War of 1812: The War Hawks

War Hawk Felix Grundy, the representative from Tennessee, very much wanted Canada in 1811. To Congress, he said:

“It cannot be believed by an man who will reflect, that the savage tribes, uninfluenced by other Powers, would think of making war on the United States. They understand too well their own weakness, and our strength. They have already felt the weight of our arms; they know they hold the very soil on which they live as tenants at sufferance. How, then, sir, are we to account for their late conduct? In one way only; some powerful nation must have intrigued with them, and turned their peaceful disposition towards us into hostilities. Great Britain alone has intercourse with those Northern tribes; I therefore infer, that if British gold has not been employed, their baubles and trinkets, and the promise of support and a place of refuge if necessary, have had their effect. . . . This war, if carried on successfully, will have its advantages. We shall drive the British from our Continent–they will no longer have an opportunity of intriguing with out Indian neighbors, and setting on the ruthless savage to tomahawk our women and children. That nation will lose her Canadian trade, and, by having no resting place in this country, her means of annoying us will be diminished. . . . I am willing to receive the Canadians as adopted brethren: it will have beneficial political effects; it will preserve the equilibrium of the Government. When Louisiana shall be fully peopled, the Northern States will lose their power; they will be at the discretion of others; they can be pressured at pleasure, and then this Union might be endangered–I therefore feel anxious not only to add the Floridas to the South, but the Canadas to the North of this empire.” [quoted in MAJOR PROBLEMS IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC, 156-57]


“Your committee will not enlarge on any of the injuries, however great, which have had a transitory effect. They wish to call the attention of the House to those of a permanent nature only, which intrench so deeply on our most important rights, and wound so extensively and vitally our best interests, as could not fail to deprive the United States of the principal advantages of their Revolution, if submitted to. The control of our commerce by Great Britain, in regulating, at pleasure, and expelling it almost from the ocean; the oppressive manner in which these regulations have been carried into effect, by seizing and confiscating such of our vessels on the high seas, and elsewhere, and holding them in bondage till it suited the convenience of their oppressors to deliver them up; are encroachments of that high and dangerous tendency, which could not fail to produce that pernicious effect; nor would these be the only consequences that would result from it. The British Government might, for a while, be satisfied with the ascendency thus gained over us, but its pretensions would soon increase. The proof which so complete and disgraceful a submission to its authority would afford of our degeneracy, could not fail to inspire confidence, that there was no limit to which its usurpations, and our degradation, might not be carried. Your committee, believing that the free-born sons of America are worthy to enjoy the liberty which their fathers purchased at the price of so much blood and treasure, and seeing in the measures adopted by Great Britain, a course commenced and persisted in, which must lead to a loss of national character and independence, feel no hesitation in advising resistance by force; in which the Americans of the present day will prove to the enemy and to the world, that we have not only inherited that liberty which our fathers gave us, but also the will and power to maintain it. Relying on the patriotism of the nation, and confidently trusting that the Lord of Hosts will go with us to battle in a righteous cause, and crown our efforts with success, your committee recommend an immediate appeal to arms.” [quoted in MAJOR PROBLEMS IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC, 157].

Term List, D.W. Howe, What Hath God Wrought

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought, term list
Fall 2012

Pp. 1-202
Samuel Morse
Telegraphy
“communications revolution”
Ned Packenham
Thomas Mullins
Battle of New Orleans, 1815
Jedediah Morse
Vaqueros
“Middle Ground”
“little ice age”
Republican ideology
Husbandry
“agency”
Fur trade
Santa Fe Trail
Jedediah Smith
Sojourner Truth
Planter paternalism
Slave patrol
Dolley Madison
Battle of Baltimore, 1814
Old Republicans
Hartford Convention
Treaty of Ghent
Creek War
Second Treaty of Greenville
Algiers War
Madisonian Platform
Second Bank of the U.S.
14th Congress
John Randolph
Old Republicans/Tertium Quids
Tariff of 1816
National Road
Compensation Act
Bonus Bill
James Monroe
Monroe’s cabinet
Anglo-American Convention of 1818
First Seminole War
St. Mark’s
Transcontinental Treaty of Washington, 1819
Monroe Doctrine
Erie Canal
John Marshall
Joseph Story
preemption
Old Southwest
Second Middle Passage
Francis Cabot Lowell
Lowell, Mass.
Great Migration
Butternuts
John Chapman
Panic of 1819
Langdon Cheeves
Missouri Compromise
Rufus King
Denmark Vesey
Disestablishment
Temperance [American]
The Beecher Family
Charles G. Finney
“Burned-over District”
Oberlin College
“Christian perfection”
Circuit rider
Peter Cartwright
Baptists
“Second Great Awakening”
Evangelical United Front
Robert Baird
Elias Hicks
“Catholic revivalism”
John Hughes

