By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
The 1775−1783 American War of Independence
The American Revolution or the American War of Independence against British colonial lordship started in 1775 when the Thirteen Colonies began to fight for their political independence from London. In fact, fighting began at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, in April 1775. In June the colonies’ Continental Congress created a Continental Army under General George Washington. However, despite several defeats, and the loss of New York (former New Amsterdam) in September 1776, Washington hung on, and at Christmas 1776, with the successful crossing of the Delaware, won several battles. The campaign culminated in Saratoga in 1777. The final triumph was only assured, nevertheless, with the signing of a Franco-American alliance in 1778 that was joined by Spain in 1779. Reinforced by French troops followed by direct naval support, George Washington succeeded in forcing the British troops to surrender at Yorktown on October 19th, 1781. The resulting Treaty of Versailles in 1783 recognized the Great Lakes in the north and the Mississippi in the west as the state borders of the newly-born USA. In other words, by 1783 the original Thirteen Colonies had decisively established themselves as the new United States with enlarged territory up to the Mississippi River including Indian Reserve.
The westward imperial expansion
In 1783, the new Republic of the United American States was pretty small and weak with a population of a little more than three million inhabitants. However, half of its territory was held by hostile neighbors. The westward expansion of the USA was sustained by its vast abundance of physical (natural) resources. Like the great Western European powers turned their imperial politics toward Africa and Asia, the USA did the same westward toward the Pacific. Therefore, the westward annexation policy of Washington after 1783 has to be understood as American imperialism for many of the same reasons as the imperialist policy in Western Europe but with significantly different results. The culture of native inhabitants of North America was not only conquered but in essence, it was destroyed.
In 1783 the USA was composed of an area of some 800.000 square miles, much of it rich arable land between the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi River. That huge territory was soon enlarged by other lands, even larger and more fertile – the first phase from 1803 to 1819. The Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 (during the Napoleonic Wars) of some 827.000 square miles was a mighty windfall that dropped into the hands of an astonished US President Thomas Jefferson. The western part of Spanish Florida was occupied by force and annexed in 1812 during James Madison’s presidency followed by the annexation of East Florida in 1819 (some 60.000 square miles) by purchase but with the threat of force by the administration of President James Monroe.
The next (second) phase of making a greater USA by territorial acquisitions covered the years 1845−1853 in completing the contiguous area of the continental USA. The Texas Republic (390.000 square miles) was annexed in 1845. The negotiations for the territory of Oregon Country (285.000 square miles) were ended with a compromise in 1846. The vast Mexican Cession (529.000 square miles) was annexed in 1848 after the war with Mexico and finally, there was the Gadsen Purchase in 1853, bought from Mexico to control a promising railroad route (30.000 square miles).
The annexation of Texas in 1845
The historical importance of the annexation of Texas, the conquest of California (in fact, its northern portion as Baja California left to Mexico), and the inclusion of the Southwest into the USA from Mexico is in the fact that all of these three events finally rounded out the US domain in the (Wild) West. As a matter of fact, during only several years in the 1840s the USA succeeded in expanding its state borders over some of North America’s richest and most scenic territories. However, many scholars understood this wresting of lands from Mexico as immoral aggression. Some of them thought that the southern states of the USA, for example, wanted the territory of Texas for the only reason to have bigger pens to cram Afro-American (the Blacks) slaves in. Nonetheless, others believe that a natural and inevitable process (of Lebensraum) brought about the inclusion of Texas into the federal system of the USA. This process is well hit off by the phrase “manifest destiny”.
Texas was a part of the Mexican Republic before the mid-1830s, a southern neighbor of the USA. It was as large as Germany, with but a few ranchers and hunters. The land early attracted many Americans (inhabitants of the USA) followed by some British citizens. Stephen F. Austin established the first Anglo-American settlement in 1821. Free lands westward from Louisiana were easily accessible to the people from the American South and, therefore, became principal bait for settlers. At the same time, the Mexican government was corrupted, inefficient, and authoritarian. The settlers in Texas rose in revolt in 1835 against the Mexican authorities and after many battles succeeded in winning the independence. From this time, probably the most striking episode was the capture by the Mexican army of the Alamo, a fort in San Antonio, where every American defender was killed.
