West of Slavery

1. The Continental South: A Transcontinental Vision of Slavery

How this transcontinental sphere of proslavery influence was created, how it was destroyed at the end of the Civil War, and how it reemerged from the ashes of that conflict—albeit in a modified and more modest form—is the subject of this book.

Beyond the Cotton Belt. The traditional understanding of the American South often confines its influence to the Atlantic states and plantation agriculture. However, this book reveals a "Continental South" – a vast sphere of proslavery influence that stretched across the southwest quarter of the nation, encompassing California, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Utah. This region, though not dominated by plantation slavery, embraced other coercive labor regimes and aligned politically with the slave states.

A carefully constructed coalition. This extended influence was not accidental but the result of a deliberate political coalition, originating from the slave states and expanding westward after the US-Mexico War in 1848. Slaveholders and their allies actively mobilized federal power to achieve their goals, including:

• Passing slave codes in New Mexico and Utah.
• Sponsoring separatist movements in Southern California and Arizona.
• Orchestrating territorial purchases from Mexico.
• Building roads to facilitate southern migration.
• Monopolizing patronage networks to empower proslavery allies.

A national institution. The Continental South demonstrates that slavery was not merely a "peculiar institution" of the South but a transcontinental regime. It highlights how the South and West intersected, interlocked, and overlapped, profoundly impacting national development and, conversely, national dissolution. This broader perspective reframes the standard narrative of the Civil War era, revealing a more formidable and far-reaching American master class than previously imagined.

2. Pacific Empire: Southern Ambitions Beyond the Atlantic

While they operated primarily in an Atlantic world, slaveholders lusted after a transpacific dominion.

Jefferson's vision. The dream of a Pacific gateway for American commerce began with Thomas Jefferson, who actively promoted transcontinental exploration to find the shortest route to the Pacific Ocean and Asian markets. This early national interest in Pacific trade, initially not tied to slavery, laid the groundwork for later southern ambitions.

Expanding horizons. Southern statesmen like Andrew Jackson and John Tyler continued to pursue Pacific frontage, with Jackson attempting to acquire San Francisco and Tyler extending the Monroe Doctrine to Hawaii and formalizing trade relations with China. By the mid-1840s, slaveholders like Judah Benjamin and John C. Calhoun explicitly articulated a vision of a global cotton commerce, stretching from Liverpool to Canton, believing that Asian markets offered a vast new frontier for their plantation economy.

Imperial ambitions. The US-Mexico War, orchestrated by President James K. Polk (a southerner), was a nakedly imperialist venture driven by the desire for California's deepwater harbors. This acquisition was seen as crucial for controlling the "direct route of the great commerce of Asia." Slaveholding expansionists, including Thomas Jefferson Green and Matthew Fontaine Maury, envisioned a transcontinental network that would funnel slave-grown cotton across the continent to Pacific sea lanes, securing a substantial share of global trade for America's slave economies.

3. The Great Slavery Road: Railroads as Tools of Expansion

This road is emphatically the Southern, yea, what the abolitionist truly calls the ‘great slavery road.’

A national highway, a sectional prize. The debate over America's first transcontinental railroad became a major national issue in 1845, quickly sectionalizing as partisans understood that control of this "national highway" would determine access to western commerce and the lucrative China trade. Southern railroad promoters, editors, and politicians united to oppose northern routes, advocating instead for a line through slave country.

Memphis to San Diego. Conventions in Memphis in 1845 and 1849, largely controlled by southerners, articulated a vision for a route from Memphis to San Diego. They touted this "far southern route" as shorter, more temperate, and capable of channeling the "vast trade" of Asia into American harbors. This project was seen as a blueprint for the Continental South, where politics would follow commerce, uniting the southern half of the continent.

Slave labor's advantage. White southerners argued that slave labor offered a compelling advantage for railroad construction, being:

• Cheaper (costing roughly half of northern projects).
• More reliable (not prone to strikes or riots).
• Better disciplined.
• Usable year-round.
  This belief positioned slavery as the "handmaiden of a modernizing, industrializing South," challenging abolitionist claims about slavery's intrinsic inefficiencies and presenting a distinctly modern vision for westward expansion.

4. Federal Power: The Engine of Southern Expansion

The federal government—and more specifically, the executive branch—was the primary mechanism through which southerners extended their influence over the Far West.

Executive leverage. Despite often espousing state-rights dogma, southern slaveholders frequently made exceptions when federal power served their expansionist interests. From 1853 to 1861, proslavery Democrats controlled the executive branch, with presidents like Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan appointing slaveholding partisans to key cabinet positions, notably Secretary of War Jefferson Davis.

Strategic deployment of resources. These slaveholding secretaries directed major federal projects in the West to benefit the South. Examples include:

• Gadsden Purchase (1853): Orchestrated by James Gadsden (a South Carolina slaveholder and railroad promoter) under Pierce's administration, this acquisition secured crucial land for a southern transcontinental railroad route.
• Pacific Railroad Surveys (1853): Jefferson Davis, as Secretary of War, authorized and then biased these surveys to favor a far southern route, despite scientific objectivity claims.
• Butterfield Overland Mail Company (1857): Postmaster General Aaron V. Brown (a Tennessee slaveholder) defied congressional mandates to route the nation's major overland mail road along a far southern path, seen as a precursor to the railroad.

