The New Mexico Geographic Bee: Fill & Download for Free

Yes. I was told that I was a racist and it broke my heart.I grew up in a very “white-bread” community in the Chicago suburbs. There were almost no people of color in my elementary or middle school (that I can remember), and so few in my high school that I can’t remember a single one. There was some diversity in college, but still, in the middle of a cornfield in Normal, Illinois (I am not making that up), the statistics still skewed white by a large margin.I remember, when I was in first grade, an African-American family moved into our small village of Westhaven (later renamed Orland Hills). Their son, Kenny, and I became good friends, sharing our 1st grade class. My parents frequently referred to him and his family using the n word, and it was so natural coming out of their mouths that I didn’t question it. I was also 6. One day, when my teacher had given me a lovely book as a present for winning the all school spelling bee, I wanted to show it to Kenny. I raced over to his house, about 2–3 blocks away (far outside my travel boundaries of 3 houses down in either direction). My parents panicked, checking in with all of my local friends. My best friend, Debbie, told them to check at Kenny’s. Somehow, my parents knew exactly which house was theirs. They got there, yelled at me, and said something to the effect of “No daughter of mine is going to hang out at a [insert slur here]’s house. Less than a month later, they moved. I don’t recall exactly what happened, but I believe white hoods were involved.My grandfather and uncle and one of my brothers were unapologetically racist, using slurs all of the time. The n word was frequently used by all of them, and my mother and father as well. They were “closet racists,” who said racist things all the time but would deny being actual racists. Somehow, myself and my other two brothers managed to grow up not only non-racist, but people who were completely offended and angered by racism.Flash forward to 1997, when I moved to California. I was struck by the diversity and thrilled by it at the same time. By 1999, I scored my dream job (though I didn’t know it at the time), working in a continuation school (kids who were truants or credit deficient, mostly) of 150 or so students. I was teaching a “career education” elective (totally unqualified for this and there was no existing curriculum). I gave an assignment where students had to research a career in which they were interested. There was a worksheet that went with it, and I was going over it in class. I used the ridiculous example “alien babysitter” so that I knew it would not be a career they would choose for their projects.As I went through the questions on the worksheet, answering them for this particular career, a question came up that asked “Is there a particular geographic location that this job would be found more than others?” I giggled a bit when I said, “Well, maybe New Mexico,” referring to Roswell and the “proof” that they had of alien spaceship crashes.Apparently I mumbled, because one of my Hispanic students heard me say “Maybe Mexico.” He also used this mishearing to decide that I was using “alien” not as creatures from outer space, but referring to immigrants. He went to a counselor about it, and she came to me and told me that a student had told her that I was making racist comments in my class. Took me TWO weeks before I figured out the communication breakdown.

Politicians at the time, and historians ever since have framed the issues dividing the north and south leading to the Civil War in moral/political terms, but really the economic issues over slavery were even greater. The ultimate issue was “who was going to settle the entire US west of the Mississippi river — were all those states to be free or slave? Clearly, the longer the South waited, the more the balance of power would shift against them. There was no reason for them to have seceded prior to 1860, because it was only in 1860 that the northern Republican party succeeded in electing a President hostile to slavery. Until then, slave owners and sympathizers (like James Buchanan) dominated US politics. But, after that point, delay would only work against them.To simplify, this is basically the U.S. in 1864:If you take a look at the map you can immediately see there is simply nowhere for slavery to go. Missouri was a slave state by legislative fiat (the Missouri compromise). But nobody could see a way to make slavery pay in New Mexico Territory or Arizona Territory. So, a westward expansion of slavery from Texas was blocked by climate (deserts with no appreciable water — blazing hot and dry) climate.In 1849 gold was discovered in CA and tens of thousands of Americans rushed westward as fast as they could travel to get in on the gold bonanza; so many that California was admitted as a state in September 1850. As a free state. The miners who swarmed westward were bitterly opposed to slavery because they refused to compete against slave wages. Lots of northern states had such restrictions. Illinois had a law that stated it was illegal for anybody to bring a person into Illinois who was 1/4 or more African ancestry. No slaves and no free-Negroes could legally emigrate to Illinois. So, it was impossible for Congress to impose a slave code over California given this intense hostility of the settlers. CA thus, became a free state and upset the “balance” of free and slave states that the South demanded to ensure the political safety of slavery within the union.Kansas was next in line for admission as a new state. However, despite all kinds of