American Territorial Expansion

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It can be easy to take the physical shape of the United States for granted. But the expansion of thirteen colonies into a continental empire in less than a century was the result of a great deal of luck; ceaseless labor; brutal, racially based warfare against Indians and Mexicans; and an extremely potent ideology known as Manifest Destiny that cast western expansion as natural and predetermined.1 Starting in the late 1830s, American politicians asserted, and many citizens believed, that God had divinely ordained the United States to grow and spread across the continent.2 Americans wanted to do this badly at this point in time because they wanted to prove to everyone that they were the very best and they wanted to show how powerful they were …show more content…
There were many tactics used to get the land that was already occupied by other people, to belong to the United States. There could have been trade, war, or simply just taking over without any remorse. Of course there were people that had already made their homes on some land and they thought it belonged to them. Up until this point they had not been bothered by anybody. The Native Americans, or Indians, was a group of people’s that really got the bad end of the expansion. Although the history of American’s territorial expansion is almost always narrated in terms of the shifting ownership of land between European nations and the United States, it is important to remember that the Indian peoples of North America had original claims to the land they occupied.3 Before all of this it always seemed that Native Americans were often in control where the very young United States wanted to settle. Indians were seen as a nuisance or a threat, but rarely as holding legal and legitimate title to land desired by whites.4 This was because the whites and Indians had different views on how the land could be used or what purpose it served. Of course, the whites just wanted it to become theirs for the expansion. The Indian peoples of the Old Northwest, for instance, reserved extensive shared tracts for hunting. But in the minds of white Americans, if land could be cultivated and was not, it was being …show more content…
Both the president of Texas, Sam Houston, and his good friend U.S. president Andrew Jackson hoped to see the speedy of annexation of Texas by the United States.13 The United States waited eight years to deal with the Texas issue. James K. Polk entered office with the intentions of taking some places from Mexico. Soon Polk turned his attention south. He ordered U. S. troops into an area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, a region that was claimed by both Mexico and Texas, openly antagonizing Mexico.14 On April 25, 1846, Mexican forces killed sixteen U.S. soldiers. Whenever Polk had heard of this news, he informed Congress that “American blood” had been shed on “American soil.” This incident was a little tricky considering that they were at a place that was claimed by both Texas and Mexico. So it was difficult to say if “American blood” had really been shed on “American soil.” Polk then asked for a declaration of war. Members of the Whig party in congress did not want to be branded as unpatriotic, so they endorsed a war they believed to be unjust. This led to sixteen months of combat. That was far longer than the Americans had imagined it would last. U.S. soldiers committed atrocities in Mexico, including the rape and murder of civilians, which horrified not only the Mexicans but also the soldiers’ own commanding officers and American civilians back home.15 American soldiers were taking advantage of being at war. It was
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