The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War

The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War PDF Author: Leonard L. Richards
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307277577
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Award-winning historian Leonard L. Richards gives us an authoritative and revealing portrait of an overlooked harbinger of the terrible battle that was to come. When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848, Americans of all stripes saw the potential for both wealth and power. Among the more calculating were Southern slave owners. By making California a slave state, they could increase the value of their slaves—by 50 percent at least, and maybe much more. They could also gain additional influence in Congress and expand Southern economic clout, abetted by a new transcontinental railroad that would run through the South. Yet, despite their machinations, California entered the union as a free state. Disillusioned Southerners would agitate for even more slave territory, leading to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and, ultimately, to the Civil War itself.

The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War

The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War PDF Author: Leonard L. Richards
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307277577
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
Award-winning historian Leonard L. Richards gives us an authoritative and revealing portrait of an overlooked harbinger of the terrible battle that was to come. When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848, Americans of all stripes saw the potential for both wealth and power. Among the more calculating were Southern slave owners. By making California a slave state, they could increase the value of their slaves—by 50 percent at least, and maybe much more. They could also gain additional influence in Congress and expand Southern economic clout, abetted by a new transcontinental railroad that would run through the South. Yet, despite their machinations, California entered the union as a free state. Disillusioned Southerners would agitate for even more slave territory, leading to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and, ultimately, to the Civil War itself.

The World Rushed In

The World Rushed In PDF Author: J. S. Holliday
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806181214
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
When The World Rushed In was first published in 1981, the Washington Post predicted, “It seems unlikely that anyone will write a more comprehensive book about the Gold Rush.” Twenty years later, no one has emerged to contradict that judgment, and the book has gained recognition as a classic. As the San Francisco Examiner noted, “It is not often that a work of history can be said to supplant every book on the same subject that has gone before it.” Through the diary and letters of William Swain--augmented by interpolations from more than five hundred other gold seekers and by letters sent to Swain from his wife and brother back home--the complete cycle of the gold rush is recreated: the overland migration of over thirty thousand men, the struggle to “strike it rich” in the mining camps of the Sierra Nevadas, and the return home through the jungles of the Isthmus of Panama. In a new preface, the author reappraises our continuing fascination with the “gold rush experience” as a defining epoch in western--indeed, American--history.

Days of Gold

Days of Gold PDF Author: Malcolm J. Rohrbough
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520216598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
When gold was discovered in California in 1848, the news caused the greatest mass migration in the history of the Republic. This comprehensive history demonstrates how the Gold Rush touched the lives of families & communities everywhere in the U.S.

With Golden Visions Bright Before Them

With Golden Visions Bright Before Them PDF Author: Will Bagley
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806187751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
During the mid-nineteenth century, a quarter of a million travelers—men, women, and children—followed the “road across the plains” to gold rush California. This magnificent chronicle—the second installment of Will Bagley’s sweeping Overland West series—captures the danger, excitement, and heartbreak of America’s first great rush for riches and its enduring consequences. With narrative scope and detail unmatched by earlier histories, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them retells this classic American saga through the voices of the people whose eyewitness testimonies vividly evoke the most dramatic era of westward migration. Traditional histories of the overland roads paint the gold rush migration as a heroic epic of progress that opened new lands and a continental treasure house for the advancement of civilization. Yet, according to Bagley, the transformation of the American West during this period is more complex and contentious than legend pretends. The gold rush epoch witnessed untold suffering and sacrifice, and the trails and their trials were enough to make many people turn back. For America’s Native peoples, the effect of the massive migration was no less than ruinous. The impact that tens of thousands of intruders had on Native peoples and their homelands is at the center of this story, not on its margins. Beautifully written and richly illustrated with photographs and maps, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them continues the saga that began with Bagley’s highly acclaimed, award-winning So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812–1848, hailed by critics as a classic of western history.

Ohio Records and Pioneer Families

Ohio Records and Pioneer Families PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ohio
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description


The Plains Across

The Plains Across PDF Author: John D. Unruh
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252063602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
The most honored book ever released by the University of Illinois Press, The Plains Across was the result of more than a decade's work by its author. Here, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Oregon Trail, is a paperback reissue that includes the notes, bibliography, and illustrations contained in the 1979 cloth edition.

The Track in the Forest

The Track in the Forest PDF Author: Bob Burns
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1641600802
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The 1968 US men's Olympic track and field team won 12 gold medals and set six world records at the Mexico City Games, one of the most dominant performances in Olympic history. The team featured such legends as Tommie Smith, Bob Beamon, Al Oerter, and Dick Fosbury. Fifty years later, the team is mostly remembered for embodying the tumultuous social and racial climate of 1968. The Black Power protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the victory stand in Mexico City remains one of the most enduring images of the 1960s. Less known is the role that a 400-meter track carved out of the Eldorado National Forest above Lake Tahoe played in molding that juggernaut. To acclimate US athletes for the 7,300-foot elevation of Mexico City, the US Olympic Committee held a two-month training camp and final Olympic selection meet for the ages at Echo Summit near the California-Nevada border. Never has a sporting event of such consequence been held in such an ethereal setting. On a track in which hundreds of trees were left standing on the infield to minimize the environmental impact, four world records fell—more than have been set at any US meet since (including the 1984 and 1996 Olympics). But the road to Echo Summit was tortuous—the Vietnam War was raging, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, and a group of athletes based out of San Jose State had been threatening to boycott the Mexico City Games to protest racial injustice. Informed by dozens of interviews by longtime sports journalist and track enthusiast Bob Burns, this is the story of how in one of the most divisive years in American history, a California mountaintop provided an incomparable group of Americans shelter from the storm.

Blacks in Gold Rush California

Blacks in Gold Rush California PDF Author: Rudolph M. Lapp
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300065459
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Examines the lives of the thousands of free blacks and slaves who migrated to the California gold fields after 1848 and studies their relationships with other minorities and with whites

Wagons, Gold and Conflict

Wagons, Gold and Conflict PDF Author: John G. Wilder
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1669806154
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Alfred Davenport—parents gone, elder siblings married with families—followed a dream to see Oregon in May 1844. Visiting California in 1846, Davenport dropped into the conflict between settlers and the Mexican government. Joining California settlers, Davenport fought in the Bear Flag Revolt and with John Charles Fremont’s California Mounted Battalion. Year 1849 found Alfred caught up in California’s gold rush. His mining career ended with Davenport resigning as manager of Fremont’s famous Pine Tree Mine to join General Fremont in Missouri as a cavalry captain in the Body Guard. Year 1862 found Captain Davenport serving as a special messenger carrying orders from General Fremont to field generals in western Virginia. The army’s Quartermaster Department assigned Davenport as supervisor of military hospital construction in the Civil War’s Mississippi valleys and for duty in the customhouse in Union-occupied New Orleans. Postwar, Davenport became a land speculator in a newly opened land in Kansas.

The Land of Gold and Strangers

The Land of Gold and Strangers PDF Author: Stacey L. Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description