Was American Expansion Abroad Justified

Era of U.Southward. Continental Expansion

The history of Hispanic representation in Congress is entwined with that of U.S. continental expansion in the 19th century.⁷ In the decades of rapid westward advance and settlement between the signing of the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 and the announcement of the Castilian-American War in 1898, the House nearly doubled in size.⁸

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Westward Expansion

/tiles/non-collection/p/part1_04_madison_james_hc.xml Collection of the U.S. Firm of Representatives
Most this object Considered the Male parent of the The states Constitution, James Madison of Virginia served iv terms in the Firm (1789–1797). Like Thomas Jefferson, Madison saw the strategic value of securing the Usa from foreign encroachment by acquiring East and West Florida.

President Thomas Jefferson spearheaded west expansion when the United States acquired the Louisiana territory from France in 1803 and sponsored Lewis and Clark's expedition (1805–1807). Jefferson's foreign policy goal to expand U.Due south. territory west was intended to help the U.S. have greater freedom in dealing with foreign powers on the Due north American continent and to consolidate the ability of the young democracy. It required developing armed services strength and practicing shrewd diplomacy.⁹ The policies Jefferson implemented, specially regarding U.Due south. expansion in the modern Gulf Declension region, persisted through two more presidential administrations.

After securing the Louisiana territory, Jefferson and his successors focused on acquiring Spanish Florida—which encompassed all of modern-mean solar day Florida, besides as a strip running forth the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi River. New possibilities for commerce and ports along the Gulf Coast were ane rationale. National security was another: Florida offered strategic value in securing Louisiana, the Mississippi Territory, and Georgia. President James Madison employed his predecessor's tactics. In Due west Florida—which extended from Baton Rouge, on the east banking concern of the Mississippi River in modernistic-day Louisiana, to Pensacola, in the panhandle of modernistic-twenty-four hours Florida—U.South. settlers became the majority population from 1805 to 1810. The settlers resisted weakened Spanish rule and advocated for American sovereignty. In 1804 Congress passed the Mobile Act, which extended U.Due south. federal revenue laws to all territories ceded by France, including Westward Florida. The act also granted the President "discretionary authorisation" to take possession of the Mobile area.¹⁰ In 1811 Madison asserted U.S. jurisdiction over the area and had incorporated Westward Florida into Louisiana. The United States annexed Mobile during the State of war of 1812.

Adams-Onís Treaty (Transcontinental Treaty)

Spain claimed the lands that constitute present-day Florida in improver to the country stretching from its panhandle westward, across the southern portions of modern-day Alabama and Mississippi to the eastern banks of the Mississippi River. General Andrew Jackson'due south invasion of Florida during the First Seminole War (1817–1818) spurred the Spanish government—fearing the loss of its claim to the territory—to the negotiating table. Benefiting from favorable geopolitical circumstances, Secretary of Land John Quincy Adams entered into negotiations with Spanish diplomat Don Luis de Onís in 1819. In return for the United states of america' renouncing its tenuous claims to Texas and paying $5 one thousand thousand for U.S. citizens' claims against Spain, Adams secured all of Spanish Florida, finalizing the Louisiana Purchase. The treaty also set a new boundary running from the mouth of the Sabine River on the Gulf Coast (on the eastern border of modern-day Texas) northwestward along portions of the Sabine, Red, and Arkansas Rivers, then west on the 42nd parallel to the Oregon coast. It was the beginning boundary to traverse the U.South. continent.

/tiles/non-collection/p/part1_05_adams_john_quincy_hc.xml Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives
About this object Secretarial assistant of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, the lead negotiator of the Adams-Onís Treaty, enjoyed a prominent political career as a foreign government minister, U.Southward. Senator, and President before serving in the U.S. Business firm of Representatives for nine terms (1831–1848).

