Kathleen Fitzgerald

America—Take Home Final

Professor St. John, Fall 2006

History 1639: The Expanding United States, 1803-1917 Take Home Final Exam

Identifications (6)
(1) “They occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of their will,
which must take effect in point of possession when their right of possession
ceases. Meanwhile they are in a state of pupilage. Their relation to the
United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian.”
(Cherokee Nation vs. State of Georgia, 1831)
This quote originates in the 1831 response Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall offered
to the Cherokee Nation after the Cherokees accused Georgia of unconstitutionally
legislating for Indian removal despite the fact that Cherokee Nation, as an independent,
“foreign state,” was not liable to U.S. state laws. Penned the year following the Indian
Removal Act of 1830, Marshall’s quote reflects what even moderate Americans of the
time (in contrast to the far more radical responses offered by Johnson and Baldwin in the
same document) believed about the United States’s right to territorial expansion as well
as its paternalistic role toward subordinate cohorts like Native Americans and slaves.1
Marshall’s paradoxical claims that (1) the U.S. Constitution demarcated Indians as being
separate from the protected “foreign nation” category, thereby leaving states to deal with
Indians however they desired and (2) that U.S. subgroups like the Indians (and
simultaneously, the slaves) needed to be told what to do by their “American parent”
because they were like mildly ignorant pupils in life set the stage for both the Trail of
Tears in 1838 and the claims by Southerners (less than three decades later) that it was the
right of civilized and paternalistic states to control their relationships with (and rights to)
slaves.

(2) “Self-interest makes the employer and free laborer enemies. The one prefers
to pay low wages, the other needs high wages. War, constant war, is the
result, in which the operative perishes, but is not vanquished; he is hydra-
headed, and when he dies two take his place. But numbers diminish his
strength. The competition among laborers to get employment begets an
intestine war, more destructive than the war from above. There is but one
remedy for this evil, so inherent in free society, and that is, to identify the
interests of the weak and the strong, the poor and the rich.”
(George Fitzhugh’s “Slavery Justified,” 1854)
This quote comes from the latter part of George Fitzhugh’s intellectual treatise in
favor of slavery titled, “Slavery Justified.” Written less than a decade before the Civil
War, the quote encapsulates Fitzhugh’s economic argument that an entirely free society
leads the innately less intelligent (presumably the slaves during the ante-bellum period)
into a system that naturally destroys their well-being and livelihood by pitting each

1
This reflected a definite shift in ideas of U.S. empowerment when contrasted to the letter President
Thomas Jefferson sent to Meriwether Lewis in 1803 in which he advised Lewis to treat Indian chiefs like
foreign dignitaries by inviting them to the U.S. capital.

1
unarmed slave against his brother in a war of underbidding and competition while the
white employers, who had formerly provided for and taken care of their “employees” (i.e.
slaves) simply watch with glee. In the post-Second Great Awakening period, the
morality argument against slavery was gaining steam as American leaders and anti-
slavery conventions railed against the immoral and unreligious treatment of slaves,
arguing that it violated the Christian principle of stewardship. Claiming that the slave
system actually served the practical interests of black slaves through domestication and
paternalism (both of which provided culture, shelter, food, and medicine for slaves) and
contrasting that with examples of European and ancient free trade nations where the
working class fared far worse, Fitzhugh forcefully undercut the abolitionist argument that
purported slaves would be better provided for under God’s natural law if America
adopted a free labor system. Fitzhugh openly admits that his aim in writing this is
intended to re-invigorate the resolve of his fellow pro-slavery Southerners by
emboldening their cause with economic sense and subtle righteousness.

