THE YEAR OF DECISION: 1846—Bernard DeVoto—Little, Brown ($3.50).
In January 1846 universal peace seemed assured at last: Biela's comet was about to wipe out the world. But, as comet and Earth rushed toward the fatal conjunction, a watcher in the U.S. Naval Observatory saw the "ominous and inconceivable" happen—Biela's comet split in two. This lucky break permitted history to crowd into the balance of that amazing year a series .of events (of which the Mexican War and the westward migration are best known) that cause Historian Bernard DeVoto to believe that 1846 was the great divide in U.S. history. He has written this book to prove it.
Before 1846, the U.S. was a long front yard facing the Atlantic Ocean, with a big back pasture behind the Appalachian fence. The country was shut off from the Pacific by Mexico in California, and the British claims to the Oregon territory. During 1846, the U.S. occupied the Pacific coast from the 49th parallel to Lower California, and became a continental power. At the same time the stage was cleared for a new issue: Who was going to run this continental power—the free-labor North and West, or the slave-labor South? "At some time between August and December, 1846," says Historian DeVoto, "the Civil War had begun."
Six main events hurried the U.S. to ward history's great divide: 1) President James K. Folk's handling of the Mexican and Oregon questions; 2) Zachary Taylor's campaign in northern Mexico; 3) Kearny's campaign in the Southwest; 4) Kearny's and Fremont's campaigns in California; 5) the Mormon colonization of Utah; 6) the westward surge of U.S. farmers and mechanics. The Year of Decision (Book-of-the-Month Club selection for April) also includes one of history's greatest horror stories, the anthropophagous annals of the Donner expedition.
History as Inexperience. The year of decision really begins in the White House with James K. Polk scheming to get California away from Mexico, Oregon from England. "Who is James K. Polk?" Americans asked when he was nominated. They still ask. Yet Polk, says Historian DeVoto, was "the only 'strong' president between Jackson and Lincoln." He had "guts," "integrity," could not be "brought to heel." But he was also "pompous," "suspicious," "secretive," "humorless," "vindictive." He believed that "wisdom and patriotism were Democratic monopolies." He made an effort to be generous, sometimes confided to his diary: "Although a Whig he seems a gentleman."
There are glimpses of the amateur statesman Polk conspiring with (and getting double-crossed by) Mexican General Santa Anna, who was supposed to sell out Mexico for $30,000,000. When war came, Polk was all but crushed by his Presidential burdens. Says DeVoto: "Deliberately carrying twin torches through a powder magazine ... he made no preparation for either war. . . . He did not know how to make war or how to lead a people." Result : "Time after time the extemporized organizations broke down. . . . Millions of dollars were wasted, months were lost." But at last "the first modern industrial war somehow . . . succeeded."