“Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” had been adopted in 1777 and ratified by the agreement of all the states in 1781. But the Confederation was not a union. Each state claimed to be a sovereign commonwealth, and little power was given to the central government. The weak point in the Articles of Confederation was that they gave Congress no power to lay taxes or to levy soldiers. It could merely ask the states for men and money, but must wait till they were ready to give them—if they chose to do so at all. It could make treaties, but could not enforce them; could borrow money, but could not repay it; could make war, but could not force a man to join its armies; could recommend, but had no power to act.
The states proposed to remain independent except in minor particulars. They were jealous of one another and of the general Congress. “We are,” said Washington, “one nation to-day and thirteen to-morrow.” That well expressed the state of the case; no true union existed; the states were free to join hands more closely or to drift more widely asunder.
The time from the revolt against the stamp duties in 1775 to the inauguration in 1789 of the National Government under which we live has been called the critical period of American history. It was a period which displayed all the inaptitude of the Americans for sound financiering. There is hardly an evil in finances that cannot be illustrated by some event in American affairs at that time. The Americans began the war without any preparation, they conducted it on credit, and at the end of fourteen years three millions of people were five hundred millions of dollars or more in debt. The exact amount will never be known. Congress and the State Legislatures issued paper currency in unlimited quantities and upon no security. The Americans were deceived themselves in believing that their products were essential to the welfare of Europe, and that all European nations would speedily make overtures to them for the control of American commerce. It may be said that the Americans wholly over-estimated their importance in the world at that time; they thought that to cut off England from American commerce would ruin England; they thought that the bestowal of their commerce upon France would enrich France so much that the French king, for so inestimable a privilege, could well afford to loan them, and even to give them, money.
The doctrine of the rights of man ran riot in America. Paper currency became the infatuation of the day. It was thought that paper currency would meet all the demands for money, would win American independence. Even so practical a man as Franklin, then in France, said: “This effect of paper currency is not understood on this side the water; and, indeed, the whole is a mystery even to the politicians, how we have been able to continue a war four years without money, and how we could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated specifically to redeem it. This currency, as we manage it, is a wonderful machine: it performs its office when we issue it; it pays and clothes troops and provides victuals and ammunition, and when we are obliged to issue a quantity excessive, it pays itself off by depreciation.”
If the taxing power is the most august power in government, the abuse of the taxing power is the most serious sin government can commit. No one will deny that the Americans were guilty of committing most grievous financial offenses during the critical period of their history. They abused liberty by demanding and by exercising the rights of nationality, and at the same time by neglecting or refusing to burden themselves with the taxation necessary to support nationality.
The inability of the Congress of the Confederation to legislate under the provisions of the Articles compelled their amendment; for while the exigencies of war had forced the colonies into closer union,—a “perpetual league of friendship,”—they had also learned additional lessons in the theory and administration of local government; for each of the colonies, with the exception of Connecticut and Rhode Island, had transformed colonial government into government under a constitution. The people had not looked to Congress as a central power; they considered it as a central committee of the States. The individualistic tendencies of the colonies strengthened when the colonies transformed themselves into commonwealths.
The struggle, which began between the thirteen colonies and the imperial Parliament, was now transformed into a struggle between two tendencies in America, the tendency toward sovereign commonwealths and the tendency toward nationality. The first commonwealth constitutions did not acknowledge the supreme authority of Congress; there was yet lacking that essential bond between the people and their general government, the power of the general government to address itself directly to individuals. Interstate relations in 1787 were scarcely more perfect than they had been fifteen years before. The understanding of American affairs was more common, but intimate political association between the commonwealths was still unknown. The liberty of nationality had not yet been won. A peculiar tendency in American affairs from their beginning is seen in the succession of written constitutions, instruments peculiar to America. The commonwealths of the old Confederation demonstrated the necessity for a clearer definition of their relations to each other and of the association of the American people in nationality.
