Part 14

Toward the end of this period the discovery of rich silver mines in the Nevada section began to attract a miscellaneous population from all parts of the West. By 1863 a Mormon census of Utah gave the territory a population of 88,206, of whom probably a majority were foreigners. The great bulk of these were English, particularly from the factory towns, but Brigham Young boasted that fifty nationalities were represented in his territory a few years later. On the whole, however, the population was almost entirely Nordic.

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Idaho's first settlement is supposed to have been made by a party of Mormons in 1855 when it was still a part of Washington territory. At the close of the period here considered it was still a part of Washington and was just beginning to get a population of its own because of a gold rush in 1860.

Its early settlers were from Oregon, Washington, and northern California, and included an unusual proportion of men bred in the Southern and Southwestern States.

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Montana had scarcely begun to receive settlers at this time.

Meanwhile the tides of colonization were flowing over the "great plains" to deposit their load on the Pacific Coast.

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Oregon's settlement may be conveniently dated from the expedition of Marcus Whitman in 1836. The few trappers and traders who had arrived in early days may be disregarded. Thus began the short-lived race between the United States and Great Britain to colonize the country and to have their claims to possession based on effective occupation. American immigration did not commence in earnest until 1842 or 1843, but continued steadily, until the discovery of gold in California diverted many to that territory.

Most of the early American settlers came from Missouri or Iowa, and represented therefore either the Southern or New England pioneer stock. In general it may be said that Oregon at that time was settled from the Mississippi Valley, and mainly by men who came as genuine settlers with their families, in striking contrast to the adventurers who invaded California.

Meanwhile, the British colonizers were coming from Canada, many of them French-Canadians, while the rest were mostly of Scotch ancestry. But the American population grew so much more rapidly that by 1846, when the Treaty was made defining the parallel of 49° as the boundary between the two nations, there were nearly 8000 American settlers in the Oregon territory as against about 1500 of British allegiance.

In 1860, of the 30,500 native immigrants in the State 40 per cent were of Southern birth. Nearly half of these were from Missouri, and a large part of the others from Kentucky or Tennessee. The remainder represented principally the New England stock which has always been considered to be the foundation of Oregon.

The actual permanent settlement of the Puget Sound country began in 1845, but progress for some years was slow. Scarcely had a start been made here when the gold rush turned everyone's attention to California. Following this came the Indian war of 1855 to 1856, and shortly afterward the Civil War upset all plans, leaving the few scattered inhabitants of the Puget Sound region in the midst of a wilderness, surrounded by hostile savages, and inevitably neglected by the government to which they naturally looked for attention.

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Washington was separated from Oregon and established as an independent territory in 1853. The census found there only 3965 white persons, a small number to assume the responsibilities of a separate political existence. Walla Walla Valley was opened up in 1859, when the removal of a military interdict and a survey of public lands allowed a waiting population of some 2000 to rush in and spread over the whole of eastern Washington within a short time.

XI

THE SPOILS OF THE MEXICAN WAR

It has been remarked often that it was a mere accident that gave North America to the Nordics instead of to the King of Spain, when Columbus turned from his course to follow a flock of birds and thus sighted the West Indies instead of the mainland, but several other incidents played an equally important part in giving this empire to the British. The defeat of the Invincible Armada by the captains of Elizabeth stopped the expansion of Spain and thus gave the British an opportunity to begin their colonization, and the Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Jefferson's administration virtually made certain that by far the larger part of the North American continent should belong to British stock, rather than to French or Spanish. Jefferson himself, who believed that the Purchase was illegal, saw its tremendous possibilities, but no one in his day could realize just what this action would mean in extending a Nordic civilization to the Pacific Ocean.

The settlement of the Louisiana Purchase by Americans made certain the conquest of Texas, which was extraordinarily aided by the fact that in the period after the War of 1812 there were not many more than 5000 Mexicans in that vast territory. The great Plains stretched southward as a wide-open domain, inviting settlement by those who were far-sighted and aggressive enough to possess themselves of it.

The beginning of the American settlement of Texas is always dated from 1820, when the Connecticut Yankee, Moses Austin, started his colonization scheme. Austin himself had lived for some years in Missouri, but most of his settlers, like most of the other early pioneers of Texas, came from the lower Mississippi Valley or from Tennessee and Kentucky, with a sprinkling of adventurers from the Central and New England States and even from Europe.

