by H. W. Brands
4 “Fifty Comanches”: Austin Papers, 1:487, 1:631.
CHAPTER 12: TEXAS WILL BE LOST
1 “I have just had the pleasure”: W. B. Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas (1852), 39–44.
2 “On the eastern bank… reserved for Mexican settlers”: Manuel de Mier y Terán, Texas by Terán: The Diary Kept by General Manuel de Mier y Terán on His 1828 Inspection of Texas, edited by Jack Jackson (2000), 32–39, 45–46, 53–58, 74–79, 97–98, 144–155, 178–179, 217–218.
CHAPTER 13: RUIN AND REDEMPTION
1 “If any wretch”: Marquis James, The Raven: The Life Story of Sam Houston (1929), 84. The best of the recent biographies of Houston is James L. Haley, Sam Houston (2002).
2 “About one o’clock”: Haley, Sam Houston, 59–60.
3 “I have this moment heard”: H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson (2005), 426.
4 “It has been communicated”: Brands, Lone Star Nation, 196–197.
5 “nineteen twentieths”: Brands, Andrew Jackson, 517–518.
6 “The primary product”: Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderland, 1800–1850 (2015), 86–87.
CHAPTER 14: VICTORY OR DEATH
1 “It was our Lexington”: Noah Smithwick, The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days (1900), 101.
2 “We, therefore”: Texas Declaration of Independence, Mar. 2, 1836, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, https://tsl.texas.gov.
3 “To the People of Texas”: Travis letter from the Alamo, Feb. 24, 1836, Papers of the Texas Revolution, edited by John H. Jenkins, 10 vols. (1973), 4:423.
4 “The moon was up”: José Enrique de la Peña, With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution, translated and edited by Carmen Perry (1975), 46–51.
5 “Among them was one of great stature”: De la Peña, With Santa Anna, 53.
6 “I told the people”: William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis (1998), 413.
7 “Santa Anna answered”: De la Peña, With Santa Anna, 53. De la Peña’s account of Crockett’s capture and execution has been challenged, most vigorously by Texans who refuse to believe that Crockett or any of the other defenders of the Alamo would have let themselves be taken alive.
CHAPTER 15: BLOODY PALM SUNDAY
1 “I have but three citizens”: Papers of the Texas Revolution, 4:454.
2 “The immediate advance”: The Writings of Sam Houston, edited by Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, 8 vols. (1938–1943), 1:365.
3 “The country around us”: Herman Ehrenberg, With Milam and Fannin: Adventures of a German Boy in Texas’ Revolution, translated by Charlotte Churchill (1935), 169–170.
4 “Grey clouds hung”: Ehrenberg, With Milam and Fannin, 198–207.
CHAPTER 16: LAYING THERE YET
1 “I am firmly convinced”: Carlos E. Castañeda, ed., The Mexican Side of the Texas Revolution (1928), 65–66.
2 “The first law of nature… trudged along”: Creed Taylor, as told to James T. DeShields, Tall Men with Long Rifles (1971 ed.), 117–123.
3 “Sir: The enemy are laughing”: Writings of Sam Houston, 1:412n.
4 “Remember the Alamo!” and the rest of the account of the Battle of San Jacinto: Brands, Lone Star Nation, 450–455.
CHAPTER 17: THE FOUR WISE MEN
1 “Immediately after we landed”: Christian Advocate and Journal and Zion’s Herald, Mar. 1, 1833.
2 “The weather was very warm”: Samuel Parker, Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains (1846 ed.), 46.
3 “A man by the name”: Parker, Journal, 46–47.
4 “Learning that this Indian”: Will Bagley, South Pass (2014), 39.
5 “The passage through these mountains”: Parker, Journal, 76–77.
6 “The Doctor pursued the operation”: Parker, Journal, 80–82.
CHAPTER 18: FEMALES WANTED
1 “Is there a place”: Clifford M. Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon (2005 ed.), 1:102–104.
2 “Our expenses here”: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 1:183.
3 “We will pass through this city”: W. H. Gray, A History of Oregon, 1792–1849, Drawn from Personal Observation and Authentic Information (1870), 121–128.
4 “Among these veteran Rocky Mountain hunters”: Gray, History of Oregon, 121–128.
