A Nation on the Move: Westward Expansion, 1800s

This is Unit Eleven, part one, on westward expansion, and it runs from the Louisiana Purchase to the first American settlers in Texas. Unit Ten closed by saying that Jacksonian politics enabled this expansion. Here is the expansion. Two things to carry, and both are chains rather than facts. The first is a border. In eighteen nineteen a secretary of state trades away the American claim to Texas, and every step from there to a war with Mexico follows from that one clause. The second is a distinction between two chambers of Congress, and a student who blurs them cannot explain why the admission of one thinly settled state became a national emergency. By the end you will be able to explain what Adams traded at the Sabine. To say which chamber the three-fifths clause governs and which the Missouri crisis was fought in. To state what the Missouri Compromise did. To explain why the vote frightened Jefferson. And to say what the Corps of Discovery was sent to find.

Four entries on the purchase and the party sent to survey it.

What Jefferson did next.

USH1 1501 The Purchase, and What Followed

Jefferson bought Louisiana in April eighteen oh three, effectively doubling the size of the United States, and then wanted to know what he had bought, ordering an assessment of the territory's potential for commercial exploitation. Unit Eight covered the purchase, its price and its constitutional problem. This unit covers what was done with it.

Why France was willing.

USH1 1502 Why Napoleon Sold

After the success of the Haitian Revolution, an uprising of enslaved people against the French, Napoleon abandoned his quest to re-establish an extensive French Empire in America. The largest land acquisition in American history followed from a successful slave revolt. The West opens because enslaved people in Haiti won their freedom, and the causation is the anchor's own.

The men he sent.

USH1 1503 The Corps of Discovery

Jefferson appointed his friend and personal secretary, the twenty-nine-year-old army captain Meriwether Lewis, who chose William Clark — and Clark had once been Lewis's commanding officer, now serving under him. Thirty-three frontiersmen, boatmen and hunters made up the party that set off in May eighteen oh four.

What they were sent to do.

USH1 1504 The Expedition's Objectives

The corps was to find a water route to the Pacific, improve access to Chinese ports, establish a river route from St Louis for the fur trade, and legitimise American claims against British and Spanish rivals, with orders to map the territory and establish trade relationships with western tribes. Scientific observation was one objective among eight, and commerce was the first.

Four entries on the journey, and the second corrects the thing everybody remembers about it.

The journey itself.

USH1 1505 The Journey

The corps wintered at the mouth of the Missouri, set off in May eighteen oh four, and met fierce storms that left them drenched and freezing, along with enormous clouds of gnats and mosquitos. They killed elk and grizzly bears, and one man survived a rattlesnake bite. Lewis became seriously ill after tasting minerals he had collected, which indicates the method as much as the hazard.

The woman who joined them.

USH1 1506 Sacagawea

In the winter of eighteen oh four the corps met the trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, who joined as interpreter, bringing Sacagawea and their newborn son. The anchor records that she did not actually guide the party. She was invaluable as interpreter and diplomat to the Shoshone, and her presence with an infant convinced many groups that the party meant no harm.

What they brought back.

USH1 1507 What the Expedition Found

After eighteen long months and near starvation in the Bitterroot Mountains, the corps reached the Pacific in eighteen oh five and returned in eighteen oh six with hundreds of plant and animal specimens, several named for Lewis and Clark. There was no all-water route, because none existed. The expedition's central objective was impossible.

What became of its commander.

USH1 1508 Lewis's Death

Lewis was made governor of the Louisiana Territory and died only three years later, in circumstances that are still disputed — a commander dying before he could write a complete account of his own expedition. Tribal delegates travelled to Washington to meet the president, which was among the expedition's real diplomatic results.

Three entries on Florida, and the third is the chain I promised you at the start.

Spain's Florida.

USH1 1509 The Adams-Onís Treaty

Spain could barely control Florida by eighteen nineteen, the territory being sparsely populated by Spanish colonists and far from both Mexico City and Madrid. Andrew Jackson pursued Creek and Seminole raiders across the international border in March eighteen eighteen. United States troops executed two British citizens accused of acting against the United States, and Spain demanded withdrawal.

What each side gave up.

USH1 1510 What Each Side Gave Up

John Quincy Adams and the Spanish ambassador Luís de Onís agreed that Spain would cede Florida officially and that the Mexican boundary would be fixed at the Sabine River, with Adams forgiving Spain's five million dollar debt to the United States. The United States gave up all claims to lands west of the Sabine, which is the clause that mattered most.

Who objected, and why.

USH1 1511 The Texas Objection

Many expansionists believed the Louisiana Purchase had already included Texas, and criticised Adams for not claiming all of it. He had instead traded the American claim west of the Sabine for a Spanish cession of Florida, and fixed a border where none had been agreed before — a secretary of state accused of giving away territory in the act of acquiring some. Follow the chain from here, because the rest of this unit hangs on it. Adams trades away the American claim to Texas in eighteen nineteen. Americans then settle Texas under Mexican authority in the eighteen twenties. Texas revolts in eighteen thirty-six. Annexation brings war in eighteen forty-six. The Sabine line is where the Mexican-American War begins. Learn it as a chain rather than as five separate events.

Three entries on men who ignored that line, and the first is a vocabulary warning.

What the word meant.

