Territorial Expansion and Manifest Destiny

1. Territorial Expansion and Manifest Destiny - Forced Removal of American Indians to the trans-Mississippi west Western migration and cultural interactions Territorial acquisitions Early U.S. imperialism: the Mexican War

2. Forced Removal of American Indians to the trans-Mississippi west • As the American frontier continued to move westward through the antebellum era, white settlement abutted and in some cases surrounded Native American groups west of the Appalachians. • Fighting during the War of 1812 had all but eliminated the Indians east of the Mississippi as a military threat, but substantial numbers of Indians still clung to their ancestral homes, especially in the South. • The policy of the U.S. government since the Washington administration had been one of “civilization.” Recognizing that the tide of white settlement could not be stopped, the government embarked to educate, and perhaps eventually assimilate the Indians into white culture. Indian groups were encouraged to adopt European-style agriculture and Christianity. • By the 1820s, several of the Native American groups had made remarkable progress in meeting the goals of the government policies (disregarding the wisdom or ethics of the policy to begin with). The Cherokee, for example, had extensive farms and plantations (including slaves), had adopted a Constitutional government, and had developed a unique syllabary for their language, making almost the entire population literate. The Cherokee were proclaimed one of the five “civilized” tribes of the South, along with the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole.

3. But another policy, the idea to forcibly remove the Indians west of the Mississippi, had begun to take shape as early as 1802, when Jefferson negotiated a “Compact” with Georgia to remove the Indians within its borders in exchange for relinquishing western land claims. Jefferson also initiated the first actual (voluntary) removal of some eastern Indian groups. • As white settlement exploded through the 1810s and 1820s, the Indians were increasingly seen as an impediment to American progress, and the clamor for opening ever more land became too much to resist, politically speaking. In 1830 Andrew Jackson initiated the Indian Removal Act, which provided for the forced removal of nearly all the Native Americans that remained east of the Mississippi. • Despite the impassioned pleas of the Indians and their advocates (including a Supreme Court decision denying the constitutionality of removal in the Cherokee’s case), plans for removal continued. In the fall and winter of 1838-39, tens of thousands of Indians were gathered up and marched to their new home in Indian Territory (present Oklahoma). Many thousands died on the journey and the untold suffering and brutality of this “Trail of Tears” marks one of the most shameful acts of the United States government.

4. Western migration and cultural interactions • It is difficult to overstate how rapidly the American frontier was moving and evolving throughout the 1800s. The prospect of cheap fertile land fostered huge migrations of Americans westward, and with the removal of the Indians, virtually all of the available land east of the Mississippi (and most of the states on the western border of the river) had been completely settled by 1850. Migration patterns tended to be latitudinal- that is- northerners tended to stay north and southerners tended to stay south. • A comprehensive discussion of “cultural interactions” in the west through the antebellum period is daunting, suffice it to say it was incredibly varied. Natives Americans still constituted a substantial presence on the frontier west of the Mississippi. European immigrants formed substantial populations in several western states- Germans in Missouri, and Scandinavians in the upper mid-west, for example. • Through the deep South, African-American culture continued to evolve and influenced the larger southern culture, especially in those areas where they comprised a majority of the population, as in the “black belt” of Alabama and the Mississippi delta region. • Mexican culture played an obvious role in the development of the southwest from Texas to California. Following the Gold Rush in 1848-9, a substantial number of Chinese immigrants made the long journey across the Pacific and left a lasting cultural legacy in California. • In short, the cultural diversity of the antebellum American West was tremendous, foreshadowing the evolution of the American “melting pot.”

5. Territorial acquisitions • By 1853, the contiguous United States had taken its present form. Through the 1840s, the United States had roughly doubled its size once again. The annexation of Texas in 1845, followed by the formal acquisition of the Oregon country in 1846, followed by the Mexican cession (present southwest and California), fulfilled the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States- the idea that the United States would (and should) control the continent from coast to coast. • “Manifest” in this sense means ‘clear’ or ‘obvious.’ And we know what destiny means: foreordained, fate. So it was the obvious fate, a providentially blessed conclusion, that the American nation would come to be a continental power- spreading the light of civilization on the dark and pagan wilderness of the west. • Perhaps it was fear of a premature closing of the frontier, or perhaps greed and racism, but whatever the underlying motive, the United States chartered a new course beginning in the 1840s.

6. Early U.S. imperialism: the Mexican War • The idea of Manifest Destiny reached its height (and got its name) in the mid-1840s, but the events leading up to these enormous land acquisitions were decades in the making. • The Mexican War of 1846-8 had its roots in the annexation of Texas a year prior to the war’s outbreak. As early as 1820, American settlers from Tennessee and elsewhere through the South had migrated to Texas under the lure of grants. The Mexican government wanted to attract occupants to its northern state, and assumed the American settlers would assimilate to Mexican culture. Tensions between the Mexican government and American settlers erupted into war in 1836, and although ultimately a stalemate, Texas claimed its independence as the Lone Star Republic. • Mexico never acknowledged Texas’ independence, and although the United States was not willing to risk war in 1836, they were in 1845, and so the US annexed Texas, in a move that some hoped would provoke the Mexicans into war.

7. Indeed Mexico was furious, but it took further provocation to bring the conflict to arms. That came in 1846, when an American force crossed the Nueces River in south Texas, into disputed territory just north of the Rio Grande. The Mexican defenses, rightly thinking the US was attacking, fired on the American forces and a battle ensued that left 16 Americans dead. • Even with the forces of Manifest Destiny at play, a patently imperialistic policy against Mexico, or any nation, seemed out of step with American ideals of democracy and self-determination. It should be noted that there was a substantial element of resistance to the Mexican War, by those that opposed it morally and/or saw it as a ploy by southerners to extend the “slave power” westward. But President James K Polk was more than able to muster a coalition of the willing on the ruse that the Mexicans had attacked first, and therefore, all out war was necessary. • In fighting that spanned nearly two years, the Americans routed Mexican forces in northern Mexico and California, and eventually marched to Mexico City itself to occupy the Mexican seat of power. The resulting Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo recognized the US annexation of Texas, and ceded California and the rest of the south west in exchange for $18,250,000.