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American Foreign Policy: Wars of the Early Republic
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- [00:00]
Professor Anton
Foreign.
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Jeremiah Regan
Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan.
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Juan Davalos
And I'm Juan Davalos. And we are back with American Foreign Policy lecture number two, wars of the Early Republic.
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Jeremiah Regan
Americans had to figure out how they were going to protect their own lives, liberty and property using their military. And there were some fits and starts. The Great Lakes forts that were supposed to be vacated by the British after the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution, were not vacated. There were threats from hostile Indians and other European powers. And in this lecture, Professor Anton explains how American foreign policy and its ability to actually do it by means of diplomacy, the army and the navy developed and matured, and we became a real nation. This is really exemplified by the publication of the Monroe Doctrine, which proclaimed America's view that it would not interfere with European colonies, and in exchange, Europe would not install any new colonies in North America.
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Juan Davalos
Yeah, remember during this time in history, this is when America is really starting to form as a nation and starting to make decisions on how it's going to deal with other nations, especially those European nations. So that's when the Monroe Doctrine and things like that become really important for the future of the nation and how we behave internationally.
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Jeremiah Regan
If you'd like to read the Monroe Doctrine, we have posted it on our website along with this lecture. We've done that with all of the primary sources that Professor Anton references. So for lecture two, that includes John Quincy Adams, Independence Day address, George Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality, we referenced the Farewell address in lecture one. Those are all posted along with the American Foreign Policy course on Hillsdale.
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Juan Davalos
That's Hillsdale.
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Jeremiah Regan
Edu course. Enroll in the course to access all of these primary documents.
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Juan Davalos
Now let's turn to professor anton in Lecture 2 of American Foreign Policy wars of the Early Republic.
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Professor Anton
We talked in the last lecture about the Founders principles that they derived from the laws of nature and of nature's God, how they set them forth in various documents, how they interpreted them, what they thought they meant. And we started to get a little bit into how they practiced them. But in this lecture, we're going to talk a lot more about the practice of American foreign policy, basically from the revolution through the 19th century, in a period during which I would argue their practice was consistent and consistent with those original principles. Now, the first thing we have to understand is the particular situation. At the time of the founding, America was a weak country. It was a small country, or really the situation was more complicated than that. It was a big geographic country with a small population. We remember the thirteen colonies of course, just those colonies alone were far more extensive territorially than, say, Britain, France, or Spain, the three great powers that the founders had to contend with at the time. What some of you may not remember is that the 1783 treaty that ended the Revolutionary War ceded to the United States a whole lot of additional territory, basically everything that now constitutes the Midwest out to the Mississippi River. Now, a lot of territory sounds great. It sounds like it's one of those things that makes you a great nation. You'd rather have more than less, wouldn't you? But a lot of territory can be a problem if you can't hold onto it. And the population at the time of the Revolution, there was yet no census, so it's hard to know exactly, but it's estimated to have been somewhere between three and three and a half million people. Now, that's very small in comparison to both the nations in Europe that I just discussed, but also compared to the amount of people it would take to adequately settle all that territory and hold onto it. The founders were very conscious of the fact that it could be difficult for them to hang on to all of this land that they had won in a war with the number of people available to them. So this was, in a way, foreign policy problem number one for them. How to protect that land from potential invasion, from potential conquest, theft from other nations. Now, I mentioned in the last lecture, Washington's farewell address, which I would urge everyone watching this to read in full. He makes a great many extraordinarily wise points, and let's look at one of them now. He says that it would be crazy. That's my word, not his. But I think I captured the spirit faithfully for the Americans to forego the great advantages of such a situation as theirs. What did