A sense of the necessity for commercial integrity led to the calling of the Philadelphia Convention to amend the old Articles, but when the Convention assembled it was found that an adequate solution of the large problem of nationality could not be found in an amendment of the old “Articles of Confederation,” but called for a new and more vigorous Constitution. This Convention combined the associated states into a strongly united nation, possessed of all the powers of nationality, civil, financial and military. It organized a tripartite government, consisting of Supreme Executive, Supreme Legislative, and Supreme Judicial departments, each with all the power “necessary to make it feared and respected.” While the Upper House of Congress still represented the states as separate commonwealths, the Lower House represented the people as individuals; it standing, not for a group of distinct communities, but for a nation of people. And to this House was given the sole power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, and to pay the debt, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States.”
With this Constitution the United States of America first came into existence; a strong, energetic and capable nation; its government possessed of all the powers necessary to the full control of the states, and full ability to make itself respected abroad; its people possessed of all the civil rights yet known or demanded.
Yet the people, in their political privileges, were still controlled by the constitutions of the states, and these fixed close restrictions on the right of suffrage, the electorate being confined to a small body whose ownership of real estate and whose religious opinions agreed with the ideas existing in colonial times. The property each voter was required to possess differed in different commonwealths. In New Jersey he must have property to the value of fifty pounds, in Maryland and the Carolinas an estate of fifty acres, in Delaware a freehold estate of known value, in Georgia an estate of ten dollars or follow a mechanic trade; in New York, if he would vote for a member of Assembly he must possess a freehold of twenty pounds, and if he would vote for State Senator, it must be a hundred. Massachusetts required an elector to own a freehold estate worth sixty pounds or to possess an annual income of three pounds. Connecticut was satisfied if his estate was of the yearly value of seven dollars, and Rhode Island required him to own the value of one hundred and thirty-four dollars in land. Pennsylvania required him to be a freeholder, but New Hampshire and Vermont were satisfied with the payment of a poll-tax.
The number of electors was still further affected by the religious opinions required of them. In New Jersey, in New Hampshire, in Vermont, in Connecticut, and in South Carolina, no Roman Catholic could vote; Maryland and Massachusetts allowed “those of the Christian religion” to exercise the franchise, but the “Christian religion” in Massachusetts was of the Congregational Church. North Carolina required her electors to believe in the divine authority of the Scriptures; Delaware was satisfied with a belief in the Trinity and in the inspiration of the Bible; Pennsylvania allowed those, otherwise qualified, to vote who believed “in one God, in the reward of good, and the punishment of evil, and in the inspiration of the Scriptures.” In New York, in Virginia, in Georgia, and in Rhode Island, the Protestant faith was predominant, but a Roman Catholic, if a male resident, of the age of twenty-one years or over, could vote in Rhode Island.
The property qualifications which limited the number of electors were higher for those who sought office. If a man wished to be governor of New Jersey or of South Carolina, his real and personal property must amount to ten thousand dollars; in North Carolina to one thousand pounds; in Georgia to two hundred and fifty pounds or two hundred and fifty acres of land; in New Hampshire to five hundred pounds; in Maryland to ten times as much, of which a thousand pounds must be of land; in Delaware he must own real estate; in New York he must be worth a hundred pounds; in Rhode Island, one hundred and thirty-four dollars; and in Massachusetts a thousand pounds. Connecticut required her candidate for governor to be qualified as an elector, as did New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In all the commonwealths the candidate for office must possess the religious qualifications required of electors.
From these statements it is evident that the suffrage in the United States was greatly limited when, after the winning of American independence, the Constitution of the United States was framed and the commonwealths had adopted their first constitutions of government. It may be said that in 1787 the country was bankrupt, and America was without credit, and that of a population of three million souls, who, by our present ratio, would represent six hundred thousand voters, less than one hundred and fifty thousand possessed the right to vote. African slavery and property qualifications excluded above four hundred thousand men from the exercise of the franchise. It is evident, then, that at the time when American liberty was won American liberty had only begun; the offices of the country were in the possession of the few, scarcely any provision existed for common education, the roads of the country may be described as impassable, the means for transportation, trade, and commerce as feeble. If the struggle for liberty in America was not to be in vain, the people of the United States must address themselves directly to the payment of their debts, to the enlargement of the franchise, to improvements in transportation, and to the creation, organization, and support of a national system of common taxation. It is these great changes which constitute the history of this country during the nineteenth century.
