After Conquering California The Victors Turned on Each Other

 

U.S. Marines from the Navy's Pacific Squadron under Commodore John Drake Sloat conduct a bloodless amphibious operation to seize the Alta California provincial capital, Monterrey. 

Other men get most of the credit for the annexation of Alta California during the Mexican War of 1846-’48.  But Commodore John Drake Sloat, commander of the U.S. Navy Pacific Squadron, sailed into the harbor at Monterrey, the provincial capital, and after a bloodless skirmish with a small force of Mexican Coast Guard and silencing shore batteries with a few well-placed salvos, landed with a complement of sailors and Marines. Sloat raised the flag over the Customs House on July 7, 1846 and issued an edict annexing Alta California to the United States. 

Two days later he sailed up the coast and took Yerba Buena—today’s San Francisco.  He acted as self-proclaimed Military Governor of California until relieved by Commodore Robert F. Stockton, who reprimanded him for exceeding his orders.  That reprimand was later echoed by President James Knox Polk. 

Exceed orders of not, with a state of war between the counties, Stockton was not about to hand California back to Mexican authorities.  

                       

                                Commodore John Drake Sloat.

Sloat was a veteran Naval officer.  An orphan from New York he entered the Navy as a midshipman in 1800.  He left the service but re-enlisted for the War of 1812.  He was serving as Sailing Master under Captain Stephen Decatur on the frigate USS United States when it captured the British frigate HMS Macadonian and was promoted to Lieutenant for conspicuous gallantry under fire in the battle.  In his long naval service, he battled Caribbean pirates and commanded several ships before accepting command of the Pacific Squadron in 1844. 

As tensions with Mexico grew, Sloat was ordered to take Alta California in event of the outbreak of war.  He was sailing off of Mazatlán on the Mexican Pacific coast when he got fragmentary reports from shore that fighting had broken out along the Texas border.  Without waiting for official confirmation, he raced north to prevent a possible occupation of California by the British from Oregon.  Sloat eventually learned that fighting had already broken out in Northern California and that a Republic had been declared by a handful of settlers from the US. 

Famed explorer Captain John C. Frémont entered the rich agricultural Sacramento Valley at the head of a large 55 man “exploration” party early in 1846.  His appearance there was something of a mystery, as his official orders were to explore the source of the Arkansas River on the east side of the Rocky Mountains.  Many historians believe he was acting under secret orders from President Polk, although no evidence of such orders has been found.  Others think that the ambitious Frémont acted on his own accord.

At any rate, Frémont agitated among the U.S. settlers in the valley promising that if war broke out with Mexico that he and his men would, “be there to protect them.”  

A heavily romanticized view of Capt. John C. Fremont who mysteriously appeared in northern California at a critical moment and after the senseless slaughter of an innocent Klamath fishing village, rousted local Californio forces, claimed the brief Bear Flag Republic for the United States and anointed himself military governor.

Needless to say, Mexican authorities were unamused.  Commandante General José Antonio Castro, a native Californian who was himself often at odds with the distant Mexican government but who was a fierce opponent of foreign immigration, rallied his small force and forced Frémont to north into Oregon.  After a battle with Modoc warriors Frémont let a retaliatory attack on a wholly innocent Klamath fishing village massacring the residents.  He encountered Marine Corps Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie who was carrying secret oral orders for him from the President. 

He turned his force back south to California with his trusted scout Kit Carson and Lt.  Gillespie at his side.  When he arrived at Sutter’s Fort on June 25, Frémont found the settlers at Sonoma had declared the Bear Flag Republic on June 14.  He took command in the name of the United States and ended the nine-day existence of the Republic. 

Frémont went to work consolidating his force of men from the Army’s Topographical Engineers and experienced mountain men led by Carson with local volunteers, including some Mission Indians.  After defeating a small force under Castro at the Battle of Olompali, it seemed that Frémont was in control of California, a situation that did not thrill either Sloat or his successor Stockton. 