he mean by that? He means that America is not surrounded by enemies. Now, we can take that too far. The British, French, and Spanish empires all still have possessions on the North American continent, and all are potential threats to the United States. There are also Indian tribes, some of which are friendly with the United States, some of which are unfriendly, and even attack United States frontier settlements, some of which the United States have good relations with and treat as essentially foreign nations and make treaties with. All of this makes especially the western provinces of the country insecure. That's on the one side. On the other side, though, the United States is not obviously in Europe, but I mean that in a specific way. It's not surrounded by established great powers with settled populations, large armies, and functioning productive economies that can, equip. Those armies. The United States is not in the middle of a continent, sharing borders on all sides with countries that are potentially hostile. And this is, if not a unique situation, an almost unique situation from Washington's point of view. And he's trying to make his fellow Americans, his compatriots, understand what a blessing it is to. To be over here on the other side of the Atlantic, far from European quarrels, far from European armies that European navies remember. This is the age of sail have to cross at great peril and expense and taking much time if they want to exert any power, exert any pressure onto the American continent. This is an extraordinary situation. Washington says we've essentially been given an almost secure situation that we should not easily trade away by getting ourselves mixed up in these foreign quarrels. So, on the one hand, you have to think about this essentially in two ways. On the one hand, the United States is weak. It's small. Its population is small, it's poor. It has really yet to develop much of a military. On the other side is a vast potential strength. A potential strength from the extent of territory, from the natural resources, from the navigable rivers available, from an incredible array of existing and potential eastern ports. All you have to do is look at a map of the eastern seaboard of the United States and see how variegated it is, how many inlets and bays and rivers there are all up and down the seaboard. It's an incredible geographic blessing to this young country to have all of that potential there. And you have a growing population with. Unlike most of the countries of Europe, which are have been settled since Roman times and are very densely populated, the United States is not that densely populated. And that's an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is it means that settlers can spread out and form independent farms and independent homesteads and not be dependent on great landowners or on jobs in the city for their sustenance. The disadvantage I've already alluded to, it means that this young country had a vast extent of geography, but not close to a large enough population to adequately settle it and protect it. So America was sort of both weak and strong, favored and vulnerable at the same time. That was the situation that the American founders found themselves in immediately after the Revolution. And that situation really animates almost all their thoughts about foreign policy from the beginning. So their first worry was, having won the Revolution, they needed to maintain their independence. And just winning the revolution didn't suddenly make the United States a strong country. It was still far weaker than these European powers in Particular, the United States was most concerned about Great Britain, both because of the fact that it had humiliated Great Britain, then arguably the world's greatest power was beaten by a colonial insurgency. It's not fun to get beaten by a weaker power and be shown up. But also the basis of Great Britain's great power was above all the Royal Navy, a force the size, sophistication, experience of which vastly outshone anything the United States could put in the water at that time. Which is one of the reasons why Alexander Hamilton, above all in number 11 of the Federalist Papers, urged that the United States rapidly build a navy to protect its own ports, to protect those ports from potential invasion or blockade. One of the things that great navies can do against undefended or lightly defended ports is simply prevent ships from getting in and out and cutting off commerce. Another thing they argued that a navy could do is make the United States essentially the arbiter of the balance of power in North America. So by developing our own commerce, protecting our own ports, Hamilton says, we should be in a position, we would like to be in a position where the great powers of Europe have to come to us and negotiate with us to gain our favor. We should protect access to our ports and make them bid for it. Don't give away advantages for nothing. Get things for them on the international sphere. Now this may sound a little transactional to you, but as I said in the last lecture, the founders were not deluded, they were not naive. They knew that at the international level every nation is in the state of nature vis a vis every other. They will seek to press their advantages sometimes, regardless of what the dictates of conscience, morality and obligation require. The only way ultimately to prevent being taken