A century of expansion

Preface

The purport of the term "expansion" is sometimes carelessly misunderstood. It is, apparently, supposed to apply to nothing but acquisition of territory, and to that of recent date; to wit, our annexation of Porto Rico and the Philippines. Such a conception is inadequate and misleading. Expansion is no new thing, and it is not measured by any geographical scale. Its history begins with the history of the nation, and both its causes and its effects are intimately intertwined with almost every fibre of our national being. The expansion of the human body is a process of physical growth which is maintained incessantly so long as vitality is in the ascendant. When growth ceases the man begins to die. Moreover, it involves something far more than increase of physical bulk and stature. It is accompanied by a corresponding and, indeed, largely consequent development of the intellectual and spiritual nature. We may not say that the mind and soul are always developed commensurately with the physical body. But it is unquestionable that their development does largely depend upon the development of the physical powers and viii PREFACE

upon the extension of activities which this makes both possible and necessary. A person leading the life of a babe in swaddHng clothes could never hope to attain the intellectual and spiritual development of an active man of affairs.

The same principle is applicable to the state. Territorial expansion increases power, enlarges the sphere of activity, adds to responsibilities and duties, creates new problems for solution, leads to new relationships, and thus induces constitutional — that is, intellectual and moral — development of the nation. This is generally true of growing states. It is especially true of a new country under a constitutional government, in which the process of expansion began, practically, with the foundation of the state and has been maintained at intervals ever since. The history of American expansion is therefore something far more than a record of geographical extension, or even of wars and treaties. It involves the history, in large measure, of constitutional development and interpretation, of domestic institutions, of foreign relations, and of our whole national life. It is, moreover, a consistent and logical history. The physical growth of a man is a steady, persistent process, not an irregular series of disconnected spasms. We may say the same of our territorial expansion. However widely and irregularly separated by time, the individual acts of territorial acquisition are all intimately and essentially

PREFACE IX

related. Order and design characterize them. The law of cause and effect is dominant among them. In the first step of expansion, in colonial times, every subsequent step was forecast and made inevitable. From Washington at Great Meadows to Dewey in Manila Bay the span, in both time and space, is enormous, but it is a span of unbroken links of cause and effect, coherent, logical, and inevitable.

The history of American expansion, then, must trace this sequence of causes and effects. It must also note where national necessity here and there impinges upon the line to direct it hither or thither, and where in return the processes of expansion exert their influence upon the development of national institutions and the whole course of national thought and life. To do this with all possible completeness might well be a long lifework, and involve a publication of encyclopaedic compass. The present essay has no such ambition. It aims to present the salient features of the great story, succinctly yet with sufficient comprehensiveness, at least, to suggest where it does not instruct. It aims, moreover, to deal justly with the varying phases of the checkered story. For it is not all pride and sunshine. The nation has not always acted wisely and well. There are things to condemn as well as to commend. Acts are not always necessarily right just because our own country performs them. The

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best that we can claim, and we can truly claim it, is that, on the whole, our expansion has been a sound and beneficent growth, contributing to elevation of mind and spirit as well as to enlargement of area on the map of the world; so that out of all the storm and stress of disputed and sometimes devious ways —

" Earth's biggest country's got her soul, And risen up earth's greatest nation."

It is in such confident faith that these pages have been penned, and in such a spirit that they are laid before the American people.

W. F. J.

New York, June, 1903.

Contents

The Opening of the Door .

Securing the Open Door .

The Nation first enters in Expansion and Constitution " The Immutable Principle

Chapter II

The War of the Revolution was chiefly fought, for obvious reasons, in the Atlantic littoral. There were the masses of population, the organized governments, the industries, the fortifications, the ports at which the English troops must land in their campaign of attempted repression. We have seen, however, that the region beyond the mountains played an important part in the processes and the influences which led to the war. It was also the scene of some of the operations of that war, minor from the military point of view but decidedly major from the point of view of the nation-building statesman, and in the final settlement of the issues and results of the war it held a paramount place. Upon it turned the whole question of peace-making. Upon it was based and according to its disposition was framed the treaty which restored peace and secured for the United States universal recognition as an independent and sovereign power.

