Americans Expand the Nation’s Borders

In 1816, in the midst of the nation’s economic resurgence, James Monroe, a Democratic-Republican from Virginia, won an easy victory in the presidential election over Rufus King, a New York Federalist. Monroe hoped to use improved relations with Great Britain to resolve Indian problems on the frontier. With this in mind, he sent John Quincy Adams to London to negotiate treaties that limited U.S. and British naval forces on the Great Lakes, set the U.S.-Canadian border at the forty-ninth parallel, and established joint British-U.S. occupation of the Oregon Territory. In 1817 and 1818, the Senate approved these treaties, which further limited Indian rights and power.

President Monroe harbored grave concerns about the nation’s southern boundary as well. He sought to limit Spain’s power in North America and stop Seminole Indians in western Florida and Alabama from claiming lands ceded to the United States by the defeated Creeks. Shifting from diplomacy to military force, in 1817 the president sent General Andrew Jackson to force the Seminoles back into Florida. But he ordered Jackson to avoid direct conflict with Spanish forces for fear of igniting another war. However, in spring 1818, Jackson attacked two Spanish forts, hanged two Seminole chiefs, and executed two British citizens.

Jackson’s attacks spurred outrage among Spanish and British officials and many members of Congress. The threat of conflict with Britain, Spain, and the Seminole prompted President Monroe to establish the nation’s first peacetime army. In the end, the British chose to ignore the execution of citizens engaged in “unauthorized” activities, while Spain decided to sell the Florida Territory to the United States. Indeed, in the Adams-Onís Treaty (1819), negotiated by John Quincy Adams, Spain ceded all its lands east of the Mississippi to the United States.

Success in acquiring Florida encouraged the administration to look for other opportunities to limit European influence in the Western Hemisphere. By 1822 Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico had all overthrown Spanish rule. In March of that year, President Monroe recognized the independence of these southern neighbors, and Congress quickly established diplomatic relations with the new nations. The following year, President Monroe added a codicil to a treaty with Russia that claimed that the Western Hemisphere was part of the U.S. sphere of influence. Although the United States did not have sufficient power to enforce what later became known as the Monroe Doctrine, it had quietly declared its intention to challenge Europeans for authority in the Atlantic world.

By the late 1820s, U.S. residents were moving to and trading with newly independent Mexican territories. Southern whites began settling on Mexican lands in east Texas, while traders traveled the Santa Fe Trail. Meanwhile New England manufacturers and merchants had begun shipping their wares via clipper ships to another Mexican territory, Alta California.

Some Americans looked even farther afield. In the early nineteenth century, U.S. ships carried otter pelts and other merchandise across the Pacific, returning with Chinese porcelains and silks. In the 1810s and 1820s, the Alta California and China trades converged, expanding the reach of U.S. merchants and the demand for U.S. manufactured goods. The desire to expand trade led some Americans to set their sights on Pacific islands, especially Hawaii and Samoa.

Expanded trade routes along with wartime disruptions of European imports fueled the expansion of U.S. manufacturing, which improved opportunities for entrepreneurs and workers. By 1813 the area around Providence, Rhode Island, boasted seventy-six spinning mills. Two years later, Philadelphia claimed pride of place as the nation’s top industrial city, turning out glass, chemicals, metalwork, and leather goods.