Capture the Sunset — Robert M. Johnson

Since he first met John Charles Fremont, the Mountain Man has been going from one adventure to another. They have logged thousands of miles together as they pushed the boundaries of the American wilderness further west. Their destiny has now crossed that of the ultimate expansionist politician, President James Polk. After a grueling campaign centered around expanding America's boundaries to the Pacific Ocean, Polk's victory meant a mandate for expansion. When Jeremiah Warner heard the call by his President, he dedicated himself body and soul to the cause of western expansion. The President had said, “Now you have seen the sunrise over the Atlantic, I want you to conquer California and Capture for America, the Sunset it was destined to have over the Pacific Ocean!” In the year 1803, President Thomas Jefferson of the United Colonies signed the declaration that in historical retrospect appears now as important as the earlier declaration that formed the country of America. The Louisiana Purchase as it was called, opened the land west of the Mississippi to commerce and to settlement, extending the American Colonies all the way to the Western Ocean and the Oregon territory. California to the south was still the enticing object of political expansionists in Washington, hoping to fulfill the dream of Jefferson of one nation from ocean to ocean. Many men pioneered this new territory as trappers and scouts, as soldiers and explorers. The Mountain Man series presents the fictional narrative of this exciting period between 1803 and 1846 as the territories to the West were explored for settlement. The main protagonist of this series, a fictional character named Jeremiah Warner, is inspired from the lives of real men who took up the challenge of the wilderness and of the Rocky Mountains. These were men who dealt with the hardships of the trail and the struggles with Native Americans, wild animals, and the fierce climate of the high mountains. They were real-life men like Jim Bridger, Joe Walker, Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith and Jeremiah Johnston. In the previous two volumes, western expansion has been front and center with the mapping of the Oregon Trail. This northern route duplicated what had already been done to the south along what came to be known as the Santa Fe Trail. But something much more grandiose was going on in the Nation's Capital, where political forces were gaining ground to complete this outreach and annex the far western territories, mainly California. In this volume, the thirteenth in the Mountain Man Series, the campaign is on to take the westernmost territory from Mexico. The 19th century history of the American Nation is filled with surprising events. Perhaps none more surprising than the acquisition of the western territories from Mexico. What was later called the War with Mexico was a patchwork of conflicts ranging from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Northwest Territory on the southern edge of Oregon. In this thirteenth volume of the Mountain Man Series, Jeremiah Warner receives an informal mandate from the President himself, James Polk. After campaigning on the theme of extending the American Nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, Polk was not forced to deliver on his campaign promise. In the story as told here, President Polk says to the Mountain Man, “Capture the Sunset for me, Jeremiah!” In saying this the chief executive sets in motion the northern movement of the military invasion of California, then a Mexican Province. In the year 1846, few Americans could claim to have made even a journey to the west coast of the continent, over two thousand miles from Washington City. What was known, was that the Mexicans were terrible administrators of these lands that they claimed to own. At a time when news from the far west took months to get, this campaign was a march into darkness for a fledgling nation struggling to find consensus on the most basic political matters.