Pp. 203-420
William H. Crawford
John C. Calhoun
John Quincy Adams
Henry Clay
Andrew Jackson
The Letters of Wyoming
National Road
Turnpike
Erie Canal
“Empire State”
United States Post Office
Sabbitarians
Washington Irving
James Fenimore Cooper
Timothy Flint
DeWitt Clinton
“Bucktails”
Chesapeake and Ohio
John McLean
American Colonization Society
Liberia
Freemasonry
Antimasons
“American System”
National Republicans
Tariff of Abominations
Democrat
“corrupt bargain”
Millennium (postm; prem)
Francis Wayland
American civil religion
William Miller
“The Great Disappointment”
Robert Owen
Associationist
Shakers
George Rapp
Amana Society
Martin Stephan
CFW Walther
Elizabeth Seton
Prophet Matthias
John Humphrey Noyes
Harriet Martineau
Frances Wright
Joseph Smith, Jr.
The Book of Mormon
Kirtland
Mormon War of 1838
Nauvoo
Mount Benedict
Nat Turner
“Age of Jackson”
“kitchen cabinet”
John Henry Eaton/Peggy Eaton
Indian Removal
Cherokee Nation
Sequoyuah
ABCFM
Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
“domestic dependent nation”
Maysville Veto Message
Pocket veto
Sovereignty
Robert Y. Hayne
Daniel Webster
Nicholas Biddle
Second Bank of the U.S.
Wildcat Banking
Martin Van Buren
Pet Banks
Great Triumvirate
Whig
Second Party System
Tariff of Abominations
Nullification proclamation
Force Bill

Pp. 410-524
John Ross
Treaty of New Echota
Black Hawk’s War
Keokuk
David Walker
William Lloyd Garrison
American Anti-Slavery Society
Amos Kendall
Mobocracy
Elijah Lovejoy
Code duello
Roger Taney
Robert Owen
American Bible Society
Alexander Campbell
Horace Mann
Edward Everett
Disestablishment
Yale Report of 1828
The Book of Nature
Joseph Henry
Miasma
Slyvester Graham
William Morton
Theodore Dwight Weld
James H. Thornwell
Martin Van Buren
Richard M. Johnson
William Henry Harrison
Amos Kendall (and again on pg. )
Deposit-Distribution Act
Specie Circular of 1836
Pet banks
Free banking
Doughface
William Leggett
Gag rule
Indian Removal
William Mackenzie
Cinque
Amistad

Pp. 525-
“Five Points”
Eli Whitney
Cyrus McCormick
John Deere
“manufactories”
Working Men’s political parties
Francis Wright
Thomas Skidmore
Locofocos
Lowell Female Reform Association
Stephen Van Rensselaer II
Anti-rent movement
Treatise on Domestic Economy
Maysville Veto
“legal person”/corporation
B&O Railroad
America’s economic “take-off”
William Henry Harrison
Log cabin/Hard Cider
Horace Greeley
Land Act of 1841
Bankruptcy Act of 1841
“Illinois System”
Dorr Rebellion
Dorothea Dix
Pp. 613-
William Ellery Channing
Laura Bridgman
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Transcendentalists 
Margaret Fuller
Henry David Thoreau
Brook Farm
Henry Wadworth Longfellow
Edgar Allen Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Frederick Douglass
Lewis Tappan
Theodore Dwight Weld
Liberty Party
Prigg v. Pennsylvania
Erasmo Seguin
Stephen Austin
Mexican Constitution of 1824
Filibuster
Santa Anna
Texian Revolution
William Travis
David Crockett
James Fannin
San Jacinto
Lone Star Republic
Webster-Ashburton Treaty
Robert Walker
James K. Polk
James G. Birney
Samuel F.B. Morse
Texas Annexation
ABCFM
Rendezvous
Hudson’s Bay Company
“Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!”
Joseph Smith
Mormonism
Nauvoo
Brigham Young
Zachary Taylor
George Wilkins Kendall
Winfield Scott
St. Patrick’s Battalion
John C. Fremont
Thomas Larkin
Stephen Watts Kearny
“No Territory”
Walker Tariff
Polk-Santa Anna Conspiracy
Cotton Whigs
Conscience Whigs
Revolutions of 1848
“All Mexico”
Nicholas Trist
Gold Rush
Irish Potato Famine
Nativism
Lewis Cass
Free Soil
Declaration of Sentiments

Jacksonian Lecture 1: Introduction to the Early American Republic, 1801-1848

Opening Lecture, August 30, 2012.

