Saturday, July 5, 2008

4th of July: Philadelphia to Santa Fe

Paul Harden For El Defensor Chieftain, na5n@zianet.com

According to the history books, the first European settlement was Jamestown in 1608. By the end of 1610, only 60 of the 214 English settlers had survived — a mortality rate more than 70 percent.

In 1620, the Mayflower arrived with 102 English settlers, who formed the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts. Less than half survived the first winter in North America.

Of course, this traditional history completely ignores the European settlers arriving with Juan de Oñate in 1598. A decade before Jamestown, and 22 years before the Mayflower, these Spanish settlers colonized the Rio Grande area, including Socorro. While there were, no doubt, some deaths it was certainly far less than the mortality rate of the Jamestown and Plymouth colonies.

Although colonists had settled both New England and New Mexico throughout the 1600s, they were two separate worlds. Jamestown and Plymouth were colonies of the British, and the colonies in New Mexico were part of the Spanish empire. In 1588, England attacked the Spanish Armada. The following year, Spain nearly destroyed the English Armada. By the early 1600s, England and Spain weren't exactly friends. In the New World, the two empires scarcely acknowledged the other existed.

The colonies continued to grow from Massachusetts to South Carolina. However, these were British colonies, and as such, were governed by England. All goods flowing between the New World colonies and England were heavily taxed, often twice, by the British.

Tired of the British oppression, the colonies formed the Continental Army, in 1775, to begin the overthrow of British rule. King George of England didn't take this well and declared war against the colonies. The following year, on July 4th, the Continental Congress declared independence from England.

The British used their naval strength to capture and occupy the coastal cities. However, their relatively small land army was not able to gain control of the more remote countryside and the war dragged on and eventually it led to the British defeat.

France was the only country at this time that recognized the sovereignty of the United States. The French came to the aid of the new country to confront the British Navy. A French naval victory in Chesapeake Bay lead to the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown, in 1781.

The war finally ended in 1783. The United States was finally a sovereign country.

The Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson, and a committee of four others, were secretly commissioned by the Continental Congress to draft the Declaration of Independence from England.

Numerous rough drafts were changed and altered until the committee was satisfied with the document. On July 1, 1776, it was presented to the Continental Congress. After a few more last minute revisions, the document was approved.

Here's where history differs from the popular rendition.

As soon as the Declaration was passed on July 4, it was taken to the Philadelphia print shop owned by John Dunlap.

In 1776, each letter was a piece of lead, such that each word in the Declaration had to be set by hand — letter by letter — which often took many hours to do.

The typesetting was finished early the next morning. The Declaration was then printed, allowed to dry and the copies were delivered to Congress on the morning of July 5th.

This Declaration of Independence ended with, "Signed by Order and in Behalf of the Congress, John Hancock, President. Attest. Charles Thomson, Secretary." These are the only two names appearing on the original printed version of the Declaration of Independence.

It is not known how many copies of the Declaration were printed, but it was sufficient enough to send copies to all 13 colonies for distribution, army commanders in the field and British military leaders. In many towns throughout the colonies, the Declaration was read aloud and posted in the town square for approval. The copy sent to King George in England was one of the printed versions.

Today, only 23 copies of Dunlap's printed version are known to exist in the United States and two in England.

On July 19, Congress ordered that the Declaration be "engrossed on parchment." Now approved by all 13 colonies, the title was changed to "The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America." This is the handwritten version we are most familiar with. It is believed to have been penned by a man named Timothy Matlack.

Representatives from all 13 colonies signed the parchment version of the Declaration of Independence on Aug. 2, 1776. The artistic signature of John Hancock is the most well known. However, 55 others signed the Declaration as well. This included such early prominent Americans as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and the primary author, Thomas Jefferson.

This explains one of the largest misconceptions about our Declaration of Independence. It was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 — but it was not actually signed until Aug. 2.

It is interesting to note that Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, on the 50th anniversary of Independence, at 83 years of age. Even stranger is that fellow signer, John Adams, the president who built the White House, died on the same day — only a few hours after Jefferson. Adams died at his home in Quincy, Mass., at 90 years of age.

