181.

104 Young to Addison Pratt, Aug. 22, 1845, BYOF.

310 Whether Indians did indeed “identify” with the Mormons and “rejoice” in the Gospel is a matter of speculation. The prophetic nature of the Lamanite redemption meant that Mormon missionaries likely misinterpreted general acts of Indian hospitality as specific acceptance of the Mormon faith. However, other than Stockbridge Chief

Thomas Hendricks’ letter of recommendation (above), few concrete pieces of evidence exist that demonstrate Indians had any sort of firm commitment to Mormonism.105

Cherokee leader John Brown did respond favorably to Dana’s overtures, but emphasized that the “unsettled” nature of the Cherokee people needed to be solved before any further plans could be made.106 Brown referred to Ross Party-Treaty Party civil war, a conflict seemingly unknown among Mormon leadership. Even if Indian leaders like Hendricks and Brown were honestly looking to join the Mormons, their individual wishes may not have meshed with the wishes of their nations. Indeed, this was the same John Brown who had migrated to Mexico in the early 1840s, but failed to inspire anyone to follow him. Clearly he favored ambitious migratory schemes. More generally, internal Indian politics may have negated any Mormon alliance. Moreover, any potential alliance would have had to overcome Mormon racism; the Mormons were still white Americans, and like most they harbored the same prejudices, as would be born out in the years that followed in the West.107 Perhaps, too, the Cherokee who favored a Mormon alliance were in fact engaging in borderlands diplomacy, in which they hoped to play the

105 It would be wonderful to find correspondence by Indians to Mormons, or about Mormons, when I undertake the chapter on Indian Country. I would guess, however, that any correspondence would have been already been discovered and archived by the LDS Church History Library.

106 John Brown to Lewis Dana, July 5, 1845, Dana Correspondence.

107 Jared Farmer provides a concise but perceptive summary of Mormon attitudes towards Indians in “Displaced from Zion.”

311 Mormons against the United States, positioning themselves to be courted by both.108

However, despite all these caveats, the unlikelihood of a Mormon-Indian alliance should not deny its geopolitical potential. Native peoples had united both with one another and various European powers within living memory of 1845, terrorizing Americans on the frontier – if not always in reality, at least in the minds of white Americans. A Mormon alliance with the Cherokee or any other formidable native people could have done so again.

Ultimately the alliance failed not due to the failure of Mormon-Indian relations, but due to anti-Mormons in Illinois. Although Joseph Smith’s murder in June of 1844 had halted the violence around Nauvoo, peace was only temporary. In January 1845 the

Illinois legislature repealed the Nauvoo charter, and by the summer anti-Mormon rhetoric was at an all time high. In September, Mormons from Nauvoo’s outlying settlements fled to the city after anti-Mormons repeatedly burned their barns and crops.109 By October

Mormon leaders were furiously preparing their people for an exodus west. Although never definitively stated, it seems the plans for an Indian alliance dwindled in the face of this much more immediate crisis. As with the Mormon-Texas negotiations of 1844, the rush of events destroyed hopes for any Mormon-Indian alliance in 1845. In October,

Lewis Dana arrived in Nauvoo to meet with Mormon leaders. While there, he married a white Mormon convert named Mary Gont, demonstrating his full integration into the

108 On borderlands diplomacy, see Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lake Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Hinderaker, Elusive Empires; David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New York: Yale University Press, 1992).

109 Arrington and Bitton, The Mormon Experience, 94-95; Allen and Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints, 208; Leonard Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Knopf, 1985), 125-126.

312 Mormon community.110 By December, however, Dana was back in Cherokee territory. Writing to Brigham Young, Dana stated the Cherokee hoped he would stay at least three years among them, but he would obey the wishes of the Twelve if they wanted him to return to Nauvoo.111 Eventually they sent for him the following April, and by the autumn of 1846 Dana was now involved with Mormon-Indian relations in Iowa

Territory.112 Mormon-Indian interaction during the exodus, however, would not be concerned with geopolitical alliances but, more simply, with ensuring the Mormons a safe passage across native land. Plans for a Mormon-Indian alliance were defunct.

Like Lyman Wight’s settlement in Texas, there was also a coda to the Mormon-

Indian alliance. Alpheus Cutler was a member of the Council of Fifty and friend of

Lewis Dana. He was chosen by Joseph Smith to begin a mission to the Indians in 1844, but Smith died before the mission ever got off the ground. As the Mormons moved west in 1847, spurred by the advice of Dana, Cutler proposed a mission to the Indians in

Kansas territory, many of whom had been in contact with the Mormons from earlier missions.113 In making his proposal, Cutler stated he hoped to build mills and schools among the Indians, but also to raise a potential “army of redemption” of several thousand

110 Taylor, “Telling Stories of Mormons and Indians,” 254-255. Taylor notes that while this marriage was allowed, interracial marriage between blacks and whites had been previously prohibited, demonstrating a sort of racial hierarchy among Mormons.

111 Dana to Young, Dec. 16, 1845, BYOF.

112 Hosea Stout, On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844-1861, ed. Juanita Brooks (2 vols., Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1964), 1: 152, 1: 205.

113 For an account of Alpheus Cutler, see Danny L. Jorgensen, “Building the Kingdom of God: Alpheus Cutler and the Second Mormon Mission to the Indians, 1846-1853,” Kansas History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Autumn 1992), 192-209; Taylor, “Telling Stories of Mormons and Indians,” 279-295.

313 natives.114 Significantly, Brigham Young gave the mission his blessing. Although

Young’s motivations for allowing the mission remain ambiguous, clearly the Indian alliance retained a powerful hold.115 Young would eventually regret his decision. By

1849 Cutler, along with Lewis Dana, refused to leave his work in Kansas for the Mormon settlement in the Salt Lake Valley. He had converted few Indians, and obviously a native alliance was out of the question, but he would not abandon his mission. Eventually he would make a full break with the Salt Lake Mormons, establishing his own small church, later termed the Cutlerite branch of Mormonism. Into the twentieth century this small group would continue to maintain the importance of converting the Indians to the

Mormon faith, the potential Indian political alliance now long forgotten and irrelevant.116

Like Lyman Wight’s refusal to abandon Texas, Alpheus Cutler’s refusal to leave his

Indian mission further demonstrates the importance of the Lamanite redemption for

Mormon leaders in the mid-1840s.117 Meanwhile, as Cutler moved to Kansas, Brigham

Young and a majority of the Mormons were traveling west to the Salt Lake Valley, where they hoped they could finally achieve Mormon sovereignty.

114 Richard E. Bennett, “Lamanism, Lymanism, and Cornfields,” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 13 (1986), 50. Bennett cites a minutes of a meeting of the First Presidency, Dec. 27, 1847 in the Brigham Young papers in the LDS Church History Library. Currently these minutes are not listed in the Brigham Young Papers, suggesting that they are closed to research at this moment.

115 Danny Jorgensen, the leading historian of Alpheus Cutler, claims Young had high hopes for the economic prospects of the settlement but was unenthusiastic about the Indian alliance, yet he cites no source with this assertion. In all likelihood, Young acquiesced to the mission because there was nothing to lose in allowing it to proceed. If it failed, it would take few resources away from the Mormon exodus; if it succeeded – economically and/or politically – it would only aid the exodus. Jorgensen, “Building the Kingdom of God,” 200.

116 Ibid., 206.

117 It is important to note that Lyman Wight also kept pushing for redeeming the Lamanite in his writings from Texas. Like Cutler, he believed Brigham Young had abandoned the Lamanite redemption, and with it his allegiance to Joseph Smith: Wight, “An Address”; Wight to the Northern Islander, July 1855; both in Lyman Wight Correspondence, CHL.

314

Navigating U.S Expansion

As violence escalated in the fall of 1845, Brigham Young and the Twelve clearly saw the Mormons would need to leave Nauvoo. Only by promising the Mormons would eventually evacuate the city did Young prevent an all-out war. But where would they go?

It was certain the Mormons were not going to Texas, nor were they finding allies among the removed Indians. Yet the vast North American West lay open for settlement. Of course few areas of the West were actually empty. Natives had lived in the West since time immemorial, and had been joined by californios, nuevomexicanos, British trappers working for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and recently arrived American settlers.

However, despite not being empty in early 1846, the West was not yet a United States

West, and it was the United States from which the Mormons fled. Although their travels would bring them in contact with others who may not share their views, at the least a westward migration would take the Mormons out of the U.S. Moreover, Joseph Smith had prophesied such a step possibly as early as 1840, undoubtedly by 1842.118 While the

Mormons later may have overemphasized the importance and specificity of Smith’s

“Rocky Mountain Prophecy” once their success in Utah seemed to fulfill his vision, a westward exodus was at least discussed among Mormon leaders for several years before

Smith’s death. This discussion culminated in the spring of 1844, when Smith had planned to send out a “California Expedition” to explore the west, but soon his presidential campaign took precedence and the expedition never occurred.119 Thus by the

118 Epslin, “A Place Prepared,” 89-93; see also Christian, “Mormon Foreknowledge of the West.”

119 Epslin, “A Place Prepared,” 93-94.

315 fall of 1845, when Young and the Twelve decided they had no choice but to lead the Mormons from Nauvoo, they were tapping into a long-established but vague idea. It was certain the Mormons would go west, but where they would go in the West remained unknown.

After Young publicly promised to evacuate Nauvoo, Mormon leaders debated their final destination in private. Importantly, however, they were not the only ones to weigh in on the subject. Once the American press brought news of the planned exodus to the general public, many Americans suggested destinations to Mormon leaders. For example, Duff Green, the infamous pro-slavery expansionist and Polk confidant, urged the Mormons to go to Cuba to establish an “independent and sovereign nation.” There the Mormons could easily conquer the Cubans, “people similar in all respects to those of

Mexico.”120 Green’s suggestion was outlandish – and completely ignored – but even his preposterous idea demonstrates the contemporary understanding of the Mormons securing sovereignty somewhere beyond U.S. borders. While tensions were rising between the U.S. and Mexico, war – let alone U.S. victory – was hardly inevitable.

Personal interests undoubtedly influenced many of the Americans who wrote Young and the Council of Twelve, but nevertheless their letters belied the rhetoric of Manifest

Destiny. To them, U.S. expansion was hardly foreordained, even as late as 1845.121 For many, both Mormons and non-Mormons, the West remained a blank slate where the

Mormons and others could achieve their own political and economic goals.

120 Duff Green to Charles Dana, Nov. 2, 1847, BYOF.

121 For more on the American attitude towards Mormon settlement, see above, page 100.

316 Before the outbreak of the Mexican War in the summer of 1846, there were essentially three potential sites for Mormon settlement in the West. The first was somewhere within the vast Oregon Country, at the time jointly controlled by the U.S. and

Great Britain. Oregon had been proposed before. As noted above, Orson Hyde had weighed the benefits of Oregon versus Texas in letters from Washington D.C. in the spring of 1844, and Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas, and Arkansas governor Thomas Drew advised the Mormons to solve their problems by moving to Oregon.122 After Young publicly announced the exodus, the Illinois paper Quincy Whig maintained that, within

Oregon Country, the Mormons were specifically going to Vancouver Island, an assertion that then reverberated throughout the American press.123 For some, this development was ominous, as U.S.-British tensions were mounting over Oregon Country’s future. With thousands of Mormon converts in Britain potentially traveling to North America, there was indeed logic to a Mormon-British alliance in Oregon Country. The Sangamo

Journal, for example, wrote, “[The Mormons] are said to number some 18,000, are bitterly hostile to the government of the United States, and many of them Englishmen, and are likely…to act in concert with the British in all their designs.”124 Thomas Ford, the Illinois governor whose actions – or inaction – had augmented the violence in

122 Thomas Drew to Brigham Young, May 27, 1845, BYOF; History of the Church, 6: 188; Orson Hyde to Joseph Smith, April 26, 1844, in History of the Church, 6: 373-376.

123 The Quincy Whig’s story was repeated in a vast number of papers, for example: Boston Courier, Oct. 27, 1845; The Sun (Baltimore), Oct. 28, 1845; Daily National Intelligencer, Oct. 28, 1845; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Nov. 8, 1845.

124 Barre (Mass.) Patriot, quoting the Sangamo Journal, Jan. 2, 1846.

317 Nauvoo, expressed similar fears.125 Indeed, one Mormon leader in London urged such an alliance, for he believed Great Britain was poised to decisively defeat the U.S. if war broke out. He based his assertion on the presence of sixty ships in U.S. waters, and the British ability to “arm the slaves and the Lamanites.”126 Many Mormons themselves believed Vancouver Island was the ultimate destination. In fact, this was a carefully crafted ruse by Young and the Twelve.127 While Young hoped Vancouver Island would be a way station for British Mormon immigrants traveling to the Salt Lake Valley, he had no plans to make anywhere in Oregon Country a permanent settlement. Wary of U.S. intervention (more below), he and the rest of the Twelve hoped to disguise their true destination for as long as possible, and advancing the Oregon rumor served this purpose.

To the south of Oregon Country lay the even more enormous Mexican province of Alta California, which also offered prospects for Mormon settlement, either somewhere on the coast or in the more remote interior. Many non-Mormons urged

Young to settle on the coast, specifically near San Francisco Bay. American travelers in

California, notably Thomas Farnham and Lansford Hastings, had published books extolling the virtues of the west coast, and others echoed these sentiments to Mormon

125 Governor Ford to Sheriff Backenstos, Dec. 29, 1845, in William E. Berrett and Alma P. Burton, ed., Readings in L.D.S. Church History: From Original Manuscripts, Vol. 2, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1953), 109.

126 Elisha Davis to Wilford Woodruff, Jan(?), 1846, Wilford Woodruff Journals and Papers, MS 1352, CHL.

127 Brigham Young, Sept. 13, 1857, Journal of Discourses, 5: 230-231; George Smith, July 24, 1854, Journal of Discourses, 2: 22-24; Epslin, “A Place Prepared,” 102-103; Young to Stephen Douglas, Dec. 17, 1845, BYOF.

318 leaders – oftentimes with hidden or not-so-hidden agendas of their own.128 A writer from Ipswich, Massachusetts urged the Mormons to seize San Francisco, where they could increase in numbers and gain “entire mastery of the country, and might bid defiance to your persecutors.”129 Another writer from Boston echoed this advice, for San

Francisco Bay was a harbor that “cannot be surpassed on the globe.”130 He believed that

Mexico would never be able to permanently retain San Francisco, and whoever controlled this strategic region would automatically possess all of Oregon and California.

Whether this region would be taken by Britain, the U.S., or become an independent nation was uncertain, but if the Mormons settled there, they would become a powerful people. Judging by his Boston origin and his intimate knowledge of Pacific trade, the writer was offering more than just advice, for he hoped to use the Mormons as trading partners on the west coast. Others were more forthright and offered to contract with the

Mormons to supply them in California.131 Even Illinois governor Thomas Ford urged the

Mormons to seize California from a “physically weak” and “morally distracted” Mexico, and establish an independent government “subject to only the laws of nations.”132 While these recommendations were obviously self-serving – merchants wanted Mormon

128 Thomas J. Farnham, Travels in California, and Scenes in the Pacific Ocean (New York, 1844); Lansford Hastings, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California (Cincinnati, 1845). Both Farnham and Hastings will be further detailed in Chapter Six and Chapter Seven.

129 Charles Lovell to Young, Oct. 20, 1845, BYOF.

130 E. (Elden?) Warren to Young, Oct. 22, 1845, BYOF.

131 Samuel Hastings to Young, Dec. 29, 1845, BYOF; Eli Whitney Jr. to Young, Jan. 6, 1846, BYOF.

132 Thomas Ford to Young, April 8, 1845, BYOF.

319 business, Ford simply wanted the Mormons out of his state – they demonstrated that as late as 1845 many Americans viewed California’s political future as uncertain.133

Of non-Mormons pushing for a Mormon settlement in California, none was more intriguing – or ambitious – than Lansford Hastings. Hastings had led several migrant companies west, and in 1845 he published The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and

California, regaling the American public with the economic prospects of the region. Left unsaid in his book was his more ambitious political agenda. Hastings schemed for an independent western republic, presumably with Hastings himself as its leader.134 In

Oregon in 1844 he pushed for such a plan, only to be voted down, and now in late 1845 he hoped the Mormons could help him achieve a republic in California.135 Hastings was in contact with Samuel Brannan, a Mormon convert in New York. Brigham Young had tasked Brannan with organizing a seaborne migration to the west coast of those Mormons who remained in eastern states. While it remains unclear just what exactly Hastings planned, he clearly hoped to use the Mormons as allies in his ambitious California scheme, and it seems Brannan was at least aware of some of these plans. Also caught up in the plot were California promoter and author of Travels in California Thomas

Farnham, New York merchants Arthur and Alfred Benson, and, remarkably, former U.S.

133 The Journal History entry for Oct. 31, 1845, also mentions several letters Orson Hyde received from Americans urging the Mormons to move to California.

134 On Hastings, see Thomas F. Andrews, “The Ambitions of Lansford W. Hastings: A Study in Western Myth-Making,” Pacific Historical Review 39 (Nov. 1970), 473-491; Will Bagley, “Lansford Warren Hastings: Scoundrel or Visionary?” Overland Journal 12 (Spring 1994), 12-26.

135 Hastings’ Oregon scheme will receive greater treatment in Chapter Six. On his connections to Brannan, and both of their connections with Farnham, the Benson brothers, and Kendall, see the letters in Will Bagley, ed., Scoundrel’s Tale: The Samuel Brannan Papers (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1999), 75-85; Dirkmaat, “Enemies Foreign and Domestic, 88-95. On the Mormons’ connections with Farnham specifically: Hyde to Young, Oct. 21, 1845, BYOF; Journal History, Oct. 31, 1845.

320 postmaster-general Amos Kendall. It remains unclear exactly what each man hoped to get from promoting Mormon migration to the coast of California. Judging by their past and future deeds, in all likelihood Hastings and Farnham sought a path to power in the region, while the Benson brothers and Kendall would profit from the move.

Unfortunately for Hastings and the rest of the schemers, Young sensed something was afoot, either a plan to get rich at Mormon expense (likely true), or a scheme devised by

Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton to exterminate the Mormons as a people

(undoubtedly false).136 While the coast of California was part of Young’s western plans, he foresaw it only as a stopping point. When Brannan did lead the first ship of Mormon passengers to California in 1846, they stayed for only several months. Once they were fully outfitted, they left the coast and journeyed east to the Salt Lake Valley. Here, not on the coast but in the remote interior, was the place Young and the Twelve had agreed upon as the site of the Mormon Zion.

Because they feared U.S. interference, Mormon leaders maintained a deliberate public ambiguity, and thus it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when they decided on the Salt

Lake Valley. As noted above, they deceptively mentioned Oregon. They also routinely stated they would travel to California, but in 1845 Mexican California was so vast that it meant practically everywhere in the West besides Oregon. In all likelihood Young and the rest of the Council of the Twelve agreed upon the enormous Great Basin region by the fall of 1845, and the Salt Lake Valley by early 1846.137 If the letters Young received

136 Bagley, Scoundrel’s Tale, 127-129. Thomas Hart Benton was often singled out by the Mormons as someone who was decidedly anti-Mormon, a trend that began with Benton’s laissez faire approach to the Mormon War in Missouri in the late 1830s.

137 See Epslin, “A Place Prepared”; Richard E. Bennett, “Finalizing Plans for the Trek West: Deliberations at Winter Quarters, 1846-1847,” Brigham Young University Studies 24 (Summer 1984), 301-320.

321 pushing the California coast had any effect, it would only have been negative.

Indeed, in response to a letter signed by “Backwoodsman” that urged the Mormons to create the “United States of the West,” Young claimed the letter was part of a conspiracy devised by Thomas Hart Benton and his “mobocratic associates” to further isolate the

Mormons.138 More generally Young believed the Mormons needed to become, in his words, the “original settlers,” where they could build Zion without outside interference – especially American interference. Americans had already arrived in both Oregon and coastal California, and many more were on their way.139 The fact that so many letters urged the Mormons to go to the area San Francisco, while none recommended the Salt

Lake Valley, would only have made the latter more attractive in Young’s eyes. While some Mormons doubted Young’s decision, noting the region’s dubious agricultural prospects, for Young it was worth the risk.140 Zion would be built in the Salt Lake

Valley.

Although Mormon leaders knew they were going to the Salt Lake Valley in early

1846, the general Mormon populace did not. Trusting their leaders to guide them, most

Mormons were concerned with the day-to-day hardships of procuring food and supplies for the rigorous journey that would take many over two years. Thus Mormon diaries and trail journals during this period emphasize the Mormon exodus as an epic tale of survival, a journey into the unknown western wilderness. Of course Mormon leaders were also

138 Journal History, Oct. 29, 1845.

139 As Young told Thomas Kane, “There are thousands in the United States who would be glad to be the first settlers in California.” Journal History, July 13, 1846.

140 For example, John Bernhisel, eventually Utah Territory’s delegate to Congress, wrote several letters to Young in which he questioned the climate in the Great Basin: Bernhisel to Young, Nov. 26, 1846, and Bernhisel to Young, Jan. 18, 1847, both in BYOF.

322 primarily concerned with day-to-day survival, but for them the final destination was not unknown; rather, it was quite known – the Mormons were leaving the political boundaries of the U.S. to travel into a remote corner of Mexico. By 1846 Mormon leaders had read John C. Fremont’s reports and Lansford Hastings’ Emigrants’ Guide, and had studied western maps that hung in the Nauvoo Temple.141 Samuel Brannan warned Young explicitly that the federal government would intervene in the migration because the Mormons were violating the “law of nations” as an armed body traveling from one country into another. Brannan’s warning was based on a false rumor planted by

Amos Kendall, who had promised he would intervene on the Mormons’ behalf for a fee.142 Yet the importance of Brannan’s letter lies not in its fear of federal intervention, but its clear understanding of Mormon intentions: the Mormons were leaving the United

States, and both they and many other Americans knew it. As one Mormon leader wrote, the Mormons were “forsaking the American Republic.” Their destination was Mexico – although it remained to be seen just how Mexico would receive them.143

Just what Mormon leaders believed they could accomplish within Mexico is guesswork. Ensconced in a region with few economic benefits and far from non-native populations, the Mormons perhaps hoped the Mexican government would simply ignore their presence.144 Even if Mexican leaders protested the settlement, the Salt Lake Valley

141 Journal History, Dec. 20, 1845; Dec. 27, 1845; Christian, “Mormon Foreknowledge of the West,” 412- 414.

142 Brannan to Young, Jan. 12, 1846, BYOF; History of the Church, 7: 544.

143 Although certain major works on the Mormons mention the geographical situation of the Salt Lake Valley, no historian examines the theoretical political consequences of the decision.

144 Indeed, the Salt Lake Valley was somewhat far from native populations as well, representing a sort of no-man’s land between the Ute and Western Shoshone tribes: Arrington and Bitton, The Mormon Experience, 110-114.

323 was a half continent away from Mexico City and the grasp of Mexican military power. As such, the Mexican government would have little choice but acquiesce to

Mormon terms for maintaining – at least officially – allegiance to Mexico. Indeed, since

1836 californios settled along the west coast had achieved this exact political status.

Although California remained a part of Mexico, both the Mexican government and

California leaders knew Mexico had no ability to enforce Mexican sovereignty within the territory. As Chapter Six will demonstrate, Mexico’s hold over California was nominal at best, and Mexican sovereignty continued to exist only due to the continued acquiescence of the local californio population. Although no Mormon referenced

California, a Mormon settlement in the Salt Lake Valley would likely lead to a similar result of autonomy under loose Mexican oversight. Perhaps the Mormons could have even engaged in borderlands diplomacy, and played the U.S. and Mexico off of one another, while ensuring that neither country interfered within Mormon territory.

Ultimately, however, Mormon political goals remained uncertain, for two reasons. First, their future political status was a distant third to the two more immediate priorities of leaving the U.S. as fast as possible, and preparing and organizing the journey west.

Although Mormon leaders knew they were traveling into Mexico, their political status within Mexico could be determined at a later date. Second, for the third time in two years external events rendered future Mormon political plans irrelevant. Joseph Smith’s death had destroyed the Texas plans in the summer of 1844, then anti-Mormon violence around Nauvoo had ended the quest for an Indian alliance in the fall of 1845, and in April

1846 the United States declared war on Mexico.

324 Mormon leaders learned of the war in late May, one month after it began.145

Their initial reaction was unsurprising. Due to years of at best federal neglect of their plight, and at worst deliberate American aid to the anti-Mormon cause, the Mormons had come to loathe the United States. Brigham Young deemed the U.S. “Satan’s Kingdom,” and in later sermon asked for the crowd’s affirmation on leaving the “Hell of a Hole” that was the U.S., at which point the audience promptly cheered.146 Right before the war’s outbreak, another Mormon leader remarked that he disdained the U.S. as he did the

“gates of hell.”147 However, Mormon leaders also knew they were playing a decidedly political game, and needed to mollify federal officials in case the U.S. decided to intervene. Thus, the Mormons made public proclamations of their loyalty that belied their true feelings, even claiming they traveled west to “sustain the claim” of the U.S. to the region.148 Privately, however, they could hope for only one outcome: the U.S.-

Mexican War would bring divine vengeance against the United States. As Mormon diarist Hosea Stout write, “I confess I was glad to learn of war against the United States and was in hopes that it might never end untill [sic] they were entirely destroyed for they had driven us into the wilderness & was now laughing at our calamities.”149 Yet for the first month after learning of the war, the Mormons did nothing to change their western

145 The Diary of Hosea Stout, May 27, 1846, 1: 163.

146 Brigham Young to Parley Pratt, May 26, 1845, MS 4766, CHL; Stout, The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1: 73. See also Dirkmaat, “Enemies Foreign and Domestic,” chapter three.

147 Lucius Scovil to Brigham Young, April 14, 1846, BYOF.

148 “A Circular of the High Council,” Times and Seasons [Nauvoo, Ill.], Jan. 15, 1846; New York Daily Tribune, Feb. 5, 1846. Dirkmaat calls Mormon attitudes towards the U.S. during this time “schizophrenic,” but that implies that these contradictory statements were random and served no purpose: Dirkmaat, “Enemies Foreign and Domestic, 85.

149 The Diary of Hosea Stout, May 27, 1846, 1: 163.

325 plans. They could not control who won on the battlefield; their primary objective remained to travel safely to the Salt Lake Valley, and only when they arrived would they assess the larger geopolitical situation.

However, unbeknownst to Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve now traveling across Iowa Territory, important decisions were being made in Washington that would change Mormon plans irrevocably. In January 1846 the Twelve had appointed

New Englander Jesse Little to head the Eastern States Mission, replacing Samuel

Brannan, who was now on a ship to California. They urged Little to go to Washington and seek tangible assistance for their move west – what would likely become another futile request.150 Little soon struck up an acquaintance with Thomas Kane, a

Philadelphian with connections to the Democratic Party and the Polk administration.

Kane urged Little to write a letter to President Polk himself, and it was Kane who probably suggested playing on American fears of Mormon hostility to get Polk’s attention.151 War with Mexico and potential war with Great Britain over Oregon had indeed altered Polk’s attitude towards the Mormons. When he first learned of their emigration, he maintained he had no authority in preventing them from leaving U.S. borders.152 While he found their beliefs “absurd,” Polk held that intervening against the

Mormons was no different than intervening against any other faith – a power he did not

150 Journal History, July 6, 1846.

151 Will Bagley and David Bigler, ed., Army of Israel: Mormon Battalion Narratives (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000), 31-32; Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 49-50, Dirkmaat, “Enemies Foreignand Domestic,” 115-116.

152 James K. Polk, The Diary of James K. Polk: During his Presidency, 1845-1849, ed. Milo Milton Quaife (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1910), 1: 205-206; Dirkmaat, “Enemies Foreign and Domestic,” 109.

326 believe he possessed as president.153 Now, however, the U.S. was at war with

Mexico, war with Britain loomed, and the Mormons were a potentially hostile force traveling into a region still up-for-grabs. The Mormon presence in the West put Polk in a precarious position that Little’s letter obliquely but forcefully emphasized.154 Clearly

Polk took the hint, writing in his diary that he needed to “conciliate” the Mormons, and

“prevent this singular sect from becoming hostile to the U.S.”155 The Mormons and the

U.S. government would strike a deal.

After days of backroom discussions, the agreement was made: in return for federal aid, several hundred Mormons would enlist in the U.S. Army and assist in the conquest of California. Eventually deemed the “Mormon Battalion,” these men would endure the longest journey of any armed force in U.S. history, and make an imprint on the West as road-builders, peacekeepers, and, for a few, gold-finders. The Battalion’s creation came after a complicated set of negotiations that cannot be detailed here, but suffice to say, it was not a gesture of goodwill on the part of the Polk administration, nor was it an expression of patriotism by the Mormons, although both sides outwardly expressed these lofty sentiments.156 Rather, the Mormon Battalion resulted from calculated realpolitik on both sides. For fighting with the United States – and even more

153 Dirkmaat, “Enemies Foreign and Domestic,” 109.

154 “[The Mormons]…are true hearted Americans, true to our country, true to its laws, true to its glorious institutions – and we have a desire to go under the outstretched wings of the American Eagle. We would disdain to receive assistance from a foreign power – although it should be proferred – unless our government shall turn us off in this great crisis and will not help us, but compel us to be foreigners.” Little to Polk, June 1, 1846, in Bigler and Bagley, ed., Army of Israel, 34.

155 Polk, Diary, 1: 443-450.

156 The most in-depth treatment of the Mormon Battalion negotiations is Dirkmaat, “Enemies Foreign and Domestic,” 103-148; see also Bagley and Bigler, ed., Army of Israel, 31-49.

327 importantly, not against them – the Mormons received several important tangible benefits: the United States would permit them to settle temporarily on and travel through

Indian Territory on their journey west; those who enlisted would essentially be moved west at U.S. expense; and the Battalion’s pay would help finance the westward journey for the rest of the Mormon populace.157 More symbolically, to Mormon leaders who had long feared potential U.S. hostility, the creation of the Mormon Battalion ensured the

U.S. government would not only not interfere in the Mormon exodus, but endorse it.

With the deal struck, both Little and several army officers traveled to take the news to Mormon leaders, most of whom were now in Iowa Territory. When the army officers arrived before Little, such was the state of Mormon-U.S. relations that several

Mormons believed the U.S. troops had arrived to destroy them.158 Even when the officer in charge stated his peaceful intentions, Council of Twelve member Wilford Woodruff believed the troops were spies sent by Polk to keep watch on the Mormons.159 Yet, when the officer eventually spoke with Brigham Young, Young immediately responded favorably, even before Little arrived to assure Young of the offer’s authenticity and

Polk’s amicability. Clearly Young understood the immediate, tangible benefits of what was in reality a calculated Mormon-U.S. alliance. Knowing the hostility with which most

Mormons viewed the U.S., Young then engaged on a stump speaking tour of the Mormon

157 Bigler and Bagley, Army of Israel, 23.

158 Wilford Woodruff, June 26, 1846, in Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 54-55.

159 Ibid. In a sense this was true, but not in the overt way Woodruff believed.

328 encampments to persuade men to volunteer. Eventually the ranks filled, the

Mormons accepted the U.S. offer of alliance, and the Mormon Battalion became a reality.160

Despite the seemingly simple timeline of the creation of the Battalion, there remains an intriguing question that has scarcely been investigated: what were Brigham

Young’s political plans before the U.S. Army’s arrival? To Mormon leaders in Iowa, the

U.S. offer came out of the blue; they believed that if the U.S. had any stance towards the

Mormons, it was not friendship but belligerence.161 Before this unexpected U.S. alliance, essentially the Mormons had two options from which to choose as to their stance towards the U.S.-Mexican War. The first was neutrality – if not outwardly voiced, at least in practice. The Mormons could watch the results of the war carefully, with the hope that their settlement in the Salt Lake Valley would present the war’s victor with a fait accompli. The second option was perhaps riskier, but had great potential if it succeeded: an outright alliance with Mexico.

A Mormon-Mexican alliance is undoubtedly a historical “what-if.” Whether

Brigham Young ever seriously contemplated it remains uncertain. Yet what is certain is that other Mormons not only contemplated a Mexican alliance, but urged Young to take such a step. Thus, while Young may not have given it serious consideration, he at least knew of the idea. Before the outbreak of war, this alliance would not be against the U.S. necessarily, but would somehow serve both Mexican and Mormon goals in the West.

160 Amidst rising U.S.-Mormon tensions in the 1850s, Young and others maintained the Mormon Battalion was part of a plot hatched by the U.S. to take the able-bodied men away from the Mormon camps. Clearly he did not think this when the Battalion was first raised.

161 Dirkmaat, “Enemies Foreign and Domestic,” 152.

329 One letter-writer was clearly hesitant to make such a suggestion to Young, writing,

“I hope you will excuse me for this first trespass for of late their is a great many ideas a runing through my weak head but when I come in contact with any that I think is good I sometimes communicate them to others.” Despite his trepidation, he then explained his ambitious idea: the Mormons should negotiate Mexico to uphold Mexican sovereignty in

California, for Mexico was “very anxious to obtain mil[it]ary citizens. And I think that vast country could be obtained by us if we would agree to take amediate posesion and help defined [defend] it.”162 While this writer obviously did not hold a leadership position, Council of Twelve member Orson Hyde suggested a similar idea, maintaining that Mexico would want the Mormons to combat the “scapegoat mobocrats” who were pouring into California.163 Four days after Hyde wrote the letter, however, the U.S. declared war on Mexico, and either Hyde or someone else crossed out this part of the letter. Whether the Mexican government would have accepted the offer prior to war is impossible to gauge, but clearly several Mormons felt the effort was worth making.164

The most ambitious and detailed plan for a Mexican alliance was proposed after the war began. Written by William Pickett in July 1846, it was titled, “A Concise View of the Policy of the Latter Day Saints in reference to their emigration to California.”165

162 W.D. Salisbury to Young, 1845, BYOF.

163 Hyde to Young, April 22, 1846, BYOF.

164 Dirkmaat notes that the Mexican government was wary of a vast Mormon migration into California: “Enemies Foreign and Domestic,” 124.

165 “A Concise View of the Policy of the Latter Day Saints in reference to their emigration to California,” 1846, BYOF. The letter is listed in the archives without author or date, although it is referenced in the Journal History as proposed to the Council of the Twelve on July 16, and written by William Pickett. The Journal History mentions Pickett presented his paper on July 16, but gives no further details. There are no minutes for the meeting of the Twelve for that day, and the minutes for the following days are closed to research. However, responding to my request to see the minutes, the Church History Library staff looked

330 Although Pickett was not a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, he was a leader of some importance, charged with overseeing the departure of the last Mormons from

Nauvoo many months after Young and the Twelve had left for the West.166 Pickett’s knowledge of California was excellent, for he correctly diagnosed the myriad number of political problems that beset Mexican rule in the territory. Because Mexican sovereignty over California was tenuous, Pickett wanted the Mormons to become official empresarios, and uphold Mexican claims to the territory. The Mormons could even use the funds generated from selling the Nauvoo Temple to pay for land. Because the

Mexican government feared California would break away “as did Texas,” Mexican officials would simply ignore the fact that the Mormons were obviously not Catholic.

Pickett knew about the U.S. enlistment of the Mormon Battalion, but felt there was no reason to trust the United States:

This government has been notorious for making promises during war, and breaking them at pleasure, as soon as it saw fit to do so - witness how the U.S. in the Algerine War in 1804, broke faith with a Barbary prince…also its broken promises to the Canadians during the last war - inducing hundreds of them to join the American standard, under the promise of protection, and then shamefully left them to the mercies of British anger, when they had finished using them.

Pickett worried that if the U.S. conquered the West, new American immigrants would arrive, and eventually the anti-Mormon deprivations would begin again. He concluded

at the documents, where they found no mention was ever made of Pickett’s proposal in the two weeks that followed (CHL Access Review Committee to Thomas Richards, June 26, 2014). Intriguingly, I have been unable to locate any historian who mentions this letter, despite its potential geopolitical ramifications.

166 Journal History, June 6, 1846; July 6, 1846; Aug. 7, 1846. Pickett would also assume a leadership role during the journey west, printing money for the Mormons while in Iowa (June 11, 1848), counting votes for elections (Oct. 5, 1848), and becoming a territorial delegate for Utah (Sept. 6, 1849) (all from Journal History).

331 his letter adamantly: “Our safety is to leave this government.” Picket clearly hoped to change the minds of Mormon leaders before the West’s political future was decided.

Pickett was in Nauvoo when he wrote his proposal, although it is unclear the exact date on which he wrote it.167 It seems that Pickett learned about the Mormon

Battalion from Jesse Little on June 28, when Little arrived in Nauvoo while en route to the main Mormon camp in Iowa.168 Pickett then wrote his detailed proposal, and gave it to Little to give to the Twelve, which Little did on July 16.169 This date is particularly intriguing for its lateness, for Little had arrived in the Mormon camp two weeks before.

Moreover, this day was the first muster of the Mormon Battalion. Why did Little wait so long to deliver Pickett’s letter? Perhaps Little wanted to wait until a time when there was no going back on the U.S. alliance, and preserve the deal he helped broker. Less conspiratorially, perhaps Pickett was simply not important enough for his letter to take priority, or perhaps his ideas were simply too ambitious or outlandish to merit serious consideration. Undoubtedly, for the ever-practical Brigham Young, the immediate and tangible benefits of the Mormon Battalion would have outweighed any distant hope of a

Mexican alliance. Even if Little had presented Pickett’s proposal as soon as he arrived in camp as an alternative to the Mormon Battalion, it is doubtful the Mormons would have chosen it. Yet Pickett’s letter clearly shows that some Mormons seriously contemplated a

167 The Journal History mentions Pickett in Nauvoo on June 6, and again on July 12. Considering he was one of the men in charge of getting the last Mormons out of Nauvoo, it seems unlikely he would have left between those dates.

168 Journal History, June 28, 1846.

169 Journal History, July 16, 1846.

332 Mexican alliance, and while Mormon leaders did not give it serious consideration, they at least knew of the idea.

As the U.S-Mexican War dragged on into 1847 and 1848, Mormon assertions of sovereignty would gain renewed life. Although the United States defeated Mexico on the battlefield, for a time it looked like Mexico’s refusal to surrender, coupled with increasing domestic opposition, boded poorly for Polk’s ambitious expansionist agenda.

Perhaps the Mormons could seize the moment; as one Mormon put it in a letter to Young,

“…While rogues are quarrelling, honest men get their just rewards.”170 Moreover, the

Wilmot Proviso introduced the politics of slavery into the war’s outcome, and gestured toward a sundering of the Union. These developments caused some Mormons to hope for the “death and dissolution” of the United States, in which case, as one man described,

“Gods will be done, and let him reign whose right it is.”171 George Miller, anticipating that the U.S. would soon be “broken up and divided into factions,” urged Young to send a diplomatic mission to Mexico in the hopes of creating a buffer state between Mexico and

Texas. He believed that securing a port on the Gulf of Mexico would then facilitate

Mormon immigration from Europe.172 Miller was still dreaming of Joseph Smith’s old

Texas plans, and would soon break with Young to join Lyman Wight in Texas, but Miller still expressed a legitimate political alternative to a U.S. alliance and Salt Lake Valley settlement. Without a peace treaty ending the U.S.-Mexican War, Mexico was not yet defeated, and remained a potential ally.

