James Lincoln Collier - The United States Enters the World Stage: 1867 - 1919

T HE D RAMA OF A MERICAN H ISTORY

The UNITED STATES ENTERS the WORLD STAGE:
From the Alaska Purchase through World War I

18671919

Christopher Collier

James Lincoln Collier

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The authors wish to thank Thomas G. Paterson, Professor of History Emeritus, University of Connecticut, for his careful reading of the text of this volume in The Drama of American History series and his thoughtful and useful comments. The work has been much improved by Professor Paterson's notes. The authors are deeply in his debt, but, of course, assume full responsibility for the substance of the work, including any errors that may appear.

Photo research by James Lincoln Collier.

COVER PHOTO: Corbis/Bettmann

PICTURE CREDITS: The photographs in this book are used by permission and through the courtesy of:

Chapter I: Corbis/Bettmann: America challenging John Bull, Dawson, Oahu. Joslyn Art Museum: River Platte. New York Public Library: Battle of Monterrery, Canton.

Chapter II: Corbis/Bettmann: steel mill workers, Mark Twain. Museum of the City of New York: child laborers. New York Public Library: Spanish conquest of Mexico, Hong Kong.

Chapter III: Corbis/Bettmann: John Quincy Adams, painting of the USS Maine , Santiago harbor, fighting in the Philippines, Aguinaldo, cartoon from Puck . New York Public Library: photograph of the USS Maine , Battle of San Juan Hill.

Chapter IV: Corbis/Bettmann: digging the Panama Canal, digging holes for dynamite, SS Ancn , Pancho Villa. New York Public Library: Cuna Indian settlement, Teddy Roosevelt, president of Haiti with U.S. Marine Corps, Mexican bandits.

Chapter V: Corbis/Bettmann: Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. National Archive: German aviator. New York Public Library :Prussians attacking Hanoverians, Germans at Metz, German propaganda, the Kaiser heading to Paris, American soldiers on the Piave front, American-German airfight, Poelkapelle, injured British children, American 23rd Infantry Division, Wilson drowning in public opinion.

2001 Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright holders.

First ebook edition 2012 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-525-3

Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9584-1

The UNITED STATES ENTERS the WORLD STAGE:
From the Alaska Purchase through World War I

18671919

C ONTENTS

P REFACE

OVER MANY YEARS of both teaching and writing for students at all levels, from grammar school to graduate school, it has been borne in on us that many, if not most, American history textbooks suffer from trying to include everything of any moment in the history of the nation. Students become lost in a swamp of factual information, and as a consequence lose track of how those facts fit together and why they are significant and relevant to the world today.

In this series, our effort has been to strip the vast amount of available detail down to a central core. Our aim is to draw in bold strokes, providing enough information, but no more than is necessary, to bring out the basic themes of the American story, and what they mean to us now. We believe that it is surely more important for students to grasp the underlying concepts and ideas that emerge from the movement of history, than to memorize an array of facts and figures.

The difference between this series and many standard texts lies in what has been left out. We are convinced that students will better remember the important themes if they are not buried under a heap of names, dates, and places.

In this sense, our primary goal is what might be called citizenship education. We think it is critically important for America as a nation and Americans as individuals to understand the origins and workings of the public institutions that are central to American society. We have asked ourselves again and again what is most important for citizens of our democracy to know so they can most effectively make the system work for them and the nation. For this reason, we have focused on political and institutional history, leaving social and cultural history less well developed.

This series is divided into volumes that move chronologically through the American story. Each is built around a single topic, such as the Pilgrims, the Constitutional Convention, or immigration. Each volume has been written so that it can stand alone, for students who wish to research a given topic. As a consequence, in many cases material from previous volumes is repeated, usually in abbreviated form, to set the topic in its historical context. That is to say, students of the Constitutional Convention must be given some idea of relations with England, and why the Revolution was fought, even though the material was covered in detail in a previous volume. Readers should find that each volume tells an entire story that can be read with or without reference to other volumes.

Despite our belief that it is of the first importance to outline sharply basic concepts and generalizations, we have not neglected the great dramas of American history. The stories that will hold the attention of students are here, and we believe they will help the concepts they illustrate to stick in their minds. We think, for example, that knowing of Abraham Baldwin's brave and dramatic decision to vote with the small states at the Constitutional Convention will bring alive the Connecticut Compromise, out of which grew the American Senate.

Each of these volumes has been read by esteemed specialists in its particular topic; we have benefited from their comments.

C HAPTER I: T HE U NITED S TATES L OOKS W ESTWARD

THE UNITED STATES was, right from the beginning, a nation bent on expanding. The nation was barely a decade old when Thomas Jefferson made the famous Louisiana Purchase, buying what is today about a third of the country from France. In the 1840s the nation acquired the territory farther west, along the Pacific Coast. Americans very rapidly began to fill up all this land, hitherto thinly occupied by Indians. (The story of the displacement of the Indians is told in other volumes in this series.)

Yet despite this expansionist push, there has always been in America a lot of isolationist feeling. Protected on two sides by great oceans, and on two more sides by much weaker neighbors, a great many Americans, at times the majority, have felt that we should stay at home and keep out of the rest of the world's troubles. Yet in the years after the Civil War, when America was becoming one of the world's mightiest industrial powers, the United States was looking outward in a way it had never done before, not merely involving itself in troubles elsewhere but actually acquiring colonial possessions and greatly expanding foreign trade. That expansionist moment in American history is the subject of this book.