The Adams-Onís Treaty as well ushered in Congress's first Fellow member of Hispanic descent; Joseph Marion Hernández served as Florida'due south first Territorial Delegate during the 17th Congress (1821–1823).¹¹ Pursuing an agenda that was typical for a Territorial Delegate, Hernández sought to secure infrastructure improvements that would benefit economic growth and bolster political arguments for Florida'south admission into the Matrimony equally a land. A wealthy planter and military figure who had fought for Spanish interests in the Patriot War and the Kickoff Seminole State of war, Hernández helped bridge the transition from Spanish rule to American governance. It would be xxx years after Hernández'southward departure from the House in March 1823 until the next Hispanic Fellow member arrived in Congress. Like many Territorial Delegates in the 19th century, Hernández returned home to a prominent career in local politics and business; he served in the legislature and led a militia in the 2d Seminole War in the 1830s earlier making an unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat when Florida became a state in 1845.

Though the Adams-Onís agreement resolved one friction indicate, it created others. Critics charged that President James Monroe and Secretary of State Adams yielded legitimate claims to Texas, fueling subsequently demands for Texas' "re-annexation," particularly by pro-slavery advocates in the 1830s. Moreover, the Adams-Onís Treaty validated Mexican ownership of lands that would go targets for U.S. expansion during the State of war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848.

Manifest Destiny

/tiles/non-collection/p/part1_06_manifest_destiny_drawing_lc.xml Image courtesy of the Library of Congress Titled American Progress. West the course of destiny. Westward ho!, this impress memorializes the movement of U.S. settlers across the continental United States during the 1840s and 1850s.

Powerfully articulated in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, Adams'due south coolheaded geopolitical calculations provided after generations of U.S. officials with a road map for the advancement of American dominion in the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, Americans in the 1830s and 1840s justified their march beyond the continent under the rubric of "Manifest Destiny." Coined past a New York newspaper, the term described the popular desire for geographic expansion and, equally such, was more than a zeitgeist than an official foreign policy strategy in antebellum America.¹² Though derived from complex circumstances, Manifest Destiny was amenable to unlike political agendas and worldviews, and thus its entreatment cutting across regional, party, and class lines.¹³ At the laying of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument on July 4, 1848, Speaker of the Business firm Robert Winthrop captured the mood, employing a metaphor that evoked the era's ultimate symbol of progress: "The great American congenital locomotive 'Liberty' however holds it grade, unimpeded and unimpaired; gathering strength equally it goes," he said. "Nor can we fail to observe that men are everywhere beginning to examine the model of this mighty engine, and that not a few have already begun to re-create its structure and to imitate its machinery.… The whole civilized world resounds with American opinions and American principles," he added. "Every vale is song with them. Every mountain has establish a tongue for them."¹⁴

In the eyes of many observers in that location was little divergence between federal policy and popular will. It was America's obligation, one pundit wrote in 1845, "to overspread and to possess the whole continent which providence has given us for the development of the bully experiment of liberty and federated self authorities."^xv Such seemingly inevitable growth justified America'due south rapid acquisition of Western lands and amplified the nationalist sentiments of U.Due south. settlers in Texas and the Pacific Northwest in the 1840s.¹⁶

However, the concept of expansion veiled multiple motives and was advocated by Northerners and Southerners for unlike reasons. While many Americans supported information technology, such growth awakened sectional debates over slavery. The possibility of new Western lands forced the federal government to confront questions that had been somewhat mollified since the Missouri Compromise of 1820: Would new states allow slavery or oppose information technology? How would Congress maintain its balance of exclusive interests? Expansionists, moreover, did not accost the potential effects of rapid development on African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican citizens living in contested territories.¹⁷

Texas Revolution and Annexation

The boundaries that were ratified in the Adams-Onís Treaty, yielding Texas to New Spain, were swiftly altered in 1821 when Mexico replaced Spain as the sovereign, and U.Due south. settlers apace began to cross into E Texas.¹⁸ Throughout the 1820s, Anglos streamed into the Mexican province, outnumbering Hispanic Texans by 2 to one within a decade. The Mexican regime sought to prohibit the slave merchandise, and in 1830 the Mexican Congress passed a law that suspended U.S. immigration into Texas.

/tiles/not-drove/p/part1_07_santa_anna_lc.xml Image courtesy of the Library of Congress In this political drawing, Texas Army Commander-in-Primary Sam Houston (left) accepts the surrender of Full general Antonio López de Santa Anna. After achieving independence, Texas existed every bit an independent republic until its access equally a U.Due south. land in 1845.

