Exploration, Genocide, Conquest, Disunity

Those are three words which I think define early American History. I have had no less than four history professors on the relevant topic say that the United States that we know today did not, at least societally and ideologically, exist before 1865 and further had some say the 'American Revolution', the ideological one, did not end until 1865 until it was clear it was "the United States" rather than "these United States"; if that makes sense.

So let's just go through the years here of major events and kind of work on them as they come. I'm going to zoom through a lot because, well, summarizing 70 years of history is hard to do in a deep way so if you have any specific questions about a specific topic go ahead and ask or even submit another question!

• 1800 Congress would meet for the first time and the capital would be centered on Washington D.C. A bit of a preliminary point but I do think it bears mentioning: the Revolution Wary ended in 1783 and our final Constitution would come into effect in 1789 but it was not until 1800 that our legislature officially came together. This is, in many ways, the beginning of the century and the beginning of our state 'officially'.

• In 1803 two more landmark things would happen -- Marbury v. Madison and the Louisiana Purchase.

Marbury v Madison, in essence, gave the Supreme Court the right to declare something Congress (our legislature) as 'unconstitutional'. It firmly places that power in the hands of the Supreme Court and leads to a balance of power of sorts; this legal justification would be critical throughout the 19th century especially but we'll get some real interesting cases in our discussion here today.

The Louisiana Purchase. Right. So to clarify 'Louisiana' did not refer to the modern iteration of Louisiana but rather a shit ton of land in Central America. Essentially everything that would turn into the Midwest, ie, the 'breadbasket of America'. It would hug the Mississippi River on its Easterly border (which school students, including your own here, affectionately call a 'chef' -- it's more clear here! Like he's got the body and the hat, whatever!)

Anyways the tl;dr of the situation is that Spain owned Louisiana and made a deal with the Americans that they could share the river and that the Spanish wouldn't protect the Indians in those lands. It was a nice deal for the Americas; the Spanish Empire was crumbling and they could just slowly pick away at the territory. Napoleon however takes it from Spain in 1802 and wanted to plan a colonial empire for the French again. He sent armies, navies, etc. but with disease and (yellow fever) and just general issues with war with Britain on the horizon (which started in 1803) he scrapped the idea and just sold it off the Americans. As you can see from the picture above it doubled their landmass size overnight and extended their territorial claim to the Rocky Mountains. This is really, in my opinion, the landmark moment in our nation's history. This wasn't some far away colonial region we acquired it was our next door neighbor and it was just ours for a relatively cheap fee.

In the spirit of this, in 1804 Lewis and Clark would be sent from Missouri to explore the Western frontier and in 1805 they would find that path to the Pacific Ocean. This is, again, a major topic in the American education system (at least for my schooling) -- this is when the sights on the West were beginning to become fully realized. Although we're talking many years from now it would be this purchase and this expedition which laid the foundations for Manifest Destiny -- the idea that the entirety of North America, from East to West Coast, was rightfully the United States' and it was our 'destiny' to achieve this. This mindset justified wars of just pure aggression and annexation with Mexico and, more horribly, genocide against natives to assert control and settlement of these lands. The 19th century on a domestic level, if I had to choose one topic which defined it most, was the 'Indian Problem'. Constant guerrilla wars, constant genocide, constant relocation and general oppression. It is the darkest time in American history and it is taught as such and, thankfully, it's getting far more attention in recent years. We'll get to that in due time though because now:

• In 1812 we have the War of 1812 it was cleverly named. Okay honestly it was a big deal but I don't think it really bears too much mentioning. Britain was impressing U.S. sailors into service, U.S. was pissed off and kind of wanted Canada too. We kind of felt Britain didn't take us too seriously as a sovereign state and the war was started by us to solve all of those issues. White House is burned down, our favorite nationalist song the Star Spangled Banner is written in a dramatic story that just about everyone knows: Francis Scott Key was captured on a ship during the siege of Fort McHenry and he's talking about how in the brief sparks of light from cannonfire he knows we were still holding out by the flag remaining in the air, and, just to make it extra dramatic, would eventually hold it from British siege. The end result being neutral to slightly lost for the Americans but impressment did end on a large scale and perhaps most importantly relations would kind of settle between America and Britain. This war is commonly taught as the point where we were taken seriously as a state and not some temporary aberration that was going to be recolonized in a few years.

• In 1819 we get Florida from the Spanish. This is more or less when Spain's colonial grasp was falling apart. One year later in 1820 we get the first real landmark issue of slavery vs free states. There was a delicate balance between free and slave states (11 each) at this point and with Missouri wanting to be admitted as one that balance was upset. It would be offset with Maine being created from Massachusetts as a free state and created an imaginary line across the center of the nation horizontally that said 'below slave, above free' more or less. No one liked it though -- it was a compromise in that no one liked it but it kept the nation from civil war. Slave states didn't like the federal government meddling with slavery and the North didn't want slavery expanding. Lose/Lose, a bandaid on the wound if you would. This is the type of conflict my professors spoke about though; we were not a United States at this point, our ideology was not aligned and neither was our vision of how it should be run in a fundamental way.

• In 1823 President Monroe declared in his State of the Union (applying a modern term to what he was doing but that was, in essence, what he was doing) that colonization of the Western Hemisphere was over and, further, any intrusion of European powers into American business would be met with conflict by the U.S. This is basically defining a period of isolationism that would extend to 1917 and, even after WWI, would continue de facto until 1941 again.

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