Signers of the

Declaration

There are some interesting stories associated with the lesser known signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Declaration signer Button Gwinnet returned to Georgia, where he became engaged in a longstanding rivalry with Lachlan McIntosh. On May 16, 1777, they challenged each other to a public duel — both were shot and wounded. Gwinnet died three days later, while McIntosh survived.

Carter Braxton was from a wealthy Virginia plantation family. During the war he loaned £10,000 Sterling (slightly more than $2 million today) to support the revolutionary war, which was never fully repaid.

British forces also destroyed his plantation. He never recovered from these losses and died nearly penniless.

Actually, quite a number of the signers had lost much of their property and wealth during the Revolutionary War.

There is no historical evidence that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were specifically targeted by the British. They were simply the victims of the spoils of war like so many others.

Benjamin Harrison was another of the little known signers. His son, William Harrison, however, became the ninth president of the United States.

George Wythe was considered a man of true honor. After the war with England, he freed his slaves and provided for them until they could support themselves. He gave some of the family wealth to slaves, which angered his family. In retaliation, a young family member poisoned the slaves' food with arsenic on June 8, 1806. This accidentally killed Wythe in the process, who had eaten dinner that evening with his former slaves.

Edward Rutledge returned to South Carolina shortly after the signing to defend Charleston Harbor. He was captured by the British and held prisoner until 1781. Four other signers — Thomas Heyward Jr., Arthur Middleton, George Walton and Richard Stockton — were also captured by the British and held as prisoners of war.

Stockton was the only one who was actually taken prisoner because of his status as a signer to the Declaration; the others were captured in battle.

Thomas Lynch Jr. fell ill shortly after signing the Declaration. At the end of 1776, he and his wife sailed for the West Indies in search of better health. The ship they were on disappeared at sea — Lynch was never heard from again.

Oliver Wolcott was ill for the Aug. 2 signing ceremony. He actually signed it some time later, being the last to sign the Declaration.

Charles Carroll, on the other hand, has the distinction of being the last surviving member of the signers. He died in 1832 at the age of 95.

Thomas Stone is the stealth-signer of the Declaration. He died in 1787, at age 40, while waiting for a ship to England. Little else is known about him as no documentation of his life has ever been found. He just sort of slipped in and out of history, almost without a trace.

While there are popular stories of how the signers of the Declaration suffered at the hands of the British, there are few cases where they endured treatment indifferent from the other Americans engaged in battle or captured as prisoners. The Declaration of Independence in the hands of the British was the printed version, which only contained the names of John Hancock and Charles Thompson. Most of the signers of the Declaration were not known until after the Revolutionary War.

Still, these men took a huge risk in signing the document that broke ties with England. Had not the Revolutionary War been successful in expunging the British, all 56 signers would certainly have been arrested and executed for treason.

In the 1700s, those who were convicted of treason were "hanged and quartered."

The British defined this as follows: "You shall be hanged by the neck and being alive cut down, your privy members shall be cut off and your bowels taken out and burned before you, your head severed from your body, and your body divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the King's pleasure."

Clearly, the signers of the Declaration, at risk of being hung and quartered, were not faint of heart.

New Mexico in 1776

News of the formation of the United States of America quickly spread throughout Europe and much of the world. This was not the case in New Spain.

The people in New Mexico, Mexico and South America likely did not hear of the United States' independence from England for many, many years.

Spain, unlike France, refused to recognize the independence of the United States. Spain was not keen on encouraging similar rebellions within their own empire, such as New Mexico.

They remembered the 1680 Pueblo Revolt very well and did not want to encourage another uprising. As a result, Spain kept the news under wraps. It was probably not until the next caravans along El Camino Real arrived that the rumors began to spread.

The territory of New Spain, which consisted of the majority of the western portion of North America, was a vast, unexplored and unknown land to the newly formed United States. Spain controlled it with an iron fist, and entry into and out of the land without written permission was forbidden.

