Episode 17: Expansion and War
Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course U.S.
history and today we’re going to discuss
how the United States came to acquire two
of its largest states, Texas and…there is
another one.
Mr. Green! Mr. Green! I believe the answer
you’re looking for is Alaska.
Oh me from the past, as you can clearly tell
from the globe, Alaskan statehood never happened.
No I am referring of course to California.
Stan, are we using your computer today? Oh.
Stan!
We’ve talked about westward expansion a
few times here on CrashCourse, but it’s
usually about, like, Kentucky or Ohio. This
time we’re going really west, I mean, not
like Hawaii west, but sea to shining sea west.
intro
So you might remember that journalist John
O’Sullivan coined the phrase Manifest Destiny
to describe America’s god given right to
take over all the land between the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans, regardless of who happened
to be living there
Sorry Native Americans, Mexicans, French fur
trappers, beavers, bison, prairie dogs, passenger
pigeons.
I’m not going to go so far as to give God
credit for America’s internal imperialism,
but I will say that our expansion had a lot
to do with economics, especially when you
consider Jefferson’s ideas about the empire
of liberty.
Stan, did I just say liberty? That means technically
I also have to talk about slavery, but we’re
gonna kick the slavery can down the road until
later in the show. Just like American politicians
did in the 19th century.
By 1860 nearly 300,000 people had made the
trip that has been immortalized by the classic
educational video game “Oregon Trail,”
which, by the way, is inaccurate in the sense
that a family of 6, even a very hungry one,
cannot eat a buffalo.
But is extremely accurate in that a lot of
people died of dysentery and cholera. Frickin
disease.
So, Oregon at the time was jointly controlled
by the U.S. and Britain. Northern Mexico at
the time included what are now Texas, Arizona,
Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and California.
But New Mexico and California were the only
two with, like, big settlements. About 30,000
Mexicans lived in New Mexico, and about 3,500
in California, and in both places they were
outnumbered by Native Americans. Okay, let’s
go to the Thought Bubble.
When Mexico became independent, there were
only about 2,000 Tejanos there, so to encourage
economic development, Mexico’s government
granted a huge tract of land to Moses Austin.
Austin’s son Stephen made a tidy profit
selling off smaller parcels of that land until
there were 7,000 American Americans there.
This made Mexico nervous so, backpedalling
furiously, Mexico annulled the land contracts
and banned further emigration into Texas.
Even though slavery was already abolished
in Mexico, up to now they had allowed Americans
to bring slaves. Austin, joined by some Tejano
elites, demanded greater autonomy and the
right to use slave labor. Thinking the better
of it, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa
Ana decided to assert control over the restive
territory with an army, turning the elite’s
demands for autonomy into a full-scale revolt
for independence.
On March 13, 1836, Santa Ana defeated the
American defenders of the Alamo, killing 187
(or 188, sources differ) Americans including
Davy Crockett. The Texas rebels would “remember
the Alamo” and come back to defeat Santa
Ana at the battle of San Jacinto. And Mexico
was forced to recognize Texas’s independence.
So Texas became the Lone Star Republic and
quickly decided that it would be much better
to be a less lonely star and join the United
States. So, in 1837, Texas’ Congress called
for union but all they heard back was, “not
so fast, Texas.” Why? Because Texas wanted
to be a slave state, and adding another slave
state would disrupt the balance in the Senate,
so Jackson and Van Buren did what good politicians
always do: they ignored Texas.
And then after Martin Van Buren wrote a letter
denouncing any plan to annex Texas on the
grounds that it would probably provoke a war,
Democratic convention southerners threw their
support behind slaveholding Andrew Jackson
pal, James K. Polk.
Polk just managed to get a presidential victory
over perennial almost-president Henry Clay,
and seeing the writing on the wall, Congress
annexed Texas in March of 1845, days before
Polk took office. Congress then forged an
agreement with Britain to divide Oregon at
the 49th parallel, which restored the slave
state/free state balance in the Senate.
Thanks, Thought Bubble. Hey, Stan, can I get
the foreshadowing filter? I wonder if we’re
going to be able to keep that slave state/free
state balance...forever.
The land-hungry James K. Polk had another
goal as president: acquire California from
Mexico.
He tried to purchase it from Mexico, but they
were like, “No,” which is Spanish for
“No.”
