32. Meinig, Continental America , 141; Campbell, Empire for Slavery , 54–55; Lack, “Slavery and the Texan Revolution,” 202.
33. Lelia Roeckell, “Bonds over Bondage: British Opposition to the Annexation of Texas,” JER 19 (1999): 257–78.
34. See Jay Sexton, “Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations, 1837–1873” (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 2003).
35. Papers of Daniel Webster: Diplomatic Papers , ed. Kenneth Shewmaker et al. (Hanover, N.H., 1983), I, 58–68. Webster addressed the letter to Henry Fox, the British minister to the United States, but it formed the basis of his agreement with Ashburton.
36. Kenneth Stevens, Border Diplomacy (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1989), 164–68; Claude Fuess, Daniel Webster (New York, 1930), II, 112. The present applicability of the Caroline Doctrine is debated in Timothy Kearley, “Raising the Caroline ,” Wisconsin International Law Journal 17 (1999): 325–46, and John Yoo, “Sinking the Caroline ,” San Diego International Law Journal 4 (2003): 467–90.
37. The Creole ’s story is told in Howard Jones and Donald Rakestraw, Prologue to Manifest Destiny (Wilmington, Del., 1997), 71–96.
38. Don Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic (New York, 2001), 165–88.
39. Norma Peterson, The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler (Lawrence, Kans., 1989), 118–22; Jones and Rakestraw, Prologue to Manifest Destiny , 112.
40. Daniel Webster to Edward Everett, June 14, 1842, quoted in Irving Bartlett, Daniel Webster (New York, 1978), 179; Francis Carroll, A Good and Wise Measure (Toronto, 2001), 305–6.
41. Thomas LeDuc, “The Webster-Ashburton Treaty and the Minnesota Iron Ranges,” JAH 51 (1964): 476–81.
42. Freehling, Secessionists at Bay , 422–24; Wilbur Jones, The American Problem in British Diplomacy, 1841–1861 (London, 1974), 31.
43. David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation (Columbia, Mo., 1973), 119–25; Edward Crapol, John Tyler (Chapel Hill, 2006), 68–74.
44. Green’s reports and Upshur’s publications in the Washington Madisonian are in Frederick Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas , 187–92, 204–5, 217–36, 245–64.
45. Thomas Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca, N.Y., 1985), 20–21; Abel Upshur to Beverly Tucker, March 13, 1843, printed in William Freehling, The Reintegration of American History (New York, 1994), 125–29.
46. Peterson, Presidencies of Harrison and Tyler , 199; Pletcher, Diplomacy of Annexation , 125–35.
47. Merk, Slavery and Annexation , 42–43; Freehling, Secessionists at Bay , 406–7.
48. “A Treaty of Annexation, Concluded between the United States of America and the Republic of Texas, at Washington, the 12th Day of April, 1844,” rpt. in Merk, Slavery and Annexation , 271–75.
49. Excerpts rpt. in History of U.S. Political Parties , ed. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (New York, 1973), 550–52.
50. Freehling, Secessionists at Bay , 431.
51. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy (New York, 2005), 545.
52. On the subtle relationship between Tyler and Calhoun, see John Niven, John C. Calhoun (Baton Rouge, 1988), 260; William J. Cooper, The South and the Politics of Slavery (Baton Rouge, 1978), 176–89; Charles Sellers, “Election of 1844,” in History of American Presidential Elections , ed. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (New York, 1985), II, 758.
54. On the motive behind Calhoun’s Pakenham Letter, I accept Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution (New York, 1991), 413. See also Peterson, Presidencies of Harrison and Tyler , 213–18; William Brock, Parties and Political Conscience (Millwood, N.Y., 1979), 132–35.
55. Donald Cole, Martin Van Buren (Princeton, 1984), 393–94; Robert Remini, Henry Clay (New York, 1991), 613.
56. Michael Morrison, “Martin Van Buren, the Democracy, and the Partisan Politics of Texas Annexation,” Journal of Southern History 61 (1995): 695–722; Leonard Richards, The Slave Power (Baton Rouge, 2000), 144–45.