H302

by Bradley J. Birzer

These years proved an anxious time for Americans. I can’t imagine a generation with a more difficult task—how to live up to what the founding fathers had given them.

The Revolutionary Generation had spoken, acted, and achieved with a deep-seated confidence.

And, as they surveyed the land to the West, they felt a sense of overwhelming Providence.

John Adams, for example, had said as early as 1765:
“I always consider the settlement of American with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”

Of course, we can think of the excellent work by our own brilliant scholar and gentleman, Richard Gamble.  Much of this anticipates American exceptionalism—especially given the Puritan idea of a “City Upon a Hill” and rethinking at the time/renaming of the Plymouth Combination as the “Mayflower Compact” to give it a less religious feel.

Americans had several questions to ask during the early Republic:

• How could they possibly live up to the Revolutionary generation–both the intellectuals who declared Independence, wrote the Northwest Ordinance, and the Constitution and the soldiers who gave their lives for the Patriot cause? Why had God granted the Patriot movement so many heroes and gifts? Why wasn’t he granting the same types of men and women now? The burden was immense. Madison had issued the challenge to his own generation and later generations rather bluntly in 1787 in Philadelphia: “It is more than probable we are now digesting a plan which in its operation will decide forever the fate of republican government.”[quoted in Major Problems of the Early Republic, 20]. Probably true, but this leads to all kinds of questions and those answers each have huge implications. 
• How find virtue necessary to support a republic–especially in a commercializing society? A) Religion seemed one obvious answer–but what about all the Roman Catholics and bizarre sects developing? Second Great Awakening quite different from the First Great Awakening. B) What about warfare? But, that goes against the Republican fear of a standing army? 
• Is America a Nation? And, if so, in what sense? Something akin to an Old Testament Nation or like a modern Nation State? Or, a federal system–something unique in the world. And, if federal–which sections, which layer, is the most powerful? What about huge differences, such as between the North and the South? Every nationalist, ironically, had his own vision of what a nation should be. 
• Are we a new or old people? Are we the descendants of the Romans and the Greeks or something new, the country of the future? Or, both? Regardless, America needed a myth–something to hold it together, to bind all Americans into one? 
• Should the Republic be a passive model or an active advocate of further Republicanism? 
• Are we a Republic or a democracy? Can democracy produce a natural aristocracy, or is that passe? Or, does it produce military demagogues like Andrew Jackson? Indeed, the transition from a J.Q. Adams to an Andrew Jackson is one of the most important transitions in American History. It signaled the end of the Old Republic. 
• What to do with the Indians? Empire of Liberty or Manifest Destiny? Republic or Empire? 
• What is the role of the Man of Letters–or should a free society have such a thing? Could it possibly corrupt us? Isn’t it decadent? 
• What about unfree peoples–such as those from Africa? 
• How keep up with immense technological change? (these years saw the widespread use of the steam engine as well as the advent of the Railroad). And, what does it mean? Though, usually celebrated. 

Such questions kept persons up at night. Anxious, anxious years as American attempted to define itself. And, of course, in many ways America failed and did so horrifically– 

• the Civil War was a result of the compromises, the bickering, the anxiety of the men of the Early Republic. 
• Imperialistic expansion, the complete annihilation of Indian Rights and dignity. 
• Utopian reform movements and their egalitarian monstrosities–would be the non-violent (usually) and often religious brethren of the atheist French Revolutionaries and the forerunners to the twentieth-century ideologues, the harbingers of death 
• Extreme nativism 

But, amazing personalities–from James Madison to James K. Polk, from James Fenimore Cooper to Herman Melville, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Joseph Smith.

And, we find some of the most important political debates ever in U.S. history.