5 “She was the most beautiful”: Victor, River of the West, 176.
6 “The father seemed”: Gray, History of Oregon, 127–128.
7 “Dearest Mother”: Narcissa Whitman letter, no day given, July 1836, in First White Women over the Rockies: Diaries, Letters, and Biographical Sketches of the Six Women of the Oregon Mission Who Made the Overland Journey in 1836 and 1838, edited by Clifford Merrill Drury (1963), 1:73–77. This collection will be cited as Diaries and Letters.
8 “The whole tribe are exceedingly anxious”: Narcissa Whitman diary, Aug. 1836, Diaries and Letters, 1:79–80.
9 “We were so swarmed”: Narcissa Whitman diary, Aug. 1836, Diaries and Letters, 1:80–85.
10 “Before noon we began to descend”: Narcissa Whitman diary, Aug. 1836, Diaries and Letters, 1:87–91.
CHAPTER 19: TRAPPED OUT
1 “Come… we are done with this life”: Victor, River of the West, 264–265.
CHAPTER 20: WAIILATPU
1 “She is a large, healthy and strong child”: Narcissa Whitman letter to sister, Mar. 23, 1839, Transactions of the Annual Reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association for 1891, 117.
2 “Last Sabbath, blooming in health”: Narcissa Whitman letter to Mrs. H. K. W. Perkins, June 25, 1839, Transactions 1891, 123–125.
3 “The greatest trial”: Narcissa Whitman letter to Clarissa Prentiss, May 2, 1840, Transactions 1891, 133–135.
4 “These men are all firm believers”: Narcissa Whitman letter to Jane Prentiss, Feb. 2, 1842, Transactions 1891, 140–143.
CHAPTER 21: FOR GOD AND COUNTRY
1 “We were most agreeably surprised”: New York Daily Tribune, Mar. 29, 1843, in Oregon Historical Quarterly 4 (1903): 168–169.
2 “Go get some decent clothes”: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 2:51.
3 “My Dear Husband”: Narcissa Whitman letter to Marcus Whitman, Oct. 4 and after, 1842, Transactions 1891, 163.
4 “Probably there was more”: Narcissa Whitman letter to her parents, Feb. 7, 1843, Transactions 1891, 172.
CHAPTER 22: THE WAY WEST
1 “There was a bill”: Peter H. Burnett, Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer (1880), 97–99. John D. Unruh Jr., The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1860 (1979), puts the migration to Oregon in context.
2 “They appear very willing”: Marcus Whitman letter to Edward Prentiss, May 27, 1843, Transactions 1891, 177–178.
3 “It is four o’clock A.M.… of blushing maidens”: Jesse Applegate, “A Day with the Cow Column in 1843,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 1 (1900): 372–383.
4 “He was a tall, trim”: Burnett, Recollections, 102–103, 113–114.
5 “Up to this point”: Burnett, Recollections, 116–118.
6 “This noble tree… end of our journey”: Burnett, Recollections, 124–127.
CHAPTER 23: THE BUSINESS OF THE TRAIL
1 “The health of Mrs. Thornton”: J. Quinn Thornton, Oregon and California in 1848 (1849), 1:13–15, 1:21–26.
2 “The early part of the day”: Thornton, Oregon and California, 1:36–37, 1:66, 1:142–143.
3 “Applegate affirmed”: Thornton, Oregon and California, 1:161–162, 1:167–168.
4 “Water and grass good”: Thornton, Oregon and California, 1:161–162, 1:167–168, 1:178–179, 1:184.
5 “She did not complain in words”: Thornton, Oregon and California, 1:192, 1:198, 1:200, 1:213, 1:222–235.
CHAPTER 24: DESPERATE FURY
1 “In the fall of 1847”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections, “Across the Plains in 1844,” c. 1860, available at PBS, Archives of the West, https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/two/sager1.htm.
2 “It was most distressing”: Frances Fuller Victor, The Early Indian Wars of Oregon (1894), 98.
3 The story that did the most damage: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 2:236–237; J. B. A. Brouillet, Authentic Account of the Murder of Dr. Whitman and Other Missionaries by the Cayuse Indians of Oregon in 1847 (1869 ed.), 35–36.
4 “The night was dark”: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 2:244.
5 “He examined the patients”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections.