170 Joseph Heywood to Young, Oct. 2, 1846, BYOF.

171 William Appleby to Young, Jan. 29, 1847, BYOF.

172 George Miller to Young, March 17, 1847, BYOF.

333 Although Mormon leaders seem to have ignored suggestions for negotiations with Mexico, their territorial ambitions did become more expansive as the war dragged on. The Quorum of the Twelve discussed the disaffection in the U.S. in early 1847, and in February of that year Young requested maps of Texas, Oregon, and

California.173 Once the Vanguard Company arrived at the Salt Lake Valley, Young was confident enough to proclaim that every “hold and corner from the Bay of San Francisco to the Hudson Bay” would be “known” to the Mormons, foreshadowing the expansive borders of Deseret several years later.174 As late as the summer of 1848 George Smith, one of the Twelve, believed the diplomatic impasse between the U.S. and Mexico could lead to Mormon independence, not knowing when he was writing that the Treaty of

Guadalupe-Hidalgo had already been signed.175 Clearly Mormon leaders did not believe that U.S. victory against Mexico was either automatic or destined, and neither was the

U.S. acquisition of the West.

These musings of a U.S. defeat were of course private. Publicly Mormon leaders affirmed their loyalty to the U.S. In August 1846, Young wrote a fawning letter to Polk, in which he proclaimed Mormon loyalty and petitioned for a territorial government. His letter ended in a remarkable expression of goodwill: “…Resolved; that we have the fullest confidence in the friendly protection of President Polk; that our hearts are with him to do good, and sustain the best government on earth; that he may depend on our

173 Journal History, Jan. 7, 1847, Jan. 29, 1847, and Feb. 18, 1847.

174 Journal History, July 28, 1847.

175 George Smith to Young, June 28, 1848, BYOF.

334 warmest gratitude, and our cordial co-operation in all things…”176 Young was aided in his public relations campaign by Thomas Kane, the young Pennsylvania

Democrat who had first proved crucial in gaining Jesse Little an audience in Washington.

Kane began planting positive Mormon stories in eastern papers, which where then reprinted by other papers through the reverberating nature of the nineteenth-century

American press.177 Additionally, the Mormon Battalion provided tangible proof of

Mormon loyalty, which Kane played up in his stories. For example, a New York Tribune article likely planted by Kane noted the Battalion’s members were “frugal”,

“industrious”, “self-denying”, and showed “heroism in the endurance of suffering.”178

This positivity was echoed in other papers not subject to Kane’s influence. For example,

Niles’ National Register lamented the Battalion’s discharge, “for they are an orderly, quiet, and peaceable set of men, submitting without resistance or murmur to the severest discipline, and altogether a most useful and efficient set of men.”179 This public relations campaign, undoubtedly helped by the diminishing Mormon presence within the U.S., was so successful the Mormons enjoyed a brief period of sympathy with the American public.180 More importantly, they achieved valuable political breathing space. When the

Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed, the Mormons were once again back in the

United States, but for the first time they were completely isolated from other Americans.

Moreover, while the U.S. sent troops to administer the newly conquered lands from

176 Brigham Young to James K. Polk, Aug. 9, 1846, in Army of Israel, 69-71.

177 Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 69-92.

178 New York Tribune, Dec. 16, 1846; Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 71-76.

179 Niles’ National Register, Nov. 20, 1847.

180 Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 71-72, 84, 91.

335 Mexico, none went to the Salt Lake Valley. The Mormons were truly alone, just as

Brigham Young had desired. Initially the Mormon alliance with the U.S. had paid dividends – but it remained to be seen for how long.

Conclusion: The Breakaway Republic of Deseret

The Mormons were so successful at buying themselves time that it was not external U.S. interference but internal Mormon dissension that first tested Young’s leadership. Once gold was discovered at Sutter’s Ranch – a discovery involving several members of the Mormon Battalion – some Mormons saw little benefit to remaining in the

Salt Lake Valley. Gold beckoned farther west. Mormon leaders, however, decided it was much more important to stay united than take part in the Gold Rush, and united in their opposition to a new Mormon settlement in California. “Great Salt Lake City” was a gift from God, and “if we get the Gold and not the Salt we shall not be saved.”181

Eventually the Twelve decided the opportunity in California was too good to ignore entirely, so they surreptitiously sent several small contingents to dig for gold. Any earnings would then be sent back to the main Mormon settlement in the Salt Lake

Valley.182 While the story of the “Gold Rush Saints” falls outside the parameters of this study, the California-over-Salt Lake logic voiced by many Mormons demonstrates the changed political nature of the West after the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Those

Mormons pushing for a Mormon settlement in California had a logical argument: if the

181 Ezra Benson, Pottawattamie Conference Minutes, April 7, 1849, MS 2737, Box 86, Folder 12, typescript Edyth J. Romney (1848-1851), CHL.

182 For the Mormon role in the Gold Rush, see Kenneth N. Owens, Gold Rush Saints: California Mormons and the Great Rush for Riches (Norman, Okl.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), especially 201-244 for documents relating to Brigham Young’s gold rush policy.

336 Salt Lake Valley was now U.S. territory, why stay in such an inhospitable region?

Why not go to California, with a milder climate, more productive land, and perhaps the possibility to strike it rich? The Salt Lake Valley had lost its political raison d’etre.

However, for Young, there remained a political opportunity in the Salt Lake

Valley, if not for total independence, then at least for autonomy. The Mormons needed to make their settlement a U.S. state, from which they would get a state government and a great degree of independence from Washington.183 In essence, statehood would solidify the Mormon-U.S. alliance that had begun with the creation of the Mormon Battalion, where Polk had negotiated with the Mormons as if they were a strategically important foreign entity, not the disruptive and disloyal Americans as viewed by many U.S. politicians. Indeed, the initial Mormon proposal for the State of Deseret in 1849 demonstrated they still considered themselves strategically important, and revealed their continued geopolitical ambitions. Deseret was breathtaking in its geographical scope, stretching from San Diego to the Salt Lake Valley. Alas for the Mormons, they no longer represented a geopolitical threat to U.S. expansion as they had in 1846, and U.S.-Mormon relations deteriorated. Deseret was reduced to Utah, statehood was reduced to a territorial government, and soon U.S.-appointed officials began meddling in the territory.

Mormon intransigence in the face of these developments, coupled with the outrage of

U.S. authorities, and buttressed by the public revelation of Mormon polygamy in 1852, began the rush of events that would generate in the Utah War of 1857. The State of

183 Mormon leaders at first petitioned for a territorial government, not fully understanding that this would allow the federal government to place its own chosen authorities to oversee Deseret-cum-Utah. It was Thomas Kane (yet again) who urged the Mormons to alter their strategy and push for a state government. Kane’s suggestion led Mormon leaders to write federal authorities that a constitutional convention had been held in Salt Lake City, when in fact no convention ever occurred: Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 81; Arrington, Brigham Young, 223-227.

337 Deseret – an enormous, autonomous Mormon settlement, only nominally under

U.S. oversight – was never meant to be.

While the events that led up to the Utah War cannot be detailed here, it is worth noting its anomalous place in the history of the late antebellum United States. During a decade dominated by the politics of slavery and the march to the Civil War, from a western perspective the Utah War had little to do with slavery or the struggle between

North and South.184 It began the trend of Mormon Utah as, in the words of Jan Shipps, the “doughnut hole” of the west. Utah’s exceptionalism did not fit with the general trends of U.S. history and American West history, creating a divide between Mormon historians who have ignored the U.S., and U.S. historians who have ignored the

Mormons. Yet if the Utah War is placed not as a development of the late 1850s, but as an outgrowth of the mid-1840s, then its outbreak becomes much clearer. During the mid-

1840s, the Mormons attempted to create an independent western nation amidst other independent western nations. While their reasons for desiring independence were undoubtedly unique, in the years prior to U.S.-Mexican War political independence in itself was not. By 1848, however, no other western polity existed except the United

States itself. Despite the disappearance of political alternatives, Mormon faith, unity, and resilience, coupled with their choice of the unsettled Salt Lake Valley, made Mormon independence a brief reality. However, Deseret stood as the lone political anomaly in the

West. Texas, the Cherokee Nation, California, and Oregon now all fell within U.S. borders. Of course, so too did Deseret, but its Mormon inhabitants refused to accept U.S.

184 Of course, it did in the East, but this was because every western issue was connected with the politics of slavery in this era.

338 authority. Thus, while the breakaway republic of Deseret did not exist on any U.S. maps, it did exist on the ground. By 1857, however, its presence could no longer be accepted by an expansionist U.S. government. President James Buchanan was only finishing what he – then Secretary of State – and Polk had begun in 1840s. U.S. power needed to be solidified in the West, Mormon independence needed to be curtailed, and so began the Utah War.

From the perspective of the Mormons in the mid-1840s, of course, no U.S.-

Mormon conflict ever needed to occur. The whole purpose of their diplomacy was to find a place of settlement outside of the United States. Taken individually, each of the

Mormon diplomatic initiatives appear as idiosyncratic side notes to the larger story of

Mormonism’s emergence and growth in the face of American hostility. However, taken as a whole, Mormon diplomacy reveals the breathtaking scope of the non-U.S. political

West before the U.S.-Mexican War. The Mormons sought alliances with the Republic of

Texas and removed Indians, and in each case found willing partners – until outside events sundered these ties. They discussed settling or seizing portions of coastal California or

Oregon, and while Brigham Young and a majority of the Twelve eventually rejected these plans, other influential Mormons continued to push for them. A few Mormons even urged an alliance with Mexico, only to be undercut by the surprising, substantial U.S. offer that led to the Mormon Battalion. With each geographic discussion, fascinating what-ifs reveal the inchoate nature of the West before 1848: what if the Mormons had buttressed Texas sovereignty in 1844? What if a Mormon-Indian alliance became reality in 1845? What if the Mormons had allied with Mexico in 1846? As to the non-Mormon perspective in the mid-1840s, it was clear that many Americans believed in the validity of

339 a Mormon settlement beyond U.S. borders. Americans wrote Mormon leaders letters urging such a step, including major politicians like Stephen Douglas, Henry Clay,

Thomas Ford, and Thomas Drew. Other Americans, most importantly James Polk, dreaded such a step. Polk then took steps to ensure the Mormons never became the geopolitical threat in reality that they appeared to be in theory. Polk knew, as did the

Mormons, that, before 1848, U.S. expansion was no more a product of destiny than was

Mormon independence. Both sides also knew that it was politics and war – not destiny – that determined the outcome of the West.

340 CHAPTER 6

VISIONS AND REALITIES OF A CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC

Introduction

For ten years, California residents contemplated new forms of sovereignty in the remote Mexican territory. In 1836, prominent californio Juan Alvarado proclaimed

California a “free and sovereign state.”1 Five years later, Swiss immigrant John Sutter threatened to create an “independent republique” based at his fort in the Sacramento

Valley.2 American and one-time California visitor Thomas Farnham wrote in 1845 that the “Republic of California” would “arise,” and “neither Europe nor the United States are prepared for the event.”3 In April 1846, Captain Rafael González proposed to his fellow californio politicians that California should be “free, sovereign, and independent.”4 Two months later, American immigrants raised a flag over Sonoma that pictured a bear, and the words “California Republic.” The subject of California independence was, it seems, ubiquitous.

Yet the many statements envisioning California independence have ironically obscured the historical record. So many different people mentioned the subject, all contemplating different versions and visions of what a California republic would look like, that historians have dismissed the possibility of California’s independence entirely.

1 Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vols. 3-5 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1886), 3: 470-471, n. 28.

2 John Sutter to Jacob Leese, Nov. 8, 1841, Vallejo Papers, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California. Unless otherwise noted, all archival citations from this chapter come from the Bancroft Library.

3 Thomas Farnham to John Marsh, July 6, 1845, Marsh Family Papers, MSS C-B 878.

4 Mariano Vallejo, “Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California,” transl. Earl Hewitt, C-D 19, 63.

341 In essence, because statements on California independence were everywhere, their diversity and ubiquity have rendered them meaningless. Unlike Anglo-Texans fighting

Mexico, American Patriots invading Canada, the Cherokee asserting their sovereignty in

Indian Territory, or the Mormons migrating west to create Zion, California republicans rarely had a coherent goal. Indeed, differing visions of a California republic frequently put California inhabitants at odds with each other, which made expansionist U.S. politicians assume California was low-hanging fruit ripe for picking.

Historians have echoed the expansionists. While they have revealed the complexity of Mexican California society, the story of California’s incorporation into the

American union continues to take a Whiggish tone.5 California, so the story goes, was too remote and too marginal for Mexico to assert sovereignty over the territory. With

5 While scholars have interpreted California’s history in different ways, most generally portray U.S. conquest being preordained by the early 1840s. This interpretation has spread from specific works on California, to larger works on U.S. expansion, to recent syntheses. Examples include: Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush, ed. Ramón Gutiérres and Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982); Alan Rosenus, General M.G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans: A Biography (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995); Harland Hague and David J. Langum, Thomas O. Larkin: A Life of Patriotism and Profit in Old California (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990); Neal Harlow, California Conquered: War and Peace on the Pacific, 1846-1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Carlos Manuel Salomon, Pío Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 1-108; Albert L. Hurtado, John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 16-203; Robert Ryal Miller, Juan Alvarado: Governor of California, 1836-1842 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 3-129; Woodrow James Hansen, The Search for Authority in California, intro. Joseph Augustine Sullivan (Oakland: BioBooks, 1960). More general works that follow this trend include: Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion (New York: Knopf, 2008), 189-193; Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 48, 79-81; Kevin Starr, California: A History (New York: Random House, 2005), 65-69; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought?: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 752-757; Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, (New York: Norton, 2005), 603. One recent exception to this is Anne Hyde, who ably reveals the contingencies in the process: Anne Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800-1600 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 392-400. Additionally, Bancroft largely avoids teleology – perhaps because of the length and detail of the work, perhaps because he wrote so long ago that California’s incorporation into the U.S. did not appear as destiny. His work remains indispensable: Bancroft, History of California.

342 californios too divided amongst themselves to rule competently, it was only a matter of time until the mushrooming population of American immigrants seized the territory for themselves – and for the United States. The Bear Flag Revolt and subsequent American conquest was, in essence, a replay of events in Texas, but where

Texas annexation was a decades-long process, California’s incorporation took a few short years. However, this traditional portrayal presumes two false premises: first, U.S. conquest was foreordained; second, American immigrants knew this, longed for it, and often acted to facilitate it. Upon closer scrutiny, neither American immigrants nor californios believed U.S. conquest was imminent. As late as 1845 both groups envisioned an independent Republic of California, achieved through either a californio-

American alliance, or a seizure of the territory by American immigrants alone. These ideas were not always rhetoric; at certain moments California did indeed function as an independent republic. However, with the outbreak of the U.S.-Mexican War, the U.S. government could point to the continued status of California as de jure Mexican territory and justify its conquest, thereby snuffing out all potential for a California republic, and silencing the brief period of California’s independence.

A Remote and Divided Territory

In the mid-1830s, Alta California remained a remote and economically marginal region of Mexico, a status largely unchanged since the first Spanish settlement in

California in 1769. The vast territory was divided between the californios living on the

343 coast, and unconquered natives in the interior.6 Approximately 5500 californios lived on the coastal strip that stretched from Sonoma in the north to San Diego in the south, most of whom were mestizo descendants of Spanish veterans and Indian women.7

The lives of californios revolved around raising livestock on ranchos, vast estates once part of the California mission system that had only been secularized in the 1820s and early 1830s.8 Californio society was family-oriented, hierarchal, and traditional, what one scholar has defined as a “seigneurial” system.9 At the top of the pyramid of californio society were the “dons,” a class that included famous californios such as

Mariano Vallejo and Juan Alvarado. These men owned vast estates and dominated

California in a manner reminiscent of feudal lords. Numbering around fifty, this small group controlled both California’s local politics and regional economy.10 Below these dons was a middling class composed of smaller rancho owners or those that rented land from the dons. Both upper and middling californios relied on former mission Indians to provide the bulk of the rancho labor force, paying them in food, clothing, and perhaps a

6 The official boundaries of Mexican Alta California stretched as far east as the Salt Lake Valley, but for this chapter I am going to define California by its modern state boundary, for that is roughly how its inhabitants understood their world and its scope (as did contemporary Americans). Thus when the Mormons maintained they were going to California, most assumed this meant somewhere on the California coast.

7 Rosenus, Vallejo, 35.

8 Some land remained under church control, but most had been sold off. For a good description of californio society, see Douglas Monroy, “The Creation and Re-Creation of Californio Society,” in Contested Eden, 173-193.

9 Ibid., 184. In light of recent work on the antebellum South that has demonstrated that southern society was highly capitalistic, and not the old-fashioned labor system portrayed by the likes of Eugene Genovese, I am somewhat hesitant to define California society as traditional. However, until another scholar replaces the old – and still persuasive – historiography on California, I will continue to regard California society in these terms.

10 Steven W. Hackel, “Land, Labor, and Production: The Colonial Economy of Spanish and Mexican Florida,” in Contested Eden, 132.

344 few cattle hides. Although most californios were mestizos, with significant Indian ancestry, they drew a clear distinction between themselves and their Indian workers.

Indeed, recently Andrés Reséndez has recently argued that native laborers in California should be viewed more as slaves than as laborers.11 Suffice it to say, natives could not and would never be allowed to ascend beyond their quasi-serf status. While not the same as chattel slavery in the U.S. East, California’s economy was based upon a system of unfree labor.

By the 1830s much of californio society was in many ways paradoxical.

Although still committed to a hierarchy of sorts, younger californios shared the Mexican commitment to both liberalism and republicanism that had emerged with independence from Spain.12 Moreover, while californio families were united by generations of intermarriage, California society was riven with frequent political and military squabbles, especially between autonomous northerners (“norteños”) based at Monterey, and southerners (“sureños”) in Los Angeles, who were more closely tied to Mexico. Finally, californios were insular, and disdained Mexicans and the Mexican government, but at the same time they welcomed foreigners into their ranks as long as they adopted californio culture. Foreigners could become, like the californios, “people of reason” (“gente de razón”), defined as Spanish-speaking, Catholic, and willing to work for the benefit of the community.

11 Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Slavery in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), 250-265.

12 On the liberalism of californios, see Rosaura Sánchez, Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 96-141

345 Indians, by contrast, were seen as “sin razón” – “without reason” – whether they were former mission Indians now working the ranchos, or living unrepentant lives in the California interior. Although the native population had been decimated by disease and warfare in the decades since the Spanish arrival, almost 100,000 Indians remained in

California in the mid-1830s, outnumbering the californios twenty to one.13 Although

Indians would never threaten the existence of the californio settlement themselves, native raids on the ranchos were relentless and deleterious, and only increased with the secularization of the missions in the 1830s, as former neophytes now joined the raids.14

Mostly seeking horses and cattle to trade with nuevomexicanos farther south, Indians destabilized californio society at its margins.15 Because of the specter of Indian power, californios hesitated to become aggressive when confronted with other threats to their power, whether this threat was Mexico, American immigrants, the United States, or fellow californios.16 Indians were almost always the primary threat to californio society.

Thus, while most natives played little part in California’s major military and political

13 Sheburne F. Cook, The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 4.

14 On California Indians in the decades before U.S. conquest, see Ibid.; George Harwood Phillips, Indians and Intruders in Central California, 1769-1849 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993); James A. Sandos, “Between Crucifix and Lance: Indian-White Relations in California, 1769-1848,” in Contested Eden, 196-229.

15 Phillips, Indians and Intruder, 160-161; Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 16-41. The Indian effect on California was not nearly as violent as the role of the Comanche and Apache in Texas. California Indian generally limited their raids to property, and warfare did not often assume the ruthlessness seen between native and non-native in Texas during the same era. On Indian warfare in Texas, see Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 181-238; Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

16 Michael Gonzalez, “War and the Making of History: The Case of Mexican California, 1821-1846,” California History, Vol. 86, No. 2 (2009), 14-20.

346 events of the 1830s and early 1840s, they remained an all-important psychological factor. Because of the Indian presence, californios were uncertain about their ability to maintain their power – an uncertainty that would prove fatal for the realization of a

California republic.

In the 1820s, foreigners began to make inroads into this binary californio-native society. New England and European traders, lured by the lucrative hide-and-tallow trade, began settling in towns along the California coast. Seeking profits above all, these men readily acculturated to californio society by becoming Mexican citizens, converting to

Catholicism, marrying into prominent californio families, and learning Spanish. The californios accepted the new arrivals in turn.17 By the mid-1840s, these maritime immigrants had become an integral part of Californian politics and society. Indeed,

Thomas Larkin, a Massachusetts native who had arrived in California in 1832, estimated in 1845 that three-fifths of the town alcaldes (mayors) and two-sevenths of the legislature were foreigners.18 Among these men, Larkin was the exception to the rule, for he refused to give up his American citizenship and, following his appointment as U.S. consul in

1843, continuously sought a peaceful means for California to enter the American Union.

While other American merchants were not necessarily opposed to U.S. annexation, they were content with any political system that would continue to guarantee their profits.19

17 Nunis, “Alta California’s Trojan Horse,” 306-310; Douglas Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 154- 162; Andrew Isenberg, Mining California: An Ecological History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 103- 107.

18 Thomas Larkin to William Hooper, March 22, 1845, in The Larkin Papers, 10 Vols., ed. George P. Hammond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), 3:84.

19 Larkin tellingly defined many of these American merchants as non-political in a letter to the U.S. state department: Thomas Larkin, “Description of California,” Larkin Papers, 4:332-344. Non-political

347 As such, many would remain uninvolved in the international conflicts that intruded on insular California in the mid-1840s.

In contrast to these well-established maritime immigrants, a new and – for californios – more worrying group of immigrants began to arrive in California in the

1830s. These were American hunters and trappers who had crossed the Sierra Nevadas, some coming to stay permanently, many others to enjoy respite until eventually returning to the wilderness. The first and most famous American to arrive was Jedediah Smith in

1828, but others followed. Sparse records make it impossible to pinpoint these men’s numbers and long-term goals.20 Even Isaac Graham, who would become the most infamous, is impossible to locate for the three years prior to his arrival on California’s political stage in 1836.21 Although they certainly numbered less than one hundred – more likely only a few dozen – their presence outweighed their numbers. Unlike the maritime immigrants who assimilated into californio society and were readily accepted, californios perceived these mountain men as unruly, vulgar, and possibly dangerous.

Undoubtedly californio dislike hinged on class, not ethnicity – a common theme until the eve of U.S. conquest. Per Mexican policy, californio authorities issued the mountain men passports, and then watched warily.

By the 1830s, this population of californios, Indians, maritime immigrants, and

American mountain men lived under a Mexican sovereignty that existed more in name than reality. Since its independence in 1821, the Mexican government had mostly

American merchants included Henry Fitch, William Dana, Isaac Sparks, Jacob Leese, and Stephen Smith. Those few he described as political were John Warner and John Marsh.

20 Bancroft, History of California, 385-413.

21 Doyce Nunis, The Trials of Isaac Graham (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1967), 14-18.

348 ignored California, and in turn, California ignored Mexico.22 The hide-and-tallow trade had reached its most lucrative point, and traders easily disregarded the Mexican law that dictated that all California trade must be conducted through the California capital of

Monterey. Moreover, while the Mexican government appointed governors, californios ran day-to-day affairs through on their own political organization, consisting of town councils (ayuntamientos) and regional representative bodies (diputaciones), both of which were dominated by the powerful dons. When californios clashed with the appointed governor – which they often did – it was the governor who was expelled, taking the form of a (mostly) bloodless coup. Thus, Mexican California, like its neighboring territories of Texas and New Mexico, possesses a great deal of independence, whether its residents desired it or not. Nevertheless, California remained nominally Mexican territory. In 1836, however, centralists seized power in Mexico City, and the event quickly reverberated to distant California.

California Libre?: Halting Steps towards Independence

In the mid-1830s, Mexican centralists ousted the federalist government and, by the end of 1836, imposed a new constitution on Mexico. The event had not just national, but continental ramifications. Protective of their autonomy and dedicated to federalist principles, the peripheries of Mexico – Texas, New Mexico, and eventually the Yucatán – exploded in rebellion. In October 1836, Alta California also revolted.23 Led by a young californio liberal from Monterey named Juan Alvarado, the California rebels aimed to

22 Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 16-31, 156-157.

23 Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 242-272; Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 146-196.

349 oust the centralist governor Nicolas Gutierréz.24 As noted above, this was not the first time the californios had rebelled, but previous rebellions had arisen over personal grievances.25 While undoubtedly Alvarado disliked Gutierréz for personal reasons, more was at stake this time. Alvarado aimed to overthrow not just the governor, but the new constitution – and with it Mexican sovereignty itself.

To overthrow Gutierréz, Alvarado commanded 75 fellow californios, as well as a few dozen American trappers (“rifleros Americanos”), led by trapper-cum-distillerer

Isaac Graham. The mountain men joined Alvarado for several reasons, none of which were selfless. First, Alvarado likely promised them land in exchange for their support.26

Additionally, they also may have been motivated by the centralist governor’s increasing hostility towards foreigners, and saw Alvarado as a natural ally against him.27 The mountain men’s superior marksmanship gave Alvarado the edge. With Graham’s contingent taking the lead, Alvarado and his force overwhelmed Gutierréz in the

Monterey presidio without any loss of life. Alvarado and his allies forced Gutierréz to return to Mexico, and turned their diputación into an official congress “that shall pass all the particular laws of the country.”28 They then declared California a “free and sovereign state.”29 An independent California was born.

24 For the Alvarado rebellion, see Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 255-260; Miller, Alvarado, 45-50; Bancroft, History of California, 3: 455-477.

25 Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 243.

26 Nunis, The Trials of Isaac Graham, 22.

27 Miller, Alvarado, 42-43. It was actually the former governor, Mariano Chico, who had first shown this hostility towards Graham, but he and Gutiérrez were both centralists, and represented the same threat.

28 Miller, Alvarado, 50.

29 Ibid.; Bancroft, History of California, 3: 471.

350 But it was a tentative independence, for there was a key caveat in the declaration: California was free and sovereign, but only “until the federal system of 1824 should be reestablished.”30 This proviso reflected the myriad divisions and anxieties of

California’s inhabitants. Californios disdained centralist Mexico, but they also feared

Mexican retaliation. They also believed they might require Mexican aid if confronted with a large-scale Indian attack. Moreover, whether it was Mexicans or Indians who might invade California, many californios understood their small numbers precluded international ambitions.31 The ambivalent declaration also reflected a regional tension between norteños and sureños. Closer to Mexico and with more recent Mexican settlers, sureños were less willing to declare complete independence. Even more importantly, both sureños and norteños feared domination by the other. In 1836, after Alvarado’s norteño rebellion, it was sureños who felt wary.32

To assuage the sureños, the victorious Alvarado, along fifty californio soldiers and Graham’s riflemen, journeyed to Los Angeles. After a productive meeting with sureño dons, Alvarado returned to Monterey and disbanded his army. He did so too soon, for upon arriving in Monterey Alvarado learned that the sureños had disavowed his rebellion, affirmed their commitment to the centralist constitution, and welcomed the new commissioner from Mexico Andrés Castillero. Castillero, however, had come alone, for

Mexico had no army to spare for marginal California while countering rebellions in

30 The entire declaration is translated in Bancroft, History of California, 3: 470-471, n. 28.

31 Antonio María Osio, The History of Alta California: A Memoir of Mexican California, transl. Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 158.

32 This north-south divide is a common theme in both primary and secondary works on California. For a brief description, see Bancroft, History of California, 3: 478-481; Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 123; Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 257-258; Sánchez, Telling Identities, 233.

351 Texas and New Mexico. With Alvarado unable to enforce his rule in the south,

Castillero powerless to assert Mexican sovereignty in the north, and the south caught between the north and Mexico, a political compromise emerged. In exchange for disavowing independence and taking an oath to the centralist constitution, Alvarado kept his power and became California’s governor, while Castillero returned to Mexico and promised to keep Mexican troops out of the territory. By July 1837 California was once again officially under Mexican sovereignty.33

The californios’ first attempt to establish a California republic profoundly highlighted both the possibilities and problems with California sovereignty. Although

Alvarado swore allegiance to Mexico and the centralist constitution, californios still largely governed themselves. Whether this is defined as autonomy, home rule, or secession, californios understood clearly that Mexico’s ability to enforce its rule was limited at best.34 Alvarado had to backtrack on his proclamation of a “free and sovereign” California not because of Mexican power, but because of sureño opposition.

Meanwhile, sureños opposed California independence more out of fear of northern domination than because of their attachment to Mexico – although, due to their proximity to Mexico, they were marginally more loyal than the north. The Mexican government also recognized its weak hold over California. One former Mexican governor of

California told the Mexican government that he had no authority in the territory because

Mexico had “neither ships nor soldiers” there. As such, he maintained Mexico had two

33 This is a brief summary of a much more complicated series of events. See Miller, Alvarado, 50-56; Hansen, Search for Authority, 26-28; Bancroft, History of California, 3: 515-533.

34 Historians have used all these terms. “Home rule”: Hansen, Search for Authority, 26; “Autonomy”: Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 259; “Secession”: Sánchez, Telling Identities, 240.

352 options: send thousands of soldiers to enforce Mexican sovereignty, or ignore

California entirely.35 For the next five years the Mexican government chose the latter.

However, the divisions within California society, especially those between north and south, reflected the major impediment to independence in 1836. Californios were confident who they were not – they were not Mexicans, Indians, or Americans – but they struggled for a positive group identity. As one scholar noted, californios were more

“nativist” than “nationalist.”36 Lacking a state education system and local print culture –

California would be without a newspaper until 1846 – the californios were loosely united by blood, Catholicism, and a vague dedication to liberalism. In essence, they lacked many of the prerequisites of nineteenth-century nationalism.37 Thus californios were willing to throw out Mexican governors, but not yet embrace full sovereignty – which, with only 6000 non-native inhabitants, was a perilous undertaking. This lack of nationalism revealed itself upon Alvarado’s capture of the Monterey presidio. Before the attack, Alvarado’s soldiers used the password “libre California” (“free California”) to identify each other. Once the rebels captured the presidio, they promptly took down the

Mexican flag. Yet soon they realized they had no acceptable replacement, and the following day re-raised the Mexican flag.38 California libre? The californios were undecided.

35 Mariano Vallejo, “Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California,” transl. Earl Hewitt, C-D 18, 125-126.

36 Sánchez, Telling Identities, 228-267.

37 Ibid., 96-141. On the importance of print culture for the development of nationalism, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983).

38 Henry Jubilee Bee, “Recollections of the History of California,” 17-18, 1877, transcribed by Thomas Savage, MSS C-D 41.

353 Alvarado and his fellow rebels did have one other flag option besides that of

Mexico: a Texas-inspired lone-star flag. Likely prepared by some of Isaac Graham’s

American riflemen, it represented a full embrace of independence, Texas style.39

Alvarado and his californio allies had revolted for similar federalist reasons as the

Texans, but they did not want to become another Texas. Part of their wariness stemmed from their perception of California’s many weaknesses on the international stage, but it also reflected an understanding of Texas’ path to independence.40 While the Texans had been victorious in their anti-centralist struggle, Texan victory represented dominance by

Anglo-Texans, not tejanos. Thus, while many californios, like the inhabitants of Texas, hoped for a restoration of the federalist constitution, they did not want to be inundated with American settlers – at least, American settlers like mountain man Isaac Graham.

They had of course embraced wealthy New England traders who were willing to assimilate, but Graham and his ilk were a different matter entirely.

The californios dislike for American mountain men was not readily apparent in

1836, when Alvarado relied on Graham’s forces to overthrow Alvarado. By 1840, however, these men had made themselves unwelcome. Part of the problem – perhaps the only problem – was their drunk and disorderly behavior, which reached the point of

39 Thomas Larkin to Abel Stearns, Nov. 9, 1836, in First and Last Consul: Thomas Oliver Larkin and the Americanization of California, ed. John A. Hawgood (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1962), 12; Alfred Robinson, Life in California…(1846), 176; Bancroft, History of California, 468-469.

40 According to Bancroft’s notes, Alvarado discussed putting California under a European or American protectorate, while some Americans wanted to get U.S. aid in the form of a nearby American ship. However, most of Bancroft’s sources for this event are memoirs and interviews, and many clearly read back the international situation of the mid-1840s to the mid-1830s. In the 1830s, California was not yet of international importance. Bancroft understood this, at least implicitly, and relegated all of this discussion to a note. See Bancroft, History of California, 469, n. 26.

354 insulting Alvarado personally in the streets of Monterey.41 This social conflict was augmented by a supposed political conflict, as Alvarado accused Graham and his men of plotting to overthrow the government and declare California independent in the mode of the Anglo-Texans. Alvarado ordered all California authorities to arrest foreigners without passports, with the exception of those who had married californio women or had honorable professions. Initially Alvarado arrested one hundred foreigners, of whom he permanently imprisoned forty-five. Of these forty-five, half were American, the other half British. Alvarado then sent the prisoners to Mexico for trial.42

The facts of the “Graham Affair,” as it became known, remain inscrutable.

Whether Graham or any of his compatriots were in fact guilty of plotting to overthrow californio rule is impossible to answer definitively, but the odds are unlikely. These men simply did not have the numbers to conquer California. The supposed revolutionaries may have been guilty of some form of loose talk, in which they expressed hopes that one day they could wrest control of California from the californios, but it is unlikely this talk ever turned to concrete plans.43 The more likely explanation for the Graham Affair is that

Alvarado and other prominent californios simply wished to rid California of this unruly class of foreigners. Indeed, class clearly trumped both ethnicity and nationality during the entire affair. Thomas Larkin, for example, seemed to tacitly approve of Alvarado’s actions, while many of the prisoners believed Larkin and other wealthy foreigners were

41 Robinson, Life in California, 184; Miller, Alvarado, 80.

42 For a more detailed summary of these events see Miller, Alvarado, 80-83; Nunis, Trials of Isaac Graham, 21-30; Bancroft, History of California, 4:1-41.

43 See Bancroft, History of California, 4: 5-11, for a weighing of all the evidence.

355 part of Alvarado’s conspiracy.44 One American immigrant later remembered that

Larkin and several other American and British traders were “the worst enemies foreigners had in California.”45 Moreover, half of the men imprisoned were British seamen, another unruly element of the California population, clearly demonstrating that the incident was neither a move against Americans nor the United States. Therefore the Graham Affair was less a defense of California’s sovereignty than it was a defense of California’s society, and those enmeshed at the top of this society approved of Alvarado’s actions.

Elevating society over sovereignty would become a pattern in the years that followed, as californios would consistently be willing to relinquish some of the latter to preserve the former. With the unruly foreigners gone, the californios and their upper-class foreign allies could keep their society unchanged.

The Graham Affair made California, briefly, an international subject. The arrests outraged both U.S. and British governments, and both protested the incident to the

Mexican government. American and British observers of the incident also put a Spanish

Black Legend spin on Mexico’s treatment of the prisoners, who were supposedly deprived of food and water for extended periods of time amidst intense heat.46 Graham became something of an American hero through the writings of Thomas Jefferson

44 Larkin would later try to portray himself as an advocate of Graham, but this occurred only after the U.S. became involved, and word of the Graham Affair spread throughout the country: Lawrence Carmichael to Thomas Larkin, Jan. 18, 1841, The Larkin Papers, 1:75; Hague and Langum, Larkin, 80-81; Bancroft, History of California, 4:8-9, note 8.

45 John Chamberlain, “Memoirs of California since 1840,” transcribed by Thomas Savage, MS C-D 57. See also Charles Brown, “Early Events in California,” 15, MSS C-D 53.

46 Thomas Jefferson Farnham, Travels in the Californias, and Scenes in the Pacific Ocean (New York, 1844), 55-59; Charles B. Churchill, “Thomas Jefferson Farnham: An Exponent of American Empire in Mexican California,” Pacific Historical Review Vol. 60, No. 4 (Nov., 1991), 517-537; Chamberlain, “Memoirs,” 9; Thomas Larkin to John Calhoun, Jan. 25, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 22-24; Thomas Marsh to Thomas Catesby Jones, 1842 draft, Marsh Family Papers, MSS C-B 878.

356 Farnham, whose 1844 work Travels in California portrayed Graham as a Crockett- like Tennessee rifleman.47 However, despite the international scope of the Graham

Affair, the U.S. never went beyond haphazard diplomatic protests. Indeed, one American observer of the incident lambasted the U.S. for its complete lack of presence in

California, in contrast to ever-present Britain and France, whose ships constantly sailed the coast.48 Graham’s arrest did not provide an excuse for U.S. intervention in California, or for that matter made California an important subject for Americans. Graham became famous, but California did not, as both U.S. officials and the American public ignored the region until 1845.49 Eventually, through the intervention of the British consul in Mexico,

Mexico gave the prisoners restitution, returned them to Monterey, and allowed them to remain in California.

The trajectory of Isaac Graham’s career, from Alvarado’s crucial ally in 1836 to his inveterate enemy in 1840, profoundly reveals the californios’ ambivalent political situation. In 1836, Alvarado needed Graham and his mountain men’s assistance to overthrow the Mexican governor. By 1840, he looked to Mexico’s courts to offer legitimacy for his arrest of Graham. Clearly Alvarado and ruling californios liked neither

Mexico nor crass foreigners, but they did not feel confident enough in their own power to move against either alone. They enlisted Graham to defeat Mexico, and asked Mexico to condemn Graham. The californios’ dislike of each hinged on which was more of an immediate problem: in 1836 it was the Mexican governor, while in 1840 it was Graham.

47 Farnham, Travels in the Californias, 61-63.

48 Nunis, “Alta California’s Trojan Horse,” 313.

49 Norman A. Graebner, Empire on the Pacific: A Study in American Continental Expansion (New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1955), 51-64.

357 While the numbers of men involved in each incident was small, the course of each event established a pattern that would continue into the mid-1840s, when both Mexican soldiers and American immigrants no longer numbered in the dozens, but in the hundreds.

Texas on the Pacific: American Immigration and Plans for an Anglo-American California Republic

While the Graham Affair proceeded in Monterey and Mexico, two events of immense importance for California’s future occurred on the northern frontier. First, in

1839, Swiss immigrant Johann Sutter received Governor Alvarado’s blessing to construct a permanent inland settlement on the Sacramento River. Although Alvarado balked at

Sutter’s idea to become an empresario like Stephen Austin in which Sutter would foster further immigration, Alvarado believed Sutter could be a useful bulwark against

Indians.50 In his discussions with Alvarado, Sutter hid his unending quest for power and influence behind a magnanimous and gregarious personality, which clearly helped sway the governor. By 1841, with the aid of several Hawaiians in his employ and after forging trade alliances with Indian peoples in the Sacramento Valley, Sutter made “New

Helvetia” a power center. By the time he purchased Fort Ross from the Russians on credit that same year, Sutter had become the master of the northern California frontier.