Especially were these things true of the region north of the Ohio River. .That south of the river, composing the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, was not so much the subject of controversy. As we have seen, it was, prior to the Seven Years' War, practically conceded to the English colonies by France, though during that war it was seized by her in revenge for the English invasion of the country north of the river. At the end of that war it was restored to English rule and occupancy, whereupon England unhesitatingly assigned it to the colonies, to wit, to Virginia and North Carolina, upon which it directly abutted at the west. While she tried to deprive the colonies of the territory north of the Ohio by annexing it to Canada, she left that south of the Ohio to the colonies, and it was therefore a matter of course, never seriously questioned by England, though it was by Spain and France, that the southern country should share the fate of the coast colonies. If the latter won their independence, Kentucky and Tennessee would belong to them. This understanding was greatly strengthened by the course of affairs between the Seven Years' War and the Revolution, when settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas flocked into Kentucky and Tennessee in great numbers. Indeed, such invasions and settlements were made on a considerable scale at an earlier date. In 1 748-1 750 Dr. Thomas Walker, of Virginia, discovered the Cumberland River, the Cumberland Mountains, and the Cumberland Gap, and gave them the names which they still bear, in honor of that duke who was the " proud Cumberland " of CuUoden and the " bloody Duke of Cumberland " who won fame in defeat by his mighty stand against overwhelming odds at Fontenoy. Christopher Gist, who was Washington's companion in his first visit to the Ohio Valley, explored the Kentucky River in 1751. Daniel Boone, of Pennsylvania, became a mighty hunter in Kentucky in 1769.

From those years down to the Revolution other explorers, hunters, and settlers entered those regions and occupied them to such an extent that by June, 1778, they considered themselves numerous enough to be entitled to political recognition. Accordingly on June 8 of that year they held a convention and elected two delegates to the Colonial Assembly of Virginia, and sent them to Williamsburg, the Virginian capital, with a petition for the incorporation of Kentucky into the colony of Virginia as a new county. These delegates reached Williamsburg just in time to find that the assembly had declared its independence of England and had adjourned. Thus balked in their mission, they waited until the next session of the assembly, only then to be denied seats in it. However, on December 8 of that year the assembly did finally incorporate the western part of Kentucky as a county of Virginia, just six months after the Kentucky convention. The Kentucky delegates then returned home.

One of these delegates was George Rogers

Clark, a notable figure in the history of American expansion, and a remarkable combination of hero and knave. He came of a good Virginian family, and was well educated, but his practical training in warfare and public services had not been of the best character. He had been a companion and in some respects a pupil of the famous or notorious Michael Cresap. The latter, a Marylander, had settled on the Upper Ohio at the end of the Seven Years' War and had figured conspicuously in Lord Dunmore's war. Of his patriotism, valor, and prowess there was no question, and some of his services were of great value. But he was ruthless and cruel, and whether deservedly or not incurred the reproach of some acts of sheer savagery. Clark was morally superior to Cresap, at least in this early part of his career, and was not his inferior in strength and courage. In personal appearance he was a stalwart blond giant, and in spirit he was adventurous, resolute, fearless, and ambitious. It is not infrequently the case that a man who dwells much in the forest or the desert, and thus communes with Nature in her vast and wild aspects, becomes imbued with ideas at once gloomy and grandiose. So it was with Clark, always a dreamer and schemer. On his way home to Kentucky, by way of the Ohio River, he brooded amid the solitudes of the great wilderness upon mighty themes — the Declaration of Independence, the prospect of creating a new nation, the possibilities of extending the borders of that nation almost inimitably to the north and west. The dream of empire possessed him, and he cherished it, at once with the adventurer's daring and with the mathematician's calculation (he was a surveyor by profession). So he conceived on that journey the enterprise which made him famous, and in the completion of which it would have been well for his fame had he perished. He saw that if the colonies succeeded in winning their independence from England, it would be essential to their peace and progress that they should possess the territory at their backs, between the mountains and the lakes. Every reason that required England to wrest that country from France now required the colonies to win it from England.

Self-contained and self-reliant, Clark kept his own counsel until the time was opportune and his ground was sure. All through the spring and summer of 1777 he brooded and planned and investigated. He sent two young hunters north, along the Wabash and to the old French settlements in IlHnois, to " see how the land lay " and to report to him all they could learn, though not even to them did he impart an inkling of his real purpose. Finally, with the ground thus fully surveyed and with his whole campaign mapped out, he bade his neighbors adieu, and in the fall of 1777 set out again for Virginia. His fellow Kentuckians supposed he was merely going to enter the colonial army. Instead, early in December, he went to Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, and unfolded to him his scheme of invading and conquering the Northwest Territory. The time seemed propitious. Burgoyne had been defeated and captured at Saratoga, and the Americans were flushed with confidence. One bold blow was all that was needed, and all the land to the Great Lakes would be won.