advantage of is, is to be strong enough that you can't be taken advantage of. Really. The first tasks of the young country, internationally, obviously the most important domestically was cleaning up the messy finances left over from the revolution, which was Alexander Hamilton's task number one as America's first Treasury secretary. But he also set about to raise the necessary funds for an army and especially a navy. Now, the United States was founded in opposition to standing armies, as we know. This is one of the grievances listed against King George III in the Declaration of Independence. So the United States from its earliest days always preferred citizen, local or state controlled militias to defend the western frontier. In particular militias that could be called up as necessary by the federal government, but with that word necessary being defined as narrowly as possible. Meanwhile, there began a rapid buildup of the navy to do exactly what Alexander Hamilton said it ought to defend and protect all of those eastern seaboard ports. Protect commerce. Remember, there's a lot of seaboard and commerce going on between the states up and down the eastern seaboard, from the southern states to the Mid Atlantic to the northern states and back down. All of which in principle is at least subject to high seas depredation by hostile navies, which in fact does happen eventually and leads in part to the outbreak of the War of 1812, which I'll get to in a moment. The first great crisis, or at any rate controversy of American foreign policy is what to do about the French Revolution. Now, as you may remember, but I will sneak the dates in here anyway to give a little refresher. The Revolutionary War is over in 1783. The Constitution was drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788, which is also the year of the first American presidential election. And in 1789, the year George Washington took office as the first president, a Paris mobile or justified outraged protesters, depending on your point of view, stormed a hated prison in Paris called the Bastille, touching off the French Revolution, whose effects were long lasting. Within a few years, the king, King Louis xvi and his bride Marie Antoinette and their young son were all killed and a revolutionary government had taken power in France. Now, the reason this was controversial is, was really twofold. The first is more philosophic, that is to say there was a dispute among the founders or the entire population of America at the time, which went something like, we the Americans, declared our independence from a king on the basis of God given natural rights. Well, the French have just overthrown a king in the name of liberte, egalite and fraternite. Liberty, equality, fraternity, very similar principles to our own. Are we not then obligated to help the revolutionaries? And the second question revolved around a treaty that the United States signed with France in the Revolutionary War. Remember that France gave considerable aid to America during that war, arguably without which the revolution would not have succeeded. So what were the obligations of the United States under that treaty? And this was an especially complicated question because before long the revolutionary government in France was at war with other countries in Europe, especially England. Now, given the terms of the treaty, did that mean that the United States was obligated to support France in this new war? And then another thorny question this raised is, well, when we made a treaty with France, we made a treaty with the king, King Louis xvi. That doesn't mean we're then obligated to support a French government the same French government that cut off that king's head. This is not the same government we made a deal with. It's in fact the opposite of it. It's its enemy. And this question swirled throughout America, certainly among American elites concerned about foreign affairs during this period, and especially Alexander Hamilton, who insisted that we should do nothing. In fact, Hamilton said that if, as a principled matter, the United States were to take up the policy that any government that declares the principles of the Declaration of Independence or something like them to be the only legitimate form of government, and not just any government, that if any revolutionary movement were to declare that those are the only legitimate principles and that we are therefore obligated to support such movements, we're essentially declaring war with all the governments of the world, since there really are almost none that are based on our system of government. And it would be ridiculously foolhardy for for us as a young country to declare war against the rest of the world. And in fact, he would say, beyond merely being a young and weak country, it would simply be foolish because even the strongest country can't be at war with the whole world. And it violates our principle of non interference. So this debate, as I said, really roiled the early Republic. It becomes especially important in 1793 in the Crisis over the so called Neutrality Proclamation. Now, at this time, Washington is the President, Thomas Jefferson is still the Secretary of State, and Alexander Hamilton is still the Secretary of the Treasury. On Hamilton's advice, the Washington administration issues a proclamation saying that they're not going to take sides in the budding conflict between revolutionary