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The story of America’s westward migration is a powerful blend of fact and fable. Over the course of three decades, almost a million eager fortune-hunters, pioneers, and visionaries transformed the face of a continent—and displaced its previous inhabitants. The people who made the long and perilous journey over the Oregon and California trails drove this swift and astonishing change. In this magisterial volume, Will Bagley tells why and how this massive emigration began. While many previous authors have told parts of this story, Bagley has recast it in its entirety for modern readers. Drawing on research he conducted for the National Park Service’s Long Distance Trails Office, he has wo...
In the midst of the heartbreak, confusion, and rumors that followed Appomattox, some Southerners resolved to emigrate rather than surrender, and emigrate they did-to South America, Europe, Canada, and Mexico. Mexico's Emperor Maximilian, trying to secure his shaky throne against Juarez' opposition, encouraged these recalcitrant Confederates to settle in Mexico. But, doomed to defeat by the internal crisis in Mexico and by the Southerners' failure to face reality, the Confederate colonies were established and destroyed within two years' time. Later, many of the colonists who survived the ordeal tried to forget that they had ever gone into exile. Among the emigrants were many prominent Souther...
Robert Lewis (b.1607) and his family immigrated from Wales to Gloucester County, Virginia in 1635. Descendants lived in Virginia, West Vir- ginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas and elsewhere. Includes some data on ancestry in England.
After the Civil War, a handful of former Confederate leaders joined forces with the Mexican emperor Maximilian von Hapsburg to colonize Mexico with former American slaveholders. Their plan was to develop commercial agriculture in the Mexican state of Coahuila under the guidance of former slaveholders with former slaves providing the bulk of the labor force. By developing these new centers of agricultural production and commercial exchange, the Mexican government hoped to open up new markets and, by extending the few already-existing railroads in the region, also spur further development. The Southern Exodus to Mexico considers the experiences of both white southern elites and common white an...
Perhaps no other institution has had a more significant impact on Latin American history than the large landed estate—the hacienda. In Mexico, the latifundio, an estate usually composed of two or more haciendas, dominated the social and economic structure of the country for four hundred years. A Mexican Family Empire is a careful examination of the largest latifundio ever to have existed, not only in Mexico but also in all of Latin America—the latifundio of the Sánchez Navarros. Located in the northern state of Coahuila, the Sánchez Navarro family's latifundio was composed of seventeen haciendas and covered more than 16.5 million acres—the size of West Virginia. Charles H. Harris pla...
Tracing the historical development of Mexico from the pre-Hispanic period to the present, the Historical Dictionary of Mexico, Third Edition, is an excellent resource for students, teachers, researchers, and the general public. This reference work includes a detailed chronology, an introduction surveying the country’s history, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section includes cross-referenced entries on the historical actors who shaped Mexican history, as well as entries on politics, government, the economy, culture, and the arts.
The Oregon Trail is the gripping account of Francis Parkman's journey west across North America in 1846. After crossing the Allegheny Mountains by coach and continuing by boat and wagon to Westport, Missouri, he set out with three companions on a horseback journey that would ultimately take him over two thousand miles. Map.
Charles Swett (1828-1910) was a prosperous Vicksburg merchant and small plantation owner who was reluctantly drawn into secession but then rallied behind the Confederate cause, serving with distinction in the Confederate Army. After the war some of Swett's peers from Mississippi and other southern states invited him to explore the possibility of settling in British Honduras or the Republic of Honduras. Confederates in the Tropics uses Swett's 1868 travelogue to explore the motives of would-be Confederate migrants' fleeing defeat and Reconstruction in the United States South. The authors make a comparative analysis of Confederate communities in Latin America, and use Charles Swett's life to i...
Bill Sublette (1799-1845) led two lives. Renowned as a hardy mountain man, he ranged the Missouri, Big Horn, Yellowstone, and Sweetwater River country between 1823 and 1833 hunting beaver, fighting Indians, and unwittingly opening the West for settlers (he proved that wagons could be used effectively on the Oregon Trail). Financial success and silk hats, which strangled the fur trade, later forced him to a less adventuresome life in St. Louis as a gentleman farmer, businessman, and politician. Not only did Sublette help develop the rendezvous system in the fur trade and blaze the first wagon trail through South pass, but also he established what was later Fort Laramie, was a participant in laying the foundation for present Kansas City, and left a large fortune to excite envy and exaggeration, One of the most successful fur merchants of the West, he also helped to break John Jacob Astor's monopoly of the trade.