All these have been gained since the adoption of the Constitution. The remarkable financial operations of Alexander Hamilton—by which the crushing load of debt of the new nation was funded, for payment in after years a customs tariff established as a means of obtaining revenue, and provision made for paying the claims of the soldiers of the Revolution—saved the credit and secured the honor of the nation. As regards the franchise, it was greatly extended during the nineteenth century. By the time the Erie canal was excavated property qualifications for suffrage had disappeared in nearly all the states, and by the middle of the century such qualifications had been abandoned in them all. Those of a religious character had vanished thirty years earlier.
As yet, however, the right to vote was limited to “free, white, male citizens.” Twenty years afterwards, on March 30, 1870, a further great extension of the right of suffrage was made, when, in accordance with the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, it was proclaimed by Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, that the right of citizens of this country to vote could not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Universal suffrage, so far as male citizens were concerned, thus became the common condition of American political life in 1870. But the struggle for liberty in this direction was not yet ended. Female citizens, about the middle of the century, gave voice to their claim to the same right, and with such effort that they had gained the right to vote at all elections in four of the States—Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho—by the end of the century, and partial rights of suffrage in a majority of the States. The outlook is that before many years universal suffrage in its fullest sense will be established in the United States.
With the westward movements of the millions of human beings who have occupied the North American continent have gone the institutions and constitutions of the east, modified in their journey westward by the varying conditions of the life of the people. The brief constitutions of 1776 have developed into extraordinary length by successive changes and additions made by the more than seventy Constitutional Conventions which have been held west of the original thirteen States. These later constitutions resemble elaborate legal codes rather than brief statements of the fundamental ideas of government. But these constitutions, of which those of the Dakotas and of Montana and Washington are a type, express very clearly the opinions of the American people in government at the present time. The earnest desire shown in them for an accurate definition of the theory and the administration of government proves how anxiously the people of this country at all times consider the interpretation of their liberties, and with what hesitation, it may be said, they delegate their powers in government to legislatures, to judges, and to governors.
The struggle for liberty will never cease, for with the progress of civilization new definitions of the wants of the people are constantly forming in the mind. The whole movement of the American people in government, from the simple beginnings of representative government in Virginia, when the little parliament was called, to the present time, when nationality is enthroned and mighty commonwealths are become the component parts of the “more perfect union,” has been toward the slow but constant realization of the rights and liberties of the people. Education, for which no commonwealth made adequate provision a century ago, is now the first care of the State. Easy and rapid transportation, wholly unknown to our fathers, is now a necessary condition of daily life. Trade has so prospered that the accumulated wealth of the country is more than sixty billions of dollars. Newspapers, magazines, books and pamphlets are now so numerous as to make it impossible to contain them all in hundreds of libraries, and the American people have become the largest class of readers in the world.
A century ago there were but six cities of more than eight thousand people in this country; the number is now more than five hundred. Three millions of people have become seventy-five millions. The area of the original United States has expanded from eight hundred and thirty thousand square miles to four times that area. With expansion and growth and the amelioration in the conditions of life, the earnest problems of government have been brought home to the people by the leaders in the State, by the clergy, by the teachers in schools and colleges, and by the press.
But though we may be proud of these conquests, we are compelled in the last analysis of our institutions, to return to a few fundamental notions of our government. We must continue the representative idea based upon the doctrine of the equality of rights and exercised by representative assemblies founded on popular elections; and after our most pleasing contemplation of the institutions of America, we must return to the people, the foundation of our government. Their wisdom and self-control, and these alone, will impart to our institutions that strength which insures their perpetuity.
In 1775, when the British colonies in America struck the first blow for independence, they were of dwarfish stature as compared with the present superb dimensions of the United States. Though the war with France had given them possession of the great Ohio Valley, the settled portion of the country lay between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic, and the thirteen confederated States were confined to a narrow strip along the ocean border of the continent.
