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Acquired in
Acquired from
Original USA
Y
1783
United Kingdom
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601
1
ORIGINAL THIRTEEN STATES AND TERRITORY
The original thirteen British colonies that formed the United States fall into three geographic groups: New England, the Middle Colonies, and the Southern Colonies. New England consisted of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut as well as the frontier areas of present day Maine and Vermont. New England was settled almost exclusively by the English and was strongly Puritan in religion. The rocky soil and hard winters kept farms small. The close proximity of towns and farms encouraged commerce. Education also benefited from New England’s closeness and from mandatory Bible reading in the religious colonies. Massachusetts was the parent New England colony and second only to Virginia in wealth and influence.
The Middle Colonies were New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. They had the most diverse populations in the colonies. New York and New Jersey had large Dutch populations. New York was a large, sparsely-settled colony and New York City was a small but thriving commercial center. Pennsylvania dominated the Middle Colonies and Philadelphia dominated Pennsylvania. Philadelphia was the largest and most prosperous city in the colonies. Agriculture in the Middle Colonies was on a larger scale than to the north but commerce and industry were developing there after the fashion of New England.
The Southern Colonies were Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The warm climate in the South made plantation agriculture the dominant economic activity. Tobacco in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina and Rice in South Carolina and Georgia were cash crops whose cultivation was the center of life in the South. African slavery existed in all the colonies but it became the major source of labor on plantations by the Revolution. Most Southerners were small farmers but the wealthy planter class governed in all the Southern Colonies. The scattered population of the South was detrimental to education and commerce. Charleston was the only city of any size in the South.
The vast area that the United States received in the Treaty of Paris (1783) between the Appalachian Mountains, that marked the general limits of settlement, and the Mississippi River, that was the boundary of Spanish Louisiana was peopled mostly by Indians when it officially became American territory in 1783. The southern border of the territory was disputed with Spain until Pinckney’s Treaty of 1796 which settled the claim at the 31st parallel. The northern boundary was the Great Lakes. Most of this vast area was claimed by various states. During the 1780s and 90s the states ceded their claims to the federal government. Vermont (Mar. 4, 1791) and Kentucky (June 1, 1792) were the first new states. The territory that was not included in the new states was divided into the Northwest and Southwest Territories.
¶Louisiana Purchase
Y
1803
France
Ø
602
1
THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 was the single greatest acquisition of new territory in American history. For about 15 million dollars the United States almost doubled in size. The cost worked out to little over four cents an acre. The Purchase was the crowning achievement of Thomas Jefferson’s two terms as President (1801-1809) and set the nation on the course of westward expansion to the Pacific Ocean. Although the it was the fulfillment of many of Jefferson’s most cherished dreams the Purchase was more a result of European strategic adjustments than Jefferson’s diplomacy.
France lost Louisiana, the vast area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, to Spain in 1762 as a result of the Seven Year’s War (French and Indian War); 1756-63. In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte secured the territory’s return to France in the Treaty of San Ildefonso. Napoleon hoped to rebuild the French colonial empire in the New World. He had a problem in that his planned base of operations, Haiti, was in the hands of rebels. The rebels were mostly former slaves led by Toussaint L’Overture. Napoleon expected little trouble but the 20,000 men he sent there under his brother-in-law, General Charles LeClerc, failed to conquer the island. Napoleon could spare no more men, and without Haiti, he had little use for Louisiana.
Jefferson meanwhile was deeply concerned about the Mississippi River. Western trade and development depended on free passage down the river to the Gulf; so the Western states were at the mercy of any foreign government that held New Orleans. In 1802 Jefferson instructed Robert Livingston, the U.S. minister to France, to try to purchase both New Orleans and Florida or somehow secure free passage. In October 1802, Jefferson empowered James Monroe to go to France and offer up to $10 million for Florida and New Orleans. News that disaster had struck in Haiti reached Napoleon in early 1803 and he soon offered Livingston all of Louisiana for sale to the United States. Although it went beyond the specific parameters of their instructions, in May 1803 Livingston and Monroe signed the treaty to buy Louisiana from France for the equivalent of $15 million.
In the United States, although there was some debate as to whether the Purchase was constitutional, the treaty was ratified quickly. Before France could turn Louisiana over to the United States they had to formally receive it from Spain however. France had neglected to physically reoccupy the colony since regaining in it 1800. Therefore, on November 20, 1803, the French Tricolor was raised above New Orleans and the French nominally took over. On December 20, 1803 the Stars and Stripes was raised and the French turned Louisiana over to William C. C. Claiborne, the first Governor of American Louisiana.