In 1834, the year after he assumed power, General Antonio López de Santa Anna dissolved the Mexican Congress and set up a dictatorship. Revolts erupted in several Mexican states. After the insurrection spread to Texas in June 1835 (largely because of issues related to the quartering of Mexican soldiers and considering of the central regime'southward collection of customs duties), a group of rebels in Anáhuac seized a Mexican garrison. Anglos Stephen Austin, William Travis, and Sam Houston became leading insurrectionaries. In March 1836, even as the Republic of Texas declared its independence, the Mexican Army nether General Santa Anna massacred Texan forces at the Alamo in modern day San Antonio and at Goliad, 100 miles to the southeast.¹⁹ But under Sam Houston's control, the Ground forces of Texas repelled Santa Anna's divided forces at the Battle of San Jacinto near modern-twenty-four hour period Houston, killing roughly half of them and capturing nearly all the rest, including Santa Anna himself. Under the threat of decease, Santa Anna ordered his forces to pull out of Texas and across the Rio Grande River, in upshot recognizing Texan independence.^xx

/tiles/non-collection/p/part1_08_houston_sam_lc.xml Epitome courtesy of the Library of Congress Sam Houston was a prominent war veteran and politician before moving to Texas in 1835. Houston served in the Texas congress and equally its first president earlier his election to the U.S. Senate in 1846.

During the next decade, the population in Texas increased from approximately 30,000 to 50,000 in 1835 to a full of approximately 125,000 to 140,000 in 1845. Every bit members of a distinct minority who were suspected of disloyalty by Anglo settlers, Hispanic Texans were chop-chop excluded from the political procedure.²¹

With the population nail Texas' beginning president, Sam Houston, and subsequent leaders sought to bring together the Usa. The Andrew Jackson administration (1829–1837) and the Martin Van Buren administration (1837–1841) demurred despite their unneutrality, fearing that annexation would provoke all-out war with Mexico—inviting a political backfire driven by critics who believed the button for Texas was linked to the extension of slavery in the Southwest.²²

But the John Tyler assistants (1841–1845) was willing to proceed with annexation. Secretary of State Abel Upshur and his successor, John C.Calhoun, completed the negotiations, which were signed on April 12, 1844, and which fabricated Texas eligible for access every bit a U.S. territory, and perhaps afterwards as one or more states. Additionally, the U.S. government assumed $x million in Texan debt in exchange for public lands. The boundaries with Mexico were left unresolved.²³ On June 8, 1844, with public opinion stirred by antislavery activists after Senator Benjamin Tappan of Ohio leaked the provisions of the hugger-mugger treaty to the press, the Senate rejected it with a vote of 35 to 16. But afterwards the fall 1844 elections, in which James K. Polk triumphed, President Tyler pushed the treaty (H.J. Res. 46) through Congress. Information technology passed the Democratic-controlled House 120 to 98 and the Senate 24 to 21. Tyler signed the treaty into law on March 1, 1845 (5 Stat. 797–798), three days earlier the end of his term. In the cease, Texas was admitted as a land on Dec 29, 1845, with the proviso that it could be divided into as many every bit five states—a prospect that outraged and horrified abolitionist members of the Whig Political party.²⁴

War with Mexico and the Southwest

/tiles/non-drove/p/part1_09_tx_annexation_roll_call_na.xml Original gyre phone call vote on ratification of treaty to annex Texas; image courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration On June 8, 1844, the U.S. Senate refused to corroborate the ratification of a treaty annexing Texas to the Usa. Shortly before he left office, President John Tyler, with the support of President-elect James M. Polk, maneuvered a joint resolution through both houses of Congress and signed the annexation treaty into police on March i, 1845.

