UCLA

From 1846 to 1866, the United States expanded national power in the West while confirming it in the South. In the far corner of the Southwest, two unlikely groups of men worked together to facilitate Southern California’s incorporation into the Union: southerners—migrants from the antebellum South; and Californios—the Spanish-surnamed cattle ranchers of Alta California. Drawing upon census data, legislative documents, militia records and other sources, this dissertation demonstrates that seigneurial notions of social hierarchy and masculine honor stood behind their political alliance in a faction known as “the Chivalry” and their coordination of cavalry companies in vigilante justice.

While a desired state split may have done much to entrench seigneurialism and local militia organization, the primary result of the alliance was not to mediate but to hasten the region’s incorporation. They brought a rough order to Southern California in the wake of the Mexican-American War that privileged white Americans and Californios over Indians and Spanish-surnamed people of lower social status. They also stimulated a military build-up in the region during the Civil War that strengthened local connections to the capitalist economy of the expanding nation-state. Driven by a desire to protect the embattled sister republics of the United States and Mexico, Californios would generally side with the Union and many joined the California Native Cavalry Battalion. Also known as the California Lancers, this mostly Spanish-surnamed unit played a critical role in Unionizing Southern California. The Chivalry alliance, though not fully destroyed by the Civil War, was greatly weakened by it, and a window of opportunity closed for those benefiting from a hybrid seigneurial society—land-owning rancheros, white southerners and a limited number of free black southerners. By focusing on the sectional dimension of American identity in the West and also on class distinctions within the Spanish-surnamed population, this dissertation outlines a case of culture trumping race in a period of US history typically defined by conflict between North and South on one side of the country and between whites and western peoples of color on the other.