Westward Extension, 1841-1850 . By George Pierce Garrison , Ph. D., Professor of History, University of Texas. (New York and London: Harper and Brothers. 1906. Pp. xiv, 366).

A few years ago a plan for a general history of the United States was formulated by Professor A. B. Hart, of Harvard University, and others, which contemplated a series of volumes to be prepared under the general editorship of Professor Hart, by specialists upon particular features of our country's history, the idea being to select men with reference to their peculiar fitness for the particular subjects and epochs involved.

Dr. Garrison's services were secured for the period above mentioned, and this volume is the result. What is known as the westward movement had been going on in the United States ever since the first frontiersman crossed the Alleghanies. It continued uninterruptedly notwithstanding strenuous opposition to it in the northeastern section of the Union. The main historical interest of the movement centered in the region south of the Ohio River and southwestwardly for reasons mentioned by Mr. Roosevelt in his “Winning of the West.” He says, “The way in which the southern part of our western country, that is, all the land south of the Ohio river, and from thence on to the Rio Grande and Pacific, was won and settled, stands quite alone. The region north of it was filled up in a very different manner. The Southwest, including what was once called, simply, the West, and afterwards the Middle West, was won by the people themselves, acting as individuals and groups of individuals, who hewed out their own fortunes in advance of any governmental action.

On the other hand, the Northwest, speaking broadly, was acquired by the government, the settlers merely taking possession of what the government guaranteed them. *** North of the Ohio the regular army went first. The settlements grew up behind the Federal troops of Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne and their successors, even to our own day.

The wars in which the borderers themselves bore any part, were few and trifling compared to the contests waged by the adventurers who won Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas.

In the southwest the early settlers acted as their own army. Indeed, the southwesterners not only won their own soil for themselves, but were the chief instruments in the original acquisition of the northwest. The warlike borderers who thronged across the Alleghanies, the reckless hunters, the hard, dogged frontier farmers, by dint of grim tenacity, overcame and displaced French, Indian, and Spaniard alike.”

In this book, Dr. Garrison briefly traces this movement down to the year 1841, when these same frontiersmen are flying their own flag. Six hundred miles in advance of the furthest outposts of the United States with their laws, customs and institutions transplanted over the fertile area of Texas, from which they had a few years before displaced the Indian and Mexican. He takes the story of their incorporation into the Union from its legitimate beginning, and traces it through the intricate mazes of international diplomacy, the Mexican war and American politics and carries it to its final consummation on the shores of the Pacific—and when this is done, he gives us an elaborate survey of the steps by which this immense territory was adjusted to the political conditions of the United States. In doing so he has had to deal with the slavery issue, and many facts and circumstances bearing immediately or indirectly on that issue, which perplexed the minds and stirred the passions of people in that day.

Political antagonisms and party strife were at white heat, during most of that period, and historians and writers of that epoch have, as a rule, not been able to divest themselves of the influence of the political partisanship resulting from the struggle of that day. In dealing with questions that involve passions, and motions of men, the historian has a delicate and difficult task, but Dr. Garrison has brought to his aid much that is new to the world, has had the advantage of a fifty-year survey of the results, and immense facilities for examining questions from every point of view, and has surveyed the whole subject with a purely historic spirit, and woven together the whole history with the genius of the artist and wisdom of the philosopher.

The chapter on the boundary of Texas is perhaps the most distinctly original contribution to United States history in the volume. It is comprehensive, accurate, and valuable, and will put a new phase upon that question. There has long been and still is a notion that the cause of the Mexican war was a boundary dispute, and it will probably never be entirely dissipated until 90 per cent of all the present school histories are destroyed and the present generation is all dead, or the study of Garrison's chapter on the subject is made compulsory in the schools.

The very full accounts of the various diplomatic negotiations of that decade afford opportunities for a much better estimate of the history of annexation than we have hitherto had, while the chapters on the Slidell mission and rupture with Mexico give a proper insight into the attitude of the United States and Mexico toward each other in 1845. A proper review in the Quarterly would consume more space than could be allowed, and many interesting and instructive references in other chapters, calculated to revise the judgment of many who have gone over the ground in other histories, must be passed unnoticed.

A very instructive and unusually interesting and helpful feature of the book is the series of maps and charts which accompany the text. They not only elucidate, but they supplement the text, showing many facts and are full of suggestions that would not occur to the average reader. They are original compilations and are executed in the best style.

The chapter on the Ashburton treaty will hardly impress one, at first blush, as being germane to westward extension, but when considered in connection with the chapter on the settlement of the Oregon question, its relevancy will be apparent. The same may be said of the chapter on the Isthmian Canal.

The book fills an important gap in United States history, and, therefore, meets a demand that had existed in Texas for some years. Its two-fold value as a part of the history of the whole country, and of the most interesting and important part of the political history of Texas, and its assured rank as standard United States history should give it a place in every library in our State.

Z. T. Fulmore .

How to cite:
Fulmore, Z. T., "Westward Extension, 1841-1850", Volume 010, Number 3, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 281 - 283. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v010/n3/review_7.html
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