But Stockton had to use his force of sailors and Marines to garrison key points on the coast and to be kept in reserve as “shock” troops should serious fighting break out.  He needed to bring Frémont’s California Battalion under his orders and into U.S. service.  Frémont was brevetted Lt. Colonel in command of the unit dubbed the U.S. Mounted Rifles with Gillespie as Major and second in command.  Carson was appointed a Lieutenant. 

Former mountain man and guide, Kit Carson, left, seemed to be everywhere during the California campaigns of the Mexican Wars.  One of the few legendary figures of the old West whose real life lived up to the hype, Carson is pictured here with John C. Fremont, the Pathfinder, after their famous and epic exploration of the Mountain west.  Carson would rise in the Army to the rank of Brigadier General and command forces in New Mexico during the Civil War.  He was the only Army general officer known to be illiterate.

The volunteers supported a landing by Marines and Bluejackets at San Diego on July 28 followed by taking Los Angeles on August 13.  The conquest of California seemed complete.  But Major Gillespie, left in command at Los Angeles with 60 men, infuriated the local ranchers with a harsh order of martial law and general contemptuous treatment of local citizens.  Previously many were sympathetic to the possibility of American rule, having become fed up with inept and corrupt government from Mexico City. 

On September 23 about 200-300 Californios under Gen. José María Flores staged a revolt besieging Gillespie and his garrison without water on Ft. Hill. American volunteer John Brown broke through the Californio lines and made a 400-mile ride to contact Stockton in San Francisco Bay.  Before Stockton could act to relieve the siege, Gillespie was forced to surrender and was allowed to retreat from Los Angeles to the near-by port of San Pedro.  

Brigadier General Stephen Kearny arrived in California at the head of a few hundred Dragoons after a punishing march from Santa Fe.  He eventually clashed with both Commodore Stockton and Fremont for leadership.

Meanwhile, an entirely separate American Force was heading to California overland from Santa Fe.  On September 25 about 300 Dragoons under the command of Brigadier General Stephen Kearny began an epic march across deserts and mountains to California.  On October 6 he encountered a small party led by Kit Carson which was sent from Los Angeles in early September with dispatches for President Polk proclaiming victory in California.  On the strength of this now outdated news, Kearny sent more than half of his troops back to Santa Fe along with Carson’s dispatches.  Carson agreed to turn around and guide Kearny the rest of the way to California by the best possible route.

By December 5 Carson brought Kearny’s exhausted men to within 25 miles of their destination in San Diego.  An intercepted Mexican courier alerted Kearny that Stockton and his forces were under siege in the city.  With his men mounted mostly on broken mules, Kearny decided to raid a camp of Californios under Andrés Pico at San Pasqual for much needed spare horses.  The camp was alerted that Kearny decided to attack.  But his 60 remaining exhausted men and their mules were no match for Pico’s skilled lancers who rode rings around the Americans and killed at least 22 of them.  Kearny was among the wounded.  

Lancers of the Californio Militia badly mauled Kearny's exhausted forces in a bloody battle but had to retreat as reinforcements from Stockton's sailors and Marines neared. It was the final major military action of the campaign and left Alta California securely in American hands.

The Dragoons set up a defensive perimeter and were besieged by Pico.  Carson and another man were dispatched to sneak through the lines into San Diego for help.  Miraculously, they arrived in the city with bloody bare feet.  Stockton dispatched 200 sailors and Marines with fresh horses for Kearny.  The arrival of reinforcements caused Pico’s men to scatter. 

The combined forces entered San Diego on December 12.  Kearny’s dispatches reported the Battle of San Pasqual a victory because the Californios “fled the field” when re-enforcements arrived.  Stockton reported it as a loss for the Army.  The Lancers considered it their victory. 

After a brief rest Stockton and Kearny’s combined force marched to Los Angeles where they were to join with 400 men under Frémont.  On January 8, 1847, with Stockton in command and Kearny his second, approximately 600 men from the San Diego column with artillery support dispersed 150 Californios under José Mariá Flores in the short but sharp Battle of Rio San Gabriel.  Remnants of Flores’s men were defeated again the next day at the battle of Battle of La Mesa, the last significant action of the California campaign.  

