These various sorts of claims were singularly tangled and contorted in America. Who had the best title to the Chesapeake—the English, who believed Sebastian Cabot had followed that part of the coast in 1498, or the French, whose commander Verrazzano undoubtedly was there in 1524, or the Spaniards, for whom De Ayllon made a voyage in 1526? Spanish explorers had crossed and followed the Mississippi River, but it is doubtful whether in 1600 they could easily have found its mouth. The French, in like manner, had explored the St. Lawrence, but without permanent results. Therefore, the territorial history of the United States may be said to begin with the almost simultaneous planting of settlements in the New World by France, England, and Holland, between 1600 and 1615. The French happened first on the St. Lawrence, which was the gateway into the interior, with its valuable fur-trade; and they set up their first permanent establishment at Quebec in 1608. The English, after thirty years of attempts on the Virginia coast, finally planted the colony of Jamestown in 1607. The Dutch rediscovered the Hudson River in 1609, and founded New Amsterdam in 1614. The next great river south, the Delaware, was occupied by the Swedes in 1638. It is one of the misfortunes of civilization that Germany, then the richest and most intellectual nation in Europe, and well suited for taking a share in the development of the New World, was in this critical epoch absorbed in the fearful Thirty Years’ War, which in 1648 left the country ruined and helpless, so that no attempt could be made to link the destinies of Germany with those of America.

Soon began seizures of undoubted Spanish territory: the English first picked up various small islands in the West Indies, in 1655 wrested away the Spanish island of Jamaica, and thereupon made a little settlement on the coast of Honduras. The next step was a determined onset against the nearer neighbors in North America. Quebec was taken and held from 1629 to 1632; the Dutch, who had absorbed the Swedish colonies, were dispossessed in 1664;2 and the English proceeded to contest Hudson Bay with the French. These conflicts marked a deliberate intention to seize points of vantage like Belize and Jamaica, and to uproot the colonies of other European powers in North America; it was part of a process of English expansion which was going on also on the opposite side of the globe. As the eighteenth century began, France, England, and Spain were still in antagonism for the possession of North America; and the French, in 1699, succeeded in planting a colony on the Gulf in the side of the Spanish colonial empire. These international rivalries were soon altered by the struggle of England against the attempt of Louis XIV. to bring about the practical consolidation of Spain and France, which would have made an immense Latin colonial empire. To some degree on religious grounds, partly to protect their commerce, and partly from inscrutable international jealousies, the nations of Europe were plunged into a series of five land and naval wars between 1689 and 1783, in each of which North American territory was attacked, and in several of which great changes were made in the map.

In these wars the colonies formed an ideal as to the duty of a mother-country to protect daughter colonies, and aided in developing a policy which has been described by one of the most brilliant of modern writers as that of “sea power.”3 The illustration of that theory was a succession of fleet engagements in the West Indies, always followed by a picking up of enemy’s islands; and also the repeated efforts of the colonists in separate or joint expeditions to conquer the neighboring French or Spanish territory. The final result was the destruction of the French-American power and the serious weakening of the Spanish.

In 1732 the charter of Georgia was a denial of the Spanish claims to Florida. By the treaty of 1763 France was pressed altogether out of the continent, yielding up to England that splendid region of the eastern part of the Mississippi Valley which the English coveted, and with it the St. Lawrence Valley. For the first time since the capture of Jamaica, a considerable area of Spanish territory was transferred to England by the cession of the Floridas. Louisiana to the west of the Mississippi, together with New Orleans, on the east bank, were allowed to pass to Spain. From that time to the Revolution the only two North American powers were England and Spain, who substantially divided the continent between them by the line of the Mississippi River.4

During this period the English were not only acquiring but were parcelling out their new territory. It was always a serious question how far west the coast colonies extended; some of them—Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, the Carolinas—had bounds nominally reaching to the Pacific Ocean. To silence this controversy, in 1763 a royal proclamation directed that the colonial governors should not exercise jurisdiction west of the heads of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic, leaving in a kind of territorial limbo the region between the summit of the Appalachians and the Mississippi.5 These numerous territorial grants gave rise to many internal controversies; but by the time of the Revolution most of the lines starting at the sea-coast and leading inward had been adjusted.

