Squatter Politics and the Civil War: Bancroft Roundtable, May 19

Squatter Politics - Bancroft Roundtable 5/19/16

Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesman, and the Rupture of American Democracy, 1830-1860 will be the topic of the next Bancroft Roundtable on May 19th at noon in The Faculty Club.

John Suval, Gunther Barth Fellow at The Bancroft Library and doctoral candidate, History, University of Wisconsin–Madison will present.

Squatters were a persistent frontier presence from the earliest days of the United States, yet these illegal settlers emerged as political and cultural lightning rods in the Jacksonian and antebellum periods. Why?

This talk explores how squatters in the expanding West came to occupy a central place in U.S. political culture, territorial conquests, and conflicts leading up to the Civil War. California was a particularly violent and disruptive proving ground of squatter politics, and a primary focus of the discussion.

Date: May 19, 2016

Time: Noon

Where: Lewis-Latimer Room, The Faculty Club

Free and open to the public.


Post contributed by Kathryn M. Neal, Associate University Archivist
and
Crystal Miles, Public Services Assistant, The Bancroft Library