American Politics by Roper Jon

Author:Roper, Jon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2011-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Diversity in unity

Immigration and migration, patterns of settlement, historical development, economic circumstances, industrialization, urbanization and religious sentiments are among the influences that have helped form the different characters of individual states. Even in colonial times political attitudes in the towns of Puritan New England could be contrasted with those of the slaveholding plantations in Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas. During the early part of the nineteenth century, moreover, as immigrants came to the United States from Europe, they fanned out across the continent to the new territories acquired through the Louisiana Purchase (1803). By 1840, the original thirteen states had doubled in number. The annexation of Texas (1845) and the war with Mexico (1846–1848) brought those areas of the former Hispanic empire in the Americas into the United States, broadening the ethnic mix of its population still further.

Once territories achieved a critical threshold of population, they could apply for statehood. This afforded fresh opportunities to consider how republican governments could be organized, and the new western states took the lead in adopting more open and democratic methods of doing political business. Consider California. In his fourth annual message to Congress in December 1848, President Polk observed that “it was known that mines of the precious metals existed to a considerable extent in California at the time of its acquisition.” He went on to confirm that “The accounts of abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief … gold is found at various places in an extensive district of the country.” He did not need to say any more. The rush for gold triggered such a rapid increase in population that two years later, in 1850, California was admitted to the Union as the first American state with a Pacific coastline. During the first half of that decade, indeed, the West coast state was responsible for just under half of the world’s gold production, with its cities – notably San Francisco – booming as a result.

In 1849, California’s state constitution was among the first to be put to a popular vote of the people living there, before it became part of the United States. Thirty years later, however, it was subjected to a radical overhaul as a result of widespread discontent with the political corruption that was then rife, the inequitable tax system and the conduct of – in particular – the railroad corporations in the state. At that time, there was also a widespread hostility directed against the Chinese who had settled on the West coast. Article Nineteen of the state’s 1879 Constitution therefore prohibited any Californian corporation from hiring Chinese workers, barred them from any public sector employment and mandated the Legislature to “discourage their immigration by all the means within its power.” The provision remained until 1952, when a number of amendments to the state constitution were put to a popular vote. Presenting the argument in favor of the Article’s repeal, Thomas Maloney, the temporary speaker of the Assembly

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