The United States and the world - Ideological Flashcards
Introduction:
The United States was still an unfinished nation in 1865, semi-detached from international affairs. By 1890 it was one of the world’s leading industrial economies, in a position to become a world power. The expansion of the United States was territorial as well as economic: the acquisition of Alaska, confirmation of the long border with Canada, and the conquest and colonisation of the American West through a series of treaties and wars with Native American nations, all increased American territory. Most Americans still held to the traditional beliefs in anti-colonialism and in avoiding foreign entanglements’; but the territorial consolidation between 1865 and 1890 prepared the way for American imperialism
Manifest Destiny:
The belief of Ulysses Grant in April 1865 that the United States would loom far above all other countries, being able to put half a million soldiers in the field, and therefore able to dictate others to conform to justice and right, reflected the ideas of Manifest Destiny, a slogan that had fostered intense patriotic feeling in the 1840s, at the time of the war against Mexico. Manifest Destiny, with its belief in ‘continentalism’ (the consolidation of the United States to occupy the North American continent - expansion), went hand in hand with the belief in America as a future world power
The limits of foreign engagement:
There were powerful forces holding back any urge for American expansionism in 1865. Some of these forces had deep ideological roots: the sense of American exceptionalism and the desire to avoid entanglements with ‘old Europe’. Other forces were immediate and practical: the need to reconcile the nation after a traumatic civil war, to stabilise relations with Mexico and Canada, to bring order and stability to the American West, and to complete the territorial consolidation of the nation
There were also specific issues making Americans look inward in 1865:
• Relations with Britain were complicated by tensions over the US-Canada border; and because interests in Britain had supported the Confederacy (South) during the Civil War.
• Spain was anxious to protect what was left of its colonial empire against further US expansio
• Conservative regimes such as the Austrian Empire feared the ‘dangerous’ ideas of American democracy
• Americans were hostile to the interference in Mexico promoted by Emperor Napoleon III of France
The continuation of isolationism and the Monroe Doctrine:
The concept of isolationism was always relative rather than absolute. Almost from its beginnings the United States was an expanding nation, conscious of its Manifest Destiny. Against this, there were many strands of American thought leading towards isolationism. One was anti-colonialism. Another was geographical isolation, the sense of safe separation from the world that was provided by two great oceans. A third strand was the vision of America as the Land of the Free, a refuge from persecution
Isolationist thinking was underpinned by the Monroe Doctrine (stating that the US would oppose any European intervention in the affairs of the Americas). Originally issued in 1823, this had gained a universal hold on the nation’s view of itself. From 1823, all American politicians and opinion-formers, whatever their party loyalties, accepted the Monroe Doctrine as an article of faith. During and after the Civil War, the power of the Monroe Doctrine was demonstrated by the American response to the attempt by France and Austria to establish an empire in Mexico
The attempt to establish an empire in Mexico:
In 1863, with America preoccupied with the Civil War, Emperor Napoleon III of France sent an army to occupy Mexico City. This enabled the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, to accept the Crown of Mexico, offered to him by Mexican conservatives
While the Civil War continued, the chances of Archduke Maximilian of Austria establishing a secure imperial rule in Mexico seemed promising, but once the war ended there were furious American protests from Congress and the press against this foreign ‘invasion’. Ulysses Grant and other army generals wanted the army to be sent to Mexico, to ‘defend the Monroe Doctrine’
William Seward, the Secretary of State, opted to rely on diplomatic pressure instead. Seward pursued an ambitious, interventionist foreign policy in many areas: his plans included acquiring naval bases in the Caribbean and in the Pacific Islands, and negotiating a treaty with Colombia to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. Most of these schemes failed to materialise, though Seward did have some important achievements, such as the acquisition of Midway Island in the Pacific and, especially, the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Seward was also a realist, however, and carefully avoided open conflict with France over Mexico