But there were diilficulties in the way which daunted even Henry's fiery spirit, though never Clark's. The matter ought to be laid before the legislature, for authority and for the granting of supplies. Yet that would be fatal to success, for it would probably mean delay, and it would almost certainly mean a sacrifice of that secrecy which was essential to success. Once the scheme got to British ears, a redcoat army would be rushed into the territory. But Clark rose superior to all such considerations. He cared little about authorization. The word of the governor, a little ready money, and some promises of reward contingent upon success, were all he asked. Promptness and intrepidity were far more essential than acts of legislature and formal appropriations. In the ^ end, Henry was won over to Clark's view. A hurried council of five was held : Henry and Clark, with Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and George Wythe — a secret syndicate of expansionists. Clark's proposals were approved. A fund '

of twelve hundred pounds in colonial paper money was raised, and Jefferson, Mason, and Wythe promised to use their influence to secure an ex post facto grant of three hundred acres of land in the conquered territory for each member of the expedition. As for authorization, that was not lacking. Henry was competent to give it. The Virginia constitution of 1778 declared that "the governor of this state for the time being shall be commander-in-chief of the army and navy and all the military forces of this state, by sea and land, and shall have full power ... to lead and conduct them, and with them encounter, repulse, repel, resist, and pursue, by force of arms . . . within and without the limits of this state, and also to kill, slay, destroy, if necessary, and conquer, by all fitting ways, enterprise, and means, all and every such person as shall at any time hereafter, in a hostile manner, attempt the destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance of this state." Surely that was sufficiently comprehensive. If the territory north of the Ohio belonged to Virginia, Henry had a right to send troops to expel the invaders. If it did not belong to Virginia, he had a right to send troops outside the state, into a foreign land, to conquer or destroy all who threatened the borders of Virginia with annoyance. Thus early did the founders of the RepubHc recognize and declare the right of foreign conquest when necessary for the safeguarding of their own land.

Henry, however, did not give Clark merely an order of campaign. He gave him two separate and distinct orders, one public and the other secret and confidential. The public order directed him to return to Kentucky and make necessary preparations for its defence. That, openly proclaimed, soon got to English ears and deceived the EngHsh commanders as to Clark's real purpose. The secret orders, dated at Williamsburg, January 2, 1778, ran as follows : —

" You are to proceed with all convenient speed to raise seven companies of soldiers, to consist of fifty men each, officered in the usual manner and armed most properly for this enterprise ; and, with this force, attack the British post at Kaskaskia. It is conjectured that there are many pieces of cannon and military stores to a considerable amount at that place, the taking and preservation of which would be a valuable acquisition to the state. . . . During the whole transaction you are to take especial care to keep the true destination of your force secret ; its success depends upon this. ... It is earnestly desired that you show humanity to such British subjects and other persons as fall into your hands. If the white inhabitants will give undoubted evidence of their attachment to this state (for it is certain they live within its limits), by taking the test prescribed by law, and by every other way and means in their power, let them be treated as fellow citizens. . . .

SECUBLVG THE OPEN DOOR 39

But if these people will not accede to these reasonable demands, they must feel the miseries of war." With these letters in his pocket Clark was, he said, clothed with all the authority he could wish. Accordingly he set out, on February 4, 1778, on his momentous mission. It was a crucial time. It was the winter of Valley Forge. The pitiable remnant of Washington's army was suffering martyrdom. The Continental Congress was at its nadir of incompetence and irresolution. Lee had tried his worst to betray the country. The infamous Conway and his scurrilous crew were likewise doing their worst, while Gates, wearing the laurels won by Schuyler and Arnold at Saratoga, was letting vanity, jealousy, and ambition draw him to the very brink of treason. The American cause was in a desperate phght, and sorely needed revival through some heroic stroke such as that at Trenton a year before. That stroke was to be given by Clark's Httle forlorn hope, in the far western wilderness. It was, of course, impossible to look to Washington or to any of the forces east of the mountains for aid. Not a man could be spared there. So Clark recruited his companies from among the hardy frontiersmen of Kentucky and West Virginia — as many as he could. He had indeed been directed by Henry so to do. After weeks of effort he found it impossible to raise the seven companies, or 350 men, authorized by Henry. The population of those regions was sparse, and it would not do to withdraw from home all the able-bodied men, lest the settlements be defenceless against Indian raids. He succeeded at last in getting together some 200 men. Of these he took only 150, to whom a score more were added as he made his way down the Ohio Valley toward the place of final embarkment upon that river. That place was at the Falls of the Ohio, now marked with the city of Louisville. It was on June 24 that he put his men aboard the boats and started downstream. At the moment of embarkation there was an eclipse of the sun. Some of his men regarded it as an evil omen. Clark, playing upon their superstition, assured them it was on the contrary a good omen, seeing that there was darkness for only a few moments and then the full brightness of the sun again. Thus reassured, the little expedition pursued its memorable way, while Clark was doing some hard and fast thinking concerning his plan of campaign.

