Part I, "Our Manifest Destiny bids fair for fulfillment": An historical overview of Vancouver Barracks, 1846-1898, with suggestions for further research

Sinclair, Donna

The purpose of this document is: (1) to provide a social history overview of Vancouver Barracks for National Park Service interpreters; (2) to provide directions for further research, both by NPS Interpretive staff and professional historians and their graduate students; (3) to make the history of Vancouver Barracks accessible to the general reader. Two questions provided the research foundation: (1) What were the relationships between Vancouver Barracks and the region, nation, and world? (2) What were the relationships between the barracks and the nearby community? As a social history, questions of race, class, and gender underscored the inquiry. This document begins with an overview of the history of Vancouver Barracks in Part One, supplying a brief contextual summary of Euro-American discovery, exploration of the lower Columbia River, and the period of Hudson’s Bay Company hegemony. There are four chronological sections. Section I examines the arrival of the first troops to Vancouver and the development of the post. The focus is on the transitional period, 1849-1860, from Hudson’s Bay occupation to the firm establishment of an American presence. Section II is an overview of an era of international, regional, and national conflict, from the exit of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1860 and the Pig War in the San Juan Islands to the end of the Civil War. Section III outlines the major conflicts with native people in the region during the 1870s, as both the city of Vancouver and the regional American claim became more securely established. Section IV describes Washington’s entry into statehood and the barracks’ 1898 entry into the world military theatre. Part Two is a vignette titled “Cultural Transitions: Women and the Army in the Northwest, 1849-1865.” Part Three is a set of seven appendices, each designed to provide information and to stimulate further research.