Belligerents, Brinkmanship,

and the Big Stick

This page intentionally left blank
Belligerents, Brinkmanship,
and the Big Stick
A Historical Encyclopedia of
American Diplomatic Concepts

John Dobson
Copyright 2009 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in
writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dobson, John M.
Belligerents, brinkmanship, and the big stick : a historical encyclopedia of American diplomatic
concepts / John Dobson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59884-131-2 (alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-59884-132-9 (ebook)
1. United States—Foreign relations—Encyclopedias. 2. United States—Foreign relations—
Philosophy—Encyclopedias. I. Title.
E183.7.D59 2009
327.73003—dc22 2009022938

13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5

ABC-CLIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116–1911

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an e-book.

Visit www.abc-clio.com for details.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Manufactured in the United States of America

 Contents

Preface, xi
Acknowledgments, xiii

Section 1: Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830, 1

Key Concepts, 3
Alliance, 3
Diplomats, 6
Embargo, 7
Impressment, 11
Jay’s Treaty, 13
Legitimacy, 15
Louisiana, 17
Mercantilism, 19
Monroe Doctrine, 21
Most Favored Nation, 25
Neutrality, 26
Nonimportation, 28
No-Transfer Principle, 30
Paper Blockade, 32
Pinckney’s Treaty, 34
Plan of 1776, 35
Plenipotentiary, 37
Quasi-War with France, 39
Ratification, 42
Recognition, 44
Rule of 1756, 46
Transcontinental Treaty (Florida), 48

v
vi | Contents

Treaty (Treaty of Paris, 1783), 50

Uti Possedetus (Treaty of Ghent, 1814), 55
War Hawks, 57
XYZ Affair, 59
Biographies, 61
Deane, Silas, 61
Franklin, Benjamin, 61
Gallatin, Albert, 63
Genêt, Edmond, 63
Jay, John, 64
Livingston, Robert, 65
Logan, George, 66
Rush, Richard, 66
Symmes, John Cleve, 67
Wilkinson, James, 67

Section 2: Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880, 69

Key Concepts, 71
Alaska, 71
Arbitration (Alabama Claims), 73
China Market, 75
Filibustering, 77
First Shot Tradition, 79
Japan, Opening of, 82
Joint Resolution (Texas), 84
King Cotton Diplomacy, 87
Manifest Destiny, 89
Mexican War, 91
Natural Boundaries, 95
Oregon Claims, 98
Oregon Fever, 100
Ostend Manifesto (Cuba), 103
Recognition as a Belligerent, 106
Santo Domingo, 109
Texas Revolution, 110
Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 112
Biographies, 114
Adams, Charles Francis, 114
Astor, John Jacob, 115
Bidlack, Benjamin A., 116
Burlingame, Anson, 116
Calhoun, John Caldwell, 117
Clayton, John Middleton, 118
 Contents | vii

Cushing, Caleb, 119

Gadsden, James, 120
Harris, Townsend, 120
Kearny, Stephen Watts, 121
Perry, Matthew Calbraith, 121
Scott, Winfield, 122
Seward, William H., 123
Slidell, John, 125
Stockton, Robert Field, 126
Trist, Nicholas, 126
Upshur, Abel, 127
Van Buren, Martin, 127
Walker, William, 128
Webster, Daniel, 128
Wilkes, Charle, 129

Section 3: Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914, 131

Key Concepts, 133
Algeciras, 133
Anti-Imperialism, 134
Big Stick, 137
Boxer Rebellion, 141
Cuban Rebellion, 143
Dollar Diplomacy, 146
Gunboat Diplomacy, 149
Hawaii, 151
Jingoism, 154
Mediation (Russo-Japanese War), 156
Mission, 159
Neutralization, 161
New Manifest Destiny, 163
Olney Corollary, 165
Open Door Policy, 168
Panama, 171
Pan-Americanism, 173
Platt Amendment, 175
Protectionism, 178
Punitive Expedition, 181
Rapprochement, 183
Spanish-American-Cuban War, 185
Sugar, 188
Biographies, 191
Adee, Alvey, 191
Blaine, James Gillespie, 191
viii | Contents

Bryan, William Jennings, 192

Dewey, George, 193
Hay, John Milton, 194
Olney, Richard, 195
Root, Elihu, 195
Shufeldt, Robert Wilson, 196
Stevens, John Leavitt, 196
Teller, Henry Moore, 197
Wood, Leonard, 198

Section 4: The World Wars, 1914–1945, 201

Key Concepts, 203
American Expeditionary Force, 203
Atlantic Charter, 205
Atomic Diplomacy, 208
Disarmament, 211
Four Policemen, 214
Fourteen Points, 215
Good Neighbor Policy, 220
Grand Alliance, 222
Great War, 226
Island Hopping, 229
Isolationism, 231
Kellogg-Briand Pact, 233
League of Nations, 235
Lend-Lease, 238
Neutrality (1914–1917), 242
Neutrality Acts, 244
Non-recognition, 246
Pearl Harbor, 249
Quarantine, 252
Red Scare, 254
Second Front, 256
Siberian Expedition, 259
Stimson Doctrine, 261
United Nations, 262
Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, 266
Yalta, 268
Biographies, 271
Hopkins, Harry, 271
Hughes, Charles Evans, 272
 Contents | ix

Hull, Cordell, 273

Kellogg, Frank B., 274
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 275
Nye, Gerald P., 276
Pershing, John J., 276
Stimson, Henry L., 277

Section 5: The Cold War and After, 1945–, 279

Key Concepts, 281
Bay of Pigs, 281
Berlin, 283
Brinkmanship, 286
Bush Doctrine, 291
Cambodia, 294
Containment, 296
Détente, 298
Free Trade 302
GATT, 304
Gulf War, 306
Hostage Crisis 309
Iran-Contra, 311
Israel 314
Land for Peace, 316
Liberation of Eastern Europe, 319
Limited War (Korea), 321
Marshall Plan, 323
Massive Retaliation, 326
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 328
NSC-68, 332
Red Scare Again, 334
Shuttle Diplomacy, 337
Sputnik, 338
Tet, 340
Tonkin Gulf Incident, 343
Truman Doctrine, 346
U-2, 349
War on Terror, 352
Biographies, 354
Acheson, Dean, 354
Dulles, John Foster, 355
Kissinger, Henry, 356
x | Contents

Marshall, George C., 358

McNamara, Robert Strange, 358
Rumsfeld, Donald, 359

Chronology, 363
Index, 369
About the Author, 397
 Preface

My initial conception for this volume was to delve backward in time to identify the
source or initial statement of an American foreign policy and then describe how it
influenced subsequent actions. Many of the broader concepts, such as mission and
manifest destiny, took shape over time without a specific triggering incident. Oth-
ers clearly represented responses to real or perceived threats, as was the case when
President George Washington issued his Proclamation of Neutrality to avoid taking
sides in the Anglo-French wars. Whether general sentiments or reactions to specific
events, these attitudes became key elements in the vision that Americans had of
their nation and, more particularly, in the image of it that they wished others to
accept.
The original plan for the book also envisioned entries that defined and then
described the implementation of common and less common diplomatic processes.
Thus entries such as arbitration, containment, détente, and protectionism discuss
instances in which American policy makers utilized these techniques. As the project
moved forward, it became apparent that much more than lofty principles or applica-
tions of diplomatic techniques has affected the course of U.S. foreign policy. Some-
times, particular geographic locations, such as Hawaii or Israel, have riveted the
attention of Americans and spawned new approaches. And, as the famous nineteenth-
century military tactician Carl von Clausewitz noted, wars represent an extension of
diplomacy. Consequently, the book includes coverage of the major international con-
flicts in which the United States participated.
Along the way, many individuals contributed their own nuances to U.S. foreign
relations. Because the Constitution assigns responsibility for articulating and imple-
menting foreign relations to the executive branch, presidents appear frequently in the
following pages. For example, the names of several presidents are associated with
doctrines of one sort or another. Moreover, phrases such as the “big stick,” “dollar
diplomacy,” or the “Good Neighbor Policy” are associated with particular chief exec-
utives. But many other people have influenced or even developed independent policy

xi
xii | Preface

formulations. The biographical entries provide many details about who these people
were and why and how they became significant actors in U.S. diplomatic history.
The final elements included in this book are the actual words used to announce or
confirm a U.S. foreign policy objective. Sprinkled throughout the volume are excerpts
from key documents that defined the conception that the United States has of itself in
the international arena. Some are famous in their own right, such as Woodrow
Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which was designed to end one war, or the Tonkin Gulf
Resolution, which formally began another. Other documents dictated or tuned ongo-
ing policy developments.
I chose a chronological framework for presenting all of these elements. Each of the
five sections of the book contains concepts, events, people, and documents that relate
to a particular time period. Every section begins with a brief survey of diplomatic
events during that period, to provide a historical context for the individual entries. The
book also provides a chronology, or time line, that dates events or policies that can be
linked to a particular starting point.
Those interested in further exploration of the topics included in this book may con-
sult the references listed after each entry. If additional references are desired, readers
may want to consult the comprehensive bibliographic work that Robert L. Beisner
edited for the Society of Historians of Foreign Relations, titled American Foreign
Relations since 1600: A Guide to the Literature, 2nd. ed. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-
CLIO, 2003.
 Acknowledgments

My interest in diplomatic history and foreign relations received its initial impetus from
a total immersion experience during my high school years. It began when my father
signed on as a technical advisor in the recently formed Point Four program, which
later evolved into the U.S. Administration for International Development (USAID.)
An expert on soils and irrigation in arid southwestern states like my native New Mexico,
he was well equipped to assist the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture in planning how
best to use the water to be stored by the projected High Aswan Dam. As a result, my
family spent a thoroughly delightful two years in Cairo. The Suez Canal crisis cut
short our stay when it led to the cancellation of U.S. support for the dam project. My
family remained committed to assisting people in other countries, however, so I com-
pleted my high school education in Ankara, Turkey. Although I then returned to the
United States to attend college, my family spent another nine years overseas, living
and working in Jordan, Tunisia, Libya, and Colombia, and their example reinforced
my own strong interest in international affairs.
That, in turn, encouraged me to complement my study of physics at the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology with a second major in history. I then pursued doctoral
study at the University of Wisconsin, specializing in American political and diplo-
matic history. There Professor William Appleman Williams served as an outstanding
teacher and role model. Shortly after I earned my PhD, I decided to put that expertise
to practical use by serving as a foreign service officer in Washington.
My true calling, however, was as a teacher and writer, so I returned to academe and
a career as a history professor. Throughout those years, I taught, researched, and pub-
lished books and articles about diplomatic history. I benefited greatly from my inter-
actions with compatible colleagues at both Iowa State University and Oklahoma State
University. A particularly influential mentor was Iowa State diplomatic historian
Richard Kottman, who provided me with new perspectives and constructive criticism
as I broadened my understanding of international relations.

xiii
xiv | Acknowledgments

Among my most enlightening teaching experiences were those that occurred over-
seas. I taught American diplomatic history as a Fulbright senior lecturer at University
College, Dublin, and as a visiting faculty member at the University of Glasgow on two
different occasions. I also delivered invited lectures in Belfast, Moscow, Bukara, and
Samarkand. Wherever I spoke, those in attendance raised questions about the conduct
of and rationalizations behind U.S. foreign policy that were quite different from those
of my American students. I am pleased to acknowledge the assistance of all those, both
here and abroad, whose intelligent queries encouraged me to rethink my own analy-
ses of diplomatic history. Their insights have definitely influenced how this book was
conceived and written.
Having published several more focused historical studies, I had long wanted to cre-
ate a comprehensive history of American foreign affairs. When I suggested the idea to
Steven Danvers, my editor at ABC-CLIO, he enthusiastically worked with me to
sharpen my approach and sketch out the format for the present volume. My research
benefited from the able assistance of two outstanding librarians at Oklahoma State
University, John B. Phillips and Barbara Miller. As the book took shape, I received
helpful support from ABC-CLIO’s Editorial Development Manager Holly Heinzer
and the perceptive reviews of Submissions Editor Kim Kennedy White. The profes-
sional assistance of Christian Green, production editor; Ellen Rasmussen, media edi-
tor; and Publication Services, Inc. smoothed the way through the final stages of
production.
Finally, I am pleased to extend my thanks to my supportive family. My wife, Cindy,
has graciously tolerated my frequently egocentric absorption in books and ideas. Even
more important, as a fellow professor, she has enriched my professional thinking and
writing with her intelligent insights and practical advice.
 SECTION 1
INVENTING A FOREIGN POLICY,
1776–1830
The colonists who lived along the
Atlantic Coast in the 18th century were
subject to the policies of Great Britain
and, to a lesser extent, those of its
trading rivals and wartime enemies.
Mercantilism was the underlying pur-
pose of the British Empire, and the
American colonies both benefited and
suffered from mercantile policies. In the
1760s and, even more dramatically, in
the early 1770s, many colonists con-
cluded that the British government’s
actions did them more harm than good.
Both individuals and groups resorted to
nonimportation, hoping it would starve
the British economy enough to convince
the government to relax or eliminate
detrimental policies.
By July 4, 1776, the delegates to the
Continental Congress had concluded
that a clean break was necessary, so they
signed a declaration of independence.
Now the American people were in a
position to conduct their own foreign
policies. The first, essential step was an
effort to gain external recognition of the
new nation’s independence. In pursuit of
that goal, Congress sent diplomats with
1
plenipotentiary powers to Europe.
Three of these envoys negotiated an
alliance with the French government
that not only recognized the nation’s
independence but promised full-scale
military assistance in achieving the goals
of the American Revolution. Simultane-
ously, they agreed to a commercial treaty
that accorded most-favored-nation sta-
tus to the new nation. In 1781, the British
government concluded that the war’s
costs were no longer supportable. They
opened discussions with American
diplomats in Paris that ultimately led to a
treaty of peace containing provisions
quite favorable to the United States.
Although they suffered from a deep
economic depression after the war,
Americans continued to expand their
peacetime foreign relations. That all
changed in the early 1790s when the
French Revolution set off more than two
decades of warfare with conservative
European governments. Having fought
long and hard to attain independence from
just such entanglements, the United States
announced that it would pursue a policy of
neutrality. That decision, however, did
2 | Section 1
not alter the fact that the nation’s econ-
omy was intricately interwoven with
those of the warring nations. Some years
earlier, Americans had developed the
Plan of 1776, an attempt to define the
rights of neutral nations in a time of war.
But the British government, in particular,
refused to recognize such rights, espe-
cially when American trade with the
French and Spanish West Indies seemed
to be benefiting the very countries that the
British were fighting in Europe. Relying
on a unilateral decree of their own, the
British asserted that American actions
violated the Rule of 1756. Hoping to find
a middle ground, President George
Washington sent John Jay to London, but
Jay’s Treaty did little other than preserve
a tenuous peace, and it nearly failed to
win ratification by the U.S. Senate. For-
tunately, a diplomatic mission to Spain
the following year produced Pinckney’s
Treaty, which contained some support
for the neutral rights doctrines that
Americans championed.
Having staved off a war with Great
Britain and developed an understanding
with Spain, the United States then fell
into an extended dispute with France. In
an effort to resolve differences between
the two countries, President John Adams
sent a commission to Paris. The unfortu-
nate result was the XYZ Affair, which
further inflamed anti-French passions.
Within weeks, the United States was
involved in a Quasi-War with France
that dragged on until 1800.
The European war entered a lull
shortly afterward, but by 1803 France
was once again fighting a strong coali-
tion of European nations—led by its
archenemy, Great Britain. Any hope that
Americans might have had about assert-
ing their rights as a neutral disappeared
when both Great Britain and France
imposed paper blockades. Even more
galling, Great Britain’s Royal Navy
aggressively pursued a policy of
impressment that disrupted trade even
as it forced thousands of Americans into
involuntary naval service. President
Thomas Jefferson imposed an embargo
that he hoped would force both of these
nations to rescind their anti-American
policies, but its negative impact on the
U.S. economy more than outweighed
any international benefits. Soon an ener-
getic and vocal group of War Hawks
was goading President James Madison
into a direct confrontation with Great
Britain. The War of 1812 fulfilled almost
none of the American goals. Worse yet, it
raised the possibility that the British
government would exploit the doctrine
of uti possedetus to amputate some terri-
tory from the United States. Skillful
negotiations staved off that eventuality,
and the 1814 Treaty of Ghent left things
pretty much the way they had been
before the war.
A key War Hawk objective had been
to expand the size of the United States.
The remarkable success and popularity
of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase fed
these expansionist impulses. Before and
during the War of 1812, American
settlers and adventurers had used
Louisiana as a base for gobbling up the
western portions of Spain’s colony of
Florida. By 1819, the Spanish govern-
ment had accepted the inevitability of
American expansionism, so it signed the
Transcontinental Treaty that formally
surrendered all of Florida to the United
States.
During those same postwar years, the
dominant powers in Europe insisted that
legitimacy should determine who gov-
erned. The French, for example, ousted a
republican government in Spain and

restored the legitimate Bourbon king to
the throne. This raised concerns that
France might then attempt to extend its
power to the Western Hemisphere. The
United States had, by that time, estab-
lished a firm commitment to the No-
Transfer Principle, insisting that a
weak nation, such as Spain, should not
be permitted to transfer its colonial
claims to a stronger one, such as France.
In 1823, President James Monroe incor-
porated the No-Transfer Principle as one
of the key elements in his famous procla-
mation. The Monroe Doctrine was a
forthright statement of the U.S. belief
that the Western Hemisphere should be
left to develop independently of further
European interference. By 1830, the size
and economic strength of the United
States were such that the American
people could pursue independent for-
eign policies relatively free of outside
influences.
KEY CONCEPTS
Alliance
The military alliance with France in
1778 was the first significant diplomatic
triumph for the Revolutionary United
States. France duly implemented its part
of the arrangement by declaring war
against Great Britain, and French sol-
diers and sailors played crucial roles in
achieving the final U.S. victory. Ironi-
cally, the French Alliance became
extremely controversial and unpopular
in the 1790s. The perceived negative
aspects of the pact ultimately meant that
the United States signed no other
alliance for a century and a half.
When the Americans declared their
independence from Great Britain, France
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 3
was a logical place to look for support.
France and England had been quarreling
for centuries and had engaged in several
major conflicts that affected both
Europeans and their American colonies.
Most recently, the French and Indian
War (1754–1763) had ended with a
treaty in which France ceded Canada to
the British and, subsequently, Louisiana
to the Spanish. The loss of all of their
North American possessions in this
humiliating defeat haunted French states-
men. They were naturally cheered when
their traditional enemy’s own North
American colonies rose up in rebellion.
Nothing that occurred during the
opening months of the Revolutionary
War gave assurance that the Americans
had any chance of success. France there-
fore prudently offered only minor assis-
tance in the form of loans and supplies.
In October 1777, however, renowned
British general John Burgoyne surren-
dered his entire army at Saratoga to a
mix of Continental Army units, state
militiamen, and local volunteers.
Overnight, optimism about an ultimate
victory in the Revolution spread
throughout the United States and across
the Atlantic.
The United States had already created
a three-man commission charged with
developing formal relations with France.
Silas Deane, Arthur Lee, and Benjamin
Franklin were expected to cooperate in
this venture, but Franklin, an internation-
ally renowned scientist and philosopher,
quickly emerged as the commissions’
leading spokesman. He adopted a folksy,
rustic style in sharp contrast to the for-
mality of Louis XVI’s court, but it was
extraordinarily effective in charming his
French hosts. He had already been lob-
bying the Comte de Vergennes, the
French foreign minister, for a formal
4 | Section 1
commitment to the American cause for
months. Shortly after the new year,
Vergennes agreed to draft two treaties,
both of which he signed on February 7,
1778. One, a “Treaty of Amity and Com-
merce,” established reciprocal trading
rights for both parties.
The other agreement, the Treaty of
Alliance, was even more crucial. It
included a statement that France recog-
nized the independence of the United
States, the first international acknowl-
edgment of that fact. In addition, it com-
mitted the French to make common
cause with the Americans in their contin-
uing struggle. Vergennes promised that
his government would continue fighting
until the British, too, acknowledged the
independence of the United States.
Far from an empty pledge, the
French Alliance generated immediate
assistance—in the form of financial
grants, loans, and additional military
supplies. In the late spring, French and
British fleets clashed, the first in a series
of battles between the two nations. These
bled Great Britain’s military resources
and distracted attention from the battle-
fields in America. More significantly,
they threatened to expand the conflict
into a full-blown world war.
A traditional ally of France, Spain
cleverly exploited its position. The
Spanish held lengthy talks with the
British, hoping to extract a promise that
they would relinquish control of Gibraltar,
which they had captured in an earlier
conflict. When the British proved unwill-
ing to do so, Spain sought the same
objective by allying with France.
Although their agreement did not
directly include the United States, the
Spanish government also extended sup-
port and sent money to aid the American
cause.
The summer and fall of 1781 repre-
sented the high point of the French
Alliance. Having carried out a lengthy
and largely successful campaign through
the southern states, British general Lord
Cornwallis found his forces weak and in
need of resupply. The general headed
for the Virginia port city of Yorktown,
expecting the Royal Navy to refurbish
his army. But French admiral Comte de
Grasse had managed to prevent a British
fleet from sailing into Chesapeake Bay,
and his sailors and marines joined the
rapidly expanding American and
French Army units besieging Yorktown.
In October, Cornwallis surrendered in
the last major military event of the
Revolutionary War. Two-thirds of those
fighting on the American side were
French.
Franklin immediately began working
on a peace treaty. The British seemed
willing to concede American independ-
ence at last, in no small part to avoid a
continuation and possible expansion of
the costly war. Vergennes papered over
the Spanish insistence on Gibraltar and
allowed Franklin to draft the terms of the
Treaty of Paris in 1783.
For the next several years, Franco-
American relations remained generally
friendly. By 1793, France had become
deeply involved in her own democratic
revolution, provoking Great Britain and
other more conservative European pow-
ers to take up arms. Did the French
Alliance mean that the United States
must fight for France? After a good deal
of consideration, President George
Washington answered that question in
the negative by issuing his Proclamation
of Neutrality. Part of his rationalization
was that France had provoked the war
and the alliance was only meant to apply
to defensive wars.
 Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 5

Even so, some British spokesmen
insisted that, simply because the alliance
existed, the United States was aiding
their enemy. The Americans were whip-
sawed by charges and countercharges
from both sides. By 1798, the Federalist
administration of President John Adams
had become involved in an undeclared
war with France. Most of the action took
place at sea, but it further soured rela-
tions on both sides.
When the world war ebbed after the
turn of the 19th century, U.S. negotia-
tors took advantage of the lull to
negotiate a new treaty with the French.
Among other provisions, the Treaty of
Mortfontaine (1801) specifically abro-
gated the alliance of 1778. Although the
United States could not avoid being
affected by the global warfare that
persisted for another decade and a half,
the nation steadfastly refused to enter
into any formal alliances. Indeed, the
consequences of the 1778 alliance were
so unsettling that the United States
developed a strong aversion to any sort
of military alliance.
This tradition had become so
ingrained that the United States partici-
pated in both of the 20th-century world
wars without ever signing an alliance.
Only the perceived Soviet threat to
Western Europe overcame U.S. distaste
for alliances. In 1949, the United States
joined 11 other nations in forming the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), only the second alliance in its
history, coming nearly a century and a
half after the nation extricated itself from
the first alliance.

TREATY OF ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND FRANCE:

FEBRUARY 6, 1778

. . . ART. 1. If War should break out betwan france and Great Britain, during the con-
tinuance of the present War betwan the United States and England, his Majesty and
the said united States, shall make it a common cause, and aid each other mutually with
their good Offices, their Counsels, and their forces, according to the exigence of Con-
junctures as becomes good & faithful Allies.
ART. 2. The essential and direct End of the present defensive alliance is to maintain
effectually the liberty, Sovereignty, and independence absolute and unlimited of the
said united States, as well in Matters of Gouvernement as of commerce.
ART. 3. The two contracting Parties shall each on its own Part, and in the manner
it may judge most proper, make all the efforts in its Power, against their common
Ennemy, in order to attain the end proposed. . . .
ART. 8. Neither of the two Parties shall conclude either Truce or Peace with Great
Britain, without the formal consent of the other first obtain’d; and they mutually
engage not to lay down their arms, until the Independence of the united states shall
have been formally or tacitly assured by the TREATY or Treaties that shall terminate
the War. . . .

Source: Bevans, Charles I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States
of America, 1776–1949. Washington, DC: GPO, 1971, 7:777–780.
6 | Section 1
See also: Franklin, Benjamin; Neutrality;
Quasi-War with France; Recognition
References
Dull, Jonathan R. Franklin the Diplomat:
The French Mission. Philadelphia:
American Philosophical Society, 1982.
Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J. Albert, eds.
Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-
American Alliance of 1778. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1981.
Stinchcombe, William C. The American
Revolution and the American Alliance.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,
1969.
Stourzh, Gerald. Benjamin Franklin and
American Foreign Policy. 2nd ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1969.
Diplomats
Several different kinds of diplomatic
agents have carried out U.S. foreign rela-
tions. To handle political matters, minis-
ters, commissioners, and eventually even
ambassadors were dispatched as represen-
tatives to foreign governments. To pro-
mote and facilitate trade relationships,
consular officials were identified and often
stationed in key overseas ports. These
diplomats received instructions from the
home government that defined the breadth
of their authority and often stated specific
goals or objectives. Because of the slow-
ness of overseas communication right
through the 19th century, these individuals
enjoyed wide latitude. The United States
had to hope that those it chose to serve as
diplomats were truly diplomatic.
The United States initially relied on
informal diplomatic contacts. Arthur Lee
was already in Europe conducting
personal business when the Continental
Congress tapped him to represent its
interests. Shortly afterward, a member of
the Congress named Silas Deane became
the first American formally dispatched to
serve as a diplomatic agent. Within a few
months, Congress ordered these two to
collaborate with Benjamin Franklin
when he arrived in Paris with the goal of
gaining French assistance and support
for the Revolutionary War effort.
Until the French government offi-
cially recognized the United States as an
independent nation, however, formal
relations could not occur. The two
treaties the American commission nego-
tiated in 1778 provided the recognition
essential to opening the door for an
exchange of high-level envoys. But the
United States was considered a minor
country at that point, so the representa-
tives on both sides were designated as
ministers who operated out of legations.
For more than 100 years, U.S. ministers
remained the highest-ranking diplo-
mats overseas. Similarly, the top diplomats
resident in Washington, D.C., were
heading up legations of their own.
Where lower-level representation seemed
appropriate, an individual might be
named as chargé d’affaires, a title that
authorized that person to handle more
routine matters for the United States.
By the 1890s, the size and influence
of the United States had risen to a level
that the other great powers considered
worthy of ambassadorial status. Thomas
F. Bayard, a former secretary of state
under President Grover Cleveland,
became the first U.S. ambassador when he
was accredited to the Court of St. James in
London. Over the next few years, the
United States transformed many of its
legations into embassies and exchanged
ambassadors with the major powers. By
the mid-20th century, virtually all
diplomatic missions overseas were
called embassies. Today even a tiny
country can receive an ambassador from
the United States.

Regardless of whether they were min-
isters or ambassadors, many of these
diplomats were plenipotentiaries, mean-
ing that they had full authority to speak
for and negotiate agreements with their
opposite numbers, usually the foreign
ministers of their host countries. The
plenipotentiary designation survives
today, but it means far less than it did
when thousands of miles of ocean sepa-
rated national capitals.
Sometimes an issue arose that
required special diplomatic action. A
common example involved the negotia-
tion of a peace agreement following a
war. In such instances, the U.S. govern-
ment usually followed the precedent it
had established with Franklin and his
friends in 1777 by naming one or more
individuals as peace commissioners. To
end the War of 1812, for example, Presi-
dent James Madison sent five commis-
sioners to the Belgian city of Ghent. Two
of them were already overseas: John
Quincy Adams, the U.S. minister to
Russia, and Jonathan Russell, the U.S.
minister to Sweden. The other three—
Henry Clay, Albert Gallatin, and James
A. Bayard—were selected primarily as
representatives of domestic political
factions in the United States.
To handle commercial rather than
political relations, nations exchange con-
sular officers. If the relationship is
important enough, a consul-general may
be named to oversee the work of other
consuls who handle affairs in other cities
of the host country. Consular relations
can actually precede official recognition.
Edward Stevens served as the U.S.
consul-general on the island of Hispan-
iola after a slave revolt had overwhelmed
French colonial control in 1798.
Although the United States did not for-
mally establish diplomatic relations with
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 7
China until 1844, consular officials had
been in place for half a century. In the
1780s, Secretary of Foreign Affairs John
Jay had named Samuel Shaw as the first
American consul. A member of a promi-
nent New England merchant family that
traded through the port of Hong Kong,
Shaw devoted most of his time to his
family’s business affairs and had only
very limited influence over the other
American traders or with the Chinese
government itself.
The division between consular and
legation affairs often remained quite dis-
tinct. In a great many cases, the consuls
were, like Shaw, businessmen who were
as much or more interested in pursuing
their own dealings as in serving their fel-
low Americans abroad. The 1924 For-
eign Service Act regularized the
relationships among the various cate-
gories of diplomats. It created a career
Foreign Service that assigns individuals
to political, economic, and consular
posts abroad. Although political
appointees often serve as ambassadors or
consuls-general, career officers handle
most routine diplomatic and consular
affairs.
See also: Plenipotentiary
References
Engelman, Fred L. The Peace of Christmas
Eve. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1962.
Hulen, Bertram D. Inside the Department of
State. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939.
Embargo
An embargo prohibits certain types of
trade. It can ban all forms of commerce
or it can target specific commodities or
products. In the early years, the United
States thought embargoes would have
8 | Section 1
positive results. Imposed primarily to
coerce European nations into modifying
or eliminating policies that were inimical
to the United States, none of these
embargoes proved successful. Conse-
quently, U.S. leaders largely abandoned
the use of this technique after 1815.
In one sense, an embargo is a more
comprehensive application of nonimpor-
tation. Americans had successfully
exploited nonimportation before and
during the American Revolution, so it
was natural for them to consider embar-
goes when trading difficulties developed
in the 1790s.
The underlying cause for all of the
trouble was the outbreak of war between
England and France in response to the
French Revolution. For more than two
decades, these nations fought one
another, often drawing allies into the con-
flict as well. Through it all, the United
States tried desperately to pursue a
neutral course, favoring neither one side
nor the other, with the goal of profiting
from Europe’s distress. The United States
possessed an extraordinarily large mer-
chant fleet and had benefited enormously
from the carrying trade, so it was hardly
surprising that Americans objected when
both England and France announced
policies that would interfere with or even
halt such trade.
The British were particularly incensed
when American merchants took the place
of French shippers in handling trade to
and from the French West Indies.
Maintaining that it violated their self-
proclaimed Rule of 1756, the British
began seizing American vessels engaged
in that trade. The French responded by
attacking American ships carrying Eng-
lish goods. Hoping to convince one or
both of these European nations to alter its
policies, President George Washington
urged Congress to impose a temporary
embargo in 1794. Even when it was
extended by another month, this short-
lived attempt to prevent either American
or European trading vessels from using
American ports had little effect.
Trading opportunities for Americans
ebbed and flowed until 1807 when hos-
tile and contradictory policies issued by
both Great Britain and France became so
annoying that pressure for relief could
no longer be ignored. When a British
naval vessel attacked a U.S. Navy ship,
the Chesapeake, in 1807, war spirit
flared up and down the Atlantic Coast.
But President Thomas Jefferson,
motivated by what he called his
“passion” for peace, sought to frame a
policy that would prevent war. He turned
to an embargo, hoping it might achieve
that goal.
Along with a great many of his coun-
trymen, Jefferson believed that U.S.
trade, both imports and exports, was
absolutely vital to the economic health
of the major European nations and their
American colonies. After all, the United
States purchased one-third of all British
exports, and her remarkably productive
agrarian sector provided vital raw mate-
rials, such as cotton, to the entire world.
If the United States imposed an embargo
that stopped all imports and exports,
Jefferson reasoned, both Great Britain
and France would essentially be starved
into submission and forced to rescind
their obnoxious maritime restrictions.
Because his Republican party con-
trolled Congress, it duly imposed a
nationwide embargo on December 22,
1807. No U.S. ship could legally leave
port for a foreign destination; no foreign
ship could legally dock at any U.S. port.
Coastal trade was exempted, although
someone planning to engage in such trade
 Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 9

EMBARGO ACT, DECEMBER 22, 1807

Be it enacted . . . , That an embargo be, and hereby is laid on all ships and vessels in
the ports and places within the limits or jurisdiction of the United States, cleared or not
cleared, bound to any foreign port or place; and that no clearance be furnished to any
ship or vessel bound to such foreign port or place, except vessels under the immediate
direction of the President of the United States: and that the President be authorized to
give such instructions to the officers of the revenue, and of the navy and revenue cutters
of the United States, as shall appear best adapted for carrying the same into full effect:
Provided, that nothing herein contained shall be construed to prevent the departure of
any foreign ship or vessel, either in ballast, or with the goods, wares and merchandise
on board of such foreign ship or vessel, when notified of this act.
SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That during the continuance of this act, no reg-
istered, or sea letter vessel, having on board goods, wares and merchandise, shall be
allowed to depart from one port of the United States to any other within the same,
unless the master, owner, consignee or factor of such vessel shall first give bond, with
one or more sureties to the collector of the district from which she is bound to depart,
in a sum of double the value of the vessel and cargo, that the said goods, wares, or
merchandise shall be relanded in some port of the United States, dangers of the seas
excepted, which bond, and also a certificate from the collector where the same may
be relanded, shall by the collector respectively be transmitted to the Secretary of the
Treasury. All armed vessels possessing public commissions from any foreign power,
are not to be considered as liable to the embargo laid by this act.

Source: Act of December 22, 1807, Chapter 5, 2 Statutes at Large (10th Congress), 451–453.

had to post bond set at twice the value of
the ship and its cargo to ensure that it did
not stray to some foreign port instead.
Those who abided by the embargo
suffered a good deal. Northeastern
harbors became choked with idle ships
and awash with unemployed seamen.
Southerners and westerners also suffered
when unsold agricultural commodities
piled up on wharfs and caused a nation-
wide decline in the market price of all
products. As the months passed, protests
against the embargo became increas-
ingly vocal in the Northeast where the
Federalist political party enjoyed an
unexpected rejuvenation. Some even
advocated seceding from the Union to
escape from the hated policy.
At the same time, the economic
impact on overseas customers of the
United States fell far short of the level
that Jefferson had anticipated. Bumper
crops in Europe in 1808 partially substi-
tuted for the cut off of U.S. grain ship-
ments. The French emperor Napoléon
Bonaparte had recently begun promoting
what he called the Continental System, a
broad economic policy designed to
reduce European dependence on colo-
nial and imported goods. To that extent,
the U.S. embargo actually played into
his hands.
Widespread evasion of the embargo
also limited its effectiveness. Smuggling
across the long, largely unpatrolled
U.S.–Canadian border surged to levels
10 | Section 1
The 1807 Embargo Act roused bitter criticism like this political cartoon in which the turtle named
“ograbme” (embargo spelled backward) impedes international trade. (Lossing, Benson J. The
Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812, 1868)
comparable to those that occurred in the
1920s during the Prohibition Era.
Because shipowners could make huge
profits from vessels that actually com-
pleted a transatlantic voyage, many ships
that slipped out of harbor, supposedly to
engage in coastal trade, forfeited their
bond and sailed overseas anyway. The
embargo also exempted whaling ships, a
good many of which came home loaded
with anything but whale oil.
The embargo effectively destroyed
Jefferson’s credibility and popularity, and
Congress revoked it three days before his
term ended in March 1809. His succes-
sor, James Madison, had to develop an
alternative. Still convinced that denying
access to U.S. trade was a potent eco-
nomic weapon, Congress issued the Non-
intercourse Act early in Madison’s term.
It lifted the general embargo but prohib-
ited trade with either France or Great
Britain. U.S. ships immediately set sail
for the four corners of the globe, but
many of them soon diverted to high-
return trading with the two super powers.
When the largely ineffective Nonin-
tercourse Act expired in 1810, Congress
approved an even looser variation
called Macon’s Bill Number 2. It per-
mitted unrestricted trade with all
nations including Great Britain and
France. But the law stipulated that if
either of those nations formally can-
celled its restrictive trading policies, the
United States promised to reimpose
nonimportation against the other. The
French falsely claimed to have met this
requirement, and President Madison
duly imposed nonimportation on Great

Britain. The British government objected
strenuously, pointing out the duplicity
of the French move, but, at that point,
Madison had become convinced that
war was the only solution to this long-
running problem.
Although he drafted a war message,
the British government finally recog-
nized that, after five years, Jefferson’s
original conception had been correct.
The British economy had become
depressed, starved of vital U.S. raw
materials, and hugely overstocked with
goods for which the only logical mar-
ket was the United States. Conse-
quently, in the spring of 1812,
Parliament finally revoked many of the
restrictive policies that had so angered
Americans. Unfortunately, news of this
development arrived in the United
States a few days after Congress had
voted in favor of what became known as
the War of 1812.
The unsatisfactory outcome of
Jefferson’s embargo and the enormous
unpopularity it provoked in the United
States undermined faith in embargoes
as an element of its foreign policy.
Never again would the nation impose a
blanket embargo, relying instead on
aggressive tariff legislation and other
economic policies to shape interna-
tional trade. In the end, an embargo
proved to be too crude a tool to use
effectively.
See also: Nonimportation; Paper Blockades;
Rule of 1756
References
McDonald, Forrest. The Presidency of
Thomas Jefferson. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 1976.
Perkins, Bradford. Prologue to War: England
and the United States, 1805–1812. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1961.
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 11
Spivak, Burton I. Jefferson’s English Crisis.
Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1979.
Impressment
During the series of wars that ran from
the early 1790s through 1815, Great
Britain’s Royal Navy was in constant
need of seamen. Conditions on its war-
ships were so harsh, however, that
thousands of sailors deserted, many of
them subsequently finding berths on
U.S. ships. Whenever they located such
“deserters,” the British claimed the right
to “impress” them back into service,
regardless of U.S. protests. Impressment
became a major point of friction
between the United States and Great
Britain, contributing to the breakdown
in relations that culminated in the War
of 1812.
Both the army and the navy in Great
Britain relied on “press gangs” to fill
their ranks. These gangs rounded up
unemployed or unlucky men and
forcibly enlisted them in military serv-
ice, whether or not they had any interest
or desire to participate. With large per-
centages of their crews serving against
their will, the Royal Navy developed
increasingly strict discipline, which
included flogging and even hangings.
Not surprisingly, many oppressed sea-
men were eager to escape.
British naval vessels frequently called
at U.S. ports and, even when on block-
ade duty, visited U.S. cities for provi-
sions. Resentful crew members could
take advantage of these opportunities to
slip away. U.S. shipowners frequently
hired these skilled seamen to fill out their
crews. Life aboard a cramped U.S. mer-
chantman may have been far from idyllic,
but it was much less stressful than being
12 | Section 1
subject to Royal Navy discipline. The
British government considered anyone
who left its naval service a deserter. If a
deserter was recaptured, he might be
hanged to discourage others from attempt-
ing to escape. Between 1790 and 1815,
British authorities admitted that some
20,000 men had deserted from the
Royal Navy.
As early as 1791, the U.S. govern-
ment began formally protesting what it
saw as cavalier actions by the Royal
Navy in pursuing deserters. At its most
basic level, Americans considered impress-
ment an insult to their nation, and they
denied that the British had a right to stop
U.S. ships and remove their crew mem-
bers. The U.S. government found the
practice unacceptable even if some of
those impressed were undeniably
deserters from the Royal Navy.
But many of the men impressed off
U.S. ships were not deserters. The
British espoused the concept of “inalien-
able allegiance,” meaning that if you
were born in England, you remained an
Englishman even if you underwent a nat-
uralization process in another country.
The United States was filled with immi-
grants from the British Isles and else-
where, most of whom either had
obtained U.S. citizenship or were in the
process of naturalization. Even if they
had not previously seen service in the
Royal Navy, British officials contended
that they were subject to impressment
just like any other British citizen.
To make matters worse, the British
also impressed native-born Americans. If
a man spoke English and looked like an
Englishman, British naval officers might
sweep him up in an impressment raid as
well. Over the 25-year period ending in
1815, the United States claimed that
some 10,000 men had been taken off
U.S. ships and pressed into British serv-
ice. Of that total, only one-tenth of them
were actual British deserters, so the
United States had ample reason to com-
plain about impressment.
On June 22, 1807, U.S. rage reached
the boiling point when the HMS Leop-
ard stopped a U.S. Navy ship a few miles
off the coast of Virginia. The USS
Chesapeake was a 40-gun frigate on its
way to fight the Barbary pirates of North
Africa. Just before sailing, it had enlisted
four men who were lingering at the
docks in Norfolk. The captain of the
Leopard claimed they were British desert-
ers and demanded their return. When the
U.S. captain refused, the Leopard fired a
broadside at the Chesapeake, killing three
men and injuring 18 others. The U.S.
ship managed to get off a single shot in
protest before striking its colors. Only
one of the four men was actually a
British deserter and he was later hanged.
Two of the others were eventually
released, but the third man died in
prison.
President Thomas Jefferson might
have exploited the nationwide outrage
over the Chesapeake Affair as an excuse
to declare war. Instead, he decided to
impose a national embargo that lasted
through the rest of his term. Five years
later, however, the tolerance of Americans
with British policies and actions had
reached an end. President James Madison
highlighted impressment as a key justifi-
cation in the war message that he sent to
Congress in June 1812.
Impressment remained a major bone
of contention right through the war, so
the U.S. delegates who were sent to
negotiate a peace treaty in 1814 were
instructed to demand an end to the prac-
tice. Realizing that the British would
never abandon a system so vital to their

maritime dominance, the U.S. delegation
finally asked for and received permission
to drop the issue. It was not mentioned in
the Treaty of Ghent that ended the war.
Shortly after that treaty was ratified,
the Napoleonic Wars ended as well, ush-
ering in nearly a century of general
world peace. That, in turn, reduced the
need for naval force, effectively ending
the British need to maintain its impress-
ment policies. Anglo-American relations
improved considerably as a result of this
change.
See also: Embargo; Plan of 1776; Uti Possedetus
(Treaty of Ghent, 1814)
References
Horseman, Reginald. The Causes of the War
of 1812. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1962.
Tucker, Spencer C., and Frank T. Reuter.
Injured Honor: The Chesapeake-Leopard
Affair. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press,
1996.
Zimmerman, James F. Impressment of
American Seamen. New York: Columbia
University, 1925.
Jay’s Treaty
Jay’s Treaty ranks as one of the most
controversial international agreements
ever presented to the U.S. Senate for rat-
ification. The United States and Great
Britain were on the brink of war in 1794
when President George Washington sent
John Jay to London to work out an
agreement to prevent conflict. The
resulting treaty contained many provi-
sions that were repugnant to various sec-
tional and political groups in the United
States. It also failed to address many
controversial issues. In the end, however,
it achieved Washington’s major goal:
maintaining peace with Great Britain
and delaying a resort to war until 1812.
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 13
The Treaty of Paris of 1783, which
ended the Revolutionary War, left several
issues unresolved. For example, the British
agreed to withdraw all of their military
forces from the territory ceded to the new
United States, but they continued to man
posts in the North and West that Americans
claimed were encouraging Indian hostility.
Another unfulfilled provision was a treaty
pledge that Americans would pay their pre-
Revolutionary War debts to British credi-
tors. Local and state courts had routinely
protected U.S. citizens at the expense of
foreigners. Some Southerners, meanwhile,
demanded compensation from the British
government for the 3,000 slaves that its
armies had freed during the conflict.
Unmentioned in the 1783 Treaty was
any sort of commercial agreement.
Although Americans could trade directly
with English importers and exporters,
access to lucrative markets in the British
West Indies was denied. To replace that,
Americans took advantage of loosening
French and Spanish restrictions on trade
with their Caribbean colonies, especially
after war broke out between Great Britain
and France in the early 1790s. British
authorities reacted by issuing a series of
orders-in-council that caused Royal Navy
vessels to stop, seize, and even sink U.S.-
owned ships that were conducting what
they considered to be illegal trade.
Americans in all sections of the
United States had reasons for concern.
Northeasterners protested British inter-
ference with U.S. ocean-going trade.
Westerners objected to what they saw as
British provocation of Indian raids on
their settlements. Southerners remained
peeved at the “theft” of their property in
the form of slaves.
Sensitive to the calls for war with
Great Britain coming from all quarters,
President George Washington decided to
14 | Section 1
try to defuse the tension by negotiating a
settlement. The Federalist faction, headed
by Alexander Hamilton, favored such an
approach, seeing good relations with
Great Britain and maintenance of active
Anglo-American trade as essential to the
prosperity of the new nation. Rather than
send the ambitious Hamilton, however,
Washington dispatched Supreme Court
Chief Justice John Jay as his emissary.
Fortunately for Jay, British military
resources were fully engaged against
France, so Great Britain had no interest
in taking on an additional opponent. At
the same time, British statesmen were
unwilling to grant exceptions or exemp-
tions to the upstart Americans. The only
major bargaining lever Jay had was a
threat to join Sweden and Denmark in a
newly formed Armed Neutrality. Hamilton
successfully torpedoed that argument by
assuring the British minister in the
United States that Washington’s cabinet
had already voted against such an action.
Jay’s Treaty therefore accomplished
little other than to preserve peace between
the two countries. The one positive
British concession was a pledge to fulfill
its earlier promise and withdraw all of its
forces from the Northwest Territory of the
United States. U.S. claims regarding
minor boundary disputes and potential
compensation for shipping losses were
assigned to future arbitration panels. The
treaty completely ignored the slave issue.
The agreement’s trading provisions
reconfirmed U.S. access to ports in the
British Isles proper and opened British
colonial ports in the Far East as well. On
the crucial West Indies issue, however,
the treaty allowed for trade only on ships
displacing 70 tons or less, far too small
to handle bulk agricultural commodities.
George Washington was disheartened
when the text of the treaty arrived in
Philadelphia, but, because he saw it as
achieving his primary purpose—peace
with Great Britain—he decided to sub-
mit it to the Senate for ratification.
Debating in stormy secret sessions, the
senators finally approved the treaty with
a 20 to 10 vote, the bare minimum the
Constitution prescribed.
The Senate’s action did nothing to
defuse the enormous burst of popular
unrest with Jay’s Treaty. Newspapers,
public meetings, and private citizens all
complained bitterly about what they saw
as a sellout of U.S. interests. John Jay
personally became the symbol of this
betrayal, and he was burned in effigy and
otherwise denigrated from North to
South. Reflecting this outrage, oppo-
nents in the House of Representatives
tried to deny the funding needed to
implement the treaty. Although they did
manage to strip off the humiliating
West Indies trade provision, President
Washington lobbied effectively enough
to win a slim three-vote margin in favor
of the appropriations bill.
For years afterward, Jay and the Fed-
eralists who had backed his efforts
remained prominent targets for critics of
the administration. Fortunately, the
treaty did prevent the outbreak of war
between the two countries. It allowed the
United States to grow and mature con-
siderably before another collection of
issues and grievances—some of them
quite similar to those that had arisen in
the early 1790s—arose to provoke the
outbreak of the War of 1812.
See also: Mercantilism; Pinckney’s Treaty
References
Bemis, Samuel Flagg. Jay’s Treaty. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962.
Combs, Jerald A. The Jay Treaty. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1970.

Ritcheson, Charles R. Aftermath of Revolu-
tion. Dallas: Southern Methodist Univer-
sity Press, 1969.
Legitimacy
In the late 18th century, virtually all
European countries had “legitimate”
monarchs, rulers whose family linkages
and authority extended back in time,
often for centuries. The French Revolu-
tion that overthrew King Louis XVI, the
reigning member of the Bourbon
dynasty, generated an enormous and
long-lasting negative reaction. The
United States had earlier cut its ties with
a legitimate monarchy in Great Britain,
so the American people continually
faced challenges to their political and
social beliefs. As an outsider that had
foresworn legitimacy, the United States
had to navigate a difficult course in inter-
national affairs.
The Bourbon rulers of France had
intermittently engaged in conflict with
the British government for decades when
the Americans signed the Declaration of
Independence. Although the French king
had no particular sympathy for the dem-
ocratic, rights-of-man principles that
document proclaimed, he was more than
willing to assist anyone, including
American rebels whose actions might
damage or humiliate his perennial arch-
enemy. France therefore provided exten-
sive military and financial support, as
well as an alliance and a favorable com-
mercial treaty signed in 1778.
Even though the American Revolu-
tion concluded successfully from the
patriots’ point of view, it failed to alter
the worldwide political tradition of legit-
imacy. Americans cheered when republi-
can ideals similar to their own ignited a
revolution against the monarchy in France.
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 15
By 1793, it had gone so far as to execute
the king himself. Many Americans
considered that step excessive and they
were even more unnerved by the suc-
ceeding Reign of Terror. The various
phases of the French Revolution pre-
sented the United States with a number
of complex diplomatic problems. These
even included an undeclared or quasi-
war in the late 1790s over trading prac-
tices between the world’s only two
democratic nations.
Napoléon Bonaparte’s rise to power
in France assumed many characteristics
of a top-down, authoritarian govern-
ment. When he named himself emperor,
his regime seemed to resemble the legit-
imate monarchies far more than it mir-
rored the egalitarian United States. The
Europeans nations that formed coalitions
to fight against revolutionary France
nevertheless considered Napoléon ille-
gitimate, and warfare continued until his
final defeat at Waterloo.
The victorious European nations met
at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to sort
out past issues and lay the groundwork
for the future. Support for legitimacy
fundamentally shaped the actions of
the Congress. For example, it restored
the grandson of the executed king to the
French throne as Louis XVIII. A Bourbon
monarch also replaced Joseph Napoléon
in Spain.
To preserve peace, the great powers
that had defeated Napoléon agreed to
meet periodically. Great Britain, Prussia,
Austria, and Russia formed a quadruple
alliance that became known as the
Concert of Europe. This group met for
the first time at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818,
and the main action it took there was to
invite legitimate France into the
alliance. British foreign minister Lord
Castlereagh was the major architect of
16 | Section 1
what had now become a Quintuple
Alliance. Representing a constitutional
rather than an absolute monarch, how-
ever, his motives and goals often differed
substantially from those of the other
members of the Concert of Europe.
The most conservative of them was
Russian czar Alexander I. An absolute
monarch in his own right, he was com-
mitted to preserving and strengthening
the authority of legitimate rulers. He was
also something of a mystic who allowed
his deep-seated religious beliefs to influ-
ence both his domestic and foreign poli-
cies. To implement the latter, he
established the Holy Alliance, and virtu-
ally every Christian nation signed on.
The key exceptions were the Prince
Regent of Great Britain, the Pope, and,
for obvious reasons, the Sultan of the
Ottoman Empire.
The conservative European establish-
ment was dismayed when democratic
movements continued to threaten legiti-
macy. Simón Bolívar and his associates
had already been successful in rousing
revolutionary sentiments in South
America. Venezuela, Argentina, and
other former colonies took advantage of
the distractions of the Napoleonic Wars
to declare independence from Spain. The
United States welcomed this develop-
ment, which Americans saw as a flatter-
ing copy of their own revolution, but the
government in Washington did not
immediately recognize the new
republics.
Willing to ignore legitimacy for finan-
cial gain, Great Britain was willing to
accept new regimes in Latin America
because of the trading opportunities they
presented. When the Concert of Europe
restored Bourbon rule in Spain, some
thought that the monarchy might
attempt to recolonize South America.
But democratic stirrings within Spain
itself weakened the king’s authority and
finally resulted in his being ousted.
At that point, the Concert of Europe
met again and, following Russia’s lead,
authorized France to invade Spain and
restore the monarchy. Meanwhile,
Austrian military units were restoring a
legitimate monarch in the Kingdom of
Naples. These circumstances provoked
British foreign minister George Canning
to propose that the United States coop-
erate in issuing a joint declaration of
support for the Latin American
republics. Instead, the United States
produced its own independent statement
in the form of the Monroe Doctrine in
December 1823.
During this period, Secretary of State
John Quincy Adams did much to publi-
cize the concept of the “Separation of the
Spheres.” Drawing inspiration from both
Washington and Jefferson, he empha-
sized that the New World had a set of
interests and political ambitions far dif-
ferent from those in the Old World.
Although trade would keep them eco-
nomically connected, Adams favored a
clean political separation between the
Eastern and the Western Hemisphere. In
Adams’s view, legitimacy had no place in
the West. There were no traditional ruling
dynasties; democratic republics modeled
after the United States were increasingly
becoming the norm in the Americas.
In the long run, the influence of
European-style legitimacy continued to
decline in the Western Hemisphere. Per-
haps the most notable exception was
when the French government invited
Maximilian of Austria’s ruling Hapsburg
family to serve as emperor of Mexico in
the 1860s. Even the distractions of the
American Civil War did not prevent
Secretary of State William Seward from

stating strong and effective diplomatic
objections to the French plan to establish
a puppet government south of the border.
The very real possibility of a U.S. expe-
dition to oust Maximilian helped con-
vince France to withdraw its support and
demonstrated that legitimacy was irrele-
vant to the Americas.
See also: Monroe Doctrine; Quasi-War with
France
References
Davis, David Brion. Revolutions: Reflections
on American Equality and Foreign Liber-
ations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1990.
Parsons, Lynn Hudson. John Quincy Adams.
Madison, WI: Madison House, 1998.
Perkins, Bradford. Castlereagh and Adams.
Berkeley: University of California Press,
1961.
Louisiana
The purchase of Louisiana in 1803 was
the most dramatic and unexpected suc-
cess of President Thomas Jefferson’s
administration. France’s decision to sell
the territory came after a convoluted
series of events and changing strategies.
The United States took advantage of the
continuing worldwide conflict, appear-
ing on the scene ready to buy just when
France decided to sell. Even so, the
Louisiana Purchase was not universally
popular at home, and it tested the author-
ity of both the president and the Senate
in the realm of foreign relations.
A vast wilderness area west of the
Mississippi River and stretching all the
way to the Canadian border, Louisiana
had first come to the attention of
Europeans through the efforts of French
explorers like Father Jacques Marquette
and Sieur de La Salle. Administered as
a remote offshoot of French colonial
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 17
possessions in eastern Canada, the area
remained largely undeveloped and
unknown through the middle of the 18th
century.
When the governor of colonial
Virginia selected George Washington to
lead a military force to contest French
expansion into the Ohio Valley in 1754,
it turned out to be the opening campaign
of the French and Indian War. Two years
later, Great Britain and France took up
arms in Europe, where each assembled
allies for the so-called Seven Years’ War.
Spain sided with France in this struggle,
and British forces achieved a definitive
victory over both of these enemies in the
early 1760s. Disappointed and demoral-
ized, France withdrew completely from
North America. At the 1763 Treaty of
Paris, it relinquished all of its claims of
Canada to Great Britain and transferred
Louisiana to Spain. Simultaneously,
Great Britain took control of Spanish
Florida.
Even when Spain retrieved possession
of Florida in 1783, it found the costs of
administering that territory and the much
larger Louisiana to be extraordinarily
high. It may have served as a buffer
between Mexico and the United States,
but Louisiana remained untamed and
unproductive. American settlers heading
West and South put increasing pressure
on the Spanish colonies. Moreover,
American farmers along the western
river network needed to use the
Mississippi and the Spanish port of New
Orleans as outlets for their bulky agricul-
tural produce. Pinckney’s Treaty (1795)
between Spain and the United States
guaranteed free access and deposit for
U.S. goods using that river highway.
Meanwhile, influential French states-
men like Foreign Minister Talleyrand
nourished a dream of reincorporating
18 | Section 1
Louisiana into their nation’s empire.
When Napoléon Bonaparte assumed
control of France, he responded posi-
tively to this concept. And he had a
compelling rationalization for doing so:
to help sustain the French colony of
St. Dominique (present-day Haiti).
Located on the island of Hispaniola in
the Caribbean, it had been an extraordi-
narily profitable producer of sugar and
other exotic tropical products, but it had
also come to rely increasingly on food
shipments from the United States. Dur-
ing wartime, such shipments were sub-
ject to interruption. If France absorbed
Louisiana into its empire, Napoléon
believed, it could serve as a secure
“bread colony” for St. Dominique.
This plan suffered a serious setback
when a slave rebellion swept the island
in the late 1790s. A former slave named
Toussaint L’Ouverture proclaimed the
colony’s independence. The United
States had sent an enterprising consular
officer named Edward Stevens to the
island, and he encouraged the new gov-
ernment and intrigued with the British
for joint trading privileges. The Quasi-
War with France played a part as well,
pitting the United States against France.
As the undeclared war drew to a close,
French imperial ambitions revived. On
October 1, 1800, the day after it signed a
peace treaty with the United States,
Napoléon’s government completed the
Treaty of San Ildefonso, in which Spain
restored the Louisiana Territory to
France, although that retrocession was
supposed to be kept secret for some time.
Shortly afterward, a brief lull
occurred in the series of European
conflicts. Temporarily free of a threat
from Great Britain, Napoléon dispatched
a 20,000-man expeditionary force to St.
Dominique, charged with putting down
the rebellion and reestablishing French
control. Black guerrillas and yellow
fever decimated the French Army, how-
ever, and subsequent expeditions were
equally unsuccessful. Then Great Britain
and the members of the so-called Third
Coalition once again took up arms
against France, forcing Napoléon to
rethink his whole strategy for the West-
ern Hemisphere. President Thomas
Jefferson was keenly interested in these
developments. Even though France had
kept Spanish administrators in place in
New Orleans, Jefferson quickly learned
of the retrocession. Realizing that France
would probably be a more effective and
aggressive colonial administrator than
Spain had ever been, the U.S. president
concluded that he should, at the very
least, attempt to gain control of New
Orleans, a port that Americans now con-
sidered absolutely vital to their western
trade. When the French ordered their
Spanish agents to cancel the right of free
deposit that had been in place since
Pinckney’s Treaty in 1795, Jefferson’s
concern rose even higher.
He obtained congressional authoriza-
tion early in 1803 to send a special
envoy, James Monroe, to France to seek
a resolution of these issues. Monroe was
instructed to buy New Orleans and to
make an offer for Florida as well. If the
French proved reluctant, Monroe was to
threaten to go to London and seek an
alliance with Great Britain, something
France certainly did not wish to happen.
Before Monroe arrived, Napoléon had
already concluded that the failure of his
Caribbean ventures had fatally damaged
his North American empire concept.
Embroiled in the revived European war,
he realized Louisiana would be impossi-
ble to defend. Therefore, his government
contacted the U.S. minister to France,

Robert Livingston, and offered to sell
not only New Orleans but all of
Louisiana. When Monroe arrived a few
days later, the U.S. emissaries quickly
concluded that they should pursue this
opportunity, even though neither had
specific orders to do more than purchase
the port city.
When the Americans asked French
finance minister Barbé Marbois about
price, he gave a figure of 100 million
French livres, even though Napoléon
had suggested half that amount. Monroe
and Livingston were so eager to con-
clude the purchase that they counted
themselves fortunate to settle on a final
price of 80 million French livres, equiv-
alent to $15,000,000. Three-fourths of
that total would be paid in cash and the
rest distributed to Americans who had
earlier filed claims for damages against
France.
When news of the proposed purchase
reached Washington, Jefferson became
concerned about procedural issues. He
had always been a strict constructionist
of the U.S. Constitution, and he knew
that document contained no authoriza-
tion for the federal government to buy
new lands. He toyed with the idea of
calling for an amendment to the Consti-
tution to permit it, but his advisors sug-
gested that he simply present the deal in
the form of a treaty. If two-thirds of the
senators agreed to ratify the treaty, the
deed would be done.
Some senators opposed the arrange-
ment, but it easily won more than the
two-thirds vote required. The purchase
ran into more trouble when the House of
Representatives debated an appropria-
tions bill for the money needed to com-
plete the transaction. The eventual
success of both the ratification and the
financial authorization set a precedent
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 19
for expanding the territory of the United
States through the treaty process.
A lingering problem, however, was
that no one was absolutely certain just
where the boundaries of the Louisiana
Territory lay. Did it include Florida? Did
it include part of Texas? These questions
would generate continuing controversy
long after Jefferson left office. Wanting
to know more about what he had bought,
he sent Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark on an extended exploratory mis-
sion all the way to the Pacific Coast. Not
incidentally, having Americans physi-
cally walk through the territory helped
confirm U.S. ownership of it.
See also: Pinckney’s Treaty; Plenipotentiary
References
DeConde, Alexander. This Affair of
Louisiana. New York: Scribner, 1976.
Labbe, Dolores Egger, ed. The Louisiana
Purchase and Its Aftermath, 1800–1830.
Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies,
University of Southwestern Louisiana,
1998.
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in
North America. New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1992.
Mercantilism
The various European nations that
founded colonies in America gradually
developed an economic philosophy that
became known as mercantilism. In an
ideal mercantile empire, the colonies pro-
duced exotic or otherwise valuable raw
materials and commodities that the
mother country would otherwise have to
import. Meanwhile, the European nation
could exploit its colonies as markets for
its surplus goods. A successful ideal mer-
cantile empire would be self-sufficient,
requiring no external trade. Although
20 | Section 1
mercantilism never achieved such perfec-
tion, it presented many problems for
American diplomats and statesmen once
independence had been achieved.
Until 1776, however, Great Britain’s
mercantilist policies provided many
benefits to its American colonists.
Beginning in the mid-17th century, Par-
liament enacted legislation that dictated
increasing control over colonial trade.
The so-called Navigation Acts, for exam-
ple, stipulated that certain American
products, such as tobacco, cotton,
copper, and indigo, must be marketed
exclusively in Great Britain. These poli-
cies were designed to provide a reliable
and protected source of raw materials
for British manufacturers and proces-
sors. They also guaranteed American
colonists a market for their output,
even if, as in the case of tobacco in the
18th century, they produced so much
that it created a persistent surplus.
Other aspects of the American bounty
also strained mercantilist policies. For
example, New Englanders were so suc-
cessful at harvesting the rich fishing
grounds off Newfoundland that they had
to find an alternative market. Spain and
Portugal ended up buying thousands of
tons of New England salt fish to satisfy
the needs of those Catholic countries that
forbid the eating of meat on Fridays and
holy days. Similarly, South Carolina’s
rice plantations became so productive
that they ended up feeding slaves working
sugar plantations on many West Indies
islands, regardless of which European
nation claimed them as colonies.
In 1776, Scottish economist Adam
Smith published a critical evaluation of
mercantilism titled The Wealth of
Nations. Ironically, just as Smith was
cataloging the features of a mercantile
empire, Americans had decided to throw
off rule from London. The success of
their political revolution, however, left in
its wake a number of persistent eco-
nomic problems.
The pre-Revolutionary American
economy had been so geared to supply-
ing British customers that, as quickly as
possible, American diplomats tried to
reestablish mutually beneficial trade
relations with the former mother coun-
try. Although British manufacturers were
more than willing to see this trade rela-
tionship restored, the royal government
refused to countenance open trade
between the United States and its
remaining colonies in the Western Hemi-
sphere. Although some of the British
reluctance was simply pique at the
American Revolution, advocates of mer-
cantilism insisted that the British Empire
should remain isolated and insulated
from outside influences.
In 1794, John Jay went to England,
hoping to break down British resistance.
But the U.S. bargaining position was so
weak that the resulting agreement only
allowed very small U.S. ships—of 70 tons
displacement or less—to trade with the
British West Indies.
Americans had no more success in
subsequent negotiations aimed at regain-
ing broader access to Great Britain’s
mercantile empire. Indeed, it was not
until the late 1820s that the major restric-
tions were lifted. Ironically, this change
actually benefited British home and
colonial agents as much as it did the
Americans who had worked so hard to
achieve the change.
Operating as an independent eco-
nomic entity, the United States also
encountered problems with other mer-
cantilist empires. Both the Spanish and
the French were reluctant to allow U.S.
trade with their colonies, hoping instead

to keep them comfortably within their
own imperial control. From time to time,
however, especially once the French
Revolution set off two decades of
European warfare, the U.S. carrying
trade was seen as an advantage to nations
that were focused on war at home. Both
Spain and France modified their mercan-
tile regulations to allow direct trade
between their colonies and U.S. shippers
when it suited their larger purposes.
Great Britain objected to these
arrangements on several grounds. They
wanted their enemies’ colonies to suffer
economically, not to benefit from U.S.
trade. They also hoped to capture some
of the more valuable West Indian posses-
sions for themselves. The British gov-
ernment therefore championed its Rule
of 1756. It objected to nations opening
their mercantile empires to external, usu-
ally neutral, traders when a war inter-
fered with the home country’s ability to
nurture its colonies.
The Rule of 1756 seemed especially
arbitrary to Americans after the Revolu-
tion. Closed out of their traditional
Caribbean markets by British mercantile
policies, they considered it only reason-
able to take advantage of French or
Spanish troubles to open trade with their
colonies. But Great Britain’s powerful
Royal Navy stood ready to enforce its
insistence on the Rule of 1756. In
another unpopular provision of Jay’s
1794 treaty, the United States formally
acquiesced to the British position.
Well into the 19th century, the U.S.
economy retained its traditional empha-
sis on producing agricultural surpluses
for export. Fortunately, especially after
the British government adopted a free
trade policy in the 1840s, U.S. farmers
and planters could usually find ready
customers for their surpluses in England.
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 21
There seemed to be no limits, for
example, to the European appetite for
U.S. cotton. Over time, the edges of mer-
cantilism became blurred enough to
leave plenty of opportunities for U.S.
economic expansion.
See also: Embargo; Nonimportation; Rule of
1756
References
Kammen, Michael. Empire and Interest: The
American Colonies and the Politics of
Mercantilism. Philadelphia: Lippincott,
1970.
McCusker, John J., and Russell R. Menard.
The Economy of British America,
1607–1812. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1985.
Monroe Doctrine
President James Monroe included three
statements in his annual message in 1823
that profoundly influenced subsequent
U.S. policy. Collectively called the
Monroe Doctrine, it discouraged future
European colonization in the Americas
and insisted that Europeans should not
attempt to reconquer Latin American
republics that had become independent.
In return, the president promised that the
United States would avoid intervening in
European affairs. By the close of the
19th century, the Monroe Doctrine had
become a fundamental principle of U.S.
diplomacy, which many considered a
justification for U.S. dominance of the
Western Hemisphere.
Dominance was neither considered
nor possible in the early 1820s. Instead,
President Monroe was responding to
disturbing external events and perceived
threats. At that point, the United States
maintained a very small standing army
and a small war fleet, neither of which
was capable of aggressive or, for that
22 | Section 1
The statements President James Monroe
included in his 1823 Annual Message regarding
United States supremacy in the Western
Hemisphere became known as the Monroe
Doctrine. (Library of Congress)
matter, truly effective defensive action.
The president’s statements therefore
reflected U.S. concepts and hopes rather
than threats or intentions.
The prospect of European expansion-
ism provoked U.S. concern. Russia
seemed the most threatening along the
Northwest Coast. The czar’s government
had already established a rather diffuse
colonial control over Alaska and
appeared to be extending its authority
farther south. A wooden stockade called
Fort Ross, just north of the San Francisco
Bay, represented the southern extent of
Russian expansion. In 1821, to counter
British and U.S. penetration of the
Oregon Territory, the czar issued a ukase
declaring all of the Pacific Coast and
adjacent waters down to the 51st parallel
off-limits to non-Russians. This decree
conflicted with both U.S. and British
claims to territory up to 54° 40’.
Other European statements and
actions appeared equally threatening.
After the Napoleonic Wars, most of the
European countries reverted to very
conservative governmental structures,
with monarchy being the preferred form
of rule. The republican revolutions that
swept the Spanish colonies in Latin
America were quite disconcerting to
autocratic European governments. They
were even more upset when similar
revolts ousted kings in Portugal, Spain,
and Italy. Austrian armies invaded and
reestablished monarchical control in
Naples; French troops did the same in
Spain.
At that point, it seemed possible that
either France or a revived Spanish
monarchy would attempt to reconquer
the republican governments that ruled
Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, and other
former Spanish colonies. At least one
European nation was particularly opposed
to that possibility. Great Britain’s mer-
chants were profiting handsomely from
the opening of trade with the former
colonies in Latin America; the British
government certainly did not want to see
them drawn back under Spanish or
French imperial control.
British foreign minister George
Canning decided to take action, and he
invited U.S. minister Richard Rush to
join him in issuing a statement opposing
any restoration of colonial control. Rush
had no authority to do so, however, so he
referred the matter to his government in
Washington. There, President James
Monroe was inclined to go along with
the idea, but Secretary of State John
Quincy Adams was bitterly opposed. He
wanted his nation to assert its own
authority, not to be perceived as “a cock-
boat in the wake of the British man-of-war”
(Adams, Memoirs, VI, 179).
 Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 23

Monroe eventually agreed with To counter the Russian threat,

Adams and decided to include his
thoughts in the annual message he sub-
mitted to Congress on December 2,
1823. The two statesmen carefully
crafted language that would be assertive
but would not commit the United States
to any particular action. Although they
appeared in separate sections of the long
message, three key points emerged as the
heart of what became known as the
Monroe Doctrine.
Monroe asserted that “the American
continents, by the free and independent
condition, which they have assumed and
maintain, are henceforth not to be
considered as subjects for future colo-
nization by any European powers”
(Richardson, Compilation, 778). This
statement was hardly as bold as it
sounded. Adams knew that negotiations
with Great Britain and Russia were well
along the path toward an agreement,

MONROE DOCTRINE: DECEMBER 2, 1823

[From President Monroe’s Seventh Annual Message to Congress]

In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never
taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so. It is only when our rights
are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our
defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately
connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial
observers. The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect
from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respec-
tive Governments; and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss
of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened
citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is
devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing
between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any
attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dan-
gerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any
European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Govern-
ments who have declared their independence and maintain it, and whose independ-
ence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could
not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any
other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the man-
ifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States. In the war between
those new Governments and Spain we declared our neutrality at the time of their
recognition, and to this we have adhered, and shall continue to adhere, provided no
change shall occur which, in the judgement of the competent authorities of this Gov-
ernment, shall make a corresponding change on the part of the United States indis-
pensable to their security.

Source: Richardson, J. D., ed. Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. New York:
Bureau of National Literature, 1917, 1–2:776–790.
24 | Section 1
signed by all three powers in 1824, reaf-
firming the 54° 40’ line as the northern
boundary of the Oregon Territory.
With regard to the possibility of
European reassertion of control over for-
mer colonies, the U.S. doctrine was care-
ful to state that the United States would
not interfere with any existing colonies.
But, relying on historical precedents, such
as the 1811 No-Transfer doctrine, Monroe
stated that his country would view “as
dangerous to our peace and safety” any
attempt by Europeans to reestablish con-
trol over independent nations or to trans-
fer ownership from a presumably weaker
to a stronger colonial power.
As a sort of quid pro quo, Monroe
included a third principle: a pledge not to
interfere in internal European affairs.
This was, of course, a rather empty
promise at the time, given the weakness
of U.S. armed forces, the 3,000 miles
that separated them from Europe, and
the lack of enthusiasm at home for
another foreign war.
In subsequent years, the three
principles of the Monroe Doctrine—no
new colonization in America, no trans-
fer of colonial claims, and no U.S. inter-
vention in Europe—became widely
respected elements of U.S. foreign
policy. This happened in part because
these principles never seemed to be
challenged. It was not, however, U.S.
force or threats that accomplished that
goal. Instead, the existence of a balance
of power in Europe and, even more
important, Great Britain’s undisputed
control of the seas kept European ambi-
tions in check.
Foreign Minister Canning had no
intention of allowing the U.S. president
to steal his thunder. When Rush refused
to agree to a joint declaration, Canning
began negotiating with the French
ambassador to London, Prince Jules de
Polignac, eventually obtaining a promise
that France would neither establish new
colonies in America nor assist Spain in
retaking her former colonies. Canning
then publicized the so-called Polignac
Memorandum, to reassure Great
Britain’s valued trading partners in Latin
America. He also pointed out that the
memorandum had been signed fully two
months before Monroe delivered his
message to Congress.
In the long run, however, the Monroe
Doctrine dwarfed Canning’s astute
diplomacy. It became a shibboleth of
U.S. policy, brought up as a justification
for a number of assertive moves on the
part of the United States. When Presi-
dent James K. Polk was preparing for
aggressive action against Mexico in the
1840s, he used the doctrine as a justifi-
cation, adding his own interpretation or
corollary to this now-hallowed belief.
Secretary of State Richard Olney rein-
terpreted it again in 1895, and President
Theodore Roosevelt used it as a
justification for extending U.S. admin-
istrative authority in the Caribbean in
1905. Together the Polk, Olney, and
Roosevelt corollaries to the Monroe
Doctrine added weight and meaning to
what had been a carefully drafted and
cautious statement of values by an
infant republic.
See also: No-Transfer Principle
References
Adams, C. F. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams.
Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1874–1877.
Dozer, Donald M., ed. The Monroe Doctrine:
Its Modern Significance. New York:
Knopf, 1965.
Perkins, Dexter. A History of the Monroe
Doctrine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1963.

Richardson, J. D., ed. Compilation of the
Messages and Papers of the Presidents.
New York: Bureau of National Literature,
1917, 1–2:776–790.
Most Favored Nation
Many international trade agreements
include most-favored-nation provisions
that benefit both parties. If the United
States, for example, were to negotiate a
new agreement with France that
included a most-favored-nation provi-
sion, France would gain the same privi-
leges that the United States has granted
to whatever nation has the most favor-
able relationship. In other words, a most-
favored-nation agreement ensures that
one country automatically enjoys the
best arrangement that its treaty partner
has with any other nation.
The very first trade treaty that the
United States negotiated contained a
most-favored-nation provision. The 1778
Treaty of Amity and Commerce between
the United States and France awarded
both nations that status. This was a
remarkably generous concession to the
new nation because it gained trading priv-
ileges that were identical to those that, in
some cases, had only been granted to oth-
ers after long and tortured negotiations.
By including a most-favored-nation state-
ment in the agreement, France also under-
lined its commitment to recognizing the
United States as a fully independent polit-
ical entity.
Most-favored-nation agreements are
quite common in international relations,
and many U.S. treaties contain such lan-
guage. U.S. relations with China provide
a case in point. In the late 1830s, Great
Britain and France fought a war against
the Chinese Empire, hoping to wring
commercial concessions from China—
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 25
with specific attention to permitting
Europeans to import opium. Having
suffered a humiliating defeat in the so-
called Opium Wars, China signed a treaty
with the victors that greatly expanded
their access to Chinese ports. In 1844,
U.S. commissioner Caleb Cushing built
on that framework in negotiating the
Treaty of Wangshia with the imperial
government. The treaty included a most-
favored-nation provision, which gave
Americans the same access to trade
opportunities that the British and French
had won on the battlefield.
It is easy to see why the United States
promoted a most-favored-nation agree-
ment, but Chinese motives may not be so
obvious. Perhaps the most credible
explanation is that the imperial govern-
ment decided to extend broad trading
privileges to other nations in order to
defuse or limit the dominance of Great
Britain and France. A similar rationale
appears to have influenced the drafting
of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. Once
again, successful British and French mil-
itary action forced additional conces-
sions from China. Even though the
United States had not taken part in the
fighting, it participated in the postwar
treaty negotiations and won most-
favored-nation status. U.S. trade with
China remained relatively minor through
the rest of the 19th century, but not
because of lack of opportunity.
A more recent example of the most-
favored-nation principle at work occurred
in the 1930s. During and after the Civil
War, the United States maintained high,
protective tariffs on most imports.
Because Congress jealously guarded its
prerogative in setting tariffs, alterations
came about only after intense lobbying
and compromise. When the Great Depres-
sion set in, however, most Americans
26 | Section 1
realized that the high-tariff policy was
hampering a revival of international
trade. President Franklin Roosevelt
therefore pushed Congress to approve the
Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in 1934
to facilitate the reduction of tariff levels.
In a reciprocal trade agreement, each
nation commits to lowering tariffs on
the other’s imports. The 1934 Act
authorized the executive branch to initi-
ate bilateral tariff-reduction talks with
dozens of other nations and permitted
the rates to be lowered by as much as
50 percent. Most of these agreements
either included or paralleled other
treaties that contained most-favored-
nation language. That meant that a
reduction included in any bilateral agree-
ment was equally applicable to all trad-
ing partners with most-favored-nation
status. By the late 1930s, tariff rates
around the world had fallen considerably
as a result of these negotiations.
After World War II, the United States
joined with dozens of other nations in
complex multinational negotiations that
led to the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT). Here again, most-
favored-nation agreements among the
various signatories smoothed the process
of developing a global trade structure.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is
the successor of the GATT system, and
most-favored-nation provisions continue
to help make international trading prac-
tices uniform and fair for all participants.
See also: Alliance; China Market; Protectionism
References
Fairbank, John K. The United States and
China. 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1983.
Gardner, Lloyd C. Economic Aspects of New
Deal Diplomacy. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1964.
Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J. Albert, eds.
Diplomacy and Revolution. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1981.
Neutrality
No foreign policy question generated
more controversy in the early years of the
United States than that of which, if either,
side the new nation should take in the
Anglo-French confrontation. This was
hardly a passing problem, given that the
confrontation continued with only minor
breaks from 1792 to 1815. President
George Washington stated what became
the standard approach in 1793 when he
issued his Proclamation of Neutrality.
His executive action, fortified by con-
gressional endorsement in the following
year, staked out an independent course
for the United States. Both internal and
external pressures made pursuing a pol-
icy of neutrality difficult, but in the long
run it seemed to serve the nation well.
One of the American Revolution’s
key goals was to make a clean break
from Europe and its persistent quarrels.
From the mid-17th century on, British
American colonists had been drawn into
and sometimes suffered substantial harm
from the string of wars that pitted Great
Britain against France and from the
changing set of allies that they attracted.
The Revolution itself became yet
another in this series of conflicts after the
American alliance with France brought
French military and naval forces into
play against Great Britain.
Less than a decade after the signing of
the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Great Britain
and France again took up arms against
each other. The chief cause was British
dismay at the republican revolution that
swept France, eventually deposing and
then executing the Bourbon king. Many
 Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 27

Americans cheered this democratic over-
throw of an autocratic regime, seeing it
as a confirmation and endorsement of
their own recently concluded revolution.
Indeed, the more rabid Francophiles
insisted that the United States had a duty
to implement its alliance responsibilities
and to jump in to support France.
President George Washington and his
circle of advisors disagreed. The cabinet
debated many strategies, but Washington
finally decided to issue a proclamation in
the spring of 1793 announcing that the
United States would aid neither side. The
president’s Neutrality Proclamation
raised a storm of protest from the pro-
French faction, but cooler heads recog-
nized the wisdom of keeping the United
States disengaged from European
nations that were pursuing selfish goals.
Federalists in Congress agreed and engi-
neered the passage of the Neutrality Act
in 1794, which confirmed Washington’s
decision. The retiring president reiter-
ated his advocacy of neutrality in his
Farewell Address in 1796.
These documents drew intense criti-
cism from committed internationalists
inside the United States as well as strong
objections from both French and British
diplomats. For example, “Citizen”
Edmond Genêt’s actions, which included
commissioning army officers and priva-
teers in America, drew a stern rebuke

WASHINGTON’S PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY: APRIL 22, 1793

Whereas it appears that a state of war exists between Austria, Prussia, Sardinia,
Great Britain, and the United Netherlands, of the one part, and France on the other;
and the duty and interest of the United States require, that they should with sincer-
ity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the
belligerent Powers. . . .
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our com-
mercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as
we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith.
Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very
remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of
which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in
us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or
the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different
course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far
off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take
such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be
scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making
acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may
choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Source: Richardson, J. D., ed. Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. New
York: Bureau of National Literature, 1917, 1:148–149.
28 | Section 1
from the Washington administration.
Subsequent French politicking became
so blatant that it contributed to President
John Adams’s decision to take the
actions that led to the Quasi-War with
France in 1798.
During these stressful years, the
United States was not alone in champi-
oning neutrality. From time to time, var-
ious European coalitions announced the
formation of “armed neutralities” that
were dedicated to preserving their own
political neutrality at the same time as
they hoped to continue profitable trade
with the warring parties. None of these
ultimately had much impact on the bel-
ligerents, however, and the interpretation
of neutrality on the part of the United
States essentially ruled out U.S. partici-
pation in them.
When Thomas Jefferson, a long time
admirer of France, won the presidency
in 1800, many expected him to aban-
don neutrality. His inaugural address
definitively ended such speculation. In
measured tones, he echoed Washington’s
arguments that the United States had a
set of interests that were far different
than those of the European nations.
He advocated a continuation of what
was already becoming a tradition of
neutrality.
By 1812, dismaying actions on the
part of both Great Britain and France so
stirred passions among Americans that
they felt they had to act. At that point,
Great Britain seemed the worst offender
in abusing U.S. attempts to pursue neu-
tral trading rights, so Britain became the
target of U.S. reprisal. The United States
accomplished almost none of its objec-
tives in the War of 1812. Even so, the
country emerged from the conflict with a
strong and continuing dedication to
remaining neutral in world affairs. Only
minor or regional conflicts occurred
throughout the rest of the 19th century,
allowing the neutrality tradition to
become a deeply ingrained principle of
U.S. foreign policy.
When the Great War, World War I,
broke out in 1914, the neutrality tradi-
tion reinforced President Woodrow
Wilson’s decision to keep the United
States out of the conflict. His advocacy
of remaining neutral in “thought, word,
and deed” helped the United States avoid
being drawn into the war for more than
two and a half years. By the spring of
1917, however, even Wilson had become
convinced that the United States must
take a stand. U.S. entry on the side of the
British and French and their allies was
the first major break with the century-old
tradition of neutrality.
See also: Genêt, Edmond; Paper Blockade;
Quasi-War with France
References
DeConde, Alexander. Entangling Alliance.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1958.
Kaufman, Burton I., ed. Washington’s
Farewell Address. Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1969.
Spaulding, Matthew, and Patrick J. Garrity. A
Sacred Union of Citizens. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1996.
Nonimportation
Even though it might have negative eco-
nomic effects at home, from time to
time, Americans attempted to halt
imports. The goal of nonimportation was
to convince a trading partner, in almost
all cases Great Britain, to desist from
what Americans saw as destructive or
unfair trading practices. Usually imposed
against a specific trading partner, nonim-
portation differs from an embargo,
 Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 29

which typically forbids trade with all
other countries.
The first and, in many ways, one of
the most effective applications of a non-
importation policy occurred in 1767.
After failing to raise revenue from the
American colonies with the unpopular
Sugar and Stamp Acts, Parliament
adopted the suggestion of Chancellor of
the Exchequer Robert Townshend and
imposed a new set of import duties. The
Townshend Acts taxed commodities that
colonists had customarily imported from
the home islands, such as paper, glass,
tea, and lead paint.
Although many colonists continued to
buy such items and to pay the import tax,
a substantial protest arose over what was
increasingly referred to as “taxation
without representation” by the British
Parliament. Throughout the colonies,
protestors simply refused to import
goods that were subject to the Town-
shend duties. By 1770, this economic
rebellion had cost British exporters so
much revenue that they prevailed on Par-
liament to rescind the levies.
Three years later, the Tea Act revived
the taxation issue when it granted the
British East India Company a monopoly
of all tea shipped to America. The fact
that the legislation included an import
tax did not escape the attention of radi-
cals like Samuel Adams. He and his fel-
low Sons of Liberty staged the so-called
“Boston Tea Party” by boarding some
East India Company ships that were
docked in Boston. Throwing overboard
all of the tea chests that they found
enabled the protestors to impose unilat-
erally an effective nonimportation
process.
Parliament reacted to this civil distur-
bance with the “Coercive Acts,” which

Nonimportation was one of the most effective economic weapons Americans used against Great
Britian. This drawing depicts the 1773 Boston Tea Party in which patriots dressed as Mohawk
Indians dumped hundreds of chests of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor to prevent its
importation. (National Archives and Records Administration)
30 | Section 1
American patriots insisted were actually
“Intolerable Acts.” These included clos-
ing the port of Boston to all trade and
imposing martial law on the citizens of
the Massachusetts colony. In response
to these and other affronts, delegates
from all 13 colonies assembled in
Philadelphia at the First Continental
Congress. Among its other actions, the
Congress urged the adoption of a nonim-
portation approach throughout the
colonies. The hope was that the same sort
of economic pressures that had forced
cancellation of the Townshend Acts
would convince the British government
to modify its harsh policies.
Although Parliament subsequently
took some steps to lessen its trade restric-
tions, too many Americans had commit-
ted themselves to fighting for full
independence. The Revolutionary War
began in the spring of 1775, but only the
American victory over Lord Cornwallis
at Yorktown in October 1781 caused the
royal government to begin serious peace
negotiations. Interestingly enough, by
that point, British officials were being
pressured by domestic manufacturers and
exporters whose livelihoods had been
severely damaged during seven years of
American nonimportation.
For better or worse, the citizens of the
new nation concluded that nonimporta-
tion was an extraordinarily powerful
tool. Confidence that American trade,
both imports and exports, was vital—to
Great Britain and, increasingly, to other
European countries—continued to
motivate future policy makers. In the
early 1790s, President George Washing-
ton announced an embargo on U.S.
trade, hoping to duplicate the apparent
success of the earlier nonimportation
programs. Not until the failure of the
extended embargo that President
Thomas Jefferson had imposed in 1807
did Americans recognize the limitations
of a nonimportation policy.
See also: Embargo; Neutrality; Plan of 1776
References
Barrow, Thomas C. Trade and Empire.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1967.
Kammen, Michael G. Empire and Interest.
Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970.
Thomas, Peter D. G. The Townshend Duties
Crisis. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1987.
No-Transfer Principle
In the early 1800s, the United States
began voicing opposition to the possible
transfer of colonies in the Western Hemi-
sphere from one Europ ean country to
another. The No-Transfer Principle was
applied to both Florida and Cuba, and it
occupied a prominent place in the
Monroe Doctrine as well. Over a century
later, fear that Nazi Germany might
attempt to extend its influence in the
Americas revived interest in the No-
Transfer Principle. At no time, however,
did U.S. application of the doctrine fore-
stall the possibility that the United States
itself might annex additional territories
in the New World.
The most obvious example of just
what the Americans did not want to hap-
pen was the retrocession of Louisiana
from Spain to France in 1800. Confident
expansionists in the United States con-
sidered Spain a weak and overextended
colonial power at that point, and they
eagerly anticipated the moment when
their country would take over loosely
held Spanish colonies. When Napoléon’s
government reestablished French control
of Louisiana, it threatened to stifle U.S.
expansionism. France was one of the

most powerful nations in the world, and
President Thomas Jefferson immediately
reacted with a number of initiatives
aimed at weakening or eliminating the
threat of a powerful European colonial
empire to the south and west. The
Louisiana Purchase in 1803 accom-
plished that goal far more definitively
than he had anticipated.
Other nearby Spanish colonies
intrigued U.S. expansionists. In 1808,
for example, the Jefferson administration
went on record as opposing a possible
British or French takeover of Cuba.
Although that possibility faded away,
Jefferson’s successor, James Madison,
became concerned that a similar fate
might befall East Florida. The fact that it
had been under British control for the
two decades between 1763 and 1783
gave credence to fears that another trans-
fer might take place.
The elections of 1810 enabled
stridently Anglophobic War Hawks to
become a highly influential faction in
the U.S. Congress. They responded
promptly to a request from President
Madison for a formal announcement of
U.S. opposition to any such transfer. A
joint resolution articulating the No-
Transfer Principle with regard to Florida
swept through Congress in 1811. It
authorized the president to use tactics up
to and including temporary occupation,
if necessary, to prevent Spain from relin-
quishing control. This resolution and
Madison’s policies in general were
based, of course, on the undisguised U.S.
intention to annex all of Florida to the
United States as soon as possible. Secre-
tary of State John Quincy Adams
achieved that objective eight years later
in the Transcontinental Treaty.
At almost the same time, the possibil-
ity of other colonial transfers arose
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 31
again, this time as a result of the actions
of the so-called Concert of Europe. The
five major European powers, acting as
members of the Quintuple Alliance,
authorized France to invade Spain in
order to reinstall a Bourbon monarch on
the throne. Both British and American
statesmen worried that this might
encourage France to assume control of
some of Spain’s American possessions.
One of the three major points of Presi-
dent James Monroe’s famous doctrine in
1823 was a restatement of the No-Transfer
Principle.
By enshrining the No-Transfer Princi-
ple in the Monroe Doctrine, the presi-
dent ensured that it would continue to be
a key element in U.S. attitudes about the
Western Hemisphere. It certainly played
a part in Secretary of State William
Seward’s reaction to a French attempt to
install a puppet regime in Mexico in the
early 1860s. The United States would no
more countenance the transfer of an
already independent nation into a
dependency of a European nation than it
would an existing colony.
The Civil War demonstrated the mili-
tary power of the United States and
enhanced its influence in the Western
Hemisphere. By then, as well, most of
the people in the region had severed their
colonial ties to Europe. The few excep-
tions, such as Belize and the Guianas,
were of comparatively little concern to
the United States. The only major trans-
fers that took place subsequently
involved Americans assuming control of
areas such as Puerto Rico and the Danish
West Indies.
When Hitler’s armies invaded and
conquered France in 1940, concern arose
that France’s few remaining Caribbean
colonies might fall under German control
as well. Should that occur, they could
32 | Section 1
become staging areas for subversion by
the Axis powers. Foreign ministers from
the American republics met in Cuba and
promulgated the Act of Havana. The
heart of that declaration was a strong
multinational statement of support for the
No-Transfer Principle, which had been a
traditional policy of the United States for
more than a century.
See also: Monroe Doctrine
References
Logan, John A. No Transfer: An American
Security Principle. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1961.
May, Ernest R. The Making of the Monroe
Doctrine. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 1975.
Paper Blockade
During the protracted warfare between
Great Britain and France in the early
19th century, both sides resorted to
increasingly desperate measures. Among
them were paper blockades, arbitrary
proclamations designed to restrict vari-
ous sorts of seaborne trade. As the most
active trading nation not engaged in the
war, the United States suffered more
than any other country from these paper
blockades. After several attempts to neu-
tralize their effects, the United States
went to war against Great Britain in
1812 in part as a protest over its use of
paper blockades.
A blockade is usually considered an
act of war. During a conflict, a nation
with a large navy may decide to place its
ships outside its enemy’s ports to prevent
the import or export of vital resources.
To blockade a nation as large as France
with an extensive coastline along the
English Channel, the Atlantic Ocean,
and the Mediterranean, literally thou-
sands of ships would be needed. Even
the mighty Royal Navy lacked the
resources to impose a conventional
blockade of France.
An alternative way of interrupting
trade was needed. In May 1806, the
British government announced what
came to be called the Fox Blockade. An
official decree, called an order-in-council,
instituted a partial blockade of the
French coast that authorized Royal Navy
vessels to stop any merchant ship intend-
ing to call at a French port anywhere in
the world. British ships could hover just
off the U.S. coast—beyond the three-
mile limit, for example—and intercept
vessels that they suspected of hauling
cargo destined for France.
In practice, any merchantman leaving
port anywhere might be stopped at sea,
its cargo searched, and a decision made
that it was carrying either outright con-
traband or other goods that might be use-
ful to the French war effort. The U.S.
government bitterly protested the arbi-
trariness of this policy, particularly com-
plaining about the very broad definition
of contraband that the British insisted on
employing.
As bad as the British policy appeared,
in November the French went a step fur-
ther when Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
issued an imperial decree at Berlin.
Although his fleets were far too small to
mount an effective blockade, the decree
declared that the British Isles were “in a
state of blockade.” In effect, the Berlin
Decree gave French navy vessels and
privateers free rein to stop any ship any-
where in the world to search it for “law-
ful prizes,” which could be and were
often interpreted as anything manufac-
tured in Great Britain. Virtually every
ship in the world had, at the very least, a
British sextant or some other essential

item that could be used to justify a
seizure.
The blizzard of paper blockades had
only begun. In January and November
1807, the British issued more orders-in-
council. These were designed to assert
complete control of external trade with
all of Europe, an effort aimed at breaking
open the so-called Continental System
that Napoléon had created. His goal was
to make Europe so self-sufficient that it
would require no imports at all, thereby
rendering Great Britain’s control of the
seas irrelevant. Napoléon responded
with another imperial decree, issued
from Milan, stating that France would
consider any vessel that touched the
British Isles as a British, that is, as an
enemy vessel, thus subject to capture.
U.S. shippers were caught in an
impossible situation. If they tried to
trade with France, the British would
stop them. If they confined their trading
activities to British ports, they risked
capture or sinking by French corsairs.
Even so, the global trade turmoil was so
intense and disruptive that if a U.S.
shipowner sent out three vessels and lost
two of them, the profits on the third ship
more than offset the investment in all
three.
U.S. merchants may have been will-
ing to take such risks, but President
Thomas Jefferson was not. In his view,
the U.S. carrying trade was absolutely
vital to the economic viability of both
France and Great Britain. He chose,
therefore, to impose a total embargo on
all shipping in and out of all U.S. ports.
He anticipated that, within a few months,
Great Britain or France or both would be
so desperate for U.S. goods that they
would cancel their paper blockades.
Instead, it was the U.S. economy that
withered away. Great Britain saw the
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 33
U.S. embargo as strengthening its con-
trol of world trade; Napoléon saw it as
shoring up his Continental System. As a
final insult, he issued yet another decree,
this one at Bayonne, stating that any U.S.
ship that had somehow evaded Jefferson’s
embargo must, in fact, be British and
therefore subject to French capture.
The unsuccessful embargo terminated
when Jefferson left office in March
1809. The two succeeding U.S. trade
policies, the Nonintercourse Act and
Macon’s Bill Number 2, also failed to
ease European trade restrictions. Great
Britain’s paper blockades remained in
force and became a central factor in
President James Madison’s decision to
declare war in 1812.
Ironically, at that point, the British
economy had sunk into a deep depres-
sion, in large measure because of its
inability to import U.S. raw materials or
export manufactured goods to the United
States. While the American Congress
was debating whether or not to go to war,
the British government concluded that it
must cancel its paper blockade policies.
Unfortunately, news of that decision
took too long to reach the United States
to stave off the war.
By the time commissioners from both
sides met to discuss peace terms in 1814,
the issue of paper blockades had virtu-
ally ceased to exist. Great Britain and its
allies had defeated Napoléon’s armies on
the battlefield. Although the deposed
emperor would escape from exile on the
island of Elba and briefly present a
renewed threat, the world was essentially
at peace for another 100 years. Neither
paper blockades—nor actual blockades,
for that matter—were needed in such a
world, so what had loomed as a major
disruptive issue for so long just faded
away.
34 | Section 1
See also: Impressment; Rule of 1756; War
Hawks
References
McDonald, Forrest. The Presidency of
Thomas Jefferson. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 1976.
Spivak, Burton I. Jefferson’s English Crisis.
Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1979.
Stagg, J. C. A. Mr. Madison’s War. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Pinckney’s Treaty
In 1795, Thomas Pinckney negotiated a
treaty with Spain that fulfilled almost all
U.S. desires at that point. The chief pro-
visions of the agreement included a fixed
southern boundary for the United States,
open trade along the whole length of the
Mississippi River, and a pledge on both
sides to prevent Indian depredations
from either direction. Pinckney’s Treaty
was very popular in the South and West,
and it helped offset dismay in those
regions over Jay’s Treaty, which had
been negotiated the previous year.
U.S. relations with Spain remained
unsettled after the Revolutionary War.
Although Spain had provided some assis-
tance to the American patriots, it was
slow to recognize a new nation that might
serve as a model for revolutionaries in its
own American colonies. Florida pre-
sented additional complications. Great
Britain had taken control of that area as a
prize of its victory over Spain and France
in 1763. But Florida was of little use to
the British once they had granted inde-
pendence to the United States, so they
returned it to Spanish control in 1783.
The actual boundaries of what they
had returned remained in dispute. Great
Britain had maintained a northern
boundary of West Florida that ran along
the 31st parallel, but prior Spanish
claims reached up to 32° 28’. Basing its
position on the British treaty conces-
sions, the United States insisted that 31°
was the correct boundary. Spain refused
to recognize the American claim.
Another complication in the 1783
Treaty of Paris between Great Britain and
the United States was a provision that
granted citizens of the new nation the
right to free navigation along the Missis-
sippi River from its source to its mouth.
Although no one disputed American
shipping along the river that defined the
nation’s western border, several hundred
miles of the river’s final course ran
through Spanish-held Louisiana Terri-
tory. Spain naturally questioned Great
Britain’s authority to grant trading rights
through territories that it did not control.
A major American objective in the
Revolutionary War had been to control
the Ohio Valley region. To develop its full
agricultural potential, however, settlers
streaming into that area needed to ship
bulk goods down the river network and,
ultimately, to an ocean port, such as New
Orleans. The federal government found
itself under considerable pressure to
ensure American rights to that passage.
President George Washington clearly
did not wish to foment a war with Spain
in the late stages of his second term. For-
tunately, at that point, the Spanish gov-
ernment had become concerned that the
United States and Great Britain might
make common cause, especially after the
signing of Jay’s Treaty in 1794. To offset
this potential alliance, Spain asked the
United States to send a diplomatic repre-
sentative. Washington ordered Thomas
Pinckney, then serving as U.S. minister
in England, to go to Spain; Pinckney was
fully authorized to negotiate a wide-
ranging treaty.

A compliant Spain acceded to almost
all of Pinckney’s requests. The treaty
defined the 31st parallel as the boundary
between the United States and Florida.
Spain also agreed to allow Americans to
use the Mississippi River route all the
way to New Orleans. Once there, they
were granted the right of “free deposit”
at the port, absolving them of the need to
pay import or export duties for goods
that were destined to be loaded on
ocean-going vessels. This provision had
a three-year term, but the right to free
deposit was routinely extended in the
future. The final major provision was a
mutual promise to work to prevent
Indian or criminal raids on each other’s
territories.
Pinckney’s Treaty was enormously
popular back home. Particularly appreci-
ated by Southerners and Westerners,
even Americans living in the Northeast
considered it to be a positive balance to
Jay’s Treaty. The Senate ratified Pinck-
ney’s Treaty unanimously, signaling a
major achievement for the Federalists who
had come to dominate the Washington
administration.
For the next several years, the United
States and Spain enjoyed reasonably
amicable relations. Only when Napoléon
Bonaparte decided to retake Louisiana
did the situation deteriorate. By 1803,
the French had cancelled the U.S. right
to free deposit in New Orleans. President
Thomas Jefferson therefore had ample
motivation to negotiate a new arrange-
ment with France, a step that ultimately
led to the Louisiana Purchase.
See also: Louisiana; Transcontinental Treaty
(Florida)
References
Bemis, Samuel Flagg. Pinckney’s Treaty.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1926.
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 35
Whitaker, Arthur Preston. The Spanish
American Frontier, 1783–1795. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1927.
Plan of 1776
Two months after they signed the Decla-
ration of Independence on July 4, 1776,
delegates at the Continental Congress
decided to lay out some principles to
guide the new nation’s foreign policy.
The main focus of the Plan of 1776 was
articulating trading rights for a country
that was not allied with any other. If the
United States hoped to plot a neutral
course in the world, it needed to chart
that journey. The principles of the Plan
of 1776 were frequently discussed in
future negotiations, and they remained
fundamental U.S. desires right through
the War of 1812.
The plan’s basic principle was that
“free ships make free goods.” In this
context, a free ship was one registered in
a neutral country, as the United States
intended to be. If such a free ship took on
cargo anywhere in the world, the plan
argued, the ship’s neutrality effectively
neutralized the cargo as well. A typical
case in the 1790s would be a U.S. ship
that called at a French colonial port and
loaded tropical products. According to
the doctrine that “free ships make free
goods,” those products ceased to be
French and thus could be carried any-
where in the world.
An exception to this rule were goods
defined as contraband. During wartime,
it was generally acknowledged that guns,
ammunition, explosives, and the like
would be useful in combat. They were
categorized as contraband, goods that
naval vessels of warring countries could
legitimately seize in order to deny them
to their enemies. In the Plan of 1776, the
36 | Section 1
United States recognized the concept of
contraband but argued that the list
should be limited only to those items
clearly related to warfare.
A third basic element in the Plan of
1776 was insistence that ships from neu-
tral countries should be able to trade
directly with countries at war, even if
such trade had previously been discour-
aged. That put the American plan into
direct opposition to Great Britain’s Rule
of 1756. Not surprisingly, the British had
no intention of agreeing to what they
considered a contradictory policy.
In a revision of the Plan of 1776
eight years later, the Confederation Con-
gress added a fourth principle. Fully aware
that a nation engaged in war might wish to
restrict trade by blockading enemy ports,
the Americans claimed that such a block-
ade had to be effective enough to threaten
“eminent danger” to those who hoped to
breach it. This stand put the United States
in stark opposition to what became known
as “paper blockades” during the ensuing
Napoleonic Wars. When they could not
physically close off their enemy’s ports,
both the British and the French issued
decrees or executive orders declaring that
a blockade existed. Those who, like the
Americans, were exercising their right to
neutral shipping strenuously objected to
such declarations.
The Plan of 1776 received its first
foreign endorsement in the 1778 Treaty
of Amity and Commerce that Benjamin
Franklin negotiated with France. The
French government may have been will-
ing to accede to the American plan pri-
marily to tweak the noses of their
perennial enemies, the British. The
treaty contained provisions supporting
neutral rights doctrines such as “free
ships make free goods” and a short list of
contraband.
Shortly afterward, other neutral
nations, such as Russia and the Baltic
States, formulated their own set of prin-
ciples similar to those laid down in the
Plan of 1776. These countries attempted
to join together into “armed neutrality,”
with the goal of defending their right to
trade where and when they chose. The
initiative proved to be rather weak and
ineffective, however, so Great Britain,
the chief target of the policies, largely
ignored them.
When Benjamin Franklin negotiated
the peace agreement with England in
1783, he failed to convince the British
government to include elements of the
Plan of 1776. Fortunately, the world
remained generally peaceful for the
next few years, rendering the issues
moot. When the French Revolution trig-
gered the first of a long series of world
wars, however, Americans once again
found themselves in the awkward posi-
tion of neutrals hoping to take advan-
tage of the disturbances to expand trade
opportunities.
Once again, Great Britain was the
chief opponent of neutral trading rights.
The British refused to acknowledge U.S.
desires in Jay’s Treaty in 1794. Spain
accepted some parts of the Plan of 1776
in Pinckney’s Treaty the following year.
Even more important was France’s will-
ingness to include neutral rights provi-
sions in the Treaty of Mortefontaine,
which ended the Quasi-War with France
in 1801.
None of this mattered as much as
Great Britain’s refusal to countenance
the concept. For the next 20 years, the
United States vainly cited the principles
of the Plan of 1776 in defending its role
in international commerce. British rejec-
tion of those concepts played a key role
in fueling the hostility that led the United

States to declare war in 1812. Ironically
enough, however, the United States
found itself in the opposite camp in
1861, opposing all European trade with
the Confederate states and arguing
against the very principles that it had
first articulated in 1776.
See also: Jay’s Treaty; Neutrality; Paper Block-
ades; Quasi-War with France; Rule of 1756
References
Bemis, Samuel Flagg. The Diplomacy of the
American Revolution. 3rd ed. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1957.
Madariaga, Isabel de. Britain, Russia, and
the Armed Neutrality of 1780. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962
Stetser, Vernon G. The Commercial Reci-
procity Policy of the United States,
1774–1829. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1937.
Plenipotentiary
Prior to the era of instantaneous interna-
tional communication, many diplomatic
envoys sent overseas possessed full
authority to negotiate. The term
“plenipotentiary,” of which the etymo-
logical roots stem from “full of” and
“power,” applied to such individuals.
The home country could, of course, dis-
avow or fail to ratify any agreements that
a plenipotentiary emissary negotiated,
but, in most cases, carefully worded
instructions prevented diplomats from
straying too far outside the expectations
of the governments that had dispatched
them.
When the American Revolution
began, the Continental Congress relied
on private citizens like Arthur Lee,
already in London, to provide intelli-
gence. Benjamin Franklin and other
members of Congress advocated sending
out official representatives, carefully
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 37
instructed by the Committee of Secret
Correspondence, to act as spokesmen for
American interests and desires abroad.
New Yorker Silas Deane was the first to
accept such an assignment, traveling to
Europe and calling on foreign officials
with the goal of obtaining supplies,
loans, grants, and, it was hoped, formal
recognition for the new nation.
Other prominent Americans, includ-
ing John Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin
Franklin himself, took on diplomatic
missions for the United States. Of all of
these, Franklin was granted the widest
latitude. He clearly merited the plenipo-
tentiary designation, in part because he
had been one of the most influential
leaders managing foreign relations in
Philadelphia before he headed for
France. With tact, charm, and cleverness,
he laid the groundwork for a more for-
mal French relationship with the United
States. Capitalizing on news of the
American victory at Saratoga in October
1777, he, along with Deane and Lee,
negotiated and signed two treaties with
the French foreign minister, the Comte
de Vergennes. Congress duly ratified the
Treaties of Amity and Commerce and of
Alliance without alteration in 1778.
Even in the best of times, messages
could take two months or more to cross
the Atlantic by sailing ship, so American
envoys simply had to be trusted enough
to operate on their own. John Jay was
only marginally successful in his mis-
sion to Spain, but John Adams achieved
remarkable success in gaining both
recognition and expanded financial
support from the government of the
Netherlands.
The situation became much more
complex when Congress authorized
these two men to collaborate with
Franklin on peace negotiations with
38 | Section 1
Great Britain after the Battle of York-
town in 1781. Each of them was a
plenipotentiary, but they did not always
agree with one another on how the talks
should be conducted or on what objec-
tives should be considered nonnego-
tiable. Far older and more experienced
than his fellows on the delegation,
Franklin took the lead in laying out U.S.
demands for the British negotiator,
Richard Oswald. The other American
commissioners ultimately accepted the
terms of the 1783 Treaty of Paris that
Franklin had engineered.
After the Revolution, the president
and his secretary of state frequently
granted plenipotentiary status to the min-
isters and other diplomats they sent
abroad. Some, like Thomas Pinckney in
Spain in 1795, did very well indeed.
John Jay, on the other hand, failed to
obtain in his negotiations with Great
Britain many of the objectives that his
instructions had outlined.
A striking example of the importance
of plenipotentiary status came in 1803
when President Thomas Jefferson sent
James Monroe to France, charged with
gaining U.S. control of the island of New
Orleans and a portion of West Florida.
Robert Livingston was already in Paris,
serving as U.S. minister to Emperor
Napoléon’s court and lobbying for the
same goal. Even before Monroe arrived,
French foreign minister Talleyrand
suddenly offered Livingston an opportu-
nity to buy all of the Louisiana Territory.
When Monroe arrived, he and Livingston
quickly decided to ignore the limita-
tions in their instructions. The treaty
ceding all of Louisiana, including New
Orleans, was the most remarkable
diplomatic achievement of the Jefferson
administration, and it would not have
occurred if the U.S. negotiators had
failed to exercise their plenipotentiary
authority.
A later instance proved equally for-
tuitous. At the height of the Mexican
War, President James K. Polk sent the
clerk of the State Department, Nicholas
Trist, to Mexico with plenipotentiary
authority to negotiate a peace treaty
with that country. Polk soon aban-
doned hope of a successful negotiation
and ordered his envoy to return to the
United States. Trist stayed on, how-
ever, and signed an agreement, which
became known as the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, early in 1848. Polk
ultimately decided that he could do no
better, so he submitted the treaty for
Senate ratification.
In modern times, a top envoy to
another country may hold the title
“Ambassador Extraordinary and
Plenipotentiary,” but that elaborate
phrase is often a relic of past practices.
In almost all cases, a U.S. ambassador or
negotiator receives daily or even minute-
by-minute instructions and advice from
desk officers and higher level officials at
the State Department in Washington.
Although the character and personality
of an individual ambassador can be vital
in opening doors to discussion and lob-
bying for support, the fundamental oper-
ating procedures prevent him or her from
exerting the wide-ranging authority that
earlier envoys exercised.
See also: Franklin, Benjamin; Jay, John;
Louisiana; Pinckney’s Treaty; Treaty
(Treaty of Paris, 1783); Trist, Nicholas
References
DeConde, Alexander. This Affair of
Louisiana. New York: Scribner, 1976.
Dull, Jonathan R. A Diplomatic History of
the American Revolution. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1985.
 Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 39

Morris, Richard B. The Peacemakers. New
York: Harper and Row, 1965.
Van Alstyne, Richard W. Empire and Inde-
pendence. New York: Wiley, 1965.
Quasi-War with France
The quasi-war, or undeclared war, that
dominated the presidency of John
Adams represented the final breakdown
of relations between France and the
United States in the 1790s. Conducted
almost exclusively at sea, the damage to
both sides was relatively minor, but the
confrontation stirred enormous passions
among Americans. After several botched
diplomatic initiatives on both sides,
Adams responded positively to a French
proposal for renewed negotiations,
which ultimately led to a mutually satis-
factory resolution.
When the French Revolution deposed
the most powerful monarchy in Europe,
it understandably dismayed the leaders
of other monarchical governments. By
1793, France had been drawn into the
first of a series of conflicts with various
coalitions of its European neighbors that
would last nearly a quarter of a century.
In these circumstances, the status of the
French alliance with the United States,
dating to 1778, became the subject of a
number of interpretations.
If the French had hoped for direct
military assistance from the United
States, President George Washington’s
1793 Neutrality Proclamation and subse-
quent neutrality legislation effectively
ruled it out. Complicating the picture,
however, was Jay’s Treaty, negotiated in
1794 and ratified shortly afterward.
Regardless of both American and British
interpretations of the document, the
French government chose to assume that
it made the United States a subordinate
of its archenemy, Great Britain. From
time to time, French and American ships
tangled, primarily in the Caribbean, as
hotheads on both sides responded to
rising international tensions.
Polarized viewpoints festered within
the United States as well. President

WASHINGTON’S FAREWELL ADDRESS:

SEPTEMBER 17, 1796

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with
all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not
equally enjoin it? . . .
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the
foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it. . . .
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable
defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary
emergencies. . . .
There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from
nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought
to discard.

