"As you all know we are all thinking about embracing this Manifest Destiny movement that has occurred. O'Sullivan seems to believe that this movement is only for the rich, white men of America but we believe that anyone that helped build this country should have claim to some land in the West. Since the people of Virginia, that are not interested in being friends with the Native Americans like we are, are against our life style we've decided to relocate in hopes of changing our American's minds about the Native Americans. They are extremely nice and helpful people who have done nothing but help us make our lives better since we've met them. They are such free people and their culture has rubbed off on us as a colony. But instead of just picking everything up and moving, we the selected few have gone to check it out first and we've sent a letter back to you all to let you know how it's going. So far we're in the state of Louisiana and all we've done so far is help some lone pioneers clear out land and build houses and barns so we could start communities (pg 324). We've had a bit of luck with changing some views of the Native Americans and those people have agreed to consider joining our colony. They've even suggested that we should all move out here and start our own cotton farm seeing as how a man by the name of Eli Whitney has created the cotton gin which makes harvesting cotton a lot easier (pg 326). This may not be such a bad idea, our colony is growing and we would all be able to pitch in without any outside labor (no slaves). You've probably heard of the Lowell mills up North but since we've been here we've learned that they rely mostly on women and children for labor (pg 332). We've also run into a lot of immigrants from places like Ireland, England, and Germany (pg 334) which brings us to the atrocious treatment of the Asians. We've been informed that in 1798 The Alien Act was issued (pg 335) which helps nativist push out ANOTHER group of people without getting to know them. We as a colony should embrace everyone the US is shunning because different cultures have different advantages that may not know of right away. The last thing we've learned is that entrepreneurship in on the rise which means we as a colony we can start a business if we decide to permanently relocate here (pg 336). Today if we started a business we'd be better protected but the law so that would be something to think about.
Sincerely,
Anthony Thomas"