In Philadelphia, and the new capitol city of Washington, D.C., there was virtually no knowledge of what lay west of the Mississippi River. And, the people of New Mexico had virtually no knowledge of what lay east of the Pecos.

All travel into and out of New Mexico was north and south along El Camino Real to Mexico. Travel east and west of the Rio Grande was extremely limited.

Although New Mexico was well established along the river and the trail with towns, pueblos and haciendas, even Spain did not know what existed much beyond the reaches of the river.

Miera y Pacheco Map

In 1776, what little was known about New Mexico was that of the Miera y Pacheco map, produced in 1758. Viceroy Marqués de las Amarillas ordered Gov. Francisco Marín at Santa Fe to map the northern interior lands, the tierra de adentro. Marín contracted with Don Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, an engineer and mapmaker from El Paso, Mexico, for the task.

Gov. Marín accompanied Miera y Pacheco on much of the inspection tours to map the province. By April 1758, Miera's elaborate map was completed.

This is the first known map of New Mexico. Copies were sent to Viceroy Amarillas in Mexico City. However, none of the Miera y Pacheco maps ever left the empire.

Many years later, in 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the United States. The following year, the Louisiana Purchase was added to the American territory. There were no maps of this region, making the boundaries of the purchase rather ill-defined. For example, the eastern boundary was fixed along the Mississippi River, even though the headwaters of the mighty river was not yet known.

Jefferson became increasingly interested in what lay within the purchase, and even more curious about the vast unknown Spanish Empire farther to the west and southwest. Virtually nothing of New Spain was known by the United States government.

This is exactly what drove Jefferson to order the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803. Not only was the expedition to find the headwaters of the Missouri River, and hopefully the Northwest Passage, but also to catalog the indigenous people and resources along the way.

President Jefferson did not order a similar expedition to the Southwest section of the country. This was firmly the property of Spain and sending American troops into the region would be an act of aggression against Spain — who was the world power at the time.

Instead, Jefferson got lucky with an old friend, Baron Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt was a well-known German explorer. He obtained permission to travel New Spain in 1803, no doubt because he was German, and not English or American. He could speak German, English, French and Spanish, which made him a valuable asset in his explorations of New Spain. Apparently, he never entered New Mexico.

The Von Humboldt Map

While in Mexico City, Viceroy Jose de Hirriguay allowed Humboldt to study all documents in the Spanish archives. One of these documents was the Miera y Pacheco map of New Mexico, which he copied and later incorporated into his own map.

Returning temporarily to Germany in 1804, Humboldt stopped in Washington, D.C. He shared with President Jefferson information about his travels through New Spain from northern Mexico to South America. Since Humboldt could speak English, he was able to give details and answer questions from Jefferson directly. This was the first first-hand look of the western continent made available to Jefferson and the U.S. government.

Humboldt left a copy of his map with Jefferson. This was a treasured acquisition — being the only known accurate map in existence of the southwestern United States. It was an all-important peek into the Spanish empire west of the Mississippi. It was the basis of all future exploration from Zebulon Pike to the arrival of Gen. Steven Watts Kearny, in Santa Fe, in 1848. It also inspired Jefferson to learn more about this huge unknown part of the continent.

The Humboldt map found its way into the hands of Zebulon Pike for his 1806 expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Officially, Jefferson sent the Pike expedition west to find the source of the Arkansas River. Many believe Pike was sent on an intentional spy expedition into New Spain to "fine tune" Humboldt's map.

The Zebulon Pike

Expedition

The Pike expedition departed from near St. Louis in 1806. By later that year, they arrived at the Rocky Mountains near present day Colorado Springs. Pike's Peak is named in Zebulon's honor.

As winter approached, Pike and his men crossed the Sangre de Cristo Mountains into the San Luis Valley. They built a stockade near Conejos, south of Alamosa, to hunker down for the winter.

On Feb. 16, 1807, Spanish cavalrymen discovered the stockade. On Feb. 26, a large troop of Spanish soldiers arrived and informed the men that they were in Spanish territory without permission. They were taken to Gov. Joaquín Alencaster in Santa Fe and questioned about their mission.

