THE TERRITORIAL GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES
I. EUROPE CLAIMS NORTH AMERICA - ca 1750
“WESTWARD the course of empire takes its way,” wrote Bishop George Berkeley about British ambitions in North America. For 150 years those aspirations had clashed bloodily with the designs of French and other European rulers--and with the rights of several million resident Indians. Conquest began with explorers planting a sponsor’s national flag and often his religion. Spanish dons entered the Southwest with Roman Catholic priests. Russian fur traders and hunters--and the Russian Orthodox faith--came to Alaska. French traders and Catholic missionaries spread through the interior. But neither their presence nor paper titles were a defense against the British in the 1754-1763 conflict known as the French and Indian War, an extension of Europe’s Seven Years’ War. The British victory set the stage for the American Revolution by eliminating France from the field. Britain received Florida from Spain, and Quebec and several islands in the Caribbean from France, which had ceded Louisiana to Spain. The region beyond the Appalachians now lay open, but King George III barred settlement of the Indian lands.
II. A NEW NATION ON STAGE - 1787
GREATEST LEGACY of the Continental Congress, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 set an orderly course for national expansion. Following guidelines of earlier ordinances, one by Thomas Jefferson, it determined that the Northwest Territory would evolve from colony with governor appointed by Congress, to self-government with elected assembly, to statehood “on an equal footing with the original States.” The act described the borders for three to five states in order to forestall the kind of boundary conflicts that had plagued the original colonies. It provided for democratic rights by supporting public education, promising freedom of religion, and forbidding slavery, a clause that assured settlement by Yankees. Validating this precedent-setting act, the Constitution, written in Philadelphia that summer, gave newly defined Congress the power to admit new states and regulate territories; the nation would not develop willy-nilly, but the Constitution left to the future the states of claims shown on this map. In 1802 Georgia was the last state to relinquish western lands.
III. EXPANDING WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI - 1803
“A NOBLE BARGAIN,” French Foreign Minister Talleyrand called the Louisiana Purchase, a 909,000-square-mile region sold to American diplomats for 15 million dollars. President Jefferson had sent aides to buy only New Orleans and West Florida, but Napoleon, who had secretly obtained Louisiana back from Spain, was pressed for funds and eager to divest. The Constitution did not authorize such a land deal or address the status of 50,000 new residents, many of them French speakers. Some New Englanders, feeling their region reduced in power, talked of secession. The Congress spent little time debating the treaty of purchase, which stipulated that residents would become citizens and their property, including slaves, would be guaranteed. Otherwise Louisiana was to be organized according to the Northwest Ordinance. Jefferson sent explorers to learn what he had bought; even its boundaries were uncertain. In 1794, in Ohio, a national army had established a precedent--after defeating Indians, it forced cession of their lands, becoming a participant in expansion that seemed to Americans a natural right.
IV. COMING OF AGE - 1821
BRITISH TROOPS returned during the War of 1812 --provoked by Britain’s impressments of American seamen-- and burned Washington before the 1814 Treaty of Ghen restored the prewar status quo. Andrew Jackson’s 1815 victory of the Battle of New Orleans, fought before news of the treaty arrived, fired patriotic fever. Europe realized the U. S. was a power. Later Jackson chased raiding Seminoles into Spanish Florida, pushing Spain to parley. Secretary of Sate John Quincy Adams demanded Texas and Florida. Spanish Minister Luis de Onφs kept Texas but gave up Florida and claims to the Oregon Country for five million dollars. An 1818 treaty with Britain demilitarized the Canadian border and prescribed joint control of the Oregon Country. The new territories threatened the North-South balance in Congress; New England opposed more slave states. The Missouri Compromise outlawed slavery north of latitude 36º 30º with the exception of Missouri, settled by Southerners. Maine entered free. Jefferson lamented that the controversy “like a firebell in the night awakened and filled me with terror.”
V. COAST TO COAST - 1850
“OUR MANIFEST DESTINY is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” Journalist John Louis O’Sullivan gave voice to the newfound confidence of Americans, whose population had passed 23 million by 1850. The government had moved southeastern Indians west of the Mississippi, and land-hungry cotton planters spread across the South. Oregon Trail emigrants settled in the Northwest, prompting an agreement with Britain that split the territory at the 49th parallel. Americans settling in Texas, on free land offered by Mexico, proclaimed Texan independence in 1836, then won it by force. When Congress finally approved statehood, Mexico sent troops into the disputed territory. Americans counterattacked from California to Mexico City and in treaty talks won 529,000 square miles. The discovery of gold brought hordes to California. Southern states agreed to California’s entering as a free state only if settlers in the remaining Mexican cession could decide the slavery issue. This Compromise of 1850 could not prevent the fatal wrenching of the Civil War.
VI. THE UNION HOLDS - 1877
THE SECESSION OF SOUTHERN STATES reduced the nation’s territory by a fourth and precipitated a civil war that cost 618,000 lives. Rather than secede, West Virginians broke away from Virginia, formed a free state, and quickly won admission, thanks to the absence of Southerners in Congress. At war’s end debate raged over terms for defeated states’ reentry to the Union. Congress in 1867 required new state constitutions that guaranteed equal rights and the vote for blacks. Federal troops were sent to enforce this “reconstruction.” then were withdrawn in 1877. Recalcitrant white state governments refused to carry out the reforms and enacted discriminatory anti-black Jim Crow laws. Reconstruction had failed. Promoting westward development, Congress granted millions of acres of federal land to sates and railroads to finance acres of federal land to states and railroads to finance transcontinental lines. Settlers purchased railroad lands or homesteaded, peopling the region once called the Great American Desert and beyond; dry-land farmers predominated in the North, cattle ranchers in the Southwest. The army moved Indians onto scattered reservations.
VII. THE FIFTY STATES TODAY - 1987
MOBILITY remains a trait of Americans (one in five changes address each year), although territorial growth ended on the continent in 1867 with the purchase of Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. Hawaii was annexed in 1898 during an era of overseas expansion and remains the only island group to become a state. In February 14, 1912, Arizona became the last state admitted to the contiguous United States. Its constitution, like others in the West, boasted such progressive reforms as workmen’s compensation, woman suffrage, and recall and referendum. In fulfilling the promise of statehood to settlers, Congress broke up what remained of Indians’ ancestral lands. The shrinking of scattered reservations ended only in 1934. Native Americans, today numbering some 1.5 million, retain their diversity in 500 tribal groups speaking 250 languages. Since 1880 the nation’s population has nearly quintupled, swelled by the influx of 40 million immigrants from all parts of the world. On September 17, 1987, the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, Americans will number more than 243,600,000.
VIII. A BROADER VIEW
EXPANSIONISM turned to imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the U. S. acquired overseas possessions and Congress decided that statehood would not follow the flag. Most new possessions would remain colonies. Expansionists had long eyed Cuba and helped pus the U.S. into the 1898 Spanish-American War, fought ostensibly to gain Cuba’s independence, which occurred in 1902. At the treaty table the U. S. acquire Puerto Rico, Guam, and -- for 20 million dollars-- the Philippines. That huge Pacific archipelago became independent in 1946. Today Puerto Rico is defined as a self-governing commonwealth, Guam and the Virgin Islands (purchased from Denmark in 1917) as unincorporated territories. Residents are U. S. citizens. Throughout its domain the U. S. claims a territorial limit of three miles offshore and an economic zone of 200 miles to keep fisheries and seabed resources in American hands. Offshore oil fields have sparked anew the old debate between advocates of federal control and those of state jurisdiction, a perpetual conflict in American federalism.