But before and during the Revolutionary War pathfinders and pioneers were at work. Chief among them was the noted hunter Daniel Boone, the explorer and settler of the “Dark and Bloody Ground” of Kentucky. Before him daring men had crossed the mountains, and after him came others, so that by the end of the Revolution the hand of civilization was firmly laid on the broad forest land of Kentucky and Tennessee. The rich country north of the Ohio, where the British possessed a number of forts, was captured for the United States by another daring adventurer, George Rogers Clark, who led a body of men down the Ohio, took and held the British forts, and saved the northwest to the struggling States. The boundaries of the United States in 1800, as established by the treaty of peace with Great Britain, extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi, and from the Great Lakes on the north to Florida on the south. Florida, then held by Spain, included a strip of land extending to the Mississippi River, so that the new republic was cut off from the Gulf of Mexico by domain belonging to a foreign country. The area thus acquired by the new nation was over 827,000 square miles. It was inhabited in 1800 by a population of 5,300,000.
The vast and almost wholly unknown territory west of the Mississippi, claimed by France, in virtue of her discoveries and settlements on the great river, until 1763, when it was ceded to Spain, was held by that country in 1800. This cession gave Spain complete control of the lower course of the Mississippi, since her province of Florida extended to the east bank of the stream. And she held it in a manner that proved deeply annoying to the American settlers in the west, to whom free navigation of the Mississippi was of great and growing importance.
These settlers were increasing in numbers with considerable rapidity. The daring enterprise of Daniel Boone and other fearless pioneers had opened up the fertile lands of Kentucky and Tennessee. The warlike boldness of Colonel Clark had gained the northwest territory for the new nation. Into this new country pioneer settlers poured, over the mountains and down the Ohio, and by the opening of the century villages and towns had been built in a hundred places, and farmers were widely felling the virgin woods and planting their grain in the fertile soil. Kentucky and Tennessee had already been organized as states, and their admission was quickly followed by that of Ohio, which entered the Union in 1803. In the same year an event of the highest importance took place, the acquisition of the great Louisiana territory by the United States.
It has been stated above that the action of Spain gave great annoyance to the settlers in the country west of the Alleghanies. To these the natural commercial outlet to the sea was the Mississippi River, and the free use of this stream was forbidden by Spain, through whose country ran its lower course. Spain was so determined to retain for herself the exclusive navigation of the great river that in 1786 the new American republic withdrew all claim upon it, agreeing to withhold any demand for navigation of the Mississippi for twenty-five years.
This action proved to be hasty and unwise. The West filled up with unlooked-for rapidity, and the settlers upon the Mississippi soon began to insist on free use of its waters, their irritation growing so great that the United States vainly sought in 1793 to induce Spain to open the stream to American craft. This purpose was attained, however, in 1795, when a treaty was made which opened the Mississippi to the sea for a term of three years, with permission for Americans to use New Orleans as a free port of entry, and place goods there on deposit.
Five years later (1800), by an article in a secret treaty between Spain and France, the vast province of Louisiana, extending from the source to the mouth of the Mississippi River, and westward to the Rocky Mountains, was ceded by Spain to France, from which country Spain had received it in 1763. Towards the end of 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte, then at the head of French affairs, sent out a fleet and army ostensibly to act against San Domingo, but really to take possession of New Orleans.
When the secret of this treaty leaked out, as it soon did, there was great excitement in the United States, the irritation being increased by a Spanish order which withdrew the right of deposit of American merchandise in New Orleans, granted by the treaty of 1795, and failed to substitute any other place for that city, in accordance with the terms of the treaty. So strong was the feeling that a Pennsylvania Senator introduced a resolution into Congress, authorizing President Jefferson to call out 50,000 militia and occupy New Orleans. But Congress wisely decided that it would be better and cheaper to buy it than to fight for it, and in January, 1803, made an appropriation of $2,000,000 for its purchase. The President thereupon sent James Monroe to Paris to co-operate with Robert R. Livingston, United States Minister to France, in the proposed purchase.
Fortunately for the United States a new war between England and France was then imminent, in the event of which Napoleon felt that he could not long hold his American acquisition against the powerful British navy. Not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana, would probably be lost to him, and just then money for his wars was of more consequence than wild lands beyond the sea. Therefore, to the surprise of the American Minister, he was asked to make an offer for the entire territory. This was on April 11th. On the 12th Monroe reached Paris. The two commissioners earnestly debated on the offer. They had no authority to close with such a proposition, but by the time they could receive fresh instructions from Washington the golden opportunity might be lost, and Great Britain deprive us of the mighty West. An ocean telegraph cable would have been to them an invaluable boon. As it was, there was no time to hesitate, and they decided to close with the offer, fixing the purchase price at $10,000,000. Napoleon demanded more, and in the end the price fixed upon was $15,000,000, of which $3,750,000 was to be paid to American citizens who held claims against Spain. A treaty to this effect was signed April 30, 1803.