By 1835, when the Americans so outnumbered the Mexicans that the throwing off of the Mexican yoke was inevitable, there were 30,000 or 35,000 Nordics settled in the territory. The original background of these can easily be remembered from what has been said before in these pages about the settlement of their respective States. They were overwhelmingly English and Scotch and pre-dominantly from the trans-Appalachian part of the United States.

The idea that most of these settlers went to Texas as a deliberate plan to acquire this region for the extension of the slave-holding States seems to have little basis. Most of them went, just as most of them or their fathers had gone to Tennessee or to Louisiana a few decades previously, in search of better and cheaper land, freer opportunities, and a possible fortune. It was the accident of geographical location that gave to Texas its importance as slave-holding territory, and that led indirectly to the war with Mexico.

On technical grounds there was little justification for a declaration of war in 1846, but from a larger point of view it was one of the most important and most beneficial acts ever taken by the American Government, in spite of the feeling of the Abolitionists, because it formed the final procedure in the spread of American sovereignty to the Pacific Ocean.

The United States was indeed deprived a few years later, at the time of the Gadsden Purchase, of the outlet to the Gulf of California which it should have had. Whether this was due to the climate of that region which made the surveyors shirk their duty, as one story goes, or to the drunkenness of the mapmakers which led them to draw the boundary line crooked, as another story has it, the result is unfortunate and might yet perhaps be rectified by a further purchase. The Southwest should have an outlet on the Gulf in the logic of the case.

This does not involve any desire to take over Lower California which is a peninsula of negligible value for Nordic purposes, and contains a Mexican population which under no circumstances should be incorporated in the United States. From a racial point of view it is indeed fortunate that the desire of James K. Polk's Administration to include the whole peninsula of Lower California in the transfer of sovereignty was not accomplished. Still more disastrous would have been a realization of the wishes of an important element in Congress which desired to annex a large part of northern Mexico.

Similarly, one can scarcely avoid being grateful nowadays that Cuba did not get its independence in the first quarter of the nineteenth century instead of at the end. Henry Clay and others, encouraging the Cuban patriots, had virtually arranged to have the island taken over by the United States. In this instance abolitionist sentiment in the North, which prevented an extension of slave territory, was more beneficial to the true interests of America than it was a generation later--for the acquisition of Cuba would have brought into the union an indigestible mass of Mediterraneans and blacks.

When the suspicions and jealousies of international relations abate somewhat, it may be possible to make a slight rectification of the Arizona boundary which will give the Southwest its intended outlet on the Gulf of California. Such a step would doubtless promote the prosperity of the adjoining Mexican territory in every way. If Mexico could be persuaded to accept a gift of some of the United States' possessions in the West Indies, in return for this favor, the whole transaction would be most satisfactory.

It is now easy to see that Mexico could not have retained Texas under any circumstances, but the catastrophe (from the Mexican point of view) was made quick and certain by the encouragement of American immigration, in spite of refusals to discuss a sale of the whole territory to the United States, and by an attempt to fasten an objectionable State religion on the immigrants they had invited.

In the days of the Lone Star Republic, immigration increased rapidly. The Mexican War not only gave unlimited advertising to the region but furnished many Northerners with an opportunity to see something of it first-hand, and by the close of that conflict there were some 200,000 Americans in Texas. During the decade from 1850 to 1860 the growth of the State was exceeded by few in the Union.

Unfortunately much of this population was made up of Negroes who have ever since formed one of the real handicaps of this immense American Empire. As we have seen, the great bulk of the population of eastern and southern Texas came from the adjoining slave States, and it was not until the time of the Civil War that the northern counties had begun to attract settlers from Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. The war put a stop to this movement, but it was resumed later.

Meanwhile southern and western Texas had been attracting a German emigration made up largely of Alpines from the States along the Upper Rhine. This reached serious proportions as early as 1842, when a group of noblemen with uncertain motives fostered an Emigration Society Land Company. The movement continued in force up to the Civil War and indeed had not ceased altogether until the outbreak of the World War. Though Texas had but 20,000 German-born in 1860, these were so concentrated that half of the entire population of the southern part of the State, in the region surrounding San Antonio, was German. Here, as elsewhere, the Germans greatly diminished their value to their adopted country by an unwise insistence on retaining the customs and the language of the Fatherland.

