https://twitter.com/DecolonialMarx/status/1736248614035272113

There's a lot of misleading things about this presentation; for one only the poorest of people were crossing the plains and Mountains. Instead those who could afford it preferred to sail to Nicaragua and walk across the isthmus, to then sail up to the West Coast. Yes the mountains were tough to pass, but not because they are mountains, but because the easiest paths are controlled by, and tolls are enforce by Indigenous nations across the west. Meaning it was not the Mountains that discouraged them, but instead the idea of following Indigenous laws; i.e. it's a political barrier. This barrier prevents a western expansion preferring instead almost a Roman style, build a fort around your enemy, style of invasion.

Palo Alto was further from the White House than it was from Mexico City. Frémont felt safe massacring unarmed indigenous groups in 1846, but the Anglo settlers were vastly outnumbered, and the tables could turn fast -never mind the European powers and wildcards like Russia and the Chinese. In the West, the United States was out on a limb. What the United States needed was for a bunch of people to go to California and stay there, anchor the territory, and ready it for statehood. The problem was that there were not a whole lot of reasons for settlers to try it. The sea routes around the Cape of Good Hope or down to British Nicaragua and up the West Coast after an overland trek were long, dangerous, and expensive; the Oregon Trail across the continent was even worse. When they got to the California territory, settlers found unsurpassed natural beauty and unbelievable biodiversity, but the pecuniary prospects the only thing that could lure them in large numbers were not all that great at first. There was plenty of land but no one was especially enthusiastic about working it for profit. Indians comprised the vast majority of laborers (as they comprised the vast majority of the population), but their connection to the land always left them an exit if the contracted terms were insufficiently remunerative.

So while people like Leland and William Randolph Hearst's dad fled the eastern side of the Mississippi after ending slavery cut into prophets, it became clear it was very easy to rip people off in California; and anti-slavery laws didn't apply to Indigenous workers who were disregarded as people, so remained a cheap if not free source of labor. A lot of folks then assume the railroad was made to cheapen the costs of traveling to the west, but in reality that was more of a marketing ploy by a group known as the Combine, or 'the Associates' that Leland Stanford would be made a de facto face of, hell he was even made the de facto governor. According to the eugenics science that was pioneered in Stanford University later in Leland's life, he was a great man because of great genetics. In reality it is birth lottery, as is always the case, and a uncanny ability to somehow take credit for everyone else's work making him the best of the capitalists.

He couldn't even pretend to be self made. Even his associates often made jokes about how all of his money is made for him, he doesn't have to do anything. At any rate it was land speculation by which this profit was made, just as George Washington's was made before him, this business was the American dream; the get rich quick scheme. One that practically presents itself to him after squandering the perfect opportunity he had on the Erie Canal. These excerpts come from Palo Alto a must read for movement members today.

After an apprenticeship, he opened his own law office, which suffered from his total lack of German-language proficiency, given that German immigrants formed the bulk of the settler population. A run for district attorney on the progressive Whig line flopped. In 1850 he briefly returned to Albany to marry Jane Lathrop, a merchant's daughter from his hometown milieu. Back in Port Washington, Leland's office burned down, taking with it his law books and legal career, such as it was. Leland's life to that point - he was in his mid-twenties - was a total loss. Despite the cosmic luck of being born alongside the Erie Canal, he'd squandered the little he put together. What he did have left was family, including four surviving brothers. He (scandalously) deposited his new wife back home, and set out to join the rest of the Stanford boys in California. With his family's support, he took the ritziest of the three routes west: a ship down to British-occupied Nicaragua, an overland trek, and another boat up the continent's flank.

Born at the edge of a commercial frontier, Leland was a restless young man, moving from mediocre school to mediocre school, performing in accordance with his surroundings. Leland liked reading more than he liked working, and he didn't like reading all that much. He decided on a career in law, perhaps with a quick transition to politics, a professional path forever beloved by ambitious slackers. A politician needs a good name, and so Leland dropped the biblical Hebrew Amasa, which, fittingly, means "burden." The frontier had lower standards than New York did, so he took the law books his father bought him and in 1848 moved to Port Washington.

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