France and the rest of Europe. Now this angers some people and it leads to a fairly memorable event which is amusing to think about in the present context. What happens is that Hamilton, writing under a pseudonym, gets into a pamphlet war with Madison, also writing under a pseudonym. And everyone knew that Madison was writing on behalf of Jefferson. So try to imagine a sitting Secretary of State fighting in the public press in a pamphlet war with a sitting Secretary of the Treasury. It's fun to think about. Hard to imagine it happening today. Tony Blinken writing screeds against Janet Yellen and vice versa. Or pick any Secretary of the treasury or State that you want. We can go back maybe to Mike Pompeo and Steve Mnuchin. These kinds of things don't happen anymore, but they were common in the early Republic. Now, the debate over the Neutrality Proclamation was primarily a debate over presidential powers. That is to say, it was a debate about constitutional principle in a way, more than it was a debate about Foreign policy. But the foreign policy question was still important. What is the United States obligated to do both in terms of upholding its own principles overseas, in other countries, and what do treaty obligations require of us? Right. It was clearly not in the US Interest. Hamilton, I think, had this exactly right. For the United States to get involved in the fight between France and England or France and the rest of non revolutionary European. It would have been expensive, it would have been time consuming, it could have been bloody. It was logistically very complicated. But is there something hypocritical about declaring all men to be created equal and saying this is a universal principle, and then when others declare the same thing, sort of washing your hands and saying, I have nothing to do with that? Well, a lot of people at the time in the country felt that way, including some very, very prominent and influential people. At the end of the day, the United States did not get involved in the French revolutionary wars. And it's arguable, and historians still debate this question, whether the United States did not get involved out of principle or because it simply was too poor and too weak anyway. So even had it wanted to, it couldn't have. But this issue doesn't go away. And in fact, this whole question of what do our principles, as enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, require of us on the international stage has been with us since the beginning of the Republic, is with us now and has one way or the other determined or influenced foreign policy decisions throughout the life of the country. Now, to illustrate one of the principles we talked about in the first lecture. That is to say that the United States is a commercial republic and therefore cannot afford to be isolationist, but must be able to project power in defense of its commercial interests.
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Jeremiah Regan
On the new episode of the Larry Arn Show, Hillsdale College president Larry P. Arn sits down with pastor, professor and author Kevin DeYoung for a one on one conversation. When Jesus is ascending about to ascend in Acts chapter one, and the disciples ask him, is now now are you going to set up your kingdom? It's amazing. They are still confused. They still are thinking, might this be an earthly kingdom? In John's gospel, they want, they try to make him king by force. Some of his followers, they just can't get out of their head that when he talks about the kingdom, the only way they can conceive of power and true influence and might might in the world is there's a king on a throne, in a palace, in a castle, in a temple somewhere. Listen to this exclusive interview with Kevin DeYoung right now only available on the Larry Arn Show. Find it on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu also at Apple podcasts Spotify and YouTube and subscribe to receive new episodes delivered right to your device. That's podcast hillsdale.edu.
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Professor Anton
Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale Edu or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you you find your audio. We could take a brief look at essentially the first use of or projection of American power overseas, and that's Jefferson's war against the Barbary Pirates. So Thomas Jefferson is the president, the early 19th century and American shipping is being seized, captured by pirates. So not only are American merchants losing their goods, ship owners losing their ships, but American sailors are losing their lives and their liberty. Now this is happening very far from American shores, from American borders. America is under no threat from the Barbary pirates in the sense that there's no prospect of the Barbary pirates to cross the Atlantic and sail into the Chesapeake. But American interests, American goods, American citizens are at risk. And Thomas Jefferson proved himself willing to use force to protect those interests abroad. So again, this is not a question of isolationism. It's yet another piece of evidence that the founders were far from isolationists. They were willing to send the US Navy across the Atlantic. Another issue we have to talk about in terms of American foreign policy is the Louisiana Purchase. And this is another one like the Neutrality Proclamation, where the line between what counts