Patronage and influence. Democrats also used executive authority to fill federal positions in the Far West with slaveholders and their allies. The San Francisco Customs House, for instance, became known as the "Virginia Poorhouse" due to the number of southern-born appointees. This tactical use of federal authority allowed a white southern minority to wield decisive influence over local policy and advance a sectional agenda, demonstrating how the "Slave Power" operated thousands of miles from Washington.

5. California's Dual Identity: Free State, Proslavery Politics

Ironically, the free state of California became the linchpin of the Continental South.

Free soil, southern rule. Despite being admitted as a free state in 1850, California's political landscape was heavily influenced by white southern emigrants. A southern-born minority, though not always a numerical majority, seized power by dominating patronage networks, legislative sessions, and judicial proceedings throughout the antebellum period. This effectively turned California into a client of the slave states.

Legal loopholes and judicial bias. California's legislature, with figures like Thomas Jefferson Green and William Gwin, actively undermined the state's antislavery constitution. Key actions included:

• Foreign miners' tax: Discouraged international immigration, reducing competition for white prospectors.
• Testimony ban: Barred blacks, "mulattoes," and Indians from testifying against whites, making it difficult to challenge re-enslavement.
• Fugitive Slave Act (1852): Legalized the enslavement of bondpeople brought into the state before statehood, provided they were eventually returned South.
• Proslavery judiciary: Judges like Hugh C. Murray and David S. Terry consistently ruled in favor of slaveholders, even extending slaveholding rights to a free state in the Archy Lee case (1858).

Separatist ambitions. Southern Californians, particularly in Los Angeles County, agitated for state division, aiming to create a separate territory (Colorado) that could legalize slavery and boost southern power in Congress. This movement, supported by figures like Andrés Pico and William Gwin, was seen by Abraham Lincoln as part of "the high-road to a slave empire," highlighting the deep-rooted proslavery agenda within the ostensibly free state.

6. The Desert South: Unfreedom Beyond Chattel Slavery

According to their logic, American slavery was not the “peculiar institution” of the South alone, as some claimed. It was a transcontinental regime.

A haven for coercion. The "Desert South" – encompassing New Mexico, parts of Utah, and Southern California – became a sphere of influence where various forms of unfree labor flourished, even if plantation slavery did not. This region was already accustomed to coercive labor systems, which predated American arrival.

Diverse forms of bondage:

• Native American captivity: For centuries, enslaved Natives and mestizo offspring worked mines, fields, and domestic spaces. The trade in captives, often girls prized as domestic workers, was rampant, with New Mexican trading parties ranging into Utah and California.
• Child servitude: Utah's "Act for the Further Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners" (1852) allowed white residents to "adopt" Indian children for up to twenty years, ostensibly for "salvation" but effectively for labor.
• Debt peonage: Prevalent in New Mexico, this system trapped peasants (often of mixed Hispano and Indian ancestry) in inescapable cycles of debt, making servitude heritable and perpetual, akin to chattel slavery.

Southern defense of unfreedom. Southern slaveholders, while sometimes rhetorically criticizing peonage as "far more harsh and repulsive" than their own system, consistently defended these western labor regimes. They recognized that an attack on one form of human property could erode another, thus forming a united front against federal attempts to abolish peonage in New Mexico. This continental defense of unfreedom underscored their belief that coercion, not wages, would drive the world's workforce.

7. A Continental Crisis: Western Separatism and the Road to War

Stretching from the Charleston harbor to the Los Angeles coastline, America’s national crisis was far greater than the standard historical narrative allows.

Secession's ripple effect. When South Carolina seceded in December 1860, the insurrection quickly spread westward, reaching southern New Mexico (Arizona) by March 1861. White settlers in Arizona held multiple conventions to renounce the Union and align with the insurgent slave states, demonstrating that the rebellion's spirit extended far beyond the traditional South.

Western disunionism:

• Arizona's secession: Driven by southern migrants and their grievances against the US government, Arizona declared itself a Confederate territory, adopting New Mexico's slave code.
• California state division: A long-standing movement to split California into two, with the southern half becoming a slave territory, gained renewed urgency.
• Pacific Republic plots: Influential Californians, including US Senator Milton S. Latham and Congressman Charles L. Scott, openly contemplated forming an independent republic on the West Coast if the Union dissolved.

Lincoln's dilemma. Abraham Lincoln recognized the transcontinental threat, warning that concessions on territorial slavery would pave "the high-road to a slave empire." His administration, facing a disintegrating Union, diverted resources to shore up support in the West and prevent the rebellion from spreading further. This continental perspective reveals that the crisis of 1860-61 was not confined to the East but was a sprawling, interlocking set of rebellions challenging the very shape of the United States.

