Today we have Kevin Waite on the show. Kevin Waite is an associate professor at Durham Universisty and a political historian of the 19th-century United States with a focus on slavery, imperialism, and the American West. His first book, West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (UNC Press, 2021), is a study of slaveholding expansion in California and the Far Southwest. It explores how American Southerners extended their labour order and political vision across the continent, and in the process, triggered a series of conflicts that culminated in the Civil War. West of Slavery won the 2022 Wiley-Silver Prize from the Center for Civil War Research and was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize as well as the SHEAR Manuscript Prize. It was named one of the "11 books that shaped how we think about California" by Boom: A Journal of California and one of the "Five Best Books" ever written on the Civil War in the American Far West by the Civil War Monitor. Please enjoy our conversation.
In today's episode, we explore the first few major battles in the Mexican American War in the Alta California theater. Our Patreon Page: www.patreon.com/historyofcalifornia...
In the episode, we sketch a brief bio of the poet and writer Joaquin Miller and read some of his more famous poems.
Continuing our journey with Junipero.