Decisive Battles of America

by Unknown

The idea of territorial solidarity among the English colonies was disturbed by the addition of Nova Scotia and Quebec on the north, and East and West Florida on the south. Intercolonial jealousy was heightened in 1774 by the Quebec act, under which the almost unpeopled region north of the Ohio River was added to the French-speaking province. When the Revolution broke out in 1775, that jealousy was reflected in the refusal of Quebec and Nova Scotia and the distant Floridas to join in it. Almost the first campaign of the war, however, showed the purpose of territorial enlargement, for in 1775 the Arnold-Montgomery expedition to Canada vainly attempted to persuade the Frenchmen by force to enter the union. Two years later George Rogers Clark lopped off the southern half of the British western country. The Southwest, into which settlers had begun to penetrate in 1769, was, during the Revolution, laid hold of by the adventurous frontiersman; and in 1782 the negotiators of Paris thought best to leave that, as well as the whole Northwest, in the hands of the new United States.[6]

The result of the Revolutionary War was the entrance into the American continent of a third territorial power, the United States, which was divided into two nearly equal portions: between the sea and the mountains lay the original thirteen states; between the mountains and the Mississippi was an area destined to be organized into separate states and immediately opened for settlement.[7] This destiny was solemnly announced by votes of Congress in 1780, and by the territorial ordinance of 1784, the land ordinance of 1785, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which, taken together, were virtually a charter for the western country, very similar in import to the old colonial charters.[8]

In this sketch of territorial development up to 1787 may be seen the elements of a national policy and a national system: the territories were practically colonies and inchoate states, soon to be admitted into the Union; while the expansion of the national boundary during the war was a presage of future conquest and enlargement; and, considering the military and naval strength of Great Britain, the only direction in which annexation was likely was the southwest. Although the Federal Constitution of 1787 acknowledged the difference between states and territories only in general terms, and made no provision for the annexation of territory, the spirit and the reasonable implication of that instrument was that the Union might be and probably would be enlarged; some writers at the time felt sure that republican government was applicable to large areas.[9]

Hence it was neither unnatural nor unsuitable that the new nation should at once show a spirit of expansion: in 1795 and 1796 its boundaries were finally acknowledged by its southern and northern neighbors. Various wild schemes of invading Spanish territory were broached, but not till 1803 was the question of the Mississippi fairly faced. Repeating the bold policy of Louis XIV., Napoleon attempted to combine the military and colonial forces of Spain with those of France, in order to make head against Great Britain. As a preliminary, in 1800 he practically compelled the cession of the former French province of Louisiana, and thereby revealed to the American people that it would be a menace to national prosperity to permit a powerful military nation to block the commercial outlet of the interior. Hence, when Napoleon changed his mind and offered the province to the United States in 1803, there was nothing for the envoys, the President, the Senate, the House, and the people to do but to accept it as a piece of manifest destiny. The boundaries of the Union were thus extended to the Gulf and to the distant Rocky Mountains.[10]

With a refinement of assurance the United States also claimed, and in 1814 forcibly occupied West Florida. In the same period began a purposeful movement for extending the territory of the United States to the Pacific. Taking advantage of the discovery of the mouth of the Columbia River by an American ship in 1792, President Jefferson sent out a transcontinental expedition, under Lewis and Clark, which reached the Pacific in 1805, and thereby forged a second link in the American claims to Oregon. By this time the Spanish empire was in the throes of colonial revolution, and in 1819 the Spanish government ceded East Florida and withdrew any claims to Oregon, Texas being left to Spain.

This is a stirring decade, and it completely changed the territorial status of the United States. By 1819 the Atlantic coast all belonged to the United States, from the St. Croix River around Florida to the Sabine; the country was reaching out toward Mexico, and was building a bridge of solid territory across the continent, where, as all the world knew, far to the south of Oregon lay the harbor of San Francisco, the best haven on the Pacific coast. The bold conceptions of Jefferson and John Quincy Adams and their compeers included the commercial and political advantages of a Pacific front; and they were consciously preparing the way for the homes of unborn generations under the American flag.

One result of the new position of the United States was to bring out sharply a territorial rivalry with Great Britain. The War of 1812 had been an attempt to annex Canada, and after it was over a controversy as to the boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia kept the two countries harassed until its settlement in 1842.[11] After that the rivalry for Oregon, which had been held in joint occupation since 1818, was intensified. About 1832 immigration began in which the Americans outran the English; and it was fortunate for both countries that in 1846 the disputed territory was divided by a fair compromise line, the forty-ninth parallel.[12] A third territorial controversy was fought out within the limits of the Union itself, between the friends and opponents of the annexation of Texas, in 1845.[13] This was the first instance of an American colony planting itself within the acknowledged limits of another power, until it was strong enough to set up for itself as an independent state and to ask for admission to the Union.

The annexation of Texas inevitably led to a movement on California, which could be obtained only by aggressive war upon Mexico, and for connection with which the possession of New Mexico was also thought necessary. Ever since 1820 explorers had been opening up the region between the Mississippi and the Pacific,[14] and it was known that there were several practicable roads to that distant coast.[15] The annexation of California almost led the United States into a serious territorial adventure; for apparently nothing but the hasty treaty negotiated by Trist in 1848 stopped a movement for the annexation of the whole of Mexico.[16] The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 conveniently rounded out the cession of New Mexico and closed this second era of territorial expansion.

The annexation of Texas was logical, and delayed only by the accidental connection with slavery; but the annexation of Oregon and California added to the Union very distant possessions, the settlement of which must have been slow but for the discovery of gold in California in 1848. At once a new set of territorial questions arose: the necessity of reaching California across the plains led to the organization of Nebraska and Kansas territories in 1854, which convulsed the parties of the time; the movement across the Isthmus to California brought up the question of an interoceanic canal in a new light; the commercial footing on the Pacific led to a pressure which broke the shell of Japanese exclusion in 1854. Above all, these annexations brought before the nation two questions of constitutional law, which proved both difficult and disturbing: the issue of slavery in the territories, which precipitated, if it did not cause, the Civil War, and the eventual status of territories which, from their situation or their population, were not likely to become states.

The third era of national expansion began in 1867 with the purchase of Alaska,[17] which was wholly a personal plan of Secretary Seward, in which the nation took very little interest; nor was the public aroused by Seward’s more important scheme for annexing the Danish West India Islands and a part of Santo Domingo; when the latter project was taken up in 1870 and pushed with unaccountable energy by President Grant,[18] popular sentiment showed itself plainly averse to annexing a country with a population wholly negro and little in accord with the American spirit. For twenty-five years thereafter there was the same indisposition to annex territory that brought problems with it; and then the movement for the annexation of Hawaii was headed off by President Cleveland in 1893.[19] The Spanish War of 1898 swept all these barriers away, and left the United States in possession of the Philippine Islands, a distant archipelago containing seven and a half millions of Catholic Malays; of the island of Porto Rico, in the West Indies; of the Hawaiian group; of a responsible protectorate over Cuba; and, four years later, of the Panama strip, which may include the future Constantinople of the western world.