The history of any country demonstrates that national unity is a necessary condition of national survival. Those who have come to the United States of their own will, to profit by what opportunities they find may well be expected to yield a whole-hearted allegiance to the country which thus benefits them, or to move elsewhere.

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New Mexico, when it became a part of the territory of the United States, had a population made up of native and Mexican Indians, some of the latter having enough Spanish blood to cause them to consider themselves white men. The self-styled Spanish-American population of the present day is, properly speaking, composed of those whose ancestors were in the territory at the time of the Mexican War. The Spanish part of the description must be considered largely a courtesy title, for the amount of real Spanish blood in this hybrid population was always from a biological point of view nearly negligible, and the American part must be understood to mean native American Indians. The persistence of the Spanish language and culture is of course only a passing phase.

The Federal Census of 1850 credited New Mexico with 61,000 population not counting Indians, but the territory at that time included all of Arizona and Southeastern Colorado. By 1860 the population of the same territory was given at 82,979, plus 55,100 Indians. At this time there were less than 1200 natives of the United States in the whole territory.

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Arizona had a fluctuating white population dependent upon the prosperity of the mining industry, but when the Federal troops were withdrawn at the outbreak of the Civil War most of the white men had to leave also. At that time the only real settlement was Tucson, where a few hundred Mexicans lived under mediæval conditions.

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California had a population of Indians when the Spaniards coming from Mexico entered it. Most of them were of a very low order of intelligence and social development. The Spanish invaders were largely soldiers, and few of the members of these early expeditions brought their families. Hence, there was undoubtedly some mixing with the Indians from the very first days. In accordance with the custom elsewhere, those who had any white blood called themselves white, and the figures given by early writers for the number of Spanish in the colony must be understood in that light. The amount of real Spanish blood was extremely small and much of it was in the veins of missionaries who left no offspring.

The permanent population was made up of ex-soldiers who had settled down, married Indian women, and taken up land, together with occasional traders, vagabond sailors, and adventurers. The population of 1820 other than Indian could hardly have represented more than 500 men. The Mexican administration made an effort to supply women of Spanish ancestry to the colony in order to prevent too much matrimonial mixture with the Indians, which, even at that time, was regarded as somewhat disgraceful; but the number of brides who could be sent into a colony of that sort was small.

The population grew mainly by its own natural increase, and the small size of the Mexican population in California was one of the main factors that led to the incorporation of the territory in the United States. It has been computed that the "Spanish" population, most of which was of Indian blood, never exceeded 3000 persons. Prior to the American occupation there were not more than 1200 foreigners in California, three-fourths of whom were American and most of the remainder British. Thus this immense territory, which became a part of the United States in 1848 as a result of the Mexican War, was relatively empty. The amount of Spanish blood in the California population of today must therefore be quite negligible.

The whole trend of migration was changed by the discovery of gold at the end of 1848. In February of that year there were not more than 2000 Americans in all California. By the end of December there were 6000. By July of 1849 this number had grown to 15,000 and six months later it had climbed to 53,000. The earliest arrivals naturally came from the nearby regions. Oregon alone contributed more than 5000 from its scanty population. But every seaport of the Pacific sent a contingent, and the stream of men that poured into the gold fields was the most cosmopolitan group that had ever been seen in North America. In _The New York Tribune_ for December 15, 1849, appears the following item from San Francisco:

"Foreign flags in the harbor: English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Hamburg, Bremen, Belgium, New Granadian, Dutch, Swedish, Oldenburgh, Chilean, Peruvian, Russian, Mexican, Hanoverian, Norwegian, Hawaiian, and Tahitian."

When the territory became a State, on September 9, 1850, its population was at least 150,000, and a year later had probably reached a quarter of a million. Many of the Argonauts stayed but a few months, and, failing to become rich at a stroke, went elsewhere, so that the composition of the population changed markedly from week to week. It was almost exclusively a population of males. Few brought their families; and while prostitutes went to San Francisco from all accessible seaports, they contributed little or nothing to the permanent population.

The first Chinese immigrant found his way into California in 1847, but by the summer of 1852, 20,000 others had followed him. Probably 5000 Mexicans also had come into the territory which they had so recently lost.