as foreign policy and domestic policy gets very blurry. Because what the Louisiana Purchase did, of course, is vastly expand the territory of the United States. But it was a purchase from a foreign power from Revolutionary France. At this point, Napoleon Bonaparte is in charge in France and he is completely focused on the various wars and campaigns that he's fighting in Europe. And he finds this large French possession in the heart of North America, which constituted much more than the present day state of Louisiana. He finds that a burden. He doesn't want it, he can't govern it. He can't defend it. And he also needs to raise some money. So he offers to sell it. Jefferson rather eagerly buys it, raising an important question of whether he had the power to buy it. Now, these days, I know most of my viewers here will say, well, why would that even be a question? Well, in those days, those more innocent times, or one may say, more scrupulous times, people took the Constitution extremely seriously. And so they read Article two, the article of the Constitution that enumerates the powers of the presidency very carefully. And they did not believe that Jefferson had the power to make this purchase, that if such a purchase were to be made, only Congress could allocate and appropriate the money. Jefferson himself, interestingly, in a letter, a later letter to a citizen. Back in those days, presidents used to write to citizens. I assume it happens occasionally now, but it was a more frequent occurrence then. And he acknowledges that what he did may have been extra or even unconstitutional. But he says that as a statesman, it would have been an act of gross malpractice for him to forego this purchase. What the Mississippi river is to North America, it's almost unlike any other geographic feature in any other part of the world. There are only a handful of rivers that compare in terms of length and in terms of the amount of water they carry and so on. No other river really compares in terms of the tributaries that funnel into it. So that if you think of the Mississippi down the center, almost the center of North America as a superhighway, it's then fed by dozens of other superhighways which put vast, vast, vast amounts of North America in reach of this superhighway, making transportation all that much easier. The idea, the possibility of controlling both sides of that river is too great an opportunity for the young country to pass up. And this is where the foreign aspect of it comes in. Being able to control both sides of it means you're essentially able now to protect the eastern third of the United States much more adequately, efficiently, and strongly via this geographic benefit than you are if you only have one side. So not only does he, with the Louisiana Purchase, control both sides of the river, he controls western lands out hundreds, to some extent, even more than 1,000 miles west of the river. This makes the geographic situation of the United States, which George Washington had already urged his countrymen all the way back in 1796, he had already said that we have this unique and extraordinary geographical situation that we should never, ever squander for any reason. The Louisiana Purchase makes that geographical situation all the more, if not impregnable much more defensible, much more secure, harder to attack, much more beneficial for the American people. So Jefferson takes what even he admits is an action of questionable constitutionality, does what he think any statesman in his position would have no choice but to do. In fact, he all but says he would be condemned by history for malpractice if he didn't make this purchase. And then he says that he intends to work with Congress to make it constitutional after the fact. Now, I don't know about you. I occasionally, more than occasionally, sadly, see the government do extra or unconstitutional things, and I never hear anyone worry about constitutionalizing it after the fact. So. So it's sort of uplifting to look back to those times when our leaders were still scrupulous and mindful of such considerations. The next great foreign policy crisis worth talking about is the War of 1812. The British government, as we know, lost the Revolutionary War and signed a treaty. But there were elements in the British government that never got over it. And to some extent, there were people in the British government who thought that the United States was not legitimate, that by right, Americans were still British subjects and therefore subject to British law, including the British practice of impressment. What is impressment? Well, impressment is like being drafted, except by force. So it is a sad fact that a very impressive organization such as the Royal Navy, which I have the highest respect for, to be clear, often could not recruit enough sailors to manage ships. And so what it would do is it would go around to the inns and lodges of seafaring towns like Bristol and Portsmouth in England, and press gangs, as they were called, would basically kidnap you and say, congratulations, you're a sailor in the Royal Navy. Now. Now this is a practice that even many of the Royal Navy's greatest heroes, such as Horatio Nelson, the great victor of the Battle of the Nile and the Battle of Trafalgar, were embarrassed by, I think, with good reason. But they felt that they had no choice, that they couldn't have the sufficient number of sailors without