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A Level History M. Nichols SCIE 2009-10
A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA –
WESTWARD EXPANSION & THE TAMING OF THE WEST (c.1840-1896)
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A Level History M. Nichols SCIE 2009-10
Introduction to a History of the USA
The United Sates of America by 1900 was a phenomenally successful nation. It was the dominant power in the Americas, with a relatively large population of 76 million (compared with Canada’s 5.5 million).
Between 1800 and 1900, the nation’s population had increased twelve fold. 33 million Europeans would eventually emigrate to the ‘land of opportunity’ between 1820 -1950, and America would be more than pleased to receive these “poor, huddled masses”, as an inscription on Ellis Island would proudly proclaim.
By 1900, the US had 200 000 miles of railroad track: more than all of Europe’s. It was also the world’s greatest debtor nation – as it is today! By 1914, it had the greatest manufacturing output in the world, even though manufacturing was not yet it chief interest. It was also a country of 1 million cars by 1914; though the virgin land, which had once abounded in this huge country, had almost disappeared by the 1890s.
The US was also a morally righteous and essentially conservative nation. In 1901, prohibition of the sale of alcohol was already in place in 5 states and by 1917, in 2/3 of them.
Socialist presidential candidates never ever got more than 6% of the vote (5.97 in 1912 being the highest). Instead, the cult of “rugged individualism” prevailed, despite the fact that industrial relations were “almost continuously turbulent” down to 1914, according to J.M. Roberts.
Demands for reform had led to a period of ‘Progressivism’, a movement which had shown an interest in administrative and political redress, as well as female suffrage and a desire to end corruption. Advocated by the Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, his successor, Taft, would also introduce a federal income tax and prosecute scores of corrupt business practices. Woodrow Wilson would be elected in 1913 as a progressive Democrat. As a southerner, he was the first president, since the Civil War, to gain the votes of both Massachusetts and Virginia. Despite his liberal credentials though Wilson, like most Americans, was still a strict segregationist.
The ‘Negro question’ in 1900 was, says Roberts, hardly on the agenda, and things had not changed by 1914. The later twentieth century, however, would more than make up for this initial apathy.
In 1914, Roberts sums up the USA as “still a young giant waiting in the wings of history”. The German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck certainly had earlier recognised its potential and regarded the fact that both the USA and GB spoke the same language as ominous for the rest of the world.
The events of 1917-1918 and 1941-45 would prove just how prescient Bismarck’s remark was.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries though, things looked entirely different.
The Demographics of the USA 1790-1900
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A Level History M. Nichols SCIE 2009-10
The Colonial Background
The ‘American rebels’, as the British called them, had officially declared their separateness from the mother country on July 4th 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. However, the US had only become a de facto sovereign state in 1783, with the final defeat of the British.
The original 13 colonies (Alan Taylor points out that there were in fact 14, with Newfoundland though remaining loyal to GB) were now known as the United States of America. The new nation had had substantial military, naval and economic aid from France and Spain who shared a common hatred of their imperial, British rivals. Ironically though by defeating GB, the French and Spanish had only helped to ensure the doom of their own colonies in North America, which would eventually be taken over by the even more aggressive and expansionist new nation-state.
In the process of forming their nation many myths had already come into existence, which would help shape and determine subsequent American history, even up to the present day.
The idea that the War for Independence had been revolutionary in nature was only true in part. Admittedly, the reactionary British and their monarchical system had been rejected, and the rights of US citizens had been enshrined in the new republican Constitution. At last, there was taxation with representation in the form of both the elected Houses of Congress and an elected President. The “We the people” opening phrase of the Constitution inculcates the idea of what J.M. Roberts has called “popular sovereignty”, the idea that power ultimately rested on the consent of the population. However, in many other ways the pre-War status quo was retained.
Women were certainly not granted suffrage and the rights widely spoken of did not, of course, apply to black slaves, who were only counted as 3/5th of a person. The humanitarian Dr. Samuel Johnson had famously declared, during the War, that he would not be lectured on liberty by a “bunch of nigger-whippers”. The enormous autonomous rights given to the 13 states in the de-centralised federal system would also come back to haunt the nation in the mid-19th century, and would be one of the main causes of its bloody Civil War (1861-1865).