rigged elections, and the “LeCompton Fraud” — attempts by the Buchanan Administration to foist a slave Constitution over Kansas, all efforts failed because the settlers came mostly from the North in search of free land, and wanted no part of competition with slave owners for land or slave wages. They fought bitterly and resisted until they finally got a Free State constitution in 1862.So, another Free State was going to be added to the union, further outnumbering the South.The Southern pro-slavery leaders could see that the future of the entire country would be determined by the settlement of the west, but it was equally obvious that millions of immigrants from Europe would come — to the North. Few immigrants wanted to settle in the South because of the slave based economy. Nobody without ready access to lots of capital could buy land and slaves and start cotton planting. Poor whites in the South were little better of than slaves themselves, with little hope of advancement in an increasingly class stratified society of planter aristocracy (e.g. the “First Families of Virginia” and other states formed a kind of closed elite).There was free land and untapped mineral resources; thus incredible opportunity for economic advancement for poor people in the west, but clearly these states as they came in would be free states, and would violently resist any attempt to impose a slave code over them.Thus, the South would be more and more outnumbered.I’ve written extensively about their counter proposals - to fight a series of wars to seize more and more territory for slavery in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. This is a little taught or understood part of American history.Southern Leaders Expose Their Real Goals: the true history, Shorn of Myth.The South’s real purpose before and during the war, as revealed by their own statesmen, was to carve out an enormous slave empire that spanned the entire continent south of the Rio Grande to counter the expected expansion of the North across the continent of North America.Their dream state included Mexico and Panama as far south as Nicaragua and Honduras, as well as the sugar producing islands of the Caribbean — particularly Puerto Rico and Cuba, but also included the West Indies (as much of it as they could grab).“The Gulf of Mexico is a basin of water belonging to the United States. . . Cuba must be ours” in order to “increase the number of slave holding constituencies.” Sen. Jefferson Davis. See McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States Book 6) (p. 104). Oxford University Press. “Southern leaders certainly feared the North would open the entire West of the US to white settlers as soon as the Army could clear the Native American Tribes out of the way and force them either to flee further west or ultimately onto reservations and building on the transcontinental railroad was only delayed by Southern prewar resistance to permitting a northern route for the Railroad that would provide a funnel for easy access to the entire Rocky Mountains and western US to settlement. That would open vast new territories; all of which would become Free States — because the land-hungry white working class mechanics and farmers who would inevitably pour into them would never tolerate the presence of slavery in their states; because they did not wish to have to compete for wages or commodity prices against slave labor. Illinois where Lincoln was from for instance; prohibited slavery, but also prohibited free Negroes from settling in the state. The only way the South could keep up the balance of power was by adding more slave states — but the admission of CA as a free state and the pending admission of Kansas as another showed that this effort was doomed by Northern political resistance. The North wanted to reserve the entire Western territory for land-hungry free settlers.So, the South was utterly doomed to be more and more outnumbered by the Free Northern States as time passed. The election of Lincoln in 1860 proved the North’s determination to follow this policy of progressively encircling the South with more and more Free States in the belief that Slavery would wither in it’s geographically isolated and politically weaker position as more and more free states came into the Union. (Oregon in 1859; Kansas in 1861; WV 1963; NV 1864; NB 1867; CO 1876; ND, SD, MT, WA all in 1889; ID, WY in 1890 — all these territories were obviously going to become free states unless Congress or the S.Ct. forced slave codes on them prior to their becoming states. (That is what the pre-war fight over whether Kansas would be admitted with a free-state or slave-state constitution was all about).THIS Part is Almost Never Taught In American Schools but it is critically important to understand what Southern Politicians like Jefferson Davis were thinking and planning: The South’s plan to counter the expected growth in northern free states was to conquer Mexico and the Caribbean — opening all of Latin America to enslavement by Southern Whites and creating a gigantic slave empire that would dominate the entire continent.Sen. Stephen Douglas gave a speech in 1860 that openly declared the South’s agenda of foreign conquest for slavery. In an attempt to shore up support among Southern Democrats for his 1860 Presidential run Stephen Douglas explicitly embraced this agenda of attacking and conquering foreign countries to expand the number of slave states of America:“Our destiny has forced us to acquire Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California. We have now territory enough, but how long will it be enough? One hive is enough for one swarm of bees, but a new swarm comes next year and a new hive is wanted. Men may say we shall never want anything more of Mexico, but the time will come when we will be compelled to take more. Central America is half-way to California and on the direct road. The time will come when our destiny, our [slave] institutions, our safety will compel us to have it. . . " So it is with the island of Cuba.... It is a matter of no consequence whether we want it or not; we are compelled to take it, and we can't help it". Stephen Douglas, New Orleans Speech, Dec. 6, 1858. Nicolay, John George; Hay, John. Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02 (Kindle Locations 2319-2324).The South had a long history of trying to seize Cuba, demanding the seizure of more territory in Mexico and sending “filibustering expeditions” (basically Southern pirates) to Central America to conquer a slave empire there. But, the Northern representatives in Congress relentlessly blocked these efforts to seize more lands for slavery. Northern Antislavery newspapers denounced the “shame and dishonor” of this ‘Manifesto of the Brigands,’ this “highwayman’s plea” to “grasp, to rob, to murder, to grow rich on the spoils of provinces and toils of slaves.”Edward A. Pollard, a Virginia journalist and future participant-historian of the Confederacy. “The path of our destiny on this continent,” wrote Pollard, lies in . . . tropical America [where] we may see an empire as powerful and gorgeous as ever was pictured in our dreams of history . . . an empire . . . representing the noble peculiarities of Southern civilization . . . having control of the two dominant staples of the world’s commerce— cotton and sugar. . . . The destiny of Southern civilization is to be consummated in a glory brighter even than that of old. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States Book 6) (pp. 115-116).William Walker launched 4 separate expeditions to conquer Cuba, Mexico or parts of Latin America for slavery. He sailed from Mobile on his second expedition to Nicaragua. “But the navy caught up with him and carried his army back to the states. Southern newspapers erupted in denunciation of this naval “usurpation of power.”“Alexander Stephens [later Vice President of the Confederacy] urged the court-martial of the commodore who had detained Walker. Two dozen southern senators and congressmen echoed this sentiment in an extraordinary congressional debate. “A heavier blow was never struck at southern rights,” said a Tennessee representative, “than when Commodore Paulding perpetrated upon our people his high-handed outrage. . . ” “I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason— for the planting and spreading of slavery.” Senator Albert Gallatin Brown, MS. . . . “With Cuba and St. Domingo, we could control the productions of the tropics, and, with them, the commerce of the world, and with that, the power of the world.” Indeed, pronounced De Bow’s Review, “we have a destiny to perform, ‘a manifest destiny’ over all Mexico, over South America, over the West Indies. . . .” At the 1856 commercial convention a delegate from Texas proposed a toast that was drunk with enthusiasm: “To the Southern republic bounded on the north by the Mason and Dixon line and on the south by the Isthmus of Tehuantepec [i.e. all Mexico north of the Yucatan], including Cuba and all other lands on our southern shore. . . .” See Battle Cry of Freedom: (p. 104).Northern politicians however, resisted all these efforts, which would have involved the United States in a series of squalid and dangerous foreign wars; all to ensure the expansion of a gigantic slave empire from the Mason-Dixon Line to Nicaragua. Thus, the South found itself blocked north and south.Kansas voters refused to endorse a slave constitution for Kansas, the Republican Party emerged and started winning elections on a platform of resisting the expansion of slavery into the U.S. territories, and finally elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860 on an explicit policy of confining slavery to its existing territory and refusing to accept any further foreign expansion for the U.S that would involve adding more slave states to the Union.It was clear to Southern politicians that the North would never agree to permit further foreign wars to conquer new slave territory and would not force settlers in the territories to accept slavery when they were bitterly opposed to it (mostly because white workers did not want to be forced to compete with slave wages). In 1860, the South had a choice of accepting that slavery would be limited and would never be permitted to expand; or rebelling and forming their own slave republic that could continue the conquest and subjugation of Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America.Had they succeeded in their rebellion they would have been faced within a few years with the opportunity to seize more territory from Mexico and expand slavery further into the Caribbean. But, instead they failed and slavery was abolished throughout the South. So, instead Southern historians were faced with the prospect of either defending a lost war for slavery (squalid) or entirely re-inventing the War as a noble “lost cause” for States Rights — even though such a theory explodes instantly upon examination. Exactly what “rights of the states” were being disputed by the North? Property rights — in slave property. The right of Southerners to take their slave property into the western territories and even the North. “Our only demand” Jefferson Davis stated bluntly, “is that slave property be treated like any other.”