Commodore Robert Stockton won his bureaucratic and inter-service struggle with General Kearny for ultimate command and as Military Governor, but his choice of Fremont to succeed him fell afoul of the Pathfinder's Regular Army status as a mere Captain and therefore subordinate to Keary.

American forces re-entered Los Angeles and Major Gillespie personally raised the same American flag he had been forced to haul down months earlier. 

With fighting essentially over, the conquerors fell to bickering among themselves for command.  Both Stockton and Kearney held equivalent one-star rank but there was no ordinary precedent for an officer of one branch to serve under one of the other of the same rank.  Stockton on the scene longer and asserted military command as well as the post of military governor.    Kearny insisted his orders from Washington were more recent and included both military command and authority to establish a government.   

Frémont, acting for Stockton signed the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13 which ended local fighting with the surrender of Californio artillery and return of prisoners on both sides, and which allowed the Californios to return unmolested to their homes without having to surrender Mexican citizenship until a final and comprehensive end to the broader war, which would finally be ended in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the official cession of California to the U.S. 

Stockton appointed Frémont his successor as governor.  Frémont, a mere captain in the Regular Army, several times defied a direct order from his Army superior to surrender the Governorship.  Kearney appealed to Washington, which confirmed him as Governor.  He had Frémont arrested, put in chains, and court marshaled for mutiny and insubordination.  Frémont was convicted and sentenced to be dishonorably discharged from the service.

Polk upheld the verdict but bowing to pressure from Frémont’s powerful father-in-law, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and considering his service, vacated the sentence and allowed Frémont to honorably resign his commission.  

President James Knox Polk may or may not have given secret orders to Fremont and others before the War with Mexico officially broke out.  He also spent a lot of time sorting through the squabbles, charges, and counter charges involving Sloat, Stockton, Kearny, and Fremont.  About the only major figure to emerge with their reputation unsullied was Carson, who rose rapidly in the Army after the war

Frémont returned to California where he was subsequently elected Governor and Senator.  He was the first Republican Party candidate for President in 1856 and commanded Union forces in Missouri and in western Virginia during the Civil War displaying remarkably bad generalship in both assignments.  He ended up sitting out most of the war in disgrace. 

Kearney saw further service in the Mexican War and was appointed Military Governor of Vera Cruz and then Mexico City.  While in Mexico he contracted Yellow Fever.  He died of the illness at his home in St. Louis 1848. 

His rival Stockton resigned from the Navy in 1850 and was elected to the Senate as a Democrat from New Jersey the next year.  He was the sponsor of the bill that finally ended flogging in the Navy. In 1861 he was a delegate to an unsuccessful Peace Conference trying to head off the Civil War.  He was appointed commander of the New Jersey Militia during the war but saw no action.  He died in 1865. 

Frémont, Stockton, and Kearny—even Kit Carson—were all lauded as heroes for their part in the annexation of California.  Place names in several states honor each of them as did Army posts and Navy ships. 

And what of Commodore Sloat?  Ill health ended his career as a sea-going officer.  He was assigned shore duty, including the planning of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard at Vallejo, California.  He retired from the service in 1866 and died in New York the next year.  Largely forgotten, you can find a stone monument in his memory, if you know where to look at the Presidio of Monterrey and streets in residential areas of Monterrey and Los Angeles are named in his honor.

 

Geezer Whining--What Ever Became of the Picnic?

The American family picnic 1950s.  Was it ever really like this?  Pretty close.

I don’t want to be one of those old fuddy-duddies who bitch and moan that everything was better in the good ol’ days.  Trust me.  It wasn’t.  Take polio, segregation, child labor, and push lawn mowers for example.  And as much as I once loved banging away on my trusty Smith-Corona, the computer I am working on is way better and I can get the fruits of my writing labor in front of you eyeballs in a trice.  Nifty.

But what the hell happened to picnics?  I don’t mean just eating outside which humans have been doing since they came down from trees, or wherever they hung out before the magic pixie dust made them something a little different than the other apes.  We have no end of cook outs and barbeques on private decks and patios.  We munch Red Hots at ballparks.  We grab fast food on the fly and have lunch at the little tables outside, in sprawling urban plazas adorned with monumental modern sculpture.   There are church events, concerts, carnivals, and family reunions.  We eat outside all the time, weather permitting, and sometimes even when it is discouraging.