James K. Polk prepare an ambitious course when he assumed the presidency on March 4, 1845.²⁵ A strict Jacksonian, Polk achieved what later historians have identified as iii of four primary goals during the commencement session of the 29th Congress (1845–1847).²⁶ With the help of Autonomous majorities in the House and the Senate, President Polk had lowered the tariff; he had created an independent treasury; and by affairs he had acquired the Oregon Territory from England. The acquisition of California from United mexican states was all that remained of his original calendar. But unlike the acquisition of Oregon, taking possession of such coveted lands required an all-out state of war.²⁷

Less than two years into Polk'south presidency, many suspected but few knew most his one thousand designs for California. Revealing little, Polk sent diplomats to Mexico, pressuring the Mexican government not to interfere with the annexation of Texas. Moreover, Polk claimed that Mexico owed Americans living in Texas millions of dollars for seized and lost property. Mexican officials resisted, banishing Polk's diplomatic envoy. One historian notes, "Given the anti-American mood of their people, Mexican diplomats understood that any compromise with the United states at this time was tantamount to political suicide." An anxious Polk ordered U.South. troops to encamp just north of the Rio Grande River in an expanse that was claimed by both Mexico and the United States. After blockading the river and training its cannon on a nearby town, the U.S. military ignored Mexican requests to stand downwards. On April 25, 1846, a skirmish between Mexican and U.Due south. troops ignited hostilities. Mexican officials blamed the Us, while Polk blamed United mexican states when he learned of the fighting two weeks later.²⁸

/tiles/non-collection/p/part1_10_polk_james_lc.xml Epitome courtesy of the Library of Congress The starting time Speaker of the House to go President of the United States, James K. Polk was an Andrew Jackson protégé who apace rose through the ranks of Tennessee politics. During Polk'southward term as President (1845–1849), the United States, through state of war and diplomacy, secured much of the American Southwest and long coveted Pacific Sea ports along the West Declension.

Polk promptly appealed to Congress for "vigorous & prompt measure[s] to enable the Executive to prosecute the War."²⁹ Polk asked for 50,000 volunteers because "past the act of the Democracy of Mexico, a state of war exists between that Government and the United states of america."³⁰ The pecker (H.R. 145) met with little open resistance in the Firm and passed 174 to 14, with only Whigs opposed. Antislavery Whigs, like John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts and Joshua Giddings of Ohio, viewed the war with Mexico as proof that Southern interests intended to expand slavery westward.³¹Garrett Davis, a moderate Kentucky Whig, was the only one on the floor that day who voiced whatever opposition to the bill: "It is our own President who began this war," Davis declared. "He has been carrying it on for months in a series of acts. Congress, which is vested exclusively by the Constitution with war-making power, he has not designed to consult, much less to inquire it for any authority."³² Davis, despite his reservations, voted for the provision of troops and funding.

/tiles/non-collection/p/part1_11_polk_cartoon_lc.xml Prototype courtesy of the Library of Congress In this 1846 cartoon, President James 1000. Polk (center left) challenges Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts (eye correct) to a fight considering of Webster'south public criticisms of Polk's Texas policies. Supporters and critics of the war stand up behind their respective advocates.

Horrified that the Firm had passed the bill in under two hours, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri told Polk that "19th Century state of war should not be alleged without full word and much more consideration."³³ Others in the Senate bristled at Polk's demands. "War could not be made with Mexico," Senator John Crittenden reminded the body, "without touching the interests and exciting the jealousies of all nations trading with us." Like the Business firm, the Senate eventually passed the bill with an overwhelming majority, forty to 2.³⁴ Polk signed information technology into constabulary (9 Stat. 9–x) the following day, May 13, 1846.

The war's nominal popularity in Congress disguised many people's reservations. Andrew Jackson Donelson, the former President'south nephew, advised Polk to resolve the trouble chop-chop. "Zippo tin can be gained by a state of war with Mexico," he said. "We are not gear up for another Annexation question, and the Mexicans are not fit for incorporation into our Spousal relationship."³⁵ In the House, Giddings finally lambasted the war. It would, he noted, be long, expensive, and disgraceful, and given its "connection with slavery," he said, it threatened the "harmony and perpetuity of the Wedlock."³⁶

