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The donor party case study
The donor party case study
The Fate of the Donner party best illustrates
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DAVID McCULLOUGH, Host: Good evening and welcome to The American Experience. I'm David McCullough.
At the start of spring in the year 1846 an appealing advertisement appeared in the Springfield, Illinois, Gazette. ''Westward ho,'' it declared. ''Who wants to go to California without costing them anything? As many as eight young men of good character who can drive an ox team will be accommodated. Come, boys, you can have as much land as you want without costing you anything.'' The notice was signed G. Donner, George Donner, leader of what was to become the most famous of all the hundreds of wagon trains to start for the far west, the tragic, now nearly mythic Donner Party.
For years Western scholars and novelists have been drawn to the story, yet until now there has been no documentary. Ric Burns's film is a first.
Westward ho, indeed. If ever there was a moment when America seemed in the grip of some great, out-of-the-ordinary pull, it was in 1846. The whole mood was for movement, expansion, and the whole direction was westward. It was in 1846 that the Mormons set out on their trek to the Great Salt Lake. It was in 1846 that the Mexican war began and effectively all of Texas, Mexico and California were added to the United States.
And it wasn't just young men who answered the call. Whole families and people of all stations in life joined the caravan, which is part of the fascination of our haunting story. One is struck, for example, by how many women there were in the Donner party and how many of them survived the horrific ordeal they met. Imagine packing up an entire household, saying good-bye to all you've known and setting off to walk essentially to walk to California, a continent away, little knowing what was in store.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE: ''It is odd to watch with what feverish ardor Americans pursue prosperity. Ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it. They cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach as if they expected to stop living before they had relished them. Death steps in, in the end, and stops them before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes them.
To many families the prospect of owning land was the central driving force that brought them to the land known today as the wild Wild West. Much propaganda wa...
Poverty-stricken emigrants floated around America. In the East and Midwest, people had nothing. There were no jobs, no homes, and no money. But in the West, they had everything. California and Oregon were full of riches and opportunity; anyone could succeed there. So desperate pioneers sacrificed their livelihoods to move westward, and the Donner Party was no exception. The group of ninety travelled to Utah, only to have the cruel wrath of nature ruin their destiny when crossing into California. Forty-eight died during the winter of 1846 in the Sierra Nevada, an anomaly to the expected success of western travel. The Donner Party exemplifies how assumptions of mass prosperity can lead to tragedy.
Present day America is going downhill, due to changes in government and lifestyle. America is no longer the place it once was. Globally, the American people are known for being lazy and obese, whereas we once were known for our determination, work ethic, and great power. American citizens are now scared of the government, and their frequent actions that are beginning to take place, such as taking citizens rights away or searching their mail. If America continues to follow down this path, we will fall like the Roman Empire. Margaret Atwood in “Letter to America” uses allusions, audience, pathos, and the context of the article in attempt to motivate America to make a change, because she does not like the way that America is currently changing.
For years, America has always been perceived as one of the top world powers due to its ability of achieving so much technological, economical, and social progress within a mere couple decades. Despite their great accomplishments, America is actually regressing psychologically, preventing the country from reaching its true potential as an “opportunity rich” country. In Anthony Burgess’ Is America Falling Apart? , the author unveils the circumstances in which America’s restricting society and selfish ideology cause the nation to develop into the type of society it tried to avoid becoming when it separated from the British Empire.
The California Gold Rush in 1849 was the catalyst event for the state that earned them a spot in the U.S. union in 1850. This was not the first gold rush in North America; however, it was one of the most important gold rush events. The story of how the gold was discovered and the stories of the 49ers are well known. Men leaving their families in the East and heading West in hopes of striking it rich are the stories that most of us heard about when we learn about the California Gold Rush. Professors and scholars over the last two decades from various fields of study have taken a deeper look into the Gold Rush phenomena. When California joined the Union in 1850 it helped the U.S. expand westward just as most Americans had intended to do. The event of the Gold Rush can be viewed as important because it led to a national railroad. It also provided the correct circumstances for successful entrepreneurship, capitalism, and the development modern industrialization. The event also had a major influence on agriculture, economics, and politics.