Coronavirus pandemic street dining in Chicago.

It takes more than chowing down outside for a picnic. A picnic was an event and an adventure, the highlight of a week. 

When I was a boy in Cheyenne it meant loading up my Mom’s ’51 Chevy or my Dad’s official State of Wyoming station wagon—not for unofficial use—and heading out on a Sunday Drive—another lost tradition. 

Out from the city we would go, often down gravel roads, in search of, I don’t know, nature of some kind or something.  Maybe out Happy Jack Road, or Vedauwoo Canyon, along some creek out on the Wyoming Herford Ranch, by the Tree Growing Out of the Rock along Highway 30 to Laramie, down to Colorado, or just any enticing spot with shade and a pull-off along the road.

Of all of our picnic destinations around Cheyenne, the rocks at Vedauwoo Canyon offered the highest adventure opportunities for boys--and the most dangerous.

When we found a spot, out would come a blanket or two to spread on the ground, which, being Wyoming, was often a little stony, strewn with pine needles and cones, covered in clumps of prairie grass and burrs.  Once smoothed out to my mother’s satisfaction we would unload the wicker hamper, a gallon thermos jug filled with iced tea, tin plates, aluminum tumblers that originally came with cottage cheese in them from the milk man, red checkered napkins, and Woolworth’s stainless steel flat ware.

The menu?  Glad you asked.  Most likely cold fried chicken.  We always had chicken on Sunday, and it was surely a Sunday afternoon, roasted if we were home.  But sometimes, for a more impromptu picnic, just cheese sandwiches with yellow mustard and Miracle Whip cut in half and wrapped in waxed paper.  Sometimes there was a bag of potato chips—rare treat not often on Mom’s shopping lists—or her favorite shoestring potatoes out of a can.  There might also be in covered dishes a potato salad and Van Camp’s Pork & Beans.  On a real good day there would be a plate of deviled eggs.  For dessert, watermelon by the slice or if it had been a cool enough week to use the oven, a homemade cherry pie.

Generally, there was nothing that needed cooking or heating, but when we knew there would be a park grill pit, maybe wieners to roast on a sick and marshmallows to toast if we lingered to dusk. 

Not much planned for amusement.  The picnic was the main fun.  Maybe we would bring a rubber ball to toss around between my twin brother Tim, me, and Dad after eating.  If there was a running creek nearby, we could roll up our jeans and go wading.  We might have even brought our rods and a coffee can of worms for a little fishing.  But Dad, a great fly fisherman, was bored by our drowning the worms under a bobber but dared not pull out his gear for fear of snagging one of our ears on a back cast.  Besides, for him fly fishing was a holy and solitary rite not compatible with noisy children.

Sometimes my brother and I snapped photos with our Kodak Brownies and got back little glossy prints in a week or so from the drug store.  Wish I could find some of those pix now. 

Quite often we would go hiking and exploring, which often quickly became an extension of our back yard cowboy and Indian games.  If we were at Vedauwoo, we would try to scamper up the steep sides of the box canyon.  When I was twelve, I broke my ankle there, but my Mom thought I was just being whiney about a simple turn.  It was not until it swelled to the size of a grapefruit and turned an angry, ugly color, that she believed me and reluctantly took me to the doctor the next day.

Few picnics ended with anything near that drama, although there could be bickering and yelling in the car on the way home if we were all tired and cranky.  But the next week we were rarin’ to go again.

American folk art circa 1800, probably Pennsylvania, shows the gentry on a picnic with a liveried servant--free or slave?

Millions of American families did more or less the same thing going back to when buggies and farm wagons were used instead of Chevys and substituting farm pastures, beaches, lakes, and city parks for destination.  Graveyards were a surprisingly frequent choice.  In the city the family might have to lug everything on trollies or busses to get to the park or walk for miles with everything packed in a Radio Flyer red wagon.  The menu and other particulars may have varied.  But the idea was the same.