doing this. Well, they started doing it to Americans. And from the perspective of the American people and the American political leadership, this was no different than the depredations of the Barbary pirates. And you get the War of 1812, which is eventually resolved by treaty after some unpleasantness, including famously, the burning of the White House, which Madison and his wife Dolly had to flee. But it shows the importance of the Founders lesson that even the largest country, even a country geographically distant, is still in principle at risk from a great power, especially a naval Great power that can cross the ocean, even a great power with which you signed a treaty not that many years before. And the only remedy for being a victim like that, the only way you avoid suffering those kinds of depredations is you have to have a defense yourself and be willing and able effectively to fight off those kinds of offenses. Now, you've all heard of the Monroe Doctrine, say famous statement of foreign policy. It is named after the president in whose name it was issued in 1823. However, the real author of it was John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams and a future president and potentially the greatest American diplomat or practitioner and analyst of foreign policy that our country has ever produced. Part of what made John Quincy Adams so outstanding at the practice of foreign policy is that he traveled overseas with his father as a very young man and essentially worked as his father's top aide. Even when he was a teenager. He learned many foreign languages. He then served as a diplomat for his country in many foreign courts, speaking to the natives of the countries he was in in their own language, and then served as secretary of state, our top diplomat. So there's really no one our country has ever produced who is quite as. As good at this or well suited to it as John Quincy Adams. Now, what is the Monroe Doctrine? The short answer is it's a declaration to the rest of the world to keep their mitts off the Western Hemisphere. And that short declaration is not misleading. If you had to put it in one line, that's probably what you would say. But it's more complicated than that, and it touches directly on this question of what America's founding principles require of America in its actions on the world stage. Now, as I've mentioned earlier, the Western Hemisphere, not just North America, but really the whole Western Hemisphere, had many colonies in it. Colonies of European powers, principally Britain, France and Spain, also Portugal and some others. Now, like the United States. These colonies eventually began to rebel and declare their independence. And when they did, the same question arose. What obligation do we Americans, who are a former colonial people who rebelled against a European monarch, declared our independence on the basis of universal natural rights. What obligation do we have to support these young republics in Central and South America? Well, some argued we ought to be fomenting revolution. This was perhaps a minority radical view, but it was present and it seemed to these people who made it consistent with American principles. But cooler heads made an argument similar to the argument Hamilton had made about a generation before. That is to say, if we declare outright that we support revolution in any Western hemisphere colony on principle, we're essentially declaring war with all of these European empires, which would be imprudent since those would be wars we couldn't win and it would violate our principle of non interference. So what the Monroe Doctrine does, I think very elegantly is it says we're not going to get involved. That is to say, we're not going to foment revolution. We're not going to supply revolutionary governments with money or arms or anything. However, if a revolutionary movement succeeds in some country, declares its independence and establishes its independence, we will recognize that independence. And I just want to say it's important to note that part of the Founders argument was independence, to be lasting and successful, really needs to be established on one's own. Now you could say, well, they're hypocrites because they got aid from France. I don't dismiss that entirely. Like I say, I think the French assistance was important, but I do think that the vast majority, the bulk of the work of the revolution was accomplished by Americans with American resources. And had that not been the case, the revolution wouldn't have been successful. At any rate, this is what the statesman of the early 19th century argued. So if and when a former colony establishes its independence, the the United States will recognize that colony as independent and we will open diplomatic relations and trade relations. And the warning to the Europeans was as follows. It was to say, don't try to come back here and get one of your colonies back. If you do that, we will stop you. We will prevent you from crossing the ocean and reversing the independence of a newly liberated former colony. And don't try to establish also any new colonies. We will let you keep what you have. We won't interfere with that. But we're not going to let you expand your holdings in the Western Hemisphere. So it's a way of being principled of supporting revolution without fomenting it, of trying to be fair both to revolutionary movements and to establish powers. Not saying that