THE FRUITS OF MANIFEST DESTINY

CONTINENTAL EXPANSION

1840s: Slavery moved to the center stage of American politics.

It did so not in the moral language or with the immediatist program of abolitionism, but as a result of the nation’s territorial expansion.

By 1840: With the completion of Indian removal, virtually all the land east of the Mississippi was in white hands.

The depression that began in 1837 sparked a large migration of settlers further west.

CONTINENTAL EXPANSION

1800-1840: Some 5,000 emigrants made the difficult 2,000 mile journey by wagon train to Oregon from jumping off places on the banks of the Missouri River.

1860: Nearly 300,000 men, women, and children had braved disease, starvation, the Rocky Mts., and occasional Indian attacks to travel overland to Oregon and California.

CONTINENTAL EXPANSION

1840s: The USA and GB administered Oregon, and Utah was part of Mexico.

This did not stop Americans from settling in either region.

National boundaries meant little to those who moved west.

The era witnessed an intensification of the old belief that God intended the American nation to reach all the way to the Pacific Ocean = Manifest Destiny.

THE MORMONS’ PLIGHT

Another migration brought thousands of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, to modern-day Utah.

THE MORMONS’ PLIGHT

The Mormons were founded in the 1820s by Joseph Smith, a young farmer in upstate NY.

He claimed to have been led by an angel to a set of golden plates covered with strange writing.

THE MORMONS’ PLIGHT

He translated the book as The Book of Mormon.

He claimed that his church descended from the lost tribes of Israel.

THE MORMONS’ PLIGHT

The absolute authority Smith exercised over his followers, as well as the refusal of the Mormons to separate church and state, alarmed many neighbors.

Even more outrageous to the general community was the Mormon practice of polygamy – a repudiation of traditional Christian teaching and 19th century morality.

THE MORMONS’ PLIGHT

Mobs drove Smith and his followers out of NY, OH and MS.

1839: They settled in Illinois where they hoped to await the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

1844: Smith was arrested on the charge of inciting a riot that destroyed an anti-Mormon newspaper.

While in jail, he was murdered by a group of intruders.

THE MORMONS’ PLIGHT

Smith’s successor was Brigham Young.

He led over 10,000 followers across the Great Plains and Rocky Mts., to the shores of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, seeking a refuge where they could practice their faith undistrubed.

THE MEXICAN FRONTIER

THE MEXICAN FRONTIER

The settlement of Oregon did not directly raise the issue of slavery.

But the nation’s acquisition of Mexico did.

THE MEXICAN FRONTIER

1821: When Mexico achieved its independence from Spain, it was nearly as large as the US and its population of 6.5 million was about 2/3 that of its northern neighbor

Mexico’s northern provinces – CA, NM, and TX – however were isolated and sparsely settled outposts surrounded by Indian country.

NM’s population at the time of Mexican independence consisted of around 30,000 persons of Spanish origin, 10,000 Pueblo Indians and an “indeterminate number” of “wild’ Indians.

1821: With the opening of the Santa Fe Trail, NM’s commerce with the US eclipsed trade with the rest of Mexico.

THE SANTA FE TRAIL

THE MEXICAN FRONTIER

1821: CA’s non-Indian population of 3.200 was vastly outnumbered by about 20,000 Indians living and working on land owned by religious missions and by 150,000 members of unsubded tribes in the interior.

THE MEXICAN FRONTIER

1834: The Mexican govt., dissolved the great mission holdings and emancipated Indians working for the Friars.

Most of the land ended up in the hands of a new class of Mexican cattle ranchers, the Californios.

They referred to themselves as “people capable of reason” as opposed to indios, whom they called “people without reason.”

The area also attracted a small number of American newcomers.

THE TEXAS REVOLT

THE TEXAS REVOLT

The first of Mexico to be settled by significant numbers of Americans was TX, whose non-Indian population of Spanish origins (Tejanos) numbered about 2,000 when Mexico became independent.

THE TEXAS REVOLT

In order to develop the region, the Mexican govt., accepted an offer from Moses Austin, a CT born farmer, to colonize it with Americans.

THE TEXAS REVOLT

1820: Austin received a large land grant.

When he died his son Stephen continued the plan, reselling land in smaller plots to American settlers at .12 per acre.

THE TEXAS REVOLT

1830: The population of Americans had reached around 7,000, considerably exceeding the number of Tejanos.

Alarmed that its grip on the area was weakening, the Mexican govt., annulled existing land contracts and barred future emigration from the USA.

Led by Stephen Austin, American settlers demanded greater autonomy within Mexico.

