Laid Waste! by John Lauritz Larson

Author:John Lauritz Larson [Larson, John Lauritz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, General, Political Science, Public Policy, Environmental Policy
ISBN: 9780812296679
Google: zgC-DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2019-11-08T22:19:27+00:00

Fracturing the Vision

The sordid story of the Mexican-American War has been told a dozen different ways, but it usually comes out the same: having “crushed” the Mexican “aggressors” and occupied the capital in Mexico City, the United States paid the vanquished nation millions to secure clear title to everything south of Oregon and west of Louisiana, namely California, New Mexico, and greater Texas. Disingenuous narratives, so convoluted as to defy simple logic, decorated both official explanations and the rhetoric found in the press. To cover his nakedness, Polk called the cession an “indemnity” from Mexico for starting an unjust war. The president stood ready to accept territory in lieu of cash, and he asked for $3 million to “enable” negotiations. Some congressmen blanched, but most people were not offended. The genius of Polk’s appeal lay in recognizing that American destiny was tied, not to slavery or free soil per se, but to an acquisitive urge that was served by both. The emerging culture of exploitation could draw upon three competing technologies: slavery and the cotton culture, free-soil family farming, and free-labor capitalist industry. New systems of commerce, transportation, law, and financial services could be made to serve all three. All that new land in the West (so Polk’s argument ran) afforded a neutral opportunity for further development: ambitious American settlers could be trusted to adopt—as they had done since the 1790s—whatever system they believed best fit the landscape before them.12

In such a narrative, the rich green valleys of Oregon and central California welcomed farmers of every description. The drier short-grass plains sustained ranchers, as they had for generations in Spanish California. The most arid regions—the so-called Great American Desert—likely marked the natural edge of the southern Cotton Kingdom, while the incredible ranges of mountains no doubt gleamed with undiscovered mineral wealth. As had been the case on the trans-Appalachian frontier, private settlers poured into these lands before Uncle Sam gained title. Even before the Oregon Treaty of 1846 well over five thousand settlers had traversed the fabled Overland Trail to plow up the lush Willamette Valley. By the end of 1847 some two thousand Mormons, driven by hostile neighbors from Missouri and Illinois, had trekked to the edge of the Great Salt Lake, where they hoped nobody would care how they prospered. Real estate hucksters such as Lansford Hastings sold golden dreams of life in the Central Valley of California, along with travel advice that gave at least one group—the Donner Party—a most gruesome experience. Then in 1848 the cry of “Gold!” went up from Sutter’s Mill, and Polk’s benign point of view acquired what should have been a new lease on life. Instead it set the table for the final bifurcation of manifest destiny into fiercely competing doctrines that would tear the Union apart.13

Polk’s land grab could not be digested in the Congress of the United States because his permissive embrace of all three strands of modernization—slavery, free soil, and industrialization—could not be sustained. Back in 1846, firmly believing

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