So Far from God by John S.D. Eisenhower

Author:John S.D. Eisenhower [Eisenhower, John S.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82768-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

* A group called the Brook Farmers, a literary group located near Boston, wrote in their house organ, “There can be no doubt of the design being entertained by the leaders and instigators of this infamous business, to extend the “area of freedom” to the shores of California, by robbing Mexico of another large mass of her territory; and the people are prepared to execute it to the letter.… [It] is to be viewed as monstrously iniquitous, but after all it seems to be completing a more universal design of Providence.” DeVoto, The Year of Decision, pp. 9–10.

† Estimates placed that fleet as comprising 600 vessels and 17,000 men (Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, January 1845, quoted in Justin Smith, The War with Mexico, vol. I, p. 525). It was based largely on Lahaina, in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). Before Mexican independence it was illegal, but one John Hudson is recorded as having bought a schooner from the Spainsh king as early as 1805 (interview with William Mason, Los Angeles, December 26, 1985).

‡ Hubert Bancroft, History of California, vol. Ill, p. 400. The Russians had an interest in the region, and it was said that the Russians feared American influence more than they did the Mexican.

§ Justin Smith, The War with Mexico, vol. I, p. 315. Alaska today has one person per 1.3 square miles, about twenty times as dense.

‖ “Though a quasi-war exists [in California], all the amenities of life, and liberty, are preserved; your person, life, and liberty, are as sacred at the hearth of a Californian as they would be at your own fireside. He will never betray you; the rights of hospitality, in his generous judgment, require him to peril his own life in defence of yours. He may fight you on the field, but in his family, you may dance with his daughters, and he himself will make the waltzing string.” Walter Colton, Three Years in California, pp. 17–18.

a One astute observer saw them as “the reckless Californian, the half-wild Indian, the roving trapper of the West, the lawless Mexican, the licentious Spaniard, the scolding Englishman, the absconding Frenchman, the luckless Irishman, the plodding German, the adventurous Mormon.” He added that all had come “with the expectation of finding but little work and less law.” Colton, p. 19.

b Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision, p. 20. In early 1846, for example, Larkin sent to Polk a remarkable 3,000-word extremely thorough assessment of the situation in California dealing with the past history of the region, its present condition, and even the prices of every commodity from gold to land to bullock hides.

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