Source: Richardson, J. D., ed. Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. New
York: Bureau of National Literature, 1917, 1:213–214.
40 | Section 1
Washington was nominally allied with
the Federalist faction, but the real leader
of that partisan group was Treasury
Secretary Alexander Hamilton. Even
after he left that office, Hamilton and his
allies continued to insist that close,
friendly ties with Great Britain were
essential to U.S. prosperity. Those who
disagreed coalesced into the Republican
Party, whose able leaders were Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison. True to
their party designation, they tended to sup-
port the republican revolution in France,
even when it took less admirable turns.
Hoping to convince the American
people to support the Republicans and
elect Jefferson to succeed Washington as
president, French diplomats engaged in
active politicking. This maneuvering
The Quasi-War with France took place almost exclusively at sea and included this confrontation
between the USS Constellation and the French frigate L’Insurgente early in 1799. (Naval Historical
Foundation)
culminated in their decision to break
diplomatic relations entirely in 1796.
Federalist John Adams won the presi-
dency anyway, and he tried to patch up
this breach by sending a three-man com-
mission to France. The unexpected result
was the XYZ Affair, which convinced
Americans that France had insulted their
country. A huge tidal wave of anti-
French, or at least pro-American, senti-
ment swept the nation.
To placate the warmongers in his own
party, Adams put the United States on a
war footing. Although never formally
declared, a quasi-war rapidly took shape.
Adams called for greatly increased naval
expenditures, including the building of
major war ships, such as the Constellation
and the Constitution, which, to this day,

ride at anchor in Baltimore and Boston.
While awaiting their planning and con-
struction, smaller U.S. Navy vessels and
privateers captured or sunk more than 80
French ships.
The army received attention as well,
with an initial call for a 10,000-man
fighting force. Adams called George
Washington out of retirement and named
him lieutenant-general, but Washington
then designated his old comrade-in-
arms, Alexander Hamilton, to lead the
forces in the field. Well aware of how
dangerous it would be to give the ambi-
tious Hamilton such an opportunity for
glory, Commander-in-Chief Adams
avoided ordering this army into action.
The quasi-war created a different sort
of casualty, however. In 1798, the
Federalist-controlled Congress passed a
Sedition Act and three acts directed at
noncitizens. The so-called Alien and
Sedition Acts created a storm of vituper-
ative controversy and led to the trial and
imprisonment of a number of critics of
the war and of the Adams administration.
Fortunately, French foreign minister
Talleyrand realized that no one was ben-
efiting from this situation. Moreover, he
wanted to restore friendly relations with
the United States, in part to support his
growing interest in reestablishing a
French empire in Louisiana and Canada.
He sent a message to William Vans
Murray, U.S. minister in Holland, prom-
ising to treat a new commission from the
United States with the respect that is due
representatives of an independent nation.
Adams, too, understood how disruptive
the quasi-war had become. Without con-
sulting his cabinet, he nominated Murray
to be minister to France. Congress and his
advisors were shocked, but the most they
could do was add two others to the mis-
sion: Oliver Ellsworth and William R.
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 41
Davie. True to his promise, Talleyrand
greeted the new commissioners warmly
and, more to the point, without any
implication that they should provide a
bribe.
Even so, negotiations went slowly.
The Americans demanded a $20 million
payment to their country for French
depredations on U.S. trade. But French
citizens had suffered substantial losses
as well, and Talleyrand rejected any con-
sideration of paying compensation.
While the discussions languished,
Napoléon Bonaparte emerged as a new,
much more authoritative leader of
France. Talleyrand somehow managed to
remain in office through this transition,
so an agreement still seemed possible.
To demonstrate how important he
considered the matter, Napoléon named
his brother Joseph to head the French
negotiating team. When the U.S. com-
mission dropped its monetary claims, the
two delegations were able to draft a
mutually beneficial document. In a key
provision, France released the United
States from the 1778 Alliance. The
Americans in return agreed to a broader
interpretation of neutral rights than Jay’s
Treaty had included. Napoléon person-
ally attended the gala celebration of the
resolution of negotiations at Joseph
Bonaparte’s estate at Mortefontaine.
Both sides signed the Treaty of
Mortefontaine on September 30, 1800.
However, news of the peace treaty failed
to reach the United States until after the
November presidential election in which
Thomas Jefferson defeated the incum-
bent. Adams had no regrets. He believed
that achieving peace had been his most
important presidential accomplishment.
He was no doubt justified in doing so:
the United States and France never again
engaged in either war or quasi-war.
42 | Section 1
See also: Alliance; XYZ Affair
References
DeConde, Alexander. The Quasi-War. New
York: Scribner, 1966.
Ferling, John E. John Adams. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1992.
Hill, Peter P. William Vans Murray, Federal-
ist Diplomat. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 1971.
Ratification
Because those who negotiate agreements
are often subordinate members of a gov-
ernment, most governments reserve the
right to review their work. If a treaty or
agreement appears beneficial, the gov-
ernment will ratify it. Until the ratifica-
tion process has been completed on both
sides, however, the terms of a diplomatic
arrangement are not necessarily binding
on either party. The U.S. Constitution
grants responsibility for ratification to the
Senate, where at least two-thirds of the
members must vote in favor.
It was hardly surprising that the
drafters of the Constitution assigned rat-
ification to the Senate. After all, until at
least two-thirds of the states had
accepted that document, the Continental
Congress had retained the right to ratify
international agreements. The most
important early case of ratification came
in 1778, when Congress speedily
endorsed the two treaties that Benjamin
Franklin and his associates had ham-
mered out with the French government.
Although the French alliance ultimately
became quite unpopular, it appeared
vital to the cause of independence at the
time of its ratification.
After the war, the United States suf-
fered a major depression, in part because
Spain cut off American trade to its
Caribbean islands once the peace treaty
was signed in 1783. Secretary for
Foreign Affairs John Jay took up the
question with Don Diego de Gardoqui,
Spain’s official envoy to the United
States. The Spaniard’s instructions did
not permit him to allow American trade
through the lower Mississippi and the
port of New Orleans; the Confederation
Congress would not allow Jay to surren-
der the American claim to free passage.
Jay finally concluded that he could
obtain American access to the Spanish
West Indies if he gave way on Mississippi
transit. Congress considered his request,
but five southern states voted against
approval. The Articles of Confedera-
tion required a positive vote of least 9 of
13 state delegations to take any action,
so Jay’s initiative failed.
When the Philadelphia convention
drafted the Constitution in 1787, the
delegates recalled the vote on the Jay-
Gardoqui issue. They decided to retain
the two-thirds rule for treaty ratification
and assigned the responsibility to the
Senate, the body that effectively repre-
sents the member states of the Union.
The Constitution simultaneously granted
the president broad-ranging responsibil-
ity for conducting foreign relations, and,
over time, executive agreements became
a common method for presidents to
strike deals with overseas counterparts.
Even so, the ratification power was, and
remains, a powerful mechanism for the
Senate to influence and, ultimately,
approve or disapprove of a president’s
policies.
The first treaty to be submitted to the
Senate for ratification was the one that
John Jay negotiated with Great Britain in
1794. President Washington had grave
doubts about its acceptability, given
the wide unpopularity of some of the
provisions of Jay’s Treaty. In the end, the

Senators voted 20 to 10 in favor of rati-
fying it. Pinckney’s Treaty with Spain,
signed the following year, proved much
more popular, receiving unanimous
support on a ratification vote.
To ensure popular approval and leg-
islative backing for initiatives, a presi-
dent is wise to provide the Senate with
opportunities to ratify foreign policies.
Some treaties that might have seemed
noncontroversial nevertheless generated
opposition when presented for ratifica-
tion. When President Thomas Jefferson
sent the 1803 Louisiana Purchase agree-
ment to the Senate, it triggered a rebel-
lion among strict constructionists of the
Constitution in his own party. They
pointed out that nothing in the document
authorized a president to expand the size
of the United States. Eager expansion-
ists, on the other hand, welcomed the ini-
tiative and were numerous enough in the
Senate to ensure ratification.
U.S. reluctance was often only par-
tially responsible for delays. The
Spanish Cortez dithered for more than
two years before it ratified the 1819
Transcontinental Treaty, in which Spain
transferred control of Florida to the
United States. Even though the U.S. Sen-
ate had approved the agreement instanta-
neously, the delay allowed for objections
to gain a hearing in Washington. The
Senate therefore had somewhat more
difficulty reratifying the document once
Spanish approval had taken place in
1821.
A couple of decades later, another
expansionist treaty failed completely.
John C. Calhoun was perhaps the
nation’s most outspoken advocate of the
expansion of slavery into new territo-
ries. Even so, President John Tyler
appointed the South Carolinian his sec-
retary of state in 1843. Calhoun then
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 43
publicly stated that expanding slavery
was a major purpose of the annexation
treaty that he had worked out with the
Republic of Texas. The Senate handed
Calhoun an embarrassing defeat when it
voted two to one against ratification.
After careful consideration and extended
negotiations, Tyler presented a different
agreement to Congress, one that care-
fully avoided emphasizing expansion of
slavery. Certain he could never get a
two-thirds Senate majority for ratifica-
tion, he asked for and received a joint
resolution in favor of annexing Texas.
Each house easily generated the simple
majority needed to approve the
resolution.
Over time, the United States became
more sophisticated at foreign relations
and presidents became more astute at
judging what the Senate would or would
not approve. That being the case, the
defeat of the Versailles Treaty in 1919
appears to be truly remarkable. President
Woodrow Wilson personally went to
Europe as head of the U.S. delegation to
ensure that the resulting treaty would
reflect U.S. desires. Back home, restive
senators found dozens of reasons to
object to the treaty that Wilson finally
presented for their ratification. Although
some of their carping was pure partisan
politics, fundamental questions about the
right of nations to pursue independent
foreign policies were never successfully
answered.
By then, many Americans had
become thoroughly disillusioned with
the Great War and the chaos that it had
left in its wake. Isolation from European
and even world affairs seemed very
appealing. When Wilson suffered a
paralyzing stroke while on a speaking
tour in favor of ratification, it stilled the
most eloquent and persuasive voice
44 | Section 1
supporting the treaty. In November
1919, the Senate voted on ratification
twice; neither time did it win even a sim-
ple majority. A third vote in March 1920
did better but still fell well short of the
required two-thirds in favor.
The Senate’s rejection of the
Versailles Treaty stands as an important
landmark and precedent for future nego-
tiations. Routine agreements may win
routine ratification, but controversial ini-
tiatives are always in jeopardy of rejec-
tion. U.S. diplomats have signed several
recent international agreements, but
presidents have been loath to submit
them to certain rejection. Controversial
topics, such as global warming and
human rights, simply have no chance of
attracting the necessary endorsement.
For good or ill, the ratification instru-
ment remains highly effective, even
today.
See also: Calhoun, John Caldwell; Fourteen
Points; League of Nations; Louisiana
References
Adler, David Gray, and Larry N. George, eds.
The Constitution and the Conduct of
American Foreign Policy. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1996.
Glennon, Michael J. Constitutional Diplo-
macy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1990.
Henkin, Louis. Foreign Affairs and the
United States Constitution. 2nd ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Recognition
Formal relations among nations can only
occur if their governments recognize
each other as having validity. No one
accorded the United States such recogni-
tion in 1776. The first formal acknowl-
edgment of the new nation’s independent
existence came when the French signed
two treaties in 1778. Far more important
was the Treaty of Paris in 1783, in which
the former colonial overlord, Great
Britain, officially recognized the exis-
tence of the independent United States.
Seeking recognition and granting it have
subsequently remained extraordinarily
important diplomatic tools for the United
States and the nations with which it
chooses to interact.
The Founding Fathers who pledged
their lives, fortunes, and sacred honors
to the United States on July 4, 1776,
were the only ones who had formally
recognized the existence of the new
nation. Even before the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, American
agents in Europe were contacting other
governments—seeking military assis-
tance, money, and even more important,
recognition of the United States as an
independent nation.
Not until Benjamin Franklin led the
negotiation of two treaties with French
foreign minister Vergennes in early 1778
did any other nation actually recognize
the United States. Once those treaties
were ratified, both countries exchanged
high-level diplomatic representatives,
and the French government greatly
increased the level and types of assis-
tance that it provided the embattled
revolutionaries. Through persistent and
patient diplomacy, John Adams per-
suaded the government of the Netherlands
to follow suit, recognizing the United
States as a legitimate, independent
nation in 1782.
None of that would have mattered in
the long run if Great Britain had failed to
grant similar recognition. When Franklin
met with British negotiator Richard
Oswald after the British defeat at York-
town, he insisted that British recognition
of the United States was an indispensable
 Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 45

requirement for any peace treaty. More-

over, he made sure that the final agree-
ment defined boundaries that confirmed
the territorial integrity of the new nation.
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 contained
these essential provisions. Within a few
years, other European nations also recog-
nized the independent United States,
allowing for diplomatic exchanges and
trade negotiations.
The dramatic success of revolutionary
forces in France in the early 1790s
abruptly reversed the situation. The
treaties between the United States and
France had been negotiated by statesmen
representing the government of King
Louis XVI. When the king was executed
in 1793, the succeeding French govern-
ment sent a staunch republican, Edmond
Genêt, to serve as its representative in President George Washington accepts the
the United States. President George credentials of French minister Edmond Genêt
Washington consulted with his cabinet in 1793. Although the United States had
extended full diplomatic recognition to France,
as to whether he should accept “Citizen”
Genêt’s interference in American domestic
Genêt as a legitimate envoy of France. In politics and other provocations severely
the end, the United States recognized the undermined relations between the two nations.
government that currently held power, (Library of Congress)
that is, the de facto government, without
attempting to decide whether or not it
was a legitimate, or de jure, government. delayed until President Monroe had
Washington’s decision set a precedent promulgated his doctrine in 1823. Great
for the United States to recognize de Britain and other nations followed the
facto governments in almost all future U.S. lead.
situations. If the United States encouraged
Sometimes, however, it seemed pru- recognition of new governments in the
dent to wait until a government had Western Hemisphere, it found itself
proven itself capable of sustained rule opposed to that same phenomenon in
before extending recognition. A series of 1861. When South Carolina led several
revolutions swept through Latin America other states in seceding from the Union,
in the early 1800s, as charismatic leaders the federal government took strenuous
like Simón Bolívar stirred anticolonial steps to discourage foreign recognition
sentiment. Eager to extend trading rela- of the Confederacy. These efforts proved
tions to areas where Spanish mercantile successful, although Great Britain and
policies had previously prohibited it, France did extend a restricted form of
U.S. traders pressured the government to recognition. By recognizing the Confed-
regularize relations. Full recognition was erate States of America as a belligerent,
46 | Section 1
Europeans hoped to exploit trade oppor-
tunities. A massive and ultimately quite
comprehensive Union Navy blockade of
the South made that almost impossible.
Because other nations regarded the
United States as a minor player on the
world scene throughout the 19th century,
U.S. decisions to grant or withhold
recognition had relatively limited impor-
tance. After the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury, however, U.S. stature had risen
considerably. President Woodrow Wilson
broke with precedent when a revolution
in Mexico took a turn that he considered
reprehensible. He announced a policy of
“watchful waiting,” hoping that an
American-style democratic government
would emerge. He finally acceded to the
flow of events in 1917, extending formal
recognition to the government of the
Constitutionalists led by Venustiano
Carranza.
Wilson reacted more quickly to simi-
lar events in China. When Sun-Yat-Sen’s
republican-inspired followers succeeded
in overthrowing the imperial government
in 1911, the United States rather quickly
granted recognition. This reflected both
U.S. empathy with republican-style rev-
olutionaries and a continuing insistence
that the territorial integrity of China be
maintained under whatever form of de
facto government held sway.
The Russian Revolution in 1917 pre-
cipitated quite a different reaction.
Whereas the Wilson administration rec-
ognized the authority of the provisional
government early in that year, it withheld
its approval when the Bolsheviks took
over a few months later. The U.S. gov-
ernment refused to acknowledge the
legitimacy of the Soviet Union for
another 16 years, granting recognition
only when President Franklin Roosevelt
reassessed the state of the world in 1933.
In contrast to this 16-year delay, Pres-
ident Harry S Truman needed only 11
minutes to recognize formally the estab-
lishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Even though Jewish and Arab forces
continued fighting for another year,
Truman’s instantaneous response to a
telephone call from Israeli leader David
Ben-Gurion legitimized his settlements
in Palestine in the eyes of much of the
world. Solid U.S. support for Israel has
persisted ever since, regardless of which
internal political faction is in control or
what Israel’s Arab neighbors think or do.
Just as recognition by major European
nations was essential to legitimizing the
U.S. government in the revolutionary
period, U.S. recognition of govern-
ments in other nations has come to have
major symbolic importance in recent
decades. A great many positive benefits
can flow from recognition—including
trade, tourism, and amity. Granting or
withholding recognition therefore
remains a major diplomatic tool for all
nations.
See also: Alliance; Mission; Monroe Doctrine;
Recognition as a Belligerent
References
Bemis, Samuel Flagg. The Diplomacy of the
American Revolution. 3rd ed. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1957.
Gilderhus, Mark T. Diplomacy and
Revolution. Tucson: University of Arizona
Press, 1977.
Wilson, Evan M. Decision on Palestine: How
the U.S. Came to Recognize Israel.
Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1979.
Rule of 1756
During the opening stages of what
Europeans called the Seven Years’ War,
Great Britain announced a policy destined
to complicate U.S.–British relations for

generations. Fully aware of how impor-
tant colonial trade was to their enemies—
Spain and France—the British unilater-
ally proclaimed that no nation could
open its colonial trade to outsiders dur-
ing wartime. The principle could be
expressed in the phrase “trade that is ille-
gal in peace is illegal in war.” The same
principle was repeatedly invoked in
future conflicts, leaving little room for
neutral nations such as the United States
to take advantage of new trade opportu-
nities. U.S. objections to the Rule of
1756 helped precipitate the War of 1812.
By the mid-18th century, Great Britain,
Spain, and France had established large
mercantile empires. Colonies on the
American mainland and scattered
through the productive islands of the
Caribbean were integral and valuable
elements in these empires. During
peacetime, all three imperial nations
attempted to restrict trade to and from
their colonies to traders affiliated with
the mother country. As the French and
Indian War (1754–1763) broadened into
a world war in 1756, however, the supe-
riority of the British Royal Navy enabled
it to disrupt normal colonial trade. When
France and Spain attempted to circum-
vent this problem by inviting other
neutral nations to step in, Great Britain
announced its rule that such trade was
not acceptable.
British American colonists achieved
some benefits from this policy, because
the royal government did not object to
ships from its own colonies calling at
foreign Caribbean ports. In fact, enforce-
ment of exclusive trading rights within
empires was so lax that, long before the
American Revolution, vessels hailing
from New York, New England, and other
Atlantic ports had become accustomed
to participating in this trade.
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 47
A few years later, the Americans cel-
ebrated their own independence, but they
recognized that they might now be
excluded from the favorable trading rela-
tions that they had enjoyed as colonists.
Moreover, when the Revolutionary War
ended, so did Great Britain’s conflict
with Spain and France. As all these
nations reinstituted their exclusive mer-
cantile trading practices, the United
States was left outside.
The Rule of 1756 came into play
again when Great Britain and France
went to war in the early 1790s. As
British warships captured or sunk enemy
vessels, France softened its restrictions,
allowing U.S. traders to fill the gap. Cit-
izens of a neutral country, they hoped
that the Royal Navy would not interfere
with their activities. By 1794, however,
British annoyance resulted in a demand
that the United States abide by the Rule
of 1756. Jay’s Treaty, signed and ratified
in 1794, included a U.S. endorsement of
this policy.
Over the next several years, wily U.S.
traders found a way to skirt these restric-
tions. The British did not object to U.S.
ships calling at the Caribbean ports of
their enemies or even loading cargo, pro-
vided that its ultimate destination was a
port in the United States. There the car-
gos were subjected to U.S. customs
duties. Goods might even be off loaded
for a few days to “neutralize” them
before the same ship or another U.S. car-
rier reloaded the cargo and set sail for
France or Spain. In most instances, all or
a substantial part of the duties collected
were refunded to a ship’s owners.
Although technically a violation of
the Rule of 1756, British authorities did
not immediately halt these so-called
broken voyages. In a landmark case
involving a U.S. ship, the Polly, the
48 | Section 1
British admiralty courts concluded that
a broken voyage did not violate the Rule
of 1756. Five years later, British for-
bearance ended abruptly when another
court decision, this one dealing with the
ship Essex, overturned the Polly deci-
sion on the basis that refunding U.S.
customs duties clearly proved it was a
“continuous” and not a “broken” voyage
after all.
Even before news of the Essex deci-
sion reached the United States, the Royal
Navy seized dozens of U.S. ships in the
Caribbean. Shortly thereafter, Admiral
Horatio Nelson’s fleet defeated a com-
bined French and Spanish force at
Trafalgar off the coast of Spain. That
victory ensured British control of the
seas for more than a century and left
Americans with little alternative but to
adhere to the Rule of 1756 or stop trad-
ing altogether.
Even so, U.S. statesmen and diplo-
mats continually defended the principle
that “free ships make free goods.”
Regardless of where a cargo originated,
they insisted, a carrier from the neutral
United States should not be subject to
capture. From time to time, other neutral
nations adopted similar stands, but the
principle was far more important to the
United States, with its enormous trading
fleet and lack of colonies.
By 1812, annoyance at the Rule of
1756 had combined with other factors
such as impressment, land hunger, and
patriotism to motivate a U.S. declaration
of war against Great Britain. Fortunately,
at the close of the conflict in 1815, the
whole world settled into an extended era
of peace, rendering the issue of neutral
trade during wartime essentially moot.
U.S. traders still faced some restrictions
from the bilateral trade arrangements
that their government had made with
other countries, but irritation about the
Rule of 1756 faded away.
See also: Plan of 1776
References
Christie, Ian R. Wars and Revolutions:
Britain 1760–1815. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982.
Spivak, Burton I. Jefferson’s English Crisis.
Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1979.
Transcontinental Treaty
(Florida)
In 1819, Secretary of State John Quincy
Adams and Spanish minister Luis de
Onís signed a landmark treaty that
resolved a number of longstanding
issues between their countries. The most
important element of the treaty was
Spain’s agreement to cede all of Florida
to the United States. In return, Adams
dropped a dubious U.S. claim to parts of
Texas. He insisted, however, that the
Adam-Onís Treaty define fixed bound-
aries between the United States and all
Spanish possessions from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, thus justifying historians’
decision to call it the Transcontinental
Treaty.
One issue that Adams and Onís had to
sort through was that of the contradic-
tory claims to the area known as Florida.
At one time or another, it included not
only the present state of Florida but also
a relatively narrow strip of land stretch-
ing west along the coast of the Gulf of
Mexico all the way to New Orleans.
Some maps distinguished between West
and East Florida, and, at least in U.S.
eyes, the United States had solid
justifications for believing that West
Florida had become U.S. territory as
early as 1803.

At one time or another, this disputed
region was under the control of France,
through its ownership of Louisiana;
Spain, through its management of East
Florida; and Great Britain, which tem-
porarily controlled all of Florida for an
extended period after the end of the
French and Indian (Seven Years’) War in
1763. The Americans rested their claims
to West Florida on the Louisiana Pur-
chase from France in 1803, in which
Napoléon’s government left the bound-
aries of the territory ill-defined.
Although unknown to the Americans at
the time, Spanish authorities had gov-
erned much of West Florida as an inte-
gral part of Louisiana when they held the
territory in the late 18th century.
In early 1804, the U.S. Congress
passed the Mobile Act, which asserted
U.S. authority over that crucial gulf port.
Although this legislative action had no
immediate effect, over the next several
years U.S. settlers and adventurers
streamed into the disputed territory,
effectively occupying the westernmost
segment by 1810. Two years later, simi-
lar settlements altered the balance of
power in the rest of West Florida enough
to allow President James Madison to
insist that it, too, was now U.S. territory.
Although Spain could not prevent the
U.S. takeover of West Florida, it held on
to the much larger East Florida. Some
U.S. adventurers claimed to have
Madison’s authority to conquer the area,
but the president disavowed their actions
when they proved unsuccessful. John Q.
Adams and Luis Onís began serious
talks in 1815, and Spain’s control over
East Florida still remained firm. Whether
the U.S. statesman could have changed
that simply through negotiations or not
remains unknown because an impetuous
military man pursued his own agenda.
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 49
Andrew Jackson had distinguished
himself as the general who won the
Battle of New Orleans in 1815, and he
was also notorious as an Indian fighter.
Members of the Seminole tribe and other
Indians, as well as escaped slaves, fre-
quently raided into Georgia, Alabama,
and Mississippi, only to slip back across
the international border to Florida for
refuge when pursued. In Pinckney’s
Treaty (1795), Spain had pledged to
prevent such activity, but its military
commitments in other regions left
Florida nearly defenseless. Although
President James Monroe disputed the
story, Jackson claimed to have received
secret presidential orders authorizing
him to chase raiding parties in hot
pursuit into Florida proper.
Jackson implemented this plan in
1818, eventually capturing several forts
and villages that he claimed Indians
were using as havens. In the process, he
also ran across a couple of British citi-
zens whom he accused of assisting the
raiders. After a brief court martial, the
two men were executed. Jackson reluc-
tantly withdrew his forces from Florida,
but the international incident that his
actions had sparked seemed likely to
blossom into a full-scale war pitting the
United States against Spain and Great
Britain.
Secretary of State Adams surprised
his fellow cabinet members by stoutly
defending Jackson’s actions. He even
managed to convince British authorities
to disavow the two unfortunate victims
of Jackson’s frontier justice. With Great
Britain effectively neutralized, the
Spanish government realized that the
U.S. conquest of Florida was inevitable,
so it authorized Onís to get the best deal
that he could in ceding the area to the
United States.
50 | Section 1
In the resulting treaty, Spain relin-
quished its claims to all of the Florida ter-
ritories, a good deal of which had already
been incorporated into the state of
Louisiana and the Mississippi Territory.
In return, Adams dropped a demand for
some $5 million in U.S. claims against
the Spanish government, some of which
extended all the way back to the quasi-
war with France in the late 1790s. The
U.S. government later audited the claims
and paid appropriate compensation.
Onís needed some concession from
Adams before he would agree to the
Florida provision. Therefore, the secre-
tary of state formally abandoned a very
weak claim to parts of Texas. To confirm
that decision, the two diplomats delin-
eated a border between the United States
and Spanish possessions to the southwest.
At Adams’s insistence, Onís agreed to
extend the line all the way to the Pacific,
setting the boundary at 42 degrees north
latitude between California and the
Oregon Territory. The major advantage
here was that Spain dropped all claims to
Oregon, leaving the territory with only
two claimants, the United States and
Great Britain.
Signed on February 22, 1819, the
treaty appeared so favorable that the U.S.
Senate ratified it almost immediately.
The Spanish government was in a chaotic
state, dealing with the consequences of
revolutionary movements in its Latin
American colonies and suffering internal
divisions as well. More than two years
passed before the Spanish Cortez ratified
the Transcontinental Treaty.
That delay gave critics of Adams’s
diplomacy plenty of time to complain.
The most outspoken was Kentucky sena-
tor Henry Clay, who objected to the
treaty’s “sellout” of the U.S. claim to
Texas. In fact, that claim was far more
tenuous than anything associated with
Florida, and Onís would never have been
authorized to surrender additional terri-
tory to the Americans. Adams had skill-
fully won the maximum concessions that
Spain was willing to make at that point,
and he deserves full credit for engineer-
ing an agreement that added territory to
the United States at the same time as it
strengthened its claim to Oregon.
See also: Louisiana; Oregon Claims; Pinck-
ney’s Treaty
References
Brooks, Philip C. Diplomacy and the
Borderlands: The Adams-Onís Treaty of
1819. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1939.
Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and His
Indian Wars. New York: Viking, 2001.
Weeks, William Earl. John Quincy Adams
and American Global Empire. Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1992.
Treaty (Treaty of Paris, 1783)
A treaty is usually a formal agreement
between two governments. It can
include general statements or very spe-
cific provisions. It can deal with major
issues such as war and peace or with the
minutia of tourism and import-export
restrictions. Regardless of who actually
negotiates or signs a treaty, the home
government usually must ratify it
before it goes into effect. Under the
Constitution, the U.S. Senate is the
body designated to ratify treaties, and
the treaties must win a two-thirds vote
of approval. As soon as the United
States declared its independence, it
sought international recognition and
support through the negotiation of
treaties. More than two centuries later,
treaties remain essential elements in the
nation’s foreign relations.

France was the first treaty partner of
the United States. Benjamin Franklin
took the lead in negotiating two agree-
ments early in 1778: a treaty of alliance
and a separate commercial agreement. A
key provision in the first treaty was for-
mal recognition of the United States as
an independent nation. Over time, other
nations agreed to recognize the new
nation as well, paving the way for more
extensive treaty negotiations.
Franklin was also the major player in
negotiating the most important treaty of
all. After the American victory at York-
town in 1781, the British government
concluded that ending the Revolutionary
War was in its own best interest. To that
end, it sent Richard Oswald to Paris to
open discussions with Franklin. Both
gentleman were elderly, experienced in
the ways of the world, and apparently
had quite compatible personalities.
A couple of stumbling blocks pre-
vented these two men from immediately
producing a document. The 1778
Alliance required Franklin to obtain
French permission before proceeding
with peace negotiations. France, mean-
while, had agreed to accept peace terms
only if Great Britain surrendered Gibraltar
to Spain. Fortunately, French foreign
minister Vergennes ignored the Spanish
commitment and allowed his American
friend to proceed with negotiations.
The second problem Franklin faced
was that the Continental Congress had
named four other Americans to work
with him on the treaty. Two, John Jay
and John Adams, arrived in Paris and
began noisily staking out positions,
some of which were antithetical to those
the pragmatic Franklin had adopted. A
fourth peace commissioner, Henry
Laurens, had been captured at sea and
was in custody in London. He was well
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 51
treated, however, and helped smooth ruf-
fled feathers on the British end of the
negotiations. The fifth commissioner,
Thomas Jefferson, failed to make the trip
to Europe and so played no direct part in
the peace negotiations.
Benjamin Franklin deserves full
credit for the successful outcome of
these discussions. He managed to tone
down the rhetoric that Jay and Adams
produced and present reasonable and
cogent points to Oswald. He divided
American desires into two groups. The
first, he maintained, were essential and
nonnegotiable. If they were not included
in the treaty, the Americans would con-
tinue fighting. The second group of
issues that he raised were less vital to the
outcome, but Franklin wanted to give the
British a full understanding of American
attitudes.
The first essential was British recog-
nition of the United States as an inde-
pendent nation. No treaty could succeed
without it. To reinforce that recognition,
Franklin made sure the treaty contained
language that defined specific bound-
aries for the new nation. He also insisted
that those boundaries include not only
the 13 former colonies but territories to
the west and south, extending all the
way to the Mississippi River and up to
the Great Lakes. In recognition of how
vital the fishing industry had become to
the New England states, Franklin’s
final nonnegotiable demand was that
Americans be allowed to continue
casting their nets off the coasts of
British-held Newfoundland and Labrador.
As the clever negotiator he was,
Franklin produced a second list of
requests. He indicated, for example, that
the American people would appreciate
an apology from the British Parliament
for the harsh and unreasonable policies it
52 | Section 1
had imposed on them during both the
colonial period and the Revolution. If
such an apology was forthcoming,
Franklin suggested, it would only be fair
for the British government to pay com-
pensation or reparations to those its poli-
cies had harmed. Recognizing how
expensive that compensation might be,
the American diplomat suggested that
Great Britain consider instead simply
transferring Canada to the United States.
His final request was a treaty provision
to allow Americans to continue trading
as they had before the war with the
British West Indies.
To no one’s surprise, the government
in London summarily rejected these
requests. Parliament certainly would
never apologize or pay compensation to
the upstart Americans. The British had
ably defended Canada from American
incursions during the Revolutionary
War, and they had no intention of
tamely handing it over at that point.
Regarding Caribbean trade, the British
government considered it a critical ele-
ment in its mercantilist imperial system.
The Americans who had chosen to
withdraw from the British Empire did
not deserve to retain the trade advan-
tages that they had formerly enjoyed.
From the British viewpoint, these
requests were so outrageous that they
made the other American demands seem
comparatively reasonable. Oswald and
Franklin therefore moved ahead, drafting
language for the treaty that would satisfy
the Americans’ essential demands. While
they were doing so, news arrived in
Europe of a great British naval victory
over a French fleet in the Caribbean.
That success encouraged the British to
push their own agenda forward. They
wanted the final treaty to include a prom-
ise that the United States would not
punish those who had remained loyal to
Great Britain during the Revolution. In
addition, they wanted assurance that any
debts Americans had run up prior to the
war would be paid in full.
The final treaty combined these
British demands with Franklin’s four
nonnegotiable provisions: recognition,
defined boundaries, western territories,
and northeastern fishing rights. The
Treaty of Paris (1783) was thus a
remarkably concise and straightfor-
ward document, considering that it
brought to a close eight years of inten-
sive warfare. Franklin’s negotiating
skills had achieved the basic American
objectives without giving too much
away.
The Continental Congress quickly
ratified the Treaty of Paris, and the world
as a whole settled back into a period of
general peacefulness. In the long run,
state governments and individual law-
suits largely nullified the provisions
about loyalists and prewar debts, but
American independence stood the test of
time. The Treaty of Paris was a remark-
able achievement for a brand-new coun-
try that was negotiating with one of the
world’s most powerful empires.
It is hardly surprising that succeeding
treaties sometimes fell short of this high
standard. An attempt to coerce Great
Britain to halt depredations against U.S.
trade failed in 1794, and the resulting
Jay’s Treaty was enormously unpopular.
In the following year, Pinckney’s Treaty
drew a positive response because it
defended and even extended U.S. influ-
ence at the expense of Spain. After
descending into an undeclared war in
1798, the United States signed the Treaty
of Mortfontaine (1800) with France,
effectively extricating itself from an
unpopular alliance. The Treaty of Ghent
 Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 53

TREATY OF PEACE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN:

SIGNED IN PARIS, SEPTEMBER 3, 1783

Article I. His Britannick Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz. New
Hampshire, Massachusets Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut,
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Georgia, to be Free, Sovereign, and Independent States; that he
treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims
to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the fame, and every part thereof.
Article II. And that all disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the
boundaries of the said United States may be prevented, it is hereby agreed and
declared, that the following are, and shall be, their boundaries, [a detailed descrip-
tion of the boundaries follows.]
Article III. It is agreed, that the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy,
unmolested, the right to take fish of every kind on the grand bank and on all the other
banks of Newfoundland: also in the gulph of St. Lawrence, and at all other places in
the sea where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish. . . .
Article IV. It is agreed, that creditors on either side shall meet with no lawful imped-
iment to the recovery of the full value, in sterling money, of all bonâ fide debts hereto-
fore contracted.
Article V. It is agreed, that the Congress shall earnestly recommend it to the legis-
latures of the respective states, to provide for the restitution of all estates, rights, and
properties, which have been confiscated belonging to real British subjects: and also of
the estates, rights, and properties, of persons resident in districts in the possession of
his Majesty’s arms, and who have not borne arms against the said United States: and
that persons or any other description shall have free liberty to go to any part or parts
of any of the Thirteen United States, and therein to remain twelve months unmolested
in their endeavours to obtain the restitution of such of their estates, rights, and prop-
erties, as may have been confiscated: and that Congress shall also earnestly recom-
mend to the several states, a reconsideration and revision of all acts or laws regarding
the premises, so as to render the said laws or acts perfectly consistent not only with
justice and equity, but with that spirit of conciliation which, on the return of the bless-
ings of peace, should universally prevail. . . .
Article VI. That there shall be no future confiscations made, nor any prosecutions
commenced against any person or persons, for or by reason of the part which he or
they may have taken in the present war; and that no person shall, on that account, suf-
fer any future loss or damage either in his person, liberty, or property; and that, those
who may be in confinement on such charges at the time of the ratification of the treaty
in America, shall be immediately set at liberty, and the prosecutions so commenced be
discontinued.
Article VII. There shall be a firm and perpetual peace between his Britannick
Majesty and the said States, and between the subjects of the one and the citizens of
the other, wherefore, all hostilities, both by sea and land, shall from henceforth cease:
all prisoners on both sides shall be set at liberty, and his Britannick Majesty shall, with
all convenient speed, and without causing any destruction, or carrying away any
negroes, or other property of the American inhabitants, withdraw all his armies,
54 | Section 1

(Treaty of Peace Between the United States and Great Britain, Continued )
garrisons, and fleets, from the said United States, and from every port, place, and har-
bour within the same; leaving in all fortifications the American artillery that may be
therein: and shall also order and cause all archives, records, deeds, and papers,
belonging to any of the said States, or their citizens, which in the course of the war
may have fallen into the hands of his officers, to be forthwith restored and delivered
to the proper states and persons to whom they belong.
Article VIII. The navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, shall
for ever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain, and the citizens of the
United States. . . .

Source: Bevans, Charles I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States
of America, 1776–1949. Washington, DC: GPO, 1974, 12:1–5

(1814) ended another war with Great
Britain but did nothing to improve the
U.S. trading position. Only in the 1820s
did the British finally relent on the West
Indies trade that Franklin had lobbied for
some 40 years earlier.
Over time, the United States has man-
aged to negotiate a number of favorable
treaties. Several added territory to the
United States, including the Louisiana
Purchase (1803), the acquisition of
Florida (1819), the conquest of California
and New Mexico (1848), and the colo-
nization of the Philippines (1898). Other
treaties expanded trade opportunities,
such as those with China (1844) and
Japan (1858). Occasionally, the United
States signed a treaty promising cooper-
ation with another nation, as it did in the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) regarding
the potential construction of a canal in
Central America. By and large, however,
the United States pursued an independ-
ent course in its foreign policies. The
threat of the Cold War finally overcame
the nation’s traditional aversion toward
alliances and motivated the signing of
the North Atlantic Treaty, which created
NATO in 1949.
On rare occasions, a treaty would
fail. The Senate’s refusal to ratify the
Treaty of Versailles (1919) stands as
the most dramatic example. To avoid
such a humiliation, presidents have
withdrawn or renegotiated controver-
sial agreements. Issues such as human
rights, genocide, or global warming
have been so contentious that the
United States has either refused to sign
international agreements or neglected
to submit them for Senate ratification.
Such caution, however, emphasizes
how important treaties can be. At best,
they can bring great benefits to the
nation; treaty making remains a key
tool of diplomacy.
See also: Jay’s Treaty; Pinckney’s Treaty;
Ratification
References
Dull, Jonathan R. Franklin the Diplomat.
Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society, 1982.
Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J. Alert, eds.
Peace and the Peacemakers: The Treaty of
1783. Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1986.
Morris, Richard B. The Peacemakers: The
Great Powers and American Indepen-
dence. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.
Stourzh, Gerald. Benjamin Franklin and
American Foreign Policy. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Uti Possedetus
(Treaty of Ghent, 1814)
When a nation has seized control of ter-
ritory through invasion or other means, it
may claim the right to retain it. The Latin
expression uti possedetus means that one
has the right to what one possesses. In
diplomatic negotiations, the nation in
possession of conquered territory may
use this principle to justify its refusal to
withdraw. It played a key role in the
negotiations at Ghent, Belgium, when
U.S. commissioners were attempting to
hammer out a resolution to the War of
1812 with British representatives.
The conflict had long roots and mul-
tiple causes, including maritime issues
between the United States and Great
Britain, perceptions that the British were
fomenting Indian resistance in the Ohio
River valley, and a desire on the part of
the United States to extend the nation’s
boundaries north into Canada. In the
first year of conflict, the United States
succeeded only in losing control of the
Michigan peninsula. The efforts of
Oliver Hazard Perry and William Henry
Harrison in the following year led to its
recapture. Despite several forays into
the lower Canadian provinces, U.S.
forces failed to retain any major British
territory.
British prospects brightened consider-
ably in 1814. Napoléon had been sent
into exile on the island of Elba, enabling
Great Britain to focus additional men,
resources, and attention on the nagging
conflict on the other side of the Atlantic.
They mounted three major initiatives.
U.S. naval forces halted the first of these
in Lake Champlain in the north. The sec-
ond British assault was far more suc-
cessful. British naval and army units
scoured the East Coast of the United
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 55
States, temporarily capturing and burn-
ing the national capital. Moreover, they
successfully blockaded virtually all
Atlantic trade. The final initiative, an
assault on the port of New Orleans, was
delayed until early in the following year.
A protracted series of diplomatic
initiatives, which began with the inter-
vention of the Russian czar, finally led
to face-to-face treaty negotiations in
Belgium. Because British forces occupied
the city of Ghent at that point, the venue
was hardly neutral. The five-member U.S.
delegation included two diplomats, John
Quincy Adams and Jonathan Russell,
and three prominent politicians, Henry
Clay, Albert Gallatin, and Thomas
Bayard. The three men representing
Great Britain were far less influential,
because British foreign minister Lord
Liverpool intended to manage the nego-
tiations directly from nearby London.
Inevitable delays in receiving news
from the far-off American continent
meant that the British government was
never fully or timely informed of the
progress its troops were making. On the
assumption that at least one of the British
initiatives would be successful, Liverpool
instructed his negotiating team to hold
out for uti possedetus. If the Americans
agreed, Great Britain would be assured
that whatever territory they captured
would remain in their hands. If the
northern initiative had succeeded, for
example, it could mean an expansion of
British control into New England and
upper New York State. Even more attrac-
tive to British planners was the prospect
that they might end up controlling the
valuable port of New Orleans.
For its part, the U.S. delegation had
neither the intention nor the authority to
cede any territory at all. Instead, it held
out for a restoration of the status quo
56 | Section 1

antebellum. Regardless of what might or With all of that in mind, Lord

might not develop along the battle lines,
the Americans insisted, no territory
should change hands as a result of the
war.
For some time, the British insistence on
uti possedetus and the U.S. refusal to
accept any territorial change stalemated
the discussions. Other issues, such as a
British proposal to create an Indian buffer
zone out of U.S. lands in the Ohio Valley,
were equally unacceptable. By the late fall,
news had reached London of the British
defeat at the naval Battle of Plattsburgh in
Vermont and the failure of the British to
retain control of any territory along the
Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps even more
important was the news that Napoléon
Bonaparte had escaped from Elba, bent on
raising new armies in France.
Liverpool told his delegation to drop its
demand for uti possedetus and to
accept the U.S. plan of a restoration of
the status quo that had existed prior to
1812. The delegates signed the Treaty
of Ghent on December 24 and news of
the Peace of Christmas Eve sped off
across the Atlantic.
A final major event ensured that both
sides would ratify the treaty. General
Andrew Jackson had taken charge of the
defense of New Orleans and, in a remark-
ably lopsided victory in early January,
decisively ended any British threat to
U.S. soil. If the British had won, they
might well have revived their insistence
on uti possedetus. As it was, both sides
ratified the Treaty of Ghent and the war
was over.

The Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812 was signed on December 24, 1814, by British negotiator
Henry Goulburn (third from left) and American commissioners (from left to right on the right side)
John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin, James Bayard, Christopher Hughes, Jonathan Russell, and
Henry Clay (seated). (Bettmann/CORBIS)

Although the archaic phrase has
largely fallen into disuse, the concept
that it encompasses has certainly influ-
enced subsequent diplomatic negotia-
tions. Whether it was Nicholas Trist
arranging for a cession of thousands of
square miles of Mexico in 1848 or
Japanese diplomats demanding that
Russia relinquish control of Sakhalin
Island in 1905, diplomatic acceptance of
the military conquest of territory has fre-
quently changed the map of the world.
See also: War Hawks
References
Dangerfield, George. The Era of Good Feel-
ings. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952.
Engelman, Fred L. The Peace of Christmas
Eve. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1962.
Updyke, Frank A. The Diplomacy of the War
of 1812. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,
1915.
War Hawks
At various times in U.S. history, certain
people or groups have become rabidly in
favor of war. A bellicose group that rose
to influence in 1810 became known as
the War Hawks. They complained about
a number of British actions and eventu-
ally proved crucial to the decision on the
part of the United States to go to war in
1812. Although that conflict fulfilled
almost none of the objectives of the War
Hawks, it also did nothing to discourage
other groups from succumbing to war
fever in the future.
From the late 1700s into the early
1800s, British policies managed to out-
rage almost all Americans one way or
another. Shocked at what it saw as an
Armageddon—with the forces of evil
personified by French emperor Napoléon
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 57
Bonaparte—the government in London
ignored international agreements, the
normal rules of war, and even common
decency in pursuing its aims. The United
States’ desire to remain strictly neutral in
this global conflict was of no interest or
importance to Great Britain.
Many American protests involved
seizures and impressment at sea.
Aggressive enforcement of arbitrarily
imposed trade restrictions and block-
ades added to the list of grievances.
American shipping suffered directly, but
American farmers throughout the nation
felt the impact of Great Britain’s
restrictive naval policies. That motivated
Westerners and Southerners to complain
about British actions, which they saw as
insulting to the American flag, as well as
economically costly to all Americans.
But Westerners, particularly those
who had settled in the former wilderness
areas along the frontier, faced a more
personal and present danger from the
Indians whom they were displacing from
their traditional hunting grounds. Here
again, Americans found reason to blame
the British. Rumors spread that officials
in British Canada encouraged Indian
depredations with weapons, supplies,
and even bounties on American scalps.
If evidence of British involvement
had been scarce earlier, the confrontation
at Tippecanoe Creek in November 1811
put those doubts to rest. Indiana’s territo-
rial governor, General William Henry
Harrison, assembled a large force of reg-
ular soldiers, local militiaman, and other
hangers-on to attempt to drive out Indian
rabble-rousers. Harrison’s force became
involved in a pitched battle at an Indian
village at Tippecanoe Creek, a con-
frontation that the Americans barely suc-
ceeded in winning. The victors found
brand-new British-manufactured guns in
58 | Section 1

MADISON’S WAR MESSAGE TO CONGRESS:

JUNE 1, 1812

[Impressment]
British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating the American flag
on the great highway of nations, and of seizing and carrying off persons sailing
under it, not in the exercise of a belligerent right founded on the law of nations
against an enemy, but of a municipal prerogative over British subjects. British juris-
diction is thus extended to neutral vessels in a situation where no laws can operate
but the law of nations and the laws of the country to which the vessels belong, and a
self-redress is assumed which, if British subjects were wrongfully detained and alone
concerned, is that substitution of force for a resort to the responsible sovereign which
falls within the definition of war. . . . The practice, hence, is so far from affecting
British subjects alone that, under the pretext of searching for these, thousands of
American citizens, under the safeguard of public law and of their national flag, have
been torn from their country and from everything dear to them; have been dragged
on board ships of war of a foreign nation and exposed, under the severities of their
discipline, to be exiled to the most distant and deadly climes, to risk their lives in the
battles of their oppressors, and to be the melancholy instruments of taking away those
of their own brethren. . . .
[Paper Blockades]
Under pretended blockades, without the presence of an adequate force and
sometimes without the practicability of applying one, our commerce has been plun-
dered in every sea, the great staples of our country have been cut off from their legit-
imate markets, and a destructive blow aimed at our agricultural and maritime
interests. . . . Not content with these occasional expedients for laying waste our neu-
tral trade, the cabinet of Britain resorted at length to the sweeping system of block-
ades, under the name of orders in council, which has been molded and managed
as might best suit its political views, its commercial jealousies, or the avidity of British
cruisers. . . .
[Indian Problems]
In reviewing the conduct of Great Britain toward the United States our attention is
necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed by the savages on one of our extensive
frontiers a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex and to be distin-
guished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity. It is difficult to account for the
activity and combinations which have for some time been developing themselves
among tribes in constant intercourse with British traders and garrisons without con-
necting their hostility with that influence and without recollecting the authenticated
examples of such interpositions heretofore furnished by the officers and agents of that
Government. We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain a state of war against
the United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace toward Great
Britain. . . .

Source: Richardson, J. D., ed. Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. New
York: Bureau of National Literature, 1917, 1:485–490.

the enemy’s camp, and the War Hawks
claimed that they proved British com-
plicity in the Indian troubles.
The national elections of 1810
resulted in a major, generational shift in
the membership of Congress. Dozens of
young, outspoken new senators and rep-
resentatives arrived in Washington.
They shared a belief that the United
States should end what they saw as
groveling to the British government.
Beyond the maritime and western griev-
ances, these young men nursed a stri-
dent nationalistic patriotism that would
countenance no further insults to their
nation’s flag.
The solution to their grievances, they
felt, was war with Great Britain, the
enemy that their fathers and grandfa-
thers had fought in the Revolution. More
specifically, the War Hawks intended
not just to defeat the British in land and
sea battles, but to force the empire to
surrender its primary U.S. possession,
Canada. As Kentuckian Henry Clay
insisted, the War Hawks were convinced
that taking that vast dominion would be
“a mere matter of marching.” By 1812,
Spain was fighting the French alongside
Great Britain, so the War Hawks
included Florida in their intended con-
quests as well.
President James Madison had devoted
much of his first term to attempting to
find a way for the United States to obtain
redress from Great Britain’s harassing
maritime practices. By the spring of
1812, he, too, had concluded that only
by defeating Great Britain on the battle-
field could that objective be achieved.
His war message on June 1, 1812, met
with immediate enthusiasm in the War
Hawk-rich House of Representatives,
winning approval by a vote of 79 to 49.
The more conservative Senate debated
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 59
the measure for two weeks before acced-
ing to war in a vote of 19 to 13.
Except for Andrew Jackson’s remark-
able defense of New Orleans, the war
fulfilled almost none of the War Hawks’
optimistic expectations. Canada remained
firmly in British hands: only a portion of
West Florida fell under U.S. control. The
termination of the European wars by
1815 rendered moot virtually all of the
hated British naval and trading policies.
The one true benefit of the war was the
nationwide sense of patriotism and pride
that the United States enjoyed in the suc-
ceeding years, known as the Era of Good
Feelings.
See also: Impressment; Paper Blockade
References
Brown, Robert H. The Republic in Peril:
1812. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1964.
Pratt, Julius W. Expansionists of 1812. New
York: Macmillan, 1925.
Stagg, J. C. A. Mr. Madison’s War. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983.
XYZ Affair
In the spring of 1798, President John
Adams responded to a congressional
demand for specific information regarding
a failed mission to France. In an early
attempt to control information relevant to
national security, U.S. commissioners had
referred to the French agents whom they
encountered as X, Y, and Z. Press reports
of the XYZ Affair stimulated a growing
partisan split between the Federalists that
Adams represented and the Democratic-
Republican faction. Worse yet, the popular
outrage justified belligerent steps that led
to a quasi-war with France.
After President George Washington
issued his Proclamation of Neutrality in
60 | Section 1
1793, relations between the United
States and its Revolutionary War ally,
France, continued to deteriorate. The
Anglo-American agreement, known as
Jay’s Treaty (1794), convinced many in
France that the United States had
become a de facto ally of Great Britain,
with whom the Republic of France was
now at war.
When President Washington announ-
ced his retirement in 1796, the Federal-
ist faction that had been most supportive
of his policies swung its support behind
Vice President John Adams. Opponents
like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
had coalesced into the Democratic-
Republican coalition, known contem-
poraneously as Republicans but later to
evolve into the Democratic Party of
Andrew Jackson. In addition to differ-
ences over domestic issues, the two
groups disagreed violently about foreign
poli cy. The Federalists, led by Alexander
Hamilton, advocated continued good rela-
tions with Great Britain. The Democratic-
Republicans were much more sympathetic
to the republican revolution that had
engulfed France.
These divergent views were quite
apparent in the 1796 election. Hoping to
draw support away from Adams, the
French minister broke diplomatic rela-
tions with the United States on the eve of
the election. Adams won a slim victory in
the electoral college anyway, but Jeffer-
son collected the second highest number
of votes and became vice president for
the next four years. He refused to take an
active part in government, however,
returning to Virginia and preparing for a
second run for the presidency in 1800.
The election also strengthened Feder-
alist control of Congress, and the legisla-
tors waited expectantly for Adams to
take strong action against France. He
called for major military preparations
but also requested authorization to send
a diplomatic delegation to Paris, charged
with restoring amicable relations
between the two nations. He selected
two Federalists, Charles Coatsworth
Pinckney and John Marshall, and a
Republican-leaning Elbridge Gerry to
represent the United States.
When the commissioners arrived,
French foreign minister Talleyrand
refused to meet with them. Instead, he
sent a Swiss banker named Hottingeur,
who demanded a bribe of $250,000 and
a loan of several million more. The
French expression for a bribe was
douceur, or sweetener, and such sweet-
eners were a common feature of
European diplomacy. The U.S. commis-
sioners had neither the authority nor the
funds to meet these demands, let alone
any desire to do so.
A second agent, named Bellamy, then
appeared, urging them to reconsider. Still
unable to speak with Talleyrand directly,
they also received a visit from a third
agent, named Hauteval. At one point,
Pinckney expressed his outrage at the
repeated demands for a douceur by say-
ing “No, no, not a sixpence.” [American
State Papers, Foreign Relations (Oct. 27,
1797) II, 161] In the United States, this
statement morphed into the more strident
slogan “Millions for defense but not one
cent for tribute.” Pinckney and Marshall
concluded that their mission was futile
and departed for home. Gerry stayed on
for a time in the forlorn hope that
Talleyrand would finally meet with him.
As the two Federalist commissioners
headed back across the Atlantic, Congress
demanded an explanation. President
Adams reluctantly sketched out the
general circumstances, but disbelieving
Republicans in Congress demanded full

disclosure of the commissioners’ reports.
Adams duly provided it, using the com-
missioners’ designations of X, Y, and Z
for Hottingeur, Bellamy, and Hauteval.
Outraged Federalist congressmen sup-
plied the information to their own parti-
san press.
News of the so-called XYZ Affair
reinforced Federalist hostility toward
France, and it even convinced many
Republicans to reconsider their support
of France. The public reaction was even
more dramatic. Influenced by partisan
newspapers, Americans throughout the
country demanded a swift and definitive
response to what they saw as an insult to
their sovereign nation. With war fever
sweeping the nation, President Adams
called for additional military prepara-
tions. Simultaneously U.S. Navy ships
and privateers began laying waste to
French trade in the Caribbean. The
quasi-war with France had begun.
See also: Alliance; Quasi-War with France
References
Bowman, Albert H. The Struggle for Neu-
trality: Franco-American Diplomacy
during the Federalist Era. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1974.
Stinchcombe, William C. The XYZ Affair.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.
BIOGRAPHIES
Deane, Silas (1737–1789)
Connecticut merchant and politician
Silas Deane had the distinction of being
the first official U.S. diplomatic envoy.
Representing his state in both the First
and Second Continental Congresses, he
proved to be adept at rounding up sup-
plies for the Continental Army. The
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 61
Committee of Secret Correspondence
decided that his expertise might be
equally valuable in Europe, so it sent
him to France. There he worked with a
colorful courtier and playwright, Caron
de Beaumarchais, who obtained military
supplies and equipment directly from the
French government. Deane also explored
the possibility of formal diplomatic rela-
tions and eventually was named, along
with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee,
to serve on a special commission for that
purpose. Franklin led this group in nego-
tiating an alliance and a commercial
treaty in 1778. Unfortunately, Arthur Lee
subsequently charged that Deane and
Beaumarchais had pocketed funding that
Congress had provided for equipment
the French had meant as a gift to the
United States. Some also claimed Deane
had turned traitor to the revolutionary
cause. Although these allegations were
largely refuted after his death, Deane
spent the last years of his life in a des-
perate and largely unsuccessful attempt
to restore his reputation.
See also: Treaty (Treaty of Paris, 1783)
Reference
James, Coy Hilton. Silas Deane, Patriot or
Traitor? East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1975.
Franklin, Benjamin
(1706–1790)
None of the other Founding Fathers
seems more definitively American than
Benjamin Franklin, yet he spent fully
25 years living abroad. He was, there-
fore, remarkably well prepared and
informed for the crucial diplomatic
assignments that he undertook for the
new nation. His life represented a story-
book rise from humble origins to a
62 | Section 1
position as one of the most well-known
and respected gentleman of his age.
Born into a working-class family in
Boston, he apprenticed with his older
brother in a print shop before heading to
Philadelphia while still a teenager. He
became the most prominent printer and
publisher in his adopted city and was so
successful that he was able to retire from
active participation in business at the age
of 42. That gave him ample time to par-
ticipate in a dazzling array of public
service and intellectual endeavors, as
well as to conduct path-breaking scien-
tific experimentation. Franklin’s writings
and his scientific discoveries earned him
international respect. Meanwhile, he
became increasingly involved in politics.
He had already lived in England for a
couple of years in his twenties, and he
began an extended stay in 1757, when he
agreed to serve as a representative of the
Pennsylvania Colony. As tensions
between the colonies and the royal gov-
ernment intensified, Franklin acted as an
honest broker, explaining American atti-
tudes and desires to the authorities in
London and interpreting Parliament’s
actions for his countrymen. Several other
colonies identified him as their agent in
London as well. Benjamin Franklin
eventually became so disillusioned with
the monarchy’s patronizing treatment of
America that he returned to his home-
land in 1775 as a firm proponent of inde-
pendence. He was immediately asked to
represent Pennsylvania in the Second
Continental Congress. In addition to
being one of five delegates chosen to
draft a declaration of independence,
Franklin’s international experience
earned him a position on the Committee
of Secret Correspondence. It sent one of
its members, New Yorker Silas Deane, to
be the first diplomat abroad. When
Deane reported from Paris that the
French government might be willing to
negotiate, the committee named
Benjamin Franklin as one of three Amer-
icans charged with opening talks with
France. His international stature and
fame, as well as his remarkable diplo-
matic skills and tact, resulted in his
being named the sole American plenipo-
tentiary at the French court. Foreign
minister the Compte de Vergennes got
along extraordinarily well with the
homespun yet brilliant intellectual, and
they took the lead in negotiating the
1778 Treaty of Alliance and a parallel
commercial treaty. That achievement
alone would have marked Franklin as a
major diplomatic figure, but he pulled
off another great diplomatic coup
five years later. Despite carping and
obstructionism from the other American
commissioners who joined him in Paris,
Franklin persevered in hammering out
the terms of a peace agreement with his
British counterpart, Richard Oswald.
Franklin then capitalized on his good
personal relationship with Vergennes to
convince the French government to
accept his handiwork. The 1783 Treaty
of Paris fulfilled all reasonable American
objectives and ensured that the two
greatest European nations, Great Britain
and France, acknowledged the unlimited
independence of the United States.
When he returned to America in 1785
after almost a quarter of a century
abroad, Benjamin Franklin continued to
make important contributions. As a
member of the Constitutional Conven-
tion in Philadelphia in 1787, Franklin
often expressed doubt about particular
provisions of the document while they
were being debated, but he threw his
considerable persuasiveness and reputa-
tion behind its ratification. All in all,

Franklin’s contributions as a politician
and, especially, as a diplomat dwarfed
those of anyone else in his generation.
See also: Alliance; Treaty (Treat of Paris, 1783)
Reference
Bloom, Harold. Benjamin Franklin. New
York: Chelsea House, 2008.
Gallatin, Albert (1761–1849)
Born in Geneva to a distinguished Swiss
family, Albert Gallatin was offered an
officer’s commission with the Hessian
troops that King George III hired to put
down the American Revolution. The 18-
year-old Gallatin did, in fact, sail to
America, but in a private capacity, and he
took no major part in the war. Instead, he
joined forces with a land speculator and
spent several years on the western Penn-
sylvania frontier in a very disappointing
venture. In the late 1780s, he entered pol-
itics, where he demonstrated special
capabilities in public finance. He won
several elective offices before gaining a
seat in the U.S. House of Representatives
in 1795. As a member of the Democratic-
Republican minority, he established the
forerunner of the House Ways and Means
Committee to ensure effective congres-
sional oversight of the Federalists who
were handling Treasury Department
affairs. That experience convinced Presi-
dent Thomas Jefferson to name him Sec-
retary of the Treasury, a position that he
held for 14 years. With less drama but no
less capability than Alexander Hamilton,
Gallatin managed the Treasury Depart-
ment and the nation’s finances with great
skill. Foreign complications that led to
the War of 1812 interfered with his long-
range planning, however, so he gladly
accepted President James Madison’s
appointment to participate in peace talks
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 63
in Russia in 1813. The site of the talks
eventually migrated to Belgium, where
Gallatin joined four other U.S. commis-
sioners. They negotiated the 1814 Treaty
of Ghent, which ended the war. Gallatin
received well-deserved credit, both for
his drafting talents and his ability to keep
the fractious commissioners on track.
After the war, Gallatin went to Paris as
the U.S. minister to the court of the
restored Bourbon monarchy. His best
efforts over the next seven years failed to
resolve outstanding Franco-American
differences, many of which dated back to
the era of the Napoleonic Wars. Gallatin
enjoyed far more success working with
Richard Rush, U.S. minister in London,
on commercial and territorial questions.
In 1823, Gallatin left Europe, only to be
sent back to London three years later. He
conducted extensive and successful
negotiations with British foreign minister
George Canning, the most important of
which assured a continuation of the
Anglo-American joint occupation of
Oregon. Gallatin retired from public
service in 1827 and spent the rest of his
long life in business, educational pur-
suits, writing, and charitable work. His
negotiating abilities, even temperament,
and excellent writing skills made him one
of the new nation’s most effective diplo-
matic representatives.
See also: Oregon Claims; Uti Possedetus
(Treaty of Ghent, 1814)
Reference
Aitken, Thomas. Albert Gallatin: Early
America’s Swiss-Born Statesman. New
York: Vantage, 1985.
Genêt, Edmond (1763–1834)
When the Girondin faction seized
control of France in 1793, it dispatched
64 | Section 1
“Citizen” Edmond Genêt to the United
States as its diplomatic envoy. He pru-
dently made his first landfall in South
Carolina, a hotbed of pro-French sym-
pathy. Then he slowly traveled north
toward Philadelphia, where he hoped
to convince President George Wash-
ington to activate the 1778 alliance
between the two countries. Genêt’s
presence stirred political currents in
the United States. Thousands of Amer-
icans joined “democratic societies”
modeled after those that had over-
thrown the French monarchy. Not inci-
dentally, the members of these
societies were often rabidly opposed to
the pro-British policies that the Feder-
alists surrounding the president advo-
cated. Even before the popular French
envoy arrived at the nation’s temporary
capital, Washington announced his
intention to preserve U.S. neutrality in
the spreading conflict between France
and her European neighbors. He also
objected to Genêt’s distribution of
commissions to U.S. officers, authoriz-
ing them to fight for France. In many
cases, the ship captains whom he
selected were to be privateers, staging
raids on British trading vessels.
Genêt’s disruptive activities so alien-
ated Washington that he eventually
asked Secretary of State Thomas
Jefferson to request the French govern-
ment to recall Genêt. By that time,
vengeful Jacobins had wrested control
from the Girondins, and they were
eager to send Genêt to the recently
invented guillotine. Genêt prudently
decided to seek asylum in the United
States. He married the daughter of the
governor of New York and spent the
rest of his life as an obscure gentleman
farmer.
See also: Alliance; Neutrality
Reference
Ammon, Harry. The Genêt Mission. New
York: Norton, 1973.
Jay, John (1745–1829)
With the notable exception of Benjamin
Franklin, John Jay was the most active
of the Founding Fathers in foreign
affairs. Born into a prominent New
York City family, it was hardly surpris-
ing that John Jay held conservative
views throughout his life. Educated at
Kings College (now Columbia Univer-
sity), he read law and passed the bar in
1768, but the American Revolution
permanently ended his law career. As a
conservative delegate to the Continen-
tal Congresses, he initially opposed
independence. Once the Declaration
had been signed, however, he devoted
his considerable talents to the revolu-
tionary cause. In late 1778, Congress
elected him its president, but he
resigned the following fall to serve as
America’s minister plenipotentiary to
Spain. His two years in Madrid were
exceedingly frustrating, because the
royal government never seriously con-
sidered recognizing American inde-
pendence and only reluctantly provided
funds to the revolutionary cause. Jay
gladly set off for Paris in 1782, to join
John Adams and Benjamin Franklin as
peace commissioners. By the time Jay
arrived, Franklin was putting the finish-
ing touches on a draft treaty that he had
negotiated with his British counterpart,
Richard Oswald. Jay nearly derailed
the whole process by insisting that the
American delegation should not negoti-
ate unless Great Britain first recognized

its members as representatives of an
independent nation. Fortunately,
Franklin was able to keep the process
moving toward its conclusion with the
Treaty of Paris in the fall of 1783.
Because of Jay’s now extensive diplo-
matic experience, Congress appointed
him its secretary of foreign affairs
when he returned to the United States.
He remained in that position, which
evolved into that of the first U.S. secre-
tary of state, until Thomas Jefferson
took over in 1790. His most significant
negotiations during those years involved
Spain, a country that Jay well under-
stood. Even so, his talks with Spanish
minister Don Diego de Gardoqui over
border and trade issues in the southern
United States ended inconclusively. Jay
recognized that the weakness of the
Articles of Confederation government
itself forestalled any hope of a settle-
ment, so he became a vocal advocate
for the new constitution. He even con-
tributed to the Federalist Papers, news-
paper articles written in conjunction
with James Madison and Alexander
Hamilton, to publicize and explain the
proposed constitutional system. Jay’s
diplomatic career appeared to be over
when President Washington chose him
to be the first chief justice of the
Supreme Court. As international ten-
sions rose, however, the president
asked the seasoned diplomat to go to
London to negotiate a treaty with Great
Britain. Jay’s Treaty of 1794 preserved
the peace between the two nations, but
only at the price of significant U.S.
concessions. The agreement was so
unpopular at home that Jay was burned
in effigy. Surprisingly, when he
returned home, he found that he had
been elected governor of New York.
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 65
After serving two terms in that
position, he retired from public life.
Many of Jay’s diplomatic endeavors
proved disappointing, but not because
of his lack of ability or commitment. To
a large degree, they were bound to fail
because he represented a revolutionary
government that was very different
from the traditional, conservative
European monarchies that had domi-
nated international affairs during his
lifetime.
See also: Jay’s Treaty; Treaty (Treaty of Paris
1783)
Reference
Brecher, Frank W. Securing American Inde-
pendence: John Jay and the French
Alliance. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
Livingston, Robert
(1746–1813)
A leading member of a prominent New
York family, Robert Livingston held
many political and governmental posi-
tions in his home state. He also served as
a delegate to the Continental Congress
on several occasions and was one of the
five members charged with drafting a
declaration of independence. He consid-
ered such a move premature, however, so
he played only a minor role and was
absent from Philadelphia when the docu-
ment was signed. On the other hand, he
was quite effective in organizational and
financial matters, an expertise that won
him appointment as head of the newly
established Department of Foreign
Affairs in 1781. In that position,
Livingston selected and instructed the
commissioners who were sent to negoti-
ate a peace treaty with Great Britain. He
resigned from federal service shortly
66 | Section 1
after the Treaty of Paris was ratified in
1783. President Thomas Jefferson
recalled him in 1801 to serve as U.S.
minister to France, where he attempted
to reverse, or at least limit, the danger of
the retrocession of Louisiana. When
French Foreign minister Talleyrand sud-
denly offered to sell the territory to the
United States, Livingston responded
enthusiastically and then worked closely
with James Monroe to negotiate an
attractive purchase agreement. In 1804,
Robert Livingston returned to private life
at Clermont, his country residence.
There he formed a partnership with
Robert Fulton to promote his steamboat,
the Clermont, and to establish monopoly
control over all steam navigation in New
York.
See also: Louisiana; Treaty (Treaty of Paris,
1783)
Reference
Dangerfield, George. Chancellor Robert R.
Livingston of New York. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1960.
Logan, George (1753–1821)
At the height of the Quasi-War with
France, a Philadelphia doctor, George
Logan, paid his own way to France. As a
Quaker, he was naturally interested in
promoting peace between the two coun-
tries. Arriving in 1798, he received a
warm welcome from high government
officials, including Talleyrand. Indeed,
the French foreign minister was eager to
reverse the bad publicity that the XYZ
Affair had generated. Federalist secretary
of state Timothy Pickering, on the other
hand, was furious at Logan’s unautho-
rized attempt to conduct diplomacy. In
January 1799, he encouraged Congress to
pass legislation outlawing such unilateral
behavior. Called the Logan Act, it stipu-
lated that anyone who took part in a diplo-
matic mission without State Department
authorization would be subject to a
$5,000 fine and up to a year in prison. No
one has ever been prosecuted under the
Logan Act, but it remains on the books as
a detriment to independent initiative.
See also: Quasi-War with France; XYZ Affair
Rush, Richard (1780–1859)
Like many lawyers, Philadelphian
Richard Rush became active in politics.
He held influential state-level posts
before President James Madison chose
him to serve, first as comptroller of the
currency and then as attorney-general in
1814. When James Monroe succeeded
Madison as president, he asked Rush to
act as secretary of state until John
Quincy Adams returned from Europe. In
the few weeks during which he headed
the State Department, Rush made his
most important diplomatic contribution:
a disarmament agreement with Great
Britain. The Rush-Bagot Agreement
(1817) imposed strict limits on each
nation’s naval presence in the Great
Lakes, restrictions that paved the way for
the establishment of the undefended bor-
der between Canada and the United
States. Rush then became the U.S. min-
ister in London, where he dealt with sev-
eral other issues that had been left
unresolved after the War of 1812. It was
Rush whom British foreign minister
George Canning approached about a
joint statement regarding the U.S.
republics, but the United States envoy
wisely referred the issue to his home
government. His insights, however,
proved valuable in the drafting of the
Monroe Doctrine. He returned to the

United States to serve as secretary of the
treasury when Adams became president,
but he lost to John Calhoun when he ran
for the vice presidency on the ticket that
Adams headed in 1828. Late in life,
Rush returned to diplomacy, serving a
stint as U.S. minister to France.
See also: Monroe Doctrine
Reference
Powell, John H. Richard Rush: Republican
Diplomat. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1942.
Symmes, John Cleves
(1742–1814)
John Cleves Symmes pursued a variety
of endeavors, including fighting as a
colonel in the Revolutionary War and
serving as a member of both the New
Jersey legislature and the Continental
Congress. Exploiting his political influ-
ence, he obtained from Congress a huge
land grant in the Ohio Territory, but he
and his partners were unable to make it
profitable. His vision of an expanding
United States led him to put his faith in
another land scheme, this one based on a
belief that the world was actually a series
of concentric spheres with spaces in
between. Convinced that access points
existed in the polar regions, he con-
vinced Congress to appropriate $2,500
to outfit an expedition to locate the
“holes at the poles” and claim all of the
land so discovered. The Lewis and Clark
Expedition distracted attention from his
proposal, however, but it was revived in
more expanded form in 1838. Leading a
four-year U.S. Navy exploratory mis-
sion, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes’s
squadron made extensive surveys of both
the north and south polar regions.
Although the Wilkes Expedition never
Inventing a Foreign Policy, 1776–1830 | 67
found any holes at the poles, it discov-
ered a vast, unexplored tract of land at
the South Pole, which is now known as
the continent of Antarctica.
See also: Wilkes, Charles
Reference
Goetzmann, William H. New Lands, New
Men. New York: Viking, 1986.
Wilkinson, James (1757–1825)
The Revolutionary War produced no
character more colorful or controversial
than James Wilkinson. He abandoned
medical studies in Philadelphia in 1776
for a commission as a captain in the
Continental Army. He participated in
several battles and rose quickly in rank
to the position of adjutant-general under
Horatio Gates. When Gates defeated
General Burgoyne at Saratoga, he dis-
patched Wilkinson to Philadelphia to
report the victory. A grateful Congress
promoted him on the spot to the rank of
brigadier general. After the war, he used
the prestige of his war record and mili-
tary rank to impress Westerners. He
played a prominent part in the creation
of the state of Kentucky out of western
Virginia. In the mid-1780s, he became
involved in the “Spanish Intrigues,”
ambiguous and fanciful scheming that
may have included plans to invade
Mexico, to break off the western states
from the United States to form a separate
republic, and to promote Spanish inter-
ests in Florida and Louisiana. At one
point, Wilkinson swore allegiance to the
king of Spain, and he received periodic
payments and pensions for his services
from the Spanish government for many
years. He used his influence with the
Spanish authorities to lead a group of
Americans who had obtained special
68 | Section 1
trading privileges through the port of
New Orleans long before Spain extended
the right of free deposit to all Americans
in Pinckney’s Treaty (1795). In the
1790s, Wilkinson revived his military
career, fighting Indians in the West,
accepting the transfer of British holdings
in Michigan, and eventually being
named military governor of the newly
acquired Louisiana Territory in the early
1800s. During that period, he became
involved in further intrigues, this time
with the discredited vice president,
Aaron Burr. Wilkinson played a double
game, both encouraging Burr and later
testifying against him at his treason trial
in 1807. Wilkinson himself survived sev-
eral investigations and courts-martial,
but his military career finally ended
when he commanded a disastrous and
unsuccessful campaign against Montreal
in 1813. He retired to a plantation near
New Orleans, but he was still engaged in
dubious dealings with the Mexican gov-
ernment right up to the moment of his
death.
Reference
Hay, Thomas Robson, and Morris Robert
Werner. The Admirable Trumpeter: A
Biography of General James Wilkinson.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1941.
 SECTION 2
EXPANSION AND CIVIL WAR, 1830–1880
By 1830, the United States was in the
fortunate position of being able to initi-
ate the foreign policies that it chose for
itself rather than simply reacting to out-
side forces. Americans increasingly
believed that their political system was
an ideal that should serve as a model for
other nations. At the same time, this belief
could be used to justify an American urge
to bring adjacent lands into their Union.
Although the sentiment had long roots, it
gained popular recognition as Manifest
Destiny in the mid-1840s. The concept
was that God had made clear that the
United States and its political system
should spread across the North American
continent. This inevitable expansion
should only stop when it encountered
natural boundaries such as oceans or
other continental limits. The Manifest
Destiny impulse set in train or served as
the rationalization for energetic diplo-
matic moves and population migrations
that added considerable territory to the
Union.
The 1840s expansionism began after
Secretary of State Daniel Webster nego-
tiated a settlement with British minister
69
Lord Ashburton in 1842. The Webster-
Ashburton Treaty resolved a series of
festering border disputes between the
United States and Canada and allowed
U.S. statesmen to focus their attention on
the South and West. Two areas attracted
particular U.S. attention: the Oregon Ter-
ritory and the underpopulated lands of
northern Mexico. The United States
began establishing its Oregon claims as
early as the 1790s. They often resulted
from a personal initiative, such as that of
Robert Gray, a merchant ship captain
who explored the Columbia River, and
of John Jacob Astor, a fur trader who
established a trading post on the south
bank of the river’s mouth. But for over
half a century, most Americans exhibited
only modest interest in the far-off land.
That all changed in the early 1840s when
Oregon Fever swept the nation, setting
in motion a series of diplomatic actions
that ultimately resulted in the annexation
of the southern half of the original
Oregon Territory to the United States.
Twenty years earlier, American
settlers had begun swarming into Texas,
the northeasternmost Mexican state. A
70 | Section 2
decade later, they objected to administra-
tive changes imposed from Mexico City
so strenuously that they set off a full-
scale Texas Revolution. Its success
enabled the Texans to form an independ-
ent republic in 1835, but they eagerly
sought annexation to the United States.
The growing conflict between North and
South over slavery complicated the
process so much that a resort to a joint
resolution of Congress in 1845 was nec-
essary to add Texas to the Union. Postan-
nexation issues caused so much
antagonism between the United States
and its southern neighbor that, just a year
later, the Mexican War broke out. U.S.
military victories in that conflict forced
the Mexican government to cede both
New Mexico and California to the
United States, fulfilling many Manifest
Destiny objectives.
Although a growing sectional crisis in
the 1850s distracted attention from fur-
ther territorial expansion, it failed to dis-
courage some adventurers from
engaging in filibustering expeditions in
Central America and the Caribbean. A
good many Southerners favored adding
Cuba to the United States, an objective
that prompted the issuance of the
Ostend Manifesto in 1854, but nothing
came of it. More successful were private
and governmental actions in the Far
East. The prospect of exploiting the
China Market had fascinated U.S. mer-
chants for decades before Caleb Cushing
signed the first formal treaty between the
United States and the Chinese Empire.
Far less was known about Japan, which
had deliberately sealed itself off from
outside contact for two centuries. Com-
modore Matthew Calbraith Perry pried
open the door to Japan in 1854;
four years later, Consul-General
Townsend Harris swung that door wider,
enabling traders from the United States
and other nations to establish broad com-
mercial relations with the secretive
empire.
By 1861, however, the people of the
United States had become almost totally
focused on their internal differences.
When several Southern states seceded,
President Abraham Lincoln realized that
war was likely. Keenly aware of the
nation’s first shot tradition, he delayed
his call for volunteers until the Confed-
erate government had ordered its batter-
ies to fire on the federal outpost of Fort
Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.
Immediately afterward, the Confederacy
sought international recognition as an
independent nation, but the major
European powers cautiously extended
only recognition as a belligerent to the
breakaway regime. Undaunted, the rebel
government set about to exploit its
control of the world’s most valuable
industrial resource, but king cotton
diplomacy brought none of the antici-
pated benefits. The only major Confed-
erate diplomatic success was buying and
arming commerce-destroying naval ves-
sels abroad. Great Britain, which had
provided the CSS Alabama, finally
agreed to submit the claims for damages
from these raiders to binding interna-
tional arbitration in 1871.
A postwar focus on reconstructing the
Southern states kept U.S. interests so
concentrated on internal issues that only
a couple of external initiatives bubbled
to the surface. One was an opportunity to
buy Alaska from Russia, and Secretary
of State William Seward took the lead in
arranging the purchase. Another was an
opportunity to annex Santo Domingo,
the eastern section of the island of
Hispaniola in the Caribbean. In this
case, President Ulysses Grant seized the

initiative. Fortunately, wiser heads pre-
vailed and the Senate refused to ratify
the annexation treaty that he presented.
That in no way signaled an end to U.S.
interest in the Caribbean, and it would
peak once again in the era of New
Manifest Destiny that characterized the
closing years of the 19th century.
KEY CONCEPTS
Alaska
The initiative for purchasing Alaska in
1867 came from one man: Secretary of
State William Seward. The sectional cri-
sis and the ensuing Civil War had
drained enthusiasm for Manifest Destiny
and expansionism; Seward was virtually
alone in hoping to revive it. His only
opportunity for a major territorial acqui-
sition came when Russia decided to sell
Alaska. Seward pounced on the opportu-
nity and coerced a reluctant U.S. govern-
ment into completing the purchase.
In the late 1700s, Russian adventurers
hunting sea otters and other fur-bearing
animals had headed east across the
Bering Strait. As Russian trappers
depleted northern areas, they pushed
south along the Alaskan coast. Up until
that time, both the United States and
Great Britain insisted that the northern
boundary of the Oregon Territory lay
along the line marked by 54° 40’ north
latitude. By 1821, the Russians had
crossed well south of the 54° 40’ line,
clearly impinging on territory that the
two English-speaking nations claimed as
their own. At that point, czar Alexander I
issued a formal decree, or ukase, that had
the effect of extending the Russian claim
south to 51° north latitude, and warned
all non-Russian vessels to remain at least
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 71
100 miles off the coastline. In fact, Russ-
ian influence extended even farther
south, all the way to Fort Ross on the
Russian River, just 70 miles northwest of
San Francisco.
Because both Great Britain and the
United States had strong claims to Oregon,
they had agreed to “occupy” the territory
jointly. They thus had good reason to
protest Russia’s aggrandizement. This
concern played into the Monroe Doctrine
in 1823. The following year, Great
Britain and the United States separately
negotiated agreements with the Russian
government in which Russia agreed to
withdraw its claim to land south of 54°
40’. In 1846, Great Britain and the
United States ended their joint occupa-
tion and divided the Oregon Territory
along the 49th Parallel.
British Columbia, the Canadian
province that lay between 49° and 54°
40’, remained remote and underpopu-
lated. With the exception of errant New
England-based whalers and a handful
of fur traders, few Americans knew
anything at all about the vast wilder-
ness that stretched to the Arctic Circle
and beyond. Even though neither the
British nor the Americans had shown
any substantial interest in Alaska, czar
Alexander II’s government decided to
dispose of it.
Recent events helped convince Russia
that the United States would be the safer
recipient. The Crimean War in the mid-
1850s had pitted Great Britain and several
other European nations against Russia.
The Russians feared that Great Britain,
with its huge navy, might stage a diver-
sionary attack on Alaska, diverting
resources from the main battle front. Dur-
ing the American Civil War, Russia was
the only major European power that stead-
fastly supported the Union government,
72 | Section 2
citing the fact that Alexander II had
ended serfdom in 1861 just as President
Lincoln was in the process of abolishing
slavery. Americans were flattered when
Russian fleets paid “friendly” visits to
New York and San Francisco in 1863—
not realizing that Russia’s main motive
was to keep its vessels safe from possible
attack should the British decide to sup-
port a Polish rebellion against Russian
dominance.
By 1866, the czar’s imperial govern-
ment had concluded that Alaska had not
only lost its value to the empire but had,
in fact, become an indefensible liability.
The Russians were also convinced that
the United States would ultimately
attempt to control the area because of its
abundant natural resources. Although
gold had yet to be discovered, if it was,
an expected California-style gold rush
would swamp any residual Russian influ-
ence. Why not sell the region instead, to
cash in on an asset that might soon be
completely worthless to Russia? While
visiting Moscow, Baron Stoeckl, the
Russian minister to the United States,
was told to offer Alaska to the United
States for a minimum price of $5 million.
At that point, only one American was
likely to respond enthusiastically. Fortu-
nately for Stoeckl, that man was William
Seward, whom President Andrew
Johnson had retained as secretary of
state after Abraham Lincoln’s death.
Tentative steps toward annexing Alaska
had been taken as early as 1854, but the
pre–Civil War expansionism had prima-
rily been associated with the discredited
Democratic Party. Seward had a far
broader international perspective than
his fellow Republicans. Although he
eagerly pursued other expansionist
opportunities, except for annexing
Midway Island, none had succeeded.
When Stoeckl returned to Washington
in 1867, Seward urgently pressed him to
sell Alaska. With such an eager prospec-
tive buyer, Stoeckl raised his sales price
to $7 million. Seward accepted on the
spot and even agreed to pay an additional
$200,000 for the property and equipment
of the Russian-American Company.
Even so, Seward worried that Stoeckl
might not have official authority to com-
plete the sale, so he insisted that the min-
ister contact his home government for
assurance. Stoeckl duly reported back to
Moscow and, not surprisingly, won
hearty approval for a deal that would
bring in 40 percent more money than
anticipated.
On the very evening that he received
Stoeckl’s confirmation, Seward rushed to
Charles Sumner’s house to plead his
case. Sumner chaired the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. During his tenure,
everything Sumner supported gained
Senate approval and anything he
opposed failed. Fortunately for Seward,
Sumner agreed to sponsor the Alaska
purchase. Despite a spate of negative
press comments ridiculing “Seward’s
Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox,” Sumner
obtained a positive vote of 27 to 12 to
ratify the purchase treaty.
The battle was hardly over. The
House of Representatives had just issued
articles impeaching President Johnson,
and every one of his administration’s
policies was subjected to critical com-
ments and assessment. Not until the
summer of 1868 did the House finally
appropriate the $7.2 million required for
the purchase of Alaska.
A return on that investment was slow
in coming. Alaska remained an unsettled,
remote wilderness for many years. But,
just as the Russians had anticipated, gold
was discovered in the Klondike region,

attracting tens of thousands of fortune
hunters to the Far North in 1898 and
after. Many other valuable natural
resources have been exploited since then,
repaying the initial purchase price a hun-
dred times over. Seward’s foresight and
enthusiasm were thus amply justified.
See also: Manifest Destiny; Monroe Doctrine
References
Chevigny, Hector. Russian America: The
Great Alaskan Venture, 1741–1867. New
York: Viking, 1965.
Holbo, Paul S. Tarnished Expansion: The
Alaska Scandal, the Press, and Congress,
1867–1871. Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1983.
Jensen, Ronald J. The Alaska Purchase and
Russian-American Relations. Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1975.
Arbitration (Alabama Claims)
If two countries cannot reach an agree-
ment, they may ask a third party to arbi-
trate. In the case of binding arbitration,
the two sides must agree in advance to
accept whatever decision the arbiter
makes. That aspect of arbitration makes
it risky for both sides, so only rarely do
governments agree to use it to resolve
differences. The most noteworthy case
of arbitration in the 19th century con-
cerned the Alabama Claims, U.S.
demands that Great Britain pay compen-
sation for allowing its shipyards to build
commerce-destroying vessels for the
Confederacy during the Civil War.
From the Confederate perspective,
obtaining warships overseas was essen-
tial; no Southern port had facilities that
were capable of building such vessels.
Lacking a preexisting navy, the Confed-
eracy initially commissioned shipowners
as privateers and encouraged them to
disrupt Northern trade. That strategy
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 73
failed because the Confederate govern-
ment could not guarantee that any prizes
captured could be sold to pay the priva-
teers’ expenses and no foreign govern-
ment would do so either.
In 1862, the Richmond government
sent Captain James D. Bullock to England,
armed with the authority to buy a war
fleet. Despite strong objections from
U.S. minister Charles Francis Adams,
the British government ignored its own
neutrality laws and allowed Bullock to
contract for the new ship, which became
the CSS Alabama. Although it took on
cannons and crew in the Azores, Confed-
erate Navy officers commanded this
commerce destroyer on its remarkably
destructive voyage. Along with a couple
of other Confederate raiders, the Florida
and the Shenandoah, the Alabama ulti-
mately captured or destroyed vessels and
cargo worth more than $15 million.
In 1869, U.S. minister Reverdy
Johnson negotiated an agreement with
British foreign minister Lord Clarendon
that submitted the U.S. claims to arbitra-
tion. The powerful head of the Foreign
Relations Committee, Massachusetts
senator Charles Sumner, convinced his
colleagues not to ratify the Johnson-
Clarendon Convention. Then Sumner
delivered an impassioned speech, insist-
ing that the harm to the United States
was far greater than the specific Alabama
claims. In addition to $15 million in
direct damages, Sumner claimed that the
Confederate raiders had frightened off,
or driven to other countries, U.S. carry-
ing trade worth $110 million. Moreover,
he charged, British support for the
Confederate naval ventures strengthened
the rebels’ resolve sufficiently to extend
the Civil War by two years. The four-
year war had cost the Union government
$4 billion, so, Sumner maintained, the
74 | Section 2
Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner’s out-
rageous demands on Great Britain encouraged
the country to accept international arbitration
of the Alabama Claims in 1871. (National
Archives)
British government should pay half that
amount, or $2 billion. He concluded with
the suggestion that Great Britain could
cancel the whole debt by ceding Canada
to the United States.
The British naturally objected to these
outrageous assertions, and fortunately
President Ulysses Grant’s secretary of
state, Hamilton Fish, was a true diplo-
mat. He decided to bundle the Alabama
claims with other Anglo-American dis-
putes, including a controversy over own-
ership of some of the San Juan Islands in
the Pacific Northwest, a revived fishing
rights dispute in the Northeast, and
British claims against the Union Navy
for allegedly illegal blockading prac-
tices. Fish then invited the British to
send commissioners to Washington,
D.C., to work out an agreement. The
resulting Washington Treaty (1871) sub-
mitted the outstanding disputes to bind-
ing arbitration. The U.S. Senate ratified
this treaty because, in it, the British gov-
ernment admitted responsibility for let-
ting the commerce destroyers loose. That
meant the arbitration panel would only
be charged with evaluating the damages,
not assessing guilt.
The German kaiser arbitrated the San
Juan Islands controversy, upholding the
Canadian claim to the disputed terri-
tory. The fishing dispute went the other
way, with the arbiter confirming that
U.S. fishermen had a right to haul in
catches off Newfoundland and
Labrador but awarding the Canadian
government $5.5 million in compensa-
tion. A three-person arbitration panel
certified $2 million worth of British
claims against the U.S. Navy for block-
ade violations.
The most important arbitration, of
course, involved the Confederate
Navy. The issue was taken up by a
five-man arbitration panel meeting in
Geneva, which included representa-
tives from the United States, Great
Britain, Brazil, Italy, and Switzerland.
The American member of the panel
was Charles Francis Adams, the same
man who had protested the British
policy in 1862, when he was the U.S.
minister in London. The panel was
stunned when the team presenting the
U.S. position reiterated Charles Sum-
ner’s extravagant formula for compen-
sation. Acting in concert with the more
rational Fish, however, Adams con-
vinced the Geneva tribunal to state that
it had no authority to consider contin-
gent claims and that, even if it had, it
would throw them out.
That move paved the way for a real-
istic assessment of direct damages.
Because Great Britain had already
admitted its responsibility, the panel

endorsed the $15.5 million in U.S.
claims as valid. When the balance sheet
for all of the elements of the Washington
Treaty arbitrations was drawn up, how-
ever, the United States received quite a
bit less. If the $2 million for blockade
violations and the $5.5 million for fish-
eries compensation were subtracted, the
United States ended up only $8 million
to the good. Although the final settle-
ment may have disappointed some
Americans, Hamilton Fish’s decision to
arbitrate the issues was an excellent
way to reduce Anglo-American ten-
sions and help move the nation beyond
the Civil War.
See also: Recognition as a Belligerent
References
Cook, Adrian. The Alabama Claims. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1975.
Hollett, David. The Alabama Affair.
Cheshire, UK: Sigma Press, 1993.
Robinson, Charles M., III. Shark of the
Confederacy: The Story of the CSS
Alabama. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 1995.
China Market
Throughout the 19th century, Americans
dreamed of exploiting the China market.
Especially after the United States
expanded to the West Coast, prospects for
a lucrative and expanding Far Eastern
trade energized U.S. merchants and man-
ufacturers. The fact that hundreds of mil-
lions of China’s potential customers lived
in a stagnant society and were, by and
large, extremely poor, did nothing to
diminish U.S. interest in the China market.
A number of political and diplomatic
obstacles limited access to that market.
Hoping to prevent foreign penetration of
its realm, China’s imperial government
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 75
took steps to discourage international
trade. When U.S. merchant ships first
began arriving in the Far East in the
1780s, they were restricted to trading
only through Hong Kong, on the South
Coast of China. That restriction persisted
for another half century, preventing the
China trade from rising above a tiny per-
centage of U.S. global commerce.
During that period, the U.S. govern-
ment demonstrated little interest in the
China market. Although it routinely
filled the post of U.S. consul in China,
the position typically went to a member
of a merchant family that had estab-
lished a warehouse or “factory” in
Hong Kong. Samuel Shaw, the first
such consul, was appointed in the
1780s. Despite holding a formal title,
the U.S. consul’s authority was not offi-
cially recognized by the Chinese gov-
ernment and, often, not even by other
U.S. traders.
An alleged murder case in 1821
demonstrated the consul’s inherent
weakness. An American sailor named
Terranova was implicated in the death of
a Chinese flower seller who had brought
her boat alongside his ship. The local
authorities wanted to execute him, so the
U.S. consul and other U.S. captains held
a hearing on board one of their ships. In
the end, however, they could do nothing
to protect their fellow citizen and reluc-
tantly turned Terranova over to the Chinese
authorities. He was convicted of murder
in a one-day trial and executed.
Meanwhile the trade that developed
between the United States and China
proved valuable to both parties. Americans
loved the tea, porcelains, and silks that
the Chinese produced. In return, U.S.
ships initially found a ready market for
furs from the West Coast and Antarctica
and sandalwood harvested in Hawaii. By
76 | Section 2
the 1830s, cotton cloth from New
England mills had become popular as
well. Some Americans even joined
French and British merchants in the
lucrative opium trade.
That trade particularly upset the
Chinese government. In the late 1830s, it
attempted to halt the importation of
opium, but the British and French gov-
ernments resorted to military force to
keep it open. To their surprise and cha-
grin, the Chinese lost every battle and
skirmish. At the end of the Opium Wars,
the Chinese acquiesced to a humiliat-
ing treaty that not only failed to elimi-
nate the opium trade but opened four
additional Chinese ports to British and
French traders.
Worried that Great Britain’s success,
in particular, might foreclose or further
limit their access, Americans interested
in the China market urged the federal
government to take action in the early
1840s. Congress responded by appropri-
ating funds for a major diplomatic mis-
sion, and President John Tyler named
Massachusetts congressman Caleb
Cushing to command a small naval
squadron to emphasize U.S. strength.
Cushing found the Chinese government
willing to sign a treaty with the United
States, which included a most-favored-
nation provision. The Treaty of Wangshia
(1844) gave Americans the same rights
of access and trade that China had
already granted to England and France.
Among those rights was authority to deal
directly with any Americans accused of
crimes in China. This principle is known
as extraterritoriality, and it remained a
major bone of contention between China
and the United States well into the
20th century.
The extended access that the treaty
granted to Americans whetted the prose-
lytizing zeal of missionaries. Arriving in
China in the late 1840s, they converted a
good many Chinese to Christianity. One
of the converts, who became convinced
that he was the brother of Jesus, attracted
a large band of followers known as the
Taipings. China’s imperial government
fought to suppress the Taipings, and, for
more than a decade, it was not clear
which side would prevail.
Although many Americans sympa-
thized with a rebellion that voiced dem-
ocratic principles, others worried that if
the Taiping Revolt succeeded, the bene-
ficial trading privileges that they cur-
rently enjoyed would disappear. In 1853,
U.S. commissioner Humphrey Marshall
began personally collecting the tariffs
and forwarding them to China’s central
government, to make sure that the U.S.
relationship would remain stable. In the
following year, Marshall’s successor as
commissioner, Robert McLane, took the
lead in institutionalizing this procedure.
The result was the formation of the
Imperial Chinese Customs Service,
staffed by foreigners who collected rev-
enue from all trading activities and trans-
ferred it to the imperial government.
This mechanism remained in operation
throughout the remainder of the 19th
century.
The Treaty of Wangshia was sched-
uled for review in 1856, and many
Americans thought their staunch support
of the imperial government would earn
them new concessions. It quickly
became apparent that the Chinese did not
share that view. A former missionary
named Peter Parker had become U.S.
commissioner, and he boldly proposed
that the United States seize the island of
Formosa as a hostage to force conces-
sions. The State Department refused to
back its overzealous envoy and doubtless

would have refused, even if naval and
military units had been available to
accomplish his plan.
In the end, Parker’s demands were
unnecessary because Great Britain and
France also faced revision or cancella-
tion of their favorable treaty provisions.
As they had in the Opium Wars, they
mounted a major military campaign, and
the Anglo-French War was equally suc-
cessful. A chastened Chinese govern-
ment signed the Treaty of Tientsin in
1858 with the victorious governments
and the United States. It included provi-
sions for diplomatic missions to reside in
the capital of Peking (Beijing) and
opened much greater access to foreign-
ers throughout the empire.
At that juncture, the United States
possessed broad and comprehensive
trading and traveling privileges that
should allow Americans to exploit the
China market fully. But the outbreak of
the American Civil War a couple of years
later focused the nation’s attention
inward. During the conflict, the Confed-
erate Navy sent out several very effective
commerce destroyers that wreaked so
much damage to the U.S. merchant
marine that it never fully recovered. The
China market thus remained a minor ele-
ment of the nation’s international com-
merce until interest revived at the time of
the Spanish-American War at the end of
the 19th century.
See also: Cushing, Caleb; Open Door Policy
References
Cohen, Warren I. America’s Response to
China. 4th ed. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000.
Dulles, Foster Rhea. The Old China Trade.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1930.
Fairbank, John K. Trade and Diplomacy
on the China Coast: The Opening of
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 77
the Treaty Ports 1842–1854. 2 vols.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1953–1956.
Hunt, Michael H. The Making of a Special
Relationship: The United States and
China to 1914. New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1983.
Filibustering
From time to time, U.S. adventurers
mounted unofficial, often illegal forays
into neighboring countries or colonies.
They were called filibusters, a word
derived from the Spanish term for free-
booters or pirates. Unlike stereotypical
pirates, whose chief motivation was to
obtain booty, many 19th-century fili-
busters saw themselves as pursuing
noble goals. These might include draw-
ing new territories into the United States
or “freeing” oppressed people from
despotic governments. Filibustering was
quite popular in some parts of the United
States, even though federal neutrality
laws prohibited it.
Florida attracted a number of fili-
busters. After the Louisiana Purchase,
Americans cast hungry eyes on the fer-
tile lands lying along the Gulf Coast east
of New Orleans. Spain’s control over its
colony of West Florida was so weak that
U.S. adventurers could confidently move
into the region. Their goal was to con-
vince the United States to annex the area.
A few years later, George Mathews
claimed to have received and destroyed
secret correspondence from President
James Madison that ordered him to lead
a filibustering expedition into East
Florida. The president disavowed any
responsibility for the unsuccessful foray,
even though his administration clearly
hoped that U.S. penetration of Florida
would eventually succeed.
78 | Section 2
Beginning in 1809, one Latin American
colony after another sought independ-
ence from Spain, and Americans
generally applauded these supposedly
democratic revolutions. A few individu-
als went much further, directly aiding the
rebel cause as soldiers of fortune or
privateers. U.S. filibusters were espe-
cially active in Mexico prior to its inde-
pendence in 1821. New Orleans and
Baltimore served as convenient bases
where filibusters and privateers could
collect financial support, recruit follow-
ers, or sell captured cargoes. In 1818,
Congress responded by passing neutral-
ity legislation that outlawed filibustering
by Americans.
Dedicated adventurers blithely
ignored these restrictions. The rise of
Manifest Destiny sentiment in the 1840s
encouraged even more filibustering.
Expansionist enthusiasm spilled over
into the next decade, although many fili-
busters in those years appeared to have
less interest in adding territory to the
United States. Narciso López, for exam-
ple, was a Cuban nationalist who fitted
out three filibustering expeditions in the
United States. His ambition was to free
Cuba from Spanish control, but his activ-
ities failed to arouse local support, and
the colonial government eventually exe-
cuted him for treason.
William Walker had even grander
ambitions. He first attempted to foment a
revolution in the Mexican states of
Sonora and Baja California, but he failed
to attract a significant following. In
1857, he switched his filibustering focus
to Central America and, for a time, actu-
ally controlled the Nicaraguan govern-
ment. He planned to expand his
dictatorial rule to encompass all of Cen-
tral America in hopes of profiting from
the lucrative isthmus trade. He ran afoul
of the U.S. neutrality laws, however and,
like López, later faced a firing squad in
Honduras.
Although George W. L. Bickley never
managed to mount an invasion, his goal
was equally grandiose. As the self-
appointed president general of the
American Legion, Knights of the Golden
Circle, he planned to use this secret
lodge as a mechanism to obtain control
of northern Mexico. Once in charge,
Bickley planned to follow the Texas
precedent and apply for annexation to
the United States. He insisted that as
many as 25 slave states could be carved
out of his anticipated domain. The Civil
War interrupted his plans for what would
have been the largest filibustering expe-
dition in U.S. history.
In subsequent years, other visionaries
attempted to gather men and supplies for
interventionist ventures. One such inci-
dent in 1873 involved the Virginius.
Spanish naval forces captured this ship
flying the U.S. flag in international
waters and took it to Santiago de Cuba.
There the crew and passengers were
accused of treason and 51 of them were
executed as filibusters. Despite wide-
spread U.S. outrage, the U.S. govern-
ment concluded that the Virginius was
not legally a U.S. vessel, thereby avoid-
ing a direct confrontation with Spain.
Similar actions evoked a much differ-
ent response in 1895. José Martí and his
fellow Cuban Americans collected arms
and money in the United and used them
to mount an invasion of Cuba from U.S.
ports. Like their filibustering antecedent,
Narciso López, their goal was to throw
off Spanish rule. The Cuban rebellion
became an extraordinarily popular cause
in the United States and ultimately led
President William McKinley to declare
war on Spain.

See also: Ostend Manifesto (Cuba); Transconti-
nental Treaty (Florida); Walker, William
References
Bowen, Charles H. Agents of Manifest Des-
tiny: The Lives and Times of the Fili-
busters. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1980.
Owsley, Frank L., Jr., and Gene A. Smith. Fil-
ibusters and Expansionists. Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 1997.
Warren, Harris Gaylord. The Sword Was
Their Passport: A History of American
Filibustering in the Mexican Revolution.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1943.
First Shot Tradition
The United States maintains a tradi-
tional belief that it has never gone to
war without ample provocation. The
nation resorts to conflict only when it
has been attacked, that is, after the other
side has fired the first shot. Whether it
was Redcoats firing on New England
colonists, Confederates bombarding
Fort Sumter, or Japanese sinking ships
at Pearl Harbor, the United States has
typically responded only after suffering
a first shot. Sometimes that shot is a
surprise, as it was at Pearl Harbor;
sometimes considerable political or
diplomatic maneuvering precedes the
firing of a first shot. Over time, the first
shot tradition has significantly influ-
enced presidential and congressional
decisions.
Although they had taken many sub-
versive steps, such as sponsoring nonim-
portation and stockpiling arms and
ammunition, the patriots who assembled
at Lexington and Concord in April 1775
insisted that British soldiers, not they,
fired the “shot heard round the world.”
This event energized those who believed
that independence was the only solution
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 79
to colonial problems and that only win-
ning a war could obtain it. The first shot
tradition thus began with the Revolution-
ary War itself.
A number of maritime grievances and
expansionist ambitions inflamed U.S.
War Hawks in the early 1800s. In 1807,
they could point to a clear-cut case in
which the British fired the first shot. A
Royal Navy vessel fired a broadside at
the USS Chesapeake when its captain
refused to surrender four men whom the
British claimed were deserters. In this
instance, President Thomas Jefferson
chose to respond with an embargo rather
than immediately declare war. Five years
later, his successor, James Madison,
alluded to the Chesapeake Affair in his
call for a declaration that triggered the
War of 1812.
As soon as he took office, President
James K. Polk began feeling intense
pressure from Southern expansionists
who wanted the United States to annex
large parts of northern Mexico. He then
provoked a first shot by ordering General
Zachary Taylor to station his army in a
contested area between the Nueces River
and the Rio Grande in southeast Texas.
In the spring of 1846, Taylor reported
that Mexican soldiers had crossed the
Rio Grande and attacked a contingent of
U.S. dragoons. Polk cited that first shot
as an excuse for a full-scale military
response that ultimately led to U.S. sol-
diers and marines occupying Mexico
City.
Interestingly enough an obscure, first-
term Whig representative from Illinois
named Abraham Lincoln was one of the
most outspoken critics of this rationali-
zation. He repeatedly introduced what
were called “spot resolutions” demand-
ing that the president identify to Con-
gress the exact spot where the attack
80 | Section 2

occurred. If it was not indisputably U.S. states. Confederate president Jefferson

territory, the argument went, the first
shot excuse for going to war was not
justified.
When Lincoln himself became presi-
dent in 1861, he was therefore well
aware of and sensitive to the first shot
tradition. Seven Southern states had
seceded from the Union even before his
inauguration, and Lincoln realized that
if he precipitously declared war, eight
more slave states would likely join the
Confederacy. Searching for a credible
rationale for a call to arms, in early
April he ordered an unarmed supply
ship to reprovision Fort Sumter. That
federal post lay in the harbor of
Charleston, South Carolina, the most
impassioned of all the secessionist
Davis decided that he could not allow
the fort to remain in federal hands, so
he ordered General P. T. G. Beauregard
to have his shore batteries initiate a sus-
tained artillery barrage on the island.
The Confederacy thus fired the first
shot, allowing Lincoln to call for
75,000 volunteers to defend the Union.
In the end, only half of the remaining
slave states chose to secede.
President William McKinley’s
situation in 1898 resembled the dilemma
that Polk had faced. His party was filled
with outspoken “jingoists” calling for
U.S. intervention in the Cuban rebellion.
Like Polk, McKinley ordered U.S. ser-
vicemen into harm’s way by sending a
second-class battleship, the USS Maine,

A Northern attempt to resupply Federal soldiers at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor in South
Carolina provoked the Confederacy into firing the “first shot” of the Civil War, allowing President
Abraham Lincoln to justify the Union response as a defensive measure. (Ridpath, John Clark.
Ridpath’s History of the World, 1901)

to Havana Harbor. On February 15, the
Maine blew up, killing 260 Americans.
Although it has since been demonstrated
that the explosion resulted from sponta-
neous combustion of coal stored adja-
cent to a powder magazine, the jingoists
blamed the explosion on Spain. A few
weeks later, McKinley cited this “first
shot” in his message to Congress, which
initiated the Spanish-American War.
Although President Woodrow Wilson
proclaimed a policy of neutrality after
the Great War began in 1914, U.S. trade
with Great Britain and France contin-
ued at ever higher levels. Early in 1917,
the German government concluded that
it could starve its enemies into submis-
sion if it disrupted their transatlantic
supply lines. The German ambassador
told Wilson’s government that his
country would henceforth target all
ships trading with Great Britain and
France, including U.S. vessels. By the
time that Wilson submitted his war
message in April, a number of U.S.
ships had been sunk and lives lost in
German U-boat attacks. Unrestricted
submarine warfare thus served as the
first shot that projected the United
States into the war.
The attack on Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941, ranks as the most
unanticipated first shot in U.S. history.
Even though Japan had staged preemp-
tive naval attacks against China in 1895
and Russia in 1904, the United States
seemed wholly unprepared for a similar
assault. Historians have engaged in a
good deal of debate over whether
President Franklin Roosevelt either
manipulated the Japanese into attacking
or, at the very least, knew in advance that
the attack would occur. What mattered in
the short run, however, was that the
United States had sustained a stunning
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 81
first shot that justified its entry into the
World War II.
Like Lincoln, President Lyndon
Johnson clearly understood the first
shot tradition. As the conflict in Viet-
nam intensified, he knew that only a
shocking event would convince the
American people to support full U.S.
military participation. In August 1964,
reports circulated that North Viet-
namese vessels had fired on U.S. Navy
ships in neutral waters. Even at the
time, questions arose about what the
U.S. ships were doing there and why
North Vietnam would risk giving the
Americans an excuse to fight. Johnson
played up this first shot on U.S. forces
to press Congress to pass the Tonkin
Gulf Resolution, which authorized him
to escalate U.S. participation in the con-
flict. It is now clear that the reported
incidents were highly exaggerated, if
they occurred at all, and that Johnson
had prepared the wording of his mes-
sage to Congress some two months
before the purported attacks took place.
The most recent U.S. war is also a
response to a shocking first shot—the
terrorist attacks on New York City’s
World Trade Center in September 2001.
President George W. Bush cited these
attacks to obtain approval for leading a
multinational force into Afghanistan, the
presumed sanctuary of the Al Qaeda
leadership that had orchestrated the
attacks. He also cited 9/11 to justify
invading Iraq a year later, despite the
lack of concrete evidence that Iraq, or its
leader, Saddam Hussein, had any con-
nection at all with those who carried out
the suicide mission in New York. Never-
theless, Bush was certainly aware of and
acting consistently with the first shot
tradition when he ordered the U.S.
counterattacks.
82 | Section 2
See also: Bush Doctrine; Jingoism; Manifest
Destiny; Pearl Harbor; War Hawks
References
Bauer, K. Jack. The Mexican War. New York:
Macmillan, 1974.
Current, Richard N. Lincoln and the First
Shot. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963.
Dobson, John M. Reticent Expansionism:
The Foreign Policy of William McKinley.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,
1988.
Moïse, Edwin E. Tonkin Gulf and the Esca-
lation of the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Japan, Opening of
Only rarely did the United States find
itself ahead of other major powers in the
19th century. If the exception proves
the rule, Japan was the exception. The
United States was the first foreign nation
to “open” Japan to outside trade and
influence in the modern era. Although
pursuit of trade opportunities played
some part in motivating U.S. interest in
Japan, other factors were equally or even
more important.
Japan very consciously decided to
close itself off from outside influences in
the early 1600s. One reason was the
Japanese experience with the Dutch and
Portuguese who had sent exploratory
voyages to the Far East. Some of these
carried Jesuits who were intent on con-
verting “heathens” to Christianity. In
Japan, the emperor was considered
divine, so Christian missionary activity
called into question the basic belief
structure of the island nation.
Internal structural developments also
contributed to the decision to close off
external contact. The chief military
leader in Japan, the shogun, held a
hereditary position that had gradually
become strong enough to control not
only the government apparatus but the
emperor himself. As the shogunate’s
power became institutionalized, the
shogun concluded that further change
might unravel the system that guaranteed
his authority. That meant keeping things
just as they were and, especially, pre-
venting external or foreign concepts and
contacts as much as possible. The ulti-
mate result was a decision to allow only
a single foreign ship from Holland to call
at the remote island of Deshima once a
year. When the Dutch became absorbed
in the European wars associated with the
French Revolution, the Dutch could not
fulfill this obligation from 1797 to 1807,
so private U.S. vessels maintained the
very limited external contact with Japan.
In subsequent years, U.S. interest in
the isolated empire grew, on both
intellectual and practical levels. New
England whaling vessels, for example,
discovered that the cold waters off
Japan’s East Coast teemed with their
prey. On more than one occasion, a
whaler ran short of water or fuel and
tried to replenish these crucial supplies
at a Japanese port. Although very
restricted access was sometimes
allowed, foreigners had to leave imme-
diately after their needs had been
fulfilled.
Unfortunate individuals who were
shipwrecked or stranded on Japanese ter-
ritory experienced even harsher treat-
ment. Because it was illegal for
foreigners even to be in Japan, they were
treated like criminals. The lucky ones
were transported, often locked in irons in
cramped sedan chairs, to Deshima,
where they could transfer to the foreign
ship making its annual visit. The stories
they told of their captivity and treatment
aroused calls for government action.
 Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 83

Americans made several attempts to President Millard Fillmore decided to

regularize relations. In 1837, for exam-
ple, the USS Morrison sailed into the
harbor at Edo, present-day Tokyo, with
11 shipwrecked Japanese fishermen on
board. The U.S. vessel was immediately
surrounded by small craft while shore
batteries fired warning shots. None of
the Japanese passengers made it home.
Subsequent attempts were slightly more
successful, but no one could ever be sure
just what reception a foreign visitor
might encounter.
take concerted action by choosing U.S.
Navy commodore Matthew Calbraith
Perry to lead a small squadron to Japan.
Perry’s ships sailed into the harbor at Edo
early in 1854 and delivered a letter to
local authorities. It demanded that they
negotiate with him when he returned
shortly with more ships. Fortunately for
the Americans, influential Japanese had
concluded that outside contact needed to
be established, so they pressured the
shogunate to open relations. As a result,

TREATY OF PEACE, AMITY, AND COMMERCE

BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND JAPAN: SIGNED AT
KANAGAWA, MARCH 31, 1854

ARTICLE I. There shall be a perfect, permanent, and universal peace, and a sincere
and cordial amity between the United States of America on the one part, and the
Empire of Japan on the other part, and between their people respectively, without
exception of persons or places.
ARTICLE II. The port of Simoda [in Yedo harbor], in the principality of Idzu, and the
port of Hakodade, in the principality of Matsmai [Hokkaido], are granted by the
Japanese as ports for the reception of American ships, where they can be supplied
with wood, water, provisions, and coal, and other articles their necessities may
require, as far as the Japanese have them. . . .
ARTICLE III. Whenever ships of the United States are thrown or wrecked on the
coast of Japan, the Japanese vessels will assist them, and carry their crews to Simoda,
or Hakodade, and hand them over to their countrymen, appointed to receive them;
whatever articles the shipwrecked men may have preserved shall likewise be restored,
and the expenses incurred in the rescue and support of Americans and Japanese who
may thus be thrown upon the shores of either nation are not to be refunded.
ARTICLE IV. Those shipwrecked persons and other citizens of the United States shall
be free as in other countries, and not subjected to confinement, but shall be amenable
to just laws. . . .
ARTICLE IX. It is agreed that if at any future day the Government of Japan shall grant
to any other nation or nations privileges and advantages which are not herein granted
to the United States and the citizens thereof, that these same privileges and advantages
shall be granted likewise to the United States and to the citizens thereof, without any
consultation or delay. . . .

Source: Bevans, Charles I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States
of America, 1776–1949. Washington, DC: GPO, 1972, 9:777–780.
84 | Section 2
the Japanese agreed to talk when Perry’s
ships returned in February.
The commodore left nothing to
chance. He threatened to return in 20
days with 100 ships if meaningful dis-
cussions failed to develop. The Japan-
ese had no way of knowing how empty
that threat was, so they grudgingly
opened negotiations. The result was the
Treaty of Kanagawa, completed on
March 31, 1854, establishing formal
relations between the two countries. Its
key provisions permitted U.S. vessels to
take on wood and water from Japanese
ports, so the agreement is sometimes
known as the “Wood and Water Treaty.”
It also allowed the United States to sta-
tion consular officers at two Japanese
ports. These officials would be able to
monitor treatment and arrange safe pas-
sage for any U.S. citizens who had
become stranded in Japan. The agree-
ment also included a most-favored-
nation clause. Although a huge
celebration greeted the signing of the
treaty, it was only a slim opening wedge
to the secretive empire.
Far more important in the long run
was the treaty worked out by Townsend
Harris, the U.S. consul-general who
took up his station near the imperial
capital. In 1858. He was able to sign a
much broader agreement than the one
Perry had negotiated in 1854. The new
treaty permitted freedom of trade
between the two countries, allowed
Americans to reside at designated ports,
and established tariff provisions for
both nations. Very quickly, Great
Britain, France, Russia, and Holland
negotiated similar trade agreements
with Japan, based on the document that
Harris had developed. The United
States thus led the way in opening
Japan to the wider world.
See also: China Market; Harris, Townsend
References
Dulles, Foster Rhea. Yankees and Samurai.
New York: Harper and Row, 1965.
Sakamaki, Shunzo. Japan and the United
States, 1790–1853. Tokyo: Asiatic
Society of Japan, 1939.
Schroeder, John H. Matthew Calbraith Perry.
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,
2001.
Joint Resolution (Texas)
When Thomas Jefferson sent the
Louisiana Purchase Treaty to the
Senate in 1803, he established a prece-
dent for using a treaty to annex terri-
tory to the United States. Sectional
politics, abolitionist agitation, and
bumbling statesmanship combined to
make it impossible to obtain a two-
thirds majority vote in the Senate for
ratification of a treaty annexing Texas.
Casting about for an alternative,
President John Tyler settled on a joint
congressional resolution. Although it
required only a simple majority of
votes in both houses, the annexation of
Texas came only after considerable
politicking and compromise.
During his term, President Andrew
Jackson scrupulously avoided proposing
the annexation of Texas, a move that
would expand the influence of the slave
states. His successor, New Yorker Martin
Van Buren, was no abolitionist, but he,
too, realized how divisive the Texas issue
had become. When Sam Houston, the
hero of the Texas war for independence,
became president of the republic in
1841, he was convinced his nation could
not survive on its own. Houston there-
fore urgently requested U.S. president
John Tyler to begin negotiations on an
annexation treaty.

