Territorial Expansion
By the 1840s, following Indian Removal programs, nearly all the land east of the Mississippi River was in white hands.
A major economic depression in 1837 (no jobs, lower wages, higher prices) sent waves of settlers migrating west, looking for a better opportunity. Some went to Oregon, a 2,000 mile journey whose difficulty was notorious–travelers faced disease, starvation, the Rocky Mountain passes, and potential attack by Indians as they moved through their lands. Between 1840 and 1845, 5,000 emigrants attempted the journey; by 1860, 300,000 had made the trek. (See paintings of the Oregon Trail.)
In the 1840s, some began to promote the idea that God intended for Americans to reach the Pacific Ocean. This narrative of legitimation was called America’s “manifest destiny,” and repeats the classical formulation: God wants us to do this.
Conquest of Mexico
Mexico had achieved independence from Spain in 1821. At that point is was nearly the size of the US; its population was two-thirds as large. (See map from 1840s.) Mexico’s northern provinces, California, Texas, and New Mexico, were sparsely populated.
Mexico initially promoted Americans to emigrate to Texas to settle and colonize the land. By 1830, the American population there was around 7,000. Mexico soon began to fear it was losing its grip on the territory and clamped down on the emigration, but it was too late. The American settlers there demanded autonomy under Mexican rule. The issue of slavery made things worse; Americans had brought slaves with them even though Mexico had abolished slavery. When Mexico sent an army to the area to reestablish order in 1835, Texas revolted openly, declaring a provisional government and Texan independence. The Mexican army of Santa Anna stormed the Alamo in 1836 (See classical Alamo mythology and cinema), but a Texas army soon beat the Mexican army and asserted Texan independence, establishing the Republic of Texas in 1836. One year later, Texas sought to be incorporated in the United States, an idea that was not accepted by US leaders for some time.
Slavery became an important issue here. President Tyler in 1844 saw the annexation of Texas as a way of bolstering his supporters in the south. Texas could be used to strengthen the hold of pro-slavery states; it could potentially even be divided up onto several states, which would give the south even more votes in Congress. Tyler and Calhoun supported this idea, Henry Clay and Van Buren rejected it on grounds that it would provoke a war with Mexico.
At the Democratic convention, southerners bent on annexation deserted Van Buren and instead nominated James Polk, a little known former governor of Tennessee who had been closely associated with Andrew Jackson, still the Democrats most popular figure. Polk, like nearly all presidents before him, was a major slaveholder, with substantial cotton plantations in Tennessee and Mississippi. Conditions there were notoriously brutal, with only half of all slave children living to age 15 and adults frequently running away.
The Democratic platform called for the annexation of Texas and the occupation of Oregon as well. Polk ended up winning in an extremely close election, getting only 2% more of the popular vote than Clay, whose supporters were partly siphoned off by a Liberty Party candidate, who received votes from antislavery Whigs. Just before Polk’s inauguration, Congress declared Texas part of the US.
It was more difficult to capture California. The Mexican government was not interested in selling it. Polk soon turned to military action. American forces under Zachary Taylor were moved into a disputed region, provoking conflict. When fighting broke out, Polk immediately declared war on Mexico.
American legitimation narratives reached a pitched fervor during this period. On one hand, under the doctrine of manifest destiny, Americans convinced themselves that God intended for them to expand westward to the Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, Americans told themselves that their ideals of liberty justified taking control of foreign territory. America was a “great empire of liberty” and its expansion was a form of philanthropy, a gift to all humankind. Northerners who opposed the war suggested that the actual aim of the government was to expand slavery and the power of the south.
Ulysses S. Grant served in Mexico at this time, and (in later years) objected strongly to the war, which he saw as reminiscent of European monarchies, describing it as “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker nation.” Henry David Thoreau bitterly opposed the war as well, and refused to pay his taxes as a form of protest, for which he was put in jail in Massachusetts in 1846. Thoreau wrote at this point his famous essay, “On Civil Disobedience,” which would later inspire MLK: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place of a just man is also a prison.”
Lincoln was another critic of the war. He had been elected to represent Illinois in Congress in 1846. He challenged President Polk to provide evidence for his assertion that Mexico had started the conflict and actually shed American blood on US soil. But Lincoln was equally troubled by the ease with which an American president had gotten the nation into a war without democratic consent, or any check and balances in place. Lincoln was a critic of preemptive war: “Allow the president to invade a neighboring country whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to make war at pleasure. . . . If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him?”
Slavery and new territory
The US victory over Mexico and the ensuing annexation of territory added another 1 million square miles to the US. This would prove a major disruption to the stability of the political system. The question of whether slavery should be permitted in the West would eventually lead the country into an internal war.
Special Topics in Walker's 8th Grade 