¶Red River Basin
Y
1818
United Kingdom
Ø
603
1
RED RIVER CESSION
The Red River Cession was part of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. The treaty was negotiated to satisfy several complaints both Americans and Canadians had with the U.S. - Canadian border. The actual focus of the treaty was not the Red River region but Maine. Since the Revolutionary War tempers had flared along the border. Maine lumbermen were anxious to get their claim to the Aroostook River Valley acknowledged. The British wanted clear claim to an area in which they wanted to build a military road. Disputes over the Maine-Quebec boundary had almost caused war several times. In 1842, Daniel Webster, President John Tyler’s Secretary of State, and the British Foreign Minister, Lord Ashburton, decided to settle the business once and for all.
The treaty they worked out split the disputed territory almost evenly with the U.S. getting a little more acreage than Canada. Maine got the Aroostook land and Canada got the land for the road. As a side issue, Britain yielded 6,500 square miles of land between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods (in Minnesota) that were later found to contain very rich iron deposits. This was the Red River Cession.
¶Florida Purchase
Y
1819
Spain
Ø
604
1
ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA
The acquisition of Florida by the United States occurred in the wake of the War of 1812. West Florida, the territory below the the 31st parallel and between the Mississippi and Pensacola Rivers was seized from Spanish authorities in 1813 by a group of American settlers there and was soon annexed into the United States. East Florida (the present state of Florida) was eyed hungrily by the farmers of Georgia. There were very few Spanish troops in the area and rebellions in several Spanish colonies made it unlikely that any would be sent there soon. Indians from Florida (Seminoles) were often raiding Georgia and escaping to the safety of the border. Also runaway slaves from Georgia found refuge there. Spain was worried that the United States would simply take Florida. In order to get something for Florida and to negotiate a clear boundary between the Louisiana Purchase territory and Spanish territory in the West, Spain agreed to work out a treaty for Florida.
President James Monroe’s Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, and the Spanish minister to America, Luis de Onis, negotiated the sale of Florida to the United States for a meager $5 million. Adams also obtained from Onis an abandonment of Spanish claims north of the 43rd parallel west of the continental divide, giving the U.S. a claim to land extending to the Pacific. The Adams-Onis Florida Treaty was signed in 1819 and ratified in 1821.
¶Texas Annexation
Y
1845
Texas
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605
1
TEXAS ANNEXATION
American settlers began trickling into Texas in the early 1820s. The new Republic of Mexico offered generous land grants to settlers in order to develop the region. They got more than they bargained for. By 1834, there were over 20,000 “Gringos” in Texas outnumbering the native “Tejanos” 4 to 1. The immigrants had to convert to Catholicism to enter Texas but most did so in name only and continued to worship according to the Protestant faiths. This was against Mexican law. Most of the settlers were from the South and many brought slaves with them. Slavery was against Mexican law also and this caused more friction. The Texas Revolution erupted in 1835 and with the victory at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836 Texas became a free Republic. The Texans were American born and many more Americans went to Texas to help with the Revolution and then even more to homestead in the vast new country. Texas wanted to join the Union and most Americans in the South and the West wanted it also. Northerners however did not want another slave state added to the nation. President Jackson and President Van Buren after him held off on annexing Texas because it would surely mean war with Mexico, which still regarded Texas as a Mexican state as well as a source of internal strife.
The President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston, had a plan to make Texas one of the United States. He very openly courted the British and the French, getting treaties from both in 1840. He dangled the possibility of Texas becoming a British protectorate. This aroused both Northerners and Southerners. In the election of 1844 Texas became a major issue of the Democratic candidate James Polk. President John Tyler had tried to annex Texas in June, 1844 but due to a foul-up by Secretary of State John Calhoun it had failed. Tyler resolved to invite Texas into the Union by a joint resolution of Congress before President-elect Polk could do it himself. On March 1, 1845 Tyler signed the resolution into law. Before the year’s end Texas accepted, moving the United States’ boundaries south and west to the Rio Grande.
