Before 1846 began, California, Oregon, the entire Southwest, weren’t part of America, and Americans tended to think of their country as really going up to the Great Plains and not extending beyond that

The Donner party was part of a movement that was not just one wagon train that went wrong, but part of the whole country kind of looking to expand itself, looking to first, dream its own future, and then make it a reality. And so much of what the Donner party is about is a very tragic sense of how very potent dreams led people astray.

And one thing that is very humbling and very moving about the actual record is that you discover, really, that it’s a great tragedy that’s kind of a great democratizer. Everyone is reduced to the barest and sort of the most harrowing kind of circumstance, which is the circumstance simply to get by. And it makes you — the more you look at the record, the less you want to judge, because you understand that until you are in that similar situation, you’d have no way of really knowing how you yourself would respond.

James Reed

One of the most striking and often noted statistics from the Donner party, which had 87 people in it, was that of the half or so who died, two thirds of the survivors — rather, two thirds of the people who survived the disaster — were women.

Almost all the women were in family units in one kind or another. In the Donner party 22 single men out of the 87 people in the Donner party — there were 22 single men who were attached to the party as teamsters, servants, drivers, hired help of one kind or another. Of the 22 single men, many of the men not in families, 19 of them died. So that pretty much accounts in and of itself for that disparate survival statistic between men and women. What it means is that if you didn’t have a family to help you, you fell by the wayside.

<strong class="mr-2" data-component="leader-text"><span class="text-uppercase">Lundy, Benjamin</span><span> (1789–1839).</span></strong>Benjamin Lundy, antislavery advocate, was born in Sussex County, New Jersey, of Quaker parentage on January 4, 1789. He became active in the antislavery movement in the 1820s. He organized abolitionist societies, lectured extensively, and contributed to many abolitionist publications

<a class="qv" href="/handbook/online/articles/yps01">slavery</a> problem could be solved by settling free Blacks in thinly populated regions, he visited Haiti and Canada and between the years 1830 and 1835 paid three visits to Texas in hopes of obtaining land for such a colony. While in Texas he talked to free Blacks, planters, and Mexican officials and visited Nacogdoches, San Antonio, and the Brazos and Rio Grande areas. He concluded that Texas was an ideal place for his colonization experiment; the Mexican government was friendly to his proposal. The <a class="qv" href="/handbook/online/articles/qdt01">Texas Revolution</a> intervened before Lundy could carry out his plans, however, and the <a class="qv" href="/handbook/online/articles/mzr02">Republic of Texas</a> legalized slavery. Lundy charged that the revolution was a slaveholders' plot to take Texas from Mexico and to add slave territory to the United States.

Lundy won many influential adherents, among them John Quincy Adams, who represented his views in the United States Congress. Adams, Lundy, and their followers were instrumental in delaying the annexation of Texas for nine years

It is strange to see with what feverish ardor the Americans pursue their own welfare; and to watch the vague dread that constantly torments them lest they should not have chosen the shortest path which may lead to it. A native of the United States clings to this world’s goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty in grasping at all within his reach, that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications.

By this act, slavery will be spread over regions to which it is now impossible to set limits. Texas, I repeat it, is but the first step of aggressions. I trust, indeed, that Providence will beat back and humble our cupidity and ambition. But one guilty success is often suffered to be crowned, as men call it, with greater; in order that a more awful retribution may at length vindicate the justice of God, and the rights of the oppressed. Texas, smitten with slavery, will spread the infection beyond herself. We know that the tropical regions have been found most propitious to this pestilence; nor can we promise ourselves, that its expulsion from them for a season forbids its return. By annexing Texas, we may send this scourge to a distance, which, if now revealed, would appal us, and through these vast regions every cry of the injured will invoke wrath on our heads.