(3) “Through political organization, historical and polemic writing and moral
regeneration, these men strove to uplift their people. It is the fashion of to-
day to sneer at them and to say that with freedom Negro leadership should
have begun at the plow and not in the Senate—a foolish and mischievous lie;
two hundred and fifty years that black serf toiled at the plow and yet that
toiling was in vain till the Senate passed the war amendments; and two
hundred and fifty years more the half-free serf of to-day may toil at his plow,
but unless he have political rights and righteously guarded civic status, he
will remain the poverty-stricken and ignorant plaything of rascals, that he is
now.”
(W.E.B. Dubois’s “The Talented Tenth,” 1903)
This quote is excerpted from W.E.B. Dubois’s 1903 article, “The Talented Tenth.” This
passage is particularly evocative in expressing Dubois’s overall opinion that Negroes
were never able to simply rise up from their powerless positions at the plow; instead, the
liberation, education, and overall empowerment of both the ante-bellum and post-Civil
War black community had always been the result of black intelligentsia leaders like
Douglass and Hughes taking a legal and systematic approach toward governmental and
societal appeals. Written during the Progressive era in which political parties ruled the
land, and overall politics were very interest-driven, Dubois and other black intellectuals
like him realized that legalized black enfranchisement like the earlier Black Codes,
1876’s U.S. vs. Cruikshank (which allowed white hotel owners to refuse to house blacks)
would never truly transform into racial equality unless combated from within the
legislative system. Throughout the article, Dubois attempts to counter other black leaders
like Booker T. Washington who espouse appealing to white paternalistic fears as a means
of gaining racial equality; DuBois undercuts Washington’s argument by offering
examples that show how those who sat behind the “plow” without taking their cause to
the Senate never made great headway and would not succeed in the 20th century either.
(4) “The American people have steadily and irresistibly taken whatever land
they felt they needed for any purpose, because the course of empire and the
movement of the race could not be stayed.”

(Henry Cabot Lodge’s “The American Policy of Territorial Expansion,” 1891)

2
 Written in 1891 during the Hawaiian annexation controversy, this quote from Henry
Cabot Lodge reflects a widely-held opinion of his day that it was in the interest of America’s
national security (strategic military bases) and in the interest of those who occupied U.S.-sought
lands for the United States to annex the territory of Hawaii rather than establish “dollar
diplomacy” or economic imperialism there. Directly disagreeing with the Hawaiian sugar cane
planters who begged the U.S. not annex Hawaii since regulations and taxes would harm their
business, this entire paper reflects Cabot Lodge’s sentiments that 19th-century America had
already annexed approximately 2,800,000 square miles of land and was simply remaining
consistent with that policy in the Pacific theater. Cabot’s description of the U.S. needing to annex
Hawaii without pausing or consulting with the indigenous peoples since territorial expansion
“could not be stayed” reflects a popular response to the pre-Progressive argument that the U.S.
should apply logic to imperialism by sitting down with European leaders and parceling up
strategic lands. According to Cabot Lodge, the U.S. now had the third strongest navy in the
world and was viewed as an international competitor by European nations, which would inhibit
any so-called “Progressive” attempts at peaceful international parceling of desired lands; Cabot
Lodge’s support of Hawaii’s annexation reflects his paradoxical isolationist-expansionist
tendencies in the sense his proposal prevented the U.S. from dealing with other nations.

(5) “I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or
indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it
exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to
do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between
the white and the black races.”
(Abraham Lincoln, The 1858 Ottawa, Illinois Stop on the
multi-city tour of the philosophical “Lincoln-Douglas
Debates”)

In this quote, Republican Abraham Lincoln is responding to Stephen Douglass’s

accusation that “black Republicans” like Lincoln believed whites and blacks should be
entirely equal, and popular sovereignty should not determine slavery in new states. This
response, as well as the entire Lincoln-Douglas Debates, were really addressing the
states’ rights controversy that had arisen following the Compromise of 1850, “bleeding
Kansas,” and the Dred Scott decision, all of which reflected a brewing war between
proponents of states’ rights and federal slavery containment. With its denial of an intent
to equalize the races in all realms, this quote reflects Lincoln’s rebuttal to Douglas’s
“black Republican” accusations. By maintaining that Republicans only believed in labor
equality and not “political” and “social” equality for blacks, this quote provides insight
into the economic aspect of the slave debate that would incite the Civil War no less than
two years later. Furthermore, this quote also reflects the appeasement and relatively
moderate stance taken by Lincoln which would garner enough support for him to win the
presidential election just two years later.