After the War of Independence, the nation would embark on over a century of expansion and exploration. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase, from an impecunious and mischievous Napoleon Bonaparte, would hugely increase the size of the United States. In contrast to their Gallic and Hispanic contemporaries though, WASPish Americans carved out new territories not to conduct missionary work, as the Spanish had done or even simply to trade in beaver pelts like the French, but to conquer, subdue and permanently annexe. As Alan Taylor in his book ‘American Colonies’ emphasises, it was the greed, ruthlessness and sheer determination of the Americans that would ensure they quickly outpaced their rather less effective - and less ambitious, European rivals.
United States in 1775
The United States in 1840
The Doctrine of Manifest Destiny
The idea that a people are special, a chosen elite with, literally, God-given rights, is not new. Judaism is a religion based on these very ideas, and many others from the English, to the Boers of South Africa have abrogated to themselves the arrogant mythology of innate, racial superiority.
To 18th and 19th century Americans, they were also a ‘chosen-people’. The same, if conveniently also materialistic, aura surrounded them.
To white Americans, the continent of North America was theirs by right. It was shamefully neglected and under-exploited by its indigenous inhabitants who did not deserve it in the way righteous, hard-working and God-fearing Americans did. God had determined that their destiny would be to own and control the whole of the North American continent. It is no coincidence that the motto of the US was, and still is, ‘In God We Trust’.
They looked covetously on a land that, J.M. Roberts emphasises, had a number of inbuilt advantages. The new nation had no mass of impoverished and ignorant peasants; it had ample territory to spare and great economic resources. It could also draw on European civilisation.
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 involved an $11.25 million acquisition of a huge expanse of territory, the largest sale of land in history. It encompassed the area between the Mississippi in the east and the Rockies in the west, and would ensure America’s westward expansion. The further acquisition of Florida from Spain confirmed ideas of American expansionism.
The War of 1812, fought against the British, had further ensured that the US would not expand northwards towards British owned Canada, but westwards at the expense of the much more vulnerable and weaker Spanish and Mexicans.
The famous Monroe doctrine of 1823 stated that the USA would, in future, resist all further attempts at European colonisation or interference in the Americas. It was a policy tacitly supported by GB, which realised that its own possessions would also be protected by such a policy. It was also an approach that would spell doom to the ambitions of not only Spain, but Spain’s ambitious colonies like Mexico, which would be denied any outside assistance. J. M Roberts has emphasised that the Doctrine “remains the bedrock of American hemisphere diplomacy to this day”.
In 1839, a certain John O’Sullivan proclaimed a creed of conquest based on certain principles. He criticised Old World values and systems, and claimed Americans were different and superior. To O’Sullivan, America was “destined for better deeds” and the US was “the nation of human progress”. Ultimately, the United States was “destined to be the great nation of futurity”.
Pletcher admits there was a definite Anglo-Saxon bias and even a “racist element” to Manifest Destiny, while also stressing its idealistic aspects.
What was ‘the frontier’ ?
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A Level History M. Nichols SCIE 2009-10
MANIFEST DESTINY
Questions of the Source
1. What do you think the goddess figure represents?
2. What and who are fleeing from the pioneers?
3. What aspects of ‘civilisation’ do the pioneers bring with them?
4. Do you think the artist (John Gast, 1872 who titled his painting ‘American Progress’) approved or not of Manifest Destiny? Explain your answer.
