Mexican American War E59 Gillespie’s Mission: The Marine Who Took California
This episode focuses on First Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, a Marine handpicked by President Polk to carry out a secret mission in California before war officially broke out.
Gillespie was gathering intelligence, delivering covert messages, and helping shift the political landscape in favor of the United States. His mission was critical to gaining control of California without triggering international backlash.
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References
Fulkerson, S. V., Stevenson, G. J., & Historical Society of Washington County, Virginia. (January 01, 1992). To the halls of Montezuma: Samuel Vance Fulkerson's journal kept during the Mexican War. Historical Society of Washington County, Va. Bulletin, 29.)
Gillespie, A. H. (1845). Archibald H. Gillespie papers.
Horsman, R. (2009). Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. United Kingdom: Harvard University Press.
Johannsen, R. W. (1988). To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
John Adam Hussey; The Origin of the Gillespie Mission. California Historical Society Quarterly 1 March 1940; 19 (1): 43–58. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25160859
John O'Sullivan, "Annexation," The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Volume 17 (New York: 1845), 5-6, 9-10.
Richard R. Stenberg, Archibald H. Gillespie; Further Letters of Archibald H. Gillespie: October 20, 1845, to January 16, 1846, to the Secretary of the Navy. California Historical Society Quarterly 1 September 1939; 18 (3): 217–228. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25160822
Rives, G. L. (1913). The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848: A History of the Relations Between the Two Countries from the Independence of Mexico to the Close of the War with the United States. United States: C. Scribner's Sons.
Smith, J. H. (1911). The Annexation of Texas. United States: Barnes & Noble, Incorporated.
U.S.Cong. (1845). The Declaration of Independence: Articles of Confederation, and Constitution of the United States; the joint resolution of the Congress of the United States for annexing Texas, and the joint resolution of the Congress of Texas consenting to annexation ; and the Constitution of the state of Texas .. [Cong. Bill]. Austin?