these colonies that still exist are illegitimate or that these European empires that have claims on territory in the Western hemisphere, not saying that those claims are necessarily illegitimate. But beyond the principle, there is a geopolitical aspect to the Monroe Doctrine. Our advantageous situation to return once again to Washington's term is the fact of being separated by oceans from other great powers. Even though those great powers are present on North American soil, their presence in North America is much weaker than their home strength is in their own countries. What the Monroe administration and John Quincy Adams as his Secretary of state, effectively accomplished with the Monroe Doctrine was putting the European powers on notice. Your empires in the Western hemisphere are a declining asset. We're not going to affirmatively take measures to take them away from you, but as they inevitably separate from you, we're going to make sure that you never get them back, and you can't establish new ones. So this only goes in one direction. You will slowly lose your colonies and you'll never get them back, which means your presence in North America will eventually disappear. And we will be. We, the United States, will be all alone as a great power in the Western Hemisphere. And to be all alone as a great power in your hemisphere is to be, in a sense, almost impregnable from foreign attack, from foreign incursion, from foreign influence. In a sense, we have the best of all possible worlds, A hemisphere in which we are the sole great power and in which we are obeying the dictates of the founder's principle of non interference. Now, I also am not naive. We have actually, the United States has interfered in the Western hemisphere multiple times, and that's a subject for another lecture. But I would maintain that throughout the 19th century, the United States remained relatively consistent with these principles. The United States was not incredibly active in foreign affairs for most of the 19th century, certainly not compared to what came later in the 20th century, and especially after World War II, when, as we'll see in a later lecture, the United States becomes one of the two dominant world powers and is engaged internationally every day. So the 19th century, for our purposes, is somewhat uneventful. But there are a few notable things that happen that we need to talk about, and we'll go into them here. The first is, of course, further westward expansion. So with the Louisiana Purchase, we have not yet completed the expansion of the United States. You've all heard the phrase manifest destiny, popularized by certain senators and politicians. It meant that it is the destiny of the United States to be a coastal nation coast to coast, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And the accomplishment of that destiny touched on foreign affairs in two important ways. One is a dispute with Great Britain over Oregon. Remember that Canada is a British colony at this time, and the northern border between where the United States ends and Canada begins and vice versa, is not settled. In fact, the two countries almost went to war over it. If you've ever heard the old phrase 54, 40 or fight, that was a rallying cry about where the latitude of the northern border of the United States should be, I will just say that 5440, meaning 54 degrees and 40 minutes north, is far to the north of where the border ended up being. And we eventually settled our differences with Britain over Oregon, meaning the Oregon Territory. So that includes what eventually became Washington State. We settle that dispute amicably without a war. Unfortunately, the dispute over the territory to the south was not settled without a war. And this is a complicated question that has many roots. Texas, the second largest state in the country by land area and which was for a brief time an independent republic, the Lone Star Republic. Well, Texas and Mexico, while they were separate countries, and Mexico is itself a former colony of Spain that achieved its independence in 1821, they had a number of disputes. Texas, fearing that it could not maintain its independence or that it could better maintain its independence if it were part of the United States, applied to join the United States as a state after it had already established itself as the Lone Star Republic. This, among a number of other issues, led to a war with Mexico, the so called Mexican American War of 1846-1848. Now, as I said, this is all complicated. I'm not going to give you a history lesson and try to unravel all of it. The salient points are the following. It appeared very desirable to President James K. Polk that the United States should possess California, which was formally at the time a possession of Mexico, very lightly populated. If you can just summon your imagination for a moment, imagine a state that is today 40 million people. That's the official estimate. I think it might even be higher. But let's just say 40 million at that time had at most, at most 10,000 people living in it. And it probably was lower than that. And it was very hard to reach from Mexico. And so very lightly governed by the Mexico City government, which was far away. And the leading landowners and leading citizens of California were interested in becoming part of the United States. And in the middle of negotiations with the Polk administration when war with Mexico broke out. The