5. Can we trust the painting as evidence about Westward expansion? Explain your answer.
6. Do you think aspects of Manifest Destiny are still a part of US policy? Explain your answer.
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A Level History M. Nichols SCIE 2009-10
Why was the US so keen to expand?
v Due to demographic pressures. The US was expanding rapidly due to rising birth rates, declining mortality and immigration. Between 1820-1850 four million people went West.
v Economic factors. In 1818 and 1839, the US experienced depressions, which increasingly drove people to live on the frontier.
v Frontier land was cheap or even free. In a society which valued independence, this was a major attraction.
v Land ownership was associated with wealth, power and self-sufficiency.
v Opportunities for advancement. Opening up the frontier would bring new commercial opportunities and possibilities for self advancement.
v Maritime merchants saw opportunities to establish trading ports on the West coast and so exploit the potential of the Pacific region.
v Mexico was regarded as weak, decadent and vulnerable. Unfit to rule the vast outlying territories when it could not even effectively govern itself.
Expansion itself, however, was a divisive issue within the USA. A number of individuals and groups opposed westward expansion for a number of reasons.
v Many were afraid that if the US grew too large, the experiment in popular sovereignty would fail. This became the political position of the Whigs in the 1840s, who harked back to Thomas Jefferson to justify their stance. Their opponents preferred to stress Alexander Hamilton’s more aggressive views on expansion.
v The Northeast and Eastern states were worried about losing power and influence to the new territories.
v The opposition of abolitionists. Many anti-slavery groups were worried that the accession of new states would see the extension of slavery. John Quincy Adams even accused Texans of a pro- slavery conspiracy as the main motive for their breaking away from Mexico, a view Pletcher says is far-fetched.
v Some groups were sympathetic to Mexico.
v Pacifists hated the idea of bloodshed and in states like Pennsylvania Quakers were still a sizeable minority.
On the whole though, most people supported the idea of westward expansion, even at the expense of the indigenous peoples and the de jure holders of the land, the Mexicans.
The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas
The Annexation of Texas
The reasons for the Texas War of Independence (1835-36) can be partly associated with the same ideals behind the principles of Manifest Destiny. The causes can be summarised as:
v The Mexican territory of Texas was inundated in the 1820s and 1830s with American settlers who resented the demands and imposition of Mexican rule.
v Mexico’s despotic rule imposed heavy restrictions, heavier taxes and a ban on slavery. Used to a certain degree of liberty and popular sovereignty, the Americans rebelled against the arbitrary and despotic rule of General Santa Anna, championing instead the constitution of 1824.
v Hispanic, as well as Anglo-Saxon, settlers felt aggrieved and often sided with their WASP compatriots, a fact often neglected or forgotten by previous histories, but now being redressed. They are now known as Tejano patriots.
The result was war between the rebellious settlers and Mexico. Initially successful at the battle of Gonzales, the rebels were later slaughtered to a man at the Alamo, in San Antonio and at Goliad. Eventually, however, under the command of Sam Houston, they won the decisive battle at San Jacinto in April 1836 slaughtering 800 Mexicans and capturing the remaining 700, while suffering only six dead themselves. Santa Anna himself was captured and traded his freedom for Texan independence. Texas was an independent republic until 1845 when it was incorporated into the United States.
The War had been relatively easily won, perhaps as much because of Mexico’s innate weaknesses, as through the strength of the Texan opposition.
v Mexico was an underdeveloped land economically and settlement in frontier areas like Texas was unpopular and often forced on people who were thus already resentful of the government.
v Mexico was weak politically, split into various political factions: Federalists, Republicans, Monarchists and Centralists.
v Fierce Native American tribes like the Commanche and Apache discouraged many from going to the frontier regions, and those brave and individualistic enough to go were unlikely to submit to being pushed around by a despotic Mexican government.
v Mexico was too vast a nation to be effectively policed by its over-stretched armed forces.
v The Catholic Church and the military, bastions of Mexico’s system, were too complex and costly to be maintained in frontier areas, and so the government’s reach was limited.
v In the 1830s, communications between Mexico and its frontier provinces like Texas were poor and resulted in only a tenuous control over its subjects being possible.
v Frontier society was fairer, more egalitarian, less rigid and formal than the rest of Mexican society. Texans had outgrown the mother country, just as the 13 colonies had outgrown GB in the 1770s.
The US-Mexican War - Causes
Fought between April 1846 and February 1848, the US-Mexican War has been called a forgotten war and one of the (relatively) bloodiest in US military history.