Having failed to obtain Senate ratification of a
treaty annexing Texas, lame-duck president
John Tyler championed approval of a joint
Congressional resolution to accomplish that
goal in early 1845. (Library of Congress)
A pro-slavery Virginian, Tyler was
more than willing to move ahead.
Elected vice president on the Whig ticket
headed by William Henry Harrison,
Tyler became president one month after
the inauguration when the old general
died. Tyler had joined the Whig coalition
primarily because of his differences with
Democrat Andrew Jackson, and he dis-
agreed with most of the Whig party’s
policies that Kentucky senator Henry
Clay had articulated. After Tyler had
vetoed several of Clay’s pet projects, the
angry senator arranged for Tyler to be
officially read out of the Whig party. Iso-
lated and ostracized, Tyler seized upon
the Texas annexation issue as one that
might save his career and improve the
prospects for his reelection in 1844.
He discussed the issue with his cabi-
net members and found most of them
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 85
supportive. But Daniel Webster, the
Massachusetts native who was secretary
of state, refused to move forward on a
policy that might expand the influence of
the slave states. When he resigned in
early 1843, Tyler appointed fellow-
Virginian Abel Upshur to head the State
Department. Upshur quietly began
working with the Texans on an annexa-
tion treaty.
British attitudes lent a sense of
urgency to these negotiations. Great
Britain had abolished slavery in all of its
possessions in the early 1830s and had
become the world’s leading advocate of
abolition. The royal government there-
fore proposed that France, the United
States, and possibly Mexico collaborate
in guaranteeing the independence of
Texas if it abolished slavery within its
borders. When the U.S. government
sought clarification of the British posi-
tion, the reply came in the form of a let-
ter from Lord Pakenham, the British
minister in Washington. Upshur decided
to ignore the letter and push ahead on his
treaty negotiations. They were cut short
when an accident aboard a navy vessel
killed the secretary of state.
Few would consider joining Tyler’s
discredited administration, so he rather
desperately offered the State Depart-
ment post to South Carolina’s John
C. Calhoun. As secretary of state, the
former senator, vice president, and
author of the nullification doctrine,
made no secret of his pro-slavery views.
Shortly after he delivered a completed
annexation treaty to the Senate for ratifi-
cation, news spread of his definitive
reply to the Pakenham Letter. Calhoun
had used the British communication as
an excuse to state his outspoken support
for slavery. His response insisted that
the United States was annexing Texas
86 | Section 2

principally as a means of extending the out in opposition as well. Democratic

U.S. slavery system. No Northern
senator could vote in favor of treaty for
that purpose, and many Southerners
found Calhoun’s assertions too bold to
support as well. The treaty was voted
down 35 to 16, more than two-thirds
against ratification.
Even so, the issue was not completely
dead. In the 1844 presidential campaign,
Whig candidate Henry Clay announced
that he did not favor the annexation of
Texas at that time. A splinter abolitionist
faction called the Liberty Party nominated
James G. Birney, who naturally came
candidate James K. Polk, however,
hailed from the slave state of Tennessee,
and his party’s platform reflected the
increasingly popular expansionist senti-
ments that were shortly to be called
Manifest Destiny. The Democrats forth-
rightly called for the annexation of both
Texas and the Oregon Territory, a bal-
ance that they hoped would gratify both
North and South. On election day,
Birney captured just enough popular
votes in New York State to give Polk a
plurality. The state’s electoral votes, in
turn, won him the presidency.

THE PAKENHAM LETTER

Response of Secretary of State John C. Calhoun to British minister Edward Pakenham’s

request for information regarding the proposed annexation treaty with Texas on April
28, 1844.
. . . It was not possible for the President [John Tyler] to hear, with indifference, the
avowal of a policy so hostile in its character and dangerous in its tendency to the
domestic institutions of so many States of this Union, and to the safety and prosperity
of the whole. . . .
The United States in concluding the treaty of annexation with Texas, are not dis-
posed to shun any responsibility which may fairly attach to them on account of the
transaction. The measure was adopted with the mutual consent and for the mutual and
permanent welfare of the two countries interested. It was made necessary in order to
preserve a domestic institution [slavery], placed under the guaranty of their respective
constitutions, and deemed essential to their safety and prosperity.
Whether Great Britain has the right, according to the principles of international law,
to interfere with the domestic institutions of either country, be her motives or means
what they may; or whether the avowal of such a policy and the exertions she has made
consummate it in Texas do not justify both countries in adopting the most effective
measures to prevent it, are questions which the United States willingly leave to the deci-
sion of the civilized world. They confidently rest the appeal on the solid foundation,
that every country is the rightful and exclusive judge, as to what should be the rela-
tions, social, civil, and political, between those who compose its population; and that
no other country, under the pleas of humanity or other motive, has any right whatever
to interfere with its decision. . . .

Source: Clyde N. Wilson, ed. The Papers of John C. Calhoun. Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1988, 18:350–351.

President Tyler still had four months
left in his term after the election, and he
chose to interpret Polk’s victory as a
mandate to complete the annexation
process. Recognizing that it would be
impossible to reverse the two-thirds neg-
ative vote in the Senate, he decided
instead to seek a joint resolution from
Congress. The expansionist mood was
sufficiently powerful to convince a
majority in each house to approve the
resolution, provided that the annexation
of Texas was paired with statehood for
the Wisconsin Territory. That would pre-
serve the Union’s equal balance between
free and slave states that had prevailed
since the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
Polk inherited this arrangement when
he was inaugurated on March 4, 1845.
After a short delay, he consulted with his
cabinet, which urged its acceptance, and
Polk instructed the U.S. chargé d’affaires
in Texas to proceed. A local convention
approved the arrangements, and Texas
entered the Union officially when Con-
gress reconvened in December 1845.
That action provoked controversy out-
side the United States as well. Mexico
had never formally recognized the inde-
pendence of Texas and took umbrage at
what it saw as the United States illegally
seizing control of its property. The
annexation of Texas thus planted the
seeds for the Mexican War.
See also: Manifest Destiny; Texas Revolution;
Upshur, Abel
References
Peterson, Norma Lois. The Presidencies of
William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1989.
Sellers, Charles Grier. James K. Polk, Conti-
nentalist, 1843–1846. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1966.
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 87
Smith, Justin H. The Annexation of Texas.
New York: Barnes and Noble, 1941.
King Cotton Diplomacy
Cotton was the most vital industrial raw
material in the mid-19th century, and
more than two-thirds of it came from the
U.S. South. Most Southerners believed
that cotton was king, and they were con-
vinced that the world simply could not
survive without it. When the slave states
seceded from the Union to form the Con-
federacy in 1861, their leaders assumed
that the industrialized European nations
would quickly come to their aid to
ensure continuing access to supplies of
cotton. The attempt to exploit king cot-
ton for diplomatic purposes involved
several strategies, none of which suc-
ceeded in the long run.
Southern confidence was not com-
pletely unfounded. From 1800 to 1860,
the annual production of U.S. cotton
rose from 2 million pounds to more than
1.6 billion pounds. On the eve of the Civil
War, cotton grown in the slave states rep-
resented 66 percent of the world’s pro-
duction. Great Britain was the chief
consumer. One-fifth of its economy and
more than 5 million textile workers were
employed milling and weaving cotton
cloth. This massive industrial engine
needed access to a steady supply of raw
cotton to remain healthy. France was the
second ranking buyer of U.S. cotton, so it,
too, was extremely interested in maintain-
ing a source of supply.
Southern leaders confidently expected
both England and France to extend imme-
diate diplomatic recognition to the Con-
federate States of America to ensure their
access to cotton. After all, the aristocrats
who dominated the governments of both
of these European countries appeared to
88 | Section 2
be generally sympathetic to the ambitions
of the landed class in the South with their
extensive plantations. Napoléon III, in
particular, having reestablished the French
empire after disconcerting experimenta-
tion with various forms of republican gov-
ernment, had little empathy for the Union
government’s democratic principles.
So what went wrong? Economic fac-
tors lay at the heart of the failure of king
cotton diplomacy. The war itself created
enormous obstacles to the overseas ship-
ment of cotton. The Union government
quickly established a blockade of the
major Southern ports, a blockade that
grew stronger through the course of the
war, almost completely choking off all
imports and exports. The blockade run-
ners that managed to sneak through were
typically small, swift ships with very
limited cargo capacity. Transporting bulk
cotton simply was not economically fea-
sible on such vessels.
Ironically, the South’s enormous pro-
duction capability turned out to be some-
thing of a liability. Bumper crops in 1859
and 1860 had filled European ware-
houses with ample supplies to keep the
mills running for more than two years.
No one knew how long the Civil War
would last, but, if it ended quickly, there
would be no need for additional raw
cotton until the overstock was depleted.
The Confederate government’s mis-
guided policies also contributed to the
failure of king cotton diplomacy. Like
their revolutionary predecessors, the
Confederates initially imposed an
embargo on exports and deliberately
destroyed more than 2 million bales of
cotton sitting in warehouses. The goal
was to create a shortage that would boost
the world price from its traditional level
of less than 10 cents a pound. Optimists
believed the price might climb as high as
50 cents a pound when cotton-starved
European buyers bid for scarce supplies.
Despite the eventual development of
wartime shortages, the price for cotton
never came near that level.
One reason prices remained lower
was that alternative sources of supply
became available. Although produc-
tion costs in India and Egypt were
substantially higher than in the U.S.
plantation South, those areas could
produce fine quality cotton in rela-
tively large amounts and sell it for far
less than 50 cents a pound. The Amer-
ican Civil War actually benefited these
alternative suppliers over the long
term, creating strong, relatively stable
demand that persisted through the rest
of the century.
Hampered by a global glut, discour-
aging price levels, and foreign competi-
tion, the Southern strategy seemed
doomed to fail. In 1863, the Confeder-
acy’s minister to France, John Slidell,
engaged in a last, desperate attempt to
make cotton pay by engineering a major
loan. A French financier named Emile
Erlanger agreed to sell bonds in Europe
using Southern cotton as collateral.
Erlanger collected large commissions on
his sales and inflated prices quite effec-
tively, but those who bought the bonds
lost everything. There was simply no
way to cash in on collateral that
remained locked up behind the Union
blockade.
All of these factors delayed the
onset of a serious cotton shortage in
Europe for more than two years. By
that time, the Battle of Gettysburg and
the capture of Vicksburg had occurred,
providing convincing proof that the
Confederate cause would eventually be
lost. No European nation was willing to
commit major support to the South,

regardless of how desperate it might be
to obtain cotton. King cotton diplo-
macy thus proved to be a huge disap-
pointment to the Confederacy, failing
to achieve any of the advantages that
the Southerners had confidently antici-
pated in 1861.
See also: Adams, Charles Francis; Recognition
as a Belligerent; Slidell, John
References
Ball, Douglas B. Financial Failure and
Confederate Defeat. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1991.
Hubbard, Charles M. The Burden of Confed-
erate Diplomacy. Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press, 1998.
Owsley, Frank. King Cotton Diplomacy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1959.
In 1872, John Gast produced this painting called American Progress as an allegorical representa-
tion of the Manifest Destiny concept. (Library of Congress)
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 89
Manifest Destiny
The Manifest Destiny phenomenon
peaked in the mid-1840s, setting the
stage for major expansionist moves into
Oregon, Texas, California, and New
Mexico. A number of environmental and
technological factors helped nourish a
belief that God had clearly made evident
that the United States should expand all
the way to the Pacific Coast and in other
directions as well. Manifest Destiny
complemented the widespread convic-
tion that the people of the United States
and their experiment in democratic
nation-building were especially blessed.
The term Manifest Destiny apparently
first appeared in a magazine article writ-
ten by John O’Sullivan in 1845, but the
sentiments and emotionality that lay
90 | Section 2
behind it had long historical roots. When
the Founding Fathers declared independ-
ence from Great Britain in 1776, they
justified their action by stressing that
they had “been endowed by their cre-
ator” with inalienable rights. These
rights, in turn, promoted the kind of
democratic self-government that the
states and, ultimately, the nation as a
whole exercised. With few exceptions,
the world clung to older, monarchial
forms of government in succeeding
decades, but that in no way weakened
the faith of Americans that their unique
form of government was superior.
From time to time, this faith received
forceful expression. The 1823 Monroe
Doctrine, for example, praised the
uniqueness of the American republics in
contrast to Europe. About the same time,
John Quincy Adams articulated the “sep-
aration of the spheres” concept: that the
New World was distinct from the Old
World and should pursue its own noble
agenda.
It was only a short step to a belief that
Americans should extend their benefi-
cent government and society as far as
possible. That conviction represented the
heart of Manifest Destiny: that God had
clearly chosen the United States to dom-
inate the Western Hemisphere. Many
Americans felt obliged to extend the
boundaries of their nation to the North,
the West, and the South. Evidence of a
divine plan was the fact that a sparsely
populated British colony lay to the
North, a feeble and changeable govern-
ment ruled Mexico to the South, and
weak and dispersed Indian tribes occu-
pied lands to the West.
Several developments at the time
strengthened U.S. belief in Manifest
Destiny. The financial Panic of 1837 had
set off a devastating economic depression
that affected people in all walks of life
including farmers. Many of them
believed that all of the good land had
already been plowed and that the nation
could only continue to develop if new,
fertile lands were added to the Union. It
was high time, therefore, for the United
States to annex underutilized lands
beyond its current borders. Americans
confidently claimed that they, and they
alone, could occupy and use the land
effectively. Neither Indians nor Mexican
peons nor backwoods Canadians were
capable of maximizing the output of
these areas.
A couple of technological break-
throughs energized Manifest Destiny.
Samuel F. B. Morse demonstrated his
telegraph system in the 1830s, and wires
were strung up and down the Eastern
Seaboard in the next decade. Instanta-
neous communication over great dis-
tances was now a reality, making the
extension of U.S. influence from coast to
coast far more possible than before.
Moreover, the experimental, primitive
steam railroads of the 1830s had evolved
into far more efficient and reliable sys-
tems. From a room in the U.S. Capitol
building, a visionary named Asa Whitney
had been championing the idea of a
transcontinental railroad for years. Com-
munication and transportation revolutions
already well under way made a much
larger nation not only feasible but logical.
Advocates of Manifest Destiny found
other divinely inspired justifications for
their ambitions. One was federalism.
Individual states in the Union had
remarkably different forms of govern-
ment and societies, yet all functioned
under the umbrella of the federal govern-
ment. That umbrella ought to be able to
accommodate additional communities
with different traditions and conceptions.

To the extent that these people might be
ill-equipped for immediate annexation,
Americans had confidence that education
and training could “regenerate” them into
model citizens. In the case of those living
in the Canadian provinces, the degree of
regeneration required would be relatively
minor. Engulfing the mixed Indian and
Hispanic populations to the South and
West might well require longer and more
determined tutelage.
Perhaps no factor was more important
in building enthusiasm for Manifest Des-
tiny than the maturation of a new gener-
ation. A good many people coming of
age in the 1840s were second- or third-
generation Americans. Their fathers had
participated in the War of 1812; their
grandfathers had fought in the Revolu-
tion. The new generation envied the leg-
endary patriotism and heroism that their
forebears had demonstrated. Younger
men sought an opportunity to exhibit
their own manliness. Going off to war in
Mexico or striking out to settle in new
lands in Oregon provided just the sort of
fulfillment that this group imbued with
youthful vigor desired.
Was there, after all, anything to pre-
vent the United States stretching from
sea to sea and from the Arctic to the
isthmus of Panama? Perhaps fortu-
nately for the citizens of Canada,
Mexico, and Central America, the
United States contained within its exist-
ing borders a highly controversial insti-
tution that increasingly colored every
aspect of the nation’s life and govern-
ment. Very few people in the North
favored expanding the nation into
Southern regions, where slavery might
become even more prevalent. And very
few Southerners were eager to promote
expansion in the North, where the addi-
tion of new free states would inevitably
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 91
undermine the delicate political balance
between North and South that had
existed since the 1790s.
So it was that Manifest Destiny had a
sort of self-limiting nature. Texas was its
first fruit. Annexing Oregon was a logi-
cal next step in that it added slave-free
lands to the nation. But President James
K. Polk settled for only half of that terri-
tory before declaring war on Mexico.
Here again, although the United States
ended up annexing thousands of square
miles of territory in California and New
Mexico, antipathy toward the spread of
slavery imposed limits. The impeding
crisis over slavery that dominated the
1850s effectively punctured the balloon
of Manifest Destiny. It would revive
again in the late 19th century, sometimes
called the New Manifest Destiny, but
with a very different set of motivations
and objectives.
See also: Mexican War; New Manifest Destiny;
Oregon Fever; Texas Revolution
References
Graebner, Norman A. Empire on the Pacific.
New York: Ronald Press, 1955.
Hietala, Thomas R. Manifest Design. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and
Mission in American History. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.
Weinberg, Albert K. Manifest Destiny.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935.
Mexican War
The Mexican War began in 1846 as a nat-
ural outgrowth of the Manifest Destiny
spirit that had swept the nation. Triggered
by a border dispute between Texas and
Mexico, the war brought a string of mili-
tary success for the United States even as
it provoked widespread dissent at home.
President James K. Polk ultimately
92 | Section 2
concluded that pursuing a broader war
raised the prospect of disunion, so he
endorsed the results of a dubious diplo-
matic mission to end the fighting. His
decision was made easier because the
United States achieved virtually all of
Polk’s initial objectives in the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.
When Polk was inaugurated in March
1845, the United States was already in
the process of annexing the Republic of
Texas. The Mexican government, how-
ever, had never recognized the independ-
ence of Texas, nor did it approve of U.S.
annexation. A key sore point was the
insistence on the part of the Texans that
the Rio Grande was their nation’s south-
western border. When Texas had been a
state in Mexico, its border had run along
the Nueces River, some distance north of
the Rio Grande. Even if the Mexican
government were to acquiesce to U.S.
annexation, the location of that border
remained unresolved.
In addition to the boundary dispute,
other factors influenced Polk’s attitude
toward Mexico. U.S. claims amounting
to millions of dollars had resulted from
outlaws who allegedly used Mexico as a
refuge. Manifest Destiny sentiments
were running high, generating calls for
U.S. expansion to its natural boundaries.
Many Americans believed that the
Pacific Coast should ultimately be the
nation’s western boundary. That would
mean incorporating California into the
Union, something that Mexico would
certainly oppose.
Polk initially attempted to resolve
these issues through diplomacy. He sent
John Slidell, a prominent Louisiana
politician, to Mexico with a commission
authorizing him to negotiate all issues.
At a minimum, he was to obtain Mexican
agreement on the Rio Grande border. In
addition, he could offer up to $25 million
to buy California and the intervening
New Mexico Territory. The Slidell
Mission failed in part because of the
Mexican government’s instability, but a
stronger government would have been
unlikely to grant everything the United
States wanted in any case.
After several frustrating months,
Slidell reported that only a show of force
would convince the Mexicans to negoti-
ate. Polk had anticipated just such an
eventuality, but he waited until his envoy
returned to Washington to report in per-
son. Slidell met with the president on
Friday, May 8, 1846. Polk began prepar-
ing a war message to be delivered to
Congress on the following Monday. On
Sunday, however, he learned that warfare
had already begun.
Based on earlier discouraging reports
from Slidell in January, the president had
ordered General Zachary Taylor to sta-
tion his army in the area between the
Nueces and the Rio Grande. If occupying
the disputed area were not provocative
enough, Taylor compounded the tension
by positioning his artillery across the
mouth of the Rio Grande, aimed at the
Mexican port of Matamoros. These steps
understandably triggered a reaction.
Taylor reported that Mexican soldiers
had crossed the river and attacked U.S.
dragoons, capturing 60 of them and
killing 3. Polk included this information
in his war message, using it effectively as
a “first shot” that justified U.S. military
action.
War fever ran rampant among South-
erners, and most Northern senators and
representatives were moved to avenge
this insult to the U.S. flag. The war dec-
laration passed with a vote of 40 to 2 in
the Senate and 174 to 14 in the House.
Polk had adroitly seized the initiative at
 Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 93

WILMOT PROVISO: AUGUST 8, 1846

Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any ter-
ritory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty which
may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein
appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of
said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted.
[Passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, 1846 and 1847, never passed by
the U.S. Senate]

Source: U.S. Congress, Congressional Globe, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., 1846: 1217.

the height of the nation’s emotional out-
pouring. Within a matter of days,
doubts began to surface that the presi-
dent had deliberately provoked a con-
frontation. They continued to escalate
as the war dragged on. Northern politi-
cians were increasingly critical of
“Mr. Polk’s War” when they concluded
that the Democratic president’s chief
goal was to add more slave territory to
the United States. A Whig Party repre-
sentative from Pennsylvania, David
Wilmot, attached a proviso to a military
appropriations bill stating that none of
the territory captured could be opened
to slavery. The Senate stripped the
Wilmot Proviso off the bill, but it ener-
gized the antislavery opposition.
The political struggles in Washington
were, in many ways, more intense than
the military moves. Polk ordered Taylor
to cross the Rio Grande and engage the
Mexican Army in northeastern Mexico.
The Americans prevailed at Buena Vista,
Saltillo, and Monterey, forcing the rem-
nants of the Mexican Army to retreat into
central Mexico. Expecting the defeated
Mexican authorities to sue for peace,
Polk ordered Taylor back across the river.
Meanwhile, General Stephen Kearny
led a 1,600-man force from Kansas to
Santa Fe, where, encountering only token
opposition, he established U.S. control
over the New Mexico Territory. He then
headed west to California where other
U.S. agents had already been active.
Army explorer John C. Fremont had
staged the short-lived Bear Flag Revolt in
Sonoma, only to be chased out by
Mexican forces. Farther south, Com-
modore Robert Stockton’s naval forces
seized San Diego. Kearny and Stockton
eventually linked up, and the United
States effectively controlled all of the ter-
ritory Slidell had been authorized to buy.
Frustrated at the Mexican government’s
continuing refusal to negotiate, Polk
ordered General Winfield Scott to land
a sizable force at Vera Cruz. From
there, Scott’s army fought its way west,
up onto the central plateau, and all the
way to the outskirts of Mexico City
itself. There Scott paused, again
expecting the Mexicans to seek peace.
To encourage them to do so, Polk sent
Nicholas Trist, a State Department offi-
cial, down to join Scott. But, like
Slidell before him, Trist found no one
willing to deal with him.
After a series of intrigues, Scott
ordered his troops to invade the city
proper, allowing the U.S. Marine Corps
94 | Section 2
U.S. general Winfield Scott’s army occupied Mexico City in September 1847, setting the stage for
Nicholas Trist to negotiate the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ceded one-third of Mexico
to the United States. (Library of Congress)
to add the “Halls of Montezuma” to its
battle hymn. Still there was no progress
toward peace. The U.S. president despair-
ingly sent Trist a letter canceling his com-
mission and ordering him to return home,
but the commissioner had finally estab-
lished contact with Mexican authorities
who were willing to talk. Ignoring his
recall, Trist proceeded with negotiations
that led to a general peace agreement. He
signed the treaty in the suburb of
Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848,
and sent it off to Washington.
Polk was furious at Trist for ignoring
his recall. At the same time, the internal
strife in the United States had reached a
fever pitch. Opposition Whigs were out-
spokenly critical of the war. Meanwhile,
enthusiastic expansionists in the Democ-
ratic Party called for the conquest of all of
Mexico. Polk viewed this All-Mexico
group as dangerous to the stability of the
Union as the antiwar Whigs. Therefore,
he carefully reviewed the terms of the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and found
that they fulfilled his major prewar objec-
tives. To stifle further partisan debate, in
March he submitted the treaty to the
Senate, where it won ratification by a vote
of 38 to 14.
Trist had done his job well. In the
treaty, Mexico agreed to recognize the Rio
Grande boundary and to cede both New
Mexico and California to the United
States. In return, the United States pledged
to compensate those with prewar claims
and to pay Mexico a total of $15 million.
To that extent, the United States could
maintain that it had actually purchased
New Mexico and California, although the
deal clearly would never have occurred
without U.S. success on the battlefield.
The Mexican War left a number of
difficult political complications in its

wake. Although the Wilmot Proviso had
failed, slavery was ultimately excluded
from both New Mexico and California.
Shortly after the treaty was completed,
gold was discovered in California.
News of the find attracted more than
100,000 U.S. fortune hunters in the
next year alone. To the extent that a
gold rush was inevitable, Mexico may
well have done better by selling the area
to the United States for a sum of money
rather than losing it to an onslaught of
U.S. settlers.
See also: Manifest Destiny; Natural Bound-
aries; Slidell, John; Trist, Nicholas
References
Bauer, K. Jack. The Mexican War. New York:
Macmillan, 1974.
Harlow, Neal. California Conquered. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989.
Johannsen, Robert W. To the Halls of
Montezuma. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1985.
Mahin, Dean B. Olive Branch and Sword.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997.
Walker, Dale. Bear Flag Rising. New York:
Forge, 1999.
Natural Boundaries
Looking west across a sparsely popu-
lated continent, Americans naturally
favored expansion. But how far to
expand and where to stop were not
always clear. One solution was to halt at
a natural boundary. Rivers, coastlines, or
even continental limits could be consid-
ered “natural” places to delineate a
nation’s borders. The Manifest Destiny
sentiment that encouraged the annexa-
tion of Oregon and California in the late
1840s represented the fulfillment of the
natural boundaries impulse.
Natural boundaries seemed less rele-
vant in a more densely settled continent
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 95
like Europe. The ebb and flow of civi-
lizations and medieval warfare fre-
quently redrew the European map. One
example of a nation that stretched to its
natural boundaries was the British Isles,
where the English government had sub-
dued Welsh, Scottish, and Irish peoples
to create the United Kingdom. But Great
Britain did not stop at its natural bound-
aries. British soldiers and sailors spread
all around the world, eventually creating
the most extensive colonial empire in
world history.
Some of that expansion included
planting colonies along the Atlantic
Coast of North America. When they
revolted in the 1770s, Americans fought
not only to free the established colonies
but also to control adjacent lands lying
to the West, the North, and the South. In
the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Great Britain
recognized the independence of the 13
colonies-turned-states and also ceded
control of the Ohio River Valley all the
way to the Mississippi River.
Americans quickly began thinking
about expanding their nation’s territory
even farther. Spain’s Florida colonies
were a logical target and, by 1819, the
Transcontinental Treaty had ensured
U.S. expansion to the natural boundary
of the Gulf Coast. No such obvious nat-
ural boundary existed in either the North
or the West.
Earlier, many Americans believed
that the crests of the Appalachian Moun-
tains served as a natural boundary. River
basins and their surrounding hinterlands
seemed to constitute more “natural”
geographic entities. In the early 1800s,
Vice President Aaron Burr conspired
with General James Wilkinson and oth-
ers in a plan to establish an independent
nation incorporating the Mississippi
Valley and the tributary Ohio River
96 | Section 2
region. President Thomas Jefferson
leapfrogged these plans by purchasing
the Louisiana Territory for the United
States in 1803. Never again was serious
consideration given to creating a sepa-
rate, central, river-based nation beyond
the Appalachians.
Technological developments in the
early 19th century strengthened the
hands of U.S. expansionists. The first
railroads appeared in the 1830s; a
decade later, long-distance telegraphy
became operational. Instantaneous
electronic communication across vast
distances and rapid, reliable land
transportation systems stimulated
thinking on a much grander scale. Asa
Whitney conceived of a transcontinen-
tal railroad and set up a museum
describing his vision in the U.S.
Capitol building itself. Simultaneously,
Americans became convinced that
God had set the stage for them to
expand. Manifest Destiny sentiment
swept the nation in the 1840s.
Should there be any limits at all on
U.S. expansionism? In the 1790s,
Alexander Hamilton had envisioned a
nation extending up to the North Pole
and down at least as far as the isthmus of
Panama. But Great Britain’s trenchant
control of its Canadian provinces cre-
ated an effective barrier to the North.
The independence movements that
swept Central and South America
proved detrimental as well. Invading
and conquering an independent, demo-
cratic republic seemed hardly compati-
ble with U.S. moral and ethical
principles.
Hemmed in on the South and the
North, Americans focused their expan-
sionist attention on the West. They saw
no reason why they should halt at the
Continental Divide, the western bound-
ary of the Louisiana Territory. Pushing
the nation’s borders on to the Pacific
Coast made sense because it was an
indisputable natural boundary. Such
thinking motivated the expansionists
who influenced the policies of President
James K. Polk. His 1844 campaign plat-
form had called for engulfing Oregon
and ensuring the annexation of Texas. It
was a short step from obtaining these
objectives to a call to extend U.S. con-
trol through northern Mexico all the way
to California. In his annual message in
December 1845, Polk praised the
Monroe Doctrine and added his own
corollary to it. He put Europe on notice
that the United States alone intended to
determine where and how it might
expand in the North American conti-
nent. In that sense, it turned the rather
passive, defensive Monroe Doctrine into
a much more aggressive statement of the
U.S. intention to expand to its natural
boundaries.
This motivation helped trigger the
Mexican War in 1846. Success on the
battlefields and skillful diplomatic
negotiations resulted in the 1848 Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In the treaty, the
Mexican government agreed to aban-
don its claims to any part of Texas and
to cede both the New Mexico and
California Territories to the United States
in return for a payment of $15 million.
By the mid-19th century, the United
States had expanded from a string of
states clinging to the Atlantic Coast
into a huge nation that cut a wide swath
across the center of the North American
continent.
Expansionist sentiment continued
to sputter in the 1850s, but an emo-
tional dispute over whether slavery
should be allowed to extend into new
territories stymied further action. The
 Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 97

THE POLK COROLLARY TO THE

MONROE DOCTRINE: DECEMBER 2, 1845

[From President Polk’s First Annual Message to Congress]

. . . The rapid extension of our settlements over our territories heretofore unoccu-
pied, the addition of new States to our Confederacy, the expansion of free principles,
and our rising greatness as a nation are attracting the attention of the powers of Europe,
and lately the doctrine has been broached in some of them of a “balance of power”
on this continent to check our advancement. The United States, sincerely desirous of pre-
serving relations of good understanding with all nations, can not in silence permit any
European interference on the North American continent, and should any such interfer-
ence be attempted will be ready to resist it at any and all hazards. . . .
The nations of America are equally sovereign and independent with those of
Europe. They possess the same rights, independent of all foreign interposition, to make
war, to conclude peace, and to regulate their internal affairs. The people of the United
States can not, therefore, view with indifference attempts of European powers to inter-
fere with the independent action of the nations on this continent. The American system
of government is entirely different from that of Europe. Jealousy among the different
sovereigns of Europe, lest any one of them might become too powerful for the rest, has
caused them anxiously to desire the establishment of what they term the “balance of
power.” It can not be permitted to have any application on the North American conti-
nent, and especially to the United States. We must ever maintain the principle that the
people of this continent alone have the right to decide their own destiny. Should any
portion of them, constituting an independent state, propose to unite themselves with our
Confederacy, this will be a question for them and us to determine without any foreign
interposition. We can never consent that European powers shall interfere to prevent
such a union because it might disturb the “balance of power” which they may desire
to maintain upon this continent. Near a quarter of a century ago the principle was dis-
tinctly announced to the world, in the annual message of one of my predecessors, that–
The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have
assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for colonization
by any European powers.
This principle will apply with greatly increased force should any European power
attempt to establish any new colony in North America. In the existing circumstances of
the world the present is deemed a proper occasion to reiterate and reaffirm the prin-
ciple avowed by Mr. Monroe and to state my cordial concurrence in its wisdom and
sound policy. . . .

Source: Richardson, J. D., ed. Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. New
York: Bureau of National Literature, 1917, 5:2248–2249.

sectional crisis blossomed into a tracts of the Southern states. The

devastating civil war in the 1860s, subsequent Reconstruction process
which killed hundreds of thousands of continued to focus U.S. attention on
Americans, absorbed vast amounts of internal troubles, to the extent that no
resources, and utterly destroyed large serious expansionist policies were
98 | Section 2
pursued. The United States had to be
content with natural boundaries only
where it met the oceans. The Pacific,
Atlantic, and Gulf Coasts were indis-
putably natural boundaries. But the
arbitrary lines drawn between Canada,
west of the Great Lakes, and Mexico,
west of the Rio Grande, remain as
proof that the nation ultimately failed
to complete its expansion to natural
boundaries.
See also: Manifest Destiny, Mexican War
References
Goetzman, William H. When the Eagle
Screamed. New York: Wiley, 1966.
Leckie, Robert. From Sea to Shining Sea.
New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and
Mission in American History. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.
Weinberg, Albert K. Manifest Destiny.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935.
Oregon Claims
The story of how the United States
obtained and then defended its claims to
the Oregon Territory is filled with hairs-
breadth escapes. At any moment, a mis-
step could have nullified or at least
severely undermined the U.S. claim. At
the same time, Great Britain, the other
major claimant to Oregon, was equally
adept at missing opportunities and taking
counterproductive steps. In the long run,
the decision to divide the disputed terri-
tory was probably reasonable for both
parties.
Spain actually possessed the first
external claim to the Oregon Territory,
dating all the way back to 1494. In that
year, the Treaty of Tordesillas divided
the new lands that Christopher Columbus
had discovered between Spain and
Portugal. Spain benefited most in this
arrangement, receiving everything that
lay west of the Line of Demarcation that
the Pope had defined as lying 350
leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.
Portugal exploited her award by settling
Brazil; most of the rest of the Americas
remained available for Spanish explo-
ration and settlement.
Although Spain expanded aggressively
into the New World, it failed to settle the
Pacific Coast north of San Francisco Bay.
In 1789, however, a Spanish task force
encountered British ships and crews plan-
ning to establish an outpost at Nootka
Sound, an inlet on present-day Vancouver
Island. As both sides prepared for war,
Spain discovered that her traditional ally,
France, was in the throes of a republican
revolution and unable to assist. Mean-
while, U.S. president George Washington
discussed with his advisors which side, if
either, the United States should aid, espe-
cially if the British requested permission
to cross U.S. territory to reach the West.
The crisis ended when Spain reluctantly
signed the Nootka Sound Convention
(1790), in which it dropped its exclusive
claim to the area.
Both British and U.S. groups quickly
seized the opportunity to explore the
region. Royal Navy captain George Van-
couver sailed a two-ship squadron to the
Northwest Coast, hoping to locate west-
ern access to an all-water route to the
Lake of the Woods. He discovered the
mouth of a wide river on his way north,
but his large ship could not cross the
sandbar that protected it. Instead, he
headed farther north, eventually explor-
ing the Strait of San Juan de Fuca and
discovering that they only separated a
large island from the mainland. His tour
did establish a firm claim to that area,
which he named Vancouver Island.

Along the way, he had encountered a
U.S. merchant vessel, the Columbia,
under the command of Robert Gray. They
exchanged information, and Gray imme-
diately sailed south to the river that Van-
couver had described. Gray’s lighter-draft
vessel slipped easily over the sandbar,
enabling him to explore quite far up the
river. He named the river the Columbia
after his ship. Vancouver learned of
Gray’s success and later returned to
explore the river himself, but Gray had
managed to stake a prior U.S. claim to the
river and its environs.
Neither country did much to exploit
its claims for sometime. In 1805, Simon
Fraser established a trading post for the
British Northwest Company on the river
that now bears his name. A couple
of years later, he explored farther south,
only to learn that, once again, Americans
had been there before him. Meriwether
Lewis and George Clark had arrived at
the mouth of the Columbia in 1805, rein-
forcing by land the claim Gray had made
by sea several years earlier.
Responding to favorable reports from
the Lewis and Clark Expedition, John
Jacob Astor, the nation’s wealthiest fur
trader, decided to establish a trading post
in the Pacific Northwest. In 1811, his
company built Astoria, on the south bank
of the Columbia River’s mouth. Astor
intended to harvest furs from the hinter-
land and ship them directly to China,
where they could be sold at a substantial
profit. The experiment failed to meet
Astor’s expectations partly because of
the area’s remoteness and because of the
very real possibility of war with Great
Britain. He therefore decided to sell his
holdings to agents of the British North-
west Company who took over and estab-
lished a headquarters at what they now
called Fort George.
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 99
When the War of 1812 broke out, both
the United States and Great Britain
hoped to expand their holdings in North
America. A Royal Navy ship, the HMS
Racoon, sailed up the West Coast with
orders to seize the U.S. outpost there.
When the ship arrived, its captain found
British citizens already in charge. But he
had his orders and intended to follow
them, so he insisted that the group at Fort
George formally surrender the fort to the
British Navy.
The Treaty of Ghent that ended the
War of 1812 was based on the principle of
status quo antebellum. That meant that
both Great Britain and the United States
were obligated to restore any captured ter-
ritory. Citing the actions of the Racoon,
President James Madison insisted that
Fort George/Astoria be returned to the
United States, even though Astor himself
had no intention of maintaining it.
Finally, in 1817, the U.S. Navy got
around to implementing Madison’s pro-
nouncement. The USS Ontario, under
the command of James Biddle, set off
with diplomat John B. Prevost on board.
The two had a falling out, however, so
Biddle left Prevost behind in Santiago de
Chile while he sailed north to the
Columbia River. Carefully avoiding any
contact with either the British or the
Indians in the area, he hammered a
couple of signs on trees announcing that
the United States was reclaiming the
territory.
Prevost meanwhile struck up a friend-
ship with Royal Navy captain Frederick
Hickey of the HMS Blossom. Hickey
had orders to leave Santiago for the
Oregon Territory, so he took Prevost
with him. When they arrived at Fort
George, Prevost, with Hickey’s assis-
tance, convinced the locals to raise the
U.S. flag formally. Back in Washington,
100 | Section 2
British minister George Bagot protested
bitterly, but, because no one at Fort
George had expressed any reservations,
the U.S. claim to the area remained firm.
It was further strengthened when Spain
signed the Transcontinental Treaty
(1819) with the United States, explicitly
surrendering its claim to all territory
north of the 42nd Parallel.
The question of how to handle
Oregon cropped up frequently in Anglo-
American discussions. Several times
over the next decade, the United States
proposed splitting the territory along the
49th Parallel. The same proposal had
been included in a failed agreement in
1807, called the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty,
and it remained the U.S. baseline in all
subsequent talks. The British were loath
to abandon their claim to the whole terri-
tory. The two countries settled on a joint
occupation arrangement in which neither
side relinquished its claims to all of
Oregon.
The United States and Great Britain
both objected when the Russian czar
issued a ukase in 1821, unilaterally
extending his claim to Alaska south to the
51st Parallel. The British and Americans
had now firmly established claims to the
Pacific coastline, from the 42nd Parallel
in the south all the way up to 54° 40’
north latitude. Both claimants eventually
signed separate agreements with Russia
that cancelled its claim below 54° 40’.
In 1826, U.S. minister Albert Gallatin
discussed a possible division of Oregon
with British foreign minister George
Canning. Canning suggested running the
line west along the 49th Parallel until it
reached the Columbia River and then
following its course to the Pacific Coast.
When Gallatin complained that would
leave the United States without a decent
Pacific port, Canning offered a small tri-
angle of land on the Olympic Peninsula
as a potential port. Gallatin refused, so
the two countries agreed to renew the
joint occupation.
In 1842, during discussions between
British minister Lord Ashburton and
U.S. secretary of state Daniel Webster,
Ashburton again offered the 49th
Parallel/Columbia River line without
even throwing in the Olympic Peninsula
piece. When the U.S. negotiator
declined, the two men once again
extended the joint occupation arrange-
ments in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty
(1842). Webster believed U.S. settlers
would ultimately move into the area in
such numbers that the British would be
forced to withdraw. Because the British
apparently held a similar view of their
future prospects, both sides bided their
time. Neither realized how quickly and
definitively Oregon fever would finally
tip the balance.
See also: Astor, John Jacob; Oregon Fever;
Transcontinental Treaty (Florida)
References
Merk, Frederick. The Oregon Question.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1967.
Rakestraw, Donald A. For Honor or Destiny:
The Anglo-American Crisis over the
Oregon Territory. New York: Peter Lang,
1995.
Stuart, Reginald C. United States Expan-
sionism and British North America,
1775–1871. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1988.
Oregon Fever
After remaining largely ignored and
unsettled, the Oregon Territory suddenly
emerged as a focus of intense interest
and patriotic posturing. In the early
1840s, thousands of U.S. pioneers began

In the early 1840s, Oregon Fever encouraged thousands of Americans to head west over the
Oregon Trail in wagon trains like this one that snaked through the South Pass of the Rocky Moun-
tains. (Library of Congress)
streaming west along the Oregon Trail,
and politicians fervently debated the
question of who owned or should own
Oregon. A key issue in the 1844 presi-
dential election campaign was whether
the United States should transform its
joint occupation of Oregon with Great
Britain into strictly U.S. ownership.
Complex diplomatic steps were neces-
sary to answer that question.
The United States had claimed an
interest in the Oregon Territory since the
1790s, but that claim frequently threat-
ened to collapse. As long as no signifi-
cant settlement took place, however, the
nation appeared content to abide by the
joint occupation agreement it had
worked out with Great Britain early in
the 19th century.
Tendrils of direct U.S. involvement
appeared in the 1830s. Christian mis-
sionaries, the most prominent of whom
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 101
was Marcus Whitman, headed west to
spread the gospel among the Indians liv-
ing along the Pacific Coast. To support
their missionary work, they returned to
the United States to solicit funding from
various congregations. In the process,
they rhapsodized about the attractive
potential for farming in the region, par-
ticularly in the Willamette River Valley.
The nation fell into a deep economic
depression after the Panic of 1837, ren-
dering a good many farmers destitute.
The prospect of moving to new, more
fertile lands exerted a strong appeal. By
1843, wagon trains were carrying thou-
sands of people along the Oregon Trail
toward the Willamette Valley.
In conjunction with this upsurge of
western migration, Americans were
responding to the exhortations and justi-
fications embodied in the Manifest
Destiny concept. In part because of the
102 | Section 2

depression, Americans became con- had failed to receive a majority of the

vinced that they had a God given right to
expand westward all the way to the “nat-
ural boundaries,” which, in the case of
Oregon, meant the Pacific Ocean. Mani-
fest Destiny sentiments motivated politi-
cians from both the North and the South
to campaign for expansion into Oregon,
Texas, and even California.
When James K. Polk emerged as a
dark horse candidate for the Democratic
presidential nomination in 1844, he
faced strong competition from the popu-
lar and talented Whig candidate Henry
Clay. A splinter group motivated by abo-
litionist sentiments nominated James
Birney. Although both Birney and Clay
seemed equivocal on expansionism, the
Democratic Party forthrightly called for
the “reannexation” of Texas and the
“reoccupation” of Oregon.
Although Polk never personally
endorsed it, the slogan some of his
fervent party members adopted was
“Fifty-four-forty or Fight.” By that they
meant the United States should annex all
of the Oregon Territory from the 42nd
Parallel in the south to 54° 40’ north lat-
itude. Birney’s splinter group won just
enough votes in New York State to
deliver its electoral votes to Polk and to
hand him the presidency. Even though he
popular vote nationwide, Polk behaved
as though he had a mandate to carry out
his party’s expansionist platform.
He immediately gave Great Britain
notice that the United States was termi-
nating the joint occupation agreement.
At the same time, Polk took the less
confrontational step of inquiring
whether Great Britain would be willing
to do what U.S. diplomats had been sug-
gesting for decades: split the territory
along the 49th Parallel. George Paken-
ham, the British minister in Washington,
rejected this proposal without even con-
sulting his home government.
In fact, that government barely
existed. Parliament was in turmoil, in
part because the powerful and outspoken
Lord Palmerston criticized almost every-
thing anyone proposed. In a desperate
effort to move forward, the Conservative
Party renominated Sir Robert Peel as
prime minister and obtained a pledge
from Palmerston to stop interfering. The
Peel government took the last word of
the “Fifty-four-forty-or-Fight” slogan
seriously; it had no desire to provoke a
war over Oregon. Consequently, it sent
word back to the United States that it
would, after all, accept the 49th Parallel
solution, provided that all of Vancouver

DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM

Resolved, That our title to the whole of the territory of Oregon is clear and unques-
tionable; that no portion of the same ought to be ceded to England or any other power;
and that the re-occupation of Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas at the earliest
practicable period are great American measures, which this convention recommends
to the cordial support of the Democracy of the Union. . . .

Source: Kurian, George Thomas. The Encyclopedia of the Democratic Party. Armonk: NY: Sharpe
Reference, 1997, 453–454.

Island remain in British hands. However,
the London government confessed that it
could only obtain approval at home if the
United States could be seen as proposing
the compromise.
Because Polk thought he had already
done that and been turned down, he had
publicly committed himself to holding
out for the 54° 40’ line. Fortunately, his
advisors were less rigid. Someone sug-
gested a method for resolving the issue
amicably, without undermining the pres-
ident’s credibility. It involved asking the
Senate whether it would consider a
treaty that drew the line along the 49th
Parallel. When a straw poll on that
proposition won approval by 38 votes to
12, Polk submitted a formal treaty to that
effect. It drew 41 positive votes and only
14 against, a comfortable margin over
the required two-thirds majority for
ratification.
On the positive side, Polk appeared to
have avoided a war. But considerable
grumbling arose in the North and in the
Midwest shortly afterward, when the
United States went to war anyway. That
conflict, however, was with Mexico, and
its chief objective was expansionism.
Why, critics wondered, had Polk been
willing to fight for land that might well
become slave states even though he had
compromised away more than half of the
“free” territory in the Pacific Northwest?
Thus, as with every major political issue
in this era, Oregon fever became infected
by the sectional antagonisms between
North and South.
See also: Manifest Destiny; Oregon Claims
References
Haynes, Sam W., and Christopher Morris,
eds. Manifest Destiny and Empire. College
Station: Texas A&M Press, 1997.
Merk, Frederick. The Oregon Question.
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 103
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1967.
Pletcher, David M. The Diplomacy of
Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the
Mexican War. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1973.
Ostend Manifesto (Cuba)
Many Americans, particularly those who
subscribed to the Manifest Destiny con-
cept, believed that the annexation of
Cuba to the United States was inevitable.
That certainly was the message con-
veyed in the Ostend Manifesto, a decla-
ration of intent from three key U.S.
diplomats in Europe in 1854. Ironically,
the negative publicity surrounding the
Manifesto generated so much antipathy
that it helped undermine the likelihood
of annexation. Like almost every other
political and diplomatic issue in the
decade prior to the Civil War, Cuba
became a pawn in the increasingly fre-
netic sectional debate over slavery.
As early as the 1820s, prominent U.S.
statesmen like Henry Clay and John
Quincy Adams expressed interest in
annexing Cuba. Nothing came from their
proposals, however, and Cuba remained
the most loyal of the many colonies Spain
had established in the Western Hemi-
sphere. Half of the island’s population
were slaves, many of whom toiled on the
sugar plantations that made Cuba a valu-
able colonial possession. This slavery also
made Cuba attractive to Americans living
in the South. Bringing Cuba into the Union
as a state or as a grouping of states would
offset the growing free-state influence in
the United States.
The Manifest Destiny impulse
enhanced interest in the annexation of
Cuba in the 1840s. If the United States
were going to fulfill its God given mis-
sion of engulfing Canada, Mexico, and
104 | Section 2

OSTEND MANIFESTO: OCTOBER 15, 1854

Signed by James Buchanan, John Y. Mason, and Pierre Soulé at Aix-la-Chapelle

We have arrived at the conclusion, and are thoroughly convinced, that an imme-
diate and earnest effort ought to be made by the government of the United States to
purchase Cuba from Spain at any price for which it can be obtained. . . .
It must be clear to every reflecting mind that, from the peculiarity of its geographi-
cal position, and the considerations attendant on it, Cuba is as necessary to the North
American republic as any of its present members, and that it belongs naturally to that
great family of states of which the Union is the providential nursery. . . .
Indeed the Union can never enjoy repose, nor possess reliable security, as long as
Cuba is not embraced within its boundaries. . . .
Self-preservation is the law of states as well as with individuals. All nations have, at
different periods, acted upon this maxim. Although it has been made the pretext for
committing flagrant injustice, as in the partition of Poland and other similar cases
which history records, yet the principle itself, though often abused, has always been
recognized.
The United States have never acquired a foot of territory except by fair purchase,
or, as in the case of Texas, upon the free and voluntary application of the people of
that independent state, who desired to blend their destinies with our own.
Even our acquisitions from Mexico are no exception to this rule, because, although
we might have claimed them by right of conquest in a just war, yet we purchased them
for what was then considered by both parties a full and ample equivalent. . . .
After we shall have offered Spain a price for Cuba far beyond its present value,
and this shall have been refused, it will then be time to consider the question; does
Cuba, in the possession of Spain, seriously endanger our internal peace and the exis-
tence of our cherished Union?
Should this question be answered in the affirmative, then, by every law, human and
divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain, if we possess the power; and
this upon the very same principle that would justify an individual in tearing down the
burning house of his neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flames
from destroying his own home.
But this course cannot, with due regard to their own dignity as an independent
nation, continue; and our recommendations, now submitted, are dictated by the firm
belief that the cession of Cuba to the United States, with stipulations as beneficial to
Spain as those suggested, is the only effective mode of settling all past differences, and
of the securing the two countries against future collisions.

Source: U.S. House, The Ostend Conference, etc. . . . 33rd Cong, 2nd Sess. H. Exec. Doc., 1855,
93:127–132.

even Central America, Cuba simply colony. The Spanish government

could not be excluded. At the height of rejected this offer out of hand.
the expansionist fervor, President James Another strategy for bringing Cuba
K. Polk authorized his minister in Spain into the United States was to provoke a
to offer up to $100 million for the island revolution like the one in Texas and

then annex the area after it had cut its
ties to Spain. Cuban exile Narciso
López, a leading advocate of rebellion,
mounted three filibustering expeditions
to free Cuba from Spain. Federal
authorities halted his first attempt
before it left New York. The second
expedition involved 700 men who man-
aged to capture a garrison in Cuba, but
the local population showed no interest
in joining the rebellion. The third
attempt in 1851 ended when the
Spanish captured and killed several
invaders, including López.
Although these executions provoked
outrage in the Southern states, Whig
President Millard Fillmore was unwill-
ing to countenance any more filibuster-
ing. The Spanish meanwhile tried to
enlist support from France and Great
Britain for their position. They, in turn,
approached the United States with a pro-
posal for a three-way guarantee that
none of them would attempt to annex
Cuba, but the United States was unwill-
ing to agree.
When Franklin Pierce won the presi-
dency at the head of a Southern-dominated
and outspokenly expansionist Democratic
Party, he made clear his intention to add
Cuba to the Union. His secretary of state,
William Marcy, sent a rabid expansionist,
named Pierre Soulé, to Spain. A native of
Louisiana and a vocal supporter of slavery,
Soulé made every effort to convince
Spain to relinquish Cuba. Meanwhile, a
large and well-funded force, led by former
Mississippi governor John A. Quitman,
prepared for an invasion.
In late February 1854, an event
occurred that could have been seen as a
historic first shot justifying war. Spanish
authorities confiscated the cargo of a
U.S. ship, the Black Warrior, as a pun-
ishment for illegal trading practices in
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 105
Havana. President Pierce asked Con-
gress for authority to use force to avenge
this affront to the U.S. flag. Soulé simul-
taneously demanded $300,000 in com-
pensation from the Spanish government,
a sum it later paid to the ship’s owners.
Subsequently, Pierce authorized Soulé to
offer $130 million for the island, but
Spain once again demurred.
To increase the pressure on Spain,
Secretary of State Marcy ordered the
U.S. ministers to Great Britain and
France, James Buchanan and John Y.
Mason, to confer with Soulé in the
Belgian city of Ostend. The three diplo-
mats met there to work out the language
of a statement that became known as the
Ostend Manifesto. The thrust of the doc-
ument was a complaint that Spain had
failed to sell Cuba to the United States
and a threat that the Americans would
take it, by fair means or foul.
Someone leaked the supposedly con-
fidential diplomatic note to the press.
Universally condemned in the Northern
states as an attempt to expand the area
open to slavery, the Ostend Manifesto
played a major role in the elections of
1854, weakening the Democratic Party’s
position in Congress and forcing Pierce
and Marcy to abandon their expansionist
agenda. Governor Quitman had to cancel
his filibustering plans. Cuba would
remain a Spanish colony for another half
century, in large measure because of the
squabbles over slavery that eventually
led to the American Civil War.
See also: Manifest Destiny; Spanish-American-
Cuban War
References
Brown, Charles H. Agents of Manifest
Destiny: The Lives and Times of the
Filibusters. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1980.
106 | Section 2
Ettinger, Amos A. The Mission to Spain of
Pierre Soulé. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1932.
Rauch, Basil. American Interest in Cuba,
1848–1855. New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1948.
Recognition as a Belligerent
When the Southern states seceded from
the Union, they hoped that the major
world powers would respond by recogniz-
ing the Confederate States of America as
an independent nation. Such recognition
would presumably certify the Confeder-
acy’s legitimacy and, not incidentally,
enhance its opportunities for foreign aid
and trade. In May 1861, the British and
French governments took a first step in
that direction by officially recognizing the
Confederacy as a belligerent in the devel-
oping Civil War. Just what that limited
recognition meant and how it would affect
the outcome of the war became defining
questions for Union diplomats and
statesmen.
Ironically, President Abraham Lincoln’s
decision to declare a blockade of
Southern ports shortly after the firing on
Fort Sumter appears to have helped con-
vince the European governments to act
as they did. Because a blockade is con-
sidered an act of war, the argument went,
there must be at least two parties in the
conflict. Therefore, recognizing the
Confederacy as a belligerent was a
logical step. That designation allowed
the European nations to trade with the
Confederacy if they could evade the
blockading Union fleet. But this reaction
fell far short of what the government in
Richmond desired. Had Great Britain
and France granted full diplomatic
recognition to the Confederate States of
America, it would have significantly
elevated the international stature of the
secessionist government. It would also
have opened the way for an exchange of
ministers, diplomats, and consular offi-
cers and created the possibility of formal
trade agreements or even alliances.
Although the decision to grant recog-
nition as a belligerent did not create
these possibilities, the Union govern-
ment still considered it an unwelcome
interference in U.S. affairs. President
Lincoln had earlier named Charles
Francis Adams as minister to the Court
of St. James and charged him with pre-
venting any form of recognition. But
Adams arrived in London a few days after
the British announcement, so he was left
to try to undermine or whittle away at the
impact of Queen Victoria’s recognition of
the Confederacy as a belligerent.
Even if his arrival had been better
timed, it is doubtful that Adams could
have prevented this action. Two longtime
critics of the United States held key posi-
tions in the British government. Lord
Palmerston was prime minister and Lord
John Russell headed the foreign min-
istry. As members of the upper class,
they were far more sympathetic to the
aspirations of the aristocratic Southern
planters than to the democratic values of
the Northern states. Their attitudes paral-
leled those of Emperor Napoléon III in
France, who had reestablished a monar-
chy in his country in opposition to
republican sentiments.
Buoyed by the Europeans’ actions,
the Confederate government hastened to
upgrade its diplomatic representation
abroad. It named John Slidell of
Louisiana and James M. Mason of
Virginia to be its ministers to France and
Great Britain, respectively. They took
passage on a British mail steamer, the
Trent, only to be captured on the high
seas by U.S. Navy captain Charles
 Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 107

Although Great Britain and France had recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent in the Ameri-
can Civil War in the summer of 1861, they considered extending full diplomatic recognition after
Union Navy captain Charles Wilkes ordered his men to remove Confederate emissaries James
M. Mason and John Slidell from the British mail ship Trent in November. (Bettmann/CORBIS)

Wilkes. Although Wilkes’s action was
highly popular in the North, fiery
speeches in Parliament called for all-out
war to avenge this insult to the British
flag. Recognizing how damaging the
affair was to their foreign policy objec-
tives, President Lincoln and his secretary
of state, William Seward, agreed to
release the Confederate envoys and for-
mally apologize for the incident. Once in
Europe, Mason and Slidell were unable
to exploit king cotton diplomacy to con-
vince their hosts to take further steps
toward full recognition.
The Union blockade that had trig-
gered all of this commotion remained an
issue in its own right. Some Europeans
dismissed it as a “paper blockade.” How-
ever, because Great Britain and France
had utilized paper blockades extensively
in earlier conflicts, both nations were
more or less forced to observe the U.S.
restrictions. Moreover, within a few
months, the Union government had con-
verted enough merchant vessels and
expanded its navy sufficiently to make
the blockade a concrete detriment to
Southern commerce.
The Confederacy tried to counter it by
building or buying blockade runners:
small, swift, often heavily armed and
armored vessels that could easily slip
past the clumsy wooden sailing ships
that had been pressed into blockade
duty. Recalling the use of the island of
St. Eustasius as an entrepôt for transfer-
ring supplies to the patriots during the
Revolutionary War, Caribbean ports
108 | Section 2
stockpiled goods for transshipment by
blockade runners. Again, using prece-
dents established and stoutly defended
by the British government, the United
States invoked its right to halt this trade.
That interference might even take place
on the high seas as long as the Americans
could claim, as had the British prior to
the War of 1812, that the goods seized
were essentially on a “continuous
voyage” destined for the Confederacy.
Union warships often captured cargos
headed for the Mexican port of
Matamoros, even though the last stage of
the “voyage” might be over a land route.
To mount an offensive, the Confeder-
acy attempted to utilize privateers to
disrupt the Union’s oceangoing trade.
As long as the European powers with-
held full recognition, however, they
could not officially open their ports to
privateers for the adjudication of prizes
and distribution of booty to the crews. A
more successful strategy was to pur-
chase vessels from foreign shipyards or
owners and commission them as Con-
federate Navy vessels. Minister Adams
mounted a trenchant campaign with the
British government aimed at preventing
this sort of activity. He based his argu-
ments on Great Britain’s own Foreign
Enlistment Act, which prohibited
British citizens from aiding those
involved in foreign wars. Even so,
Adams failed to prevent the launching
of the CSS Alabama, which went on to
wreak havoc among U.S. merchant
ships worldwide. He was able, however,
to convince the British government not
to release the so-called Laird rams to
the Confederate government. After the
war, Adams played a major role in adju-
dicating the resolution of claims result-
ing from the depredations of the
Alabama and its sister ships.
During the conflict’s early months,
several European nations, led by
France’s Napoléon III, seriously pro-
posed European mediation. One of the
emperor’s suggestions was that the two
sides lay down their arms for six
months while diplomatic negotiators
attempted to resolve the issues. Presi-
dent Lincoln quite naturally had no
interest whatsoever in such outside
meddling. The Union victory at the Bat-
tle of Antietam in September 1862 per-
manently ended all talk of European
mediation.
Antietam also provided President
Lincoln with an opportunity to issue his
preliminary Emancipation Proclamation,
officially putting the Union government
on record against slavery. Although his
first announcement drew skeptical com-
ments in Europe, the formal proclama-
tion, which went into effect on January 1,
1863, and subsequent actions convinced
doubters of Lincoln’s sincerity. Both
Great Britain and France had long since
outlawed slavery; strong reservations
about the institution’s morality ran deep
in both countries, so Lincoln’s emanci-
pation program significantly weakened
European empathy for the Southern
cause.
Ultimately, of course, the Confeder-
acy’s battlefield losses were crucial to
undermining its credibility with other
nations. The nearly simultaneous capture
of Vicksburg and the Battle of Gettysburg
in early July 1863 ended all hope that any
other nation would recognize the Con-
federacy as an independent nation.
Although the war continued for almost
two more years, the Southerners—
locked up behind an effective blockade,
starved of vital resources, and lacking
any external allies—were doomed to
defeat. Recognition as a belligerent thus

produced almost no long-term benefits to
the lost cause.
See also: Adams, Charles Francis; Arbitration
(Alabama Claims); King Cotton Diplomacy;
Paper Blockade; Slidell, John
References
Crook, D. P. The North, the South, and the
Powers, 1861–1865. New York: Wiley,
1975.
Monaghan, Jay. Diplomat in Carpet Slip-
pers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with For-
eign Affairs. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1945.
Nevins, Allan. The Statesmanship of the Civil
War. New York: Collier Books, 1962.
Taylor, John M. William Henry Seward:
Lincoln’s Right Hand. New York:
HarperCollins, 1991.
Santo Domingo
The Santo Domingo affair was a pale
postscript of the Manifest Destiny spirit
of the mid-19th century. Although the
area had never been high on the list of
U.S. annexation targets, it fascinated
President Ulysses Grant. The efforts of
several questionable individuals led to an
annexation treaty, which failed to win
ratification, and the whole affair gave
overseas colonization a bad name.
The large island of Hispaniola, which
lies east of Cuba in the Caribbean Sea,
had long been divided between France
and Spain. By 1869, the western area was
known as Haiti and the eastern region as
Santo Domingo, now the Dominican
Republic. Its recent political history
included a series of misadventures under
the leadership of Bonaventura Baez. At
one time or another, Baez had attempted
to convince France to annex the country,
suggested to Great Britain that it admin-
ister it as a protectorate, and cooperated
when Spain briefly reestablished control.
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 109
Reinstalled as president by 1869, Baez
became convinced that selling the place
to the United States was now the most
attractive option.
Two U.S. adventurers encouraged that
scheme. President Franklin Pierce had
sent a hero of the Texas revolt, General
William L. Cazneau, to Santo Domingo
as an official U.S. representative in the
1850s, and he had stayed on. During
the Civil War, Colonel J. W. Fabens, a
New Yorker, arrived. In cahoots with
Cazneau, he hatched schemes to sell
land and resources to U.S. speculators.
Fabens met with President Grant shortly
after his inauguration and touted the
country’s beauty and potential for annex-
ation to the United States.
The president sent his private secre-
tary, Orville Babcock, to survey the situ-
ation firsthand. He also ordered the U.S.
Navy to support Babcock’s mission. The
resourceful envoy negotiated two treaties
with President Baez in November 1869.
One proposed the outright annexation of
all of Santo Domingo. If it failed, the
second treaty would establish a long-
term U.S. lease of Samaná Bay. Grant
knew that Massachusetts senator Charles
Sumner, chair of the Foreign Relations
Committee, would have a key role in the
ratification process. The president burst
in unannounced on Sumner one evening
and went away thinking that he had
obtained the senator’s endorsement.
The annexation treaty reached the Sen-
ate on December 10, 1870, but a series of
odd occurrences took place before it was
reported out to the Senate floor. Baez
requested that the U.S. Navy help him
prepare for an unlikely invasion from
Haiti. He then staged a plebiscite on the
treaty, which produced an improbable
vote of 15,169 in favor and only 11
opposed. A U.S. investor named Davis
110 | Section 2
Hatch was arrested and imprisoned,
apparently because his business dealings
interfered with those of Fabens and
Cazneau. Babcock refused to use his
influence to free Hatch, who managed to
escape anyway and who testified before a
Senate committee about the questionable
activities of the other Americans in Santo
Domingo.
When Sumner’s committee reported
the treaties out, with a negative recom-
mendation of 5 to 2, Grant was furious. At
about the same time, Fabens arrived in
Washington as the designated Dominican
minister to the United States and created
a furor when he presented his dubious
credentials to Grant rather than to Secre-
tary of State Hamilton Fish. The final
Senate ratification vote was evenly split,
nowhere near the two-thirds required.
Grant never forgave Sumner and did
everything in his considerable power to
destroy his political influence. Given the
suspect behavior of the parties involved,
however, Sumner appears to have done
the nation a great service. The negative
publicity surrounding the Santo Domingo
affair discredited U.S. expansionism for
many years.
See also: Manifest Destiny
References
Nelson, William Javier. Almost a Territory.
Newark: University of Delaware Press,
1990.
Tansill, Charles Callan. The United States
and Santo Domingo. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press, 1938.
Texas Revolution
In retrospect, the annexation of Texas to
the United States appears to have been
preordained, but enough complications
cropped up, most importantly the rise of
abolitionist sentiments in the North, to
direct the process down an unexpected
path. Americans had been settling in
Texas since the early 1820s, but only
after these immigrants had become thor-
oughly disillusioned with the Mexican
government did they take bold action.
Rather than immediate annexation to the
United States, they engineered a revolu-
tion that created an independent country.
The future status of that country would
remain unknown for another decade.
In negotiating the Transcontinental
Treaty in 1819, Secretary of State John
Quincy Adams conceded to Spanish
minister Don Luis de Onís a very weak
U.S. claim to part of Texas. Although
bitter protests greeted that decision, it
remained U.S. policy into the mid-
1840s. The process of U.S. expansion
into Texas therefore remained in private
hands.
Both the Spanish colonial authorities
and the Mexican government that suc-
ceeded them recognized that the state of
Texas was a vast, underpopulated corner
in northeast Mexico that would inevitably
act as a magnet to land-hungry settlers
from the United States. In an effort to
control immigration, government officials
encouraged both Americans and
Europeans of good character to move
into Texas. The hope was that this mixed
population would be loyal to the gov-
ernment in Mexico City and act as a
buffer against less desirable filibusters
and desperadoes who might otherwise
move in.
Moses Austin was eager to seize this
opportunity, so he began negotiating
with Spanish authorities. When the
Mexican Revolution intervened, he
switched his focus to the new govern-
ment. He died before his plans came to
fruition, but his son, Stephen Austin,

inherited the dream. Mexico designated
him an emperasario, authorized to lead
other settlers across the Sabine River
from Louisiana into attractive agricultural
lands in East Texas. Some 300 families
signed on with Austin, and other
emperasarios brought in additional
settlers during the next few years.
To qualify for admittance, these
Americans had to acknowledge Catholi-
cism as the established religion and to
forswear ownership of slaves. These
provisos were easily evaded or ignored.
New arrivals might pay tithes to Church
officials, but they held private Protestant
services. The land was ideally suited to
cotton cultivation, so they naturally
brought their agricultural labor force
with them. These people, who had been
slaves in the United States, were rede-
fined as “indentured servants” to avoid
Mexican reprisal. No one doubted that
their indentures would extend through-
out their lives, and they lived and
worked just as they had in slavery across
the border.
Mexico’s efforts to recruit European
settlers were so disappointing that trans-
planted Americans ended up greatly out-
numbering any other group in Texas.
Fortunately, these “Texicans” exhibited
loyalty to their adopted country for some
time. When the Edwards brothers lost
their emperasario grant in the mid-
1820s, they rounded up followers and
proclaimed the formation of an inde-
pendent country called Fredonia.
Stephen Austin and his associates sided
with Mexican efforts to put down this
rebellion.
After John Quincy Adams became
president in 1825, he took steps to
reverse the concession that he had made
earlier. He sent Joel Poinsett to Mexico
as the U.S. minister, arming him with
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 111
authority to pay $1 million for Texas.
Adams’s successor, President Andrew
Jackson, raised the offer to $5 million,
but the Mexican government still refused
to consider selling. Jackson then sent a
much more aggressive and outspoken
envoy, Anthony Butler, to Mexico City
and urged him to use any means at his
disposal to extract Texas. Resorting to
bribery and blackmail, Butler proved so
obnoxious that the Mexican government
requested his recall. Throughout all of
this diplomatic maneuvering, however,
neither president ever suggested or
implied using military force.
That was not true of the man who
became dictator of Mexico in the early
1830s. General Antonio López de Santa
Ana was a respected and popular mili-
tary leader when he took control of the
country. Intent on demonstrating his
authority and leadership, he chose Texas
as one place to do so. The first blow to
the Texicans was a decision to annex
Texas administratively to its neighboring
state, creating a new entity called
Coahuila-Texas. This move created a
political unit in which the U.S. immi-
grants were a distinct minority.
Determined to fight back, a group of
Texicans captured a fort near Galveston
in June 1835. To make an example of
these rebels, Santa Ana led a large army
into Texas. This, in turn, stimulated a
stream of volunteers from the United
States who rushed to assist the belea-
guered Texicans. The first major
confrontation occurred in what is
present-day San Antonio at the Alamo,
an old mission that had been converted
into a fort. Fewer than 200 men, a pre-
ponderance of whom were not actually
Texicans, inflicted 1,500 casualties on
Santa Ana’s 5,000-man force before
being killed to a man.
112 | Section 2
Santa Ana moved on to Goliad, where
he won another battle and captured some
400 prisoners, all of whom were sum-
marily executed. The future looked bleak
until Texas general Sam Houston’s army
caught the Mexican troops taking a
siesta at San Jacinto. The surprise attack
quickly routed the Mexicans, and Santa
Ana himself was captured. He agreed to
acknowledge the existence of an inde-
pendent Texas, including the fateful
decision to define the Rio Grande as its
southeastern boundary. Santa Ana subse-
quently insisted that he had conceded
under duress, justifying the Mexican
government’s refusal to recognize the
independence of Texas for many years.
The Republic of Texas immediately
sought annexation to the United States.
President Andrew Jackson had carefully
steered clear of the controversy,
although his administration had done
nothing to enforce federal neutrality
laws that prohibited U.S. volunteers
from participating in an external war.
Jackson was all too aware that Texas
was slave territory. Adding it to the
Union would destroy the balance
between free and slave states that had
prevented a wider sectional crisis for
many years. Moreover, he was con-
vinced that the Texas issue could tor-
pedo the chances for his handpicked
successor, Martin Van Buren, in the
upcoming presidential election of 1836.
Not only did the United States fail to
annex Texas, Jackson did not even for-
mally recognize the new republic until
the closing days of his administration in
early 1837. Unless the United States
could find a way to defuse sectional ten-
sions regarding slavery, Texas would
have to languish outside the Union.
France recognized the republic in 1839,
as did Great Britain and Holland a year
later. Their motives were rather
transparent. They all hoped that Texas
would limit U.S. expansionism in the
Southwest and, simultaneously, they
planned to exploit Texas as an independ-
ent source of low-cost cotton. As it
turned out, these economic motives and
fear of greater British influence played a
major part in the ultimate U.S. decision
to annex Texas with a joint resolution in
1845.
See also: Filibustering; Joint Resolution
(Texas); Manifest Destiny
References
Binkley, William. The Texas Revolution.
Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana
Press, 1952.
Lowrie, Samuel H. Culture Conflict in Texas,
1821–1835. New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1932.
Smith, Justin H. The Annexation of Texas.
New York: Barnes and Noble, 1941.
Webster-Ashburton Treaty
The treaty that Secretary of State Daniel
Webster worked out with British minis-
ter Lord Ashburton in 1842 contains no
very remarkable provisions. It did, how-
ever, amicably settle several issues that
had troubled U.S., British, and Canadian
relations for many years. Webster was
extraordinarily proud of this diplo-
matic achievement, which helped pre-
serve peace along the nation’s northern
border.
The trouble actually started back in
1783 when Benjamin Franklin and
Richard Oswald described that border
in the Treaty of Paris. They used
Mitchell’s Map as a reference, unaware
of its many inaccuracies. In an age long
before GPS and satellite imagery, the
mapping of remote and unpopulated
areas was more an art than a science.

The treaty associated the boundary
between Maine and Canada with a river
that ran nowhere near the intended line.
In 1831, Great Britain and the United
States asked the king of the Netherlands
to arbitrate the issue, but the line that he
drew satisfied neither party, so the
boundary remained in dispute. A map-
ping discrepancy well to the west also
meant that the northern boundary of
what is present-day Minnesota was
impossible to determine.
A series of recent confrontations
across the long, unguarded border added
to U.S.–Canadian tensions. One inci-
dent began in 1837, when a group of
Canadians set out to foment a revolt
against British authority. They found
sympathizers across the border who
were willing to provide them with a U.S.
ship, the Caroline, to transport guns
across the St. Lawrence River. Canadian
authorities responded by sending 50
men to search for the vessel. When they
located it, even though it was docked at
a U.S. port, the Canadian party swarmed
aboard, killed one crew member, injured
another, and set the ship adrift, to break
up and sink down the river. Although
President Martin Van Buren contented
himself with sending diplomatic
protests to London, U.S. rowdies took
more definitive action. In May 1838,
they boarded a British-owned river boat
and set it on fire. Again, Van Buren
took the high road, emphasizing that
all Americans should abide by U.S.
neutrality laws.
Soon another incident stoked patriotic
fires on both sides. The British govern-
ment decided to construct a road linking
Nova Scotia and the St. Lawrence,
selecting a route that ran through the
remote Aroostook Forest in northern
Maine—or was it southern New
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 113
Brunswick? No one really knew which
country actually owned the area. When
Canadian lumberjacks began felling
trees in the disputed area, however,
Americans armed themselves to fight
back. President Van Buren sent General
Winfield Scott’s army to the area to keep
the antagonists separated and to enforce
a tenuous truce in the as yet bloodless
“Aroostook War.”
Almost simultaneously, two other
issues complicated Anglo-American
relations. One involved a Canadian citi-
zen who was arrested in New York State
and tried for participating in the raid on
the Caroline. Despite British protests,
the federal government did nothing to
intervene. Tensions eased only when the
local jury acquitted the man after delib-
erating for only 20 minutes. The other
incident was far more serious. Slaves
being transported on a U.S. ship named
the Creole staged a mutiny, killed a
white crew member, and sought refuge
at Nassau in the British-owned Bahama
Islands. Great Britain had abolished
slavery throughout its empire in 1833
and had become the world’s most impas-
sioned advocate of abolition. After the
authorities in Nassau hanged those found
guilty of the murder, they set all the rest
of the mutineers free, causing the United
States to protest over the “theft” of U.S.
property.
When President John Tyler took
office in 1841, he named former sena-
tor Daniel Webster as secretary of
state, hoping that he could resolve
these issues. Fortunately, Lord
Aberdeen had become Great Britain’s
foreign minister at about the same
time, and he, too, wanted to reduce
Anglo-American tensions. He sent a
longtime friend of the United States,
Lord Ashburton, to Washington as
114 | Section 2
minister, charged with working out a
comprehensive agreement.
The two men quickly reached accord
on the Maine Boundary issue, agreeing
to a division that assigned to the United
States about two-thirds of the disputed
territory. That decision did not satisfy
Maine or Massachusetts politicians,
however, and, in a test vote only 21 sen-
ators expressed approval compared to
20 opposed, far fewer than the two-
thirds required to ratify a treaty. Webster
earned his pay at that point. A prominent
Massachusetts politician himself, he
used a variety of techniques, including
promises of federal grants of $150,000
to each state, to convince his fellow New
Englanders that the proposed arrange-
ment was the best that they could
expect.
The negotiators encountered little
public opposition in other areas. They
agreed, for example, to leave the joint
occupation of Oregon in place because
neither felt that the territory was cur-
rently of any great importance. They
split the difference in the Minnesota bor-
der dispute, drawing a line that, as it
turned out, left the iron ore-rich Mesabi
Range wholly within the United States.
The negotiators also included wording
regarding extradition that was designed
to facilitate the handling of cross-border
incidents. Recognizing Great Britain’s
opposition to the importation of slaves
from Africa, Webster emphasized the
fact that the United States had outlawed
that practice in 1808. To reinforce the
nation’s commitment, the treaty con-
tained a promise that the United States
would maintain a squadron of navy ves-
sels patrolling the African coast to stop
slavers. Neither the Caroline nor the
Creole was mentioned specifically in the
document, but the British government
ultimately agreed to provide $110,000 to
compensate the owners of the freed
slaves.
The Webster-Ashburton Treaty was
signed on August 9, 1842. The secretary
of state persuasively defended his
accomplishment, and the Senate
approved it with a vote of 39 to 9. The
agreement ran into some trouble in
England, but it ultimately won ratifica-
tion there as well. The treaty proved to
be the only major diplomatic achieve-
ment of President Tyler’s administration
other than the steps that he took to annex
Texas. Hailing from virulently antislav-
ery New England, Webster simply could
not support that initiative, so he resigned
from the cabinet in 1843.
See also: Joint Resolution (Texas); Van Buren,
Martin
References
Carroll, Francis M. A. A Good and Wise
Measure: The Search for the Canadian-
American Boundary, 1783–1842.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2001.
Remini, Robert V. Daniel Webster: The Man
and His Time. New York: W. W. Norton &
Co., 1997.
Stevens, Kenneth R. Border Diplomacy.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press,
1989.
BIOGRAPHIES
Adams, Charles Francis
(1807–1886)
As the son and the grandson of presi-
dents, Charles Francis Adams naturally
pursued a political career. Young Charles
spent much of his childhood overseas
while his father, John Quincy Adams,
held various diplomatic posts. He

returned in time to graduate from
Harvard and qualify as a lawyer. Despite
his father’s trenchant abolitionism, the
younger Adams took a slower, more
intellectual approach to the issue of slav-
ery. By 1848, however, he was suffi-
ciently outspoken to earn the vice
presidential nomination on the Free-Soil
Party ticket. His service in Congress in
the 1850s earned him the respect of New
York senator William Seward, whom
President Abraham Lincoln later chose
as his secretary of state. At Seward’s
urging, Lincoln named Adams as U.S.
minister to Great Britain. Having
attended a British public school for a
couple of years and being a member of a
distinguished U.S. political dynasty,
Adams proved extraordinarily capable at
dealing with the aristocratic statesmen
who headed the British government.
Adams spent his first four years in
London tirelessly supporting the Union
cause and attempting to throttle Confed-
erate initiatives. His biggest disappoint-
ment was failing to prevent the sailing of
the British-built ship that became the
CSS Alabama, the most destructive
weapon in the Confederate Navy. On the
other hand, his most important victory
was convincing his hosts to halt the
Confederate effort to purchase the Laird
rams, state-of-the-art commerce-
destroying vessels that could have devas-
tated the Union blockade. Adams
completed his tour in London in 1868,
only to be called back into service in
1871 as the U.S. representative on the
arbitration panel that dealt with the
Alabama Claims. His judicious behavior
on that panel helped it settle highly
charged issues and reinforced Adams’s
reputation as one of the most effective
diplomats ever to represent the United
States abroad.
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 115
See also: Arbitration (Alabama Claims);
Recognition as a Belligerent
Reference
Durberman, Martin B. Charles Francis
Adams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.
Astor, John Jacob (1763–1848)
John Jacob Astor is one of a select num-
ber of Americans whose foresight and
initiative personally promoted the expan-
sion of the United States. A German
immigrant, he arrived in New York City
with seven flutes and the goal of selling
musical instruments. He parlayed his
success in that venture into other enter-
prises, most prominently the fur trade.
Astor’s supplies came from upper New
York State, the Ohio country, and even
Canada. In 1800, he sent a shipload of
furs to China, where they sold at an
enormous profit. That stimulated his
interest in the Pacific Northwest as both
a supply point and a more convenient
shipping base for the Asian market. In
1811, he established a trading post
named Astoria in the Oregon Territory
just south of the mouth of the Columbia
River. The looming threat of war with
Great Britain convinced him to sell the
outpost to the British Northwest Com-
pany in 1812. He later used his vast
wealth to engage in profitable real estate
ventures, primarily on rapidly growing
Manhattan Island, and left a $20 million
estate to his heirs, the largest fortune yet
accumulated in the United States. Even
more important for the future, however,
was the fact that the United States
capitalized on his short-lived Oregon
venture to reinforce its claim to the ter-
ritory after the War of 1812, a claim that
ultimately led to the annexation of much
of the region in 1846.
116 | Section 2
See also: Manifest Destiny; Oregon Claims
Reference
Madsen, Axel. John Jacob Astor: America’s
First Multimillionaire. New York: Wiley,
2001.
Bidlack, Benjamin A.
(1804–1849)
After practicing law and serving in
Congress as a representative from
Pennsylvania, Benjamin Bidlack
obtained a diplomatic appointment as
chargé d’affaires in Bogota, the capi-
tal of New Granada. That country con-
trolled the northwestern corner of
South America, as well as the isthmus
of Panama. Bidlack arrived in Bogota
in late 1845 and quickly became con-
cerned about rumors that both Great
Britain and France were contemplating
the construction of a railroad or high-
way across the isthmus. Hoping to
obtain exclusive U.S. rights to any
such passage, Bidlack sought authori-
zation from Washington to work out an
agreement with the government of
New Granada. He never received it,
but he chose to proceed with negotia-
tions anyway, signing a treaty to that
effect in 1846. This unauthorized doc-
ument arrived in Washington at the
height of the Mexican War, but Presi-
dent James K. Polk eventually decided
to move it forward. The Senate ratified
Bidlack’s Treaty early in 1848. Bid-
lack died the following year, but his
treaty definitely strengthened the U.S.
bargaining position with Great Britain.
The two countries signed the Clayton-
Bulwer Treaty of 1850, which required
prior approval from both countries
before either could build an isthmian
canal.
See also: Panama
Reference
McCullough, David. The Path between the
Seas. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1977.
Burlingame, Anson
(1820–1870)
Harvard law school graduate Anson
Burlingame entered politics first as a Free-
Soiler and then as a founding member of
the Republican Party. Having lost his seat
after three terms as a congressman from
Massachusetts, he was named U.S. minis-
ter to China in 1861. Three years earlier,
the Treaty of Tientsin allowed foreign
diplomats to reside in the Chinese capital
for the first time. Although he had no pre-
vious diplomatic experience, Burlingame
quickly assumed leadership of the foreign
representatives residing in Peking (Bei-
jing.) At that point, influential European
merchants were attempting to work out
separate trading relationships with provin-
cial governments. Burlingame strongly
opposed these efforts, defending the
nationwide authority of the imperial gov-
ernment and the treaty provisions that it
had approved in 1858. His position served
as a precedent for the U.S. policy later
articulated in the Open Door Notes. His
views were also so attractive that the
imperial government hired him as its own
envoy when he resigned from U.S. service
in 1867. In that role, he negotiated the
Burlingame Treaty in 1868 with U.S. Sec-
retary of State William Seward as well as
similar agreements for China with other
nations. Except for its controversial han-
dling of immigration issues, the provisions
of the Burlingame Treaty guided Chinese-
American relations through the end of the
19th century.
 Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 117

Reference Andrew Jackson, Calhoun devoted stren-

Anderson, David L. Imperialism and Ideal- uous efforts aimed at getting the 1828
ism: American Diplomats in China, tariff act revoked or modified. When that
1861–1898. Bloomington: Indiana Uni- appeared unlikely, Calhoun resigned
versity Press, 1985.
from the vice presidency, went home to
South Carolina to agitate for nullifica-
Calhoun, John Caldwell tion, and then returned to Washington as
(1782–1850) a senator. There he worked closely with
Henry Clay on a gradual reduction in tar-
No one was more nationalistic than John
iff levels that rendered the nullification
C. Calhoun in his early career, yet no
controversy moot. The tariff battle com-
American became as identified with the
pleted his transition from nationalist to
slave-holding South as his life drew to a
Southern spokesman, however, and he
close. Born in rural South Carolina,
subsequently focused much of his atten-
young John Calhoun had an atypical
tion on defending the institution of slav-
education. He spent time in Connecticut,
ery. The old War Hawk was also a strong
including a couple of years at Yale,
advocate of expansion, and he urged the
before returning to study law in his home
annexation of Texas as soon as it gained
state. He married well and owned a prof-
independence from Mexico. Ironically,
itable plantation with many slaves, but
Calhoun did more to derail that process
he found his true calling in politics. After
than anyone else when President John
honing his parliamentary skills in the
Tyler named him secretary of state in
South Carolina Legislature, he won a
1843. Calhoun completed negotiations
seat in the U.S. House of Representatives
on an annexation treaty with Texas, but
in 1810. There he became a leading
then he justified it as a means to promote
member of the youthful cadre known as
the expansion of slavery, which, in turn,
the War Hawks. In addition to playing a
would preserve the institution in the
key role in convincing Congress to
existing slave states. A majority of sena-
declare war against Great Britain in
tors could not accept this rationalization,
1812, Calhoun worked hard to raise and
so the treaty was never ratified. Only
equip the troops. His nationalistic fervor
after Calhoun left the State Department
and proven organizational talents con-
was President Tyler able to engineer
vinced President James Monroe to name
annexation through a joint congressional
him secretary of war. Calhoun ably
resolution. Calhoun completed his polit-
served in that cabinet post for more than
ical career in the Senate, where he
seven years. In 1824, he nursed presi-
strongly supported the expansionist
dential ambitions, but he had to settle for
Mexican War and never compromised on
the vice presidency under John Quincy
his commitment to the preservation and
Adams. Over the next four years, he
extension of slavery.
became increasingly critical of high tar-
iffs, even though he had earlier advo- See also: Joint Resolution (Texas); Texas
cated protectionism. The so-called Tariff Revolution; War Hawks
of Abominations in 1828 was the final Reference
straw. Reelected vice president on a Bartlett, Irving H. John C. Calhoun: A
Democratic Party ticket headed by Biography. New York: Norton, 1993.
118 | Section 2

Clayton, John Middleton During the Mexican War, Americans had

(1796–1856)
John Clayton’s support of Zachary
Taylor’s successful run for the presi-
dency in 1848 earned him an appoint-
ment as secretary of state. It was a
logical choice. Clayton had grown up in
Delaware and become a successful
lawyer there before holding several
state-level political positions. Elected to
the U.S. Senate in 1828 and again in
1845, he was well known in Washington.
explored the isthmus of Tehuantepec to
see if it might provide a feasible canal
route between the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans. Meanwhile, Benjamin Bidlack
negotiated a treaty granting the United
States exclusive rights to passage across
the isthmus of Panama. This flurry of
activity stimulated British interest in
potential canal routes. Great Britain had
established a colony of its own in what is
present-day Belize, as well as a protec-
torate over the Mosquito Indians, whose

CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY

Convention between the United States of America and Her Britannic Majesty; April 19,
1850
ARTICLE I. The governments of the United States and Great Britain hereby declare,
that neither the one nor the other will ever obtain or maintain for itself any exclusive con-
trol over the said ship canal; agreeing that neither will ever erect or maintain any forti-
fications commanding the same or in the vicinity thereof, or occupy, or fortify, or
colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the
Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America; nor will either make use of any pro-
tection which either affords or may afford, or any alliance which either teas or may
have, to or with any State or people, for the purpose of erecting or maintaining any
such fortifications, or of occupying, fortifying, or colonizing Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the
Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America, or of assuming or exercising domin-
ion over the same; nor will the United States or Great Britain take advantage of any inti-
macy, or use any alliance, connection, or influence that either may possess, with any
State or government through whose territory the said canal may pass, for the purpose
of acquiring or holding, directly or indirectly, for the citizens or subjects of the one, any
rights or advantages in regard to commerce or navigation through the said canal which
shall not be offered on the same terms to the citizens or subjects of the other . . .
ARTICLE IV. The contracting parties will use whatever influence they respectively
exercise with any State, states, or governments, possessing, or claiming to possess,
any jurisdiction or right over the territory which the said canal shall traverse, or which
shall be near the waters applicable thereto, in order to induce such states or govern-
ments to facilitate the construction of the said canal by every means in their power;
and furthermore, the United States and Great Britain agree to use their good offices,
wherever or however it may be most expedient, in order to procure the establishment
of two free ports, one at each end of the said canal. . . .

Source: Bevans, Charles I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States
of America, 1776–1949. Washington, DC: GPO, 1974, 12:1–5–8.

amorphous territory included parts of
Nicaragua. By 1850, British and U.S.
agents had negotiated several treaties
with various local authorities in the
vicinity of a possible Nicaraguan Canal,
and the two nations appeared headed for
a full-scale confrontation. British foreign
minister Lord John Russell hoped to
defuse the tensions by naming Sir Henry
Bulwer as minister to the United States.
He and Secretary of State Clayton
worked out a mutually acceptable agree-
ment called the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty
(1850).
In the treaty, both parties pledged to
consult with one another before develop-
ing an isthmian canal, a provision that
effectively prevented either side from
taking unilateral action. The treaty also
promised that any canal built would
never be fortified nor closed to the ships
of either nation. Clayton resigned from
the State Department when Taylor died
shortly afterward, and he returned to the
Senate, unaware that the treaty he had
negotiated would quickly become one of
the most unpopular diplomatic agree-
ments of the 19th century. Among other
perceived flaws, it seemed to violate the
principles of the now sacrosanct Monroe
Doctrine, which had proclaimed the
Western Hemisphere off limits for Euro-
pean interference. Worse still, it repre-
sented a truckling to Great Britain, and
no nation was more despised in the
United States. Self-righteous Americans
certainly objected to an agreement that
appeared to grant Great Britain veto
power over U.S. expansionism in the
Western Hemisphere. Finally, even
though the project was well beyond the
technical capability of the United States
at that point, patriotic Americans were
already convinced that the proposed isth-
mian canal simply had to be built and
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 119
defended by the United States. That con-
viction only grew stronger as the century
drew to a close, creating still further
disappointment and anger about the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty.
See also: Bidlack, Benjamin A.; Panama
Reference
Bauer, K. Jack. Zachary Taylor. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1985.
Cushing, Caleb (1800–1879)
A brilliant Harvard-trained scholar and
lawyer, Caleb Cushing grew up in
Newburyport, Massachusetts, where his
father owned a merchant fleet that often
sailed to China. The younger Cushing
devoted his life to the law, diplomacy,
and politics. He won election to Congress
as a Whig in the 1830s, but his support of
President John Tyler in the early 1840s
cost him his seat. Tyler then named him
U.S. commissioner to China. Cushing
commanded a small squadron that sailed
east and arrived in China just after the
British and French had successfully
prosecuted the Opium War and forced
the imperial government to sign a treaty
that opened five ports to their commerce.
Capitalizing on this event and the Chinese
government’s desire to dilute the influ-
ence of the European powers, Cushing
negotiated the Treaty of Wangshia
(1844). It contained a most-favored-
provision that ensured that the United
States had the same trading and diplo-
matic privileges that the British and
French had won in war. During the
Mexican War, Cushing formed a volun-
teer regiment and eventually rose to the
rank of brigadier general, even though he
missed most of the key battles. Now
firmly in the Democratic Party, he
120 | Section 2
became President Franklin Pierce’s
attorney-general, and, in 1860, he
presided over the chaotic Democratic
Convention in Charleston, South Carolina,
which ended when Southerners walked
out to nominate their own pro-slavery
presidential candidate. Cushing’s intelli-
gence and skill were such that Republi-
can president Ulysses Grant nominated
him to be chief justice of the Supreme
Court, but Cushing failed to win confir-
mation. He completed his federal serv-
ice with a three-year tour as U.S.
minister to Spain.
See also: China Market; Most Favored Nation
Reference
Fairbank, John K. Trade and Diplomacy on
the China Coast: The Opening of the
Treaty Ports, 1842–1854. 2 vols. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1953, 1956.
Gadsden, James (1788–1858)
Although he graduated from Yale,
Charleston-born James Gadsden spent
most of his life promoting Southern
causes and Southern economic develop-
ment. He served in the U.S. Army as an
engineering officer, eventually earning
the rank of colonel, before he resigned in
1822 to run a plantation in Florida. In the
1830s, he returned to Charleston. Like
many trained engineers, he was naturally
attracted to railroading and soon became
president of what evolved into the South
Carolina Railroad Company. In the
1840s, he devoted much of his energy to
promoting direct trade between the
Southern states and both Europe and
Asia. He ultimately concluded that a
transcontinental railroad running along
the Gila River might help him realize his
dream of linking the South with West
Coast ports that were engaged in shipping
goods to the Orient. A friend, Secretary of
War Jefferson Davis, helped convince
President Franklin Pierce to name Gadsden
minister to Mexico in 1853. Despite his
defeats in the Mexican War, General
Santa Ana was once again running his
country as a dictator and, as usual, was
desperately in need of money. Gadsden
obtained authorization from Pierce to
spend up to $50 million for all of the land
that he could get from Mexico. In the end,
the U.S. minister was only able to pur-
chase a narrow strip along the southern
border of the New Mexico Territory, for a
final figure of $10 million. The Southern
Pacific Railroad eventually laid its tracks
through the Gadsden Purchase sometime
after the visionary diplomat’s death.
See also: Mexican War
Reference
Garber, Paul N. The Gadsden Treaty.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1923.
Harris, Townsend
(1804–1878)
A New York businessman with experi-
ence in the China trade, Townsend Harris
became the first official U.S. envoy to
Japan. In 1854, Matthew Calbraith
Perry’s small naval squadron had arrived
hoping to “open” Japan to the rest of the
world. The so-called Wood and Water
Treaty that he eventually worked out was
a limited, bare bones agreement that
allowed U.S. ships to stop in Japan only
to restock essentials needed to continue
their voyages. But the treaty did, at least,
provide for an exchange of consular
officers. Shortly afterward, President
Franklin Pierce nominated Townsend
Harris to serve as the U.S. consul

general. He moved into an abandoned
temple at Shimoda, near Edo (present-
day Tokyo), and patiently began peti-
tioning the imperial government for
permission to negotiate a broader
agreement. Not until 1858 did the
emperor finally grant Harris an audi-
ence, opening the way for full negotia-
tions. A few months later, Harris was
able to sign a full commercial treaty
that legitimized trade between the
United States and Japan. This docu-
ment served as a model for the repre-
sentatives of other foreign governments
who also wished to trade with Japan. In
that sense, Townsend Harris may truly
be credited with “opening” Japan to
worldwide commerce.
See also: Japan, Opening of; Perry, Matthew
Calbraith
Reference
Statler, Oliver. Shimoda Story. New York:
Random House, 1969.
Kearny, Stephen Watts
(1794–1848)
The outbreak of the War of 1812 con-
vinced New Jersey-born Stephen Kearny
to drop out of Columbia College and enlist
in the army. He remained a soldier for the
rest of his life. He spent most of his time
after the war exploring in the West and
helping establish new forts ahead of the
line of settlers pushing into hostile country.
When the war with Mexico began in 1846,
Kearny’s skill and experience earned
him appointment as the brigadier general
commanding the Army of the West. His
mission was to lead a 1,600-man force
from Ft. Leavenworth to Santa Fe, where
the local authorities quickly surrendered.
Mistakenly informed that California was
already in U.S. hands, Kearny enlisted
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 121
frontier legend Kit Carson to guide him
and a small contingent of 100 dragoons
to the Pacific Coast. They encountered
stiff opposition near San Diego, before
linking up with naval forces under
Commodore Robert Stockton. The two
men quickly took control of southern
California, only to become involved in a
heated dispute with John C. Fremont.
Nicknamed “the Pathfinder,” Fremont
had been assigned to head a small
exploratory mission into northern
California before the United States
declared war on Mexico. Once the con-
flict broke out, the overconfident officer
misconstrued both his orders and other
information that he had received to con-
clude that he had been designated to
serve as the U.S. governor of California.
This contention conflicted with Kearny’s
position, and the general ultimately pre-
vailed. Fremont was court-martialed and
resigned from the army. Kearny then
headed down into Mexico, only to con-
tract a fatal disease at the port of Vera
Cruz. But his 1,500-mile trek along the
Santa Fe Trail and on through the
trackless region to the west had estab-
lished a strong U.S. claim to the territo-
ries that Mexico ceded to the United
States in 1848.
See also: Mexican War
Reference
Walker, Dale L. Bear Flag Rising: The
Conquest of California, 1846. New York:
Forge, 1999.
Perry, Matthew Calbraith
(1794–1858)
Matthew Calbraith Perry’s success in
convincing the Japanese Empire to open
itself to outside contact was the most
important diplomatic achievement of a
122 | Section 2
U.S. Navy officer in the 19th century.
Perry was an obvious choice for the
assignment, given his reputation and expe-
rience. His first active naval service came
under his equally famous brother, Oliver
Hazard Perry, the commander who
defeated British naval forces on Lake
Ontario in 1813. Matthew Perry partici-
pated in many other naval skirmishes in
the War of 1812. Afterward, he played a
major role in establishing what became
Liberia, the African refuge for freed U.S.
slaves. His midcareer experiences
included interactions with Greeks, Turks,
Italians, Russians, and many others, so he
was no stranger to international negotia-
tions. At home, he helped frame the cur-
riculum for the Naval Academy,
superintended the New York naval yard,
and was a prominent advocate of steam-
powered ships. In 1847, he commanded
the naval squadron that supported General
Winfield Scott’s army in capturing Vera
Cruz. Five years later, President Millard
Fillmore appointed him commodore of the
squadron that was sent to open relations
with Japan. Perry’s ships arrived in Edo
Bay in July 1853. He refused to speak to
anyone of lesser rank than himself, and his
stubbornness enabled him to deliver the
president’s letter personally to two Japan-
ese princes. Perry’s squadron then
departed, promising to return early the fol-
lowing year. When the Americans arrived
in February 1854, they found Japanese
officials willing to negotiate. The Treaty of
Tanagawa was so limited in scope that it is
often referred to as the Wood and Water
Treaty because its major provision only
allowed U.S. vessels to restock needed
supplies at Japanese locations. The treaty
did open consular relations between the
two countries, however, enabling the first
U.S. consul-general, Townsend Harris, to
negotiate a much broader-ranging com-
mercial and diplomatic treaty four years
later. But it was Perry who had started the
process that would ultimately lead to
Japan’s full participation in world affairs
and earn the United States international
kudos for astute diplomacy.
See also: Japan, Opening of; Harris, Townsend
Reference
Morison, Samuel Eliot. “Old Bruin”: Com-
modore Matthew C. Perry. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1967.
Scott, Winfield (1786–1866)
A lifelong professional soldier, Win-
field Scott performed a number of sen-
sitive and successful diplomatic
missions. Born and raised in southern
Virginia, Scott read law, but he never
practiced as an attorney. When the
Chesapeake Affair stirred patriotic sen-
timents up and down the Atlantic
seaboard in 1807, Scott volunteered for
service in the local militia. A large and
powerful man, he quickly earned
respect and rapid promotion. After
switching to the regular army, Scott
took part in several major actions dur-
ing the War of 1812. Although gener-
ally disheartened at how poorly the
army performed in the field, he earned
accolades for his personal leadership in
key encounters, such as the Battle of
Lundy’s Lane in July 1814. Having won
promotion to the rank of brigadier gen-
eral by the end of the war, Scott chose
to remain in the peacetime army. A
strong advocate of technical and tactical
training, he encouraged the develop-
ment of a more professional fighting
force. After Scott had handled several
assignments dealing with Indian trou-
bles in the 1830s, President Martin Van
Buren sent the general as a peacemaker

along the Canadian border. Scott
showed remarkable tact and empathy in
his dealings with emotional participants
on both sides, and his presence was cru-
cial in preventing an outbreak of hostil-
ities. As general-in-chief of the U.S.
Army in 1841, Scott had become
prominent enough to be considered for
the presidency. But Henry Clay won the
Whig Party nomination in 1844, and
Scott enthusiastically endorsed him.
When James K. Polk won, relations ini-
tially were frosty between the Whiggish
general and the Democratic president.
After some initial success, it became
clear that General Zachary Taylor’s
actions were unlikely to end the
Mexican War, so Polk turned to sea-
soned veteran Scott to lead an assault
on Vera Cruz. Having secured that
objective, the general proved to be a
brilliant tactical commander as his col-
umn climbed onto the central Mexican
plateau. With minimal loss of both
civilian and military lives, his force
arrived at the gates of Mexico City.
There he paused, hoping for a peaceful
capitulation but eventually having to
engage in two brief but bloody battles
to gain control of the city. During the
ensuing occupation, Scott demonstrated
the same diplomacy and tact that he had
used effectively along the Canadian
border. Swallowing his initial outrage at
the arrival of State Department envoy
Nicholas Trist, Scott paved the way for
Trist’s ultimately successful peace nego-
tiations, which brought the war to a
close. Complaints from jealous officers
and Democratic politicians led to an
inquiry into Scott’s performance in Mex-
ico, but he was eventually cleared of all
charges. The Whig Party nominated the
war hero for the 1852 presidential race,
but the general suffered a humiliating
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 123
loss to Democrat Franklin Pierce. Scott
remained on active duty through the out-
break of the Civil War, now honored
with the rank of lieutenant general,
which only George Washington had held
before him. President Lincoln urged the
elderly and ailing Scott to retire to make
way for younger officers, and he did so
in October 1861. Although Winfield
Scott is remembered most for his mili-
tary successes, he deserves substantial
credit for his thoughtful and effective
contributions to U.S. diplomacy.
See also: Mexican War; Van Buren, Martin
Reference
Peskin, Allan. Winfield Scott and the Profes-
sion of Arms. Kent, OH: Kent State
University Press, 2003.
Seward, William H.
(1801–1872)
William H. Seward naturally gravitated
to politics after graduating from Union
College and practicing as an attorney in
upstate New York. Thurlow Weed’s
Whig Party political machine elected
Seward to positions as a state legislator
and later governor of New York. He won
a U.S. Senate seat as a Whig in 1849, but
he transitioned to the newly formed
Republican Party in the late 1850s. He
quickly became one of the most promi-
nent senators, and his abolitionist views
enhanced his reputation throughout the
North. Although Abraham Lincoln
defeated Seward’s bid for his party’s
presidential nomination in 1860, when
Lincoln won the election, he did what
many other presidents have done and
named his closest rival as secretary of
state. Many, including Seward, believed
that he would be the real leader of the
administration. Frustrated at Lincoln’s
124 | Section 2

failure to take definitive action in the
secessionist crisis, Seward wrote a mem-
orandum on April 1, 1861, proposing
that the United States declare war on
much of the world in order to generate
patriotism and draw together all
Americans, North and South, in a com-
mon cause. He even offered to handle the
war personally.
Lincoln rejected most of Seward’s
plan but did move ahead on resupplying
Fort Sumter, a decision that provoked the
Confederacy to begin the Civil War. A
chastened Seward remained in his post

WILLIAM H. SEWARD TO ABRAHAM

LINCOLN: APRIL 1, 1861

Some Thoughts for the President’s Consideration

. . . I am aware that my views are singular, and perhaps not sufficiently explained.
My system is built upon this idea as a ruling one, namely, that we must
CHANGE THE QUESTION BEFORE THE PUBLIC FROM ONE UPON SLAVERY, OR
ABOUT SLAVERY, for a question upon UNION OR DISUNION:
In other words, from what would be regarded as a party question, to one of patri-
otism or union.
The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, although not in fact a slavery or a
party question, is so regarded. Witness the temper manifested by the Republicans in
the free States, and even by the Union men in the South.
I would therefore terminate it as a safe means for changing the issue. I deem it for-
tunate that the last administration created the necessity.
For the rest, I would simultaneously defend and reinforce all the ports in the gulf,
and have the navy recalled from foreign stations to be prepared for a blockade. Put
the island of Key West under martial law.
This will raise distinctly the question of union or disunion. I would maintain every
fort and possession in the South.
FOR FOREIGN NATIONS
I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at once.
I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents into
Canada, Mexico, and Central American to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of inde-
pendence on this continent against European intervention.
And, if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France,
Would convene Congress and declare war against them.
But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it.
For this purpose it must be somebody’s business to pursue and direct it incessantly.
Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while acting in it, or
Devolve it on some member of his cabinet. Once adopted, debates on it must end,
and all agree and abide.
It is not my especial province:
But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility.

Source: Williams, William Appleman. The Shaping of American Diplomacy. Chicago: Rand-
McNally, 1956, 296.

and adroitly handled the Union’s diplo-
matic initiatives. He advised Lincoln to
disavow the Trent Affair and release the
captured Confederate emissaries. He and
U.S. minister Charles Francis Adams
worked very effectively together to
reduce the threat of European interfer-
ence in the American Civil War and to
prevent the Confederacy from obtaining
substantial foreign assistance for its war
effort. It was Seward who took the bold,
uncompromising stance against French
meddling in Mexico that helped con-
vince Emperor Napoléon III to drop his
support for Maximillian Hapsburg’s
regime there. The same night that
Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater,
Seward was stabbed in his bed. He
recovered, however, and agreed to
remain in Andrew Johnson’s cabinet. He
spent his last years as secretary of state
pursuing expansionist projects, but the
purchase of Alaska was his only major
achievement. Historians have generally
considered Seward to have been one of
the most able and effective statesmen
ever to have served as secretary of state.
See also: Adams, Charles Francis; Alaska;
Recognition as a Belligerent
Reference
Van Deusen, Glyndon B. William Henry
Seward. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1967.
Slidell, John (1793–1871)
Although he was born in New York and
educated at Columbia, John Slidell
moved to New Orleans after the Panic of
1819 torpedoed his business ventures.
Practicing law and pursuing more suc-
cessful enterprises, he became one of the
most influential Democratic politicians
in Louisiana. After Slidell had served a
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 125
couple of terms in the House of Repre-
sentatives, President James K. Polk
appointed him as the U.S. commissioner
to Mexico. Charged with sorting out the
Texas boundary dispute and possibly
purchasing other territories from
Mexico, Slidell’s mission proved
extraordinarily frustrating. No properly
authorized Mexican officials would
negotiate with him, and the instability of
the leadership in Mexico City would
probably have invalidated any agreement
that he might have been able to obtain.
Early in 1846, he informed the president
that only a show of military force would
convince Mexico to come to terms.
Elected to the U.S. Senate in the early
1850s, Slidell also served as campaign
manager for James Buchanan’s success-
ful bid for the presidency in 1856.
Although he was not a radical secession-
ist, Slidell resigned from the Senate in
1861. His diplomatic experience con-
vinced the Confederate government to
send him as its minister to France. He
and John M. Mason, the designated min-
ister to Great Britain, were captured at
sea from the British mail steamer Trent
and briefly imprisoned in Boston. Presi-
dent Abraham Lincoln concluded that
the Trent Affair was causing more harm
than good, so Slidell and Mason were
freed to continue their trips to Europe.
Although Emperor Napoléon III seemed
very sympathetic to the Confederate
cause, Slidell was unable to obtain
recognition, naval vessels, or trade agree-
ments from the French government. He
remained in France until his death.
See also: Mexican War; Recognition as a
Belligerent
Reference
Sears, Louis Martin. John Slidell. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1925.
126 | Section 2
Stockton, Robert Field
(1795–1866)
Like many other prominent naval offi-
cers, Robert Stockton’s career included
important diplomatic achievements. A
member of a wealthy New Jersey family,
he entered the U.S. Navy as a midship-
man at the age of 16 after completing a
course of study at the College of New
Jersey, now Princeton University. He
participated in a number of key naval
battles during the War of 1812 and then
spent four years in the Mediterranean,
dealing with the Barbary pirates, and
another lengthy tour of duty chasing
pirates and slavers in the Caribbean.
After an extended stay on his inherited
estate at Princeton, he returned to active
duty in 1838. He played a major role in
the construction of the USS Princeton
and was serving as its captain in 1844
when an experimental gun on board
exploded, killing Secretary of State Abel
Upshur and Navy secretary Thomas
Gilmer. The pinnacle of his naval career
came during the Mexican War, when he
was assigned command of the Pacific
squadron. In the summer of 1846, he
landed at Monterey and assumed com-
mand of all land and naval forces in
California. Stockton combined his sailors
and marines with John C. Fremont’s
small contingent of soldiers, and they
moved south, extending U.S. control all
the way to San Diego. Early the next
year, Mexican forces succeeded in
reversing some of these gains, so
Stockton collaborated with General
Stephen Kearny to recapture Los Angeles
and end the fighting in California.
Stockton resigned from the navy in 1850,
and, after a brief term in the U.S. Senate,
he served as president of a canal com-
pany until his death.
See also: Kearny, Stephen Watts; Mexican War
Reference
Walker, Dale L. Bear Flag Rising: The
Conquest of California, 1846. New York:
Forge, 1999.
Trist, Nicholas (1800–1874)
Nicholas Trist was serving as chief clerk
of the U.S. State Department in 1847
when President James K. Polk dis-
patched him to Mexico. Trist carried a
commission authorizing him to negoti-
ate peace terms with the Mexican gov-
ernment, an assignment that General
Winfield Scott believed should be his
responsibility. After an initial period of
hostility, the two men began cooperat-
ing. Unfortunately, no Mexican authori-
ties were willing to risk meeting with
either American. Frustrated with the
lack of progress, especially in light of
increasing opposition to the war at
home, Polk cancelled Trist’s authority to
negotiate and ordered him to return to
Washington. But Trist ignored these new
orders because Mexico finally appeared
willing to discuss peace terms. This led
to the signing of the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2,
1848. Because the treaty contained
everything that Polk had desired, he
overcame his annoyance with Trist and
submitted it to the Senate for ratifica-
tion. The treaty ended the conflict and
included the cession of California and
New Mexico to the United States in
exchange for $15 million. Trist thus has
the distinction of successfully negotiat-
ing a major treaty without proper
diplomatic credentials.
Reference
Ort, Wallace. Defiant Peacemaker. College
Station: Texas A&M University Press,
1997.

Upshur, Abel (1790–1844)
Whig Party nominee William Henry
Harrison won the 1840 presidential
election, but he died a month after his
inauguration in the following March.
Vice President John Tyler became
president, but he so alienated the Whig
leadership that it read him out of the
party. Among the few allies that he
could call upon was the secretary of
the navy, fellow Virginian Abel
Upshur. Tyler named Upshur secretary
of state in 1843 and charged him with
negotiating a treaty with the Republic
of Texas that would bring the area into
the Union. The major stumbling block
to annexation was growing Northern
opposition to adding any territory to
the United States that might include
slaves. Hoping to embarrass Upshur,
British minister to the United States
Lord Pakenham sent a letter requesting
a statement about the slavery issue.
Upshur prudently filed the letter with-
out responding and continued his
negotiations. In early 1844, he was
invited aboard the USS Princeton to
observe the test firing of an experi-
mental cannon. The overloaded
weapon exploded, killing Upshur
instantly. Tyler then named an outspo-
ken advocate of the expansion of slav-
ery, John C. Calhoun, to succeed him.
Calhoun retrieved Pakenham’s letter
and wrote a blistering defense of the
expansion of slavery, a move that
effectively killed any chance that an
annexation treaty would win Senate
ratification.
See also: Joint Resolution (Texas)
Reference
Smith, Justin H. The Annexation of Texas.
New York: Barnes and Noble, 1941.
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 127
Van Buren, Martin
(1782–1862)
Statesmen seldom get credit for not
doing something. What President
Martin Van Buren did not do was to suc-
cumb to persistent calls for military
action against Great Britain and, espe-
cially, its Canadian provinces. It may
seem odd that a man from New York
would be opposed to expansion into
adjacent territory, but Van Buren was,
first and foremost, an astute politician.
That talent had enabled him to work his
way up to leadership of the so-called
Albany Regency, the leading Democratic
Party organization in his home state, and
his support had done much to get
Andrew Jackson elected president in
1828. Jackson rewarded Van Buren by
naming him secretary of state, but
personality conflicts soon led all of
Jackson’s original cabinet to resign. The
president later chose Van Buren to be his
vice presidential running mate in 1832.
That gave the New Yorker the inside
track to the Democratic nomination and,
ultimately, the presidency in 1836.
Shortly after he was inaugurated, the
Panic of 1837 sent the country into a
depression that persisted throughout Van
Buren’s four years in office. Many
Americans blamed British trade policies
for causing the depression. Others, par-
ticularly those out of work or barely sur-
viving on worn-out farms, readily
supported the idea of invading and pos-
sibly annexing all of Canada to the
United States. Several border incidents
could have touched off a war, but
President Van Buren remained calm. He
did order General Winfield Scott to
deploy his troops along the northern
border on a couple of occasions, but this
action was designed as much to defuse
128 | Section 2
or dilute U.S. aggressiveness as it was
aimed against any real or imagined
Canadian threats. Although Van Buren’s
pacific policies undermined his popular-
ity in his own party and may have been
crucial to his failure to win reelection in
1840, he could comfort himself with the
knowledge that he had served his
nation’s larger interests well by pursu-
ing peace rather than war.
See also: Webster-Ashburton Treaty
Reference
Wilson, Major L. The Presidency of Martin
Van Buren. Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1984.
Walker, William (1824–1860)
A flamboyant filibuster, William
Walker was a man of many talents. A
native of Tennessee, he attended col-
lege and medical school but gave up the
practice of medicine to pursue law and
journalism in California. Combative,
energetic, and visionary, he convinced
himself that the citizens of Baja
California and Sonora wanted him to
“liberate” them from Mexico. With a
small band of well-armed adventurers,
Walker landed in Baja and proclaimed
its independence in late 1853. Mexican
authorities managed to chase his group
back to California, where Walker was
tried but never convicted of violating
U.S. neutrality laws. Two years later,
Walker led another ragtag set of
followers into Nicaragua, where they
collaborated with the U.S.–owned
Accessory Transit Company, which
owned ships and a railroad across the
isthmus. In short order, Walker became
Nicaragua’s top military commander
and then inaugurated himself as the
country’s president. His regime collapsed
in part because he backed the losing
side when rival business interests
competed to control the Transit
Company. In May 1857, he surrendered
to the U.S. naval forces sent to restore
peace. An attempt to return to
Nicaragua failed, but he did succeed in
reaching Honduras in 1860. Captured
by the British Navy, he was turned over
to Honduran authorities, who court-
martialed and executed him as a
foreign agent in 1860. Interestingly
enough, unlike other American fili-
busters, Walker apparently never
intended to ask the United States to
annex any territories that he might
ultimately control.
See also: Filibustering; Ostend Manifesto
(Cuba)
Reference
Carr, Albert H. Z. The World and William
Walker. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
Webster, Daniel (1782–1852)
Daniel Webster’s long and distin-
guished public career included two
stints as secretary of state, during
which he dealt more than competently
with complex international issues. A
New Hampshire native, he attended
Dartmouth College and practiced law in
Portsmouth for many years. In 1813, his
eloquent opposition to the war with
England gained him a seat in the U.S.
House of Representatives as a Federalist.
He left Congress in 1816 to establish a
law practice in Boston, where he con-
tinued to build a national reputation by
successfully arguing several cases
before the U.S. Supreme Court. In
1822, he returned to the House, this
time representing Massachusetts, and
moved up to the Senate five years later.

