April 29, 2009
Lincoln and the West
James McPherson
Professor of American History, Emeritus, Princeton
Minutes of the 29th Meeting of the 67th Year
The meeting was called to order at 10.15 AM by President George Hansen. Due to a large number of guests, their names were not read, rather than the usual practice. The minutes of the previous meeting were read by Charles Rojer. After the Invocation, Harvey Rothberg conducted the election of a new slate of officers, all of whom are renewals except for John Frederick, who has resigned as Recording Secretary, without a replacement.
John Harper introduced the speaker, James McPherson, Professor of American History, emeritus at Princeton University, whose topic was ''Lincoln and the West."
If you were a politician interested in public office in the 1840’s, you had an opinion on the single burning issue of the day...should the settlers in the newly acquired territories of the far west be allowed to have slaves? At the end of the Mexican war in 1848 the United States had paid 18 million dollars to Mexico for parts of what would become Nevada, New Mexico. Utah, Arizona, and California.
This bonanza reopened an argument between expansionist- minded slaveholders and politicians, like Abraham Lincoln, a member of the Whig party, who hoped that the 1850 Missouri Compromise banning slavery In Kansas and Nebraska was a prelude to its eventual disappearance.
Professor McPherson pointed out that the Whigs were nationalists in the mould of Henry Clay, who believed in national unity, in binding the states together. Nationalists based their opposition to acquiring more territory on the tendency of pro-slavery Democrats like John C. Calhoun to target new lands as potential slave states. In 1853, Senator Stephen Douglas, Lincoln's future opponent for the presidency, successfully introduced a bill in Congress allowing settlers to decide the slavery issue by vote. The resulting realignment of political factions gave birth to the Republican Party, under whose banner Lincoln would become President in 1860. A more tragic consequence, however, both for the country and for Lincoln himself was the war.
Slavery now took a back seat to other preoccupations for the President, although the west still was on his mind. In 1862 he signed the Railroad Act; a piece of legislation that he hoped would help knit together the opposite ends of the country. More importantly, he had come to believe in the vast economic and social potential that the discovery of gold in the west represented for the future. On the morning of his death Lincoln had been making plans for traveling to western places like California now that the war was over and he could think about other things.
McPherson gives us a snapshot of Lincoln engaged in minor affairs that reinforces our idea of him as a man destined for greatness.
Respectfully submitted,
Rosemary O'Brien
John Harper introduced the speaker, James McPherson, Professor of American History, emeritus at Princeton University, whose topic was ''Lincoln and the West."
If you were a politician interested in public office in the 1840’s, you had an opinion on the single burning issue of the day...should the settlers in the newly acquired territories of the far west be allowed to have slaves? At the end of the Mexican war in 1848 the United States had paid 18 million dollars to Mexico for parts of what would become Nevada, New Mexico. Utah, Arizona, and California.
This bonanza reopened an argument between expansionist- minded slaveholders and politicians, like Abraham Lincoln, a member of the Whig party, who hoped that the 1850 Missouri Compromise banning slavery In Kansas and Nebraska was a prelude to its eventual disappearance.
Professor McPherson pointed out that the Whigs were nationalists in the mould of Henry Clay, who believed in national unity, in binding the states together. Nationalists based their opposition to acquiring more territory on the tendency of pro-slavery Democrats like John C. Calhoun to target new lands as potential slave states. In 1853, Senator Stephen Douglas, Lincoln's future opponent for the presidency, successfully introduced a bill in Congress allowing settlers to decide the slavery issue by vote. The resulting realignment of political factions gave birth to the Republican Party, under whose banner Lincoln would become President in 1860. A more tragic consequence, however, both for the country and for Lincoln himself was the war.
Slavery now took a back seat to other preoccupations for the President, although the west still was on his mind. In 1862 he signed the Railroad Act; a piece of legislation that he hoped would help knit together the opposite ends of the country. More importantly, he had come to believe in the vast economic and social potential that the discovery of gold in the west represented for the future. On the morning of his death Lincoln had been making plans for traveling to western places like California now that the war was over and he could think about other things.
McPherson gives us a snapshot of Lincoln engaged in minor affairs that reinforces our idea of him as a man destined for greatness.
Respectfully submitted,
Rosemary O'Brien