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

/tiles/non-collection/p/part1_12_pueblo_indians_lc.xml Prototype courtesy of the Library of Congress A Zia Pueblo family was photographed in the New Mexico Territory in 1885.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed by chief negotiator Nicholas P. Trist on February 2, 1848, and approved past the U.South. Senate on March 10, 1848, concluded the war, opened a dramatically different chapter in U.S. relations with Mexico, and near completed America's continental empire.³⁷ The war, even so, was not without toll; roughly 12,500 U.Due south. troops died (most from illness), and the federal government spent well-nigh $100 million.³⁸ Moreover, potent Mexican resistance on the battlefield and at the negotiating table made the conflict final longer than the Polk administration anticipated. Pop support waned equally the conflict continued, contributing to a change in control; the House flipped to a new Whig majority in the 1846 elections.³⁹ Moreover, "Mr. Polk'south State of war" brought the country closer to fratricidal conflict: Would the new territories permit or outlaw slavery?

Even counting the human, fiscal, and political costs of the state of war, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo represented an American bonanza purchased at a discount. For the equivalent of nearly one-third of the landmass of the modern continental United states, American officials paid $15 meg to Mexico and assumed $three.25 one thousand thousand in war claims by U.S. citizens.⁴⁰ In one fell dive, America gained control of 530,000 square miles. From Mexico's vantage point, the United States gained over 900,000 square miles, including disputed Texas land claims Mexico had long considered illegitimate. The The states obtained nigh all of modern-day New Mexico and Arizona (whose southern portions were later acquired in the 1853 Gadsden Purchase); all of Nevada, Utah, and California, with its coveted deep water ports on the Pacific Ocean; and portions of present-day Colorado and Wyoming.⁴¹ The state of war also engendered resentment among Mexicans and other Latin Americans, leaving many wary of U.S. motives.⁴²

/tiles/non-collection/p/part1_13_guadalupe_hidalgo_map_na.xml E. Gilman, Map of the United States Including Western Territories, map (Philadelphia: P.Due south. Duval's Steam Lith. Press, 1848); from National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.Due south. House of Representatives, RG 233 This 1848 map outlines the territories acquired by the Usa in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The borders of California, New United mexican states, and Texas were later formalized as part of the Compromise of 1850.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also began to accost practical issues that arose from the fact that roughly xc,000 Mexican citizens, and substantially more American Indians of various tribes, were living in the newly caused lands, most of them in what became modernistic-day New Mexico.⁴³ The treaty independent provisions pertaining to Mexican citizens—a grouping that included the nonitinerant Pueblo Indians—which guaranteed their U.S. citizenship and holding rights, and permitted ethnic peoples to retain or renounce their Mexican citizenship in favor of U.S. citizenship. The treaty also extended blanket U.Southward. citizenship to any individual who had not made a declaration within ane year of its ratification.

Just these guarantees were qualified. For example, Pueblos, although they were Mexican citizens, were not accorded total civil and political rights. Instead, they were treated like the members of other Indian tribes in U.S. territory, who would eventually be moved to reservations and would not participate in territorial politics. For decades, congressional debates well-nigh New Mexican statehood were dominated past the question of whether nuevomexicanos were white enough to achieve self-authorities, leading many Hispano politicians to accentuate their Castilian ancestry and to differentiate themselves from their Mexican and American Indian constituents.⁴⁴

The Senate's consideration of the treaty amplified the calls of Manifest Destiny.⁴⁵ Thomas Ritchie, editor of the pro-Polk Washington Daily Union, wrote, "What we want to obtain from United mexican states is more of territory and less of population, merely we have no objection to the acquisition of a few of her people along with the soil which we get." Senator Daniel S. Dickinson of New York explained that a "majority" of nuevomexicanos were members of "blighted aboriginal races" who could "neither uphold government or be restrained by it" and therefore must "perish under, if they do not recede before, the influences of civilization."⁴⁶ Given prevailing racial prejudices and lingering concerns about the Catholicism of the Mexicans in the Southwest, the promises of citizenship as outlined by the treaty remained for decades largely unresolved, specially in territories such every bit New United mexican states and Arizona.

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Was American Expansion Abroad Justified,

Source: https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/HAIC/Historical-Essays/Continental-Expansion/Era-of-U-S--Continental-Expansion/

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