(6) “The sea of a mighty population, held in galling fetters, heaves uneasily in
the tenements. Once already our city, to which have come the duties and
responsibilities of metropolitan greatness before it was able to fairly measure
its task, has felt the swell of its resistless flood. If it rise once more, no
human power may avail to check it. The gap between the classes in which it
surges, unseen, unsuspected by the thoughtless is widening day by day. No

3
 tardy enactment of law, no political expedient, can close it. Against all other
dangers our system of government may offer defense and shelter; against
this not. I know of but one bridge that will carry us over safe, a bridge
founded upon justice and built of human hearts. I believe that the danger of
such conditions as are fast growing up around us is for the very freedom
which they mock.”
(Jacob Riis’s “How the Other Half Lives,” 1890)

This is the quote with which Jacob Riis closes the last chapter of his galvanizing photo-
journalistic attempt to document the slums, “How the Other Half Lives.” Encapsulating
Riis’s main argument (that a war of frustration was quietly rolling into late 1800s
American cities of industry along with the rapidly increasing immigrant population), the
quote also reflects Riis’s purposefully middle-class stance which claimed religious and
social justice organizations should help immigrant tenants keep traditional familial roles
in tact (e.g. allowing children to have a real childhood rather than being forced to labor as
newsboys and the like). This quote and Riis’s entire work both attempt to persuade
American readership to fight against the swelling numbers of slum immigrants who
struggled in squalor and would continue to do so forever if no one intervened. Riis and
others like him believed American progress and prosperity only occurred when
cleanliness and social order prevailed; therefore, this quote explains why Riis believes
capitalistic America will fail if the capitalist-slum war were not stopped by American
morals.

ESSAYS (2)

(3) The 1830s debates over Indian Removal laid the groundwork for future
discussions about both abolition and imperialism. How did ideas about
national sovereignty, race, and conquest shape the debates over Removal?
How were they evoked in arguments about the abolition of slavery and turn-
of-the-century imperialism?

4
 Parties on both sides of the 1830s Indian Removal debate agreed that the issue,

“unlike histories of many great questions which agitate the public mind in their day, will

in all probability endure … as long as the government itself.”2 To witness proof of the

Indian Removal debate’s lasting effects on mass opinion and political action, one need

look no farther than the abolition debates of the mid-1800s or turn-of-the-20th-century

American imperialism. Chief Justice Marshall’s 1831 proclamation that U.S. domestic

dependents like the Indians “pupils” needed to be instructed by their sovereign,

‘American parent’ merely paved the way for the Trail of Tears seven years later, and then

the claims by Southerners two decades later that slaves also needed to be ‘taught’ under a

slave holding system.3 However, at its deepest core, the Indian Removal debate was one

of economics veiled behind the guise of paternalistic concern for nations and races

weaker than the sovereign United States, and this successful fog of rationalization was

later used by pro-slavery and pro-imperialism proponents who honestly believed the U.S.

would economically benefit by the expansion of the two respective practices.

Despite the fact that many purported its real aims as being land transfer rather than

the wholly humanitarian concerns for the tribal way of life, the ultimate reason Indian

removal occurred was economically-driven.4 In 1810, just 35 years after America had

won its own independence, 400 American squatters living on un-annexed Chickasaw

lands petitioned the president and Congress to remove the Indians.5 Their rationale for

this request? “They could not understand why fertile land should be denied to those who

2
Mary Hershberger, “Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle Against Indian Removal in
the 1830s,” p. 15.
3
Justice Marshall, “Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia (30 U.S. 1, 1831).”
4
Hershberger, p. 16.
Andrew Johnson, “Seventh Annual Message to Congress (December 7, 1835).” It is the “moral duty of the
Government of the United States to protect and if possible to preserve and perpetuate the scattered
remnants of this race which are left within our borders” by moving the Indians west of the Mississippi.
5
Rothman, “Slave Country,” p. 56.