When his power was threatened by potentially hostile californio authorities, he responded by claiming he would establish an “independent republique” if they did not accede to his

50 Hurtado, Sutter, 55.

358 wishes.51 Although his threat was mostly bluster, he clearly felt secure enough in his power that he could make such claims. Although in this instance the californios backed off, this would not be their last confrontation with Sutter.

November 1841 witnessed a second significant event, when a bedraggled group of thirty-four Missourians (thirty-two men, one woman, and one child) arrived in northern

California. Upon reaching the territory, the famed Bidwell-Bartleson Party first traveled to the rancho of John Marsh. Marsh was a Harvard graduate, and had journeyed to

California via the Santa Fe Trail in 1836, fleeing from both personal and business failures in the East.52 In the late 1830s, Marsh had written letters about California to American papers, which propelled some of these first overland immigrants to the territory.

However, without passports, the immigrants’ presence was illegal, – and the Mexican government refused to grant these passports.53 Mexican officials feared that the events of the Texas Revolution would replay themselves in other regions, and therefore prohibited all further immigration into the country. Yet Commandant General Mariano Vallejo – the largest California landholder, guardian of the northern California frontier, and uncle of Alvarado – was unwilling to enforce Mexican law. While Vallejo did not want to send the immigrants on a return journey that would likely kill them, his decision came not just out of sympathy for their plight. Vallejo believed that, unlike mountain men like Isaac

Graha, these new immigrants were industrious, and could as useful to California society

51 John Sutter to Jacob Leese, Nov. 8, 1841, Vallejo Papers.

52 For the Bidwell-Bartleson Party, see Will Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 84-110; John Bidwell, Echoes of the Past (New York: The Citadel Press, 1962), 5-76.

53 Rosenus, Vallejo, 35.

359 as the New England merchants had become.54 However, in letters to Mexican officials explaining his actions, Vallejo sang a different tune. Protesting California’s military impotence, he claimed he would need two thousand Mexican troops to restore order and protect the border from the newly arrived immigrants and the ever-dangerous

Indians.55 Considering only a year prior Alvarado had been able to arrest one hundred foreigners during the Graham Affair, Vallejo was clearly lying, but Mexico was so distant and powerless in northern California that this seemed a riskless maneuver.56 The

American immigrants had arrived in California to stay.

Despite Vallejo’s willingness to let the immigrants remain, he was not unconcerned with California’s geopolitical situation, and many other californios echoed him. Vallejo’s exaggeration of his inability to expel Americans had a second purpose besides hiding his pro-immigrant actions: he was among many californios who longed for

Mexican troops and Mexican colonists on the northern California frontier, so long as these were not the convicts whom Mexico had sent in the past.57 North of Vallejo’s

Sonoma home had long remained what historian David Weber described as a “great void of Mexican settlement,” and potential threats were multiplying.58 Vallejo had made his name fighting Indians, and they remained in the region in force. Unlike his nephew

54 Mariano Vallejo, “Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California,” 5 vols., trans. Earl Hewitt, 1875, MSS C-D 17-19, 3: 307-308; Platón Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, New Light on the History, Before and After The ‘Gringos’ Came, Based on Original Documents and Recollections of Dr. Platón M.G. Vallejo (Fairfield, CA: James D. Stevenson, 1994), 59; Rosenus, Vallejo, 40-43.

55 Vallejo to Almonte, 1841 draft, 147-1, Vallejo Papers.

56 Rosenus, Vallejo, 42.

57 Ibid.; Bancroft, History of California, 4: 204-205; Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 188-190.

58 Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 186.

360 Alvarado, Vallejo did not trust the machinations of John Sutter, and was particularly disturbed at Sutter’s acquisition of Russian Fort Ross. He also believed that

Great Britain’s Hudson Bay Company hoped to extend its jurisdiction south from

Oregon.59 Moreover, while Vallejo himself was not perturbed by the arrival of

Americans, other californios were decidedly nonplussed at Vallejo’s leniency, and contemplated forming “Committees of Public Safety” to counteract immigration.60

Governor Alvarado agreed with Vallejo on the weakness of the northern frontier, and also wrote to the Mexican government requesting aid.61 Clearly Alvarado, Vallejo, and many other californios perceived that the dynamics of power were shifting in northern

California.

Alvarado’s request for aid from Mexico is particularly noteworthy, for it demonstrated a remarkable about-face since his anti-centralist revolt. In 1836 he had declared California conditionally independent of Mexico, and only sureño protests forced him to retract. By 1841, in contrast, he was asking Mexico for help to defend the territory. Alvarado’s reversal highlights californios’ ambivalence towards real independence, but it also establishes how independent California truly was. Mexican troops had not been seen in California for five years. The Mexican state had become essentially non-existent, so much so that Alvarado felt no qualms in asking for Mexican aid. Even more remarkable, Alvarado requested aid from President Santa Anna, the ardent centralist and would-be conqueror of Texas. Alvarado’s willingness to make this

59 Vallejo, “Memoirs,” 4: 125-133; Rosenus, Vallejo, 43-47.

60 Ibid., 42.

61 Miller, Alvarado, 92.

361 request reveals that he understood that Mexico simply could not enforce its power in California over a long duration. Mexico’s relationship to California had shifted from what Mexico could do to California, to what Mexico could do for California. If

Alvarado’s request reflects the ambivalence californios felt about California self- sovereignty, it also reflects that California self-sovereignty had become a reality. After five years the californios had largely forgotten that the Mexican state had once been an unwelcome presence – and did not realize it would become so again.

While most californios no longer feared the Mexican state, many –Vallejo excepted – were concerned over the arrival of American immigrants. As overland immigration slowly increased each year, from several dozen in 1841 to several hundred in 1845, the issue took on greater weight.62 Clearly the example of Texas informed californios’ anxiety: a Texas flag had been present during Alvarado’s 1836 revolt, and

Alvarado had arrested Graham for trying to create another Texas in 1840. Yet the californio fear of following the Texas path needs further interrogation in the context of the early 1840s, when the Republic of Texas was an independent country. For California to become a second Texas, Anglo-American immigrants would presumably seize the territory and create an independent republic. The threat was not yet U.S. annexation, for the United States remained largely irrelevant in California. Indeed, californio authorities rarely referred to overland immigrants as Americans, and they never referred to the

United States. Instead, immigrants were either “Missourians” or “estrangeros” –

62 John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840- 1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 119.

362 foreigners.63 In hindsight, with the era of Manifest Destiny looming, this attitude appears naïve, but in 1841 it was only a logical reading of North American geopolitics:

Texas was an independent republic, whose president Mirabeau Lamar wanted to avoid

U.S. annexation and expand Texas borders.64 Authorities in Mexico shared this geopolitical understanding, and warned californios of a Stephen-Austin-like immigration process, where the immigrants’ peaceful overtures hid more insidious political designs.65

They did not warn of U.S. intervention. To avoid Texas’ fate, californio authorities needed to counteract American immigration, not the U.S. state; the two were not related – at least not yet.

Even Thomas Larkin, whom the Tyler administration appointed U.S. consul of

California in 1843, was ignorant of U.S. aims on the territory. More so than most maritime immigrants, he maintained interest in American politics, and hoped the U.S. would eventually acquire California peacefully. Yet in the early 1840s, U.S. expansionism was at a standstill, as Chapter Two demonstrated. The country was still trying to recover from the Panic of 1837 and its reverberating effects. Political malaise augmented economic depression. Larkin’s cousin wrote to Larkin from Massachusetts that William Henry Harrison’s death had thrown everything into confusion: “The

63 Vallejo to Thomas Marsh, Nov. 11, 1841; San José Alvarado pronouncement, Nov. 11, 1841; Vallejo pronouncement, Nov. 13, 1841, all in C-B 10, Vallejo Papers.

64 Both Vallejo and Larkin received word of the Texans’ aggressive expansion: Faxon Dean Atherton to Larkin, Jan. 13, 1841, Larkin Papers, 1: 71-72; Henry Edward Vernon to Vallejo, April 16, 1842, Vallejo Papers. See also William Binckley, The Expansionist Movement in Texas, 1836-1850 (New York: De Capo Press, 1970), 16-122.

65 “El lenguaje de la colonia de Austin”: Almonte to Vallejo, May 18, 1841, Vallejo Papers; Bustamente to Vallejo, March 10, 1841, Vallejo Papers.

363 political horizon is overhung by shadows & clouds of fearful uncertainty…”66 Such was the ignorance of California in the U.S. that Larkin felt he needed to wake Americans up to its merits, and thus in 1843 he started promoting California in letters to New York papers. Only in 1845, however, did editors encourage Larkin to keep sending them. For the two years prior, he was writing to an unreceptive audience, and was often unsure if his letters had even reached their destination.67 Before 1845 California was simply not on most Americans’ minds, and Larkin understood this. More importantly, with his U.S. connections Larkin would have likely been the first to learn of expansionist sentiment in the United States; if he were unaware of U.S. designs on California, so too were his californio friends and acquaintances.68

Of course, simply because California residents did not fear U.S. designs on the territory did not mean the U.S. was a nonentity. In 1841, the Charles Wilkes-led U.S.

Exploring Expedition sent an overland party south from Oregon through northern

California, which then rendezvoused with Wilkes’ fleet in San Francisco Bay. Although in retrospect the expedition seemed to portend growing U.S. power in California, Wilkes himself did not think so, maintaining that California would one day join with Oregon and form a “powerful maritime nation” that would “control the destinies of the Pacific.”69

66 William L. Lewis to Larkin, Sept. 18, 1841, Larkin Papers, 1:120-121.

67 Fredrick Hudson (New York Herald office) to Larkin, Oct. 14, 1845, Larkin Papers, 4: 24; George P Hammond, “Preface,” Larkin Papers, 4: x-xi; Hague and Langum, Larkin, 108-110.

68 Unlike californios, Mexicans did believe the U.S. had interests in California, but this only reached hysteric proportions – and rightfully so – in 1845, after the U.S. annexed Texas (detailed below). See Frank A. Knapp, Jr., “Mexican Fear of Manifest Destiny in California,” in Essays in Mexican History, ed. Thomas Cotner and Carlos Castañeda (Austin: The University of Texas, 1958), 192-208.

69 Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, Vol. 5 (Philadelphia, 1849), 171- 172. Such was the lack of geopolitical interest in California that one member of the expedition wrote

364 While Wilkes believed this Pacific nation would undoubtedly be controlled by the

“Anglo-Norman race,” it would not be U.S. territory.70 One year later the U.S. was again involved in California in a more infamous incident, when U.S. Commodore Thomas ap

Catesby Jones’ seized Monterey on behalf of the United States. Interpreting several

Mexican newspapers erroneously, Jones believed that the U.S. and Mexico were at war, and Britain was going to subsequently intervene to preserve California’s autonomy.

Within a day Jones learned of his mistake, withdrew his ship, and sheepishly traveled to southern California to apologize to the new governor Manuel Micheltorena.71

Internationally this event did have some repercussions, ending preliminary negotiations between the U.S., Mexico, and Britain for, among other things, the U.S. acquisition of

California, but these talks were more aimed at stalling the British on an Oregon compromise than actually attaining California.72 In Mexico, Mexicans viewed the action as part of a secret U.S. plot, while newspaper reports in the U.S. awakened Americans – slightly – to California’s existence.73 Locally, however, the californios did not have the

Thomas Marsh for a description of New Mexico, for he had traveled through it, but asked nothing about California: Charles Pickering to Marsh, Oct. 29, 1841, Marsh Family Papers, MSS C-B 878.

70 In his account of Wilkes’ Expedition, Rosenus gives a spectacular example of historians conflating Americans with the United States, paraphrasing Wilkes’ the above passage, as “California… ‘must be’ possessed by the United States.” Wilkes actually wrote it must be possessed by the “Anglo-Norman race.” Rosenus, Vallejo, 30.

71 On the Jones incident, see Gene Smith, “The War that Wasn’t: Thomas ap Catesby Jones’s Seizure of Monterey”, California History, Vol. 66, No. 2 (June, 1987), 104-113.

72 Indeed, President John Tyler likely initiated the talks knowing they had no chance of going anywhere, but wanted to keep Britain guessing. They should not be taken as evidence that the United States was bent on acquiring California in the early 1840s: Edward P. Crapol, John Tyler: The Accidental President (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 119.

73 Knapp, “Mexican Fear of Manifest Destiny in California,” 195; Smith, “The War that Wasn’t,” 113; Larkin to Bennett, Feb. 10, 1843, Larkin Papers, 2: 6; David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973), 100-101.

365 same reaction as their Mexican counterparts, and were more disgusted at Mexico for leaving California in such a defenseless state than they were at Jones’ actions or the

U.S more generally.74 Californios were still not concerned with the U.S. in any immediate sense, and this would remain the case until 1845.75

However, unlike their attitude towards the distant U.S. state, californios remained concerned with overland American immigrants. Although only thirty-four had arrived in

1841, they presaged a larger migration. By 1845, their numbers reached several hundred.76 Importantly, the californio attitude towards these immigrants was general anxiety about increased immigration in the future, not immediate panic. Or, to put it another way, until 1846 californios feared immigration, but not individual immigrants.

They were anxious about an eventual conflict, not an immediate one, and thus they could welcome or at least tolerate immigrants for the present. As we have seen, Vallejo wrote

Mexico expressing his worry about immigrants, but he also was glad for the

“industriousness” the immigrants brought. From his Sonoma home, essentially the front line of Mexican California, Vallejo saw the migrant influx firsthand. Farther south in

Monterey, Alvarado was less worried, although he too wrote the Mexican governor about immigration. In Los Angeles, future (and last) governor of Mexican California Pío Pico paid little attention to matters hundreds of miles away.77 None of these men or any other

74 Smith, “The War that Wasn’t,” 111; Rosenus, Vallejo, 54.

75 Jones’ actions should be understood more as an enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine – perhaps even a precursor to the Roosevelt Corollary – than a presage of Manifest Destiny. See Gene A. Smith, “Thomas ap Catesby Jones and the First Implementation of the Monroe Doctrine,” Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Summer 1994), 139-152.

76 Unruh, The Plains Across, 119.

77 Salomon, Pío Pico, 68-92.

366 californios took concrete steps to limit foreign immigration until 1846, when the situation on the ground had drastically changed. Until then, American immigration was one of several anxieties – along with Indians, Sutter, and domination of north over south or vice versa – for californio leaders.

Was this anxiety over American immigration justified? To answer this, we must turn to the politics of the American immigrants themselves, especially those that came in larger numbers in 1844 and 1845. When focusing on certain Americans, the answer is certainly yes – some immigrants did indeed hope to wrest California from the californios and establish a Texas-style republic. The most famous – or infamous – of these would- be revolutionaries was Lansford Hastings, an Ohio lawyer who traveled to Oregon in

1842, and from Oregon to California in 1843.78 Although he only stayed for four months,

Hastings became obsessed with California, and returned to the United States via Mexico to write a western guidebook to encourage future immigration. Published in 1844, The

Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California became popular among subsequent migrants, although most California residents criticized its shoddy geographical information.

Hastings believed that once he persuaded thousands of migrants to travel to California, they would “revolutionize” the californio-led government and establish a California republic – with, presumably, Hastings as its president.79 Because Hastings was not in

78 On Hastings, see Will Bagley, “Lansford Hastings: Scoundrel or Visionary?” Overland Journal Vol. 12, No. 1 (1994), 13-25; Thomas F. Andrews, “The Ambitions of Lansford W. Hastings: A Study in Western Myth-Making,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Nov. 1970), 473-491.

79 Multiple sources attest to Hastings’ ambitions, including one letter by Hastings himself, where he hints at his revolutionary plans: Lansford Hastings to Thomas Marsh, March 26, 1846, Marsh Family Papers; Bidwell, Echoes of the Past, 92-94; Charles Putnam to Joseph Putnam, July 11, 1846, in Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Trail, Vol. II, ed. Dale Morgan (Georgetown, CA: The Talisman Press, 1963), 603; Ben E. Green to John C. Calhoun, April 11, 1844, in The Papers of John

367 California when a version of these events were realized during the Bear Flag

Revolt, it is impossible to pinpoint the specifics of Hastings’ plan, but his general dedication to it was not in doubt.80 Under his guidance, Hastings believed, California would indeed become a second Texas.

Hastings was joined in his revolutionary plans by a host of past, present, and future California residents, among them Thomas Farnham. Like Hastings, Farnham was a lawyer, western traveler, and author, who had described the Graham Affair in Travels in the Californias. While his narrative probably worked against migration to California in the short term by portraying Mexican California as hostile to Americans, by 1845

Farnham was on board with Hastings’ plan to foster immigration and seize the territory from the californios.81 Hastings and Farnham seemed to have eventually worked as a team, with Farnham promoting immigration in the East, while Hastings led immigrants west. In the summer of 1845 Farnham sent a letter with Hastings for rancho owner John

Marsh, in which he proclaimed that the “Republic of California” would “arise,” and

“neither Europe nor the United States are prepared for the event.”82 Marsh had always longed to populate California with Americans, and had written American papers urging immigration as early as 1841. Whether Marsh knew of Hastings and Farnham’s revolutionary plans before the letter’s arrival is uncertain, but clearly they recognized him

Calhoun, Vol. XVIII: 1844, ed. Clyde N. Wilson (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), 203-204.

80 Thomas Andrews raised doubts about John Bidwell’s second-hand account of Hastings’ ambitions, but as Will Bagley notes, there are too many witnesses to Hastings’ general plan to declare California independent to doubt its general truth: Andrews, “The Ambitions of Lansford F. Hastings,”; Bagley, “Lansford Hastings: Scoundrel or Visionary?”

81 Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous, 87.

82 Thomas Farnham to John Marsh, July 6, 1845, Marsh Family Papers.

368 as a tailor-made co-conspirator. Indeed, that year he and German immigrant

Charles Weber had made efforts to organize foreigners in the region for defensive purposes.83 Weber even hinted to Marsh that Marsh could be become the George

Washington of California, if he so desired.84 Hastings and Farnham’s other conspirators included Sam Brannan, the Mormon convert discussed in Chapter Five who would bring the first ship of Mormons to California in 1846. Possibly they even included the Hudson

Bay Company’s Chief Factor John McLoughlin, who hoped to maintain the HBC’s power in Oregon by pushing American overlanders to California.85 Even John Sutter, who would come to dislike American immigrants for their refusal to obey his orders, was likely privy to some of Hastings’ plans, for Hastings and most other immigrants made

New Helvetia a meeting place for all overlanders. Although this revolutionary conspiracy was still inchoate in 1845, it undoubtedly connected a wide spectrum of influential people.

It is all too easy to impugn Hastings and company’s ability to establish an independent California republic. In hindsight, declaring California independence based on the continued migration of Americans looks simultaneously delusional and vainglorious. The most recent historian of Hastings, asking whether he was a “scoundrel

83 George D. Lyman, John Marsh, Pioneer: The Life Story of a Trail-blazer on Six Frontiers (New York: The Chautauqua Press, 1931), 262-267.

84 Charles Weber to Marsh, Nov. 25, 1845, and Weber to Marsh, March 8, 1846, both in Marsh Family Papers.

85 Brannan’s story is detailed in Chapter Four. On Hastings’ connections to Brannan, and both of their connections with Farnham, see the letters in Will Bagley, ed., Scoundrel’s Tale: The Samuel Brannan Papers (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press), 75-85. On the Mormons’ connections with Farnham specifically: Hyde to Young, Oct. 21, 1845, Brigham Young Office Files, LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Journal History, Oct. 31, 1845. On the possible McLoughlin connection, see Bagley, “Lansford Hastings: Scoundrel or Visionary?”, 17.

369 or visionary,” answers his own question definitively: “Lansford W. Hastings was a scoundrel,” for his “ruthless ambition blinded him to reality.”86 Yet the geopolitical reality of California before 1846 was different than the reality after. While Polk’s election in 1844 had restarted momentum towards the United States’ annexation of Texas and thus potential war with Mexico, as Hastings prepared to leave for California in the summer of 1845, western geopolitics remained fluid. By this point some papers were indeed calling for the U.S. annexation of California in addition to Texas, but other papers

– both Whig and Democratic – made the case for California’s independence, although their visions of the final political outcome differed. Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune longed for the day when “the U. States, England and Mexico unite in guarantying the integrity of the Republic of Oregon and California.” Greeley believed the Sierra Nevadas were too impassable, so a U.S. attempt at incorporating California into the American

Union was useless. As Greeley noted, “Cannot a nation [i.e. the United States] sometimes realize that it has territory enough.”87 John L. O’Sullivan, in his soon-to-be- famous Manifest Destiny article in the Democratic Review, also believed California would become independent. Eventually, however, once the U.S. built railroads, and the populations of the “Empires of the Atlantic and Pacific…flow together into one,”

California would join the Union.88 Considering California independence was plausible as late as 1845, it was even more plausible when Hastings first arrived in the region in 1842.

Moreover, that such contrasting figures as Greeley and O’Sullivan agreed with Hastings

86 Bagley, “Lansford Hastings: Scoundrel or Visionary?”, 13.

87 New York Tribune, July 11, 1845.

88 “Annexation,” The United States Democratic Review Vol. 17, (July-August 1845), 9.

370 on California’s short-term future made Hastings and his fellow revolutionaries not delusional, but a reflection of the mainstream of American political thought.89

Moreover, the would-be revolutionaries could boast of some real accomplishments to their names. Both Hastings and Farnham had traveled to Oregon,

California, and Mexico, and both wrote bestselling accounts of their journeys. John

Marsh had become a wealthy California ranchero. John Sutter’s fort dominated the

Sacramento Valley. Sam Brannan had thus far accomplished little, but he would start

San Francisco’s first newspaper, and, thanks to the Gold Rush, would become one of

California’s wealthiest residents. It is true that all of these men were “scoundrels,” in the sense that all were, to a greater or lesser extent, unlikeable and obnoxious – both to their contemporaries and to current historians. Contemporaries saw all of them at various points as manipulative, arrogant, overly ambitious, and reckless; historians add to this portrayal by pointing out their anti-Indian and anti-Mexican racism.90 Yet notwithstanding their immense flaws, they were proven leaders. Hastings is a case in point. Despite his poor grasp of geography, Hastings was elected as the head of his overland party to Oregon in 1842, guided another group of migrants from Oregon to

California in 1843, and led a final group to California in 1845.91 Although Hastings’

89 For more on the attitude towards California in the East, see 96-101, above.

90 For both the attitudes of contemporaries and historians, see recent works on each man: Hurtado, Sutter; Bagley, Scoundrel’s Tale: The Sam Brannan Papers; Bagley, “Lansford Hastings: Scoundrel or Visionary?”; Churchill, “Thomas Jefferson Farnham.” Marsh lacks a modern biographer, and the most recent account of his life, written in 1931, maintained he is a “hero neglected by historians” (Lyman, Marsh, ix). Marsh, however, abandoned his mistress, was possibly responsible for an Indian massacre, and pioneer John Bidwell recalled him as “one of the most selfish of mortals” (Bidwell, Echoes of the Past, 68), so it seems he too fits the mold.

91 Hastings “scoundrel” status also stems from his promotion of the Hastings’ Cutoff – the mythical shortcut that led to the Donner Party disaster. In this case I do not quibble with Bagley’s assessment.

371 prediction that 20,000 migrants would come to California in 1846 was a vast overestimation, 1500 still came – six times as many as the previous year, and all largely due to Hastings’ promotional abilities. Like Hastings, the other would-be revolutionaries also demonstrated leadership capabilities. In contemporary understanding, all of these men practiced the Jacksonian ethos of “go ahead” – and when they did, people followed.

But while immigrants followed Hastings across the continent, would they then follow him in his ambitious political plans? And if they did not, then what were their political goals? These questions are impossible to answer with any certainty, for the political goals of pre-1846 migrants remain enigmatic. Whatever aims they had shifted with the U.S. conquest of the West, because either their goal of U.S. expansion had been accomplished, or their goal of independence became impossible. Additionally, most overlanders left for primarily economic reasons, and while many kept diaries of their journeys, by and large these were accounts of the day-to-day hardships of the trail, not political tracts.92 Even if immigrants wanted to create a California republic, there is no evidence pointing to this goal – except when it comes to those few exceptionally ambitious men like Hastings. We simply cannot know with certainty what would have happened if, say, Hastings and Marsh led a revolt to establish an American-led Republic of California.

Yet to assume, as most historians have, that most immigrants automatically yearned for the political embrace of the United States gives to much credit to migrants’

92 On reasons for migrating, see Unruh, The Plains Across, 90-94; Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous, 121-125; Dean May, Three Frontiers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 46-50. On the practical nature of overland diaries, see John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 13-15.

372 affection for the country they were leaving.93 While immigrants were leaving for economic purposes, their economic circumstances reflected the larger politico-economic status of the United States. Suffice it to say, in the early 1840s this status was extremely poor, as the effects of the Panic of 1837 reverberated throughout the country.94 For example, in Missouri, the origin of approximately half of the immigrants, the depression did not arrive until 1840.95 Not only were the migrants leaving a U.S. mired in depression, but they also left a local economic system whose increasingly market orientation had bypassed them. The largest contingent, families who hailed from the

Upper South states like Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, did not own slaves, and therefore were unable to achieve gentry status.96 The second most predominant migrants, those who came from the non-slaveholding states of the Old

Northwest, looked to maintain a traditional rural family structure, where a father could

93 Doyce Nunis’ portrayal is typical: “These new immigrants were Americans, first, last, and always.” Or, as John Hawgood wrote, “…[They] were prepared to stop at nothing to secure California for the United States.” Nunis, “Alta California’s Trojan Horse,” 322; John A. Hawgood, “The Pattern of Yankee Infiltration in Mexican Alta California, 1821-1846,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Feb., 1958), 31. See page 340, note 5, above, for more examples.

94 The Panic did not arguably reach its height until 1841-1842, when nine states defaulted on their debts. On the ongoing effects of the Panic, see Alasdair Roberts, America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder after the Panic of 1837 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), especially 49-120.

95 Perry McCandless, A History of Missouri: Vol. II: 1820-1860 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1972), 119-121.

96 May, Three Frontiers, 43; James Oakes, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1990), 80-136, especially 94-96. Intriguingly, there are hints that some immigrants foresaw Indian “labor” – in reality, akin to slavery – as a perfect form of labor, for Indians could be forced to work without pay, but leave for their villages when labor was not needed. In essence, they provided the work of black slaves, but without the baggage of needing to care for them: John Sutter to Anonymous, May 18, 1845, in The California Farmer, March 13, 1857; Robert Semple letter, in Lansford Hastings, A New History of Oregon and California (1849), 154, 156. See also Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery, 250- 263.

373 bestow his abundant landholdings on his multiple sons.97 Despite what was likely some affection for the land of their birth, all of these immigrants consciously chose to leave U.S. borders to seek a life that had eluded them in the United States.

Moreover, compared to the majority of overlanders who went to more orderly and more American-dominated Oregon, the California immigrants were clearly risk-takers for traveling to a territory where they would be in the minority.98 The reasons they decided to risk California over Oregon are more difficult to determine, but likely can be explained by their desire to acquire much more land than the 640 acres promised in Oregon.

According to Thomas Larkin, Americans in California sought “as much as eleven leagues of land” – almost 50,000 acres.99 Texas may have been on the minds of some California immigrants, who, like the Texas immigrants of the 1820s, hoped to become powerful empresarios wielding both economic and political clout.100 Perhaps they would indeed

97 Kathleen Neils Conzen, “A Saga of Families,” in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Milner, O’Connor, and Sandweiss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 315-358. Like my use of the term “traditional” for californio society, I understand the perils of labeling these families traditional in light of recent work on the growth of capitalism in American society. Yet, compared to the intensely capitalist Cotton Belt and Northeast, these families were traditional, trying to achieve the Jeffersonian dream of a yeoman’s republican America.

98 Unruh, The Plains Across, 93.

99 Thomas Larkin to William Hooper, March 22, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 84. After U.S. conquest, an American naval officer noted how displeased American settlers had become, for the U.S. was cutting back claims to 640 acres: Neil Howison to George Abernethy, Feb. 9, 1847, George Abernethy Papers, MSS 929, OHS.

100 Lansford Hastings made this implicit comparison in his well-read The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California (1845). He claimed (erroneously) that large grants would be given out to anyone who could settle more families in California, and implied that this method was how John Sutter acquired his holdings. See Hastings, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California (1845), 122-123. More generally, the Texas example always hovered in the background in both the minds of migrants and the californios, even before Texas annexation assumed international geopolitical importance. See, for example, John Bidwell, “The First Emigrant Train to California,” The Century: A Popular Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 1 (Nov., 1890), 111; Bidwell, “Statement of Mr. John Bidwell…in letter to the Rev. Mr. Willey, 1876,” John Bidwell Papers, MSS C-B 468, Bancroft Library; Almonte to Vallejo, May 18, 1841, Vallejo Papers, MSS C-B 33, Bancroft Library; John Sutter to Reading, Oct. 15, 1845, John Augustus Sutter Papers, MSS C-B 631, Bancroft Library.

374 follow Hastings in his revolutionary schemes. To assume these immigrants hoped to seize the territory for the United States and not for themselves fails to see them as independent political actors – a status they undoubtedly attained when they chose to leave

U.S. borders in the first place.101

Instead of the binary portrayal where most immigrants longed to secure California for the United States, and a small (and deluded) group of men hoped to establish a

California republic, it is more likely the California immigrants existed on a political continuum. On the far end of the continuum were would-be revolutionaries like

Hastings, who desired fame and power in a California republic of their own making. On the opposite end was Thomas Larkin, who yearned for the United States to annex

California peacefully at the behest of the californios. In the middle of the continuum were the vast majority of American immigrants, whose future political goals were ambivalent and transitory. To deem their politics ambivalent, however, does not mean they were indifferent to California’s political status. Rather, having left the United States looking for cheap and abundant land, they would support whichever future government guaranteed them that land. This government could be the United States, or it could be a future Republic of California under the rule of American immigrants. Probably this middle group of immigrants shared their fellow Americans’ anti-British feelings, and did not want to live under a British protectorate in California.102 Many undoubtedly harbored racist feelings towards the californios; not only was this attitude typical for Americans of

101 I concentrate in much greater detail on these overlanders in the following chapter on Oregon Country, for a vast majority of western migrants chose Oregon over California.

102 Sam Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010).

375 the time, but it also appeared frequently in the travelogues that many overlanders read before setting off. These travelogues included, of course, the respective works of

Hastings and Farnham, which both portrayed the californios as indolent and ignorant.103

Thus, while immigrants had left U.S. borders, they still brought American racial prejudices with them on their journey west.

However, despite their racism, the immigrants’ ultimate goal was gaining land, and they would likely support any government that fostered that goal. As the events surrounding the revolt against Governor Manuel Micheltorena would prove, they could support the Mexican state or the local californios if it benefited them. If the vision of

Hastings represented one path towards an independent California, in which American immigrants predominated and effectively marginalized the californios, then the culmination of the revolt against Micheltorena reveals another type of California republic. In this second vision of a California republic, californios and American immigrants were not antagonists, but partners. This alliance, however, was not present at first, but would work itself out over the course of the rebellion.

Hints of a Multiethnic California Republic

103 E.g. Hastings on the californios: “…Ignorance and its concomitant, superstition, together with suspicion and superciliousness, constitute the chief ingredients, of the Mexican character. More indomitable ignorance does not prevail, among any people who make the least pretentions to civilization; in truth, they are scarcely a visible grade, in the scale of intelligence, above the barbarous tribes by whom they are surrounded.” (Hastings, Emigrants’ Guide, 113). Farnham’s Travels in the Californias makes similar statements, as does – albeit less virulently – Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, the first account of California widely read in the U.S.: Farnham, Travels in the Californias, 54 and passim; Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast (1840), Chapter 21.

376 When President Santa Anna received word from Alvarado and Vallejo that

California was in need of Mexican oversight in the wake of increased immigration, he dispatched Brigadier General Manuel Micheltorena to the region with three hundred

Mexican soldiers. Michelorena was a veteran of Santa Anna’s Texas campaign, and a personal friend of Santa Anna himself.104 He was, in essence, the type of governor whom californios should have distrusted. Certainly some did, most especially outgoing governor Juan Alvarado, but generally californios hoped Micheltorena would provide needed stability to a territory wracked by internal divisions, American immigration, potentially hostile natives, and the growing power of John Sutter.105 This general californio acquiescence to Micheltorena is understandable considering that the Mexican state had been absent from California for five years. No longer was the Mexican state the major menace; it was instead future American immigration and a Texas-style rebellion.

At best, Micheltorena and his troops would provide the order many californios craved.

At worst, Micheltorena would be irrelevant and California would maintain its status quo.

In this assessment the californios would be proven wrong.

Rather than provide stability, Micheltorena did little to solve California’s ongoing problems. Frustratingly for those californios hoping to stem American immigration,

Micheltorena permitted their presence, and formed political ties with none other than

John Sutter. Yet it was his Mexican troops that caused the most problems. Largely composed of former Mexican convicts and thus deemed “cholos” by elite californios, these troops were penniless and quickly turned to petty theft to obtain food. First at Los

104 On Micheltorena’s character and arrival in California, see Miller, Alvarado, 97-101; Salomon, Pío Pico, 71-73; Bancroft, History of California, 4: 281-297.

105 Bancroft, History of California, 4: 293-294.

377 Angeles, and then at Monterey, Micheltorena’s troops succeeded in antagonizing practically all of the californio elite, uniting both norteños and sureños against their presence. While the soldiers were undoubtedly guilty of petty theft and disorderly conduct, they probably were not as horrendous as post-facto accounts maintained, once again underlying the importance of class in California society.106 Like Graham and his mountain men in 1840, the cholo soldiers offended the sensibilities of the elite – including, once again, Alvarado – and they needed to go. In November 1844 the californios rebelled against Micheltorena, beginning yet another californio revolt against a Mexican governor.107

Unlike Alvarado’s previous opponents – Gutierréz in 1836, Graham in 1840 –

Micheltorena possessed a sizeable (albeit undependable) army, and potential allies at his disposal, although they would take time to cultivate. At first Micheltorena acceded to the demands of Alvarado and his co-conspirator José Castro, a fellow Monterey don, former

California governor, and future Commandant General. Micheltorena agreed that his soldiers would leave California within three months, although he would remain as governor. Yet this was a false promise, for Micheltorena was in contact with John Sutter, and hoped to enlist Sutter in his cause. In December Micheltorena made Sutter an extraordinary offer: in exchange for Sutter’s aid in suppressing the rebellion,

Micheltorena would grant Sutter the ability to legally grant land in the name of the

106 Those who complained about Micheltorena’s troops reads as a whose-who list of California elite. For these complaints, see for example John Coffin Jones to Larkin, Oct. 22, 1842, Larkin Papers, 1:300-301; Henry Fitch to Jamces McKinlay, June 9, 1842, Larkin Papers, 1:236; Vallejo to Sutter, Dec. 13, 1844, Vallejo Papers; Osio, The History of Alta California, 212-217. For the most detailed secondary account, see Bancroft, History of California, 4: 363-367.

107 The most detailed accounts of the revolt against Micheltorena are Hurtado, Sutter, 136-151; Bancroft, History of California, 4: 455-517.

378 Mexican government.108 Although Sutter had previously run into conflict with

Mexican and californio authorities – recall his threat in 1841 to establish an “independent republique” – Micheltorena’s offer was tailor-made for Sutter’s inflated ego. Sutter above all craved power and legitimacy, and jumped at the chance to aid Micheltorena.109

Promising he could now legally grant land to all potential settlers, Sutter induced many

American immigrants to join his military contingent.110 On New Years’ Day, 1845,

Sutter’s army left New Helvetia to join Micheltorena – an army composed of one hundred Indians, forty californios, and – most remarkably – one hundred American immigrants.

Thus in early 1845, with the United States’ annexation accomplished and war with Mexico only a year away, one hundred Americans joined the army tasked with upholding Mexican sovereignty in California. Of course their willingness to fight for

Micheltorena had nothing to do with their affection for Mexico, but was rather came from pure self-interest. Fighting with Micheltorena and Sutter could guarantee their legal right to a significant amount of land, their primary goal for leaving the U.S. in the first place.

Moreover, many may have calculated – and Micheltorena may have pointed out – that they could trust Micheltorena’s promises more than they could trust the californio rebels.

108 Hurtado, Sutter, 140-141.

109 Sutter’s letters can barely contain his excitement at his newfound legitimate authority: Sutter to Pierson Reading, Oct. 30, 1844, and Sutter to Reading, Jan. 15, 1845, John Augustus Sutter Papers, C-B 631.

110 According to one memoir, the inducement to volunteer was more of a threat, i.e. if Americans did not fight with Micheltorena, their property would be taken away. There certainly may have been threats involved, but technically no new American immigrant had legal claim to any landed property to begin with: John Chamberlain, “Memoirs of California since 1840,” M-S CD 57, Bear Flag Memoirs.

379 After all, the Graham Affair had occurred under Alvarado’s governorship.111

Indeed, Graham himself readily joined Micheltorena to get his revenge. For these

American immigrants, undoubtedly political allegiance followed whatever would give them economic prosperity, and if this meant fighting for Mexico, so be it. They were following their own destinies, not the destiny of United States.

Sutter’s heterogeneous militia met Micheltorena’s Mexican army at Monterey, and their combined forces then marched south, as the now-outnumbered californio army retreated towards Los Angeles. Micheltorena had more than four hundred men at his command, thus far the largest army ever seen in California, and by now Alvarado and

Castro’s army had dwindled to one hundred, giving Micheltorena overwhelming numerical superiority. Yet over the course of the march south, the American immigrants started to make trouble. They showed a preponderance to drink and a desire to loot, especially as the long journey started to wear on their clothes and supplies.112 Although

Sutter largely was able to limit both problems, he could not prevent the American tendency to engage in their quintessential republicanism, as routinely the Americans in his army voted on their leaders, discussed their strategy, and questioned the course of the war. Sutter was unused to any challenge to his authority, beginning his disillusionment with Americans in general.113 Moreover, when Sutter’s force passed John Marsh’s rancho, Sutter tried to persuade Marsh to join him. As a California resident since 1837,

111 William A. Streeter, “Recollections of Historical Events in California,” ed. William Henry Ellison, California Historical Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June, 1939), 160; Larkin to Calhoun, Jan. 25, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 22-24.

112 Hurtado, Sutter, 142-144.

113 Sutter to Reading, Jan. 16, 1845, Sutter Papers.

380 Marsh understood the transitory nature of Mexican rule, and felt the Americans’ decision to aid Micheltorena was a poor long-term strategy.114 Sutter then forced Marsh to join the expedition upon threat of imprisonment, but the move backfired. On the march south, Marsh sowed dissension among the American volunteers, becoming the first of several seditious elements in the American ranks.

Further trouble continued after Micheltorena’s army left Santa Barbara, when

José Castro’s californio force captured fourteen Americans in Sutter’s contingent.