There he abandoned his earlier low-
tariff proclivities and became a leading
advocate of protectionism, reflective of
the growing importance of manufactur-
ing in New England. An outspoken
defender of the Bank of the United
States, he inevitably allied with the
Whig Party after Democratic president
Andrew Jackson killed the bank. Hop-
ing to win the presidency himself in
1836, Webster ran unsuccessfully as
one of three regional Whig candidates.
One of the others, William Henry
Harrison, did win in 1840, and he
promptly selected Webster to be his sec-
retary of state. When Vice President
John Tyler took over a month later, he
retained the distinguished New Englan-
der in his cabinet. Webster more than
justified his appointment by resolving a
number of Anglo-American differences,
including a long-standing Maine
boundary dispute in negotiations with
British minister Lord Ashburton. He
followed up with an equally masterful
campaign to convince the U.S. Senate
to approve the Webster-Ashburton
Treaty. His opposition to slavery and
the annexation of Texas prevented him
from remaining in Tyler’s cabinet. He
returned to the Senate, where he
opposed the Mexican War, voted in
favor of the Wilmot Proviso, and con-
tinued to oppose the expansion of slav-
ery. In the summer of 1850, he accepted
President Millard Fillmore’s invitation
to return to the State Department. Once
again, he conducted its affairs with
intelligence and rectitude, hoping that
his party would finally nominate him
for the presidency. That honor went to
Mexican War hero General Winfield
Scott, however, and Webster died just a
few weeks before the election. His
achievements as secretary of state more
Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880 | 129
than matched his many other contribu-
tions to U.S. history.
See also: Webster-Ashburton Treaty
Reference
Dalzell, Robert F. Daniel Webster and the
Trial of American Nationalism, 1843–1852.
New York: Norton, 1972.
Wilkes, Charles (1798–1877)
Charles Wilkes demonstrated an early
aptitude for science, navigation, and lan-
guages, all of which proved to be valu-
able assets in his long naval career. After
a brief stint in the merchant marine,
Wilkes accepted a commission as a mid-
shipman in the U.S. Navy in 1818.
During the succeeding 20 years, he con-
ducted naval surveys and laid the foun-
dations for both the Naval Observatory
and the Hydrographic Office. Although
still only a lieutenant in 1838, he jumped
at the chance to command a four-year
exploratory expedition that charted the
West Coast and hundreds of Pacific
islands, discovered the continent of
Antarctica, and produced extensive and
informative scientific reports. Holding
the rank of captain when the Civil War
began, he was assigned to picket duty in
the Caribbean. On November 8, 1861, his
ship overhauled the British mail steamer
Trent, and he arrested two of its passen-
gers, John Slidell and James M. Mason,
the Confederate commissioners who
were on their way to diplomatic posts in
Europe. Although this action earned
kudos from the public, President
Abraham Lincoln concluded that it had
significantly harmed the Union govern-
ment’s relationship with the European
governments at a time when they might
be considering support for the Confeder-
acy. So the president formally apologized
130 | Section 2
and ordered the prisoners released, to
complete their journeys to England and
France. Having failed to distinguish
himself in subsequent assignments,
Wilkes retired with the rank of rear-
admiral in 1863. Charles Wilkes was a
complex man, whose brashness and
quick temper led to courts-martial even
as he was performing valuable service to
his country.
See also: Slidell, John; Symmes, John Cleves
Reference
Henderson, Daniel. The Hidden Coasts: A
Biography of Admiral Charles Wilkes.
New York: William Sloane, 1953.
 SECTION 3
RISE OF A GREAT POWER, 1880–1914
During the Civil War and Reconstruc-
tion, U.S. attention focused primarily
on domestic affairs. As those disturbing
events receded, the nation once again
looked outward. What Americans
observed in the late 19th century was a
new age of imperialism, in which
European countries incorporated much
of the rest of the world into their colonial
empires. A predictable U.S. response
was a revival of expansionist ambitions
in what historians call the New Mani-
fest Destiny. This impulse relied heav-
ily on the traditional sense that the
United States had a mission to promote
and protect democracy around the
world. Occasionally, the U.S. Navy was
utilized to pursue gunboat diplomacy.
In the 1880s, mission sentiment
encouraged Secretary of State James
G. Blaine to promote Pan-Americanism,
the creation of a more formal set of
linkages and interrelations among the
nations of the Western Hemisphere. His
efforts bore little fruit, in part because
Latin Americans worried that his initia-
tive stemmed primarily from selfish
motives that would promote U.S.
131
domination of the region’s economic
and political systems. That belief was
supported by a U.S. tariff policy that
emphasized protectionism, the impo-
sition of high customs duties that were
likely to discourage imports and corre-
spondingly benefit domestic producers.
Even when protective tariffs were can-
celed, as in the case of sugar, U.S.
actions profoundly affected outsiders.
Nowhere was this impact more keenly
felt than in Hawaii, which moved from
a monarchy to a republic and then to a
colony of the United States in less than
a decade.
The steps leading to Hawaiian
annexation involved little violence, but
some Americans were eager to engage
in conflict. As a legacy of the Civil War,
many younger men developed an
aggressive spirit called jingoism.
Jingoes actively sought opportunities to
demonstrate their manliness in war.
Mission, the new manifest destiny,
and jingoist sentiments combined to
make U.S. participation in the Cuban
revolution nearly inevitable. Although
the Spanish-American-Cuban War
132 | Section 3
involved relatively little actual fighting,
its diplomatic consequences left the
United States in a much more complex
international position.
The first major postwar problem was
deciding what to do with Cuba once it
was freed from Spanish colonial con-
trol. After considerable thought and
debate, the United States developed a
plan that was stated in the Platt
Amendment. U.S. military forces
occupied the island until the Cuban
people accepted this plan, which
essentially made their country a protec-
torate of the United States. Another
nation that fell under direct U.S. control
was Panama. The U.S. decision to
construct a canal through that country
also increased U.S. dedication to
preserve political and economic stabil-
ity in its environs. President Theodore
Roosevelt’s big stick diplomacy
emphasized political initiatives, but his
successor, President William Howard
Taft, favored an economic approach.
Called Dollar Diplomacy, it produced
mixed results in Nicaragua, Mexico,
and the Caribbean. President Woodrow
Wilson publicly emphasized the
nation’s traditional democratic mission
in his Latin American policies, but in
practice they resembled what had gone
before. The situation in Mexico became
so confused that the president eventu-
ally ordered the U.S. Army to conduct a
punitive expedition, which brought
both nations to the brink of full-scale
war.
U.S. predominance in the Western
Hemisphere allowed the United States
to be far more intrusive there than it was
in the Far East. The center of interest
was China, where Great Britain,
France, Germany, Russia, and Japan all
vied for influence. In an effort to rein in
these ambitions, U.S. Secretary of State
John Hay announced the Open Door
Policy in 1899. It urged all foreign
powers to preserve China’s territorial
integrity and guarantee equal trading
privileges to merchants from any
nation. A few months after Hay distrib-
uted his Open Door Notes, the Boxer
Rebellion swept China, endangering all
foreigners living there and threatening
to slam the door shut. By cooperating
with other nations, the United States not
only rescued its beleaguered citizens
but also reaffirmed its commitment to
the Open Door Policy. A few years later,
the Russo-Japanese War jeopardized the
balance of power that helped support
that policy, so President Roosevelt
agreed to coordinate the mediation of
the conflict. When he took office in
1909, President Taft decided to apply
dollar diplomacy in China, developing
what was called the “neutralization
scheme,” to limit the economic influ-
ence that other nations exercised in
China.
Although the bulk of U.S. diplo-
matic action occurred in the Far East
and in Latin America during this
period, Americans kept a wary eye on
Europe. In 1895, Secretary of State
Richard Olney issued a brash, anti-
British statement. Interestingly enough,
the Olney Corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine ultimately improved relations
between the United States and Great
Britain. Over the next several years, a
series of events, negotiations, and deci-
sions led to a full-scale diplomatic rap-
prochement between the two
countries. This warming of Anglo-
American relations proved to be of cru-
cial importance when Europe imploded
into what contemporaries called the
Great War in 1914.

KEY CONCEPTS
Algeciras
President Theodore Roosevelt took great
pride in superintending U.S. participation
in a major international conference in the
Spanish city of Algeciras in 1906. The
chief topics discussed were economic
and political relations with Morocco, a
country perched on the northwest corner
of Africa. Several European countries
had developed substantial financial and
industrial interests in Morocco, and each
had its own ideas about how the region
should be managed. The U.S. representa-
tives at the conference implemented poli-
cies that Roosevelt had formulated, often
in ignorance of the European nations’
underlying ambitions and objectives. The
United States therefore made a rather
naïve debut as a great world power at
Algeciras.
The major European nations with
interests in Morocco had agreed, at an
international conference in Madrid in
1880, to an approach similar to what
became the U.S. Open Door Policy in
China. It permitted relatively free exter-
nal exploitation of Morocco but did not
prevent a number of nations from obtain-
ing concessions for mining, trade, and
other activities. No single foreign power
exercised pervasive control in this for-
mulation. While sorting out its many
competing interests in Africa, Great
Britain agreed in 1902 to recognize
France’s sphere of influence in Morocco.
France and Spain subsequently divvied
up responsibilities in the Muslim region.
In late 1904, the French government told
Morocco’s sultan that it intended to
make his realm a protectorate of France.
Germany strongly objected to this impe-
rialistic move and went so far as to send
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 133
the kaiser himself to visit Tangier to urge
the local population to resist any restric-
tions on Moroccan independence.
Germany simultaneously sought sup-
port and assistance from the United
States. President Roosevelt seized upon
the Moroccan Crisis as an opportunity to
promote the open door principle. He
therefore endorsed Germany’s 1905 call
for an international conference to deal
with the issues. This proposal made sev-
eral other powers quite uncomfortable.
Great Britain and France had recently
formed a secret entente directed against
Germany, and Italy had been holding
confidential talks with France in viola-
tion of her long-standing alliance with
Germany. The conference proposal was
so unpalatable to the French that it
forced Foreign Minister Théophile
Delcassé to resign. The sultan responded
positively to Germany’s suggestion,
however, so all parties agreed to send
representatives to Algeciras in southern
Spain in early 1906.
The kaiser’s government assured
Roosevelt that it would follow his lead,
but the president was primarily inter-
ested in gaining international support for
an open door policy in Morocco. Which
foreign power managed affairs in which
part of Morocco was of little concern to
him as long as all promised to support
free trade throughout the region. Other
nations were far more concerned about
who would control the local police
forces. In the Moroccan context, they
included infantry, cavalry, and even
artillery units, obviously more like
armies than civilian peacekeeping organ-
izations.
Germany suggested that each inter-
ested foreign power be granted police
authority in a particular region of
Morocco. Roosevelt objected to that
134 | Section 3
approach, which he considered a first
step toward partition, which might swing
the open door shut. After extended dis-
cussion and consultation, the conferees
agreed to allow France predominance in
four key cities, assign Spain similar
authority in three others, and leave
Casablanca as a neutral port. When
Roosevelt agreed, Germany felt that it
had no choice but to do so as well.
The U.S. president’s foray into great
power diplomacy in Europe demon-
strated that he either was not aware of or
misunderstood the deep currents that
flowed beneath the surface. For example,
he did not realize that the German gov-
ernment had proposed the conference in
part to help it assess just how close rela-
tions among the other powers had
become. Only Austria, Germany’s long-
time alliance partner, had voted in favor
of the original German proposal. The
kaiser’s government concluded that,
except for the Austrian alliance, it had
become diplomatically isolated. The out-
come of the conference so damaged the
credibility of Germany’s leading foreign
policy expert, Friedrich von Holstein,
that he lost his position of influence.
Algeciras also convinced the kaiser’s
government that Germany must immedi-
ately begin planning for the possibility
of a two-front war in Europe. The pre-
sumption was that Great Britain, France,
and her ally, Russia, would line up
against Germany and Austria. Military
strategists therefore devised the Schlieffen
Plan in 1906, and it remained the basic
blueprint for what Germany now
increasingly saw as an inevitable
European war. Modified and updated,
the essentials of that plan were imple-
mented in 1914, helping solidify the very
alliance that Germany feared would
attack it. Although President Woodrow
Wilson immediately exhorted his fellow
Americans to remain neutral, his prede-
cessor’s naïve behavior at Algeciras had
definitely helped lay the groundwork for
the Great War.
See also: Great War; Neutrality (1914–1917)
References
Anderson, Eugene N. The First Moroccan
Crisis, 1904–1906. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1930.
Beale, Howard K. Theodore Roosevelt and
the Rise of American to World Power.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1956.
Hall, Luella J. The United States and
Morocco, 1776–1956. Metuchen, NJ:
Scarecrow Press, 1971.
Anti-Imperialism
Although expansionism was quite popu-
lar in the United States in the 1890s, a
number of prominent individuals spoke
out stridently against U.S. imperialism.
Early in the decade, President Grover
Cleveland’s anti-imperialism halted the
annexation of Hawaii. The issue that drew
the sharpest line between expansionism
and its opponents, however, was President
William McKinley’s decision to annex
the Philippine Islands in 1898. It caused
the formation of the Anti-Imperialist
League, but the United States ultimately
ignored its sentiments to create an over-
seas U.S. empire.
Enthusiasm for what historians call
the New Manifest Destiny reached a
remarkable peak in the early 1890s.
Many Americans believed that the
United States was equally if not more
qualified than European nations to man-
age an overseas empire. Which geo-
graphic regions might be included in a
U.S. empire remained unclear at first, but

President Grover Cleveland was so opposed to
colonialism and imperialism that he withdrew
a Hawaiian annexation treaty from the Senate
in 1893. (Library of Congress)
when opportunities arose in Hawaii,
Cuba, and the Philippines, expansionists
eagerly advocated their annexation.
Given the strong and deep support for
expansionism, it may seem surprising
that a six-year delay occurred between
the first attempt to annex the Hawaiian
Islands and the final U.S. takeover. To a
large degree, the delay was a result of the
very strong antiexpansionist views of
Democrat Grover Cleveland. He was
elected to his second presidential term in
the fall of 1892, just as Republican pres-
ident Benjamin Harrison’s administra-
tion was putting the finishing touches on
a Hawaiian annexation package. But the
lame-duck session of Congress early in
1893 failed to complete the process, giv-
ing Cleveland a free hand to reconsider
or cancel the takeover.
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 135
Conservative and cautious, Cleveland
had no intention of rushing annexation.
He used delaying tactics, such as send-
ing a special commissioner to the islands
to evaluate sentiments on all sides. The
more that he learned, the more the presi-
dent became convinced that there was no
justification for U.S. annexation. He
summed up his attitude by stating, “The
mission of our nation is to build up and
make a greater country out of what we
have, instead of annexing islands” (Allen
Nevins, The Letters of Grover Cleveland,
492).
A major financial panic and depres-
sion undermined Cleveland’s popularity
and paved the way for a Republican vic-
tory in 1896. The new president, William
McKinley, appeared to be a thoughtful
conservative on foreign policy issues in
the early months of his administration.
For example, he did not push for imme-
diate Hawaiian annexation, allowing it to
be delayed until the Spanish-American
War made it seem inevitable.
That war developed out of a jingoist
reaction to a rebellion in Cuba. Spain’s
suppression of the rebel movement
inflamed public opinion, and many lead-
ing Republicans called for the United
States to “assist” the rebels in throwing
off Spanish rule. More than any other
individual, McKinley was responsible
for reining in the enthusiastic War
Hawks in his party, hoping that a diplo-
matic solution could be found. The
explosion of the USS Maine in Havana
Harbor in February 1898 effectively
overwhelmed McKinley’s ability to pre-
vent U.S. entry into the conflict.
Anti-imperialist attitudes remained
significant even so. Among the many
Americans who did not favor the idea of
the United States replacing Spain as
Cuba’s colonial overlord was Colorado
136 | Section 3
senator Edward Teller. To reassure those
who were uncomfortable with imperial-
ism, he added a proviso to the war decla-
ration in April 1898. The so-called Teller
Amendment pledged that the United
States would not annex Cuba when
Spain was ousted. That promise helped
persuade wavering legislators that they
could safely vote to authorize war with-
out simultaneously committing the
nation to expansion.
The war turned out to be too easy.
Within a matter of weeks, the United
States and the Cuban rebels succeeded in
forcing a Spanish surrender in Cuba.
Along the way, U.S. troops captured
Spanish outposts, such as Puerto Rico
and Guam, but they were such minor
acquisitions that they failed to arouse the
anti-imperialists.
The Philippine Islands were quite
another matter. Situated 7,000 miles
away in the Eastern Hemisphere and
containing a large, diverse population,
the Philippines looked like just the kind
of colony that England, France, and
Germany had been adding to their over-
seas empires for several years. McKinley
had not initially considered extending
the war to the Philippines, but impulsive
subordinates orchestrated a relatively
swift and low-cost victory over Spain
there as well.
Armistices in Cuba and the Philippines
halted combat in the Spanish-American-
Cuban War and set the stage for peace
negotiations in Paris. McKinley stacked
the U.S. delegation with expansionists,
so he could hardly have been surprised
when they advised the annexation of the
Philippines. After conducting his own
survey of domestic opinion, the presi-
dent approved their recommendation. A
number of rationalizations involving
power vacuums and the U.S. sense of
mission were cited to justify his deci-
sion, but none of them convinced the
anti-imperialists that annexation was a
good idea.
Opposition to the treaty crossed politi-
cal party lines. One leading Republican
anti-imperialist was Missouri senator
George Vest. He introduced a resolution in
December, shortly after the peace confer-
ence concluded, claiming that the federal
government had no constitutional
authority to annex distant lands. Another
Republican, George Hoar of Massachu-
setts, later delivered the most impassioned
anti-imperialist speech in the entire debate.
Opposition to Philippine expansion
spread well beyond Capitol Hill. The
newly formed Anti-Imperialist League
enrolled two former presidents, Democrat
Grover Cleveland and Republican
Benjamin Harrison; leading industrialist
Andrew Carnegie; and literary giants
Mark Twain and William Graham
Sumner. Ironically, Sumner was the
nation’s most outspoken exponent of the
Social Darwinist philosophy that had
motivated many to urge an expansion of
U.S. influence around the world.
Many of the arguments against annex-
ation were frankly racist. They raised the
specter of “little brown” people being
given rights equal to those of white
Anglo-Saxons. Filipinos were derided as
incapable of comprehending the demo-
cratic process, a circumstance that would
inevitably condemn them to remain
second-class citizens at best or, worse
yet, impoverished dependents who
would drain away U.S. wealth.
At the height of the Senate debate,
Emilio Aguinaldo’s Filipino rebel force
began fighting against the U.S. troops
occupying Manila. Thus began an
incredibly bloody war that only ended
when Aguinaldo himself was captured

two years later. Rather than aiding the
anti-imperialist cause, however, the
rebellion appears to have strengthened
the resolve of annexationists, who por-
trayed the fight as one between the
forces of righteousness and the agents of
disorder. The final vote in the Senate in
favor of the Treaty of Paris, which
included the annexation provision, was
57 to 27, just one more than the two-
thirds majority required for ratification.
After this defeat, the anti-imperialist
movement lost momentum. Bitter criti-
cism of colonialism continued to appear
from time to time, but the United States
had clearly crossed a major threshold. It
had seized control of an area that every-
one, including the expansionists, knew
would never be allowed to join the
Union on an equal footing. At the same
time, the United States was actually a
latecomer to the Age of Imperialism that
characterized the late 19th century. Per-
haps, after all, the anti-imperialist strain
in U.S. attitudes had helped prevent a
broader, potentially much more danger-
ous expansionism than might otherwise
have occurred.
Although the term anti-imperialism
is most closely identified with late
19th-century events, the broader concept
that Americans should stay home and
uninvolved overseas is a strong tradi-
tional undercurrent. Expressed in
Washington’s Farewell Address, Jefferson’s
Inaugural Address, and the Monroe
Doctrine, it had become a familiar,
widely accepted viewpoint long before
the 1890s. It cropped up in 1914, helping
keep the United States out of the Great
War, and surged again in 1919, prevent-
ing the United States from joining the
League of Nations. Particularly evident
in the 1930s, it helped delay U.S. entry
into World War II for some time. The
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 137
anti-imperialists of 1898 could thus take
some comfort from the thought that they
were acting in line with traditional U.S.
foreign policy principles.
See also: Cuban Rebellion; Jingoism; New
Manifest Destiny
References
Beisner, Robert L. Twelve against Empire: The
Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900. Chicago:
Imprint Publications, 1992.
Dobson, John M. Reticent Expansionism:
The Foreign Policy of William McKinley.
Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University
Press, 1988.
Nevins, Allen, ed. The Letters of Grover
Cleveland. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1933.
Tompkins, E. Berkeley. Anti-Imperialism in
the United States. Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1970.
Big Stick
Speaking at the Minnesota State Fair a few
days before an anarchist shot President
William McKinley, Vice President
Theodore Roosevelt quoted an old
proverb: “Speak softly and carry a big
stick and you will go far.” This concept
seemed to sum up his approach to interna-
tional relations when he took over as pres-
ident. In practice, Roosevelt’s big-stick
diplomacy meant being well prepared for
conflict but working hard to avoid it. The
approach was most evident in Latin
American affairs.
Ironically, the first major application
of big-stick diplomacy in 1902 did not
involve direct U.S. participation.
Venezuelan leader Cipriano Castro bor-
rowed heavily from foreign sources but
failed to develop a plan to repay the
loans. The German ambassador in
Washington told President Roosevelt
that his nation intended to stage a naval
138 | Section 3
demonstration to convince Venezuela to
fulfill its financial obligations. Great
Britain and Italy joined the demonstra-
tion in December 1902, and the com-
bined European naval task force sank
several of Venezuela’s gunboats and
blockaded its Caribbean ports.
Throughout the incident, the Roosevelt
administration urged Castro to submit
the issue to arbitration, a move that even-
tually ended the naval confrontation.
Although Roosevelt’s “soft speaking”
helped resolve the problem, even more
important was the presence of a size-
able U.S. Navy fleet maneuvering off
the nearby Puerto Rican coast. Publi-
cized as a peacetime war game, the
This cover of Harper’s Weekly dated February 3, 1906, graphically illustrates President Theodore
Roosevelt’s adage about speaking softly but carrying a “big stick,” while striding through the
Caribbean. (Bettmann/CORBIS)
presence of a U.S. flotilla that far out-
classed the small European force helped
convince all sides to settle their differ-
ences peaceably.
Shortly afterward, Roosevelt played a
leading role in initiating the building of a
canal across Panama. Here again, U.S.
naval vessels strategically located at both
ends of the projected canal route encour-
aged Panamanian rebels to throw off
Colombian control. Once the United
States had concluded a canal treaty with
Panama and begun constructing the
canal, the U.S. president took a keen
interest in promoting stability in the
Caribbean and resisting any encroach-
ment from European nations that might

threaten U.S. control of the projected
waterway.
That concern encouraged a very
active U.S. response when another
nation stumbled into financial difficul-
ties. Like Venezuela, the Dominican
Republic became mired in foreign debts
that it had no means to repay. A U.S.
company responded by forcing the gov-
ernment through arbitration. It resulted
in the appointment of a U.S. agent to
take over a Dominican customs house to
collect what the company was owed.
European creditors objected to this
apparent favoritism and threatened to
send naval vessels to pressure the
government.
Roosevelt would have none of it. He
was now committed to preventing
actions that might threaten the territorial
integrity of any Western Hemisphere
nation, and he had the naval resources to
impose his will. Instead of deploying
this big stick, however, he employed
astute diplomacy to reduce tensions.
Using the recent arbitration arrange-
ments and the long-standing Imperial
Chinese Customs Service as models, he
developed a customs protocol for the
Dominican Republic. Under it, U.S.
experts organized and administered a
service that collected all customs rev-
enue and routinely diverted 45 percent of
the proceeds to a fund that was ear-
marked to pay off outstanding debts.
The service was far more efficient than
what it replaced, so that, even after the
set-aside, the Dominican government
received more revenue than it had
previously.
The president drew plenty of criticism
for his unilateral action. Senators in par-
ticular objected to his failure to seek
their advice before setting his plan in
motion. In his defense, Roosevelt issued
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 139
a number of statements, the most memo-
rable of which became known as the
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine. It stressed that the United
States had no territorial ambitions that
might threaten existing Latin American
nations. If those nations behaved prop-
erly, they need have no fear of U.S. inter-
vention. But if they failed to act
prudently and honestly, the United States
might be forced to exercise “an interna-
tional police power.” Roosevelt’s mes-
sage was designed to prevent European
nations from taking matters into their
own hands; at the same time, it put other
Western Hemisphere governments on
notice that they should behave in accor-
dance with U.S. perceptions of probity
and democratic government.
Unfortunately, the first nation that
failed to live up to these standards was
Cuba. The government of President
Tomás Estrada Palma roused opposition
for allegedly fixing elections, leading to
widespread instability. Roosevelt and his
secretary of state, Elihu Root, reluctantly
dispatched U.S. troops to Cuba, where
they remained for some time. To restore
tranquility, Roosevelt encouraged the
establishment of a professional customs
service that was similar to the one that he
had advocated for the Dominican
Republic. His administration also
acceded to many of the reasonable
demands of those who had objected to
Palma’s government, allowing the troops
to withdraw in 1909.
Fortunately, the U.S. assertions of
authority and interventions in Latin
America were accomplished without
bloodshed, exemplifying the “soft-
speaking” aspect of Roosevelt’s big-
stick diplomacy. The president pursued a
similar course in the Far East, but he
eventually resorted to a dramatic show of
140 | Section 3

ROOSEVELT COROLLARY TO THE MONROE DOCTRINE

[Annual Message to Congress: December 6, 1904]

It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any proj-
ects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for
their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable,
orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can
count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with rea-
sonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and
pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic
wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civ-
ilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some
civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States
to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant
cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police
power. If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in
stable and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt Amendment Cuba has
shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the republics in both
Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all question of interference by this
Nation with their affairs would be at an end. Our interests and those of our south-
ern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within
their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them.
While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that
they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would inter-
fere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their
inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights
of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire
body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in
America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence,
must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from
the responsibility of making good use of it.

Source: Richardson, J. D., ed. Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. New
York: Bureau of National Literature, 1917, 15:6923–6924.

force late in his term in a campaign to
relieve U.S.–Japanese tensions.
The trouble was due in part to the
Japanese government’s blaming the
U.S. president for its failure to achieve
some of its diplomatic objectives after
Roosevelt mediated an end to the Russo-
Japanese War. Relations soon worsened
when California school boards prevented
Japanese immigrants from attending
classes. Unable to alter local education
practices, Roosevelt tried to reduce
Japanese hostility by working out a con-
voluted arrangement referred to as the
Gentlemen’s Agreement. It promised
that the United States would impose no
legal restrictions on immigration from
Japan provided the Japanese government
denied its citizens the right to leave for
the United States.

Meanwhile, high-level negotiations
produced two diplomatic agreements. In
the 1904 Taft-Katsura Agreement, both
nations agreed to respect each other’s
rights in their respective areas of influ-
ence: Japan’s in Korea and those of the
United States in its colony of the
Philippines. Four years later Secretary of
State Elihu Root confirmed these
pledges in his talks with Japanese
minister Kogoro Takahira.
The actions of the American battle-
ship fleet significantly strengthened
Root’s diplomatic position. With ten-
sions between Japan and the United
States rising, President Roosevelt
decided to wield the biggest stick at his
disposal. The United States had
recently completed construction of
16 first-class battleships, the heart of
what was then the second largest mod-
ern navy in the world. Over objections
from cooler heads, the president per-
sonally ordered this fleet to steam
across the Pacific.
Its arrival in Japan had exactly the
effect that Roosevelt anticipated.
Overnight, the Japanese government
became far more willing to emphasize
diplomacy. Of course, another important
consequence of this dramatic show of
force was that it convinced Japan that it,
too, should massively increase its own
naval power. The U.S. fleet anchored at
Pearl Harbor in December 1941 received
a long-delayed payback for Roosevelt’s
impulsive action.
At the time, however, the dramatic
42,000-mile, round-the-world cruise of
the U.S. battleship fleet convincingly
demonstrated that the United States pos-
sessed a very big stick indeed to support
its foreign policy initiatives. Roosevelt’s
successors were far less adept than he
had been at backing thoughtful diplo-
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 141
macy with the implication—but not the
application—of force. Whether it was
William Howard Taft’s Dollar Diplo-
macy or Woodrow Wilson’s fumbling
response to the Mexican Revolution,
both resorted to the direct use of U.S.
military combat, a policy that Roosevelt
had avoided.
See also: Cuban Rebellion; Dollar Diplomacy;
Panama; Platt Amendment
References
Beale, Howard K. Theodore Roosevelt and
the Rise of America to World Power. New
York: Collier Books, 1962.
Dobson, John M. America’s Ascent: The
United States Becomes a Great Power,
1880–1914. DeKalb: Northern Illinois
University Press, 1978.
Healy, David F. Drive to Hegemony: The
United States in the Caribbean,
1898–1917. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1988.
Boxer Rebellion
In 1900, the United States participated in
an international military expedition to
put down the Boxer Rebellion. The Box-
ers were virulently antiforeign rebels
who were intent on cleansing China of
all outside influences. Although rela-
tively short-lived, the Boxer Rebellion
seriously threatened not only the lives of
Americans and other foreigners in China
but also the Open Door Policy that the
United States had successfully promul-
gated only a few months earlier.
In Chinese, the word tuan referred to
a militia-style band, one of many that
had existed for centuries. The late 19th
century saw the rise of the I-ho Tuan, the
“Righteous and Harmonious Band,”
dedicated to eliminating foreign inter-
vention in China. Someone deliberately
or mistakenly substituted the word
142 | Section 3
chaun or “fist” when reporting on the
group, so it became known around the
world as the Society of Harmonious
Fists, or the Boxers for short.
By 1900, the group had grown quite
large, and it had tacit support from
China’s imperial government. The rebels
routinely attacked or assaulted Christian
converts and some foreigners, but world
attention focused on the Boxers when
one of them fatally shot Baron von
Kettler, the German minister in Beijing.
Foreign governments scrambled to
develop a response, and they quickly con-
cluded that military action was necessary.
President William McKinley’s secre-
tary of state, John Hay, found himself in
a very awkward position. The U.S. min-
ister in China, Edwin H. Conger, pleaded
for permission to collaborate with his
diplomatic peers in opposing the Boxers.
But Hay had just announced the Open
Door Policy, which proposed limitations
on the actions that foreign nations could
or should take in China. Moreover, Hay
was acutely aware of his nation’s
century-old tradition of maintaining an
independent foreign policy. In his view,
this ruled out any alliance, even an infor-
mal one.
When the Boxers surrounded the
Legation Quarter in Beijing, Conger
decided that he had to act. He ordered his
staff and the other U.S. citizens in the area
to join the refugees from several nations
who were seeking protection within the
well-fortified British compound. The
group included a contingent of U.S.
Marines who had earlier been sent
ashore to protect U.S. lives and property.
Abruptly, all communication between
those huddled in the compound and the
outside world was cut off. No one knew
whether the refugees survived or had
been killed by rampaging Boxers.
In a desperate attempt to protect his
Open Door Policy, Hay obtained
McKinley’s approval to send a second
round of notes to the major powers. It
reiterated the principle of the open
door—unlimited trading opportunities
for all throughout China—but it also
insisted that, no matter what occurred
inside the country, China’s territorial
integrity must be preserved. The U.S.
hope was that no other country would
use the Boxer disturbances as an excuse
to impose colonial control over any part
of China. To Hay’s relief, jealousy and
suspicion of their competitors’ motives
helped convince the other powers to
accept this expanded statement of the
U.S. policy.
No diplomatic posturing would have
been effective had the United States failed
to participate in the subsequent military
engagement. U.S. armed forces were
already in the vicinity, locked in a bitter
guerilla war in the Philippines. Field com-
manders there naturally opposed any
diversion of soldiers to China, but Presi-
dent McKinley decided to authorize the
deployment of as many as 10,000 U.S.
troops to collaborate with an international
force assembling to rescue the besieged
diplomats and their charges.
In the end, only 2,500 Americans
joined the relief force that assembled at
the port city of Tientsin in July 1900.
They joined 2,500 troops from Great
Britain, 4,000 from Russia, and more
than 8,000 from nearby Japan. On
August 14, the relief column fought its
way into Beijing and found that the
embattled British compound had sur-
vived with relatively few casualties.
Minister Conger reported that only seven
U.S. Marines had died during the 55-day
siege. The relatively speedy success of
the relief force meant that Germany’s

contingent had not even arrived by the
time the refugees were rescued.
The military achievement in no way
resolved the complexities of the Boxer
Rebellion. Conger insisted that the
imperial government was largely to
blame for the rebels’ actions. Many
members of that government, however,
including China’s minister in Washington,
Wu Ting Fang, had worked hard to
maintain good relations with outsiders.
Ambiguities in the levels of official sup-
port for the rebellion helped Hay pre-
vent additional, perhaps even more
draconian, punishment of the imperial
government.
Indeed, the threat to U.S. interests
from the other powers often seemed
more serious than China’s behavior. For
example, Russia suggested that all for-
eign troops be withdrawn immediately
after the relief expedition succeeded, a
move that would strengthen Russia’s
position in the northern province of
Manchuria. Apparently even Hay and
McKinley toyed with the idea of cutting
off a slice of China for the United States
during the rebellion’s confusing after-
math. Fortunately, England and Germany
announced a joint agreement that would,
in essence, preserve open-door privi-
leges within their spheres of interest,
strengthening the preferred position of
the United States.
Because of the Chinese govern-
ment’s complicity in the rebellion, how-
ever, 10 foreign governments demanded
compensation. Veteran U.S. diplomat
William W. Rockhill represented his
country at the meetings convened to
assess costs. Throughout the delibera-
tions, the United States favored
restraint, hoping to keep the final reck-
oning low enough to prevent the bank-
ruptcy of the imperial government. The
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 143
resulting Boxer indemnities for all
nations totaled $333 million, of which
the U.S. share amounted to $25 million.
Despite the size of the final figure, Hay
considered the result to be a victory
because the cost was less than half of
what had originally been demanded.
The United States set aside much of its
share to pay educational expenses for
Chinese citizens who were studying in
the United States. This gesture helped
reinforce the generally positive rela-
tionship between the two nations.
Although the Boxer Rebellion was
hardly a major world event, it fundamen-
tally altered the U.S. position in the Far
East. Participation in the military
engagements boosted U.S. status as a
world power. And, because each nation’s
troops remained under the command of
its own officers, the United States pre-
served its traditional independence of
action. Most important of all, the United
States remained committed to—and had
successfully defended—the territorial
integrity of China, a fundamental tenet
of U.S. policy in the Far East.
See also: Open Door Policy
References
Hunt, Michael H. The Making of a Special
Relationship: The United States and
China to 1914. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1983.
Varg, Paul A. Open Door Diplomat: The Life
of W. W. Rockhill. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1952.
Young, Marilyn Blatt. The Rhetoric of
Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1968.
Cuban Rebellion
The rebellion that broke out in Cuba in
1895 quickly became something of a
144 | Section 3
fixation for Americans, particularly
those interested in foreign relations.
Several of its characteristics seemed
tailor-made to match long-standing U.S.
traditions and recent international ambi-
tions. For example, it took place in the
Western Hemisphere, which the 1823
Monroe Doctrine and subsequent corol-
laries had proclaimed a U.S. responsi-
bility. The rebellion’s declared goal of
throwing off autocratic Spanish colonial
control meshed well with the long-
standing U.S. dedication to pursing a
democratic mission.
Perhaps most important, however,
the rebellion offered increasingly self-
righteous exponents of expansionism
an opportunity to act on their beliefs.
For these so-called jingoes, who
advocated a bold, militaristic response
to external troubles, the rebellion
emerged as an ideal excuse for imple-
menting their belligerent philosophy.
Almost heedless of the responsibilities
and dangers that it might entail, many
Americans increasingly called for a
bold and definitive response to the
tragedy unfolding just 90 miles off the
coast of Florida.
Although Cuba was the most loyal
and long-lasting of Spain’s major
colonies in the Western Hemisphere, it
was a troubled land. A bloody rebellion
between 1868 and 1878 ended only
when Spain promised to introduce
reforms, including abolishing slavery.
Thousands of disappointed rebels immi-
grated to the United States, where they
maintained a steady drumbeat of opposi-
tion to Spanish control. The Cuban Junta
in New York was the most active element
in the effort to keep the revolutionary pot
boiling.
U.S. economic policy played into the
junta’s hands. In 1890, the McKinley
Tariff Act canceled the U.S. duty on
imported sugar. Overnight, the Cuban
economy prospered as it never had
before. U.S. investment poured in, plan-
tations and mills became highly prof-
itable, and at least some of the wealth
generated percolated down to the peas-
ants who labored in them. But a business
panic in 1893, followed by a depression
in the United States, damaged Cuba’s
economy. The final blow was the reim-
position of a sugar tariff in 1894. Cuban-
American exiles exploited the resulting
disillusionment to mount a new, anti-
colonial drive.
In 1895, Cuban exile José Marti led
an armed group from the United States
back to Cuba, only to become one of
the first martyrs in the rebellion. The
junta in New York actively publicized
the efforts of those whom it portrayed
as patriots fighting for democracy and
independence. These themes res-
onated with the U.S. public, and news-
papers often reprinted junta press
releases without checking facts or
sources.
Two newspapers went even further.
Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and
William Randolph Hearst’s New York
Journal were engaged in a circulation
war. To boost its sales, each paper
printed increasingly sensational stories
about the conflict in Cuba. Many of
these highlighted Spanish “atrocities,”
and there was more than a grain of truth
behind these allegations. The Spanish
governor-general, Valeriano Weyler,
instituted a policy that forced tens of
thousands of rural peasants, or recon-
centrados, into concentration camps, to
make it easier for his soldiers to comb
guerilla fighters out of the depopulated
countryside. Unfortunately, thousands
of reconcentrados died of malnutrition

and disease in the poorly managed
camps.
Even as sensational journalism was
generating public sympathy for the
rebels, the federal government pursued
a restrained policy. Democratic presi-
dent Grover Cleveland and his Republi-
can successor, William McKinley, had
no desire to lead the United States into
war. Both pressured the Spanish gov-
ernment to find a peaceful solution. By
1897, however, McKinley had become
convinced that only independence for
Cuba would end the conflict, so he
pushed Spain even harder to accept that
eventuality.
No one will ever know whether
McKinley’s strategy would have suc-
ceeded in the long run, because two dra-
matic incidents in February 1898
significantly undermined the president’s
ability to combat the jingoist pressures
on him. The first was the New York
World’s publication of a private letter
The explosion and sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, made an
American declaration of war against Spain virtually inevitable. (Marine Corps Art Collection)
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 145
that the Spanish minister to the United
States, Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, had
written to a friend in Havana. It
implied that McKinley was weak willed
and indecisive. Americans considered
the de Lôme letter to be an unacceptable
insult to their leader.
The emotional response to the letter
had hardly dissipated when, a week
later on February 15, the USS Maine
blew up and sank in Havana Harbor. A
second-class battleship, the Maine had
been dispatched to Cuba ostensibly to
provide protection for U.S. citizens
residing there. During the three weeks
that it had remained docked in
Havana, no violence or other trouble
occurred. Although a contemporary
naval board of inquiry blamed an
external mine or torpedo for causing
the explosion, it now appears that
spontaneous combustion in a coal
bunker in the ship’s hold ignited an
adjacent powder magazine.
146 | Section 3
As a practical matter, the actual cause
of the explosion was irrelevant. It killed
more than 260 officers and men and
made “Remember the Maine” the
nation’s battle cry. It was a “first shot”
that justified a resort to war. Even so,
McKinley delayed definitive action for
several weeks in the faint hope that
Spain would free Cuba. That hope had
faded by early April, so he sent a war
message to Congress. Both houses
approved a declaration of war on April 25,
1898. The stated objective of the war
was to free Cuba from Spanish control,
and the resolution included the so-called
Teller Amendment, which promised that
the United States would not make Cuba
a colony of its own. That pledge pro-
vided some reassurance to the Cuban
rebels, who had neither anticipated nor
wanted direct U.S. interference in their
independence campaign.
So it was that the United States joy-
ously marched off to war. Fortunately,
the material and human costs of the
Spanish-American-Cuban War that
ensued were remarkably low. The con-
flict not only gave the jingoes a chance to
demonstrate their manly resolve, but it
transformed the United States from a
minor player into a major world power.
See also: Jingoism; Mission; New Manifest
Destiny; Spanish-American-Cuban War;
Teller, Henry Moore
References
Crompton, Samuel Willard. The Sinking of
the USS Maine: Declaring War against
Spain. New York: Chelsea House, 2008.
Dobson, John M. Reticent Expansionism:
The Foreign Policy of William McKinley.
Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University
Press, 1988.
Morgan, H. Wayne. America’s Road to
Empire: The War with Spain and Overseas
Empire. New York: Wiley, 1965.
O’Toole, G. J. A. The Spanish War: An
American Epic: 1898. New York: Norton,
1984.
Dollar Diplomacy
President William Howard Taft’s inter-
ventionist policy earned the somewhat
unflattering title of Dollar Diplomacy.
Although it often included the cred-
itable goal of helping poorer nations
manage their economies, many in Latin
America and elsewhere saw it as chiefly
a mechanism for extending U.S. author-
ity and influence. Dollar Diplomacy
therefore often simply seemed to be a
variation of what its recipients
traditionally viewed as “Yankee
imperialism.”
No one could deny that persistent
economic difficulties plagued various
Latin American nations. President
Theodore Roosevelt had grappled with
such problems, both in Cuba and in the
Dominican Republic. In both cases, the
United States helped install professional
customs collection mechanisms that fun-
neled more of each nation’s tariff rev-
enues to its central government.
Roosevelt viewed the Dominican Cus-
toms Protocol as one of the signal
achievements of his administration’s for-
eign policies.
At the same time, Roosevelt
attempted to downplay U.S. responsibil-
ity by working closely with the Mexican
government of President Porfirio Díaz.
In 1906, the two countries offered their
good offices to Mexico’s southern
neighbors, hoping to promote stability
in Central America. A positive outcome
of this initiative was the establishment
of the Central American Court of Inter-
national Justice to handle disputes in a
less confrontational setting.
 Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 147

José Santos Zelaya, the combative
president of Nicaragua, strenuously
objected to this “outside” interference.
He nursed an ambition to extend his con-
trol over other Central American
nations—by force if necessary, a goal
that the United States certainly did not
support. In addition to blaming the U.S.
government for interfering with his
plans, Zelaya also objected to the influ-
ence that U.S. businessmen exercised in
his country.
This all came to a head in 1909, with
the outbreak of a rebellion centered in
the coastal city of Bluefields. Zelaya
blamed U.S. financiers for provoking
this disturbance, a claim that seemed jus-
tified when his troops captured two U.S.
citizens that the rebels had hired to lay
dynamite. These two men were summar-
ily executed, causing the administration
of the newly installed President Taft to
break relations with Zelaya’s govern-
ment and order U.S. Marines to land at
Bluefields, ostensibly to protect U.S.
lives and property. The U.S. intervention
was a crucial factor in the subsequent
overthrow of Zelaya’s government.
At that point, Secretary of State
Philander C. Knox took the lead in for-
mulating the policy that became known
as Dollar Diplomacy. The first step was

PRESIDENT TAFT DEFINES DOLLAR DIPLOMACY

[Annual Message to Congress: December 1912]

. . . The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to modern
ideas of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dol-
lars for bullets. It is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the
dictates of sound policy and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims. It is an effort
frankly directed to the increase of American trade upon the axiomatic principle that
the government of the United States shall extend all proper support to every legitimate
and beneficial American enterprise abroad.
How great have been the results of this diplomacy, coupled with the maximum and
minimum provision of the Tariff Law, will be seen by some consideration of the won-
derful increase in the export trade of the United States. Because modern diplomacy is
commercial, there has been a disposition in some quarters to attribute to it none but
materialistic aims. How strikingly erroneous is such an impression may be seen from a
study of the results by which the diplomacy of the United States can be judged. . . .
It is not possible to make to the Congress a communication upon the present for-
eign relations of the United States so detailed as to convey an adequate impression of
the enormous increase in the importance and activities of those relations. If this gov-
ernment is really to preserve to the American people that free opportunity in foreign
markets which will soon be indispensable to our prosperity, even greater efforts must
be made. Otherwise the American merchant, manufacturer, and exporter will find
many a field in which American trade should logically predominate preempted
through the more energetic efforts of other governments and other commercial nations.

Source: Richardson, J. D., ed. Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. New
York: Bureau of National Literature, 1917, 17:7364–7365.
148 | Section 3
to ensure that the new Nicaraguan gov-
ernment was sympathetic to U.S. inter-
ests. That was accomplished with the
installation of President Adolfo Díaz,
who had earlier been employed by a U.S.
company. Díaz and his minister in
Washington, Salvador Castrillo, were
more than receptive to U.S. overtures,
especially because the survival of their
regime seemed reliant on a continuing
U.S. presence.
Hardly a disinterested observer, Knox
had interests in companies operating in
Nicaragua. To reassure U.S. investors, he
negotiated a bilateral agreement that was
designed to shore up the Díaz govern-
ment by establishing a Dominican-style
customs service. It also promised a U.S.
government-guaranteed loan to further
strengthen the relationship. Signed in
1911, the Knox-Castrillo Convention
failed to win ratification from the U.S.
Senate, forcing Knox to seek private
investment funding from U.S. financiers.
Worse still, the convention provoked a
groundswell of opposition in Nicaragua,
where many saw it as a sellout to the
United States. President Díaz requested
U.S. assistance, and, in 1912, 2,700 U.S.
Marines arrived. With only a minor
break, U.S. troops maintained a presence
in Nicaragua for the next 20 years.
Frustrated by the Senate’s attitude,
Knox cited another justification for his
policies. He argued that a European
power might gain control over a possible
Nicaraguan canal route and use it to
compete with the Panama Canal, which
was currently being constructed with
U.S. funds. He urged broader U.S.
investment in the country as a way to
drive out or reduce the influence of other
nations, particularly Great Britain. In
1912, Knox negotiated a new agreement
with the Díaz government, in which the
United States would pay $3 million for
an exclusive U.S. right to any potential
canal route. Again, the Senate refused to
ratify this arrangement.
When Woodrow Wilson became pres-
ident in 1913, he abandoned the Dollar
Diplomacy rhetoric. Although neither he
nor his secretary of state, William
Jennings Bryan, had any interest in
Nicaraguan investment opportunities,
they were sensitive about the canal route.
In 1914, therefore, Bryan negotiated
another agreement with Nicaraguan gen-
eral Emiliano Chamorro, which would
give the canal rights to the United States.
In addition to a $3 million grant, the
Bryan-Chamorro Agreement included
several provisions that were reminiscent
of the Platt Amendment governing
U.S.–Cuban relations. It would treat
Nicaragua as a sort of protectorate of the
United States. Once again, the Senate
balked, only to grant approval in 1916, in
the midst of World War I.
Although Nicaragua was the main
focus of Latin American Dollar
Diplomacy, similar initiatives—involving
either private or government investment
to promote stability—occurred in other
Central American and Caribbean
nations. And, as in Nicaragua, despite
President Wilson’s discomfort with such
capitalistic moves, many of his policies
resembled those of his predecessor. For
example, he sent U.S. troops and pro-
moted financial and political initiatives
in both the Dominican Republic and its
neighbor Haiti to restore stability during
the war years.
To a degree, much of U.S. foreign
policy in the 20th century resembled a
direct or indirect application of Dollar
Diplomacy. Even though the so-called
neutralization scheme that Knox had
developed for China failed, a form of

Dollar Diplomacy continued to play a
major role in Sino–U.S. relations right
through the 1930s. A far more dramatic
example was the Marshall Plan of the
late 1940s. It may have been couched in
noble, philanthropic language, but it had
much the same goal as Taft’s Dollar
Diplomacy: to stabilize economies and
governments, in this instance in Europe,
through the infusion of massive numbers
of U.S. dollars.
See also: Big Stick; Marshall Plan;
Neutralization
References
Coerver, Don M., and Linda B. Hall. Tangled
Destinies: Latin America and the United
States. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1999.
Coletta, Paolo E. The Presidency of William
Howard Taft. Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 1973.
Scholes, Walter V., and Marie V. Scholes.
The Foreign Policies of the Taft Adminis-
tration. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1970.
Gunboat Diplomacy
Using a navy in pursuit of foreign policy
goals is sometimes called gunboat diplo-
macy. The United States was hardly
unique in resorting to gunboat diplo-
macy. Great Britain’s Royal Navy was
the world’s largest in the 19th century,
and its officers and men often provoked
or reacted to overseas events. The United
States maintained a far smaller peace-
time fleet, and, in line with the nation’s
more limited foreign policy desires, it
operated on a more circumscribed scope.
As the century drew to a close, however,
Americans began constructing modern,
all-steel, steam-powered warships that
enhanced the ability of the United States
to engage in gunboat diplomacy.
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 149
Fighting the Barbary pirates after the
Revolutionary War is an early example
of gunboat diplomacy. The goal was to
prevent corsairs lurking along the
African coast of the Mediterranean Sea
from seizing U.S. merchant ships. U.S.
naval vessels patrolled the area, either to
scare off or capture pirates. Onshore,
consular officers tried to convince local
officials to restrain attacks on commer-
cial vessels. The Barbary Wars did even-
tually reduce the threat to U.S. trade.
As in the Barbary Wars, a desire to
protect commerce motivated many
other U.S. naval exercises in the early
years. Sometimes, the exercises went
well beyond passive demonstrations.
Commodore Matthew Perry used his
small squadron to intimidate the Japanese
in 1854. He threatened to return with
100 ships if the government failed to
negotiate. It was an empty threat, of
course, but Perry’s skill as an envoy and
Japan’s growing willingness to open its
doors to the outside world precluded a
more bellicose confrontation.
Gunboat diplomacy continued after
the American Civil War. One example
involved Samaná Bay on the Dominican
side of the island of Hispaniola. Presi-
dent Ulysses Grant authorized his diplo-
matic agent, Orville Babcock, to issue
orders to the captains of U.S. Navy ves-
sels standing off shore. None of that ulti-
mately mattered, however, because
Grant’s pet project of colonizing Santo
Domingo ran into stiff congressional
opposition back home.
Samoa became the target of gunboat
diplomacy involving three nations.
When the U.S. Navy’s Exploratory
Expedition stopped at the island of
Tutuila in 1839, its commander, Lieutenant
Charles Wilkes, wrote enthusiastically
about its protected harbor at Pago Pago.
150 | Section 3
In succeeding years, various U.S. agents
worked with local leaders to promote
U.S. trade in the Samoan archipelago.
Although some Americans made their
home on the islands, they were greatly
outnumbered by German settlers, who
soon controlled most of the productive
lands. In 1878, Samoan leaders eagerly
signed a treaty with the resident U.S.
consul, granting his country the right to
establish a coaling station at Pago Pago.
In return, the United States was expected
to prevent a hostile European takeover.
Although the agreement was never
ratified, it remained the basis for
U.S.–Samoan relations into the 1880s.
In 1884, Germany’s chancellor Otto
von Bismarck reluctantly agreed to over-
seas colonization. With its comparatively
large German population, Samoa
became a prime objective. At the urging
of the native government, U.S. secretary
of state Thomas F. Bayard called for an
international conference to negotiate an
agreement that would be satisfactory to
all parties. Germany’s delegation
demanded partition or even total control,
so the conference ended inconclusively.
The breakdown of talks opened the
door for aggressive gunboat diplomacy.
The United States sent three ships,
Germany dispatched three of its own,
and they all joined the Royal Navy’s
HMS Calliope in Pago Pago’s now very
crowded harbor. The warships’ crews
were preparing for possible combat,
when a terrific cyclone swept the archi-
pelago. The Calliope managed to get up
steam and reach safer waters in the open
ocean, but the storm sank or grounded
the other six ships with considerable loss
of life. The potential conflict gave way to
an international rescue effort.
With the gunboats out of commission,
diplomats decided to make one more
effort. Meeting in Berlin in 1889, they
worked out a tripartite governing scheme,
which remained in force for 10 years. In
the wake of U.S. colonization of both
Hawaii and the Philippines in 1899, the
United States agreed to a partition
arrangement that gave it complete
control over eastern Samoa.
The desire for a U.S. coaling station
there was one of many similar ambitions.
U.S. Navy captain Alfred Thayer Mahan
published his famous book, The Influ-
ence of Seapower on History, in 1890.
Among many other forward-looking
ideas, Mahan championed the idea of
establishing coaling stations around the
world. These could encourage U.S. trade
while providing the navy with conven-
ient fuel depots. Some coaling stations
were established with minimal political
complications. Others could be seen, as
in Samoa, as preliminary steps toward
colonization.
The Hawaiian Kingdom is a case in
point. In 1887, it granted the United
States the right to maintain a naval base
at Pearl Harbor in exchange for recipro-
cal trade policies that canceled the U.S.
duty on sugar imports from Hawaii. This
arrangement did not prevent economic
and political turmoil from reaching a
peak five years later. U.S. consul-general
John L. Stevens in Honolulu exploited
gunboat diplomacy to aid an American-
born group of planters attempting to
depose Hawaiian queen Liliuokalani.
Stevens ordered the U.S. Navy captains
moored in Pearl Harbor to send their
sailors and marines ashore to promote
“public safety.” The naval force helped
install a provisional government, which
worked out an annexation treaty with the
United States some five years later.
Although the rebellion engulfing Cuba
in 1898 had far different causes, the

United States did send a rather impressive
gunboat into Havana Harbor. The USS
Maine was a 6,500-ton second-class bat-
tleship, and its arrival definitely
impressed the Spanish authorities. The
underlying motive for sending the ship to
the embattled capital was to protect U.S.
citizens residing there. Ironically,
although they never suffered any threat,
the ship itself exploded and sank, killing
more than 260 officers and crew. That
tragedy helped convince the United States
to declare war on Spain a few weeks later.
As the case of the Maine illustrates,
naval deployments could have unex-
pected consequences. Commodore
George Dewey found himself on the
wrong end of gunboat diplomacy shortly
after his small squadron destroyed the
Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in May
1898. His one-sided victory created a
potential power vacuum in the
Philippines, one that quickly attracted
naval forces from both Germany and
Great Britain. At one point, Dewey sig-
naled to his superiors that the German
fleet anchored in the bay far outclassed
his own modest squadron. If the United
States did not assume colonial control of
the area, Dewey implied, the Germans
were well equipped to move in on their
own. The possibility of a German
takeover of the Philippines helped moti-
vate the U.S. government to demand that
Spain relinquish control of its colony to
the United States.
Gunboat diplomacy spilled over into
the 20th century. German and British
ships staged a naval demonstration off
the coast of Venezuela in 1902 that con-
vinced President Theodore Roosevelt to
boost U.S. influence in the Caribbean.
U.S. warships just happened to be
anchored off Panama City and Colón, on
the opposite sides of the isthmus, when
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 151
the Panamanian Revolution broke out in
1903. President Woodrow Wilson’s
intrusive policy during the Mexican Rev-
olution reached a peak when U.S. naval
vessels captured the port of Vera Cruz in
1914.
In different forms, and often with
unanticipated outcomes, gunboat diplo-
macy continues to occur. For example,
the United States has maintained a major
war fleet, including aircraft carriers, in
the Persian Gulf for many years. In addi-
tion to supporting coalition troops in
Iraq, they present a continuing challenge
to Iran. One can only hope that these
provocative gestures will ultimately have
beneficial diplomatic outcomes.
See also: Dewey, George; Hawaii; Spanish-
American-Cuban War
References
Dobson, John M. America’s Ascent: The
United States Becomes a Great Power,
1880–1914. DeKalb: Northern Illinois
University Press, 1978.
Hagan, Kenneth J. The People’s Navy: The
Making of American Sea Power. New
York: Free Press, 1991.
Kennedy, Paul. The Samoan Tangle: A Study
in Anglo-German-American Relations,
1878–1900. New York: Barnes and
Noble, 1974.
Long, David F. Gold Braid and Foreign
Relations: Diplomatic Activities of U.S.
Naval Officers, 1798–1883. Annapolis,
MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988.
Hawaii
Despite their remote location some
2,000 miles off the West Coast of North
America, the Hawaiian Islands became
an early focus of U.S. expansionism.
Between 1838 and 1842, the naval
exploratory mission led by Charles
Wilkes visited Hawaii several times.
152 | Section 3

Glowing descriptions of the archipelago and the Hawaiian Kingdom agreed to

in his reports stimulated both missionary grant each other favorable trade opportu-
and commercial interest. As early as the nities, the most important of these being
1850s, expansion-minded Americans tax-free U.S. importation of Hawaiian
were calling for the United States to sugar. The most important concession
annex the islands, but almost half a cen- from the other side was an 1887 agree-
tury passed before that goal was ment to grant the United States an exclu-
achieved. No other region better illus- sive right to establish a naval base at
trates the struggle between enthusiastic Pearl Harbor.
expansionists and equally determined Early in the next decade, these
anti-imperialists. mutually beneficial relationships suf-
Some of this equivocation stemmed fered two shocks. The first was passage
from the uniqueness of Hawaii itself. of the McKinley Tariff by the U.S.
Native Polynesians had established a Congress. It put sugar on the free list,
kingdom on the islands and had lived wiping out the reciprocity advantage that
there for generations. When U.S. mis- Hawaiian sugar had enjoyed. To subsi-
sionaries arrived in substantial numbers dize U.S. sugar producers, Congress cre-
in the 1840s and 1850s, many of them ated a 2-cent-per-pound bounty to offset
settled there and abandoned proselytiz-
ing for farming. Pineapples, sugar, and
other tropical crops flourished. Whereas
the Hawaiians had owned only small
tracts of land, enterprising Americans
acquired large tracts to manage as plan-
tations. To perform the grueling field
work on their estates, they hired Chinese
and Japanese immigrants. By 1890, the
island boasted a highly diversified
population consisting of only about
2,000 Americans, some 40,000 native
Hawaiians, 30,000 Asian immigrants,
and 9,000 others, largely of Portuguese
and other European extraction.
Despite their relatively small number,
Americans controlled the economy and
employed thousands of others. The gov-
ernment technically remained in the
hands of the native Hawaiians, but King
Kalakaua clearly acknowledged the
influence of those from the U.S. main- Initially portrayed in the American press as
land. For example, he personally traveled delicate and gentle, Hawaiian queen
Liliuokalani was such a dedicated and forceful
to Washington to negotiate improved
advocate of native rights that an American-led
trade relations with the United States. cabal deposed her in 1893, setting the stage for
The key feature of these arrangements the subsequent annexation of the islands to the
was reciprocity. Both the United States United States. (Hawaiian Historical Society)

their higher production costs. Hawaiian
sugar growers were now motivated to
seek annexation to the United States in
order to take advantage of the bounty.
The second shock was the death of
King Kalakaua and the ascendance of
Queen Liliuokalani. Determined to
restore unadulterated native Hawaiian
rule, she revoked the constitution that
had benefited the U.S. planters. They
responded by forming a Committee of
Public Safety, which, with the assistance
of conveniently deployed U.S. sailors
and marines, wrested control from the
queen. The committee then reformulated
itself into a provisional government,
with Sanford Dole as its president and
immediate annexation to the United
States as its primary objective.
President Benjamin Harrison’s admin-
istration was keenly interested in accom-
plishing that goal. Secretary of State John
Foster met with a delegation from the
provisional government in February 1893
to draft an annexation treaty. It languished
in the lame-duck Senate, however, in part
because of the strong anti-imperialist sen-
timents of some prominent Republicans.
The issue thus remained unsettled when
Democrat Grover Cleveland, a dedicated
anti-expansionist, became president again
early in 1893.
On the advice of his cabinet, Cleveland
withdrew the treaty from Senate consid-
eration. Many expected him to modify a
few of its provisions and resubmit it as
his own, but they underestimated just
how opposed the president was to over-
seas expansion. Instead, he sent James
H. Blount, a retired Georgia congress-
man who had headed the House Foreign
Relations Committee, to Hawaii to
investigate. Blount quickly learned that
Klaus Spreckles, head of the American
Sugar Refining Trust, was a major
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 153
behind-the-scenes proponent of annexa-
tion. In return for his support, the
Hawaiian planters had agreed to give his
trust half of any bounty that they might
receive after annexation. As news of
these findings leaked out, enthusiasm for
annexation waned.
That left the Cleveland administration
with the awkward problem of how to
proceed. It finally decided that it should
undo the results of the revolution and
restore the queen. The new U.S. consul-
general in Honolulu, Albert S. Willis,
was instructed to obtain a pledge from
the deposed monarch that she would not
retaliate against the rebellion’s leaders.
In his first interview with Liliuokalani,
however, she stated her intention to
impose traditional sanctions, including
the beheading of those who had staged
the revolt. Willis gradually talked her out
of that extreme position, but when he
informed the leaders of the provisional
government of his plans, they refused to
step down. At that point, Cleveland
threw up his hands and ignored Hawaii
for the rest of his term.
In the 1896 presidential election cam-
paign, the Republican Party platform
included a call for Hawaiian annexation.
When William McKinley became presi-
dent, he set about fulfilling that pledge.
A new annexation treaty was sent to the
Senate meeting in a special session in
1897. It took no action on the treaty,
however, because the president’s main
objective for the session was to raise the
tariff rates that the Democrats had low-
ered under Cleveland.
That delay gave everyone time to
examine the proposed treaty thor-
oughly. It quickly became clear that
obtaining a two-thirds majority in the
Senate might be impossible, given the
strong views of both Democratic and
154 | Section 3
Republican anti-imperialists. McKinley
therefore decided to utilize the mecha-
nism that President John Tyler had pio-
neered in annexing Texas a half century
earlier. The administration repackaged
the annexation proposal in the form of a
joint congressional resolution, which
would only require simple majorities in
each house.
The annexation drive remained stalled.
The Cuban Rebellion and the U.S. deci-
sion to go to war with Spain distracted
attention from Hawaii. But wartime
events facilitated annexation. Particularly
after Commodore George Dewey’s spec-
tacular naval victory at Manila Bay in the
far-off Philippines, Americans saw
Hawaii as a natural stepping stone to the
Far East. Arguments that Pearl Harbor
would provide a defensive bastion for the
West Coast won converts, as did persist-
ent rumors that Japan might attempt to
engulf Hawaii if the United States did not.
The final vote came at the height of
the Spanish-American War in the
summer of 1898. The resolution sailed
through the House of Representatives
with a comfortable 209 to 91 vote. In the
upper house, three weeks later, 42 senators
voted for annexation and 21 against.
This enabled expansionists to claim that
even a treaty would have won ratifica-
tion. In the long run, the annexation of
Hawaii proved to be a rational decision.
Despite early concerns about their poly-
glot population, the islands gained state-
hood in 1959, achieving coequal status
with the other former territories that had
become full members in the Union.
See also: Anti-Imperialism; Sugar; Spanish-
American-Cuban War
References
Pratt, Julius W. Expansionists of 1898.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1936.
Russ, William Adam. The Hawaiian
Revolution, 1893–94. Selinsgrove, PA:
Susquehanna University Press, 1959.
Tate, Merze. The United States and the
Hawaiian Kingdom. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1965.
Jingoism
In the late 19th century, many Americans
seemed eager to fight in a war. They
proudly called themselves “jingoes,”
just as people with similar attitudes in
more recent years have been known as
“hawks.” Jingoism became a common
expression for any warlike sentiments
that cropped up in newspaper stories
and political speeches. A variety of
factors underlay this phenomenon. In
the end, jingoism played a major part
in propelling the United States into the
Spanish-American-Cuban War in
1898.
The term “jingo” first became associ-
ated with bellicosity in the late 1870s. A
potential Russian threat to British inter-
ests in the Middle East led to the writing
of a popular song with this chorus:
We don’t want to fight but by Jingo if
we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the
men, we’ve got the money too,
We’ve fought the Bear before, and
while we’re Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Con-
stantinople. (G. W. Hunt, Macdermott’s
War Song, 1877)
Americans soon began using the term
“jingo” to refer to anyone who expressed
aggressive foreign policy attitudes or
who favored military or naval actions.
The popularity of jingoism in that
era is somewhat more understand-
able because, with very few notable

exceptions, such as the American Civil
War, 19th-century conflicts tended to
be relatively brief. For example, the
1866 Austro-Prussian War lasted only
seven weeks. Four years later, Prussia
defeated the French empire’s armies in
just six weeks of fighting. Confident in
their nation’s prowess and power, U.S.
jingoes expected any conflict involving
the United States to resemble those wars.
A few weeks of maneuvering and a cou-
ple of pitched battles or decisive naval
engagements should do the trick. No one
anticipated a protracted conflict resulting
in millions of casualties like the one that
took place from 1914 to 1918. Jingoes
confidently expected the benefits of a
brief, victorious war to far outweigh its
costs.
Prominent among those anticipated
benefits was the opportunity to demon-
strate that the United States was one of
the world’s great powers. Defeating
another great power in a military
encounter should convince doubters
around the world that the United States
had truly arrived. Most Americans
believed that their nation deserved such
recognition, and a good many felt that a
decisive war would significantly boost
the international prestige of the United
States. A desire to convince other nations
of U.S. superiority definitely motivated
jingoes like Theodore Roosevelt and
Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot
Lodge.
Personal ambitions also played a role.
A whole generation of young men had
grown to maturity after the Civil War.
Almost every family contained someone
who had participated in that conflict.
Americans generally accorded their vet-
erans great respect, sometimes bordering
on worship. Boys growing up in that era
naturally wanted to emulate their fathers,
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 155
uncles, and grandfathers. Participating in
a war would enable them to demonstrate
their manliness and, not incidentally,
earn the respect of their countrymen.
Here again, Theodore Roosevelt is a
case in point. A couple of uncles on his
mother’s side had served in the
Confederate Navy. One was Captain
James D. Bullock, who went to England
and arranged for the building of what
became CSS Alabama, the most famous
ship in the Southern fleet. Roosevelt
freely admitted his admiration for the
exploits of his relatives and eagerly vol-
unteered for service in the war with
Spain. He was hardly alone. Some
300,000 other young men rushed to
enlist in 1891, hoping to seize their own
moments of glory.
The existence of new, all-steel, steam-
powered naval vessels provided another
source of jingoism. Although the deci-
sion to build modern warships came in
1881, the United States faced no external
threat at that point that would justify
major naval expansion. In 1890, how-
ever, Navy captain Alfred Thayer Mahan
published a remarkably influential book
titled The Influence of Sea Power on His-
tory. This volume and Mahan’s other
writings convinced his fellow Americans
of the benefits of a great navy and
encouraged Congress to fund it.
As one new ship after another joined
the fleet, naval advocates searched for
excuses to use them. Serving as assistant
secretary of the Navy in 1897, Theodore
Roosevelt even suggested to a friend that
shelling a few Spanish cities would pro-
vide the new ships with valuable prac-
tice. Like the Western lawman who
strapped on his six-shooter before head-
ing out to face a desperado, the United
States seemed to be aching for a chance
to use its new naval firepower in combat.
156 | Section 3
Jingoist sentiments definitely influ-
enced President William McKinley’s
decision to seek a war declaration from
Congress in April 1898. Ironically,
Major McKinley was no jingo, having
experienced the horrors of combat in
the Civil War. But a good many of his
advisors and supporters were eager to
take up arms against the Spanish—or
anyone else who disrespected the
United States.
Fortunately for those who did partic-
ipate, the Spanish-American-Cuban
War turned out to be just the sort of
limited engagement that the jingoes
anticipated. Only one U.S. sailor died in
the thrilling naval triumphs in the
Philippines and Cuba. Army combat
deaths totaled 384, slightly more than
just 0.1 percent of those who had
enlisted. A truce came less than three
months after the U.S. war declaration.
Cheering throngs and the stirring
strains of John Philips Sousa’s marches
greeted the soldiers and sailors when
they returned to the United States. They
had achieved the recognition and
respect that they had sought.
Jingoism faded rather quickly after
the war ended. The complexities of colo-
nial administration were an unantici-
pated consequence of the conflict. Worse
yet, tens of thousands of U.S. troops
remained mired in a bloody guerilla war
in the Philippines, a conflict that killed
more than 10 times as many soldiers as
had died in the Spanish-American-
Cuban War. The United States imposed
strict censorship on war news from the
far-off islands, and those who returned
from the conflict received little recogni-
tion. The United States thus entered the
20th century with a much more rational
view of the consequences of warfare and
of the jingoism that glorified it.
See also: New Manifest Destiny; Spanish-
American-Cuban War
References
Hagan, Kenneth J. This People’s Navy: The
Making of American Sea Power. New
York: Free Press, 1991.
Jeffers, H. Paul. Colonel Roosevelt: Theodore
Roosevelt Goes to War, 1897–1898. New
York: Wiley, 1996.
Pratt, Julius W. Expansionists of 1898.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1936.
Mediation (Russo-Japanese
War)
Subjecting an international problem to
mediation is often considered only as a
last resort, and it therefore occurs only
rarely. Mediation seemed appropriate in
1905, however, when both Russia and
Japan realized that the war they were
fighting had strained their capabilities to
the limit. Seeking an honorable way out,
they turned to U.S. president Theodore
Roosevelt as an honest broker. Roosevelt
responded by arranging for negotiators to
meet in New Hampshire in the summer of
1905. The resulting Treaty of Portsmouth
ended the war and won Roosevelt the
Nobel Peace Prize, but it left a number of
disconcerting aftereffects in its wake.
The question of who would control
southern Manchuria helped trigger the
Russo-Japanese War. After a multina-
tional force had put down the Boxer
Rebellion in China in 1900, most nations
withdrew their troops. Russia, however,
continued to maintain a large military
presence in the northern Chinese
province of Manchuria, where Russia
seemed poised to force concessions from
Korea as well. The Japanese, too, left
thousands of soldiers in place to prevent
Russian mastery of a region that they had
long desired to dominate.

The Russian delegation arrives at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in response to President Theodore
Roosevelt’s offer to mediate a peaceful conclusion to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. (Library of
Congress)
The two major powers initiated high-
level talks, supposedly aimed at work-
ing out a mutually satisfactory
agreement. On February 8, 1904, even
as the talks proceeded, the Japanese
Navy attacked without warning the
Russian fleet anchored near the head-
quarters of its Chinese sphere of influ-
ence at Port Arthur, now known as
Dalian. The Russians should hardly
have been surprised because Japan had
staged a similar preemptive attack a
decade earlier, setting off the Sino-
Japanese War. Of course, the United
States should have been even more sen-
sitive to the possibility of such a surprise
attack in 1941.
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 157
Each nation began the war confident
that it would win easily, and Japan, at
least, followed up its devastating naval
attack with a series of battlefield victo-
ries that demoralized the Russian gov-
ernment and roused discontent to the
point of revolution against the czar’s
regime. But the Japanese successes were
not without cost. Only four months after
the war began, Japan sent tentative feel-
ers to the U.S. government indicating
its willingness to consider a diplomatic
settlement.
At that point, Russia still hoped to
recoup and so had no interest in such an
arrangement. To offset its devastating
naval losses in the Far East, Russia sent its
158 | Section 3
Baltic fleet steaming all the way down the
Atlantic Coast, around Africa’s Cape of
Good Hope, and up toward China. There
it fell victim to a Japanese naval ambush
that quickly rendered it helpless. Now
Russia, too, hoped for peace, especially
given the domestic turmoil and political
crises that its people faced at home.
The United States was the only major
world power that could be considered
neutral. France and Russia had forged a
strong military alliance in Europe in
1894, so the French could not be objec-
tive. Similarly, Great Britain and Japan
had established close ties in 1902, effec-
tively ruling Great Britain out as a go-
between. The only other external power
with major interests in the Far East was
Germany, whom no one trusted not to
pursue its own expansionist self-interest.
For Roosevelt, the opportunity to
mediate seemed an ideal way to further
U.S. interests. He had been relying on a
balance of power among the six major
external rivals who were interested in
China to preserve the Open Door Policy
that Secretary of State John Hay had
developed a few years earlier. Roosevelt
initially cheered Japan’s success in
thwarting Russian ambitions in the area.
When Japan defeated one enemy army
or navy after another, Japan, not Russia,
seemed to be unbalancing the Far
Eastern power equilibrium in its favor. If
Roosevelt could mediate a Russian-
Japanese settlement, it would strengthen
the overall balance of power and, by
extension, the Open Door Policy of the
United States as well.
Even after destroying the Baltic fleet,
the Japanese realized that they could
hardly continue to fight, so they once
again asked Roosevelt to sound out the
Russians about peace talks. He did so
secretly and received a positive reply.
When he told Japan that its enemy was
ready to negotiate, the Japanese govern-
ment insisted that Roosevelt act as
though calling for a conference was his
own idea. The president then publicly
invited the two countries to send nego-
tiators to the United States. Japan readily
agreed; the Russians initially gave an
obtuse response but eventually decided
to participate as well.
To avoid the stifling summer heat in
Washington, the conferees met at
Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Although
Roosevelt did not personally attend the
conference, he remained constantly in
touch with developments. The two par-
ties quickly reached agreement on most
of the outstanding issues, but the talks
stalled over two additional Japanese
demands: that Russia pay reparations for
causing the war and that Russia cede
control of Sakhalin Island, a narrow strip
of land that stretched north of the
Japanese archipelago.
Recognizing that Russia was com-
pletely broke, Roosevelt advised Japan
to drop its demand for reparations. He
was equally convinced that Russia would
refuse to sign an agreement giving the
whole island away, so the president sug-
gested a compromise that would split the
territory in half and give Japan the
southern section. Both sides accepted
this advice and included it in the treaty
that they signed on September 5, 1905.
Roosevelt’s prudent and nonpartisan
mediation thus played a major role in
restoring peace in the Far East.
Although his actions won him a
Nobel Peace prize and a congressional
commendation, Roosevelt had in no way
solved all of his Far Eastern problems.
To placate internal public opinion, the
Japanese government insisted that the
president had independently chosen to

intervene in the war, torpedoed any hope
for reparations, and restricted Japan to
half of the conquered island that it
deserved. Roosevelt found this amusing
until he realized that it reflected much
deeper Japanese resentment against the
United States. A series of minor inci-
dents kept the pot boiling until, against
congressional advice, Roosevelt sent all
16 of the nation’s new, all-steel, steam-
powered battleships to Japan. This show
of force put a damper on Japanese carp-
ing. The round-the-world voyage of the
“Great White Fleet” impressed a good
many other people as well, dramatically
demonstrating that the United States was
fully qualified for membership in the
exclusive club of great world powers.
See also: Boxer Rebellion; Open Door Policy
References
Esthus, Raymond A. Double Eagle and
Rising Sun: The Russians and Japanese at
Portsmouth in 1905. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1988.
Esthus, Raymond A. Theodore Roosevelt and
Japan. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1967.
Trani, Eugene P. The Treaty of Portsmouth.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
1969.
Mission
From colonial times onward, most
Americans thought of themselves as
unique people with superior political and
moral standing. The American Revolu-
tion established a democratic government
that was unlike any other in the world. In
succeeding decades, Americans flattered
themselves that their example, their
model republican system, was a positive
influence on global political development.
By the late 19th century, Americans were
no longer content simply to have their
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 159
nation serve as a passive model of
democracy. Instead, they assumed the
role of missionaries, actively spreading
knowledge of their beliefs and institu-
tions around the world. A democratic
mission impulse remains a leading justi-
fication for U.S. foreign policy initiatives
even today.
The U.S. sense of mission sprouted
with the planting of the earliest British
colonies. It definitely helped motivate
the pilgrims and the puritans who settled
in the New World in the early 1600s.
According to the Massachusetts Bay
Colony’s governor John Winthrop, they
believed that God had selected them for
an errand in the wilderness, the objective
of which was to build a city on a hill.
They expected this perfect Christian
community to serve as a model and a
beacon for all. Although the Puritan
Commonwealth in Massachusetts
quickly became self-absorbed and intol-
erant, the concepts of a new beginning, a
fresh start, and a break with traditional
autocratic Europe continued to influence
colonial endeavors.
Belief in their uniqueness and
supreme self-confidence were crucial
elements in motivating the patriots who
fostered the American Revolution. The
democratic rights-of-man principles that
the Declaration of Independence
expressed shaped succeeding political
developments. The Constitution rein-
forced the Revolution’s democratic
ideals and established a government that
was far different from any other. For the
next half century, the system that the
United States had pioneered served as a
model for other republican revolutions,
whether they occurred in France or in
Spain’s Latin American colonies.
Issued in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine
contained an assertive expression of a
160 | Section 3
more active missionary sentiment. It
praised democratic developments in the
New World and warned those in the Old
World not to attempt to impose or reim-
pose their systems. Mission sentiments
fed the flames of Manifest Destiny in the
1840s. At that point, the main focus of
the democratic mission was on adjacent
lands that could be and eventually were
annexed to the United States itself.
The sectional controversy over slav-
ery threw a dark shadow over the U.S.
democratic experiment, and national
self-absorption continued during the
protracted Reconstruction. By the
1880s, however, Americans once again
looked outward. What they saw was a
new age of imperialism, with European
nations gobbling up underdeveloped
areas in Africa, Southeast Asia, and
elsewhere. If, as Americans believed,
they possessed the best political system
ever created, it made sense that the
United States, not these old-fashioned
Old World countries, should be leading
the way.
At that point, the passive mission as a
model of democratic republicanism gave
way to an active mission that aggres-
sively sought to spread its principles
worldwide. That, in turn, suggested that
the United States take colonies of its
own. The Manifest Destiny corollary of
regeneration resurfaced. It advocated
active training in democratic principles
and practices, under the tutelage of U.S.
missionaries. If everything worked
according to plan, the colonists who
experienced this instruction would even-
tually be capable of enlightened self-
government.
Regardless of any selfish or economic
motives that might underlay a particular
foreign policy initiative, it could always
draw widespread public support if it was
framed as an implementation of the dem-
ocratic mission. For example, the demo-
cratic mission justification helped
convince the many Americans who were
averse to colonialism per se that it could
have positive outcomes. Whether it was
Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, or
even the virtual protectorate of Cuba
that had been established in the early
20th century, Americans felt ennobled to
be spreading the democratic gospel to
less fortunate peoples.
After nearly two and a half years of
neutrality, President Woodrow Wilson
justified the U.S. entry into World War I
by proclaiming that it would help pro-
mote democracy. A common theme in
his Fourteen Points plan for the postwar
world was U.S.–style self-determination
for all peoples, whether they were in
colonial or liberated European settings.
To that extent, Wilson was the leading
exponent of the democratic mission in
his era.
Ever since, presidents and statesmen
have cited the U.S. democratic mission
to justify their foreign policies. It ani-
mated Franklin Roosevelt’s postwar
planning at the Yalta Conference, it
underlay Harry Truman’s response to
the Cold War, and it allowed Lyndon
Johnson to justify U.S. participation in
the Vietnam War. More recently, it
provided an explanation for why
George W. Bush ordered an invasion of
Iraq in 2003.
Unfortunately, spreading democracy
does not automatically lead to desired or
desirable results. “Free” elections some-
times produce leaders who are outspo-
kenly against the United States, such as
Fidel Castro in Cuba or Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela. Imposing democracy by force
seems an inherent contradiction, but it
has often been attempted. Nevertheless,
 Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 161

Americans seemingly remain as dedi-

cated to the democratic mission now as
they were in earlier generations.

See also: Manifest Destiny; New Manifest

Destiny

References
Hunt, Michael H. Ideology and U.S. Foreign
Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1987.
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and
Mission in American History. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.
Smith, Tony. America’s Mission: The United
States and the Worldwide Struggle for
Democracy in the Twentieth Century.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1994.
Neutralization
President William Howard Taft’s admin-
istration promoted the concept of Dollar
Diplomacy. Although primarily directed
at Latin America, it was also applied in
China. There, so many other foreign
nations were involved that the U.S. strat-
egy was focused less on gaining U.S.
predominance than on preventing other
great powers from taking over. Called
neutralization, the approach involved
using U.S. dollars to limit the influence
of other economic interests in the region.
Willard Straight developed his interest
in promoting U.S. investment in China
while serving as U.S. consul-general in
Mukden, the administrative center of the
Chinese province of Manchuria. In that
position, Straight could see close up the
growing influence in Manchuria of both
Japan and Russia. Russia had obtained,
late in the 19th century, a concession to
construct the Chinese Eastern Railway,
which served as a vital shortcut for the
Trans-Siberian Railroad. Trains could
save two full days by cutting across
Railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman’s
ambition to establish close trading relations
with China lay the groundwork for the Taft
Administration’s Neutralization Policy.
(Library of Congress)
northern Manchuria to reach Vladivostok
on the Pacific Coast.
Japan’s focus lay to the south. By
winning the Sino-Japanese War
(1894–1895), the Japanese had strength-
ened their position in Korea. A decade
later, victories in the Russo-Japanese
War (1904–1905) won them control of
the Liaoning Peninsula as well. The
South Manchuria Railway, which Russia
had built to link the Chinese Eastern
Railway with its sphere of interest that
was centered at Port Arthur at the south-
ern tip of the Liaoning Peninsula, fell
under Japanese control as well. Mean-
while U.S. tycoon Edward H. Harriman
hatched the visionary plan of linking his
substantial rail holdings in the western
United States with Pacific steamship
lines that would tap the China market. In
1905, he visited the Far East with the
objective of purchasing a controlling
162 | Section 3
interest in the South Manchuria Railway
to complete his trans-Pacific transporta-
tion network. After defeating Russia in
war, Japan refused to sell, intending to
use the railroad in pursuing its own
expansionist aims in Manchuria.
Consul-General Straight enthusiasti-
cally championed Harriman’s plans, but
the business Panic of 1907 limited the
availability of investment funds. Harriman
died two years later, removing the major
U.S. entrepreneur from the scene.
Straight had by that time been reassigned
to the State Department in Washington,
however, where he was better able to
advocate U.S. investment in China. He
found a sympathetic audience in Secre-
tary of State Philander C. Knox, the
architect of President Taft’s Latin
American Dollar Diplomacy approach.
In June 1909, Great Britain, France,
and Germany negotiated a concession
with the Chinese government authoriz-
ing them to finance and build the
Hukuang Railway, a major trunk line
through central China. Straight resigned
from his government post to work with
U.S. businessmen who were interested in
obtaining a share of this concession.
With Knox’s backing, U.S. agents con-
vinced the other nations to let them par-
ticipate. U.S. investors were assigned
one section of the railroad as their
responsibility, and U.S. contractors
eventually completed it in the 1920s.
Straight continued to champion U.S.
control over the Manchurian railroad sys-
tem. Secretary of State Knox expanded
the scope of the neutralization scheme
when he proposed that an international
banking group buy the properties and
operate them for the benefit of all nation-
alities. This scheme gained popularity at
home because it appeared to be an exten-
sion of the now traditional Open Door
Policy. Although Great Britain and its
ally Japan seemed willing to consider the
plan, it alienated other nations and ulti-
mately made it more difficult for U.S.
bankers to become involved.
Events in China then took an unex-
pected turn. Partly because of its deci-
sion to grant foreigners control over the
Hukuang project, the Chinese imperial
government found itself under siege. On
November 11, 1911, nationalists led by
Sun Yat-Sen ousted the emperor and
established the Chinese Republic. This
change invalidated all previous conces-
sions. The new government, however,
was so short of money that it agreed to
accept financial support from an interna-
tional consortium, which eventually
included all of the powers with major
interests in China: Great Britain, France,
Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United
States. To a degree, this Six-Power Con-
sortium actually represented a success
for the neutralization policy because no
single nation had a dominant interest.
But it was an uneasy coalition, contain-
ing several nations that were soon fight-
ing each other in World War I.
Shortly after the Chinese Revolution,
the United States got a new government
as well, when Democrat Woodrow
Wilson became president. Wilson was no
friend of big business. Even so, he was
surprised when he met with a group of
influential U.S. bankers and discovered
that they were unwilling to continue
investing in China unless the president
promised to go to war if the Chinese
government failed to meet its obliga-
tions. Wilson had no intention of provid-
ing such a guarantee, so he effectively
canceled federal sponsorship of the
investment schemes. Instead, he
extended full diplomatic recognition to
the new Chinese regime, making the

United States the first major nation in the
world to do so. At that point, Wilson was
far more influenced by the long-standing
U.S. democratic mission sentiment than
he was concerned about economic mat-
ters such as the neutralization scheme.
See also: Dollar Diplomacy; Open Door
Policy; Stimson Doctrine
References
Cohen, Warren I. America’s Response to
China. 4th ed. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000.
Hunt, Michael H. Frontier Defense and the
Open Door, Manchuria in Chinese-
American Relations, 1895–1911. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973.
Israel, Jerry. Progressivism and the Open
Door: America and China, 1905–1921.
Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1971.
New Manifest Destiny
In the late 19th century, a vibrant expan-
sionist mood that some historians have
called the New Manifest Destiny swept
the United States. Like the earlier Mani-
fest Destiny spirit of the 1840s, the new
version was firmly grounded on a belief
that the United States was unique among
all nations and particularly favored by
God. The divine spirit apparently once
again had opened the way for the United
States to exercise ever-broader influence.
By the 1890s, this influence had even
jumped continental boundaries. Advo-
cates of the New Manifest Destiny cred-
ited it with ensuring the nation’s rise to
the status of a great world power.
In the 1840s, Manifest Destiny spirit
helped justify expansion into adjacent
regions, such as Oregon, California, and
Texas. Occupation of those relatively
empty and poorly administered areas
enabled Americans to believe that they
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 163
were fulfilling their democratic mission to
those who lived in the annexed territories.
The blessings of a political and social
system that Americans viewed as ideal
were thus shared as broadly as possible.
The 1840s expansionism faded as the
sectional crisis worsened in the follow-
ing decade and ultimately fomented the
Civil War. Postwar Reconstruction con-
tinued to focus the nation’s energies
inward. When Americans finally began
looking outward again in the 1880s,
they discovered that they were living in
a new age of imperialism. France was
colonizing Indochina and West Africa.
Great Britain was creating its Cape-to-
Cairo hold over central and eastern
Africa. Germany was demanding its fair
share of Africa, and even diminutive
Belgium had taken control of the vast
Congo River Basin. In the Far East,
Japan had shucked off its earlier isola-
tion and was now competing with
Russia for influence in northeastern
China. It was hardly surprising that
Americans would become interested in
overseas expansion as well.
While all of this imperialism moved
forward, Americans held a firm convic-
tion that their democratic traditions and
institutions made their nation superior.
They rationalized the Civil War as a sort
of annealing process that had strength-
ened the righteousness of the American
way. If that were true, expansion of inter-
national influence and colonization ought
to be carried out by the progressive and
modernizing United States, not by tired,
autocratic European governments.
Belief in Christian Social Darwinism
was a component part of the New
Manifest Destiny. Like biological
Darwinism, it accepted the evolution of
humankind as an inevitable, positive
outcome, but Social Darwinism looked
164 | Section 3
beyond individual human beings to
focus on whole societies. Its advocates
insisted that some nations had achieved
higher levels of social and political evo-
lution than others. Self-consciously
believing in the nobility of democratic
ideals, Americans asserted that the
United States represented the pinnacle
of human evolution. A logical extension
of this assertion was that, having seen to
the creation of this model society, God
would expect it to spread its benefits to
others who were less fortunate.
Economic changes and material
progress complemented the nation’s
political and social evolution. The U.S.
industrial system matured during the
Civil War era. By the 1880s, U.S. fac-
tories were capable of producing
enormous amounts of goods, far too
many for the nation alone to absorb.
Simultaneously, expansion and indus-
trialization of the nation’s farms signif-
icantly increased agricultural output.
U.S. producers came to believe that
they could prosper only if they could
export their surpluses. The New
Manifest Destiny thus included a
strong economic component.
To pursue its new destiny, the United
States needed adequate tools. In 1881,
the United States began constructing an
all-steel, steam-powered navy. By the
end of the 19th century, its size had far
surpassed what was needed for self-
defense, encouraging overseas adventur-
ism. In the late 1870s, the nation began
exporting much more than it imported
each year, reversing a historical trend of
negative trade balances. Positive trade
balances brought increasing amounts of
gold into the nation’s coffers, gold that
encouraged U.S. investment abroad. It
also provided the wherewithal for politi-
cal expansion.
Equipped with a modern war fleet and
ample financial resources, expansion-
minded Americans began to develop spe-
cific overseas goals. Because Africa and
Southeast Asia were already largely col-
onized, Americans focused their atten-
tion on Latin America and the Far East.
Many Americans favored outright colo-
nization, but after 1898, unsettling expe-
riences in Cuba and even more
disconcerting developments in the
Philippines undermined enthusiasm for
colonialism.
Instead, the United States focused
most of its expansionist energies in
the early 20th century on trying to pro-
mote stable governments that would
provide markets for U.S. products. That
was the goal of the Open Door Policy in
China. It also motivated President
Theodore Roosevelt to issue his corol-
lary to the Monroe Doctrine, which was
designed to promote stability in the
Western Hemisphere. When that proved
elusive, Roosevelt’s successor, William
Howard Taft, proudly announced the
even more intrusive policy of Dollar
Diplomacy, basically hoping to buy sta-
bility and market access.
In the long run, the New Manifest
Destiny concept helped the United States
achieve another major international
objective. As U.S. influence abroad
expanded, other major nations began to
recognize the United States as something
of an equal. Some, like Great Britain,
welcomed the United States into the elite
company of the world’s great powers.
Others, like Germany and Japan, were
less thrilled at the rise of so wealthy and
increasingly powerful a rival. Regardless
of these attitudes, the United States
achieved what many considered to be its
inevitable destiny as a leading member
of the world community of nations.

See also: Jingoism; Mission; Spanish-
American-Cuban War
References
Beisner, Robert L. From the Old Diplomacy
to the New, 1865–1900. Arlington
Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1986.
Dulles, Foster Rhea. Prelude to World
Power: American Diplomatic History,
1860–1900. New York: Macmillan, 1965.
Healy, David F. US Expansionism: The Impe-
rialist Urge in the 1890s. Madison: Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, 1970.
LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Olney Corollary
In 1895, Secretary of State Richard
Olney issued a strident note to Great
Britain reaffirming the principles of the
Monroe Doctrine and asserting U.S.
dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
The note was designed to encourage
Great Britain to arbitrate the boundary of
its colony of Guiana with neighboring
Venezuela. Although the Olney Note
could have provoked further hostility
between the United States and Great
Britain, it ultimately had quite the oppo-
site effect, clearing the air between them
and setting the stage for improved rela-
tions in the 20th century.
Anglophobia was a common U.S.
attitude in the 19th century. Like many
other Americans, President Grover
Cleveland objected to the fact that the
British seemed dismissive of other view-
points, treating Latin American nations
and even the United States itself as
minor or irrelevant. He was more than
willing, therefore, to take actions that
would reverse that perception.
The issue that provided an opportu-
nity to do so in the mid-1890s was a
boundary dispute between Venezuela
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 165
and British Guiana, a colony that lay just
to the east. Two other outposts tucked in
next door, Dutch and French Guiana,
were remnants of earlier colonization
drives. Together, these three colonies
were the only parts of the South
American continent that had not shaken
off European control.
The boundary between Guiana and
Venezuela had never been settled defini-
tively. The region in dispute was a wild
and underpopulated area that encom-
passed the many mouths of the Orinoco
River. Great Britain commissioned Sir
Robert Schomburgk to map the area,
and the royal government insisted that
the line he drew was the correct one.
The Venezuelan government never
accepted the Schomburgk Line or any
other, but a sense of urgency arose when
someone emerged from the jungle with a
507-ounce gold nugget, the largest ever
discovered. Both sides suddenly became
very intent on making sure that they con-
trolled the maximum territory possible.
The Venezuelan government appealed
to the United States for help in urging
Great Britain to submit the matter to
arbitration. President Grover Cleveland
knew virtually nothing about Latin
America and even less about the specific
dispute. The fact that Great Britain’s
administration of its colony was far more
humane and progressive than that of the
regime in Venezuela had no bearing on
his behavior. Instead, Cleveland had
been fending off accusations of being
pro-British, a charge that undermined his
support among the millions of Irish
Americans who normally supported his
Democratic Party. The president was
also being blamed for the depression that
had followed the Panic of 1893, and he
was eager to distract Americans from
their troubles at home.
 THE OLNEY COROLLARY TO THE MONROE
DOCTRINE: JULY 2, 1895

[Secretary of State Richard Olney to Ambassador James F. Bayard]

That America is in no part open to colonization, though the proposition was not uni-
versally admitted at the time of its first enunciation, has long been universally con-
ceded. We are now concerned, therefore, only with that other practical application of
the Monroe doctrine, the disregard of which by an European power is to be deemed
an act of unfriendliness towards the United States. . . . The rule in question has but a
single purpose and object. It is that no European power or combination of European
powers shall forcibly deprive an American state of the right and power of self-govern-
ment and of shaping for itself its own political fortunes and destinies. . . .
Is it true, then, that the safety and welfare of the United States are so concerned
with the maintenance of the independence of every American state as against any
European power as to justify and require the interposition of the United States when-
ever that independence is endangered? The question can be candidly answered in but
one way. The states of America, South as well as North, by geographical proximity,
by natural sympathy, by similarity of governmental constitutions, are friends and allies,
commercially and politically, of the United States. To allow the subjugation of any of
them by an European power is, of course, to completely reverse that situation and sig-
nifies the loss of all the advantages incident to their natural relations to us. . . .
Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law
upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition. Why? It is not because of the
pure friendship or good will felt for it. It is not simply by reason of its high character
as a civilized state, nor because wisdom and justice and equity are the invariable char-
acteristics of the dealings of the United States. It is because, in addition to all other
grounds, its infinite resources combined with its isolated position render it master of the
situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all other powers.
All the advantages of this superiority are at once imperiled if the principle be admit-
ted that European powers may convert American states into colonies or provinces of
their own. The principle would be eagerly availed of, and every power doing so
would immediately acquire a base of military operations against us. What one power
was permitted to do could not be denied to another, and it is not inconceivable that
the struggle now going on for the acquisition of Africa might be transferred to South
America. If it were, the weaker countries would unquestionably be soon absorbed,
while the ultimate result might be the partition of all South America between the vari-
ous European powers. The disastrous consequences to the United States of such a con-
dition of things are obvious. The loss of prestige, of authority and of weight in the
councils of the family of nations, would be among the least of them. Our only real
rivals in peace as well as enemies in war would be found located at our very doors.
Thus far in our history, we have been spared the burdens and evils of immense stand-
ing armies and all the other accessories of huge warlike establishments, and the
exemption has largely contributed to our national greatness and wealth as well as to
the happiness of every citizen. But, with the powers of Europe permanently encamped
on American soil, the ideal conditions we have thus far enjoyed can not be expected
to continue. We too must be armed to the teeth, we too must convert the flower of our
male population into soldiers and sailors, and by withdrawing them from the various
pursuits of peaceful industry we too must practically annihilate a large share of the
productive energy of the nation. . . .

Source: U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States.
Washington, DC: GPO, 1895, 545–562.

In his December 1894 annual mes-
sage, Cleveland announced his intention
to push Great Britain toward arbitration.
When the British government demurred,
Congress responded with a resolution
supporting his position, which gave
Cleveland an added impulse to press the
issue. When Secretary of State Walter Q.
Gresham died, the president replaced
him with his tough-minded attorney gen-
eral, Richard Olney. The note that Olney
sent to Great Britain in July 1895 was
doubtless even more emphatic than
Cleveland had anticipated.
In the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine,
Olney began with a criticism of
European “interference” in Western
Hemisphere affairs. After asserting that
his nation was the preeminent power in
the New World, Olney noted that the
United States considered itself the
defender of all independent peoples in
the Western Hemisphere. He warned that
the United States would not hesitate to
use its considerable military power to
prevent European nations from mistreat-
ing or attempting to subjugate them.
Regarding the boundary dispute, Olney
took the position that the British were
bent on expanding the limits of their
colony, an objective that he considered
no different from outright colonization.
Olney concluded not with a request but a
demand that Great Britain submit the
boundary dispute to arbitration or face
the prospect of war with the United
States.
The tone of the note shocked U.S.
ambassador James Bayard in London,
and he tried to downplay its aggressive-
ness. British prime minister Lord
Salisbury sent off a brief response,
which rejected Olney’s assertion that his
nation’s American possessions were
inappropriate and denied that the United
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 167
States had any right to intervene in the
boundary dispute. Meanwhile, Olney
and Cleveland developed a new proposal
and submitted it to Congress. It called
for establishing a U.S. commission that
would determine the proper boundary. If
Great Britain refused to accept its find-
ings, the United States would go to war.
When Congress appropriated
$100,000 to fund the commission, the
British government finally took the U.S.
assertions seriously. Colonial Secretary
Joseph Chamberlain sent mollifying
notes and even proposed that an interna-
tional body be assembled to endorse the
Monroe Doctrine. The outbreak of trou-
ble in Great Britain’s South African
colony alienated Germany, so the British
had even more reason to court U.S.
friendship. Working directly with
Venezuela, they finally agreed to arbitra-
tion. The ultimate ruling in 1899 closely
paralleled what the British had claimed
all along.
The whole affair ended up reducing
rather than increasing Anglo-American
hostility. Olney’s assertions and the
British response revived and strength-
ened the Monroe Doctrine. Perhaps
equally important for the future, Great
Britain had treated the United States as a
peer. The Olney Corollary thus took the
nation down the path toward recognition
as one of the great world powers.
See also: Monroe Doctrine; Rapprochement
References
Eggert, Gerald G. Richard Olney: Evolution
of a Statesman. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press,
1974.
Hood, Miriam. Gunboat Diplomacy
1895–1905: Great Power Pressure in
Venezuela. Boston: Allen and Unwin,
1983.
168 | Section 3
Welch, Richard E., Jr. The Presidencies of
Grover Cleveland. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 1988.
Open Door Policy
In 1899 and early 1900, Secretary of
State John Hay sent various governments
a series of communications intended to
discourage colonization or exclusive
trade restrictions in China. The main
principle of the Open Door Policy was
that no foreign power should prevent
ships of other countries from enjoying
free access to existing trade relationships
with the Chinese government. This effort
to keep the door open to all traders was
eventually applied to other regions, and
Hay’s policy initiatives remained the
fundamental tenets of the U.S.–Chinese
relationship into the 1930s.
U.S. participation in the China trade
began in 1782, when a Boston-based
ship aptly named Empress of China
dropped anchor at Hong Kong. In suc-
ceeding years, U.S. merchants and sea
captains established regular trading rela-
tionships at that port, the only one where
Chinese imperial authorities allowed
contact with foreign vessels. Until the
1840s, however, the U.S. government
had no significant formal relations with
the empire.
The so-called Opium Wars that ended
in 1842 changed all that. British and
French army and naval forces soundly
crushed a Chinese effort to shut out for-
eign influences. The defeated imperial
government ended up signing treaties
that allowed much greater foreign pene-
tration. In 1844, Massachusetts con-
gressman Caleb Cushing commanded a
U.S. naval expedition that was sent to
gain similar concessions for the United
States. The Treaty of Wanghsia granted
virtually identical privileges, based in
part on the Chinese desire to extend
most-favored-nation status as broadly as
possible. Their objective was to dilute
the influence of any one nation, particu-
larly Great Britain.
Subsequent conflicts and negotiations
opened ever greater freedom and access
to foreigners at the expense of China’s
authority. In each instance, even when
the United States had played no signifi-
cant role in forcing concessions from
China, imperial negotiators continued to
grant it most-favored-nation status. U.S.
trade remained relatively minor through
the 1890s, never amounting to much
more than 2 percent of all U.S. exports
and imports. Even so, a strong convic-
tion grew in the United States that access
to the China market should be a major
goal of U.S. foreign policy.
By the late 1890s, that objective seemed
threatened when other powers established
spheres of influence based in specific
Chinese ports. Many considered the estab-
lishment of a sphere of influence to be
merely a precursor to full-blown coloniza-
tion. If China became divided into
colonies, U.S. traders might well be
excluded from all Chinese commerce.
Adding to the urgency of U.S. concern was
the recently concluded Spanish-American-
Cuban War, which had ended with Spain
conceding its control of the Philippine
Islands, right next door to China.
President William McKinley implicitly
trusted his secretary of state, so John Hay
was left virtually on his own to develop a
U.S. response to these perceived threats.
He turned for advice to two other people:
W. W. Rockhill, a U.S. career diplomat
and “old China hand,” and his friend
Alfred Hippisley, late of the Imperial
Chinese Customs Service. Both of these
gentlemen viewed recent events in the Far

John Hay served as secretary of state under
Presidents William McKinley and Theodore
Roosevelt. Hay’s Open Door Notes defined
American policy toward China for another
40 years. (Library of Congress)
East as a substantial threat to the China
that they had known. At their urging, Hay
sent a note to each major power with a
sphere of influence in the fall of 1899. It
acknowledged the existence of the
spheres but insisted that they should in no
way interfere with or render moot the
long-standing principle of open trade for
all foreigners in the designated treaty
ports.
Eager to ensure its own access across
the board, Great Britain readily endorsed
the Open Door principle. Other parties
were more or less reluctant to agree, and
many of them indicated that they would
do so only if all promised to abide by the
principle. Russia was the least forthcom-
ing, but Hay chose to interpret its evasive
reply as a positive one. He issued a sec-
ond round of notes in the spring of 1900,
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 169
reporting that all parties were in agree-
ment with the Open Door Policy.
Almost immediately the Boxer
Rebellion flared up, threatening foreign-
ers from all countries in China and
encouraging strong retaliatory measures.
The United States sent thousands of
troops to participate in an international
relief force that was charged with rescu-
ing trapped diplomats and foreign nation-
als in Peking. Hay worried that once
military action had occurred, the combat-
ants would make additional, perhaps terri-
torial demands.
At the height of the crisis and while
the foreigners were still trapped in the
British Legation, Hay issued another
series of notes to the major powers. This
time around, he urged them not to make
additional territorial demands on the
Chinese when the rebellion was quelled.
In line with his earlier notes, he insisted
that China’s territorial integrity not be
compromised. That should ensure that
the open door to trade would continue to
operate as before.
This new initiative drew even more
ambiguous responses, but once again Hay
asserted that all parties generally agreed
with the U.S. position. Both Russia and
Japan, however, were slow to withdraw
their military forces, even after the Boxer
Rebellion had ended. In 1904, these two
Asian powers became involved in a con-
flict known as the Russo-Japanese War.
Theodore Roosevelt had inherited
the presidency from McKinley at that
point but had retained John Hay as head
of the State Department. Roosevelt
hoped that a balance of power could be
reestablished in the region, a balance
that would bolster the open door con-
cepts. To that end, he personally stepped
up to mediate the Russo-Japanese con-
flict and ultimately won a Nobel Peace
170 | Section 3

THE FIRST OPEN DOOR NOTE: SEPTEMBER 6, 1899

[Secretary of State John Hay to Ambassador White in London]

Earnestly desirous to remove any cause of irritation and to insure at the same time
to the commerce of all nations in China the undoubted benefits which should accrue
from a formal recognition by the various powers claiming “spheres of interest” that
they shall enjoy perfect equality of treatment for their commerce and navigation within
such “spheres,” the Government of the United States would be pleased to see [the
British government] give formal assurances, and lend its cooperation in securing like
assurances from the other interested powers, that each, within its respective sphere of
whatever influence—
First. Will in no way interfere with any treaty port or any vested interest within any
so-called “sphere of interest” or leased territory it may have in China.
Second. That the Chinese treaty tariff of the time being shall apply to all merchan-
dise landed or shipped to all such ports as are within said “sphere of interest” (unless
they be “free ports”), no matter to what nationality it may belong, and that duties so
leviable shall be collected by the Chinese Government.
Third. That it will levy no higher harbor dues on vessels of another nationality fre-
quenting any port in such “sphere” than shall be levied on vessels of its own nation-
ality, and no higher railroad charges over lines built, controlled, or operated within its
“sphere” on merchandise belonging to citizens or subjects of other nationalities trans-
ported through such “sphere” than shall be levied on similar merchandise belonging
to its own nationals transported over equal distances.

Source: U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States.
Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, 129–130.

Prize for helping bring it to a conclu- in 1906. At the Algeciras Conference,

sion. Because neither party emerged
dominant in the region, the United
States could continue to espouse the
Open Door Policy. In one of the treaties
signed during the Washington Naval
Conference (1921–1922), the other
great powers formally acknowledged
the U.S. initiative. It remained a funda-
mental tenet of the nation’s Far Eastern
policy until Japan invaded China in the
late 1930s.
The concept of free and fair trading
opportunities for all seemed consistent
with U.S. principles in general. For
example, Roosevelt championed the
concept when questions arose over for-
eign control of various ports in Morocco
the United States took the position that it
mattered less which nation controlled a
port so long as trade through it remained
open to all. In this instance and in others,
the U.S. position often seemed naïve to
practitioners of realpolitik.
All the same, the Open Door Policy
had the benefit of serving U.S. interests
without the necessity of U.S. military
intervention. As long as a balance of
power prevented any one nation from
colonizing a territory or preventing free
trade, the policy worked effectively. It
was a very low-cost method for support-
ing U.S. commercial interests and was,
therefore, extremely popular throughout
the United States.

