Religion as a Tool in American Leadership

There are times in American history that the leaders in charge rely on their interpretation of religion and God to persuade people that something is destined to be. The first time God and religion are used to convey a greater cause than settlement is when John Winthrop delivered a sermon upon reaching North America and Massachusetts telling listeners they were establishing a “city on a hill” as an example for all the world to see (Dunn n. p.). The Puritan philosopher and religious adherent believed God had given them their land in which to live and be a perfect example of a kingdom ruled theocratically according to Protestant Christian philosophy espoused by Puritans. Most wars fought in the United States (U. S.) until the Mexican American

War in 1846 had been connected to a higher calling, including or especially the Revolutionary War in 1775. Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson both wrote eloquently about God’s approval of the rebellion. Paine, in his pamphlet Common Sense, rationalized that living under a monarchy was not approved by God, while Jefferson included God, or nature’s God, given rights in the Declaration of Independence (Paine n. p.). Thus, during James Polk’s time as president, another slogan including God was created by John O’Sullivan – Manifest Destiny (U. S. History n. p.). The slogan simply meant that God approved of the U. S. spreading out to the west coast. The slogan helped rile people up to want to go to war; however, the west got settled a little faster with the help of the California Gold Rush in 1849.
Polk’s presidency carried on the ideals of Andrew Jackson’s politics as had the other presidents since Jackson. Jackson hated two things most: the British and Indians. In order to open up the west to settlement, Indians had to be removed to a place where they wouldn’t bother anyone. For Jackson, that meant Oklahoma. He was a child during the Revolution and fought during the War of 1812 and nurtured a hatred for the British because of the wars. According to a story, a British officer cut Jackson on his face when he was a boy during an encounter with the British in the Revolution, he was imprisoned, and that started his hatred for the British (Presidents by the Book n. p.). Thus, Jackson had instilled in subsequent presidents the fear of the British coming into the U. S by the back door. In other words, the British could come in to the U. S. from the Pacific Coast of Mexico, Oregon Territory or Canada. Thus, Jackson set the wheels in motion to look for opportunities for expansion during his presidency and the subsequent presidents did the same. Polk was the only president to be presented with an opportunity.
The opportunity arose when Texas became part of the U.

S. in 1845. It had fought for its independence from Mexico ten years earlier and was its own country. Leaders decided to become an U. S. state and Mexico had a problem with that. Or so the propaganda reports. American soldiers were defending the border from Mexicans and to make the excuse for war, Polk insisted the boarder was the Rio Grande and decided to go to war over the boundary dispute. At the same time, Polk was testing his might with Mexico, he was negotiating the Oregon Territory with the British. Little did he know what would occur in California three years in the future (Pletcher n. p.).

The Mexican-American War occurred from 1846-1848. The American army was a formidable one and did sack Mexico City at one point, making the entire country part of the U. S. but Polk did not want to do that. Instead, Polk wanted to stop the war because he had gained the territory he wanted so that the nation would be one from sea to sea. The California Gold Rush would make settling the west with Americans much easier than the normal settlement

pattern.
James Marshall discovered gold on January 24, 1848 at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California (Sutter n. p.). The world did not rush in immediately because the news was kept quiet. It took about nine months before the news reached Washington. One of the reasons the news was kept quiet was because the Americans were in the process of negotiating the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which would end the Mexican-American War. Even though California was in the hands of the American military, the land won in the war had not been formally ceded to the U. S. Another reason for not advertising the strike was because the people who were already there wanted to keep it quiet so they could have a chance to mine for gold before others came to the gold fields prospecting.
One day in the fall of 1848, Sam Brannan, a Mormon who had arrived in San Francisco from New York years earlier, ran through the streets of San Francisco with a vial of gold flakes in his hand, yelling about the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada Mountains foothills. At the time, San Francisco had a population of about 900 people. Brannan owned a general store where mining supplies could be acquired (n. p.; Eyewitness to History, n. p.). Someone sent Polk word that there was gold in California and when he delivered his state of the union address, he announced to the audience the discovery of gold in California (Spurr n. p.; Office of the Historian n. p.). Then the world rushed in.
The announcement set off a firestorm around the world. People came from all over the world to mine gold in California. The trip to get there was arduous. Some chose to ban together with people from their home towns or states to walk across country, ride a horse, or take a covered wagon to get to California. Others went to New Orleans and took a ship to Central America. They crossed Central America jungles by walking and then getting on a ship to make it to the coast of the Pacific Ocean where they would board another ship and disembark in San Francisco. The city by that time had become a burgeoning, bustling place with many people living in tents. Other people took ships and travel the treacherous waters around the horn to get to San Francisco. There were no trains or Panama Canal to make the trip faster or shorter. The trip took at the least six months to make. California went from a sleepy place to one overrun by 100,000 people (Eyewitness to History, n. p.).
The pattern of the U. S. government of settling land and making territories was set up in the Northwest Ordinance (NWO) of 1787. In it, the government was to go to Indian tribes or groups, make a treaty with them, buying land from them at whatever the going rate was. Then after the transfer of land was complete, the U. S. would survey the land, set some aside for government use, and then put the rest of the land for sale. When the territory reached 60,000 inhabitants and had 5,000 male voters, it could become a state.
All settlement in the northwest territories of the Ohio Valley had gone according to plan. The same pattern was enacted when other places entered the union except that they got to say whether the state would be a slave state or not. The original NWO did not allow slavery in those places in the Ohio Valley. California opted to be a free state, reasoning they wanted each miner to do a day’s work, not to have slaves do the work for him.
There was an anomaly in making California a state, however.

Because there was no time gap between the news getting out and the world rushing in, the U. S. government did not send agents to negotiate treaties with the over 100 Native groups living in the state. Therefore, all the land on which miners were mining was not American land. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Indians in the ceded land were to be citizens of the U. S., but the Americans did not follow that part of the treaty (Office of the Historian n. p.). The U. S. considered Indians members of their own nations and not citizens of the U. S. The Californios living in the state at the time of takeover were accepted as American citizens, and for the time being kept title to the land Mexico had granted them with land grants. However, no treaties were made with the Indians to cede the land to the U. S. Later, after the cacophony had settled down, the U. S. did send three agents to negotiate with the Natives. The treaties were not approved by Congress and lost (Dutchske 8). In 1927, California Natives got the right to sue the federal government for the lands people took from them without compensation. It took until the 1940s and 1950s for the government to settle parts of the case. Then, there were only 18 treaties (8). Manifest Destiny had proved disastrous to California Natives. There was no way to move Natives out of the way for the miners and more than two thirds of them ended up dying because of the Gold Rush

(Dutchske n. p.).
The land was ceded by Mexico to the U. S. in February of 1848 and the treaty ratified by Congress later that year. The news of the Gold Rush came out in early winter of 1848 and at least 100,000 people rushed in from all over the world in 1849. California became a state in September of 1850. Many people who came to the Gold Rush “saw the elephant.” That meant they had been dissolutioned by life in the gold fields and wanted to return home. Thus, settlement in the west began from California and went east. The actual pattern had been settlement to the Mississippi River and then to California and back. The trajectory of settlement was not entirely from east to west. Had it not been for the Mexican-American War and the Gold Rush of 1849 (actual date of when people arrived there), the west would not have been settled as fast. The manifest destiny slogan made the war seem just, and Jacksonians could better control their fears of a British invasion. God had answered their wishes.