USH1 1512 Filibusters Defined

A filibuster, in the anchor's own definition, was a private and unauthorised military adventurer operating abroad — private armies raised by citizens to seize foreign territory without any government's approval. The term has nothing to do with its modern legislative meaning, and the two senses are entirely unrelated.

The best-documented case.

USH1 1513 James Long

In the summer of eighteen nineteen James Long of Natchez led three hundred men across the Sabine River to take control of Texas. His men captured Nacogdoches, wrote a declaration of independence and set up a republican government. Spanish troops expelled them within a month. Returning in eighteen twenty with a smaller force, Long was arrested, imprisoned and killed.

What the timing shows.

USH1 1514 Private Expansion Ahead of Policy

Long crossed the Sabine in the same summer that the treaty fixing the Sabine as the border was signed — private citizens invading a neighbouring empire while their own government negotiated the boundary. The anchor says Long was one of many filibusters aiming at territory in the Caribbean and Central America.

Two entries opening the Missouri crisis, which is the other half of this lecture.

The amendment.

USH1 1515 The Tallmadge Amendment

New York representative James Tallmadge proposed that Missouri enter as a free state, that no enslaved people be admitted after statehood, and that enslaved children born there be freed at twenty-five — a gradual emancipation scheme attached to a statehood bill. Southern politicians rejected it as an attempt to abolish slavery nationally and to violate slaveholders' property rights.

Why the North backed it.

USH1 1516 Why the North Supported It

Northern representatives supported the amendment, framing slavery as contrary to the principles on which the country had been founded — an argument from the Declaration rather than from economics. The argument was about a state that did not yet exist, which is what made it possible to have at all.

Two entries now, and this is the distinction the whole crisis turns on.

What the clause governs.

USH1 1517 The Three-Fifths Clause and the House

The three-fifths clause counted a state's entire free population and sixty percent of its enslaved population in setting its House membership and its federal tax bill — a formula affecting representation in one chamber only. Unit Seven covered where the formula came from. What matters here is which chamber it governs.

And where the crisis was fought.

USH1 1518 The Senate Is the Battleground

Admitting Missouri as a slave state threatened the tenuous balance between free and slave states in the Senate, by giving slave states a two-vote advantage. Every state has two senators regardless of its population, so a single admission shifts national power in a way no population change can. That is why the admission of one thinly settled western state became a national emergency, with eleven free and eleven slave states, and one admission enough to break the tie. Here is the precision the exam rewards. The three-fifths clause governs the House. The Missouri crisis is fought over the Senate. Blur the two chambers and you cannot explain why anyone cared, and you will misread every territorial fight from here to eighteen sixty.

Two entries on the settlement, and note what had to be invented to reach it.

The compromise.

USH1 1519 The Missouri Compromise

The compromise of eighteen twenty admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, keeping the Senate even, with Maine, which had been part of Massachusetts, separated to make the arithmetic work. The balance was preserved by inventing a state, which indicates how mechanical the calculation had become.

The line it drew.

USH1 1520 The 36°30' Line

The compromise drew a line across the Louisiana Territory at latitude thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, coinciding with Missouri's southern border. New states south of the line were permitted slavery, and new states north of it forbidden. Missouri itself was the stated exception, lying north of its own line.

Three entries on what the vote revealed, and the middle one is why the old man was frightened.

The fire bell.

USH1 1521 Jefferson's Fire Bell

Jefferson wrote in April eighteen twenty that the crisis came like a fire bell in the night, and awakened and filled him with terror, calling it the knell of the Union. He warned that a geographical line, once held up to the angry passions of men, would never be obliterated, and every new irritation would mark it deeper.

How the vote divided.

USH1 1522 Geography, Not Party

Northerners supported the Tallmadge Amendment regardless of party affiliation, and southerners opposed it despite having party differences on other matters — a vote that ignored the party lines governing every other question. This is the first national vote to break cleanly on section rather than party, and it is why Jefferson was frightened.

The argument the South began making.

USH1 1523 Slavery as a Positive Good

Southern defenders increasingly argued that slavery generated wealth and left White men free to exercise their true talents, and claimed that enslaved people were better off exposed to Christianity as enslaved than living as free heathens in Africa. The defence shifts here from necessary evil to positive good, and Unit Twelve shows where that argument goes.

One entry to close, and it starts the chain's second link.

The men who moved to Mexico.

USH1 1524 Moses and Stephen Austin

Moses Austin, a once-prosperous entrepreneur reduced to poverty by the Panic of eighteen nineteen, asked Spain to let him settle three hundred English-speaking Americans in Texas, and Spain agreed on condition that the settlers convert to Roman Catholicism. He died in eighteen twenty-one asking his son Stephen to carry out the plan, and newly independent Mexico authorised Stephen instead.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain what Adams traded at the Sabine: Florida ceded and a five million dollar debt forgiven, in exchange for the American claim to everything west of that river — and you can name the chain, from settlement in the twenties to revolt in thirty-six to annexation and war in forty-six. You can say which chamber is which. The three-fifths clause governs the House. The Missouri crisis was fought over the Senate, where every state has two votes regardless of population. You can state what the compromise did — Missouri in as a slave state, Maine separated from Massachusetts to balance it, and a line at thirty-six thirty with Missouri exempt from its own line. You can explain why Jefferson was frightened, because the vote broke on section rather than party for the first time. And you can say what the Corps of Discovery was sent to find, that no such route existed, and that Sacagawea served as interpreter and diplomat rather than guide.