The idea of territorial solidarity among the English colonies was disturbed by the addition of Nova Scotia and Quebec on the north, and East and West Florida on the south. Intercolonial jealousy was heightened in 1774 by the Quebec act, under which the almost unpeopled region north of the Ohio River was added to the French-speaking province. When the Revolution broke out in 1775, that jealousy was reflected in the refusal of Quebec and Nova Scotia and the distant Floridas to join in it. Almost the first campaign of the war, however, showed the purpose of territorial enlargement, for in 1775 the Arnold-Montgomery expedition to Canada vainly attempted to persuade the Frenchmen by force to enter the union. Two years later George Rogers Clark lopped off the southern half of the British western country. The Southwest, into which settlers had begun to penetrate in 1769, was, during the Revolution, laid hold of by the adventurous frontiersman; and in 1782 the negotiators of Paris thought best to leave that, as well as the whole Northwest, in the hands of the new United States.6

The result of the Revolutionary War was the entrance into the American continent of a third territorial power, the United States, which was divided into two nearly equal portions: between the sea and the mountains lay the original thirteen states; between the mountains and the Mississippi was an area destined to be organized into separate states and immediately opened for settlement.7 This destiny was solemnly announced by votes of Congress in 1780, and by the territorial ordinance of 1784, the land ordinance of 1785, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which, taken together, were virtually a charter for the western country, very similar in import to the old colonial charters.8

In this sketch of territorial development up to 1787 may be seen the elements of a national policy and a national system: the territories were practically colonies and inchoate states, soon to be admitted into the Union; while the expansion of the national boundary during the war was a presage of future conquest and enlargement; and, considering the military and naval strength of Great Britain, the only direction in which annexation was likely was the southwest. Although the Federal Constitution of 1787 acknowledged the difference between states and territories only in general terms, and made no provision for the annexation of territory, the spirit and the reasonable implication of that instrument was that the Union might be and probably would be enlarged; some writers at the time felt sure that republican government was applicable to large areas.9

Hence it was neither unnatural nor unsuitable that the new nation should at once show a spirit of expansion: in 1795 and 1796 its boundaries were finally acknowledged by its southern and northern neighbors. Various wild schemes of invading Spanish territory were broached, but not till 1803 was the question of the Mississippi fairly faced. Repeating the bold policy of Louis XIV., Napoleon attempted to combine the military and colonial forces of Spain with those of France, in order to make head against Great Britain. As a preliminary, in 1800 he practically compelled the cession of the former French province of Louisiana, and thereby revealed to the American people that it would be a menace to national prosperity to permit a powerful military nation to block the commercial outlet of the interior. Hence, when Napoleon changed his mind and offered the province to the United States in 1803, there was nothing for the envoys, the President, the Senate, the House, and the people to do but to accept it as a piece of manifest destiny. The boundaries of the Union were thus extended to the Gulf and to the distant Rocky Mountains.10

With a refinement of assurance the United States also claimed, and in 1814 forcibly occupied West Florida. In the same period began a purposeful movement for extending the territory of the United States to the Pacific. Taking advantage of the discovery of the mouth of the Columbia River by an American ship in 1792, President Jefferson sent out a transcontinental expedition, under Lewis and Clark, which reached the Pacific in 1805, and thereby forged a second link in the American claims to Oregon. By this time the Spanish empire was in the throes of colonial revolution, and in 1819 the Spanish government ceded East Florida and withdrew any claims to Oregon, Texas being left to Spain.

This is a stirring decade, and it completely changed the territorial status of the United States. By 1819 the Atlantic coast all belonged to the United States, from the St. Croix River around Florida to the Sabine; the country was reaching out toward Mexico, and was building a bridge of solid territory across the continent, where, as all the world knew, far to the south of Oregon lay the harbor of San Francisco, the best haven on the Pacific coast. The bold conceptions of Jefferson and John Quincy Adams and their compeers included the commercial and political advantages of a Pacific front; and they were consciously preparing the way for the homes of unborn generations under the American flag.

One result of the new position of the United States was to bring out sharply a territorial rivalry with Great Britain. The War of 1812 had been an attempt to annex Canada, and after it was over a controversy as to the boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia kept the two countries harassed until its settlement in 1842.11 After that the rivalry for Oregon, which had been held in joint occupation since 1818, was intensified. About 1832 immigration began in which the Americans outran the English; and it was fortunate for both countries that in 1846 the disputed territory was divided by a fair compromise line, the forty-ninth parallel.12 A third territorial controversy was fought out within the limits of the Union itself, between the friends and opponents of the annexation of Texas, in 1845.13 This was the first instance of an American colony planting itself within the acknowledged limits of another power, until it was strong enough to set up for itself as an independent state and to ask for admission to the Union.