5
would ‘improve’ it, for the sake of ‘a heathen nation’ who seemed content to ‘saunter

about like so many wolves or bares.’”6 Therefore, despite Justice Marshall’s 1831 claim

that the then-contested lands of the Cherokee Indians should be left to the discretion of

the State of Georgia because the Cherokees were “domestic dependents” whose culture

and race needed to be protected from encroachment by their American “ward,” the

bottom line remained economic.7 Further proving the “smoke screen” nature of this

argument are the documented cases of economically successful Indian tribes like the

Choctaw nation that owned a cotton gin by 1802 and was soon thereafter participating in

cotton’s market economy by selling their cotton to the Chickasaw nation for cash.8 A

few indigenous communities of the Deep South even fell into the slaveholding practice

and expanded their plantation complexes, much to the chagrin of the surrounding whites.9

After all, the Jeffersonian hope that “civilizing the southern Indians [would] lead to the

peaceful transfer of surplus lands to the United States” became thwarted by the newfound

Indian resolve not to “sell out cheaply” since the market value of their prosperous, slave-

holding lands had increased.10 Thus, when the Indians were eventually forced west of the

Mississippi in the 1830s after Andrew Johnson told to the 1835 Congress, “all preceding

experiments for the improvement of the Indians have failed. It seems now to be an

established fact they cannot live in contact with a civilized community and prosper,”11 no

white man honestly believed it was entirely in the Indians’ best interest to do so. As the

complainant in the Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia case remarked, the American

and state governments’ paternalistic task of maintaining peace among its domestic
6
Rothman, p. 56.
7
Marshall.
8
Rothman, p. 59.
9
Rothman, p. 61.
10
Rothman, p. 61.
11
Andrew Johnson, Seventh Annual Message to Congress (December 7, 1835).

6
dependents obviously could not truly be motivating Indian removal since many Indians

who had abided by the removal decrees were worse off than they started; many tribes had

been “exposed to incursions of hostile Indians [in their new land], and that they are

'engaged in constant scenes of killing and scalping, and have to wage a war of

extermination with more powerful tribes, before whom they will ultimately fall.'”12 As

the Indians marched down 1838’s Trail of Tears, with 4,000 brethren dying along the

way to Oklahoma, any caring, paternalistic claims by America proved false; however, the

important matter is not that America’s paternalistic guise enabled them to dominate a

purportedly inferior race for its own free market benefit (in which land was a means of

currency in many regions), but that the guise succeeded, thereby paving the way for

future paternalistic claims in the abolition and 20th century imperialism arguments.

Just as Johnson had shown that the removed Indians would be paternalistically

provided for when moved west of the Mississippi and therefore better off, so too did the

proponents of the pro-slavery argument justify their mal-treatment of slaves by claiming

slaves needed protective paternalism under the free labor system rather than honestly

admitting it was really the Southern economy that needed slaves.13 As prominent 1850s

politicians like Stephen Douglas argued, slaves were not the white man’s equal, and

therefore required protection, which Southern slave holders were already providing in the

form of “[a slave’s] person and his property.”14 Southerners like George Fitzhugh

expanded the argument that it was the sovereign right of Americans to protect those

“weaker” races and peoples living within the U.S.’s boundaries. Fitzhugh claimed that
12
Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia.
13
Andrew Johnson, “Seventh Annual Message to Congress (December 7, 1835).” “To these districts the
Indians are removed at the expense of the United States, and with certain supplies of clothing, arms,
ammunition, and other indispensable articles; they are also furnished gratuitously with provisions for the
period of a year after their arrival at their new homes.”
14
Stephen Douglas, Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858.

7
unlike the Northern states in which “the wages of the poor diminish as their wants and

families increase, for the care and labor of attending to the family leaves them fewer

hours for profitable work … with negro slaves, their wages invariably increase with their

wants.”15 By purporting that slave holders cared for their slaves better than the free labor

market cared for poor whites, Fitzhugh succeeded in hiding the real economic need of

slaves. In the Southern, agrarian 1850s economy, cotton was king, and the system of

slavery that produced it expanded daily.16 “Slavery was a vital part” of an economy in

which slaves on one plantation picked “about 37,000 pounds of cotton in the plantation’s

