Concerned that the English or the Russians might claim California, the Spanish government decided to colonize the region in the 1760s. Instrumental in this effort was Jose de Galvez, who as inspector general of New Spain (Mexico) organized the first Californian settlements. Galvez sent an expedition to Alta California, as the Spanish called the area, in 1769, thus establishing a precarious foothold and presidio at San Diego. The Spanish also explored the California coast nearly to San Francisco Bay. Over the next few years, Franciscan fathers built a series of missions and the Spanish founded three other presidios: Monterey (1770), San Francisco (1776), and Santa Barbara (1782). Never more than a backwater ERontier of the Spanish-American empire, by 1821 the Hispanic population of California had reached about 3,200.
The early years of California were difficult for the colony, which remained dependent on supplies from Mexico. From 1774 to 1776, the Spanish sent out several reconnaissance parties to expand California’s boundaries and to explore the possibility of land communication with Sonora in Mexico and the settlement at Santa Fe in New Mexico. Communication with New Mexico across the current state of Arizona appeared unfeasible. An overland trail was discovered to Sonora, but it required maintaining an outpost at the juncture of the Colorado and Gila Rivers. When the Yuma Indians destroyed that outpost in 1782, California again became almost entirely dependent on communication by sea. Spanish explorers also traveled in the Pacific as far north as Alaska, establishing Spain’s claim to the area of the current northwest United States and coastal British Columbia.
By the time of the Yuma revolt, California was becoming more self-sufficient with expanding cattle herds and developing agriculture. In recognition of the growing importance of Alta California, the Spanish Crown ordered the provincial seat of government moved from Baja California to Monterey in 1776. The Franciscan missions contributed to this success; they converted thousands of Indians to Christianity and used Native American labor at the missions. As many as 23,000 California Indians lived in the missions by 1821. However, runaways and high mortality constantly put a strain on the missions’ Native population. Conditions for California Indians deteriorated over the course of Spanish colonization. The region’s diverse Native population declined from about 300,000 to 200,000 from 1769 to 1821.
Although never overly successful, Spanish California helped to forge the Hispanic culture of the Southwest that was sustained by Mexico until the region was conquered by the United States in the Mexican War (1846-48). Contact before 1815 with the United States was minimal; by that date, a few vessels from the United States had touched at the Californian shore as merchants began to trade in the Pacific.
Further reading: Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of St. Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).
Callender, James T. (1758-1803) political pamphleteer and newspaper writer
Scottish by birth, James T. Callender was one of many radicals compelled to leave Great Britain, during the 1790s and early 1800s. Callender had a modest education and a scathing pen and is responsible for bringing to public view in the United States the sexual indiscretions of both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Callender left Great Britain in 1793 after having written a critique of the British government called Political Progress of Britain (1792). Once in the United States, Callender became a journalist, reporting on the debates in Congress and writing essays supporting the Democratic-Republican Party and attacking members of the Federalist Party. In 1797 Callender, perhaps with the connivance of
Jefferson, published an account of Hamilton’s sordid affair with Maria Reynolds. Throughout the late 1790s and in the election of i8oo, Callender published political attacks on the Federalist Party and received financial support from Jefferson and other leading Democratic-Republicans. Threatened with prosecution under the Sedition Law, and possible deportation under the Alien Acts (see also Alien and Sedition Acts), in June 1798 Callender fled Philadelphia and went to Richmond. But in Virginia Callender seemed to have had a change of heart and decided that he would not mind being prosecuted under the Sedition Act as a political martyr and thereby bolster Jefferson’s chances for being elected president.
Not only did Callender write numerous newspaper articles against the Federalist Party, but he also published The Prospect before Us, lambasting President John Adams and his administration as corrupt. In May 1800 officials arrested Callender. The next month he was convicted of violating the Sedition Act in a federal court presided over by Samuel Chase, fined $200, and sent to jail for nine months. Once he became president, Jefferson pardoned Callender and even—after some delays—remitted his fine. But after Jefferson refused to appoint Callender as postmaster of Richmond, a position that would have provided financial stability, Callender began to turn away from the sage of Monticello. Over several years, Callender became embroiled in a series of political controversies with moderate Democratic-Republicans and found himself personally attacked by James Duane and other editors who were close to Jefferson. Knowing from his own experience that Jefferson could have easily halted these attacks, Callender lashed out at the president. On September 1, 1802, he wrote that “It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps, and for many years has kept as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY.” He went on to say that she had a son named Tom whose “features are said to bear a striking resemblance to those of the president himself.” Callender continued to engage in political controversy after this attack on Jefferson. With a long history of heavy drinking, on July 17, 1803, Callender was found drowned in the James River after having been seen in a drunken stupor.
See also Hemmings, Sally.
Further reading: Michael Durey, “With the Hammer of Truth”: James Thomson Callender and American's Early National Heroes (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990).