And, the anxiety came because Americans knew how well they had it. Washington Irving, for example, wrote in 1832:

I come from gloomier climates to one of brilliant sunshine and inspiring purity. I come from countries lowering with doubt and danger, where the rich man trembles and the poor man frowns–where all repine at the present and dread the future. I come from these to a country where all is life and animation; where I hear on every side the sound of exultation; where every one speaks of the past with triumph, the present with delight, the future with glowing and confident anticipation. 

But, with anxiety also comes energy. And, the Early Republic was nothing if not filled with intense energy. Everywhere: in government, in reform societies, in business, in westward movement (six new states just between 1816 and 1821).

Almost dizzying and overwhelming. “Jacksonian man” was restless man, man on the move.

Such restlessness and energy very evident in birth rates. The World has never seen anything like the American birthrates during this time period (and up to 1870).  The average woman on the frontier had about 13 children.

One Congressman stated: 

I invite you to go to the west, and visit one of our log cabins, and number its inmates. There you will find a strong, stout youth of eighteen, with his Better Half, just commencing the first struggles of independent life. Thirty years from that time, visit them again; and instead of two, you will find in that same family twenty-two. That is what I call the American Multiplication Table.

Almost all population increase during our time period was internal. That is, very, very little immigration. That would begin in full force in 1848–with the influx of Irish Catholics and German Catholics and Lutherans.

Up until then, free America meant Protestant Anglo-Saxon-Celtic America.

And, yet, all were welcome to come.  As John Quincy Adams put it–in an official pronouncement from the state department: 

The American Republic invites nobody to come. We will keep out nobody. Arrivals will suffer no disadvantages as aliens. But they can expect no advantages either. Native-born and foreign-born face equal opportunities. What happens to them depends entirely on their individual ability and exertions and on good fortune.

Albert Gallatin Vs. Manifest Destiny/Imperialism

Albert Gallatin, "The Mission of the United States," in Peace with Mexico (1847), 25-30.

[This is one of the finest essays against imperialism and Manifest Destiny I've encountered]  

The people of the United States have been placed by Providence in a position never before enjoyed by any other nation. They are possessed of a most extensive territory, with a very fertile soil, a variety of climates and productions, and a capacity of sustaining a population greater in proportion to its extent than any other territory of the same size on the face of the globe.

By a concourse of various circumstances, they found themselves, at the epoch of their independence, in the full enjoyment of religious, civil, and political liberty, entirely free from any hereditary monopoly of wealth or power. The people at large were in full and quiet possession of all those natural rights for which the people of other countries have for a long time contended and still do contend. They were, and you still are, the supreme sovereigns, acknowledged as such by all. For the proper exercise of these uncontrolled powers and privileges you are responsible to posterity, to the world at large, and to the Almighty Being who has poured on you such unparalleled blessings.

Your mission is to improve the state of the world, to be the “model republic,” to show that men are capable of governing themselves, and that this simple and natural form of government is that also which confers most happiness on all, is productive of the greatest development of the intellectual faculties, above all, that which is attended with the highest standard of private and political virtue and morality.

Your forefathers, the founders of the republic, imbued with a deep feeling of their rights and duties, did not deviate from those principles. The sound sense, the wisdom, the probity, the respect for public faith, with which the internal concerns of the nation were managed made our institutions an object of general admiration. Here, for the first time, was the experiment attempted with any prospect of success, and on a large scale, of a representative democratic republic. If it failed, the last hope of the friends of mankind was lost or indefinitely postponed; and the eyes of the world were turned towards you. Whenever real or pretended apprehensions of the imminent danger of trusting the people at large with power were expressed, the answer ever was, “Look at America!”

In their external relations the United States, before this unfortunate war, had, whilst sustaining their just rights, ever acted in strict conformity with the dictates of justice, and displayed the utmost moderation. They never had voluntarily injured any other nation. Every acquisition of territory from foreign powers was honestly made, the result of treaties not imposed, but freely assented to by the other party. The preservation of peace was ever a primary object. The recourse to arms was always in self-defence. On its expediency there may have been a difference of opinion; that in the only two instances of conflict with civilized nations which occurred during a period of sixty-three years (1783 to 1846) the just rights of the United States had been invaded by a long-continued series of aggressions is undeniable. In the first instance war was not declared, and there were only partial hostilities between France and England. The Congress of the United States, the only legitimate organ of the nation for that purpose, did, in 1812, declare war against Great Britain. Independent of depredations on our commerce, she had for twenty years carried on an actual war against the United States. I say actual war, since there is now but one opinion on that subject; a renewal of the impressment of men sailing under the protection of our flag would be tantamount to a declaration of war. The partial opposition to the war of 1812 did not rest on a denial of the aggressions of England and of the justice of our cause, but on the fact that, with the exception of impressments, similar infractions of our just rights had been committed by France, and on the most erroneous belief that the Administration was partial to that country and insincere in their apparent efforts to restore peace.