Uncertain as to what he should do with the men, Gov. Alencaster sent them to Chihuahua, Mexico, to be further questioned by Comman-dant General Nemesio Salcedo.

Departing Santa Fe on March 3rd, Pike and his men were escorted along El Camino Real, through just about every town and pueblo along the Rio Grande to Chihuahua. Pike saw Santo Domingo Pueblo, Albuquerque, Isleta and La Joya. On the evening of March 10, they camped on the Camino Real opposite of Socorro. Instead of traveling through the Jornada del Muerto, the party crossed to the west side of the Rio Grande at Paraje Fra Cristobal. They rejoined El Camino Real north of Doña Ana on March 18 for the last leg of the trip. They arrived in Chihuahua on April 2.

The trip to Chihuahua was a dream come true for Pike. Rather than sneaking about the Spanish province as a spy, he was afforded full view of the towns, people, crops, herds and military strength of New Mexico. More than 200 years after Oñate crossed the Rio Grande, Pike and his men became the first-known American explorers, and among the first Anglos, to see New Mexico.

Parading the American "spies" through New Mexico did not go unnoticed by General Salcedo. Realizing the damage had already been done, and Pike presented no further threat, he returned the men to the United States. They arrived at the Louisiana border on July 1.

Salcedo strongly reprimanded New Mexico Governor Alencaster for the blunder. Salcedo, in turn, was reprimanded by the King of Spain for returning the men without an apology from President Jefferson.

This inadvertent slip in Spain's otherwise tight security gave the rest of the world it's first look at New Spain from Santa Fe to Chihuahua.

Pike kept a detailed journal of his travels, which was confiscated and translated to Spanish while confined in Chihuahua. (Mexico returned the journals to the United States government in the early 1900s). Pike reconstructed from memory his journals and made a map of his southwest expedition. The map was published in 1810 entitled "A Map of the Internal Provinces of New Spain." Pike's map replaced that of Humboldt as the official map of the West. Since it was also the first published map of the West, rather than being hand copied, it was widely distributed and used by explorers for years.

After Pike's map was published, Alexander von Humboldt complained bitterly to Thomas Jefferson when he saw portions of his work reproduced in Pike's 1810 map.

The Lost Map

As mentioned earlier, the first known map of New Mexico was Miera y Pacheco's 1585 map, which makes it a very rare historical artifact. Following statehood, the map was given to the University of New Mexico for archiving. In 1925, the original map was skillfully retraced, and photographed in 1930.

In 1951, microfilm copies of all historic maps in the UNM collection was ordered. However, the original Miera y Pacheco map and report, and the 1925 tracing, could not be found. To this day, these items remain missing.

All that remained were a photocopy of the 1925 tracing and the 1930 photographic prints of the famous map. In 1977, the National Park Service decided to reconstruct the Miera y Pacheco map. Using the faded 1930 prints and the photocopy of the tracing, NPS illustrator Jerry Livingston painstakingly reconstructed the map. Today, this is the best-known rendition of Pacheco's original 1758 map of New Mexico.

So little material has survived from 18th century New Mexico that the 1758 Miera y Pacheco map is important in itself — even as a reproduction. It remains a unique look into colonial New Mexico.

From 1598 through the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in the 1820s, New Mexico was virtually a secret, unknown kingdom to the outside world. To some, it still is.

Happy Fourth of July from the great state of New Mexico — and, yes, we're one of the 50.

Some of the references used in this article: National Archives map collection; Library of Congress; Camino Real Trail Association; El Camino Real International Heritage Center; San Luis Valley Historical Society; Zebulon Pike Centennial Association; New Mexico Office of the State Historian; and National Park Service.

Courtesy of Library of Congress

TOP: The top portion of the familiar handwritten Declaration of Independence. BOTTOM: The handwritten Declaration was signed by 56 members of the Continental Congress on Aug. 2, 1776 — not on July 4th.

Courtesy of Library of Congress

The first Declaration of Independence, released on July 5, 1776, was a printed document. This was the document given to King George of England, it contained no signatures.

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