The news fell upon Spain like a thunderbolt. She filed a protest against the treaty—based, probably, on a secret condition of her cession of Louisiana to France, to the effect that it should not be parted with by that country. But Napoleon was not the man to pay any attention to a protest from a power so weak as Spain, and the matter was one with which the United States was not concerned. President Jefferson highly approved of the purchase, and called an extra session of the Senate for its consideration. It met with some vigorous opposition in that body, based upon almost absolute ignorance of the value of the territory involved; but it was ratified in October, 1803, and Louisiana became ours. The territory thus easily and cheaply acquired added about 920,000 square miles to the United States, more than doubling its area. It is now divided up into a large number of States, and includes much of the most productive agricultural land of the United States.
The members of the Senate who opposed the ratification of the treaty of purchase were in a measure justified in their doubt. Almost nothing was known of the country involved, and many idle legends were afloat concerning it. Hunters and trappers had penetrated its wilds, but the stories told by them had been transformed out of all semblance of truth. In order to dispel this ignorance and satisfy these doubts, the President determined to send an exploring expedition to the far West, with the purpose of crossing the Rocky Mountains, seeking the head-waters of the Columbia River, and following that stream to its mouth. The men chosen to lead this expedition were William Clark—brother of George Rogers Clark, of Revolutionary fame—and Merriwether Lewis. Both of these were army officers, and they were well adapted for the arduous enterprise which they were asked to undertake.
Lewis and Clark left St. Louis in the summer of 1803. They encamped for the winter on the bank of the Mississippi opposite the mouth of the Missouri River. The company included nine Kentuckians, who were used to Indian ways and frontier life, fourteen soldiers, two Canadian boatmen, an interpreter, a hunter and a negro boatman. Besides these, a corporal and guard with nine boatmen were engaged to accompany the expedition as far as the territory of the Mandans.
The party carried with it the usual goods for trading with the Indians—looking-glasses, beads, trinkets, hatchets, etc., and such provisions as were necessary for the sustenance of its members. While the greater part of the command embarked in a fleet of three large canoes, the hunters and pack-horses followed a parallel route along the shore. In this way, in the spring of 1804, the ascent of the Missouri was commenced. In June the country of the Osages was reached, then the lands occupied by the Ottawa tribes, and finally, in the fall, the hunting grounds of the Sioux. Here the leaders of the expedition ordered cabins to be constructed, and camped for the winter among the Mandans, in latitude 27 degrees 21 minutes north. They found in that country plenty of game, buffalo and deer being abundant; but the weather was intensely cold and the expedition was hardly prepared for the severity of the climate, so that its members suffered greatly.
In April a fresh start was made and the party continued to ascend the Missouri, reaching the great falls by June. Here they named the tributary waters and ascended the northernmost, which they called the Jefferson River, until further navigation was impossible; then Captain Lewis with three companions left the expedition in camp and started out on foot toward the mountains, in search of the friendly Shoshone Indians, from whom he expected assistance in his projected journey across the mountains.
On the 12th of August he discovered the source of the Jefferson River in a defile of the Rocky Mountains and crossed the dividing ridge, upon the other side of which his eyes were gladdened by the discovery of a small rivulet which flowed toward the west. Here was proof irrefutable “that the great backbone of earth” had been passed. The intrepid explorer saw with joy that this little stream danced out toward the setting sun—toward the Pacific Ocean. Meeting a force of Shoshones and persuading them to accompany him on his return to the main body of the expedition, Captain Lewis sought his companions once more. Captain Clark then went forward to determine their future course, and coming to the river which his companion had discovered, he named it the Lewis River.
