West of Slavery

Kevin Waite

Description

When American slaveholders looked west in the mid-nineteenth century, they saw an empire unfolding before them. They pursued that vision through diplomacy, migration, and armed conquest. By the late 1850s, slaveholders and their allies had transformed the southwestern quarter of the nation – California, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Utah – into a political client of the plantation states. Across this vast swath of the map, white southerners defended the institution of African American chattel slavery as well as systems of Native American bondage. This surprising history uncovers the Old South in unexpected places, far beyond the region's cotton fields and sugar plantations.

Slaveholders' western ambitions culminated in a coast-to-coast crisis of the Union. By 1861, the rebellion in the South inspired a series of separatist movements in the Far West. Even after the collapse of the Confederacy, the threads connecting South and West held, undermining the radical promise of Reconstruction. Kevin Waite brings to light what contemporaries recognized but historians have described only in part: The struggle over slavery played out on a transcontinental stage.

Sujets

• Slave
• Destinée manifeste
• États confédérés d'Amérique
• Loi d'exclusion des Chinois
• Confederate States of America
• Compromise of 1850
• Chinese Exclusion Act
• California Gold Rush
• Manifest Destiny
• U.S. Camel Corps
• Mexican?American War
• Native Americans in the American Civil War
• Estados Confederados de América

Informations

• Publié par: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781469663203
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

WEST OF SLAVERY
THE DAVID J. WEBER SERIES IN THE NEW BORDERLANDS HISTORY
Andrew R. Graybill and Benjamin H. Johnson, editors
Editorial Board
Juliana Barr
Sarah Carter
Maurice Crandall
Kelly Lytle Hern ndez
Cynthia Radding
Samuel Truett
The study of borderlands-places where different peoples meet and no one polity reigns supreme-is undergoing a renaissance. The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History publishes works from both established and emerging scholars that examine borderlands from the precontact era to the present. The series explores contested boundaries and the intercultural dynamics surrounding them and includes projects covering a wide range of time and space within North America and beyond, including both Atlantic and Pacific worlds.
Published with support provided by the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
WEST OF SLAVERY

The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire
Kevin Waite
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
CHAPEL HILL
2021 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by April Leidig
Set in Kepler by Copperline Book Services, Inc.
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Cover illustration by Diego Rios
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Waite, Kevin (Historian), author.
Title: West of slavery : the Southern dream of a transcontinental empire / Kevin Waite.
Other titles: David J. Weber series in the new borderlands history.
Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2021] | Series: The David J. Weber series in the new borderlands history | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020044309 | ISBN 9781469663180 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469663197 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469663203 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : Slavery-Southwestern States-History-19th century. | African Americans-Southwestern States-Social conditions-19th century. | Indians of North America-Southwestern States-Social conditions-19th century. | Peonage-Southwestern States-History-19th century. | Southwestern States-Politics and government-19th century. | Southwestern States-Relations-Southern States. | Southern States-Relations-Southwestern States. | United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865.
Classification: LCC E449 .W155 2021 | DDC 306.3/62097909034-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044309
For Mom and Dad
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION The Continental South
PART I From Memphis to Canton

ONE The Southern Dream of a Pacific Empire
TWO The Great Slavery Road
THREE The Lesser Slavery Road
PART II Making the South Continental

FOUR The Southernization of Antebellum California
FIVE Slavery in the Desert South
SIX The Continental Crisis of the Union
PART III War and Reunion

