Chapter 13

            This chapter was very interesting to me because of how quickly the United States expanded in just four years during James K. Polk’s administration. I feel like they were very aggressive and wanted to conquer as much as they could as quickly as they could. It also made a lot more sense to me about how and why there are so many Caucasians here. By 1860, three-fourths of foreign-born Americans were Irish or German.

            I feel like everyone comes to the United States for the same reasons, to improve themselves or their family one way or another. But even though people came for a better life and more opportunities, they still faced hardships; the same way people do today. The only difference is that the world is much more different now than it was before.

            The whole idea of the individual, I think that’s a very American type concept because in many other parts of the world, it is not about the individual; it’s about the entire family. I liked learning about how Levi jeans first started. I think he was a very fortunate man who made it big in San Francisco.

            I found this sentence intriguing, “Native-born Americans simultaneously admired German industriousness and resented German self-sufficiency, which they interpreted as clannishness.” This tells me that Americans both appreciated and had hatred toward Germans for their ways of life. I think that Native-born Americans were mad because they had not been able to be self-sufficient first.

            I think it was perfect how “Californians were as eager to buy as the traders were to sell.” This meant that business would be booming because there was a demand to meet the supply at an equal level. I also feel like both the Americans and the Mexicans used each other to their benefit. I did not know that Mexico had its’ own slaves, who became free in 1829.

            It is strange to me that the treaty that Santa Anna was forced to sign as a result of The Texas Revolution in 1836 was never ratified. I know this was a treaty that recognized the independence of Texas so would that mean that nothing has changed since then about that?

            I do not understand exactly why in the Mexican-American War, the Mexican forces were unable to defeat the Americans even though their army was four times as large.

            The fact that Americans still hired Chinese workers, ever with all the prejudice was interesting because that means that the Americans knew they needed the Chinese. So the Gold Rush is one of the reasons as to how San Francisco became so diverse. It was because people from all different parts of the world came for the gold. Racial and ethnic tensions increased during this time period because various cultures were now coming into contact with one another. Eventually, over time, they had to learn to get along or at least tolerate each other. There was much violence, but we have come a long way since then.