A number of Indian horses were procured from their red-skinned friends and the explorers pushed on to the broad plains of the western slope. The latter part of their progress in the mountains had been slow and painful, because of the early fall of snow, but the plains presented all the charm of early autumn. In October the Kaskaskia River was reached, and, leaving the horses and whatever baggage could be dispensed with in charge of the Indians, the command embarked in canoes and descended to the mouth of the Columbia River, upon the south bank of which, four hundred miles from their starting point upon this stream, they passed the second winter. Much of the return journey was a fight with hostile Indians, and the way proved to be much more difficult than it had been found while advancing toward the west. Lewis was wounded before reaching home, by the accidental discharge of a gun in the hands of one of his force.
Finally, after an absence of two years, the expedition returned to its starting point, the leaders reaching Washington while Congress was in session. Grants of land were immediately made to them and to their subordinates. Captain Lewis was rewarded also with the governorship of Missouri. Clark was appointed brigadier-general for the territory of Upper Louisiana, and in 1813 was made governor of Missouri. When this Territory became a State he was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs, which office he filled till his death.
The second acquisition of territory by the United States embraced the peninsula of Florida. The Spanish colony of Florida was divided into two sections, known as Eastern and Western Florida, the latter extending from the Appalachicola River to the Mississippi River, and cutting off the Americans of Florida and Alabama from all access to the Gulf. Spain set up a customhouse at the mouth of the Alabama River, and levied heavy duties on goods to or from the country up that stream.
The United States was not willing to acknowledge the right of Spain to this country. It claimed that the Louisiana purchase included the region east of the Mississippi as far as the Perdido River,—the present western boundary of Florida—and in 1810 a force was sent into this country which took possession of it, with the exception of the city of Mobile. That city was occupied by General Wilkinson, commander-in-chief of the army, in 1813, leaving to Spain only the country between the Perdido and the Atlantic Ocean and south of Georgia.
Throughout these years the purpose had grown in the southern states to gain this portion of the Spanish dominion, as well as Western Florida, for the United States. On January 15 and March 3, 1811, the United States Congress passed in secret—and its action was not made known until 1818—acts which authorized the President of the United States to take “temporary possession” of East Florida. The commissioners appointed under these acts, Matthews and Mitchell, both Georgians, stirred up insurrection in the coveted territory, and, when President Madison refused to sustain them, the state of Georgia formally pronounced Florida needful to its own peace and welfare, and practically declared war on its private account. But its expedition against Florida came to nothing. In 1814, General Andrew Jackson, then in command of United States forces at Mobile, made a raid into Pensacola, and drove out a British force which had been placed there. He afterwards restored the place to the Spanish authorities and retired. Four years after, during the Seminole war, Jackson, annoyed by Spanish assistance given to the Indians, again raided Eastern Florida, captured St. Marks and Pensacola, hung Arbuthnot and Ambruster, two Englishmen who were suspected of aiding the Seminoles, as “outlaws and pirates,” and again demonstrated the fact that Florida was at the mercy of the United States.
The action of Jackson was unauthorized by the government, and his hanging the Englishmen without taking the trouble to make sure of their guilt caused a feeling of hostile irritation in England. But it had by this time grown quite evident to Spain, both that it could not hold Florida in peace and that this colony was of very little value to it. In consequence it agreed to sell the peninsula to the United States for the sum of $5,000,000, the treaty being signed February 22, 1819. By this treaty Spain also gave up all claim to the country west of the Louisiana purchase, extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The purchase of Florida added 59,268 square miles to the United States, and the way was cleared for the subsequent acquisition of the Oregon country.
The next accession of territory came in 1845, when Texas was added to the dominion of the United States. This country had, since 1821, been one of the states of the Mexican Republic. But American frontiersmen, of the kind calculated to foment trouble, soon made their way across the borders, increasing in numbers as the years passed on, until Texas had a considerable population of United States origin. Efforts were made to purchase this country from Mexico, $1,000,000 being offered in 1827 and $5,000,000 in 1829. These were declined, and in 1833 Texas adopted a constitution as a state of the Mexican republic. Two years later Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, was made dictator, and all state constitutions were abolished. Irritated by this, the American inhabitants declared the independence of Texas in 1836, and after a short war, marked by instances of savage cruelty on the part of the Mexicans, gained freedom for that country. Texas was organized as a republic, but its people soon applied for annexation to the United States. This was not granted until 1845. The territory added to this country by the admission of Texas amounted to 376,133 square miles.