In the early 1900s, the United States had an increase of settlers leaving their hometowns to the west in the faith of being able to live in a more catholic freedom world, others also joined by the inspiration of Manifest Destiny, a thought in which the Americans thought that everything between the Atlantic and the Pacific ocean is theirs and should therefore settled by them. A group, that was on the way to the western U.S., for those reasons in 1846, had a tragic loss of 34 settlers due to many tragic events. This group was led by George Donner, which was elected the leader of this group on 19 July 1846, this group inherited his name, called the Donner Party. The Donner Party consisted of the families of George Donner, his brother Jacob and James F. Reed of Springfield, Illinois, and a few hired workers, a total of 87 persons. Most groups usually followed the Oregon Trail, which brought them from East to West within 4 to 6 months. But then a guide called 'The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California' was released by Lansword Hasting, a lawyer who thought he has to remigrate Americans to California, this guide would lead them through a shorter way to the west, but was never traveled by anyone for this purpose, not even by himself. In the following, the diaries of the Donner Party will be cited and combined with the information known about the situations.
People from all around the world have dreamed of coming to America and building a successful life for themselves. The "American Dream" is the idea that, through hard work and perseverance, the sky is the limit in terms of financial success and a reliable future. While everyone has a different interpretation of the "American Dream," some people use it as an excuse to justify their own greed and selfish desires. Two respected works of modern American literature, The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman, give us insight into how the individual interpretation and pursuit of the "American Dream" can produce tragic results.
...rmy moved westward they were walking the path that the Navajos, Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches had already traveled in the last decade, making it easier for the U.S to defeat Mexico in 1847.
“By 1840 almost 7 million Americans had migrated westward in hopes of securing land and being prosperous” (Westward Expansion Facts). Westward Expansion Facts -. N.p., n.d. Web. & n.d. 16 Sept. 2016). This movement is called Western Expansion. The movement brought new beginnings and hope to many northerners and southerners.
In 1839 a man by the name of John Sutter arrived in California. Sutter appeared to be somewhat of a drifter, and had failed to establish himself before arriving in California. However, in the land of great promise, he planned to establish an empire for himself. Sutter was granted eleven square leagues, or 50, 000 acres, in the lower Sacramento area. This was a common land grant for the times. Sutter got to work and began to improve his land. He went on to build a fort, accumulated over 12,000 cattle and hired hundreds of workers to hel...
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
The Donner Party had a total of 89 members which included men, women and children. They entered the Sierra Nevada Mountains in October of 1846, which was very late for traveling in the pioneer era. Brothers Jacob and George Donner attempted to take a supposedly new and shorter route through the mountains (Dowd). How was it possible that a few people’s decision affected the lives of so many, forcing them to experience such horrific and life changing events, resulting in them making unimaginable decisions.
The symbols that encompass the novel underscore the theme that the American Dream, corrupt and unjust, eventually concludes in anguish. Money, greed, and lust overtake everything in their lives to the point of nothing else being of importance. The characters in this novel lost themselves to a fruitless dream that eventually brought and end to the “holocaust” that embodied their lives (162).
The American Dream seems almost non-existent to those who haven’t already achieved it. Every character in the novel has moments of feeling happy and endures a moment where they believe that they are about to achieve their dreams. Naturally everyone dreams of being a better person, having better things and in 1920’s America, the scheme of getting rich is quick. However, each character had their dreams crushed in the novel mainly because of social and economic situations and their dream of happiness becomes a ‘dead dream’ leading them back to their ‘shallow lives’ or no life at all.
...an philosopher. "And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and burdened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must… eventually… fall." (174) Albee suggests that, behind the façade of the American dream, behind the pretense of American ideals, behind the false front of the tranquility of American society in the early 60's, America's internal corruption and emptiness threatened, and perhaps continue to threaten, the country with a similar fall.