On This Day
1853 – Gadsden Purchase: The United States buys land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest.
The Gadsden Purchase (known in Mexico as Spanish: Venta de La Mesilla, “Sale of La Mesilla”[2]) is a 29,670-square-mile (76,800 km2) region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that the United States purchased via a treaty signed on December 30, 1853, by James Gadsden, U.S. ambassador to Mexico at that time. The U.S. Senate voted in favor of ratifying it with amendments on April 25, 1854, and then transmitted it to 14th President Franklin Pierce. Mexico’s government and its General Congress or Congress of the Union took final approval action on June 8, 1854. The purchase was the last substantial territorial acquisition in the contiguous United States. The U.S. sought the land as a better route for the construction of the southern transcontinental railway line, and the financially-strapped government of Antonio López de Santa Anna agreed to the sale, which netted Mexico $10 million (equivalent to $270 million in 2016[3]). After the devastating loss of Mexican territory to the U.S. in the Mexican-American War (1846–48) and the continued filibustering by U.S. citizens, Santa Anna may have calculated it was better to yield territory by treaty and receive payment rather than have the territory simply seized by the U.S.[4]
The purchase included lands south of the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande which the U.S. acquired so that it could construct a transcontinental railroad along a deep southern route, which the Southern Pacific Railroad later completed in 1881/1883. The purchase also aimed to reconcile outstanding border issues between the U.S. and Mexico following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the earlier Mexican–American War of 1846–1848.
As the railroad age evolved, business-oriented Southerners saw that a railroad linking the South with the Pacific Coast would expand trade opportunities. They thought the topography of the southern portion of the original boundary line to the Mexican Cession (future states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, western Colorado) of 1848 was too mountainous to allow a direct route. Projected southern railroad routes tended to veer to the north as they proceeded eastward, which would favor connections with northern railroads and ultimately favor northern seaports. Southerners saw that to avoid the mountains, a route with a southeastern terminus might need to swing south into what was still Mexican territory.
The administration of President Franklin Pierce, strongly influenced by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (later President of the southern seceding Confederate States), saw an opportunity to acquire land for the railroad, as well as to acquire significant other territory from northern Mexico.[5] In the end, territory for the railroad was purchased for $10 million (equivalent to $4.15 billion in 2016[6]), but Mexico balked at any large-scale sale of territory.[7] In the United States, the debate over the treaty became involved in the dispute over slavery, ending progress[clarification needed] before the American Civil War.
Born On This Day
1922 – Jane Langton, American author and illustrator
Jane Gillson Langton (born December 30, 1922) is an American writer and author of children’s literature and mystery novels. She both writes and illustrates her novels.[1]
Biography
Langton was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She studied astronomy at Wellesley College and the University of Michigan, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1944. She received an M.A. in art history from the University of Michigan in 1945, and another M.A. from Radcliffe College in 1948. She studied at the Boston Museum School from 1958 to 1959.
In 1961 Langton wrote and illustrated her first book for children, The Majesty of Grace, a story about a young girl during the Depression who is certain she will some day be Queen of England. Langton has since written a children’s series, The Hall Family Chronicles, and the Homer Kelly murder mystery novels. She has also written several stand-alone novels and picture books.
Langton’s novel The Fledgling is a Newbery Honor book. Her novel Emily Dickinson is Dead was nominated for an Edgar Award and received a Nero Award. The Face on the Wall was an editors’ choice selection by The Drood Review of Mystery for 1998.
Langton lives in Lincoln, Massachusetts, near the town of Concord, the setting of many of her novels. Her husband, Bill, died in 1997. Langton has three adult sons: Chris, David and Andy.[2]
Reviews
“Jane Langton is a master blender. She mixes Indian magic, the transcendental philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau, and the plain everyday life of Concord, Mass., and comes up with a splendid fantasy.”—Boston Globe[3]
“Always a witty and literate writer.”—Chicago Tribune[4]
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But it’s little comfort for the man who found stardom too confining and paid the most bitter price.
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wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for January 1 January 1, 2025Picture of the day Jeeps riding near Natal Dunes State Park in Genipabu, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for December 31 December 31, 2024Picture of the day Humoristic cartoon from Puck on the establishment of diplomatic relations between Greece and Persia. In 499 BC, the Persian Achaemenid Empire tried unsuccessfully to conquer various ancient Greek city-states. Finally in 449 BC a de facto peace was concluded and the Greco-Persian Wars effectively ended, but the two sides refused to […]
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