8. Confederate Imperialism: The Western Front of the Rebellion

The Civil War in the Far West was the continuation, by military means, of a southern campaign to control the far end of the continent, dating to the late 1840s.

Conquest of California. The Confederate invasion of New Mexico, led by Colonel John R. Baylor and Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley, was not a quixotic foray but a strategic military sequel to decades of southern political and commercial ambitions in the Far West. California, with its deepwater ports, gold mines, and potential for diplomatic recognition, was the ultimate objective.

Confederate strategies in the West:

• Military invasion: Sibley's Army of New Mexico, comprising 2,500 Texans, aimed to conquer New Mexico and then push to San Francisco, establishing a Confederate pathway to the Pacific.
• Diplomatic overtures: Colonel James Reily was dispatched to negotiate trade and supply depots with Mexican governors, though direct territorial conquest was avoided to prevent international complications.
• Genocidal policies: Baylor, as military governor of Confederate Arizona, advocated for the "extermination" of Apache adults and the enslavement of their children, reflecting a brutal extension of proslavery ideology.
• Privateering and guerrilla warfare: Ashbury Harpending plotted to seize gold-laden Pacific Mail steamers, and Rufus Ingram led Confederate guerrilla raids in California's gold country.
• Colonial schemes: William Gwin, in Napoleon III's court, proposed a mining colony in Sonora, Mexico, intended as a southern extension of an independent Pacific republic.

Union countermeasures. The threat of a transcontinental Confederacy forced the Union to divert significant resources to the West. Lincoln's administrative purge replaced Democratic appointees with Unionists, and military garrisons were established in Southern California (Drum Barracks). The Pacific Railroad Act (1862) was swiftly passed, ensuring a northern route, as southern secession removed congressional opposition.

9. Reconstruction's Limits: The West's Resistance to Federal Reform

The revolt against federal Reconstruction, like the struggle over slavery that preceded it, stretched from one end of the country to the other.

Western backlash. Despite Union victory and the abolition of slavery, the Far West became a significant front in the resistance against federal Reconstruction policies. White voters in California and landholders in New Mexico, driven by racial anxieties and a distrust of federal authority, actively opposed reforms aimed at racial equality.

California's defiance:

• Democratic resurgence: California's Democratic Party, largely southern in origin and proslavery in outlook, staged a stunning comeback in 1867 on a white supremacist, state-rights platform.
• Rejection of amendments: California was the only free state to ratify neither the Fourteenth nor the Fifteenth Amendments in the nineteenth century, citing fears of "negro, Chinese, and Indian" suffrage and federal overreach.
• Anti-Chinese violence: White vigilantes, sometimes identifying as Ku Klux Klan members, assaulted Chinese workers and their employers, mimicking the racial terror tactics used in the postbellum South. The Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871, which killed eighteen Chinese residents, exemplified this violence.

New Mexico's evasion. In New Mexico, the Thirteenth Amendment and an anti-peonage statute (1867) outlawed Native American captivity and debt peonage. However, the territory's master class resisted federal intervention by:

• Insisting on the "voluntary" nature of their labor arrangements.
• Borrowing paternalistic arguments from southern planters.
• Claiming federal interference violated local sovereignty.
  Despite Republican efforts, bonded servitude persisted in New Mexico for decades, demonstrating the limits of federal emancipation in the arid borderlands.

10. The Afterlife of the Continental South: Enduring Influence and Memory

Into the twenty-first century, California’s Confederate monuments and place-names spoke to the enduring (if often overlooked) hold of the Old South in the Far West.

A modified reemergence. While the Confederacy's collapse nullified the Continental South's original political objective, elements of its influence persisted. Postwar California saw the resurgence of southern-born notables like William Gwin and Benjamin Franklin Washington, who, despite wartime treason, re-entered public life and shaped the state's political discourse.

Lost Cause in the West. California's Democratic politicians and writers, including northern-born figures like Governor Henry Haight, articulated the tenets of the "Lost Cause," blaming northern abolitionists for the war and romanticizing the Old South. Benjamin Franklin Washington, editor of the San Francisco Examiner, became a leading voice for this revisionist history, praising human bondage and denouncing Reconstruction as "negro supremacy."

Confederate monuments and place-names:

• Jefferson Davis Highway: Initiated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1913, this transcontinental road system, with markers stretching into California, symbolized the embedding of Confederate memory into the nation's infrastructure.
• Western memorials: Dozens of monuments to Confederate soldiers and commanders were erected across New Mexico, Arizona, Utah (e.g., Dixie State University), and California (e.g., Hollywood Forever Cemetery).
• Recent removals: The 2017 Charlottesville rally and the Black Lives Matter movement spurred the removal of many Confederate monuments and place-names in California, signaling a potential terminal point for the Confederacy's long afterlife in the West.

This enduring presence of Confederate memory and southern political influence in the Far West underscores that slavery was a national institution, and its legacy, including white supremacy and resistance to racial equality, extended far beyond the traditional boundaries of the American South.

Last updated: February 28, 2026