¶Oregon Country
Y
1846
United Kingdom
Ø
603
1
OREGON SETTLEMENT
The Oregon Territory of the Pacific Northwest was originally claimed by both the United States and Britain. In 1818 it was agreed that this vast region, reaching from the Continental Divide to the Pacific between California and Alaska, would stay open to both nations; for a decade. This agreement was repeatedly extended. Although the United States was closest, the early developers of the area were British. The Hudson Bay Company controlled Oregon from a base at Fort Vancouver. In the 1830s Americans began arriving in small numbers and were welcomed. However, by the early 1840s a flood of land-hungry settlers were braving the dangerous Oregon Trail to homestead in the Willamette and Columbia Valleys. The British were upset and expansionist sentiment in America was inflamed. In the 1844 Presidential Election, Democrat James Knox Polk used “Oregon Fever” to make the annexation of Texas palatable to the North. Because Texas permitted slavery many Northerners were opposed to its entry into the Union. Joining free Oregon with the United States however, was a popular issue in the North. Polk tried to obtain a national consensus on Texas and Oregon by linking them together in his campaign. His election was perceived as a mandate for acquisition of both.
Polk’s campaign platform had demanded 54 40’ to be the boundary between Canada and the U.S.. This was an extension of the old American claim of the 49th parallel to Puget Sound. Britain insisted on the 49th parallel to the Columbia River, retaining control of the Sound and much of present Washington State for themselves. Polk softened his “54 40’ or fight” talk and proposed a compromise. The British refused to entertain the offer so Polk and Congress retaliated by declaring that the joint management would end in a year. It seemed that war was imminent. Neither country had the stomach for war and when push came to shove the British said that the 49th Parallel to Puget Sound (Polk’s offer) would be fine. The Senate ratified the treaty in June 1846. Most applauded the deal although some Northerners accused Polk of betraying the 54 40’ claim while he was fighting for the Rio Grande claim for the slave state of Texas.
¶Mexican Cession
Y
1848
Mexico
Ø
607
1
MEXICAN CESSION
The border between Mexico and Texas had been the cause of a long, bitter feud (aggravated by the fact that Mexico refused to recognize Texan independence). Texas claimed the Rio Grande River was the border while Mexico claimed it ran along the Nueces River, 150 miles to the north. When Texas joined the Union, President Polk inherited the Rio Grande claim and pressed it with federal troops under General Zachary Taylor. Polk then tried to purchase Upper California and New Mexico from Mexico. When the Mexican government rejected the offer and the Rio Grande border, Polk decided to provoke a war. Taylor’s army moved to the Rio Grande and was attacked by a party of Mexicans, providing Polk with an excuse for war, which Congress declared on May 13, 1846. The Mexican War (1846-48) was a great success for the United States. General Taylor’s army occupied northern Mexico and an expedition led by General Winfield Scott captured the enemy’s capital, Mexico City, on Sept. 14, 1846. Americans “liberated” the Mexican populations in California and Santa Fe as well. Having won a complete military victory, Polk wanted to press his advantage and collect the spoils.
Nicolas Trist was the American envoy in Mexico charged with negotiating a peace treaty. At first, Trist was to offer terms similar to Polk’s purchase proposal of 1846 but soon Polk ordered Trist to demand more Mexican territory as Mexico was so weakened.
Trist, afraid both of the possibility of provoking the Mexicans into guerrilla warfare against the American occupiers and of igniting discontent at home, wisely ignored his new instructions and worked out a treaty that gave the United States the Rio Grande border, Upper California, and New Mexico; all for the sum of $18.25 million ($3.25 million of which was to paid to Americans with claims against Mexico). Trist signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on Feb. 2, 1848. Polk fired Trist for disobeying orders but the Senate ratified the treaty 38 to 14. A more acquisitive treaty would have aroused the suspicions of those opposed to slavery and expansion in the Senate, and only further angered the Mexicans, who bitterly resented (and still resent) the loss of territory as things stood. The Mexican Cession obtained a vast expanse of land (over a half million square miles) for the United States. The worth of the Cession was proved shortly during the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the great San Francisco boom that followed.
¶Gadsden Purchase
Y
1853
Mexico
Ø
607
1
THE GADSDEN PURCHASE
The Gadsden Purchase originated from the desire of Southerners like Jefferson Davis and Judah Benjamin to build a railroad to California from the South to match the lines that were proposed by northern companies. This way they could assure Southern produce access to the Pacific market, from which great things were expected. They ran into a problem in that the best southern route for a railroad ran, for a considerable distance, south of the New Mexico Territory through Mexico. To remedy this situation, the minister to Mexico, James Gadsden, was empowered to purchase the region from Mexico in 1853. Gadsden initially offered to buy 250,000 square miles but the Mexicans, having recently lost a large portion of their country, were only willing to sell the U.S. about one-fifth of that area. There was some opposition to the Purchase in the Senate, especially among Northern Senators who were opposed to the whole plan for a Southern railway to California. The Purchase (now parts of southern Arizona and New Mexico) of just over 40,000 square miles for $10 million was finalized in 1854. After the Civil War, the Southern Pacific Railroad was finally built.
