Similarities Between California And Alvarado

Diego Zavala

History 17A

“California and The Expansionist Dream.”

California is a place of invention, of new beginnings, and opportunities for those willing to seek it and work for it. Its history is rich with a wide assortment of characters, who seeking success helped it become what it is today. Among those characters we meet Thomas Larkin and Juan Bautista Alvarado; both individuals played a pivotal role in California entrance to the United States in the mid 19th century. Each one played a different role, always striving to benefit their community and as well as their own interests first; however, regardless of their own personal goals, their decisions ultimately collaborated with California’s incorporation to the United States.

Alvarado

was a Californio born in Monterrey, California, in 1809. He was the son of an army sergeant, Juan Francisco Alvarado, who died a few months after his birth, and Maria Josefa Vallejo, daughter of the influential Vallejo family. His mother remarried and left him to the care of her parents. He grew up in a colonial society where status was not achieved by merit, but by ancestry; as a result, he had access to the best California could offer at the time.
Alvarado attended a special school founded by the last Spanish governor of Alta California, Pablo Vicente de Sola, who constantly concerned for the young man’s education often lend him his books. But Alvarado craved books beyond what De Sola’s library could offer; his uncle Mariano Vallejo, who was around his age, obtained banned books from a passing ship, and along with his cousin, Jose Castro, formed a secret group to study “radical” political ideas. Although the Church and the Spanish crown ruled California, dangerous and radical ideas such as republicanism, and revolution started to penetrate the area. Ultimately, a priest discovered the trio and demanded the texts to be turned over, but they refused; as a result, they were unofficially excommunicated from the church.
Indeed, Alvarado harbored some radical ideas, but as an educated, privileged, and well-connected young man, it was a matter of time until he secured a government position. By the turn of his eighteenth birthday he was named secretary of the territorial legislature, and after moving through several positions in little less than a decade, he eventually became president of the legislature.
The political landscape constantly changed during Alvarado’s lifetime. Soon after his birth, Mexico started a revolutionary war against the Spanish rule, and it culminated eleven years later, in 1821, with its independence. Meanwhile, California proved apt for instability, its remoteness made it fertile for political turmoil, often changing governor and holding resentment to any Mexican attempt to get involved in local politics. Yet, the newly minted Mexican government was not free of blame, it periodically attempted to populate California with scoundrels from Mexico’s jails; in addition, its new centralist constitution tried to take away California’s autonomy, an act that many Californians understood as a direct threat, and made them eager to preserve their own identity.
Ultimately, in 1836 events reached a tipping point, Nicolas Gutierrez became California’s governor for the second time in less than six months. Californios reacted swiftly and with force. Alvarado became their leader, along with Jose Castro gathered a force of one hundred men, and aided by Isaac Graham, a Tennessee trapper, and his gang of fifty men marched towards Monterey, California’s capital. They quickly seized the presidio, and fired a cannonball directly to the governor’s house. Gutierrez stumbled out and surrendered immediately. California became an independent state. But this revolution was half-hearted, and it never intended for California to be recognized as an independent nation, but as a state within Mexico. And as soon as Alvarado received the word that Mexico had named him governor, he swore allegiance and quickly reincorporated California to Mexico.
Mexican California rapidly separated the state and the church, missions were secularized and its land distributed to the Indians; however, few actually received any land, and those who did, lost it quickly. Alvarado’s friends benefited from his new position as well, many received generous land grants, including John Sutter, who upon discovering gold in his Sacramento river lands sparked California’s gold rush. Alvarado’s mandate was heavily criticized for its corruption, an allegation that he always denied.
Alvarado’s challenges were numerous, but four hundred or so Americans living in California at the time posed a new threat to the young governor.