William Streeter, an American dentist in Castro’s employ, persuaded Castro that, instead of killing or imprisoning them, he should treat the captive Americans well, explain the californio cause, and release them after they pledged to no longer take part in hostilities.115 Castro agreed, and then so did the captured Americans. Once the

Americans made their pledge to sit out the fighting, Streeter accompanied them back to

Micheltorena’s army, where this group then tried to deter the remaining Americans from fighting. Fearing growing dissension, elected leader John Gantt staged an elaborate

Alamo-style motivational speech, drawing a line in the sand and asking all men who had decided to abandon the cause to cross it. At first, twenty-four stepped across the line – the fourteen former captives, joined by ten others. Gantt tried a second speech and drew a second line; this time fifty Americans crossed. Micheltorena had lost half of his

American contingent.116

114 Ibid.; John Bidwell, “California, 1841-1848.,” 122-126, C-D 8, Bear Flag Memoirs; Lyman, Marsh, 254-257.

115 Streeter, “Reminiscences,” 157-159.

116 Ibid.; Bancroft, History of California, 4: 500-501.

381 Meanwhile, in Los Angeles the californios were martialling their defenses.

The composition of Micheltorena’s army induced sureños to rally to Castro’s largely norteño army. Prominent californios in both north and south believed Micheltorena demonstrated a “black intent” by enlisting Indians, Mexican convicts, and American

“adventurers” into his force, essentially a whose who list of the groups californios disliked and distrusted.117 With this army at the outskirts of Los Angeles, the Los

Angeles assembly declared Micheltorena’s governorship at an end. All californios, as well as foreigners who lived around Los Angeles, believed Micheltorena’s army was a threat to their property and way of life. To them, they were the upholders of the status quo, while Micheltorena’s force implied radical change. As American merchant Abel

Stearns wrote about the composite army, “I am no friend of revolusions [sic].”118 While

Stearns himself did not fight, he did help muster fifty Americans and other foreigners to serve in the californio army. With these additional sureño and foreign volunteers, the californio force now stood equal in numbers to Micheltorena’s army. When the armies faced each other on February 19 outside Los Angeles, it appeared to be the makings of the largest battle in California history.

Yet appearances were deceiving, for the Battle of Providencia did not come anywhere close to a cataclysm.119 As both sides lobbed shells over each other, the

117 Alvarado and Castro to Micheltorena, Jan. 6, 1845, as quoted in Bancroft, History of California, 4: 489- 490. In their message to Micheltorena, the californios made five demands, the first three were, respectively, sending the convicts home, sending the foreigners home, and sending the Indians home (Alvarado, Miller, 107).

118 Abel Stearns to Larkin, March 11, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 61-62; see also John Coffin Jones to Larkin, Feb. 16, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 45-46.

119 This battle is also known as the Second Battle of Cahuenga Pass.

382 Americans fighting with the californios met with the remaining Americans in

Micheltorena’s army. Although the details remain murky, the californio-allied

Americans persuaded the Mexican-allied Americans that Micheltorena’s promises were meaningless, for the Mexican state had no ability to permanently control California. 120

Even if American immigrants received land from Micheltorena, so the argument went, he and his soldiers would eventually leave California, and the land grants would vanish with them. Therefore the only sensible thing was to side with the californios. Eventually the californio-allied Americans summoned Pío Pico to the meeting, who was a sureño don and the senior member of the Los Angeles assembly. When Pico arrived, he promised the Mexican-allied Americans that, although he could not legally grant land to any non-

Mexican citizen, he would not disturb their current occupation of it.121 He further explained that if the Americans eventually chose to become Mexican citizens, he could then legally grant the land. Ultimately most Americans abandoned Micheltorena and withdrew from the battle, giving numerical superiority to the californio rebels. Whether the Americans on the californio side continued to fight remains disputed, but this debate is essentially semantics, for the entire battle consisted of a long-range casualty-free

120 The leaders of the californio-allied Americans were members of the 25-person 1841 Workman-Rowland Party, the only significant immigration to California that came via the Santa Fe Trail. On this party, see Bigler, So Rugged and Mountainous, 110-111.

121 There are conflicting accounts of these negotiations: Streeter, “Recollections,” 157-159; John Bidwell, “California, 1841-1848…,” 122-128; John Chamberlain, “Memoirs of California since 1840,” 15-19; Antonio María Osio, The History of Alta California: A Memoir of Mexican California, 219-221; John Gantt to John Marsh, March 11, 1845, Marsh Family Papers; Larkin to Calhoun, March 24, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3:95-96; Frank J. Polley, “Americans at the Battle of Cahuenga,” Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California, Los Angeles, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1894), 47-54. Polley’s article is mostly a reproduced eyewitness account by B.D. Wilson, one of the leaders of the californio-allied Americans. See also Bancroft, History of California, 4: 506-507.

383 artillery duel.122 During its course, Sutter quickly found himself captured; forsaken by his men, this was likely by his own doing. On the following day Micheltorena asked for surrender terms, which the victorious californios granted. Within months

Micheltorena and his convict soldiers had returned to Mexico, and California was once again free of Mexican forces.

The successful revolt against Micheltorena represented the apogee of California’s independent sovereignty. Norteños, sureños, and Americans had come together – albeit circuitously – to expel the Mexican governor and his Mexican soldiers. With Americans once again aiding the californios (or at least not fighting against them), it was in some ways a reiteration of the 1836 Alvarado revolt, but with two important differences. First, although both rebellions were casualty-free, the 1845 rebellion occurred on a much larger scale, with significantly more soldiers traversing far greater distances. It was, essentially, a popular revolt, compared to Alvarado’s glorified coup. Second, the Americans who were involved were not Graham’s coarse trappers of 1836, but many who would become

– and were becoming – California’s most influential and prosperous residents. Men such as Abel Stearns, John Bidwell, and John Marsh all played a part. In fact, the roughly 150

Americans taking part in the campaign represented more than twenty percent of the

American population in California at the time, and a far greater percentage of the adult male population.123 Clearly Americans were invested in California’s political future.

Of course, many (or all) of these Americans did not fight in the climatic battle, and it is tempting to see American participation as peripheral to the Mexican-californio

122 See Bancroft, History of California, 4: 507, note 34.

123 Weber estimated 680 Americans were in California in 1845: Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 209.

384 struggle at the center of the conflict. Yet the American commitment to the conflict was hardly marginal. Even though Micheltorena’s American contingent did not fight, they committed months of their lives to marching hundreds of miles across the entire span of California. More importantly, the bloodless settlement between the American forces, and the decision by a majority of Americans to sit the battle out, did not represent a rift between themselves and the californios; rather, it was an acculturation of Americans towards californio-style warfare. The californio way of war was defined by long campaigns, violent threats, expectations of violence, and then…nothing. Once they could assess which side had the upper hand, californios ratified the status quo without significant bloodshed, in order to concentrate on more important matters: Indian threats, personal business, and family affairs.124 Americans at the Battle of Providencia mimicked what californios had done for decades, a pattern which californios and

Mexicans followed the next day. In the past, self-interest dictated that californios should avoid overt warfare; in 1845, Americans imitated them.

Once Micheltorena surrendered, the main political issue moving forward was whether American immigrants and californios had mutually supporting self-interests.

They had agreed that California was better off without Mexican oversight, but could they agree over California’s political future? For a time their self-interests undoubtedly coincided. Californios had always disliked Mexican rule, and now so did most

Americans, even – or especially – those who had at first joined Micheltorena’s army.

Also, like the californios, American immigrants disdained and feared natives, prompting

124 Michael Gonzalez, “War and the Making of History: The Case of Mexican California, 1821-1846.” Gonzalez estimates that between 1829 and 1845 there were twelve rebellions, in which a maximum of fifteen people died.

385 californio leaders to contract with John Marsh, John Gantt, and other American participants in the Battle of Providencia to undertake retaliatory expeditions against the

Indians for prior raiding. In return, the Americans would receive five hundred cattle and half of all they recovered from the Indians.125 In another area of mutual self-interest, californios had long detested John Sutter’s arrogance and power, and now so did many

Americans, who felt it was Sutter’s manipulations that had misled them to fight for

Micheltorena.126 Abandoned by his American allies, Sutter returned to New Helvetia chastened and significantly more isolated. Interests seemed so aligned that californio authorities acquiesced to the growing American presence on the frontier by agreeing to extend “all the guarantees they may desire for establishing themselves in this department, and for living securely in the exercise of their respective occupations.”127 With the knowledge that they could benefit from one another, there seemed to be the makings of a fledgling californio-American settlement.

Of course, it is important to not overstate this californio-American understanding; it was a settlement, not an alliance, and both sides recognized that it could fracture in the future. Perhaps this could come via the clash of legal traditions, as immigrants quickly became frustrated with the paternalistic and – as they saw it – largely ineffectual Mexican legal system.128 Moreover, although Pío Pico had promised to allow them to remain on

125 Bancroft, History of California, 4: 543.

126 John Gantt to John Marsh, March 11, 1845, Marsh Family Papers.

127 José Castro to Charles Weber, April 12, 1845, Weber Family Papers, MSS C-B 829. Castro also permitted American immigrants from Hawaii, despite arriving with obsolete passports: Larkin to Calhoun, June 6, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 227.

128 David J. Langum, Law and Community on the Mexican California Frontier: Anglo-American Expatriates and the Clash of Legal traditions, 1821-1846 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 131-278.

386 their land, most overlanders still had no legal title, and recognized this could produce conflict down the road. Significantly, immigrant leaders John Marsh and

Charles Weber put out a “call to foreigners” in March, urging representatives to convene in San José on July 4th for the purposes of uniting their political interests.129 The date was significant, for it demonstrated the cultural and social unity of Americans – unity they did not share with californios. Thirty years later Charles Weber would remember this as an attempt to turn northern California into an independent Texas-style republic, although more likely the meeting was designed to avoid a replay of the Micheltorena rebellion, where immigrants joined both sides; in future conflicts, they needed to be united.130 Whatever its purpose, it is uncertain if the meeting was ever held. However, even its planning demonstrated that certain immigrants perceived that their interests could be opposed to the californios in the future, even if these interests aligned for a time.

Despite the ongoing uncertainty of the californio-American relationship, it is worth pausing to consider a different political future for California, one that briefly revealed itself in the first half of 1845. The Mexican state was clearly powerless in

California, as Thomas Larkin astutely noted in his farewell letter to Micheltorena: “…It is an undisputed fact, that every General whom the people have revolted against in

California, have been obliged to retire, and such must be the fate of every future one who

129 Weber himself was German, demonstrating how Americans could easily assimilate northern Europeans into their culture and traditions, but they did not do the same with those of Hispanic background (let alone natives peoples or African-Americans). Weber Proclamation, March 27, 1845; Weber to Marsh, March 24, 1845, both in Weber Family Papers.

130 Weber told Bancroft about the Texas imitation, but I agree with Bancroft’s assessment that Weber was overstating the meeting’s purpose. He and Marsh already had significant political and economic power, and they had the most to lose in a rebellion; both were self-interested, and it was not in their self-interest to rebel. As we shall see, it was unsettled Americans who rebelled during the Bear Flag Revolt. Bancroft, History of California, 4: 599.

387 may be sent here.”131 Therefore California residents were on their own. For ambitious Americans like Hastings – currently traveling to California from Missouri – this meant California could be seized by Americans and run as an independent republic.

By contrast, in the eyes of californio leaders such as José Castro and Pío Pico, and perhaps immigrants like Abel Stearns, John Marsh and Charles Weber, independence could be created via an alliance between the two peoples. Certainly American traders had assimilated in the 1820s and 1830s; perhaps the “industrious” overland immigrants could do so in the 1840s. Indeed, one established American trader in San Diego believed this alliance was imminent: “[Castro’s] object was to unite the Californians and foreigners and then declare the Country independent of Mexico. That will no doubt be the case soon.” After anticipating this development, the author then noted, “The great fear in my mind is that there will be a division amonghst the Californians”.132 The letter- writer was prescient in this assessment, but what he did not anticipate was an even more important development: the arrival of the U.S. state.

The Bear Flag Revolt: Manifest Destiny as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

As the revolt against Micheltorena reached its conclusion in the early months of

1845, events with much larger geopolitical ramifications were taking place in the United

States. James K. Polk had secured the Democratic nomination for president over Martin

Van Buren thanks to Polk’s embrace of American expansion in Texas and Oregon. His subsequent election in the fall of 1844 drastically altered the geopolitics of North

131 Larkin to Micheltorena, March 21, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 74-75.

132 John Coffin Jones to Larkin, Feb. 25, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 49. Italics in original.

388 America. With Texas annexation looming – it was probable by March of 1845, but not finalized until the end of the year – the very meaning of Texas changed. No longer did it designate a separate North American republic created by expatriates from the

United States, but a mode of U.S. expansion, where the United States intervened to aid supposedly beleaguered American settlers beset by a hostile foreign power. By May of

1845 some American newspapers were already calling for the “Texas game” to be replayed in California, by which they meant American settlers should declare an independent California republic, and then seek admission to the United States.133 In this manner, they hoped, California’s American settlers would soon make the territory a part of the Union.

Rumors of Texas annexation had reached California before. In the summer of

1844 Governor Micheltorena had learned that the U.S. annexation of Texas was imminent, following a treaty between Secretary of State John C. Calhoun and Texas commissioners. In response, Micheltorena planned to implement a new militia system, in which all californios and naturalized foreigners would drill on Sundays and become

“Defenders of the Nation.”134 However, the U.S. Senate rejected Calhoun’s treaty, and

133 Washington Daily National Intelligencer, May 7, 1845. This article cited the Nashville Union and New Orleans Courier as calling for a replay of the “Texas game,” which the National Intelligencer argued against. The phrase had become ubiquitous enough that a correspondent from New York City used the phrase in a letter to Larkin to explain what should happen in California: Alfred Robinson to Thomas Larkin, May 29, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 204-206. It is worth noting that these “Texas game” articles were written before John L. O’Sullivan’s more famous Manifest Destiny article. O’Sullivan was not in favor of such a naked assertion of U.S. power, and was opposed to the war against Mexico, but these “Texas game” articles and Polk’s actions as president redefined Manifest Destiny as O’Sullivan originally intended. Indeed, O’Sullivan’s criticism of the Mexican War led to his dismissal by the New York Morning News. On O’Sullivan’s original definition of Manifest Destiny and the terms divergence from his vision, see Robert D. Sampson, John L. O’Sullivan and His Times (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003), 194-207.

134 “Defensores de la Patria”: Micheltorena Proclamation, May 11, 1844, Vallejo Papers. See also Miller, Alvarado, 100-101; Bancroft, History of California, 4: 406-408.

389 Micheltorena’s plans lapsed by the end of the summer. Nonetheless, clearly even rumors of Texas annexation caused consternation in California.135

Over the summer of 1845 California residents again heard reports of the U.S. annexation of Texas, culminating in a Mexican directive to – yet again – completely prohibit American immigration.136 In some ways, californio officials did take small steps to strengthen the territory against American immigrants and other potential enemies. To obtain desperately needed funds, new governor Pío Pico accelerated the sale of the last non-secularized mission property. Reminiscent of Micheltorena’s pronouncement in

1844, Pico also called for all residents to protect California if war came.137 Yet, overall, californio officials were either unwilling or unable to enforce the ban on foreigners.

Despite Pico’s actions, the California government remained poor. It also remained divided, as José Castro began forming a norteño coalition against the sureño Pico.

Moreover, many – although not all – prominent californios were not entirely opposed to further American immigration. In the same pronouncement in which he urged all

California residents to protect the territory, Pico also ordered that under no circumstances should foreign residents be bothered or suspected of disloyalty.138 In Sonoma, the town closest to the majority of immigrant settlements, Mariano Vallejo privately longed for further immigration and peaceful annexation by the United States – although publicly he

135 This is especially evident in Larkin’s correspondence, where both letters to and from him constantly mention rumors of Texas annexation, and then speculate as to the effect this would have on the United States, Mexico, and California. See, for example, Larkin to Jarves, Nov. 4, 1844, 2: 271; Larkin to Calhoun, Aug. 18, 1844, 3: 204-207; Parrott to Larkin, June 29, 1844, 2: 155; Larkin to Buchanan, Sept. 29, 1845, 3: 367; Atherton to Larkin, Sept. 8, 1845, 3: 340-343, all in Larkin Papers.

136 Bancroft, History of California, 4: 605.

137 Salomon, Pico, 82-85.

138 Ibid.

390 continued to declare his desire to prevent immigration. Mirroring his actions from

1841, Vallejo quietly allowed Americans to keep settling along the northern frontier.139

Thus, although it initiated small changes, Texas annexation did not change the fundamental dynamics of California politics.

However, the intrusion of the Texas issue did cause some California residents, especially Americans in tune with international affairs, to speculate on the territory’s political future. In general, most observers agreed that California would soon break from

Mexico for good. As John Marsh wrote, the californios “cared about as much for the

Government of Mexico as that for Japan.”140 However, despite talk of the “Texas game” and possible U.S. annexation, there was no consensus that the United States would ultimately assume sovereignty over the territory. One American in California believed the United States simply could not take on more territory, for it would become “so overgrown and unwieldy that he [i.e. the U.S.] would sink under such Ponderosity.”141

Many believed that California would instead become an independent country, although its existence could prove unstable due to the continuing antagonism between norteños and sureños. As one American trader in San Diego wrote, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”142 With this understanding of the dysfunction of California politics, some observers predicted it was more likely American immigrants in Oregon would join with those in California and form a Pacific republic, with the capital placed on San Francisco

139 Rosensus, Vallejo, 78.

140 Marsh to Lewis Cass, Jan. 20, 1846, Marsh Family Papers.

141 Stephen Reynolds to Larkin, April 19, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 139-141.

142 John Coffin Jones to Larkin, May 23, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 192-194.

391 Bay.143 The trouble brewing between the U.S. and Britain over Oregon buttressed this belief, for the assumption was neither country would gain control of the region.

Even U.S Consul Thomas Larkin, who longed and worked for U.S. annexation, wrote in the summer of 1845 that he was certain California would eventually be dominated by

“millions” of Anglo-Saxons “under a happy government speaking the language we speak,” but “under what flag I can not say nor when.”144 He too believed Oregon and

California could soon join together as an “independent nation.”145 Six months before

U.S. conquest, California’s political fate remained fluid.

Thus, in the aftermath of the news of Texas annexation, the rhetoric about

California’s future changed, but generally, for both californios and Americans in the territory, actions did not. However, in December 1845 a new figure arrived in California, one who did fundamentally alter the dynamics of California politics: U.S. Captain John

C. Fremont, at the head of a contingent of sixty men of the U.S. Topographical Corps of

Engineers. Fremont had already led two expeditions west, one of which had crossed into unsettled portions of Alta California, and his accounts had become bestsellers among an

American public newly eager for news of the region. On this third journey, in the first months of his arrival near non-native “settled” California, californio authorities greeted his presence without a great degree of alarm. They agreed that as long as Fremont and his men avoided coastal towns, they could resupply and remain in California for the winter. In late February, however, californio nonchalance turned to panic, when Fremont

143 Marsh to Larkin, Aug. 12, 1845, Larkin Papers, 3: 308-310.

144 Larkin to Faxon Dean Atherton, June 6, 1845, Faxon Dean Atherton Papers, MS 69 A5.

145 Larkin to Marsh, July 8, 1845, Marsh Family Papers.

392 and his men left camp at San Jose, and instead of marching north towards Oregon as expected, marched south. Events were now set in motion for the final drama of

California independence.

What Fremont hoped to accomplish by this provocation remains in doubt. As

Chapter Two has argued, he was likely prompted in some way by the arrival of Polk’s secret agent, Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, although it remains doubtful Gillespie would have ordered Fremont to take such a provocative action. In all likelihood,

Fremont’s decision – and many others by him over the following months – can be explained as a manifestation of his personality, which combined impulsivity, arrogance, and panache. Gillespie perhaps urged Fremont to remain in California in case of a U.S. war with Mexico, at which point Fremont’s impulsivity took over.146 Whatever

Fremont’s purpose was in marching south, Commandant General José Castro took affront, and demanded Fremont leave California immediately. Fremont refused and demanded an apology.147 He then retreated to Gavilán Peak, raised the American flag, and prepared for Castro’s impending assault on his force. Fremont’s actions caused hysteria among californios, particularly norteños who were significantly closer to the potential conflict.148 As Larkin desperately wrote letters from his Monterey home trying

146 See above, pages 116-118.

147 Many works recount the events in northern California from February through July, and all agree on what happened, but interpretations vastly differ. Good accounts include Bancroft, History of California, 4: 1- 100; Harlow, California Conquered, 61-114; Hague and Langum, Larkin, 112-139; Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), 289-335; Rosenus, Vallejo, 81-134; Hurtado, Sutter, 172-195.

148 Thomas Larkin’s letters provide the best perspective on the growing hysteria over Fremont, as he found himself trying to mediate between his long-time californio acquaintances and his role as U.S. consul. See, for example, Larkin to José Castro and Manuel Castro, March 6, 1846, 4: 231; Larkin to James Buchanan, March 27, 1846, 4: 270-273; José Castro, Proceedings of Military Junta, 4: 282-284; Larkin to James

393 to calm both sides, Fremont declared that, if attacked by Castro, “We will die every man of us under the Flag of our country.”149 Soon, however, Fremont realized that

Castro’s force of two hundred outnumbered his sixty mountain men, and recanted his bravado by abandoning Gavilán Peak and retreating north, ostensibly leaving for Oregon.

It seemed a crisis had been averted.

Yet Fremont’s display of the American flag marked a decisive shift in

California’s history. Hitherto California had existed largely detached from the influence of the U.S. state. The hodgepodge mix of norteños, sureños, foreign traders, and ever- increasing American immigrants lived lives independent of both Mexico and the United

States. Although the relationship among these groups was often dysfunctional, California residents had muddled through it, culminating in their combined expulsion of Mexican governor Micheltorena and his army. Although no international state recognized

California’s independence, it had come to function as a breakaway republic. Some

California inhabitants like Alvarado had recognized this fact as early as 1836, and many more recognized it by 1846; some believed an official declaration of independence would come in the near future. When Fremont raised the American flag, however, everything changed, as now U.S. intervention seemed imminent. The various groups that had united to expel Micheltorena all turned inward, isolating their own interests from those of everyone else. California unity had always been extremely fragile, and Fremont’s presence shattered it for good.

Buchanan, April 2, 1846, 4:275; all in Larkin Papers . For an overview, see Hague and Langum, Larkin, 120-125.

149 Fremont to Larkin, March 9, 1846, Larkin Papers, 4: 235.

394 Fremont’s actions at Gavilán Peak led many California residents to believe that California’s final political status would be decided imminently, leading the region’s various constituencies started makings plans to shape the outcome. In the north, where

Fremont’s presence caused a more direct stir, prominent norteños planned to convene in

Monterey to discuss California sovereignty and debate their political strategy.

Demonstrating their trust in Thomas Larkin, who, though U.S. consul, was clearly seen as a fellow elite, the norteños met at his house for what they defined as a junta, a meeting of prominent military and civil officers. 150 One by one californios and select acculturated foreigners rose to offer a solution for California’s future. José Castro recommended putting California under French protection, citing shared Catholic culture. Others wanted to make California a British protectorate, maintaining Britain could prevent slavery from spreading into the territory, and mediate between American Protestants and californio

Catholics.151 A few californios proposed complete independence, proclaiming

150 Bancroft believed this meeting was never held, and recently Rosaura Sánchez has echoed his assessment. Yet the evidence points overwhelmingly to an actual meeting. Multiple sources attest to it, all written independently, and no one who reportedly attended the meeting refuted statements about its existence in contemporary accounts. The most detailed source is Mariano Vallejo’s memoirs, in which he reconstructs the speeches of each participant in the mode of Thucydides. While he clearly did not write these speeches down verbatim, their content seems to be an accurate reflection of the sentiments of each speechmaker. Primary evidence: Mariano Vallejo, “Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California,” transl. Earl Hewitt, C-D 19, 58-74; John Sutter to John Marsh, April 3, 1846, John Augustus Sutter Papers, MSS C-D 631; Larkin to William Leidesdorff, April 13, 1846, Larkin Papers, 4: 284; Larkin to Abel Stearns, in First and Last Consul, 61-62; Joseph Revere, A Tour of Duty in California…(1849), 23- 31; William Heath Davis, Seventy-Five Years in California, ed. Douglas Watson (San Francisco: J. Howell, 1929), 141-142. For an assessment of the evidence in favor of the meeting, see especially Myrtle M. McKittrick, Vallejo, Son of California (Portland: Binsford and Mort, 1944), 248-253 and also Hague and Langum, Larkin, 256, n. 33 and 34. For the contrarian view, see Bancroft, History of California, 59-63; Sánchez, Telling Identities, 246-254.

151 The assertion of religious identity at this moment is interesting, for contemporary californios wrote little on the importance of Catholicism in their lives – and most secondary works have followed suit. Indeed, the younger, liberal generation of californio dons who attended the junta had worked against the mission system for years. In this case Catholicism seemed to act more as an assertion of californio identity, and a reaction against the Americanization of the territory, rather than an expression of religious faith. For a similar trend in New Mexico, see Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier, 83.

395 “California libre, soberana, and independiente.” (“free, sovereign, and independent

California”).152 Mariano Vallejo, long friendly to American immigrants, believed that independence was certainly possible. He cited the Republic of Texas for his reasoning, arguing that it had maintained its sovereignty for a decade despite being much closer to hostile Mexico than California. Therefore, he reasoned, if Texas could remain independent, so too could California. But Vallejo did not stop there, and recommended an alternative solution: seek U.S. annexation. Vallejo cited californios and Americans’ shared republican values, and the ability to enter the U.S. on equal footing to all other

Americans: “When we join our fortunes to hers, we shall not become subjects, but fellow-citizens, possessing all the rights of the people of the United States and choosing our own federal and local rulers.”153 Despite Vallejo’s eloquence, the junta was unable to decide, and the meeting eventually dissolved pending communication with the south.

This junta, above all, demonstrates the very real – but very ambivalent – achievement of California’s independence. By holding this meeting, californios demonstrated that they did indeed function as an independent nation; they were determining their political fate. Yet few believed California could survive as a sovereign nation for long. Californios and their elite foreign allies simply had too many potential enemies out there – Indians, Mexicans, uncouth Americans – to stand alone. Therefore, most were willing to trade total independence for local autonomy, in which the californios could still dominate the politics, economics, and society of the region.

Indeed, this was the substance of Vallejo’s remarks on independence versus U.S.

152 Vallejo, “Historical Memoirs,” 64.

153 Revere, A Tour of Duty in California, 28-30.

396 annexation. He expressed wholeheartedly that California had the means to maintain independence. However, attaching California to the United States would still allow californios to choose their local rulers, but also give the added benefit of an intimate connection with the up-and-coming economic power in the Americas. For all californios, republicanism predominated: the maintenance of local power was key even for those who did not advocate annexation to the U.S. or complete independence. To keep local control, the goal of the attendees of the norteño junta was to seize the geopolitical initiative, and by doing so dictate the terms of the final political settlement.

Thomas Larkin, who of course attended the meeting held at his house, obviously supported Vallejo’s pro-American position. He too believed that Fremont’s presence had accelerated events, and that California’s political fate was coming to a head. On April

17th he received a letter from Secretary of State James Buchanan, brought to California by Polk’s agent Archibald Gillespie. In the letter Buchanan reported the increasingly belligerent state of affairs between the U.S. and Mexico, appointed Larkin a secret agent himself, and directed him to work for the U.S. acquisition of California. Yet Buchanan maintained that U.S. annexation was secondary to Larkin’s primary goal: forestall foreign intervention in California.154 Buchanan was preaching to the choir, for Larkin had long feared the machinations of the British in California, especially the actions of British consul James Forbes. Larkin did not know that the British had largely abandoned all efforts to dominate California, and promptly set out to steer California politics away from an imaginary threat. He first wrote confidential letters to fellow wealthy American traders in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Yerba Buena (soon to be renamed San

154 Buchanan to Larkin, Oct. 17, 1846, Larkin Papers, 4: 44-47; Hague and Langum, Larkin, 116.

397 Francisco). In the letters, Larkin warned his confidants to be prepared for war between the U.S. and Mexico, for they had “much at stake…in the coming events.” If war did not come, he anticipated that California would join Britain, France, or the U.S.

Larkin then relayed his argument as to why California should choose join the United

States: only in the republican U.S. could all California residents find “fellow feeling.”155

Finally, he asked his confidants to inform him of any californio political maneuvers. The letter was Larkin’s attempt to keep the American merchant class united towards U.S. annexation through the coming, potentially decisive events.

Larkin then wrote a public letter to all californios in which he voiced similar sentiments, albeit in a manner less obviously insisting on California’s entrance into the

American union. He claimed that the United States would never actively try to conquer the territory, but would readily accept a proposal by californios to join California to the

United States on an equal footing as all other U.S. states. In a nod to the class interests of elite californios, he noted that real estate value would greatly increase upon such a step, and “persons and property” would be significantly safer. His most forceful statements, however, did not involve the United States, but British involvement in California, which would irrevocably force the U.S. to intervene on the principles of the Monroe Doctrine:

“…Great Britain by the acquisition of California would sow the seeds of future war and disaster for herself and the [U.S].”156 Ultimately californios must avoid British influence, and either join the U.S. or become a “sister Republic” on the continent.

155 Larkin to Jacob Leese, Abel Stearns, and Jonathan Trumbull Warner, April 17, 1846, Larkin Papers, 4: 295-297.

156 Larkin, “Opinion of State of Affairs in California,” April, 1846, Larkin Papers, 4: 297-300. Larkin noted in his copy to the U.S. State Department that he translated the letter into Spanish, and showed it to many important californios. Larkin did not use the term “Monroe Doctrine” in this letter, but he used it in

398 Larkin’s use of the phrase “sister republic” directly quoted Buchanan’s letter to Larkin, and voiced many of the same opinions. Whether Buchanan himself would have accepted California as a “sister republic” is a matter of speculation, although, as

Chapter Two has argued, this option was unacceptable to President Polk. Larkin himself was not fundamentally opposed to this development. He certainly favored California joining the United States, as long as it happened peacefully, with minimal disturbance to

California society. Importantly, a war between U.S. and Mexico did not preclude maintaining peace in California, for he hoped to persuade the californios to acquiesce to

– perhaps even embrace – their fate. Yet if war did not break out, he believed

California’s entrance into the Union would only be “defered [sic]” for a little while. Here

Larkin clearly believed in Manifest Destiny as originally defined by O’Sullivan, where continental amity, the wishes of local inhabitants, and U.S. prosperity would facilitate a peaceful expansionist process.157 Indeed, he was perfectly satisfied to await developments, for on a personal level Larkin was content. As he noted in the letter to his

American confidants: “I myself as a trader prefer everything as it is. The times and the

Country are good enough for me.”158 Unfortunately for Larkin, certain American immigrants on the northern California frontier were not as satisfied with the status quo, and would take matters into their own hands.

Before turning to the northern frontier, however, it is worth considering how

Fremont’s presence reverberated as far south as Los Angeles, albeit in a more indirect the letter to his American confidants, and clearly this was the policy he described in this letter to the californios as well.

157 “Annexation,” The United States Democratic Review Vol. 17, (July-August 1845).

158 Larkin to Leese et al, April 17, 1846, Larkin Papers, 4: 296.

399 manner. Having convened the junta at Monterey because of Fremont’s presence, the norteños led by José Castro also attempted to seize power from the sureños, particularly sureño governor Pío Pico. They did so somewhat surreptitiously, by recognizing the new Paredes regime that had just seized power in Mexico, and disavowing all of the decisions of the former Herrera regime – which included the appointment of Pico. Essentially, the norteños declared Pico’s governorship null and void. Considering the irrelevancy of the Mexican state in California affairs – Mexico’s ever-changing presidents had become meaningless in the territory – Pico and the sureños immediately spotted the power grab and attempted to seize the initiative from the norteños.159 Pico promptly issued a pronouncement disavowing the Monterey junta. He then called for a joint norteño-sureño junta (with sureño representatives in the majority) at Santa Barbara on June 15, which he termed the “General Council of the United Towns of California.”160 Unsurprisingly, José Castro denounced Pico’s maneuver in turn.161 By early June Pico was leading an army north to confront Castro, while Castro raised troops to meet him. Once again California was on the verge of civil war.

Castro’s decision to turn his attention south reflected his belief that the Fremont crisis had passed, as Fremont’s party retreated towards Oregon. Yet, just as Fremont’s presence had galvanized norteños, the American merchant class, and – more indirectly –

159 Salomon, Pío Pico, 95-98.

160 Pío Pico Proclamation, May 13, 1846, Collection of Documents for the History of California, MSS C-B 98. Pico may also have been in secret talks with the British, and at the coming junta would lay the groundwork for a British protectorate over California: Sheldon G. Jackson, “Two Pro-British Plots in Alta California,” Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Summer 1973), 113-140. Pico’s most recent biographer Carlos Salomon did not address this plot, nor cite this article in his bibliography.

161 José Castro Protest, June 8, 1846, Collection of Documents of the History of California.

400 sureños, so too did it galvanize American immigrants in the Sacramento Valley.

Fremont’s arrival seemed to offer protection against potentially hostile natives and californios. In early April Fremont’s force had obliged with the former, killing dozens of

Indians in a supposedly preemptive attack on an Indian village.162 He was more uncertain about attacking the californios, however, for doing so clearly would have larger international repercussions, and would be more difficult to justify.

As Fremont made his way north, rumors circulated among the American immigrants who had settled in the Sacramento Valley that the californios would expel them from their lands. There was some factual basis for these rumors: the Monterey prefect had issued an order to all the California town justices, instructing them to inform immigrants that they had no right to own land in California, and could be “expelled from

[the land] whenever the government finds it convenient.”163 Yet what was reported among American settlers became something quite different: “Notice is hereby given, that a large body of armed Spaniards on horseback, amounting to 250 men, have been seen on their way to the Sacramento valley, destroying the crops, burning the houses, and driving off the cattle.”164 American immigrants petitioned Fremont to intervene on their behalf against the californios, and attack the northernmost californio garrison at Sonoma. At first he demurred, but by early June the ever-impulsive Fremont had changed his mind:

162 Chaffin, Pathfinder, 290-291.

163 Francisco Guerrero y Palomares to William Alexander Leidesdorff, April 39, 1846, Larkin Papers, 4: 354.

164 William B. Ide, Who Conquered California? (1880), 29-30. Ide was a Bear Flagger, and claims to be quoting from his “cast-off memorandum.”

401 while he would not yet join the would-be insurgents, he would at least tacitly approve their actions.

Thus the events that would lead to the infamous Bear Flag Revolt were set in motion, when thirty-three American immigrants raided Sonoma, imprisoned Mariano

Vallejo and his family, and declared the independence of the Republic of California.

Much of what occurred in the initial stages of the revolt is cloudy, but one aspect is certain: by simply arriving in northern California, Fremont and his party changed the dynamics of the entire region.165 Whether Fremont had secret orders from President Polk via secret agent Archibald Gillespie, or secret orders from his father-in-law Senator

Thomas Benton, is beside the point. He was a representative of the U.S. state, and his presence exacerbated the tensions among American immigrants and californios. While the potential immigrant expulsion order was certainly a provocation, it would have been a minor issue without Fremont. Orders like this had circulated throughout the Sacramento

Valley since American immigrants first arrived in 1841, and tensions had always diffused eventually. As one former Bear Flagger remembered, Fremont’s presence was the catalyst for the revolt: “…Disputes about land and personal property were the first causes of bad feeling [between the immigrants and californios], but the appearance of Fremont

165 Despite an ongoing historiographical debate over the Bear Flag Revolt, the most judicious historians largely agree that we can never know what truly happened. Practically every source on the event was composed from memory, years – even decades – later. No two accounts agree, and many directly contradict one another. I have cited relevant Bear Flag Memoirs when applicable, and have relied upon the following as the most careful analyses of events: Harlow, California Conquered, 74-114; Chaffin, Pathfinder, 289-335; Rosenus, Vallejo, 81-134. The most detailed account remains Bancroft, History of California, 5: 77-190. For a sampling of the ongoing historiographical debate, particularly its local manifestations in Sonoma, see the overtly anti-Bear views of Linda Heidenreich, ‘This Land Was Mexican Once’: Histories of Resistance from Northern California (Austin: University of Texas, 2007), 75-92; and the bizarrely pro-Bear account of Barbara Warner, The Men of the California Bear Flag Revolt and their Heritage (Sonoma: The Arthur H. Clark Publishing Co. for the Sonoma Valley Historical Society, 1996), 13-74.

402 west of the Rocky Mountains…made the ‘foreigners’ bolder and the Californians suspicious.”166 John Bidwell – who did not join the insurrection – was more succinct, maintaining that all the Bear Flaggers were looking for was a “wink from an American in uniform” to begin their revolt.167 With Fremont’s arrival, Manifest Destiny became a self-fulfilling prophecy: suspicious of Fremont’s intentions, californios took steps to limit

American immigration; suspicious of the californios, American immigrants looked to

Fremont for aid. Although no one in California had received news that the U.S. was officially at war with Mexico – and had been for several weeks – simply the arrival of the

U.S. state was enough to spur American immigrants to revolt.

But not a significant amount of American immigrants. Despite the perception – then and now – that most recently arrived immigrants were, in the words of one historian,

“hothead pioneers” looking for a fight with the californios, only thirty-three men initially attacked Sonoma.168 A majority of these men were in their late teens or early twenties, had arrived in California the previous year, and were “unsettled” – that is, did not yet possess land, and made a living by hunting, trapping, and working for John Sutter.169

Ezekiel Merritt, a leader of the revolt and one of the few men over forty, had been allegedly whipped by Vallejo’s brother in a dispute, and desired revenge on the Vallejo family. Peter Storm, at forty-seven the oldest participant, had been imprisoned during

166 William Hargrave, “California in 1846,” transcribed by Ivan Petroff, C-D 97 transcription.

167 John Bidwell, “Statement,” 19.

168 Hawgood, “The Pattern of Yankee Infiltration in Mexican Alta California, 1821-1846,” 33. Hawgood’s assessment is typical of most historians. See above, page 340, note 5.

169 This is John Bidwell’s term, who divided California into the “settled” and “unsettled”: John Bidwell, “California, 1841-1848...,” 159-161, C-D 8.

403 the Graham Affair in 1840, and may also have wanted revenge.170 Two participants had previously fought in Texas, and thus had experience – and success – with settler filibusterism. Suffice it to say, the initial Bear Flaggers were not a representative sample of American immigrants, many of whom had gained access to land, and had little inclination to disturb the status quo. Of course most did not legally possess the land, but their claims were at least tacitly accepted by the californios. Moreover, three times as many Americans had volunteered for Micheltorena’s Mexican at a time when there were significantly fewer Americans in California.171 Moreover, these one hundred volunteers came from a significantly smaller number of American settlers – perhaps comprising over fifty percent of the American population in the Sacramento Valley, in contrast to less than ten percent during the Bear Flag Revolt.172 Again this demonstrates the importance

170 These assessments of individual Bear Flaggers are based on snapshot biographies in Barbara Warner, The Men of the California Bear Revolt and their Heritage. While Warner’s account of the revolt itself is extremely biased, these biographies are immensely detailed, and largely reliable when recounting facts (rather than Warner’s oftentimes overly laudatory opinions). “Unsettled” Bears: Swift, Saunders, Semple, Neal, Booker, Buzzell, Ford, O’Fallon, Cowie, Fowler, Kelley, Porterfield, Scott, Wise, Storm. This does not account for the ten or so men whose backgrounds are largely unknown. Fought in Texas: Todd, Hargrave.