6 “The kitchen was full of Indians”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections.
7 “They were placed in a row”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections.
8 “The bodies, or pieces of them”: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 2:251–255. This is the most careful and accurate account of the massacre.
9 “With hearts filled with fright”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections.
CHAPTER 25: AMBASSADOR FROM OREGON
1 “The Quickest Trip Yet”: Victor, River of the West, 439.
2 “That claim is by the right”: John O’Sullivan, “The True Title,” New York Morning News, Dec. 27, 1845, quoted in Andrew Menard, Sight Unseen: How Frémont’s First Expedition Changed the American Landscape (2012), xx.
3 “In the depth of winter”: Victor, River of the West, 455–456.
4 “Yes, indeed”: Victor, River of the West, 457–458.
CHAPTER 26: THE SECRET OF THE SIERRA NEVADA
1 “I picked up one or two pieces”: Rodman Paul, ed., The California Gold Discovery: Sources, Documents, Accounts and Memoirs Relating to the Discovery of Gold at Sutter’s Mill (1966), 118. General background for this section comes from H. W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (2002).
2 “I declared this to be gold”: Paul, ed., California Gold Discovery, 129.
3 “Damn that flag!” James A. Scherer, The First Forty-Niner, and the Story of the Golden Tea-Caddy (1925), 12.
4 “Gold! Gold!”: Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California (1888), 6:56.
5 “A frenzy seized my soul”: Bancroft, History of California, 6:56.
CHAPTER 27: GOLD MOUNTAIN
1 “We have received”: New York Herald, Sept. 15, 1848.
2 “Were I a New Yorker”: New York Herald, Sept. 17, 1848.
3 “The accounts of the abundance”: Polk annual message, Dec. 5, 1848, Papers of the Presidents, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu.
4 “A more revolting”: Kearny, quoted in George R. Stewart, Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party (1960 ed.), 276.
5 “The gold is in fine bright scales”: The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, edited by Rachel Sherman Thorndike (1894), 45.
6 “The cradle is a very simple”: Vicente Pérez Rosales, California Adventure, translated from the original Recuerdos del Pasado by Edwin S. Morby and Arturo Torres-Rioseco (1947), 51–52.
7 “With a perpendicular column”: Sacramento Weekly Union, July 22, 1854, quoted in Rodman W. Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (1947), 154–155.
8 “We descended their shaft”: Hutchings’ Illustrated California Magazine 2 (1857–1858): 147–149.
CHAPTER 28: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
1 “In the immense crowds”: Sarah Royce, A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California, edited by Ralph Henry Gabriel (1932), 109.
2 “No place in the world”: Frank Soulé, John H. Gihon and James Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco (1855), 645–666.
3 “Go West!”: Horace Greeley to R. L. Sanderson, Nov. 15, 1871, Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, https://www.gilderlehrman.org.
4 “Denison’s Exchange”: Bayard Taylor, Eldorado, or, Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850), 118–119.
5 “I put into this”: Brands, Age of Gold, 255.
6 “I may have slept”: Roger W. Lotchkin, San Francisco, 1846–1856: From Hamlet to City (1974), 175.
7 “It will be asked”: Brands, Age of Gold, 261.
8 “The voyage from Sydney”: Soulé et al., Annals of San Francisco, 565.
9 “We are determined”: Soulé et al., Annals of San Francisco, 569.
10 “I believe the man had a fair and impartial trial”: Soulé et al., Annals of San Francisco, 572–581.
CHAPTER 29: THE SPIRIT OF ’87
1 “As Congress has failed”: Report of the Debates in the Convention of California on the Formation of the State Constitution, in September and October, 1849, edited by J. Ross Browne (1850), 3.
2 “In a country where every white man”: Allan Nevins, Frémont: The West’s Greatest Adventurer (1928), 2:438.
3 “They are idle”: Report of Debates, 137–141.
CHAPTER 30: TO BE DECENTLY POOR
1 “When we join our fortunes”: Alan Rosenus, General M. G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans (1995), 90–91.
2 “All is lost”: Madie Brown Emparan, The Vallejos of California (1968), 43.
3 “The bandits from Australia”: Brands, Age of Gold, 321.
4 “I think I will know”: Rosenus, General Vallejo, 230.
