The Career of Peter Hardeman Burnett Calfiornia's First Governor
Graduation Date
Summer 1950
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Degree Granting Institution
Catholic University of America
Program Name
Humanities
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to do a measure of justice to a pioneer who labored on the frontiers of Missouri, Oregon, and California. It Is an attempt to indicate the place of Peter Hardeman Burnett In the westward movement and to reveal the true pioneer spirit that he manifested throughout his long life. Peter Burnett, the son of a pioneer, stands unique In that he was a participating witness in the succeeding eras of westward migration. This bit of personal history may interest many who have always considered the migration movement of the l840’s and the subsequent settlement of Oregon and California as a phase of "Manifest Destiny" but who have, perhaps, disassociated it from the individuals who shared in it. Much is known of the mass migration, but little of the individual man who trekked across the prairie wilderness, forded the rivers, and hewed his way over forest-covered mountains to find a new home on the sunset shores of the Pacific. Such an individual was Burnett, a typical American pioneer in his constant succession of removals from Tennessee to Missouri, from Missouri to Oregon, and then to California in the days of the Argonauts.