171 This demonstrates the continued willingness by historians to read history backward. Syntheses and textbooks have long ignored the events of Micheltorena revolt, but this was a larger, more important event, judging by numbers involved and outcome. The Bear Flag Revolt, however, always garners at least some coverage, despite creating a one-town republic that lasted a month. These differing treatments likely stem from the fact that the Bear Flag Revolt fits the pattern of American filibustering, and therefore requires little explanation, while the Micheltorena revolt does. Additionally, it may also reflect a continued local California fascination with Bear Flag descendants and the Bear Flag itself. Syntheses mentioning the Bear Flag Revolt and not the Micheltorena revolt include Howe, What Hath God Wrought?, 755; Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families, 393-395; Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 603. For an account of the continued local importance of the Bear Flag Revolt, see Heindenreich, “This Land Was Mexican Once,” 83-84.

172 These percentages are generic for a reason: it is very difficult to estimate the American population in California in the 1840s, for many hunters and trappers came and went over the years. If judging only by those who took the overland trail, then the one hundred volunteers for Micheltorena comprised 80% (100/125) of the American population, which seems extremely high. There was likely at least another fifty to hundred Americans present in California. For the Bear Flag Revolt, 33 men represent 9% of the overland population of 385 – with the similar numbers of hunters and trappers present as the year before, this 9% was likely even lower. Numbers come from Unruh, The Plains Across, 119.

404 of self-interest among the immigrants: Micheltorena promised land, and Americans joined his cause. The Bear Flag Revolt promised…an unstable and weak Anglo-

American republic? Certainly it promised an uncertain future. No wonder so few volunteered. If the Bear Flag Revolt was an example of the “Texas game,” then few

Americans wanted to play it.

By initiating the revolt, however, the thirty-three Bear Flaggers racialized and nationalized the struggle, initiating a discourse that had been largely muted in California.

Their actions united norteños and sureños against them, and divided californio from

American. When Pío Pico, journeying north to attack Castro, learned of the capture of

Sonoma, he promptly joined with Castro to confront the Bear Flaggers. He then issued a call to arms, and denounced the Bear Flaggers: “…A gang of North American adventurers, with the blackest treason that the spirit of evil could invent, have invaded the town of Sonoma…The North American nation can never be our friend. She has laws, religion, language, and customs totally opposed to ours.”173 Unsurprisingly he referenced

American “piratical schemes” that had stolen Texas from Mexico. Even more interestingly, he implored californios to rise up to defend their honor as Mexican citizens:

“Fly, Mexicans, in all haste in pursuit of the treacherous foe.” Considering californios had existed independently of Mexico for over a decade, and more often than not disdained Mexican interference, Pico’s call to arms was desperate rhetoric that did not match the reality of California politics.

173 Pîo Pico Proclamation, June 23, 1846, 22-24, Bear Flag Papers, C-B 70. A translation can be found in Bancroft, History of California, 5: 138, note 21.

405 In his proclamation, Pico also noted that “foreign citizens” were not be harmed or bothered in any way, and assured that the government would protect their property, clearly nodding towards the elite foreign merchant class that had entrenched itself in California society. However, Thomas Larkin felt new hostility from the californios, who began associating him with Fremont and secret agent Archibald

Gillespie as dishonorable Americans, and associating all of them with the even more perfidious Bear Flaggers.174 Meanwhile, more and more American immigrants joined the

Bear Flaggers in Sonoma, and the Bear Flag ranks soon exceeded one hundred. The growth of the Bear Flag force, however, should not be taken for the popularity of the cause. Many Americans felt they had no choice but to join, for now they were guilty simply because they were Americans. According to pioneer John Bidwell, when the

“unsettled” portion of the American immigrants initiated the rebellion, the “settled” portion “was compelled to carry out the war in self defense.”175 Indeed, one Bear Flag leader remembered that “there were a great many of the American settlers who would have [di]vulged the plan to the Mexicans.”176 Certainly the Bear Flaggers did not garner more recruits because of their overwhelming success; they had captured the sleepy village of Sonoma unopposed, and had no battlefield victory to show. Rather, Americans

174 Larkin to Ten Eych and Turill, June 21, 1846, Larkin Papers, 5: 62.

175 John Bidwell, “Statement of Mr. John Bidwell of Chico, California, Concerning the Conquest of California, IN Letters to the Rev. Mr. Willey, 1876,” 3, C-B 468. Similar statements include William Baldridge, “Days of 1846,” 56, transcribed by Louisa Thompson, Jan. 28, 1878, MSS C-D 36; Henry Ford, “On the Bear Flag Revolt,” Bear Flag Memoirs, C-E 75.

176 Benjamin Kelsey and Mary E. Foy, “The Bear Flag Revolution,” The Quarterly: Historical Society of Southern California, Vol. 28, No. 2 (June 1946), 65. This is a reprinted interview of Benjamin Kelsey from 1887. Kelsey’s description of the californios as “Mexicans” is telling, showing either he did not see the difference between the two in 1846, the two had been conflated by 1887, or both.

406 joined the Bear Flaggers to protect their family and property in a now-nationalized and racialized struggle.

Some of the more perceptive Americans who observed the revolt firsthand understood that it was an exceedingly rash move. Larkin, who was appalled by the Bear

Flaggers for destroying his plans for peaceful annexation, believed the californios had the decisive military advantage, for they “are at home know every road & tree, and 3 to 1 in the field, and the whole country to back them.”177 The Bear Flaggers did hold a valuable hostage in Mariano Vallejo, and the prospect of getting new overland immigrants to join them as they arrived from the East, so they were not yet desperate – but neither did they have significant momentum.178 At best, their one-town Republic of California could hold out north of San Francisco where Americans predominated; it certainly could not conquer anywhere farther south, especially after Pico and Castro united their forces.179 It is telling that such a vainglorious person as John Fremont hesitated for quite some time to join the

Bears, until he finally gave in to his reckless nature. Even more significant, Lansford

Hastings, the would-be Sam Houston of California, had chosen several months earlier to travel east to direct more immigrants to the territory.180 He wanted to conquer California, but he understood that Americans did not yet have the numbers to do so. Both Hastings

177 Larkin to U.S. Commissioner and the U.S. Consul, Sandwich Islands, July 4, 1846, Larkin Papers, 5: 100-103.

178 Larkin also noted this, in Ibid.

179 One historian made the interesting comparison to Texas, writing that the area around San Francisco Bay would have become the “California Nueces,” with the Americans holding out in the north, and californios ruling in the south: Fred B. Rogers, Bear Flag Lieutenant: The Life Story of Henry L. Ford (1822-1860), paintings by Alexander Edouart (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1951), 20-21.

180 Hastings to Leidesdorff, Feb. 25, 1846, Selected Items Relating to the Fur Trade, microfilm in Bancroft Library, originals in Huntingdon Library, FILM P-W FILM.

407 and Fremont rarely chose caution over ambition, but they understood immediate revolt was a poor decision. Of course, some Bears Flaggers remembered a different story, one where victory seemed assured, but unsurprisingly they were exceedingly relieved when they learned of the arrival of U.S. Commodore John Sloat in Monterey, and the U.S. declaration of war against Mexico.181 Suddenly the Bear Flaggers looked like astute readers of North American geopolitics, and their incredibly reckless decision now appeared prophetic.

The Bear Flag Revolt, then, was not a replay of the “Texas Game.” The revolt was neither popular, nor was it a wise decision; the Bears were simply extraordinarily lucky. Even if the war between the U.S. and Mexico came only a few months later, the

Bears may have been slaughtered in the interim. It is important to note, however, that a few participants believed they needed to demonstrate that the Texas game had indeed been played. William Ide, one of the Bear Flag leaders, was particularly concerned with demonstrating the legality of the revolt, and did not want the Bear Flaggers to appear as ruffians (which, in most ways, they were). In the initial days of the revolt, it was Ide who wrote and circulated the rationale behind he and fellow Bears’ seemingly rash actions, in was essentially a declaration of independence.182 Ide’s background differed from most

Bears. Originally from Vermont, where his father had served in the state legislature, Ide had converted to Mormonism in the early 1840s, and served as a delegate to the 1844

181 Kelsey and Foy, “The Bear Flag Revolution,” 68; William Ide to Robert Stockton, June 15, 1846, Robert Stockton Correspondence, MSS C-A; John Sloat to Charles Weber, July 17, 1846, Weber Family Papers; David Hudson to H.H. Bancroft, Nov. 2, 1872, C-D 106;

182 William B. Ide Proclamation, June 18, 1846, Document for the History of California. On Ide, see Fred Rogers, William Brown Ide, Bear Flagger (San Francisco: J. Howell, 1962).

408 Mormon convention that nominated Joseph Smith for president.183 Whether he was still a practicing Mormon is uncertain, but Ide clearly had some background in constitutionalism, so his legal emphasis is unsurprising. Once Fremont gave up his U.S.

Army commission and officially joined the Bears, he too wanted to demonstrate the fiction that a new sovereign California Republic existed, to the extent that he requested

John Sutter to fly the Bear Flag over his fort.184 Whether Fremont and Ide actually believed they were playing the Texas game is unclear, but clearly they wanted to appear as if they were.

Although most of the Bear Flaggers cared less than Ide or Fremont about the legality of their actions, they too understood the importance of Texas when they created the Bear Flag itself. Undoubtedly the flag was a recreation of the Texas flag. One participant remembered that the Bears first mimicked the Texas lone star on their own flag, and then realized they needed “some other device to go with it.”185 Moreover, when the Bear Flaggers learned of the U.S.-Mexican War and took down the Bear Flag, replacing it with the Stars and Stripes, they were relieved, but many were also annoyed by how quickly U.S. officers and officials dismissed their role in the conquest of northern

California. They assumed that, by forming a republic and then attaching it to the U.S., they were entitled to some benefits – military commissions, financial compensation, and

183 See above, pages 287-288.

184 John Sutter to Andrew Sutter, Feb. 10, 1847, Sutter Papers.

185 Henry Ford, “On the Bear Flag Revolt.” See also Kelsey and Foy, “The Bear Flag Revolution,” 67; Joseph Owen William Russell, Jan. 28, 1886, Bear Flag Memoir, MSS C-D 270.

409 public praise – for this is what happened to the Texans upon U.S. annexation.186 In essence, Texas had become a language demonstrating both the legality of rebellion and the personal benefits accrued with it. Unfortunately for the Bear Flaggers, they did not receive the benefits of the Texans, and the legality of their “revolution” continues to be debated.

Conclusion

Ten years after the Bear Flag Revolt and subsequent U.S. conquest of California,

Thomas Larkin, now residing in booming San Francisco, wrote his friend Abel Stearns in

Los Angeles: “Times are hard here – becoming harder – I begin to yearn after the times prior to July 1846 and all their honest pleasures and the flesh pots of those days. Halycon days they were. We shall not enjoy there like again.”187 Larkin’s description of hard times and his nostalgia for the past was not a reflection on his financial situation, which remained quite good until his death in 1858. Rather, the former booster of American interests in California longed for the days of pre-conquest California, when he and other

California elite dominated the political, economic, and social life of the territory. By

1856, Larkin had become simply another American businessman in San Francisco. The world in which he made his name no longer existed, partially by his own making. It

186 Blackburn, Ide, 56, Simeon Ide, A Biographical Sketch of the Life of William Ide (1880), 100-103, 193- 208; Harlow, California Conquered, 113, Bancroft, History of California, 5: 243. Interestingly Mariano Vallejo wrote in his memoirs that the whole purpose of the Bear Flaggers was to establish an independent republic for several years, run up debts, then join the U.S. on the condition that the U.S. assume all their debts. While this plan was clearly too sophisticated for a rather unsophisticated revolt, it shows that Vallejo too understood that benefits came with playing the Texas game: Vallejo, “Memoirs,” 5: 108. In terms of timing, the Bear Flaggers would certainly have known about Texas annexation: overlanders typically left Missouri in mid-May to early June, well after Tyler’s approval of annexation on March 1st.

187 Larkin to Stearns, April 24, 1856, First and Last Consul, 104.

410 would be wrong to view Larkin’s nostalgia uncritically; the pre-conquest California elite made their fortunes on the backs of Indian unfree labor, while disparaging the lower classes – whether Americans, Mexicans, or californios – who hoped to share in the wealth. Yet Larkin’s longing for better days did accurately reflect the rapidity of change in California from 1846 to the mid-1850s. The U.S. conquest of California, and even more so the 1849 Gold Rush, irrevocably ended the world Larkin – and Vallejo,

Alvarado, Castro, Sutter, and Pico – had once dominated. The many visions of an independent California republic vanished as gold seekers overwhelmed the pre-conquest

California population, in such a rapid fashion that these visions of independence have largely been ignored or forgotten.

Historians who ignore the many potential republics of California miss a fascinating political world, where different peoples envisioned different forms of self- sovereignty. Juan Alvarado envisioned a California governed by californios and their elite foreign allies. Lansford Hastings, by contrast, longed to establish an Anglo-

American republic. Some californios hoped California would be locally independent, but be protected internationally by a supervising European power. Even American boosters like Mariano Vallejo and Thomas Larkin hoped U.S. annexation would preserve

California’s exsiting political structures and its local autonomy. In essence, many saw

California as a blank slate to realize their political goals. That these goals were so often different from one another helps explain why a potential California republic gets little attention from historians; it existed more as a plethora of ideas than a single reality.

Nevertheless, at various moments California did act as a breakaway republic, such as

Alvarado’s 1836 declaration of independence, the joint californio-American expulsion of

411 Micheltorena in 1845, and the 1846 junta in Larkin’s house where the elite planned their political future. At these moments, the visions of the Republic of California became reality.

412

CHAPTER 7

THE UBIQUITY OF BREAKAWAY REPUBLICANISM: INDEPENDENCE SENTIMENT IN AMERICAN OREGON, 1842-1846

Introduction

In 1851, former Chief Factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company John McLoughlin was faced with the final defeat of his land claim over the Willamette Falls in Oregon

City. For over a decade McLoughlin had asserted his right to the same parcel of land as

Oregon’s Methodist missionaries. McLoughlin had an older and therefore better claim, but the United States held McLoughlin’s former leadership of the Hudson’s Bay

Company and his British subjectood against him. When Congress passed the Oregon

Donation Act in 1850, which guaranteed 640 acres to any American settlers who had settled in Oregon prior to the bill’s passage, it added a passage that explicitly denied these same rights to McLoughlin – even though McLoughlin had declared his intention to become a U.S. citizen in 1849. Behind these manipulations was William Bryant, the first chief justice of Oregon Territory, who had purchased the land from the Methodist missionaries, and thereby wanted to defraud McLoughlin. Writing to Oregon’s territorial delegate Samuel Thurston, Bryant described why McLoughlin did not deserve the land:

“[McLoughlin] says…that he declared his intention to become an American citizen. The

Dr I believe prefers to be, and perhaps is, an American Citizen, but not a citizen of the

United States.”1

1 William P. Bryant to Samuel Royal Thurston, Jan. 6, 1851,Thurston Family Papers, MSS 379, Oregon Historical Society, Portland (hereafter OHS). Bryant’s behind-the-scenes role is described in Sidney Teiser, “The First Chief Justice of Oregon Territory: William P. Bryant,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vo. 48, No. 2 (June, 1947), 45-54.

413 Although Bryant’s words were specifically intended to fleece McLoughlin, they contained a larger truth. McLoughlin was a respected member of Oregon’s predominately American community, and in the years after losing his land a significant number of Oregonians defended McLoughlin’s claim. They recalled how he had provided early American overlanders with vital provisions that allowed them to survive their first Oregon winter. However, McLoughlin was never attached to the United States as a national entity, and in the years prior to U.S. annexation he actively opposed U.S. involvement in Oregon. As a respected member of the American community,

McLoughlin could be seen as a fellow American in many ways; as a British subject acting for the Hudson’s Bay Company, he was not a U.S. citizen.

Yet, prior the U.S. annexation of Oregon in 1846, the same could be said of

Oregon’s entire American community.2 These thousands of Americans had consciously left U.S. borders for a region with an uncertain political future. They did so primarily because Oregon held the promise of free land that was unavailable in the United States.

Once they arrived in Oregon, they formed a government, engaged in local and international commerce, staked claims to land, and conducted Indian diplomacy – all without the oversight of the U.S. federal government. Unlike the British McLoughlin, these American Oregonians could regain their U.S. citizenship seamlessly after U.S. annexation, but they were not acting as U.S. agents beforehand. Indeed, a substantial minority of these Oregonians supported the creation of an independent Oregon, or a

2 A note on geographic terminology: Before 1846, Oregon was an ambiguous term, and could refer to territory as far north as 54’40” on the Pacific coast, which was the border of Russian Alaska. For the sake of narrative flow, I use “Oregon” as a synonym for the Willamette Valley and its environs, home to the entire population of the region’s pre-1846 American population. When referring to the larger territory claimed by both the U.S. and Great Britain, I will explicitly use the term “Oregon Country.”

414 larger Pacific Republic that also encompassed northern California. Having already founded a flourishing American community with a functional local government, this minority believed remaining permanently apart from the United States held significant incentives. Even for the majority of Americans who did support U.S. annexation, their reasons stemmed more from practical concerns about land and commerce, rather than an abiding sense of U.S. nationalism. Thus, by the early 1840s Oregon was clearly destined to be American – but it was not destined to be part of the United States.

With very few exceptions, scholars have ignored American settlers’ support for

Oregon independence. Many historians have examined the complex diplomacy surrounding the U.S.-Britain Oregon Treaty, but when it comes to the annexation story within Oregon itself, they have related a straightforward story of Americans who always hoped to be part of the Union from the time they arrived in the Willamette Valley – or even as soon as they left U.S. borders on the overland trail. Indeed, even for those historians who have demonstrated the on-the-ground complexity of U.S. expansion,

Oregon is the exception to the rule, where the ideology of Manifest Destiny came closest to reality.3 In this narrative, thousands of Americans journeyed to Oregon, quickly

3 Scholars who have ignored or underplayed the Oregon independence sentiment in larger syntheses include Anne Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 400-408; Richard W. Etulain, Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), 143-145; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought?: The Transformation of American, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 712-722; Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History, (Revised Ed; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 113-119; Dorothy Johansen and Charles Gates, Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest (Second Ed.; New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 189-194; Ray Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1830-1860 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1956), 156-157; Frederick Merk, The Oregon Question: Essays in Anglo-American Diplomacy and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 234-254, Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion (New York: Knopf, 2008), 157-186; Richard Kluger, Seizing Destiny: The Relentless Expansion of American Territory (New York: Vintage, 2008), 400-432; Will Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 191-192. Historians of Oregon have also largely ignored

415 dominated it by sheer demographics, longed for U.S. annexation, and celebrated when it was achieved. In a sense, these historians do have a point: a majority of

Americans in Oregon openly favored U.S. annexation. This pro-American sentiment contrasts with the previous breakaway republicans of this study – American Patriots,

Cherokees, Mormons, and Anglo-Californians, as well as the Anglo-Texans; most of these people were at best ambivalent about U.S. expansion, or oftentimes overtly hostile to it. In Oregon, by contrast, only a minority of settlers were ambivalent about U.S. expansion, and only a few were hostile to it. Yet it is important to note why Oregon differed. In the case of other breakaway republics, the alternative to U.S. rule was either complete independence or significant autonomy under a weak Mexican state; in Oregon, the most likely alternative to U.S. rule was British rule, and this was completely unacceptable to Anglophobic Americans. No wonder a majority favored the United

States.

Thus Oregon does stand as the exception to the rule of breakaway republics – but only a partial exception. Even though only a minority in Oregon contemplated full independence, this minority was in many ways a more remarkable phenomenon than other breakaway republicans of the era. It is no mystery why the Cherokee and the this sentiment for independence, at most giving it passing attention: Malcolm Clark, Eden Seekers: The Settlement of Oregon, 1818-1862 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1981), 139-176; John Hussey, Champoeg: Place of Transition: A Disputed History (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1967), 150-172; Hubert Howe Bancroft (ghostwritten by Frances Fuller Victor), History of Oregon, Vol. 1, 1834-1848 (San Francisco: The History Company Publishers, 1886), 292-445. The few historians who treat this sentiment seriously include Robert Loewenberg, Equality on the Oregon Frontier: Jason Lee and the Methodist Mission, 1834-1843 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976), 140-169, 195-228; Loewenberg, “Creating a Provisional Government in Oregon: A Revision,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Jan., 1977), 13-24; Melinda Marie Jetté, At the Hearth of the Crossed Races: A French-Indian Community in Nineteenth-Century Oregon, 1812-1859 (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2015), 167-173; Richard Maxwell Brown, “Oregon,” in The New Encyclopedia of the American West, ed. Howard Lamar (New Haven: Yale University Press), 830; Robert M. Utley, A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1997), 212-216.

416 Mormons wished to achieve sovereignty outside of a United States that had treated them so poorly. The motivations of the Patriots, the Texans, and the Anglo-Californians were less anti-United States, but at the very least they sought self-sovereignty in regions already independent of the U.S., where some form of government already existed.4 In

Oregon, however, Americans entered a region without formal governance, and, in order to manage daily practicalities, they subsequently created the Oregon Provisional

Government from scratch. There was nothing sacrosanct about this government, and there was no Oregon history or Oregonian identity that pushed these Americans towards independence – yet a significant minority still supported it. If Oregon was the exception to the rule, then it is also the exception that proves the rule: the minority of Oregon settlers who supported a breakaway republic demonstrated just how widespread and powerful breakaway republicanism had become.

Oregon before the Overland Migration

In 1818, the United States and Great Britain agreed to the “joint occupation” of the vast Oregon Country, which stretched from the northern border of Spanish California to the southern border of Russian Alaska. The countries renewed this agreement in 1827, essentially letting time sort out the Oregon boundary for good.5 Until the early 1840s, time seemed to be on the side of the British, in the form of the Hudson’s Bay Company

(HBC) and its Chief Factor John McLoughlin. In 1824 McLoughlin assumed control of

4 In the case of the Patriots, I’m referencing the multiple proposed Canadian constitutions that were never put into action due to British power.

5 This is a necessarily simplistic explanation for two complicated series of diplomatic negotiations. See Merk, The Oregon Question, 1-188, for an in depth description.

417 Fort Vancouver, situated on the north side of the Columbia River on today’s

Oregon-Washington border, and within several years created nothing less than a “fur empire” in the Pacific Northwest. By bringing in a multinational group of workers and forming lasting trading partnerships with the native peoples of the region, the HBC dominated the international fur trade, and effectively shut out all American competition.

While the HBC’s power rested on trade, it also facilitated settlement around Fort

Vancouver, where former HBC employees created a small agrarian community. This community, as well as relations within the HBC as a whole, rested on the intermarriage of men of mostly French Canadian descent and native women – including McLoughlin himself with his metís Cree-French Canadian wife Marguerite.6 While the community’s race relations were fluid, its incipient class relations were not, as McLoughlin ran Fort

Vancouver and its environs in a strictly hierarchical manner, and did so largely successfully. By the mid-1830s, Oregon County was practically McLoughlin’s private fiefdom, and any intruder into the region would have to navigate his rule.

However, McLoughlin’s talents could not prevent the spread of infectious diseases among Oregon’s natives. The thousands of Kalapuyan and Chinookan peoples settled in and around the Willamette Valley had lived prosperously in loosely organized villages, but in 1831 the “intermittent fever” – probably malaria – first spread into the region. Typical of European infectious diseases, it affected but did not devastate those of

European background affiliated with the HBC, but it utterly ravaged the local native

6 On this mixed race community, see Jetté, At the Heart of the Crossed Races, 12-69. On McLoughlin’s family, see Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families, 97-109. Because I am largely discussing men in this chapter (see below for further discussion of gender), I will most often refer to this community as French Canadians (echoing Jetté).

418 peoples, and did so for the next three years. By 1841, the Kalupuyans and

Chinookans had lost over 90% of their population.7 Beyond the tragic loss of life in these communities, these yearly epidemics had two lasting effects on Oregon history. First, while the French Canadian community around Fort Vancouver was largely unaffected, the death of surrounding natives left the French Canadians isolated and – potentially – vulnerable, for they no longer had the ability to find substantial native allies in case of conflict.8 Second, the Willamette Valley now lay open for settlement, for the remaining natives had no way to resist any significant population incursion. Unlike California, where thousands of Indians from the interior continued to threaten californio and

American settlement – at least in in theory if not in fact – the Indians of the Willamette

Valley would be irrelevant as geopolitical players in the power struggles to follow.9

In 1834, Methodist Missionary Jason Lee traveled across the continent and intruded into this world. Lee was originally born in Quebec, directly adjacent to the

Vermont border, but he left for the U.S. in his teens, where he attended school and first converted to Methodism.10 Lee was the first of a series of Methodist and Presbyterians ministers from the United States who hoped to convert Oregon’s natives to Protestant

Christianity. McLoughlin welcomed Lee, directed him to settle near the French

Canadians in the Willamette Valley, and provided him supplies to get the first mission off

7 Jetté, At the Hearth of the Crossed Races, 67.

8 Ibid., 69.

9 Importantly, this is only the case in the Willamette Valley. North of the Columbia River, where the missionaries were more isolated, Indians remained geopolitical players – as would be evident in the 1847 Whitman Massacre and the destructive Cayuse War that followed.

10 Here again we see the fluidity of citizenship in the early republic. As portrayed in the historical record, Lee is American for all intents and purposes, and did indeed represent American entrance into the region – even if, by birth, he was not American at all.

419 the ground. McLoughlin would eventually regret his decision, but initially relations between the HBC and the missionaries were entirely hospitable. From a certain perspective, the missionaries were successful in their endeavors, opening more than a dozen missionary stations (both Methodist and Presbyterian) by 1840. Spread as far as

Puget Sound, all of these missions ministered to local native populations, who welcomed needed supplies and care in the aftermath of yearly epidemics. Yet the success of the stations did not translate to successful conversion of the Indians; although many Indians took part in aspects of mission activities, few – if any – Indians adopted Christianity and its “civilized” life wholesale. Because of their failure, over time Lee and his cohort assumed the role more of secular colonizers than they did Christian missionaries. Of course in the Protestant worldview, colonizing went hand-in-hand with Christianizing, but undoubtedly missionaries in Oregon were much more successful with the former than the latter.11 By engaging in commerce and politics of the region, the missionaries quickly became important players in Oregon’s local secular affairs.12

The missionaries also became important in the geopolitical affairs of the North

American continent. Before missionaries arrived in Oregon, Americans were mostly ignorant of the region and its economic potential. There had been a few efforts to induce

American settlement previously, notably the newspaper articles of Hall Jackson Kelley, a

11 Robert Loewenberg, “Saving Oregon Again: A Western Perennial?” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Dec., 1977), 346.

12 On the missionaries, see Robert Loewenberg, Equality on the Oregon Frontier; Clark, Eden Seekers, 92- 164; Clifford Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon, 2 Vols. (Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1973). Importantly, most of the missionaries who traveled to Oregon came as laymen who would aid in the construction and running of the missions, but would not act as ministers to natives. When Oregon’s population expanded, these laymen then seamlessly transitioned into non-mission life.

420 Maine native who became obsessed with colonizing Oregon in the 1820s.

Washington Irving’s novels Astoria and The Rocky Mountain also awakened interest in the region, and in congress Virginia Representative John Floyd brought a bill to the floor proposing the U.S. to annex Oregon every year from 1820 to 1824.13 Yet it was Jason

Lee’s return to the U.S. in 1838 that truly initiated the American settlement of Oregon.

Lee’s primary purpose was to gain missionary reinforcements, and also to secure his leadership role – at that point under question by both missionaries in Oregon and the

Methodist Missionary Board in the East – but his speeches about Oregon reached a broader audience. By 1839 potential settlers formed the Oregon Provisional Emigration

Society, “Oregon Fever” engulfed western states, and the small Peoria Party – the first

American overlander party – was on its way to Oregon.14 These developments led to a mutually reinforcing cycle: the more Americans who arrived, the more reports on Oregon were sent back to the United States, which in turn led to more American migrants.

Although the population of non-missionary Americans was no more than a few dozen in

1839, the writing was on the wall: Americans would soon populate Oregon.

In 1838, before any large American migration, one final small but important group of people arrived in the Willamette Valley – two Catholic missionaries. Since

1834 the French Canadian community had petitioned for Catholic priests in order to form their own parish. The French Canadians were not necessarily reacting to the arrival of

Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries, with whom they largely got along. Rather, they simply wanted to create a religious community of their own, and build the social and

13 John Unruh, The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 90-92.

14 Ibid.; Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous, 66-67.

421 educational institutions that came with it.15 However, the Catholic priests subsequent missionizing efforts towards Indians quickly put them at odds with the

Protestants. Protestant missionaries’ resentment only increased in the early 1840s, as they perceived that Catholics were “penetrating” the country, essentially winning the battle for souls among the natives.16 Key to the perception of Catholic success was the support of John McLoughlin and the HBC. As Presbyterian missionary Henry Spalding wrote, “If the Priests were thrown upon their own resources for interpreters & for subsistence they would do but little, but sustained by the H.B. Co…they have nothing to do except apply themselves diligently to their work.”17 Indeed, Jason lamented that John

McLoughlin, a Catholic himself, would “rejoice to have the whole country under catholic domination.”18 Lee’s fear was overblown, for it was not religion but business that dominated McLoughlin’s thinking, and there is little evidence to suggest he cared about converting Oregon’s native peoples. However, although not rooted in reality, this

Catholic-HBC alliance was powerful in the minds of the Protestant missionaries. To oppose it, the missionaries believed they needed a larger American population. It was coming.19

15 Jetté, At the Earth of the Crossed Races, 92-121.

16 Jason Lee to Methodist Missionary Board, March 15, 1841, Oregon Methodist Missionary Papers, MSS 017, Collins Memorial Library Archives, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington (hereafter UPS).

17 Henry Spalding to David Green, Oct. 10, 1839, Letters and Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Vol. 138: Oregon Indians, 1838-1844, Vol. 1-3, 133.

18 Lee to Methodist Mission Board, Sept. 23, 1841, Oregon Methodist Missionary Papers, UPS.

19 Allan Waller to Amos Cooke, Nov. 30, 1841, Amos Cooke Letters, MS 1223, OHS; Marcus Whitman to David Greene, Nov. 1, 1843, Letters and Papers of the American Board of Commissioners, 723;

422 Facing East and West from Missouri

Beginning in 1840 with the small Peoria Party, non-missionary Americans started arriving in Oregon, and each year their numbers exponentially increased. A few dozen in

1840 and 1841 gave way to over hundred in 1842, but it was in 1843 that overland immigration truly swelled. That year 875 Americans traveled to Oregon in the “Great

Migration.” They were followed by 1475 migrants in 1844, and 2500 in 1845.20 It is important to emphasize the most salient fact of this migration: these immigrants were leaving U.S. borders, and were in effect expatriating themselves from their native country.21 Indeed, Jason Lee referred to Oregon as “this expatriated country.”22

Migrants were never certain that the United States would gain sole legal possession of the

Willamette Valley – especially before 1841 when the HBC dominated the region. After the Great Migration of 1843, the U.S. had a significantly better claim than it did previously for now Americans resided in the region, yet even then Oregon’s fate was unclear – especially if war broke out between the U.S. and Great Britain, which looked likely in 1845 and 1846.

Of course, Oregon’s political future was more defined than other western regions in the early 1840s; it always looked as if the U.S. would acquire at least some of Oregon

Country. In this regard Oregon differed from California, the other destination for

20 Unruh, The Plains Across, 119.

21 This point is either lost or downplayed in most works on the Oregon Trail, which often skip over 1846 as an important year to periodize the migration: Unruh, The Plains Across; Clark, Eden Seekers; David Dary, The Oregon Trail: An American Saga (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004); and William Bowen, The Willamette Valley: Migration and Settlement on the Oregon Frontier (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), all follow this pattern. Will Bagley, in So Rugged and Mountainous, is one of the few historians of the trail to divide the journey before and after the Mexican War.

22 Jason Lee and J.H. Frost to Charles Pitman, March 30, 1843, UPS.

423 American overlanders. Because California’s political future was entirely up in the air, it was a much riskier destination, and therefore received a much riskier type of migrant. As narrated in Chapter Six, American immigrants in California were integral participants in three conflicts in the decade leading up to the U.S.-Mexican War.23 In contrast, the much larger group of Oregon immigrants remained at peace with the HBC, the British, and with one another. They proved much more reticent to take bold political action.24 However, their reticence notwithstanding, while there was a much greater possibility that Oregon would become part of the U.S., nothing was fully secure until the

U.S. and Britain signed a treaty. Oregon may have been a less risky destination, but it was never riskless.

While migrants possessed a multitude of reasons for leaving the United States and traveling to Oregon, most made the decision primarily based upon economics.

Specifically, migrants were responding to the effects of the Panic of 1837. Although the depression began in 1837, the economy did not truly sink to its lowest until 1839, and economic distress did not reach some western states until 1841.25 It was these western states from where most migrants came – from Missouri above all, but also other states from the western Upper South (Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee) and the states of the Old

23 Alvarado’s rebellion in 1836, the Micheltorena-californio struggle in 1844-5, and the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846.

24 Unruh, The Plains Across, 93-94; Dorothy Johansen, “A Working Hypothesis for the Study of Migrations,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 36 (Feb., 1967), 1-12.

25 Jessica M. Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Alasdair Roberts, The First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder in the United States, 1837-1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012).

424 Northwest.26 Undeniably the depression was the primary push factor for the migrants. In the early 1840s, wheat prices fell by more than half across the Midwest.27

Coupled with these drastic price drops, many families simply could not get their agricultural goods to the market. They farmed land distant from major rivers and roads, for land speculators had already purchased all the prime real estate.28 In certain western regions, specie itself was hard to come by. Thus, for many in the western states, their economic situation had become untenable. As one migrant noted, “I realiz[ed] my limitations in that then well settled country.”29 This economic crisis did not mean the migrants were the most desperate inhabitants of the Midwest. Most overlanders traveled as families, and it cost $125-150 to outfit each family member for the journey; clearly migrants possessed at least some resources.30 Nevertheless, their financial states were critical enough that they were willing to undertake a risky, dangerous journey across half a continent, to a region with an uncertain political future.

Yet, unlike the United States, Oregon offered free land. In 1839, awakened to

Oregon’s potential by Jason Lee’s arrival in the East, Missouri Senator Lewis Linn proposed a bill granting 640 acres in Oregon Country to whomever made the journey.

Linn’s hoped to rapidly populate Oregon with Americans, thereby giving the United

26 Dean May, Three Frontiers: Family, Land, and Society in the American West, 1850-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 41-42; Will Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 129.

27 James Christy Bell, Jr., Opening a Highway to the Pacific, 1838-1846 (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 124-125; Bowen, The Willamette Valley, 17-18.

28 Melvin C. Jacobs, Winning Oregon: A Study of an Expansionist Movement (Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1938), 56-58.

29 John McCoy, “Memoirs,” MSS 1166, OHS.

30 John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 20-24.

425 States a better claim to the territory. Although the U.S. Congress largely ignored the bill, westerners did not, and seized upon the 640 acres as a basis for their migration.

The first migrants simply claimed the land for themselves because they were the first to arrive, but soon Linn’s proposed law in congress became actual law in Oregon: in 1843, the Oregon Provisional Government enshrined the 640-acre promise in the “Law of Land

Claims.”31 As long as a claimant made improvements to his land within six months of making the claim, and then resided on it within a year, he gained legal title to it.32

This liberal land policy stood in direct contrast with the land policy of the United

States, which had favored speculator over squatter since the nation’s founding. While there may have always existed “empty” land (most Americans of all backgrounds disregarding native land claims) until 1841 it was prohibitively expensive for most

Americans. The federal government consistently emphasized accruing revenue above populating the West. This policy changed somewhat when Congress passed the

Preemption Act of 1841. The “Log Cabin Bill” allowed squatters to purchase 160 acres of land on which they had previously settled for the price of $1.25 an acre, as long as they actually lived on the land and did not own land anywhere else. Symbolically this law was an important break from the conservative land policies of the past, later defined by one historian as a “frontier triumph.”33 However, even $1.25 per acre was too expensive

31 See Michael Husband, “Senator Lewis Linn and the Oregon Question.” Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Oct., 1971), 1-20.

32 “Law of Land Claims,” July 5, 1843, in Joseph Brown, Brown’s Political History of the Oregon Government…(Portland, OR, 1892), 104. Brown’s work is mostly reproduced primary source documents, with his own brief narrative between each document.

33 Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1936 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942), 72-91. See also On the struggle for preemption rights, see Reeve Huston, “Land Conflict and Land Policy in the United States, 1785-1841,” in Andrew Shankman, ed., The World of the Revolutionary American Republic: Land, Labor, and the Conflict for a Continent (New York: Routledge,

426 for westerners during the depths of the depression, as many were already in debt.

Indeed, there is some evidence that the Preemption Act may have even exacerbated inequality. When squatters were unable to buy their land, they had two options: they could borrow money from loan sharks agreed at usurious interest rates that they would be unlikely to repay, or they could become tenants under speculators who purchased the land that they themselves had hoped to own.34 By mid-century upwards of half of all

Midwestern farmers were tenants.35 Meanwhile, in Oregon, migrants could attain four times as much land for free. Recalled Missouri pioneer Peter Burnett, “…[The Oregon] land would ultimately be able to pay [my debts.] There was at least a chance. In staying where I was, I saw no reasonable probability of ever being able to pay my debts.”36 No wonder Burnett and thousands of other migrants chose to forego a somewhat liberal U.S. land policy for the remarkably generous Oregon policy.

Importantly, while the migrant desire to acquire land was certainly about economics, it also had ideological roots. Free land in the West promised not just financial gain, but a specific way of life. By acquiring substantial holdings, farmers in the western U.S. would be able to bestow their many sons with land of their own. This very traditional practice had once been the norm, but the increasingly market-driven

2014), 325-345; John R. Van Atta, Securing the West: Politics, Public Lands, and the Fate of the Old Republic, 1785-1850 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).

34 See Paul Wallace Gates, “Land Policy and Tenancy in the Prairie States,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (May, 1941), 60-82; John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven: Yale Uniersity Press, 1986), 181-186.

35 Jeremy Atack, “Tenants and Yeomen in the Nineteenth Century,” Agricultural History, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Summer, 1988), 31. Atack’s estimate of 50% is for 1860, but while this may have been slightly better in previous decades, Atack argues tenancy was consistently a high percentage throughout the antebellum era.

36 Peter Burnett, Recollections of an Old Pioneer (New York, 1880), 98.

427 United States made it significantly less feasible.37 Thus families could reassert tradition beyond U.S. borders, leaving a world that no longer resonated with their values and customs. The increasingly capitalistic U.S. economy, with its rampant speculation and boom-and-bust cycles and growing commercialization of agriculture, was at odds with this traditional outlook, but the excesses of capitalism could be avoided in Oregon.