In the end, neither American military power nor the mystique of the Monroe Doctrine was required to crush Maximilian’s empire in Mexico. Napoleon III lost interest. Maximilian was a well-meaning but ineffectual ruler who soon found he had no popular support. Mexican nationalists, led by Benito Juarez, fought a skilful guerrilla war and mobilised Mexican opinion. In June 1867, Maximilian was executed by a firing squad at Queretaro
The Mexican Empire had almost certainly been doomed to fail anyway, whatever the United States did, but it was easy for Seward to present the outcome as a vindication of the Monroe Doctrine, thus reinforcing its mythic importance to the American popular imagination. The ‘expulsion’ of the Europeans from Mexico fitted in with the idea of the Monroe Doctrine as essentially defensive, but it also fed expansionist ideas about future American dominance of the Western hemisphere
Seward died in 1869. His successor as Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, continued his expansionist approach. Between 1869 and 1873, backed by business interests, the United States attempted to establish a protectorate over the Dominican Republic, adjacent to Cuba. In 1873, Fish arranged a trade treaty with Hawaii that opened close links and paved the way for the eventual annexation of Hawaii in the 1890s. A similar trade treaty with Samoa was concluded in 1878. Such developments were small in scale at the time but were laying the foundations for later expansion in the 1890s
William Seward (1801-1869):
William Seward was Governor of New York State from 1838 to 1842, and Senator from 1849. He ran for the presidential nomination in 1860 but accepted a place in Lincoln’s Cabinet as Secretary of State. Seward was wounded in the assassination plot of 1865 but survived, and he continued as Secretary of State under Andrew Johnson. Seward’s role in the purchase of Alaska in 1867 was a reflection of his support for ‘Manifest Destiny’
Territorial consolidation:
The territorial consolidation of the United States was already well advanced by 1865. Vast territory was acquired from France by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Spain ceded Florida in 1818. Between the 1830s and 1845, American settlers pushed through the annexation of Texas. Victory in the Mexican War of 1846 gained new territories in California and the South West. From the 1840s, the Oregon Trail enabled settlers to cross the Great Plains and start new settlements in the Pacific North West. After 1865 vast new territories were incorporated into the United States - Alaska, the Great Plains, and the Far West. This ‘continentalist’ expansion was founded on wars, treaties and deliberate government policy
Territorial consolidation: Alaska
The acquisition of Alaska was opportunistic rather than planned. Seward was already interested in the idea, but it was a change in Russian policy that opened the way. The Russian-American Company had become an expensive drain on resources. Russia also feared that the United States might just seize the territory anyway. It made sense to gain some financial reward and to improve relations with the Americans, rather than lose Alaska for nothing. Russia ceded Alaska for $7.2 million
At the time, the acquisition of Alaska was denounced by politicians and the press as a foolish and expensive mistake. Critics called it Seward’s Folly, or the polar bear garden. But attitudes soon changed. Strong commercial links were established with West Coast ports like Seattle and San Francisco. The economic potential of the region, for fish, furs, mining and logging, became widely recognised, even before the Alaska-Yukon gold rush in the late 1890s
The overtaking of the Indian nations:
The fate of the Native American Nations in the Trans-Mississippi West is one of the blind spots in American history. According to the National Myth, the settling of the ‘empty’ West was a great leap forward for modernity and progress, fulfilling a ‘civilising mission’. In this narrative, Native Americans were ‘noble savages’ who were a barrier to progress. At the time and in later histories, Native Americans were depicted as racially and culturally inferior, and were seen as a ‘problem’ for governments to deal with
This National Myth does not correspond well with reality. Native Americans comprised numerous Indian Nations, each with their own way of life, their own ancestral lands, and their own political and social structures. The conquest and colonisation of the West was only made possible by wars, treaties, and executive decisions of government, enforced by the US Army
The marginalisation of the Indian Nations happened in a remarkably short space of time. Outbreaks of fighting during the Civil War culminated in a terrible massacre at Sand Creek in Colorado in 1864, and major conflicts continued until 1877. These wars involved countless battles and local conflicts - a total of 101 in 1871 alone. In the first phase, US policy was to recognise the Indian Nations and make ‘equal’ peace treaties with them
Treaties with the Indian nations
One example was the Treaty of Medicine Lodge in October 1867. This comprised three treaties between the Indian Peace Commission, set up by Congress in 1867, and the Indian nations of the southern Plains: the Comanche, the Apache, and the Cheyenne-Arapaho. The treaty set new borders for ‘Indian Territory’ and was intended to ensure control over white encroachment (taking over) into Native American lands