His instructions were to go to Kaskaskia. But he had planned to capture Vincennes on the way thither. He was a man wont to interpret orders according to circumstances. Soon after leaving the Falls of the Ohio, however, he learned to his dismay that Vincennes had been so strongly reenforced that it would be madness to attack it at that time with his few men. There seemed nothing to do, therefore, but to obey orders and go on to

Kaskaskia. But if he did so, he would be leaving the garrison of Vincennes behind him to cut his lines of communication and isolate him. That would never do, unless he could strike Kaskaskia quickly and get back in time to save his lines. Upon this desperate course he decided. He pushed on to Kaskaskia with all possible speed, and on the auspicious Fourth of July captured it without a blow. The commander, garrison, and people there were almost entirely French. They had meant to be loyal to England, but they were completely overawed by the advent of Clark and his frontiersmen, whom they considered far more formidable than so many painted Indians. When they found Clark was as humane as he was daring, they took the oath of allegiance to Virginia, and were ready themselves to organize for defence against the English. Thus easily and satisfactorily was the capture of Kaskaskia effected. Had Clark then slavishly followed instructions, he would have settled down in a fortified post on the Mississippi, and probably soon have been besieged and captured by the English. But he was not that kind of man.

There was need of immediate action, and of action dictated by circumstances on the spot. The English commander at Detroit was Henry Hamilton. He was bold, ambitious, energetic, unscrupulous, and cruel — a formidable antagonist. He had, moreover, much influence over the Indians, and had formed an alliance with them and organized them against the colonists. He was planning to attack Fort Pitt, at the head of the Ohio, when he heard that Clark was audaciously taking the aggressive on the lower reaches of that river. Forthwith he hastened in person down to Vincennes, on the Wabash, leaving Detroit on October 7, with 500 men, white and red. At Vincennes he roused the Indians and sent them against Clark and all Americans, offering rewards for American scalps but none for American prisoners. In a short time Clark seemed to be surrounded in the wilderness by hostile and savage bands, and cut off from all aid from Virginia, even had any been sent. His destruction seemed certain. But that daring and resourceful man was equal to the emergency. He had increased his force somewhat by recruiting at Kaskaskia and elsewhere. Part of his men he put into fortified posts. A small company, under John Rogers, he put at the mouth of the Wabash, with orders to let no enemy pass. Then, with only 130 picked men, he struck across country, through the woods, straight for Vincennes. That place was at the time, he learned, lightly garrisoned, most of the English troops and Indian levies being out in the woods, ranging the country in quest of Clark himself. The Wabash was in flood, surrounding the town with a temporary lake, and to that Vincennes trusted for protection. Hamilton did not realize that Clark and his forest rangers were amphibians !

Such was Clark's opportunity, and masterfully did he improve it. Speed and stealth were the order of the day. For two days the men went without food, though in a forest filled with game, fearing lest a musket-shot might warn the English of their approach. Presently they came to the " drowned lands," and for miles marched through water waist deep, in some places shoulder deep, and it was midwinter. On February 23 at dusk they reached dry land. There was no time for resting and for building fires at which to dry their wet and freezing clothes. Vigorous action would dry them better than anything else. Without a moment's delay they displayed themselves, so arranged as to appear like an army, and then, with a summons to surrender, moved forward upon the town of Vincennes, to the amazement and consternation of the people. There was no resisting men who had come through that wintry flood, and the town surrendered without the firing of a shot. The fort, where were Hamilton and his soldiers, was adjacent to the town. Clark was careful not to let news of his arrival get thither until he was ready to fight. But that was very soon. Before midnight he had a line of rifle pits and rude intrenchments around the fort, and opened a harassing fire upon it. In the morning he sent a note to Hamilton, couched in these peremptory words: —

" In order to save yourself from the impending storm that now threatens you, I order you immediately to surrender yourself, with all your garrison, stores, etc. For if I am obhged to storm, you may depend on such treatment as is justly due to a murderer. Beware of destroying stores of any kind, or any papers or letters that are in your possession, or hurting one house in town, for, by heavens ! if you do, there shall be no mercy shown you."

