U.S. Expansionism Notes

Discuss the United States' participation in the global community in the early 19th century.
Trace the United States' efforts to expand its territorial claims and trade networks to become a global superpower.
Develop a defensible claim about the significance of early U.S. expansion.

Term used to describe U.S. desire to expand its territory to the Pacific Coast.
It was a strategic move for accessing Pacific markets, but also gained a quasi-religious air.
The ideology was propped up by rhetoric of white supremacy
Example: "American Progress", 1872

U.S. begins to expand its participation in international markets.
First U.S. international conflict, Barbary War, results from need to protect maritime trade from piracy.
Whale hunting was a massive business, with catastrophic impact on whale population.
Northern coastal city growth spurred by access to sea markets.

New York explodes in population, gaining around 100,000 people per decade.
Baltimore becomes nation’s #2 for a time (technically).
Cincinnati is the first major Midwestern city, begins to be supplanted by Chicago and St. Louis around mid-century.
The South lags pretty far behind, with the exception of New Orleans.

1830 Indian Removal Act permits the U.S. government to move indigenous nations west of the Mississippi against their will and claim their lands.
Jackson infamously ignores Supreme Court decisions about native land rights. "Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."
Tens of thousands are forced to march 1,000 miles in the cold of winter; thousands die in the march, and thousands more die in land they are unfamiliar with.

U.S. settlers from the South had moved across the border to Mexico for several decades.
These settlers often refused to obey Mexican laws, including those against slavery, and openly wished to take the land for themselves and give it to the U.S.
Anglos fight Texan Revolution from 1835-36 and establish independent Republic of Texas after capturing President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.
The territory stays independent for a decade, pretty much solely because the U.S. wants to avoid war.

Polk moves troops to contested borders between Texas and Mexico, spurring conflict to justify invasion.
The war goes very well for the U.S.; they quickly secure northern Mexico, assisted by rebellion in California, and relatively few deaths (vast majority from disease).

Several Whigs, most notably JQA and a young Illinois politician named Abraham Lincoln, were against the war (if not the idea of expansions).
Others spoke out or wrote against it.
Some advocated for more radical protests, most notably Thoreau, whose writings on civil disobedience become globally influential.

U.S. secures close to 900,000 square miles of territory (now home to over $\frac{1}{4}$ th of the country’s population).
Like with Louisiana Purchase, however, they don’t control most of that land.
Comanche remain real power for several decades.

The discovery of gold in California leads to a rush of people from around the world to San Francisco.
California is quickly admitted as a state.
The shape of California poses a problem

Fillmore is often considered the most forgettable president, yet his admin is arguably one of the most important.
U.S. establishes contact with Japan, opening a market previously off-limits to Western powers.
More significantly, he takes charge in the midst of an extremely contentious fight over the future of slavery in the new territories…

During the Civil War, Lincoln’s administration passes the Homestead Act, opening up the West to loyal citizens.
Thousands of settlers push westward, claiming land in the plains as farmland.
The U.S. military backs them up; decades after the Civil War, the U.S. military is mainly used to kill, displace, and control native people.