The annexation of Texas inevitably led to a movement on California, which could be obtained only by aggressive war upon Mexico, and for connection with which the possession of New Mexico was also thought necessary. Ever since 1820 explorers had been opening up the region between the Mississippi and the Pacific,14 and it was known that there were several practicable roads to that distant coast.15 The annexation of California almost led the United States into a serious territorial adventure; for apparently nothing but the hasty treaty negotiated by Trist in 1848 stopped a movement for the annexation of the whole of Mexico.16 The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 conveniently rounded out the cession of New Mexico and closed this second era of territorial expansion.

The annexation of Texas was logical, and delayed only by the accidental connection with slavery; but the annexation of Oregon and California added to the Union very distant possessions, the settlement of which must have been slow but for the discovery of gold in California in 1848. At once a new set of territorial questions arose: the necessity of reaching California across the plains led to the organization of Nebraska and Kansas territories in 1854, which convulsed the parties of the time; the movement across the Isthmus to California brought up the question of an interoceanic canal in a new light; the commercial footing on the Pacific led to a pressure which broke the shell of Japanese exclusion in 1854. Above all, these annexations brought before the nation two questions of constitutional law, which proved both difficult and disturbing: the issue of slavery in the territories, which precipitated, if it did not cause, the Civil War, and the eventual status of territories which, from their situation or their population, were not likely to become states.

The third era of national expansion began in 1867 with the purchase of Alaska,17 which was wholly a personal plan of Secretary Seward, in which the nation took very little interest; nor was the public aroused by Seward’s more important scheme for annexing the Danish West India Islands and a part of Santo Domingo; when the latter project was taken up in 1870 and pushed with unaccountable energy by President Grant,18 popular sentiment showed itself plainly averse to annexing a country with a population wholly negro and little in accord with the American spirit. For twenty-five years thereafter there was the same indisposition to annex territory that brought problems with it; and then the movement for the annexation of Hawaii was headed off by President Cleveland in 1893.19 The Spanish War of 1898 swept all these barriers away, and left the United States in possession of the Philippine Islands, a distant archipelago containing seven and a half millions of Catholic Malays; of the island of Porto Rico, in the West Indies; of the Hawaiian group; of a responsible protectorate over Cuba; and, four years later, of the Panama strip, which may include the future Constantinople of the western world.

In the whole territorial history of the country, never has there been such a transition. The Philippines, which “Mr. Dooley” in 1898 thought might be canned goods, are now, according to the Supreme Court, in one sense “a part of the United States,” yet not an organic part in financial or governmental or legal relations. The country, which from 1850 to 1902 divided with Great Britain the responsibility for a future Isthmian canal, is now “making the dirt fly” in a canal strip which is virtually Federal territory. China, which a few years ago was one of the remotest parts of the earth, now lies but a few hundred miles from American possessions. The romantic era of annexations has gone by: the automobile trundles across the Great American Desert and stops for lunch at a railroad restaurant, and the South Sea Islands have lost their mystery since the trade-winds straighten out the American flag above some of those tiny land-spots.

SYNOPSIS OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS, CHIEFLY
MILITARY, IN THE HISTORY OF COLONIAL
AMERICA BETWEEN THE LANDING
OF COLUMBUS, 1492, AND
CHAMPLAIN’S BATTLE
WITH THE IROQUOIS,
1609

1492. Columbus discovers the western world.

1497. John Cabot reaches the mainland of North America.

1498. Columbus discovers the mainland of South America.

1512. Ponce de Leon lands in Florida.

1513. Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean.

1519. Entry of Cortez into the City of Mexico.

1521. Conquest of Mexico by Cortez.

1531–33. Conquest of Peru by Pizarro.

1534. Cartier’s first voyage to the St. Lawrence.

1535–36. Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca crosses the continent from near the mouth of the Mississippi to Sinaloa in Mexico.

1541. The expedition of De Soto reaches the Mississippi River. Coronado, coming from Mexico, reaches the interior, probably northeastern Kansas.

1562. The Huguenots attempt a settlement on the coast of South Carolina.

1564. Huguenot settlement on the St. John’s River in Florida. 1565. Founding of St. Augustine by the Spanish.

1583. Sir Humphrey Gilbert takes possession of Newfoundland in the name of Queen Elizabeth.

1584. Raleigh’s expedition to North Carolina. The region is named Virginia in honor of Queen Elizabeth.

1585. Unsuccessful settlement by the English on Roanoke Island.

1602. Bartholomew Gosnold attempts a settlement on the coast of Massachusetts.

1606. James I. grants a patent to the London and Plymouth Companies.

1607. Foundation of Jamestown.

1608. Foundation of Quebec by the French.

1609. Champlain, with Algonquin Indians, defeats Mohawks, of the Iroquois Confederacy, near Ticonderoga.