Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails

Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails
Author: David Devine
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre: Gadsden Purchase
ISBN: 9780595329137

Presents an account of U.S. Minister to Mexico James Gadsden's negotiations that resulted in the purchase of land in order to construct a southern transcontinental railroad line east from California, the implementation problems encountered over the next six years, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company's internal disagreements along with those it had with its rivals, and the anticipated regional economic benefits the tracks would bring.

Turmoil on the Rio Grande

Turmoil on the Rio Grande
Author: William S. Kiser
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2011-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1603446850

The mid-nineteenth century was a tumultuous yet formative time for the Mesilla Valley, home to present-day Las Cruces, New Mexico. With the coming of the U.S. Army to Mexican territory in 1846, the region became the site of a continent-shaping power struggle between two rival nations. When Mexican governor Manuel Armijo unexpectedly fled Santa Fe, he left the New Mexico territory undefended, and it fell to forces under Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny in a bloodless occupation. In the ensuing two decades, the southern portion of New Mexico's Rio Grande Valley played a prominent role in the conflict that overtook the infant American territory. In Turmoil on the Rio Grande, William S. Kiser has mined primary archives and secondary materials alike to tell the story of those rough-and-tumble years and to highlight the effect the region had in the developing U.S. empire of the West. Kiser carefully limns in the culture into which the U.S. soldiers inserted themselves before going on to describe the armed forces that arrived and the actions in which they were involved. From the thirty-minute Battle of Brazito—in which the greenhorn recruits of the 1st Regiment of Missouri Volunteers, led by Col. Alexander Doniphan, vanquished Mexican troops through superior technology—to the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the international boundary disputes, and the Confederate victory at Fort Fillmore, Kiser deftly describes the actions that made the Mesilla Valley important in American history.

Tucson

Tucson
Author: David Devine
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2015-06-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1476614601

Once considered the "Metropolis of Arizona," Tucson is in many respects a college town with a major military base onto which a retirement community has been grafted. A sprawling city of one million in the Sonoran Desert, Tucson was developed during and especially for the second half of the 20th century, a reality which has left it possibly unprepared for the challenges of the 21st century. Tracing the remarkable history of Tucson since 1854, this book describes many aspects of the community--its ceremonies and customs, its early bitter battle to secure the University of Arizona, its multitude of problems, its noteworthy successes and its racial divides. The recollections of those who have made Tucson such a memorable place are included, from political leaders to celebrities to ordinary residents.

Coast-to-Coast Empire

Coast-to-Coast Empire
Author: William S. Kiser
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2018-08-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806162392

Following Zebulon Pike’s expeditions in the early nineteenth century, U.S. expansionists focused their gaze on the Southwest. Explorers, traders, settlers, boundary adjudicators, railway surveyors, and the U.S. Army crossed into and through New Mexico, transforming it into a battleground for competing influences determined to control the region. Previous histories have treated the Santa Fe trade, the American occupation under Colonel Stephen W. Kearny, the antebellum Indian Wars, debates over slavery, the Pacific Railway, and the Confederate invasion during the Civil War as separate events in New Mexico. In Coast-to-Coast Empire, William S. Kiser demonstrates instead that these developments were interconnected parts of a process by which the United States effected the political, economic, and ideological transformation of the region. New Mexico was an early proving ground for Manifest Destiny, the belief that U.S. possession of the entire North American continent was inevitable. Kiser shows that the federal government’s military commitment to the territory stemmed from its importance to U.S. expansion. Americans wanted California, but in order to retain possession of it and realize its full economic and geopolitical potential, they needed New Mexico as a connecting thoroughfare in their nation-building project. The use of armed force to realize this claim fundamentally altered New Mexico and the Southwest. Soldiers marched into the territory at the onset of the Mexican-American War and occupied it continuously through the 1890s, leaving an indelible imprint on the region’s social, cultural, political, judicial, and economic systems. By focusing on the activities of a standing army in a civilian setting, Kiser reshapes the history of the Southwest, underlining the role of the military not just in obtaining territory but in retaining it.

Expansionism

Expansionism
Author: Richard Allen Sauers
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2010
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 1604132213

Alphabetically arranged entries cover the history of the expansion of American sovereignty from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean.

The Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Rail Road

The Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Rail Road
Author: H. Roger Grant
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2014-04-17
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 0253011876

Among the grand antebellum plans to build railroads to interconnect the vast American republic, perhaps none was more ambitious than the Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston. The route was intended to link the cotton-producing South and the grain and livestock growers of the Old Northwest with traders and markets in the East, creating economic opportunities along its 700-mile length. But then came the Panic of 1837, and the project came to a halt. H. Roger Grant tells the incredible story of this singular example of "railroad fever" and the remarkable visionaries whose hopes for connecting North and South would require more than half a century—and one Civil War—to reach fruition.

The Settlement of America

The Settlement of America
Author: James A. Crutchfield
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1500
Release: 2015-03-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 131745460X

First Published in 2015. This encyclopaedic collection includes Volumes 1 (A-L) and 2 (M-Z) as well as essays on the settlement of America. It can be argued that the westward expansion occurred only one week after the English landfall at Jamestown, Virginia, on May 14, 1607. Beginning on May 21, Captain John Smith, one of the colonization company’s leaders, and twenty-one companions made their way northwest up the James River for some 50 or 60 miles (80 or 96 km).

Encyclopedia of Politics of the American West

Encyclopedia of Politics of the American West
Author: Steven L. Danver
Publisher: CQ Press
Total Pages: 1566
Release: 2013-04-25
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1506354912

The Encyclopedia of Politics in the American West is an A to Z reference work on the political development of one of America’s most politically distinct, not to mention its fastest growing, region. This work will cover not only the significant events and actors of Western politics, but also deal with key institutional, historical, environmental, and sociopolitical themes and concepts that are important to more fully understanding the politics of the West over the last century.

Multicultural America

Multicultural America
Author: Carlos E. Cortés
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 4420
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1506332781

This comprehensive title is among the first to extensively use newly released 2010 U.S. Census data to examine multiculturalism today and tomorrow in America. This distinction is important considering the following NPR report by Eyder Peralta: "Based on the first national numbers released by the Census Bureau, the AP reports that minorities account for 90 percent of the total U.S. growth since 2000, due to immigration and higher birth rates for Latinos." According to John Logan, a Brown University sociologist who has analyzed most of the census figures, "The futures of most metropolitan areas in the country are contingent on how attractive they are to Hispanic and Asian populations." Both non-Hispanic whites and blacks are getting older as a group. "These groups are tending to fade out," he added. Another demographer, William H. Frey with the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Post that this has been a pivotal decade. "We’re pivoting from a white-black-dominated American population to one that is multiracial and multicultural." Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia explores this pivotal moment and its ramifications with more than 900 signed entries not just providing a compilation of specific ethnic groups and their histories but also covering the full spectrum of issues flowing from the increasingly multicultural canvas that is America today. Pedagogical elements include an introduction, a thematic reader’s guide, a chronology of multicultural milestones, a glossary, a resource guide to key books, journals, and Internet sites, and an appendix of 2010 U.S. Census Data. Finally, the electronic version will be the only reference work on this topic to augment written entries with multimedia for today’s students, with 100 videos (with transcripts) from Getty Images and Video Vault, the Agence France Press, and Sky News, as reviewed by the media librarian of the Rutgers University Libraries, working in concert with the title’s editors.

Last Water on the Devil's Highway

Last Water on the Devil's Highway
Author: Bill Broyles
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2014-02-06
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0816530831

The DevilÕs HighwayÑEl Camino del DiabloÑcrosses hundreds of miles and thousands of years of Arizona and Southwest history. This heritage trail follows a torturous route along the U.S. Mexico border through a lonely landscape of cactus, desert flats, drifting sand dunes, ancient lava flows, and searing summer heat. The most famous waterhole along the way is Tinajas Altas, or High Tanks, a series of natural rock basins that are among the few reliable sources of water in this notoriously parched region. Now an expert cast of authors describes, narrates, and explains the human and natural history of this special place in a thorough and readable account. Addressing the latest archaeological and historical findings, they reveal why Tinajas Altas was so important and how it related to other waterholes in the arid borderlands. Readers can feel like pioneers, following in the footsteps of early Native Americans, Spanish priests and soldiers, gold seekers and borderland explorers, tourists, and scholars. Combining authoritative writing with a rich array of more than 180 illustrations and maps as well as detailed appendixes providing up-to-date information on the wildlife and plants that live in the area, Last Water on the DevilÕs Highway allows readers to uncover the secrets of this fascinating place, revealing why it still attracts intrepid tourists and campers today.