THE TEXAS REVOLT

The issue of slavery further exacerbated matters.

Mexico had abolised slavery, but local authorities allowed American settlers to bring their slaves with them.

THE TEXAS REVOLT

1835: When Mexico’s ruler General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna sent an army to impose central authority, the Americans believed he was coming to free the slaves.

His appearance sparked a chaotic revolt in TX.

The rebels formed a provisional govt., and called for Texan independence.

THE BATTLE OF THE ALAMO

THE BATTLE OF THE ALAMO March 13, 1836: Santa Anna’s army stormed

the Alamo, a mission compound in San Antonio, killing its 187 American and Tejano defenders.

“Remember the Alamo” became the Texans rallying cry.

CROCKETT, BOWIE AND TRAVERS

THE ALAMO

STORMING OF THE ALAMO

THE BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO

THE BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO April 1836: At the

Battle of San Jacinto, Sam Houston, a former gov. of TN, routed Santa Anna’s army and forced him to recognize Texan independence.

Houston was elected the first president of the Republic of Texas.

THE TEXAS REVOLT

1837: The TX Congress called for union with the USA.

But fearing the political disputes certain to result from an attempt to add another slave state, Presidents Jackson and Van Buren shelved the question.

THE TEXAS REVOLT

Settlers from the USA poured into the region. Many were slaveowners taking up fertile

cotton land. 1845: The population of TX reached nearly

150,000.

JAMES K. POLK AND EXPANSION

THE ELECTION OF 1844

THE ELECTION OF 1844

Texas annexation remained on the political backburner until President John Tyler revived it in hopes of rescuing his failed administration and securing southern support for re-nomination in 1844.

THE ELECTION OF 1844

April 1844: A letter by John C. Calhoun, Tyler’s Sec. of State, was leaked to the press.

It linked the idea of absorbing TX directly to the goal of strengthening slavery in the USA.

Some Southern leaders hoped that TX could be divided into several states, thus enhancing the South’s power in Congress.

THE ELECTION OF 1844

Later that month, Clay and Martin Van Buren, the prospective Whig and Democratic candidates for president met at Clay’s KY plantation.

They agreed to issue letters rejecting immediate annexation of TX on the grounds that it might provoke war with Mexico.

THE ELECTION OF 1844

Clay and Van Buren were reacting to the issue of slavery in the traditional manner – by trying to keep it out of national politics.

Clay went on to receive the Whig nomination.

Van Buren failed in his bid to gain the Democratic nomination.

THE ELECTION OF 1844

The Democrats nominated little-known James K. Polk, a former gov., of TN.

His main assets were his support for annexation and his close association with Andrew Jackson, still the party’s most popular figure.

THE ELECTION OF 1844

Polk was a slaveholder.

He owned substantial cotton plantations in TN and MS, where conditions were so brutal that only half of the slave children lived to the age of 15, and adults frequently ran away.

THE ELECTION OF 1844

The Democratic platform called for annexation of TX and reoccupation of Oregon.

“Fifty-four forty of fight” –American control of Oregon all the way to its northern boundary became a popular slogan.

THE ELECTION OF 1844

Polk was the first “dark-horse” candidate for president.

Polk defeated Clay in an extremely close election.

Polk’s margin in the popular vote was less than 2%

THE ELECTION OF 1844

Had not James G. Birney, running as the Liberty Party candidate, received 16,000 votes in NY, mostly from anti-slavery Whigs, Clay would have been elected president.

March 1845: Only days before Polk’s inauguration, Congress declared TX part of the USA.

POLK AS PRESIDENT

Polk may have been virtually unknown, but he assumed the presidency with a clearly defined set of goals:

To reduce the tariff Reestablish the independent treasury Settle the dispute over the ownership of

Oregon Bring CA into the Union.

POLK AS PRESIDENT

Congress soon enacted the first two goals, and the third was accomplished in an agreement with GB dividing OR at the 49th parallel.

Many Northerners were bitterly disappointed by this compromise, considering it a betrayal of Polk’s campaign promise not to give up any part of Oregon without a fight.

POLK AS PRESIDENT

Acquiring CA proved more difficult.

Polk dispatched an emissary to Mexico offering to purchase the region, but the Mexican govt., refused to negotiations.

POLK AS PRESIDENT

Spring 1846: Polk was planning for military action.

April 1846: American soldiers under Zachary Taylor moved into the region between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, land claimed by both countries on the disputed border between TX and Mexico.

THE MEXICAN WAR

This action made conflict with Mexican forces inevitable.

When fighting broke out, Polk claimed that the Mexicans had “shed blood upon American soil” and called for a declaration of war.