At present all these principles would seem to have been abandoned. The most just, a purely defensive war, and no other is justifiable, is necessarily attended with a train of great and unavoidable evils. What shall we say of one, iniquitous in its origin, and provoked by ourselves, of a war of aggression, which is now publicly avowed to be one of intended conquest?

If persisted in, its necessary consequences will be a permanent increase of our military establishment and of executive patronage; its general tendency to make man hate man, to awaken his worst passions, to accustom him to the taste of blood. It has already demoralized no inconsiderable portion of the nation.

The general peace which has been preserved between the great European powers during the last thirty years may not be ascribed to the purest motives. Be these what they may, this long and unusual repose has been most beneficial to the cause of humanity. Nothing can be more injurious to it, more lamentable, more scandalous, than the war between two adjacent republics of North America.

Your mission was to be a model for all other governments and for all other less-favored nations, to adhere to the most elevated principles of political morality, to apply all your faculties to the gradual improvement of your own institutions and social state, and by your example to exert a moral influence most beneficial to mankind at large. Instead of this, an appeal has been made to your worst passions; to cupidity; to the thirst of unjust aggrandizement by brutal force; to the love of military fame and of false glory; and it has even been tried to pervert the noblest feelings of your nature. The attempt is made to make you abandon the lofty position which your fathers occupied, to substitute for it the political morality and heathen patriotism of the heroes and statesmen of antiquity.

I have said that it was attempted to pervert even your virtues. Devotedness to country, or patriotism, is a most essential virtue, since the national existence of any society depends upon it. Unfortunately, our most virtuous dispositions are perverted not only by our vices and selfishness, but also by their own excess. Even the most holy of our attributes, the religious feeling, may be perverted from that cause, as was but too lamentably exhibited in the persecutions, even unto death, of those who were deemed heretics. It is not, therefore, astonishing that patriotism carried to excess should also be perverted. In the entire devotedness to their country, the people everywhere and at all times have been too apt to forget the duties imposed upon them by justice towards other nations. It is against this natural propensity that you should be specially on your guard. The blame does not attach to those who, led by their patriotic feelings, though erroneous, flock around the national standard. On the contrary, no men are more worthy of admiration, better entitled to the thanks of their country, than those who, after war has once taken place, actuated only by the purest motives, daily and with the utmost self-devotedness brave death and stake their own lives in the conflict against the actual enemy. I must confess that I do not extend the same charity to those civilians who coolly and deliberately plunge the country into any unjust or unnecessary war.

We should have but one conscience; and most happy would it be for mankind were statesmen and politicians only as honest in their management of the internal or external national concerns as they are in private life. The irreproachable private character of the President and of all the members of his Administration is known and respected. There is not one of them who would not spurn with indignation the most remote hint that, on similar pretences to those alleged for dismembering Mexico, he might be capable of an attempt to appropriate to himself his neighbor’s farm.

In the total absence of any argument that can justify the war in which we are now involved, resort has been had to a most extraordinary assertion. It is said that the people of the United States have an hereditary superiority of race over the Mexicans, which gives them the right to subjugate and keep in bondage the inferior nation. This, it is also alleged, will be the means of enlightening the degraded Mexicans, of improving their social state, and of ultimately increasing the happiness of the masses.

Is it compatible with the principle of democracy, which rejects every hereditary claim of individuals, to admit an hereditary superiority of races? You very properly deny that the son can, independent of his own merit, derive any right or privilege whatever from the merit or any other social superiority of his father. Can you for a moment suppose that a very doubtful descent from men who lived one thousand years ago has transmitted to you a superiority over your fellow-men? But the Anglo-Saxons were inferior to the Goths, from whom the Spaniards claim to be descended; and they were in no respect superior to the Franks and to the Burgundians. It is not to their Anglo-Saxon descent, but to a variety of causes, among which the subsequent mixture of Frenchified Normans, Angevins, and Gascons must not be forgotten, that the English are indebted for their superior institutions. In the progressive improvement of mankind much more has been due to religious and political institutions than to races. Whenever the European nations which from their language are presumed to belong to the Latin or to the Sclavonian race shall have conquered institutions similar to those of England, there will be no trace left of the pretended superiority of one of those races above the other. At this time the claim is but a pretext for covering and justifying unjust usurpation and unbounded ambition.

