Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Antebellum Westward Expansion
Antebellum Westward Expansion
1.
One government after another began to
promote limitedly-private enterprise in North
America (the governments gave monopolistic
privileges to certain companies in return for 1/5
of profits taxed) regarding trade in otter and
beaver pelts that sold as fashionable articles of
clothing or adornment in every continent for up
to 160% profit. For example, by the 1660s Sieur
des Medard Chouart des Groseillers had first
received permission by the French and then the
British king to establish fur-trading posts in
Northeast Canada and the Great Lakes region
reliant, however, upon the Huron to have
subjugated tribesmen catch the animals so they
could sell the pelts to the French. Regarding the
business along the Pacific Coast of present-day
California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia
and Alaska, by the 1770s the Spanish, the
English and the Russians had fur-trading
posts, and hired Americans as well as publicized
accounts spread news to the newborn states
regarding the money to be had! For example,
the British dominated Nootka Sound and
Vancouver Island, predominantly run by the
Hudson Bay Company (which had been chartered
by King Charles II in 1670). The Spanish held the
coast of California tenuously and Alonso
4.
Simon Bolivar, a privileged Venezuelan of
Spanish blood born into an hacendado family,
found himself leading the first Latin American
War for Independence (allegedly, the influence of
his Enlightened & egalitarian tutor Ramon
Rodriguez, the early death of his beloved wife,
and time spent with revolutionaries in France
rendered him swearing an oath to fight against
Spanish oppression in Latin America). However,
despite his military tactical genius, losses to
Spanish forces (in Venezuela, he betrayed his
mentor Francisco de Mirandawho had tried to
foment Enlightened ideals throughout Latin
Americawhen the Spanish cornered them, while
in modern-day Columbia, his loss to Spanish
forces sent him into exile in Jamaica) as well as
losses to domestic forces of ethnically-mixed or
indigenous American, poor Latin Americans
fighting under CAUDILLOS like JOSE TOMAS
5.
Within Mexico, between its independence in
1821 and the end of the Mexican-American War
in 1848, the nation had experienced at least six
constitutions, nearly two dozen administrations,
four coups & attempted foreign invasion twice.
The liberal Constitution of 1824 declared political
6.
Having once been named the Warhawk
generation of Congressmen (Calhoun, Clay,
Crockett, Houston, etc.) and presidents (Jackson,
Harrison), this generation of aging leaders
8.
President Polk sent John Slidell as a U.S.
Minister to Mexico with instructions to take
advantage of Herreras desire to avoid war via
offering $25 million for essentially the land that
would be soon taken by conquest. Although
Paredes y Arrillaga played the patriot card, he
too apparently did not want war according to
historian Timothy Henderson. Nevertheless,
President Polk encouraged Slidell to give a twoweek ultimatum to accept the American offer as
well as her claim to Texas border stretching to
the Rio Grande, and he ordered General Zachary
Taylor to move deeper into the disputed
territory between the Nueces & Rio Grande
Rivers. Simultaneously, Polk had a Naval
Squadron arrive just outside Mexican national
waters, near the port city of Veracruz. According
to Henderson, Paredes could not appear
cowardly if he wanted to stay in power; instead,
9.
Credit must be given where it is due:
Zachary Taylor (in charge of the northern army
against Mexico), Winfield Scott (in charge of the
subsequent southern invasion of Mexican
Veracruz), and a myriad of North American Anglo