In the following year another large section of territory was added to the rapidly growing United States. The Louisiana purchase ran indefinitely westward, but came to be considered as bounded on the west by the Rocky Mountains, Spain retaining a shadowy claim over the country west of that range. This exceedingly vague claim was abandoned in the Florida purchase treaty, and the broad Oregon country was left without an owner. The United States, indeed, might justly have claimed ownership on the same plea advanced for new regions elsewhere—namely, that of discovery and exploration. Captain Grey, in his ship, the Columbia, carried the starry flag to its coast in 1792, and was the first to enter and sail up its great river, which he named after his vessel. In 1805 the country was traversed and explored by Lewis and Clark. In 1811 John Jacob Astor founded the settlement of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia, and sent hunters in search of furs through the back country. And in 1819 the vague right over the country held by Spain was transferred by treaty to the United States.
These various circumstances would have established a prescriptive right to the country concerned as against other countries, had any thought of claiming such a right been entertained. But no man, statesman or commoner, thought the country worth the value of even a paper claim, and it was left unconsidered and unthought of until the century was well advanced. Then, after the Hudson Bay Company had gained control of Astoria, and had begun to fill the country with fur hunters, a living sense of the value of this great region came to the mind of one man.
This was Dr. Marcus Whitman, a missionary physician among the Indians of the Columbia River region. He discovered that the Hudson Bay Company was making efforts to bring permanent settlers there, and that it proposed to claim the country for Great Britain. At once the energetic doctor set out for Washington, crossing the vast stretch of country from the Pacific to the Atlantic on horseback and traversing the Rocky Mountains in the dead of winter. It was a long and terrible journey, full of perils and hardships, but he accomplished it in safety, and strongly urged the government at Washington to lay claim to the country. Even then it was hard to arouse an interest in the statesmen concerning this far-off territory, so the brave pioneer went among the people, told them of the beauty of the country and the fertility of its soil, and on his return, in 1843, took with him an emigrant train of nearly a thousand persons. This settled the question. The newcomers formed a government of their own. Others followed, and the question of ownership was practically settled. In 1845 there were some 7,000 Americans in Oregon and only a few British. By that time a stern determination had arisen in the people of this country to retain Oregon. A claim was made on the whole western region up to the parallel of 54 degrees 40 minutes, the southern boundary of Russian America, and the political war-cry of that year was “fifty-four forty or fight.” Oregon Is AcquiredIn 1846 the question was settled by treaty with Great Britain, the disputed country being divided at the forty-ninth parallel. The northern portion became British Columbia, the southern Oregon. In this way it was that the United States spanned the continent and established its dominion from ocean to ocean. The tract acquired measured about 255,000 square miles. It now constitutes the States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
The United States grew with extraordinary rapidity in the decade with which we are now concerned, the acquisition of Texas and Florida being followed in 1848 by another great addition of territory, much larger than either. This came as the result of the annexation of Texas.
Mexico had never acknowledged the independence of the “Lone Star Republic,” and was deeply dissatisfied at its acquisition by the United States, which it looked upon as an unwarranted interference in its private affairs. The strained relations between the two countries were made more stringent by a dispute as to the western boundary of Texas, both countries claiming the strip of land between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers. The result was a war, the description of which must be left for a later chapter. It will suffice here to say that the American troops marched steadily to victory, and at the end of the war held two large districts of northern Mexico, those of New Mexico and California. The occupation of these Mexican states gave this country a warrant to claim them as the prizes of victory.