This was intemperate language, but was probably justifiable, for Hamilton had infamously violated the laws of civilized warfare in inciting his Indian levies to the murder of non-combatants, including women and children. What is certain is that Hamilton was panic-stricken, fearing that he would be summarily dealt with for his crimes. He replied at first orally and then in writing, seeking terms. But Clark would listen to nothing but unconditional surrender. Finally, in the middle of the afternoon, Hamilton agreed to surrender himself and his whole command, as prisoners of war, giving as his reasons for so doing, " the remoteness from succor, the state and quantity of provisions, the unanimity of officers and men in its expediency, the honorable terms allowed, and the confidence in a generous enemy." The next day the surrender was effected, and the English soldiers were released on parole, while Hamilton and the other officers were sent as prisoners of war to Kentucky and thence to Virginia. A few days later fortymen with supplies for the fort were captured by Clark as they came down the Wabash. Thus the conquest of Vincennes was completed, with cost to the Americans of only one man slightly wounded.

Had Clark been reenforced, as he expected to be, he would have pushed on to Detroit and have taken Canada in flank. But that was not to be. A regiment was organized for his aid, under Evan Shelby, but was diverted to good work elsewhere. So Clark, acting under the orders of Jefferson, who was now governor of Virginia, went on to the Mississippi River and built Fort Jefferson, just below the mouth of the Ohio, in the spring of 1780, thus estabhshing the American claim to that great river. Nor was that the only American post on the Mississippi. At the very time when Clark had set out for Kaskaskia, in February, 1778, a smaller party of adventurers went from Pittsburg down the Ohio and the Mississippi, in boats, as far as Natchez, where, on February 18, they raised the American flag and proclaimed possession of the country in the name of the United States. Spain, whose territories they were thus invading, took little notice of them at the time ; they seemed too insignificant ; but later she strenuously though vainly protested against their act and its results.

In such fashion did the thirteen colonies, in the midst of the throes of the Revolution, enter into practical possession of the goodly " hinterland " which they had helped England to wrest from France. Thus did they fasten open, for themselves and for their posterity, that door of empire through whose crevices Spottswood had peeped and at which the young Washington had knocked so rudely. Thus did they expand their coast strip westward to the Mississippi River, claiming, and promising to make good their claim to, the whole continent, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the St. Mary's River to the Great Lakes. Upon that goodly realm, with all its further potentiaHties, presently to be recognized as necessities, they maintained a masterful hold, until the capitulation at Yorktown and the ensuing Treaty of Paris confirmed it to them forever.

In the making of that treaty the chief point of controversy was the confirmation or repudiation of Clark's conquest of the region north of the Ohio River, and therein, after the first passage of words, curiously enough our ally was the very power with which we had been at war, while our chief foe was the power which had been our ally in that war. The English government displayed in the making of peace some of that wisdom which it so much lacked before and during the war. It realized that the colonies were lost to it forever. But it still held Canada and various West India islands, and it realized that if it was to hold these permanently and develop a large commerce with America, it would be far better for it for the colonies to possess the Mississippi Valley than for France or Spain to have it. Indeed, it would be to its advantage to have the colonies develop themselves into a strong and extensive English-speaking nation, which would in time dominate the continent, rather than have them a stunted and feeble state at the mercy of France and Spain.

For those reasons England was inclined to make a treaty of peace on liberal terms. She first tried, naturally enough, to regain the territory north of the Ohio for herself. All south of that river she conceded unhesitatingly to the United States, but all north of it she wanted to retain, or to regain as a part of Canada. To that the United States would not listen for a moment. Its peace commissioners would not even discuss the matter. Franklin, the most conciliatory and least aggressive of them, when the subject was broached by the English commissioners, unhesitatingly rephed, " No, sir ! If you insist upon that, we go back to Yorktown ! " Faced with such resolution on the part of Franklin, and knowing that his two colleagues. Jay and Adams, were if possible even more determined upon that point, the English government gracefully yielded and practically signified its willingness to surrender the whole eastern half of the Mississippi Valley, up to the lakes, to the United States. Botta, in his " History of the American War," strangely says that this agreement " brought within the territory of the United

States immense countries, lakes and rivers, to which, up to that time, they had never pretended any sort of claim." As a matter of fact, the United States had ever since the Seven Years' War explicitly and strenuously claimed it all.

The treaty was not, however, to be made simply between England and the United States. Had such been the case, it would speedily have been concluded in satisfactory fashion. But France had to be consulted. She had been our ally in the war, and was supposed to be our sincere friend. Accordingly it was agreed that the United States should not sign a treaty with England until France and England had also come to terms. Moreover, Congress, believing in the disinterested friendship of France, and having an exalted opinion of the wisdom and astuteness of French diplomats, categorically instructed the three American commissioners to be guided and governed by French counsels in all the negotiations. Truly, America has cause to thank God that her commissioners had the sense and manhood, when it came to the sticking-point, to disobey and violate those instructions ! For France was strongly opposed to the granting of the American claims to the territory beyond the Alleghany Mountains, and Spain, between whom and France a working understanding existed, was still more bitter against us.