So Polk decided to do things the hard way
– he sent troops under future president
Zachary Taylor into this disputed border region.
As expected, by which I mean intended, fighting
broke out between American and Mexican forces.
Polk, in calling for a declaration of war,
claimed that the Mexicans had “shed blood
upon American soil,” although the soil in
question was arguably not American, unless
you think of America as being, you know, all
of this.
A majority of Americans supported this war,
although to be fair, a majority of Americans
will support almost any war. I’m sorry,
but it is true. At least at first.
It was the first war fought by American troops
primarily on foreign soil, as most of the
fighting was done in Mexico. Among the dissenters
was a Massachusetts Transcendentalist who
is probably better known than the war itself.
Henry David Thoreau was in fact thrown in
jail for refusing to pay taxes in protest
of the war and wrote “On Civil Disobedience”
in his defence, which many American high-schoolers
are assigned to read and expected not to understand,
lest they take the message to heart and stop
doing assignments like reading “On Civil
Disobedience.”
Another critic was concerned about the increase
in executive power that Polk seemed to show,
saying: “Allow the president to invade a
neighboring country whenever he shall deem
it necessary to repel an invasion and you
allow him to make war at pleasure”
That critic was none other than noted peacenik
Abraham Lincoln, who would go on to do more
to expand executive power than any president
in the 19th century except maybe Andrew Jackson.
Right so Santa Ana’s army was defeated in
February 1847 but Mexico refused to give up.
So Winfield Scott, who had the unfortunate
nickname “old fuss and feathers,” captured
Mexico City itself in September.
A final peace treaty, the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo was signed in 1848, under which Mexico
confirmed the annexation of Texas and further
ceded California as well as several other
places that would later become states but
we couldn’t fit on the map.
In return, the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million
and agreed to a no backsies deal in re Texas
thereby freeing Mexico from the shackles of
Amarillo. I’m sorry Amarillians. No I’m
not. I am. I am. I’m not. I am.
This is great, Stan. The people of Amarillo
hate me, also the people of New Jersey, Alaska
is in the green-parts-of-not-America, We don’t
even have Arizona and New Mexico on the chalkboard.
Pretty soon I will have alienated everyone.
Anyway, thanks to the land from Mexico, our
dream of expanding from the Atlantic to the
Pacific was finally complete. And as always
happens when dreams come true, trouble started.
After the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, between
75,000 and 100,000 Spanish-speaking Mexicans
and 150,000 Native Americans were under the
jurisdiction of the United States.
Despite the fact that the treaty granted Spanish
descended Mexican “male citizens” legal
and property rights, the Mexicans were still
seen as inferior to Anglo-Saxons whose manifest
destiny it was, of course, to overspread the
continent.
And the fact that these Mexicans were Catholic
didn’t help either, especially because in
the eastern part of the United States, there
was a rising tide of anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant
sentiment known as nativism.
And there was a new political party, The American
Party, dedicated entirely to such sentiment.
They were referred to as the “Know-nothings”
because when you asked them about their politics
they would answer that they didn’t know
anything.
And indeed, they didn’t.
This was not an expert branding strategy,
although they did manage to win an unexpected
number of local offices in a state heralded
for its ignorance … Massachusetts. You thought
I was going to say New Jersey, but I’m trying
to make nice with the New Jersey people because
they take it pretty personally.
Meanwhile, in California, there weren’t
enough white, English speaking American residents
to apply for statehood until gold was discovered
in 1848, leading of course to San Francisco’s
NFL team, the San Francisco 48ers.
By 1852, the non-Indian population in California
had risen from 15,000 to 200,000 and it was
360,000 on the eve of the Civil War.
Now not all of those migrants – mainly young
men seeking their fortunes – were white.
Nearly 25,000 Chinese people migrated to California,
most as contract workers working for mining
and railroad companies.
And there were women, too, who ran restaurants,
and worked as cooks, and laundresses, and
prostitutes, but the ratio of men to women
in California in 1860 was 3 to 1.
Aw shmerg. It’s time for the Mystery Document?
The rules here are simple.
I read the Mystery Document and I’m either
shocked by electricity or by the fact that
I got it right.