But there was no disposition shown to despoil the defeated party without compensation. An agreement was made to pay Mexico $15,000,000 for New Mexico and California, and to assume debts owed by Mexico to United States citizens amounting to about $3,000,000. The territory thus acquired was 545,783 square miles in extent. Of its immense value we need scarce speak. It will suffice to say that it gave the United States the gold mines of California and the silver mines of Nevada, together with the still more valuable fertile fields of the California lowlands. Five years afterwards, to settle a border dispute, another tract of land, south of New Mexico, 45,535 square miles in extent, was purchased for the sum of $10,000,000. This is known as the Gadsden purchase, the treaty being negociated by James Gadsden. Thus in less than ten years the United States acquired more than 1,220,000 square miles of territory, increasing its domain by nearly three-fourths. These new acquisitions carried it across the continent in a broad band, giving it a coast line on the Pacific nearly equal to that on the Atlantic, and adding enormously to its mineral and agricultural wealth.
Still another extensive acquisition remained to be made. Long before, when the daring pioneers of Russia overran Siberia, parties of them crossed the narrow Bering Strait and took possession of the northwestern section of the American continent. This territory, long known as Russian America, embraced the broad peninsular extension west of the 141st degree of west longitude, and a narrow strip of land stretching down the coast as far south as the parallel of 54 degrees 40 minutes. It included also all the coast islands and the Aleutian Archipelago, with the exception of Copper and Bering Islands on the Siberian coast. This territory was of little value or advantage to Russia, and in 1867 that country offered to sell it to the United States for $7,200,000. The offer was accepted without hesitation, the result being an addition of 577,000 square miles to our territory.
As regards the value of this acquisition something more remains to be said. The active Yankee prospectors have found Alaska—as the new territory was named—far richer than its original owners dreamed of. It was like the story of California repeated. First were the valuable fur seals, which haunted certain islands of Bering Sea. Then were the fur animals of the mainland. To these must be added the wealth of the rivers, which were found to swarm with salmon and other food fishes. Next may be named the forests, which cover the coast regions for hundreds of square miles. Finally, the country proved to be rich in mineral wealth, and especially in gold. The recently discovered gold deposits lie principally on the British side of the border, the Klondike diggings—developed in 1897—being in Canada. But gold has been mined in Alaska for years, and probably exists on most of the tributaries of the Yukon River, so that the country may yet prove to be a second California in its golden treasures.
The final acquisition of territory by the United States came in 1899, as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898. The treaty of peace gave to this country a series of highly fertile tropical islands, consisting of Porto Rico in the West Indies, and the Philippine Archipelago in the Asiatic Seas. To these must be added a temporary protectorate over, and possibly the future ownership of, the broad and fertile West Indian Island of Cuba. In 1898 there came by peaceful means another accession of territory, the Hawaiian group of islands in the Central Pacific. These, with some islands of minor importance—including Guam, in the Ladrone group, also acquired from Spain—constitute the recent island accessions of the United States. Their areas are: Porto Rico, 3,530; Hawaii, 6,564; and the Philippines, 116,000 square miles; making a total of about 126,000 square miles. As a consequence of those various accessions of territory, the United States now has an area of, in round numbers, 3,732,000 square miles, more than four times its area in 1800. As a result of these several acquisitions this country has grown from one of the smaller nations to nearly the largest nation in area, on the earth, while its population has increased from 5,300,000 in 1800 to about 75,000,000 in 1900. Its few small cities at the beginning of the century have been replaced by a considerable number of large ones, three of them with more than 1,000,000 inhabitants each, while New York, the largest, is now the second city in population on the earth.
Modern democracy is often looked upon as something peculiarly secular, unreligious, or even irreligious in its origin. In truth, however, it has its origin in religious aspirations quite as much as modern art or architecture or literature. To the theology of Calvin, the founder of the Republic of Geneva, grafted upon the sturdy independence of English and Scotch middle classes, our American democracy owes its birth. James I. well appreciated that the principles of uncompromising Protestantism were as incompatible with monarchy as with the hierarchy which they swept aside. Each man by his theology was brought into direct personal responsibility to his God, without the intervention of priest, bishop, or pope, and without any allegiance to his king except so far as it agreed with his allegiance to the King of kings. Macaulay has struck this note of Puritan republicanism when he says that the Puritans regarded themselves as “Kings by the right of an earlier creation; priests by the interposition of an Almighty hand.” As John Fiske says, James Stuart always treasured up in his memory the day when a Puritan preacher caught him by the sleeve and called him “God’s silly vassal.” “A Scotch Presbytery,” cried the king, “agrees as well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council and all our proceedings!”