See also: Boxer Rebellion; Hay, John Milton;
Spanish-American-Cuban War
References
Dobson, John. Reticent Expansionist. Pittsburgh,
PA: Duquesne University Press, 1988.
McCormick, Thomas J. China Market.
Chicago: Quadrangle, 1967.
Young, Marilyn B. The Rhetoric of Empire.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1968.
Panama
Visionaries began dreaming of punching a
canal through the isthmus connecting
North and South America as soon as
Balboa reached the Pacific Ocean in
1513, but four centuries passed before the
dream was realized. By the turn of the
20th century, the United States was not
only the dominant political power in the
Western Hemisphere but also the world’s
leading industrial nation, with the
resources and technical capability to build
the canal. Even so, a number of complex
diplomatic issues had to be resolved before
U.S. steam shovels could begin digging.
Preliminary steps had begun in the
1840s, when Benjamin Bidlack had
negotiated a canal treaty with the gov-
ernment of New Granada (Colombia.)
The 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty
between the United States and Great
Britain superseded Bidlack’s Treaty. It
pledged that neither country would inde-
pendently begin work on a canal or col-
onize lands with that objective.
France was not a party to that agree-
ment, however, and it was a French com-
pany that began construction work in the
late 1870s. Ferdinand de Lessups had just
completed the Suez Canal, so French
investors trusted him to do the same in
the isthmus. Despite persistent protests
from U.S. secretary of state James G.
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 171
Blaine, de Lessups’s canal company sold
more than a quarter of a billion dollars
worth of shares. Tropical diseases and far
more rugged topography than he had
encountered in Egypt soon derailed de
Lessups’s effort. To salvage something
from one of the most devastating finan-
cial debacles in French history, specula-
tors formed the New Panama Canal
Company, hoping to sell its assets to
whoever might revive the canal project.
U.S. interest in doing just that peaked
during the Spanish-American-Cuban
War. The USS Oregon had to make a
perilous and time-consuming voyage
from Puget Sound all the way around
Cape Horn to join the fleet that was
blockading Cuba. Experts and laymen
alike considered this proof that U.S.
national security required a canal to
enable the speedy transfer of naval
strength from coast to coast.
The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty stood in
the way. President William McKinley’s
secretary of state, John Hay, opened
negotiations with British minister Julian
Pauncefote shortly after the war ended.
The first agreement that they reached left
several restrictions in place, such as a
prohibition against fortifying any canal
built. When the U.S. Senate rejected that
effort, the diplomats returned to the
negotiating table to draft the Second
Hay-Pauncefote Treaty in 1902. In it, the
British government conceded all points
in an effort to promote friendly relations
between the two countries.
Theodore Roosevelt succeeded
McKinley as president in 1901, and he
was eager to move forward. The next
step was to decide where the projected
canal should be constructed. A U.S.
engineering survey had concluded that a
route across southern Nicaragua had
many advantages over the Panama route
172 | Section 3
that de Lessups had selected. A major
drawback was the New Panama Canal
Company’s $100 million price tag for its
abandoned equipment and for prelimi-
nary digging along that route.
Philippe Bunau-Varilla took charge at
that point. A French citizen serving as
treasurer of the New Panama Canal
Company, he immediately reduced the
asking price for the company’s property
to $40 million. Shortly afterward, a major
volcanic eruption shook Nicaragua.
Bunau-Varilla sent Nicaraguan stamps
depicting a spewing volcano to every
member of the U.S. Congress to suggest
how dangerous any construction project
would be in an unstable land.
The French company also hired U.S.
lawyer William Nelson Cromwell to
lobby Congress. He distributed cam-
paign contributions and other sweeteners
so successfully that the 1902 Spooner
Act authorizing the U.S. canal project
identified the Panama route as the most
desirable and included an appropriation
of $40 million to buy the company’s
assets.
For many years, Panama had been
administered as a dependency of
Colombia. Secretary of State John Hay
therefore opened negotiations with the
Colombian ambassador, but his home
government tried to delay them by
recalling its envoy. Undaunted, Hay
pushed ahead on discussions with the
Colombian chargé d’affaires, Tomás
Herran. The two men signed a treaty that
would lease to the United States control
over a six-mile-wide strip through Panama
for an initial payment of $10 million and
$250,000 in annual rent.
The Colombian government disliked
several provisions of the 1903 Hay-
Herran Treaty. It was understandably
suspicious of granting the United
States full control over such a wide
swatch of territory. The authorities in
Bogotá also objected to a provision that
prohibited them from negotiating with
the New Panama Canal Company.
When Colombia’s senators learned that
the French company’s lease would
expire in 1904, they refused to ratify
the treaty, expecting to be able to sell
the company’s abandoned assets to the
United States for a substantial amount.
Colombia’s intransigence outraged
President Roosevelt. He had been
advised that the 1846 Bidlack’s Treaty
could be interpreted as validating U.S.
plans even without the approval of the
current government in Bogotá. Before
the president could act on that assump-
tion, however, Panamanian revolutionar-
ies ended Colombian control.
Although many were convinced that
Roosevelt fomented this rebellion, there
is little evidence of official U.S. partici-
pation. It is clear, however, that Bunau-
Varilla and Cromwell were intimately
involved in triggering the revolt. Head-
quartered in New York City’s Waldorf
Astoria Hotel, Bunau-Varilla entertained
Dr. Manuel Amador, who later became
the first president of the Republic of
Panama. The Frenchman supplied
Amador with money, a draft constitu-
tion, a secret code, and a letter naming
Bunau-Varilla as Panamanian minister to
the United States should the rebellion
succeed.
The wily conspirator later claimed
that he learned from newspaper reports
that U.S. naval vessels were going to
be visiting both Colón, on the west
coast of the isthmus, and Panama City,
on its east coast, early in November
1903. He relayed that information to
Amador. Cromwell, who also repre-
sented the Panama Railroad and

Steamship Company, helped manipu-
late transit across the isthmus to the
advantage of the rebels. Resistance
collapsed almost immediately, in part
because of widespread bribery of
Colombian soldiers and officials.
When the rebels proclaimed inde-
pendence, Minister Bunau-Varilla ini-
tiated negotiations with Hay. The
terms of the agreement that they
worked out were almost identical to
the Hay-Herran arrangements, except
that the width of the proposed canal
zone was expanded from 6 to 10 miles.
The U.S. Senate duly ratified the Hay-
Bunau-Varilla Treaty. Banker J. P.
Morgan handled the transfer of $40
million to the French company’s cof-
fers, and Cromwell presented a bill for
$800,000 to compensate him for his
services.
Digging began in 1904 and the canal
opened full operations 10 years later.
Theodore Roosevelt took credit for initiat-
ing the project, as well as implying respon-
sibility for the Panamanian revolution. His
statements ultimately embarrassed Repub-
lican Party leaders so much that, in 1921,
they arranged a federal government pay-
ment of $25 million to Colombia. The
canal definitely achieved the strategic
goals that its U.S. advocates had antici-
pated, but the intrusion of U.S. influence in
Central America disturbed and angered
many of those living in the region.
See also: Bidlack, Benjamin A.; Clayton, John
Middleton; Pan-Americanism
References
Collin, Richard H. Theodore Roosevelt’s
Caribbean. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1990.
McCullough, David. The Path between the
Seas. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1977.
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 173
Mellander, G. A. The United States in Pana-
manian Politics. Danville, IL: Interstate,
1967.
Pan-Americanism
In the 1880s, Secretary of State James G.
Blaine actively promoted stronger eco-
nomic and political relationships among
the nations in the Western Hemisphere.
Called Pan-Americanism, the concept
envisioned elements such as a common
monetary system, favorable tariff treat-
ment, and perhaps even some sort of
overarching political structure. Blaine
initiated a call for an international con-
ference to discuss these issues, but the
meeting was delayed for several years.
When it finally did occur, it produced
few tangible results. Not until World
War II posed a common threat to the
Western Hemisphere did Pan-Americanism
assume a more concrete structure.
In winning the 1880 Republican
Party’s presidential nomination, dark
horse candidate James A. Garfield
thwarted the ambitions of Maine senator
James G. Blaine, the most prominent
member of his party. In a conciliatory
move with numerous historical prece-
dents, when Garfield won the election,
he appointed Blaine to head his cabinet
as secretary of state. That position pro-
vided Blaine with an ideal opportunity to
promote his expansionist, almost imperi-
alistic vision for the United States.
In the first few months, Blaine stri-
dently criticized Ferdinand de Lessups’s
efforts to construct a canal across the
isthmus of Panama. In Blaine’s view,
this sort of project should be done by
people from the Western Hemisphere,
not by a Frenchman who was answer-
able to financial backers in his home
country. The secretary of state also saw
174 | Section 3
the project as a European encroachment
in the New World, something that the
Monroe Doctrine and Polk’s subsequent
corollary had specifically argued
against. The fact that neither the United
States nor any other Western Hemi-
sphere nation was capable of building a
canal at that point in no way lessened
Blaine’s determination to keep the
French out. The issue dissipated when
de Lessups failed because he had under-
estimated both the engineering chal-
lenges and the devastating impact that
tropical disease would have on his
workforce.
The episode only whetted Blaine’s
interest in broadening U.S. influence
throughout the hemisphere. He hoped
to convert the sentiments expressed in
the Monroe Doctrine into an action plan
for hemispheric hegemony. That desire
led to some misguided tinkering in the
War of the Pacific between Chile and
Peru. But it also encouraged him to call
for an international conference of all
Latin American nations to discuss vari-
ous proposals that might solidify their
unity.
Fate intervened. Blaine and Garfield
were standing in Union Station in down-
town Washington on July 2, 1881, when
Arthur J. Guiteau shot the president
point-blank. Garfield lingered for more
than two months before dying. Guiteau
was a member of the Stalwart faction in
the Republican Party, bitter enemies of
so-called Half-Breeds like Blaine and
Garfield. His stated motive was to vault
Vice President Chester Arthur, a
Stalwart, into the presidency. In return,
Guiteau anticipated that a grateful Arthur
would reward him with a major diplo-
matic post, preferably as minister to the
Austrian Empire. Instead, Guiteau was
tried, convicted, and executed.
Half-Breed Blaine remained in
Stalwart Arthur’s cabinet but became
increasingly uncomfortable and prepared
to resign. Just before he did, he convinced
Arthur of the wisdom of inviting represen-
tatives from all of the American nations to
a conference in Washington. Arthur
appointed Frederick T. Frelinghuysen to
succeed Blaine, but the new secretary of
state had no interest in pursuing the
Pan-American initiative, so he scrapped
the conference plans.
Blaine won the Republican Party’s
presidential nomination in 1884, but he
lost in a very close race to Democrat
Grover Cleveland. Late in Cleveland’s
term, interest in a Pan-American confer-
ence revived and new invitations were
dispatched. When Cleveland lost his
reelection bid to Republican Benjamin
Harrison in 1888, the new president
invited James G. Blaine to resume his
position as head of the State Department.
Blaine was therefore back in place when
his long-delayed Pan-American Confer-
ence met in October 1889.
Business interests dominated the
agenda. The delegates spent a month and
a half touring industrial and other sites to
observe U.S. economic capabilities first-
hand. The objective was to demonstrate
that the United States was fully capable of
supplying all of their countries’ trading
needs so that they would reduce or even
eliminate commercial ties to Europe.
When the delegates returned to the con-
ference table, Blaine proposed that they
consider creating a kind of common mar-
ket, modeled after the recently established
Zollverein in Germany. It would allow
free trade among all members. The con-
ferees were unwilling to go that far, vot-
ing instead to endorse a round of bilateral
trade talks to reduce tariffs on a reciprocal
basis. Reciprocity was an approach that

Blaine personally favored, but it was
unlikely to receive much support in the
protectionist-minded Congress.
Other unlikely proposals emerged as
well. One was to create a common silver
coinage to serve as legal tender in all
American nations and, presumably, facil-
itate trade among them. Another sugges-
tion was that all parties sign a
multinational arbitration treaty. Then, if a
dispute arose between signatories, it
would automatically be submitted to arbi-
tration rather than create the risk of con-
flict. Despite Blaine’s energetic support,
none of these ideas came close to being
ratified in the United States or anywhere
else. No nation was willing to surrender
any of its sovereignty to an international
body, especially one in which the United
States would be far and away the most
powerful and dominant member.
When Blaine stepped down as secre-
tary of state in 1892, he had little to show
for his efforts at Pan-Americanism. The
only concrete result of the conference was
the establishment in Washington of the
largely symbolic International Bureau of
the American Republics. Its chief purpose
was to promote cultural and social
interactions in the Western Hemisphere.
The Bureau later evolved into the Pan-
American Union, an organization that
continued to support people-to-people
programs. Not until the 1940s and the for-
mation of the Organization of American
States did the nations of the Western
Hemisphere implement some of the more
important elements of the Pan-American
philosophy that Blaine had championed.
See also: Panama
References
Crapol, Edward P. James G. Blaine: Architect
of Empire. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
Resources, 2000.
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 175
Gilderhaus, Mark T. The Second Century:
U.S.-Latin American Relations since
1889. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
Resources, 2000.
Healy, David F. James G. Blaine and Latin
America. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 2001.
Platt Amendment
The 1898 Treaty of Paris ended the war
between the United States and Spain, but
it failed to resolve the status of Cuba.
The U.S. declaration that began the
Spanish-American War included the
Teller Amendment, a pledge that the United
States would not annex or colonize
Cuba. That forced President William
McKinley’s administration to concoct a
policy for future relations between the
United States and Cuba that avoided
either of those outcomes. The Platt
Amendment provided an acceptable
alternative, and it strongly influenced
U.S. relationships with other Latin
American nations as well.
U.S. military and naval units
remained in place after the Spanish
authorities in Cuba agreed to a truce on
July 17, 1898. This continuing U.S.
presence disappointed the Cuban
rebels, who had begun fighting for inde-
pendence three years earlier. They
hoped that the United States would
honor its own pledge in the Teller
Amendment’s pledge not to colonize
the island. Throughout the fall of 1898,
the McKinley administration consid-
ered many alternatives for Cuba’s
future, but the president chose not to
include any specific promises in the
treaty that his envoys in Paris negoti-
ated with the Spanish government. The
absence of any definitive statements in
the Treaty of Paris encouraged expan-
sionist Americans who were interested
176 | Section 3
in the full annexation of Cuba despite
the Teller Amendment pledge.
To manage affairs in the interim,
General Leonard Wood took charge of
the U.S. occupation force. He had been
colonel of the volunteer regiment that
was nicknamed the “Rough Riders”
because it included cowboys like those in
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The
second in command was Theodore
Roosevelt, but unlike the impetuous New
Yorker, Wood had served for many years
as a doctor in the army and was cognizant
of its capabilities. As a medical man, he
was also keenly aware of the importance
of sanitation and health issues. He ordered
his subordinates to institute broad-scale
reconstruction efforts aimed at improving
the public health and living conditions of
all Cubans. As part of this initiative,
another army doctor, Walter Reed, con-
ducted research that led to the discovery
of the linkage between malaria and mos-
quitoes. Many believed that Wood’s ulti-
mate goal was to improve conditions on
the island so much that, even if the
Cubans were granted full independence,
they would eagerly seek annexation to
the United States to ensure the continua-
tion of these economic and social
benefits.
By the summer of 1900, an intractable
war in the Philippines and an interna-
tional crisis caused by the Boxer
Rebellion in China were undermining
U.S. desire to annex Cuba. Even
Leonard Wood had reservations, but he
was equally convinced that the Cuban
people were incapable of creating and
operating a stable, democratic govern-
ment. If that was true, restrictions or
limitations should be attached to any
decision on U.S. withdrawal.
External factors influenced U.S. atti-
tudes as well. The United States was
preparing to construct a canal to link the
Atlantic to the Pacific and wanted to
make sure that the eastern access to the
canal would be secure. Although no
other nation had taken definitive steps
toward extending its influence in Cuba,
there was concern that either Germany
or Great Britain might step in if Cuba
failed to maintain a stable government.
The McKinley administration intended
to be very cautious and deliberate in
orchestrating a U.S. disengagement.
Elihu Root, an astute lawyer, had
become secretary of war, and he took the
lead in drafting a policy. He obtained
approval from McKinley’s cabinet early
in 1901 for the package of proposals that
he had created. Root then sent it on to
Ohio senator Orville Platt, who added it
as an amendment to an army appropria-
tions bill then under consideration. The
Platt Amendment was included in the
final legislation that Congress approved
early in March.
The Platt Amendment contained sev-
eral provisions, the most controversial of
which authorized the United States to
intervene if it concluded that Cuban
independence was threatened from out-
side aggression or from the breakdown
of internal order. It also prohibited Cuba
from entering into any international
agreements that might limit its independ-
ence. The document urged Cuba to con-
tinue the sanitation and public health
reforms that Wood had initiated. The
Platt Amendment further insisted that
Cuba grant the United States the right to
maintain naval bases on the island, a pro-
vision that has allowed the U.S. Navy to
occupy Guantánamo Bay ever since.
The United States agreed to withdraw
its occupying force and allow the Cuban
people to establish their own govern-
ment only if they included the Platt
 Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 177

PROVISIONS OF THE PLATT AMENDMENT, 1901

I. That the government of Cuba shall never enter into any treaty or other compact with
any foreign power or powers which will impair or tend to impair the independence of
Cuba, nor in any manner authorize or permit any foreign power or powers to obtain
by colonization or for military or naval purposes or otherwise, lodgment in or control
over any portion of said island.
II. That said government shall not assume or contract any public debt, to pay the
interest upon which, and to make reasonable sinking fund provision for the ultimate
discharge of which the ordinary revenues of the island, after defraying the current
expenses of government, shall be inadequate.
III. That the government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the
right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a
government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, and for
discharging the obligations with respect to Cuba imposed by the Treaty of Paris on the
United States, now to be assumed and undertaken by the government of Cuba. . . .
V. That the government of Cuba will execute, and, as far as necessary, extend, the
plans already devised or other plans to be mutually agreed upon, for the sanitation of
the cities of the island, to the end that a recurrence of epidemic and infectious diseases
may be prevented, thereby assuring protection to the people and commerce of Cuba,
as well as to the commerce of the southern ports of the United States and the people
residing therein. . . .
VII. That to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to
protect the people thereof, as well as for its defense, the government of Cuba will sell
or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain
specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States.
VIII. That by way of further assurance the government of Cuba will embody the fore-
going provisions in a permanent treaty with the United States.

Source: U.S. Statutes at Large 31, 1901, 897–898.

Amendment in a bilateral treaty
between the two nations and in the con-
stitution that Cuba would develop. Not
surprisingly, many Cubans objected to
both of these dictates, and they
attempted to amend or add reservations
to the provisions of the Platt Amend-
ment that they found most objection-
able. But the United States simply
would not withdraw unless all of its pro-
visions were met, so the constitutional
convention delegates voted to include
the unamended Platt Amendment in
their final document on June 12, 1901.
The United States duly pulled its troops
out the following summer.
In essence, Cuba remained a protec-
torate of the United States, and many
Cubans resented the patronizing atti-
tudes of their northern neighbor. Root
hoped that the existence of the Platt
Amendment would motivate the Cuban
people to maintain a stable, democratic
government, which would preclude the
need for any U.S. action. By 1906,
however, Root, now serving as secre-
tary of state under President Theodore
Roosevelt, reluctantly concluded that
178 | Section 3
governmental stability had deteriorated
to such a degree that intervention was
necessary. U.S. troops once again
landed on the island, where they
remained for another three years.
The Platt Amendment had a broader
impact on U.S. foreign policy. Many of
its concepts seemed applicable to other
Caribbean and Central American nations
as well, so similar provisions were incor-
porated into U.S. initiatives in nations
such as Nicaragua and the Dominican
Republic. Not surprisingly, the conde-
scension implicit in the U.S. approach
kept alive resentment against the United
States. Not until President Franklin
Roosevelt developed his Good Neighbor
Policy in the early 1930s did the United
States agree to release Cuba from the
constraints of the Platt Amendment.
Even so, residual bitterness over “Yankee
Imperialism” continues to color U.S.
relations with its neighbors to this day.
See also: Big Stick; Spanish-American-
Cuban War
References
Benjamin, Jules R. The United States and
Cuba. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 1977.
Healy, David F. The United States in Cuba
1898–1902. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1963.
Pérez, Louis A., Jr. Cuba under the Platt
Amendment, 1902–1934. Pittsburgh, PA:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986.
Protectionism
As soon as it became an independent
nation, the United States adopted tariffs
designed to protect U.S. manufacturers
and producers from foreign competitors.
Tariff rates on specific commodities were
set relatively high, so that items produced
overseas would cost more than those
made in the United States, giving U.S.
producers a price advantage. Although
protective tariffs were popular with U.S.
manufacturers, many other citizens found
ample reason to object. If they were
farmers whose products were frequently
exported, they saw no need for import
levies. Consumers of all types were
aware that high customs duties increased
the prices of goods, whether produced in
the United States or overseas. Neverthe-
less, protectionism remained a dominant
theme of U.S. foreign relations well into
the 20th century.
Tariffs are taxes levied on imports.
Also known as customs duties, these
taxes are usually assessed for two pur-
poses. The first is to raise revenue for the
central government. Until the introduc-
tion of the income tax in 1916, tariffs
and sales of public lands were the chief
sources of revenue for the federal gov-
ernment. The need to use tariffs to gen-
erate revenue often competed with a
second objective, that of erecting a tax
wall around the country. Protective tar-
iffs were designed to be high enough to
discourage importation, often at the
expense of revenue, and were favored by
domestic producers of goods that might
otherwise be imported.
High tariffs were justified as being
needed to protect “infant industries.”
This rationalization was plausible
enough in the early decades when U.S.
entrepreneurs struggled to build spinning
and weaving factories that could com-
pete with technologically advanced
British mills. In 1815, for example,
British shippers and merchants dumped
huge amounts of finished woolen and
cotton cloth on the U.S. market that sold,
even after customs duties were collected,
at prices far below the production costs
of similar, U.S.–made goods.

The “infant industries” justification
lost credence as the U.S. industrial revo-
lution proceeded in the 19th century.
After the Civil War, the manufacturing
capacity and the sophistication of many
U.S. production techniques outstripped
those used anywhere else in the world.
Even so, protectionists continued to
insist on high tariffs. Republican Party
politicians in particular considered pro-
tectionism a fundamental article of faith,
regardless of international trade realities.
Opponents of protectionism some-
times won modest victories. In 1846, for
example, the Walker Tariff Act, approved
by a Democratic Congress and president.
lowered many rates. The onset of the
Civil War reversed that trend. Republi-
cans controlled the federal government,
and, arguing quite reasonably that esca-
lating war costs required more tax rev-
enue, they boosted tariff rates across the
board to unprecedented levels.
The Republican Party remained in
power after the war, and its members
were loath to reduce tariff rates, once
again citing the importance of protect-
ing domestic manufacturers. Rates con-
tinued at generally high levels, despite
several assaults by low-tariff advocates.
Some Americans even favored the con-
cept of free trade that had been pio-
neered by the British, who had canceled
many of their tariffs completely in
1846.
Although influential manufacturers
complained about potential damage to
their livelihoods if rates fell, protection-
ism gave many of them enormous prof-
its. At one point, Andrew Carnegie, the
nation’s leading steel monger, owned
mills so efficient that they produced
high quality steel rails for less than
$20 per ton. The contemporary U.S. tar-
iff on imported steel of the same quality
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 179
stood at $45 per ton. Even if British fac-
tories could match Carnegie’s efficiency,
and few could, imported British steel
sold for at least $65 per ton in the United
States once the tariff was added to
production costs. Carnegie could sell
his entire output for slightly less than
$65 per ton and collect a 200 percent
profit. This sort of advantage enabled
him to amass an enormous fortune. Less
efficient U.S. producers obviously
netted lower returns.
Why did support for protectionism
remain so strong? One reason was that
business-backed Republicans generally
dominated the national government,
right through the onset of the Great
Depression. On the few occasions when
Democrats seized control, managing the
complexities of revising tariff schedules
listing literally hundreds of individual
rates was a daunting task. Moreover,
protectionists argued that high tariff
rates also protected U.S. workers. Wage
rates in the United States, so the logic
ran, remained higher than those abroad
because of the cushioning effect of high
tariffs on imports. Consequently, many
Democrats with industrial workers as
constituents were reluctant to dismantle
the tariff wall.
Occasionally, even Republicans
acknowledged that protectionism had
gone too far. In 1890, the federal
government was collecting far more
revenue than it could wisely expend.
Embarrassed by this imbalance,
President Benjamin Harrison urged
his fellow Republicans to revise the
tariff schedules. Ohio representative
William McKinley headed the House
committee charged with this task.
Special interest groups bombarded him
with requests for continued protection,
so the resulting McKinley Tariff Act
180 | Section 3
closely resembled the preexisting
structure. McKinley’s major change
was putting sugar on the free list.
Because sugar tariffs generated almost
one-fifth of the government’s annual
revenue, that single change alone
almost solved the “surplus problem.”
In 1892, Democratic president Grover
Cleveland staked his successful election
campaign on the promise of comprehen-
sive tariff reduction. The resulting 1894
Wilson-Gorman Act reduced overall
rates by more than 10 percent but
restored the tariff on imported sugar—
with remarkable consequences for both
Hawaii and Cuba. Immediately after
his election as president, William
McKinley convened a special session of
Congress to reverse the mischief that
the Democrats had done. The 1897
Dingley Tariff Act reset most rates to
levels similar to those of the earlier
McKinley Tariff.
A dozen years later, Republican
strategists again realized that they
needed to tone down their increasingly
unpopular protectionism. President
William Howard Taft followed
McKinley’s example by convening a
special session of Congress in 1909.
New York representative Sereno Payne
pushed through the House a bill with rel-
atively mild reductions, but it ran into
concerted opposition in the Senate.
Rhode Island senator Nelson Aldrich and
his protectionist colleagues added 847
amendments to the Payne Bill, virtually
all of them restoring or raising rates that
had been reduced. The main achieve-
ment of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of
1909 was its inclusion of a proposed
amendment to permit the imposition of
an income tax. Another seven years
passed before the Sixteenth Amendment
won final ratification.
Democratic President Woodrow
Wilson superintended a major tariff
reduction program in 1913, but the out-
break of the Great War a year later so
confused the international situation that
no one could confidently assess the
effects of this modest retreat from pro-
tectionism. As part of what President
Warren G. Harding called a return to
normalcy, Republican majorities resur-
rected high tariff walls in the 1922
Fordney-McCumber Act. When the
nation tumbled into the Great Depression,
President Herbert Hoover prescribed the
standard Republican panacea for eco-
nomic ills by urging passage of an even
more protectionist measure. The resulting
Hawley-Smoot Act of 1930 contributed to
an almost total collapse of international
trade, seriously undermining U.S. faith in
the wisdom of protectionism.
In 1934, Democratic president
Franklin Roosevelt encouraged the pas-
sage of the Reciprocal Trade Agree-
ments Act. It allowed the executive
branch to negotiate mutually beneficial
reductions of individual tariff rates with
other countries. The operation of most-
favored-nation provisions in dozens of
bilateral treaties pushed U.S. tariff rates
downward by as much as 50 percent
over the next few years. Reciprocity
thus replaced congressional tariff-setting
as the nation’s main international
trade policy. As the 20th century drew
to a close, the world approached the
free-trade ideal that the British had
been championing for a century and a
half.
See also: GATT; Sugar
References
Dobson, John M. Two Centuries of Tariffs.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Print-
ing Office, 1976.

Ratner, Sidney. The Tariff in American
History. New York: Van Nostrand, 1972.
Terrill, Tom E. The Tariff, Politics, and
American Foreign Policy, 1874–1901.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973.
Punitive Expedition
President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to
send General John J. Pershing into
northern Mexico with more than 6,000
troops in 1916 was the last of a series of
unfortunate U.S. policy initiatives. Per-
shing’s Punitive Expedition was charged
with rounding up bandits who were
crossing the border, but his troops even-
tually penetrated as far as 300 miles into
the neighboring country. Wilson wisely
ordered a withdrawal early in 1917, but
the sequence of events leading up to the
expedition strained the U.S. relationship
with Mexico for years to come.
The trouble began when revolutionar-
ies ousted longtime Mexican president
Porfirio Díaz in 1911. The United States
had maintained a positive relationship
with the Díaz government, which had
allowed Americans to invest more than
$1 billion in Mexican mines, ranches,
and natural resources. When Francisco
Madero succeeded Díaz, U.S. ambassa-
dor Henry Lane Wilson worried that the
new regime would interfere with or even
drive out U.S. entrepreneurs. Conse-
quently, he sympathized with revolution-
ary general Victoriano Huerta’s
successful drive to supplant Madero.
Without checking with his superiors in
Washington, Ambassador Wilson
quickly recognized the Huerta govern-
ment as legitimate.
The diplomat’s unilateral action did
not sit well with President Woodrow
Wilson, who took office in March 1913.
Madero had died under questionable
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 181
circumstances, and Wilson assumed
that Huerta had had a hand in his mur-
der. The U.S. president was firmly com-
mitted to encouraging democratic
governments around the world; when
Huerta refused to adopt a constitution
and strengthened his hold over the
country, Wilson withdrew U.S. recogni-
tion. In August 1913, he described his
policy as one of “watchful waiting,”
hoping that democracy would soon
assert itself in Mexico.
By October, the president was ready
to abandon that passive approach for a
more active search for an alternative to
Huerta. Venustiano Carranza led a group
of revolutionaries who called themselves
“Constitutionalists.” A historian with an
abiding belief in the benefits of constitu-
tional democracies, Woodrow Wilson
was naturally attracted to them. But
when he offered to assist Carranza, the
rebel leader rejected any type of direct
U.S. military intervention. He did, how-
ever, indicate a desire to purchase arms
and equipment from the United States.
The president lifted an arms embargo
that his predecessor, William Howard
Taft, had imposed, but that change
seemed to help Huerta more than it did
the Constitutionalists.
A naval confrontation provided
Woodrow Wilson with an excuse to take
more definitive action. Several U.S. sailors
rowed a gig ashore at Tampico, a port on
Mexico’s east coast, intending to fill water
casks. Mexico’s federal soldiers arrested
the Americans as trespassers, but Huerta’s
government quickly ordered them freed.
Even so, Admiral Henry T. Mayo, com-
mander of a U.S. fleet monitoring events
along the Mexican coast, demanded a full
apology and a 21-gun salute to the U.S.
flag. Huerta agreed, but only if the United
States would reciprocate with a 21-gun
182 | Section 3

salute to his nation’s flag. President
Wilson rejected this demand because it
might be interpreted as de facto recogni-
tion of the legitimacy of Huerta’s regime.
In April 1914, Wilson obtained
authority from Congress to use force
against Huerta and his supporters,
although not against the Mexican people
themselves. Admiral Mayo’s fleet then
invaded and captured the Mexican port
of Vera Cruz, ostensibly to prevent a
German ship from landing military sup-
plies. The U.S. occupation roused such
domestic and international criticism that
Wilson had to refer the issue to a media-
tion panel made up of representatives
from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Not
surprisingly, the mediators concluded
that the United States should immedi-
ately withdraw.
Meanwhile, Carranza and his allies,
Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Emiliano
Zapata, succeeded in forcing Huerta to
resign. Although Wilson had earlier
favored the Constitutionalists, he had
become disenchanted with Carranza, so
the United States did not immediately rec-
ognize the new leadership. This response
encouraged Villa and, ultimately, Zapata
to break with Carranza, a move that
temporarily made Villa the president of
Mexico. Carranza quickly rallied his sup-
porters and, after a brief struggle, reestab-
lished his control over the country. In
October 1915, the Wilson administration
formally recognized his regime as the
legitimate authority in Mexico.
Pancho Villa retreated into the desert
country of northern Mexico, bent on car-
rying on his resistance. He apparently

U.S. general John J. Pershing’s intervention in northern Mexico in 1916 was called the Punitive
Expedition, but it failed to achieve its chief objective of capturing rebel leader Francisco
“Pancho” Villa. (Clendenen Papers, Hoover Institution)

thought that if he could provoke the
United States into intervening militarily,
its forces might ultimately overthrow
Carranza. Villa’s supporters stopped a
train carrying 17 U.S. engineering stu-
dents and summarily executed all but
one of them. When the United States
response fell short of his expectations,
Villa ordered a cross-border raid on the
town of Columbus on March 9, 1916.
The assault on this community, located
in the extreme southwestern part of the
state of New Mexico, inflicted 19 deaths
and burned many buildings.
Wilson immediately reinforced the
troop presence along the southern border
of the United States and negotiated an
ill-defined agreement with the Carranza
government. It permitted U.S. army units
to enter northern Mexico to capture the
“bandits” who had attacked the United
States. Pancho Villa deftly evaded
General Pershing’s large Punitive Expe-
dition, drawing it farther and farther
south into Mexico.
The U.S. soldiers inevitably encoun-
tered Mexican troops under orders from
Carranza. After a couple of minor skir-
mishes, U.S. units ran into bloody resist-
ance from Federalista who were
defending the town of Carrazal. Wilson
immediately began drafting a war mes-
sage but was dissuaded when he learned
that the Americans had been the aggres-
sors in the encounter. At that point,
Carranza and Wilson agreed to convene
a Joint High Commission to resolve their
differences. The commission met from
September 1916 through January 1917,
but its conclusions satisfied neither party.
By then, the German government had
initiated its policy of unrestricted sub-
marine warfare, which was certain to
draw the United States into the war rag-
ing in Europe. President Wilson had no
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 183
choice but to withdraw Pershing and his
command from the minor distraction of
Mexico to prepare them for service in
what became known as the American
Expeditionary Force across the Atlantic.
The U.S. withdrawal eased tensions
between the United States and Mexico,
but the distrust that Wilson had exhib-
ited from 1913 on left permanent scars
on the relationship between the two
nations.
See also: American Expeditionary Force;
Mission
References
Cline, Howard F. The United States and
Mexico. New York: Atheneum, 1963.
Knight, Alan. U.S.-Mexican Relations,
1910–1940. La Jolla: Center for
U.S.–Mexican Studies, University of
California, San Diego, 1987.
Stout, Joseph A., Jr. Border Conflict: Villistas,
Carrancistas, and the Punitive Expedition,
1913–1920. Fort Worth: Texas Christian
University Press, 1999.
Rapprochement
Like many other diplomatic terms, rap-
prochement comes from the French
language, meaning “approaching again.”
In the U.S. context, it has been applied to
the gradual easing of tensions between
the United States and Great Britain that
occurred early in the 20th century. The
“coming together” of the two nations’
attitudes toward international issues was
very timely for the British, because it
helped President Woodrow Wilson
rationalize his decision to ask for a war
declaration on the side of Great Britain
and France in 1917.
Such a move would have been far
less likely at almost any point in the
19th century. The general U.S. attitude
toward Great Britain could be summed
184 | Section 3
up in one word: Anglophobia. This nega-
tive attitude had long roots, stretching all
the way back to the Revolution and the
War of 1812. The fact that the United
States and Great Britain maintained
extraordinarily beneficial commercial ties
did nothing to prevent Americans from
being suspicious and critical of British
policies, especially when they involved
the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe
Doctrine articulated some of that feeling,
and the Polk and Olney corollaries were
even more pointedly anti-British.
Domestic interest groups played a
large role in stoking the hostility.
Millions of Irish immigrants poured into
the United States, particularly after the
potato famine devastated Ireland in the
1840s. Most were fiercely anti-British,
having lived on an island that was domi-
nated by British landlords and politi-
cians. German Americans constituted
another sizable group that was naturally
less than sympathetic to the British. Had
rebellious Irish and loyal Germans dom-
inated U.S. politics in 1914, the decision
about which side to support in World
War I might have been quite different.
As it turned out, however, several rel-
atively minor accommodations and
agreements between the two govern-
ments in the previous couple of decades
had facilitated a true rapprochement.
Ironically, one of the earliest of these
occurred in the mid-1890s, when the
United States took Great Britain to task
for its attitudes in the Venezuela bound-
ary dispute. Despite the strident, aggres-
sive tone of Secretary of State Richard
Olney’s note that stated his corollary to
the Monroe Doctrine, the British govern-
ment responded judiciously, sidestepping
a potentially dangerous confrontation.
A key factor in the changing relation-
ship was Great Britain’s acknowledg-
ment of the rising power and influence of
the United States. No other nation
seemed willing to welcome the Ameri-
cans into the small circle of great world
powers, but the British could see real
advantages to doing so. They were quite
complimentary of the swift and defini-
tive U.S. success in the war against
Spain in 1898 and were sympathetic
about the turmoil and continuing conflict
that developed in the Philippines after-
ward. At almost the same time, the long-
simmering opposition of Boer settlers in
South Africa boiled over into a full-scale
war. Standing almost alone in empathiz-
ing with the British in their colonial
struggle, the United States had returned
the compliment.
These more reflective attitudes helped
resolve a tense dispute involving Canada.
The discovery of gold in the Klondike in
1896 attracted a flood of prospective
miners, most of whom were Americans.
The quickest access to the mining camps
was on ships sailing the inside passage
along the Alaskan coast. The boundary
between the southern extension of Alaska
and British Columbia had never been set-
tled. When the Russian government
turned Alaska over to the United States, it
indicated that its claims extended 30
miles inland from the coast. But that
coast was highly irregular, with dozens of
deep inlets. The Americans claimed that
the 30 miles began at the deepest pene-
tration of the ocean; the Canadians
insisted that it began at the farthest exten-
sion of the land.
In 1898, both sides agreed to submit
the question to a Joint High Commission
in Québec, but that body failed to resolve
the matter. The United States stubbornly
refused to accept the initial arbitration
proposal that Great Britain favored. Ten-
sions mounted in 1902, when President

Theodore Roosevelt ordered U.S. troops
into the disputed territory. Fortunately,
his secretary of state, John Hay, was able
to negotiate a new arbitration treaty,
which subjected the issue to an interna-
tional panel of “six impartial jurists,”
three chosen by each side. The treaty
won Senate approval when the U.S.
nominees were named: two senators and
Secretary of War Elihu Root. The
Canadians chose two equally partisan
arbitrators, but Great Britain filled its
slot with the chief justice of England,
Lord Alverstone. He voted with the
Americans on each point, so the United
States gained its maximum objectives.
Alverstone’s action helped convince
Americans of Great Britain’s good faith
and friendship.
Three other issues were settled amica-
bly as well. One was a revival—or, per-
haps more accurately, the persistence—of
controversy over U.S. fishing rights off
the Canadian coast. A mutually satisfac-
tory agreement was hammered out in
1912. Despite its lack of appeal to protec-
tionist congressmen, the United States
also agreed to grant trade reciprocity to
Canada, a move that actually benefited
both countries. The final controversy
involved a congressional decision to
exempt U.S.–owned ships from paying
tolls on the nearly completed Panama
Canal, a decision that clearly violated the
1902 Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. In this
instance, President Woodrow Wilson was
able to convince the members of his party,
who controlled both houses of Congress,
to fulfill the treaty obligations.
On the eve of the outbreak of World
War I, therefore, Great Britain and the
United States had found peaceful and, in
many cases, mutually beneficial ways to
resolve their outstanding disagreements.
The rapprochement process was complete.
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 185
Throughout the rest of the 20th century,
the United States and Great Britain
almost always found common ground for
their international initiatives and actions.
See also: Olney Corollary; Panama
References
Campbell, Alexander E. Great Britain and
the United States 1895–1903. London:
Longmans, 1960.
Perkins, Bradford. The Great Rapproche-
ment: England and the United States,
1895–1914. New York: Atheneum, 1968.
Tansill, Charles Callan. Canadian-American
Relations, 1875–1911. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1943.
Spanish-American-Cuban War
The U.S. decision to intervene in the
war between rebels and Spanish colo-
nial authorities in Cuba in 1898 was
more than a little rash. Fortunately, U.S.
participation in the conflict ended in
just over three months, with relatively
few casualties. Secretary of State John
Hay expressed a widely held U.S. senti-
ment when he referred to it as “a splen-
did little war.” Although that may have
been a valid assessment of the combat
phase, it understated the broader impli-
cations and consequences of the con-
flict. The Spanish-American-Cuban
War profoundly altered the interna-
tional status and responsibilities of the
United States.
When Congress approved President
William McKinley’s request for a dec-
laration of war on April 25, 1898, the
U.S. Army was hopelessly unprepared
for an international conflict or, indeed,
almost any sort of military action.
Fortunately, the new, all-steel, steam-
powered naval vessels that had recently
been commissioned offset the army’s
186 | Section 3

many inadequacies. That became evi- access to a couple of Cuba’s northern

dent almost immediately, when the U.S. ports but failed to prevent a Spanish fleet
Navy achieved a stunning victory more from crossing the Atlantic and slipping
than 7,000 miles away from Cuban into the southern port city of Santiago.
shores. It took place in the Philippine When this fleet was discovered, the U.S.
Islands, where the Spanish had main- Navy rounded up more vessels to estab-
tained colonial control for centuries. lish a blockade there as well.
The U.S. Navy had included the In late June, the navy assembled a
Philippines in its contingency planning slow moving transport fleet to carry
for several years. The concern was that eager soldiers to the center of the action.
the Spanish might assemble a fleet there Along the way, 600 marines captured
and send it across the Pacific to attack Guantánamo Bay without opposition.
the West Coast of the United States. Other men, equipment, and horses were
Commodore George Dewey had recently unloaded in heavy surf off the rebel-held
taken command of the navy’s small coast east of Santiago. The Americans
Pacific squadron. When he received first encountered enemy forces when
word of the war declaration, he followed they headed west toward the city. The
prearranged orders to steam into Manila Spanish inflicted substantial damage at a
Bay. His squadron’s guns raked the couple of points along the way before
decrepit Spanish ships anchored there, retreating to the crest of the line of hills
sinking or disabling all of them in short
order. Dewey reported his victory by
telegraph and was instantly rewarded
with promotion to the rank of admiral.
Even so, he could do little more than
wait for army reinforcements to arrive
from the United States.
The army was in turmoil. The prewar
regular army consisted of only 25,000 men;
they were dispersed throughout the
nation, many of them in Western forts,
charged with watching out for Indian
attacks. To supplement this inadequate
force, 300,000 men immediately volun-
teered for service. The War Department
was ill-equipped to handle even a small
fraction of that number of new recruits.
With great effort and many missteps, it
managed to transfer enough units to
Florida to train and prepare for landings The United States Navy established an effective
in Cuba. blockade outside the harbor at Santiago de
Cuba. Its one-sided victory when the trapped
If the U.S. Navy had distinguished
Spanish fleet tried to flee in July 1898 was the
itself in the Philippines, it performed less last major battle of the Spanish-American-
brilliantly in the Caribbean. It hastily Cuban War. (Ridpath, John Clark. Ridpath’s
assembled a blockading fleet to close off History of the World, 1901)

surrounding Santiago. Theodore Roosevelt
led one of the U.S. volunteer regiments
that charged up these hills. Reinforce-
ments moved in behind and positioned
U.S. artillery ready to shell the city and
the ships that were anchored in the
harbor.
The Spanish admiral received orders
to escape if he could, but the U.S.
blockading fleet picked off the Spanish
vessels one by one as they left the har-
bor’s mouth. At that point, General
William Shafter realized that his troops
were running short of ammunition and
on the verge of collapse from dysentery
and other ailments. He decided to nego-
tiate and hammered out a truce with the
Spanish authorities on July 17. Mean-
while, an independent U.S. command
captured the Spanish colony of Puerto
Rico without opposition.
In the Pacific, Guam came under U.S.
control when some of the ships ferrying
troops to the Philippines stopped by.
When the reinforcements arrived at
Manila Bay, they encountered only
minor resistance from the Spanish Army
in taking control of Manila. During that
engagement, the Americans learned that
Spain and the United States had
extended the Cuban truce worldwide.
The U.S. forces suffered only 385 com-
bat deaths in the war, although many
more succumbed to disease.
Now it was up to the diplomats to sort
things out. Of the five men that
McKinley chose for his negotiating
team, four were avowed imperialists
who favored U.S. expansion and even
colonization. The U.S. commissioners
met with Spanish envoys in Paris in
October. Spain apparently thought that if
it conceded Cuba, Puerto Rico, and
Guam, the Americans might return the
Philippines. Instead, the U.S. team
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 187
notified Washington of its desire to force
Spain to relinquish its claims there as
well. The topic had become quite contro-
versial in the United States, where out-
spoken anti-imperialists noisily
protested any move toward colonization.
The president conducted his own survey
of public opinion, delivering a series of
speeches to assess the popular will
before endorsing his commissioners’
recommendation.
The Spanish were powerless to reject
the U.S. demands, although they did
obtain a $20 million payment for the lost
territories. Both sides signed the Treaty
of Paris on December 10, 1898, and
McKinley submitted it to the Senate for
ratification early in the following year.
There it encountered stiff opposition
from anti-imperialists in both parties.
Some of them worried that the Filipino
people might react violently to a U.S.
takeover. That threat became real on
February 4, 1899, when Emilio
Aguinaldo’s 15,000-man army became
engaged in open conflict with the occu-
pying forces. Ironically, the outbreak of
violence appears to have convinced some
of those on the fence that the United
States had a duty to put down the rebel-
lion. The final Senate vote on February 6
was 57 to 27, just one more than the
required two-thirds majority.
The Filipino insurrection persisted for
more than two years, caused 4,000 U.S.
combat deaths, and cost $170 million.
Although the Teller Amendment had
foresworn U.S. colonization of Cuba,
U.S. troops continued to occupy the
island for another three years. The
complexities of extracting the United
States from this commitment did not end
with Cuba’s acceptance of the Platt
Amendment. It effectively kept the
island as a protectorate of the United
188 | Section 3
States, ensuring continuing emotional
and financial costs for years to come.
On the positive side of the ledger, the
war had fulfilled many U.S. prewar
objectives. It provided a stimulating and
relatively inexpensive way for the
nation to exhaust its jingoist energies.
Americans might be far less enamored
of war for its own sake in the future.
The conflict also gave the new U.S.
Navy a trial-by-fire that exposed both
strengths and weaknesses. It provoked a
major shipbuilding frenzy that created
the second largest navy in the world by
1908.
More important than these military
aspects, the Spanish-Cuban-American
War enhanced U.S. prestige around the
world. It forced other great powers to
recognize the United States—if not as an
equal, at least as a major player. That, in
turn, guaranteed that U.S. policy initia-
tives would receive more serious consid-
eration in the future. At the same time,
the war gave the United States a some-
what more mature and rational interna-
tional perspective. It effectively slaked
the U.S. desire for colonies and demon-
strated the pitfalls of rash action. Thus,
the war and its aftermath left the United
States better prepared to deal with the
crises and confrontations that it would
encounter in the 20th century.
See also: Cuban Rebellion
References
Freidel, Frank. The Splendid Little War.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1958.
McCartney, Paul T. Power and Progress:
American National Identity, the War of
1898, and the Rise of American
Imperialism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 2006.
Schoonover, Thomas David. Uncle Sam’s War
of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
2003.
Trask, David F. The War with Spain in 1898.
New York, Macmillan, 1981.
Sugar
Although we are currently well aware of
how important oil is to the global econ-
omy and that international conflicts and
controversies surround its recovery and
shipment, few realize that sugar played a
major role in U.S. foreign policy in ear-
lier times. Both before and after the
American Revolution, trade with the
sugar-producing Caribbean islands was
highly profitable. In the 19th century, the
duties on sugar imports sometimes pro-
vided as much as 20 percent of all fed-
eral tax revenue. Complications with
offshore suppliers like Hawaii and Cuba
led to major foreign policy decisions that
profoundly shaped the future.
The importance of sugar and its less
refined form, molasses, was widely rec-
ognized in the colonial era. British,
French, Spanish, and Dutch colonists
settled in the Caribbean to establish cane
sugar plantations. To work the fields, the
Europeans imported thousands and thou-
sands of slaves from Africa. So vital
were the sugar islands that some insisted
that Barbados alone was of more value to
the British empire than all of its North
American colonies combined.
The people living in those colonies
benefited from the trade as well, collect-
ing sugar and molasses from the islands
and transporting it either to Great Britain
or to their home ports in New York and
New England. Rhode Island developed
an extremely profitable distilling industry
based on converting molasses into rum
for domestic consumption and export. To
control the sugar trade, the British

government passed the Molasses Act in
1733 and the Sugar Act in 1763, both of
which levied high taxes on any product
imported from non-British sources. But
the American appetite for sugar was so
strong that Americans legally or illegally
continued to bring in large amounts of
“foreign” sugar and molasses from other
nation’s Caribbean colonies.
This trade continued to flourish after
the Revolution and into the 1790s. At
that point, the British government
objected to Americans supporting its
wartime enemies, France and Spain. The
U.S. trade violated Great Britain’s Rule
of 1756 and, later, its orders-in-council,
setting the stage for a series of diplo-
matic confrontations. These ultimately
helped trigger the War of 1812. After
that conflict, U.S. shippers continued to
exploit Caribbean trading opportunities
that were primarily focused on obtaining
and transporting sugar.
Because sugar was a desirable prod-
uct that was imported in great quantities,
it was a natural target for customs duties
to raise revenue. The very first tariff
passed in the First Congress included a
tax levy on imported sugar. It was modi-
fied up or down in subsequent years, but
it remained a key source of funding for
federal government operations. When
Americans began settling in Louisiana
and other Gulf Coast locations, many
established cane sugar plantations, just
like the ones in the Caribbean, with
slaves handling the fieldwork. These
domestic producers had an advantage
over offshore growers because they did
not have to pay any import taxes. Later
in the 19th century, sugar beet planters in
Western areas, such as Colorado and
Utah, enjoyed the same market advantage.
Domestic sugar growers pressured their
congressmen to maintain protective
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 189
tariffs on foreign sugar to help offset
their higher costs of production.
When Americans began settling in
Hawaii, they took advantage of the trop-
ical climate to establish cane sugar plan-
tations. As in the Caribbean, they had to
import laborers to work their fields, in
this case drawing them from China and
Japan. But Hawaii was an independent
kingdom during this period, so planters
who shipped their product to the United
States were subject to import duties. To
ease this situation, diplomats on both
sides worked out a series of reciprocity
arrangements between the kingdom and
the United States. They reduced or elim-
inated the U.S. tariff on Hawaiian sugar
in return for similar cuts in Hawaiian
import taxes on U.S. products.
When Ohio representative William
McKinley took up the challenge of draft-
ing a new tariff schedule in 1890, he had
to solve the problem of embarrassing
surpluses. The protective tariff system’s
existing rates were so high that they gen-
erated far more revenue than the govern-
ment at that point had any need or desire
to spend. But McKinley was a dedicated
Republican protectionist, so the new leg-
islation left most of the protective rates
in place but canceled the sugar duty
entirely. Because sugar taxes had been
responsible for about one-fifth of the
nation’s overall tariff revenue, putting
sugar on the free list effectively solved
the surplus revenue “problem.” The leg-
islation also established a bounty for
domestic sugar producers to enable them
to compete with foreign growers.
Hawaii felt the impact of this change
immediately because it rendered the rec-
iprocity arrangements irrelevant. The
island economy headed into a depression
that fomented political instability and,
ultimately, a revolution led by the small
190 | Section 3
minority of Americans residing in the
kingdom. Their goal was to gain imme-
diate annexation to the United States, a
step that would enable sugar growers in
Hawaii to qualify for the sugar bounty. A
series of missteps delayed annexation for
another five years, forcing the Republic
of Hawaii to cope with its internal prob-
lems without a subsidy from the United
States. Annexation was finally achieved
in 1898, almost as an afterthought of the
Spanish-American-Cuban War.
The McKinley Act had the opposite
effect on the other major supplier of for-
eign sugar to the United States. Cuba
was a Spanish colony, in which almost
half of the economic activity was
focused on the export of sugar that was
grown in its bountiful cane fields. For
decades, the island’s economy had suf-
fered ill effects from the import taxes
charged by its most important customer,
the United States. When sugar suddenly
moved to the free list in 1890, the Cuban
economy blossomed accordingly. For
four years, Cubans enjoyed an unprece-
dented level of prosperity.
In his successful run for the presi-
dency in 1892, Grover Cleveland prom-
ised a major reform of the nation’s tariff
structure. In 1894, his fellow Democrats
in the Congress rammed through a revi-
sion of the McKinley Act. The new leg-
islation was called the Wilson-Gorman
Act, and it dramatically lowered the tar-
iff rates on many traditionally protected
domestic products. To replace the rev-
enue that would be lost from those
changes, the legislation revived a tariff
on imported sugar.
The Cuban economy immediately
nose dived. Prosperity vanished overnight
when its sugar exports once again had to
leap the U.S. tariff barrier. By 1895, the
Cuban people were so restive and
discontent that they responded positively
when a rebellion began in the western
part of the island. The rebels intended to
end the Spanish control that had lasted
400 years. Unlike the Hawaiian revolu-
tionary leaders, however, the Cuban patri-
ots had no interest in a U.S. takeover; in
fact, they positively feared it. They were
none too pleased, therefore, when the
United States intervened in 1898 and sub-
sequently engineered a new government
and economic framework for Cuba.
After 1900, sugar declined as a criti-
cal resource and ceased to be a major
influence on U.S. foreign policy. It
became even less important with the pas-
sage of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements
Act in 1934. That legislation set in
motion a series of bilateral agreements
that reduced tariff rates on both sides,
and sugar tariffs, in particular, were dra-
matically reduced around the world. Yet
sugar remained a key factor in some
instances. For decades, the Soviet Union
paid premium prices for the Cuban sugar
crop as a part of its effort to shore up the
Communist government there. The U.S.
embargo against that government has
effectively prevented Cuban sugar from
reaching what had historically been its
most important market.
See also: Hawaii; Spanish-American-Cuban
War
References
Dobson, John M. Two Centuries of Tariffs.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Print-
ing Office, 1976
Pletcher, David M. The Diplomacy of Trade
and Investment: American Economic
Expansion in the Hemisphere, 1865–1900.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1998.
Tate, Merze. Hawaii: Reciprocity or
Annexation. East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1968.

BIOGRAPHIES
Adee, Alvey (1842–1924)
New Yorker Alvey Adee served 8 years at
the American Legation in Spain and 47
more at the State Department in Wash-
ington, D.C. He stumbled into his
remarkably long diplomatic career rather
by accident. A generous inheritance
allowed him to live as a dilettante who
never earned a college degree. Even so,
he read widely, engaged in scientific stud-
ies, and ultimately published a definitive
edition of Shakespeare’s King Lear. As a
young man, he also traveled widely, an
experience that recommended him to
General Dan Sickles, a law client of one
of Adee’s uncles. When President
Ulysses Grant named his former com-
rade-in-arms to be minister to Spain in
1869, Sickles invited Adee to accompany
him as a private secretary. The young
man spoke Spanish fluently and proved
to be an extraordinarily competent
administrator, often serving as the lega-
tion’s chargé d’affaires. He gained
prominence for arranging to have
William Marcy Tweed returned to cus-
tody after the notorious New York City
political boss had escaped from prison
and fled the country. When Adee’s tour in
Spain ended, Secretary of State William
Maxwell Evarts offered him a suppos-
edly temporary post at the State Depart-
ment. Over the years, Adee won
promotion to third and then second assis-
tant secretary of state, the position he
held until a week before his death. Adee
deliberately avoided seeking further
advancement, to escape being subject to
the rotation of political appointees. His
accumulated experience, wide knowl-
edge, and writing skills proved invalu-
able to succeeding secretaries of state. In
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 191
addition to serving as a living archive of
past diplomatic actions, Adee drafted or
revised virtually all major policy state-
ments and documents emanating from
the State Department for nearly half a
century. For example, it was he who
drafted the famous Open Door Notes that
his longtime friend, John Hay, distributed
in 1899 and 1900. Adee also participated
in modernizing the department, introduc-
ing typewritten communication in the
1880s, a dramatic break from traditional
handwritten diplomatic notes. Adee
superintended the editing of the Foreign
Relations series, the official record of
U.S. diplomacy. A modest, self-effacing
man, Adee was content to make his
behind-the-scenes contributions to the
rise of the United States to world power
status, but everyone who worked with
him and relied on his judgment and com-
munication skills readily acknowledged
the centrality of his influence.
See also: Hay, John Milton; Open Door Policy
Reference
DeNovo, John A. “The Enigmatic Alvey A.
Adee and American Foreign Relations,
1870–1924,” Prologue 7 (Summer 1975):
69–80.
Blaine, James Gillespie
(1830–1893)
Like other unsuccessful 19th-century
presidential candidates, including Henry
Clay, William Seward, and John Calhoun,
James G. Blaine took consolation in
serving as secretary of state. Born and
educated in Pennsylvania, Blaine mar-
ried Harriet Stanwood in 1850. Some of
her extended family lived in the state of
Maine, so the young couple moved to
Augusta, a decision that established
Blaine’s political base of operations for
192 | Section 3
the rest of his life. An early Whig convert
to the Republican Party, he quickly rose
to prominence during the Civil War.
Elected to the U.S. House of Representa-
tives in 1863, Blaine became Speaker
six years later. When the Democratic
Party captured control of the House in
the 1875 elections, Blaine moved over to
the Senate. An astute politician and
enthralling orator, he managed to chart a
prudent course through the minefields of
war and Reconstruction, emerging as the
leader of the so-called Half-Breeds in
competition with the Republican Party’s
Stalwart faction. The Stalwarts repeat-
edly tried to get Ulysses Grant renomi-
nated after he completed his second term
in 1876. Blaine’s supporters were
equally committed to putting the man
from Maine in the White House.
Stymied by Stalwart intransigence, the
Half-Breeds turned to compromise can-
didates Rutherford B. Hayes and James
A. Garfield in 1876 and 1880. Grateful
for Blaine’s support, Garfield named him
secretary of state. Garfield’s death at the
hands of an assassin cut Blaine’s tenure
short after less than a year. After his own
unsuccessful run for the presidency in
1884, Blaine threw his support behind
General Benjamin Harrison in 1888.
Like Garfield before him, President
Harrison reinstalled Blaine in the State
Department. Anglophobia was a major
factor in Blaine’s policies in both peri-
ods. He worked hard to undermine Great
Britain’s commercial influence in Latin
America and replace it with a revived
U.S. merchant marine. He also promoted
Pan-Americanism, fully expecting the
United States to be the undisputed leader
of the Western Hemisphere. This ambi-
tion caused him to intervene ineffectively
in the War of the Pacific between Chile
and Peru, to oppose French efforts to
construct a canal through the isthmus of
Panama, and to invite delegates from all
Latin American nations to a conference
in Washington. After several years of
delay, the conference took place in 1889,
but it failed to fulfill Blaine’s larger ambi-
tions. He completed his term at the State
Department with an aggressive annexa-
tionist policy directed at Hawaii. Blaine
was able to pursue an active agenda as
secretary of state in part because rela-
tively few Americans paid much atten-
tion to international affairs while he was
in office.
See also: Panama; Pan-Americanism
Reference
Crapol, Edward P. James G. Blaine: Architect
of Empire. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
Resources, 2000.
Bryan, William Jennings
(1860–1925)
Like many other secretaries of state,
William Jennings Bryan earned that
position not as a recognition of any inter-
national expertise or experience, but
because he had been a presidential can-
didate. Born in Illinois, Bryan studied
law and eventually established his
practice in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1890,
he won the first of two terms in the U.S.
House of Representatives, the only gov-
ernment position he held prior to head-
ing the State Department. In 1896, Bryan
captured the Democratic Party presiden-
tial nomination on the basis of his artic-
ulate advocacy of the free coinage of
silver. He lost to Republican William
McKinley that year and again in 1900.
Although he remained the most promi-
nent Democrat, his party nominated
Alton B. Parker, who ran unsuccessfully
against Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. The

Democrats returned to Bryan in 1908,
only to see him lose for a third time to
William Howard Taft. Even so, Bryan
retained sufficient support within his
party to give him considerable influence
at the 1912 Democratic Convention. His
switch to endorsing New Jersey gover-
nor Woodrow Wilson triggered a sizable
swing in Wilson’s direction that ulti-
mately led to his nomination. As a
reward, President Wilson offered Bryan
his choice of cabinet posts, and the
Nebraska warhorse selected the State
Department, traditionally recognized as
the most important. Pacifism was a
major character trait that influenced
Bryan’s behavior as secretary of state. For
example, he negotiated some 30 bilateral
arbitration treaties with other countries.
They stipulated that if a dispute arose
between the signatories, they should give
an international commission up to a
full year to arbitrate its resolution. Only
if the arbitration failed could either side
consider resorting to military action. A
U.S. arbitration treaty with Germany had
yet to be ratified when World War I
broke out in 1914, but Bryan hoped that
its spirit would forestall U.S. entry into
the conflict. In Bryan’s view, the United
States was violating its own neutrality
policy in allowing U.S. ships and pas-
sengers to travel freely to Great Britain.
When 122 Americans aboard the British
liner Lusitania died in May 1915,
Bryan found himself to be the only
member of the Wilson administration
counseling an even-handed approach.
He chose to resign rather than be asso-
ciated with the second bitter protest
note that Wilson sent to Berlin. Bryan
nevertheless continued to support
Wilson in his 1916 reelection bid and
even volunteered for service, although
he never saw action, when the United
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 193
States finally entered the war in the
following spring.
See also: Neutrality (1914–1917); Unrestricted
Submarine Warfare
Reference
Leinwand, Gerald. William Jennings Bryan:
An Uncertain Trumpet. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Dewey, George (1837–1917)
George Dewey’s training, personality, and
competence all helped prepare him for his
moment of destiny in Manila Bay. The
son of a Vermont doctor, young George
was a childhood troublemaker who even-
tually enrolled in Norwich College, a mil-
itary institution. Unable to obtain a
position at West Point, Dewey settled for
the U.S. Naval Academy as a consolation.
After graduating in 1858, he took the
required two-year cruise prior to being
commissioned a lieutenant just a few days
before the Civil War began. He served
under Admiral David G. Farragut during
the Union Navy’s capture of New
Orleans, and Dewey always cited the
crusty, resourceful Farragut as his role
model. Dewey completed several other
war assignments and emerged from the
conflict with the rank of lieutenant com-
mander. For the next three decades, he
stubbornly remained in the peacetime
navy, even though he had to compete with
a huge surplus of naval officers for often
boring assignments. In the late 1880s,
however, Dewey landed administrative
posts that provided him with up-to-date
knowledge of the rapidly developing all-
steel, steam-powered navy. By 1897, his
record and experience had come to the
attention of assistant secretary of the navy
Theodore Roosevelt, who personally
arranged for Dewey to take command of
194 | Section 3
the Asiatic squadron. As war fever rose
early the next year, Roosevelt sent an
unauthorized message ordering Dewey to
keep his ships full of coal and ready for
offensive action against Spain. When war
was declared in late April, Dewey imple-
mented a preplanned attack on the Spanish
defenses at Manila Bay. Within a few
hours, his squadron completely destroyed
the enemy fleet without the death of a sin-
gle American. The situation remained
tense, however, as powerful foreign
navies assembled to threaten Dewey’s
authority in the bay. By August, enough
U.S. soldiers had arrived to capture the
city of Manila. The newly promoted
admiral remained in the Philippines for
another year before returning to one of the
most thunderous popular receptions that
any U.S. war hero has ever received. After
toying briefly with the idea of a run for
the presidency, Dewey returned to more
routine naval positions until his death, on
the eve of U.S. entry into World War I.
See also: Spanish-American-Cuban War
Reference
Spector, Ronald. Admiral of the New Empire:
the Life and Career of George Dewey.
Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1988.
Hay, John Milton
(1838–1905)
A literate, scholarly, and gentlemanly
Midwesterner, John Hay distinguished
himself as both a diplomat and a states-
man. He spent his early years in Illinois
and, after graduating from Brown Uni-
versity, returned to establish himself as a
lawyer in Springfield. His law office was
located next door to Abraham Lincoln’s.
Recognizing the young man’s intelli-
gence and amenable personality, Lincoln
invited Hay to accompany him as his pri-
vate secretary when he was elected pres-
ident. In the nation’s capital, Hay’s
responsibilities ranged from door keep-
ing to letter writing and all the way to a
position as Lincoln’s military aide in the
late stages of the Civil War. Hay and his
friend John Nicolay, another Springfield
lawyer who served under Lincoln, later
published an outstanding 10-volume
biography of the president. When Secre-
tary of State William Seward became
aware of Hay’s talents, he sent the young
man on diplomatic assignments to
France and Austria. Hay held other
diplomatic positions from time to time in
succeeding decades, even as he pursued
his interests in journalism and letters. He
published novels and poetry, as well as
insightful newspaper columns. An active
participant in Republican Party politics
and frequent international traveler, Hay
was an obvious choice for President
William McKinley to send to London as
the U.S. ambassador. His astute and
genteel behavior during the Spanish-
American-Cuban War did much to
improve Anglo-American relations.
When McKinley chose Secretary of
State William R. Day to lead the peace
negotiating team in Paris, he recalled
Hay from London to head the State
Department. There Hay announced and
defended the Open Door Policy regard-
ing China, negotiated successful treaties
with Great Britain and Panama to allow
the United States to dig the isthmian
canal, and smoothed relations with
Canada over the Alaskan boundary dis-
pute. In every instance, Hay was the soul
of tact and thoughtfulness, qualities that
made him a distinguished statesman for
his country. These same qualities earned
him respect and enhanced his ability to
work effectively with representatives of

other countries. Although Theodore
Roosevelt retained Hay as secretary of
state when he became president, the two
men had markedly different personali-
ties. The young president tended to be
decisive and forceful in both his opin-
ions and his interactions with others, and
he often took the lead in articulating and
implementing foreign policies on his
own. As a result, Hay played a less
prominent role in his final years as sec-
retary of state, although he did provide
an experienced and rational counterbal-
ance to the more assertive president.
Throughout his long career, Hay served
his nation well, both at home and abroad,
and ranks as one of the better secretaries
of state in the 19th century.
See also: Boxer Rebellion; Panama; Rap-
prochement
Reference
Clymer, Kenton J. John Hay: The Gentleman
as Diplomat. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1975.
Olney, Richard (1835–1917)
A Harvard-trained lawyer who practiced
corporate law in Massachusetts, Richard
Olney had only briefly dabbled in poli-
tics before Democratic president Grover
Cleveland appointed him to be attorney
general in 1893. Despite his political
inexperience, Olney quickly emerged as
the most dynamic member of Cleve-
land’s cabinet. He gained national
prominence when he ordered federal
troops to crush the so-called Pullman
Strike in 1895, but he ultimately
empathized with the plight of labor
leader Eugene Debs, who had called the
strike. When Secretary of State Walter Q.
Gresham died in 1895, Cleveland named
Olney to replace him. In that position,
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 195
Olney exhibited far more energy and
aggressiveness than his gentlemanly
predecessor had. His most pugnacious
move was issuing a strongly worded
defense of the Monroe Doctrine. The
Olney Corollary explicitly stated that the
United States considered itself preemi-
nent in the Western Hemisphere. Olney
also grappled with revolutions in Hawaii
and Cuba, where, in both instances, he
definitely sided with those opposed to
any attempt at U.S. colonization.
Although he retained strong Democratic
Party loyalty for the rest of his life, he
never again sought public office.
See also: Olney Corollary
Reference
James, Henry. Richard Olney and His Public
Service. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923.
Root, Elihu (1845–1937)
Born in upper New York State, Elihu Root
graduated from Hamilton College before
attending the New York University Law
School. He quickly established himself as
one of the nation’s leading lawyers, with
a largely corporate clientele. His profes-
sional activities naturally led him to asso-
ciate with New York Republicans, the
most important of whom was Theodore
Roosevelt. President William McKinley
wanted a creative lawyer to handle the
many military and legal issues following
the Spanish-American War, so he invited
Elihu Root to serve as his secretary of war
in 1899. It was Root who chose Leonard
Wood to head the occupation of Cuba and
who personally drafted the provisions of
the Platt Amendment that led to the end of
the U.S. occupation. Root also efficiently
deployed more than 70,000 troops to deal
with the Filipino insurrection and, in con-
sultation with William Howard Taft,
196 | Section 3
wrote the Organic Act of 1902, which
established the U.S. colonial regime for
the islands. After carrying out a major
modernization and reorganization of the
army, Root stepped down in 1903.
Two years later, President Roosevelt
asked him to rejoin his cabinet as secre-
tary of state to succeed John Hay. In that
office, he cultivated friendly relations
with leaders and governments in Latin
America and helped reduce the festering
antagonism between Japan and the
United States with the Root-Takahira
Convention in 1908. In 1912, Root
received the Nobel Peace Prize in recog-
nition of his enlightened diplomatic and
colonial policies. He resigned from the
cabinet in 1909 to become a senator from
New York. During his six years in the
Senate, he continued to influence foreign
policies. His commitment to President
Taft while presiding over the 1912
Republican National Convention perma-
nently alienated his old friend Roosevelt.
After his retirement in 1915, Root contin-
ued to serve as an influential Republican
spokesman and advisor.
See also: Platt Amendment
Reference
Jessup, Philip C. Elihu Root. New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1938.
Shufeldt, Robert Wilson
(1822–1895)
R. W. Shufeldt devoted his life to the sea.
He joined the U.S. Navy in 1839 and
served on a number of ships before resign-
ing his commission in 1853. For the next
several years, he commanded commercial
steamships on the Atlantic run. Appointed
consul-general in Cuba at the outbreak of
the Civil War, he secretly slipped into
Mexico as an observer during the French
invasion. He rejoined the navy in 1862 and
saw plenty of action through the end of the
war. Afterward, he remained on active
duty and even served a term as one of the
U.S. Navy’s eight bureau chiefs in
Washington. His real interest lay in emu-
lating Matthew Calbraith Perry, who had
opened Japan and expanded U.S. trade
and diplomatic interests in the Far East.
Shufeldt’s focus was on the secretive king-
dom of Korea, which had recently estab-
lished diplomatic ties with Japan. Shufeldt
headed for the Far East in 1880, stopping
off in China and Japan to assess the possi-
bilities. He concluded that Chinese offi-
cials would be more helpful than the
Japanese, who seemed intent on dominat-
ing Korea’s international relationships.
Shufeldt returned to China in 1882 as a
naval attaché who was authorized to
negotiate a treaty, which he concluded on
May 22. It was a comprehensive agree-
ment that established formal diplomatic
relations, including extraterritoriality, pro-
vided for the exchange of consular offi-
cials, and authorized commercial and
residence privileges for Americans trading
directly with Korea. Although Korea never
became an important U.S. trading partner,
Shufeldt had succeeded, at least temporar-
ily, in lessening Japan’s influence over the
Hermit Kingdom.
See also: Japan, Opening of; Harris, Townsend;
Perry, Matthew Calbraith
Reference
Lee, Yur-Bok. Diplomatic Relations between
the United States and Korea, 1866–1887.
New York: Humanities Press, 1970.
Stevens, John Leavitt
(1820–1895)
John L. Stevens began his career as a
Universalist clergyman, serving in

several churches in his native state of
Maine and nearby New Hampshire. A
committed abolitionist, he joined James
G. Blaine in purchasing a newspaper in
Kennebec to express antislavery views.
Stevens edited the paper until 1869. With
Senator Blaine’s patronage, Stevens then
began a long diplomatic career, serving
as U.S. minister in Paraguay, Uruguay,
Norway, and Sweden. In 1889, President
Benjamin Harrison appointed Blaine as
secretary of state. Blaine then sent
Stevens to the Kingdom of Hawaii as
U.S. minister, elevating his status to min-
ister plenipotentiary just in time for him
to participate in the Hawaiian Revolu-
tion. When the local U.S. planters
formed a Committee of Public Safety
and ousted the Hawaiian queen, Stevens
immediately extended U.S. recognition
to the new government. He also ordered
the U.S. Navy commander on the scene
to land sailors and marines to shore up
the new government.
When anti-imperialist Grover Cleve-
land won the presidency for a second
time in 1892, he quickly put a halt to
any moves toward colonization. Instead,
he commissioned James H. Blount to go
to Hawaii and make a full report on
what had occurred there. Not surpris-
ingly, Democrat Blount’s report was
highly critical of Republican policy in
general and of John Stevens’s actions in
particular. It charged the U.S. envoy
with acting in an unauthorized and pre-
cipitate manner during the revolutionary
turmoil, but Stevens maintained to his
death that he had acted appropriately.
See also: Hawaii
Reference
Tate, Merze. The United States and the Hawai-
ian Kingdom: A Political History. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965.
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 197
Teller, Henry Moore
(1830–1914)
Henry Moore Teller became an attorney
in his home state of New York before
moving first to Illinois and then to the
Colorado Territory. There he quickly
rose to the rank of major general of
militia during the Civil War. As with
many other high-ranking veterans,
Teller’s war record opened doors for
him in his pursuit of successful postwar
legal and business enterprises. His
prominence then won him a seat as a
Republican in the U.S. Senate when
Colorado became a state. He served
four terms, interrupted only briefly for a
stint as secretary of the interior during
President Chester Arthur’s administra-
tion. A dedicated proponent of the mon-
etization of silver, he eventually broke
with his party to become a silver
Democrat in 1896. Although he had
previously spoken in favor of overseas
expansion, he took a different stand
when President William McKinley
asked Congress for a war declaration in
1898.
Many Americans opposed imperial-
ism and worried that U.S. military
involvement in Cuba would inevitably
lead to U.S. annexation of the island. To
assuage such doubts and to encourage
reluctant fellow senators to vote in favor
of the war declaration, Senator Teller
proposed an amendment that was ulti-
mately approved. The Teller Amendment
stated unequivocally that the U.S. goal in
the war was an independent Cuba. Its
inclusion in the war declaration ulti-
mately disarmed those who favored
annexation of the island after the U.S.
victory in the Spanish-American-Cuban
War. It was no fluke or political expedi-
ent. Senator Teller consistently criticized
198 | Section 3

TELLER AMENDMENT

[One of four resolutions adopted unanimously by both houses of Congress, April 20,
1898]
Fourth. That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exer-
cise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island [Cuba] except for the pacifi-
cation thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the
government and control of the Island to its people.

Source: U.S. Statutes at Large 30, 1889: 739.

international adventurism, as he did, for late 1890s, he was on assignment in

example, in delivering a bitter indictment
of U.S. policy in the Philippine Islands in
1902. He devoted the closing years of his
Senate career to domestic issues that
were important to his Colorado con-
stituency, such as reclamation, Indian
affairs, and public land policy. But his
enduring contribution to U.S. foreign
policy remained his firm stand against the
tide of colonial enthusiasm that was
sweeping the United States in 1898.
See also: Spanish-American-Cuban War
Reference
Smith, Duane A. Henry M. Teller:
Colorado’s Grand Old Man. Boulder:
University Press of Colorado, 2002.
Wood, Leonard (1860–1927)
General Leonard Wood was intimately
involved with the U.S. rise to world
power at every step of the way. A
Massachusetts native, he worked his way
through Harvard Medical School and,
rather than entering private practice,
sought a commission in the Army Medical
Corps. His first assignment involved
chasing down and capturing the Apache
chief Geronimo, action that won him a
Congressional Medal of Honor. In the
Washington, where he found a kindred
spirit in assistant secretary of the navy
Theodore Roosevelt. These two jingoes
organized the First United States Volun-
teer Cavalry Regiment, the “Rough
Riders,” who fought with distinction in
Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
After the truce, Wood stayed on as head
of the occupation of the city of Santiago
and, ultimately, as the U.S. military
governor-general of Cuba. He intro-
duced comprehensive sanitation pro-
grams, worked effectively with Cuban
leaders, and was a key player in smooth-
ing the transition from U.S. to Cuban
control in 1902. Subsequently, he served
as commander of the Philippine division
of the army and as an ambassador to
Argentina. In 1910, he returned to the
United States to assume the position of
army chief of staff, where he did much to
prepare the poorly organized army for its
eventual participation in World War I.
His politics and his friendship with now
ex-president Roosevelt made him
unpopular with Democratic president
Woodrow Wilson’s administration,
which passed over him and chose John J.
Pershing to command the American
Expeditionary Force in Europe. Wood
had to content himself with making

credible though unsuccessful runs for the
Republican Party presidential nomina-
tions in 1916 and 1920. In his last
decade, he returned to the Far East as
governor-general in the Philippines.
Rise of a Great Power, 1880–1914 | 199
See also: Platt Amendment
Reference
Lane, Jack C. Armed Progressive: General
Leonard Wood. San Rafael, CA: Presidio
Press, 1978.
This page intentionally left blank
 SECTION 4
THE WORLD WARS, 1914–1945
When relations among the major
European nations broke down in the fall
of 1914, their confrontation quickly
became known as the Great War. It was
only after World War II broke out in the
late 1930s that the earlier conflict
became known as World War I. That des-
ignation was appropriate, because sev-
eral of the warring nations possessed
extensive overseas colonies. The fighting
quickly spread to Asia and Africa, but for
some time the Americas appeared to be
immune.
A key reason was that the United States,
the most powerful nation in the Western
Hemisphere, immediately announced a
policy of neutrality. That assertion did not
prevent economic ties from drawing
Americans into a major supporting role for
Great Britain and France. Emotional and
historical factors strengthened the transat-
lantic bond, but Germany’s announcement
of unrestricted submarine warfare early
in 1917 proved to be the tipping point. In
April, President Woodrow Wilson
obtained a war declaration from the U.S.
Congress and began planning the dispatch
of an American Expeditionary Force to
201
aid the embattled Allies in Europe. To clar-
ify the U.S. position in January 1918,
Wilson announced the Fourteen Points, a
blueprint for a postwar settlement that he
hoped would ensure an end to all wars.
After the defeat of Germany and Austria,
Wilson’s formula served as the starting
point for negotiations. Many alterations
and compromises were made in the course
of drafting the final peace treaty at
Versailles, but it did include a Covenant for
a League of Nations. Wilson optimisti-
cally believed that this international col-
lective security organization would
preserve world peace.
Among the many issues that the
Versailles Conference failed to resolve
was the status of the Soviet Union. Two
revolutions had swept the Russian
Empire in 1917, and the second installed
a dedicated communist regime that most
Americans considered antithetical. In the
closing months of the war, President
Wilson authorized the deployment of
U.S. military units into the strife-torn
region, with the Siberian Expedition
being the most substantial. These forays
did nothing to improve U.S.–Soviet
202 | Section 4
relations. Instead, Wilson and his Repub-
lican successors unapologetically pursed
a non-recognition policy. Meanwhile,
U.S. distaste for what had happened in
Russia triggered a full-blown Red Scare
in 1919 and 1920.
Fortunately, popular anxiety about
communism waned, allowing U.S.
statesmen to pursue other initiatives.
One was international disarmament, a
principle that Wilson had included in his
Fourteen Points. Secretary of State
Charles Evans Hughes pulled off a major
diplomatic coup at the Washington
Naval Conference by limiting the con-
struction of new, large warships. Even
so, a strong spirit of isolationism pre-
vailed, preventing U.S. participation in
the League of Nations and frustrating
those who hoped for international lead-
ership. The United States managed to
avoid making a unilateral commitment
to France by insisting that other nations
be invited to sign the Kellogg-Briand
Pact, which supposedly outlawed war.
Although Secretary of State Frank
Kellogg won the Nobel Peace Prize for
this initiative, his successor, Henry
Stimson, found it of little use. The pact
failed to discourage Japan from making
demands on China in the early 1930s.
Unable to prevent the extension of
Japanese power, the exasperated U.S.
statesman chose formally to ignore any
Japanese claims. This non-recognition
policy became known as the Stimson
Doctrine. The same principle was
applied to other international develop-
ments in subsequent years because it
accorded with U.S. isolationism. The
only bright note in the 1930s was an
improvement in Western Hemisphere
relations after President Franklin
Roosevelt implemented what he called
the Good Neighbor Policy.
At the same time, conditions were
deteriorating in Europe. The rise of
expansionist fascism disheartened inter-
nationalists and encouraged the U.S.
Congress to pass several neutrality acts
designed to prevent U.S. participation in
another European conflict. As conditions
worsened both there and in East Asia,
President Roosevelt tried to prepare his
country for the inevitable. One example
was a speech calling for an international
quarantine of nations whose values dif-
fered markedly from those of the United
States to prevent them from spreading
their influence or even invading other
countries. When World War II engulfed
Europe in 1939, the beleaguered Allies
once again turned to the United States
for material support. To evade neutrality
law restrictions, Roosevelt devised the
Lend-Lease program. As it strengthened
the flow of U.S. support to Europe, the
president decided to announce his
nation’s objectives. He did so in August
1941 in the Atlantic Charter, a joint
declaration with British prime minister
Winston Churchill.
The unanticipated Japanese attack on
the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor
definitively canceled the appeal of isola-
tionism. Within a matter of days, the
United States had become a member of
what Winston Churchill called the
Grand Alliance, linking U.S. efforts
with those of Great Britain and the
Soviet Union. From the very beginning,
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin urged his
counterparts to establish a second front
in Western Europe to relieve the pres-
sures on his forces on the eastern front.
One reason for the delay in fulfilling that
request was the simultaneous U.S. desire
to halt Japan’s expansion. The United
States found an effective way to do so by
island hopping, a strategy that allowed

U.S. forces to bring the war home to
Japan far more quickly than otherwise
might have been the case.
As victory became more likely, Pres-
ident Roosevelt appears to have believed
that superpower collaboration could
continue after the war and provide a
mechanism for ensuring world peace.
He embodied these sentiments in his
Four Policemen proposal. His concept
of allocating significant authority to the
major powers fighting against Germany
was incorporated into the United
Nations organization in the form of its
Security Council. Unfortunately, as
early as the Yalta conference in
February 1945, the ideological cracks in
the Grand Alliance were all too evident.
These fissures became gaping chasms
when the United States unilaterally used
atomic diplomacy against Japan to end
the war. U.S. atomic capabilities played
a major role in transforming the victori-
ous Allies into bitter enemies in a Cold
War that was to persist for almost half a
century.
KEY CONCEPTS
American Expeditionary Force
The United States was poorly prepared to
enter the Great War in 1917. By the fall
of 1918, however, more than 2 million
Americans were engaged in combat
operations in Europe. Most were mem-
bers of the American Expeditionary
Force (AEF) under General John J.
Pershing’s command. Although the AEF
made its major contributions to the
fighting only in the last few months of
the four-year war, it was crucial in
convincing Germany to surrender under
the terms of the Fourteen Points that
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 203
President Woodrow Wilson had
announced in January 1918.
Wilson had initially anticipated that
U.S. participation in the war would be
limited to financial, naval, and material
support. He hoped to avoid sending
ground troops into the grueling trench
warfare that had devastated men and
morale on both sides since 1914. Even
before U.S. entry into the war, the presi-
dent had urged all participants to accept
“peace without victory,” and he contin-
ued to believe that completely defeating
Germany would not be in the best inter-
ests of either the United States or the bal-
ance of power in Europe.
Another reason that Wilson wanted to
abstain from direct combat was the sorry
state of the U.S. Army in 1917. It ranked
seventeenth largest in the world and, for
decades, had mainly been confined to gar-
rison duty in the West or messy guerilla
campaigns in Cuba and the Philippines.
Neither constituted ideal training for
modern, mechanized war. The only man
with recent major command experience
was General Pershing, who had led the
controversial Punitive Expedition in
northern Mexico. Wilson skipped over
several senior-ranking generals to choose
Pershing to head the AEF in Europe.
In a broader sense, the United States
was better prepared. Congress had
begun approving major army and navy
appropriations bills in 1916, in anticipa-
tion of future contingencies. It also
authorized military conscription, in
which young men were drafted to serve
in the army. Although many others con-
tinued to enlist voluntarily, once the
United States entered the war, half of the
soldiers on active duty were draftees.
Most of these ended up serving tours
ranging from one to two years. Hastily
arranged training programs had to deal
204 | Section 4
with a massive influx of manpower.
After several false starts, the War Indus-
tries Board, under financier Bernard
Baruch’s astute leadership, did a good
job of controlling, managing, and stimu-
lating industrial production for both
U.S. and European needs.
As soon as Pershing arrived in France
with the first small contingent of troops,
he became engaged in a diplomatic as
well as a strategic conflict. France and
Great Britain desperately wanted to send
individual U.S. soldiers to fill vacancies
in their existing units who were already
in the trenches. Pershing insisted on
maintaining an independent U.S. force.
President Wilson reinforced his general’s
position by pointing out that the United
States had signed no formal agreements
with those already engaged in combat.
Instead, he asserted that his country
was only an “associated power.” That
position preserved the long-standing
U.S. tradition of avoiding all military
alliances.
Battle lines on the Western Front had
changed little in four years. In 1916,
German general Erich Ludendorff had
sacrificed hundreds of thousands of
troops in a futile attempt to capture the
fortified French city of Verdun. Great
Britain and France suffered similar
staggering losses later that year in an
unsuccessful attempt to capture territory
along the Somme River. In the summer
of 1917, British general Alexander Haig
initiated another disastrous offensive
near Ypres in Belgium. He had hoped
to defeat Germany quickly and thereby
evade U.S. diplomatic and political
pressures.
Equally interested in ending the war
before the United States became fully
engaged, German general Ludendorff
mounted a series of drives along the
eastern end of the trench lines in the
spring of 1918. He drew reinforcements
from units that had been transferred
from the Eastern Front, where a German-
Soviet peace agreement had just been
signed. His armies suffered more than
800,000 casualties but netted only minor
territorial gains. The first major U.S.
action occurred during Ludendorff’s
third offensive, on May 28, 1918, when
U.S. troops captured the village of
Cantigny. This success encouraged the
Entente powers and profoundly dis-
heartened the Germans, who had never
anticipated that the United States would
be capable of any significant action in
1918. A second morale-building victory
occurred a couple of days later, when
U.S. troops participated prominently in
the capture of Chateau-Thierry and in a
drive through the Bellau Wood. By mid-
July, tens of thousands of fresh, reason-
ably well-equipped U.S. soldiers were
arriving in France, about half of them
having been transported on British ves-
sels. Because French marshal Ferdinand
Foch had recently distinguished himself,
the British and Americans accepted his
appointment as supreme commander.
Pershing continued to develop his inde-
pendent force, however, consolidating
twelve divisions into the U.S. First
Army. The U.S. general received Foch’s
permission in mid-September to send it
to capture the St. Mihiel Salient, which
Germany had held since 1914. That
campaign succeeded in part because
German forces were already withdraw-
ing from the area.
Although Pershing believed that his
units could have made further progress
in that area, Foch developed an
alternative strategy that involved U.S.,
British, and French collaboration. This
massive initiative became known as the

Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Begun on
September 26, it eventually included
more than 1.2 million U.S. troops.
Although Pershing had confidently
expected to push ahead 10 miles on the
first day, his troops had moved just 34
miles closer to the German border after
six weeks of intense combat.
Despite this disappointing progress
on the ground, German resistance was
collapsing. Whole army units defected
behind the lines, and the German Navy
suffered a fleetwide mutiny. On October 4,
six weeks into the offensive, German
officials contacted Wilson’s govern-
ment, hoping to arrange an armistice
based on the Fourteen Points. A key fac-
tor was the president’s stated willing-
ness to allow Germany to survive as a
nation rather than face possible dismem-
berment. Great Britain and France were
reluctant to accept this formula, but the
United States had sufficient diplomatic
clout to make it work. The German
kaiser abdicated on November 9, suc-
ceeded by a government that styled
itself as republican. That political
change helped convince Wilson that the
U.S. democratic mission had been ful-
filled. The guns fell silent at 11 a.m. on
November 11, 1918.
The armistice rendered Pershing’s
detailed plans for a 1919 offensive moot.
U.S. military force may have been late in
arriving, but no one doubted that it was
poised to continue expanding rapidly.
The AEF’s battlefield successes certainly
played a major role in convincing
Germany to stand down. Equally impor-
tant was the prospect of additional
healthy, well-trained, and equipped U.S.
dough boys who were set to embark for
Europe in 1919. To that extent, U.S.
participation was crucial in bringing the
Great War to a close.
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 205
See also: Fourteen Points; Pershing, John J.
References
Coffman, Edward M. The War to End All
Wars. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1968.
James, D. Clayton, and Anne Sharp Welles.
America and the Great War, 1914–1920.
Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1998.
Stallings, Laurence. The Dough Boys. New
York: Harper & Row, 1963.
Trask, David F. The AEF and Coalition War-
making, 1917–1918. Lawrence: Univer-
sity Press of Kansas, 1993.
Atlantic Charter
By the summer of 1941, President
Franklin Roosevelt had become resigned
to the prospect that his country would
probably enter the war to defeat Nazi
Germany. But isolationism still exerted a
strong influence in the United States, so
the president had to proceed cautiously.
An important step in preparing the pub-
lic was to outline the principles on which
he intended to take action. The Atlantic
Charter did just that.
World War II began in 1939 and, for
two years, the United States remained on
the sidelines. That did not prevent
Americans, and the Roosevelt adminis-
tration in particular, from admiring and
empathizing with the efforts that Great
Britain and France exerted against
Germany. In addition to providing emo-
tional and psychological support, the
United States implemented concrete
steps, such as the destroyers-for-bases
arrangement and the Lend-Lease pro-
gram, and coordinated navy operations
to protect Atlantic commerce.
These and related efforts drew
Roosevelt and British prime minister
Winston Churchill into frequent contacts,
through intermediaries or by overseas
206 | Section 4
electronic communication. As the crisis
in Europe expanded, the president
decided he needed face-to-face talks
with his British counterpart. His desire
became even more pressing after Ger-
many invaded the Soviet Union in June
1941.
The two leaders met for the first time
in August on a Royal Navy vessel in
Placentia Bay off the coast of New-
foundland. Most of the discussions at
the so-called Atlantic Conference were
strategic ones involving issues such as
Lend-Lease, the German submarine
threat, and the advisability of joint
action against Japanese imperialism in
the Far East. The public learned few
details about these secret discussions,
but the two statesmen issued a press
release outlining mutual policy and
principle goals. It became known as the
Atlantic Charter.
President Franklin Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill met on board the HMS
Prince of Wales to negotiate and then sign the Atlantic Charter on August 14, 1941. (Corel)
The charter enabled Roosevelt to pro-
claim U.S. objectives prior to any direct
involvement in the war. Many of its
statements echoed the Fourteen Points
that President Woodrow Wilson had
issued almost a year after U.S. entry into
World War I. In that respect, the Atlantic
Charter was a wise move. It articulated
U.S. attitudes, which put other nations
on notice, as well as reassuring people in
both the United States and Great Britain
of what they could expect from U.S.
diplomatic and military initiatives.
None of the eight points in the
Atlantic Charter were a surprise; they all
accorded with long-standing U.S. tradi-
tions and foreign policy positions. For
example, they championed democracy
and democratic governments as the ideal
way to resolve domestic and international
controversies. On a more objective plane,
the charter called for freer trade, global
 The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 207

THE ATLANTIC CHARTER: AUGUST 14, 1941

The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill,
representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together,
deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their
respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.
First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;
Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely
expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;
Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under
which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored
to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;
Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further
the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal
terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their
economic prosperity;
Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the
economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic
advancement and social security;
Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a
peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own
boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all lands may live out
their lives in freedom from fear and want;
Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans
without hindrance;
Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spir-
itual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace
can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations
which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe,
pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that
the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all
other practicable measure which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing bur-
den of armaments.

Source: Bevans, Charles I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States
of America, 1776–1949. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, 3:686–687.

economic advancement, improved labor Events were moving so swiftly at that

standards, and other concepts that were
reminiscent of Roosevelt’s domestic New
Deal programs. Other points had direct
links to Woodrow Wilson’s policies:
freedom of the seas, international disar-
mament, and an effective collective
security system.
point that the Atlantic Charter received
only passing attention. Some isolationists
bitterly criticized the whole concept, even
as liberals took comfort in the fact that
their nation was taking a principled stand.
Perceptive people on all sides recognized
that the Atlantic Charter was essentially a
208 | Section 4
statement of purpose, designed to justify
U.S. military action against German and
Japanese aggression.
Japanese prime minister Fumimaro
Konoye took particular notice. A com-
parative moderate in an increasingly mil-
itaristic nation, Konoye proposed that he
and President Roosevelt hold their own
face-to-face meeting. He may have
hoped that a Pacific Conference would
produce a Pacific Charter, perhaps based
on previous Japanese-American under-
standings, such as the 1908 Root-
Takahira and the 1917 Lansing-Ishii
agreements. These had assured each
nation of a free hand in its Far Eastern
spheres of interest and colonies. Had
such an agreement been reached in the
fall of 1941, it might have prevented the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in
December. Nothing came of the sugges-
tion. The United States summarily
rejected the idea of a Pacific Conference,
and General Hideki Tojo, a confirmed
militarist, soon replaced Konoye in
Tokyo.
Although never as prominent as the
Fourteen Points, the Atlantic Charter
played a role in subsequent develop-
ments. It provided impetus toward the
formation of the United Nations as a suc-
cessor institution to the League of
Nations. The charter’s advocacy of
democracy was mentioned specifically in
the Declaration on Liberated Europe that
the United States, Great Britain, and the
Soviet Union approved at the Yalta Con-
ference in February 1945.
In the long run, however, it became
just one of a number of viewpoints and
proposals that appeared during and after
World War II. They often overshadowed
the Atlantic Charter’s gentlemanly, aca-
demic principles. As with so many other
idealistic statements, the realities of
postwar reconstruction, both political
and economic, and the development of
the Cold War, consigned the Atlantic
Charter to a relatively minor place in
world history.
See also: Fourteen Points; Lend-Lease
References
Lash, Joseph P. Roosevelt and Churchill,
1939–1941. New York: Norton, 1976.
Wilson, Theodore. The First Summit: Roo-
sevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay,
1941. Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1991.
Atomic Diplomacy
Use of the atomic bomb in the closing
days of World War II was controversial
at the time and has become even more so
in succeeding years. President Harry S
Truman made the decision, relying on
advice from many others, including
some of the leading scientists who were
involved in developing the superweapon.
No one at the time fully understood
either the enormous collateral effects of
an atomic explosion or how central
atomic weapons would be to the diplo-
macy of the postwar era.
Thousands of experimental weapons
proposals had surfaced before and dur-
ing World War II. Some of them, like
radar and advanced aircraft design,
were put to immediate use. Others
either failed to work as anticipated or
lost out to alternatives. Still others were
as fanciful as strapping tiny incendiary
bombs on the feet of bats and releasing
them over Japanese cities in the hope
that they would roost under eaves and
set ablaze the predominantly paper and
wooden buildings. Deriving immense
explosive power from the manipulation
of invisible atoms initially seemed even

less credible than the incendiary bat
project.
The U.S. program began in 1939,
when a group of prominent physicists
encouraged Albert Einstein to write a let-
ter urging President Roosevelt to fund
basic research that was aimed at harness-
ing atomic energy. A key inducement
was knowledge that German scientists
were already working toward that same
objective. But Germany subsequently
diverted substantial resources to rocketry
and jet-propelled aircraft, allowing the
United States to emerge with the most
advanced atomic energy initiative.
Major funding for the program, called
the Manhattan Project, began in 1941.
Congress eventually appropriated more
than $2 billion for secret development
efforts, which employed as many as half
a million people at one time or another.
Plutonium and uranium were purified at
other locations while J. Robert Oppen-
heimer supervised bomb assembly work
at Los Alamos in the remote mountains
of New Mexico. Delays and disappoint-
ments were inevitable in such a path-
breaking research and development
effort. Strategists had initially hoped to
deploy the weapon in France to clear the
way for the D-Day invasion, but not until
July 16, 1945, did the first of three com-
pleted bombs explode in a blinding flash
at a White Sands test site.
Although President Franklin Roosevelt
was well aware of the development pro-
gram, knowledge of it was so closely
guarded that even Vice President Harry
Truman was kept out of the loop. After
Roosevelt died in mid-April, Secretary
of War Henry Stimson informed the
newly sworn-in president of the secret
project. As long as it remained untested,
however, other diplomatic and military
strategies had to be pursued.
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 209
The war in Europe ended just a few
weeks later, but fighting in the Pacific
Theater of Operations remained intense.
In recent months, U.S. forces had encoun-
tered increasingly stubborn resistance as
they got closer to Japan’s home islands.
Japanese propaganda warned that
Americans would inflict unspeakable
torture on anyone who fell into their
hands. In Iwo Jima and Okinawa, U.S.
forces took relatively few prisoners
because Japanese soldiers continued
fighting long after their defeat was
inevitable or chose to commit suicide
rather than surrender. These experiences
convinced U.S. leaders that a long,
drawn-out war of attrition would be nec-
essary to conquer the home islands of
Japan proper. Although capturing isolated
islands on the perimeter of the Japanese
Empire had been discouragingly costly,
U.S. military planners believed that both
Japanese armed forces and civilians
would put up even stronger resistance if
U.S. troops invaded their own cities and
countryside. Rational estimates suggested
that such a campaign would last at least
18 months, cause 1 million U.S. casual-
ties, and wreak untold damage and death
on the Japanese.
Such discouraging estimates inevitably
influenced the president and his advi-
sors. For some time, Americans had been
urging the Soviet Union to enter the war
in the Pacific. At the Yalta Conference,
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin assured Pres-
ident Roosevelt that he would do just
that within three months of a victory in
Europe. Soviet intervention remained a
key element in U.S. planning as late as
July, with General Douglas MacArthur
insisting that the participation of at least
60 Soviet divisions was essential.
In mid-July 1945, President Truman
met with Stalin and the British prime
210 | Section 4
minister at Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin.
When the talks opened, the United States
was still counting on Soviet assistance
against Japan. Shortly afterward, Truman
learned of the successful atomic test in
New Mexico. He immediately reconsid-
ered the U.S. position. He told Stalin that
the United States had developed a super-
weapon but provided few details about
it. Stalin reportedly took the news in
stride and wished the Americans success
in deploying it.
Truman received conflicting advice
about how to do that. Some, particularly
in the scientific community, advocated
inviting international press representa-
tives to a demonstration in a remote loca-
tion. Others wanted to keep the weapon a
secret for possible future conflicts. Truman
selected a middle course. Convinced that
its use in an all-out war was justified, the
president sent an ultimatum to the
Japanese government on July 26, warning
of “prompt and utter destruction” if it did
not surrender immediately. Having
received no definitive response, Truman
authorized the dropping of an atomic
bomb over the industrial city of
Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Much of
the central core of the city was completely
leveled and as many as 70,000 people
died immediately. By the end of the year,
the casualty figure had doubled as a result
of deaths from injuries sustained or from
sickness that developed as the result of
exposure to the bomb’s radiation.
The shocked Japanese government
quickly contacted Stalin, hoping that he
would help them work out a deal with
the Americans. Instead, the Soviet leader
announced that his country was entering
the war in Asia. The date was August 8,
exactly three months after Victory in
Europe (VE-) Day. Some believe that
Stalin’s decision convinced Truman to
order the dropping of a second atomic
bomb on another industrial city,
Nagasaki, on the following day. It was
somewhat less destructive, killing some
40,000 people outright. No one knew
that the United States had no more
bombs in its arsenal at that point, but the
Japanese government could not risk
another devastating attack. It immedi-
ately opened direct negotiations with the
U.S. government and signed an armistice
on Victory in Japan (VJ-) Day, August 14,
1945. General MacArthur superintended
the signing of formal surrender docu-
ments on September 2 on board a battle-
ship, the USS Missouri, which was
anchored in Tokyo Bay.
Any hope that Truman might have had
that his actions would stymie Soviet
ambitions in the Far East were disap-
pointed. In just a few days, Soviet troops
occupied substantial parts of Manchuria
and the northern half of Korea. The latter
set the stage for the Korean War
five years later. The Soviets continued to
implement their expansionist plans in
Europe as well, apparently unconcerned
about the demonstrated U.S. atomic
capability.
Revisionist historians have advanced
a number of interpretations of Truman’s
policy. The most cogent is that of Gar
Alperowitz, who argues that the United
States deliberately kept Japan in the war
long enough to have a target for demon-
strating its atomic weapons. In this for-
mulation, the real purpose of the U.S.
bombings was to frighten the Soviets
into contrition. It did not do so,
Alperowitz concedes, but, in his view,
this cynical use of atomic diplomacy
makes the United States responsible for
starting the Cold War.
Other analysts are more willing to
accept that Truman believed the bombs

were an effective way to end fighting that
might otherwise continue for more than a
year. The weapons were used at the end
of a long, increasingly brutal conflict. A
conventional bombing raid on Tokyo in
March had killed more than 100,000
Japanese citizens, more than died imme-
diately at Hiroshima. In the context of the
war and the times, the atomic bomb
could be viewed as escalating the level of
destruction one more notch.
In retrospect, however, the develop-
ment of atomic bombs and their nuclear
successors is viewed as both dangerous
and unfortunate. Many Manhattan Project
scientists expressed remorse for their
parts in promoting the escalation of inter-
national confrontations. Perhaps in the
end, however, the universal revulsion gen-
erated by the U.S. bombings has had one
positive effect: no other atomic or nuclear
weapon has been used since 1945.
See also: Island Hopping; Yalta
References
Allen, Thomas B., and Norman Polmar.
Code-Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to
Invade Japan and Why Truman Dropped
the Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1995.
Alperowitz, Gar. Atomic Diplomacy:
Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Use of the
Atomic Bomb and the American Con-
frontation with Soviet Power. 2nd ed.
Boulder, CO: Pluto Press, 1994.
Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic
Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1986.
Disarmament
One of President Woodrow Wilson’s
Fourteen Points called for worldwide
disarmament. The topic was discussed at
the Versailles Peace Conference, but the
resulting treaty did little to advance the
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 211
idea. Two years later, however, the United
States hosted an international conference
in Washington to set down specific limits
on naval warships. Although the
Washington Naval Conference only
halted new construction, it proved to be
the closest that international statesman
would come to implementing Wilson’s
plea for disarmament.
Ships were far easier to catalog than
the tanks, artillery, and rifles common
in land warfare. Elements of fleets,
ranging from huge battleships to tiny
dispatch boats, could rather easily be
assessed and compared to one another.
In one instance, virtually total disarma-
ment did occur. The victors in World
War I insisted that Germany’s war fleet
be sunk at Scapa Flow off the Orkney
Islands. What had been the second
largest navy in the world ceased to
exist.
The greatest naval power, Great
Britain, had emerged on the winning side
in the war but faced very straitened cir-
cumstances afterward. Its war-depleted
economy generated inadequate funds to
enable Great Britain to maintain its tra-
ditional naval superiority. Consequently,
the British urged the United States to
take steps to prevent or hinder other
nations from mounting ambitious naval-
building programs.
Japan appeared most likely to do so. It
had not participated in the war, its econ-
omy was booming, and it had major
international ambitions. While much of
the rest of the world was absorbed in the
Great War, Japan had made aggressive
demands on China. The United States
managed to limit the impact of these
demands somewhat, particularly with
the signing of the Lansing-Ishii Agree-
ment in 1917. But Japan’s ambitions
threatened to overwhelm its pledges,
212 | Section 4

particularly if it substantially increased that definitely implied a lower interna-

the size of its navy.
The United States had its own reasons
for responding to Great Britain’s
entreaties and Japan’s aggressiveness.
The U.S. Navy had emerged from the
war nearly as large as Great Britain’s. If
the building plans announced for the
1920s were implemented, the U.S. fleet
would quickly have become the largest
in the world. Domestic political con-
straints made that outcome less certain.
Americans generally favored isolating
themselves from international problems
after the war. That pressured the federal
government to reduce rather than expand
its military and naval commitments.
President Warren G. Harding coined
the word “normalcy” to describe what he
thought Americans desired in 1920, and
tional profile. To manage the U.S. retreat
from global responsibilities, Harding
appointed Charles Evans Hughes to
be his secretary of state. A former attor-
ney, judge, and presidential candidate,
Hughes was an ideal choice. Having
astutely assessed British desires and
Japanese ambitions, he invited represen-
tatives of several nations to convene in
Washington to discuss naval matters and
related issues. It was no coincidence that
the conference opened on November 11,
1921, three years to the day after the
armistice that had ended World War I.
In a virtually unprecedented and, for
that matter, almost never duplicated diplo-
matic move, Hughes devoted his welcom-
ing address to the delegates to a detailed
U.S. plan for limiting shipbuilding.

President Warren G. Harding posing with members of the Women's Committee for World Disarmament
in 1921. He subsequently asked Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes to host the Washington
Conference of 1921–1922 to limit the international naval arms race. (Library of Congress)

Everyone else had come expecting to
engage in back and forth negotiations
before reaching a conclusion. Remark-
ably, the treaty, signed on February 6,
1922, contained a limitation framework
that was identical to the one that Hughes
had announced at the outset of the talks.
The Hughes plan set a quota on the
number of battleships that each nation
could possess. The five nations
included in the scheme were the United
States, Great Britain, Japan, France,
and Italy. Hughes’s ratio for these
nations was 5 : 5 : 3 : 1.6 : 1.6. The rela-
tionship began with the assumption that
the United States and Great Britain
intended to maintain 15 35,000-ton bat-
tleships in their active fleets. Japan was
restricted to only nine such ships, repre-
senting three-fifths of the allocation for
the other nations. Hughes’s ratio
permitted Italy and France just five bat-
tleships each. The same ratio applied to
aircraft carriers.
The Hughes plan relieved Great
Britain of the need to build more ships
and allowed the isolationist United States
to abandon its plans for additions to the
fleet. Japan objected to the proposed lim-
itations, but Hughes used a convincing
argument to encourage its acquiescence.
He pointed out that both the United
States and Great Britain had to maintain
two-ocean navies, whereas Japan’s naval
forces were concentrated only in the
Pacific. Its nine battleships assured its
naval superiority in the vicinity of
Japan’s major international interests.
In addition to the naval limitations
treaty, the Washington Conference
produced two other major agreements.
One treaty formalized international sup-
port for the U.S. Open Door Policy in
China, and it won approval from nine
nations in all. The other treaty involved
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 213
four nations, the United States, Japan,
Great Britain, and France. It pledged the
signatories to respect one another’s
established interests in the Far East. Both
of these agreements were popular in the
United States because they seemed to
ease tensions among the great powers
and to preserve China’s position without
specifying any enforcement commit-
ments. Unfortunately, that deficiency ren-
dered the treaties completely impotent
when Japan initiated a series of power
plays directed against China in the 1930s.
The naval limitations of the Washington
Conferences were popular as well, at least
for a time. In 1927 delegates attended
another naval conference, this one in
Geneva, that was charged with developing
limitations on cruisers and other smaller
vessels. These talks ended acrimoniously.
The British government remained fiscally
strained, however, so it hosted a third con-
ference in London in 1930. It ended with
an agreement among the United States,
Great Britain, and Japan to abide by a ratio
of 10 : 10 : 6 for cruisers.
That commitment proved short-lived.
Soon afterward, Japan began building
new ships of all sizes. Many Americans
who had earlier praised the Hughes pro-
gram now complained bitterly that the
United States had missed its opportunity
to get ahead. Perhaps a more rational
view is that the disarmament initiative
had, at least, stifled a decade’s worth of
naval construction that would otherwise
have occurred. No one in the 1920s
anticipated the remarkable developments
that were to lead the world inexorably
into another world war.
See also: Fourteen Points; Open Door Policy
References
Buckley, Thomas H. The United States and
the Washington Conference, 1921–1922.
214 | Section 4
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
1970.
Fanning, Richard W. Peace and Disarma-
ment: Naval Rivalry and Arms Control,
1922–1933. Lexington: University Press
of Kentucky, 1995.
Goldman, Emily O. Sunken Treaties: Naval
Arms Control between the Wars. Univer-
sity Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1994.
Four Policemen
President Franklin Roosevelt devel-
oped his concept of the Four Police-
men during World War II. He
optimistically believed that the great
powers united in fighting against fas-
cism would continue to cooperate
afterward. He hoped that cooperation
would, in turn, enable these powers to
ensure international stability in the
postwar world.
Although British prime minister
Winston Churchill characterized his
nation’s collaboration with the United
States and the Soviet Union as “the
Grand Alliance,” no actual agreements
or treaties linked these nations together.
The United States had a traditional aver-
sion to alliances of all sorts, and it had
just emerged from an intensely isolation-
ist phase in the 1920s and 1930s. Well
aware of these circumstances, President
Franklin Roosevelt realized that any
postwar arrangements would have to be
carefully conceived.
His secretary of state, Cordell Hull,
was an old Wilsonian who believed
strongly in the concept of collective secu-
rity. He devoted much of his wartime
efforts to establishing the United Nations
as a successor to the League of Nations,
which the United States had never joined.
For some time, Roosevelt remained
unconvinced that such a large, diverse
body could provide the United States
with effective security.
Instead, he was impressed by the
success of the cooperation between
the United States and the other two
Allies, Great Britain and the Soviet
Union. He had also become convinced
that China must be revived as an inde-
pendent great power once Japan had
been defeated. Roosevelt saw this
quartet as constituting the Four
Policemen, who would patrol the
world and impose order. Although the
details were never fully clarified, his
fundamental idea was that representa-
tives of the four great powers would
meet on a regular basis and cooperate
in solving or resolving international
squabbles and preventing aggression
among nations.
Few U.S. officials were as opti-
mistic as Roosevelt about the benevo-
lence of the Soviet Union, and fewer
still were convinced that China could
become an effective, independent col-
laborator in this venture. Moreover, the
liberation of France in the summer of
1944 saw the emergence of Charles De
Gaulle as an articulate and effective
leader for what had been the second
largest imperial power in the world.
That suggested that his nation, too,
should have a prominent place in the
postwar equation.
All of these considerations began to
merge as Cordell Hull diligently moved
forward with his plans for the United
Nations. It would include a general
assembly, with representatives of all the
member nations. And, like the League
of Nations Council, it would also con-
tain a smaller grouping of representa-
tives from leading countries. Hull
convinced Roosevelt that his Four Police-
men should be permanent members of

the UN Security Council, and that
France should be granted a fifth perma-
nent seat. The General Assembly would
then select, on a rotating basis, six addi-
tional members to fill spaces on the
council.
To reinforce the authority of the five
permanent members, the United States
insisted that each hold the power to veto
any Security Council resolution that
they disliked. Interestingly, it was the
Soviet Union that most objected to the
veto power, but President Roosevelt felt
that it was essential. He was well aware
that the U.S. Senate had refused to rat-
ify the Versailles Treaty in 1919
because it appeared to give the League
of Nations authority to order U.S.
forces into action. Veto power at the
United Nations could prevent that from
occurring and make the whole arrange-
ment more palatable to senators voting
on ratification.
The Four Policemen concept thus
became embodied in the UN Security
Council. Unfortunately, the postwar
cooperation that President Roosevelt had
anticipated quickly evaporated. The five
permanent members of the Security
Council have almost always been at odds
with one another on major initiatives,
and each of the permanent members has,
at one point or another, exercised its
right to veto resolutions. Cooperation is
possible only on less controversial issues
or in rare instances, such as reactions to
conflict in the Middle East, when the
great powers find common ground for
agreement.
See also: Hull, Cordell; United Nations
References
Burns, James MacGregor. Roosevelt: The
Soldier of Freedom. New York: Harcourt,
Brace, Jovanovich, 1970.
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 215
Divine, Robert A. Roosevelt and World War II.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1969.
Fourteen Points
In January 1918, President Woodrow
Wilson issued a blueprint for a peace
settlement to follow World War I. The
document listed 14 points, or categories
of issues, and proposed a resolution for
each. Although none of the other nations
fighting alongside the United States fully
endorsed the Fourteen Points, the pro-
posal helped motivate Germany to agree
to a cease-fire in November. Wilson per-
sonally participated in the postwar peace
conference at Versailles, hoping to
ensure that his 14-point program would
be implemented. Although some of the
points were compromised away, either
before or during the negotiations, the
fourteenth point—calling for the cre-
ation of an international collective secu-
rity system—was embodied in the
League of Nations.
The United States entered the war in
April of 1917 on the side of the Entente
powers, led by Great Britain and
France, but Wilson did not fully articu-
late U.S. war aims until the following
January. Prior to the announcement of
Wilson’s 14-point proposal, the other
participants had expressed their inten-
tions for the postwar world, either openly
or in secret. For example, Great Britain
and France had held extensive clandes-
tine talks that led to bilateral accords,
such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement of
1915. A major focus of this agreement
was a proposal for redistributing much of
the prewar Ottoman Empire. The British
were eager to gain imperial control of the
oil-rich areas of present-day Iraq, for
example, and the French had similar
216 | Section 4

ambitions with regard to Syria and preceding December by publishing the

Lebanon.
As a wartime ally of Great Britain
and France, Russia had also negotiated
postwar arrangements. The czar’s gov-
ernment fell in the spring of 1917, and
the Bolshevik faction seized control
and established the Soviet Union in the
fall. The new regime had promised the
Russian people that it would withdraw
from the conflict, and the Soviet gov-
ernment signed a humiliating treaty
with Germany at Brest-Litovsk in
March 1918. The Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk effectively canceled all previ-
ously negotiated promises and postwar
plans related to Russia.
Soviet foreign minister Leon Trotsky
had already stunned the world in the
so-called Secret Treaties. He had found
copies of earlier diplomatic correspon-
dence in the czar’s files, including the
clandestine agreements among other
Entente countries. Trotsky’s goal was to
convince working-class people in all of
the warring nations that they were fight-
ing for goals that would benefit the
wealthy and powerful, not their fellow
members of what the Soviets called the
proletariat.
To a degree, Trotsky’s plan had the
desired result. Publication of the Secret
Treaties provoked consternation and criti-
cism among the European combatants.
When U.S. president Woodrow Wilson
announced his own plans a month later,
many Europeans on both sides of the

FOURTEEN POINTS: JANUARY 8, 1918

Delivered at a Joint Session of Congress by President Woodrow Wilson

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no pri-
vate international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always
frankly and in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in
peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by interna-
tional action for the enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment
of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and
associating themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced
to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims,
based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions
of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with
the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions
affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of
the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the
independent determination of her own political development and national policy and
assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her
own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may
 The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 217

need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in
the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of
her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish
sympathy.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without
any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free
nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among
the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the gov-
ernment of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole struc-
ture and validity of international law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the
wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has
unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that
peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recog-
nizable lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see
safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous
development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories
restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the
several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically
established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the
political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan
states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure
sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be
assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of
autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a
free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the terri-
tories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free
and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and
territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for
the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial
integrity to great and small states alike.

Source: Richardson, J. D., ed. Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. New
York: Bureau of National Literature, 1920, 18:8421–8426.

conflict saw them as attractive and noble.
Although no other government officially
endorsed Wilson’s Fourteen Points, many
people around the world became convinced
that the plan would provide a fair and rea-
sonable framework for any peace settle-
ment that could be worked out if the Entente
powers and theirAllies won the war.
Wilson’s plan included three distinct
types of proposals. The first group,
218 | Section 4
consisting of Points 1 through 5, listed
general principles for international rela-
tions that the president hoped would
discourage future resorts to war. To dis-
courage secret diplomacy, for example,
the first point would prohibit clandes-
tine negotiations (“open covenants
openly arrived at”). The other general
principles within this group were free-
dom of the seas, reduction of trade bar-
riers, international disarmament, and
reassessment of colonial claims with an
emphasis on self-determination.
As a former history professor, Wilson
was well aware that a series of specific
grievances and perceived inequities
within Europe itself had played major
roles in igniting the Great War.
Consequently, Points 6 through 13
proposed resolution of many of these sore
points, to reduce tensions and eliminate
causes of international bickering. Wilson
advocated the creation of an independent
Poland, restoration of an independent
Belgium, readjustment of Italy’s borders
with the old Austrian empire, and preser-
vation of an independent Russia. He also
called for German withdrawal from occu-
pied France and the restoration of the two
provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, that the
German government had retained as
spoils of its victory in the 1870 Franco
Prussian War. Finally, Wilson called for
democratic self-determination for the
peoples of the Balkans and the Austro-
Hungarian Empire.
The U.S. president realized that
something tangible was needed to
enforce the general principles and to
administer the realignment of European
territories that he proposed. Point 14
therefore advocated the establishment of
an international body to be charged with
mutually guaranteeing “political inde-
pendence and territorial integrity to great
and small states alike.” In his view, this
“league of nations” would act collec-
tively to ensure implementation of the
first 13 points, as well as deal with any
potential future conflicts. In the long run,
Wilson became convinced that creating
the League of Nations was the most
important of all of his proposals.
Various parties began quibbling over
some of the points as soon as they were
announced. Ever since Admiral Horatio
Nelson’s definitive victory over the
French at Trafalgar in 1806, Great
Britain’s Royal Navy had enjoyed virtu-
ally unchallenged control of the seas.
Despite heavy losses during the war,
British officials were loath to abandon
their preeminent position to Wilson’s
rhetorical stance. Disarmament might be
a fine idea as well, but four years of
intensive war production had created
such a plethora of weapons that any
attempt to control their distribution was
likely to be futile.
The French meanwhile expected
compensation from their enemies for the
damages that the war had inflicted.
Whereas Wilson wanted to look toward
the future, people in war-torn France and
Belgium firmly believed that the
defeated Germans should provide repa-
rations to help restore and rebuild their
economies and infrastructure.
Great Britain and France also found
fault with Wilson’s fifth point regarding
colonization. These nations controlled
the two largest global empires and had
no intention of casually giving them up.
Instead, they anticipated fulfilling the
colonial ambitions that had been envi-
sioned in the Sykes-Picot Agreement and
other secret treaties, particularly with
regard to the Middle East, now that the
Ottoman Empire had been reduced to a
mere shadow of its former size. T. E.