But admitting, with respect to Mexico, the superiority of race, this confers no superiority of rights. Among ourselves the most ignorant, the most inferior, either in physical or mental faculties, is recognized as having equal rights, and he has an equal vote with any one, however superior to him in all those respects. This is founded on the immutable principle that no one man is born with the right of governing another man. He may, indeed, acquire a moral influence over others, and no other is legitimate. The same principle will apply to nations. However superior the Anglo-American race may be to that of Mexico, this gives the Americans no right to infringe upon the rights of the inferior race. The people of the United States may rightfully, and will, if they use the proper means, exercise a most beneficial moral influence over the Mexicans and other less enlightened nations of America. Beyond this they have no right to go.

The allegation that the subjugation of Mexico would be the means of enlightening the Mexicans, of improving their social state, and of increasing their happiness, is but the shallow attempt to disguise unbounded cupidity and ambition. Truth never was or can be propagated by fire and sword, or by any other than purely moral means. By these, and by these alone, the Christian religion was propagated, and enabled, in less than three hundred years, to conquer idolatry. During the whole of that period Christianity was tainted by no other blood than that of its martyrs.

The duties of the people of the United States towards other nations are obvious. Never losing sight of the divine percept, “Do to others as you would be done by,” they have only to consult their own conscience. For our benevolent Creator has implanted in the hearts of men the moral sense of right and wrong, and that sympathy for other men the evidences of which are of daily occurrence.

It seems unnecessary to add anything respecting that false glory which, from habit and the general tenor of our early education, we are taught to admire. The task has already been repeatedly performed, in a far more able and impressive manner than anything I could say on the subject. It is sufficient to say that at this time neither the dignity or honor of the nation demand a further sacrifice of invaluable lives, or even of money. The very reverse is the case. The true honor and dignity of the nation are inseparable from justice. Pride and vanity alone demand the sacrifice. Though so dearly purchased, the astonishing successes of the American arms have at least put it in the power of the United States to grant any terms of peace without incurring the imputation of being actuated by any but the most elevated motives. It would seem that the most proud and vain must be satiated with glory, and that the most reckless and bellicose should be sufficiently glutted with human gore.

A more truly glorious termination of the war, a more splendid spectacle, an example more highly useful to mankind at large, cannot well be conceived than that of the victorious forces of the United States voluntarily abandoning all their conquests, without requiring anything else than that which was strictly due to our citizens.

[source: http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1950&chapter=121608&layout=html#a_2457453]

Back When All Were Allowed

“The American Republic invites nobody to come.  We will keep out nobody.  Arrivals will suffer no disadvantages as aliens.  But they can expect no advantages either.  Native-born and foreign-born face equal opportunities.  What happens to them depends entirely on their individual ability and exertions and on good fortune.”


--John Quincy Adams, U.S. Secretary of State

Books for Jacksonian America (H302)--Fall 2012

Books assigned for H302 (Jacksonian America), Fall 2012.

Howe, What Hath God Wrought
http://www.amazon.com/What-Hath-God-Wrought-Transformation/dp/0195392434/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335268570&sr=1-1

Edmunds, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership
http://www.amazon.com/Tecumseh-Leadership-Library-American-Biography/dp/0321043715/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335268636&sr=1-5

Lee Cheek, ed., John C. Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government
http://www.amazon.com/Disquisition-Government-John-C-Calhoun/dp/1587311852/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335268758&sr=1-1

Cooper, Last of the Mohicans
http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Mohicans-Signet-Classics/dp/0451529820/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335268797&sr=1-2

Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Mayer ed.)
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-DEMOCRACY-IN-AMER/dp/B001SRTKZ0/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335268892&sr=1-2

Kansas

Today, 150 years ago, the federal government officially recognized Kansas as a state.  After six years of terrorism and guerilla warfare between the "Pukes" (aka Border Ruffians)  and the Jayhawkers, the Jayhawkers won.  Topeka triumphed over Lecompton; free labor and free soil triumphed over the evils of slavery.


God bless, my home state, Kansas.  To the stars through difficulties.