Umfang:
1 Online-Ausgabe (297 Seiten)
ISBN:
9780197531440
Inhalt:
Dangerous Ground examines how white squatters in the American West came to occupy a central and destabilizing position in US political culture in the decades culminating in the Civil War.
Inhalt:
"With one eye on Washington and the other on flashpoints across the West, Dangerous Ground tracks squatters from the Mississippi Valley and cotton lands of Texas, to Oregon, Gold Rush-era California, and, finally, Bleeding Kansas. The sweeping narrative reveals how claiming western domains became stubbornly intertwined with partisan politics and fights over the extension of slavery. While previous generations of statesmen had maligned and sought to contain illegal settlers, Democrats celebrated squatters as pioneering yeomen and encouraged their land grabs through preemption laws, Indian removal, and hawkish diplomacy. As America expanded, the party's power grew. The US-Mexican War led many to ask whether these squatters were genuine yeomen or forerunners of slavery expansion. Some northern Democrats bolted to form the Free Soil Party, while southerners denounced any hindrance to slavery's spread. Faced with a fracturing party, Democratic leaders allowed territorial inhabitants to determine whether new lands would be slave or free, leading to a destabilizing transfer of authority from Congress to frontier settlers. Squatters thus morphed from agents of Manifest Destiny into foot soldiers in battles that ruptured the party and the country"--
Anmerkung:
Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources
Weitere Ausg.:
ISBN 9780197531426
Weitere Ausg.:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe ISBN 9780197531426
Sprache:
Englisch
Schlagwort(e):
USA
;
Democratic Party
;
Siedler
;
Landnahme
;
Sklaverei
;
Politische Kultur
;
Geschichte 1829-1861
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