Can you imagine rounding up children today for such an expedition?  “What are we going to do?” “Eat”  “That’s it?”  “Mostly.”  “There’s nothing to do!”  Oh, the wails, oh, the moans.  I know that after a few disastrous tries with our daughters when they were small, we gave up.

                                        Picnic romance--innocent privacy and sometimes something more.

Of course, picnics were not just for families.  They were a great cheap date.  An innocent enough sounding activity that otherwise closely watched young people often got time away from prying eyes.  It could be perfectly romantic; it could also become a sweaty rutting ground.  I suspect more than a few children were conceived on a picnic blanket.

But no need for that now. 

The French had more interesting picnics according to Édouard Manet in 1863.

Of course, picnics were not even uniquely American, we know, because a lot of French artists found them attractive subjects and displayed that the French often had a more adventuresome take on it than did prudish Americans.

And even the English, especially the gentry and toffs enjoyed a picnic outing if it was accompanied by servants and elegant accouterments.  But they always looked stiff in acres of crinoline and huge hats for the ladies with gentlemen buttoned up in sporting wool tweeds.

I’ll take our old American version, informality, dirt, dust, ants, mosquitos, sunburn and all.  If only I could find one…. 

To Placate Youth Rebellion the 26th Amendment Promised Old Enough to Fight—Old Enough to Vote

 

The struggle to win youth voting rights was rooted in Vietnam War protests.

Note--Eliminating the youth vote is bubbling on the back burner of the regime's voter suppression efforts alongside revoking Women's Suffrage--tasks requiring a daunting Connotational challenges but are stated aims of the most extreme Christian Nationalist wing of the MAGA movement.  Which is to say not far at all from Primus himself.

On July 5, 1971, the 26th Amendment which guaranteed 18- to 21-year-old citizens the right to vote in all elections was officially added to the U.S. Constitution.  A Joint Congressional Resolution proposing the amendment had cleared both houses by March 23.  On July 1 North Carolina became the 38th state to ratify the amendment—the necessary three quarters of the states.  No other Constitutional amendment has come close to the speed at which the 26th Amendment was ratified—just 69 days.  On July 5 President Richard Nixon signed official certification of the amendment.

The idea of reducing the voting age had been kicked around since West Virginia Democratic Senator Harley Kilgore proposed it 1941 with the vocal support of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt while the Draft was beefing up the Army on the eve of America’s entry into World War II.  After the war began, the proposal was lost in the shuffle.  The Cold War and the very hot war in Korea revived interest, but most states signaled their opposition.  In his 1954 State of the Union address Dwight D. Eisenhower, became the first president to publicly support prohibiting age-based denials of suffrage for those 18 and older.  By 1955 just two states—Georgia and Kentucky had taken action to lower the voting age, mostly due to internal political issues.

Students march for the vote circa 1968.

But the Vietnam war, for which reluctant youth were being drafted in large numbers as cannon fodder because the government feared the political consequences of wide-spread mobilization of the National Guard and the Reserves, brought the issue to a head once more.  Promoted by a wave of student and anti-war activism demonstrations “Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Vote” became a powerful slogan.  The student uprisings, urban rioting, and the violent confrontations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention caused many political leaders of both parties to seek some way of mollifying the street rage.

In 1970, Senator Ted Kennedy proposed amending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to lower the voting age nationally.  On June 22, 1970, President but expressed his reservations in his signing statement. 

Despite my misgivings about the constitutionality of this one provision, I have signed the bill. I have directed the Attorney General to cooperate fully in expediting a swift court test of the constitutionality of the 18-year-old provision.

Oregon and Texas challenged the law in court, and the case came before the Supreme Court in 1970 as Oregon v. Mitchell.  The Court struck down the provisions that established 18 as the voting age in state and local elections while upholding the extension of voting rights in Federal elections.  The decision resulted in states being able to maintain 21 as the voting age in state and local elections but being required to establish separate voter rolls so that voters between 18 and 20 years old could vote in federal elections—a bureaucratic nightmare that threatened to cause chaos in the up-coming 1972 elections.