Nelson McKeeby gives a very good military analysis and mentions the Jefferson Davis strategy. I have already written extensively on Southern goals; as exposed by their own public statements before and during the war — which stand in stark contrast to the Myth of the Lost Cause propaganda they engaged in for 150 years thereafter to cover-up the truth.William Walker who spent years leading militia forces to try and seize Latin America to conquer new territory for slavery. He was executed after capture when his attempted coup failed in Honduras in 1860.The South’s real purpose before and during the war was to carve out an enormous slave empire that spanned the entire continent south of the Rio Grande. It included Mexico and Panama as far south as Nicaragua and Honduras, as well as the sugar producing islands of the Caribbean — particularly Puerto Rico and Cuba, but also included the West Indies (as much of it as they could grab).The Gettysburg campaign was intended to give Lee the opportunity to seize Washington D.C. and perhaps sack the capitol and capture Lincoln — which Jefferson Davis fondly imagined would lead to peace and independence — and the chance to conquer a slave empire from the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean.“The Gulf of Mexico is a basin of water belonging to the United States. . . Cuba must be ours” in order to “increase the number of slaveholding constituencies.” Sen. Jefferson Davis. See McPherson, James M.. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States Book 6) (p. 104). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.It was a desperate gamble but the South was starting to run out or resources by Summer 1863 and Grant was already besieging Vicksburg threatening to sever the entire Mississippi.They were certainly clear-sighted and understood their danger. The North would certainly open the entire West of the US to white settlers as soon as the Army could clear the Native American Tribes out of the way and force them either to flee further west or ultimately onto reservations and building on the transcontinental railroad was only delayed by Southern pre-war resistance to permitting a northern route for the Railroad that would provide a funnel for easy access to the entire Rocky Mountains and western US to settlement. That would open vast new territories; all of which would become Free States — because the land-hungry white working class mechanics and farmers who would inevitably pour into them would never tolerate the presence of slavery in their states; because they did not wish to have to compete for wages or commodity prices against slave labor. Illinois where Lincoln was from for instance; prohibited slavery, but also prohibited free Negroes from settling in the state.The only way the South could keep up the balance of power was by adding more slave states — but the admission of CA as a free state and the pending admission of Kansas as another showed that this effort was doomed by Northern political resistance. The North wanted to reserve the entire Western territory for land-hungry free settlers.So, the South was utterly doomed to be more and more outnumbered by the Free Northern States as time passed. The election of Lincoln in 1860 proved the North’s determination to follow this policy of progressively encircling the South with more and more Free States in the belief that Slavery would wither in it’s geographically isolated and politically weaker position as more and more free states came into the Union. (Oregon in 1859; Kansas in 1861; WV 1963; NV 1864; NB 1867; CO 1876; ND, SD, MT, WA all in 1889; ID, WY in 1890 — all these territories were obviously going to become free states unless Congress or the S.Ct. forced slave codes on them prior to their becoming states. (That is what the pre-war fight over whether Kansas would be admitted with a free-state or slave-state constitution was all about).THIS Part is Almost Never Taught In American Schools but it is critically important to understand what Southern Politicians like Jefferson Davis were thinking and planning:The South’s plan to counter the expected growth in northern free states was to conquer Mexico and the Caribbean — opening all of Latin America to enslavement by Southern Whites and creating a gigantic slave empire that would dominate the entire continent.Sen. Stephen Douglas gave a speech in 1860 that openly declared the South’s agenda of foreign conquest for slavery. In an attempt to shore up support among Southern Democrats for his 1860 Presidential run Stephen Douglas explicitly embraced this agenda of attacking and conquering foreign countries to expand the number of slave states of America:“Our destiny has forced us to acquire Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California. We have now territory enough, but how long will it be enough? One hive is enough for one swarm of bees, but a new swarm comes next year and a new hive is wanted. Men may say we shall never want anything more of Mexico, but the time will come when we will be compelled to take more. Central America is half-way to California and on the direct road. The time will come when our destiny, our [slave] institutions, our safety will compel us to have it. . . " So it is with the island of Cuba.... It is a matter of no consequence whether we want it or not; we are compelled to take it, and we can't help it". Stephen Douglas, New Orleans Speech, Dec. 6, 1858. Nicolay, John George; Hay, John. Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02 (Kindle Locations 2319-2324).The South had a long history of trying to seize Cuba, demanding the seizure of more territory in Mexico and sending “filibustering expeditions” (basically Southern pirates) to Central America to conquer a slave empire there.But, the Northern representatives in Congress relentlessly blocked these efforts to seize more lands for slavery. Northern Antislavery newspapers denounced the “shame and dishonor” of this ‘Manifesto of the Brigands,’ this “highwayman’s plea” to “grasp, to rob, to murder, to grow rich on the spoils of provinces and toils of slaves.”Edward A. Pollard, a Virginia journalist and future participant-historian of the Confederacy. “The path of our destiny on this continent,” wrote Pollard, lies in . . . tropical America [where] we may see an empire as powerful and gorgeous as ever was pictured in our dreams of history . . . an empire . . . representing the noble peculiarities of Southern civilization . . . having control of the two dominant staples of the world’s commerce— cotton and sugar. . . . The destiny of Southern civilization is to be consummated in a glory brighter even than that of old. McPherson, James M.. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States Book 6) (pp. 115-116). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.William Walker launched 4 separate expeditions to conquer Cuba, Mexico or parts of Latin America for slavery. He sailed from Mobile on his second expedition to Nicaragua. “But the navy caught up with him and carried his army back to the states. Southern newspapers erupted in denunciation of this naval “usurpation of power.” Alexander Stephens [later Vice President of the Confederacy] urged the court-martial of the commodore who had detained Walker. Two dozen southern senators and congressmen echoed this sentiment in an extraordinary congressional debate. “A heavier blow was never struck at southern rights,” said a Tennessee representative, “than when Commodore Paulding perpetrated upon our people his high-handed outrage. . . ”“I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason— for the planting and spreading of slavery.” Senator Albert Gallatin Brown, MS. . . . “With Cuba and St. Domingo, we could control the productions of the tropics, and, with them, the commerce of the world, and with that, the power of the world.” Indeed, pronounced De Bow’s Review, “we have a destiny to perform, ‘a manifest destiny’ over all Mexico, over South America, over the West Indies. . . .” At the 1856 commercial convention a delegate from Texas proposed a toast that was drunk with enthusiasm: “To the Southern republic bounded on the north by the Mason and Dixon line and on the south by the Isthmus of Tehuantepec [i.e. all Mexico north of the Yucatan], including Cuba and all other lands on our southern shore. . . .” See McPherson, James M.. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States Book 6) (p. 104). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.Northern politicians however, resisted all these efforts, which would have involved the United States in a series of squalid and dangerous foreign wars; all to ensure the expansion of a gigantic slave empire from the Mason-Dixon Line to Nicaragua. Thus, the South found itself blocked north and south. Kansas voters refused to endorse a slave constitution for Kansas, the Republican Party emerged and started winning elections on a platform of resisting the expansion of slavery into the U.S. territories, and finally elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860 on an explicit policy of confining slavery to its existing territory and refusing to accept any further foreign expansion for the U.S that would involve adding more slave states to the Union. It was clear to Southern politicians that the North would never agree to permit further foreign wars to conquer new slave territory and would not force settlers in the territories to accept slavery when they were bitterly opposed to it (mostly because white workers did not want to be forced to compete with slave wages). In 1860, the South had a choice of accepting that slavery would be limited and would never be permitted to expand; or rebelling and forming their own slave republic that could continue the conquest and subjugation of Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America. Had they succeeded in their rebellion they would have been faced within a few years with the opportunity to seize more territory from Mexico and expand slavery further into the Caribbean. But, instead they failed and slavery was abolished throughout the South. So, instead Southern historians were faced with the prospect of either defending a lost war for slavery (squalid) or entirely re-inventing the War as a noble “lost cause” for States Rights — even though such a theory explodes instantly upon examination. Exactly what “rights of the states” were being disputed by the North? Property rights — in slave property. The right of Southerners to take their slave property into the western territories and even the North.“Our only demand” Jefferson Davis stated bluntly, “is that slave property be treated like any other.” This is the “mere property” theory of slavery which held that slaves being merely a species of property just like any other property, they should have no more rights than any other kind of property. I.e. none whatever. “They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice, Dread Scott Case, Supreme Court, March 1857