One Oregonian wrote to his brothers in the U.S. that a crucial benefit of Oregon’s economy was that “there is no money here at present…Our wealth consists of in herds of cattle, horses, and hogs, etc., which we can exchange for all the necessiaries [sic] of life.”38 While this writer believed specie would be available in a few years, he only valued it as hard money, nothing more than a medium for exchange. In essence, Oregon migrants sought a return to the ideal of the agrarian yeoman, prosperous but not wealthy, unbeholden to neither man nor market. Alva Shaw, an Oregon pioneer from Ohio, summarized this attitude best: “[In Ohio], you are a slave to your property, your labor is principally spent for [others], while here [in Oregon] a man’s property will support him.”39 The West, in essence, was not just a solution to individual economic hardship, but it was a solution to a broader socio-economic world with which migrants could no longer identify.

Embedded in this traditional agrarian outlook was an aversion to slavery, for migrants from both slaveholding and non-slaveholding states. With a very few rare

37 Kathleen Neils Conzen, “A Saga of Families,” in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Milner, O’Connor, and Sandweiss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 315-358.

38 Medorem Crawford, A Letter from Medorem Crawford, 1845 (Eugene, OR: Friends of the Library, University of Oregon, 1971), 2.

39 Alva Shaw, 1844 letter, MSS 941, OHS.

428 exceptions, slaveholders did not migrate to Oregon in the early 1840s. Most simply did not face the hardship that non-slaveholders did; their slaves acted as an asset on which they could fall back in hard times, selling or using them as collateral to gain more money.40 For slaveholders who did need to migrate, the Republic of Texas was a much better destination. In contrast to most Texas migrants, those who traveled to Oregon were explicitly opposed to slavery. Migrants from the Old Northwest brought their free soil ideology with them, while those from Missouri and other southern states had little attachment to a system that had clearly not benefited them.41 Indeed, as slave agriculture became even more commercially successful, non-slaveholders fell behind economically.

However, these antislavery westerners were also decidedly anti-black, and once in the

West they attempted to solve the increasing sectional issues engulfing the United States by prohibiting slavery and African-Americans. As one settler noted, Oregon would be

“superior” to the eastern states because it would avoid the evils of “mixed races.”42

Nothing demonstrated Oregonians’ free soil commitment more than one of the first laws passed by the Oregon Provisional Government in 1844. “An Act in Regard to Slavery and Free Negroes and Mulatoes [sic]” barred slavery in Oregon, and also threatened any black resident who remained in the region with twenty to thirty-nine lashes.43

40 Bell, Opening a Highway to the Pacific, 126; May, Three Frontiers, 43; James Oakes, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1990), 80-136, especially 94-96; Edward Baptist, The Other Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 292-297.

41 Bowen, Opening a Highway to the Pacific, 126; Robert Johannsen, Frontier Politics and the Sectional Conflict: The Pacific Northwest on the Eve of the Civil War (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1955), 18-21.

42 Peter Burnett, Recollections of an Old Pioneer (New York, 1880), 221.

43 For the free soil ideology of Oregon and its black exclusion laws, see Thomas C. McClintock, “James Saules, Peter Burnett, and the Oregon Black Exclusion Law of June 1844,” The Pacific Northwest

429 Considering that the black presence was negligible in Oregon at the time, this law was definitively an ideological statement rather than an immediately enforceable measure.44 This infamous “lash law” demonstrated the more general racial pull of

Oregon: it would become the agrarian white ideal.

There were, of course, other reasons to leave the United States beyond the tangible availability of free land and the ideological fulfillment of free soil. Some migrants sought a disease-free climate, especially at a time when “ague” – malaria – routinely erupted in the Mississippi River Valley.45 Additional factors included

Americans’ propensity to move continuously in search of better opportunities, and, for some, a simple quest for adventure.46 Importantly, this myriad of factors did not include patriotism. Whatever their reasons for traveling to Oregon, migrants were not “winning” the region for the United States – despite what many claimed in their memoirs. In these memoirs, migrants recalled they left for Oregon with distinctly patriotic intentions.47 For example, one migrant remembered he made the following claim upon leaving U.S.

Quarterly, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Summer, 1995), 121-130; Clark, Eden Seekers, 261; Quintard Taylor, “Slaves and Free Men: Blacks in the Oregon Country, 1840-1860,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), 153-158; John Dippel, Race to the Frontier: “White Flight” and Westward Expansion (New York: Algora Publishing, 2005), 259-277; Eugene Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 79-80; Elizabeth McLagan, A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788-1940 (Portland: The Georgian Press Co., 1980), 23-32.

44 This law emerged following the Cockstock Affair, examined below, and therefore was not divorced from current events in Oregon. However, this incident only confirmed the antislavery yet racist beliefs of most white Oregonians.

45 Bowen, Willamette Valley, 18-21; Jacobs, Winning Oregon, 62-65.

46 Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous, 121-125.

47 Indeed, this became the major emphasis of the Oregon Pioneer Society in the second half of the nineteenth century. See Abner Sylvester Baker, “The Oregon Pioneer Tradition in the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. Diss.: University of Oregon, 1968), 56-84.

430 borders: “Well, I allow that the United States has the best right to that country, and I am going to help make that right good.”48 While a few Oregonians argued for their patriotism immediately following Oregon’s annexation to the U.S. in 1846, this attitude became truly ubiquitous in the second half of the nineteenth century. By then, “saving

Oregon” became the keystone of the Oregon “pioneer tradition,” in which former migrants celebrated their accomplishments in annual meetings of the Oregon Pioneer

Association.49 However, in the diaries and letters written before 1846, the United States was largely a nonentity. No migrant lamented leaving U.S. borders, and before 1845 no migrant expressed a desire for U.S. annexation of Oregon prior to their departure from the U.S.50 Ultimately Oregon migrants were matter-of-fact expatriates looking for more secure lives for themselves in the Pacific Northwest, concerned more with gaining free land than this land’s future political fate.

Importantly, Oregon overlanders’ elevation of pragmatism over patriotism does not mean they were purposefully anti-American. Simply because they left the United

States did not mean they abhorred their former country. On the contrary, compared to the other two groups of western migrants – the anti-U.S. Mormons and the volatile, ambitious overlanders who went to California – future Oregonians were concerned with

U.S. interests. While migrants were clearly dissatisfied with their current economic prospects and, more ambiguously, aspects of American society more generally, they were

48 John Minto, “Reminiscences of Experiences on the Oregon Trail in 1844,” ed. H.S. Lyman, The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 2, vol. 2, no. 2 (June, 1901), 130.

49 Baker, “The Oregon Pioneer Tradition in the Nineteenth Century,” 56-84; Merk, The Oregon Question, 235-236, and esp. 236, note 6, for an older literature taking this attitude.

50 This statement is based on reading over one hundred trail diaries and letters. Once in the territory, this sentiment changed for many – but not all – migrants, which will be examined below.

431 not shedding their American heritage when they left U.S. borders. Indeed, the

Fourth of July remained an important day for Oregonians; some remarked on the anniversary in their diaries, and, upon reaching the West, settlers routinely chose this date as an opportune time to hold important meetings.51 They were proud of their American background, and clearly respected American institutions. Like all the actors of this study,

Oregon migrants remained staunchly committed to republican government. Importantly, however, unlike the other breakaway republicans in this study, a majority unambiguously supported the U.S. after their arrival in Oregon. Yet most who held this sentiment arrived at their opinions not out of some abiding affection for the United States as a political entity, but for the same pragmatic reasons they had chosen to migrate to Oregon in the first place: land. They believed that with U.S. annexation would come the passage of

Linn’s Oregon bill, which would legally guarantee them the holdings they had just acquired by occupation. Thus U.S. annexation became a more enticing scenario than it had seemed prior to leaving U.S. borders. However, migrant support for U.S. annexation was not unequivocal; moreover, pro-annexationists faced a minority who viewed a different future: Oregon’s complete independence.

The Defeat of Oregon Independence, Part I

Despite its brief duration and the small population over which it governed, the history of the Oregon Provisional Government is immensely complex. The primary reason for this complexity is found in the nature of Oregon migration, for after 1841 each

51 William Gray Diary, Gray Papers, William Gray Papers, MSS 1201, OHS; Robert Newell, Account of 1843 Champoeg Meeting, Robert Newell Papers, MSS 1197, OHS; Oregon Spectator, July 4, 1846.

432 subsequent year brought a much larger group of migrants than the prior year. In

1843 and 1844, so large was the migration that it outnumbered the entire population then living in Oregon. Thus the decisions made in the spring and summer of one year were often completely overturned by the spring of the following year, after the new migrants had arrived and survived the winter, and now were able to engage in politics. Not only did this fluidity of population mean that the government structure was constantly in flux, but also that there were never any official political parties around which to organize.

Therefore, when this study refers to the “independent party” and the “Ultra-American

Party,” it does so for the sake of narrative flow. Oregon’s political “parties” were simply loose factions, and should not read as the equivalent of the Whigs and Democrats of the

Second Party System.52 Moreover, even these factions hide the diversity of Oregon’s population, which, as demonstrated above, was divided by ethnicity and religion.

Considering its complexity, it is unsurprising that the pre-annexation Oregon Provisional

Government has been mostly ignored by general American historians, and left to a dedicated group of local Oregon historians.53

52 See Walter C. Woodward, Political Parties in Oregon, 1843-1868 (Portland, OR: J.K. Gill and Co., 1913), 28-30.

53 On early Oregon politics, see Clark, Eden Seekers, 139-176; Hussey, Champoeg: Place of Transition, 150-172; Bancroft, History of Oregon, 292-445; Loewenberg, Equality on the Oregon Frontier, 140-169, 195-228; Loewenberg, “Creating a Provisional Government in Oregon: A Revision,” 13-24; Jetté, At the Hearth of the Crossed Races, 167-173; Richard Maxwell Brown, “Oregon,” 830; Woodward, Political Parties in Oregon, 13-34; Mirth Tufts Kaplan, “Courts, Counselors, and Cases: The Judiciary of Oregon’s Provisional Government,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 2 (June, 1961), 117-163. See also Loewenberg, “Creating a Provisional Government,” 14, note 4, for a list of articles from the early 1900s covering various aspects of the Provisional Government.

433 These historians have traced the political beginnings of Oregon to the death of Ewing Young in 1841.54 Young was an American mountain man who became the wealthiest Oregon settler by virtue of his early 1834 arrival, as, once the Oregon population grew, his well-developed land claim assumed the role of marketplace, store, bank, and factory.55 Because many Willamette Valley settlers were either Young’s creditors or debtors, the community decided that Oregon required a probate court to administer Young’s estate after he died intestate. Therefore, in February, both Americans and French Canadians gathered to arrange the matter. At first they also discussed drafting a constitution and creating a more organized government. However, as one participant remembered, this idea “died away” because the population was still so small

(perhaps 150 people), and the “peace and harmony of the community could be preserved without it.”56 Ultimately the settlers decided to simply appoint a probate judge and several administrators.

Although these steps towards government proved to be small, it was the beginnings of an official Oregon government, and led some Oregon settlers to contemplate a more sophisticated governing structure – especially because it was clear more Americans would arrive in the region in the future. When the part of the U.S.

Exploring Expedition traveled up the Columbia River in early 1842, several Methodist community leaders met with its commander Lieutenant Charles Wilkes to ask him his

54 This was not the first effort at community organizing – the Methodist Missionaries and the HBC had agreed to enforce temperance in 1836 – but it was the first time settlers of all backgrounds came together as essentially an Oregon community.

55 Hussey, Champoeg, 136.

56 Gustavus Hines, Life on the Plains of the Pacific. Oregon: Its History, Conditions, and Prospects…(Buffalo, 1852), 420.

434 opinion about forming a government. Wilkes bluntly opposed such a move, reasoning that the “moral code” of the community was sufficient to ensure order. As he stated, “No crime appears to have been committed, and the persons and property of settlers are secure.”57 According to Wilkes’ Narrative of the United States Exploring

Expedition, published in 1845, Wilkes also offered one additional reason as to why the

Oregon settlers should avoid forming a stronger government: “I further advised them to wait until the government of the United States should throw its mantle over them.”58

Interestingly, this statement only appears in Wilkes’ Narrative, not his diary written at the time. Both diary and the Narrative agreed on Wilkes’ discussion of the “moral code,” but only the Narrative mentioned the inevitable involvement of the United States.59

The discrepancy between Wilkes’ 1841 diary and his 1845 Narrative does not necessarily mean Wilkes never mentioned U.S. annexation in his meeting with the

Methodists. In his account of the settlement of Oregon, Methodist layman Gustavus

Hines also remembered Wilkes stating that the United States would “probably soon extend jurisdiction over the country.”60 Yet Hines wrote his account in the 1850s, and thus could rely on Wilkes’ already published Narrative. It seems likelier that Wilkes’ diary was the more accurate account, which implies he never mentioned U.S. involvement in Oregon to the Oregon settlers. This assertion is strengthened by the rest of Wilkes’ actions in the Pacific Northwest, in which he carefully avoided matters of

57 Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, 5 Volumes, (1845), 4: 352-353.

58 Ibid.

59 Edmund S. Meany, ed., “Diary of Wilkes in the Northwest,” Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Jan., 1926), 48-49.

60 Hines, Life on the Plains of the Pacific, 421.

435 international geopolitics. The Exploring Expedition’s mission in the Pacific was twofold: gain as much scientific knowledge as possible for the United States, and act as a protective ally for American shipping to China, Hawaii, and other Pacific nations.61 Not included in these goals – at least not explicitly – was facilitating U.S. continental expansion, in either Oregon or California. Thus, Wilkes tread softly when the expedition moved towards the HBC-dominated Pacific Northwest, ensuring he would have

McLoughlin’s acquiescence in regards to his forays into the region.62 Moreover, Wilkes encountered a bit of a crisis while in Oregon Country, for one of his vessels (the U.S.S.

Peacock) hit a sandbar and sunk at the mouth the Columbia River. No lives were lost, but Wilkes needed to arrange transportation and supplies for the stranded sailors; getting involved in local Oregon politics would have been the least of his worries. Revealingly,

Wilkes’ even betrayed his statement about imminent U.S. oversight in a later volume of the Narrative, in which he predicted Oregon and California would eventually join together to form a “powerful maritime nation” that would “control the destinies of the

Pacific.”63 While he believed this nation would be controlled by the “Anglo-Norman race,” it would not be part of the United States. Wilkes’ earlier contrary statement, in which he maintained that he told Methodist missionaries that the U.S. would soon control the territory, was likely added later, when many more Americans were calling for Oregon annexation. By adding this statement, Wilkes would have demonstrated he was not

61 For Wilkes’ actions in Oregon, see Henry Viola, “The Wilkes Expedition on the Pacific Coast,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), 21-31.

62 Ibid., 25.

63 Wilkes, Narrative, 5: 171-172.

436 neglecting U.S. geopolitical interests when he traveled to Oregon in 1842 – when in fact he was.64

However, American settlers in Oregon did view Wilkes’ arrival in a geopolitical light. Americans were still a minority of the population within the Willamette Valley, and the arrival of the U.S. Exploring Expedition excited them, raising hopes that the U.S.

– and implicitly, American settlers themselves – would soon assume power over the region. As Gustavus Hines remembered, “The arrival on the coast of Oregon of so extensive an armament…for the express purpose of exploring not only the coast and rivers, but the country itself, produced a very great excitement in the community, and but little was heard of but the Exploring Squadron during its somewhat protracted stay....”65

American excitement may have been amplified by the British attempt to counteract

American immigration with immigrants of their own. Earlier in the year, the HBC facilitated the migration of twenty-five HBC-affiliated families from the Red River

Colony in Canada to Oregon, what would prove to be the first and only substantial British migration to Oregon.66 Wilkes’ arrival perhaps allayed American settlers’ that they were outnumbered, and that the U.S. was on the verge of abandoning Oregon to the British.

However, almost immediately Wilkes’ dashed their hopes. His lack of interest in the

64 Historians’ treatment of Wilkes’ actions in Oregon mirror their treatment of Thomas ap Catesby Jones’ seizure of the California port of Monterey, which also occurred in 1842 (see Chapter Six). Both Wilkes and Jones were concerned with ports and trade, and were looking out for U.S. trade interests in the Pacific – which may have included gaining control of strategic waterways; however, neither were attempting to facilitate the U.S. conquest of the West more generally.

65 Hines, Life on the Plains of the Pacific, 421.

66 Robert Carlton Clark, History of the Willamette Valley, Oregon (Chicago: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1927), 231-235; Malcolm Clark, Eden Seekers, 143-145.

437 region’s politics, as well as his haughty attitude, frustrated them.67 As one missionary wrote, “I am sorry to perceive that the Commander of this expedition, thinks himself too important and dignified…to give that attention and consequently to impart additional influence that he might to American settlers, and American missionaries, as I believe they are entitled to. This is my opinion, and I care not who knows it.”68 Wilkes’ behavior made it clear: American settlers in Oregon were on their own.69

American settlers’ dashed hopes for Wilkes’ support was representative of their general feeling of vulnerability in the early 1840s, when they were still outnumbered by

French Canadian settlers and HBC employees who favored Great Britain. They could not predict certain developments that historians now take for granted. They did not know, for example, that the British attempt to settle Oregon would fail entirely; to them, the twenty- five families from Canada augured for larger British migration in the future. They also did not know that fur trade profits were declining, and the HBC’s dominance in the region would soon be at an end. Thus it is no wonder that these Americans saw U.S. annexation as a solution to their vulnerability, and they dramatized this vulnerability to gain the federal government’s attention. In 1838, 1839, and 1843, various groups of

American settlers sent petitions to Congress that pleaded for U.S. annexation and a

67 “Petition of Citizens of Oregon in 1843,” quoted in William Gray, A History of Oregon, 1792-1849 (Portland, OR, 1870), 293; Clark, History of the Willamette Valley, 145; Malcolm Clark, Eden Seekers, 143-145.

68 Jonathan Richmond to G.P. Disoway, Aug. 18, 1841, Oregon Methodist Mission Papers, UPS.

69 Wilkes did eventually have influence of Oregon geopolitics, but on an international stage. Due to the wreck of the Peacock, Wilkes told the federal government that the Columbia River was poor for navigation, and suggested the U.S. look to Puget Sound as the primary port in the region. This suggestion helped fuel expansionists’ desire to push for an Oregon boundary that would give the U.S. access to Puget Sound. See Jacobs, Winning Oregon, 72-73. Wilkes was representative of many U.S. expansionists, who cared little for settlement, and much more for access to ports and markets. Indeed, Graebner argues in Empire on the Pacific that it was this maritime attitude that drove U.S. expansion.

438 territorial government. As the 1839 petition warned, if the U.S. did not soon extend its jurisdiction over Oregon, American settlers “are exposed to be destroyed by the savages around them, and others that would do them harm.”70 This statement played on a common assumption in the United States that McLoughlin and the HBC (the “others that would do them harm”) were permanently in league with Oregon’s Indians, and together they could destroy the small American settlement at a moments notice. These petitions also stated that settlers traveled to Oregon because they believed it was, or would be, part of the United States, and now the U.S needed to hold up its end of the bargain.71

While undoubtedly exaggerations, particularly in regard to their fear of violence, the petitions reflected a palpable feeling among American settlers that Oregon was slipping away to the British in the early 1840s. For Protestant missionaries, this feeling had a theological bent, for they associated any Catholic success as a victory for British sovereignty. Their belief made no sense from a historical perspective, as the British had only recently repealed centuries of anti-Catholic legislation. To Protestant missionaries on the ground in Oregon, however, the two went together. As Presbyterian missionary

Marcus Whitman stated, “I think the papal effort is designed to convey the country over to the English.”72 This “papal effort” was twofold: increased Catholic immigration, and

Catholic success in missionizing to the Indians.73 While the 1841 Red River settlers were

70 “Petition of 1840,” quoted in Gray, A History of Oregon, 194.

71 Ibid.; “Petition of 1843,” quoted in Gray, A History of Oregon, 293.

72 Whitman to David Greene, May 30, 1843, Letters and Papers of the American Board of Commissioners, 714-716.

73 For the continuing fears of Catholic/British domination, see, for example, Ibid.; Whitman to Greene, Nov. 1, 1843, LPABC, 723-724; Lee to Missionary Board, March 15, 1841, Oregon Methodist Missionary Papers, UPS; Leslie to Pitman, Nov. 20, 1842, Oregon Methodist Missionary Papers, UPS; Allan Waller to

439 the only Catholic migrants of the period, Catholicism did take hold among Oregon’s natives to a much greater extent than either Methodism or Presbyterianism, both of which continued to fail at finding converts. Thus, Protestant missionaries’ dread of Catholic

“penetration” in the late 1830s only magnified in the succeeding years.74 Protestants directed much of the vitriol for their failures at John McLoughlin personally, for he was a combination of all their fears: he was a Catholic, the Chief Factor of the HBC, and a

British subject all in one. In Jason Lee’s eyes, McLoughlin “would rejoice to have the whole country under Catholic domination.”75 Clearly gone were the days when

Protestant missionaries valued McLoughlin for his life-saving supplies.

Indeed, McLoughlin’s business was another source of contestation, in several ways. As detailed in the introduction, the Methodists disputed McLoughlin’s claim to the potentially valuable Willamette Falls (now in Oregon City). Missionary Alvan Waller built a sawmill alongside the falls, arguing that McLoughlin had never improved his claim, and thus the land was open for the taking. Waller’s argument was disingenuous, for he was betting on international developments, not local land claims. If the U.S. gained jurisdiction over the Willamette Valley, the recently passed 1841 Preemption Law would go into effect, a key caveat of which stated that American claims took precedence over foreign claims. No wonder Waller and his missionary allies longed for U.S.

Amos Cooke, Aug. 25, 1842, Amos Cooke Letters, MSS 1223, OHS; Walker to Greene, Oct. 10, 1843, LPABC, 556-559.

74 Jetté, At the Hearth of the Crossed Races, 182-185.

75 Jason Lee to the Mission Board, Sept. 23, 1841, Oregon Methodist Missionary Papers, UPS.

440 annexation.76 Waller went so far as to petition Chief Justice Roger Taney to give him permanent rights to the disputed land, but as the U.S. had no jurisdiction over

Oregon yet, the letter fell on deaf ears.77 Moreover, beyond Waller’s specific dispute, many newly arrived Americans simply resented McLoughlin’s prosperity and the monopolistic dominance of the HBC – doubly so, because they remained dependent on

McLoughlin’s supplies.78 Thus, while McLoughlin did retain some allies among the

American population, in general his power bred resentment in the early 1840s.

All of the fears and frustrations of Oregon settlers reflected a larger truth: in the early 1840s, there existed an “other” in the Willamette Valley, whether defined as Great

Britain, Catholicism, John McLoughlin, or Oregon’s native peoples. Undoubtedly

American settlers, missionaries and overlanders alike, exaggerated these threats, but considering the rampant Anglophobia and anti-Catholicism of Americans in general, their attitude was unsurprising.79 Moreover, while they did inflate the power of their enemies,

Americans in Oregon were indeed a rather weak and powerless group. They were still outnumbered by British-allied settlers in Oregon, and they still depended on HBC supplies for survival. Thus, when U.S. Sub-Indian Agent Elijah White arrived in the

Willamette Valley in late 1842 with one hundred additional American settlers, Americans already living in Oregon celebrated. Wilkes and the U.S. Exploring Expedition may have

76 For a more detailed explanation, see Loewenberg, Equality on the Oregon Frontier, 188-194; Dorothy Morrison, Outpost: John McLoughlin and the Far Northwest (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1998), 390-396. Letters surrounding the claim controversy can be found in The Letters of John McLoughlin (hereafter LJM), 7 Volumes, ed. E. E. Rich (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1944), 7: 195-210.

77 Petition of Alvan Waller to Roger Taney, Feb. 8, 1844, Alvan Waller Papers, MSS 1210, OHS.

78 Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families, 141.

79 For American Anglophobia, see Sam Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010).

441 disappointed six months prior, but certainly White’s arrival, they believed, presaged greater U.S. involvement in Oregon.80 After all, White was a representative of the U.S. government, although whether he had any jurisdiction in Oregon was a matter of doubt.

Adding White’s arrival to their knowledge of Lewis Linn and Thomas Hart Benton’s continued agitations for Oregon in Congress – which had helped spark Oregon immigration in the first place – and it is no wonder that American migrants in Oregon believed U.S. annexation was imminent.81

Yet, despite their faith in U.S. action, Americans in Oregon also understood that the community was growing at a rapid pace, and required some form of formal government to provide order. Many of the French Canadian settlers were sympathetic.

Thus, in 1843, both groups met several times at the village of Champoeg to discuss just what structure this more formal government should take. Because these meetings resulted in the formation of the Oregon Provisional Government, local Oregon historians have argued over them for a century, and the Champoeg story has become a key component of early Oregon lore. While the details of the story are in dispute, the general outline is not. The first meeting started somewhat inauspiciously in March 1843, when

Oregon settlers convened at Champoeg to discuss predatory wolves that were attacking livestock. During these “Wolf Meetings” they once again discussed creating a formal government for the community, but unlike after Ewing Young’s death or Wilkes’ arrival, this time the discussion proved productive. Informal talks then continued among the

80 McLoughlin to the HBC, Oct. 31, 1842, LJM, 4: 76-77. White was a former Methodist missionary who had left the mission over conflicts with Jason Lee

81 Husband, “Senator Lewis Linn and the Oregon Question”; William A. Hansen, “Thomas Hart Benton and the Oregon Question,” Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 63, Issue 4 (July, 1969), 489-497.

442 settlers until May 2nd, when, once again meeting in Champoeg, they decided to create an official government for Oregon.

According to the traditional narrative, these debates and final vote reflected the ethnic divide of the community. On one side were the French Canadian settlers affiliated with the HBC. They adamantly opposed all forms of government organization, for presumably any fledgling government would interfere with their allegiance to Great

Britain. On the other side were American settlers. They desired a government that would act for U.S. interests, and serve as a placeholder until the United States officially gained control of the territory. In the famous meeting of May 2nd, the American settlers won the day by a narrow vote of 52-50, after two French Canadians switched their votes and allied with the Americans. Thus the Oregon Provisional Government was formed,

Oregon’s Organic Laws (as the law code was termed) were written, and Oregon Country was “saved” for the United States.82

Yet, as historian Robert Loewenberg has meticulously analyzed, the traditional

Champoeg story is subject to doubt. It was based upon the account of William Gray, a cantankerous Methodist layman and vociferous opponent of the HBC who was present at

Champoeg. Gray’s A History of Oregon was one of only two detailed accounts of the government discussions, and it conflicted entirely with the account of Robert Newell, an

American mountain man who settled in Oregon in the late 1830s who was also present at

Champoeg. Although it is impossible to prove definitively, Newell’s account lines up

82 The best traditional account of Champoeg is Hussey, Champoeg, 119-172. Similar accounts can be found in Morrison, Outpost, 365-372; Johansen, Empire of the Columbia, 188-190; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Oregon, Vol. 1 (San Francisco, 1886), 166-178, 203-221. See also Loewenberg, “Creating a Provisional Government in Oregon: A Revision,” 14-15, note 4, for a list of the many accounts from the early 20th century.

443 much more with the other prevailing evidence on Champoeg, and should be taken as the more likely scenario – and it is a fascinating scenario. As described by Newell,

Gray, rather than desiring U.S. annexation, was “determined upon the act of secession.”83

Newell’s continued use of the word “secession” reflected he wrote his account in 1867, only two years after the Civil War. In reality, in 1843, Oregonians had nothing to secede from. Gray’s actual goal was Oregon independence, and a minority of the attendees of the Champoeg meeting supported him. One of these supporters was none other than

Lansford Hastings, the soon-to-be California booster and schemer of California independence. Hastings had journeyed to Oregon in 1842, and upon his arrival worked as McLoughlin’s lawyer in the Waller-McLoughlin land dispute. Hastings was likely voicing an early version of his Pacific Republic dreams. What is unclear, however, was who else agreed with Hastings and Gray, but it seems probable that at least some other independence supporters were also American.84

Moreover, the Champoeg debate revolved not around whether to form a government or not, but what type of government it would be. Gray, Hastings, and others

83 Robert Newell to Oregon Herald, Jan. 22, 1867, Newell-Gray Letters, Robert Newell Papers, MSS 1197, OHS.

84 For Loewenberg’s analysis, see “Creating a Provisional Government in Oregon: A Revision,” 13-24, and Equality on the Oregon Frontier, 140-168, 195-228. Interestingly, Loewenberg’s revisionist account has generally not been contested, but neither has it replaced the old historiography. In essence, Loewenberg has been largely ignored. There are two possible reasons for this. First, Loewenberg’s political analysis was embedded in a larger (and jargon-y) study of the sociology of Methodism in Oregon, and perhaps other historians simply overlooked his work. Second, Loewenberg became a professor at Arizona State, but eventually moved to Israel, where he assumed the chairmanship of a right-wing Israeli think-tank that has warned of the Islamisation of the United States, and has frequently attacked President Obama – thus he is no longer a presence in academia, and his views may offend the political sensibilities of most academic historians. Morrison contests Loewenberg without citing him (and does so by simply citing secondary sources that Loewenberg already demonstrated were flawed): Outpost, 370. Robert Utley is the only historian who retells Loewenberg’s account wholesale: Utley, A Life Wild and Perilous, 212-216. Loewenberg’s analysis is also supported by Methodist missionary Gustavus Hines, who recalled that some Americans did support an independent government at Champoeg: Hines, Life on the Plains, 422.

444 who supported full independence desired a strong and active government as possible. They wanted, for example, a single executive officer possessing legitimate power and a legislature that had the ability to tax. In contrast, supporters of U.S. annexation wanted to keep the government weak, with a three-man executive committee and a legislature that was prohibited from taxing the community. This government would serve simply as a caretaker until Oregon was, in the words of the pro-annexationists at

Champoeg, “brought as soon as practicable, under the jurisdiction of our mother country.”85 Because the government would hold so little power, it would never get in the way of U.S. annexation. Ultimately, a weak government would ensure that even those settlers ambivalent about the U.S. as a polity would still desire U.S. annexation, if only to have a more effective government.

Undoubtedly conflicting feelings of vulnerability and confidence played into the divide amongst American settlers debating Oregon’s future. Throughout his life

Lansford Hastings exhibited boundless – perhaps foolhardy – ambition, and he always believed in his leadership abilities. Although we have no account of what Hastings said at Champoeg, it would have been very unlike him to fear the HBC, Catholicism, or

McLoughlin; he was, after all, McLoughlin’s lawyer.86 However, most Americans in

Oregon did not share his confidence in the future. To them, the easiest way to combat their perceived enemies was U.S. annexation. In the end, the latter were in the majority.

85 Minutes of Champoeg Meeting, June 25, 1843, in Brown’s Political History of Oregon, 97.

86 Hastings’ connections to McLoughlin is the source of the speculation in Chapter Five that McLoughlin may have been privy to Hastings’ California schemes, as McLoughlin wrote the HBC that Hastings success in California may hopefully propel American immigrants away from Oregon: McLoughlin to the HBC, Nov. 15, 1843, Letters of John McLoughlin, 6:130. Hastings’ accounts of Champoeg are brief, but he notes how the pro-U.S. faction carried the day: Hastings to McLoughlin, April 8, 1843, LJM, 7: 252; Lansford Hastings, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California (Cincinnati, 1845), 61.

445 The pro-annexationists got their wish, creating an Oregon Provisional Government that would only exist, as the preamble explicitly stated, “until such time as the United

States of America extend their jurisdiction over us.”87 Defeated in his ambitions,

William Gray remained in Oregon, served as a legislator in the Provisional Government, and eventually wrote his version of early Oregon history to cover his now-embarrassing and traitor-like behavior. Indeed, there is circumstantial evidence that Gray or one of his allies even doctored the minutes of Champoeg to hide their “secessionist” tendencies.88

While Gray remained in Oregon, Hastings left for California to continue his pursuit of a

Pacific Republic.

Thus, despite petitions to the U.S. government and dislike of the HBC, some

American settlers in Oregon did support independence. These Americans were definitely in the minority, and were most likely allied with many French Canadian settlers who did not want to live under U.S. jurisdiction – and who subsequently withdrew from the government to protest its pro-U.S. leanings. Yet the sheer presence of support for independence, albeit among a minority of Oregon residents and an even smaller minority of Americans, is significant. Independence was an option, even if it was not the preferred one for most Americans.

And independence sentiments continued among portions of the Oregon community, although no longer via the method that Gray and Hastings had argued for.

The vote at Champoeg defeated an active push for independence, but it did not defeat a second method for achieving the same goal: simply awaiting continental developments.

87 Oregon Organic Laws, May 1844, in David C. Duniway and Neil. R. Riggs, ed., “The Oregon Archives, 1841-1843,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vo. 60, No. 2 (June, 1959), 273.

88 Loewenberg, “Creating a Provisional Government for Oregon,” 22-24.

446 Instead of depending on U.S. annexation to solve their vulnerability in Oregon,

Americans could depend on the future immigration of more Americans. While American immigration would not put Oregon under U.S. jurisdiction, it would put it under

American jurisdiction, for Americans would dominate the region demographically.

Missionary P.L. Edwards, for example, noted that Oregon already possessed a “moral, religious, and industrious population.” With increased population, he believed, Oregon could be “perchance the germ of a powerful State.”89 Did Edwards mean “state,” as in one of the United States? Or did he mean “state,” as in an international state?90 Perhaps his ambiguity was deliberate; immigration would decide the issue. Missionary David

Leslie was even more forthright about the importance of a growing population, writing that, in Oregon, “There is a nation being born in a day, the future eminence and greatness of which needs not a prophet to predict.”91 Leslie did not argue explicitly for Oregon independence, but neither was Leslie envisioning immediate U.S. annexation; like

Edwards, he believed Oregon’s destiny rested with future migrants. In contrast to the vulnerability felt by much of the American community in Oregon, Edwards and Leslie’s statements reflected a growing confidence among some settlers that Oregon was on the right track, and the future was promising – regardless of whether the U.S. annexed

Oregon in the near future.

89 P.L. Edwards, “Instructions to Immigrants,” letter to St. Louis New Era, May 25, 1843, MSS 235, OHS.

90 According to Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), “state” could be one or the other. There is no reason to assume Edwards meant United States simply because he once resided there. Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828),

91 David Leslie to Charles Pitman, Nov. 20, 1842, Oregon Methodist Missionary Papers, UPS.

447 Therefore, the question for all Oregon settlers moving forward was rather simple. What would happen first: American immigration on a much greater scale, or the

U.S. annexation of Oregon Territory? The question was answered in fall of 1843, when the “Great Migration” brought almost 900 new settlers to the region, fundamentally altering the dynamics of Oregon politics.

The Defeat of Oregon Independence, Part II

The 875 migrants who arrived in Oregon during the fall of 1843 outnumbered the entire existing population of the Willamette Valley. Induced by the exhortations of

Presbyterian missionary Marcus Whitman, these overlanders were known as the “Great

Migration,” and their arrival presaged the decline of missionary influence in Oregon. For the rest of their lives, members of the Great Migration argued their arrival “saved”

Oregon for the United States. This narrative was decidedly false; as Frederick Merk observed, American settlers had almost nothing to do with the 1846 Oregon Treaty.92

Yet it makes sense why – well after-the-fact – the migrants themselves argued for their patriotic importance. They were the first to leave the United States after the signing of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in August 1842 between the U.S. and Britain, which left the fate of Oregon off the table. They also left after February 1843, when Congress defeated Senator Lewis Linn’s 640-acre land-grant bill for all Oregon migrants.93 In essence, they departed the U.S. at a time when, after several years in which it seemed to

92 Merk, “The Oregon Pioneers and the Boundary,” in The Oregon Question, 233-254. Originally published in 1919, this essay demolished the decades-long argument by the Oregon Pioneer Society claiming credit for “saving” Oregon.

93 Husband, “Senator Lewis F. Linn and the Oregon Question,” 15-16.

448 be gaining momentum in Congress, the prospect for immediate Oregon annexation again dropped precipitously. Thus, in retrospect, their arguments that the U.S. was able to annex Oregon only a few years later because of their arrival had logic.

Yet, as we have seen, in 1843 – or any other year, for that matter – overlanders made no mention of their patriotic goals, and thus their migration takes on a whole new meaning: in all likelihood, the 1843 migrants cared the least about the U.S. annexation of

Oregon, for they left when the prospect for U.S. annexation was at a nadir – even though, in hindsight, this nadir was only temporary. Seen in this light, their actions upon their arrival in Oregon were eminently rational: they sought to make the Oregon Provisional

Government a strong, functional government, for they had no faith that the U.S. would soon – or ever – “extend their jurisdiction over us,” as the original Organic Laws stated.

To the Great Migration, the deliberately weak government created at Champoeg was simply untenable; not only had rapid U.S. annexation become more unlikely, but the

Great Migration more than doubled the population of Oregon. The Willamette Valley now possessed a burgeoning community of many different interests – new American migrants, Protestant missionaries, French Canadian settlers, and the Hudson’s Bay

Company – and it required something more than a caretaker government.

Moreover, Oregon settlers were beset with a momentary crisis in February 1844, during what became known as the “Cockstock Affair.” This incident emerged when

James Saules, one of Oregon’s few black residents, disputed ownership of a horse with a

Chinookan Indian named Cockstock. Eventually their disagreement led to a brawl between Cockstock, Saules, and several other Oregon settlers, in which Cockstock himself and two white Oregonians were killed. It was this incident that propelled the

449 passage of Oregon’s infamous “lash law,” detailed above, for white settlers feared – however illogically – that blacks would somehow precipitate Indian warfare. However, this law was largely symbolic and was never enforced. Of more immediate importance, the Cockstock Affair amplified the perceived threat of Indian violence, and thus demonstrated the need for a stronger government to counter this threat.94 Oregonians undoubtedly overestimated the danger from native peoples, and the hysteria rapidly diminished; nevertheless, the Cockstock Affair provided the catalyst for governmental change.

In May 1844, the Oregon Provisional Government held its first elections under the original Organic Laws. Highlighting their new demographic power, the 1843 migrants elected mostly their own: seven of the nine members of the legislative committee were part of the Great Migration. Led by future California governor and 1843 migrant Peter Burnett, these newly elected officials set out to drastically revise the original governmental structure. To strengthen the government’s power, they hoped to eliminate the three-man executive and replace it with a single governor. They wanted to give this government the ability to tax, and anyone who refused to pay taxes would be disqualified from voting and excluded from the protection of the Organic Laws. A new government required popular approval via new elections, and therefore the 1844 government would have to wait until the next elections in the summer of 1845 to implement these revisions, but they also made other more immediate changes.

Responding to the Cockstock Affair, they enacted a militia system, although it would

94 On the Cockstock Affair, see Mcclintock, “James Saules, Peter Burnett, and the Black Exclusion Law of June 1844,” 126-127; Taylor, “Slaves and Free Men,” 156.