Camden, Battle of (August 15, 1780)
Three months after capturing Charleston (May 12, 1780), with virtually the entire Continental army in the South,
British forces under Charles, Lord Cornwallis overwhelmed revolutionary troops at Camden, South Carolina, and brought about the fall from grace of Horatio Gates, the hero of Saratoga (October 17, 1777). After the surrender of Charleston, Congress had appointed Gates as head of the Southern Department. Unfortunately for the revolutionaries, his tenure was riddled with poor decisions.
Upon assuming his command, Gates immediately targeted the British supply base at Camden, which was vital
To their intended campaign to subjugate the Carolinas and Virginia. His subordinates, who were familiar with the region, suggested a circuitous route to Camden through rich farming country, where anti-British sentiment was high and the troops would easily find sustenance. Unwilling to march an extra 50 miles, Gates ignored the advice and plotted a direct route through a barren, pro-British area that was permeated with sandy plains, swamps, and dense forests. Although he promised issues of rum and rations en route, none were forthcoming, and the soldiers were forced to subsist mainly on peaches, green apples, and green corn as they marched in the heat and humidity of a Carolina summer. As reinforcements slowly joined Gates’ army, its strength in numbers grew, but the men were sick and debilitated. In Charleston, word reached Cornwallis of Gates’s advance, and he set off for Camden, ordering additional troops into the area so that ultimately about 2,200 men were at his command. Gates, on the other hand, was ignorant as to the size of his army. He believed he had more than twice the number of available troops than the slightly more than 3,000 men who were actually fit for duty.
Gates continued to undermine his own operations. Planning a night march to surprise the enemy, he placed dragoons at the front of the line, despite protests from his officers that the enemy would be able to hear the horses’ hooves from a great distance. Presumably trying to fortify the sick and hungry army for the battle ahead, rations of beef, cornmeal, and molasses were procured and given to the men prior to breaking camp. The meal had severe gastrointestinal consequences, however, and throughout the march, soldiers continually broke ranks in order to relieve themselves, which only weakened them further. Around 2:30 A. M., British cavalry ran into Gates’s dragoons, and after a flurry of gunfire and saber fighting in the dark, the Continental cavalry retreated to its line of infantry and both armies halted further action until daylight.
With the knowledge that Cornwallis was personally commanding the British forces and that the two armies were fairly even in size, Gates would have been wise to retreat to a stronger defensive position. As an ex-British officer, Gates must have known that, even with fewer men, the superior training and experience of the British gave them the advantage over the raw militia units that comprised much of his army. Vacillating as to his course of action, Gates asked his officers for their opinions. None suggested a withdrawal, but one emphatically stated that it was too late to do anything but fight. Gates agreed and ordered the officers to their various commands straddling the Charlotte road. Stands of pine trees on either side of the route offered cover for sniper fire, and swamps on both sides of the trees protected against flanking movements. Gates positioned himself and his staff at the remote distance of 600 yards to the rear of the line. Following European military convention, the British placed their strongest unit on the right of their line. Gates, also a traditionalist, deployed his troops in similar fashion, which meant his inexperienced militia units would be on the left, facing the best of the enemy forces.
The British began their advance in the early morning hours, and Gates’s artillery opened fire as they approached. British artillery responded, and as their troops were moving from columns into line of battle, one of the revolutionary officers reported to Gates that he could attack them before they completed their deployment. Gates gave him the order to do so, which was apparently the last command he gave at Camden. Receiving their instructions, the militia on the left of the line clumsily advanced. Many of these men had never been in battle and had little or no training with the bayonets they had been issued. Cornwallis noticed their hesitation and ordered a bayonet charge. Seeing the steady advance of the British regulars with their deadly steel implements and hearing their blood-curdling shouts, the raw troops ran for their lives. When more than 2,000 of these fleeing men came storming through the reserve units behind the main line of battle, Gates mounted on an excellent horse and believing the cause was lost, left the field in full gallop. He maintained the frantic pace until he reached the safety of Charlotte, 60 miles away. Meanwhile, the experienced troops at the left of the revolutionary line, though badly outnumbered, managed to push the enemy back with repeated bayonet charges. When the British dragoons finally joined the fray, the revolutionaries gave up the fight and escaped into the woods and swamps, ending the battle. Total British casualties in killed, wounded, and missing comprised about 15 percent of the number engaged. Estimates of revolutionary losses reach as high as one-third of Gates’s army, a devastating blow following the losses at Charleston. Gates, who claimed he went to Charlotte to rally the survivors of the battle, was exonerated for his conduct, but he never held command again.
See also CHARLESTON, SlEGE Of.
Further reading: Robert Leckie, George Washington’s War: The Saga of the American Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 1993); Henry Lumpkin, From Savannah to Yorktown: The American Revolution in the South (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1981).
—Rita M. Broyles
World History