THE MEXICAN WAR

Some in Congress were not convinced by Polk’s claims of American blood shed.

Abraham Lincoln introduced a resolution demanding the exact spot that blood was shed.

This resolution is known as the “spot resolution.”

THE MEXICAN WAR

The Mexican War was the first American conflict to be fought primarily on foreign soil and the first in which American forces occupied a foreign capital.

Inspired by the fervor of Manifest Destiny, a majority of Americans supported the war.

THE MEXICAN WAR

However a significant minority in the North dissented, fearing that far from expanding the “great empire of liberty,” the Polk Administration’s real aim was to acquire land for the expansion of slavery.

THE MEXICAN WAR

Ulysses S. Grant, who served with distinction in the war, later called the war “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker nation,” and indication that the USA was beginning to act like “European monarchies,” not a democratic republic.

THE MEXICAN WAR

Henry David Thoreau, was jailed in MA for refusing to pay taxes as a protest over the war.

Defending his actions, he wrote an important essay “On Civil Disobedience.”

“Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place of a just man is also a prison.”

THE MEXICAN WAR

June 1846: A band of American insurrectionists proclaimed CA freed from Mexican control and named Capt. John C. Fremont its ruler.

THE MEXICAN WAR

July 1846: The US Navy sailed into Monterey and San Francisco Harbors, raised the American flag and put an end to the “bear flag republic.

THE MEXICAN WAR

American troops under Gen. Stephen W. Kearney occupied Santa Fe and then set out for So. CA, where they put down a Mexican uprising.

Feb. 1847: Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated Santa Anna’s army at the Battle of Buena Vista.

THE MEXICAN WAR

When the Mexican govt. still refused to negotiate, Pres. Polk ordered American forces under Gen. Winfield Scott to march toward Mexico City.

Sept. 1847: Scott’s forces routed Mexican defenders and occupied the country’s capital.

THE MEXICAN WAR

Feb.1848: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed: Mexico confirmed the

annexation of TX. Ceded CA, present day

NM, AZ, NV, and UT to the USA.

The USA paid Mexico

$15 million.

THE MEXICAN WAR

The Mexican Cession, as the land acquired from Mexico was called, established the present day boundaries of the USA, except for the Gadsden Purchase, a parcel of land brought from Mexico in 1853, and Alaska acquired from Russia in 1867.

THE MEXICAN WAR

RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY

RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY With the end of the Mexican

War, the USA absorbed half a million square miles of Mexico’s territory, one-third of that nation’s total area.

An estimated 75,000 to 100,000 Spanish-speaking Mexicans and over 150,000 Indians inhabited the Mexican Cession.

RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed to “male citizens” of the area “the free enjoyment of their liberty and property” and “all the rights” of Americans – a provision designed to protect the property of large Mexican landowners in CA.

RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY As to Indians, whose

homelands and hunting grounds suddenly became part of the USA, the treaty referred to them only as “savage tribes” whom the USA must prevent from launching incursions into Mexico across of the new border {The Rio Grande River}.

RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY

The spirit of Manifest Destiny gave a new harshness to ideas about racial superiority.

1840s: Territorial expansion came to be seen as proof of the innate superiority of the “Anglo-Saxon” race – a mythical construct defined largely by its opposites: blacks, Indians, Hispanics, and Catholics.

RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY

“Race,” declared John O’Sullivan’s Democratic Review, was the “key” to the “history of nations,” and the rise and fall of empires.

RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY “Race” in the mid-19th century was a

shapeless notion involving color, culture, national origin, class and religion.

Newspapers, magazines, and scholarly works popularized the link between American freedom and the supposedly innate liberty-loving qualities of Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY Manifest Destiny represented a triumph of

civilization, progress, and liberty over the tyranny of the Catholic Church and the inferiority of “mongrel races.”

Calls by some expansionists for the USA to annex all of Mexico failed in part because of fear that the nation could not assimilate its large non-white Catholic population, supposedly unfit for citizenship in a republic.

REDEFINING RACE

REDEFINING RACE

The imposition of the American system of race relations proved detrimental to many inhabitants of the newly acquired territories.

TX had already demonstrated as much.

Mexico had already abolished slavery and declared persons of Spanish, Indian and African origin equal before the law.

REDEFINING RACE

The TX constitution, adopted after independence, included protections for slavery and denied civil rights to Indians and persons of African origins.

Only whites were permitted to purchase land, and the entrance of free blacks into the state was prohibited altogether.

REDEFINING RACE

The race issue was not settled until the Civil War – or was it?