450 exist mostly on paper until the 1847 Cayuse War. Moreover, by agreeing to respect the rights of the French Canadians and not send any more petitions to the U.S., the newly elected officials induced the French Canadian settlers to participate in the government.

For their part, the French Canadians recognized that the massive population influx made their participation necessary to protect their rights and property. While McLoughlin and the HBC still refused to participate, Oregon was on its way to a functional, active government. Or, to put it a different way, the 1843 migrants changed the emphasis of

“Provisional Government” from provisional to government.95

Such was the alteration of Oregon’s government from 1843 to 1844 that one historian deemed the newly elected officials the “independent party.”96 The name does not reflect their sentiments as to Oregon’s political future; unlike Lansford Hastings, they were not necessarily bent on rapid independence. Yet, they were pragmatic enough to realize there was no guarantee for U.S. annexation, and they needed to act independently to create a functional government. After all, they left the U.S. when the hope for quick for annexation had reached a temporary nadir. During the first legislative session in June, the Provisional Government even acknowledged a potential future in which Oregon would never join the U.S. As part of its instructions tasking the Legislative Committee with strengthening the Organic Laws, the Executive Committee referred to the original

1843 laws: “At the time of our organization it was expected that the United States would have taken possession of the country before this time, but a year has rolled around, and

95 There are many short accounts of this transition that largely agree: Johansen, Empire of the Columbia, 191-194; Hussey, Champoeg, 168-170; Jetté, At the Hearth of the Crossed Races, 172-179; Woodward, Political Parties in Oregon, 20-23.

96 Hussey, Champoeg, 168-170. See also Bancroft, History of Oregon, 471.

451 there appears little or no prospect of aid from that quarter, consequently we are left on our own resources for protection. In the view of the present state of affairs…we would recommend to your consideration the adoption of some measures for a more thorough organization.”97 It is impossible to determine whether this message was obliquely referring to the failure of Linn’s Oregon bill in Congress and/or the lack of attention to Oregon in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, but undoubtedly the new leadership felt a stronger government was necessary while the United States dallied on resolving Oregon’s fate.

Six months later, with U.S. annexation not any closer, the Executive Committee used even stronger language that hinted at future independence in its instructions to the

Legislative Committee. Among its recommendations was convening a constitutional convention in order to write an official constitution for the government of 1845. The use of the word “constitution” was significant, for it demonstrated permanence that “Organic

Laws” did not. So too did the concluding paragraph:

And we sincerely hope that Oregon, by the special aid of Divine Providence, may set an unprecedented example to the world, of industry, morality, and virtue. And although we may now be unknown as a State or Power, yet we have the advantages, by uniting efforts of our increasing of our increasing population, in a diligent attention to agriculture, arts and literature, of attaining, at no great distant day, to as conspicuous an elevation as any State or Power on the continent of America.98

97 Executive Committee to Legislative Committee, June 18, 1844, in Brown’s Political History of the Oregon Government, 131-132. Brown’s work is mostly reproduced primary source documents, with his own brief narrative between each document. It is worth noting that the Executive Committee believed this change was important enough that they were essentially asking the Legislative Committee to abolish the entire structure of the Executive Committee, and therefore their own power.

98 Executive Committee to Legislative Committee, Dec. 16, 1844, in Ibid., 135-136.

452 The message concluded that all Oregon citizens, regardless of whether they were of

American or British origin, should “cultivate kind feelings, not only of our native countries, but of all the Powers or States with whom we may have intercourse.”99 While this message was not necessarily anti-United States, the change in language since 1843 and earlier was notable. No longer was Oregon desperate for U.S. oversight. Indeed, the continued use of “State or Power” reflected an ambiguous but confident future for the region, where Oregon – whatever its political formulation – would be a powerful and prosperous polity.

This message coincided with a growing sentiment among Oregon settlers, many of whom had once hoped for immediate annexation to the United States, that now independence was the best course to pursue. Many influential Oregonians noted such a change, such as John McLoughlin, Peter Burnett, Methodist missionary and the first judge of Oregon Ira Babcock, and U.S Indian Agent Elijah White.100 Future Oregon politician J. Quinn Thornton had not yet arrived in the region, but in his 1849 account of

Oregon he too noted that a sentiment for independence existed in 1844, having presumably learned this from prior immigrants with whom he conversed on a daily basis.101 For the most part, these sources align with one another, as well as with the

Executive Committee’s message quoted above that clearly implied independence was an

99 Ibid.

100 John McLoughlin to the Governor, Deputy, Commissioner, and Committee of the HBC, Nov. 20, 1844, in LJM, 7: 32; McLoughlin to HBC, July 4, 1844, in LJM, 6: 199; McLoughlin to HBC, March 28, 1845, in LJM, 7: 73; McLoughlin to HBC, Dec. 12, 1845, in LJM, 7: 153; McLoughlin to Pelly, July 12, 1846, in LJM, 7: 162; Peter Burnett, “Letter from Peter Burnett, Esq.,” in The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1923), 108; Elijah White to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, April 4, 1845, in White, A Concise View of Oregon Territory, Compiled from Letters and Official Reports, Together with the Organic Laws of the Colony (Washington, 1846), 54.

101 J. Quinn Thornton, Oregon and California in 1848, Vol. 2 (New York, 1849), 34.

453 option. Unfortunately, all sources are sparse as to the details behind this growing support for independence. There are no records of more detailed political speeches, particularly because no Oregon newspaper existed until 1846. In all likelihood, Oregon settlers brought up the subject of independence in places where politics was discussed: small meetings at the various missions (which remained community hubs in spite of the missionaries decreasing influence), dinners at houses of friends made on the wagon train, and the stores of Oregon City.102 The latter is likely where McLoughlin himself heard politics discussed, as settlers continued to frequent his store. How the topic of independence arose or in what manner is also impossible to determine from the sources, but it is reasonable to assume it would have been discussed amidst a larger discussion of

Oregon’s future.

Importantly – and perhaps counter intuitively – the growth of support for independence coincided with the growth of the American community in Oregon. In

1843, the independence movement had been led by Lansford Hastings, whose ambitions well surpassed any fears he had about the security of the American community in

Oregon. For most Americans at the famed Champoeg meeting, however, their fears overrode any desire to make Oregon independent. One year later, however, and these fears had greatly diminished, largely due to the results of the Great Migration. While the

American population was at best equal to the HBC-French Canadian population in 1843, in 1844 it greatly exceeded it. Pro-British settlers were now a small percentage of the

102 For where Oregonians discussed politics, see James Tompkins, “Political Developments in Oregon: The Provisional Government, 1843-1849” (Masters Thesis: Portland State University, 1976), 14. Tompkins makes claims that seem rather obvious (where else would Oregonians discuss politics, after all?), but I have not read any other works that actually discuss this subject.

454 community, and everyone knew this percentage would only grow smaller over time, for more Americans would undoubtedly come to Oregon.103 Meanwhile, there were no signs that the British were facilitating more settlement of their own; the Red River settlers increasingly appeared to be an anomaly. Thus, American demographic power would easily overwhelm whatever advantages the British had once possessed.

Revealingly, John McLoughlin, whose presence had for so long bestrode the

Pacific Northwest, realized he was now on the defensive. When HBC Governor George

Simpson voiced frustration with McLoughlin supplying provisions for the arriving

Americans, McLoughlin defended himself by claiming, “…If we had not assisted them

[Fort] Vancouver would have been destroyed.”104 Whether American settlers would have actually attacked HBC holdings was dubious, but McLoughlin’s larger point was valid: new migrants gave the Americans the balance of power in the Willamette Valley. In response, the HBC decided to move its headquarters from Fort Vancouver just north of the Columbia River to Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island. American settlers also understood this new dynamic. In 1845, members of the Oregon Provisional Government solicited McLoughlin and the HBC to enter into the government as full participants, and

McLoughlin accepted. This action was unthinkable several years before, when

Americans disliked McLoughlin’s influence and power. With the Great Migration, however, the British specter no longer haunted Oregon’s American community, and thus

McLoughlin’s participation was once again valued – now that he was no longer a threat.

103 Increased migration was well-known among all Oregonians. The December message from the Executive Committee, for example, noted that 750 migrants were on their way, which was a great underestimation.

104 John McLoughlin, “Remarks,” found in P.S. Ogen and J. Douglas to Sir George Simpson, March 16, 1847, LJM, 7: 296.

455 As American fears of the British diminished, their frustration with U.S. inaction over Oregon increased. And, according to several commenters, this frustration was the root cause for the increased support for Oregon independence. As Peter Burnett wrote, “…The people here are worn out by delay [of U.S. annexation], and their condition becomes everyday more intolerable.”105 What exactly was “intolerable”? John

McLoughlin gave the answer: “The Settlers are anxious that the Boundary Line should be drawn so as they may get titles for their Lands; some say if it is not soon settled they will propose to declare themselves independant [sic].”106 Both Burnett and McLoughlin referred to the original reason Americans traveled to Oregon in the first place: the 640- acre land donation originally proposed by Senator Linn that failed to pass the U.S.

Congress, but which the Provisional Government enacted into Oregon law in 1843.

Significantly, however, this was an action by the Oregon Provisional Government, its temporariness enshrined in its very title. And, because the government was temporary, so potentially were all Oregon land claims. Of course, the United States could enshrine these claims into law upon annexation, but, to Oregonians, this prospect seemed increasingly distant. Thus even pro-annexation settlers started contemplating a different solution: declare Oregon independent, which would then make the land claims permanent.

It is worth noting that taking such an action did not mean Oregon would be permanently independent. As demonstrated by Texas annexation in 1845, an

105 Burnett, “Letter,” 107-108.

106 McLoughlin to the HBC, Dec. 12, 1845, LJM, 7: 153. Another observer of Oregon noted something similar, writing that settlers “suffered from the present ill conceived arrangement” with the United States. Benjamin Stark Jr. to Benjamin Stark, Nov. 15, 1845, Benjamin Stark Papers, MSS 115, OHS.

456 independent republic could join the Union under rather generous terms. After annexation, Texas still retained control of all of its public lands, and, because it entered the Union as a state, was left to write its own constitution that did not require congressional approval. And, of course, the Texans now received U.S. military protection paid for by the federal government. The only measure with which the Texans were disappointed concerned Texan debts, which the U.S. refused to assume after annexation. However, because Texas retained control of its public land, it could hopefully sell this land to pay down its debt.107 Undoubtedly Oregonians knew of events in Texas and the ongoing politics of Texas Annexation in the United States. Some

Americans in the East reported on Texas annexation in letters to their Oregon friends and family, and in 1846 the newly founded Oregon Spectator printed news of Texas regularly.108 The thousand-plus overlanders who arrived in 1845 knew of – and would have spread to others living in Oregon – news of the Polk’s joint Texas-Oregon platform, which deliberately put the two issues together. Whether Oregonians equated their own potential independence with that of Texas is difficult to ascertain, but it is not unreasonable to think that some Oregonians may have hoped to mimic the Texans. If an independent Oregon joined the U.S. as a state, then Oregon’s laws – including, above all, the 640-acre land donation – would remain in effect. Certainly, Oregon independence- cum-statehood required many more settlers, but every Oregonian knew they were

107 On the benefits of annexation, see Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 252.

108 Texas is mentioned in the following letters: James Nesmith to Samuel Wilson, June 27, 1845, James Nesmith Papers, MSS 577, OHS; Jason Lee to Gustavus Hines, April 24, 1844, and July 1, 1844, Gustavus Hines Papers, MSS 1215, OHS. Also, one Oregon migrant had family who migrated to Texas instead: Joseph Showalter Smith, Biography, MSS 2105, OHS. The Oregon Spectator printed news of Texas on the following dates in 1846: March 19, June 25, July 4, Aug. 6, Aug. 20, and Sept. 3.

457 coming. With increased population and then a declaration of independence, Oregon could join the U.S. on its own terms.

If some Oregonians hoped to use independence as a means to bring about an advantageous connection to the United States, others were more wary about any sort of connection. Oregon settlers had traveled for months, over inhospitable terrain and through hostile (or so it was said) Indian territory. The United States was now very far away. Some believed this distance would hinder U.S. governance over Oregon.

Washington would simply be too remote to administer Oregon effectively.109 Moreover, if Oregon did join the U.S., it was more likely it would do so as a territory than as a state.

This would be a step backwards. Oregonians already governed themselves, but territorial status would necessitate ceding their self-governance to the United States until statehood could be achieved.110 Joining the U.S. would also reopen the slavery debate, which

Oregonians believed they had solved with their laws prohibiting both slavery and all black settlers. In essence, there were good reasons for Oregonians to oppose annexation to the United States.111

In hindsight, it may appear naïve, even ludicrous, that some settlers believed

Oregon could exist and even thrive as an independent nation, yet for Oregonians in 1845

109 McLoughlin to HBC, Nov. 20, 1844, in LJM, 7: 32.

110 This argument is inferred from the Oregon Spectator, April 2, 1846, detailed below.

111 Importantly, these concerns were not unrealistic. On the contrary, they all came true in the years after annexation. In 1850 it looked for a time that Congress would not ratify the Oregon Donation Act, which would have rendered all Oregon land claims invalid. One Oregon settler wrote Oregon’s congressional delegate that if this came true, “sad and sickening will be the spectacle among our people.” (Wesley Shannon to Samuel Thurston, July 7, 1850, Thurston Family Papers, MSS 379, OHS). Although Congress did pass the bill, Oregonians continued to hate their territorial governor and territorial government in general. Moreover, because Oregon was antislavery, slave interests prevented Oregon statehood until 1857. On these issues, see Johannsen, Frontier Politics and the Sectional Conflict, 11-50.

458 the future was promising. The Willamette Valley community was flourishing.

Oregon was by no means a paradise, but it did fulfill many of the hopes that migrants possessed when they first left the United States: most settlers were able to claim their 640 acres, the region was at peace, the land was bountiful, Oregon’s republican government functioned effectively, and Indians remained largely unthreatening – the Cockstock

Affair notwithstanding.112 Future migrants would presumably add to this dynamic community, and help Oregon take its place on the international stage. Significantly,

Oregon settlers often referred to their settlement as a “colony,” and, in one missionary’s case, a second Plymouth.113 While these statements could mean that settlers envisioned

Oregon as a colony of the United States, no settler made this explicit, and it seems unlikely. After all, the whole purpose of the territory-to-state transition first enacted in the Northwest Ordinance was to ensure American settlements in the West would never be treated as the Thirteen Colonies had once been under Britain.114 More likely, settlers’ descriptions of Oregon as a colony referred to their own actions: they were colonizers, leaving the land of their birth to start a new community. And, like American colonizers

112 According to James Gibson, “The success of the Willamette Settlement was unequivocal. Its population grew steadily, and from the early 1840’s, rapidly, and its farms raised abundant crops and reared sizeable herds”: Farming the Frontier: The Agricultural Opening of the Oregon Country, 1786-1846 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985), 144. Bowen goes into much greater detail about the daily hardship of life, but he does not compare Oregon to other regions: Bowen, The Willamette Valley, 65-94.

113 Executive Committee to Legislative Committee, June 18, 1844, in Brown’s Political History of Oregon, 131; Robert Newell to Oregon Herald, Jan. 22, 1847, in Newell-Gray Letters, Robert Newell Papers, OHS; George Gary to Charles Pitman, Jan. 2, 1846, Oregon Methodist Missionary Papers, UPS; White, A Concise View of Oregon Territory, 54; James Nesmith to Samuel Wilson, June 27, 1845, Nesmith Papers, OHS; Elkanah Walker to Levi Chamberlain, Feb. 8, 1844, Levi Chamberlain Papers, MSS 1207, OHS. Plymouth reference: John Barbour to Corresponding Secretary, Jan. 7, 1839, Oregon Methodist Missionary Papers, UPS.

114 See Peter Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987).

459 of old, perhaps these new colonizers would one day create an important nation on the world stage.115

Perhaps too Oregon would join with the other significant American settlement on the Pacific Coast: California. McLoughlin reported several times that Oregonians discussed a union with California, especially after they learned of the Bear Flag Revolt and California’s potential independence.116 Their belief in a Pacific republic was eminently logical, particularly because most Americans in Oregon already knew

Americans in California from their shared time together during the early months of the overland journey. Indeed, Americans in California also discussed a Pacific republic, as

Chapter Six has argued. Moreover, Americans in Oregon and Americans in California often remained connected to one another through both trade and migration between the two regions.117 In sum, Oregon independence was not a flight of fancy, but reasonable and rational response to both settlers’ knowledge of American history and the current geopolitics of the region.

115 On historical memory in the public consciousness, see Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991); Fred Somkin, Unquiet Eagle: Memory and Desire in the Idea of American Freedom, 1815-1860 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 91-130; Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (New York: Atheneum, 1985), 107-208. Only Kammen examines westerners specifically, noting their limited knowledge of American history – which supports my argument here, that westerners in Oregon could uncritically use the early American colonies as examples of what Oregon could become.

116 McLoughlin to Pelly, July 12, 1846, in Letters of John McLoughlin, 7: 162.

117 Direct evidence for Oregon-California connections can be found in Samuel McMahan to John Marsh, June 16, 1844, Marsh Family Papers, MSS C-B 878, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California; McLoughlin to HBC, Nov. 15, 1843, LJM, 6: 136; John Sutter to Leidesdorff, Aug. 5, 1846, John Augustus Sutter Papers, MSS C-B 631, Bancroft. McLoughlin had substantial economic connections with northern California, and even established an HBC post there: Morrison, Outpost, 319-328; Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families, 191-195.

460 For a select few, there was another reason to support Oregon independence: naked ambition. As U.S. Indian Agent Elijah White described in a letter to the Office of

Indian Affairs, “…Already demagogues are haranguing in favor of independence, and using the most disparaging language regarding the measures of our government as a reason for action. These are but the beginnings…”118 Oregon politician J. Quinn

Thornton used less hostile language, calling these people, “Persons…respectable for their character and influence.”119 For these ambitious few, their calculus was simple. They had achieved some sort of political and/or social power in Oregon, which would be greatly curtailed if Oregon became a U.S. territory, and therefore subject to a U.S.- appointed territorial governor. If Oregon became independent, whether alone or with

California, then their future held the possibility of president or some other high office. If the U.S. annexed Oregon, then they would forever remain local politicians.

Unfortunately neither White nor Thornton provided the names of these “demagogues.” If historian Robert Loewenberg was correct, then William Gray represented an early version of one when he sought independence at Champoeg, but Loewenberg’s assertion remains unprovable – and Gray, alas, is the most verifiable of these types of men. This absence of names is unsurprising. After Oregon annexation, and even more so during and after the Civil War, any pro-independence Oregonian would have appeared a fool at best, a traitor at worst.120 Those who supported Oregon independence would have likely

118 White to O.I.A., April 4, 1845.

119 Thornton, Oregon and California in 1848, 34.

120 While there were Confederate sympathizers in Oregon during the Civil War, most were not secessionists; rather, they disliked what they perceived as a tyrannical central government. Jeff LaLande

461 destroyed any relevant correspondence, and hid their former involvement in a now- discredited movement.121

While there were clearly practical and not so practical reasons for supporting

Oregon independence, it is important to state unequivocally: a majority of Americans in

Oregon still supported U.S. annexation. Those such as McLoughlin and Burnett who acknowledged the growing support for independence also acknowledged that a majority of settlers still supported a United States Oregon.122 These pro-annexationists were divided into two camps: the “Ultra Americans” or simply the “Ultras,” and the moderates. The Ultra-Americans were rabidly patriotic, and were frustrated with the

Provisional Government’s seeming lack of U.S. nationalism and attention to U.S. interests.123 Described by one HBC employee as “unprincipled fanatics,” the Ultras continued to see the British bogeyman behind any personal setback.124 In one example, an Ultra lost an election to an HBC fur trader for a government office, and subsequently tried to get him disqualified by arguing hysterically that the Oregon Provisional

Government only applied to Americans.125

compared their beliefs to inhabitants of the “butternut” districts of southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. See Jeff LaLande, “ ‘Dixie’ of the Pacific Northwest: Southern Oregon’s Civil War,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 100, No. 1, The Civil War in Oregon (Spring, 1999), 32-81.

121 Note the similarities to Texas annexation: Most of the Republic of Texas’ cabinet members opposed U.S. annexation, for they feared losing their individual power: Stanley Siegel, A Political History of the Texas Republic, 1836-1845 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1956), 246-247. Also note the similarities to the Patriots in 1838, who also destroyed their correspondence after the movement was discredited.

122 McLoughlin to Pelly, July 12, 1846, in LJM, 7: 162; Burnett, “Letter from Peter Burnett, Esq.,” 108.

123 McLoughlin to HBC, Nov. 20, 1845, LJM, 7:109

124 James Douglas to McLoughlin, March 5, 1845, LJM, 7: 179.

125 Philip Foster to Francis Ermatinger, June 18, 1845, Philip Foster Letters, MSS 996, OHS.

462 Significantly, this settler did not prevail, for the Ultras were a minority of pro-annexationists, and were opposed by a larger contingent of moderates. While the moderates also desired U.S. annexation, they respected John McLoughlin, and generally did not let their pro-U.S. stance affect the practical concerns of their daily lives and of the larger Oregon community. And, in an important sense, supporting U.S. annexation was the most moderate and least risky course to take. All settlers knew that the United States claimed a portion of Oregon, and had a particularly strong case in regards to all territory south of the Columbia River, including the Willamette Valley. Oregon independence, whatever its enticements, would still require negating this long-established claim. For most Americans, it would be much better – and safer – to await the likely scenario of

U.S. annexation, which hopefully would come in the near future.

Such was the preponderance of pro-annexationists that 1845 witnessed a backlash against the “independent party,” even though men like Peter Burnett did not necessarily oppose annexation either. Nevertheless, many Americans in 1845 – including another

1500 migrants who arrived in late 1844 – feared what the much smaller group of

Americans had feared at Champoeg in 1843: creating too strong a government would begin the slippery slope towards independence, and, in their view, this is exactly what members of the 1844 government had done. The moderates and Ultra-Americans voiced their disapproval in the June 1845 ballot. This ballot was the first election under the laws of the stronger Provisional Government, in which settlers would elect one governor instead of a three-man executive. Because members of the independent party had essentially made these changes without a public vote, they now sought popular approval for their actions. In addition to the regular election of candidates, the ballot asked an

463 additional question: should Oregonians call a constitutional convention to write a constitution for Oregon (thereby making the new structure Provisional Government more official)? The answer was a decisive “no,” as Oregonians rejected the measure by a vote of 283-190. A few weeks later, however, they voted to uphold the “Amended Organic

Laws” over the original Organic Laws. This vote demonstrated that Oregonians did support the stronger government structure that the independent party had created, for the only difference between the Amended Organic Laws and a potential Oregon constitution was the word “constitution.” The word was the crux of the matter, however, for a constitution implied potential independence.126

Unfortunately no records exist that detail anything beyond the vote tally that rejected the constitutional convention. Therefore, in order to analyze the various constituencies, we must place this vote alongside the vote for governor from the same election. In this election, the moderate George Abernethy won with 283 votes, defeating another moderate (75 votes), an independent of British background (130 votes), and an

Ultra-American (71 votes).127 Extrapolating from these numbers, we can tentatively assume that the 71 Ultras from the vote for governor also rejected the constitutional convention, while the 130 independents approved it. Thus, the remaining moderates rejected the constitutional convention by a vote of 212-60. In more general terms, for every moderate who supported a constitutional convention, more than three moderates opposed it. These numbers establish that most of Oregon’s community was, essentially,

126 Hussey, Champoeg, 169; Woodward, Political Parties of Oregon, 25-26; Clark, Eden Seekers, 194; Clark, History of the Willamette Valley, 308.

127 There is no explanation as to why the number who voted in the election for governor (559) does not match the number who voted for or against the constitutional convention (573). These numbers should not be taken as entirely accurate, but as more broadly revealing the general trends in Oregon politics.

464 moderately pro-United States. Unsurprisingly, the newly elected Provisional

Government of 1845 once again petitioned for U.S. annexation – something the 1844 independents had never done. Voicing lack of military protection in case of Indian warfare and continued dependence on the HBC for supplies, the petitioners “pray[ed] the national congress to establish a district territorial Government, to embrace Oregon and its adjacent sea coast.”128 As one historian noted, the emphasis of the 1845 Provisional

Government was once more back on the provisional.129

But it is also worth emphasizing the moderation of a majority of the Oregon population. Moderates, by definition, could contemplate another future besides U.S. annexation, and 60 of their number supported the constitutional convention in 1845. At the end of the day, these moderates were not trying to secure U.S. interests in Oregon, but were pragmatically looking out for their own interests. Their moderation was palpably revealed in their actions during the final year and a half before U.S. annexation. During this time the possibility of war between the U.S. and Britain greatly increased, as

President Polk argued belligerently against any compromise that did not give the United

States most or all of the vast Oregon Country.130 Now back in the U.S., former Indian

Agent Elijah White believed that Americans in Oregon would support Polk’s stance, and

128 Oregon Provisional Government Memorial to Congress, June 28, 1845, in Brown’s Political History of Oregon, 160-162.

129 Hussey, Champoeg, 169.

130 The story is of course much more complicated than this, but I’m summarizing because it has little to do with events in Oregon itself. See Pletcher, Diplomacy of Annexation, 273-351.

465 follow him to war if need be. Writing to the Washington Daily Union, White claimed they were “true to the American eagle,” and would “defend our flag” in

Oregon.131

White’s statement demonstrated how divorced events in the U.S. were from those in Oregon, as the 1845 Oregon officials had welcomed the HBC into the Provisional

Government months before White wrote his letter.132 Moreover, this same government also implemented an oath of office in which officials promised to support the Organic

Laws “so far as they are consistent with my duties as a citizen of the United States or a subject of Great Britain.”133 Although McLoughlin noted that the Ultra-Americans were upset with what they perceived as an antipatriotic oath, they were outnumbered by

“respectable Americans in the Settlement” who supported the bi-national wording.134

Most importantly, as war hysteria increased in the U.S., Oregon remained at peace. One letter-writer to the Oregon Spectator in 1846 (the first Oregon newspaper, founded that year) likely voiced the sentiments of most Oregonians as to their best approach to a U.S.-

British war: “As the main war would be on the Ocean, I see no use of our fighting here…let our provisional government stand, and those who wish to stay at home and cultivate their farms, be permitted to do so without censure or molestation.”135 Clearly

131 Elijah White to Daily Union, Feb. 10, 1846, Elijah White Papers, MSS 1217, OHS.

132 For a discussion of this process, see Morrison, Outpost, 413-419; Clark, Eden Seekers, 176. McLoughlin gives his reasons to agreeing to join the government in McLoughlin to HBC, Nov. 20, 1845, LJM, 7: 98-102.

133 “Organic Law of the Provisional Government of Oregon,” in Brown’s Political History of Oregon, 166.

134 McLoughlin to HBC, Aug. 30, 1845, LJM, 7: 109.

135 Oregon Spectator, Sept. 3, 1846. Although after the Oregon Treaty, Oregonians did not learn of it until late November.

466 Americans in Oregon were not “winning” Oregon for the United States, as they later remembered. Indeed, if they actually wanted to “win” Oregon from the British, they could have done so: by 1845, thanks to continued migration, Americans outnumbered pro-British settlers by more than ten to one.136 Yet, despite their numerical superiority, most Americans in Oregon continue to argue for moderation.

And key to this moderation was a willingness to change their minds about Oregon independence, under the right circumstances. Recall that, of the moderates, more than a quarter voted to hold a constitutional convention in the summer of 1845. Clearly some moderates saw logical reasons for taking such a step, even if they were not trying to force independence by doing so. Their vote suggests that other moderates might change their minds about a constitution – and therefore independence. Just what could have changed their minds? Above all, continued U.S. neglect, meaning continued impermanency to all

Oregon land claims, and, more generally, a continued inability to plan for a still ambiguous political future. Even the pro-annexation 1845 Provisional Government implicitly voiced this frustration in its petition to the United States: “We, as citizens of the United States…are forced to the enactment and execution of laws not authorized, and for what we know, never will be sanctioned by our Government” (italics added).137

Frustration bred a search for a solution, and the solution in 1846 remained the same as it did in 1844: Oregon independence.

136 Only a few days after McLoughlin joined the Provisional Government, a British ship of war arrived to protect British subjects in Oregon, and look at the feasibility of bringing an army overland from Canada in the case of war with the U.S. However, a visit to the American settlements, as well as the protestations of McLoughlin himself, persuaded them that this was a fruitless enterprise, as there were too many Americans already in the region. See Bancroft, History of Oregon, 497-500.

137 Oregon Provisional Government Memorial to Congress, June 28, 1845, in Brown’s Political History of Oregon, 161.

467 A long letter to Oregon citizens, printed in the Oregon Spectator in April

1846, best demonstrates this continued discussion of independence, as well as how this discussion had changed over the past few years in the Willamette Valley. Written by “A

Friend to Oregon,” the letter noted that the subject of independence was “one of great moment to this people, and one which seems to be engaging considerable attention.”138

The writer went on to argue why U.S. annexation was a much more preferable option than independence, and named several specific reasons. First, Oregon was too poor to stand on its own, and could benefit from U.S. expenditures on the territory. Second, echoing Madison, as a small republic Oregon would be plagued by faction, but faction would be mitigated within the extended republic of the United States. Third, Oregon could simply not survive on the international stage among other great powers.

Ultimately, the writer argued, “We see that the home government has more effectual means, more extensive jurisdiction, to promote the general welfare that can possibly be anticipated to fall to our lot, as an independent Oregon.” If Oregon joined the U.S., it would “become entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the older states.”

Significantly, the writer asked, “Ought not then the government of our birth to become more deeply an object of regard and reference, or attachment and pride?” Perhaps he believed that Oregonians were not as attached to the United States as they should be.

Even though “A Friend to Oregon” supported U.S. annexation in 1846 just as many of his fellow settlers did in prior years, the contents of the pro-annexation argument had changed markedly. No longer was the argument based on emotional concern about protection from Indians and “others that would do us harm,” as the 1839 petition to the

138 Oregon Spectator, April 2, 1846.

468 United States had stated.139 Gone were fears of HBC influence and British might.

Now the argument against independence was based upon an assessment of long-term geopolitics and a calculated gesture towards Federalist 10. In a certain sense, by using rational argument to oppose Oregon independence, the letter-writer also legitimized the rational reasons for Oregon independence.140 The letter-writers’ overtly intellectual arguments revealed that Oregonians did not feel hysteria over their future prospects, for the writer would have employed them – as Americans had done until 1843. Oregon was no longer a peripheral, endangered settlement of a few hundred on the edge of civilization, but a flourishing agricultural community of some several thousand people.

Oregon settlers no longer needed to beg the United States for its protection, but could calmly assess the positives and negatives of U.S. annexation versus Oregon independence. “A Friend to Oregon” may have favored the former, but he did not find the latter option ridiculous.

Proponents of independence did have a geopolitical retort to this article, and could argue that first, Texas independence had demonstrated the feasibility of other American republics, and second, Oregon could join with California and form a Pacific Republic.

Yet, as the years 1845 and 1846 progressed, U.S. expansion took these arguments off the table, and strengthened the argument for U.S. annexation. Pro-annexationists sensed this. As one such settler wrote, “...Polk is elected and Texas annexed, also a revolution in

California. The patriots will be reinforced from this place.” The pro-annexation Oregon

Spectator printed less overt but still telling articles that celebrated Texas’ addition to the

139 “Petition of 1843,” quoted in Gray, A History of Oregon, 293.

140 As the famed writers of the Federalist Papers legitimized the Antifederalist position by respecting its arguments, then attacking each argument one by one.

469 “great confederacy” that was the United States.141 The paper’s take on the U.S. conquest of California followed similar lines. In June it printed five statements written by California settlers, all of which claimed California was simply a terrible place to live.142 Explicitly, the paper urged American overlanders to choose Oregon over

California; implicitly, these letters would have given anyone pause who believed a

Oregon-California union would be beneficial to Oregon. In November 1846, the

Spectator printed an article titled “Oregon and California,” in which the paper noted that, due to lack of resources, “California can never be an independant [sic] country.” Left unwritten was an obvious additional point to those who favored a Pacific Republic: if

California could not be independent, neither could Oregon.

Two weeks prior to this article, settlers received word that the U.S. and Great

Britain had signed the Oregon Treaty. As many long expected, the United States received the Willamette Valley and all land south of the Columbia River. More surprising, the U.S. also received the territory north of the Columbia as far as 49 degrees latitude, an area almost completely unoccupied by Americans. Importantly, as noted above, American settlers in Oregon played no part in this treaty; just as importantly, the federal government played no part in Oregon itself.143 The two were divorced from one another. Oregon settlers simply learned of the treaty by mail, and had no say in the matter. Of course, in all likelihood a majority Americans in Oregon celebrated. To them,

141 “Great confederacy”: Oregon Spectator, March 19, 1846. Texas annexation is also mentioned on June 25, July 4, Aug. 6, Aug. 20, and Sept. 3, all in 1846. All of these articles support Texas annexation in some fashion.

142 Oregon Spectator, June 25, 1846.

143 See Merk, “The Oregon Pioneers and the Boundary,” in The Oregon Question, 233-254.

470 it was about time the U.S. took interest in Oregon, as they had been soliciting the federal government to annex Oregon as early as 1839. Now they could be content that

Oregon’s future was no longer ambiguous. The Oregon Spectator celebrated: “”We can look forward now with faith, and congratulate one other that we are again citizens of the

United States.”144 A majority of Oregon settlers had never wanted Oregon to become a breakaway republic, and now their wishes were fulfilled. As Oregon Provisional

Governor George Abernethy wrote when he first flew the U.S. flag, “[We] rejoice under the blew [sic] of our country’s glory – sincerely hoping the star spangled banner may forever wave over this portion of the United States.”145

Conclusion: The Lessons of Oregon

Such is the manner in which most scholars end their narratives of Oregon annexation. It was, in historian Walter Nugent’s words, the “cleanest and least dismaying” of any U.S. acquisition in its history.146 In this statement, Nugent ignored the sentiments of Oregon’s native peoples, who (he would likely concede) were certainly

“dismayed” at losing their sovereignty. Scholars have recognized this native story that counters the U.S. expansion story, but most have not focused on a second group of people who were dismayed by U.S. actions, both before and after Oregon annexation: American settlers themselves. They chose expatriation because the U.S. no longer offered the prospects it once did. Land was increasingly scarce, the market economy was

144 Oregon Spectator, Nov. 12, 1846.

145 George Abernethy to Neil Howison, Dec. 21, 1846, George Abernethy Papers, MSS 929, OHS.

146 Nugent, Habits of Empire, 157.

471 increasingly unforgiving, and slavery and race were increasingly tearing the nation apart. After annexation, these issues reemerged, to the laments of many Oregonians. In response, they crafted the “saving Oregon” narrative, which implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) suggested that they deserved more recognition and better treatment by the federal government.147 Despite their claims to their staunch patriotism, only a small minority of Americans – the Ultras – actually exhibited this patriotism in Oregon before

1846. A majority of Americans did desire U.S. annexation, but only the Ultra-Americans did so out of any sort of nationalist sentiment. For the moderate Americans in the majority, annexation was simply in their self-interest. Without annexation, they believed, the British and/or Catholics and/or Indians would gain control. Yet, as the American community in Oregon grew and flourished after 1843 – thus diminishing outside threats – and as the United States dragged its heels on assuming sovereignty, even moderate settlers began contemplating Oregon independence. Although this step was only ever fully embraced by a minority of the population, independence was an idea that

Oregonians of all backgrounds discussed and debated. The longer the U.S. neglected

Oregon, and more the Oregon community grew, the more realistic and the more advantageous independence became.

Which brings us to the two lessons of Oregon in regard to the larger Texas

Moment. The first lesson pertains to the phenomenon of breakaway republics.

Americans who migrated to Oregon were not forced west like the Cherokee or Mormons.

Nor were most Oregonians ambitious adventurers in pursuit of military glory or political power, in contrast to many immigrants to California and volunteers for the Patriots and

147 Baker, “The Oregon Pioneer Tradition in the Nineteenth Century.”

472 the Texas Army. Nor were they slave owners who could “Go to Texas” in order to both flee their debts and protect their slave property. Oregon settlers were, ultimately, pragmatic agrarian yeomen in search of a modest amount of free land. Thus it is unsurprising that, while Oregon was never free of violence, before 1846 it never witnessed the convulsions that afflicted Texas, California, Upper Canada, the Cherokee

Nation, and the Mormons. And yet, even in modest, peaceful Oregon, a minority of settlers still supported independence, and a great many more at least considered it as a possibility for the future. What was truly remarkable about Oregon was not that a majority of Oregonians supported U.S. annexation, but that a rival sentiment for independence existed at all. Above all, the case of Oregon demonstrated that breakaway republicanism was a ubiquitous belief among American migrants of the era, and perhaps among Americans in general. Or, to put it more simply, if breakaway republicanism could exist in Oregon, then it could exist anywhere.

While the first lesson pertains to the growth of breakaway republicans, the second pertains to the U.S. expansion that curbed them. One common Whig critique of Polk’s expansionist agenda, and one that historians such as David Pletcher have often echoed, was Polk’s misplaced emphasis on haste.148 Why could not Polk have simply waited for the United States to naturally expand? After all, so this argument goes, Americans were rapidly settling the non-U.S. West, and if they were given only a few more years, their dominance would have engendered the peaceful annexation of Oregon without threatening war with Britain, and the peaceful acquisition of California without actual war with Mexico. But Oregon demonstrated that this might not have been the case. The

148 Pletcher, Diplomacy of Annexation, 610-611.

473 more Americans who arrived in Oregon, the more confidence they gained; the more confidence they gained, the more they believed that independence was not only possible but favorable. It is impossible to know what would have happened if Oregon’s autonomy continued for several more years after 1846, but it is not unreasonable to assume that a thriving Oregon of 25,000 or 50,000 American settlers would have made some demands on the U.S. government in order to accede to annexation. This scenario presumes

Oregonians would still have desired annexation, which may have been less likely in the

1850s, as the United States careened towards civil war.149 Of course, if Oregonians did not desire annexation, the U.S. could have easily forced it upon them, but this action would have belied the ideology of peaceful expansion so beloved of Democratic politicians. The list of “what ifs” can go on indefinitely, becoming so hypothetical that they lose their usefulness. Nevertheless, these speculations all gesture towards a central point: Polk’s haste may have been more justified than critics have alleged.150 With

Oregon, time was not necessarily on Polk’s side. And, if time was not on his side with

American-dominated Oregon, then it may have been much less on his side with other breakaway republics. Even in American Oregon, U.S. expansion was never destined.

149 Of course, if Oregon were not annexed in 1846 and thus was not a northern counterpart to Texas annexation, the sectional crisis may have emerged in a different fashion.

150 As I state in Chapter Two, I am not necessarily justifying the morality of expansion, but the political reasons it needed to occur at the time.