5 “For some time back”: Frank F. Latta, Joaquín Murrieta and His Horse Gangs (1980), 36.
6 “When shot at”: James F. Varley, The Legend of Joaquín Murrieta: California’s Gold Rush Bandit (1995), 49–50.
7 “I have been engaged”: John Boessenecker, Gold Dust and Gunsmoke: Tales of Gold Rush Outlaws, Gunfighters, Lawmen, and Vigilantes (1999), 91.
8 “He says he will take”: Latta, Joaquín Murrieta, 474–479.
CHAPTER 31: WHERE CAN WE GO?
1 “The system they employed”: Pérez Rosales, California Adventure, 44.
2 “insatiated search for revenge”: Daily Alta California, May 30, 1850.
3 “The white man, to whom time is money”: Peter Burnett message, Jan. 7, 1851, Journals of the Legislature of the State of California: Senate (1851), 15.
4 In hundreds of incidents: Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 (2016). This is the most thorough—and harrowing—account of the killing. See especially the appendices.
5 “The savages were in the way”: Bancroft, History of California, 7:474.
6 “He is a man of about 28 years”: The Mariposa Indian War, 1850–1851: Diaries of Robert Eccleston. The California Gold Rush, Yosemite, and the High Sierra (1957), 106–107.
7 “Savage said to them”: Lafayatte Houghton Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851 Which Led to That Event (1892), 11–12.
8 “From his long acquaintance”: Bunnell, Discovery of Yosemite, 20–23.
9 “Burnt over 5000 bushels”: Mariposa Indian War, 49, 67–68.
10 “Kill me”: Bunnell, Discovery of Yosemite, 172–173.
11 “We are afraid”: Bunnell, Discovery of Yosemite, 33.
12 “Where can we now go”: Bunnell, Discovery of Yosemite, 231.
CHAPTER 32: STEPHEN DOUGLAS’S BRAINSTORM
1 “Here, before God”: Evan Carton, Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America (2006), 82. Or Brown might have spoken a less dramatic version: “I pledge myself, with God’s help, that I will devote my life to increasing hostility to slavery.” Ibid. The former quotation was the one that became etched in American memory.
2 “Bleeding Kansas”: David Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (1976), 220; New York Times, May 30, 1856.
3 The image was misleading: See Dale E. Watts, “How Bloody Was Bleeding Kansas?” Kansas History (Summer 1995): 116–129.
CHAPTER 33: NORTH, SOUTH, WEST
1 Lincoln made the grand tour: The most thorough telling is Ralph Campanella, Lincoln in New Or
leans: The 1828–1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History (2010).
2 Harpers Ferry: See Tony Horwitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War (2011).
CHAPTER 34: FREE SOIL
1 “We cannot but feel”: Junction Union excerpted in The Big Blue Union, Marysville, Kansas, Dec. 27, 1862.
CHAPTER 35: HELL ON WHEELS
1 construction of the Pacific railway: The best sources are David Haward Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (1999); Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869 (2000); Maury Klein, Union Pacific: Birth of a Railroad, 1862–1893 (1987); and Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2011).
2 “Four or five of the Irishmen”: George T. Clark, Leland Stanford (1931), 213–214.
3 “Did they not build”: Bain, Empire Express, 221.
4 “Those mountains over there”: Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World, 117.
5 Ropes anchored at the top of the cliff: Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World, 156–157.
6 “Without them it would be impossible”: Bain, Empire Express, 220.
7 “They really began to suffer”: Bain, Empire Express, 362.
8 “We’ve got to clean the damn Indians out”: Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World, 223.
9 “Unless some relief”: Bain, Empire Express, 351.
10 “Many an honest John”: Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World, 235–236.
11 “We send you greeting… our highest ambition”: Clark, Leland Stanford, 244.
12 “Make it cheap… for acceptance”: Bain, Empire Express, 447.
13 “We are cribbed in… not travel over too fast”: J. D. B. Stillman, “The Last Tie,” Overland Monthly, July 1869, 79–80.
14 “Durant is so strange”: Bain, Empire Express, 651.
15 “THE LAST RAIL IS LAID”: Klein, Union Pacific, 226.
CHAPTER 36: SAINTS AND SINNERS
1 “The cause of our exile”: Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (1985), 128.
