Thursday, February 11, 2021 – UNITED STATES A SANDWICH OR A FLAG?

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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2021

The

282nd Edition
 
From Our Archives

UNITED STATES:

A SANDWICH OR A FLAG?

STEPHEN BLANK
 

In the past months, many of us have wondered about the future of our country. Let me take you to a time when many leaders felt our country’s future was very grim. This essay is a Cliffs Notes version of a (now Zoom) course I am preparing for the Osher Program at Carnegie Mellon University. I thought I might share it with you, and hope you find it interesting.

We assume that the United States’ march across the continent was inevitable. That’s how it worked out. But at the time, in the 1790s and early 1800s, it did not seem so. The more likely bet would have been that North America would be shaped like a flag, with north-south stripes of the US and British, French and Spanish territories, rather than a sandwich, with a thick, coast to coast US between the Canadian “bread” to the north and Mexico to the south.

The Founding Fathers feared, with very good reason that the mainland of North America would continue to be a cockpit of diplomatic intrigues and military struggles among the European powers, that these struggles would reflect issues centered outside of the continent, and that the new nation would be embroiled in all of this. The way things worked out was, as the Duke of Wellington said after the battle of Waterloo, a damn close thing.

So, what’s the story?

The result of the French and Indian War in 1763 (part of a global struggle between Britain and France) was that the French were out of North America – though they retained several islands in the Caribbean. London’s relations with their American colonies worsened, leading to the Revolution and the independence of 13 of their former colonies. (Why Quebec and Nova Scotia didn’t join the revolution is interesting but too much for this brief piece.)

Peace left the new nation with twice as much territory – from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. But geography was a problem: the Allegheny Mountains, not large by Rocky Mountain standards, but a formable barrier to westward movement. The Alleghenies divided the old seaboard colonies from the new territories.

Growing numbers of settlers in the trans-Allegheny west were cut off from the older Atlantic front states. They could get goods to market only by boat down Mississippi, through New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico and then around Florida and up the Atlantic Coast to eastern US ports and rivers. From earliest days, the new republic faced the danger that the trans-Allegheny region would be separated from new nation.

Britain was another problem. Even after peace, London didn’t’t give in. The British maintained forts south of the new border with British North America and, Americans believed, continued to embolden Native American anger and fear. Many Brits, King George III included, assumed that, after a few years of anarchy, the States would beg to be taken back into the Empire.

The trans-Allegheny west became the focus of a complex ballet with Spanish, French and British adventurers (some sponsored by their governments, some working on their own) seeking to detach pieces of these territories while Washington struggled to respond to demands of those crossing the mountains for land, security and access to the Mississippi to trade their goods and, as well, to control the Native Americans in the region who responded with increasing violence to these incursions (and, it was believed, were being supported by the British).

And indeed, the efforts of the new US government to slow the flood of Americans across the mountains in search of cheap land were no more successful than the British has been earlier. Kentucky’s population soared from perhaps 12,000 in 1783 to 221,000 in 1800.

Spain was a big problem. After 1763, Spain gained all of French territory west of the Mississippi (“Louisiana”) and, under Emperor Carlos III, tried to revive its North American holdings. Spanish explorers advanced up the California coast, establishing new colonies as far as San Francisco. Spain threatened to bottle up Mississippi passage and sought to entice trans-Allegheny settlers to switch to Spanish allegiance. This was not too difficult: the most famous was Aaron Burr. In Kentucky, the first state west of the Alleghenies, many argued that they should join Spain rather than the US.

France, too, threatened again. Big time. Napoleon had been determined to put down slave rebellion in in Saint-Domingue (later Haiti), the source of 40% of the world’s sugar and France’s most profitable colony. Meanwhile, France had secretly reacquired Louisiana (and control of the Mississippi) by a deal with Spain, which had switched sides in the Napoleonic War. Many French troops were sent to Saint-Dominique. During the Peace of Amiens (between two parts of the Napoleonic wars), these troops were viewed as a potential invasion force that could restore France’s colonial empire in North America. The result? This would import the Napoleonic wars into the North American mainland, creating much greater European military involvement and risking drawing the US into the fray and marginalizing it at the same time. American leaders were deeply divided about allying with Britain, but even Jefferson, who had been a forceful French supporter, said that “the day France takes possession of new Orleans…we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”

How did it all work out? Disease in Saint-Dominique massively slew French troops, and the resumption of war in Europe forced Napoleon to abandon any North American aspirations. Instead, he offered to sell Louisiana.

Jefferson’s envoy, James Monroe, was forced to make a quick decision: What would Jefferson do? Lacking any Constitutional mandate by which the federal government could acquire new territory – but certain that Jefferson would approve, the Americans purchased a territory of some nine hundred thousand square miles, roughly equal in size to the existing nation. What would happen to all of this land was totally uncertain. Whether it might become a permanent colony of the United States, whether it might lead to the creation of several new, larger states or even to emergence of several sovereign nations in North America were all possibilities.

Meanwhile, the Spanish role in North America collapsed. After the US Revolution, Spain’s position in North America was never stronger. In fact Spain was on the defensive, losing its position in the Pacific Northwest and Florida. But the catastrophe took place at home. In 1807, the French invaded
Spain, and replaced the Spanish king with Joseph Napoleon. This plunged Spain into years of chaos and civil war. Lacking central authority in Madrid, Spain’s North American colonial empire disintegrated.

With the purchase of Louisiana, the size of the new US was doubled and the issue of control of the Mississippi was resolved. Efforts to detach parts of the country continued – see Aaron Burr – but that danger had passed. The addition of these new territories, soon followed by Texas, California and a large section of Mexico would bring the US to its coast to coast reality. But this would also intensify the existing and near fatal problem – the extension of slavery.

Still, the story was not entirely over. Taking advantage of US Civil War, France, Spain and Britain invaded Mexico in 1861 to pressure Mexico to settle its debts. Spain and Britain withdrew in 1862 after negotiating an agreement. But France’s Emperor Napoleon III invited Austrian archduke Maximilian in 1864 to establish a new pro-French monarchy in Mexico, overthrowing the administration of President Benito Juárez. (A holiday many celebrate here, Cinco de Mayo, marks the beginning of struggle against the French.) Maximillian was executed in June 1867.

And finally let us not forget the so-called Zimmerman telegram. In January 1917, British cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico offering United States territory to Mexico in return for joining the German cause.

The historian’s dilemma is that one knows how the story ends. The task is to write from the perspective of those who don’t know what the outcome will be. Certainly the young nation’s leaders in the post-Revolutionary War years were deeply uncertain, often pessimistic, about the country’s future.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen Blank
RIHS
February 8, 2021

If you would like to see a longer iteration of this essay, with full footnotes and references, you can find it on my website: www.stephenblank.info under “Articles”, “Slow Blogs”, “The Map of North America”.

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THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

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WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

The Valley Forge War Memorial, one of many designed by the architect Paul Philippe Cret. 

Architects have long created memorials to commemorate dead from wars and other mass casualty events. In America, these structures, from the Washington Memorial to lesser known monuments located across the country commemorating the Union victories of the Civil War, play an important role in shaping and projecting a certain vision of American history. 

The French-American architect Paul Philippe Cret, active during the first five decades of the 20th century, is perhaps the most prolific American memorial designer.

We featured the architecture of Paul Phillipe Cret in a previous edition.

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter  and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)

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