It is the great mission of this country, to forward this revolution, and never was a sublimer work committed to a nation. Our mission is to elevate society through all its conditions, to secure to every human being the means of progress, to substitute the government of equal laws for that of irresponsible individuals, to prove that, under popular institutions, the people may be carried forward, that the multitude who toil are capable of enjoying the noblest blessings of the social state. The prejudice, that labor is a degradation, one of the worst prejudices handed down from barbarous ages, is to receive here, a practical refutation. The power of liberty to raise up the whole people, this is the great Idea, on which our institutions rest, and which is to be wrought out in our history. Shall a nation having such a mission abjure it, and even fight against the progress which it is specially called to promote?

In addition to using enslaved labor at the White House, Polk secretly purchased enslaved people and separated children aged ten through seventeen from their families while in office.

After Congress passed the Indian Removal Act and <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/fotoware?id=0573C43CECF64983%2097F6D3859319FD56" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">President Andrew Jackson</a> forced the Choctaw Nation off their land in northern Mississippi in 1830, one in a series of forced relocations which became known as the Trail of Tears, Polk joined the rush of speculators to purchase the vacant land.

he used profits from his Mississippi plantation to purchase an additional nineteen enslaved people during his time in the White House. These enslaved people were purchased through several agents in Tennessee and shipped to Polk’s Mississippi plantation.

When I have seen it surrounded by the flags of foreign countries, the pulsations of my heart have beat quicker with every breeze which displayed its honored stripes and brilliant constellation. I have looked with venera­tion on those stripes as recording the original size of our po­litical family and with pride upon that constellation as mark­ing the family's growth; I glory in the position which Missis­sippi's star holds in the group; but sooner than see its lustre dimmed—sooner than see it degraded from its present equality—would tear it from its place to be set even on the perilous ridge of battle as a sign round which Mississippi's best and bravest should gather to the harvest-home of death.

Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become markets of legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye fields and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men

Events organized at Harpers Ferry in 1906 and 1959 typified this duality by presenting to the public disparate interpretations of John Brown.

The first casualty occurred sometime around 1:30 am on October 17 when a raider shot and killed Heyward Shepherd, a free African American working as a porter for the B&amp;O Railroad.

In 1906 the leaders of the Niagara Movement – precursor to the NAACP – chose to host their second annual meeting at Storer College, a historically black college in Harpers Ferry. I

“The Spirit of John Brown,” Ransom framed Brown’s actions within a religious context.<a href="applewebdata://1DE8DFA0-0973-4F57-800F-7C22784656C6#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a> Ransom proclaimed: “He was commissioned by the same authority and bore the same credentials as did Moses. […] he delivered a blow against slavery in the most vital part, and fired the gun whose opening shot echoed the sound of the death knell of slavery.”<a href="applewebdata://1DE8DFA0-0973-4F57-800F-7C22784656C6#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a> By referencing the influence of God as the reason for the raid, Ransom enforced the significance of religion in Brown’s life and challenged the assumption that insanity drove him to lead the raid.

Du Bois presented a resounding speech that projected the demands of the movement and urged members to harness the spirit of John Brown and his fellow raiders. In the conclusion of his speech, Du Bois said, that “we do not believe in violence, but we do believe in John Brown, and here on the scene of John Brown’s martyrdom we reconsecrate ourselves, our honor, and our property to the final emancipation of the race which John Brown died to make free.”

President Eisenhower approved a joint resolution for the establishment of the Civil War Centennial Commission (CWCC) in 1957.

he questions posed by NPS Staff Historian, J. Walter Coleman reinforced the CWCC’s disregard and contempt for the legacy of Brown. Some of the questions Coleman asked included: why did men follow John Brown on such a reckless scheme with no promise of results, should John Brown have been declared insane, and why did mainstream New Englanders fund his ventures.<a href="applewebdata://1DE8DFA0-0973-4F57-800F-7C22784656C6#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18">[18]</a>

The contrasting interpretations of John Brown’s Raid presented in 1906 and 1959 elucidates the enduring controversy over who can claim this hallowed ground and how historical events associated with the space appear within public memory.