The Treaty of Fort Laramie established similar agreements with the Sioux Nations after Red Cloud’s War of 1866-1868 - a war fought by the Plains Indians, led by the Sioux chief Red Cloud, to stop white encroachment
Under President Grant, the policy shifted towards one of ‘reservation or assimilation’, requiring Native Americans to accept life in demarcated reservations, or to assimilate as individual citizens. In part, this new policy was intended to protect Native Americans from exploitation by settlers and from the corruption among government agents. President Grant appointed Quaker missionaries as agents, hoping to ensure higher ethical standards. From 1877, President Hayes and his Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz, continued to reform the Bureau of Indian Affairs to root out corruption
These policies brought some improvements but the agents were often unable to enforce their authority over white settlers, and even reformers like Schurz regarded Native Americans as culturally inferior, not as equals. Native American peoples found themselves fighting a triangle of white power: the initiation of conflict by the actions of settlers; the decisions of the US government and its Bureau of Indian Affairs; and, above all, the US Army
Wars with the Indian nations:
There were three main theatres of war: in the South West, in the Great Plains, and in the North West. The long-running Apache Wars were ended in 1874 when the Apache leader Cochise agreed a peace treaty. In the Great Plains, breaches of the 1868 peace treaty by white settlers and gold prospectors led to renewed war in the Black Hills and to a catastrophic defeat of the US Army at the Little Bighorn in 1876, but the Sioux and Cheyenne nations were brutally suppressed in the months that followed. Further north, the Comanche and Cheyenne were defeated in the Red River War of 1874-75. In the Nez Perce War of 1877, Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce warriors fought their way across five Northwest states towards Canada until forced to surrender by the US Army under General Miles
By the end of 1877, US military control was effectively established, though there were outbreaks of rebellion such as Geronimo’s War from 1881 to 1886 and the Ghost Dance Rebellion of the Lakota Sioux, crushed by the US Army at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890. By then, the influx of white settlers had pushed Native Americans to the margins of society. The unstoppable tide of land-hungry settlers (and the willingness of the government to accommodate them) was shown by the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, when 2 million acres of ‘Indian Territory’ was granted as free land to white settlers
The Treaty of Fort Laramie:
This agreement (also known as the Sioux Treaty) was made in Wyoming Territory in April 1868, between the United States and the chiefs of the Lakota Sioux and the Arapaho Nation. The Great Sioux Reservation was established to the west of the Missouri River, including exclusive Native American rights over the Black Hills region. The treaty also made provision for white assistance in education and economic development
Wars and Treaties - The United States and the Indian Nations 1864-90:
Sitting Bull (c1831-90):
Sitting Bull was a tribal chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota people in Dakota Territory. He fought in Red Cloud’s War of 1866-68 and was a war leader in the Great Sioux War (Black Hills War) in 1876. After the defeat of 1877, Sitting Bull went into exile in Canada until 1881 when he returned to surrender. In 1885 he participated in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. He was killed in 1890, resisting police sent to arrest him in case he joined the Ghost Dance Rebellion
Joseph of the Nez Perce (1840-1904):
Joseph of the Nez Perce was chief of the Wallowa Nez Perce (in Oregon) from 1871. He negotiated peace with the US Army in 1873 but the army broke this agreement in 1877, leading to the Nez Perce War: a long retreat by the Nez Perce across Oregon, Idaho and Montana, pursued by the US Army. The war ended at the Battle of Bear Paw Mountain. Joseph then became a prominent campaigner for the return of Indian lands. He was invited to meet President Hayes in 1879 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1903
Tensions over Canada:
In 1865 Canada, like the United States, was an unfinished nation with only tenuous links to the West. The US-Canada border had been satisfactorily agreed by treaties in 1842 and 1846, making the demarcation line the 49th Parallel. However, this only covered eastern Canada from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. What would happen in the West remained an open question
There were three main issues causing tension and raising the possibility of American annexation of Canadian territory:
• the Fenian Raids
• the Red River Colony
• the western Canadian province of British Columbia
