Audubon's Western Journal, 1849-1850

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Excerpt from Audubon's Western Journal, 1849-1850: Being the Ms. Record of a Trip From New York to Texas, and an Overland Journey Through Mexico and Arizona to the Gold-Fields of CaliforniaOrdinarily events are the result of antecedent causes, but now and then an apparently fortuitous incident upsets all calculations and changes the course of history in a day. Of such a character was the discovery of gold in California. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It led directly to a similar discovery in Australia and the combined output of the two fields replenished the world's stock of precious metals, shaped monetary systems, stimulated prices and powerfully affected the economic and industrial development of the last half century. Politically for the United States the discovery was the turning point in the struggle between the sections. Texas had been annexed and the South West wrung from Mexico largely for the purpose of equalizing slave and free territory by providing the South with an outlet for Western emigration comparable in extent with that pos sessed by the North. The instantaneous settlement of California under circumstances unfavorable to slavery produced a free state and gave the North a majority in the Senate. The attempt to recover the lost ground brought on the Kansas struggle and precipitated the war that destroyed the only real cause of antagonism between the sections. Socially the results of the discovery were not less important.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.