first year.”17 With incidents like 17 hangings in one day, whippings for no apparent

reason, and other abuses, the alleged guardianship slave holders offered slaves appeared

feigned. Rooted in the successful 1830s Indian Removal, inherently racist ideas about

skin color and the white sovereign duty to control helpless blacks fueled the pro-slavery

argument. By arguing often about the paternalistic good they were providing the slaves,

slavery proponents successfully deflected moralistic abuse accusations; abolitionist

complaints about the morality of slavery could never have been successfully defeated by

a realistic appeal to southern economics, since the Northern abolitionists’ appeal to

equality under America’s burgeoning free labor market would have demolished such a

southern claim.

Similarly, 20th-century imperialist supporters utilized the paternalistic argument that

resulted from Indian Removal debates to forcefully argue in favor of early 20th century

American expansion as a means to better the lives of child-like indigenous populations in

other territories. Henry Cabot Lodge reflected this philanthropic take on American

15
George Fitzhugh, “Slavery Justified,” p. 29.
16
Rothman, p. 4.
17
Rothman, p. 3, 53

8
imperialism when he remarked in 1898 that many in America possessed “too much

confidence in our own political system to imagine that the inhabitants of the annexed

[territories] would find themselves less free, less happy, or less prosperous under

[American] rule than under that from which they had been taken.”18 As America

stretched into a truly global empire near the beginning of the 20th century, with

international land acquisitions like Hawaii and Cuba, it nevertheless continued its policy

of publicly justifying imperialistic acquisitions by claiming the U.S. was making them

out of a desire to benefit the indigenous peoples in those lands as well as protect them

and American interests from foreign threats. Regarding America’s desire to claim Cuba

(a move which would later incite 1898’s Spanish-American War), 1994’s “Ostend

Manifesto” purported that America needed to interfere in Cuba so as to protect her

national security (since Cuba was too close to America to safely be ruled by a European

threat like Spain) as well as liberating those Cuban peoples who were being persecuted

by the Spaniards in concentration camps. The Manifesto reads, “The sufferings which

the corrupt, arbitrary, and unrelenting local administration necessarily entails upon the

inhabitants of Cuba, cannot fail to stimulate and keep alive that spirit of resistance and

revolution against Spain.”19 This public slant de-emphasizes the major economic factors

fueling America’s lust for Cuba—the income that such a well-located port could provide

for America via ship tolls. Similarly, America claimed it was deposing of Hawaii’s Last

Queen, Liliuokalani, because she was threatening the stability of the Bayonet

Government by attempting to increase the monarchy’s power; America, as the “sovereign

guardian” of peoples of Hawaii (who like the Indians and slaves before them were

18
Henry Cabot Lodge, “The American Policy of Territorial Expansion,” The Independent (January 13,
1898).
19
The Ostend Manifesto, Aix-La-Chapelle, October 18, 1854.

9
deemed unable to properly rule anything “more than [a] wandering horde”), publicly

interfered under the auspices of a concerned, sovereign guardian; however, once again,

America was really interfering so as to reap the economic rewards of the thriving sugar

cane plantations.20

According to numerous scholars, “Indian removal symbolized … a portentous

triumph of the market values of aggressive acquisitiveness that placed a monetary value

on everything and encouraged human exploitation for commercial gain. ‘How long shall

it be that a Christian people … shall stand balancing the considerations of profit and loss

on a national question of justice and benevolence?”21 By claiming it was America’s

sovereign right to ensure paternalistic care of those races and peoples who were unable to

properly govern themselves, American government established a precedence of public

humanitarianism that belied their more central, economic motivations. This practice

proved successful at persuading many people that America was behaving righteously

during Indian removal, the Civil War, and imperialistic battles like the Spanish-American

War.

(1) In his 1898 article, “The American Policy of Territorial Annexation,” Henry
Cabot Lodge argued that the United States’ acquisition of Hawaii was part
of a long, consistent, and justified history of American conquest that reached
back to the beginning of the nation. Agree or disagree with this argument.
What is the relationship between the United States’ continental expansion in
the first half of the 19th century and its acquisition of overseas territories in
the late 19th and early 20th century? Is this history best understood as one of
continuity or change?