Alvarado, as did many of his predecessors, granted land to Yankees who became naturalized citizens, but the newcomers were different from previous Americans. They were rough frontiersmen, who worked their way to California through land, had little respect for authority, and harbored no intention of becoming Mexican citizens. Alvarado realized that these people came from a country, whose creed was “time is money”, and California for them was a well-worth investment of time and money. At the time, none of Alvarado’s American friends made him think that it was otherwise, not even Thomas Larkin, who became seminal to the integration of California into the United

States.
Larkin was born on September 16, 1802 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. His father, Thomas O. Larkin died when he was six, and his mother, Ann Rogers, who widowed three times during her life, remarried banker Amariah Childs. Since his childhood he demonstrated great interest in money, and as a young man he openly admitted that he would “stoop to any means and measures to gain it.” While still a teenager, he moved to Boston to become a book publisher, he soon learned that it was a poor business, and decided to quit and travel south to North Carolina. Eventually he landed in Wilmington, where he worked as a clerk, and soon opened his own store.
By 1830 he owned two stores, a small plantation with six slaves, and was the postmaster and magistrate of Duplin County, North Carolina. Yet, unhappy with his modest wealth, he decided to sell his store and invest in a sawmill, only to lose it all. Larkin was shattered by the lost of ten years of work, but soon started to check his possibilities. He wanted to return to Massachusetts and marry a rich cousin, but she expressed no interest, and refused. He sought out a Post Office appointment in Washington through another cousin, but it also failed. Running out of options, he faced his third and least desirable alternative, moving to far-off California with his half-brother, John Cooper.
Cooper was captain and sea trader, and was in need of a clerk for his store in Monterrey. A perfect job for Larkin. In addition, he converted to Catholicism, became Mexican to obtain lands, and married a local woman. But not just any woman, he married Encarnacion Vallejo, daughter of the very influential Vallejo family. Larkin’s ambition and desire of wealth was set alight upon learning this, he thought he could move to California, marry a local woman from a wealthy family and, finally, live the accommodated live that he so fervently desired.
Larkin once more departed out of Boston, this time on a seven-month voyage, bound for Oahu and Monterrey. Recently married Rachel Hobson Holmes was onboard the same ship, and was sailing towards Monterrey to meet her sea captain husband. However, upon arrival, Holmes discovered that her husband had sailed towards South America. Larkin, who was a ladies’ man, developed a relationship with Holmes, and in early 1833, she gave birth to a baby girl. After Holmes learned her husband had died at sea, Larkin found himself under pressure to marry her, and six months later he finally gave up, only to see her daughter die one month later.
Wealth and land would not be Larkin’s through marriage, but Captain Holme’s state of three thousand dollars was, and it became the basis upon which he built his fortune. Larkin worked as Cooper’s clerk for a while, but soon started to trade for himself, and the conditions could not have been better. California during the mid 1830s was experiencing secularization, the wealth was moving from the Church hands onto the rancheros, who proved more fitted than the fathers in producing, and administering the wealth. By the late 1830s California was undergoing an economic boom. Larkin was perfectly positioned, and sold all kinds of good in his store; in addition, he expanded his business enterprises, he owned a flour mill, a blacksmith, a soap factory, and a bakery.
Larkin’s desire of wealth and perfect timing helped him build an empire, but there was more than that to his success. Unlike many Americans before him, Larkin never converted to Catholicism or married a local woman, nor became a Mexican citizen to secure land. Yet, he did not express prejudice and disdain for Mexicans, like many of his Yankee contemporaries did. In addition, he developed a profitable relationship with his neighbour, Juan Bautista Alvarado. Indeed, Larkin wealth and importance grew handsomely during this period, but he was growing worried that his interests would be affected by California’s political instability.
In 1842 California inability to govern itself was proven again when a new governor was overthrown by another Alvarado led revolt.

But this time Larkin interests were affected since he had loaned the deposed governor a large sum of money. For Larkin this further cemented the idea that Yankee interest in California, and California itself had to be secured by the United States, an idea that countless Americans shared by the 1840s. Americans believed that they had a god-given duty to spread from coast to coast, an assumption encapsulated in the term manifest destiny, which was by then an old idea that could be traced to seventeenth century Puritans. However, now it was reinforced by eighteenth century political and racial assumptions of superiority, and gave Americans a powerful justification to get Indians, British, and Mexicans out of their way. Californians would not be the

exception.
America’s expansionist dream was a hot political issue by the mid 1840s. In 1844 expansionist-minded Democrat James K. Polk was elected president on a platform calling for the takeover of the Oregon Territory and independent Texas. Larkin headed a lobby group advocating for the establishment of an American consulate in California since 1840, and three years later he was naturally appointed consul. In his new position, Larkin exalted the beauty of California as well as the dangers it was faced with to the American readers, at one point he claimed “We must have, others must not.” Simultaneously, he was sending detailed political and economic reports to the United States government, all intended to stimulate interest in the troubled Mexican province.
Larking