Lawrence and General George Allenby
had been quite successful in expanding
British influence in Arab lands during
the conflict.
When Wilson arrived in Europe as
head of the U.S. delegation, in early
1919, many treated him as a sort of mes-
siah who had brought peace to the world.
That heady feeling quickly evaporated
once the delegates sat down to negotiate
at the Versailles Palace outside Paris.
Wilson had already compromised his
position on freedom of the seas. He soon
gave in to French and Belgian entreaties
for reparations. Wilson retreated on
colonial issues as well. He eventually
agreed to allow the British into Iraq, the
French into Syria, and other colonial-
style transfers, but he insisted that they
be framed as “mandates” from the
League of Nations. This device had two
advantages: it fulfilled the ambitions of
the victorious Allies and, at the same
time, it emphasized the authority of the
collective security system that Wilson
hoped to establish.
In February 1919, the president
returned briefly to the United States to
deal with pending legislation. However,
he learned that many Americans, includ-
ing an especially influential group of
Republican politicians, had become
quite critical of his personal negotiating
style and his idealism in general. With
his plans under fire at home, Wilson
returned to France convinced he had to
interweave his 14-point principles inex-
tricably with the League of Nations and
the final peace treaty as a whole. Unfor-
tunately, his determination to do so made
him all the more vulnerable to Euro-
peans who were insisting on modifica-
tions or changes in his original
proposals. Personally guiding the draft-
ing of the Covenant of the League of
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 219
Nations, Wilson hoped that its authority
would ultimately outweigh any compro-
mises he accepted on the rest of the
Fourteen Points.
One very positive outcome of the con-
ference, however, was that, once they
had achieved much of what they had pro-
posed in the secret treaties, the Allies
stepped back and allowed Wilson a great
deal of latitude in “redrawing” the map
of Europe. In consultation with a group
of U.S. academic experts he called “The
Inquiry,” Wilson and his fellow diplo-
mats created nine new nations in Europe:
Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Poland, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia,
and Yugoslavia. To that extent, at least,
Wilson’s commitment to self-determination
was fulfilled.
The Versailles Treaty was signed on
June 18, 1919, but it met a skeptical
reception in the United States. Through-
out the summer, the Republican-
controlled Senate Foreign Relations
Committee held exhaustive hearings on
the treaty prior to scheduling a vote on
ratification. Opponents were particularly
concerned about Article X of the
Covenant of the League of Nations
because they felt it implied that U.S. mil-
itary forces might be called into action
by the international body without con-
gressional approval.
Wilson mounted an aggressive
publicity campaign to counter these
negative sentiments, making a number
of appearances throughout the country.
After a speech at Pueblo, Colorado, on
September 25, he suffered a massive
stroke that left him partially paralyzed
and unable to function as president for
many weeks. Although he had some-
what recovered by November, he was
unable to convince enough senators to
vote in favor of his master plan for
220 | Section 4
European realignment and collective
security. The Senate brought the matter
to another vote in the spring of 1920,
but, once again, supporters failed to
muster the required two-thirds majority
for ratification.
The Fourteen Points thus left a mixed
legacy. The League of Nations func-
tioned more or less effectively without
U.S. representation for the first few
years. Its authority waned in the 1930s,
however, and the collective security con-
cept it embodied had to be reanimated in
the United Nations during the closing
months of World War II. In 1921, Secre-
tary of State Charles Evans Hughes
chaired an international disarmament
conference that temporarily halted the
expansion of war fleets. Many Europeans
benefited in the interwar years from the
self-determination that Wilson’s plans
had assured them.
In the long run, however, the retreat of
the United States into isolationism in the
1920s and 1930s fatally undermined the
influence that Americans might have
had. Wilson’s failure to adhere to his
own principles gave internationalism a
bad name at home and did much to
destroy the popularity of Democratic
Party liberalism, paving the way for the
restoration of “normalcy” and conserva-
tive Republican Party control.
See also: Kellogg-Briand Pact
References
Bailey, Thomas A. Woodrow Wilson and the
Lost Peace. New York: Macmillan, 1944.
Boemeka, Manfred F., Gerald D. Feldman,
and Elisabeth Glaser, eds. The Treaty of
Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years.
New York: Cambridge University Press,
1998.
Mayer, Arno J. Politics and Diplomacy at
Peacemaking. New York: Knopf, 1967.
Tillman, Seth P. Anglo-American Relations
at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1961.
Good Neighbor Policy
In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt
took great pride in promulgating a Good
Neighbor Policy for Latin America. The
move toward neighborliness had begun
under President Herbert Hoover and his
secretary of state, Henry Stimson. But
Roosevelt made the policy a centerpiece
of his international approach, and it con-
tinued to evolve during his administra-
tion. Just how neighborly the policy was
remained debatable. Although it seemed
to rule out military intervention, U.S.
political and economic influence contin-
ued to expand throughout the region.
To give the policy its due, U.S. inter-
ventionism did decline markedly in the
1930s. U.S. Marines had been stationed
in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican
Republic during the administration of
President Woodrow Wilson. With minor
breaks, they remained in place right
through the 1920s. For example, Presi-
dent Calvin Coolidge recalled them from
Nicaragua in 1925 but sent them in again
to quell instability less than a year later.
By the end of the decade, even U.S. busi-
nessmen with interests in those countries
complained that the U.S. military pres-
ence often did more harm than good.
President Herbert Hoover took
positive steps to reduce North-South ten-
sions. He repudiated the Roosevelt
Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that
had asserted a U.S. right to intervene
wherever it chose to protect U.S. lives and
property. The Hoover administration also
began reducing the existing occupations.
The succeeding Roosevelt administration

completed the withdrawal of U.S. mili-
tary units from all Latin American areas.
That did not necessarily guarantee unal-
loyed freedom for the people there,
because the United States retained strict
controls over financial affairs in nations
like the Dominican Republic. It also
used loans from the Export-Import Bank
to strategically maintain an official eco-
nomic influence. Private U.S. investment
continued to grow once the initial impact
of the Great Depression had eased.
An unfortunate consequence of the
new approach was that the U.S. govern-
ment proved reluctant to relinquish con-
trol to anyone it did not trust. As a result,
U.S.–backed dictators sometimes estab-
lished themselves when U.S. troops
pulled out. In Nicaragua, for example,
Samoza García defeated popular peasant
leader Cesár Augusto Sandino and even-
tually had him executed. The Samoza
family retained control over Nicaragua
from 1936 to 1974. This pattern was
duplicated in the Dominican Republic,
with the emergence of Rafael Trujillo,
and in Haiti, where, after a long period
of instability, François “Papa Doc”
Duvalier proclaimed himself president
for life. All of these dictators relied on
national guard forces that the United
States had trained and equipped.
The situation in Cuba was particularly
complex. Gerardo Machado governed
the island with an iron fist from 1924 to
1933. President Roosevelt sent a per-
sonal friend, Sumner Welles, to Havana
as ambassador in 1933, and he arrived
just when internal opposition and eco-
nomic crises had weakened Machado.
Although Roosevelt refused to imple-
ment Welles’s call for U.S. military
intervention, the ambassador was influ-
ential enough to help persuade Machado
to go into exile. At that point, an internal
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 221
military coup boosted left-leaning
Ramón Grau San Martin into the presi-
dency. The United States refused to rec-
ognize the Grau administration, fearing
that it might be communist inspired, but
it did endorse the government that
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar installed to
replace Grau early in 1934. Shortly after
the new regime was in place, Roosevelt
formally abrogated the Platt Amendment,
except for retaining the U.S. naval base
at Guantánamo. This action officially
ended the U.S. protectorate of Cuba that
had existed since the Spanish-American-
Cuban War. Either as president or king-
maker, Batista controlled Cuba for a
quarter of a century until Fidel Castro
ousted him in 1959.
Dropping the Platt Amendment was
one of several elements of the Good
Neighbor Policy. In 1933, for example,
Roosevelt’s secretary of state, Cordell
Hull, voted in favor of a nonintervention
resolution at the Seventh Pan American
Conference in Montevideo in 1933.
Although Hull attached an ambiguous
caveat to his vote, it did confirm a U.S.
commitment to avoid military interven-
tion in neighboring states. Shortly
afterward, Hull initiated a series of bilat-
eral talks utilizing the authority that
Congress had granted in the Reciprocal
Trade Agreements Act of 1934. These
resulted in a comprehensive reduction in
U.S. tariff rates and reciprocal conces-
sions from trading partners that proved
mutually beneficial. None of these steps,
however, significantly weakened U.S.
economic and political influence in Latin
America.
Mexico presented a unique set of
problems. An enormous amount of
U.S. investment had taken place there,
but Article 27 of the Mexican constitu-
tion, adopted in 1917 under President
222 | Section 4
Venustiano Carranza, claimed that all
of the country’s natural resources
belonged to Mexico. It also prohibited
non-Mexicans from buying land. For a
time, purchases completed prior to
1917 remained untouched, but the
Mexican government increasingly
hinted at a desire to expropriate all
foreign-owned properties. President
Calvin Coolidge sent an old college
friend, Dwight Morrow, to Mexico
City in 1927. An urbane and wily
diplomat, Morrow negotiated an agree-
ment that officially confirmed the pre-
1917 exemption. It survived until
1938, when President Lázaro Cárdenas
went ahead and expropriated the hold-
ings of all foreign oil companies.
Resisting calls for U.S. intervention
that would have invalidated his Good
Neighbor Policy, Roosevelt behaved
with restraint, and U.S. companies
eventually had to accept a token pay-
ment of $25 million for what they had
lost.
By 1938, the Roosevelt administration
was far more worried about possible
German or Italian penetration into the
Western Hemisphere than which local
ruler or faction held power. The Good
Neighbor Policy provided a reasonably
friendly environment in the hemisphere
that enabled the United States to convince
Latin Americans to cooperate in regional
security arrangements. Although a few
nations, such as Argentina, were less than
sympathetic to these admonitions, they
enabled the United States to focus its
efforts in Europe and the Far East, free of
complications closer to home.
See also: Big Stick; Platt Amendment
References
Black, George. The Good Neighbor. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Dozer, Donald M. Are We Good Neighbors?
Gainesville: University of Florida Press,
1959.
Gellman, Irwin F. Good Neighbor Diplomacy.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1979.
Grand Alliance
When the United States entered World
War II, British prime minister Winston
Churchill began praising the formation
of a Grand Alliance. Its members were
the United States, Great Britain, and the
Soviet Union—the three world powers
that were at war with the fascist govern-
ments of Germany and Italy. Although
the heads of state of the three powers
consulted and collaborated in a broad
spectrum of activities, they frequently
disagreed on fundamental issues and
never entered into a formal alliance.
Nevertheless, the concept that there was
a grand alliance arrayed against common
enemies encouraged the participants’
citizens and influenced their leaders’
behavior.
Close ties had bound the United
States and Great Britain long before
President Franklin Roosevelt called for a
war declaration. The two countries had
fought side by side in World War I and
had remained friendly in the intervening
years. When World War II began, in the
fall of 1939, Roosevelt did not, like his
predecessor Woodrow Wilson, announce
that the United States would be strictly
neutral. In succeeding months, he pur-
sued policies that inexorably led his
nation down the path to war on Great
Britain’s side.
During that period, Roosevelt and
Churchill became increasingly close.
They carried on a lively correspondence
long before their first face-to-face meet-
ing off the coast of Newfoundland in

August 1941. There they issued the
Atlantic Charter, a high-minded state-
ment of purpose that linked their coun-
tries in opposition to fascism. Military
planners and strategists from both coun-
tries were working closely together,
anticipating that the United States would
soon join in the fighting. Meanwhile,
Great Britain relied on the United States
for billions of dollars worth of assistance
through the Lend-Lease program and
other avenues.
When Congress approved a declara-
tion of war after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, joint military planning
moved to much higher levels. In late
December, Churchill traveled to the United
States, reinforcing the linkage between
the two nations. A strong sense of com-
mon purpose clearly existed between the
two English-speaking countries. Even
so, President Roosevelt never considered
negotiating a formal agreement that
would violate the longstanding U.S. tra-
dition of joining no alliances.
Churchill was particularly interested
in promoting cordial relations with the
other great power fighting against
Germany. When the United States
entered the fray, the Soviet Union was
engaged in a furious defensive battle
against massive German armies deep
inside its territory. Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin therefore had ample reason to wel-
come a new participant in the fight
against Hitler’s regime. Fortunately,
President Roosevelt had personally
superintended the restoration of normal
diplomatic relations between the United
States and the Soviet Union in 1933.
Although tensions and suspicions con-
tinued to cloud their relationship, the
Americans and the Soviets found com-
mon cause in the current global conflict.
Indeed, even before his country entered
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 223
the war, Roosevelt had begun sending
Lend-Lease assistance to Moscow and
increased it substantially in 1942.
Because Churchill and Roosevelt con-
sidered Germany their most dangerous
enemy, they were pleased to have the
Soviets on their side. Both of the West-
ern powers, however, were continually
distracted by their fight against the
Japanese in East Asia. That was just one
of the many differences among the mem-
bers of the grand alliance. The Soviets
were completely focused on driving the
Germans out, so they chose to stay out of
the conflict with Japan.
Their concentration on the European
front clearly influenced what the Soviets
desired from the other members of the
grand alliance. From Stalin’s perspec-
tive, getting the Americans and the
British to establish a second front in
Western Europe had the highest priority.
France had fallen under German control
in the summer of 1940, stranding hun-
dreds of thousands of British troops who
had to be rescued from Dunkirk shortly
afterward. Hitler could then focus the
bulk of his resources on the eastern front,
and his armies invaded Russia in June
1941. Even while trying to push the
Germans out of his country, Stalin
nursed territorial ambitions that would
restore the traditional czarist boundaries
of Russia as well as build a protective
wall against the German menace.
U.S. objectives were quite different.
Although Americans, too, saw defeating
Hitler as the primary objective, they had
no interest in helping the Soviet Union
extend its influence to neighboring
regions. Like all U.S. presidents,
Roosevelt was dedicated to encouraging
democracy, not imperial expansion. He
made no secret of his desire to see
colonial peoples granted independence.
224 | Section 4

Even though he agreed that a second front
in Western Europe was desirable, the
unrelenting warfare in the Pacific less-
ened his ability to pursue that objective.
Great Britain’s goals also differed
from those of its partners. Like the Amer-
icans, the British were distracted by
events in the Far East, where Great
Britain traditionally had major territorial
holdings and trade influence. And, like
their Soviet counterparts, the British
hoped to maintain control of their
extended colonial empire in Africa, the
Middle East, and India—objectives far
different than those of the Americans.
Partially because of that goal, Churchill
consistently proposed focusing on South-
ern Europe rather than the West. He used
the image of a crocodile, insisting it
would be far easier to attack the “soft
underbelly” of Europe than the hardened
defensive positions that the Germans had
established along the Atlantic Coast.
These conflicting and sometimes even
contradictory national ambitions compli-
cated the crafting of agreements when-
ever alliance members met. Churchill
served as the main personal link in the
grand alliance, traveling to Washington
and Moscow on several occasions.
Roosevelt’s paraplegia made him less
comfortable traveling, but he believed
that he must make the effort. He also
wanted to meet with Joseph Stalin
directly rather than rely exclusively on
Churchill as a go-between.
In January 1943, the first major inter-
national conference took place in
Casablanca, Morocco, shortly after U.S.
forces had landed in North Africa.

President Franklin Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill, leaders of the Grand
Alliance, held their first overseas meeting at Casablanca early in 1943. Here Roosevelt reads his
“unconditional surrender” statement. (Library of Congress)

Roosevelt and Churchill discussed many
other issues, but the most noteworthy
outcome of the Casablanca Conference
was Roosevelt’s pledge to continue fight-
ing until the enemy agreed to “uncondi-
tional surrender.” This stand recalled the
one that Union general Ulysses Grant
had taken during the American Civil War
some 90 years earlier.
Later that year, Churchill and
Roosevelt convened in Washington and
then in Québec before heading overseas
again. The two Western leaders
stopped first in Cairo in late November
1943, where they met with nationalist
leader Chiang Kai-shek to discuss the
future of China. Then they headed for
face-to-face talks with Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin in Teheran, Iran. A Soviet
law that prohibited the head of state
from leaving the nation during wartime
dictated the unusual choice for a meet-
ing site. The Red Army had moved in
and occupied northern Iran when
British troops had taken control in the
south. That brought Teheran into the
Soviet sphere of control, enabling
Stalin to attend the meeting.
The Teheran Conference was the pin-
nacle of the Grant Alliance. At that point,
Soviet forces were slowly pushing
German troops out of their territory, and
British and U.S. units had reclaimed
North Africa and Sicily and were mov-
ing north through Italy. The Big Three
discussed the future of Germany, Poland,
and Eastern Europe, as well as the struc-
ture and purpose of the planned United
Nations organization. Stalin pressed the
others on when they might establish a
second front in Western Europe, and
Roosevelt promised that it would occur
early in 1944. Certain that they were on
the road to victory in Europe, Roosevelt
successfully lobbied the Soviet leader
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 225
for a promise to enter the war against
Japan in due course.
The U.S. president also managed to
meet privately with the Soviet leader. He
used that opportunity to inform Stalin of
his lack of commitment to preserving the
British Empire. More important, these
conversations apparently convinced him
that he could influence the Soviet leader
and perhaps even control his territorial
ambitions. Neither Churchill nor most of
Roosevelt’s advisors shared the presi-
dent’s optimism.
Although it came several weeks later
than Roosevelt had promised, the D-Day
invasion on June 6, 1944, established a
dynamic western front at last. In a matter
of months, British and U.S. forces had
liberated both France and Italy and were
heading east toward Germany, just as
Soviet troops were closing in from the
opposite direction. From a military
standpoint, the Grand Alliance appeared
to be well along the path to achieving its
goals.
Battlefield successes were only one
aspect of the collaboration, however.
Although the leaders of the Grand
Alliance held two more meetings, one at
Yalta and the other at Potsdam, the three
nations advocated radically different poli-
cies. Political and ideological disagree-
ments among the three powers created
fissures in the Alliance, fissures that would
ultimately destroy any hope for postwar
cooperation. Although the Alliance won
the hot war, its disintegration set the stage
for a long and bitter Cold War.
See also: Atlantic Charter; Atomic Diplomacy;
Second Front; United Nations; Yalta
References
Beitzell, Robert. The Alliance: America,
Britain, and Russia, 1941–1943. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
226 | Section 4
Edmonds, Robin. The Big Three: Churchill,
Roosevelt, and Stalin in Peace and War.
New York: Norton, 1991.
Lane, Ann, and Howard Temperley, eds. The
Rise and Fall of the Grand Alliance,
1941–1945. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1995.
Sainsbury, Keith. The Turning Point:
Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill and Chiang-
Kai-Shek, 1943. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 1985.
Great War
Even today, Europeans wonder why the
United States waited so long before
entering what was called the Great War
in 1914. Two and a half years passed
before President Woodrow Wilson aban-
doned neutrality and requested Congress
to approve a war resolution. U.S. reluc-
tance was understandable, because the
causes for and objectives of the war had
no intrinsic relevance to U.S. interna-
tional interests or policies. A review of
those underlying causes demonstrates
why Americans had no desire to rush
into the fighting.
The Great War that erupted in 1914
was the first major European conflict
since the 1815 Congress of Vienna had
ended the era of the Napoleonic Wars. It
established an enduring balance of
power among the major European states
that discouraged anything but minor
conflicts during the 19th century. Even
the Crimean War (1856–1858), which
involved several major powers, had the
limited objective of preventing Russia
from expanding further into the
Balkans.
In the mid-19th century, the balance
of power began to deteriorate, in large
part as a result of nationalism. Giuseppe
Garibaldi united the Italian states and
principalities into a coherent nation by
1860. Otto von Bismarck became prime
minister in the Kingdom of Prussia in
1862, with the goal of unifying dozens
of small, competing German political
units. His first success was fomenting a
dispute that led to a war with the
Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1866.
Prussia’s modern, well-equipped army
defeated the Austrians in just seven
weeks, allowing Bismarck to draw
together several contiguous German
principalities into his North German
Confederation.
French emperor Napoléon III viewed
consolidation of the German states as a
threat to the balance of power and to
France’s position as the leading military
force on the continent. Bismarck
doctored information to provoke France
into declaring war in the summer of
1870. Six weeks later, Napoléon surren-
dered his armies, after losing the Battle
of Sedan. His government also fell,
allowing the Germans ultimately to
invade Paris and impose a harsh peace
settlement on the republican government
that succeeded the empire. In addition to
demanding reparations for war damages,
Germany annexed the northeastern
French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine
into its greatly expanded empire. Having
accomplished his goal of unifying
Germany, Bismarck became chancellor
of the newly created Second Reich.
No one knew better than Bismarck
that France would harbor deep resent-
ment over its losses. The so-called Iron
Chancellor spent the next 20 years
negotiating a complex set of alliances
that prevented France from finding
Allies to help it recapture its pride and
lost provinces. Bismarck’s first coup was
establishing a Triple Alliance linking
Germany, Austria, and Russia. Called
the dreiKaiserbund, or Three Emperor

Union, it was essentially a defensive
pact. If any other nation—in other
words, France—were to attack an
alliance member, the other two agreed
not to assist the aggressor. Because the
three empires frequently disagreed with
one another on a variety of issues,
Bismarck repeatedly had to recast or
revive his arrangements.
In 1890, a young and self-confident
Wilhelm II became kaiser of the German
Empire. Trained to rule, he refused to
take dictation from the aging Bismarck
and dismissed the chancellor to pursue
his own policies. A major casualty was
Germany’s linkage with Russia. By
1894, France and Russia were crafting
an alliance of their own, directed against
the German Empire lying between them.
The kaiser responded by reinforcing his
alliance with Austria and attempting to
strengthen the German links that
Bismarck had initiated earlier with Italy.
Meanwhile, the greatest naval power
in the world, Great Britain, took pride in
remaining in “splendid isolation” from
these European intrigues and devoting
its energies to expanding its global
empire. In 1898, however, Cecil
Rhodes’s visionary plan of establishing a
line of colonies in Africa—from the
Cape of Good Hope in the south to Cairo
in the north—encountered opposition in
the Sudan. France had been pursuing its
own expansionist plan of extending its
line of colonies across Africa from west
to east. Advance agents of the two colo-
nial empires met at Fashoda on the upper
Nile River. After intensive negotiations,
the French stepped aside and allowed
Great Britain to pursue its goals. The
peaceful resolution of the Fashoda
Incident led to a broader, worldwide set
of accommodations between Great
Britain and France. By 1904, the two
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 227
countries had become friendly enough to
form a secret Entente Cordiale.
In part to assess the strength of the
Anglo-French relationship, Germany
stirred up trouble in Morocco. This mis-
chief led to the Algeciras Conference in
1906, where only Austria supported
Germany’s proposals. The conference
convinced the German government that
the ties among Great Britain, France,
and Russia were very strong indeed. The
Germans felt that they had no choice but
to prepare for a possible two-front war
in Europe. The leading strategist was
Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, whose ideas
shaped German military planning for
the next decade. The Schlieffen Plan
called for Germany to invade and defeat
France in one month, while Russia pon-
derously mobilized. Then Germany
could throw the bulk of its military
resources into a campaign to defeat the
greater Russian menace.
Just when the anticipated war might
begin remained unknown, but a series of
confrontations in the Balkans sent
tremors through all of Europe. The
Balkan crises usually pitted Austria, on
one side, against Russia, on the other.
Confident of solid German backing,
Austria usually achieved its goals. In
1914, for example, it incorporated the
Balkan provinces of Bosnia and
Herzegovina into its sprawling multina-
tional empire.
Serbs formed the primary ethnic
group in these provinces, so the Austrian
takeover naturally aroused resentment in
the neighboring country of Serbia. A
secret patriotic terrorist organization,
called the Black Hand, was based there,
but it hoped to provoke a pro-Serbian
revolt in Bosnia-Herzegovina. To welcome
the newly acquired territories into the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, the government
228 | Section 4
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, moments before
they were assassinated. Their deaths lit the fuse that set off the Great War a month later. (The
Illustrated London News Picture Library)
in Vienna sent Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and his wife on an official
visit. On June 28, 1914, a Black Hand
assassin named Gavrilo Princip shot
and killed the visiting dignitaries at
Sarajevo.
The Austrian government was
shocked at the assassination of the
designated heir to the Austrian throne.
Before responding, however, Austria
checked with Germany to make sure of
its ally’s backing. The German govern-
ment agreed to support Austria’s aggres-
sive intentions, even though it realized
that they might ignite the long-anticipated
European war. The Austrian government
then delivered an ultimatum to Serbia in
late July. Among other points, it
demanded that the Serbians allow
Austrian forces to enter their country to
root out the rebels who were responsible
for the assassination.
Some years earlier, Serbia had negoti-
ated an alliance with Russia. Now Russia
agreed to implement its defensive
alliance if Austrian troops entered
Serbia. Serbia then boldly rejected the
ultimatum, triggering a war declaration
from Austria. The Russian government
immediately began the formidable task
of mobilizing an army that was scattered
throughout its vast empire. Kaiser
Wilhelm II wrote his cousin, czar
Nicholas II, pleading with him not to
take such a step, but the Russian leader
claimed that he was powerless to halt the
process.
The German government now had to
fulfill its commitment to Austria, but it
had only the current version of the 1906
Schlieffen Plan with which to work, and
it called for an immediate invasion of
France if Russia began mobilizing.
Germany therefore felt that it must
declare war on France, Russia’s alliance
partner. In sweeping down on France
from the north, German armies passed
through Belgium. Great Britain had a
long-standing defensive alliance with
Belgium, so, when Germany invaded,

Great Britain responded by declaring war
as well. The Great War had begun. In
addition to Germany and Austria, on one
side, confronting Great Britain, France,
and Russia, on the other, several smaller
nations soon entered the fray.
The United States did not. Instead,
Americans responded with shock and
disbelief. None of the warring nations
had provided rational explanations for
their behavior, so no one could be certain
what their true objectives were. Clearly,
the United States had no reason to get
involved in a titanic clash of arms taking
place 3,000 miles away. Neutrality was
the most sensible policy for Americans
to pursue.
Besides, everyone expected it to end
quickly. A few stirring victories should
bring the enemy to the peace table. Such
optimism soon evaporated. Defying
German projections, Russia managed to
send two sizable armies into East Prussia
within a couple of weeks of the war
declaration. In response, Germany with-
drew substantial forces from the western
front, enabling France and Great Britain
to halt the German advance there. Both
sides started digging trenches and set-
tling in for what became four years of
largely static warfare.
The stalemate on the western front
gave U.S. attitudes plenty of time to
mature. By 1917, the United States had
invested heavily in French and British
war bonds, been influenced by one-sided
anti-German propaganda, and lost citi-
zens to German submarine attacks. At
that point, neutrality in the Great War no
longer seemed acceptable.
See also: Algeciras; Neutrality (1914–1917)
References
Joll, James. The Origins of the First World
War. 2d ed. New York: Longman, 1992.
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 229
Kennan, George F. The Decline of Bismarck’s
European Order: Franco-Russian Rela-
tions, 1875–1890. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1979.
Lee, Dwight E. Europe’s Crucial Years: The
Diplomatic Background of World War I,
1902–1914. Hanover, NH: University
Press of New England, 1974.
Tuchman, Barbara. The Guns of August. New
York: Macmillan, 1962.
Island Hopping
When the United States declared war
on Japan after the attack on Pearl
Harbor, Americans activated contin-
gency plans that they had developed in
the late 1930s. A key premise of this
planning was the near certainty that
Japan’s aggressiveness would be able
to sweep U.S. and British influence
completely out of the Western Pacific.
Recapturing all of that conquered terri-
tory would present formidable chal-
lenges. Instead, the United States
adopted island hopping, choosing to
attack a few, carefully selected targets
from the hundreds that Japan occupied.
These islands could then serve as bases
to enable U.S. military forces to
leapfrog all the way to the home islands
of Japan.
The Japanese plans for protecting
those home islands involved erecting a
defensive perimeter around them by
invading and subduing neighboring
countries and colonies. Simultaneously
with or shortly after the bombing of
Pearl Harbor, well-prepared Japanese
army and navy units carried out coordi-
nated assaults on the Malay Peninsula,
Singapore, Burma, Siam, French
Indochina, and Dutch Indonesia. At the
same time, they used their prewar
Pacific colonies, many of which were
held under League of Nations mandates
230 | Section 4
as bases from which to spread their
influence and control well to the south
and east.
For the United States, the most
disheartening move was the Japanese inva-
sion of the U.S. colony of the Philippine
Islands. More than 70,000 American
soldiers were captured and forced to walk
on foot to detention camps along the
Bataan Peninsula west of Manila. Thou-
sands died in the “death march.” U.S.
general Douglas MacArthur barely man-
aged to escape from his headquarters on
Corregidor Island. His pledge to return to
the Philippines would complicate
strategic planning down the line.
Encouraged by its swift advance,
Japan decided to push on and establish
an outer ribbon of defense, extending
from Australia all the way to the
Aleutian Islands, part of the U.S.
colony of Alaska. U.S. admiral Frank
Fletcher learned that the Japanese were
moving toward Port Moresby, an Aus-
tralian outpost on the island of New
Guinea. He hastily assembled a fleet in
the Coral Sea and engaged Japanese
vessels in a pitched battle. Although
neither side could claim victory, the
desperate action halted Japanese expan-
sion to the south.
Now determined more than ever to
push farther east, Japanese admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto gathered an enor-
mous fleet and headed for Midway
Island. U.S. intelligence agents had
cracked the Japanese military codes, so
Admiral Chester Nimitz was able to pre-
pare a reception. The three-day Battle of
Midway, in early June 1942, ended in a
stunning success for the U.S. Navy. It
halted Japanese expansion to the east
and north and so damaged the enemy
navy that it could never again mount a
victorious offensive attack.
The victory at Midway also
transferred the initiative in the Pacific
War to the United States, allowing the
Americans to implement their island-
hopping strategy. The first confrontation
came at Guadalcanal in the Solomon
Islands chain northeast of Australia. It
took U.S. forces eight months to gain
full control and clear the way for
building a major airbase, called
Henderson Field, on the neighboring
island of Bougainville. General
MacArthur commanded the land forces
that used this strategic base and others in
nearby New Guinea as staging areas for
a drive that slowly forced the Japanese
north toward the Philippines.
Simultaneously, Admiral Nimitz
initiated an island-hopping campaign
from the east. His marines captured out-
posts such as Tarawa, Kwajalein, and
Eniwetok. Using these as stepping
stones, the U.S. Navy then headed for
the Mariana Islands chain. Before Japan
moved in, the chain’s largest member,
Guam, had been a U.S. colony since the
Spanish-American-Cuban War. Even
more important strategically were two
smaller islands to the north, Tinian and
Saipan. The U.S. attack, which began in
June 1944, triggered a major naval
battle in the Philippine Sea. Once again,
the Americans prevailed and quickly
began constructing airfields on the
recaptured islands. From these, newly
designed long-range B-29 bombers
could carry out missions on Japan’s
home islands.
At that point, Nimitz favored heading
for Formosa to bring China more
directly into the conflict, but MacArthur
insisted that liberating the Philippines
should be the next priority. MacArthur
won the debate, and the U.S. Navy
received orders to facilitate his landings

on Leyte Island in October. Hoping to
prevent those landings, the Japanese
Navy staged its last naval campaign.
Faulty execution caused the three sepa-
rate arms of the Japanese fleet to reach
U.S. admiral Bull Halsey’s defenders
one at a time rather than simultaneously.
The Americans knocked out each wave
and then returned to supporting the land-
ings. MacArthur’s confidence proved ill-
founded, however, because stubborn
Japanese resistance tied his troops down
for another eight months.
The U.S. Navy resumed island hop-
ping, with a bloody, month-long assault on
Iwo Jima in February 1945. The capture of
that tiny island, located halfway between
Saipan and Japan, allowed the Americans
to build an airfield to provide fighter
escorts for their longer-range bombing
runs. The Japanese increasingly resorted
to kamikaze tactics, in which Japanese
pilots tried to crash their own bomb-laden
aircraft on U.S. vessels. First used at Leyte
Gulf, these desperation attacks peaked
when the Americans landed at Okinawa in
April. In all, kamikazes sank 38 ships and
damaged 368 others.
Having brought the Philippines and
Okinawa under control by June, the United
States completed its island-hopping cam-
paign. The Americans now faced the
dilemma of what to do next. The incred-
ible resistance that they had met in off-
lying locations convinced them that a
full-scale invasion of Japan’s home
islands would be extraordinarily costly.
Estimates of as many as 1 million U.S.
casualties and another year and a half of
heavy combat convinced the United
States to pursue two risky alternatives.
One was to convince the Soviet Union to
enter the war against Japan. The other was
to deploy an experimental atomic bomb.
In the end, both of these alternatives were
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 231
implemented, with far-reaching conse-
quences.
See also: Atomic Diplomacy; Pearl Harbor;
Yalta
References
Keegan, John. The Second World War. New
York: Penguin Books, 1990.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United
States Naval Operations in World War II.
15 vols. Boston: Little, Brown,
1947–1967.
Spector, Ronald H. Eagle against the Sun:
The American War with Japan. New York:
Free Press, 1985.
Isolationism
In the 1920s, the United States retreated
into isolationism, deliberately avoiding
international connections and obligations.
Isolationism had long roots in U.S. diplo-
matic history, but contemporary events
and perceptions intensified the isolationist
impulse after World War I. In the long
run, this ostrich-like behavior failed to
protect the United States from becoming
deeply involved in global affairs.
During his campaign for the presi-
dency in 1920, Republican candidate
Warren G. Harding struck a sensitive
chord when he spoke of returning the
United States to “normalcy.” A good
many Americans were eager to do just
that, to retreat to the less complicated
lives that their rose-colored memories
recalled from the late 19th century. A
central aspect of that normalcy was a
United States that was politically iso-
lated from European affairs and content
with its own relatively modest expan-
sionist ambitions in the Western Hemi-
sphere. Consequently, a retreat to
isolation in the 1920s appeared very
attractive.
232 | Section 4
Isolationist sentiments drew on popular
historical traditions, beginning with Presi-
dent George Washington’s declaration of
neutrality in 1793. Thomas Jefferson rein-
forced that concept when he became pres-
ident in 1801. A key provision of the 1823
Monroe Doctrine was a U.S. pledge to
steer clear of European entanglements.
These and other precedents made isola-
tionism respectable and easy to defend.
The American people’s experience in
World War I strengthened their desire to
retreat into isolation. Although the
United States was directly involved for
only 20 months, the death and devasta-
tion of trench warfare in northern France
was truly horrifying. It bore little resem-
blance to the last U.S. war, when eager
volunteer soldiers gaily set off to put
things right in Cuba and returned a few
months later with a swagger and a sense
of accomplishment. The experiences of
the American Expeditionary Force under
General John J. Pershing were far grim-
mer, the costs far higher, and, perhaps
most discouraging, the results far less
satisfying. All of this made it quite
understandable that many would favor
turning inward to avoid such unsatisfac-
tory consequences in the future.
Plenty of support came from what
some historians have called “natural iso-
lationists.” At that point, prominent
politicians in both major parties favored
Progressivism, a political impulse
focused on domestic issues. Senators like
George Norris of Nebraska and Robert
La Follette of Wisconsin had opposed
U.S. entry into the war in 1917, certain
that it would distract the nation’s atten-
tion from their uncompleted Progressive
agenda. They were right. The war effec-
tively killed the Progressive impulse.
Allied with antiwar Progressives were
millions of Americans who traced their
family roots to nations on the “wrong”
side in the war. German-Americans and
Irish-Americans had little sympathy for
Great Britain and France to begin with,
and many of them suffered blatant dis-
crimination or fell afoul of sedition laws
during the war. Retreating from interna-
tional affairs seemed like an ideal way
to avoid such problems in the future.
Progressives and hyphenate Americans
were prevalent in the Midwest, so isola-
tionist sentiments were particularly
evident there.
Isolationism became increasingly
popular as internationalists and liberals
became disillusioned with the conse-
quences of the war. Some had found
their internationalism waning when
President Wilson announced his Four-
teen Point program. Not only would it
involve the United States in the emo-
tional responsibility of redrawing the
map of Europe, but the collective secu-
rity concept that was inherent in
Wilson’s call for a League of Nations
threatened to entwine Americans in a
continuing series of intractable problems
overseas.
The Versailles Treaty’s inclusion of
reparations, compromises on many of
Wilson’s points, and clear-cut collective
security provisions further disillusioned
Americans. The U.S. Senate’s failure to
ratify the treaty discouraged even those
who had remained hopeful of a positive
U.S. role in preserving world peace. The
failure of the League of Nations to
resolve many of the issues that it was
designed to handle delivered a final blow
to liberal optimism. The fact that the
United States had refused to join the
organization had much to do with its
impotence, but the league’s disappoint-
ing record only strengthened isolationist
sentiments among Americans.

Although no one favored restricting
international trade, political isolation
became entrenched during the conserva-
tive presidential administrations of
Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge,
and Herbert Hoover. It severely compli-
cated U.S. efforts to work with other
countries. Even after Democrat Franklin
Roosevelt became president, isolation-
ism remained a powerful force. It
encouraged the passage of neutrality acts
in the late 1930s, and, like the acts them-
selves, left the United States extraordi-
narily unprepared when World War II
began.
See also: Fourteen Points; Neutrality
(1914–1917); Neutrality Acts
References
Adler, Selig. The Isolationist Impulse: Its
Twentieth-Century Reaction. New York:
Abelard-Schuman, 1957.
Guinsburg, Thomas N. The Pursuit of Isola-
tionism in the United States Senate from
Versailles to Pearl Harbor. New York:
Garland, 1982.
Jonas, Manfred. Isolationism in America,
1935–1941. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 1966.
Kellogg-Briand Pact
In 1928, representatives from 15
nations met in Paris to sign a pledge
outlawing the use of force. The Pact of
Paris had evolved from negotiations
between U.S. secretary of state Frank
B. Kellogg and French foreign minister
Aristide Briand. For a brief period,
internationalists and peace advocates
around the world celebrated what they
saw as a fundamental watershed in the
conduct of international relations, but,
within a matter of a few months, the
Kellogg-Briand Pact had proven to be
impotent.
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 233
An influential U.S. lawyer, Salmon O.
Levinson, gained widespread attention
in 1921 when he floated a plea for an
international commitment to what he
called the “outlawry of war.” The con-
cept drew favorable support from
Nicholas Murray Butler and James T.
Shotwell, academic leaders associated
with the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. The chief political
advocate of the concept was Idaho
senator William Borah.
Shotwell enthusiastically championed
the concept in 1927, when he visited
Aristide Briand, the French foreign min-
ister. Briand had been diligently creating
a network of alliances with other European
countries, similar to those that had
existed prior to the Great War. Having
failed to draw the isolationist United
States into that network, he seized upon
Shotwell’s proposal as a way to over-
come U.S. reluctance to make a commit-
ment to France.
He began his campaign by sending an
open letter that Shotwell drafted directly
to the American people. He followed up
with a properly framed diplomatic pro-
posal shortly afterward, inviting the
United States to sign a bilateral agree-
ment with France that would forswear
war between them. President Calvin
Coolidge and his secretary of state,
Frank B. Kellogg, immediately recog-
nized it for what it was—a backdoor
way of linking French and U.S. foreign
policies.
Briand’s strategy seemed to be work-
ing very well; it generated widespread
popularity for the proposal among the
American people. Senator Borah sug-
gested an ingenious way out for the
Coolidge administration by urging
Kellogg to open the treaty to all comers.
If more nations came on board, it would
234 | Section 4
significantly dilute the influence of the
U.S.–France relationship. Kellogg
adopted this approach and presented it to
Briand. Even though it would undermine
his original objective, the French states-
man could hardly refuse.
With great fanfare, representatives
of 15 major powers met in Paris on
August 27, 1928, to sign a brief state-
ment of commitment. The first article
renounced war “as an instrument of
national policy,” and the second pledged
the signatories to settle their disputes “by
pacific means.” By the end of the year, 31
additional countries had added their
signatures to the document. Kellogg won
the Nobel Peace Prize for his initiative
and, apparently, became convinced that
the pact was truly significant.
In fact, it was nothing more than a
paper pledge. It contained no enforce-
Signed in Paris on August 27, 1928, universal optimism greeted the Kellogg-Briand Pact “outlaw-
ing” war, but the pact quickly proved meaningless. (Bettmann/CORBIS)
ment structure or mechanism, and it
failed to designate any individual or
body to administer it. Worse still, many
nations appended convoluted hedging
statements when they signed, which
weakened its authority. For example, the
U.S. proviso included a statement that
the United States reserved the right to
defend itself from external attack and
further insisted that the pact in no way
altered the Monroe Doctrine’s assertion
of U.S. supremacy in the Western
Hemisphere. With these carefully
drafted caveats attached, the pact won
ratification in the U.S. Senate by a vote of
85 to 1. The pacifists could not have been
more pleased.
In the very next year, an incident in
Manchuria, a province in northern
China, demonstrated how quixotic and
empty the pact really was. When
 The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 235

KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT
(PACT OF PARIS): AUGUST 27, 1928

ARTICLE I
The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples
that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and
renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.
ARTICLE II
The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or con-
flicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among
them, shall never be sought except by pacific means. . . .

Source: Bevans, Charles I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States
of America, 1776–1949. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, 2:732–735.

Chinese authorities attempted to assert See also: Stimson Doctrine

control over the Russian-built and
Russian-maintained North Manchurian
Railroad, the Soviet government
refused to acquiesce. Fearing that both
sides were on the point of conflict, U.S.
secretary of state Henry Stimson
“invoked” the Kellogg-Briand Pact,
urging China and Russia to honor their
pledges to avoid war. He also asked the
other signatories to support his declara-
tion, and more than 30 did so.
None of this fazed the Russians, who
sent units of the Red Army into
Manchuria to preserve their control of
the railroad, a vital link in the Trans-
Siberian Railroad. After only two weeks
of turmoil, the Chinese and the Russians
negotiated a diplomatic resolution of the
confrontation.
But the Kellogg-Briand Pact had been
fatally wounded. It had failed to prevent
this extremely minor war, and Stimson’s
premature invocation of the pact demon-
strated its ineffectiveness. The pact was
cited several more times in future crises,
but never with any lasting or substantive
impact.
References
Ferrell, Robert H. Peace in Their Time. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952.
Vinson, J. Chal. William E. Borah and the
Outlawry of War. Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 1957.
League of Nations
President Woodrow Wilson was the most
enthusiastic supporter of the League of
Nations and did more than anyone else
to ensure its creation and to shape its
structure. Ironically, the United States
not only failed to join the league in 1919
but, for many years, acted as though the
organization did not even exist. Even
without U.S. participation, the league
remained the preeminent international
organization in the 1920s, but its influ-
ence deteriorated considerably in the fol-
lowing decade. Whether U.S.
membership would have or could have
significantly altered that trajectory
remains unclear.
Earlier international organizations had
provided models for the league. In the late
236 | Section 4

19th century, groups such as the Interna-
tional Telegraphic Union, the Red Cross,
and the Universal Postal Union had
demonstrated the usefulness of collabora-
tion for specific purposes. In the early
20th century, advocates of international
law had praised the establishment of the
Permanent Court of Arbitration at the
Hague. Americans benefited from their
participation in such organizations, even
though they sometimes seemed inconsis-
tent with the U.S. isolationist tradition.
As a historian, Woodrow Wilson had
a broad understanding of international
affairs that enabled him to analyze the
causes of World War I. He became con-
vinced that secret treaties and alliances
had created the preconditions for that
catastrophe. After the United States was
drawn into the conflict, Wilson laid out a
14-point plan for resolving the issues
that had caused the war and for estab-
lishing an international body that he
hoped would prevent another one. He
considered the last of his Fourteen Points
the most important—creating an interna-
tional political organization to provide
collective security.
As head of the U.S. delegation at the
1919 Versailles Peace Conference,
President Wilson insisted that establish-
ing his organization, now identified as
the League of Nations, should be the
first issue discussed. He personally
chaired a committee of delegates from
14 nations, which drafted the Covenant
of the League of Nations. The heart of
the new organization would be a gen-
eral assembly, in which each member
nation had a single vote. A league coun-
cil would include permanent seats for
the so-called Big Five—the United
States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and
Japan—as well as rotating seats for
other assembly members. The lengthy
document outlined a series of responsi-
bilities for the league, including the
granting of mandates to colonial or
dependent areas, mechanisms for
applying international law, and other
collaborative activities.
Article Ten of the Covenant contained
an operational definition of the collective
security concept. Wilson believed that
war could be avoided if any country con-
sidering aggression knew that all of the
other nations would team up in opposi-
tion. Although the article failed to prom-
ise military action explicitly, it stated that
the league members would “undertake to

ARTICLE X, LEAGUE OF NATIONS COVENANT

INCORPORATED IN THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES, SIGNED JUNE 28, 1919

ARTICLE 10.
The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external
aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members
of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of
such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall
be fulfilled.

Source: Bevans, Charles I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States
of America, 1776–1949. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, 2:51.

respect and preserve as against external
aggression” all member states.
The Versailles Peace Treaty that
Wilson subsequently submitted to the
U.S. Senate for ratification contained
the League Covenant. Opponents
claimed that Article Ten might draw the
United States into a conflict, a violation
of the U.S. Constitution’s granting to
Congress the responsibility for declar-
ing war. Although many other objec-
tions to the treaty and the league arose,
Article Ten was most influential in con-
vincing a majority of senators to reject
the document. In doing so, they also
guaranteed that the United States would
not become a member of the league.
Republican senator Warren G. Harding
participated in the ratification debates
prior to his election as president in 1920.
Even though Charles Evans Hughes, the
man whom he named secretary of state,
and other prominent Republicans advo-
cated league membership, Harding
bowed to pervasive isolationist pressures
and refused to consider it. That presented
Hughes with a problem when he
received letters from the league, now
established in Geneva, Switzerland. He
initially chose to have no contact at all
with the organization and refused even to
acknowledge its existence.
Within a few years, the U.S. position
eased. The State Department began for-
mally acknowledging league communi-
cations. When the organization took up
issues such as the international trade in
slaves and opium, the United States sent
nonvoting delegates to observe the pro-
ceedings. For some time, these represen-
tatives did not even speak at meetings,
but, by the late 1920s, Americans were
taking active roles in discussions of non-
political matters, such as communica-
tions, trade, and counterfeiting, that
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 237
affected all nations. The delegates took
great pains, however, to avoid commit-
ting the United States to any action that
might be seen as direct cooperation with
league initiatives.
Former Secretary of State Elihu Root
had participated in the creation of the
World Court, a permanent legal body
that operated under league auspices. As
a prominent and highly respected
Republican, Root’s advocacy of U.S.
membership in the World Court helped
persuade many congressmen and sena-
tors to open that door to international
cooperation. In 1924, the platforms of
both major political parties advocated
membership, and substantial majorities
in both houses of Congress supported
the idea. President Calvin Coolidge was
less enthusiastic. When Congress added
reservations to its approval, Coolidge
used them as an excuse not to move for-
ward. President Franklin Roosevelt
revived the question of membership in
the World Court in the mid-1930s, but
once again isolationist sentiments torpe-
doed the proposal.
Even without the participation of the
world’s most powerful county, the League
of Nations accomplished a good deal in
the 1920s. It mediated several postwar
boundary and territorial disputes. It super-
intended a worldwide mandate system
that assigned member nations responsibil-
ity for colonial or dependent areas. The
United Kingdom, for example, controlled
Palestine and Iraq under league mandates,
ensuring subsequent British influence in
the Middle East. The league added many
new members to the original 41, includ-
ing Germany in 1926 and the Soviet
Union in 1934.
The league proved far less effective
in dealing with serious political
challenges. The Second Manchurian
238 | Section 4
Crisis in 1931–1932 did much to dis-
credit the organization. Japan used a
trumped-up excuse to expand its mili-
tary control in Manchuria, the northern-
most province of China. Secretary of
State Henry Stimson hoped that the
League Council would develop a strong
response. Great Britain’s Lord Lytton
headed a league commission that even-
tually produced a report critical of
Japan. The Japanese delegate then dra-
matically withdrew from the league in
the spring of 1933. The United States
meanwhile issued its own Stimson Doc-
trine, which denied recognition of
Japan’s newly installed puppet govern-
ment in Manchuria.
Japan’s decision to withdraw no doubt
encouraged German chancellor Adolf
Hitler to do the same shortly afterward.
More postwar constraints had been
imposed on his country than on any other,
including the demilitarization of German
territory west of the Rhine River. The
league was unable to prevent Hitler from
reasserting control over the Rhineland in
1933, and Germany’s withdrawal freed it
from other league restrictions.
The league did take some steps when
Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, but its
call for an international embargo against
the aggressor had only limited effects.
Substantial assistance from Germany
helped fascist leader Benito Mussolini
impose colonial control over Ethiopia in
the spring of 1936. Even though the
league then cancelled its embargo, Italy
withdrew from the organization. Several
other nations left the league as well, and,
in 1939, the organization took positive
action in expelling the Soviet Union
after its troops invaded Finland.
Clearly, the league had failed to pre-
serve the peace and to punish aggressors.
The world plunged into a second war
that was even more extensive and deadly
than the first. The league continued to
function at a much reduced level until
1946, when the United Nations absorbed
many of its remaining activities and
institutions.
Despite its disappointing record, the
league served as a model for the much
stronger and more effective postwar
organization. The structure of the
United Nations, with its assembly and
Security Council, closely resembles
that of the league. Many of the interna-
tional institutions and responsibilities
that the league had fostered continued
under United Nations management.
Regrettably, the league had failed to
accomplish Woodrow Wilson’s most
heartfelt desire: preventing a recurrence
of global conflict.
See also: Fourteen Points; Isolationism;
Stimson Doctrine
References
Cooper, John Milton. Breaking the Heart of
the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight
for the League of Nations. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Dunne, Michael. The United States and the
World Court, 1920–1935. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1988.
Northedge, F. S. The League of Nations: Its
Life and Times, 1920–1946. New York:
Holmes & Meier, 1986.
Otrower, Gary B. Collective Insecurity: The
United States and the League of Nations
during the Early Thirties. Lewisburg, PA:
Bucknell University Press, 1979.
Lend-Lease
To sidestep restraints such as the 1937
Neutrality Act and strong U.S. isolationist
sentiments, President Franklin Roosevelt
developed the lend-lease concept. It
allowed warring nations to “borrow”

U.S. military goods and other needed
resources if they could not pay for them.
The program expanded after the United
States entered World War II. In the long
run, lend-lease distributed more than $50
billion worth of material to Great Britain,
the Soviet Union, and many other nations
fighting against Nazi Germany.
Some historians consider the lend-
lease program to be the most important
in the series of steps that Roosevelt took
leading to U.S. entry into World War II.
The first of these occurred almost imme-
diately after Germany invaded Poland.
The existing neutrality legislation called
for the United States to impose an arms
embargo on all participants in a conflict.
Roosevelt convinced Congress that it
was wiser to avoid an embargo in order
to assure Great Britain and France access
to U.S. equipment in their fight against
Hitler’s armies.
In succeeding months, Americans
exhibited highly contradictory attitudes
toward the war. As late as the eve of the
Pearl Harbor bombing, most Americans
did not want the United States to become
directly involved in the global conflict.
At the same time, a similar substantial
majority desperately hoped both German
and Japanese aggression could be halted.
With Roosevelt’s blessing, popular
newspaperman William Allen White
strongly advocated U.S. support for
Great Britain and France. In May 1940,
White helped found the Committee to
Defend America by Aiding the Allies,
and it quickly spawned 600 local
branches. The president formally
endorsed its basic tenets in a speech
delivered at Charlottesville, Virginia, on
June 10, 1940. His pledge to “extend to
the opponents of force the material
resources of this nation,” was welcome
news to those battling fascist armies.
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 239
Legal and statutory constraints stood
in the way of fulfilling that pledge imme-
diately. Throughout the summer, British
prime minister Winston Churchill repeat-
edly requested concrete assistance. In
August, he noted that German sub-
marines had been particularly effective in
weakening the Royal Navy’s fleet of
destroyers. President Roosevelt
responded with an executive order that
transferred 50 “surplus” U.S. destroyers
to Great Britain. In return, the British
invited the United States to establish mil-
itary outposts on their Caribbean island
colonies. The destroyers-for-bases
arrangement obviously moved the United
States closer to direct involvement in the
war.
For that reason, the deal aroused
vigorous protests from isolationist
Americans. In September, some of them
coalesced into the American First
Committee. Its most prominent advo-
cate was Charles Lindbergh, the man
who had won universal acclaim for
completing the first solo transatlantic
airplane flight. Like White’s committee,
America First established hundreds of
local branches. Both groups favored
military preparedness, however, making
it easier for the Roosevelt administra-
tion and Congress to advance various
programs, such as a massive naval
building initiative and the institution of
the nation’s first peacetime draft pro-
gram to strengthen the army.
After winning his campaign for a
third term, President Roosevelt felt free
to increase U.S. aid to the Allies short of
war. Well aware of the problems that had
persisted long after World War I ended,
he looked for an approach that would
avoid postwar debt obligations for the
Allies. Rather than lend money that they
would then be obligated to repay,
240 | Section 4

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT’S CHARLOTTESVILLE ADDRESS

Delivered June 10, 1940 at the University of Virginia’s Commencement Ceremonies

. . . Perception of danger to our institutions may come slowly or it may come with
a rush and shock as it has to the people of the United States in the past few months.
This perception of danger—danger in a world-wide arena—has come to us clearly
and overwhelmingly. We perceive the peril in this world-wide arena—an arena that
may become so narrow that only the Americans will retain the ancient faiths.
Some indeed still hold to the now somewhat obvious delusion that we of the United
States can safely permit the United States to become a lone island in a world
dominated by the philosophy of force.
Such an island may be the dream of those who still talk and vote as isolationists.
Such an island represents to me and to the overwhelming majority of Americans today
a helpless nightmare, the helpless nightmare of a people without freedom. Yes, the
nightmare of a people lodged in prison, hand-cuffed, hungry and fed through the bars
from day to day by the contemptuous, unpitying masters of other continents.
It is natural also that we should ask ourselves how now we can prevent the building
of that prison and the placing of ourselves in the midst of it.
Let us not hesitate—all of us—to proclaim certain truths. Overwhelmingly we, as a
nation, and this applies to all the other American nations, we are convinced that
military and naval victory for the gods of force and hate would endanger the institu-
tions of democracy in the Western World—and that equally, therefore, the whole of
our sympathies lie with those nations that are giving their life blood in combat against
those forces. . . .
On this 10th day of June 1940, in this university founded by the first great
American teacher of democracy we send forth our prayers and our hopes to those
beyond the seas who are maintaining with magnificent valor their battle for freedom.
In our unity, in our American unity, we will pursue two obvious and simultaneous
courses; we will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation
and, at the same time, we will harness and speed up the use of those resources in
order that we ourselves in the Americas may have equipment and training equal to the
task of any emergency and every defense. . . .

Source: U.S. Department of State, Bulletin, June 1940, 3:635.

Roosevelt chose the alternative of lend-
ing them supplies and material. In a Fire-
side Chat, he used the analogy of a fire in
someone’s home. His neighbor would
readily lend the victim a garden hose to
help douse the flames, expecting only
that the hose be returned later. The
United States anticipated that those who
took advantage of the lend-lease pro-
gram would feel obligated to return or
replace any borrowed equipment after
the fighting had ended.
Submitted to Congress in January
1941, the proposal ignited an emotional
two-month debate. Opponents quite rea-
sonably characterized the program as an
irreversible step toward U.S. entry into
the war. Many of the bill’s supporters
agreed but considered supplying the
Allies to be crucial to U.S. security.

American-made .38 caliber revolvers being
unpacked at an English ordnance depot, an
early shipment of the ultimate distribution of
$50 billion worth of materials through the
United States' Lend-Lease program. (Library
of Congress)
Eventually, solid majorities in both
houses of Congress voted in favor of “An
Act to Promote the Defense of the United
States.” It authorized the president to
“sell, lease, or lend” not only arms and
munitions but also food and any other
goods that he considered essential to the
defense of the United States.
For some time, the neutrality law’s
prohibition against U.S. flag vessels car-
rying such goods to belligerent nations
remained in force. By September, how-
ever, Roosevelt had approved the arm-
ing of U.S. merchant vessels, the
establishment of protective naval con-
voys, and extensive air and sea monitor-
ing of German submarine activity in the
North Atlantic. Denouncing German
actions as equivalent to piracy, he
authorized the U.S. Navy to “shoot on
sight” any German or Italian warships
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 241
found in a broadly defined U.S. patrol
zone. To all intents and purposes, the
United States had become involved in an
undeclared war.
Despite increasing incidences of
human and material loss at sea, the U.S.
public remained strongly opposed to a
formal entry into the war. It took the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on
December 7, 1941, to alter U.S. attitudes
dramatically and to propel Congress to
approve a declaration of war.
Once that occurred, the Lend-Lease
program expanded quickly. Any nation
fighting against the Axis Powers—
Germany, Italy, or Japan—could apply
for and receive U.S. material support.
The value of Great Britain’s share
exceeded $31 billion. The Soviet
Union received the next largest alloca-
tion, more than $11 billion, and France
and China received $3.6 billion and
$1.6 billion, respectively. Although
some of these expenditures were offset
by compensation such as rent pay-
ments for U.S. facilities, the United
States received almost none of what it
lent back.
In retrospect, Lend-Lease appears to
be little more than a subterfuge for out-
right grants to other nations. But, given
the strong isolationist attitudes of many
Americans at the time, such window
dressing was absolutely essential to
achieve the goal of aiding the Allies.
Like so many other Roosevelt adminis-
tration programs, Lend-Lease was an
experimental, somewhat ad hoc method
for achieving a politically sensitive goal.
See also: Atlantic Charter; Neutrality Acts
References
Dobson, Alan P. US Wartime Aid to Britain,
1940–1946. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1986.
242 | Section 4
Heinrichs, Waldo H. Threshold of War:
Franklin D. Roosevelt and American
Entry into World War II. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988.
Kimball, Warren F. The Most Unsordid Act:
Lend-Lease, 1939–1941. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, 1969.
Neutrality (1914–1917)
When the Great War engulfed Europe in
the fall of 1914, President Woodrow
Wilson urged his fellow Americas to be
neutral in thought, word, and deed. For
two and a half years, the United States
managed to avoid being drawn into the
conflict. That delay, however, in no way
proves that the United States remained
strictly neutral. Economic and emo-
tional decisions undermined the neutral-
ity that Wilson maintained was his
chief objective.
The events that led to a series of war
declarations in late August and early
September 1914 had no direct relation-
ship to the United States, its international
policies, or the desires of the American
people in general. Even the governments
that were engaged in the war often failed
to explain, even to their own citizens,
why they were fighting and what they
hoped to achieve. Not until 1915 did
France and Great Britain hold clandes-
tine talks to define their war objectives,
and the resulting Sykes-Picot Agreement
remained a state secret until its exposure
early in 1918.
Lack of clarity over the causes and
objectives of the war made neutrality a
rational policy. Equally important was
the widespread belief that the fighting
would soon end. The German High
Command confidently expected to carry
out its plans in just three months, one to
defeat France and two more to dispose of
Russia. The French and British had less
explicit timetables, but they, too,
expected to bring their enemies to the
negotiating table before the year ended.
But the German army’s drive into north-
ern France quickly bogged down, and a
grinding, debilitating trench warfare set
in. Although more movement occurred
on the eastern front, neither side could
deliver a knockout blow.
As the war dragged on, pressure
increased on the United States to take
more definitive action, to choose sides,
perhaps even to enter the conflict.
Urging the American people forward
were a series of economic, philosophi-
cal, and emotional factors that appeared
to grow more compelling over time.
Some contend that economic factors
were preeminent. In the late 1920s,
Americans who were critical of interna-
tionalism blamed bankers and business-
men for luring the United States into the
war. In the 1930s, North Dakota senator
Gerald Nye headed a congressional com-
mittee that investigated whether busi-
nessmen had exerted undue influence in
keeping the war going and promoting
U.S. participation. The term “merchants
of death” became associated with those
suspected of war profiteering.
Although some economic and politi-
cal decisions were cited as proof of that
rather simplistic explanation, there was
little evidence of a detailed, precon-
ceived plan. By 1914, the U.S. economy
was so large and comprehensive that it
seemed inevitable that U.S. resources
would be drawn into the global conflict.
Secretary of State William Jennings
Bryan was a rural Democrat with Pop-
ulist attitudes, however, and he, far more
than President Wilson, advocated strict
neutrality. Fully aware that his nation’s
substantial financial resources would be
very helpful to any of the European

combatants, Bryan tried to discourage
them by stating that money was a form
of contraband. In the early weeks of the
war, President Wilson seemed to agree,
telling the J. P. Morgan banking firm that
he would not approve any U.S. loans to
the nations at war.
Wilson’s resolve weakened when he
detected signs that the U.S. economy
might be lapsing into a recession.
European demand for U.S. goods was
declining, in part because both France
and Great Britain, traditionally the best
U.S. customers, were running out of
money. In October, still anticipating a
quick end to the war, Wilson allowed the
U.S. banking community to extend
credit to overseas buyers. That would
allow them to continue buying U.S.
goods, but to delay payment until their
financial situations improved.
By the summer of 1915, U.S. lenders
had reached the limit of their willingness
to extend credit. At that point, Wilson
permitted U.S. citizens to lend money
directly to Great Britain and France by
buying their bonds. Half a billion dollars
worth of foreign bonds were immedi-
ately sold in the United States, and pur-
chases continued at a steady pace. This
investment paid quick dividends when
the embattled governments spent the
money on U.S. manufactured goods and
agricultural products.
Not surprisingly, the German govern-
ment complained that this activity vio-
lated the U.S. neutrality policy. Wilson
responded by pointing out that Germany
itself had made funds and material avail-
able to participants on both sides in ear-
lier conflicts. But a comprehensive
British blockade of Germany’s ports
severely limited its access to imports
from abroad. By the spring of 1917, the
Entente powers, led by Great Britain and
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 243
France, owed $2.3 billion to U.S. citi-
zens, whereas Germany’s indebtedness
amounted to just $100 million. If the
Entente powers lost the war, their loans
might never be repaid. No nefarious
machinations by merchants of death
were necessary to convince Americans
of the economic benefits of going to war
on the side of their debtors.
Economic motivations alone would
have been insufficient to make the United
States abandon neutrality in the absence of
other factors. Propaganda was one. Early
in the war, the British cut the Atlantic
cable connecting the United States to con-
tinental Europe, so virtually all news
passed over British-controlled communi-
cation links. The British government
severely censored all news from the bat-
tlefields, even for home consumption, so
the stories reaching the United States were
undeniably biased against Germany.
Many Americans did not need one-
sided news reports to sympathize with
the plight of the Entente nations. The
British-American rapprochement that
had occurred early in the 20th century
disposed many Americans to empathize
with the British plight. Some, like ex-
president Theodore Roosevelt, outspo-
kenly advocated going to war immediately
on the side of Great Britain and France.
The cumulative effect of slanted news
from Europe and strident Anglophiles in
the United States inevitably pushed the
Wilson administration closer to war. By
the summer of 1916, Congress had
responded to increasing U.S. bellicosity
by funding major naval and military
buildups that increased the likelihood of
U.S. participation.
It sometimes appeared that Woodrow
Wilson was the American who was the
most reluctant to get involved. He
personally had little interest in the
244 | Section 4
welfare of financiers as such, nor was he
overly sensitive to political exhortations.
Instead, Wilson viewed himself as a
thoughtful academic, devoting his presi-
dency to pursuing and strengthening his
nation’s traditional values.
Prominent among those values was a
historical sense of democratic mission.
When Wilson looked at Europe, he saw
republican governments in Great Britain
and France locked in a death struggle
with autocratic, monarchical regimes in
Austria and Germany. Russia presented
something of a problem, however,
because it was arguably the most auto-
cratic nation of all. Suddenly, everything
changed. In March 1917, a provisional
government espousing democratic prin-
ciples toppled the czar’s reactionary
government. Now all of the “demo-
cratic” governments were on the same
side in the war—and that clearly was the
side that the United States would join if
it went to war.
By April 1917, economic, emotional,
and mission sentiments were all aligned.
The United States was ready to enter the
conflict on the side of righteousness,
provided that a first shot occurred to
justify U.S. action. Germany’s decision
earlier in the year to initiate unrestricted
submarine warfare provided that justifi-
cation. Remaining neutral had no appeal
if one side was killing Americans with
torpedo attacks. The United States thus
went to war not only to promote democ-
racy but in response to an outright attack.
See also: Great War; Rapprochement; Unre-
stricted Submarine Warfare
References
Cooper, John Milton, Jr. The Vanity of
Power: American Isolationism and the
First World War, 1914–1917. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1969.
Devlin, Patrick. Too Proud to Fight:
Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1975.
Ferrell, Robert H. Woodrow Wilson and
World War I. New York: Harper and Row,
1985.
Smith, Daniel M. The Great Departure: The
United States and World War I. New York:
Wiley, 1965.
Neutrality Acts
In the mid-1930s, Americans were
increasingly uneasy about the possibil-
ity that they might be drawn into
another major European war. The
desire to avoid becoming involved that
had developed after World War I
became so strong that Congress
approved a neutrality act in 1935 that
was designed to wall the United States
off from any international conflict. As
disturbing changes took place overseas,
politicians reconsidered how best to
accomplish that goal. The result was
two additional Neutrality Acts, each
slightly modifying its predecessor. In
the end, none of them insulated the
United States from the consequences of
World War II.
Isolationism was strongly embedded
in the U.S. psyche prior to 1930, and the
onset of the Great Depression did noth-
ing to change it. As their economies
unraveled, people in many countries
focused their attention on deteriorating
conditions at home. Introspection was
particularly prevalent in the United
States. President Franklin Roosevelt’s
New Deal programs contained very little
of relevance to foreign affairs. Even
though the whole world suffered from
the depression, pervasive isolationist
sentiments caused few Americans to
advocate international initiatives to deal
with its impact.

Those who did look outward found
little reassurance. The rise of fascism in
Spain, Italy, Germany, and even Japan
seemed ominous indeed. Which nation
or incident might trigger a major con-
flict remained unclear, but what was
obvious was the U.S. desire to avoid
becoming involved. Revisionist studies
by respected historians like Charles
Beard and Charles Tansill concluded
that British propaganda and the ambi-
tions of financiers and manufacturers
who profited from the conflict had
hoodwinked the United States into par-
ticipating in World War I. They also
noted that the deaths of U.S. passengers
riding on belligerent ships like the
Lusitania helped propel the United
States into the war.
The Nye Committee provided official
confirmation of some of these interpreta-
tions. North Dakota senator Gerald Nye
North Dakota senator Gerald Nye was a
committed isolationist whose investigations
and speeches were key elements in convincing
Congress to pass the Neutrality Acts in the
1930s. (Library of Congress)
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 245
headed a congressional inquiry into why
and how the United States had become
involved in World War I. The committee
concluded that manufacturers and finan-
ciers who reaped large profits from the
war effort had wanted it to continue as
long as possible and had urged U.S. entry
to increase their benefits. The report
implied that these so-called merchants of
death had influenced President Woodrow
Wilson’s decisions and had a primary
role in drawing the United States into the
war. In addition, the report noted that the
extensive loans to Great Britain and
France that preceded U.S. entry had
made it all but certain that the United
States would become involved.
With these conclusions in mind, Con-
gress passed a joint resolution in August
1935 that became known as the First
Neutrality Act. Its purpose was to dis-
courage Americans from trading with
any nation at war. If a war broke out, the
act authorized the president to proclaim
the existence of the conflict, impose an
impartial embargo on the warring par-
ties, and warn U.S. citizens they would
be personally responsible if they chose
to ride on ships belonging to the bel-
ligerent nations. The latter provision was
specifically aimed at discouraging
Americans from taking passage on ships
like the infamous Lusitania that were
owned or operated under the flag of a
country engaged in a war. Shortly after
the resolution was approved, Italian
troops invaded Ethiopia. President Roo-
sevelt duly proclaimed the existence of
the war and imposed an embargo on both
sides, a move that severely weakened
Ethiopia’s ability to avoid an Italian
takeover.
Even as that war continued, Congress
approved the Second Neutrality Act in
February 1936. It stiffened the embargo
246 | Section 4
provisions of the first act and added a pro-
hibition, inspired by the Nye Committee,
against U.S. loans to those engaged in war.
Congress had not envisioned a civil war
like the one that began in Spain in 1936,
when fascists under Francisco Franco
attacked a democratic popular front gov-
ernment. Hastily approved special legisla-
tion authorized Roosevelt to apply the
neutrality acts’ restraints on this conflict.
Once again, the U.S. policy benefited the
fascist side, which ultimately extended its
control to all of Spain in 1938.
In part because the earlier legislation
had produced undesirable outcomes,
Congress modified the U.S. policy some-
what in the Third Neutrality Act, passed
in April 1937. It included an outright
prohibition rather than an admonition
against Americans traveling on belliger-
ent ships. At the same time, the new act
softened the economic strictures. It
would allow warring nations to buy
whatever they chose from the United
States as long as they paid cash and pro-
vided transportation for the goods. The
“cash and carry” concept ruled out loans
and would presumably keep U.S.–owned
vessels from being attacked.
This final neutrality legislation was in
place when Japan invaded China in the
summer of 1937. Because the United
States clearly sided with China, Roosevelt
avoided applying U.S. neutrality sanc-
tions by simply failing to proclaim the
existence of a war. That left Americans
much greater flexibility in responding to
changing events in the Far East. The out-
break of war in Europe in the fall of 1939
put even greater pressure on the adminis-
tration to assist its friends. Roosevelt
therefore called for a special session of
Congress, which quickly agreed to can-
cel many of the restrictive provisions of
the Neutrality Acts.
This series of events and reactions to
them provides an interesting case of
applying the lessons of history. U.S. atti-
tudes were so colored by what had hap-
pened previously in World War I that
Congress created a policy based almost
exclusively on trying to avoid the “mis-
takes” made during that period. To that
extent, the neutrality legislation of the
1930s might very well have proven
effective in keeping the United States out
of a war—as long as it was World War I.
But 20 years later, the world had
changed dramatically, the rise of aggres-
sive fascism posed direct threats to the
U.S. democratic system, and the United
States simply could not insulate itself
from this danger. By December 1941,
the United States had provided France
and Great Britain, in particular, with far
more material support for their war
efforts than it had between 1914 and
1917. Concrete U.S. participation in the
war thus existed long before Japanese
war planes dropped their bombs on the
U.S. fleet moored at Pearl Harbor.
See also: Isolationism
References
Cole, Wayne S. Roosevelt and the Isolation-
ists, 1932–1945. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1983.
Coulter, Matthew Ware. The Senate Muni-
tions Inquiry of the 1930s: Beyond the
Merchants of Death. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1997.
Guinsburg, Thomas N. The Pursuit of Isola-
tionism in the United States Senate from
Versailles to Pearl Harbor. New York:
Garland, 1982.
Non-recognition
Soon after gaining its own independence,
the United States began granting formal

recognition to any government that
assumed de facto control over another
country. That century-old tradition
received a major jolt in 1913, when Pres-
ident Woodrow Wilson refused to recog-
nize the revolutionary government in
Mexico because, in his view, it did not
represent a truly democratic substitute for
the dictatorship that it replaced. A far
more important case of non-recognition
occurred four years later, when the
Bolshevik faction seized power in Russia.
Wilson made his decision not to recog-
nize this change in the midst of World
War I, but it defined the U.S. position for
the next 16 years. An even longer period
of non-recognition began in 1949, when
communist leader Mao Zedong ousted
the Nationalists from power in China.
In the case of Russia, Wilson initially
expressed satisfaction when the czarist
government collapsed early in 1917.
Alexander Kerenski emerged as head of
a provisional government that voiced
democratic principles. Five days after
Kerenski took charge, the United States
formally recognized the provisional gov-
ernment as the legitimate authority in
Russia. Shortly afterward, the United
States loaned $187 million to the new
leadership, to encourage it to continue
fighting against Germany.
Wilson was particularly gratified that
the new regime appeared to subscribe to
democratic ideals. He took it as evidence
of the success of his nation’s traditional
democratic mission to convince the
whole world to emulate the U.S. system.
He also considered a transition from
autocracy to democracy as a positive
change, because it meant that all of the
major powers fighting against autocratic
Germany and Austria were now demo-
cratic. When Wilson led the United
States into the war a month later, he
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 247
could proudly claim that his goal was to
“make the world safe for democracy.”
The war itself, however, had been a
major cause, if not the most important
cause, of the Russian Revolution. War
weariness had spurred opposition to the
czar, and it continued to influence public
opinion when Kerenski promised to stay
in the conflict. Hoping that it might force
Russia out of the war, Germany arranged
for a group of radical Russian exiles,
including Nikolai Lenin and Leon
Trotsky, to return to their homeland.
Very quickly, this group gathered a fol-
lowing that referred to itself as the
Bolshevik, or “majority,” faction. Promis-
ing peace and bread, Lenin’s group top-
pled Kerenski’s government and set its
sights on halting the fighting in Russia.
The Bolshevik assault on an ostensi-
bly democratic government infuriated
Wilson. Like most other outsiders, he
anticipated that this ultraradical Marxist
faction would quickly give way to a
more moderate, centrist regime. Wilson
therefore withheld U.S. recognition, just
as he had in Mexico, hoping for the situ-
ation to improve. It never did. The
Bolsheviks reorganized the huge country
into a union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, established highly central-
ized, top-down rule, and ruthlessly
stamped out any opposition to their
authority. Worse still in U.S. eyes, the
Soviets established the Communist Inter-
national (Comintern), which welcomed
sympathizers from all over the world and
had the stated objective of promoting
anticapitalist revolutions everywhere.
After the Soviets signed a separate
peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk in
March 1918, Wilson approved the dis-
patch of relatively small expeditionary
forces into Russia, in Archangel and
Murmansk to the North and Siberia in
248 | Section 4
the Far East. None of these expeditions
impeded the Soviet drive to eliminate
anyone who attempted to counter the
revolution. The last U.S. soldier left
Russia in the summer of 1920.
Wilson had meanwhile settled on a
policy of diplomatically isolating the
Soviets. He considered them an outlaw
group, citing their failure to repay the
U.S. war loan as an excuse to treat them
as pariahs. The only major softening of
U.S. attitudes came from Herbert
Hoover, who had headed the U.S. Food
Administration for several years. He
arranged massive shipments of food to
Russia, to counter the widespread starva-
tion that followed World War I.
Despite the absence of formal relations
between the two nations, some tentative
interactions took place. With Wilson’s
approval, Charles E. Bullitt went to
Moscow hoping to promote better rela-
tions, but he came home empty-handed.
In the 1920s, a few businessmen pursued
commercial opportunities. The most
prominent of these was President Warren
G. Harding’s secretary of the interior,
Albert B. Fall. At the urging of oilman
Harry Sinclair, Fall made a secret trip to
the Soviet Union to explore opportunities
for tapping its huge petroleum reserves.
Whatever possibilities there were evapo-
rated when Harding died shortly after-
ward and Fall was subsequently convicted
and jailed for blatant corruption in the
Teapot Dome Scandal.
Throughout the 1920s, the conserva-
tive, isolationist Republican presidents in
the United States made no serious effort
to modify the non-recognition policy that
they had inherited from Wilson. When
Russia and China became enmeshed in
the First Manchurian Crisis in 1929,
however, rational statesmen recognized
the drawbacks of a policy that prevented
the United States from influencing what
was, after all, undeniably a major world
power. Shortly afterward, the Second
Manchurian Crisis raised U.S. anxiety
about Japan’s aggressiveness. Reviving
U.S. relations with the Soviet Union
might impede Japanese imperialism.
President Franklin Roosevelt took the
first step by sending Charles Bullitt on a
second mission to Moscow. He found the
Kremlin leaders much more forthcoming
than on his first visit. In November 1933,
Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov
made a return visit to the United States.
Negotiating with the Roosevelt adminis-
tration, he indicated that his government
would treat religious minorities less
harshly, muzzle the Comintern, and make
arrangements to repay the U.S. war loan.
In return, the United States formally rec-
ognized the Soviet government and sent
Bullitt to be the U.S. ambassador in
Moscow. He quickly became disillusioned
with his hosts. No money was ever repaid,
and, at its 1935 meeting, the Comintern
stridently revived its anticapitalist crusade.
In the long run, however, the reestab-
lishment of normal diplomatic relations
proved beneficial. Most important, it
helped the United States and the Soviet
Union ignore their differences in the
early 1940s when they faced a common
enemy. The so-called Grand Alliance of
Great Britain, the United States, and the
Soviet Union, which was arrayed against
Hitler’s Germany, might never have been
forged without Roosevelt’s initiatives a
decade earlier. Interestingly enough,
throughout the ensuing Cold War years,
the United States continued to recognize
the Soviet government.
None of that prevented the United
States from reviving its trenchant anticom-
munist stance when Mao Zedong’s armies
defeated and exiled Nationalist leader

Chiang Kai-Shek in 1949. The installation
of a communist regime in a nation that, at
least in U.S. eyes, had always had a spe-
cial relationship with the United States
simply could not be tolerated. The United
States stubbornly refused to recognize the
People’s Republican of China for several
decades. Instead, it maintained the fiction
that the Nationalist regime confined to the
island of Formosa (Taiwan) represented
the “legitimate” government of China.
Formal relations between the United
States and the People’s Republic of China
were finally restored in 1979.
In neither the Russian nor the Chinese
case did U.S. non-recognition necessarily
improve international relations. Deliber-
ately refusing to deal with governments
that represented hundreds of millions of
people limited international trade and
understanding. The continuing U.S. non-
recognition of Fidel Castro’s communist
regime in Cuba has similar drawbacks.
In retrospect, the more traditional U.S.
decision to recognize de facto govern-
ments may have been the wiser policy.
See also: Mission; Punitive Expedition; Red
Scare; Siberian Expedition
References
Bennett, Edward M. Recognition of Russia.
Waltham: MA: Blaisdell Publishing Co.,
1970.
Bishop, Donald G. The Roosevelt-Litvinov
Agreements. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 1965.
Hoff, Joan. Ideology and Economics: U.S.
Relations with the Soviet Union,
1918–1933. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1974.
Pearl Harbor
The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor
stunned the American people. Analysts
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 249
have suggested a variety of often contra-
dictory explanations for the attack and
for how culpable President Franklin
Roosevelt was—either for provoking it
or being unaware that it was about to
occur. Regardless of the interpretation,
the attack unquestionably served as a
definitive first shot that overwhelmed
traditional U.S. isolationism and pro-
pelled the United States into full partici-
pation in World War II.
In the previous decade, three factors
diverted U.S. attention from dangerous
developments in the Far East. The first
was the Great Depression, which kept
U.S. attention riveted on domestic rather
than international concerns. Related to
that self-absorption was a rampant isola-
tionism, which became increasingly
vocal as the decade advanced. Finally, to
the extent that Americans did look
beyond their shores, they were far more
disturbed by the rise of aggressive fas-
cism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, which
threatened to ignite a second world war.
As it turned out, that conflict began not
in Europe, but in the Far East. Japan had
long nursed ambitions to expand its eco-
nomic and political control over nearby
China. The Second Manchurian Crisis
ended with the establishment of a Japan-
ese puppet government in much of north-
eastern China. The U.S. response was the
Stimson Doctrine, a refusal to recognize
officially that any change had taken place.
Americans were equally unwilling to
acknowledge the fratricidal contest within
China between the nationalists and the
increasingly popular communists under
Mao Zedong. Even well-informed Amer-
icans believed that communism would
play only a minor role in China’s future.
Moreover, the internal dispute took a back
seat when Japan mounted a full-scale
invasion of China.
250 | Section 4
World War II in the Far East began on
July 7, 1937, when Japanese troops
clashed with Chinese soldiers at the
Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing. What
Westerners called the China Incident
escalated three weeks later when Japan
mounted major military operations along
the Chinese coast. These attacks clearly
violated the Nine-Power Treaty that had
been signed at the Washington Naval
Conference in 1922, but neither the
United States nor any of the other signa-
tories were willing or able to prevent the
unilateral Japanese assault. Worse yet,
Japan could rely on two key supporters.
Earlier negotiations with Germany had
produced the Anti-Com-Intern Pact
directed against Russia. Italian leader
Benito Mussolini’s fascist government
signed the pact in November. Even when
Japanese aircraft bombed and destroyed
U.S. property in Nanking, including the
gunboat Panay, the United States con-
tented itself with a Japanese apology and
financial compensation.
President Roosevelt tested the mood
in October of that year with his
Quarantine Speech and concluded that
Americans had no stomach for aggres-
sive responses to situations like the
growing Japanese dominance of China.
Nationalist leader Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-Shek retreated to the central Chinese
stronghold of Chungking, allowing Japan
to execute tens of thousands of Chinese
civilians in the process of establishing its
own governmental authority in Nanking,
the nation’s capital at that point. Not
surprisingly, the United States responded
with a reiteration of the Stimson Doc-
trine’s non-recognition policy.
By the summer of 1939, however, the
Roosevelt administration had become
concerned enough to warn Japan that it
might restrict exports of strategic materi-
als that it needed to pursue its war. The
U.S. Navy also relocated its Pacific fleet
headquarters from California to Pearl
Harbor in Hawaii. Shortly afterward,
Germany’s invasion of Poland set off the
war in Europe, a catastrophe that clearly
distracted U.S. attention from the contin-
uing conflict in the Far East.
To offset a potential loss of access to
U.S. war materiel, in the summer of
1940, the Japanese announced the cre-
ation of a Co-Prosperity Sphere of Inter-
est in Greater East Asia. They
rationalized it as a way of strengthening
their stand against the spread of commu-
nism, but the real goal was to tap the rich
resources of nearby French Indochina
and Dutch Indonesia. Because the home
governments of both of these colonial
areas had fallen under German domina-
tion, Japan knew that it would meet min-
imal resistance if it extended its military
and political authority over these regions.
To reinforce their cooperation, Japan
joined Italy and Germany in signing the
Tripartite Pact in late September 1940. A
key provision of the pact was a commit-
ment that all three signatories would
cooperate should any of them be
attacked by a power not already engaged
in war. This provision was obviously
directed toward the United States, the
only major power currently at peace. The
Roosevelt administration could hardly
ignore this development, especially
when it included the European fascist
powers whose actions had deeply dis-
turbed the American people. The United
States tightened its trade restrictions
against Japan and, for the first time,
diverted a substantial flow of U.S. aid to
the nationalist government in China.
Even so, both sides perceived advan-
tages in continuing to talk rather than
take up arms against each other, so
 The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 251

diplomatic relations between the United

States and Japan remained in operation.
When Japanese troops invaded Indo-
China in late July 1941, however, the
United States cut off all trade. That
effectively created an economic war
between the two countries, but diplo-
matic talks continued. Prince Fumimaro
Konoye, who had been in and out of
office in recent years, briefly returned to
the position of Japan’s prime minister in
August. He proposed a personal meeting
with Roosevelt, similar to the one that
the president had just had with British
prime minister Winston Churchill to
hammer out the Atlantic Charter. The
Americans refused to consider such a
meeting, and, shortly afterward, Konoye President Franklin Roosevelt signing the dec-
lost his position to an unequivocal mili- laration of war against Japan on December 8,
1941, the day after the surprise Japanese
tarist, General Hideki Tojo. That change
attack on the American naval station at Pearl
substantially increased the tension Harbor. (National Archives)
between the two countries.
The United States had cracked the
Japanese diplomatic code in the summer remained unclear. Some critics insist that
of 1941, so the administration was aware President Roosevelt had full prior
that Japan had set November 26 as a date knowledge of both the timing and the
when events would begin that could not objective of the Japanese attack but did
be reversed. Although Tokyo’s ambassa- nothing because he knew it would galva-
dor continued to hold desultory talks nize war spirit among the American
with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, people. Countering that theory is the fact
Japan’s armed forces implemented their that allowing the Japanese to wreak such
plans to conduct a surprise bombing mis- extensive damage on the Pacific fleet was
sion on U.S. naval vessels docked at a devastating blow to U.S. capabilities.
Pearl Harbor. Just as they had against Fortunately, several vessels, including
China in 1894 and Russia in 1904, they some aircraft carriers, were on sea maneu-
hoped that their preemptive attack would vers on the morning of December 7, 1941,
neutralize enemy naval power in the and they managed to escape the other-
Pacific, clearing the way for them to wise extraordinarily effective Japanese
expand so rapidly and so far that the assault.
United States would never be able to dis- The U.S. reaction was swift and pre-
lodge them. dictable. Public opinion made a com-
Astounding intelligence lapses plete U-turn. Just prior to the attack, the
occurred on the U.S. side. Some people vast majority of Americans expressed
knew something was about to happen, opposition to the United States entering
but what, where, and exactly when World War II anywhere. On December 8,
252 | Section 4
four of five people polled agreed that
U.S. participation was now vital. Shortly
after Congress approved a war resolution
against Japan, its Tripartite Pact partners,
Italy and Germany, declared war on the
United States.
Had Roosevelt deliberately engi-
neered the Japanese attack to achieve
this result? The preponderance of evi-
dence suggests that he was as surprised
as most Americans when it occurred.
At the same time, his government had
taken steps—such as cutting off
Japan’s access to U.S. strategic
resources and increasing military sup-
port to China—that the president must
have known would dramatically
increase the likelihood of war with
Japan. Moreover, even if the Pearl Har-
bor catastrophe had not occurred, the
United States would almost certainly
have found another justification or
rationalization for joining the global
fight against fascism.
See also: Lend-Lease; Stimson Doctrine
References
Feis, Herbert. The Road to Pearl Harbor.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1950.
Lafeber, Walter. The Clash: A History of
U.S.-Japan Relations. New York: Norton,
1997.
Prange, Gordon W. Pearl Harbor: The Ver-
dict of History. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1986.
Trefousse, Hans I. Pearl Harbor, The Contin-
uing Controversy. Malabar, FL: Krieger,
1982.
Quarantine
In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt
delivered a speech suggesting that the
United States might consider imposing a
quarantine on international troublemak-
ers. The object of his concern was Japan,
which had recently launched a full-scale
undeclared war against China. His pro-
posal involved reducing or even cutting
off all economic and political intercourse
with the imperialist nation in an effort to
limit its ability to fulfill its expansionis-
tic ambitions. The Quarantine Speech
provoked such a storm of criticism from
isolationists that Roosevelt abandoned
the idea.
Roosevelt faced a vexing dilemma in
the summer of 1937. A clash between
Japanese and Chinese soldiers at the
Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing on July
7 lit the fuse for a much broader conflict.
Within a few weeks, Japan sent hundreds
of thousands of troops into northern
China, clearly intending to establish full
control. The fighting soon spread south-
ward to Shanghai and Nanking. There,
Japanese bombs aimed at a Standard Oil
Co. storage facility also sank the USS
Panay, a navy gunboat that had been
detailed to rescue stranded U.S. citizens.
The president felt that he must
respond, even though Japan had deliber-
ately refrained from issuing a formal
declaration of war. The escalating mili-
tary confrontation was referred to as the
China Incident. The Japanese apparently
hoped that the absence of a war declara-
tion would insulate them from interna-
tional criticism. Although that hope
proved unfounded, the ambiguous status
of the conflict allowed Roosevelt to
avoid strictures in recently passed U.S.
neutrality legislation. It called for him to
recognize formally the existence of a
war. Had the president done so, the neu-
trality act then insisted that he impose an
impartial embargo on trade with all com-
batants. Recent experience with the
Italian invasion of Ethiopia suggested
that such an embargo would be far more
 The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 253

harmful to the Chinese than to the well-
prepared, militaristic Japanese. Americans
almost universally sympathized with the
embattled Chinese, long considered spe-
cial friends of the United States and now
clearly victims of a vicious assault from
a traditional enemy.
The absence of an embargo allowed
the United States to direct military and
economic aid to China. The magnitude
of that assistance remained quite small.
The United States also considered can-
celing its reciprocal trade agreements
with Japan. Such a move would prevent
Japan from obtaining vital war-related
resources, such as steel and oil, from the
United States.
In part to test the public’s willingness
to support more forceful action, Roo-
sevelt delivered a speech on October 5,
1937, in Chicago, deep in the heartland
of U.S. isolationism. Read today, the
eloquently worded speech sounds
remarkably similar to contemporary
statements about international terrorism.
Roosevelt described the effects of the
Japanese invasion and noted that it had
roused nearly universal opposition. Had
he stopped at that point, he might have
avoided a negative reaction. But his last
sentence concluded that “There must be
positive endeavors to preserve peace.”
Advocates of an active response to
international threats and supporters of the
collective security concept praised the
president’s implicit call for action. But
isolationist sentiment was running very
strong in 1937, and those who hoped to
avoid international responsibilities were
quick to condemn Roosevelt, even for

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT’S “QUARANTINE”

SPEECH: OCTOBER 5, 1937

The political situation in the world, which of late has been growing progressively
worse, is such as to cause grave concern and anxiety to all the peoples and nations
who wish to live in peace and amity with their neighbors. . . .
It began through unjustified interference in the internal affairs of other nations or the
invasion of alien territory in violation of treaties. It has now reached the stage where
the very foundations of civilization are seriously threatened. The landmarks, the tradi-
tions which have marked the progress of civilization toward a condition of law and
order and justice are being wiped away.
Without a declaration of war and without warning or justification of any kind, civil-
ians, including vast numbers of women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered
with bombs from the air. In times of so-called peace, ships are being attacked and sunk
by submarines without cause or notice. Nations are fomenting and taking sides in civil
warfare in nations that have never done them any harm. Nations claiming freedom for
themselves deny it to others.
Innocent peoples, innocent nations are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power
and supremacy which is devoid of all sense of justice and humane considerations. . . .
The peace-loving nations must make a concerted effort in opposition to those vio-
lations of treaties and those ignorings of human instincts which today are creating a
state of international anarchy and instability from which there is no escape through
mere isolation or neutrality. . . .
254 | Section 4

(Quarantine Speech, Continued )

It seems to be unfortunately true that the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading.
And mark this well: When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the
community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the
health of the community against the spread of the disease. . . .
War is a contagion, whether it be declared or undeclared. It can engulf states and
peoples remote from the original scene of hostilities. We are determined to keep out
of war, yet we cannot insure ourselves against the disastrous effects of war and the
dangers of involvement. We are adopting such measures as will minimize our risk of
involvement, but we cannot have complete protection in a world of disorder in which
confidence and security have broken down.
If civilization is to survive, the principles of the Prince of Peace must be restored.
Shattered trust between nations must be revived.
Most important of all, the will for peace on the part of peace-loving nations must
express itself to the end that nations that may be tempted to violate their agreements
and the rights of others will desist from such a course. There must be positive endeav-
ors to preserve peace.

Source: U.S. Department of State, Press Releases, 1937, 17:275.

suggesting that the United States might
engage in “positive endeavors” regarding
the troubles in the Far East.
The protests were so unnerving and so
strong that Roosevelt hastily abandoned
any idea of imposing restrictions on Japan
at that point. For another three years, the
United States officially remained neutral,
although it continued to provide China
with some aid. Perhaps Roosevelt’s critics
were not altogether misguided in oppos-
ing forceful action in 1937. When the
United States ultimately did suspend
Japan’s trading privileges in the summer
of 1941, it pushed the two nations well
down the road to the clash at Pearl Har-
bor. The delay provided an opportunity
for recruiting, training, and equipping a
much larger U.S. military force.
See also: Neutrality Acts; Pearl Harbor
References
Burns, James MacGregor. Roosevelt: The
Lion and the Fox. New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 1956.
Herzberg, James R. A Broken Bond: American
Economic Policies toward Japan,
1931–1941. New York: Garland, 1988.
Red Scare
A Red Scare is an emotional response
to real or perceived communist threats.
A major Red Scare swept the United
States in 1919. The immediate cause
for alarm was widespread fear that
communist radicals in the United
States might try to achieve the same
sort of revolution that the Bolsheviks
had engineered in Russia two years ear-
lier. Strikes, riots, bombings, and other
disturbing events in the wake of World
War I fueled this paranoia. Although
the first Red Scare had burned itself out
by 1920, another one flared up in the
late 1940s.
In the mid-19th century, Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels published their
criticisms of capitalism, claiming that it
exploited industrial workers whom they

called the proletariat. As an antidote
and alternative, the theorists urged the
establishment of a socialist or commu-
nist system, in which the government
rather than private enterprise would
control the means of production. In
their view, workers in such a system
would suffer less exploitation and gain
a fair share of the wealth that their labor
produced.
In the United States, advocates of
socialism, like Eugene Debs, developed
a substantial following among disgrun-
tled workers, but far fewer rallied around
those who championed the more extreme
approach of communism. Estimates of
the actual number of communists in the
United States in 1919 range as low as
10,000 to no more than 100,000, even if
all of those who vaguely sympathized
with the goals of the small, organized
communist movement are included.
Together, they constituted a tiny fraction
of all working-class Americans, and, in
normal times, they would have been
tolerated or simply ignored.
That all changed when impassioned
revolutionaries called Bolsheviks ousted
the democratic-leaning provisional gov-
ernment that had supplanted the czar in
Russia. The success of this radical revo-
lution surprised and dismayed most
Americans. The threat posed to U.S. val-
ues became more tangible in the summer
of 1919 when the newly installed Soviet
government created the Communist
International or Comintern. Its stated
purpose was to promote communism all
around the world, even if that meant the
violent overthrow of institutions and
governments.
Despite the minuscule number of truly
dedicated communist revolutionaries in
the United States, disturbing events in
1919 convinced many Americans that a
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 255
revolution might actually take place. The
first of these was a general strike in Seat-
tle in January. Some 60,000 workers left
their jobs even though the nature of their
grievances and their objectives remained
ambiguous at best. Seattle mayor Ole
Hanson charged that Bolsheviks, or Reds,
had inspired the walkout and ordered
police and soldiers to quell the strike.
The conservative American Federation
of Labor had initially supported the
strikers but quickly realized how badly
its actions were being misinterpreted and
urged its members to return to their jobs.
The general strike planted the seeds
of a Red Scare, and subsequent events
nourished it into maturity. A popular
stereotype of a Bolshevik was a cloaked
figure holding a lighted bomb. In late
April, someone mailed more than 30
package bombs to high-ranking
government officials and prominent
businessmen. Although only one person
was seriously injured before the bombs
were discovered and defused, the action
heightened the American sense that radi-
cals were willing to take any steps to
promote their agenda.
Meanwhile, the U.S. economy stum-
bled into a severe postwar recession,
and, by the summer of 1919, many wage
earners were feeling the pinch. It was
natural, therefore, for them to strike for
higher wages. But with the nation in the
throes of a full-blown Red Scare, any
strike could be and was interpreted as
the work of radicals and anarchists. For
example, the grossly underpaid and
overworked Boston police force formed
a social club and applied for an
American Federation of Labor charter.
When city officials refused to recognize
this organization or consider its com-
plaints, three-fourths of the police force
went on strike. Rioting and looting on a
256 | Section 4
grand scale ensued until Governor
Calvin Coolidge deployed Massachusetts
National Guard units to restore order. A
steel workers’ strike in September and a
coal miners’ strike in November met the
same sort of concerted resistance.
President Woodrow Wilson’s attor-
ney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, pub-
licly charged that communist agents
were behind all of this disorder. In
August, he appointed J. Edgar Hoover
to head the General Intelligence
Division within the Justice Department.
In November, the division’s agents
rounded up several hundred purported
Red agitators and loaded 249 of them
onto “the Ark,” officially named the USS
Buford, for deportation to the Soviet
Union. Many of those on the ship were
native-born citizens of the United States
whose only crime was having political
beliefs at odds with those of the majority.
Palmer’s campaign to root out Red spies
and agents was so popular that he
mounted an even larger nationwide raid on
January 1, 1920. Although it netted more
than 4,000 alleged radicals, fewer than
600 of them were found guilty enough for
Palmer’s agents to deport them.
Palmer’s overreaction to what was
now being recognized as an almost non-
existent threat marked the effective end
of the Red Scare. Americans came to
their senses and realized that their eco-
nomic problems had nothing to do with
radicals or international agitators. When
a huge bomb exploded on Wall Street in
September 1920, killing more than 30
people, few believed it was part of a
Comintern plot. Americans would again
respond to perceived communist threats
after World War II, egged on by dema-
gogues like Wisconsin senator Joseph
McCarthy, but fortunately the first Red
scare quickly faded in the 1920s.
See also: Non-recognition; Red Scare Again
References
Coben, Stanley. A. Mitchell Palmer: Politi-
cian. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1963.
Murray, Robert K. Red Scare: A Study in
National Hysteria, 1919–1920. Westport,
CT: Greenwood, 1980.
Preston, William, Jr. Aliens and Dissenters.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1963.
Second Front
No U.S. initiative generated more
diplomatic and military interest in World
War II than the establishment of a second
front in Europe. The first front was the
confrontation between the Soviet Union
and German armies that penetrated deep
into Russian territory. As soon as the
Grand Alliance was established, Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin asked the United
States and Great Britain to establish a
second front by attacking Germany from
the west. Although President Franklin
Roosevelt agreed in principle with the
beleaguered Stalin, political, economic,
and strategic factors delayed the creation
of a second front until June 6, 1944.
Even though it occurred far later than
originally planned, the second front
proved to be a key factor in forcing
Germany to surrender less than a year later.
Before the United States entered
World War II, Germany had enjoyed
great success in Western Europe. For sev-
eral months after it invaded Poland, noth-
ing much happened. The Phony War
ended in the spring of 1940, when the
armies of German chancellor Adolf
Hitler went on the offensive. They used a
tactic called Blitzkrieg, or Lightning War,
to overwhelm their opponents. After sub-
duing Denmark and Norway, they turned

south to assail Holland, Belgium, and
France. By mid-summer, they had forced
the French government to sign a humili-
ating surrender document, in the vintage
railway car that Chancellor Bismarck’s
government had used for the same pur-
pose at the end of the Franco-Prussian
War in 1871. Germany treated northern
and western France as occupied territo-
ries and installed a puppet government at
Vichy, under Marshal Henri Pétain, to
govern the southeastern provinces.
The British forces dispatched to
defend France managed to execute a dra-
matic withdrawal from Dunkirk, using
every conceivable kind of water craft. For
the next several months, Germany waged
a relentless air assault across the English
Channel, but Great Britain’s Royal Air
Force gradually achieved dominance and
won the Battle of Britain. Hitler then
abandoned his plans to invade the British
Isles and devoted his energies to prepar-
ing for an invasion of the Soviet Union
for the following summer.
Hundreds of thousands of German
troops in occupied France established
heavily fortified positions all along what
became known as the Atlantic Wall. The
existence of this barrier discouraged any
thought of an immediate invasion from
the west. Moreover, during 1942, German
submarine warfare was remarkably
effective at destroying seaborne supply
lines and preventing the mass transport
of U.S. troops and equipment. In the fol-
lowing year, U.S. and British naval con-
voys and sophisticated tracking
mechanisms, such as radar and sonar,
shifted the balance in their favor. At that
point, large-scale U.S. deployments
across the Atlantic became feasible.
Diplomacy determined where they
would take place. Despite Stalin’s
repeated calls for a second front in north-
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 257
western Europe, British prime minister
Winston Churchill was equally persist-
ent in requesting United States assis-
tance in North Africa. German and
Italian troops had spilled into that region
in huge numbers under the command of
German field marshal Erwin Rommel.
His objective was to capture the Suez
Canal and thereby cut Great Britain’s
links with its colony of India. President
Franklin Roosevelt agreed to send assis-
tance at an early meeting with Churchill,
and a major British victory at El
Alamain, in the desert west of Cairo,
encouraged both Allies. U.S. troops
therefore entered the war with landings
at North African ports in Morocco and
Algeria. Their arrival emboldened the
Free French under General Charles De
Gaulle and revived French participation
in the war against Germany.
Although that might seem to encour-
age a direct attack on German-occupied
France, pushing the Axis forces com-
pletely out of North Africa emerged as
the immediate priority. U.S. general
Dwight D. Eisenhower and his able
second-in-command, Omar Bradley,
drove eastward and eventually joined
forces with the army of British general
Bernard Montgomery, coming west
from Egypt. Not until May 1943, how-
ever, did the allied armies capture the
last Axis strongholds in Tunisia. With
so many troops at hand, it seemed
expedient to send them across to nearby
Sicily. Montgomery and his U.S. coun-
terpart, General George S. Patton,
wrested the island from Axis control in
a little over a month.
Once again, expediency dictated the
next step. British and U.S. forces
decided to use Sicily as a springboard for
a jump to the Italian Peninsula. The
allied move convinced Italian leader
258 | Section 4
Benito Mussolini to abdicate, but the
Germans quickly moved in and propped
him up again. They also sent many divi-
sions south, where they presented unan-
ticipated resistance. The United States
staged amphibious landings at Salerno,
near Naples, in the early fall and at
Anzio, near Rome, in December, but not
until June 1944 was the enemy driven
out of the Italian capital.
Although some allied troops were
slogging their way north through the
rugged Italian mountains, many others
were preparing at last for the long-
awaited second front. U.S. and British
bombers carried out round-the-clock
raids on German targets, aimed at
destroying the nation’s productive capa-
bility and morale. Meanwhile more than
1.5 million U.S. soldiers crossed the
On June 6, 1944, Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy in northwestern France, estab-
lishing the long-anticipated second front in the European theater of operations in World War II.
(National Archives)
Atlantic to participate in Operation
Overlord, the code name for the cross-
channel invasion. A bewildering array of
tricks and falsified rumors confused the
German High Command about where
and when the assault that it knew was
inevitable would occur.
General Eisenhower ordered the
invasion of beaches in Normandy on
D-Day, June 6, 1944. More than 50,000
men and thousands of vehicles went
ashore on the first day, joined by another
300,000 troops in succeeding days.
Even though the Germans continued for
some time to anticipate a major assault
at Pas de Calais, they were discourag-
ingly effective at resisting the allied
push. On July 25, General Bradley’s
First Army finally managed to break
through German lines at St. Lo, opening

the flood gates for hundreds of thou-
sands of allied troops to swarm into
northwestern France. By mid-August,
they had reached Paris, where General
De Gaulle led the liberating troops
through l’Arc de Triomphe.
Overextended supply lines now pre-
sented General Eisenhower with a
dilemma. A second amphibious assault
had begun in August along the Riviera
in southern France, and allied forces
were making their way north. Simulta-
neously, General Patton’s Third Army
was driving eastward toward the
German border. He lobbied Eisenhower
for fuel and supplies to continue his
advance. British field marshal
Montgomery insisted instead that an
invasion of Holland would pay larger
dividends. Unable to support both,
Eisenhower acceded to the British
request. The airborne attack on the
Dutch city of Arnhem was an unmiti-
gated disaster. Meanwhile, Patton quite
literally ran out of gas and had to halt his
offensive as winter set in.
Even though Russian armies were pin-
ning down millions of German soldiers in
the east, Hitler found 24 reserve divisions
to throw into a desperation attack on the
Allies in eastern France. For a few weeks,
their momentum carried them well to the
west, creating a bulge in the allied defen-
sive lines. The Battle of the Bulge raged
for several weeks before the German
drive ran out of steam.
Shortly afterward, the Allies discov-
ered that retreating German units had
failed to destroy a key railroad bridge
across the Rhine River at Remagen. It
allowed allied armies to pour into
Germany proper. In accord with earlier
diplomatic agreements, Eisenhower
halted his advance at the Elbe River.
That allowed Soviet Red Army units to
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 259
swarm into German territory well to the
west of Berlin. On April 30, Adolf Hitler
committed suicide in his underground
bunker. A week later, remnants of his
government agreed to the unconditional
surrender that President Roosevelt had
insisted on at the Casablanca Conference
more than two years earlier. The celebra-
tion of VE-Day, May 8, 1945, proved
that the second front had, indeed, been
crucial to ending Axis domination of
Europe.
See also: Grand Alliance
References
Ellis, John. Brute Force: Allied Strategy and
Tactics in the Second World War. New
York: Viking, 1990.
Murray, Williamson, and Allan R. Millett. A
War to Be Won: Fighting the Second
World War. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
Weigley, Russell F. Eisenhower’s Lieu-
tenants: The Campaign of France and
Germany, 1944–1945. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1981.
Wilson, Theodore A., ed. D-Day 1944.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1994.
Siberian Expedition
Few Americans are aware that U.S.
troops were active in the Soviet Union
in the late stages of World War I. One
group assisted French and British units
that were already engaged in Murmansk
and Archangel. A much larger contin-
gent of Americans entered from the Far
East and remained in Siberia for almost
two years. A number of explanations for
these activities have been advanced, but
Soviet leaders repeatedly referred to
them as proof of a U.S. intention to
infiltrate and even overthrow their
regime.
260 | Section 4
These unusual U.S. initiatives occur-
red during a period of great uncertainty
and stress. The Bolshevik faction had
taken charge of Russia in late 1917 and
signed a separate peace agreement with
Germany in March 1918. The Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk allowed Germany to con-
centrate its forces on the western front,
where the United States was only begin-
ning to be engaged.
Great Britain and France cited the
Russo-German peace agreement as a
justification for sending troops into
Murmansk and Archangel, two port
cities in northwestern Russia. They had
shipped substantial amounts of war
materiel to those cities when czarist
Russia was their wartime ally. Now they
worried that Germany would seize this
equipment and use it against them. To
assist in the recovery effort, President
Wilson agreed to send three battalions
of fresh U.S. troops in June 1918. They
soon discovered that whatever equip-
ment might have been there was long
gone. The Americans ended up manning
defensive lines around besieged
Archangel until they could withdraw in
the following summer.
The U.S. intervention in Siberia was
much larger and longer lasting. One pos-
sible justification for this move was a
report that 55,000 Czech soldiers who
had been held behind Russia’s front lines
were willing to be transported to the
western front to fight against the
Germans. Wilson authorized the dis-
patch of 7,000 U.S. soldiers to infiltrate
Siberia from the east, in hopes of estab-
lishing contact with the Czechs and
facilitating their redeployment.
The existence of the Czech legions in
no way explains why Japan sent 72,000
troops of its own into Russia’s far eastern
expanses. Japan was not a participant in
World War I, so its activities could only
be based on a desire to expand its influ-
ence in East Asia. Some historians argue
that the United States sent its troops into
Siberia primarily to try to counter
Japan’s influence.
Other historians claim that the U.S.
Siberian Expedition was a thinly dis-
guised attempt to help Russians who
were fighting to overthrow the Bolshevik
regime. By 1919, Admiral Alexander
Kolchak had gathered in Siberia a
sizable opposition force that was fight-
ing the Red Army and hoping to over-
throw the Soviet system. Two factors
weaken the argument that the United
States was seriously intending to help
Kolchak. The first is the relatively small
size of the expeditionary force; 7,000
troops simply could not exert any mean-
ingful impact in what was a massive mil-
itary confrontation. Second, the U.S.
soldiers actually had very little contact
with Kolchak, whose opposition move-
ment began to collapse in the fall of 1919.
Shortly afterward, Wilson ordered the
troops withdrawn, and the last of them
left Siberia in April 1920. The Czech sol-
diers who had earlier established effec-
tive control of the Trans-Siberian
railroad remained inside the Soviet
Union for some time. Japan also left its
troops in Soviet territory until 1922 and
maintained a strong presence in adjacent
Manchuria for another three years.
Whatever motivated two U.S. inter-
ventions into the Soviet Union, they had
no major impact on the outcome of
World War I or the ultimate success of
the Soviet revolution. Perhaps, in the
end, the Czech legions, Kolchak’s strug-
gles, and the missing war materiel had
little to do with Wilson’s decision. When
he ordered these deployments in the
summer of 1918, the United States was

totally dedicated to fighting on the west-
ern front and therefore willing to con-
sider any action that might weaken
Germany. The ill-considered moves into
Siberia and northwestern Russia were
minor missteps that had been taken in
the heat of a global conflict.
See also: Non-recognition; Red Scare
References
Fogelsong, David S. America’s Secret War
against Bolshevism. Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Kennen, George. Soviet-American Relations.
Vol. 2: The Decision to Intervene. Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958.
Unterberger, Betty Miller. America’s Siber-
ian Expedition, 1918–1920. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1956.
Stimson Doctrine
In 1932, Secretary of State Henry Stimson
refused to recognize Japan’s military
achievements in northern China. Japan
subsequently installed a satellite govern-
ment in Manchuria, calling the new
regime Manchukuo. Stimson reiterated his
non-recognition policy, and the United
States never acknowledged the change in
government. This non-recognition stance
became known as the Stimson Doctrine,
and it was applied to other situations as
well.
Stimson was not the first secretary of
state to resort to non-recognition in East
Asia. During the early months of World
War I, Japan presented the Chinese gov-
ernment with Twenty-One Demands that
would effectively have made China a
dependency of Japan. Chinese authori-
ties appealed for help from the United
States, and U.S. diplomatic intervention
caused the Japanese to drop some of the
most intrusive demands. In addition,
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 261
President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary
of state, William Jennings Bryan,
announced that the United States would
not recognize any attempts to infringe on
the territorial integrity of China.
Japanese ambitions were hardly
slaked, however, and when the world-
wide depression set in after 1929, the
nation’s leadership became increasingly
militant. One strategy proposed for
relieving economic distress at home was
to expand Japan’s resource base by tak-
ing control of nearby territories on the
mainland of Asia. Korea had effectively
become a Japanese colony as a result of
the Sino-Japanese War (1895). Now
Japan set its sights on the vast, temper-
ate, and very productive province of
Manchuria, which lay beyond Korea.
An excuse for action came in
September 1931, when Japan claimed
that Chinese forces had attacked and
destroyed a section of the Japanese-
controlled South Manchurian Railway
near the city of Mukden. At post–World
War II trials, Japanese officials admitted
that the Mukden Incident had never actu-
ally happened. But, in 1931, they cited it
as a justification for allowing their
10,400-man Kwan-tung Army to assault
Chinese military forces and gradually
expand their sphere of occupation in
Manchuria.
Americans had long sustained a belief
that the United States had a special inter-
est in and relationship with China. A key
factor was the U.S. issuance of the Open
Door Notes in 1899 and 1900, which,
among other provisions, called for con-
tinued recognition of China’s territorial
integrity.
Although China’s imperial government
had fallen in a revolution in 1911, the
United States took the lead in recognizing
and encouraging the evolving Chinese
262 | Section 4
regimes as the appropriate governing
authority for all of China. In the late
1920s, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek
had emerged as leader of the dominant
nationalist movement. It was his army that
the Japanese were fighting in Manchuria.
Secretary of State Stimson had
recently been badly burned when he had
attempted to invoke the Kellogg-Briand
Pact’s prohibition against war in an ear-
lier Manchurian incident involving
Russia. He was understandably unwill-
ing and, realistically, hardly able to do
much more than hope that the League of
Nations would deal with the situation.
The League Council did dispatch an
investigative commission, led by British
Lord Lytton. After nine months, the
Lytton Commission reported its unsur-
prising findings, which were quite criti-
cal of Japan. The Japanese chose to
ignore the league and eventually with-
drew from the organization altogether.
When they announced the formation
of a new, independent government for
Manchuria, they renamed it Manchukuo
and installed Henry Pu Yi as its titular
head. Because he was a member of the
deposed Manchu Dynasty, Japan could
claim that it was merely restoring the
region’s traditional and proper ruling
family. In fact, the young man was noth-
ing more than a Japanese puppet.
President Herbert Hoover was grap-
pling with the onset of the Great
Depression, and the United States was
entering an even more isolationist phase
than it had exhibited in the 1920s. That
severely limited Stimson’s options.
With the president’s approval, he
announced that the United States would
not recognize any changes in govern-
ment that violated the long-standing
U.S. commitment to the territorial
integrity of China. This non-recognition
policy had no perceptible effect on
either the Japanese or the Chinese citi-
zens of Manchukuo. Atlases published
in the United States in the 1930s do,
however, note the U.S. non-recognition
of Japanese control.
The Stimson Doctrine was a safe,
relatively popular response to an inter-
national crisis that the isolationist peo-
ple of the United States had no interest
in resolving. Indeed, President Hoover
was quite annoyed that his secretary’s
name was associated with the policy.
The relationship between Hoover and
Stimson became quite strained in the
aftermath of what the president insisted
should properly be called the Hoover
Doctrine.
See also: Kellogg-Briand Pact; League of
Nations
References
Ferrell, Robert H. American Diplomacy in
the Great Depression. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1957.
Langer, Robert. Seizure of Territory. Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947.
Smith, Sara R. The Manchurian Crisis,
1931–1932. New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1948.
United Nations
As World War II drew to a close, the
United States became the primary spon-
sor of a new international organization to
promote collective security. This devel-
opment may seem surprising because
Americans had steadfastly avoided
involvement in the League of Nations. It
also seems odd given the league’s poor
record of fulfilling President Woodrow
Wilson’s idealistic goals for it. In the
end, however, the United Nations was
enormously popular with the American

people when it came into existence in
1945.
Both the league and its successor
organization were designed to promote
collective security. To do so, the organi-
zations should ideally be equipped with
tools—ranging from mediation all the
way to military intervention—to resolve
crises. If they could rely on collective
security, individual member nations
would be relieved of the necessity of
maintaining substantial independent
military capabilities. Collective security
would also obviate the need for bilateral
or multilateral defense agreements.
Instead, a nation threatened with aggres-
sion could appeal to the international
organization for protection.
On several occasions, appeals of that
kind had reached the League of
Nations, but it often lacked the influ-
ence or power to respond effectively.
The internationalists planning a succes-
sor organization hoped to remedy that
weakness. One of the most dedicated
proponents of a new, stronger organiza-
tion was President Roosevelt’s long-
serving secretary of state, Cordell Hull.
He had been an ardent Wilsonian during
World War I, and he continued to have
abiding faith in international collective
security.
His boss in the White House was less
enthusiastic, even though Franklin
Roosevelt had supported Wilson’s initia-
tives when he served under him as assis-
tant secretary of the navy. Like most
Americans and many others around the
world, Roosevelt had found the impo-
tence of the League of Nations disillu-
sioning. Once he had been drawn into
full participation in World War II, how-
ever, the president developed a renewed
belief that international cooperation
could produce great benefits.
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 263
The so-called Grand Alliance of the
United States, Great Britain, and the
Soviet Union shaped Roosevelt’s opti-
mism. He hoped that the great powers
would continue cooperating after they
had defeated their current enemies, and
that hope underlay his concept of the
Four Policemen. In this formulation, the
three wartime Allies plus China would
be the preeminent political authorities
and military powers after the war. No
international organization could success-
fully offer collective security if it failed
to include the great powers.
Cordell Hull agreed but wanted the
organization to be much more than a con-
tinuation of collaboration of great powers.
After laying careful diplomatic ground-
work, Hull invited representatives from
China, Great Britain, the Soviet Union,
and the United States to Dumbarton
Oaks, a secluded estate in the District of
Columbia, in the fall of 1944. The assem-
bled delegates mapped out the basic
design for the organization. The League
of Nations served as a model and, like the
league, the new organization would have
a general assembly for open debate and
discussion among the representatives of
all member nations.
The assembly would not, however,
have administrative or enforcement pow-
ers. They would be lodged instead in the
Security Council. In line with Roosevelt’s
vision, the council would contain perma-
nent seats for representatives of the Big
Three and China. Because British prime
minister Winston Churchill considered
China a dependency of the United States,
he sponsored the inclusion of liberated
France as a fifth permanent member on
the council.
The Dumbarton Oaks Conference left
key issues unresolved, anticipating that
the Big Three leaders would deal with
264 | Section 4