¶Alaska Purchase
Y
1867
Russia
Ø
609
1
THE ALASKA PURCHASE
The Purchase of Alaska in 1867 was not initially popular. The Press called it “Seward’s Folly” after Andrew Johnson’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward (1861-69), who was the driving force behind the acquisition. Alaska had been a Russian possession since the late 1700s. The region was rich in resources but was too far from St. Petersburg to be effectively exploited by the troubled Czars. The Russians wanted to rid themselves of the territory (and procure some hard currency) but did not want to further British interests in the area. So, they offered to sell Alaska to the United States. Seward, an ardent expansionist, jumped at the chance to acquire the territory. He quickly hammered out a treaty with the Russians to buy Alaska for $7.2 million. In the Senate and the press, Seward and his “Icebox” deal were ridiculed. At length, Seward managed to convince the Senate to ratify the treaty, thus securing Alaska for America at the cost of a few dollars per square mile.
¶Hawaii Annexation
Y
1898
Hawaii
Ø
610
1
THE ANNEXATION OF HAWAII
American immigrants first began settling in the Hawaiian Islands in the 1840s when New England missionaries arrived. In 1875 the Kingdom of Hawaii and the United States signed a treaty that allowed Hawaiian sugar to enter America duty free. American businessmen soon became the dominant force in the economy. A U.S. tariff was placed on Hawaiian sugar in 1890 and the planters and businessmen there started calling for annexation of the Islands. Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian monarch, countered with a movement to restore control of the Islands to Hawaiians and to revoke the western style constitution (limiting her power) that the new-comers had instituted. The Americans and Europeans found an ally in the U.S. minister, John L. Stevens, who sent in the U.S. Marines to aid them in a successful coup against the Queen in 1893. Outgoing President Benjamin Harrison approved of the coup but took no actions for or against annexation. The new President, Grover Cleveland, did not approve but also let matters lie. The situation remained in limbo until a treaty of annexation was finally enacted by the Senate on Independence Day, 1898, during the fever of the Spanish-American War.
¶GO WEST !!!
N
Ø
Ø
Ø
611
2
OVERVIEW OF WESTWARD EXPANSION
Westward expansion began early in the history of America. From the earliest colonial times, men hungry for adventure, new farmland, or simply the business opportunities of the frontier packed up their families and moved inland from the coastal settlements. By the time of the Revolution, although most people lived in the seaboard counties, “going west” was an established American tradition. Woodsmen in buckskin were the archetypical Americans. In the decades preceding the Revolution, settlers had already begun crossing the Appalachians into Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. After the war, for the first time, Americans had legal title to the lands over the mountains and they rushed to fill them with towns and farms. From the early national borders on the Mississippi River Americans could see how empty the continent was except for Indians and game. One was the frontiersman’s principal enemy; the other, his principal source of food. Only the weak Spanish and the hated British, both in small numbers, stood between America and mastery of the entire continent. Americans believed that eventually the whole land would be theirs and, that as a nation dedicated to liberty, it should be theirs. What came to be called “Manifest Destiny” by the 1840s was a sense of optimism and mission that Americans felt from the earliest days of the Republic. This sense of national destiny coupled with an avaricious hunger for land was a powerful historical force.
The first acquisition of new territory by the United Sates was also the most important. This was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Thomas Jefferson (President 1801-09) in pursuing and closing the Purchase opened the entire continent up to America. From the Mississippi River the border was extended to the continental divide. With this vast inland area open to settle and exploit, America, with its steady population growth, was assured of dominating as much of the sparsely inhabited regions as they could move into. America’s expansion for the next fifty years came at the expense of the Spanish and British Empires. Florida (1819) is the only present American state directly obtained from Spain but all of the land taken from Mexico : Texas (1845), The Mexican Cession (1848), and the Gadsden Purchase (1853) came to the United States in the chaotic period in Mexico after Spain lost control. The Louisiana Purchase itself resulted partly from Spanish weakness. The gains made at the expense of Britain were much smaller : The Red River Purchase (1842), and the Oregon Settlement (1846) were amicably resolved. The administration of James K. Polk (1845-49) deserves credit for the acquisition of Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican Cession in one term. William Seward’s $7.2 million purchase of Alaska (1867) was money well and wisely spent. The annexation of Hawaii (1898) following an illegal, U.S. backed coup against the lawful government was blatant imperialism although certainly in the best interests of the United States.