upshot of that war is that the United States ends up acquiring from Mexico the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, what becomes the states of New Mexico, Arizona, California and portions of some other states, thereby completing in one interpretation, Manifest Destiny. There's probably maybe only two other topics that we need to go into, and the first is the Civil War. In the Civil War, obviously the north fought the south, and each side, but especially the south, sought help from foreign powers. Now, why did the south need help from foreign powers? Well, because the south was the weaker party in that war, and it was also the far less industrialized party in that war and so needed to import a great deal of war material. Just to fight the war, if I may cite a movie, but one very relevant. In an early scene in Gone with the Wind, before the Civil War breaks out, the gentlemen are having their brandy and cigars and young Charles Hamilton, who eventually marries Scarlett o' Hara and then dies quickly thereafter, probably unrelated, but who knows, asserts that the south will of course win because the south is full of gentlemen and the Northerners are not gentlemen. And Rhett Butler points out that there's not a single cannon factory in the whole South. And Charles says to him contemptuously, what difference does that make to a gentleman? And Rhett says in reply, I'm afraid it's going to make a great deal of difference to a great many gentlemen. What that illustrates is the lack of industrialization in the south vis a vis the north. Put the south at a fundamental disadvantage, which means just as Hamilton predicted or feared for the United States as a whole. It meant that the south as a region had to seek military supplies from overseas. And that put it at a disadvantage, which meant that the south really needed trade relations with other countries just to stay alive. The whole question that Hamilton raised early in the Republic about access to seaports and the dangers of naval blockades is also well illustrated by the Civil War in which the Union navy, which was far stronger and better equipped, was able to maintain fairly strict. No blockade is ever 100% effective, but fairly strict blockades against southern ports, which had a double edged effect on the South. It meant that it was harder for the south to import the raw materials and manufactured goods that it needed, but it also meant that it was harder for the south to export the agricultural crops that were the basis for its economy. Now in the Civil War, Britain in particular sided with the South. And I say this from a foreign policy perspective. It really had nothing to do with Britain's sympathy for the southern cause for slavery or anything else. In fact, Britain abolished slavery in British colonies before the United States Civil War. I mentioned this once to a friend and I said, well, in that case, the British were just following the classical Machiavellian dictum. If you as an external power see two potential rivals fighting one another, you always support the weaker power because a you don't want to increase the power of the greater power who can just later on become a threat to you. You'd rather have them fight for as long as possible and bleed each other out. The ideal outcome for you in a way is that neither one of them comes out stronger. In addition to that, I would say Britain had one other reason for supporting the south, which is that Britain, which was rapidly industrializing at that time, was really the leading industrializing power in the world. One of its great industries was textiles. There were gigantic looms running throughout Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and the great industrial cities of England. And those looms were hungry for raw material to make into fabric, above all cotton, which they got from all over their empire, but they also imported gigantic amounts with from the American South. So it made sense for Great Britain to support the south in the Civil War. Now, when the war was over, all of this was forgotten, or attempted to be forgotten. That is to say, the Union didn't seek revenge against Britain. The United States, in fact, embarked on a similar campaign of industrialization that leads to all of the great efforts that we know about and have read about it in our history books. Transcontinental railroad, the electrification of lighting and the electrical grid, and the application of steam technology throughout our economy. And, and all of that required reasonably good trade relations with Britain and the other countries of Europe. So we may say that the rest of the 19th century, the post civil war foreign relations of the United States for the rest of the 19th century, until 1898, which is where I'm going to begin the next lecture are all about maintaining good trading and commercial relations with the countries of Europe to support American industrial expansion, both in importing what we needed, although at the time the United States was definitely a net exporter, not a net importer, but especially to export the excess goods that our very robust economy could produce to other countries. And to do that, you needed to be on good terms with these other countries. And that's essentially what the foreign relations of the United States focused on for the rest of that century.
- [45:16]
Juan Davalos
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