The second meeting of the leaders of the wartime Grand Alliance took place in February 1945 at
Yalta in the Soviet Union. British prime minister Winston Churchill, American president Franklin
Roosevelt, and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin worked out the basic structure of the United Nations
organization at this meeting. (National Archives)

them at their upcoming meeting in Yalta
early in 1945. There, Churchill, Roosevelt,
and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed to
grant veto power to each of the perma-
nent members. Stalin argued for extend-
ing that authority to procedural issues,
but the Western leaders insisted that it
apply only to substantive actions that the
council might consider. The Yalta
Conference also resolved a membership
controversy, by allowing both Ukraine
and White Russia to have separate seats
in the General Assembly along with the
Soviet Union.
The next step was an organizational
meeting, set to convene in San Francisco
on April 25, 1945. President Roosevelt
died on April 12, but newly sworn-in
President Harry S Truman insisted that
the meeting be held as planned. Secre-
tary of State Edward R. Stettinius
chaired the San Francisco Conference,
which included delegates from the great
powers and from 46 other nations who
were currently at war with Germany and
Japan. The U.S. delegation also included
key political figures like Republican sen-
ator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan,
whose support would be crucial in assur-
ing Senate ratification.
The conference lasted right through
VE-Day, when the war in Europe ended,
on May 8, 1945. Many of the delegates
were reluctant to see the major powers

retain so much prominence and author-
ity, but they could do little to prevent it.
The conference completed the drafting
process that had begun at Dumbarton
Oaks. The resulting charter created the
General Assembly and the Security
Council, with five permanent members
and six additional members to be elected
to rotating two-year terms.
To overcome a key weakness of the
League of Nations organization, the San
Francisco conference created a third
branch called the Secretariat. Its
Secretary-General would handle routine
administration of the organization but
could take no concrete action without
Security Council authorization. Article 52
of the UN Charter allowed for regional
arrangements, such as the Organization of
American States, which were a key factor
in assuring widespread support. The dele-
gates also established the Economic and
Social Council (ECOSOC) to provide
humanitarian assistance and information
for the global community, the first of
several UN agencies dealing with non-
confrontational issues.
Of these, the UN Trusteeship Council
was of immediate importance to the
United States. At considerable cost, U.S.
forces had driven Japanese troops out of
hundreds of islands in the South Pacific.
Most of their residents would probably
have welcomed direct annexation by the
United States, but President Roosevelt
had repeatedly stated that his country
had no territorial ambitions. An accept-
able alternative was for the Trusteeship
Council to delegate authority over the
islands to the United States, allowing
U.S. influence to prevail without formal
annexation.
The American people’s reaction to the
UN declaration was far different from
their hostility to the League of Nations.
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 265
President Truman sent a treaty embody-
ing the UN Charter to the Senate on
July 2, 1945; before the end of the
month, it sailed through with a definitive
89 to 2 ratification vote. Public opinion
polls reported greater than 90 percent
popular approval as well.
Unfortunately, hopes that the Big
Three would make a smooth transition
from war to peace were quickly dashed.
When he met with Foreign Minister
Vyacheslav Molotov just prior to the San
Francisco Conference, President Truman
chided the Soviet government for failing
to promote democratic government in
Poland. The United States subsequently
prevented Poland from obtaining a seat
in the General Assembly. Some analysts
mark this as the opening move in what
was to become the Cold War.
Although it fell far short of its opti-
mistic advocates’ dreams, the United
Nations did perform a number of valu-
able functions in subsequent years. Its
economic and social programs were
universally praised, and the General
Assembly provided a forum for smaller
nations to air their grievances. And, more
than once, the Security Council did take
definitive action, most effectively in
areas or issues outside the bounds of the
bitter East-West confrontation. To that
extent, the United Nations has proven to
be a more substantial international
organization than the League of Nations.
See also: Four Policemen; League of Nations;
Yalta
References
Campbell, Thomas M. Masquerade Peace:
America’s UN Policy, 1944–1945. Talla-
hassee: Florida State University Press,
1973.
Divine, Robert A. Second Chance: The
Triumph of Internationalism in America
266 | Section 4
during World War II. New York:
Atheneum, 1967.
Hoopes, Townsend, and Douglas Brinkley.
FDR and the Creation of the U.N. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
Unrestricted Submarine
Warfare
Germany’s decision to initiate unre-
stricted submarine warfare in January
1917 convinced President Woodrow
Wilson to bring the United States into
the Great War. Prior to that decision, many
U.S. lives had been lost when German
submarines sank passenger-carrying
ships, but the president obtained prom-
ises and pledges from Germany that
seemed to limit the threat. Once its sub-
marines began sinking all ships, includ-
ing U.S. merchant vessels in February,
however, it served essentially as a first
shot, enabling Wilson to insist that the
United States was entering the conflict
only after being attacked.
When the Great War broke out in
August 1914, President Wilson captured
the prevailing U.S. view when he
announced that the United States would
remain neutral. That position was
remarkably similar to the U.S. response
to European wars a century earlier. Prior
to the War of 1812, the United States
repeatedly claimed that, as a neutral
nation, its ships should not be stopped,
captured, or sunk by those at war. Both
Napoléon’s France and Great Britain,
with its superior navy, pursued policies
that undermined or denied U.S. attempts
to champion neutral rights. When Presi-
dent James Madison led his nation into
war against Great Britain in 1812, he jus-
tified his action by citing a number of
British maritime policies that Americans
considered unacceptable.
Ironically, British actions and policies
in 1914 and after resembled the same
behavior that had outraged Americans
more than 100 years earlier. Royal Navy
vessels stopped U.S. merchant ships at
sea to search for contraband goods, and,
even if none were found on board, they
might impound the ships and cargos any-
way. The Wilson administration directed
a stream of protests to London. In almost
all cases, the royal government eventu-
ally compensated the owners of captured
goods and vessels. Even more signifi-
cantly, British actions caused no U.S.
deaths.
Early in the war, Germany showed
relatively little concern about events at
sea, because it had amassed huge stock-
piles in anticipation of a conflict that
everyone assumed would last no more
than a few months. As the fighting
dragged on, however, the German gov-
ernment realized that interfering with
Great Britain’s ocean-borne trade could
seriously weaken its enemy. The Royal
Navy had successfully blockaded virtu-
ally the entire German war fleet in Kiel
Harbor, however, so the only maritime
weapon that Germany could utilize was
an untested fleet of some 30 untersee-
boots, which English speakers referred
to as U-boats.
The U-boats initially preyed on
enemy merchant and naval vessels in the
Mediterranean and elsewhere, actions
that had no direct impact on Americans.
In February 1915, the British extended
its list of contraband to include food
stuffs and stepped up its attempts to limit
external trade with its enemy. Germany
responded by warning everyone to keep
clear of a war zone that encircled the
British Isles. President Wilson then
issued a warning of his own that the
United States would hold Germany

strictly accountable for any U.S. lives or
property that it might endanger.
The cruise liner Lusitania was the
first and most prominent U-boat casu-
alty. It sailed from New York with 1,959
crew and passengers, including more
than 200 Americans aboard, as well as
4,000 cases of rifle cartridges that the
Germans considered contraband. As the
liner approached Great Britain on May 7,
1915, a German U-boat unleashed a cou-
ple of torpedoes that sank the Lusitania
in just 18 minutes. Among the nearly
1,200 killed were 128 Americans,
including 37 women and 21 children.
The event so shocked and aroused the
American people that Wilson could jus-
tifiably have declared war right then.
Instead, he dispatched strongly worded
diplomatic notes to Germany, threaten-
ing to cut off relations, typically a first
step to war. The German government
responded with an agreement to com-
pensate the U.S. loses and, simultane-
ously, secretly ordered its submarine
captains never again to fire on any large
passenger ships.
Even so, in August, a German torpedo
sunk another British liner, the Arabic,
with the loss of two lives. Wilson’s angry
reaction convinced the German ambassa-
dor in Washington to reveal his govern-
ment’s secret orders. Wilson grudgingly
accepted this Arabic Pledge as proof that
Germany was attempting to prevent fur-
ther loss of life. Compensation for
Lusitania victims and their families came
through in February 1916, but tensions
ratcheted up the following month, when a
French channel steamer, the Sussex, was
torpedoed in late March, severely injur-
ing several U.S. passengers.
Realizing that U.S. patience was
nearly exhausted, the German govern-
ment publicly promised that its U-boats
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 267
would refrain from attacking any com-
mercial vessels without advance warn-
ing. Because issuing a warning from a
submarine was unfeasible, particularly
when many merchantmen were heavily
armed themselves, this Sussex Pledge
effectively curtailed all commerce
destruction. Germany tied this pledge to
a demand that Great Britain abide by
recognized international rules of mar-
itime war, a proviso that Wilson conve-
niently ignored. U-boats continued to hit
the enemy’s naval vessels, but no further
incidents involving civilians occurred
throughout the remainder of 1916.
Well into the third year of war, in
January 1917, with no apparent prospect of
victory, Germany took up a proposal
advanced earlier by Admiral Alfred von
Tirpitz, the man who had masterminded
the creation of the submarine fleet. He had
resigned his post in disgust in 1916 when
the kaiser’s government had rejected his
plan. The German High Command now
reconsidered the proposal. The submarine
fleet had more than doubled in size and had
become far more experienced and effec-
tive. Von Tirpitz insisted that if his U-boats
were unleashed, they could quickly cripple
the overseas trade on which Great Britain’s
island kingdom depended. Within six
months, the admiral promised, the enemy’s
economy would be so devastated that its
government would have to sue for peace.
This strategy would inevitably wreak
devastation on U.S. vessels trading with
Great Britain as well, a consequence that
would surely force the United States to
take countermeasures. The German lead-
ers knew that would be likely but dis-
counted its importance. The U.S. Army
was a negligible force of around 100,000
ill-trained and poorly equipped troops,
who would have to be transported at
great cost and risk across the ocean,
268 | Section 4
which was patrolled by German U-boats.
In the best of circumstances, the German
High Command concluded, more than
two years would pass before the United
States could have any significant impact
on the European battlefront. By then,
Great Britain would long since have
been forced out of the war.
On January 31, 1917, the German
ambassador in Washington informed the
U.S. government of his country’s deci-
sion to initiate unrestricted submarine
warfare. The Wilson administration
immediately severed diplomatic rela-
tions with Germany and sent the ambas-
sador home. Within a few more days,
U-boat assaults were killing Americans
at sea. Germany had clearly fired the first
shot, one that the United States could use
as full justification for entering the war
against it. More than two months of fre-
netic planning and diplomatic activity
intervened, however, before President
Wilson sent his request to Congress for a
declaration of war.
Germany’s risky calculation had
failed to take into account two immedi-
ate factors, as well as another that
exerted influence far sooner than antici-
pated. First, the U.S. Navy was a formi-
dable force, nearly as large as the
German fleet that remained penned up
behind the British naval blockade. The
U.S. Navy and the even larger British
war fleet quickly developed an effective
convoy system that provided substantial
protection for merchant ships crossing
the Atlantic. Equally important was an
immediate infusion of billions of U.S.
dollars into the depleted war coffers of
Great Britain and France, money that
substantially increased their ability to
carry on the fight. Finally, the United
States mounted a massive mobilization
that enabled it to dispatch some 2 million
fresh, well-equipped troops to Europe by
the summer of 1918. Their presence
proved crucial in defeating the
exhausted, overstrained German forces
within a matter of months.
See also: Neutrality (1914–1917)
References
Bailey, Thomas A., and Paul B. Ryan. The
Lusitania Disaster. New York: Free Press,
1975.
Birnbaum, Karl E. Peace Moves and U-Boat
Warfare. Stockholm: Almqvist and
Wiksell, 1958.
Devin, Patrick. Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow
Wilson’s Neutrality. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1975.
Herwig, Holger H. Politics of Frustration:
The United States in German Naval Plan-
ning, 1889–1941. Boston: Little, Brown,
1976.
Yalta
The final meeting of the original leaders
of the Grand Alliance took place at Yalta
in early February 1945. They discussed
four main issues: Poland, Germany, the
United Nations, and the war against
Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt had
not been eager to attend another tiring
overseas conference. He had just com-
pleted an exhausting reelection cam-
paign, winning an unprecedented fourth
term in the White House. But encourag-
ing news from the front lines in both
Asia and Europe made it seem essential
to consult with the leaders of the major
U.S. war partners on what steps they
should take next.
The president took three major
desires to the Russian province of
Crimea. Viewing the United Nations as
the key to postwar collective security,
he wanted to resolve remaining differ-
ences on its membership and opera-

tions with Joseph Stalin, head of the
Soviet Union. In line with the Atlantic
Charter and traditional U.S. mission
sentiments, he also wanted the Big
Three to go on record as favoring
democracy and self-determination. The
most pressing military issue was the
continuing war in Asia, so Roosevelt
sought a pledge of Russian support at
the conference.
As at earlier meetings, the other lead-
ers came with different agendas. British
prime minister Winston Churchill feared
that the United States would not have the
stomach for continuing military involve-
ment in Europe, so he wanted the other
leaders to recognize liberated France as a
great power. The postwar status of
Poland was another key concern of the
British government. Ultimately,
Churchill wanted assurance that the
Allied success in eliminating the threat
of a Europe dominated by fascism would
not open the way for a communist
takeover.
Joseph Stalin, general secretary of
the Communist Party, greeted his
guests at Yalta with his own set of
desires. His nation’s Red Army now
occupied much of Eastern Europe, and
Stalin intended to use that strength to
install pro-Russian governments wher-
ever possible. He also wanted the other
leaders to join him in demanding sub-
stantial indemnities, including mone-
tary reparations and forced labor, from
defeated Germany.
Some of the contradictory desires that
the leaders brought to the Yalta Confer-
ence were fulfilled in principle. For
example, all three endorsed Roosevelt’s
call for democratic elections by signing
the Declaration on Liberated Europe. It
quickly became apparent, however, that
any election that took place under the
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 269
guns of a foreign army would most
likely result in a government that was
friendly to that of the occupying force.
Thus elections in Italy and France pro-
duced open, democratic governments. In
Eastern Europe, elections took place
only when the Soviets were certain that
those countries would install communist
governments.
Poland was a case in point. Winston
Churchill had already concluded that the
Western Allies could do nothing to pre-
vent Soviet control of Poland. Therefore,
when the three leaders met, the main
topic of debate was where to establish
the boundaries of the country. Stalin
insisted on reclaiming the eastern region,
which had once been part of czarist
Russia. The Allies therefore agreed to
shift Poland’s western boundary to the
Oder and Niesse rivers, incorporating
much of the prewar German province of
Prussia. Roosevelt and Churchill also
allowed the Soviet-supported govern-
ment at Lublin to serve as the core for
extending Polish authority throughout
the reconstituted country.
The Polish question influenced deci-
sions regarding postwar Germany. The
three leaders agreed to define occupation
zones in what remained of German’s
prewar home territory. Churchill and
Roosevelt successfully argued that
France should be assigned a zone of its
own. In a fateful decision, they also
agreed to allow the Russian zone to
extend from the western border of Poland
well past Berlin, a city which itself would
be segmented into four occupation zones.
As they did for other occupied areas, the
leaders established Allied Control Com-
missions to coordinate affairs in both
Berlin and Germany. Roosevelt and
Churchill neither accepted nor ruled out
the Soviet demand for up to $20 billion in
270 | Section 4

DECLARATION ON LIBERATED EUROPE

(Agreed to at the Yalta Conference, February 13, 1945)

. . . [Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin] jointly declare their mutual agreement to con-
cert during the temporary period of instability in liberated Europe the policies of their
three Governments in assisting the peoples liberated from the domination of Nazi
Germany and the peoples of the former Axis satellite states of Europe to solve by dem-
ocratic means their pressing political and economic problems.
The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life
must be achieved by processes which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the
last vestiges of Nazism and fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own
choice. This is a principle of the Atlantic Charter—the right of all people to choose the
form of government under which they will live—the restoration of sovereign rights and
self-government to those peoples who have been forcibly deprived to them by the
aggressor nations.
To foster the conditions in which the liberated people may exercise these rights, the
three governments will jointly assist the people in any European liberated state or for-
mer Axis state in Europe where, in their judgment conditions require,
(a) to establish conditions of internal peace;
(b) to carry out emergency relief measures for the relief of distressed peoples;
(c) to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic
elements in the population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through
free elections of Governments responsive to the will of the people; and
(d) to facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections.
The three Governments will consult the other United Nations and provisional author-
ities or other Governments in Europe when masters of direct interest to them are under
consideration. . . .

Source: Bevans, Charles I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States
of America, 1776–1949. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, 3:1008–1009.

reparations, choosing instead to refer that
issue to a reparations commission to
meet in the future.
The United States intended to struc-
ture the United Nations as a far more
effective collective security body than
the League of Nations had been. Appar-
ently assuming that cooperation among
the victorious Allies would continue
after the war, Roosevelt favored assign-
ing them permanent seats on the pro-
posed Security Council. At the same
time, he knew that winning U.S. Senate
approval for U.S. participation would
require some constraints on the interna-
tional organization’s authority. To that
end, he favored granting each of the per-
manent members a veto over council
actions.
Membership issues also had to be
resolved. Stalin’s opening gambit was to
demand a separate seat in the General
Assembly for each of the 16 Soviet
Socialist Republics that constituted the
USSR. The Americans briefly considered
a counterdemand for 48 seats, one for
each state in the union. The final compro-
mise allowed the USSR three assembly

seats, one each for the Ukraine, White
Russia, and the Soviet Union.
The most controversial decision made
at the Yalta Conference stemmed from
President Roosevelt’s belief that the
United States needed Soviet assistance to
defeat Japan. The president had raised
the issue at the Teheran Conference more
than a year earlier. During pre-Yalta
negotiations in Moscow, Stalin expressed
a willingness to turn his attention to the
east within two or three months of the
anticipated victory in Europe.
At Yalta, Stalin confirmed that prom-
ise, but only after laying down several
conditions. In the 1905 peace agreement
that ended the Russo-Japanese War,
Russia had surrendered the southern half
of Sakhalin Island to Japan. Now they
wanted it restored. Stalin also insisted
that the former Russian sphere of interest
in China be revived as well, including
the right to reestablish a Russian naval
base at Port Arthur. Other demands in
the Russian package were a major role in
controlling railroads in Manchuria and
increased influence in Korea. On the
other hand, Stalin recognized Nationalist
leader Chiang Kai-Shek as the legitimate
authority in all of China and agreed to
forswear Soviet support for Chinese
communist leader Mao Zedong.
Roosevelt returned home from Yalta
tired and ailing. He died two months
later, several weeks before VE-Day, the
celebration of victory in Europe. One
possible explanation for his behavior at
Yalta is that he thought he would be per-
sonally able to modify or moderate
Soviet actions after the war.
Critics maintain that Roosevelt was
too ill at Yalta to realize just how dan-
gerous Soviet intentions were. In fact, he
and Churchill both favored postponing
many difficult decisions. Equally clear,
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 271
Joseph Stalin had no intention of delay-
ing his assertion of total dominance over
Eastern Europe in anticipation of future
agreements.
Roosevelt may implicitly have been
acknowledging that his actions might be
faulted when he insisted that some of the
Yalta agreements be kept secret. Not
until 1946 were the concessions to the
Soviet Union on China and Japan publi-
cized. These seemed particularly ques-
tionable, given how quickly Japan
surrendered. As he had promised at
Yalta, Stalin entered the war two days
after the United States dropped an
atomic bomb on Hiroshima, exactly
three months after VE-Day. Even though
the Japanese capitulation occurred just
eight days later, the Soviets had ample
time to expand their influence in China
and Korea and to demand the restoration
of pre-1905 territories. For better or
worse, decisions and agreements made
at Yalta laid the groundwork for the
ensuing Cold War.
See also: Grand Alliance; United Nations
References
Buhite, Russell D. Decisions at Yalta: An
Appraisal of Summit Diplomacy. Wilm-
ington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1986.
Clemens, Diane Shaver. Yalta. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1970.
Laloy, Jean. Yalta: Yesterday, Today, Tomor-
row. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.
Theoharis, Athan G. The Yalta Myths.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1970.
BIOGRAPHIES
Hopkins, Harry (1890–1946)
After ably managing several New Deal
relief programs, Harry Hopkins became
272 | Section 4
President Franklin Roosevelt’s most
intimate foreign policy advisor and
emissary during World War II. Hopkins
was born in Iowa and attended Grinnell
College. After graduating, he moved to
New York City and found employment
as a social worker in settlement houses.
His administrative talents soon won him
leadership positions in various city relief
programs. After the 1929 stock market
crash, Hopkins established a dynamic
Red Cross relief operation that New York
governor Franklin Roosevelt used as a
template for the state’s Temporary Emer-
gency Relief Administration. Hopkins
moved over to head that organization
and distributed millions of state dollars
to the needy. It was only natural, then,
that President Roosevelt would select
Hopkins to manage the broad-ranging
Federal Emergency Relief Administra-
tion (FERA) in 1933. Later, Hopkins
also ran the Civil Works Administration
and it successor, the Works Progress
Administration (WPA), as well as help-
ing shape the social security legislation
that was passed in 1935. Roosevelt
named him secretary of commerce in
late 1938, and Hopkins became inti-
mately involved in assessing the military
production and manpower capabilities of
both the United States and Great Britain.
In 1940, he resigned from his cabinet
post and moved into a White House
apartment to serve as assistant to the
president. Although the position lacked a
prestigious title, it placed Hopkins at the
center of all major diplomatic initiatives.
He made frequent trips to meet with
Winston Churchill and also visited with
Joseph Stalin. On his return from
Moscow, he convinced Roosevelt to
extend Lend-Lease support to the Soviet
Union. Beginning with the Atlantic
Conference, Hopkins was always at
Roosevelt’s side in his meetings with
other Grand Alliance leaders. He spoke
with the authority of the president on all
diplomatic matters, exercising far greater
influence than any other civilian, includ-
ing Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Even
though he suffered very poor health dur-
ing the last decade of his life, Harry
Hopkins made major contributions to the
United States during its greatest foreign
policy challenge as a trusted go-between
and advisor to the president.
See also: Lend-Lease
Reference
McJimsey, George T. Harry Hopkins: Ally of
the Poor and Defender of Democracy.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1987.
Hughes, Charles Evans
(1862–1948)
The son of a minister, Charles Evans
Hughes developed strong respect for
legal and moral principles at a young age
that would shape his long life. After
some early home schooling in his native
New York, Hughes attended several edu-
cational institutions before graduating
from Brown University. He then com-
pleted his studies at the Columbia Uni-
versity Law School and opened a
thriving private law practice. It brought
him to the attention of Republican Party
Progressives, who encouraged him to
attack public corruption. His success
made him a popular icon, so his party
nominated him for the governorship of
New York. Hughes eked out a slim vic-
tory over newspaper magnate William
Randolph Hearst in 1906 and won
reelection four years later. His formality
and stiff adherence to principles under-
mined his political effectiveness; Conse-

quently, in 1910 he gladly accepted an
appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court,
where his talents were far more appreci-
ated. The Republican Party nominated
Charles Evans Hughes to run against the
popular Democratic president, Woodrow
Wilson, in 1916. He resigned from the
Supreme Court but ran a clumsy and ulti-
mately unsuccessful campaign. Back in
private life, Hughes remained prominent
in political circles, where he expressed
strong support for Wilson’s international-
ism. When President Warren G. Harding
selected Hughes to be secretary of state
in 1921, he had to drop his advocacy of
the League of Nations. Hughes insisted
that the United States should participate
in the work of the Reparations Commit-
tee, and he was a key player in the cre-
ation of the Dawes Plan to restart the
flow of stalled international finance.
Hughes’s greatest achievement was his
forceful diplomacy at the Washington
Conference in 1921–1922. He convinced
the other delegates to adopt his original
plan for limits on naval construction and
superintended two other treaties that
were designed to preserve peace in the
Far East. Hughes also improved Latin
American relations by advocating a
reduction in U.S. interventionism, a
stand that presaged the development of
the Good Neighbor Policy in the 1930s.
Although many of his achievements,
such as his disarmament efforts, failed to
stand the test of time, they were rather
remarkable, given the strength of the iso-
lation sentiments that the American peo-
ple and Presidents Harding and Coolidge
shared. After leaving the State Depart-
ment, Hughes once again took up his law
practice, but President Herbert Hoover
decided in 1930 that Hughes could make
more important contributions as chief
justice of the Supreme Court. Hughes
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 273
held that post for 11 stressful years,
adroitly guiding the court through the
highly charged controversies that Presi-
dent Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal ini-
tiatives generated.
See also: Disarmament; League of Nations
Reference
Pusey, Merlo J. Charles Evans Hughes. 2 vols.
New York: Macmillan, 1951.
Hull, Cordell (1871–1955)
Born in a log cabin in Tennessee, Cordell
Hull eventually read law at the Cumber-
land Law School. He entered politics
almost immediately as a Democrat, win-
ning a seat in the Tennessee state legisla-
ture, where he served until volunteering
for service in the Spanish-American-
Cuban War. Although he arrived in Cuba
after the armistice, his overseas adven-
ture generated a lifelong interest in Latin
America. Hull won election to the U.S.
House of Representatives in 1906 as a
strong advocate of lower tariffs. After
moving up to the U.S. Senate in 1930, he
devoted much of his energy to promoting
Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential bid.
Roosevelt then named Hull secretary of
state in part to strengthen his support in
the South. Cordell Hull headed the State
Department for 12 years, during which it
expanded enormously. Even so, Hull had
little interest in organizational or admin-
istrative issues. A methodical thinker, he
focused on relatively few policy areas
whereas the president and other cabinet
officers played far larger roles in articu-
lating and implementing foreign policy
before and during World War II. Even so,
Hull is remembered for three successful
initiatives. The first came at an inter-
American conference in Montevideo in
1933, where he supported a resolution
274 | Section 4
stating that no nation had the right to
intervene in the affairs of another. Fortu-
nately, Roosevelt agreed, and the two
men cooperated in developing the Good
Neighbor Policy for Latin America.
Hull’s lifelong interest in tariff reduction
helped shape the Reciprocal Trade
Agreements Act of 1934. The secretary
of state then used its provisions to initi-
ate dozens of bilateral trade negotiations
in order to take advantage of the flexibil-
ity reciprocity offered to lower tariff
rates across the board. This approach
ultimately led to the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in the late
1940s. The final major cause that Hull
championed was the United Nations.
Loyal to Wilsonian ideals, Hull favored
collective security and worked hard to
create a new international framework to
promote it. His advocacy won him a
Nobel Peace Prize in 1945, a year after
he retired. Cordell Hull thus made sev-
eral positive contributions to U.S. for-
eign policy over his long career, even
though his influence was overshadowed
by the monumental developments of the
World War II era.
See also: Good Neighbor Policy; United
Nations
Reference
Pratt, Julius W. Cordell Hull, 1933–44.
Vols. 12–13, The American Secretaries of
State and Their Diplomacy, edited by
Samuel Flagg Bemis and Robert H. Ferrell.
New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1964.
Kellogg, Frank B.
(1856–1937)
Shortly after his birth in New York,
Frank Kellogg immigrated with his fam-
ily to rural Minnesota. Denied all but the
most rudimentary schooling, Kellogg
eventually read law and was able to
establish a successful practice as an
attorney. In the early 20th century, he
won national fame by successfully pros-
ecuting high-profile trust-busting cases
that were targeted against individuals
such as railroad magnate Edward H.
Harriman and corporations such as the
Standard Oil Trust, which was broken up
in 1911. After supporting Theodore
Roosevelt’s Progressive bid for the pres-
idency in 1912, Kellogg returned to his
traditional Republican roots and won
election to the U.S. Senate in 1916.
There, he supported the collective secu-
rity concept and handled a diplomatic
assignment for President Warren G.
Harding before losing his seat in the
1922 elections. President Calvin
Coolidge considered his diplomatic
experience sufficient to send him to
London as U.S. ambassador, where he
played a key role in the development of
the Dawes Plan. Coolidge then recalled
Kellogg to Washington in 1924 to suc-
ceed Charles Evans Hughes as secretary
of state. Serving after such a distin-
guished predecessor, Kellogg’s tenure at
the State Department seemed rather
mundane. He was constantly drawn into
bureaucratic infighting resulting from
the passage of the 1924 Rogers Act,
which combined the consular and diplo-
matic services. Kellogg objected
strongly when Mexico threatened to
expropriate U.S. interests, but the deci-
sion to name Dwight Morrow as ambas-
sador smoothed relations. Another
persistent issue was the U.S. relationship
with China. Kellogg eventually resolved
it by supporting the government of
Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek and
modifying U.S. trade policy in his favor.
Submerged in the isolationism of the
1920s, Kellogg initially declined to sign

a nonaggression treaty with French for-
eign minister Aristide Briand. He then
managed to dilute its bilateral impact by
welcoming all nations to sign the
Kellogg-Briand Pact, which theoretically
outlawed war in 1928. This achievement
won him the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize but
had almost no long-term positive impact.
Kellogg’s public service ended the
same year that Coolidge left the White
House.
See also: Kellogg-Briand Pact
Reference
Ellis, L. Ethan. Frank B. Kellogg and
American Foreign Relations, 1925–1929.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1961.
Lodge, Henry Cabot
(1850–1924)
The spirited and articulate criticisms
that Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot
Lodge directed at the Versailles Treaty
in 1919 fundamentally altered the
course of world affairs. His stubborn
isolationism at that point seemed some-
what surprising in someone who had
enthusiastically supported U.S. expan-
sionism in the late 19th century. At heart,
however, Lodge was a conservative, born
into and imbued with old-fashioned New
England virtues. As the son of a wealthy
Boston merchant and a descendent of
the distinguished Cabot family, it was
only natural that Lodge would attend
Harvard College. Having graduated with
no clear plans, he decided to return to
Harvard to study law and pass the bar.
Still casting about for a career, he
accepted an invitation from Henry
Adams to work at the North American
Review, a leading literary journal. Over
the next few years, Lodge wrote articles,
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 275
earned a doctorate in political science at
Harvard, and published several books,
all of which prepared him for a career in
politics. In 1879, he ran successfully as
a Republican for a place in the Massa-
chusetts House of Representatives, the
first of a series of electoral victories that
culminated in a seat in the U.S. Senate
in 1893. He and Theodore Roosevelt
became acquainted at the Republican
National Convention in 1884, and their
friendship matured into a lifelong col-
laboration. Senator Lodge sponsored
Roosevelt for a position on the U.S.
Civil Service Commission and later
abetted him in urging dynamic action at
the time of the Spanish-American-
Cuban War. As an outspoken jingo,
Henry Cabot Lodge was a leading advo-
cate of the United States assuming a
much more prominent position in world
affairs, even to the extent of taking
colonies. Like many other Americans,
however, Lodge gradually became disil-
lusioned with international affairs, par-
ticularly when Europe descended into
World War I. As a staunch Republican
conservative, Lodge nursed an abiding
hatred for Progressive Democrat
Woodrow Wilson, a bitterness that was
reciprocated. In 1919, Lodge chaired the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
the body responsible for reviewing the
documents prepared at the Versailles
Peace Conference. As head of the U.S.
delegation in Paris, President Wilson
had interwoven the League of Nations
into the final peace treaty so thoroughly
that they could not be separated.
Although Lodge did not oppose peace
as such, he did harbor severe reserva-
tions about the League Covenant. He
particularly objected to the implication
in its 10th article that the league might
order U.S. military forces into action
276 | Section 4
without congressional approval. Criti-
cism of that provision became the cen-
terpiece of Lodge’s ultimately successful
campaign to convince the Senate not to
ratify the treaty. As a result, the United
States never joined the league and
retreated into isolationism in the 1920s,
fatally weakening its ability to influence
European developments and related
global issues. Lodge never regretted his
action, convinced to his dying day that
his stand had been best for the United
States.
See also: Fourteen Points; League of Nations
Reference
Garraty, John A. Henry Cabot Lodge, A
Biography. New York, Knopf, 1953.
Nye, Gerald P. (1892–1971)
A lifelong dedicated Progressive,
Gerald Nye honed his political beliefs
in his native Wisconsin before moving
to North Dakota in 1916. An influential
newspaper publisher and advocate of
farmers’ rights, Nye was an obvious
choice when the Progressive Republi-
can governor needed to appoint some-
one to a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate
in 1925. Nye quickly gained national
fame by using his position on the Pub-
lic Lands Committee to head the inves-
tigation that exposed the Teapot Dome
scandal. His home-state supporters reg-
ularly reelected him with wide margins,
even though Nye often found himself
out of step with the business-oriented
Coolidge and Hoover administrations.
He was even more outspokenly opposed
to Democratic president Franklin
Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.
Increasingly concerned with interna-
tional threats, he headed a Senate inves-
tigation of how the munitions industry
had influenced U.S. policy before and
during World War I. The Nye Commit-
tee findings definitely influenced the
passage of the Neutrality Acts in the
late 1930s, legislation that Nye strongly
favored. His unwavering commitment
to isolationism long after World War II
broke out marginalized his influence.
He lost a reelection bid in 1944 and
held a couple of minor federal posts in
his final years.
See also: Neutrality Acts
Reference
Cole, Wayne S. Senator Gerald P. Nye and
American Foreign Relations. Westport,
CT: Greenwood, 1980.
Pershing, John J. (1860–1948)
In conjunction with his extensive
military experience and expertise, John
J. Pershing’s intelligence and diplo-
matic skills made him a logical choice
to command U.S. ground forces in
World War I. After graduating from
West Point, Pershing served in the black
Tenth Cavalry in the frontier West. His
command of African American troops
earned him his lifelong nickname of
Black Jack. In the 1890s, he headed the
officer training program at the Univer-
sity of Nebraska and earned a law
degree. He returned to teach at West
Point briefly before serving in the
Spanish-American-Cuban War and
then spent several years in the Philip-
pines. His assignment as military
attaché in Tokyo in 1905 gave him an
intimate view of the Russo-Japanese
War. Promoted to the rank of brigadier
general in the following year, he subse-
quently served as military governor of
Moro Province, the most rebellious
area in the Philippines. President

Woodrow Wilson selected him to lead
the Punitive Expedition into Mexico in
1916–1917 and promoted him to major
general. Wilson then chose him to com-
mand the American Expeditionary
Force in Europe. There, he grappled
with daunting logistical and training
problems, prevented the dispersion of
U.S. troops to other countries’ units,
and led the First Army in several suc-
cessful operations. Even so, he earned
some criticism for advocating tactics
that were inappropriate to trench war-
fare and for sometimes failing to pre-
vent unnecessary casualties. He
disagreed with President Wilson’s deci-
sion to settle for an armistice in
November 1918. Instead, he favored a
march to capture Berlin, to demonstrate
to the German people just how com-
pletely they had been defeated. Con-
gress created the superrank of General
of the Armies for Pershing in 1919, and
he completed his active military career
by serving as the army’s chief of staff.
See also: American Expeditionary Force; Puni-
tive Expedition
Reference
Smythe, Donald. Pershing, General of the
Armies. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986.
Stimson, Henry L.
(1867–1950)
Few Americans have enjoyed a longer
and more distinguished public career
than Henry Stimson. A native New
Yorker who was educated at Yale Uni-
versity and the Harvard Law School, he
began his legal career in New York City
as a member of Elihu Roots’s law firm.
Root remained a lifelong mentor and
model of legal astuteness and public
The World Wars, 1914–1945 | 277
service. In 1906, President Theodore
Roosevelt named Stimson the U.S. attor-
ney for the southern district of New
York. That position gave Stimson ample
opportunity to distinguish himself in
successful, high-profile antitrust prose-
cutions. Although he sought and failed to
win elective office, President William
Howard Taft named him secretary of war
in 1911. His organizational and adminis-
trative skills were vital in laying the
groundwork for the modern U.S. army.
When the United States entered World
War I, Stimson went to France to fight as
a lieutenant colonel in the field artillery.
He returned to his law practice for a
time, but President Calvin Coolidge sent
him on a diplomatic mission to
Nicaragua and then appointed him gov-
ernor of the Philippines. That experience
prepared him for service as secretary of
state under President Herbert Hoover in
1929. During his four years heading the
State Department, Stimson worked hard
to ease the international impact of the
Great Depression, engineered new naval
limitations at the 1930 London Confer-
ence, but he failed to find an effective
way to prevent Japanese advances in
China. The Stimson Doctrine, calling for
non-recognition of any territorial
changes in the Far East, was a feeble
and ultimately inadequate response to a
persistent and growing crisis. Return-
ing to private life in 1933, Stimson con-
tinued to attract attention by insisting
that the United States could not avoid
the impending global conflict. His posi-
tion was hardly popular in an isolation-
ist decade. When his dire warnings
proved all too correct, President
Franklin Roosevelt asked the experi-
enced and capable Stimson once again
to head the War Department in the sum-
mer of 1940. As he had earlier, Stimson
278 | Section 4
proved remarkably adept at organiza-
tion, administration, long-range think-
ing, and, perhaps most important,
building a confident and capable lead-
ership team for the U.S. Army. He was
intimately involved in the development
of the atomic bomb and served as Pres-
ident Harry S Truman’s chief advisor
on its use after it was successfully
tested in July 1945. Stimson retired
from the War Department later that
year, at the age of 78. He was univer-
sally lauded as a conscientious and
honest man, who demanded the same
qualities in those with whom he
worked so effectively.
See also: Non-recognition
Reference
Morison, Elting E. Turmoil and Tradition: A
Study of the Life and Times of Henry L.
Stimson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960.
 SECTION 5
THE COLD WAR AND AFTER, 1945–
The American people hoped that
winning World War II would guarantee a
peaceful future. But the members of the
Grand Alliance began squabbling with
one another even before they defeated
fascism in Europe and Japanese imperi-
alism in Asia. The proven destructive
power of atomic weapons made every-
one leery of using them, so the ensuing
rivalry between capitalist and commu-
nist systems never escalated into a “hot”
war. Instead, the Cold War persisted for
almost half a century.
Containment was the premier U.S.
foreign policy during the Cold War. It
began with the Truman Doctrine,
which provided military and financial
support to countries directly threatened
by Soviet expansion. To protect other
European nations from an economic col-
lapse that might encourage a swing to
the left, the United States disbursed bil-
lions of dollars of economic recovery aid
through the Marshall Plan. Neither of
these programs affected the city of
Berlin. The victorious Allies had agreed
to occupy the city jointly, but in 1947,
the Soviets attempted to cut it off from
279
Western access. A yearlong airlift pre-
served Western authority. To further con-
tain Soviet expansionism, the United
States sponsored the formation of a
multinational mutual defense arrange-
ment called the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO).
The Soviet Union successfully tested
its own atomic bomb in 1949, the
same year Communist leader Mao
Zedong took control of mainland China.
In response, American planners devel-
oped a strategic plan designated NSC-68.
Among other proposals, it called for a
tripling of American military expendi-
tures. This occurred almost simultane-
ously with North Korea’s invasion into
South Korea, even though the United
States settled for a limited war that
essentially reestablished the status quo.
These distressing developments, mean-
while, plunged the United States into a
Red Scare Again.
When Dwight Eisenhower won the
presidency in 1952, he and his secretary
of state, John Foster Dulles, announced a
more aggressive foreign policy, threaten-
ing massive retaliation on the Soviet
280 | Section 5
Union should communism appear to be
gaining ground anywhere in the world.
Dulles also promised American support
for the liberation of Eastern Europe.
The United States did nothing concrete to
implement either policy before the 1957
launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik,
which seemed to shift the East-West bal-
ance of power. In fact, U-2 spy planes
provided evidence that reassured the
Eisenhower administration that the
United States still had a substantial lead
in Cold War weaponry.
Closer to home, Fidel Castro engi-
neered a successful revolt in Cuba in
1959. By 1961, American-Cuban rela-
tions had deteriorated to the point that
President John Kennedy unwisely
approved an anti-Castro raid at the Bay
of Pigs. Among other negative conse-
quences, the unsuccessful foray
increased Soviet influence in Cuba. By
1962, Russia was preparing to install
nuclear-tipped missiles on the island,
forcing Kennedy to resort to daring
brinkmanship to resolve the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
Half way around the world, the
United States remained deeply commit-
ted to the survival of Israel. Periodic
confrontations between Israelis and their
Arab neighbors eventually convinced
Israel to stage a preemptive strike that
blossomed into the Six-Day War in
1967. It doubled the territory under
Israeli control. A few months later, the
United Nations called upon Israel to
trade its occupied land for peace.
Another war and frenetic shuttle diplo-
macy had to take place before the 1978
Camp David Accords brought about the
first implementation of the land-for-
peace formula.
No other Cold War confrontation
proved more costly and disappointing
than American involvement in Vietnam.
The U.S. commitment to South Vietnam
was limited to economic support and
military training until the 1964 Tonkin
Gulf Incident led to a congressional res-
olution authorizing the deployment of
combat troops. Escalation continued
until the 1968 Tet Offensive undermined
American faith in a purely military
approach. Peace negotiations were
already underway when President Nixon
authorized a cross-border raid into
Cambodia in 1970. That incursion
proved so unpopular that Nixon eventu-
ally agreed to withdraw all American
forces in early 1973, ending the longest
war in American history. Nixon’s secre-
tary of state, Henry Kissinger, was the
chief architect of the Vietnam peace
talks. He also advocated the détente that
led to U.S. recognition of the communist
government in China and better relations
with the Soviet Union. The Cold War
finally faded away in the late 1980s.
Throughout this period, the United
States pursued a successful international
economic policy. In 1948, it promoted
the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT). Over succeeding
decades, the free world continually
revised tariff barriers under the auspices
of GATT. By the 1990s, the United
States was ready to adopt a free trade
approach with its North American neigh-
bors, which paralleled its membership in
GATT’s successor, the World Trade
Organization (WTO).
The Middle East remained a major
trouble spot as the century drew to a
close. The Iranian hostage crisis almost
immobilized the administration of Presi-
dent Jimmy Carter. His successor,
Ronald Reagan, became involved in the
murky Iran-Contra conspiracy that
tested the limits of executive authority.

President George H. W. Bush developed
a measured response to an Iraqi invasion
of Kuwait that culminated in the short,
successful Gulf War in 1991. Concur-
rently, anti-American sentiments flour-
ished. Terrorist attacks on Americans
and American institutions both at home
and abroad convinced President George
W. Bush to declare a war on terror.
He also promulgated the Bush Doctrine
that included a major military effort in
Iraq, one of the most controversial inter-
national actions in American history.
KEY CONCEPTS
Bay of Pigs
The failure of the Bay of Pigs assault in
1961 was a major Cold War embarrass-
ment for the United States. It reflected
the exaggerated fear of communism
Americans experienced after World War II.
The fact that communism spread to Cuba,
just 90 miles off the Florida coast, put
pressure on federal agencies to do some-
thing dramatic in response. The Joint
Chiefs of Staff and the Central Intelli-
gence Agency collaborated to plan a
response and encouraged a reluctant
President John Kennedy to implement it.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco not only tarnished
the image of the United States in Latin
America and around the world, but it also
laid the groundwork for an even more dan-
gerous U.S.–Soviet confrontation the
following year.
In a sense, the Bay of Pigs assault rep-
resented a last, desperate attempt to alter
the course of Cuban history. In the
1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt’s
Good Neighbor Policy canceled the
demeaning Platt Amendment restrictions
on the island nation, helping to blunt
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 281
anti-Yankee hostility among the Cuban
people. The resulting warmer relations
encouraged ever more American invest-
ment, generating wealth that seldom fil-
tered down to the vast majority of
impoverished Cubans.
Cuba’s dictatorial governments also
failed to promote prosperity. The key fig-
ure after 1934 was Fulgencio Batista, a
former soldier who served as both king-
maker and president from time to time.
In the early 1950s, Batista established an
oppressive dictatorship in Havana, rely-
ing on support from wealthy, right-wing
Cubans and prosperous Americans.
Unfortunately, many of them were
prominent members of the U.S. under-
world. Exploiting Cuba’s lax laws and
permissive government, they invested
profits from criminal enterprises in
nightclubs, hotels, and plantations.
Tourists flocked to the island to sample
illicit pleasures, enjoy elaborate enter-
tainment, and gamble for high stakes.
The U.S. government did almost noth-
ing to stifle this activity. Instead it provided
military training and equipment for the
Cuban armed forces that reported to
Batista. Not surprisingly, disgruntled
Cubans saw little distinction between the
Cuban dictatorship and the Americans who
seemed in league with it. This alliance,
coupled with long-standing bitterness
about U.S. policies dating back to the
Spanish-American-Cuban War, encour-
aged opposition to the Batista regime.
In the early 1950s, Fidel Castro
emerged as the most popular rebel
leader. A middle-class law graduate in
his late twenties, Castro took up arms
against the entrenched Batista regime.
His first effort misfired badly. He spent
two years in a Cuban jail, and then lived
in Mexico for a time, absorbing revolu-
tionary rhetoric and techniques.
282 | Section 5
Castro returned to Cuba in the late
1950s and established his headquarters
in a remote jungle area. His followers
carried out raids that included burning
sugarcane fields and destroying foreign-
owned property. Batista’s American-
trained military was no match for the
wily guerrilla leader, and each success
drew new recruits to his rebellion. As
Castro’s myth grew, it attracted some
young Americans to the jungle along
with dedicated communist revolutionar-
ies like Argentinian-born Ché Guevara.
With Castro’s forces closing in on
Havana, Batista and his retinue abruptly
fled on January 1, 1959. Overnight,
Castro found himself in charge of all of
Cuba. Although he had been a remark-
ably successful guerrilla chieftain, he
seemed less comfortable with the details
of governing. As a result, Marxist and
socialist members of his rebel force
quickly assumed key positions in the
government. This helped convince critics
that his regime was, at heart, a commu-
nist one.
Although President Dwight Eisenhower
formally recognized Castro’s takeover
just six days after it occurred, Cuban-
American relations rapidly deteriorated.
One unnerving development was the
new government’s staging of show trials
that condemned many of Batista’s sup-
porters to death. Moreover, Castro cited
his intention to redistribute wealth to the
underprivileged to justify expropriating
over $1 billion worth of American-
owned property.
The Cuban leader took obvious
delight in tweaking the United States
diplomatically. For example, he pro-
claimed 1959 the “year of revolution,”
and his agents and admirers in other
Latin American countries seemed to be
making inroads on existing governments.
Castro even urged Puerto Ricans and
Black Americans to consider overthrow-
ing the U.S. government.
All of this fed the belief among
American commentators and policy
makers that Castro was not only a com-
munist but, worse yet, a pawn of Soviet
expansionism. In 1960, he warmly
greeted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
at the United Nations. Hoping to humble
the increasingly hostile Cuban leader,
the United States gradually cut its trade
with the island. The Soviet Union
quickly stepped in, signing advanta-
geous trade agreements with Castro’s
government and becoming by far its
most important trading partner.
The inevitable break came in January
1961 when Castro gave the United
States 48 hours to reduce its embassy
staff in Havana from 130 to 11. Instead,
the Eisenhower administration withdrew
all representation and broke relations.
John F. Kennedy inherited this awkward
situation when he was inaugurated as
president a couple of weeks later.
The Eisenhower administration also
bequeathed secret plans for an assault on
the island. The Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) had earned undeserved
credit for its role in an anticommunist
coup on Guatemala in 1954, and many
now expected the agency to do the same
in Cuba. Cubans who had fled Castro’s
regime seemed eager to participate in its
overthrow. The CIA provided rudimen-
tary training for about 1,500 Cuban
exiles and prepared to send them ashore.
The underlying premise for the plan
was the belief that most Cubans viewed
Castro and communism as negatively as
did the United States, and, given proper
encouragement, they would eagerly join
the exile force and rise up en masse. In
fact, many of the Cubans who had not fled

the island still hoped the new government
would be better than the dictatorship it
had replaced.
Even if the basic premise for the inva-
sion had not been flawed, the assault was
carried out so ineptly that it was bound
to fail in any case. Castro’s intelligence
network told him when and where the
assault was to take place, enabling him
to station Cuban armed forces in defen-
sive positions. The invaders who waded
ashore at the Bay of Pigs on the remote
Isle of Pines found themselves mired in
swampy land. An earlier U.S. air strike
had failed to inflict much damage on
Cuban defenses. Castro’s men quickly
surrounded the ill-equipped invasion
force, killing several hundred and cap-
turing the rest.
President Kennedy earned severe crit-
icism for refusing to authorize a second
air strike when the assault appeared to be
in trouble. He reasoned that it might
transform the poorly planned operation
into an international conflict that no one
desired. The president was outraged at
the feebleness of the assault force, the
overly optimistic thinking that underlay
the plan, and its inept execution. The
Bay of Pigs fiasco made Kennedy dis-
trustful of his own intelligence and mili-
tary advisors from then on.
Castro trumpeted his success around
the world, emerging from the incident
stronger in Cuba and far more respected
among disgruntled Latin Americans.
Thus, the Bay of Pigs invasion had pre-
cisely the opposite effect its planners had
anticipated. The United States ultimately
paid Cuba $50 million to “ransom” the
surviving raiders who had been captured.
The most important consequence by far
was the fact that the raid made Cuba ever
more dependent on the Soviet Union.
The following year, that dependency led
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 283
directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the
moment when the Cold War came clos-
est to flaring into an all-out international
war.
See also: Brinkmanship; Good Neighbor
Policy; Spanish-American-Cuban War
References
Parmet, Herbert S. JFK: The Presidency of
John F. Kennedy. New York: Dial Press,
1983.
Patterson, Thomas G. Contesting Castro:
The United States and the Triumph of the
Cuban Revolution. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Welch, Richard E. Jr. Response to Revolu-
tion: The United States and the Cuban
Revolution, 1959–1961. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
Berlin
Berlin was the focus of international
attention on three different occasions
during the Cold War: the dramatic airlift
mounted by the Western allies in 1948
and 1949, the series of missteps that led
to the erection of a wall between East
and West, and the fall of the Berlin Wall
in 1989. Tensions emanating from Berlin
deeply affected American policy makers,
often pushing them into positions that
intensified the Cold War.
In 1945, the United States apparently
did not consider Berlin itself particularly
important. General Dwight Eisenhower,
the Allied commander in Europe,
advised against sacrificing American
lives to assault the German capital, and
President Harry S Truman agreed. The
Soviet army ended up capturing the city
and much of the surrounding countryside
all the way to the Elbe River.
Postwar agreements addressed the sta-
tus of Berlin. At the Potsdam Conference
in the summer of 1945, the victorious
284 | Section 5
Allies firmed up the details of a four-way
division of both Germany and Austria
that established a similar division of both
Berlin and Vienna. As with other joint
occupations, an Allied Control Commis-
sion administered Berlin with representa-
tives of each of the four powers: the
United States, the Soviet Union, Great
Britain, and France. The fact that the
Soviet-occupied zone in northeastern
German completely surrounded the
Berlin metropolitan area inevitably led to
controversy.
The Soviets immediately began con-
fiscating manufacturing equipment and
skilled manpower from their zone and
even convinced their wartime allies to
allow some transfers from other zones.
In 1946, General Lucius Clay, the U.S.
general in charge of the American
zone, shut off this flow and imple-
mented a plan to restore Germany’s tra-
ditional industrial might. His next step
was to promote the formation of
“Bizonia,” a merging of the British and
American zones. Shortly afterward,
France joined in, creating “Trizonia,”
the forerunner of the Federal Republic
of Germany.
In response, the Soviets began to
strengthen rather than loot the economy
in their zone. Berlin remained a sore
point, however, serving as an inviting
avenue to the West for East Berliners
uncomfortable under Soviet occupa-
tion. As the Western allies moved ahead
with creating a strong West Germany,
Soviet authorities instituted a provoca-
tive countermeasure. In June 1948, they
cut off Western access to Berlin on any
road, railroad, or canal that ran through
East Germany. The move was appar-
ently designed to convince the Western-
ers to modify or even halt their plans for
rebuilding West Germany.
The Truman administration now con-
fronted what many consider the most
dangerous moment in the early years of
the Cold War. If the president backed
down, it might be seen around the world
as a Soviet victory and encourage com-
munists and socialists in Western Europe.
The United States had just initiated the
Marshall Plan to prevent that sort of ide-
ological deterioration. On the other hand,
a U.S. attempt to use military force to
restore land-based access to Berlin could
provoke a massive Soviet response, pos-
sibly setting off a third world war.
To avoid either unsatisfactory outcome,
the Western allies exploited an existing
four-power treaty that guaranteed all par-
ties unrestricted air access to Berlin. The
Soviets decided to honor that agreement,
no doubt believing that an airborne supply
system was economically and practically
insupportable. American air transports
began arriving almost immediately at
Berlin’s Templehoff Airfield, and the airlift
grew to unprecedented proportions over
the next year. To meet the besieged city’s
basic needs, at least 4,000 tons of goods,
including food, coal, and many other
items, had to be transferred every day. At
the peak of the airlift in the spring of 1949,
a supply plane landed every 90 seconds, a
pace that enabled the fleet to transport as
much as 9,000 tons in a single day.
The Soviet leadership could not halt
the airlift without provoking a major
conflict. Reinforcing that conclusion was
the fleet of B-29 bombers the United
States Air Force had stationed in East
Anglia in the British Isles. This strategic
move definitely discouraged counter
measures because the Russians did not
know that no atomic bombs were actu-
ally available to arm the bombers.
Not only did the airlift maintain
West Berliners’ morale, it broadcast a

When the Soviets abruptly cut off land access to the city of Berlin in 1948, the Western allies
responded with a massive airlift of goods through the beleaguered city's Tempelhof Airfield.
(Library of Congress)
soul-stirring image around the world. It
undermined left-wing sympathies and
improved the prospects for an independ-
ent West Germany. In the summer of
1949, the Soviets concluded that the neg-
ative publicity the airlift gave their regime
had turned the blockade into a liability.
They reopened limited land-based access,
and the showdown over Berlin gave way
to other Cold War confrontations.
For almost a decade, Berlin remained
on the back burner. In 1957, however, the
Soviet Union orbited its Sputnik satellite,
giving Premier Nikita Khrushchev confi-
dence he could be more demanding. Even
while promoting his concept of “peaceful
coexistence” between the United States
and the Soviet Union, he issued an ulti-
matum in 1958. He demanded that the
Western allies renegotiate the Berlin
occupation agreement and turn it into a
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 285
free, nonaligned city as Vienna had
become three years earlier. If they
refused, the Soviet Union would sign a
separate peace treaty with its East
German satellite, the German Democratic
Republic. The implicit threat was that the
GDR would then unilaterally take over
the whole city with full Soviet backing.
President Dwight Eisenhower had no
intention of allowing either of those
events to occur. Khrushchev visited the
United States in 1959, met with the pres-
ident, and urged him to relent. Nothing
concrete came from the talks. Everyone
expected Berlin to take center stage at
the 1960 summit meeting scheduled for
Paris in mid-May, but the U-2 Incident
torpedoed it. Just a few days before the
conference opened, a Soviet missile shot
down an American U-2 spy plane over
Russia. Eisenhower refused to offer the
286 | Section 5
abject apology Khrushchev demanded.
The Soviet premier therefore delivered a
scathing criticism of U.S. policies and
then dramatically stormed out of the
Paris conference. He apparently con-
cluded he might make more progress
discussing Berlin with the man who suc-
ceeded Eisenhower in the presidency.
The ominous shadow over Berlin was
just one of several troubling foreign pol-
icy problems John F. Kennedy inherited
when he was inaugurated in January
1961. Shortly afterward, he stumbled
into the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, an
embarrassment that encouraged
Khrushchev to press ahead with the post-
poned summit conference. The resulting
meeting in Geneva between the two
leaders was tense and ultimately unpro-
ductive, however, in part because the
new American president proved to be a
much tougher negotiator than
Khrushchev had anticipated.
Frustrated at the failure of his Berlin
ultimatum, Khrushchev pursued an alter-
native strategy. By the summer of 1961,
an estimated 3 million East German citi-
zens had escaped to the West through the
Berlin portal. They included some of the
nation’s most talented and productive
citizens, constituting a major drain on
the Soviet satellite. On August 13, with-
out prior notification, the Soviets began
constructing what soon became a solid,
concrete block wall separating East
Berlin from West Berlin. The wall
included posts for sentries with orders to
shoot to kill anyone who attempted to
cross the wall without official approval.
Although the wall effectively reduced
the westward population flow to a tiny
trickle, it proved embarrassing to both
parties. It was an embarrassment that the
Soviets had essentially to imprison peo-
ple to prevent them from leaving. But it
also embarrassed the Western allies
because they could do nothing to prevent
it from being built. Two years later, Pres-
ident Kennedy made an emotional visit
to Berlin where he stood beside the wall
and proclaimed enduring U.S. support
for freedom.
The wall did succeed in relegating
Berlin to a minor position in the Cold
War for a quarter of a century. By 1989,
Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev was
rapidly losing his authority and influence
both within and outside the Soviet Union.
Protests in Berlin gained momentum, but
Gorbachev refused to provide East German
chancellor Honecker with military back-
ing. East Berliners broke through the
wall on November 9. Within a matter of
days, the brooding symbol of East-West
division was reduced to rubble, opening
the way for the reunification of East and
West Germany a few months later.
Although the United States had no direct
responsibility for the demolition of the
Berlin Wall, it did represent a major mile-
stone in ending the Cold War.
See also: Containment; Marshall Plan
References
Miller, Roger G. To Save A City: The Berlin
Airlift, 1948–1949. College Station:
Texas A&M Press, 2000.
Schick, Jack M. The Berlin Crisis.
1958–1962. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1971.
Tusa, Ann, and John Tusa. The Berlin Airlift.
New York: Atheneum, 1988.
Zelikow, Philip D., and Condoleezza Rice.
Germany Unified and Europe Trans-
formed: A Study in Statecraft. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Brinkmanship
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
defined brinkmanship as “The ability to

get to the verge without getting into the
war” (Life, January 16, 1956). Although
Dulles’s name is the one most often
associated with this strategy, many other
leaders have taken their nations to that
awesome brink. The true test of one’s
finesse at brinkmanship is the ability to
teeter on the edge without falling into the
abyss of conflict.
Brinkmanship became especially dan-
gerous when a war might include the use
of nuclear weapons. In 1952, the United
States exploded its first thermonuclear
(hydrogen) bomb, and the Soviet Union
matched that achievement a little over
a year later. Although the very existence
of these super weapons made it vital to
keep the Cold War cold, they imposed
severe limits on the maneuverability of
those who hoped to pursue aggressive
foreign policies.
On at least three occasions President
Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of
State Dulles engaged in brinkmanship.
The first occurred when Eisenhower per-
sonally traveled to Korea shortly after
his election in 1952. He brought with
him an implication that the United States
might resort to the use of superweapons
if an effective armistice in the Korean
War could not be negotiated. The second
instance was a similar warning to the
Chinese communists to temper their sup-
port for North Vietnam’s efforts to take
over South Vietnam.
China also figured in perhaps the
most trivial instance of brinkmanship.
The islands of Quemoy and Matsu lie
between the Chinese mainland and
Formosa, the island where Nationalist
leader Chiang Kai-Shek retreated with
his followers in 1949. The Nationalists
insisted on occupying these tiny dots of
land even though they were far closer to
communist China than to the country
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 287
that became Taiwan. Many believed that
the occupation was maintained to pro-
vide a staging area for an eventual
Nationalist invasion of the mainland.
The communist Chinese were under-
standably annoyed at this provocation.
To end the occupation they began
shelling Nationalist positions in 1954. In
response, the United States signed a
more comprehensive defensive pact with
Chiang’s government and implied it
might use nuclear weapons if the Chinese
communists continued their attacks.
Such a doomsday threat seems out of
proportion to the issues involved, but
Dulles took particular pride in having
gone to the brink and forcing his adver-
saries to retreat.
Fortunately, none of these confronta-
tions with China produced anywhere
near the level of anxiety that arose when
the United States and the Soviet Union
marched toward the brink during the
Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962.
A contributing factor to this confronta-
tion was a persistent U.S. clandestine
effort to destabilize or even overthrow
the communist government in Cuba. In the
wake of its embarrassing failure at the
Bay of Pigs, the U.S. Central Intelli-
gence Agency concocted a number of
schemes, even including plots to assassi-
nate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
To support what had become a client
state, the Soviet Union expanded its trade
and provided military backing for Castro’s
regime. It included almost 50,000 troops
and a broad array of weaponry and equip-
ment including armored personnel carri-
ers and MIG fighter planes. In the
summer of 1962, Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev approved a startling escala-
tion in this support: the dispatch of
nuclear-tipped missiles and nuclear-
equipped bombers to Cuba.
288 | Section 5
That decision raised the stakes far
beyond adequate strategic support for
Cuba. The underlying reason for the
move was the Soviet Union’s failure to
match the size and firepower of Ameri-
can intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs). These ICBMs had a 5,000-
mile range, enabling them to reach tar-
gets throughout the Soviet Union from
United States territory. To offset that
advantage, the Soviets decided to station
intermediate range ballistic missiles
(IRBMS) in Cuba. Their 1,200 to 2,100-
mile ranges were sufficient to place the
eastern United States effectively under
the gun from Cuban launch pads.
Preparations for the deployment began
in September 1962, and American U-2
spy planes quickly spotted the activity.
The Russians tried to rationalize their
actions as a counter to similar missiles
and bombers the United States had sta-
tioned in the territories of NATO allies
like Great Britain and Turkey, but Presi-
dent John F. Kennedy simply could not
accept the Cuban missile threat on any
basis. He had very little time to respond,
so he quickly assembled a top-flight team.
Prominent members included his brother,
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy;
Secretary of State Dean Rusk; Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara; and for-
mer officials such as Dean Acheson, Pres-
ident Truman’s secretary of state.
This group considered alternatives
ranging from an all-out invasion of
Cuba, an air assault to destroy the
launching sites, a direct counterstrike
against the Soviet Union, or an
embargo. Although the U.S. Joint Chiefs
of Staff favored military action,
Kennedy’s crisis team opted for a less
confrontational approach. On October
22, he appeared on nationwide televi-
sion to deliver a somber report on the
crisis. He reviewed the alternatives,
including nuclear war, to resolve the sit-
uation, but ended by announcing the
imposition of an embargo of Cuba.
Because an embargo is technically an
act of war, the American Navy was
ordered instead to “quarantine” Cuba to
prevent the importation of any more
Soviet military equipment.
Tensions inside the White House and
around the world continued to escalate.
All U.S. armed forces were put on full
alert with the crews of underground mis-
sile silos, bombers, and submarines
rehearsing procedures for launching
their nuclear weapons. On October 24,
the president received an encouraging
report that two Soviet cargo ships had
stopped dead in the water well beyond
the quarantine’s 500-mile boundary.
Meanwhile all sorts of mixed messages
poured in. One American diplomat
reported that the Soviets might reverse
course if the United States pledged never
to invade Cuba. Others suggested remov-
ing superannuated Jupiter IRBMs from
their Turkish emplacements on the bor-
der of the USSR as a bargaining lever to
encourage Soviet removal of the Cuban
weapons.
On October 26, the president
received a direct communication from
the Russian premier that raised the pos-
sibility of compromise. Khrushchev’s
rambling note seemed to suggest that he
would cancel the installation of a
nuclear arsenal if the United States pub-
licly promised not to invade Cuba. The
next day, the Soviet government issued a
strongly worded official statement that
included a demand that the United
States remove its missiles from Turkey.
Several disconcerting incidents occurred
 The Cold War and After, 1945– | 289

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY’S CUBAN MISSILE

CRISIS ADDRESS TO THE NATION

October 22, 1962

Good evening, my fellow citizens:
This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet
military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence
has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on
that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide
a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere. . . .
. . . This action also contradicts the repeated assurances of Soviet spokesmen, both
publicly and privately delivered, that the arms buildup in Cuba would retain its origi-
nal defensive character, and that the Soviet Union had no need or desire to station
strategic missiles on the territory of any other nation. . . .
Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tol-
erate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or
small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents
a sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear
weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially
increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well
be regarded as a definite threat to peace. . . .
Our policy has been one of patience and restraint, as befits a peaceful and pow-
erful nation which leads a worldwide alliance. We have been determined not to be
diverted from our central concerns by mere irritants and fanatics. But now further
action is required, and it is under way; and these actions may only be the beginning.
We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in
which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth; but neither will we shrink
from that risk at any time it must be faced. . . .
. . . To halt this offensive buildup a strict quarantine on all offensive military equip-
ment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba
from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons,
be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo
and carriers. . . .
I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless,
and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations.
I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination, and to join in an
historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man. He
has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction by return-
ing to his government’s own words that it had no need to station missiles outside its
own territory, and withdrawing these weapons from Cuba by refraining from any
action which will widen or deepen the present crisis, and then by participating in a
search for peaceful and permanent solutions. . . .
The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it
is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our com-
mitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have
290 | Section 5

(Cuban Missile Crisis Address, continued)

always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surren-
der or submission.
Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right; not peace at the
expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we
hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

Source: U.S. Department of State, American Foreign Policy Current Documents, 1962. Washing-
ton, DC: GPO, 1966, 399–403.

as well, including the shooting down of
an American U-2 spy plane over Cuba, a
violation of Soviet airspace by an
American fighter, and a Russian subma-
rine commander arming his nuclear
weapons.
As both nations teetered on the
brink, Kennedy decided to ignore the
second letter and “accepted”
Khrushchev’s offer to stand down and
remove the nuclear weapons from
Cuba. The implication was that the
president was also acceding to the
Russian leader’s demand never to
invade Cuba. The Soviets acquiesced,
started disassembling the missiles and,
a few days later, began withdrawing a
bomber force they had deployed as
well. The crisis ended without either
nation falling over the brink.
Had the United States achieved its
objectives without a major concession? In
fact, the Jupiter missiles in Turkey were
demobilized shortly afterward, a move
many in the administration had been
urging for months. That the United States
managed to get through the crisis without
issuing a formal promise not to invade
Cuba seemed significant at the time. In
the long run, however, the issue is moot,
since no such invasion has taken place.
Two key bilateral decisions quickly
followed the Cuban Missile Crisis. One
was the installation of a so-called hot-
line between Washington and the
Kremlin in acknowledgment of the need
for accurate and direct communication
between the leaders of the superpowers.
In 1963, the Soviet Union and the
United States agreed to a limited nuclear
test ban that ended their detonation of
experimental weapons except in under-
ground bunkers.
In a broader sense, Kennedy’s
brinkmanship had more positive bene-
fits for the United States than for
Russia. The president’s reputation as a
statesman received a boost both inside
the United States and abroad, a wel-
come reversal of his humiliation over
the Bay of Pigs fiasco. For Premier
Khrushchev the consequences were
decidedly negative. He drew severe crit-
icism from his compatriots and was
ousted from his leadership position a
couple of years later. Fortunately for all,
the Cuban Missile Crisis was the last
major application of brinkmanship by
the United States.
See also: Bay of Pigs
References
Allison, Graham T., and Philip D. Zelikow.
Essence of Decision: Explaining the
Cuban Missile Crisis. 2nd. ed. New York:
Longman, 1999.

Hilsman, Roger. The Cuban Missile Crisis:
The Struggle over Policy. Westport, CT:
Praeger, 1996.
Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Mem-
oir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New
York: Norton, 1969.
Stolper, Thomas E. China, Taiwan, and the
Offshore Islands. Armonk, NY: M. E.
Sharpe, 1985.
Bush Doctrine
In the wake of the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, President George
W. Bush promulgated a set of policy ini-
tiatives that collectively became known
as the Bush Doctrine. Applied first
against terrorist organizations in
Afghanistan, the doctrine was subse-
quently used to justify the U.S. invasion
of Iraq early in 2003. From the very
beginning, some complained that its
principles were inconsistent with long-
established American and collective
security traditions. As the conflict in Iraq
persisted inconclusively, the Bush Doc-
trine became increasingly controversial.
Although several elements have been
ascribed to the Bush Doctrine, three fac-
tors appear fundamental. First is a will-
ingness to act unilaterally to redress
international grievances rather than wait
for collective action or for the United
Nations to sanction military engage-
ment. A second precept justifies preemp-
tive or preventative military action even
if the target of that action neither has
initiated an attack nor appears ready to
do so. Capsulated in the phrase “regime
change,” the third element calls for
replacing dictatorial or autocratic leaders
with democratic governments.
The Bush administration proclaimed
these precepts as essential for dealing
with 21st-century threats to American
security. Unlike earlier “conventional”
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 291
confrontations, terrorist activities can
occur at any time or place without prior
warning. And, because terrorist organi-
zations have no defined territorial
boundaries or governmental structures,
they fall outside the purview of tradi-
tional international law and practices.
The Bush Doctrine therefore proposed
using nontraditional methods for dealing
with nontraditional international threats.
An early formal statement of the Bush
Doctrine appeared in a 2002 national
security strategy report. At that point, the
administration was engaged in a con-
certed effort to obtain international
authorization and support for extending
its war on terror beyond Afghanistan.
The focus of that effort was Saddam
Hussein, the dictatorial leader of Iraq.
His regime relied on the Ba’ath Party,
which was almost exclusively populated
by Iraqi Muslims belonging to the Sunni
Sect. Because Sunnis constituted a
minority of Iraq’s population, Hussein’s
rule was even harsher than it might oth-
erwise have been. The leader had to con-
tend with opposition both from the much
larger Shiite population as well as from a
substantial Kurdish element, neither of
which would willingly have acquiesced
to a less dictatorial Sunni overlordship.
President George W. Bush had a per-
sonal reason for wanting to bring down
the Iraqi leader. Conservatives had
harshly criticized his father, President
George H. W. Bush, for leaving Saddam
Hussein in power at the end of the 1991
Gulf War. Encouraged by advisors such
as Vice President Richard Cheney and
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the
younger Bush was determined to make a
case for American intervention. Among
the many justifications advanced was an
implication that Saddam Hussein bore
some responsibility for the Al Qaeda
292 | Section 5
attack on New York’s World Trade Cen-
ter. This charge lacked validity since the
Iraqi leader had always been hostile to
Al Qaeda and none of the terrorists had
ties to Iraq.
A more persuasive claim was that
Saddam Hussein’s armed forces had
stockpiled “weapons of mass destruc-
tion” (WMDs), including biological and
chemical weapons. Moreover, the Bush
administration maintained that Iraq was
on the verge of creating, or might
already possess, nuclear weapons.
Administration officials including Secre-
tary of State Colin Powell repeatedly
warned that Iraq’s WMDs posed a major
threat not only to its neighbors, but to the
world as a whole. The possibility of an
attack by Iraqi WMDs allowed President
Bush to rationalize a preemptive U.S.
invasion of the country.
Yet another motive lay behind the
decision to invade Iraq. The Bush admin-
istration convinced itself that Saddam
Hussein’s regime was so unpopular that
the Iraqi population would joyfully wel-
come U.S. intervention. Once the Ba’ath
Party had been ousted from power, the
Americans expected Iraq to become a
capitalist, democratic state. As such, it
could serve as a model for other Arab
peoples in the region, one that might
convince other oppressed people to over-
throw their own autocratic leaders. The
regime change proposed for Iraq could,
therefore, be the first step in the wide-
spread adoption of American-style
democracy. To that extent, the Bush
Doctrine harked back to the traditional
American democratic mission policy.
By early 2003, the Bush administra-
tion was ready to implement two of the
core precepts of the Bush Doctrine: a
preemptive war and a commitment to
regime change in favor of democracy.
Although the doctrine also included a
willingness to go it alone, the adminis-
tration hoped to round up allies and gain
United Nation approval of its plans.
Great Britain was the only major nation
to commit resources to what Bush called
“the coalition of the willing.” Several
other countries, including some newly
admitted NATO members from Eastern
Europe, dedicated small contingents.
The United States ran into trouble at
the United Nations. The United States
based its case on charges that Iraq had not
complied with UN resolutions dating
back to the Gulf War requiring the
destruction of all WMDs. Meanwhile, the
UN weapons inspection teams conduct-
ing repeated visits to Iraq found no evi-
dence of current stockpiles. President
Bush impatiently ordered an invasion of
Iraq anyway on March 20, 2003. Faced
with this fait accompli, the UN Security
Council two days later approved a resolu-
tion recognizing the United States, Great
Britain, and the other coalition members
as legitimate occupying forces in Iraq.
That mandate was ultimately extended
through the end of 2008. The pending
expiration of the UN authorization forced
the Bush administration and the Iraqi
government to work toward a bilateral
agreement in the fall of 2008 to allow
American troops to remain in place.
The invasion began very well. Iraq’s
defenses quickly crumpled in the face of
the better-equipped coalition forces.
Fortunately, they encountered no
WMDs. Indeed, none have ever been
discovered. On May 1, President Bush
stood before a banner on a U.S. aircraft
carrier that proclaimed “Mission
Accomplished.” He was careful to disas-
sociate himself from such a definitive
assertion, a prudent decision given that
the conflict persisted year after year.
 The Cold War and After, 1945– | 293

President George W. Bush implemented the Bush Doctrine by ordering the invasion of Iraq in
early 2003. On May 1, he announced the end of major fighting on board the U.S. aircraft carrier
Abraham Lincoln, but the war actually intensified after this announcement. (AFP Photo/Stephen
Jaffe)

What went wrong? The administration
clearly underestimated the deep hostility
among the three major Iraqi groups:
Sunnis, Shiites, and, in the northwestern
portion of the country, Kurds. Bloody
sectarian struggles persisted long after
Saddam Hussein was deposed. Con-
tributing to the instability were two deci-
sions American administrators made
shortly after they occupied Baghdad. One
was to demobilize and dismiss the
remaining units of Iraq’s armed forces,
thus eliminating an organization that
might have been able to counter the ensu-
ing internal strife. The other blunder was
to oust all Ba’athists from positions in the
governing structure. In doing so, the
United States alienated the Sunni faction
and denied positions to people with more
relevant administrative experience than
anyone else in the country.
After many months of turmoil, elec-
tions produced a successor government
headed by Nouri al Maliki, a Shiite. The
parliament, made up of contending
Shiites, Sunni, and Kurds, struggled
for years trying to reach consensus on
key issues. Independent militias compli-
cated any attempt to provide basic secu-
rity within Iraq. Meanwhile, the country
was repeatedly rocked by the unpre-
dictable actions of disruptive individuals
and groups, some of them willing to use
suicide bombs to destroy tranquility. As
late as 2008, the United States was main-
taining nearly 150,000 troops in Iraq, a
commitment that strained the American
military establishment to the extreme.
Despite the presence of this substantial
occupying force, Iraq remained extraor-
dinarily tense with numerous unresolved
problems.
294 | Section 5
As a full-dress application of the
Bush Doctrine, the war in Iraq clearly
illustrated its inherent dangers and con-
tradictions. Instead of lessening the
threat of global terrorism, the invasion
appears to have stimulated greater insta-
bility and anti-Americanism than existed
before the conflict. Any hope that a
responsible democratic government
would emerge from the ashes of the war
has long since vanished. Along the way,
the American penchant for going it alone
has alienated many former allies. Pre-
sumably, a successor administration will
significantly modify or abandon the
tenets of the Bush Doctrine.
See also: Gulf War
References
Caleche, Lamont. Crusading Realism: The
Bush Doctrine and American Core Values
after 9/11. Lanham, MD: University Press
of America, 2008.
Dolan, Chris J. In War We Trust: The Bush
Doctrine and the Pursuit of Just War.
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005.
Jervis, Robert. American Foreign Policy in a
New Era. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Kaufman, Robert Gordon. In Defense of the
Bush Doctrine. Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press, 2008.
Cambodia
No event during the long involvement of
the United States in Vietnam crystallized
public opposition more dramatically
than did the 1970 Cambodian Incursion.
Several demonstrators were killed on
college campuses when hundreds of
thousands staged protests. Although
President Richard Nixon had authorized
the incursion to demonstrate American
resolve, it was widely interpreted as yet
another futile step in a failed policy.
Negative reactions to the incursion
substantially altered U.S. policy in
Southeast Asia.
France had colonized the kingdom of
Cambodia in the 19th century, but
French control ended in the early 1950s.
As U.S. intervention in Vietnam esca-
lated in the 1960s, Cambodia’s royal
government under Prince Norodom
Sihanouk pursued a neutralist strategy to
avoid being drawn into the conflict next
door. But Sihanouk was unable to pre-
vent North Vietnamese soldiers from
establishing a network of supply lines in
the jungle just inside the borders of
Cambodia and Laos. This amorphous
conduit became known as the Ho Chi
Minh Trail after North Vietnam’s leader.
It facilitated the movement of troops and
supplies directly to South Vietnam,
bypassing the heavily fortified demilita-
rized zone that divided north from south.
In late 1969, President Nixon
approved U.S. Air Force bombing mis-
sions across the Vietnamese border
aimed at destroying or interdicting traffic
along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Over 3,600
bombing runs took place, although offi-
cial reports were forged or altered to
conceal the true targets. But the aerial
assault failed to halt the largely foot and
bicycle traffic along the trail’s overgrown
pathways. Nixon considered the flow of
resources from the north as a key factor
undermining his Vietnamization policy
of replacing American combat troops
with well-trained and equipped elements
of the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam
(ARVN).
When a pro-American general named
Lon Nol ousted Sihanouk from power in
Cambodia, the Nixon administration
quickly responded to his appeals for
assistance. It had managed to conceal
the high-level bombing campaign from
the press and the public but realized it

could not so easily bury the story of a
major ground action. The president
therefore made a nationally televised
announcement of a joint U.S. and
ARVN incursion from South Vietnam
into eastern Cambodia on April 30,
1970. Its goal was the same as that of
the unsuccessful bombing campaign: to
close the Ho Chi Minh Trail and halt the
flow of men and materiel from the north.
Despite the administration’s optimistic
reports, traffic along the network of
trails recovered quickly after the troops
withdrew on June 24th. Worse yet, the
American action stimulated support
within Cambodia for the Khmer Rouge,
a communist revolutionary group that
ultimately supplanted Lon Nol’s regime.
The domestic reaction in the United
States had more immediate effects. The
Vietnamization policy and the draft lot-
tery the Nixon administration had intro-
duced had caused a significant drop in the
level of opposition to the war. The Cam-
bodian Incursion changed all that. Hun-
dreds of thousands of people from all
walks of life participated in demonstra-
tions against what they perceived to be a
major expansion of a very unpopular war.
Antiwar protests had swept college
campuses earlier, and they burst forth
again immediately after the president’s
announcement. On May 4th, National
Guard troops summoned to control a
demonstration at Kent State University in
Ohio fired into the crowd, killing four and
wounding nine other people. A couple of
weeks later, police gunfire killed two stu-
dent demonstrators at Jackson State Col-
lege in Mississippi. These civilian deaths
only intensified public outrage.
Congress responded with legislation
that explicitly prohibited American com-
bat in Cambodia. It also voted to rescind
the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution that
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 295
President Lyndon Johnson and his suc-
cessor, Richard Nixon, had used to jus-
tify their continuing involvement in the
Vietnam War. Nixon chose to ignore this
rebuff, however, claiming he had a
responsibility as commander in chief to
protect American troops wherever they
were including Vietnam.
In fact, Nixon realized his Cambodian
adventurism had exposed a boundary to
American patience that even he could
never again cross. In February 1971,
therefore, he issued strict orders that pro-
hibited American ground troops from par-
ticipating when the ARVN staged another
cross-border raid, this one into Laos, the
nation lying north of Cambodia. The Laos
incursion was designed to showcase the
success of the Vietnamization policy. But
the poorly equipped, ill-trained, and low-
morale South Vietnamese units suffered
an appalling 50 percent casualty rate
before withdrawing and leaving the Ho
Chi Minh Trail barely affected.
In the United States, demonstrations
against the invasion of Laos and the
administration’s war policy in general
broke out once again, although they were
less violent and widespread than those
that had followed the Cambodian Incur-
sion. Nevertheless, President Nixon now
knew he had to reduce American
involvement in Southeast Asia substan-
tially if he hoped to win reelection in
1972. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
redoubled his efforts to work out a
settlement with North Vietnamese nego-
tiator Le Duc Tho. Although Kissinger
publicly claimed that “peace was at
hand” in October, not until after Nixon
was safely reelected was the Paris peace
agreement finalized.
The American public had largely
forgotten about Cambodia when that
country once again captured the headlines
296 | Section 5
in the summer of 1975. The Khmer
Rouge had established a repressive and
ruthless government in the country they
now called Kampuchea. Meanwhile, U.S.
president Gerald Ford felt a sense of
humiliation over the fact that the last
Americans had been forced out of South
Vietnam in March 1975. He responded
rashly to news that Kampuchean naval
vessels had captured an American
freighter, the Mayaguez, sailing in inter-
national waters just off the country’s
south coast. Ford authorized an almost
comic-opera countermove in which 41
American servicemen lost their lives
assaulting an island where the captured
freighter’s crew were reportedly being
held. The Kampuchean authorities later
released both the ship and its crew.
The United States relationship with
Cambodia has remained strained ever
since, even though a coalition of
Vietnamese and Cambodian troops
deposed the Khmer Rouge in 1979. In
addition, the violent domestic response
to the Cambodian Incursion in 1970
remains an indelible marker of the
degree of public disillusionment with
U.S. policy in Southeast Asia.
See also: Kissinger, Henry; Tet
References
Kimball, Jeffrey. Nixon’s Vietnam War.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1998.
Small, Melvin. Johnson, Nixon and the
Doves. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1988.
Wells, Tom. The War Within: America’s
Battle over Vietnam. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994.
Containment
In 1947, the administration of President
Harry S Truman adopted a policy known
as containment. Its objective was to pre-
vent the spread of communism from the
Soviet Union to its neighbors and
beyond. Steps including the Truman
Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and ulti-
mately the formation of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
were taken with the goal of containing
Soviet influence within the limits it had
reached during and immediately after
World War II.
Some historians consider the contain-
ment policy a provocative step that
ignited the Cold War. Although it did
provide a rationalization for an aggres-
sive American foreign policy, others see
containment as a logical reaction to
Soviet aggrandizement. During the clos-
ing months of World War II, Red Army
forces numbering in the millions had
pushed westward, driving out Germany’s
occupying troops and establishing or
reestablishing Soviet authority in the
lands they “liberated.”
The postwar political configuration of
Europe reflected this realignment. For
example, the area that had constituted
the prewar Baltic republics of Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania was definitively
returned to its historic subservience to
Russian authority. The three prewar
independent nations were transformed
into Soviet Socialist Republics within an
expanded USSR. Few in the West held
out any hope that this restoration of
Russian dominance could be reversed.
Even more disheartening was Soviet
success in installing “friendly” govern-
ments in areas that had more significant
historical claims to independence. In
Poland, Hungary, Romania, and other
Eastern European regions, the presence
of the Red Army ensured that the gov-
ernments within those areas were trans-
formed into communist-dominated

organizations. Although these countries
were not directly incorporated into the
USSR like the Baltic republics, they
were clearly subject to directives from
the Kremlin and functioned as satellites
of the Soviet Union.
These developments discouraged
American leaders, especially as the Dec-
laration of Liberated Europe, signed at
the Yalta Conference in February 1945,
had called for self-determination. Even
more frightening was the prospect that
additional territory might soon fall under
communist control, areas like Greece
and Turkey in the south and Czechoslo-
vakia, and even Italy and France, in the
west. Implementation of the containment
policy was designed to prevent such
expansion of Soviet influence.
The architect of the policy was career
foreign service officer George F. Kennan.
He had studied the Soviet Union inten-
sively in the 1920s and later served in
increasingly important diplomatic posts
in Moscow. In January 1947, Kennan
sent his State Department superiors what
became known as the “Long Telegram”
from Moscow. With official encourage-
ment, Kennan then publicized his views
in an article titled “The Sources of
Soviet Conduct” under the pseudonym
“X” that appeared in the June issue of
Foreign Relations. The thinly disguised
attempt at anonymity was designed to
avoid restrictions on public officials
commenting independently on policy
matters. The ruse failed almost immedi-
ately, however, when a journalist
revealed the identity of Mr. X.
Both the Long Telegram and the “X”
article reviewed the historical sources of
Soviet power and conduct, recalling
among other factors the tradition of
Russian territorial expansionism that
dated back to the czars. Kennan saw the
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 297
current extension of Russia’s political
reach far beyond the borders of the
USSR as a natural, even inevitable, phe-
nomenon. Because it was unlikely to be
limited from within, Kennan argued, the
United States and its Western allies must
take external steps to contain Soviet
expansionism.
The core of Kennan’s strategy was his
belief that “Soviet pressure against the
free institutions of the Western world is
something that can be contained by the
adroit and vigilant application of
counterforce at a series of constantly
shifting geographical and political
points” (Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet
Conduct,” 575). The containment policy
Kennan proposed was, therefore, a flexi-
ble one that would require constant read-
justment and rethinking on the part of
those who would implement it.
The initial applications of the contain-
ment policy fit this dynamic model. In
response to Kennan’s long telegram and
advice of others both inside and outside
the administration, President Truman
asked Congress to approve funds for mil-
itary assistance to Greece and Turkey.
Both were under internal and external
communist pressures that threatened to
draw them into the Soviet orbit. The
1947 Truman Doctrine proclaimed that
the United States had a responsibility to
protect “free peoples” from such threats.
Congress quickly approved the proposed
aid, and Greece and Turkey used it to
remain independent of the Soviet
Union’s influence.
Another example of a flexible response
was the Marshall Plan, announced just
prior to the publication of the “X”
article. Here the perceived threat was
economic. War-torn nations like France,
Italy, and Great Britain were mired in
deep depressions by the summer of
298 | Section 5
1947, economic crises that strengthened
left wing socialist and communist advo-
cates in those countries. The American
decision to supply billions of dollars in
direct financial aid to strengthen these
struggling economies helped them
recover and ultimately avoid communist
takeover.
By 1949, the military threat to Western
Europe appeared strong enough to con-
vince the United States to abandon a
century and a half of neutrality. It not
only joined but led the establishment of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
It brought the military forces of 12 mem-
ber nations under a common command,
directed at preventing, by force if neces-
sary, the further expansion of Soviet
influence in Europe.
As time passed, serious questions
arose about the wisdom of the contain-
ment policy. Some critics claimed con-
tainment was ineffective because it was
primarily reactive, doing nothing to
reverse or roll back Russian influence
where it already prevailed. Even more
disconcerting was the policy’s apparent
failure to completely contain commu-
nism, the ideological element that had
animated American hostility to Soviet
expansion. In 1949, Chinese communist
leader Mao Zedong succeeded in captur-
ing control of the most populous nation in
the world. Ignoring the clear doctrinal and
geopolitical differences between China
and the USSR, many Americans saw this
change as a frightening expansion of the
Soviet sphere, the very phenomenon con-
tainment was supposed to prevent.
By 1952, containment had become so
discredited that the Republican Party por-
trayed it as one of three major failures of
the Democratic administrations, along
with the fall of China and the unresolved
conflict in Korea. Promising to find a
substitute for containment, Dwight
Eisenhower easily won election on the
Republican ticket that year. As it turned
out, the alternatives that emerged, like
brinkmanship and massive retaliation,
were no more effective than containment
in reducing U.S.–Soviet hostility. Despite
the Eisenhower administration’s avoid-
ance of the term, it remained dedicated to
the objective the containment policy had
pursued: limiting the spread of Soviet
influence anywhere in the world.
See also: Marshall Plan; North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO); Truman Doctrine
References
Harlow, Giles D., and George C. Maerz, eds.
Measures Short of War: The George F.
Kennan Lectures at the National War
College, 1946–1947. Washington, DC:
National Defense University Press, 1991.
Kennan, George F. (“X”). “The Sources of
Soviet Conduct.” Foreign Affairs. 25
(1947): 566–582.
Rose, Lisle A. The Cold War Comes of Main
Street. Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1999.
Woods, Randall B., and Howard Jones.
Dawning of the Cold War: The United
States’ Quest for Order. Athens: Univer-
sity of Georgia Press, 1991.
Détente
Like many diplomatic terms, détente is a
French word, and it refers to a relaxation
of tensions. President Richard Nixon’s
national security advisor and later secre-
tary of state, Henry Kissinger, popular-
ized the policy of détente. Among other
benefits, he hoped it would help the
United States extricate itself from the
Vietnam War. For a time, it appeared that
détente would supplant the older con-
tainment policy, but it failed to produce
the global peace Kissinger anticipated.

When Nixon and Kissinger took
charge in Washington in 1969, the
United States was deeply mired in a
seemingly endless conflict in Vietnam.
The new team believed that Russian and
Chinese support for North Vietnam was
a key factor in prolonging the war. If
they could lessen or even halt that sup-
port, Ho Chi Minh’s government might
be more likely to agree to a negotiated
settlement, one that would enable Nixon
to avoid having to acknowledge defeat.
The potential benefits of a policy of
détente ranged far beyond Southeast
Asia. The Nixon administration defined
five major centers of international
power: the United States, the Soviet
Union, the People’s Republic of China,
Japan, and the rapidly integrating eco-
nomic and political community in West-
ern Europe. An astute student of history,
Kissinger viewed favorably the balance
of power system the Congress of Vienna
had established in 1815 at the end of the
Napoleonic Wars. With minor excep-
tions, that arrangement had assured
nearly a century of world peace. If he
could craft a new international balance
of power structure in the 1970s,
Kissinger believed it might have similar
long-term positive consequences.
The United States maintained normal
if not always friendly diplomatic rela-
tions with three of the other four power
blocs. China was the exception. The
U.S. government refused even to recog-
nize the People’s Republic that commu-
nist leader Mao Zedong had established
in 1949 on the Chinese mainland.
Instead, succeeding administrations in
Washington had consistently claimed
that the Nationalist Chinese regime,
confined to Taiwan after 1949, was the
legitimate government of China. No
American political leader had been
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 299
more outspoken in opposing the recog-
nition of Mao’s ascendancy than
Richard Nixon.
Once he became president, Nixon
modified his position. He recognized
that any friendly ties that might once
have existed between China and the
Soviet Union had become badly frayed.
The two superpowers shared a long com-
mon border, and each maintained sub-
stantial armed forces along it. As
President Harry Truman’s secretary of
state, Dean Acheson, had proposed much
earlier, Nixon and Kissinger now
decided they might profitably play one
side off against the other.
Kissinger took the lead in contacting
communist China. He secretly visited
Beijing in 1971 and held extended con-
versations with Zhou Enlai, Mao’s sec-
ond in command. The Chinese appeared
interested in improving relations with
the United States, so Kissinger brought
home an invitation for the president him-
self to visit. Nixon’s dramatic tour in
February 1972 actually did little more
than open the door slightly to allow for
future interactions. These interactions
included the United States dropping its
opposition to UN membership for the
People’s Republic, opening limited trade
opportunities, and, finally, in 1979,
establishing full diplomatic relations
with the government in Beijing.
Nixon’s China trip was the pinnacle
of détente if for no other reason than it
promoted improved American relations
with the Soviet Union. Unsure what
Nixon had promised Mao, Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev immediately invited
the American president to come to
Moscow for a summit meeting. Aware of
how well his globe-trotting was playing
at home during an election year, Nixon
headed for Moscow in May 1972.
300 | Section 5
The most dramatic success of President Richard Nixon's détente policy occurred when he flew to
Beijing to meet with Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong in 1972. (National Archives)
The timing was far from auspicious.
The United States had just stepped up
major military action against North
Vietnam, including the bombing and
mining of Haiphong Harbor. The assault
sunk four Russian cargo ships, causing
the Nixon administration to worry that
Moscow might rescind its invitation. But
Brezhnev apparently considered direct
talks with the American leader too
important to cancel.
Unlike the largely ceremonial
encounter in China, the Moscow Summit
produced concrete diplomatic agreements.
Most important was the signing of a
Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT)
that had been under negotiation for some
time. The major focus of SALT-1, as it
came to be called, was the Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) defensive systems both
super powers had under development.
Although no one was certain what level of
protection an ABM system could provide,
if it did succeed it could enable a devastat-
ing “second strike.” A nation rash enough
to initiate a nuclear exchange might well
suffer even more horrendous damage in a
second round.
Cost was also a major drawback. The
two rivals were engaged in a rapidly esca-
lating weapons buildup neither could
really afford. Moreover, fear that the
enemy might be able to create an effective
ABM system stimulated additional pres-
sure for weapons development. The
United States, for example, was already

moving toward replacing its single-strike
nuclear arsenal with Multiple Indepen-
dently Targeted Reentry Vehicles
(MIRVs). These payloads might contain a
dozen or more warheads, each capable of
being aimed at a different target. Even
though Congress speedily ratified SALT-1,
it did little to reduce costs because the
rival nations continued to add new
weapons and warheads to their stockpiles.
Fortunately, the fact that the Cold
War’s chief adversaries were holding
serious talks had other benefits. Within a
of couple years, both sides came to
accept a divided Germany. The Soviet
Union formally recognized West Germany
and the United States and its allies did
the same for the German Democratic
Republic, which remained a Soviet satel-
lite. In this case at least, détente did clear
the air and reduce East-West tensions.
The Nixon-Kissinger approach
proved less effective in other areas.
Although Soviet and Chinese support for
North Vietnam did decline after Nixon’s
overseas visits, nothing weakened Ho
Chi Minh’s resolve to control of all of
Vietnam. With the 1972 election day
looming, the Nixon administration made
a major concession to move the peace
negotiations forward: it dropped its
demand that all North Vietnamese troops
be withdrawn from the South. Early in
1973, Kissinger and his North Vietnamese
counterpart, Le Duc Tho, signed an
agreement that resulted in the with-
drawal of all U.S. combat troops by the
end of March.
Equally disappointing to its architects,
the détente policy did little to ease ten-
sions in other parts of the world. Nation-
alism and ancient hostilities continued to
be far more important than great-power
posturing in the Middle East and Africa.
For example, the internal dynamics of the
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 301
Arab-Israeli confrontation set off the so-
called Yom Kippur War in 1973, and no
amount of American politicking in
Moscow or Beijing could forestall it.
That was only one factor in reducing
the appeal of the Nixon-Kissinger policy.
Democratic President Jimmy Carter
emphasized human rights to the detri-
ment of realpolitik approaches like
détente. Another grueling round of strate-
gic arms limitations talks had produced a
more comprehensive set of agreements
called SALT-2. But when the Soviet
Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979,
Carter halted action on SALT-2 and took
other steps designed to “punish” Russia.
With the election of Republican
Ronald Reagan as president in 1981, the
United States moved further away from
détente. It had never been popular with
many of the Republican Party’s conser-
vatives who favored a more confronta-
tional attitude, one that recalled the
discredited containment approach. Rea-
gan basically abandoned détente in favor
of massive increases in the number of
ships in the navy, continuing deployment
of nuclear warheads, and advocacy of a
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The
goal of the SDI was to develop a space-
based system for intercepting enemy
missiles, an aim that seemed quite con-
trary to the spirit of the ABM treaty. By
the end of Reagan’s second term the
Soviet Union was on the verge of col-
lapse, an outcome his political backers
found far more gratifying than any bene-
fits détente had brought.
See also: Cambodia; Massive Retaliation;
Shuttle Diplomacy
References
Ashton, S. R. In Search of Détente: The
Politics of East-West Relations since
1945. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
302 | Section 5
Goldman, Marshall I. Détente and Dollars:
Doing Business with the Soviets. New
York: Basic Books, 1975.
Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger: A Biography.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Thornton, Richard C. The Nixon-Kissinger
Years Reshaping America’s Foreign
Policy. New York: Paragon House, 1989.
Free Trade
In the early 1990s, the United States,
Canada, and Mexico signed the North
American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA). It permitted citizens of the
signatory countries to sell goods any-
where within the three-nation region
without paying customs duties. The
regional trade agreement is part of a
broader framework that includes the
World Trade Organization (WTO). Both
NAFTA and the WTO represent remark-
able deviations from the United States’
traditional support of protectionism and
economic isolationism.
The first major nation to promote free
trade on a large scale was Great Britain
in the mid-19th century. Activists such as
John Bright and Richard Cobden insisted
that Great Britain’s rapidly industrializ-
ing economy would benefit from unlim-
ited trade with other nations. It could, for
example, stimulate the flow of cheaper
agricultural imports from trading part-
ners like the United States and, presum-
ably, encourage them to reduce their
levies on industrial products exported
from the British Isles. Two natural disas-
ters in the late 1840s, the Irish potato
blight and a flood that destroyed the
wheat crop, made gaining access to inex-
pensive overseas foodstuffs all the more
pressing. In 1849, Parliament canceled
the import duties on grain as part of a
broader adoption of free trade on other
goods.
During the same period, the concept
of freer trade gained support in the
United States, especially among Democ-
rats. The newly formed Republican Party
soon became a stalwart supporter of high
tariffs ostensibly designed to protect
American producers from foreign com-
petition. Republicans dominated the fed-
eral government with few exceptions
right through the outbreak of the Great
Depression in 1930. As international
trade stagnated, many came to believe
nationalistic tariff barriers were a pri-
mary cause for the deterioration. In
1934, Democratic president Franklin
Roosevelt asked Congress for, and
received, authority to negotiate recipro-
cal trade agreements that could lower
existing protective tariff rates by as
much as 50 percent. The process contin-
ued through World War II, culminating
in the creation of a multilateral arrange-
ment called the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Subsequent
rounds of negotiations continued to
reduce trade barriers around the world.
The GATT structure allowed for
regional trade arrangements like the
Common Market in Europe. Over time,
the Common Market evolved into a much
broader organization, the European
Union (EU), which encompassed politi-
cal as well as economic collaboration
among its member states. It even devel-
oped an international monetary system
based on the Euro, which most members
of the EU agreed to use instead of their
national currencies. Growing prosperity
in Europe encouraged other countries to
form similar regional trade arrangements.
On the other side of the Atlantic,
American president George H. W. Bush,
Canadian prime minister Brian
Mulroney, and Mexican president
Carlos Salinas de Gortari championed

the concept of a regional free trade zone.
Each anticipated benefits for his own
country. For example, Americans would
be able to export agricultural surpluses
to Mexico tax-free, Canadians would
benefit from lower prices for American
manufactured items like automobiles,
and Mexico anticipated higher wages
for industrial workers producing goods
attractive to their northern neighbors.
Linking the three nations together
economically would create a huge eco-
nomic bloc that could better compete
with the EU and other nations around
the world.
The three leaders signed the North
American Free Trade Agreement in
1992. For a time, its ratification
remained in doubt because Democrat
Bill Clinton defeated Republican
George Bush’s reelection bid. Clinton
decided to move ahead, however, and
lobbied Congress to approve the agree-
ment even though it did not have uni-
versal support. The House eventually
approved NAFTA with a 234–200 vote,
and the Senate did the same by a tally of
61–38. The nation’s first comprehen-
sive free trade program took effect on
January 1, 1994.
Paralleling this development was a
major restructuring of GATT. Over the
years, the multinational trade organiza-
tion had continued to add members and
renegotiate tariff rates, almost always to
lower levels. In addition to resetting tar-
iffs, the so-called Uruguay Round of
negotiations (1986–1994) generated a
call for a more comprehensive entity.
The World Trade Organization became a
reality on January 1, 1995.
As a successor to GATT, the WTO
continues to sponsor negotiations lead-
ing to the modification or elimination of
trade barriers. By the early 21st century,
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 303
the average tariff rate for all commodi-
ties had dropped to around four percent.
Although short of unlimited free trade, it
is a vast reduction of 19th-century tariffs
that could exceed 100 percent on some
items. In addition to dealing with trade
in commodities, the WTO assumed
responsibility for two other aspects of
international commerce: services and
intellectual property. As with commodi-
ties, its goal is to promote exchanges that
do not disadvantage any member nation
or its people.
By 2008, the WTO had 153 active
members. A relatively recent addition
was the People’s Republic of China.
Leading nations remaining outside the
WTO are the Russian Federation, Iran,
and Iraq. The WTO operates by consen-
sus. Every two years, the finance minis-
ters of each nation meet to resolve
overarching issues. To handle more rou-
tine matters, every member names a del-
egation headed by an ambassador.
Although talks sometimes take place
among small groups, no changes can be
imposed on a member state without its
agreement. This consensus model pro-
tects individual nations from exploita-
tion, but it inevitably limits the scope of
the policies approved.
Both NAFTA and the WTO have
many critics in the United States. Some
claim that free trade with Canada and
Mexico has facilitated the export of jobs.
Along the U.S. Mexican border, NAFTA
has encouraged the establishment of
maguiladoras, factories producing inex-
pensive products for the American mar-
ket. These often import raw materials
from the United States and then export
finished products. More recently, the
Central American Free Trade Agreement
(CAFTA) generated even more opposi-
tion, but it finally won congressional
304 | Section 5
approval by a very narrow margin in the
summer of 2008.
The WTO is also seen as making it
more attractive for American companies
to rely on offshore factories and facilities
that increase U.S. unemployment. It
draws particular criticism for creating a
flood of imports from China and other
countries with much lower wage levels
than American workers require. Some
see free trade and the reduced global tar-
iff structure as major contributors to the
substantial negative trade balance the
United States has generated in recent
years. It appears highly unlikely, how-
ever, that the world will ever retreat to
the sort of nationalistic protectionism the
United States had stubbornly pursued
into the 1930s.
See also: GATT; Protectionism
References
Colin, Theodore H. Governing Global Trade:
International Institutions in Conflict and
Convergence. Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2002.
Dunkley, Graham. The Free Trade Adven-
ture. New York: Zed Books, 2001.
Zeiler, Thomas W. Free Trade, Free World:
The Advent of GATT. Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1999.
GATT
The signing of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) at Geneva in
1948 represented a major step toward
easing restrictions on international trade.
Its extensive addendum listed specific
tariff rates for the dozens of nations that
had participated in the negotiations. It
also marked the first time the United
States had approved a comprehensive
multinational trade agreement.
One remarkable aspect of GATT was
how far it deviated from traditional
American trade policies. The United
States had been one of the world’s most
dedicated advocates of protectionism
right through the 1920s. Although
Congress occasionally lowered tariff
rates on specific commodities or prod-
ucts, U.S. import duties generally
remained high. The 19th-century justifi-
cation that domestic producers needed
the “protection” of high customs duties
to discourage imports had long since
lost its credibility. Although few
Americans favored unfettered free trade,
many realized that rigid protectionism
hurt both importers and exporters.
As in most economic areas, the Great
Depression forced a major rethinking of
trade policy. The first, knee-jerk
response was the Smoot-Hawley Act of
1930. It generally raised rather than low-
ered tariff levels, harking back to the tra-
ditional belief that the U.S. economy
needed protection from cheap imports.
In conjunction with similar defensive
moves abroad, the U.S. policy intensified
the economic crisis by contributing to a
precipitous decline in international trade.
Recognizing that Congress would
balk at undertaking a complete rewrite of
the tariff structure, President Franklin
Roosevelt proposed an alternative. He
requested authority for representatives of
the executive branch to negotiate mutu-
ally beneficial rate reductions directly
with overseas trading partners. The 1934
Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act did
just that. Secretary of State Cordell Hull
immediately opened bilateral negotia-
tions with dozens of other countries. The
goal was for each side to reduce its own
tariff levels in return for corresponding
concessions from the other.
By the end of the decade, a large
number of bilateral reciprocal trade
agreements had been signed, lowering

taxes on 40 percent of American imports
by up to one-half of their Smoot-Hawley
levels. These two-way concessions had
broader impact because the United
States followed the principal supplier
approach. That meant that the key bilat-
eral agreement on a particular product
was negotiated with the nation supplying
the largest percentage of imports of that
product.
Perhaps even more important than the
principal supplier element was the oper-
ation of most-favored-nation provisions
in the treaty structure. Any nation with
such an agreement was obligated to
extend the same trade concessions it
granted one nation to all others. There-
fore, the most favorable treatment any
nation granted on a particular commod-
ity immediately applied to any other
countries with most-favored-nation
clauses in their trade agreements. The
operation of this system created a more
uniform international trade structure. It
was only a short step from that piece-
meal approach to the more comprehen-
sive and coordinated GATT system.
The United States emerged from
World War II as an enthusiastic propo-
nent of international organizations.
Either alongside, or as an integral part
of, the United Nations structure, the
American government participated in
efforts to promote global understanding
and progress. This desire became even
more pressing when the Cold War
dawned, dividing East and West into
rival political and economic systems.
In part to strengthen the noncommu-
nist bloc, President Harry S Truman
requested authorization to further reduce
U.S. tariff rates. Congress approved
another round of up to 50 percent in
reciprocal reductions to then current tar-
iff rates. This time, however, the goal
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 305
was a general, multinational agreement
that would cement ties among the so-
called free world nations.
Dozens of nations sent negotiating
teams to Geneva. Although the goal was
a common document, virtually all dis-
cussions of specific items followed the
bilateral approach the United States had
used before the war. Here again, the
principal supplier model prevailed,
ensuring that the most important trading
partners in a particular area would be
comfortable with the results. By 1948,
this frenetic round of discussions had
produced agreements on customs duties
for 47,000 items. The participating
nations then signed the General Agree-
ment on Tariffs and Trade and appended
the list of agreements to it.
Everyone seemed to benefit from the
new system, so Congress extended the
president’s negotiating authority a cou-
ple of times. By 1952, however, conser-
vative Republican majorities controlled
both houses of Congress and, like their
19th-century predecessors, they were
leery of further reductions. Although
additional agreements were hammered
out during the Eisenhower administra-
tion, they were far less extensive than
those of the previous decade.
When John F. Kennedy became pres-
ident, he managed to convince slim
Democratic margins in both houses of
Congress to authorize a new set of nego-
tiations. The so-called Kennedy Round,
begun in earnest only after his death,
reinforced the multinational approach
and further facilitated trade. Throughout
the 1960s and 1970s, American politi-
cians and businessmen complained that
these trade concessions might be detri-
mental to American producers. A num-
ber of restrictions on trade negotiations
were proposed and many implemented,
306 | Section 5
all with the classic justification that they
would protect domestic industries.
Even so, progress seemed unstop-
pable. After the Cold War ended, the
United States was willing to open the
trade system to an ever broader clien-
tele. GATT gave way to the World Trade
Organization (WTO), which added new
members and continued the process of
lowering trade barriers around the world.
At almost the same time, the United
States even went so far as to sign the
North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) that essentially eliminated all
tariff barriers between the United States,
Canada, and Mexico.
Many Americans remain convinced
that NAFTA was a step too far, and politi-
cians have had to carefully choreograph
their positions on international trade pol-
icy. It seems unlikely, however, that the
United States will ever again retreat
behind protectionist redoubts. To that
extent, GATT was a major turning point
in the history of international commerce.
See also: Free Trade; Protectionism
References
Dobson, John M. Two Centuries of Tariffs:
The Background and Emergence of the
United States International Trade Com-
mission. Washington, DC: U.S. Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1976.
Ilgen, Thomas L. Autonomy and Interdepen-
dence: U.S.-Western European Monetary
and Trade Relations, 1958–1984. Totowa,
NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985.
Zeiler, Thomas W. Free Trade, Free World:
The Advent of GATT. Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Gulf War
Iraq’s unexpected invasion of neighbor-
ing Kuwait in 1990 provoked a remark-
able global response. President George
H. W. Bush rallied international public
support and assembled a multinational
military force to deal with the aggression
at the head of the Persian Gulf. The
ensuing counterattack restored pride in
American military prowess, but the long-
term consequences of the Gulf War
proved disappointing.
Several motives underlay Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein’s decision to order his
soldiers to invade Kuwait. For example,
he claimed the area had once been a
province of Iraq, although administrative
boundaries within the Ottoman Empire
had never anticipated the rise of modern
nation-states. The takeover was designed
to “restore” greater Iraqi access to the
Gulf. Gaining control of Kuwait’s enor-
mous petroleum reserves was doubtless
a strong motivating factor as well. It was
especially so for Hussein because
Kuwait’s output had helped flood the
global market, undercutting world oil
prices and correspondingly reducing the
value of Iraq’s own oil exports. Not inci-
dentally, Hussein desperately needed
money in the wake of his costly, six-year
war against Iran. Tapping Kuwait’s
resources could generate much-needed
funds.
Saddam Hussein also apparently
believed his bold action would elevate his
stature as a leader in the Middle East, a
prospect that troubled many Arabs in the
region. In addition to occupying Kuwait,
substantial Iraqi forces were deployed
along the Iraqi-Saudi border. If Hussein’s
ambitions remained unchecked, he might
be tempted to expand south into the
Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi govern-
ment had long maintained friendly ties to
the United States, so it naturally turned to
the U.S. government for assistance.
President Bush did not respond rashly
or unilaterally. When the American

delegation raised the issue at the United
Nations, they found widespread support.
Even the Soviet Union, a former backer
of Saddam Hussein’s regime, was unwill-
ing to condone an unprovoked attack on
a neighboring nation. Taking full advan-
tage of the ending of the Cold War, the
Bush administration obtained solid sup-
port for a UN resolution demanding that
Iraq withdraw from Kuwait. The interna-
tional body also imposed a comprehen-
sive embargo that reduced Iraqi imports
and exports to a trickle.
Equally important was the formation
of a U.S.–led coalition that ultimately
included nearly 50 nations willing to
participate in a counterattack. As in the
Korean War, American officers occupied
the top command positions in the inter-
national force, and the United States
eventually dispatched half a million
troops to the region. Coalition partners
sent another 200,000. Their first move
was Operation Desert Shield, the
deployment of some 200,000 troops in
northern Saudi Arabia to prevent any fur-
ther Iraqi expansion.
The United Nations set January 15,
1991, as the deadline for Iraqi with-
drawal. The next day, General Colin
Powell, chairman of the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff, initiated a massive air
assault code-named Operation Desert
Storm. Bombs and rockets rained down
on targets in both Kuwait and Iraq for the
next five weeks. The Iraqi government
refused to retreat, however, and Saddam
Hussein bragged that his soldiers were
prepared for the “mother of all battles”
should the coalition be so foolhardy as to
stage a ground assault.
On February 23, U.S. General
Norman Schwarzkopf ordered a massive
invasion anyway, sending hundreds of
thousands of coalition troops into
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 307
Kuwait and eastern Iraq. Believing that
Saddam Hussein’s military had stock-
piled chemical and biological weapons,
the invading force took extensive precau-
tions. The most surprising development,
however, was how quickly and com-
pletely the Iraqi defenders gave way.
They did manage to set hundreds of
Kuwaiti oil wells on fire and wreak
extensive damage on other facilities
before fleeing toward Baghdad. Less
than 100 hours after the assault began,
Iraq agreed to a UN-brokered cease-fire.
More than 25,000 Iraqis died in com-
bat compared to just 148 Americans
killed. A large percentage of the interna-
tional force did come into contact with
poisonous sarin gas, however, and that
exposure continued to affect tens of
thousands of soldiers long after the fight-
ing ended. The use of such a weapon was
just one of a number of highly criticized
aspects of the Iraqi defense. For exam-
ple, Iraq launched Scud missiles into
Israel, hoping to provoke a response that
would galvanize pan-Arab support for
Iraq. The Bush administration worked
hard to hold the coalition together and
discourage any reactions that might
broaden the scope of the conflict.
The dramatic and speedy victory in
the Gulf War momentarily pushed the
president’s approval ratings to unprece-
dented heights. Very quickly, however,
questions arose over his decision to sus-
pend the assault rather than drive all the
way to Baghdad and depose Saddam
Hussein. The president had chosen to
limit the war for several reasons. One
factor was continuing uncertainty about
just how extensive the enemy’s biologi-
cal, chemical, and nuclear weapons
capabilities were. Moreover, the UN
resolutions did not envision actions
beyond restoring the prewar boundaries.
308 | Section 5

Recognizing defeat was imminent in the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein ordered
his retreating troops to set fire to Kuwait's oil fields. Fortunately, these fires were extinguished soon
after allied forces occupied Kuwait. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Pursuing a broader objective might have any remaining stocks of chemical or

weakened, or even disintegrated, the
coalition assembled to rescue Kuwait.
Bush also realized that an American-
engineered regime change could be very
unpopular in the Arab world. Besides,
like many others, he anticipated that the
humiliating defeat the Iraqis had sus-
tained would motivate them to oust the
dictator on their own.
That never happened, even though the
United Nations imposed severe sanc-
tions on Hussein’s government. For
example, it designated all of northern
Iraq a no-fly zone. For years afterward,
American warplanes patrolled the area to
prevent Iraqi use of that airspace. The
UN also insisted that its personnel be
given free reign to search out and destroy
biological weapons. Dozens of Scud
missiles and other weapons were
scrapped as well. Perhaps most impor-
tant, UN inspections neutralized Iraq’s
nuclear weapons development projects,
which some estimated might have pro-
duced a bomb within two years.
The Gulf War marked a pinnacle of
post–Cold War international coopera-
tion. Very quickly, familiar controver-
sies and confrontations retook center
stage in the Middle East: Palestinian
Arabs demanded independence from
Israel, hostility between Jews and Arabs
continued to prevent the development of
better relations, and disputes between
Shiite and Sunni Muslims created
further instability. In addition, the

continuing Western desire for, and
dependence on, the region’s oil limited
the amount of influence the United States
and other customer nations could exert.
Although no one at the time antici-
pated it, the seeds of another United
States military confrontation with Iraq
were already germinating. President
Bush’s son, George W. Bush, apparently
considered his father’s failure to oust
Saddam Hussein as unfinished business.
In the wake of the 9/11 attack, the
administration of the second President
Bush advanced every possible justifica-
tion for a second round. The disappoint-
ing American experience in the most
recent Iraqi war suggests that the first
President Bush had been wise to settle
for a quick and limited victory in the
Gulf War.
See also: Bush Doctrine
References
Brune, Lester H. America and the Iraqi
Crisis, 1990–1992. Claremont, CA:
Regina Books, 1993.
Freeman, Lawrence, and Efraim Karsh. The
Gulf Conflict, 1990–1991: Diplomacy
and War in the New World Order. Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Gordon, Michael R., and Bernard E. Trainor.
The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of
the Conflict in the Gulf. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1995.
Khaddure, Majid, and Edmund Ghareeb. War
in the Gulf, 1990–91. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997.
Hostage Crisis
In 1979, radical militant students
invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the
capital of Iran. They rounded up 66
Americans inside the compound and
held most of these unfortunate people
hostage for more than a year. The Iranian
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 309
hostage crisis paralyzed the administra-
tion of president Jimmy Carter and
played a major role in the failure of his
1980 reelection bid. For the American
people, the crisis proved especially dis-
couraging, coming in the wake of the
U.S. humiliation in Vietnam and seem-
ing to symbolize a precipitous decline in
American prestige around the world.
Shortly after World War I, the Pahlavi
family established a royal government in
Iran. During World War II, Soviet armies
occupied the northern section of the
country while British troops did the
same in the south. Because Iran shared a
long border with the Soviet Union, many
Westerners worried that communist
influences might bleed across that
boundary. To forestall Russian aggran-
dizement, the United States staged a
naval demonstration in the Persian Gulf
in 1946 and extended Truman Doctrine
assistance to Iran in 1947.
Internal instability in succeeding years
set the stage for a Central Intelligence
Agency sponsored coup in 1953 that
restored the monarchy. Mohammad Reza
Shah Pahlavi seemed an ideal choice to
govern the nation because he was ardently
anticommunist and pro-American. Begin-
ning in 1963, the Shah announced a
“White Revolution” designed to modern-
ize the country. But many of its reforms,
such as expanded women’s rights and
Westernization in dress and culture, alien-
ated traditionalists, particularly those with
fundamentalist Muslim beliefs.
Another cause of dissension was the
Shah’s heavy dependence upon the United
States as a military supplier. Billions of
dollars of oil-generated income went for
the purchase of state-of-the-art weapons
systems and aircraft. Iran developed the
most advanced and powerful armed
force in the Middle East outside of
310 | Section 5
Israel. The Shah justified his militarism
as necessary to make Iran a bastion
against communism, and the U.S. gov-
ernment considered Iran a powerful, sta-
ble ally in a troubled region.
Appearances were definitely deceiving.
With CIA guidance, the Shah established
a powerful secret police organization,
SAVAK, that ruthlessly clamped down on
dissent or even mild criticism. Thousands
of Iranians were executed or imprisoned.
By the late 1970s, opposition to the Shah’s
regime had spread throughout all classes
of Iranian society.
The most outspoken critic was the
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shiite
cleric living in Paris. Even operating
from exile, the ayatollah was able to
superintend a broad-ranging opposition
movement within Iran. It drew particu-
lar strength from traditionalists and fun-
damentalists who despised the Shah’s
secular reforms. Widespread rioting
broke out in 1978. The Shah imposed
martial law, but it only served to ener-
gize opposition to his regime. His fleet
of U.S.-built jet fighters and missiles
provided no protection at all against
domestic resistance. On January 16,
1979, the Shah fled into exile, forced to
move like a pariah from one country to
another.
The confusion following his departure
began to ease when Khomeini returned to
his homeland and took steps toward estab-
lishing an Islamic-based government. His
movement maintained a constant barrage
of criticism of both the deposed Shah and
his American allies. Many Iranians feared
the United States might be planning a
repeat of the 1953 coup to restore the
despised Shah to power.
In fact, the exiled leader was dying of
cancer. In late October 1979, he
requested permission to get medical care
at a New York hospital, and the Carter
administration agreed to let him enter the
country. This move stimulated a fervent
outcry in Iran along with demands that
the Shah be returned to stand trial. At the
height of this emotional outburst, radical
students assailed the American Embassy
in Teheran on November 4.
Occupation of an embassy violates all
traditional diplomatic protocols, but the
ayatollah did nothing to prevent it. Tele-
vised images of handcuffed, blindfolded
Americans were beamed around the
world. These pictures haunted no one
more than President Carter himself. He
froze $8 billion in Iranian assets and
imposed other economic sanctions to try
to coerce the Iranian authorities to free the
hostages. The only success came when
the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) served as a clandestine intermedi-
ary and obtained the release of 13 of the
hostages, mostly women and African
Americans.
After another secret diplomatic effort
failed in April 1980, the United States
formally broke relations with Iran, and a
major debate raged within Carter’s inner
circle. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance
defended diplomacy as the best strategy,
but National Security Advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski was equally insistent that a
military response was the only viable
alternative.
Carter came down on Brzezinski’s side
and ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to
launch a rescue mission. Eight huge heli-
copters left the U.S. aircraft carrier Nimitz,
positioned in the Persian Gulf, while six
C-130 transport planes took off from an
Egyptian base. They were to rendezvous
in the desert south of Teheran. Three of the
helicopters developed engine trouble in an
intense sand storm. Even after the ill-fated
mission had been scrubbed, a cargo plane

and a helicopter collided, killing eight
American servicemen.
The botched rescue mission further
undermined Carter’s credibility and U.S.
prestige. The hostages remained impris-
oned, and Vance quietly resigned from
the administration that had ignored his
rational advice. The situation seemed
hopeless until the Shah died in Mexico
in July, ending any threat of a coup and
relieving some anti-American pressure
in Iran.
Shortly afterward, Khomeini’s bloc
won outright control of parliament,
reducing the hostages’ political value to
his backers. When a bloody war between
Iraq and Iran broke out in September, the
Iranian government found itself largely
friendless and underprepared. Almost all
of its military equipment had originated
in the United States, and the continuing
break between the two nations prevented
Iran from obtaining spare parts and
replacements. Moreover, the frozen
assets would have been very helpful to a
nation at war.
The final key to resolving the hostage
crisis was the election of Republican
Ronald Reagan to replace Carter in
November. There is some speculation
that secret arrangements with Iran had
been made to leave the Americans
imprisoned to keep Carter on the defen-
sive until after the election. In any event,
the ordeal ended on January 19, 1981,
the day before Reagan’s inauguration
and 444 days after the initial assault on
the embassy.
U.S. relations with Iran have remained
strained ever since. American sympathies
in the Iran-Iraq war largely favored Iraq
despite doubts about its leader, Saddam
Hussein. The only exception was the con-
troversial Iran-Contra operation that
deeply scarred the Reagan administra-
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 311
tion. More recently, the Iranian govern-
ment’s alleged role in training and arm-
ing anti-American agents to infiltrate
Iraq has kept tensions high. Finally, con-
cern that Iran may be attempting to
develop nuclear weapons has kept it high
on the list of U.S. adversaries. Much of
that might well have occurred in any
case, but the humiliation and helpless-
ness Americans felt during the hostage
crisis still casts a long shadow over U.S.
attitudes toward Iran.
See also: Iran-Contra
References
Bakhash, Shaul. The Reign of the Ayatollahs:
Iran and the Islamic Revolution. New
York: Basic Books, 1990.
Christopher, Warren, and Paul H. Kreisberg,
eds. American Hostages in Iran: The
Conduct of a Crisis. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1985.
Sick, Gary. All Fall Down: America’s Tragic
Encounter with Iran. New York: Random
House, 1985.
Iran-Contra
The Iran-Contra Affair was one of the
most improbable diplomatic episodes in
American history. No obvious linkage
between troubles in the Middle East and
Central America existed until individuals
in the administration of President Ronald
Reagan developed a creative and highly
suspect operation to solve two very dif-
ferent problems. Revelations about the
Iran-Contra Affair exposed some of the
seamier inner workings of the Reagan
administration and ruined the careers of
several of the principal participants.
Symptomatic of how convoluted the
affair was, the Iranian aspect actually
began in Lebanon. In the early 1980s,
terrorists with ties to Iran kidnapped
312 | Section 5
several American citizens in Beirut. The
United States had frequently publicized
its refusal to pay ransom or bow to
blackmail to free political hostages. The
Lebanese hostages remained imprisoned
month after month. President Jimmy
Carter’s administration had become dys-
functional as a result of the much larger
Iranian hostage crisis just prior to Rea-
gan’s election, and the Republican presi-
dent had no desire to repeat Carter’s
unfortunate experience.
Iran, however, appeared to be the
only outside element that might be able
to convince the kidnappers to free the
hostages. The fact that the United States
currently had no formal relations with
Iran certainly complicated the prospects
for resolving the hostage dilemma.
Meanwhile, Iran was mired in a
devastating war with its neighbor, Iraq.
The government in Teheran was very
interested in obtaining supplies and
parts for the U.S.-supplied military
equipment it had inherited from the
deposed Shah’s government. Hoping to
win friends in Teheran, Reagan admin-
istration insiders hit upon a plan to sell
desperately needed armaments to
“moderates” in Iran. Because reliable
direct contacts between the two nations
did not exist, the Americans asked
Israeli agents to extend the offer and
handle the sales.
Implementing this scheme raised a
host of difficulties at home as well.
Publicly, the U.S. government leaned
toward supporting Iraq in the conflict.
Providing weapons to Iran would cer-
tainly seem inconsistent with that posi-
tion. Moreover, the long-standing U.S.
tradition of refusing to negotiate with
politically motivated kidnappers ruled
out any open contacts. Still another diffi-
culty was financing arms shipments
since Congress had never approved such
activities. The last problem triggered the
surprising link with events halfway
around the world in Central America.
In the late 1970s, Central America
hosted a wave of communist-inspired
rebels and reformers. One of the most
dynamic revolutionary movements arose
in Nicaragua where Daniel Ortega
headed a faction known as the
Sandinistas. The group took its name
from Augusto Sandino who had fought
against U.S. domination of Nicaragua
until he was killed in 1934. The
Sandinistas developed strong popular
support among the poverty-ridden citi-
zens of Nicaragua and captured control
of the government in 1979. Because
Ortega had friends in communist Cuba
and his programs were unabashedly
socialistic in orientation, the Reagan
administration considered the Sandin-
istas nothing more than Cuban or Soviet
agents. An avid anticommunist, Reagan
appeared far more disturbed by this
apparent subversive expansion than his
predecessors had been in the age of
détente.
Not content with exerting political
and economic pressure on the Sandinistas,
the Reagan administration encouraged
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and
other clandestine support for a group of
right-wing Nicaraguans who despised
the Ortega government. Because they
constituted an opposition force, they
became known as “Contras.” CIA and
U.S. military agents provided training,
funding, and supplies for the Contras,
many of whom operated from bases out-
side of Nicaragua proper. From their
camps across the border, the Contras
unleashed deadly, guerilla-style raids on
the civilian population living in rural
areas of Nicaragua.
 The Cold War and After, 1945– | 313

Congress became increasingly uneasy Momentarily at least the scheme

with the U.S. support for such a destruc-
tive initiative. In 1982, it prohibited the
use of U.S. funding to promote the over-
throw of the Nicaraguan government.
When the Reagan administration contin-
ued to flout this ban, Congress approved
the so-called Boland Amendment in
1984 that explicitly forbade the use of
appropriated federal funds to aid the
Contras. Again, the administration
secretly continued its support, even
going to the extreme of soliciting funds
from private citizens to finance what
Congress had specifically forbidden.
Here the divergent threads of the story
became intertwined. Because selling
arms to Iran was also prohibited,
American agents did not have to offi-
cially account for the money they
received from the sales. Therefore, the
profits could be transferred directly to
the Contras without technically violating
the Boland Amendment. Marine Lieu-
tenant Colonel Oliver North was charged
with coordinating this top secret opera-
tion, operating directly under the
National Security Council (NSC).
Encouraged first by Robert McFarlane,
Reagan’s national security advisor, and
then by his successor, Admiral John
Poindexter, North managed a complex
web of contacts that provided arms to
Iran and money to the Contras.
produced a positive result. Apparently
responding to orders from Teheran, the
Lebanese kidnappers released some of
their hostages. Shortly afterward, how-
ever, other Americans in Beirut were
captured, which meant that the number
of Americans held hostage remained vir-
tually unchanged despite the weapons
transfers. At the same time, the money
from the sales was funneled through
clandestine channels to Central America,
where it financed increasingly elaborate
Contra activities, such as the construc-
tion of a huge airfield in Costa Rica.
Congressional investigators began
piecing the story together in 1986. A key
question was just how directly President
Reagan himself had been involved.
Republican Senator John Tower of Texas
headed a commission charged with
investigating the affair. Its verdict regard-
ing the president was equivocal, in part
due to Reagan’s claims of forgetfulness.
Although the Tower Commission never
completely unraveled the complexities of
the Iran-Contra affair, North, McFarlane,
and Poindexter all eventually stood trial
for their parts in the scheme. The first two
were found guilty and given suspended
sentences, but Poindexter actually served
time in prison.
Despite dogged and illegal U.S.
efforts to strengthen the Contras, the

BOLAND AMENDMENT

During fiscal year 1985, no funds available to the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Department of Defense, or any other agency or entity of the United States involved in
intelligence activities may be obligated or expended for the purpose or which would
have the effect of supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations
in Nicaragua by any nation, group, organization, movement or individual.