Indiana Senator Birch Bayh rushed a proposed Constitutional amendment through his sub-committee an on to adoption by the Senate

Indiana Democratic Senator Birch Bayh, the Chair of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments had been holding hearings on an amendment to lower the voting age since 1968. After Oregon v. Mitchell, Bayh surveyed election officials in 47 states and found that registering an estimated 10 million young people in a separate system for federal elections would cost approximately $20 million and concluded that most states could not change their state constitutions in time for the 1972 election, mandating national action to avoid “chaos and confusion” at the polls.  On March 2, 1971, Bayh's subcommittee and the House Judiciary Committee approved the proposed constitutional amendment. 

                                   

                                                 The official Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the 26th Amendment to the states for ratification.

On March 10, 1971, the Senate voted 94–0 in favor of proposing the amendment and the House followed on March 23 by a vote of 401–19 in favor.

The proposed amendment read:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

On the very day the amendment was submitted by Congress Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Washington ratified it followed by Hawaii and Massachusetts the next day.  After that it was a scramble by the states to get on board, although some did so reluctantly feeling that they were being fiscally blackmailed into taking action.  Four additional states ratified it later in 1971 and South Dakota finally passed it in 2014. Seven states—Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Utah—have still not taken any action on the amendment.

Richard Nixon signed the Amendment as a witness surrounded by Congressional pages.

After signing as a witness to the certification of the amendment by the Administrator of General Services Robert Kunzig President Nixon said:

As I meet with this group today, I sense that we can have confidence that America’s new voters, America’s young generation, will provide what America needs as we approach our 200th birthday, not just strength and not just wealth but the “Spirit of ‘76” a spirit of moral courage, a spirit of high idealism in which we believe in the American dream, but in which we realize that the American dream can never be fulfilled until every American has an equal chance to fulfill it in their own life.

But in fact, Nixon feared that young voters would reject his re-election.  Democrats we hopeful that they would.  Neither was correct.  Many of the youth activists were disillusioned by electoral politics after the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the ’68 Democratic Convention debacle.  They failed for the most part to rally to Senator George McGovern’s candidacy the way many had for Kennedy or had “come clean for Gene” McCarthy.  McGovern accepted the nomination of a badly fractured and demoralized party and was star-crossed by disaster after disaster.  Nixon romped to reelection in an Electoral College landslide carrying all states but Massachusetts and claiming 60.7% of the popular vote.

In subsequent elections voters 21 and under consistently registered and voted in far lower numbers than older voters.  And polling showed that when they did vote, they were far from radical.  Most consistently reflected the political parties and choices of their parents.

The youth vote did occasionally affect local elections, especially in college towns like Madison, Wisconsin where they helped former student activist and avowed Socialist Paul R. Soglin get elected and re-elected as Mayor.  They also influenced hyper-local contests, especially in favor of school referendums.

A screen save from MTV's first Rock the Vote campaign in 1990.

Many attempts at mobilizing youth voting have been made, most significantly MTV’s Rock the Vote Campaign that began in 1990.  But young voters did not have a significant influence until Barack Obama for whom they turned out strongly in 2008 and 2012.  But they largely failed to show up for Congressional off-year elections contributing Democrats losing the House of Representatives.

Bernie Sanders’ 2016 primary campaign did mobilize many youths.  The failure of significant numbers of them to support Hillary Clinton in November has been blamed for her narrow loss to Donald Trump but in the end, it was probably not the decisive cause of her defeat.  In 2020 beyond a hard core of support, Sanders did not do so well among younger voters, many of whom spread their support among his rivals especially Elizabeth Warren.  They initially showed little enthusiasm for Joe Biden.  But he got enough of their votes to push him to victory in key states because young voters especially regarded another four years as an existential threat.  

Youth leaders of the March for Our Lives extended their activism to Vote for Our Lives.

The survivors of the 2018 Margery Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida organized the March for Our Lives movement and subsequent drive for youth voter registration.  Many climate change activists and women’s groups have also backed action as did many Black Lives Matter marchers in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd and others.  Voter registration drives ramped up across the nation and many hoped that the wide-spread adoption of vote-by-mail during the Coronavirus pandemic would also increase the youth vote.

That’s what Trump and his Republican enablers feared, which is why they poured millions of dollars into backing wide-spread voter suppression ever since.