A newly established Texan Republic attracted many fresh American settlers which caused a prosperous economic development. However, their final political goal was not independence but rather the inclusion of Texas into the USA as a new state. The government of the USA for a time refused to consider any proposal for annexing Texas for the reason not to spoil relations with Mexico. But for many reasons, the government gradually changed its mind. First, it was thought that it was a duty to expand firstly settlers and then state borders over the unpeopled and undeveloped West. Second, many felt that the Texans were kindred people whose natural place was the USA. Third, many feared that Great Britain might launch a military intervention in Texas in order to establish a protectorate over the land for the reason not to be annexed by Washington. Fourth, pocket motives were at work as well as the Northerners wished to sell farm products and manufactured goods in Texas; shipowners saw that their vessels could make profitable voyages to Galveston (coastal town and port of Southeast Texas); Yankee mill owners wanted to have cheap Texas cotton to spin. Finally, many Southerners wanted to migrate and settle in Texas but were not willing to leave the US flag. As a consequence, in the national election of 1844, a majority of the voters expressed their readiness to see Texas as a part of the USA, and early the next year the republic became annexed.
The 1846−1848 Mexican-American War
After the annexation of Texas, many US citizens were kin upon gaining control of California by the same peaceful means applied to the case of Texas, considering its peculiar position as they thought. California at that time had a population of only up to 12.000 people, clinging tightly to the coast. The Californians had no their own currency, no army, or political experience. They had more Spanish blood than the Mexican masses and regarded themselves as both physically and intellectually superior. California was, in fact, only formally dependent upon the Mexican Republic but nominally it was and politically had nothing to do with the USA. It was believed by the Americans that the Californians would have thrown off the Mexican authority altogether had it not been for their family jealousies and an old feud between the northern and southern portions of California. Mexico did not provide courts, police, regular postal service, or schools. The links and communications between California and the Mexican capital Mexico City have been irregular, rare, and even uncertain. It was an option that Mexico could sell California to Great Britain because the Mexican real control and authority over the province did not exist or was very weak. However, in the course of time, the number of American settlers in California was growing in numbers followed by their aggressiveness.
It has to be noted that the ships under the US flag had long traded on the coast of California. The US emigrants had started to cross the mountains for California in the early 1830s to settle their families in the province of good climate to make money from cattle, wine, and wheat. California up to 1846 had 12.000 foreign inhabitants who have been mostly US citizens. Many of them thought that California could join the USA by using no force. Surely, it would have happened if the Mexican War had not occurred between Mexico and the USA. The remote cause of the war was the increasing distrust between the two neighboring states but its direct cause was a dispute over the borderland of Texas. The US administration found it a short and brilliant military conflict. One US army under Zachary Taylor was sent into North Mexico and occupied the fortified city of Monterey. The same army defeated a large Mexican military detachment in the heavy battle of Buena Vista, while another US army under Winfield Scott (hero of the 1812 War) landed at Vera Cruz in the Gulf of Mexico and pushed westward over the mountains. Scott’s army after hard fighting occupied Mexico City and put the US flag over “the halls of the Montezumas” which was, in fact, the end of the war in American favor.
The territorial acquisitions in 1848
According to the Mexican-American Peace Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the US was given California followed by the vast area between it and Texas known at that time as New Mexico, which included the present states of Utah and Nevada (including Texas, the US gained in 1848 from Mexico some 918.000 square miles). However, the Americans also gained a “treasure house” as soon as the treaty of peace was ratified gold was discovered in the hills of California which became known as the Golden State. The mountains of California became filled with new settlers and camps. San Francisco overnight became a little metropolis, full of vice, luxury, and energy. California was converted very quickly from a sleepy even romantic community of Spanish-American ranchers into a hustling and numerous community of Anglo-Saxons. Californian inhabitants were growing in numbers so fast that already in 1850 it became a new state within the USA (the minimum number of people was 20.000 so that the territory would become a new state of the USA).
The acquisition of the vast territory from Louisiana to the Pacific Ocean (Texas, New Mexico, and California), nonetheless, forced Washington to deal with newly emerged challenges and problems as the Caribbean area, the Pacific area, an isthmian canal, and above all problems the issue of slavery, which now threatened to expand into the whole area of the Wild West. Before 1776, the Americans were not so kin to settle the interior (westward from the Appalachian Mt.) which they called the “back-country”. However, after 1803, the “back-country” was renamed “frontier” and the line of settlement advanced westward with great speed. Before the end of the American Revolution in 1783 that line was still largely east of the Appalachian Mt. but by 1819 the “frontier” crossed the Mississippi River and by 1848 reached the Pacific coast. In such a way, the “natural borders” of the USA (from the ocean to the ocean) have been finally established.
Personal disclaimer: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.