FOOTNOTES
[1] All the large cities were so poorly governed, however, that they were often the scenes of serious riots, political, labor, race, and even religious.
[2] An unfriendly picture of the United States in 1842 is Dickens's American Notes, a book well worth reading.
[3] Several non-Mormon officials were sent to Utah, but they were not allowed to exercise any authority, and were driven out. The Mormons formed the state of Deseret and applied for admission into the Union. Congress paid no attention to the appeal, and (1857) Buchanan appointed a new governor and sent troops to Utah to uphold the Federal authority. Young forbade them to enter the territory, and dispatched an armed force that captured some of their supplies. In the spring of 1858 the President offered pardon "to all who will submit themselves to the just authority of the Federal Government," and Young and his followers did so.
[4] An interesting account of the buffalo is given in A. C. Laut's The Story of the Trapper_, pp. 65-80. Herds of a hundred thousand were common. As many as a million buffalo robes were sent east each year in the thirties and forties.
[5] John C. Fremont was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1813, and in 1842 was Lieutenant of Engineers, United States Army. In 1842 he went up the Platte River and through the South Pass. The next year he passed southward to Great Salt Lake, then northwestward to the Columbia, then southward through Oregon to California, and back by Great Salt Lake to South Pass in 1844. In 1845 he crossed what is now Nebraska and Utah, and reached the vicinity of Monterey in California. The Mexican authorities ordered him away; but he remained in California and helped to win the country during the war with Mexico. Later, he was senator from California, Republican candidate for President in 1856, and an army general during the Civil War.
[6] Whitney asked for a strip sixty miles wide. So much of the land as was not needed for railroad purposes was to be sold and the money used to build the road. During 1847-49 his plan was approved by the legislatures of seventeen states, and by mass meetings of citizens or Boards of Trade in seventeen cities.
[7] One from the west border of Texas to California; another from the west border of Missouri to California; and a third from the west border of Wisconsin to the Pacific in Oregon or Washington.
[8] In 1842 Morse laid the first submarine telegraph in the world, from Governors Island in New York harbor to New York city. It consisted of a wire wound with string and coated with tar, pitch, and india rubber, to prevent the electric current running off into the water. It was laid on October 18, and the next morning, while messages were being received, the anchor of a vessel caught and destroyed the wire.
[9] The wire was at first put in a lead tube and laid in a furrow plowed in the earth. This failed; so the wire was strung on poles. One end was in the Pratt St. Depot, Baltimore, and the other in the Supreme Court Chamber at Washington. The first words sent, after the completion of the line, were "What hath God wrought." Two days later the Democratic convention (which nominated Polk for President) met at Baltimore, and its proceedings were reported hourly to Washington by telegraph.
[10] Morse offered to sell his patent to the government, but the Postmaster General reported that the telegraph was merely an interesting experiment and could never have a practical value, so the offer was not accepted.
[11] The use of vast sums of money in building so many railroads, together with overtrading and reckless speculation, brought on a business panic in 1857. Factories were closed, banks failed, thousands of men and women were thrown out of employment, and for two years the country suffered from hard times.
[12] It was not till 1883 that the rate was reduced to two cents. Before the introduction of the postage stamp, letters were sent to the post offices, and when the postage had been paid, they were marked "Paid" by the officials. When the mails increased in volume in the large cities, this way of doing business consumed so much time that the postmasters at St. Louis and New York sold stamps to be affixed to letters as evidence that the postage had been paid. The convenience was so great that public opinion forced Congress to authorize the post office department to furnish stamps and require the people to use them (1847).
[Illustration: MAP OF EASTERN UNITED STATES IN 1861.]