SEVEN West of the Confederacy
EIGHT Reconstruction and the Afterlife of the Continental South
EPILOGUE In the Shadow of the Confederacy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURES
White and black miners in El Dorado County, California
Camel caravan in Nevada
Butterfield stagecoach in San Francisco
Biddy Mason
Brigham Young Monument
Drum Barracks
The Reconstruction Policy of Congress, as Illustrated in California
Victims of the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871
Confederate memorial, Hollywood Forever Cemetery
MAPS
The Continental South
The Gadsden Purchase, 1853-1854
Routes of the Pacific Railroad Surveys, 1853-1854
The Butterfield Overland Mail Road, 1858-1861
The proposed division of California and New Mexico
The Confederate invasion of Arizona and New Mexico
Confederate monuments of California
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS IS A WELL-TRAVELED BOOK . While researching and writing it, I moved from coast to coast and then across the Atlantic, amassing intellectual debts at every stop along the way. Those debts can never be adequately repaid, but they re very gratefully acknowledged.
For as far back as I can remember, I ve been guided by great teachers. The late Barbara Sheinkopf convinced a distractible sixth grader that literature could be more fun than kickball. Robert Farrar and Garine Zetlian kindled my love of history, while dozens of other teachers, coaches, and mentors at Poly cheerfully endured my adolescence. At Williams College, I had the great fortune of studying under Charles Dew. Now, as an advisor of undergraduate thesis students myself, I consistently find myself asking, What would Dew do? Charles s scholarship, generosity, and kindness place him in a league of his own. My Williams friends and I still speak of our experiences in Steve Fix s English classes in tones of reverential awe. He has the pedagogical ability to make Samuel Johnson thrilling and Thomas Pynchon comprehensible. At Cambridge, Peter Mandler provided direction and encouragement as I muddled through the history of sport and masculinity in Georgian-era English public schools.
The research that culminated in this book began at the University of Pennsylvania, under Steve Hahn s mentorship. More so than anyone else, Steve has shaped the way I approach the past. With humbling intellect and good humor, he guided this project in all the right ways. He encouraged me to read widely, think big, and pursue my intellectual interests as far as they would take me. Others at Penn were almost equally instrumental. I m especially grateful to Kathy Peiss, Stephanie McCurry, Kathy Brown, and Dan Richter. As director of the McNeil Center and mentor to too many graduate students to count, Dan was unfailingly generous with what he had so little to spare: time. He made the McNeil Center a second home within Philadelphia.
A big family of fellow students at Penn and across Philadelphia ensured that the ups of grad school always outnumbered the downs. That noble list includes Holly Stephens, John Lee, Matthew Kruer, Sam Lacy, Robert Hegwood, Jessie Regunberg, Tommy Richards, Nora Slonimsky, Jane Dinwoodie, Sarah Rodriguez, Alexis Broderick Neumann, Alexandra Montgomery, Evgenia Shnayder Shoop, Tina Irvine, Camille Su rez, Gloria Young, and Emma Teitelman. From our first seminar together, Roberto Saba has been a true friend and an inspiration. While researching, I spent a productive year at Stanford, thanks to the comradery and insights of Alex Stern, Andy Hamman, and Cameron Blevins.
I m immensely fortunate to count Sally Gordon as a mentor, coauthor, and dear friend. Our collaborative project on Biddy Mason, a Georgia slave turned Los Angeles philanthropist and real estate entrepreneur, has been a continual source of joy these past two years-and a fitting complement to my work on this book. Thanks go to Lydia Medici and everyone else at the National Endowment for the Humanities for generously supporting our project.
Since 2016, I ve had the great fortune to work and teach at Durham University. I still pinch myself. My colleagues brilliance is matched only by their generosity. From the day I arrived, they made this Southern Californian feel right at home in northern England. There are too many friends to name here, but special mention is due to Jennifer Luff, Richard Huzzey, Eleanor Barraclough, John Henry Clay, Skye Montgomery, Tom Stammers, James Koranyi, Helen Foxhall Forbes, David Minto, Adrian Green, Jo Fox, Christian Liddy, Giles Gasper, Ana Dias, Ludmilla Jordanova, Stephen Taylor, and Matt Johnson (and also my godson, Aidan Johnson, honorary professor of firetruck studies, who s grown too quickly while I ve been in London and Oxford on sabbatical). Sarah Davies has been a terrific and terrifically supportive head of department. Academics, of course, are hopelessly dependent on our colleagues in professional support roles. Fortunately for us, we ve had the very best in Durham s history department: Imogen Barton, Audrey Bowron, Jasmine Baker-Sones, Lydia Price, Hannah Martin, Kelly Groundwater, and several new colleagues whom I m just beginning to meet. Joining St. Cuthbert s Society has been one of the best decisions I ve made at Durham, not least because it introduced me to the peerless Elizabeth Archibald.
Peerless is also a term I regularly apply to my students at Durham. On a daily basis, they astound me with their intellectual curiosity and remind me why teaching is rightfully at the heart of our mission as academics. A shout-out to everyone in my Special Subject, my undergraduate advisees, and my PhD students, Dan Doherty and Mark Markov. Teaching was made even more joyful by the assistance and enthusiasm of Catherine Bateson, Tom Ellis, and Liana Valerio.
As nearly everyone who s worked there can tell you, the Huntington Library is a scholar s paradise. The setting is stunning, of course, but it s the people that make the Huntington such a special place. More than anyone else, Bill Deverell deserves the credit (or the blame) for getting me into the business of history. When a cheeky high school student sauntered into his office with a few questions about the Civil War, Bill had no idea what was in store. A decade and a half later, he remains a tireless mentor, editor, and dear friend. The intellectually omnivorous Steve Hindle has offered crucial advice and support at every turn in my career. Peter Blodgett is the consummate curator. My thanks go also to Juan Gomez, Chris Bronson, and especially Hally Prater. Because of all these people, returning to the Hunt