20
Johnson, Cherokee Nation .
21
Hershberger, p. 17.

10
 From its inception, America had consistently been a land of expansion. Colonizers

initially settled at Plymouth Rock only to migrate inland and southward soon thereafter.

Continuing in this spirit of explorative expansion, early 19th-century America pursued a

similar course of territorial acquisition using treaties and strategic land selection. Part of

the rationale behind their land acquisition methodology was their belief that America’s

power to wage a federally-funded and staffed war of expansion against a strong European

nation would undoubtedly prove fatal to the young nation; consequently, American

leaders implemented a policy whereby the federally-weak government would be strategic

in choosing relatively weak opponents like Spain-controlled Mexico for treaty talks or the

disjointed Indian Nations for forceful acquisition. On January 13, 1898, Henry Cabot

Lodge proudly proclaimed that America had acquired great territory throughout the 19th

century and “only one of [its] great acquisitions was made by war. The others have come

by purchase.”22 Cabot Lodge is accurate in recognizing America’s definite trend toward

strategically un-risky land acquisition during the first half of early nineteenth century.

After all, this was a time period in which the American union operated under the strain of

international dissension over issues like states’ rights and regionalized economic needs.

The resultant weak federal government had no chance of waging a successful territorial

war with powerful nations like Britain; however, following Reconstruction and the

reinvigoration America’s federal and naval power, America shifted gears and grew more

brazen in its willingness to fight strong nations for land.

Throughout antebellum America, expansion followed either peaceable treaties like

1803’s Louisiana Purchase from France, or forceful action against weaker groups like the

22
Henry Cabot Lodge, “The American Policy of Territorial Expansion,” (The Independent, January 13,
1898).

11
Indians; simultaneously, the government purposefully avoided warring with a strong

nation like Britain over northern California’s boundary. Toward the beginning of the 19th

century, when land-hungry America aggressively pursued the nearby lands of what would

become Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, there was scarcely a strong, unified force

on that land with which America would have to fight. In fact, most of these lands were

described at the end of the 18th century as being “thinly populated by a congeries of

peoples subject to the overlapping jurisdictions of several American Indian nations,

Spain, and the United States.”23 Similarly, America’s attack on the Indians for their land

also did not require a federally united, militaristic front since the Indian force itself did

not “present a united front” against America.24 Even when America fought against the

Spanish government over Texas territory during the Mexican-American War (1846-

1848), it can be argued that the Spanish force was not too strong in Texas. In fact, in the

1820s, it is reported American immigrants outnumbered Tejanos 3:1 in that region.

American mass power in Texas remained so strong that by 1830, Mexico attempted to

prohibit any more American settlers but failed to thwart the continuous influx.25 Thus,

even when antebellum America waged territorial war against a European power, as it did

against Spain here, it did so only when that nation posed little militaristic threat to its

weak federal powers. Furthermore, President James K. Polk’s 1844 refusal to fight

against Britain over the disputed boundary of North Carolina also reflects America’s

hesitancy to take on a powerful nation. Polk did not believe America could win a battle

against the world’s naval superpower (Britain) at that time, so he chose to war with

23
Rothman, p. x.
24
Rothman, p. 55. “Historical animosities between different indigenous groups, disputes over boundaries,
and the highly decentralized, consensual character of their internal politics inhibited pan-Indian solidarity.”
25
Few Mexicans and Spaniards would settle in Texas, which also contributed to the skewed population
ratio.

12
Mexico for the acquisition of Southern California instead. Through the resultant 1848

Treaty of Hidalgo, America increased its own size by ¼ without waging a major

territorial war. Thus, in antebellum America, the government acquired expansive

amounts of territory through treaties and conservative power moves since it continued to

fear fighting with strong national superpowers for land; until the Civil War, internal

dissension and a limited federal governmental power prohibited the relatively weak

nation from even attempting such a feat.

