| | 1 | Author: | Dyer, Frank Lewis and Thomas Commerford Martin | Add | | | Title: | Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. 1  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE year 1847 marked a period of great territorial
acquisition by the American people, with incalculable
additions to their actual and potential wealth.
By the rational compromise with England in the dispute
over the Oregon region, President Polk had secured
during 1846, for undisturbed settlement, three
hundred thousand square miles of forest, fertile land,
and fisheries, including the whole fair Columbia Valley.
Our active "policy of the Pacific'' dated from
that hour. With swift and clinching succession came
the melodramatic Mexican War, and February, 1848,
saw another vast territory south of Oregon and west
of the Rocky Mountains added by treaty to the United
States. Thus in about eighteen months there had
been pieced into the national domain for quick development
and exploitation a region as large as the
entire Union of Thirteen States at the close of the War
of Independence. Moreover, within its boundaries
was embraced all the great American gold-field, just
on the eve of discovery, for Marshall had detected the
shining particles in the mill-race at the foot of the
Sierra Nevada nine days before Mexico signed away
her rights in California and in all the vague, remote
hinterland facing Cathayward. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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