📜 Document A: John O'Sullivan on Manifest Destiny (1845)

Source: "Annexation," The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, July-August 1845

And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us. It is right such as that of the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth.

Texas has been absorbed into the Union in the inevitable fulfillment of the general law which is rolling our population westward; the connexion of which with that ratio of growth in population which is destined within a hundred years to swell our numbers to the enormous population of two hundred and fifty millions (if not more), is too evident to leave us in doubt of the manifest design of Providence in regard to the occupation of this continent.

It is wholly untrue, and unjust to ourselves, the pretense that the Annexation has been a measure of spoliation, unrightful and unrighteous—of military conquest under forms of peace and law—of territorial aggrandizement at the expense of justice due by a double sanctity to the weak. This view of the question is wholly unfounded, and has been before so amply refuted in these pages, as well as in a thousand other modes, that we shall not again dwell upon it.

📜 Document B: Luzena Stanley Wilson's Gold Rush Account (1849)

Source: Luzena Stanley Wilson, '49er: Memories Recalled Years Later for Her Daughter Correnah Wilson Wright

The gold excitement spread like wildfire, even out to our log cabin in the prairie, and as we had almost nothing to lose, and we might gain a fortune, we early caught the fever.

My husband grew enthusiastic and wanted to start immediately, but I would not be left behind. I thought where he could go I could, and where I went I could take my two little toddling babies. Our neighbors thought we were crazy to give up a good farm that was well improved and mortgage our lives to such an uncertain undertaking.

The road through the desert was long and wearisome. The alkali dust was suffocating, and the sun's rays were scorching. The cattle were dying, and the people were nearly exhausted. Many gave up in despair and turned back, but my husband was determined to see California, and I determined to see it with him.

When we reached Sacramento, there was great excitement. Gold had been discovered, and people were rushing to the mines. Provisions were enormously high. Eggs were selling for three dollars a dozen, and potatoes for sixteen dollars a hundred pounds. I determined to set up business and provide meals for the miners. I hung up my sign, 'Meals for miners,' and I never lacked for customers. The miners were glad to pay well for a good meal, and I prospered.

📜 Document C: Chief William Shaw's Miwok Perspective

Source: Oral history recorded by ethnographer C. Hart Merriam, circa 1850s

Before the white people came, we lived well. We had plenty of acorns, plenty of fish in the streams, deer in the mountains, and seeds and roots and berries. We knew every tree, every rock, every stream. This was our home for more generations than there are stars in the sky.

When the gold seekers came, they were like a great flood that washes away everything in its path. They tore up the earth looking for gold. They muddied the streams where the fish lived. They cut down the oak trees that gave us acorns. They drove away the deer and other animals we hunted.

They said this land was now theirs, that they had papers that proved it. But how can you own the earth? How can you own the sky or the wind or the rain? The earth is our mother. You cannot sell your mother.

Many of my people became sick with diseases we had never known. Many died. The white men said we must live in the places they chose for us, not in the places our ancestors had lived. They said we must learn their ways and forget the ways our grandfathers taught us. But how can you forget who you are?

Some of my people tried to fight, but there were too many white men, and they had guns. Some of my people tried to live as the white men wanted, but it was like trying to be a fish out of water. We are still here, but we are not the same people we were before the gold seekers came.

📜 Document D: California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians (1850)

Source: California State Legislature, Chapter 133, April 22, 1850

Section 6: Complaints may be made before a Justice of the Peace, by white persons or Indians; but in no case shall a white man be convicted of any offense upon the testimony of an Indian, or Indians.

Section 14: When an Indian is convicted of stealing a horse, mare, mule, cow or ox, belonging to a white man, he shall be liable to receive any number of lashes not exceeding twenty-five, or shall be sentenced to work for the person injured not exceeding four months, or both, at the discretion of the Court or Justice; and if such Indian be unable to pay for such property, it shall be lawful for such Court or Justice, to order him to work for the aggrieved party until such amount is paid, not exceeding two years.

Section 20: Any person having, or hereafter obtaining a minor Indian, male or female, from the parents or person having the care or charge of any such Indian minor, and wishing to keep it, such person shall go before a Justice of the Peace in his township, and if the Justice of the Peace becomes satisfied that no compulsory means have been used to obtain the minor from its parents or friends, or that the parents or Indian friends of such minor have not been induced to part with such minor through fraud, then the Justice of the Peace shall enter on record, in a book to be kept for that purpose, the name, apparent age, and sex of such Indian minor.