States military during the Mexican–American War. In 1848, Mexico ceded California to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. A home of his in California, the Hastings Adobe, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Later years After serving as a captain in the California Battalion during the Mexican War, Hastings again took up the practice of law. He married Charlotte Toler in 1848 and was a delegate to the 1849 California Constitutional Convention. In the late 1850s he moved his family to Yuma, Arizona, where he served as postmaster and as a territorial judge. During the Civil War, Hastings sided with the South. In 1864, he travelled to Richmond, Virginia, where he met with Confederate President Jefferson Davis to gain his support for a plan to separate California from the Union and unite it with the Confederacy. Upon meeting him, President Davis promoted Hastings to the rank of Major in the Confederate States Army, and asked him to assemble a military unit in Arizona, with the aim of defending California. However, the so-called Hastings Plot came to little, as the war ended early the following year. After the end of the war, many disgruntled former Confederates left the United States to establish colonies in Brazil. Hastings visited the region, made arrangements with the Brazilian government, and wrote The Emigrant's Guide to Brazil (1867) to attract potential colonists. He died at St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands in 1870, possibly of yellow fever, while conducting a shipload of settlers to his colony at Santarém. References Hastings, Lansford W. The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California. Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, 1994. (Facsimile of the 1845 ed.) Bagley, Will. "Lansford Warren Hastings: Scoundrel or Visionary?" Overland Journal 12:1 (Spring 1994): 12-26. Cumming, John. "Lansford Hastings' Michigan Connection." Overland Journal 16:3 (Fall 1998): 17-28. Andrews, Thomas Franklin. The Controversial Career of Lansford W. Hastings: Pioneer California Promoter and Emigrant Guide. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1970. Dawsey, Cyrus B. and James M. Dawsey, eds. The Confederados: Old South Emigrants in Brazil. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1995. External links Roy Tea's Hastings Cutoff Page Hastings Cutoff Trail Guides by Roy D. Tea The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California from American Studies at the University of Virginia. Descendants of Thomas Hastings website Descendants of Thomas Hastings on Facebook "Hastings Country" website The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California by