57. National Party Platforms , comp. Kirk Porter and Donald Johnson (Urbana, Ill., 1970), 4.
58. Francis Pickens to Henry Conner, May 29, 1844, quoted in Cooper, Politics of Slavery , 206.
59. For a good account of the Democratic convention, see Sellers, “Election of 1844,” 747–75.
60. Michael Holt, “The Democratic Party,” in Schlesinger, History of U.S. Political Parties , 518; Lynn Parsons, “The Last Ten Years of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson,” JER 23 (2003): 421–44, esp. 433.
61. Andrew Jackson to Francis Blair, May 11, 1844, Correspondence of AJ , VI, 286–87.
62. Andrew Jackson to William Lewis, April 8, 1844, ibid., VI, 278. See also Freehling, Secessionists at Bay , 415–17.
63. Letter of Mr. Walker of Mississippi Relative to the Annexation of Texas (Washington, 1844), rpt. in Frederick Merk, Fruits of Propaganda in the Tyler Administration (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 221–52. Walker’s rhetorical appeal is analyzed in Stephen Hartnett, Democratic Dissent and the Cultural Fictions of Antebellum America (Urbana, Ill., 2002), 103–31.
64. Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (New York, 1999), 174–75.
65. Letter to the editors of the Washington National Intelligencer , April 17, 1844, Papers of Henry Clay , ed. Melba Hay (Lexington, Ky., 1991), X, 41–46.
67. See Michael Morrison, “Texas Annexation and the American Whig Party,” JER 10 (1990): 221–49.
68. Henry Clay to Thomas Peters and John Jackson, July 27, 1844, Papers of Henry Clay , X, 89–91. This is called Clay’s “Second Alabama Letter.” The First Alabama Letter, dated July 1, disavowed abolitionist support (X, 78–79).
69. Holt, Rise and Fall of Whig Party , 184. See also Brock, Parties and Political Conscience , 155.
70. Holt, Rise and Fall of Whig Party , 199–201.
71. Sellers, “Election of 1844,” 795. See also Michael Feldberg, The Philadelphia Riots of 1844 (Westport, Conn., 1975).
72. Holt, Rise and Fall of Whig Party , 203–4.
73. Jackson to Andrew Donelson, Nov. 18, 1844, Correspondence of AJ , VI, 329. Cf. Luke 2:29.
74. Quoted in Russel Nye, George Bancroft (New York, 1944), 150.
75. Jackson and Adams are quoted in Sellers, “Election of 1844,” 796. By “Native Americans” Adams of course meant the nativists, not American Indians.
76. Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York, 1868), 168; Michael Holt, Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (Baton Rouge, 1992), 17–18; Gary Kornblith, “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise,” JAH 90 (2003): 76–105. Tom Wicker explores the related question, what if Harrison had not died in office? See his essay in What Ifs? of American History , ed. Robert Cowley (New York, 2003), 57–65.
77. Inscribed on the central U.S. Post Office in New York City.
78. See Daniel Headrick, When Information Came of Age (Oxford, 2000), 197–203.
79. Richard John, Spreading the News: The United States Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 86–89.
80. For the origin of the phrase, see the Introduction to this book.
81. Kenneth Silverman, Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (New York, 2003), 233–38.
82. On Morse’s career as a painter, see Paul Staiti, Samuel F. B. Morse (Cambridge, Eng., 1989).
83. Jedidiah Morse, American Geography (1789; New York, 1960), 469.
84. Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York, 2004), 157–61.
85. The vote is analyzed in Carleton Mabee, The American Leonardo (New York, 1943), 258–59.
86. S.F.B. Morse to Levi Woodbury, Sept. 27, 1837, quoted in Richard John, “Private Enterprise, Public Good?” in Pasley, Beyond the Founders , 339–40.