474 CHAPTER 8

CONCLUSION

On April 15, 1846, former Texas president and current U.S. senator Sam Houston rose to speak in the Senate on the “Oregon Question.”1 Only recently arrived from newly annexed Texas, Houston wanted to voice his full support for President Polk’s intention to abrogate the current Oregon Treaty with Britain, which, in expansionists’ opinions, would pave the way for U.S. annexation of the region. Houston admitted in a letter to an acquaintance that the speech was hastily written, and that he was unwell when he spoke it

– and it showed. Houston rambled, to say the least. Ostensibly Houston’s purpose was to discuss Oregon, which he did during the first half of the speech. However, because, as

Houston said, “allusion has been made” between Oregon and Texas, he then decided to

“correct any errors” in regard to the history of Texas, and proceeded to give an account of

Texas’ path to annexation that had almost nothing to do with Oregon. Indeed, if anyone was paying close attention, the two parts of the speech directly contradicted each other.

First tackling the subject of Oregon, Houston supported Polk’s decision to annul the 1846 Oregon Treaty. During this part of the speech, Houston stated that Americans only migrated to Oregon because they believed the U.S. would soon acquire the region.

If the U.S. did not take control of Oregon soon, the federal government was in effect betraying American migrants. Refuting those who wanted to slow down Polk’s aggressive diplomacy, Houston argued that it would be impossible for the U.S. to offer protection to settlers “gradually,” and wait several years as Oregon’s fate lay undecided.

1 Sam Houston, Speech of Mr. Houston, of Texas, on the Oregon Question: delivered in the Senate of the United States, April, 1846 (1846).

475 On the contrary, it was the duty of the federal government to promptly repeal the

Oregon Treaty, which would pave the way for Oregon annexation and the protection of

American settlers. Thus, Houston wed American settlers in Oregon to the U.S. state, and saw them as mutually reinforcing U.S. power cover the continent.

Yet, when he moved to Texas, Houston flipped the narrative. Unlike Americans in Oregon, Americans who had migrated to Texas in the 1830s were not relying on the federal government to quickly annex Texas. Houston then described how Texas transformed from a disastrously weak polity in 1836 to a respectable, fully sovereign republic in 1845. Implicitly, Houston argued that the U.S. rejection of Texas annexation in 1836 was a blessing in disguise, for when Texas did eventually join the U.S., it did so as a fully sovereign polity under its own terms. Houston then gave details on this transformation, relating how Texas had created a stable currency, reestablished peace with the Indians, restored law to the region, imposed order on the land, kept the seas free from invasion, and became recognized as an international power by other countries.

Houston concluded that, in acceding to annexation to the U.S., Texas “was not a suppliant. She came into this confederacy as a sovereign and independent state…If she did not make her advent with all the paraphernalia of bridal array, she brought a nation for her dowry, and the hearts of freemen for her jewels.”2 His diatribe on Texas concluded, Houston then returned to the subject of Oregon diplomacy.

While few seemed to be listening to him at the time, in retrospect Houston’s unnoticed speech marked a crucial transition in the narrative of American expansion, a hinge point in the transition from the Texas Moment becoming, in the eyes of Americans,

2 Ibid., 7.

476 the era Manifest Destiny. Houston’s speech described both phenomena. His description of Texas’ history was undoubtedly the history of the Texas Moment: Texas was strong, sovereign, and independent, and agreed to U.S. annexation not out of necessity but convenience. In contrast, his description of Oregon was Manifest Destiny at work: Americans moved to distant regions on the continent because they believed the

U.S. would soon follow their path, and thus Americans and the U.S. state were mutually reinforcing forces of American expansion – American as both people and nation. Of course, both of Houston’s portrayals were not entirely accurate. Texas was hardly the strong, prosperous country he portrayed, and, as Chapter Seven demonstrated, Oregon migrants put little thought into the United States’ annexation of the region prior to their departure from U.S. borders. However, despite Houston’s embellishments, he did grasp that Texas did indeed make its own decision regarding U.S. annexation, and he did understand that Oregon migrants were at least moderately concerned with U.S. interests after their arrival – thus his accounts of Texas and Oregon were flawed, but understandable.

More revealing than these minor flaws was the stunning blind spot in Houston’s argument: If Texas could begin its independence in such a precarious state, but then emerge prosperous and united a decade later, then why could not Oregon do the same thing? Perhaps American migrants in Oregon were in difficult straits at the present, but like the Anglo-Texans, their racial, cultural, and political superiority over the continent’s other peoples would lead them to future triumphs. And why stop at Oregon? There were many other American settlements throughout the continent that existed beyond U.S. borders, some of which had more advantages on the international stage than Texas ever

477 had? The Mormons, for example, were much more united as a people and much more geographically isolated than the Texans had ever been, and unlike the Texans, the

Mormons were willing to ally with local native peoples. California did not have the population of Texas, but it was also much farther from both the United States and

Mexico. Moreover, one independent western polity would help create conditions for another; such was the case with the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution, the anti-centralist rebellions against Mexico in 1836, and the secession of the Confederate

States of America in 1860-1. In this way, Houston demonstrated the very precariousness of the U.S. expansionist project. While Houston may have been supporting Polk in his speech, expansionists who listened closely would be right to be concerned that Houston was actually giving other breakaway republicans ammunition for their causes.

And yet, it seems expansionists were not listening closely, or if they were, they were focusing only on Houston’s account of Oregon. In this story, American settlers and the U.S. state expanded side-by-side, both united towards the same goal, both needing one another to fulfill America’s Manifest Destiny. Ultimately, the blind spot in

Houston’s argument – and, more importantly, other Americans’ failure to recognize that blind spot – demonstrated the rapid transition in the narrative Americans told themselves about the unprecedented expansion of the United States in the mid-1840s. Houston’s defense of Texan sovereignty was adamant, but for most Americans, Texas’ decade of independence could be largely ignored, and its annexation assumed as preordained.

Instead, it was Houston’s Oregon argument that became the dominant trope of American expansion, as Oregon’s annexation was soon understood to be an inevitable result of the superiority of the United States and the American people. Inevitable, too, was the United

478 States’ conquest of California and New Mexico, and its defeat of Mormon and

Cherokee autonomy. Thus, while Oregon followed Texas in Polk’s real-time agenda in

1845, Texas – and every other breakaway republic – followed Oregon in the historical understanding of the period. Perhaps the decade following Texas independence in 1836 was the Texas Moment in actuality, but it was the Oregon Moment in memory – and the

Oregon Moment was simply another name for Manifest Destiny.

However, even as most Americans followed Houston in assuming the inexorableness of U.S. expansion, the Texas Moment did not disappear entirely. Instead, it splintered, as the Texas Moment’s various constituencies tried to fulfill the goals that had led them to create breakaway republics in the first place. For the Mormons, always the most ambitious of breakaway republicans, this remained self-sovereignty – or at least local autonomy. When the U.S. refused to grant it to them in the mid-1850s, the stage was set for the drama of the Utah War of 1857 and the tragedy of the Mountain Meadows

Massacre.3 Now isolated in the West, without any potentially powerful allies – whether

Texas, Mexico, Great Britain, or the Cherokee – the Mormons were forced to back down.

The Cherokee, too, wanted local autonomy, but used less dramatic measures to try to secure it. As they attempted to attain economic and social prosperity within their portion of Indian Territory, Cherokee diplomats in Washington maintained their efforts to stop the further erosion of the Cherokee Nation’s sovereignty. At various points, they fought against the federal licensing of white traders in the Cherokee Nation, the

3 On the Utah War, see David Bigler, The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War, 1857-1858 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2011). On the Mountain Meadows Massacre, see Ronald Walker, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002).

479 imposition of military garrisons, the use of federal courts to try Indian-white crimes

(as enshrined in Rogers v. Cherokee Nation in 1846), and the desire of some federal authorities to make Indian Territory an official U.S. territory. In a few areas, the

Cherokee achieved some measure of success; in others, they met unrelenting federal hostility, and did their best to at least postpone the issue for another day.4 Meanwhile, the Cherokee did little to further the intertribal diplomacy that John Ross had initiated in

1843.5 Surrounded by the U.S. state, local autonomy could only be pursued through diplomatic means.

Unlike the Mormons and the Cherokee, the thousands of Americans who had moved to Texas, California, and Oregon possessed a variety of individual goals, which also splintered in the aftermath of 1846. A certain segment of the population had always been drawn to breakaway republicanism out of personal ambition, pursuing some combination of military glory, political power, economic success, and simply adventure; undoubtedly American Patriots, Texas Army volunteers, and even the Bear Flag rebels had been motivated by such factors. Luckily for men like these, the U.S.-Mexican War gave this motivation added life. Upon the outbreak of the war, thousands volunteered for

U.S. forces with great enthusiasm, seeking fortune and glory in an exotic land.6 When the war ended, many Americans’ ambition did not, as the 1850s became the decade of the

4 William McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears: The Cherokees’ Struggle for Sovereignty, 1839-1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 86-121.

5 Tribal councils continued into the 1850s, but the Cherokee did not participate, and the goals of the councils were more modest. They had, after all, left the 1843 council because they feared it would damage their relations with the U.S. See John P. Bowes, Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians and the Trans- Mississippi West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 145-151.

6 Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 21-44.

480 filibusters. Filibusterism was, in a sense, a reemergence of the most ambitious types of breakaway republicans. With much of North America now closed to independent polities, these men set their sights on more distant places in the hemisphere, such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mexican Sonora. The difference between these filibusters and earlier ambitious breakaway republicans like Lansford Hastings was not their goals, but their methods: unlike Hastings-types, the filibusters of the 1850s were not buttressed by the hundreds and thousands of American settlers with the more modest goals of land and personal independence, not power and glory. Without this additional population,

American filibusters remained isolated amidst foreign, largely hostile peoples. Needless to say, filibusterism failed time and again.7

What of these more modest American settlers in California and particularly

Oregon? These were the men who had been willing to acquiescence to any political settlement so long as it guaranteed them access to land – in essence, the least

“breakaway” of all breakaway republicans? After the United States conquered the West, they flocked to the region in even greater numbers, as they believed U.S. oversight made their migration less risky, and their economic goals more attainable.8 Moreover, sheer numbers protected them: the 1849 Gold Rush ensured the overland trails would become well-worn roads traveled by thousands of fortune seekers. Upon their arrival, however, migrants were disappointed with what U.S. oversight brought – or, more accurately, did not bring. In the 1850s, settlers in Oregon and California stepped up their efforts to take

7 Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

8 For the federal presence in the West, see John Unruh, The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 201-243, esp. 220 and 243.

481 land from Indians, for they believed that the U.S. Army would defend their actions.

They were sorely mistaken. American aggressiveness towards Indians led to an eruption of warfare throughout the West, but the U.S. Army struggled to protect the scattered

American settlements spread over the vast region.9 And, when the U.S. Army did arrive, it was often ineffectual or – much worse in settler eyes – pro-Indian. Indeed, during the

Yakima War in northern Oregon (territory that would become the state of Washington),

General John Wool blamed white settlers for the violence, and made peace with the

Indians.10 Oregonians had an additional reason for displeasure: while Californians achieved statehood via the Compromise of 1850, Oregonians were left with a territorial government that they perceived as dictatorial; they had, after all, governed themselves for several years before annexation, and saw little need for outsiders to run their internal affairs. Thus, the U.S. did not give the protection that western settlers desired, while it simultaneously imposed itself in areas where it was unwanted.11

Of course, this unhappiness with the U.S. state did not translate into movements for independence. Now that the U.S. controlled the West, breakaway republicanism would require positive action that would directly counter the United States. Many

Americans in the West may have been displeased with certain aspects of federal oversight, but they were not going to rebel against their native country. Moreover, they were too busy; panning for gold, clearing forests, and plowing fields took precedence

9 For a good summary, see Anne Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800-1860 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 409-450.

10 Ibid., 429-431.

11 For an overview of what became a typical western grievance, see Patrician Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: Norton, 1987), 44-48.

482 over arguing about U.S. sovereignty. However, the idea of an independent western polity was still present in general terms, for the simple reason of distance: Washington was just too far for the U.S. to govern the West effectively. Easterners joined westerners in this opinion, one of whom was none other than U.S. President Zachary Taylor. During the journey to his inauguration, Taylor casually told Polk that he believed that distance made a western republic likely, which stunned Polk as “alarming opinions.”12 Rightfully so, for both California and Oregon had been Polk’s presidential projects, and now Taylor was calmly dismissing all of Polk’s work. Far from Washington, westerners may have agreed passively, but most were not going to take action to see a western republic created.

Yet, what if the U.S. sovereignty in the West collapsed due to outside forces?

This is precisely what happened during the Civil War, as Lincoln and his administration were too concerned with the secession of the South to concentrate on the Far West. As

U.S. sovereignty over the West receded, the Texas Moment reemerged in full. In Utah, the U.S. pulled troops out of the territory to reassign them to more needed areas, at which point Brigham Young promptly reasserted Mormon control. In the Cherokee Nation, the submerged tensions of the 1840s resurfaced, as John Ross and Stand Watie once again battled for supremacy, a struggled that revolved around whether to ally with the

Confederacy. In the end, Ross reluctantly did so, but not as much out of his desire to maintain slavery, but rather to maintain Cherokee unity and therefore Cherokee

12 James K. Polk, The Diary of James K. Polk During his Presidency, 1845 to 1849, ed. Milo Milton Quaife (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1910), 375-376.

483 sovereignty.13 In southern California, some ex-southerners argued for California’s secession and political connection to the Confederacy; even more Californians began once again contemplating an independent Pacific Republic – particularly if the North failed to win the war.14 In ever-moderate Oregon, a portion of southern Oregonians supported the South out of their disdain for federal interference in all state matters.15

Even Texas, by this point routinely written into the Deep South, made arguments for secession that echoed almost word-for-word their reasons for declaring independence from Mexico in 1836.16 Included in these reasons was the federal government’s failure to provide frontier protection. Thus, across the West, breakaway republicanism reasserted itself during the Civil War, as the Texas Moment resurfaced in full force.17

Of course, the West was not the South. Much of the talk of western independence was simply that – talk. In this way, the Texas Moment that reemerged during the Civil

War also echoed the original Texas Moment: most western Americans were dictated by pragmatism. If the U.S. won the Civil War, then they were willing to remain in the

13 William McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears: The Cherokees’ Struggle for Sovereignty, 1839-1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 176-200.

14 See Glenna Matthews, The Golden State in the Civil War: Thomas Starr King, the Republican Party, and the Birth of Modern California (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 66, 84-91; Joseph Waldo Ellison, “Sentiments in California for a Pacific Republic, 1843-1861” (Master’s Thesis: University of California, 1919), 66-104.

15 Jeff LaLande, “ ‘Dixie’ of the Pacific Northwest: Southern Oregon’s Civil War,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 100, No. 1, The Civil War in Oregon (Spring, 1999), 32-81.

16 Sarah Rodriguez, “‘Children of the Great Mexican Family’: American Immigration to Northern Mexico, 1810-1861,” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2015), 399-430.

17 Steven Hahn makes a similar point in his epilogue, in Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States, ed. Adam Arenson and Andrew R. Graybill (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 265- 272. See also this book of essays more generally, and also Virginia Scharff, ed., Empire and Liberty: The Civil War and the West (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015).

484 newly strengthened national union. However, if the Confederacy emerged victorious, then pragmatism dictated other political possibilities: for former southerners living in the West, this may have been joining the Confederacy, but for most Americans in the region, it meant an independent republic – or republics.18 Thus, the Civil War was not just a clash between two sections, North and South, but a clash that also dictated the political fate of the third section, the West. If the U.S. became truncated to its south, it was very possible that it would become truncated to its west as well.

Viewing the Civil War in the West was as a coda to the Texas Moment, part of a longer phenomenon of U.S. sovereignty ebbing and flowing over near and distant portions of the North American continent, this raises larger questions about the Texas

Moment’s effect on the periodization of U.S. history more generally. Typically, the U.S.-

Mexican War and the Wilmot Proviso mark the dividing line between the Jacksonian and antebellum United States. 1846 inaugurates the countdown to the Civil War.19 This periodization presumes, however, that Jacksonian America was in some sense a unified polity, and that disunion only became inevitable (or, at least, much more probable) after

1846. But as we have seen, the Texas Moment decade represented a series of crises for the United States, which led some Americans to undertake expatriation as a solution.

However, unlike the national crisis of the Civil War, the crises of the Texas Moment within U.S. borders were profoundly regional, not national or sectional. They all

18 This echoes Jeremy Adelman’s study of Latin American independence, in which he argues that the collapse of sovereignty in Latin America due to the Napoleonic Wars’ effects on Spain and Portugal led to the growth of independence sentiment: Jeremy Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

19 For example, the Oxford series on American history: Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought?: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

485 revolved the relationship between federal and state power, and the actions of individual Americans: Cherokee hysteria in Georgia and Arkansas; Patriot incursions in

New York, Ohio, and Michigan; Mormon “wars” in first Missouri then Illinois; Seminole intransigence in Florida; the “Aroostook War” in Maine; a plethora of race and nativist urban riots. Even the predominant national crisis of the era, the Panic of 1837, was in many ways also series of regional crises, as the depression affected different states at different times, and in different ways. Of course, many of the crises of the 1850s were also regional: Bleeding Kansas; the escalating “border war” over the Fugitive Slave Act;

John Brown’s raid.20 The Civil War may was more of a catastrophe than all of the above crises combined, but looking at it another way, it was simply the culmination of many struggles of sovereignty. Thus, to re-periodize, one should see the era from the Texas

Moment in 1836 (or perhaps South Carolina Nullification in 1828) to 1865 – or even

1877 – as the defining era of U.S. sovereignty more generally. While the Civil War was the most dramatic conflict of U.S. sovereignty, the decade of the Texas Moment was also a series of battles over similar issues. Ultimately, between 1828 and 1877, the U.S. careened from crisis to crisis; only by redefining its very composition did the federal government solve the issue.21

This re-periodization is perhaps on firmer footing if the Texas Moment, and U.S. history in general, is incorporated into North American history more broadly. A geographic reorientation is needed just as much as a re-periodization, for ultimately this

20 “Border War” is Stanley Harrold’s phrase: Harrold, Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

21 It seems Steven Hahn may be making a related point in his forthcoming A Nation Without Borders: The United States and its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 (New York: Viking, 2016), which periodizes U.S. history by the Mexican civil wars.

486 era was not just the defining era of U.S. sovereignty, but a defining era for North

American republicanism more generally. The Texas Moment was not a series of conflicts over U.S. sovereignty, but a series of conflicts over Mexican sovereignty as well

– and, in that sense, a general conflict over the very functioning of republicanism in both countries. Beginning in the mid-1830s, both countries endured an unending series of rebellions, secession movements, and national emergencies – including, in 1846, against one another.22 In both countries, men desiring local control challenged those who wanted to centralize power. Indeed, if examining this era by itself, one crucial takeaway is republicanism as an ideology broke down when it met on-the-ground reality. Tellingly, the British Empire also experienced a crisis in North America in 1837 during the

Canadian Rebellions, but Great Britain dealt with it promptly and effectively. Neither the republican United States nor republican Mexico could follow suit, allowing breakaway republics to emerge in Texas, Mormon Utah, California, the Yucatan, and New Mexico.

Both Mexicans and Americans contemplated creating more republics in other regions, even if these never fully came to fruition. Ultimately the Texas Moment was the first salvo in what was a failure of republicanism. When both the United States and Mexico finally emerged from decades of civil war, neither would – or could – allow the devolved power they once had to their local constituencies.

The Texas Moment’s crisis of sovereignty was also a crisis of space. It was easy for Americans of the early republic to wax poetic about the sheer size and potential of the

West when they had no connection with on-the-ground events. However, when they and

22 See the papers for “Remaking North American Sovereignty: Towards a Continental History of State Transformation in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” July 30-Aug. 1, 2015, Banff, Alberta, Canada.

487 the U.S. state finally caught up to the western vision with their actual presence, vision did not match reality. North America was simply too big for the United States to exert control over the distant regions of its own territory, let alone on or beyond its borders.23 Of course, U.S. weakness had long been apparent to the non-Anglo-American populations in the trans-Mississippi West; recent work has made it abundantly clear that native peoples held the balance of power in the region through at least the first half of the nineteenth century.24 Yet neither could the United States govern the actions of its own citizens. During the Texas Moment, the U.S. – both its federal and state authorities – could not control its northern or southern borders, could not govern whites or Indians in

Georgia or Indian Territory, could not alleviate violence between and non-Mormon and non-Mormons in Missouri or Illinois – and these conflicts occurred within U.S. borders!

Needless to say, when Americans expatriated themselves to Texas, California, the Salt

Lake Valley, and Oregon, minimum U.S. influence dropped to no influence whatsoever.

Instead of the migration of thousands of Americans representing U.S. strength – as the

Manifest Destiny literature has argued – it represented U.S. weakness. People left the

United States because it seemed to be failing its citizens. And, the more distant the

American population, the more limited were the measures the federal government could use to exert control over that population.25

23 D.W. Meinig offers a continental perspective on U.S. power that few historians have echoed: D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: Vol. 2: Continental America, 180—1867 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).

24 Among many works, see Pekka Hämänäinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Kathleen Duval, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

25 In many ways, the haphazard colonization of the 17th and 18th centuries from Great Britain to North America was repeating itself, if only for a brief time.

488 This assertion seems to contradict recent work that has demonstrated the underlying strength and resilience of the U.S. state in the decades before the Civil War, particularly as it exerted influence on the western frontier.26 Certainly historians who have argued the U.S. state was strong in certain ways are not entirely wrong. After all, while both Mexico and the U.S. experienced crises of sovereignty in 1836, the U.S. was able to withstand its own crises, and then harness its power to defeat Mexico decisively only a decade later (although U.S. victory was still less assured that it has been portrayed in retrospect). The United States could and did exert its power in this instance – but it depended on the individuals, coalitions, and parties in power, the decisions they made, and the larger circumstances that informed and circumscribed these decisions.

Or, to put it another way: politics mattered. The strong vs. weak state debate has tended to flatten the political history of the early republic, judging U.S. state power as an entity unto itself. Federal power, however, was an extension of the individuals at the helm of the federal government. Thus Polk and his allies, through a combination of luck and skill, were able to harness the U.S. state to conquer vast expanses of the North

American continent; in 1846, the U.S. was a strong state. Yet only eight years previously, the U.S. could not annex Texas, could not exert authority over its northern border during the Canadian Rebellions, could not defeat the Seminole in Florida, could not oversee Cherokee migration, and could not keep the U.S. economy out of the worst depression in its short history. In 1838, the U.S. was undoubtedly a weak state. State

26 Brian Balogh, A Government out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 113, No. 3 (June, 2008), 752-772; Jeff Pasley, “Midget on Horseback: American Indians and the History of the American State,” Common-place, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Oct., 2008), < http://www.common-place-archives.org/vol-09/no-01/pasley/>.

489 strength and weakness therefore ebbed and flowed over the entire period, and depended on the skills and policies of those in power.

So weak was the U.S. state during the Texas Moment that it is tempting to understand the decade not just as a moment of state weakness, but as a return to a postcolonial United States. Indeed, the late 1830s and early 1840s mimicked the 1790s and early 1800s, in that some observers believed the U.S. would rupture in some fashion, through some combination of war with Great Britain, a sectional rift over slavery, urban disorder and riots, political polarization, economic depression, and conflicts with Indians on the western frontier.27 Alexis de Tocqueville may have offered a ringing endorsement of U.S. society in 1831, but less than a decade letter many Americans did not share his assessment. For the first time in years, the United States’ future did not seem so assured.

This feeling made sense both economically and politically. The depression devastated the lives of ordinary Americans, and politics offered no reprieve. For Democrats, their country was the one that Andrew Jackson had made (or, perhaps to Democrats, preserved), but now without the crucial influence of the great man himself; meanwhile,

Whig hopes for reform were dashed with the death of William Henry Harrison and the intransigence of John Tyler. It is no wonder that a wide variety of Americans in many different regions responded with anxiousness, even hysteria, over the issues that plagued the nation – particularly those issues that plagued their locality.

With the U.S. at such a nadir, the question must be then asked: How did it survive the Texas Moment not only intact, but with vastly more territory? While there is no

27 On the U.S. as a postcolonial nation, see Kariann Yokota, Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

490 single definitive reason, several answers can be posited. First, as recent historians have demonstrated, Americans understood their nation as a union, and this was indeed how the U.S. functioned in the half century before the Civil War.28 As a union, the plethora of local and regional crises always remained local and regional; union isolated the federal government from a truly national crisis – although the Patriot War came close in its amplification of war hysteria with Britain. Second, breakaway republicanism provided an outlet to resolve, or at least mitigate, some of the major tensions in American society. While violence surrounded Cherokee and Mormon migrations, there never was a true Cherokee-U.S. or Mormon-U.S. war, in which hundreds or thousands of Americans died. At the same time, the rootless would-be filibusters and adventurers who may have caused disorder within the U.S. were drawn by both land and war to leave for Texas, to invade Canada, to migrate to Oregon and California. Certainly breakaway republics were not the “safety-valve” of the Turnerian West, but it is worth considering the dynamics of a place like Missouri. In the late 1830s, Mormons and non-Mormons came to the brink of all-out war; several years later, both groups were leaving for the West by the thousands; in some sense, the West was alleviating the potential for violence. Finally, in many ways the Texas Moment was not solved, but only transformed; Polk’s expansionist actions simply paved the way for a much more united breakaway republicanism a little

28 On the importance of union during this period, see David Hendrickson, Union, Nation, or Empire?: The American Debate over International Relations, 1789-1941 (Lawrence, KN: University Press of Kansas, 2009), 111-194; Elizabeth Varon, Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Scott Silverstone, Divided Union: The Politics of War during the Early American Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004); Rogan Kersh, Dreams of a More Perfect Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). Although not focused on this period, James Lewis identifies a crucial relationship between union and international relations in The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood – The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783-1829 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

491 over a decade later, with the secession of the Confederate States of America. This long durée of breakaway republicanism leads back to an earlier point: the Texas Moment was simply the first act in the three part drama (with the Civil War and Reconstruction) that decided what exactly U.S. sovereignty would mean in practice – or whether it would survive at all.

Perhaps, of course, all of these implications for the Texas Moment on the history of the United States – weak vs. strong state, postcolonialism, crises in sovereignty and republicanism, the importance of politics – are actually missing the proverbial forest for the trees: what truly mattered during the Texas Moment was not what the United States was doing as a nation-state, but what Americans were doing as a people. They were migrating (or, in the case of the Patriot War, hoping to migrate) to regions beyond U.S. borders by the thousands. In this demographic sense, John L. O’Sullivan’s vision of

Manifest Destiny – which was shared by a great mass of white Americans more generally

– was correct. Indeed, James Belich has gone so far to argue that U.S. imperialism over

North America, as well as British imperialism over its far-flung seaborne empire, was of passing importance compared to the most important phenomenon of the nineteenth century: Anglo-American demographic explosion and its consequences for world history.29 Whether the U.S. state eventually conquered the West did not really matter, for Americans would do so as a people by sheer numbers. Belich’s findings support those of this study, in that both argue that Americans were migrating beyond U.S. borders

29 James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783- 1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

492 regardless of the presence of the United States. It was Americans, not the U.S., who truly mattered.

However, Belich’s larger point counters this study’s emphasis on one decade; to

Belich, whether the U.S. controlled the West ten years before 1846, ten years after 1846, or never gained control at all, it simply did not matter in the long run. Americans’ demographic expansion would not have stopped, and thus Americans’ political goals were largely irrelevant when they arrived in the West. Certainly Belich’s concentration on demography over empire is a needed corrective to the plethora of works on American expansion that assume they went hand-in-hand, yet his argument still assumes a continued connection between the two. Perhaps Anglo demographic victory was inevitable, but its implications would have been very different if a robust Pacific

Republic emerged on the West Coast, or if California, Texas, and Mormon Deseret remained independent under loose British supervision. Perhaps historians have overplayed the expansion of the U.S. empire, but empire cannot be ignored entirely. In

1900, North America bared little geopolitical resemblance to South America, but it goes too far to assume it could not have been more similar if the Texas Moment and its aftermath had played out differently.

Which leads to a return to the key question of this study: could it have played out differently? Certainly Americans at the time, both those remaining in the U.S. and those expatriating themselves, believed so. The fate of North America was ambiguous; the future that did emerge, in which only three countries comprised most of the continent, was hardly foreordained. Yet simply because Americans believed a different future was possible did not mean they were correct. Indeed, if we look at the end of the Texas

493 Moment “facing east” from a breakaway republican perspective, and assuming U.S. actions would have remained the same, then a different political future was impossible.

To counter U.S. expansion, breakaway republicans would have needed to ally with one another, and form a united front. As we have seen, however, for many Americans in the

West, breakaway republicanism arose in the form of general musings about independence and small gestures towards its realization. Only the Texans actually formed a breakaway republic, which initially ran counter to the desires of a majority of its inhabitants who desired U.S. annexation. Only the Mormons actively countered the United States, and took concrete actions to create a polity of their own. As the Mormons sensed in 1846 when they chose to ally themselves with the United States, there was not enough independence sentiment in the West to U.S. conquest at bay.

What was needed was time – and for it appeared there was plenty of it. In the early 1840s, it seemed the U.S. would not expand into Texas, California, or Oregon any time soon. Here again Polk’s election and aggressive policies assume the utmost importance. Let us take one counterfactual, and apply it to Americans living beyond U.S. borders: a Henry Clay victory in the election of 1844. If Henry Clay had won, it is reasonable to assume that Texas, Alta California, and Oregon would have remained apart from the United States, at least for the four years of Clay’s term. If this happened, one can imagine any or all of the following occurring: Texas turning its back on U.S. annexation for good, and embracing the British-brokered peace treaty with Mexico; an independent Mormon settlement in the Salt Lake Valley of at least 10,000 people; a fully functional Oregon government overseeing a population of 20,000, whose independence aspirations the British supported as a counter to U.S. attempts to annex the region; a

494 California Republic comprising the northern half of today’s state of California, governed by an alliance of wealthy californio dons and American immigrants who were rapidly becoming dons themselves, by virtue of claiming thousands of acres of land for free. To understand what Americans were doing in the West when they expatriated themselves in the early 1840s, one must have these counterfactuals in mind. At their heart, breakaway republicans’ motivations and actions revolved around economic opportunity, social advancement, and political pragmatism – none of which necessarily involved the United States as a nation-state.

But these motivations did involve the United States as an ideological paradigm, both in the past and, for most Americans, still in the present. We must not forget the twin ideological cores of the breakaway republican experience: American nationalism, and republicanism itself. Breakaway republicans may have been circumscribed by pragmatism, but so too did American nationalism and republican ideology circumscribe this pragmatism. If breakaway republicans were motivated by pragmatism alone, then it stands to reason that Great Britain would have acquired significant holdings in what is now the western United States. Throughout the decade of the Texas Moment, the British were certainly present in the region, and, as exemplified with their diplomatic negotiations with Sam Houston in 1844, were willing to partner with anyone who would prevent U.S. expansion. Yet partnering with the British was anathema to breakaway republicans, even though they had expatriated themselves from the United States, and even though the British had the ability to offer them real economic incentives. However, unlike the Late Loyalists of the 1790s in Canada, the nationalism and republicanism of breakaway republicans in the 1830s and 1840s prevented most from even contemplating

495 such an alliance. As Americans, the British were their supreme historical enemy; as republicans, the British government was a decrepit monarchy. Certainly aspects of this ideology could be fudged; Americans proved themselves willing to partner with the

Mexican republic so long as Mexico granted local control – note, however, that this step still preserved republicanism and a localized American society. Thus, while land and opportunity could bend the shape of American nationalism and republicanism, these pragmatic incentives could not break American ideology entirely.

Breakaway republicans’ ideology leads back to the power of the U.S. state, and this state’s relationship with its American people. While the U.S may have been a weak state in the typical sense – in its military and economic prowess on the domestic and international stage – it was a remarkably strong state from an ideological perspective.

Indeed, the U.S. was so strong that even the most ambitious breakaway republicans remained tethered to its ideological parameters. We can see this best with the ubiquitous

Lansford Hastings. Hastings’ travels and his continental ambitions have caused him to pop up throughout this dissertation, but it is important to note the roads he did not take to achieve these ambitions. As John McLoughlin’s lawyer in Oregon, he could have chosen to further ties to McLoughlin, and through them become a powerful fur patriarch of the

West. Instead, Hastings tried to persuade the American community in Oregon to declare independence. After failing in this endeavor, Hastings traveled to California, where he met John Sutter. Here again was a road not taken, for Sutter’s manipulations had secured him his own private fiefdom in the Sacramento Valley. Instead of trying to insinuate himself with Sutter himself or the californio authorities – and thereby mimic

Sutter – Hastings returned to the United States, where he hoped to persuade Americans to

496 migrate to California to create an American-led California republic. In both Oregon and California, Hastings undoubtedly desired power for himself, but it was always of a certain type: he desired power within an American republic. In the end, despite Lansford

Hastings’ anti-U.S. ambitions, he could not escape his American heritage and his own predilection for American republicanism.

Undoubtedly the ideological strength of American nationalism and republicanism helped mitigate the many weaknesses of the U.S. state during the period of the Texas

Moment. While breakaway republicans may have wanted to leave U.S. borders, they still remained American republicans wherever they went. They were willing to accommodate non-Americans, but they were not willing to assimilate. When the U.S. did undertake expansion in the mid-1840s, it could then reclaim these Americans as national actors.

And many of these actors also reclaimed the U.S., albeit oftentimes grudgingly. Indeed, despite Hastings’ intentional anti-U.S. actions, he likely aided U.S. expansion by persuading hundreds of Americans to journey west, some of whom became Bear

Flaggers, who in turn joined U.S. forces in California during the U.S.-Mexican War. In an ironic twist, the desire of Hastings and those like him to create new American breakaway republics was made much more difficult because they already were American republicans. While the practical realities of the U.S. state may have furthered breakaway republicanism during the era, the powerful ideologies of American nationhood helped mitigate its most extreme manifestations. In the end, the long-term power of American ideology overcame the short-term weaknesses of the U.S. state.

Thus the Texas Moment has important implications both for the history of the

United States as a polity, and for Americans as a people in the non-U.S. West. Perhaps

497 the most intriguing implications, however, relate to an underdeveloped portion of this dissertation: Americans as a people within U.S. borders. This study has privileged the actions of American post-expatriation and their dialectic with the U.S. state, yet the

Texas Moment’s roots lay in American society, as economic depression, social unrest, and political anxiety ran rampant through the American union. Tens of thousands of

Americans chose to migrate during this decade beyond U.S. borders, and a great many more migrated within the United States itself – perhaps to more western states, or perhaps to the nation’s burgeoning urban centers. What was American society like on the ground, particularly in those places that hemorrhaged population? On a personal level, what did it mean for individuals to watch friends and loved ones leave for the distant west, to see

“Gone to Texas” written on a neighbor’s doorway? The devastating effects of emigration on Ireland over the past few centuries come to mind, as do those of the internal migrations of Americans during the Great Depression. So too do more contemporary issues, notably the hollowed-out manufacturing centers of the post-industrial United

States. It seems unlikely that American communities experienced this level of devastation during the Texas Moment, but at present we do not know. It is almost always the case that histories of the overland trail begin in Missouri and end in the Far West.

Ultimately, what is needed is a social history that remains in the small communities of

Missouri – and in communities in Arkansas, Ohio, New York, Mississippi, and Illinois, and all of those places whose population left for other places, or left – in a few circumstances – to fight in foreign wars. Only then will we know how deeply the Texas

Moment penetrated American society.

498 * * * * *

Sam Houston began this conclusion, and he is a particularly appropriate figure with whom to conclude. It was Houston who first articulated how Americans would quickly forget the Texas Moment in his 1846 speech on Texas and Oregon. In his account of Texas annexation, Houston demonstrated how contingent and closely-run the

U.S. annexation of Texas had been; in his account of the Oregon Question, he combined the U.S. state and American migrants into one entity, essentially articulating Manifest

Destiny ideology without using the actual phrase. Thus, without mentioning the contradiction in his account, Houston turned the Texas Moment in the past into Manifest

Destiny in the future. Houston’s speech was not the only demonstration of this transformation; so too was Sam Houston himself. For almost his entire life, Houston was the consummate believer in the American Union. A Tennessee delegate to the House of

Representatives and then its state governor in the 1820s, Houston made poor personal and political choices that forced him to flee to Texas in the early 1830s. Yet, as two-time president of the Texas Republic, Houston worked tirelessly to annex it to the United

States. He then became a U.S. senator for two terms, followed by governor of Texas for two terms. In 1860, Houston again showed his commitment to the Union. While in the

1830s he had worked tirelessly to make Texas a part of the United States, in 1860 he worked tirelessly to keep Texas in the United States. Vociferously against secession,

Houston refused to call a secession convention until Texans called it anyway, thereby negating his authority. He died in Texas in 1863, having not seen the coming destruction of the South that he had predicted two years before.

499 Sam Houston’s life epitomizes how Americans viewed – and still view –

U.S. expansion. Wherever he went, Houston was not just an American, but an American committed to the United States. His journey to Texas was rooted in his personal failings, and was not symbolic of larger geopolitical forces; in essence, it was a temporary move, not a permanent expatriation. Then, as soon as he arrived in Texas, Houston argued for its connection to the United States. Only forces beyond his control kept Texas independent for another decade. We remember most of the migrants of the 1830s and

1840s as, in effect, Sam Houstons. In this view, American Patriots wanted to attach

Canada to the U.S.; the Mormons may have wanted isolation, but only within U.S. borders; the Cherokee were a defeated people relegated to U.S. wards; Americans in

California fought to attach the territory to the U.S.; Americans in Oregon never even questioned that Oregon would soon be connected to the U.S. Like Houston, all

Americans of the era, wherever they traveled and whatever they did, were U.S. nationalists, foremost and forever.

Yet, as this dissertation has demonstrated, Houston was an anomaly. Indeed, his unionist actions while president of Texas in the 1830s and 1840s should be viewed as just as anomalous as his unionist actions as Texas governor in 1860. In both cases, separation and secession were the dominant trends, not union. Of course, permanent Texas independence in the late 1830s was not as popular as Texas secession in 1860, but at the very least it was still a part of normal discourse. On a broader scale, separation and independence were part of the normal discourse for most of the Americans who left, or contemplated leaving, U.S. borders during the Texas Moment. Certainly Brigham Young had independence in mind when he looked to the Salt Lake Valley in 1845, and in all

500 likelihood John Ross hoped for Cherokee sovereignty when he convened more than a dozen removed native groups in Indian Territory in 1843. Rensselaer Van Rensselaer did not hope to expand the United States when he volunteered to fight for the Republic of

Canada in 1838, and Jon Gantt did not plan for the U.S. conquest of California when he signed up for the Mexican army in 1845. Even those who may have longed for U.S. conquest prepared for other contingencies: the Bear Flaggers would not have rebelled if they believed U.S. conquest was imminent, and Peter Burnett and his “independent party” would not have laid the groundwork for a vigorous Oregon government if they thought Oregon would soon be a U.S. territory. These men were not alone: The thousands of more Americans who joined them in Texas and Canada, the Salt Lake

Valley and Indian Territory, and California and Oregon felt the same way.

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