“We would beg to remind you that when your
nation was a wilderness, and the nation from
which you sprung barbarous, we exercised most
of the arts and virtues of civilized life;
that we are possessed of a language and a
literature, and that men skilled in science
and the arts are numerous among us; that the
productions of our manufactories, our sail,
and workshops, form no small share of commerce
of the world; and that for centuries, colleges,
schools, charitable institutions, asylums,
and hospitals have been as common as in your
own land. (…) And we beg to remark, that
so far as the history of our race in California
goes, it stamps with the test of truth that
we are not the degraded race you would make
us.”
So it’s someone who said that “we” had
a great civilization when “you” were a
wilderness, plus they called us “barbarous,”
so it’s either ancient Rome or China. I’m
gonna lean toward China.
That only gets me halfway there. Now I have
to think of the name of the person. And I
don’t know any famous people from mid-19th
century China who lived in the U.S. ...People
say I can’t sing.
Norman Asing? Who the hell is Normal Asing?
AHHHH.
So these days California is known for its
groovy, laid back, “oh your back hurts?
here’s some pot” attitude, but that was
not the case in the 19th century.
The California constitution of 1850 limited
civil participation to whites – no Asians,
no Black people or Native Americans could
vote or testify in court. Indians were kicked
off their land if it had any mineral value,
and thousands of their orphaned children were
sold as slaves.
And all of this led to the Indian population
of California dropping from 150,000 to about
30,000 between 1848 and 1860.
So it wasn’t at all clear whether California
was the kind of place to be admitted to the
U.S. as a free state or as a slave state.
The Missouri Compromise was of no help here
because half of California is below the 36
30 line, and half is above it.
A new “Free Soil” party formed in 1848
calling for the limiting of slavery’s expansion
in the west so that it could be open for white
people to live and work.
I just want to be clear that most of the people
who were for limiting slavery were not, like,
un-racist.
So, they nominated the admirably-whiskered
Martin Van Buren for the presidency, and Van
Buren and Democratic nominee Lewis Cass then
split the northern vote, allowing the aforementioned
Zachary Taylor, to win.
So in 1850, when California finally did ask
to be admitted into the Union, it was as a
free state.
Southerners freaked out because they saw it
as the beginning of the end of slavery, but
then, to the rescue came Henry Clay, for his
last hurrah.
He said, “We can kick this problem down
the road once more” and brokered a four-part
plan that became known rather anticlimactically
as the Compromise of 1850. Historians, can
you name nothing?!
The four points were:
1. California would be admitted as a free
state
2. The slave trade, but not slavery, would
be outlawed in Washington D.C.
3. A new, super harsh fugitive slave law would
be enacted, and
4. Popular sovereignty
The idea was that in the remaining territories
taken from Mexico, the local white inhabitants
could decide for themselves whether the state
would be slave or free when it applied to
be part of the U.S.
Ah, the Compromise of 1850. A great reminder
that nothing protects the rights of minorities
like the tyranny of the majority.
There was a huge debate over the bill in which
noted asshat John C. Calhoun was so sick that
he had to have his pro-slavery, anti-compromise
remarks read by a colleague. On the other
side, New York’s Senator William Seward,
an abolitionist, also argued against compromise,
based on slavery’s being, you know, wrong.
But, eventually the compromise did pass, thus
averting a greater crisis for ten whole years.
Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that if the
United States acquired part of Mexico, it
would be like swallowing arsenic.
And indeed, arsenic can be a slow-acting poison.
Now I don’t think Ralph Waldo Emerson was
a good enough writer to have thought that
far ahead, but he was right.
Some people say that manifest destiny made
the Civil War inevitable. But, as we’ll
see next week, what really made the Civil
War inevitable was slavery.
But, we see in the story of manifest destiny
the underlying problem, the United States
didn’t govern according to its own ideals.
It didn’t extend liberties to Native Americans
or Mexican Americans or immigrant populations
or slaves.
Thanks for watching. And we’ll see you next
week when things will get much worse.
Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan
Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith
Danko. The show is written by my high school
history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself. Our
associate producer is Danica Johnson. And
our graphics team is Thought Café.
If you’d like to contribute to the libertage,
you can suggest captions. You can also ask
questions in comments where they will be answered
by our team of historians. Thank you for watching
Crash Course and as we say in my hometown,
don’t forget to be awesome.