America’s inability to fight strong world powers for territory changed following the

Civil War. In 1838, Chief Justice Marshall justified his ruling in the Cherokee Nation vs.

the State of Georgia Supreme Court case by referencing the power of states for expansive

self determinism as long as it did not violate the Constitution. With this proclamation,

Marshall essentially provided fodder for the South’s states’ rights argument, which

merely perpetuated the long-term internal American disagreement over a state’s right to

determine its slave status. Marshall wrote:

To control the state of Georgia, and to restrain the exertion of its physical
force. The propriety of such an interposition by the court may be well
questioned. It savours too much of the exercise of political power to be
within the proper province of the judicial department.26

With this proclamation, Justice Marshall left the weakening federal government little

recourse against the now-bolstered South, and the resulting Civil War was often thought

to be a battle for the enforcement of federal laws nation-wide by Union soldiers. “‘This

contest is not the North against South,’ wrote a young Philadelphia printer six days

before he enlisted. ‘It is government against anarchy, law against disorder.”27 By 1860, it

had become quite obvious that the Union lacked unity and was guided by regional ties

26
Marshall, Cherokee
27
McPherson, “For Cause and Comrades,” p. 18.

13
rather than loyalty to the entire nation. One Civil War soldier wrote, “the West might

want to separate next Presidential Election … others might want to follow, and this

country would be as bad as the German states.”28 As Lincoln said, the “house divided”

could hardly remain together, let alone aggressively battle for controlled land with

stronger European nations. Therefore, when the North won a decided victory over the

South and established a strong, federal government that would not accept “flaccid”

federal power any longer, the stage was set for America to grow into a single, United

States, capable of confronting world superpowers during disagreements over territorial

acquisition.29

The shift in the U.S.’s newly aggressive land acquisition policies is incredibly

evident in the late 19th century and early 20th century, a period in which “the United States

was conquering overseas territories.”30 Between 1800 and 1900, the U.S. navy increased

in size so much that it jumped from ranking as the world’s fifth largest navy to the

world’s third largest navy, only behind Britain and Germany. With its bolstered military

force and truly empowered federal government, the U.S. was now able to use either

treaties or armed conflict to battle European strongholds for land. Such was the case in

1898 when the U.S. waged the Spanish-American War in Cuba (over which Spain held a

tighter control than it had with Texas 50 years earlier) for territorial dominance.

Although the U.S.’s relative military inexperience almost prevented McKinley and his

Rough Riders from summiting Havana’s hill and attaining victory, and Spain’s economic

28
McPherson, p. 18.
29
Walter L. Williams, “United States Indian Policy and the Debate Over Philippine Annexation:
Implications for the Origins of American Imperialism,” The Journal of American History 66:4 (March
1980), p. 812. Empowerment of the federal government and courts include measures like 1885’s providing
the federal court jurisdiction over major crimes on reservations. The key insight is that the federal
legislature, court, and President were now understood to be in charge of the entire Union.
30
Williams, p. 813.

14
hardships at the time caused an economic blockade to break their control sooner than it

would have otherwise, the fact that the U.S. trekked down to Cuba and fought for the

primary reason of expanding territory (and not as a response to Americans’ cries for help,

as it had done in the earlier Mexican-American War) reflected a newfound national

confidence. Gaining control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines as a result of that

war’s Treaty of Paris, the U.S. then proceeded to stay in an extremely bloody war with a

Filipino rebel Aguinaldo. Although the Filipino insurgents were divided into smaller

groups, the leaders were typically well-trained militarists possessing “a remarkably high

exposure to the military ramifications of [the] United States.”31 The United States’

willingness to enter into such a violent conflict and remain there so as to maintain their

territorial ascendancy reflected a shift from their earlier, more protective policy of 19th

century continental expansion.

Seventeen years after the dawning of the 20th century, the United States entered

World War I, essentially sounding a loud declaration that it remained willing to battle

strong European nations for territory and rights. Having grown in federal strength and

military since the early 19th century, the U.S. continued to prove that it would remain a

territorially large and internationally powerful nation with which others should not

reckon.

NOTES: possibly discuss that perfect Indian-Filipino article in first essay?

31
Williams, p. 828.

15