By the census of 1860 it appears that most of the riff-raff had drifted out of the State again, and the basis of the permanent population had been laid. The total population was 380,000 of which nearly 40 per cent was foreign-born; the percentage reaching this high mark partly because of the number of Chinese. California had a population more nearly representative of the entire Union than did any other State--about equal numbers were contributed by New England, by the Middle States, by the Northwest, and by the lower Mississippi Valley. This population, it will be remembered, was almost entirely in the northern half of the State. The more homogeneous settlement of the southern half did not get under way until about the middle of the next period.

California differs profoundly from the other frontier regions of the United States in that it was settled from all sections of the country and not mostly from the adjoining States. The vast mineral wealth of the new State supplied it from the very beginning with abundant capital for local enterprises so that it was free from the debtor complex, so characteristic of the other frontier communities.

California faces westward on the Pacific and has developed into a unique and more or less self-sufficient section with a definite self-reliant character of its own.

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While the West was thus filling up and the United States was reaching the Pacific Ocean, the States on the Atlantic continued to grow in power and population, largely through their own natural increase, but partly through the immigration of the period. French Canadians began to drift down into New England, as they have continued to do to this day. The single State of New York had by the end of the period a million foreign-born in its population, of whom half were Irish and one-fourth German. New Jersey had become one-fifth foreign-born, Connecticut one-sixth, Pennsylvania one-seventh. The racial character of this immigration was not particularly harmful, as it was mostly Nordic, but the large Roman Catholic element excited widespread alarm.

The arrival of large numbers of ignorant and destitute South Irish Catholics, who occupied the lowest social status here, led directly to the formation of a native American secret political party, nicknamed the "Know Nothings," because of their refusal to discuss or divulge their aims or actions. For the purpose of membership they defined the name Native American to mean a person all four of whose grandparents were born in this country. This party's policy, in the early stage of its career, was to act secretly, supporting the candidate who most nearly represented their views, regardless of his party affiliations. The party at once developed great strength, and in 1854 and 1855 carried State elections in Massachusetts, New York, Kentucky, California, and several other States. It played a large part in national politics in 1856, but its organization was disrupted by the increasing virulence of the slavery issue.

The principle of the Know Nothing party was opposition to the political power of the large masses of newly arrived aliens. This was especially directed against the Catholic Church, because it was felt that their establishment of parochial schools was inimical to the public-school system, which the Americans of that time regarded as the palladium of their liberties. This hostility to Catholics was aggravated by the attempted use of public funds derived from general taxation for parochial schools and even more by the exemption claimed and often obtained from taxation of large ecclesiastical institutions as well as churches.

Further opposition to aliens arose from their organization into compact political units which quickly demoralized our municipal governments, a scandal which has existed down to this day.

All this led to the widespread belief that these immigrants, now arriving in large numbers, refused to accept wholeheartedly the customs, principles, and institutions of the country in which they had sought refuge. This belief still persists and has given rise in each generation since the days of the Know Nothing party, to similar powerful and secret anti-foreign organizations. Our alien elements are to this day extremely sensitive to the public discussion of any of these matters. In this respect, Americans probably have less freedom of speech and freedom of press than exist in any of the countries of Europe.

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During the colonial period the natural increase of the Anglo-Saxon stock in New England had made it a continual source of population for the rapidly opening West. No one State, however, contributed such a large element of the population of the subsequent United States as did Virginia, the largest and most populous of the thirteen Colonies. One cannot read the history of the movement westward of the American frontier without being impressed by the importance of the Old Dominion in supplying settlers for the West, first to Kentucky, thence to the States of the upper and lower Mississippi Valley, later to the Great Plains, and finally to the Southwest and the Pacific Coast.

But if Virginia has been the most fertile source of settlers, New England has more nearly put its stamp on American civilization; and this was made possible largely because there was an available emigrant stock in Massachusetts and her sister States, to carry this impress in person. Before the Civil War, however, the birth rate of the old white stock in New England had declined to the point where it was probably not replacing its own numbers.

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In 1860 the religious unity of the United States had been somewhat impaired. The unity of language was as yet scarcely menaced. The unity of institutions, traditions, and culture was breached only temporarily. The racial unity of the country was little changed from 1790. The United States was still nine-tenths Nordic.

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Earlier in these pages a description is given of the empty continent which lay open to settlement by the British stock on both sides of the Canadian border.

Let us see what use was made of this opportunity in the period from the end of Colonial times to the Civil War.