| Description |
1 online resource (xi, 281 pages) : illustrations, facsimiles, portraits |
| Contents |
Introduction : a tale of two squatters -- Squatter democracy -- Bad birds -- Crockett, hard cider, and the Whigs' rustic turn -- "Great american measures" and the election of 1844 -- Manufacturing destiny -- Sacramento's squatter riot and the aftershocks of manifest destiny -- Squatterdom -- The ordeal of squatter king -- Epilogue : George Bush's America |
| Summary |
Historians have highlighted the link between U.S. westward expansion and intensifying conflicts between the North and South over slavery. Few, however, have noted the shadowy figure of the squatter standing at the forward edge of territorial conquests and the center of battles that sparked disunion. This study examines how white squatters on western lands came to occupy a central and destabilizing position in American political culture in the decades leading up to the Civil War. It traces the rise and rocky tenure of Squatter Democracy, a brand of politics pioneered by Jacksonian Democrats that transformed the partisan landscape and actual map of North America in the antebellum period. Unlike previous generations of statesmen who maligned settlers lacking title to the lands they claimed, Democrats rose to dominance in part by celebrating them as nation-building yeomen and encouraging their land grabs with preemption laws, Indian removal policies, and saber-rattling at neighboring nations and rival empires. Once settled in newly conquered domains, these same squatters overwhelmingly supported Democrats. Whigs, by contrast-as well as Native Americans, Mexicans, and European colonists-lambasted U.S. squatters as lawless plunderers. For Democrats the myth of the squatter yeoman who planted American civilization in the "howling wilderness" had powerful unifying appeal, allowing northerners and southerners to sidestep the volatile issue of slavery and rally behind an expansionist platform that promised spoils for all. Despite their paeans to "hardy pioneers" and passage of squatter-friendly legislation, they could not avoid a thorny question: Were squatters genuine yeomen farmers or forerunners of slavery extension? The U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848) deepened fissures as Democrats from the North and South debated whether lands acquired in the conflict would be slave or free. Party chiefs attempted to bridge the divide with the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which authorized settlers to determine the slavery question for themselves. Far from quelling conflict, the policy-dubbed "squatter sovereignty"-merely transferred it from Washington to the West, converting flesh-and-blood squatters from land-taking agents of Manifest Destiny into foot soldiers on the front lines of clashes over slavery that sundered the Party of Jackson and the nation. Tracking squatters across antebellum America offers new perspectives on how the nation grew into a continent-spanning juggernaut and how Jacksonian political culture cohered and came apart as the issues of land-claiming and slavery extension became inextricably bound |
| Notes |
Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018 |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed January 22, 2024) |
| Subject |
Squatters -- Political activity -- United States -- 19th century
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Squatter sovereignty.
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Squatter sovereignty
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Squatters -- Political activity
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History of the Americas.
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History.
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| SUBJECT |
United States -- History -- 1815-1861. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140198
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| Subject |
United States
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| Genre/Form |
History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780197531457 |
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0197531458 |
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019753144X |
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9780197531433 |
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0197531431 |
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9780197531440 |
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