Source: U.S. Statutes at Large 98, 1984: 1935–1937. Public Law 98–473.
314 | Section 5
rebels never substantially weakened
popular support for the Sandinistas.
Daniel Ortega remained in power until a
peaceful election in 1991 installed Violeta
Chamorro. Early in the 21st century,
Ortega returned to the presidency of
Nicaragua, although in a far less dog-
matically socialistic incarnation. The
Iran-Contra Affair also had little long-
term impact in the Middle East. The
Iran-Iraq war burned itself out after
nearly a decade of fighting and a million
deaths. Although one American hostage
died in captivity, the rest were ultimately
released.
The most important consequences
occurred in the United States. Iran-Contra
revealed just how unrepentantly anticom-
munist Reagan and his advisors were, and
how far they were willing to go beyond
the law to support that agenda. Congress
ultimately succeeded in thwarting this
blatant abuse of executive power, but
many Americans were appalled at the
investigation’s revelations. It led to an
unhealthy rise in cynicism about foreign
affairs in general and the Republican
Party in particular.
See also: Hostage Crisis
References
Burns, E. Bradford. At War in Nicaragua:
The Reagan Doctrine and the Politics of
Nostalgia. New York: Harper and Row,
1987.
Emerson, Steven. Secret Warriors: Inside the
Covert Military Operations of the Reagan
Era. New York: Putnam, 1988.
North, Oliver, with William Novak. Under
Fire: An American Story. New York:
HarperCollins, 1991.
Israel
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion
telephoned President Harry Truman to
inform him that Israel had declared its
independence. A few minutes later,
Truman extended full U.S. diplomatic
recognition to the new country. That
speedy decision reflected a willingness
to go to almost any lengths to support
Israel, a position that has influenced and
complicated U.S. foreign relations with
the Middle East, and the world, ever
since. A number of factors and historical
events reinforced this commitment, even
though the United States was relatively
late in developing a Mideast policy.
The concept of an independent Israel
arose in the 19th century with a group of
Jewish nationalists known as Zionists.
They cited Old Testament evidence that
God had granted the land of Palestine to
the Jewish people. The fact that Jews had
not controlled the area for centuries in no
way discouraged the Zionist movement.
The concept had no chance of imple-
mentation as long as the area remained
under Ottoman control. Turkish Muslims
in Istanbul managed a vast empire con-
taining a confusing array of ethnic and
religious groups. Jews constituted a small
minority in the largely Arab population
of Palestine well into the 20th century.
A key moment in the prehistory of
Israel came in 1917 when Zionists lead-
ers discussed their goal with British for-
eign minister Arthur Balfour. Inclined to
support any group that opposed Great
Britain’s enemies in World War I,
Balfour issued a declaration stating his
country’s support for the establishment
of a Jewish state in Palestine. The
Balfour Declaration became something
of an embarrassment after the war ended
and the League of Nations granted Great
Britain mandates over both Palestine and
Iraq. In 1939, the government in London
issued a white paper formally disavow-
ing the Balfour Declaration.

U.S. interest in the area was slow to
develop until its vast deposits of oil began
being tapped. American companies were
eager to exploit this valuable resource, so
the federal government ramped up its
diplomatic relationships with many of the
leaders Great Britain had installed in the
region. The Saud family in Arabia and
the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan, for
example, developed friendly relations
with the United States.
Although the World War II Allies knew
about the anti-Semitic campaigns Adolf
Hitler’s Nazi regime had pursued, the full
enormity of what would be known as the
Holocaust only became clear in the last
stages of the conflict. Millions of European
Jews had died, many in inhuman concen-
tration camps. Most of those who had
avoided that fate ended up as displaced
or stateless persons. These people
desperately wanted to find new homes,
and the Zionist vision of a “return” to
Palestine gained increasing popularity.
Meanwhile, the United States had
become disenchanted with colonialism,
either for itself or for anyone else. After
the war, Palestine technically remained
under British authority, but nationalistic
ambitions were strengthening among the
Arab peoples of the region. The British
attempted to control Jews eager to
migrate to the area by holding them in
camps on the island of Cyprus. Some
residents of those camps secretly made
their way across the narrow arm of the
Mediterranean to Palestine. There they
joined forces with native-born “Sabras,”
Jewish people whose families already
resided in the area and often had done so
for many generations. Not surprisingly,
Palestinian Arabs objected to what they
saw as a threat to their own patrimony.
The United Nations struggled to
develop a reasonable solution to this
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 315
growing crisis. By 1947, it had drafted a
partition plan assigning separate parts of
Palestine to Muslims and Jews. A major
sticking point was Jerusalem, a holy city
for Jews, Muslims, and Christians. The
Partition Plan envisioned Jerusalem as a
nonaligned city, open to all. The UN
scheme won little support from any of
the parties.
Arab resentment eventually boiled
over. Palestinian Arabs and supporters
from neighboring countries like Egypt,
Jordan, and Syria teamed up to drive out
all Jews. To their surprise, the Jews
proved to be fierce fighters, aided by
weapons and financial support from
friends in Europe and the United States.
The latter was especially important
because Jewish Americans constituted
an influential voting block, capable of
putting considerable pressure on the U.S.
government to support their side in the
struggle. This persuasion was all the
more effective because no countervailing
Arab lobby existed in the United States.
While putting up a remarkably effec-
tive defense, the Jewish leaders in
Palestine decided to bypass the United
Nations altogether and create their own
nation, Israel. President Truman’s
instantaneous recognition of the new
country further undermined United
Nations initiatives. Even so, six days
after the American recognition, the UN
Security Council appointed a highly
respected Swedish diplomat, Count
Folke Bernadotte, to mediate the ongo-
ing conflict between Arabs and Jews.
Bernadotte made some progress on
truce arrangements modeled after the
original partition plan, but he ignored the
proposal to make Jerusalem an interna-
tional city. When it became clear he
intended to assign it to the Arab sector,
members of an extremist Jewish group
316 | Section 5
assassinated him. The fighting continued
unabated until the UN sent another medi-
ator, U.S. citizen Ralph Bunche. He
worked out a new truce arrangement in
which Jerusalem would be divided
between Arabs and Jews. The proposal
won support from many of the combat-
ants, although Egypt proved reluctant.
When the Egyptian government finally
accepted Bunche’s armistice in February
1949, it left the Arab population of the
Gaza Strip cut off from their traditional
farmlands.
The end of the fighting in no way
ended the controversy. The conflict had
driven tens of thousands of Arabs out of
their homes and into relocation camps.
These quickly changed from temporary
to permanent facilities, dependent upon
UN relief support. Although the United
States remained committed to the survival
of Israel, the new nation received some-
what less attention than it might have if
it had been threatened by communism.
Paranoia about Soviet ambitions so col-
ored U.S. policy at that point that the
Middle East muddle retreated to the back
burner.
See also: Land for Peace
References
Benson, Michael T. Harry S Truman and the
Founding of Israel. Westport, CT:
Praeger, 1997.
Cohen, Michael J. Palestine and the Great
Powers, 1945–1948. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1982.
Louis, William Roger. The British Empire in
the Middle East, 1945–1951. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1984.
Land for Peace
In 1967, the United Nations Security
Council approved American-sponsored
UN Resolution 242. It laid out a formula
for restoring balance in the Middle East
after the so-called Six-Day War. The fun-
damental concept was that Israel would
exchange lands it had captured in the
conflict for assurance of recognition and
nonbelligerency from its Arab neigh-
bors. The land-for-peace formula has
remained a fundamental element of U.S.
foreign policy ever since.
The war that resulted in the conquest
of Arab lands was the third conflict
between Israel and its neighbors. The
first ran from 1947 to 1949 and produced
two key results: an independent Israel
and a UN-brokered peace agreement that
left a good many questions unanswered.
One was whether Israel’s Arab neighbors
would ever recognize the existence of
the Jewish state. The second conflict
stemmed from a dispute over control of
the Suez Canal, a dispute whose roots
extended back at least to the year 1952
when a military coup in Egypt ousted
King Farouk, a remnant of former
British rule.
One of the colonels who master-
minded the change was Gamal Abdel
Nasser, a dedicated nationalist. By 1954,
Nasser was not only firmly in charge in
Cairo, but was also a rising star in the
Pan-Arab movement arrayed against
Israel. His most ambitious domestic plan
was to build a huge dam on the Nile
River upstream from the one already in
place at Aswan. Nasser anticipated that
the High Aswan Dam would provide
electric power and irrigation water for
his country’s farmlands.
The U.S. government initially took
a keen interest in this project. It dis-
patched development teams from its
International Co-operation Adminis-
tration, a predecessor of the U.S.
Agency for International Development
(USAID). The American experts

advised their Egyptian counterparts on
the irrigation and community-building
benefits the dam could produce. Their
positive reports convinced Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles to promise
increased American technical support
and substantial financial contributions
to pay for building the High Aswan
Dam.
Nagging Arab resentment over Israel
complicated the picture. Since the 1949
cease-fire, periodic border clashes had
taken place between Israel and its
neighbors. Committed to being recog-
nized as the Pan-Arab leader, Nasser
requested military assistance from the
United States. When the Americans
refused, the Egyptian government
contracted with suppliers in the Soviet
satellite of Czechoslovakia to provide
arms. Cold warrior Dulles then rescinded
the American offer of help for the dam
project to punish Nasser for trading
with a communist nation.
Nasser decided to raise the money he
needed to build his dam by exploiting a
resource close at hand. In late July
1956, he nationalized the Suez Canal
that ran through Egypt. Both the
French, who operated the canal, and the
British, who maintained armed forces
to “protect” it, were outraged. Even
though Nasser promised to pay reason-
able compensation to the former own-
ers, neither European country was
willing to admit Egypt was capable of
operating this vital transportation link.
A military effort to reestablish foreign
control of the canal began with an Israeli
invasion of the Sinai Peninsula on
October 29, 1956. The next day Great
Britain and France sent Egypt and Israel
an ultimatum demanding that they
withdraw all of their troops from within
10 miles of the canal. Only Egyptian
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 317
troops were anywhere near the canal at
that point, so Nasser rejected the ultima-
tum. When French and British aircraft
began bombing Egyptian positions, the
United Nations Security Council took up
the issue.
With the Soviet Union offering to
support Egypt up to and including the
use of atomic weapons, the United States
worked feverishly on a resolution to end
the confrontation. Faced with implacable
American opposition to their policies,
the European powers and Israel reluc-
tantly stood down. To preserve the
resulting armistice, a United Nation’s
Emergency Force (UNEF) stationed
troops along Sinai’s Egypt-Israel border.
The Soviet Union immediately
stepped in to exploit Arab hostility to the
West. Within a few months thousands of
Soviet military advisors had arrived in
Egypt and Syria, bringing with them new
weapons and tactics. Equally momen-
tous was the Soviet offer to assist in
building the High Aswan Dam. The
United States responded by stepping up
its already substantial economic and
military support for Israel. The broader
effect of these developments was pre-
cisely what Dulles had hoped to avoid:
drawing the Arab-Israeli dispute directly
into the Cold War, with each side
dependent upon one of the superpowers.
Cease-fire violations and border inci-
dents continued to occur. A key focus of
this activity was the Golan Heights,
Syrian territory ideal for harassing Israeli
settlements in the adjacent lowlands. The
situation spiraled out of anyone’s control
in the spring of 1967. Frustrated by the
growing American presence in Vietnam,
the Soviet leadership decided to heat up
the Middle East cauldron. They secretly
warned Nasser’s government that Israel
was beginning to mobilize for a full-scale
318 | Section 5

confrontation. This information was not
only false, but rather comical since Israel
was so well organized it could fully
mobilize in 24 hours. Nasser apparently
felt he would lose stature with his fellow
Arabs if he failed to act. He ordered his
own armed forces to mobilize and
demanded the removal of the UNEF
peace keepers. UN Secretary General U
Thant duly recalled them without con-
sulting any one else.
Israel understandably interpreted
these moves as threats to its survival.
On June 5, 1967, Israel’s armed forces
staged simultaneous preemptive attacks
on Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. In almost
no time at all, Israeli forces occupied
the Sinai Peninsula, Arab lands west of
the Jordan River, and the Golan Heights.
Frantic efforts at the United Nations
brought about a cease-fire in less than a
week, but the Six-Day War had com-
pletely redrawn the Middle Eastern
map, leaving Israel with more than
twice its original territory.
Complex negotiations continued at
the United Nations. The aggrandizement
of Israel was particularly embarrassing
to the United States with its long-standing
commitment to the right of peoples to
self-determination. Millions of Arabs
suddenly found themselves trapped in a
hostile foreign country. At the same
time, Israel was reluctant to withdraw
unless it won assurance that its neigh-
bors would leave it in peace. At that
point the land-for-peace formula came
into play. UN Security Council Resolution

UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 242

November 22, 1967

The Security Council,
Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,
Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need
to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in secu-
rity, . . .
1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a
just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both
the following principles:
Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledg-
ment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State
in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries
free from threats or acts of force;
2. Affirms further the necessity
For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the
area;
For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;
For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every
State in the area through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones.

Source: United Nations, Yearbook of the United Nations 1967. New York: United Nations, 1969,
257–258.

242 called upon Israel to withdraw from
the recently occupied territories in return
for Arab promises to recognize its right
to exist.
Israel still occupies the West Bank and
the Golan Heights. Does that mean the
land-for-peace formula has failed? A
fourth round of warfare, the so-called
Yom Kippur War, in 1973, did nothing to
change the redrawn map. But later in that
decade, President Jimmy Carter superin-
tended a major implementation of UN
Resolution 242 when he met with Egypt-
ian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli
Prime Minister Menachem Begin at his
retreat in Maryland. The Camp David
Accords represent the most important
application of the land-for-peace formula.
Egypt promised to recognize Israel’s right
to exist and Israel returned control of the
Sinai Peninsula to its former enemy.
See also: Israel; Shuttle Diplomacy
References
Kingseed, Cole C. Eisenhower and the Suez
Crisis of 1956. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1995.
Kyle, Keith. Suez. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1991.
Neff, Donald. Warriors for Jerusalem: The
Six Days that Changed the Middle East.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.
Oren, Michael B. Six Days of War. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
Liberation of Eastern Europe
The 1952 Republican Party platform
roundly criticized containment, the
Truman administration’s response to
communism. Rather than pursue such a
static policy, the Republicans advocated
active efforts to free Russia’s Eastern
European satellites. The chief proponent
of this new approach was John Foster
Dulles, an experienced diplomat and
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 319
statesman. When Dwight Eisenhower
won election as president, he named
Dulles his secretary of state, thus placing
the architect of the liberation policy in
charge of implementing it.
Eisenhower and Dulles faced a dis-
couraging situation in Eastern Europe.
Although the Big Three leaders at the
1945 Yalta Conference had approved the
Declaration on Liberated Europe, its call
for free elections had been ignored. With
its Red Army units occupying much of
the region, the Soviet Union could
demand that “friendly” governments be
installed in countries such as Poland,
Hungary, and Romania. These govern-
ments became Soviet puppets, and the
Iron Curtain became a rigid barrier
between East and West.
The United States acknowledged this
division and may well have reinforced it
by adopting its containment policy. It
included military (NATO) and eco-
nomic (Marshall Plan) support for those
countries that remained outside the
Soviet sphere. By 1950, the Americans
and their allies created West Germany
as another bulwark against Russian
expansion.
Two events within Europe itself rein-
forced the division between East and
West. In 1948, the Soviet Union sud-
denly extended tentacles that drew
Czechoslovakia behind the Iron Curtain.
At about the same time Yugoslavia’s
communist leader, Josip Broz Tito,
stunned the world by extricating his
country from Soviet control. Although
Yugoslavia maintained its communist
ideology, it was not a Russian satellite.
If one nation could wrench itself free
from Soviet influence, others might well
be able to do so. Both Eisenhower and
Dulles spoke positively about the
prospects for “liberation,” and many
320 | Section 5
interpreted these remarks as pledges of
U.S. assistance. But when workers in
East Germany rioted in 1953, neither the
United States nor its allies did anything
to forestall a Soviet crackdown.
That same year saw the death of
Joseph Stalin, the autocratic and dictato-
rial leader of the Soviet Union. For a time,
exactly who would rule the Soviet empire
remained unclear. Nikolai Bulganin
assumed the post of premier, but a wily
Ukrainian named Nikita Khrushchev
increasingly dictated Soviet policy. In
1958, Khrushchev became premier.
It was Khrushchev who called for a
summit conference of the leaders of the
United States, Great Britain, France, and
the Soviet Union. Although Eisenhower
seemed willing, Dulles was dead set
against it. He worried that such a meet-
ing could enhance the international pres-
tige of the Soviet leaders. He also
worried that the president might be more
flexible than Dulles believed prudent.
To prevent the summit from taking
place, the secretary of state insisted his
country would not participate unless the
Soviets made a concession he was cer-
tain they would reject. Dulles demanded
that they agree to terminate the four-
power occupation the Allies had main-
tained in Austria since the end of World
War II. Like Germany, both the country
itself as well as its capital, Vienna, were
still managed by Allied Control
Commissions. Dulles was taken com-
pletely by surprise when the Soviet gov-
ernment agreed to his stipulations. All
occupying forces withdrew when the
Austrians agreed to remain essentially
disarmed and aligned with neither bloc.
When the 1955 Geneva Summit took
place, it produced no significant agree-
ments. Dulles and Soviet foreign minis-
ter Vyacheslav Molotov met after their
leaders had adjourned, but both were
such confirmed antagonists that nothing
emerged from that meeting either. When
the Russian returned to Moscow, Dulles
traveled to Belgrade. From the Yugoslav
capital he delivered a radio broadcast
aimed at the people in the Eastern Euro-
pean satellites that urged them to seek
liberation.
More encouraging than U.S. exhorta-
tions were developments within the
Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev deliv-
ered a “secret” address to a Communist
Party Congress early in 1956 that bitterly
criticized many of Stalin’s policies. The
secret quickly came out, and it encour-
aged some relaxation of authority in the
Soviet Union, such as the release of
many political prisoners.
Restiveness in Poland forced the Sovi-
ets to accept a new leader, Wladyslaw
Gomulka. He was a dedicated communist
as well as an astute politician. Although
Gomulka permitted some limited steps
toward liberalization, he remained firmly
committed to the Warsaw Pact, the
Soviet-led defensive arrangement
directed against NATO. That assurance
was enough to keep Poland among the
“friendly” nations in Russian eyes.
The leader of adjacent Hungary, Imre
Nagy, tolerated much greater freedom.
He ultimately accepted in principle the
concept of free elections. The Soviets
knew that the Communist Party would
inevitably lose control if they occurred.
When rioters in Budapest pulled down a
statue of Stalin, Red Army tanks rolled
in. Some 20,000 Hungarians lost their
lives in the ensuing clamp down,
although 192,000 did manage to make
their way to freedom through now neu-
tral Austria.
The brutal suppression of the
Hungarian Freedom Fighters evoked

strident rhetoric from the Eisenhower
administration but no tangible support.
One rather lame excuse for the U.S. fail-
ure to intervene was that the Soviets had
timed their actions to coincide with the
messy resolution of the Suez Canal cri-
sis. Because the British and French had
played major roles in creating that crisis,
they were incapable of action. And,
although the United States obviously had
a major interest in achieving a Middle
Eastern peace agreement, that in no way
absolved Dulles and Eisenhower from
failing to take concrete steps in support
of the liberation policy they had so vocif-
erously championed.
In fact, there was almost nothing they
could have done short of threatening
nuclear retaliation against the Soviet
Union. Such a response would have
been a dangerous overreaction that
could have turned a minor crisis into a
devastating war. Instead, the United
States failure to aid Hungary demon-
strated conclusively just how hollow the
liberation policy was. The people of
Eastern Europe had to wait another
30 years before the internal deteriora-
tion of the Soviet Union allowed them to
take meaningful steps toward independ-
ence. And even then, the United States
essentially stood by while the citizens of
those countries developed the will and
strength to free themselves.
See also: Containment; Dulles, John Foster,
Yalta
References
Immerman, Richard H. John Foster Dulles:
Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S.
Foreign Policy. Wilmington, DE: Schol-
arly Resources, 1999.
Korvig, Bennett. Of Walls and Bridges: The
United States and Eastern Europe. New
York: New York University Press, 1991.
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 321
Krebs, Ronald R. Dueling Visions: U.S.
Strategy Toward Eastern Europe Under
Eisenhower. College Station: Texas A&M
University Press, 2001.
Limited War (Korea)
In the spring of 1951, President Harry
Truman removed General Douglas
MacArthur as head of the United
Nations Command engaged in the
Korean War. The chief reason was a fun-
damental difference of opinion between
the two men over how to conduct that
war. The general wanted to invade China
proper, claiming he could defeat the
communist regime that had seized power
two years earlier. The president was
determined to limit the war’s geographic
area, its strategic objectives, and the type
of weaponry involved. While MacArthur
railed against the concept of limited war,
Truman imposed restraints that, in the
long run, appear to have been prudent.
Long a Japanese dependency, Korea
became a focus for post–World War II
planning when the Soviet Union tardily
entered the conflict in the East. American
and Soviet officials agreed to jointly
occupy the Korean Peninsula once Japan
surrendered. As in Germany and Austria,
this occupation involved the Allies creat-
ing a temporary division with Russian
influence paramount north of the 38th
parallel while American forces con-
trolled the south.
Like other Cold War boundaries around
the world, the division between North and
South Korea had hardened considerably
by 1948. Although both the United States
and the Soviet Union withdrew their occu-
pying troops, they left military training
and advisory units in place. The Soviets
ensured the installation of dedicated com-
munist Kim Il-Song in the North, while
322 | Section 5
the United States accepted rightist Syng-
man Rhee as leader in the South. Unfortu-
nately, Rhee was so unpopular he utilized
much of his continuing U.S. military and
economic aid to defend his authority
against internal enemies. Kim maintained
a strong, disciplined, communist dictator-
ship in the North.
Few paid much attention to either
leader before 1950. The containment
policy in Europe dominated American
thinking, a preoccupation many thought
had hastened the “fall” of China to Mao
Zedong’s communist revolution. In early
1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson
made a well-publicized address defining
the extent of U.S. interests in Asia. Sig-
nificantly, he did not include South
Korea in that assessment.
On June 25, 1950, 75,000 North
Korean soldiers flooded south across the
38th parallel. When Rhee’s forces began
folding in face of this onslaught, Presi-
dent Truman reacted decisively. Without
asking for congressional authorization,
he ordered the general in charge of the
U.S. occupation of Japan, Douglas
MacArthur, to provide American naval
and air support to the beleaguered South
Koreans. Simultaneously, Secretary of
State Dean Acheson prepared a resolu-
tion for the United Nations Security
Council condemning North Korea’s
move and calling for UN action to
reverse it. The resolution passed easily
because the Soviets were boycotting the
Security Council in protest over its
refusal to replace the Nationalist Chinese
delegate with one from the newly estab-
lished People’s Republic of China.
Thirty UN members responded to the
call, assigning troops and support units
to what became known as the UN Com-
mand. General MacArthur assumed the
top position in this multinational organi-
zation, a predictable move given that the
United States funded over 90 percent of
its costs and provided the vast majority
of its military forces including ground
troops.
The North Koreans easily captured
Seoul, the South Korean capital, and
swept southward all the way to a feeble
defensive line around the southeastern
city of Pusan. MacArthur realized that
breaking out of that restricted area would
be almost impossible, so he obtained
permission to stage a risky amphibious
landing at Inchon Harbor just south of
Seoul. Two divisions landed successfully
and quickly liberated the capital, isolat-
ing tens of thousands of North Korean
troops from their supply and command
lines. The limited objective of reversing
the North Korean invasion had been
accomplished.
It had gone so well, in fact, that
MacArthur gained UN authorization to
cross the 38th parallel with the goal of
unifying all of Korea under a single
government. For several weeks, the drive
went well as allied forces pushed
increasingly demoralized North Korean
soldiers backward. In October, the UN
Command began capturing Red Chinese
soldiers. MacArthur dismissed these as
“volunteers” and insisted China would
never stage a major response. His own
troops had became seriously overex-
tended by December, however, as they
occupied an ever larger area. Then the
general was forced to report that some
300,000 regular Chinese troops had
crossed the northern border. They not
only blunted the UN drive, but also
recaptured most of North Korea and
spilled into the South.
Reacting to this serious turnaround,
the Truman administration readjusted its
objectives. Simply restoring the prewar

border now seemed a reasonable out-
come. U.S. general Matthew Ridgeway
achieved that goal by March, but
MacArthur was outraged. He publicly
criticized the switch to a limited war
objective. He even wrote a letter detail-
ing his views to Joe Martin, the minority
leader in the House of Representatives.
Representative Martin read MacArthur’s
diatribe into the Congressional Record.
At that point, President Truman dis-
missed MacArthur from his command
for insubordination. The general
returned to a hero’s welcome in the
United States. Ticker tape parades and
cheering crowds turned out everywhere
he stopped. Although Truman refused to
meet with him, Congress invited
MacArthur to speak at a widely publi-
cized joint session. His message was
clear: the United States should abandon
the limited war strategy and push ahead
with a full-scale assault on Red China.
Cooler heads prevailed. The chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Omar Bradley, defended the limited war
concept in testimony before Congress.
He warned that expanding the land war
in Asia would be “the wrong war, at the
wrong place, at the wrong time, and with
the wrong enemy” (qtd. in Michael D.
Pearlman, Warmaking and American
Democracy, p. 293). Yet controversy
over the wisdom of settling for a limited
war continued to swirl even after the
Soviet delegate to the United Nations
agreed, in June 1951, that negotiations
were preferable to a wider conflict.
Those negotiations dragged on for two
more years, and bloody firefights contin-
ued to flare up along the uneasy truce line
established just north of the 38th parallel.
The Republican Party presidential plat-
form in 1952 pointed to Korea as a major
failing of the Democratic Party’s foreign
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 323
policy approach. The Republican candi-
date, Dwight Eisenhower, promised to go
to Korea personally if elected to sort
things out. He did visit the battle-scarred
region in December, and his tour may
have helped move the negotiations
toward their conclusion the following
July.
More than half a century later, a
demilitarized zone still divides Korea
between the two heavily-armed adver-
saries. The costly limited war had merely
restored conditions to essentially what
they had been prior to the invasion from
the north. The alternative might have
been far worse. Long after his dismissal,
MacArthur wrote about his plans. He
stated that he would have dropped
between 30 and 50 atomic bombs on
Chinese targets and considered creating
a highly radioactive no-man’s-land to
prevent any Chinese ground forces from
crossing into northern Korea. If indeed
that is what pursuing a broader conflict
entailed, then the world clearly is better
off because the Truman administration
accepted a limited war objective.
See also: Acheson, Dean; Marshall, George C.
References
Bailey, Sydney D. The Korean Armistice.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
Lowe, Peter. The Origins of the Korean War.
2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1997.
Wainstock, Dennis D. Truman, MacArthur,
and the Korean War. Westport, CT:
Greenwood, 1999.
Weintraub, Stanley. MacArthur’s War: Korea
and the Undoing of an American Hero.
New York: Free Press, 2000.
Marshall Plan
In implementing the Truman Doctrine’s
pledge of military assistance to other
nations, the United States acknowledged
324 | Section 5
the onset of the Cold War. Shortly after-
ward, the Truman administration con-
cluded that economic recovery and
stability in Western Europe might be as
effective as military assistance in slow-
ing the spread of communism. Secretary
of State George Marshall announced this
new approach in a commencement
address at Harvard University on June 5,
1947. That gave the program its popular
name, the Marshall Plan, but it was
based on a broad consensus among Pres-
ident Harry Truman’s advisors.
By the spring of 1947, the United
States no longer doubted that the
Soviet Union intended to spread its
system as broadly as possible. Wher-
ever Red Army units remained in occu-
pation, communist governments took
control. Responding to British anxi-
eties regarding Greece, Turkey, and
Iran, the president promulgated the
Truman Doctrine, promising military
support for nations under communist
threat from internal or external forces.
Having committed itself to combating
Soviet expansion, the administration
analyzed the reasons communism might
succeed even in areas outside of Red
Army occupation. For example,
communist agitators in Italy and France
seemed to be gaining popularity. Both
nations were mired in postwar depres-
sions that encouraged people to consider
more extreme ideological solutions. The
Truman administration concluded that
restoring economic stability would
lessen the attractiveness of socialism and
communism.
Secretary of State Marshall’s speech
invited European leaders to work out a
regional recovery program the United
States could support. The initial
announcement of the Marshall Plan
contained few specifics other than the
prospect of a substantial U.S. financial
contribution. Unlike the 1924 Dawes
Plan that focused primarily on solving
Germany’s problems, the Truman
administration’s conception was for a
much broader-based recovery effort.
Although Marshall’s announcement
drew little immediate attention at home,
Great Britain and France responded
enthusiastically. Their first step was to
invite Soviet Foreign Minister V. I.
Molotov to Paris to discuss the idea. He
quickly made clear that his country
would never consider accepting U.S.
aid and stormed out of the meeting.
Great Britain and France then felt free
to issue invitations to 22 other nations,
including many chafing under Soviet
occupation, to discuss the U.S. pro-
posal. Not surprisingly the Soviet
Union prohibited its satellite countries
from participating in the conference or
accepting U.S. aid.
In the summer of 1947, representatives
from 14 other countries joined those from
Great Britain and France at the Conference
for European Economic Cooperation.
Lengthy discussion and negotiation pro-
duced a proposal for an integrated eco-
nomic recovery program. The projected
cost for the ambitious plan was $17 billion
over four and a half years.
In December 1947 President Truman
conveyed this proposal to Congress. It
appealed to American humanitarian
sentiments, and the plan was also pop-
ular with both agricultural and indus-
trial groups who anticipated it would
promote beneficial trade. The chief
motive, of course, was to undermine
support for communism in the recipient
nations. American opponents objected
to the price tag, insisting the United
States had already contributed billions
of dollars in earlier aid packages. They

also complained it would affront the
Soviets and further divide Europe.
As if to prove these critics correct, the
Soviet Union responded by creating two
organizations. One was the Comecon, an
economic program targeted at the Soviet
Socialist Republics and their satellites.
The other was the Cominform, a propa-
ganda organization similar to the Com-
intern that had existed in the 1920s and
1930s. Neither of these moves roused
nearly as much concern as a Soviet coup
in Czechoslovakia in February. The
Czechs had been straddling the edge of
the Iron Curtain that divided East from
West, but the Soviet government ruth-
lessly ousted their popularly elected gov-
ernment and installed a repressive
communist regime.
The U.S. Congress responded to this
disturbing development by authorizing a
peace-time draft program and a major
increase in air force appropriations. It
also moved forward on the proposed
Marshall Plan under its official title: the
European Relief Program. Rather than
settling a multiyear figure, Congress
allocated $4 billion for the first year. If
the program proved effective, additional
appropriations could be anticipated in
subsequent years.
News of the U.S. action seemed to
have immediate positive effects. The
Italian Communist Party had appeared
on the verge of winning nationwide
elections, but the prospect of substantial
U.S. financial support helped convince
voters to resoundingly defeat the ultra-
leftists. Anticommunist victories in
other Western European elections
followed. To that extent the Marshall
Plan was a resounding success, prompt-
ing Congress to provide additional
funding. The final cost ran to more than
$12 billion.
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 325
Among other positive aspects, the
Marshall Plan stimulated the formation
of the Organization for European
Economic Cooperation to distribute the
U.S. funds. This, in turn, led to other
steps that culminated in the formation of
the European Community by the close of
the 20th century. Economic recovery did
take place in recipient countries, with
both industrial and agricultural produc-
tion benefiting. American producers
profited as well because the legislation
required that some of the Marshall Plan
money must be spent in the United
States.
Although most considered the plan a
success, it did have some negative con-
sequences. It stimulated unhealthy infla-
tion in many countries and encouraged
continuing dependence on U.S. charity.
Some European critics objected to what
they characterized as U.S. economic
imperialism. And at least one recipient,
France, directed substantial amounts of
Marshall Plan assistance to its efforts to
retain colonial control in Indochina, a
policy that set the stage for later U.S.
involvement in Vietnam.
Some analysts saw the Marshall Plan
as stimulating the East-West division,
hardening the lines drawn in the Cold
War. It definitely helped rebuild West
Germany, a development the Soviet
Union found particularly alarming.
Even so, it is not clear that these divi-
sions would not have occurred in the
absence of the U.S. economic recovery
program. In fact, there is every reason to
believe that more countries might have
been drawn behind the Iron Curtain had
it never been implemented. The
Marshall Plan thus served as a key ele-
ment in the containment policy the
United States pursued in the early stages
of the Cold War.
326 | Section 5
See also: Containment; Truman Doctrine
References
Arkes, Hadley. Bureaucracy, the Marshall
Plan, and the National Interest. Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973.
Gimbel, John. The Origins of the Marshall
Plan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1976.
Hogan, Michael J. The Marshall Plan:
America, Britain, and the Reconstruction
of Western Europe, 1947–1952. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Massive Retaliation
As the Korean War drew to a close,
President Dwight Eisenhower and his
forceful secretary of state, John Foster
Dulles, formulated a new approach to the
Cold War. A key element was to threaten
enemies with massive retaliation in
response to expansionist or subversive
actions. Fortunately, massive retaliation
remained a threat that was never
implemented.
Several factors played into the
Eisenhower administration’s reevalua-
tion of U.S. defense operations. Some of
them were political. Eisenhower had
criticized what was increasingly seen as
the Democratic Party’s reactive policy of
containing communism. The Republican
Party complained so loudly about the
“failures” of containment that the new
administration simply had to put forward
different initiatives.
American experience in the Korean
War also influenced policy planners. The
conflict resembled a replay of World
War II: conventional arms, bombers and
fighters, and infantry soldiers slogging
through muddy battlefields. That sort of
warfare was expensive in both manpower
and dollars. Annual U.S. defense expendi-
tures rose from a peacetime level of less
than $15 billion to more than $50 billion
during the conflict. The Republican Party
has traditionally favored reducing federal
expenditures, so finding a less expensive
way to wage the Cold War was a major
goal of the Eisenhower administration.
Of course, the most important factor
shaping the new approach was the devel-
opment of thermonuclear bombs. Popu-
larly known as fusion or hydrogen
bombs, these superweapons dwarfed the
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. In 1952 a three-megaton bomb
ripped apart Eniwetok Island in the South
Pacific. Two years later a 15-megaton
bomb devastated Bikini Island. These
awesome weapons featured prominently
in U.S. planning, even though the Soviet
Union successfully tested its own hydro-
gen bomb in 1953.
The Eisenhower administration
proudly rolled out a “New Look” for
defense: a mix of conventional and
nuclear weaponry. By 1954, research
and testing programs had progressed to
the point that the administration could
claim that emphasizing superweapons
would actually be less expensive than
maintaining a substantial array of con-
ventional armed forces. The U.S. Air
Force benefited most from the new
approach, increasing its percentage of
defense appropriations at the expense of
the army and navy.
Secretary of State Dulles repeatedly
promised that the United States would
use its growing arsenal of nuclear
weapons if sufficiently provoked. Just
how large a provocation it had to be to
trigger massive nuclear retaliation
remained unclear. A self-proclaimed pro-
ponent of brinkmanship, Dulles claimed
to have unsheathed the threat of nuclear
response on at least three occasions: in
Korea, in Vietnam, and in a confrontation

over the Chinese islands of Matsu and
Quemoy.
Although the primary target of these
warnings was China rather than the
Soviet Union, the United States cer-
tainly did not consider the USSR blame-
less. Commentators and policy makers
had long insisted that communism was a
single, international movement. What
came to be called monolithic commu-
nism was presumably headquartered in
the Kremlin in Moscow. No one doubted
that Russia dominated and dictated to
the Communist Party officials who man-
aged Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.
When China fell to communists led by
Mao Zedong in 1949, most Americans
viewed it as a success of Soviet
expansionism.
Belief in monolithic communism
was not only flawed but dangerous.
Rural peasants dominated the Chinese
communist movement, in contrast to the
industrial workers who had backed
Lenin in Russia. The rationales and
goals of these very different political
groupings inevitably led to differing
worldviews. The two major communist
nations frequently pursued international
policies detrimental to those of the
other. Nationalistic ambitions also
influenced the behavior of communists
in other nations like North Korea, North
Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Cuba.
Astute American statesmen like
President Truman’s secretary of state,
Dean Acheson, were well aware of
these differences and hoped to use them
to limit the influence of communism
around the world. No such subtlety was
possible once Senator Joe McCarthy
fomented a major Red Scare. In his
myopic view, all communists were the
same. Although the Eisenhower admin-
istration carefully distanced itself from
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 327
the red-baiting senator, it never aban-
doned its belief in the monolithic nature
of communism.
The combination of monolithic
communism and massive retaliation
created an interesting dynamic. If one
believed the Kremlin truly controlled
all communists worldwide, then any
communist-sponsored uprising or sub-
version anywhere must stem from
Soviet initiatives. As long as massive
retaliation remained the chief response
to communist expansion, it made logi-
cal sense to threaten the Soviet Union
with massive retaliation if communism
appeared to be gaining ground any-
where in the world.
And there lay the crux of the problem.
The Soviet Union was engaged in a
huge, and quite successful, effort to build
up its own stock of nuclear weapons. A
country so equipped was far more capa-
ble than any other to respond to a U.S.
assault with a devastating counterattack.
By the 1960s, the United States and the
Soviet Union had passed the point where
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was
a likely outcome of a nuclear attack by
either country.
That development fatally undermined
the credibility of the U.S. threat to
employ massive retaliation. The flaws
inherent in both massive retaliation and
monolithic communism had become
apparent by the end of Eisenhower’s
term as president. Not surprisingly, his
successor, John F. Kennedy, immedi-
ately ordered a reshaping of U.S.
defense capabilities. Among other
changes it emphasized “flexible forces,”
like the Green Berets, trained to conduct
more conventional warfare. Massive
retaliation was still possible, but it
receded from its position as the nation’s
primary foreign policy initiative.
328 | Section 5
See also: Brinkmanship; Dulles, John Foster;
Red Scare Again
References
Craig, Campbell. Destroying the Village:
Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War.
New York: Columbia University Press,
1998.
Marks, Frederick W. III. Power and Peace:
The Diplomacy of John Foster Dulles.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993.
Wenger, Andreas. Living with Peril:
Eisenhower, Kenney, and Nuclear
Weapons. Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1997.
North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO)
In response to a perceived threat of
Soviet expansion into Western Europe in
1949, the United States and 11 other
nations created the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). It linked its mem-
bers in a military alliance, creating a
common defensive posture to forestall
Soviet aggression. Despite the apparent
consensus among the original signato-
ries, NATO was, and has remained,
highly controversial. Even so, it not only
survived the end of the Cold War in the
early 1990s, but continues to add mem-
bers in the 21st century.
The alliance was one of several steps
the administration of President Harry S
Truman took to implement its contain-
ment policy. To prevent the spread of
communism in Europe, it delivered
military supplies and funding to Greece
and Turkey under the Truman Doctrine.
The administration also initiated the
Marshall Plan to help European
economies recover and mounted an
airlift to beleaguered Berlin. By the
spring of 1949, the administration was
ready to expand on its commitment to
Western Europe by joining a multina-
tional military alliance.
In doing so, Truman and his advisors
broke with a long established precedent
in U.S. foreign policy. The Revolutionary
War alliance with France had become so
unpopular by the time it was canceled in
1800 that the United States steadfastly
refused to commit itself to any other
peacetime military alliances for a century
and a half. But the Soviet threat seemed
sufficiently menacing at the outbreak of
the Cold War to require abandonment of
the nonalignment tradition.
Several European countries had
already worked out similar arrange-
ments with one another before the
United States invited 11 of them to sign
the NATO agreements on April 4th,
1949. (The founding members of
NATO were the United States, Great
Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Luxemburg, Canada, Italy, Portugal,
Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. Greece
and Turkey joined in 1952, Germany in
1955, and Spain in 1981.) The agree-
ment’s key provision appeared in
Article V: a statement that an attack on
any member would be considered an
attack on them all. The signatories
pledged to take any actions including
“the use of armed force” to defend
themselves.
The proposed treaty provoked all too
familiar opposition. Recalling the 1919
Senate criticisms of the League of
Nations, opponents protested that NATO
could plunge the United States into war
without any congressional consultation
or approval. Others objected to what
they correctly saw as the huge price U.S.
participation would entail. Many Ameri-
cans felt their government had already
provided more than adequate foreign
assistance around the world and wanted

Representatives from 12 nations convened in Washington on April 4, 1949, to sign the North
Atlantic Treaty, the first military alliance the United States participated in since 1800. (NATO Photos)
no part of a seemingly open-ended
military commitment.
Despite these qualms, paranoia about
Soviet intentions and emotional opposi-
tion to the spread of communism helped
clear the way for Senate approval of the
treaty, by a vote of 82–13, on July 21. As
opponents had predicted, two days later
President Truman submitted a Mutual
Defense Assistance Bill to Congress,
requesting over $1 billion to implement
the new U.S. commitment. It, too,
quickly received positive approval,
although it proved to be only a down
payment on the continuing and ever
increasing costs of NATO.
One focus of the alliance was to
assemble enough conventional armed
forces to prevent, or at least slow down, a
Soviet incursion. NATO members imme-
diately began assigning army and navy
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 329
units to the alliance. Dwight Eisenhower
came out of military retirement to go to
Brussels to head the Supreme Headquar-
ters Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE).
By 1952, the NATO Council had
approved plans for placing some 50 divi-
sions under his command. More divi-
sions were added to this total in
succeeding years, along with substantial
numbers of aircraft and support units. By
1974, for example, the American deploy-
ment included 300,000 army, 70,000 air
force, and 40,000 navy personnel.
Fortunately, these troops avoided
combat, in large part because of the
atomic and nuclear capabilities NATO
also maintained. A linchpin of the initial
agreement was the U.S. monopoly of the
atomic weaponry arrayed in the defense
of Europe. The value of that asset suf-
fered some deterioration when Truman
330 | Section 5

THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY

Signed in Washington D.C., April 4, 1949

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the
Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all
governments.
They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civiliza-
tion of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and
the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic
area.
They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defense and for the preservation
of peace and security. They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty:
Article 1.
The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any
international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a man-
ner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to
refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner
inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. . . .
Article 3.
In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, sep-
arately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid,
will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed
attack.
Article 4.
The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the terri-
torial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.
Article 5.
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or
North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they
agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of
individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the
United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, indi-
vidually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary,
including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North
Atlantic area. . . .
Article 10.
The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a
position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the
North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party
to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the
United States of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform
each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession.

Source: Bevans, Charles I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States
of America, 1776–1949. Washington, DC: GPO, 1970, 4:828–831.

announced a few months later that the
Soviet Union had exploded its own atomic
device. That seemed to make it even more
imperative to equip the alliance with
expanded U.S. atomic firepower.
No other feature of NATO was as con-
troversial as the deployment of increas-
ingly powerful nuclear weapons in
Western Europe. The United States tech-
nically retained control of the missiles
and bombs with nuclear warheads that it
distributed to its allies. Complicating
factors were British and French desires
to develop and maintain their own, inde-
pendent nuclear arsenals. Worse yet, the
proliferation of nuclear arms understand-
ably provoked a similar build-up by the
Soviet Union, locking both East and
West into a costly and dangerous arms
race. Here again, neither side ever actu-
ally used these weapons.
Organizational issues complicated
interallied collaboration. The United
States was firmly committed to bringing
West Germany into the alliance, a move
that would only be meaningful if it were
rearmed. The British favored this
approach, in part to force the increasingly
prosperous Germans to pay a reasonable
share of the alliance’s mounting defense
costs. For historic reasons, France was
far less enthusiastic about remilitarizing
its traditional enemy. French Premier
René Pleven proposed that a European
Defense Community (EDC) be created
with each nation contributing individual
troops to an internationalized military
force. His goal was to prevent Germany
from fielding large units answerable only
to the government in Bonn.
The United States initially opposed
the Pleven Plan, until it appeared to be
the only way to incorporate Germany
into the overall defensive structure.
President Dwight Eisenhower’s secre-
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 331
tary of state, John Foster Dulles, there-
fore became an outspoken advocate of
the plan. Indeed, in 1953 he warned that
the United States would be forced to
conduct an “agonizing reappraisal” of
its commitments to European defense if
the EDC plan was not implemented.
Embarrassingly, the French National
Assembly then overwhelmingly voted
down the EDC approach, and a rearmed
Germany entered NATO on the same
basis as the other members.
Germany’s NATO membership coin-
cided with a tripartite agreement among
the United States, France, and Great
Britain to end their occupation and grant
West Germany full political independ-
ence. The Soviet Union responded to
these developments by creating its own
defensive coalition, signed in Warsaw,
Poland, in 1955. The Warsaw Pact
included the following member states:
Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East
Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania,
and the USSR. It served as a mirror
organization to NATO, with the Soviet
Union dominating its policies and pro-
viding the bulk of the resources just as
the United States did on the NATO side.
Relations among the allies remained
rocky right through the 1960s. French
Premier Charles de Gaulle was particu-
larly feisty. In 1966, he withdrew French
military participation from the alliance
and forced the relocation of over 25,000
American troops to other European
posts. In the early 1970s, Greece and
Turkey became enmeshed in a conflict
over the island of Cyprus, and each
threatened to use NATO resources
against the other.
For all of its faults and internal bicker-
ing, the alliance apparently achieved its
major objective when the Soviet Union
disintegrated in the early 1990s. One of
332 | Section 5
the more bizarre post–Cold War phenom-
ena has been NATO’s continued expan-
sion. Three former Soviet Socialist
Republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania,
have qualified for membership. The
Czech Republic and Slovakia joined sep-
arately. Former Soviet satellites Bulgaria,
Hungary, Poland, and Romania have also
entered the Western alliance.
Ironically, NATO’s first true military
action did not take place until 1995, and
it occurred in Kosovo, which was not a
member of the alliance. The Western
leadership responded to a crisis that fol-
lowed the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic
ordered troops into the neighboring terri-
tory after Kosovo declared its independ-
ence. NATO responded with an air
campaign that was effective enough to
end the Serbian incursion.
It is hardly surprising that the Russian
Federation has objected strongly to the
continued existence of NATO and espe-
cially to its incorporation of former
Soviet dependencies. A related aggrava-
tion is a U.S. desire to place antimissile
defensive facilities in former Soviet
satellites. Like so many other relics of
past foreign policy initiatives, however,
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
appears likely to endure.
See also: Containment; Dulles, John Foster;
Marshall Plan
References
Cook, Don. Forging the Alliance: NATO,
1945–1950. New York: Arbor House, 1989.
Ireland, Timothy P. Creating the Entangling
Alliance: The Origins of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization. Westport,
CT: Greenwood, 1981.
Kaplan, Lawrence S. NATO and the United
States: The Enduring Alliance. New York:
Twane Publishers, 1994.
Powaski, Ronald E. The Entangling
Alliance: The United States and European
Security, 1950–1993. Westport, CT:
Greenwood, 1994.
NSC-68
Early in 1950, the National Security
Council circulated a key policy document
numbered 68. NSC-68 linked the Soviet
Union and communist China together as
elements in a consolidated communist
drive for world dominance. The U.S. pol-
icy statement recommended a substantial
increase in containment activities and
their extension to all parts of the world.
NSC-68 ultimately became the funda-
mental blueprint for U.S. behavior in the
early stages of the Cold War.
Coordination among the U.S. armed
services and the diplomatic establish-
ment had often broken down during
World War II. To solve that problem, as
well as to streamline administrative
authority, President Harry Truman asked
former president Herbert Hoover to chair
a commission to develop an improved
organizational framework. Among the
Hoover Commission’s recommendations
was consolidation of the three armed
services—Army, Navy, and a separate
Air Force—within a Department of
Defense. Similarly, the commission
advocated coordination of intelligence
activities under an independent Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). The National
Security Act of 1947 implemented many
of these recommendations, including the
establishment of a National Security
Council (NSC).
The NSC brought the top administra-
tors of the Defense and State Depart-
ments together with the Director of the
CIA, creating a focused group to advise
the president on all foreign relations

matters. At that point the NSC had no
independent staff, as it would during the
presidency of Jimmy Carter. Instead, it
relied on those who worked within the
collaborating agencies for advice and
planning.
In 1949, the United States suffered
two severe shocks: the Soviets exploded
their first experimental atomic bomb and
Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong
took control of mainland China. Seeking
a way forward in light of these changes,
President Truman asked the NSC to ana-
lyze the new world situation and propose
appropriate policy directions. The
assignment initially fell to the State
Department’s Office of Policy Planning,
headed by George F. Kennan, the pri-
mary exponent of the containment pol-
icy. But Kennan had reservations about a
more aggressive stand, so he resigned
from the post, allowing Paul Nitze, a
zealous anticommunist, to take the lead
in articulating a new approach.
The resulting document was NSC-68,
delivered to the White House in April
1950. Hard-line anticommunism pro-
vided the ideological basis for its rec-
ommendations. In Nitze’s view, both the
Soviet Union and communist China
were determined to spread communism
world wide. NSC-68 thus treated Soviet
and Chinese initiatives as subsets of the
same overarching ambition. Moreover,
the document contended, the threat of
communist “subversion” existed every-
where in the world. It insisted that the
United States take the lead in protecting
the “free world” from that insidious
virus wherever and however it seemed
to be spreading.
Implementing this demanding agenda
would require a quadrupling of U.S.
defense expenditures from the $13 billion
originally appropriated in 1950. Some of
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 333
the increased funding would build addi-
tional atomic bombs. At the same time,
the United States scientific community
would be encouraged to develop a ther-
monuclear, or hydrogen, bomb that
would be enormously more powerful
than the weapons dropped on Japan in
1945.
The scope of NSC-68 was very broad,
encompassing any region or nation not
currently within the Soviet orbit. For
example, communist subversion could
crop up in Latin America or Africa, so
the existing focus on Europe and Asia
was seen as too narrow. According to
NSC-68, American policy makers should
be alert to any governmental change or
threatened revolution anywhere that
might allow communism to expand. To
that extent, the policy proposals built on
the containment concept but vastly
expanded where it should be applied.
The White House did not immediately
embrace the tough-minded, unrepen-
tantly right-wing proposals in NSC-68.
President Truman worried that the
increased defense costs it demanded
would undermine his administration’s
ability to implement his Fair Deal
domestic agenda and require unpopular
tax increases. Although the document
was highly classified and made public
only by error in the 1970s, its proposals
were widely discussed in the executive
branch. Their stridently ideological
nature disturbed many, and for some
time it was unclear whether NSC-68
could escape the fate of so many other
ignored policy proposals.
That all changed on June 25, 1950,
when North Korean troops crossed into
the South and quickly established control
over much of the Korean peninsula. The
Truman administration’s response was
immediate and forceful. It determined to
334 | Section 5
do everything it could to halt and roll
back this expansion of communism.
Within a matter of months, Defense
Department appropriations had bal-
looned to $50 billion on an annual basis,
almost exactly the same level NSC-68
had envisioned.
For better or worse, the policies the
document proposed followed this fund-
ing curve. The United States ratcheted
up its global response to the perceived
threat of communist expansion.
Whether true or exaggerated, its fun-
damental premises of monolithic com-
munism, a global threat to the free
world, and the necessity of unstinting
American military, economic, and ideo-
logical reaction against them won almost
universal acceptance in the United
States. NSC-68 thus served as a roadmap
for the hard-line, uncompromising
approach the nation pursued in the Cold
War for many years.
See also: Containment; Limited War (Korea)
References
Leffler, Melvyn P. A Preponderance of
Power: National Security, the Truman
Administration, and the Cold War.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1992.
Reardon, Steven L. The Evolution of
American Strategic Doctrine: Paul H.
Nitze and the Soviet Challenge. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1984.
Talbott, Strobe. The Master of the Game:
Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
Red Scare Again
The onset of the Cold War in the late
1940s raised tensions that spilled over into
domestic politics in the form of a second
Red Scare reminiscent of the one that fol-
lowed World War I. Many questioned how
loyal some citizens were to the United
States. This concern quickly expanded to
include charges that some Americans had
sold out their country’s interests to com-
munists overseas. The Red Scare reached
its zenith when Wisconsin Senator Joseph
McCarthy began a ruthless witch hunt for
communists and communist sympathiz-
ers. The Red Scare profoundly influenced
both domestic and foreign policies in the
early 1950s.
The Great Depression of the 1930s
encouraged a search for governmental
solutions. The New Deal policies of
President Franklin Roosevelt expanded
the scope and size of domestic federal
programs, causing critics to portray them
as a swing toward socialism or even
communism. Meanwhile, communist
and other left-leaning groups attracted
new members. Most Americans quickly
abandoned their radical associations, but
even the most peripheral contact with
such groups could have major conse-
quences when a Red Scare reemerged
after World War II.
By 1947, most Americans had lost
any affection or respect they might have
had for their wartime ally, the Soviet
Union. President Harry Truman was a
major contributor to this disillusionment.
In promoting the Truman Doctrine, his
program to aid those in other nations to
stave off communism, he deliberately
played up the threat of communist sub-
version. Along the same line, the Truman
administration instituted a comprehen-
sive domestic loyalty program. Thou-
sands of federal employees refused to
comply with its directives and many
were fired. Investigations and back-
ground checks led to the dismissal of
many more.
International incidents help stoke anti-
communist emotionalism. One was the
 The Cold War and After, 1945– | 335

communist takeover of Czechoslovakia or communist sympathizers. Its most

in 1948. More upsetting was the Soviet
detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949.
Perhaps most disappointing of all was
Chinese communist rebel leader Mao
Zedong’s definitive victory over pro-
American Nationalist leader Chiang
Kai-Shek in the same year. Many
Americans apparently came to believe
that subversives within the United States
had helped bring about these communist
successes.
Back in 1939, Congress had estab-
lished the House Un-American Activi-
ties Committee (HUAC) to investigate
domestic support for both fascism and
communism. In the late 1940s, HUAC
revived its interest in ferreting out
Americans who might be communists
well-publicized target was Hollywood.
The committee demanded that direc-
tors, actors, and writers testify about
their political activities. Ten who
refused were imprisoned. The film
industry attempted to avoid further
harassment by developing a list of 300
professionals whom no one dared hire
for fear of being added to the list of
communist sympathizers. Many of
those blacklisted had done nothing
more than attend a few socialist meet-
ings in the 1930s, but the Red Scare had
become so virulent that even tangential
association with left-leaning organiza-
tions could destroy a career.
Although the activities of entertainers
might seem minor, other Red Scare

Journalist Whittaker Chambers testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee that
diplomat Alger Hiss was a communist spy. This investigation in 1948 was the opening act of what
became a six-year Red Scare. (Library of Congress)
336 | Section 5
targets appeared more dangerous. For
example, newsman Whitaker Chambers
admitted to HUAC that he had been a
member of the Communist Party in the
1930s and that high-ranking diplomat
Alger Hiss had supplied him with copies
of classified documents. Hiss denied the
charges, but Chambers supported his
allegations when he took members of
the committee, including Richard
Nixon, to his farm in Maryland. There
he produced a hollowed-out pumpkin
containing microfilms of classified
materials. Although the connection
between this evidence and Alger Hiss
remains disputed to this day, Hiss was
eventually convicted of perjury and sen-
tenced to a five-year prison term.
Many Americans simply did not
believe the Russians could have devel-
oped an atomic weapon as quickly as
they did without help from the West.
British physicist Klaus Fuchs fed that
belief in 1950, when he confessed that
he had transmitted information he had
obtained from the Los Alamos
Laboratory to the Russian government.
Shortly afterward, two American scien-
tists, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were
found guilty of similar espionage and
condemned to die in the electric chair.
Russian documents publicized in the
1990s suggest that the contributions
espionage made to the Russian weapons
program were minimal at best, but few
were willing to believe that at the height
of the Red Scare.
The communist takeover of China
implicated a different group. A number
of American officials were accused of
“selling out” Chiang Kai-Shek, or aiding
his communist adversaries. The State
Department became a particular focus of
inquiry. Career China expert John
Service survived more than half a dozen
security investigations before being
forced out of his position.
McCarthyism infused new energy
into the Red Scare. The junior senator
from Wisconsin, Republican Joseph
McCarthy, had failed to develop much
of a record after four years in Washington.
On the advice of a priest in 1950, he
decided to exploit anticommunism to
generate support for his reelection bid
in 1952. McCarthy grabbed national
headlines two days after the Fuchs’s
story broke by telling a West Virginia
audience he possessed a list of 205
communists in the State Department.
The number on this purported list fluc-
tuated wildly. The next day it was 57
and later still it was 81. McCarthy never
made his list public so it may not have
existed at all.
His unsupported and undocumented
charges had the desired effect of drawing
national attention. When he finally did
provide a single name, it was to
implicate State Department official
Owen Lattimore. Maryland Senator
Millard Tydings conclusively proved
McCarthy’s allegations to be unfounded.
At that point, McCarthy charged Tydings
with being soft on communism. The
Marylander lost his own reelection bid in
1950, having failed to realize how potent
Red Scare tactics could be.
Riding the crest of his notoriety,
McCarthy raised his sights to more
prominent administration officials includ-
ing Secretary of State Dean Acheson and
Secretary of Defense George Marshall.
No Democrat could be sure of avoiding
McCarthy’s tar brush, and his tactics
made many Republicans nervous as well.
When the Republican Party nominated
ex-General Dwight Eisenhower for the
presidency in 1952, it emphasized
strongly anticommunist attitudes.

Both before and after the election,
Eisenhower scrupulously avoided asso-
ciating himself personally with
McCarthy’s extremism. The new
president did, however, make it far easier
to fire federal employees suspected of
being vaguely defined security risks. The
1952 election also produced a Republi-
can majority in the Senate. Resound-
ingly reelected, McCarthy insisted on
being named chair of the Senate Sub-
committee on Government Operations to
pursue his campaign against communist
subversion. His staffers broadened the
scope of the inquiry to include targets
like Voice of America broadcasts and
books in U.S. Information Agency over-
seas library collections.
By 1954, McCarthy was even chal-
lenging officials in the Eisenhower
administration. His assault on the army
led to his undoing. His committee held
televised hearings that clearly demon-
strated how minor army personnel’s
alleged infractions actually were and
how vicious McCarthy could be. The
Army-McCarthy hearings destroyed the
senator’s credibility. He served another
three years in the Senate before his death
in 1957 but exercised no major influence
after the dramatic hearings ended.
The Red Scare destroyed the careers
of thousands of people, subjected thou-
sands of others to unjust accusations,
and frightened still more. The single-
mindedness of the anticommunist cru-
sade reinforced the widespread belief
in monolithic communism. That, in
turn, severely limited the opportunities
for Americans to pursue more rational,
less doctrinaire foreign policies. In the
long run, the Red Scare may well have
done more to damage the U.S. standing
in the world than any external subver-
sion could have.
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 337
See also: Limited War (Korea); Red Scare;
Truman Doctrine
References
Fried, Richard M. Nightmare in Red: The
McCarthy Era in Perspective. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990.
Griffith, Robert. The Politics of Fear: Joseph
R. McCarthy and the Senate. Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1970.
Powers, Richard Gid. Not Without Honor:
The History of American Anticommunism.
New York: Free Press, 1995.
Wicker, Tom. Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of
Joe McCarthy. Orlando, FL: Harcourt,
2006.
Shuttle Diplomacy
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is
most closely identified with the term
“shuttle diplomacy.” After the 1973 Yom
Kippur War between Israel and its Arab
neighbors, Kissinger undertook a series
of visits to key Middle Eastern capitals,
attempting to find terms for a settlement
acceptable to all.
The long-standing hostility of the
opposing groups in the Middle East
made shuttle diplomacy essential. None
of the Arab governments bordering
Israel recognized its right to exist in the
1970s, making direct negotiations
impossible. The impasse dated back to
the late 1940s when the State of Israel
announced its independence in the midst
of a war with Arab residents of Palestine
and their allies in neighboring countries.
United Nations Special Envoy Ralph
Bunche, an American national, managed
to hammer out a cease-fire in 1949, but
the Arabs remained hostile to the new
nation in their midst. None of them rec-
ognized the existence of Israel and open
conflict broke out in both 1956 and
1967. Although the latter war lasted
338 | Section 5
only six days, it resulted in a huge
expansion of territory for the Jewish
state. Israel now controlled all of the
lands west of the Jordan River, as well
as the Sinai Peninsula, which had been
part of Egypt for centuries.
The United Nations Security Council
issued Resolution 242 in the fall of 1967,
calling on Israel to give back the territo-
ries it had occupied in exchange for a
guarantee of peace and recognition on
the part of the Arab nations around it.
Despite continuing efforts on the part of
the United States and other interested
parties, no major progress in that direc-
tion had occurred by 1973.
Instead, an Arab coalition including
Egypt, Syria, and Jordan attacked Israel
from all sides in October 1973 on the
Jewish high holy day of Yom Kippur.
Frantic diplomatic action by the United
Nations halted the conflict in a matter of
days, but the festering underlying causes
for hostility remained unresolved. Inter-
estingly enough, this was the first con-
flict in which the United States did not
unequivocally support Israel. President
Richard Nixon was impressed that the
Egyptians had thrown out their Soviet
advisors during the previous year, and he
wanted to act as a moderating force
between the longtime enemies.
It fell to Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger to implement the new U.S.
policy. The basis of his approach
remained the land-for-peace formula
enunciated in U.N. Resolution 242.
Because the Arab governments had
never recognized Israel, there was no
chance for face-to-face meetings among
the antagonists. Kissinger thus began a
wearying series of visits, shuttling
between Jerusalem, Cairo, Damascus,
and Amman, trying to fine-tune a for-
mula that all could accept.
Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy never
did achieve its main objective, but it did
have two positive outcomes. First, as
long as he continued his travels, the
adversaries remained at peace, waiting
for some sort of resolution. Even more
important was the gradual wearing down
of resistance that it represented, laying
the groundwork for a major break-
through under President Jimmy Carter.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat finally
made a personal visit to Jerusalem, and
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin
reciprocated with a trip to Cairo. Under
Carter’s personal mediation, the two
leaders hammered out an agreement at
Camp David in 1978. The Camp David
Accords finally implemented the policy
that both the UN Resolution and
Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy had
sought. Egypt formally recognized
Israel’s existence and Israel, in turn,
restored the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt
over the next several years.
See also: Israel; Land for Peace
References
AlRoy, Gil Carl. The Kissinger Experience:
American Policy in the Middle East. New
York: Horizon Press, 1975.
Sheehan, Edward R. F. The Arabs, Israelis,
and Kissinger. New York: Reader’s Digest
Press, 1976.
Sputnik
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union
launched the world’s first man-made
Earth satellite named Sputnik, or “fellow
traveler.” Although the launching
rocket’s payload weighed only 184
pounds and the satellite itself was no
larger than a grapefruit, the Soviet
achievement momentarily reordered
Cold War perceptions. The United States

responded quickly and paranoically to
Sputnik, which many Americans saw as
evidence their nation had, for the first
time, fallen behind its Cold War rival not
only in science and technology, but also,
far more ominously, in weaponry.
Sputnik was the culmination of a
Soviet response to the U.S. atomic bombs
unleashed on Japan in 1945. The Soviet
Union immediately began a determined
and costly effort to develop similar or
superior weapons. In 1949, the Soviets
tested their first atomic bomb. In 1954,
just 13 months after the Americans deto-
nated the world’s first hydrogen, or fusion,
bomb, the Soviets matched that achieve-
ment with an H-bomb of their own. Paral-
leling the development of these weapons,
both nations ramped up research and
development of delivery systems. One
result was that the U.S. Air Force’s
Strategic Air Command (SAC), headquar-
tered in Omaha, Nebraska, kept nuclear-
armed bombers constantly in the air.
Meanwhile, both nations worked to
develop long-range rockets capable of car-
rying nuclear warheads across the North
Polar region to their rival’s heartland. In
doing so, both nations relied heavily on
German scientists familiar with Hitler’s
successful rocket development program.
Wernher von Braun was the most promi-
nent German expert involved in the U.S.
program. Through the mid-1950s, most
people around the world believed the
United States was well ahead of the Soviet
Union in developing both sophisticated
weapons and delivery systems.
The first event to shatter that belief
came in September 1957 when the
Soviets launched the world’s first long
range intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) capable of carrying a nuclear
warhead from the Soviet Union to a tar-
get in the continental United States.
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 339
Two months later, they attached the
Sputnik payload to one of these experi-
mental rockets and launched it into
earth orbit. The fact that the missile was
powerful enough to achieve earth-
escape velocity seemed convincing
proof that the Soviets had pulled well
ahead of their Cold War rivals. To prove
it was no fluke, shortly afterward they
launched a second satellite large
enough to carry a live dog.
The U.S. response took many forms.
One was an over-hasty attempt to match
the Soviet rocketry achievement. It quite
literally misfired. American television
viewers were shocked to see one rocket
after another explode on their launching
pads. Not until January 31, 1958, did a
U.S. Army Juno rocket manage to orbit
Explorer 1, a 10-pound satellite.
President Dwight Eisenhower and his
advisors were far less worried than their
countrymen because they had access to
secret intelligence. Much of it came
from clandestine observation flights of
stratospheric U-2 spy planes. This infor-
mation reassured the administration that
the Soviet’s grandstand displays did not
actually signal major progress or serious
threats to the United States. But the
president could not publicize this infor-
mation to restore confidence without
revealing its highly sensitive source.
Indeed, when the U-2 program was
inadvertently revealed in 1960, the
Soviet Union turned it into a major pub-
lic relations embarrassment for the
United States.
In addition to pushing ahead with its
own missile development program, the
United States took other steps in the
aftermath of the Sputnik launch. One was
to pass the National Defense Education
Act in the summer of 1958 to increase
funding for scientific and technological
340 | Section 5
training programs for Americans. A
longer-lasting change was the creation of
the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) in October 1958
to finance and coordinate American mis-
sile and space research.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev,
meanwhile, made much of his nation’s
achievements. He had earlier proposed
that “peaceful coexistence” should
replace Cold War rivalry, and he used his
country’s space triumph to lobby for
wider acceptance of the concept. At the
same time, he pressured the Western allies
regarding the future of divided Germany.
Although that strategy ultimately failed
and led to the erection of the Berlin Wall
in 1961, it definitely stirred trouble in the
immediate post-Sputnik years.
Sputnik influenced domestic American
politics as well. Democratic candidate
John F. Kennedy cited a “missile gap” in
campaigning for the presidency in 1960,
implying that Republicans had allowed
the nation to fall behind the Soviet Union.
After winning an extraordinarily narrow
victory over Republican Richard Nixon,
Kennedy adopted a more realistic view.
He did, however, inspire his countrymen
with a vision of putting an American on
the moon by the end of the decade; in
1969 a NASA program actually met this
optimistic deadline.
In one sense, Kennedy had been cor-
rect: there really was a missile gap. But
it favored the United States by a factor
of more than two to one. The Soviet
Union had failed to build upon its
highly publicized achievements with
solid progress. Khrushchev was well
aware that the United States had far
more high-quality ICBMs aimed at
Russian targets than were pointed the
other way. To offset that disadvantage,
the Russian leader decided to station
Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles
(IRBMs) in Cuba. His decision led to
the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most dan-
gerous moment in the 40-year-long
Cold War.
We now live in an era when literally
thousands of artificial satellites perform
an enormous variety of functions, like
spying, global positioning, weather
reconnaissance, communication, and
entertainment. No one could have pre-
dicted just how substantial the legacy of
the unsophisticated and primitive Sputnik
would be.
See also: Berlin; Brinkmanship; Massive Retal-
iation; U-2
References
Clowse, Barbara Barksdale. Brainpower for
the Cold War: The Sputnik Crisis and the
National Defense Education Act of 1958.
Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981.
Divine, Robert A. The Sputnik Challenge.
New York: Oxford University Press,
1993.
Levine, Alan J. The Missile and Space Race.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994.
Tet
On January 31, 1968, Viet Cong and
North Vietnamese soldiers attacked hun-
dreds of targets in South Vietnam,
including its capital, Saigon. This unex-
pected assault began on Tet, the first day
of the Asian new year. The Tet Offensive
marked a key turning point in American
conduct of the war in Vietnam, a moment
when escalation gave way to protracted
efforts to extricate the United States
from an increasingly unpopular war.
Although U.S. backing for the South
Vietnamese government had been
growing for years, Congress’s nearly
unanimous endorsement of the Tonkin
Gulf Resolution in August 1964

authorized far greater direct U.S. par-
ticipation. At that point, however,
Democratic President Lyndon Johnson
was engaged in a heated reelection
campaign against Republican Barry
Goldwater. Goldwater, a conservative
senator from Arizona, advocated a
major escalation of U.S. action in
Southeast Asia, perhaps including the
use of atomic weapons. Johnson dis-
agreed, claiming he did not favor send-
ing “American boys” to defend South
Vietnam. His less strident war policy
contributed to his landslide victory in
November.
Johnson’s pledge apparently did not
include halting the flow of American
“advisors” to Vietnam, but they techni-
cally remained in noncombat roles. In
February 1965, an enemy attack on an air-
base at Pleiku killed nine Americans. The
Johnson administration reacted by step-
ping up its plans for greater American
involvement. In March, two U.S. Marine
battalions landed at Da Nang, the first
Americans officially sent into combat to
aid the South Vietnamese government. By
the end of the year, the U.S. military pres-
ence had expanded to 180,000, and it
doubled in the following year.
From one perspective, the campaign
was successful: U.S. forces won every
formal battle against the enemy. But this
string of tactical victories had little
impact on the overall direction of the
war. Even though Nguyen Van Thieu’ s
South Vietnamese government achieved
reasonable stability and effectiveness by
1965, its authority continued to fray at
the edges.
As in the American Revolutionary
War, people living in remote areas were
less hostile to their revolutionary coun-
trymen than to foreign soldiers. The
United States attempted to offset this
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 341
hostility by dispatching “pacification”
teams of diplomatic and economic
experts to create a friendlier American
presence in the countryside. But these
efforts failed to achieve their anticipated
benefits, especially when American
bombers continued dropping tons of
defoliants and napalm on the heavily
forested countryside.
The Johnson administration seemed
obsessed with pursuing, and even
expanding, the same initiatives that had
failed in the past. Well aware that hun-
dreds of thousands of communist
Chinese operatives were directly sup-
porting North Vietnamese efforts, the
United States felt some constraints. To
avoid provoking more direct Chinese
countermoves, the United States con-
ducted a measured, step-by-step escala-
tion until the deployment exceeded more
than half a million military personnel by
1968. Some 30,000 Americans had died
in combat by that point.
At home, the war provoked increas-
ingly vocal opposition. The first univer-
sity “teach-ins” took place in 1965, the
initial phase of growing campus protests.
Although the administration chose to
ignore these demonstrations, it was far
more difficult to dismiss the antiwar sen-
timents of major political figures like
Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright,
Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy,
and New York Senator Robert F.
Kennedy, brother of the slain president.
By 1967, some of the most trenchant
early supporters of the war effort, like
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara,
had become disillusioned enough to
resign.
Clark Clifford, the highly respected
foreign policy expert who replaced
McNamara, became concerned over the
apparent inability of the nation’s military
342 | Section 5
leadership to propose any alternative to
further escalation. Early in 1968, the
U.S. commander in Vietnam, General
William Westmoreland, requested an
additional 206,000 troops. Clifford
rejected he request even before the Tet
Offensive occurred.
Although North Vietnamese general
Vo Nguyen Giap advised against such a
bold step, Ho Chi Minh overruled him.
Tens of thousands of Viet Cong and North
Vietnamese soldiers conducted simulta-
neous attacks throughout South Vietnam.
Because the offensive began on a holiday,
half the soldiers in the Army of South
Vietnam (ARVN) were on vacation. The
drive’s most spectacular success was the
capture of Hue, the old imperial capital
just south of the line dividing the two
Vietnams. For Americans, the most
unnerving event was an invasion of the
supposedly impregnable U.S. Embassy
grounds in Saigon itself. Only 19 Viet
Cong managed to get inside, but they
were able to kill several defenders before
a helicopter-borne team of paratroopers
landed on the embassy roof and ended the
assault.
The chastened American forces col-
laborated with the embarrassed ARVN in
a massive counter attack that killed some
50,000 enemy soldiers and recaptured
control of Hue and other key locations.
Although the North Vietnamese were
shocked at the magnitude and speed of
the reversal, the Tet Offensive’s most
important consequences occurred half a
world away in the United States.
Press coverage did nothing to minimize
the horror of the offensive that completely
discredited the administration’s claims
that real progress had finally been taking
place. The offensive also confirmed
Defense Secretary Clifford’s decision that
escalation was hopeless. He helped con-
vince a reluctant President Johnson that an
alternative strategy must be developed.
That conviction was reinforced when
Senator Eugene McCarthy, an outspoken
critic of the war, won 42 percent of the
votes in the New Hampshire Democratic
presidential primary a few days later,
nearly matching the 49 percent for the
incumbent president.
Johnson announced a new approach at
the end of March. He suspended the
massive, yet seemingly ineffective, U.S.
bombing campaign on North Vietnamese
targets and ordered only a token increase
in troop deployments. He also made the
stunning announcement that he was
abandoning his reelection campaign to
devote the remaining months of his pres-
idency to seeking a negotiated peace
with North Vietnam. Still, it took several
months to work out preliminary steps for
peace talks.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy had
jumped into the presidential race just
after the New Hampshire primary. His
antiwar message resonated with the
American people, and he seemed well on
his way to capturing the Democratic
nomination when he was assassinated in
June. Vice President Hubert Humphrey
ultimately became the party’s nominee,
only to lose in a very close race to
Republican Richard Nixon in November.
During the fall campaign, Nixon had
claimed he knew how to end the war.
Once in office, however, he redefined his
position. It now appeared that he
intended to reduce the level of U.S.
participation in the war without aban-
doning the goal of a South Vietnamese
victory. To that end, he announced a pol-
icy of “Vietnamization,” stepping up
U.S. training programs for the ARVN so
it could replace American troops in the
field. This move was part of a broader

reduction of direct U.S. involvement in
Asia, which the president heralded as the
Nixon Doctrine.
Another step was the introduction of a
lottery system for the draft, which
relieved the anxieties of the majority of
young men about their prospects of
being sent off to die in Vietnam. The
draft lottery reduced opposition to
Nixon’s policies and gave him breathing
room to proceed with Vietnamization
and pursue less energetically the peace
negotiations Johnson had initiated.
Nixon’s fateful decision to invade
Cambodia in 1970, however, quickly
revived the antiwar sentiments and led to
further complications down the line.
See also: Cambodia; McNamara, Robert
Strange; Tonkin Gulf Incident
References
Ford, Ronnie E. Tet 1968: Understanding the
Surprise. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1995.
Heineman, Kenneth J. Campus Wars. New
York: New York University Press, 1993.
Hoopes, Townsend. The Limits of Interven-
tion. New York: Norton, 1987.
Kaiser, David. American Tragedy: Kennedy,
Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam
War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2000.
Tonkin Gulf Incident
In early August 1964, President Lyndon
Johnson ordered the U.S. Air Force to
bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for two
attacks on American destroyers. Within
three days, Congress overwhelmingly
approved the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giv-
ing the president virtually unlimited
authority to pursue a war to defend South
Vietnam. The response was very much in-
line with the long established tradition that
the United States only initiated combat if
someone else fired the first shot. Johnson
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 343
was well aware of that tradition and had
struggled to find a way to justify his plans
for expanding the U.S. commitment to
South Vietnam.
As with other Cold War confronta-
tions, hasty decisions at the end of World
War II sowed the seeds for future trou-
bles. Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi
Minh had long dedicated himself to try-
ing to shape the future of his homeland.
He had led a group called the Viet Minh
in an effective guerrilla campaign against
the Japanese, who had captured control
of the French colonies in Indochina in
1941. Because he was on the “right” side,
that is, fighting the same enemy the
United States was, American soldiers and
intelligence operatives collaborated with
Ho even though he had become a dedi-
cated communist in the 1920s.
When the Japanese departed in 1945,
Ho proclaimed the establishment of an
independent nation with Hanoi as its
capital. The victorious Allies generally
ignored his pronouncements. Instead,
they delegated postwar occupation
authority to China in the north and
Great Britain in the south. Neither did
much to discourage Frenchmen from
returning to their former colony and
reasserting prewar property rights.
Ho Chi Minh continued to hope for
reconciliation with France, but relations
between the two broke down completely
in 1947 when French naval vessels
shelled Haiphong, Hanoi’s seaport, over
a customs dispute. Ho reluctantly
retreated to the jungles, revived the Viet
Minh, and directed its guerrilla warfare
against France. When the United States
became involved in an anticommunist
struggle in Korea, the French campaign
against a communist rebellion in Asia
seemed consistent with the U.S. contain-
ment policy. In the early 1950s, U.S.
344 | Section 5
dollars sent to France through the
Marshall Plan were often redirected to
its war effort in Vietnam.
That effort ended disastrously in 1954
when the Viet Minh besieged a French
fort at Dien Bien Phu in the far northwest
corner of Vietnam. U.S. Air Force Secre-
tary Nathan Twining urged President
Eisenhower to authorize the use of atomic
weapons to relieve the beleaguered
Europeans, but the president wisely
ignored his advice. Instead, the United
States stood by while the two adversaries
hammered out a diplomatic agreement in
Geneva. The Geneva Accords established
a supposedly temporary division between
North and South Vietnam. The Accords
also called for an election to be held
within two years to determine the future
government for all of Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh’s allies gathered in the
North where the communist leader
reestablished his control in Hanoi. At
about the same time, Ngo Dinh Diem, a
Catholic who had been living in Paris for
many years, returned to Saigon, the
southern administrative capital. Once in
power, Diem made no move to imple-
ment the Geneva Accords, which he per-
sonally had never signed. He had no
doubt that Ho would win a substantial
majority of support in a general election.
The United States never signed the
Geneva Accords, either. In 1954, Presi-
dent Eisenhower articulated a disturbing
metaphor for Southeast Asia. He com-
pared the countries there to dominoes
standing on end. If one of those domi-
noes fell to communism, he warned, it
could knock all of them down. The
Domino Theory gained widespread cre-
dence and persuaded the United States to
enter into a number of security agree-
ments, including one with South Viet-
nam. The Eisenhower administration
began funneling military and economic
aid to the Diem government.
When the election deadline set by the
Geneva Accords passed, Ho Chi Minh
decided once again to revive his guerilla
campaign. Virtually all members of the
newly created National Liberation Front
(NLF) were southerners dedicated to
ousting the Diem regime. Diem portrayed
them as communist agents, however, a
strategy that induced the United States to
make ever greater commitments.
The NLF’s combat arm became
known as the Viet Cong. When John F.
Kennedy became president in 1961, he
viewed the Viet Cong as a serious enough
threat to justify sending American
military advisors to South Vietnam.
Unfortunately, they were assisting an
increasingly unpopular government. The
most dramatic examples of widespread
disillusionment were Buddhist monks
who set fire to themselves to protest the
Diem regime. A group of South Viet-
namese generals eventually staged a
coup, with U.S. connivance, that culmi-
nated in Diem’s ouster and death. Just a
few weeks later, President Kennedy him-
self was assassinated.
Meanwhile, the number of U.S. advi-
sors had grown from an initial contin-
gent of 400 to over 16,000 men, and
included land, sea, air, and political ele-
ments. Even so, the Viet Cong continued
to expand their influence. President Lyn-
don Johnson did not want to be remem-
bered for failing to prevent another
communist takeover in Asia. As early as
June 1964, his advisors were urging him
to seek congressional authorization for
more direct participation in the conflict.
Johnson even drafted some of the lan-
guage he would use in his request to
Congress a full two months before an
incident occurred that he could exploit.
 The Cold War and After, 1945– | 345

On August 2, 1964, U.S. Navy

destroyer Maddox was just off the coast
of North Vietnam in the Tonkin Gulf
monitoring North Vietnamese communi-
cations and relaying information to
South Vietnamese naval vessels attack-
ing the coastline. It was hardly surpris-
ing, then, that North Vietnamese
gunboats would approach the ship and
shoot at it. The Maddox returned fire and
called for help from navy fighters on a
nearby aircraft carrier. The skirmish
ended quickly and without any American
casualties. Such an isolated, minor inci-
dent was hardly sufficient to justify a
full-scale mobilization. But two nights President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Tonkin
later, jittery American naval personnel Gulf Resolution on August 10, 1964, authoriz-
responded to what they thought was a ing him to take whatever measures he deemed
necessary to deal with communist aggression
second North Vietnamese attack. In fact, in Vietnam. Congress repealed the resolution
no evidence has ever confirmed that an in late 1970. (National Archives)
attack took place on August 4.

TONKIN GULF RESOLUTION

(Joint Resolution of Congress H.J. RES 1145, August 7, 1964)

To promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.
Whereas naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the prin-
ciples of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately
and repeatedly attacked United Stated naval vessels lawfully present in international
waters, and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace;
Whereas these attackers are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign of aggres-
sion that the Communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors
and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom; and
Whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of southeast Asia to protect their
freedom and has no territorial, military or political ambitions in that area, but desires
only that these people should be left in peace to work out their destinies in their own
way: Now, therefore be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America
in Congress assembled, That the Congress approves and supports the determination of
the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any
armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.
Section 2. The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world
peace the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.
346 | Section 5

(Tonkin Gulf Resolution, continued)

Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United
Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective
Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines,
to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or
protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in
defense of its freedom.
Section 3. This resolution shall expire when the President shall determine that the
peace and security of the area is reasonably assured by international conditions cre-
ated by action of the United Nations or otherwise, except that it may be terminated
earlier by concurrent resolution of the Congress.

Source: U.S. Department of State, American Foreign Policy Documents 1964. Washington, DC:
GPO, 1967, 991–992.

Press reports of both incidents circu-
lated widely, however, and President
Johnson did nothing to counter them.
Instead, he delivered a nationwide tele-
vision address urging Congress to
authorize U.S. military action in light of
the “further deliberate attacks against
U.S. naval vessels operating in interna-
tional waters.” Congress responded
hastily to this “first shot.” The Tonkin
Gulf Resolution won unanimous
approval in the House of Representa-
tives and gained an 80–2 majority in the
Senate. It authorized the president to
“take all necessary measures to repel
any armed attack against the forces of
the United States and to prevent further
aggression.”
The president had already ordered
American bombers to attack North
Vietnam, the first step in what eventu-
ally became the deployment of over
half a million members of the U.S.
armed forces to South Vietnam. Even
more fatefully, the Tonkin Gulf Resolu-
tion focused American efforts on attack-
ing North Vietnam, even though the Viet
Cong were essentially homegrown in the
South. Thus the rush to war in 1964 had
far reaching consequences, drawing the
United States into what ultimately
became known as the Vietnam quagmire.
See also: Cambodia; Containment; Tet
References
Berman, Larry. Lyndon Johnson’s War: The
Road to Stalemate in Vietnam. New York:
Norton, 1989
Moïse, Edwin E. Tonkin Gulf and the Esca-
lation of the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Patti, Archimedes L. A. Why Viet Nam? Pre-
lude to America’s Albatross. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980.
Tourison, Sedgwick. Secret Army, Secret
War. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 1995.
Truman Doctrine
To limit Soviet expansion in southern
Europe in the spring of 1947, President
Harry Truman called for substantial,
direct U.S. military and economic aid to
countries under threat of communist
takeover. The Truman Doctrine was the
first major U.S. initiative in what became
known as the Cold War. Congress appro-
priated some $400 million that eventu-
ally helped stabilize the governments of
Greece and Turkey. Subsequent steps

included the Marshall Plan, Point Four
Program, and, eventually, the establish-
ment of a major western mutual defense
pact creating the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO).
During World War II, the United
States, Great Britain, and the Soviet
Union cooperated in defeating the Axis
powers. What British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill called “the Grand
Alliance” was always a loose and
strained collaboration, however, and
no topic was more controversial than
planning for postwar Europe. Although
the leaders of all three nations signed
the “Declaration on Liberated Europe”
at the Yalta Conference in February
1945, each nation interpreted it
differently.
The declaration called for “free elec-
tions” in the areas extricated from Axis
domination, but in each case, the pres-
ence of the occupying forces of the vic-
torious Allies heavily influenced the
government that emerged. In much of
Eastern Europe, therefore, outright com-
munist regimes took control under the
watchful eyes of the Red Army. In
Western Europe, the new governments
espoused variations of liberal democratic
principles modeled after British, French,
and American examples.
As early as 1946 the lines of demar-
cation between these two political blocs
had sufficiently hardened for ex-Prime
Minister Churchill to call U.S. attention
to an “Iron Curtain” descending through
the heart of Europe. Had no interna-
tional complications existed, the United
States would likely have followed its
historical precedents and retreated into
the sort of isolationism that had pre-
vailed after World War I. Even
Churchill’s dramatic language did little
to stir U.S. action.
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 347
By 1947, however, a disturbing ideo-
logical struggle had developed in two
southern European countries. In Greece,
the British supported the rightist monar-
chy that had ruled the nation prior to the
war, but they were opposed by rebel
guerrillas. These rebels, in turn, received
encouragement, weapons, and financing
from communist sources funneled
through Yugoslavia.
Turkey had carefully stayed out of the
war until the spring of 1945 and joined
then primarily to obtain membership in
the United Nations. But in the postwar
confusion, British observers noted that
committed communists were encouraging
dissent and rebellion against the republi-
can government. If Greece fell to commu-
nism, it would put enormous pressure on
Turkey to follow a similar path.
Another weak link at this point was
Great Britain itself, which had emerged
from World War II with major economic
shortages at home and far too many over-
seas commitments. It simply could not
continue to support the two governments
fighting communism. British diplomats
brought these facts to the attention of the
U.S. government early in 1947, indicat-
ing that if British support collapsed, both
nations would likely be drawn behind the
Iron Curtain.
President Harry Truman, Secretary
of State George Marshall, and other
administrative leaders recognized and
understood the nature of the crisis. But
the conservative Republicans, who had
done well in the 1946 elections and now
dominated Congress, were less con-
vinced. Truman personally lobbied Sen-
ator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan,
chair of the Foreign Relations Commit-
tee, and he agreed to cooperate, pro-
vided that the president “scared the hell
out of the American people.”
348 | Section 5

Harry Truman set out to do just that.
He even agreed to testify in person
before Congress on March 12, 1947. In
what came to be known as the Truman
Doctrine, he outlined the existing situ-
ations in Greece and Turkey. Looking
beyond the two current hot spots, he
insisted that “it must be the policy of
the United States to support free peo-
ples who are resisting attempted subju-
gation by armed minorities or by
outside pressures.” In a sense, his
assertions represented the opening
salvo in what would become known as
the Cold War.
Even though Truman had “scared”
the American people, it took two months
of strident debate and negotiation to
implement his request for $400 million
in economic and military support for
those opposing communist aggression.
Senator Vandenberg was crucial in

THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE

President Harry S Truman’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress, March 12, 1947
. . . One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the
creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way
of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and
Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their
way of life, upon other nations.
To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States
has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations. The United Nations is
designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We
shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to
maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive move-
ments that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank
recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect
aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security
of the United States. . . .
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who
are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their
own way.
I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid
which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes. . . .
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and
grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope
of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.
If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world—and we
shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.
Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events.
I am confident that the Congress will face these responsibilities squarely.

Source: Congressional Record, 80th Cong. 1st sess., 1947, 93:1999.


engineering a “bipartisan” response to
the crisis, and the final bill passed both
houses of Congress by wide margins.
The infusion of U.S. aid enabled the
existing governments to neutralize the
communist drives. Both Greece and
Turkey ultimately became vital south-
eastern European bulwarks of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The philosophical and political
debates that Truman’s initiative trig-
gered were the first in a continuing evo-
lution of U.S. political thought. His
generalized call for American support
for “free peoples” clearly threw down
the gauntlet to Soviet expansionism.
Within a matter of a few months, the
administration proposed several related
initiatives like the Marshall Plan, the
Point Four Program, and, ultimately, an
unprecedented multilateral mutual
defense pact, NATO. The Cold War was
well under way.
See also: Marshall Plan; North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO)
References
Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation.
New York: Norton, 1969.
Donovan, Robert J. Conflict and Crisis: The
Presidency of Harry S Truman,
1945–1948. New York: W.W. Norton,
1977.
Frazier, Robert. Anglo-American Relations
with Greece. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1991.
U-2
High altitude spy planes called U-2s
began flying in the mid-1950s and
played key roles in two major Cold War
confrontations. The so-called U-2 Inci-
dent sabotaged a 1960 summit meeting,
and the publication of U-2 photographs
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 349
focused world attention on the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis. The aircraft’s
designation was a shorthand version of
Utility–2, a deliberately bland and mis-
leading identifier because the airplane’s
existence and capabilities remained
highly classified. U-2 missions repre-
sented the pinnacle of American aerial
intelligence gathering and profoundly
influenced U.S. and Soviet behavior
during the Cold War.
When the U.S. Air Force showed little
interest in the concept, the U-2 became a
project of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA). Although he had initial
doubts, CIA director Allen Dulles,
brother of the secretary of state, became
an enthusiastic advocate. The project’s
goal was to develop an airplane capable
of flying so high that it would be beyond
the reach of the most sophisticated anti-
aircraft weapons. Lockheed engineer
Clarence Johnson began with the fuse-
lage of an F-104 jet fighter. To it he
attached wings three times longer than
normal and as thin and light as possible.
The U-2’s final silhouette resembled that
of a glider since the aircraft needed to
soar in very thin air at 70,000 feet or
higher. A single jet engine tweaked to
perform in an oxygen-starved atmos-
phere gave the airplane an operational
speed of over 450 miles per hour.
To carry out its spying mission, it
needed cameras capable of producing
high-resolution photographs from that
altitude. Edwin Land, founder of the
Polaroid company and creator of the
most successful instant photograph
camera, was a major contributor to the
camera design project. U-2 cameras
used mile-long, ultrathin Mylar film
rolls and highly advanced lenses to pro-
duce remarkably detailed images of the
landscape 12 or more miles below.
350 | Section 5
Lockheed completed its first opera-
tional U-2 in six months at a cost of just
over $1 million. It proved extremely
tricky to fly, but did meet the CIA’s per-
formance standards. Over the years,
Lockheed produced a number of varia-
tions and updates of the specialized air-
craft. The CIA carefully screened the
pilots chosen for missions and insisted
that all of them be civilians rather than
military officers. The presumption was
that if news of the missions leaked out,
having civilians at the controls would
prevent them from automatically draw-
ing military retribution.
To deploy its spy planes around the
world, the United States had to negotiate
special agreements with other countries.
Pakistan’s location made it a logical
choice and, to obtain basing rights, the
United States agreed to broader defense
commitments with Islamabad. A ques-
tionable result of this deployment was
that the United States then felt obligated
to provide support and equipment when
Pakistan subsequently became embroiled
in a war with India.
Once the U-2s were operational,
they began flying over the Soviet Union
and photographing military and indus-
trial facilities. Some claim that the 23
surveillance flights conducted by 1960
provided 90 percent of the hard mili-
tary intelligence the U.S. collected
about its Cold War rival. Soviet Pre-
mier Nikita Khrushchev was well
aware of these overflights, but he could
not complain about them publicly with-
out revealing the embarrassing fact that
the Soviets were incapable of shooting
the aircraft down.
The secrecy cut both ways. Largely
on the basis of U-2 photographs, the
Eisenhower administration knew that
Soviet defensive capabilities were less
than impressive. For example, at one
point they showed that the USSR had
only 14 bombers capable of delivering
nuclear weapons to distant targets, far
fewer than the U.S. and NATO air forces
possessed. Equally important, U-2 pic-
tures proved that the United States had
little to fear from Soviet missiles.
American leaders recognized that the
dramatic launching of Sputnik and sub-
sequent Soviet rocketry achievements
did not signal that the USSR was ahead
in the space race. In the late 1950s, the
United States had far more advanced
ballistic missiles on hand and in devel-
opment than did its rival.
A dramatic incident on May 1, 1960,
stripped away the cloak of secrecy.
While flying from Pakistan to Norway,
U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers encoun-
tered technical problems that forced him
to descend. He was about 1,200 miles
inside Soviet territory when a surface-to-
air missile (SAM) knocked the wings off
his airplane. Powers managed to eject
safely, only to be immediately captured
on the ground. The Soviets also retrieved
much of the downed aircraft, including
its camera.
The U.S. government initially
claimed Powers had mistakenly strayed
over Soviet territory while conducting a
civilian weather reconnaissance flight.
When confronted with U-2 photos of
Russian industrial installations, the U.S.
duplicity was revealed for all the world.
Rather than apologize, President Dwight
Eisenhower defended his nation’s right
and responsibility to learn as much as
possible about its adversary. After all,
both sides were deeply involved in spy-
ing on each other. One of the most
bizarre methods involved a carving of
the great seal of the United States that
had been installed in the U.S. Embassy
 The Cold War and After, 1945– | 351

Russians view the wreckage of Francis Gary Powers's U-2 spy plane shot down over Soviet
territory on May 1, 1960. The resulting U-2 Incident torpedoed plans for a U.S.–Soviet summit
meeting and hardened Cold War positions. (Bettmann/CORBIS)

in Moscow. The U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations showed his colleagues
that the eagle contained a hidden micro-
phone that Russian intelligence agents
used to eavesdrop on conversations in
the embassy.
Eisenhower did promise that no
more U-2 flights would take place dur-
ing his administration, but that pledge
did not satisfy Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev. When the leaders met at
the Paris summit conference on May
14, Khrushchev bitterly criticized the
United States and its president before
dramatically walking out of the confer-
ence after a single day. The so-called
U-2 Incident thus wrecked any hope of
productive East-West diplomatic dia-
logue for some time.
Another U-2 spy mission shook up
Cold War relationships two years later. In
July 1960, U-2 photos revealed a signifi-
cant increase in Soviet shipping to Cuba.
In August, they also produced evidence
of a major Soviet military buildup on the
island. Then, on October 14, a U-2 cam-
era took detailed pictures of Soviet mis-
sile bases being constructed in Cuba.
President John F. Kennedy publicized
these photographs as indisputable proof
of Soviet intentions. The U-2 spy planes
thus played a critical role in provoking
the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ironically, a
Soviet SAM shot down a U-2 flying over
Cuba a couple of weeks later. Fortu-
nately, that incident did not derail the
accommodation Kennedy was working
out with Khrushchev.
U-2 flights occasionally made head-
lines in subsequent years. In 1970, for
example, they revealed that the Soviets
were building a submarine base in Cuba,
an activity U.S. diplomacy managed to
discourage. Some U-2s were transferred
352 | Section 5
to Taiwan for use by Nationalist Chinese
pilots to conduct overflights of the Peo-
ple’s Republic, and Red Chinese rockets
shot down at least five of them. During
the Gulf War in 1991, U-2 planes flew
dozens of reconnaissance missions over
Kuwait and Iraq to help direct American
actions and assess their impact. As
recently as 2000, U-2s were still con-
ducting weather and climate evaluation
around the world.
One of the reasons President
Eisenhower was willing to suspend fur-
ther missions in 1960 was that alterna-
tive technologies were already beginning
to replace U-2 overflights. While the
Soviet Union was publicizing showy
space exploits, the United States was
engaged in a more focused, and ulti-
mately successful, effort to launch spy
satellites. As these became increasingly
sophisticated, they were able to provide
reliable alternatives to U-2 photographs.
Spying quite literally rose to new heights
in the wake of the U-2 Incident.
See also: Berlin; Brinkmanship
References
Beschloss, Michael. MAYDAY: Eisenhower,
Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair. New
York: Harper and Row, 1986.
Burrows, William E. By Any Means Neces-
sary: America’s Secret Air War in the
Cold War. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2001.
Strodes, James. Allen Dulles: Master of
Spies. Washington, DC: Regnery Publish-
ing, 1999.
War on Terror
Early in the 21st century, President
George W. Bush declared a war on terror
that is remarkably different from earlier
conflicts. The enemy is elusive, difficult
to identify, and distressingly resilient.
Massive military moves, the deployment
of the most sophisticated weaponry, and
enormous expenditures seem to have had
little effect. Indeed, there may never be a
definitive victory in this war.
Although other terrorist attacks have
victimized Americans, incidents in
Beirut in 1983 marked a discouraging
evolution in the nature of terrorism. The
stage was set when Israeli troops crossed
over to attack Palestinian refugees in
camps in southern Lebanon. The Israeli
justification was that they had to protect
their citizens from refugee attacks. The
invasion soon developed into a broader
conflict that ultimately involved Syrian
troops and the collapse of the Lebanese
government.
President Ronald Reagan felt he must
take action. The United States joined
France, Italy, and Great Britain in
deploying small military contingents,
hoping they would calm the crisis. But
the presence of U.S. Marines did noth-
ing to stem the violence and seemed to
increase anti-American sentiment. In
April, an assault on the U.S. Embassy
in Beirut killed 60 people, including
17 Americans. Six months later, some-
one drove a bomb-laden truck into
American-occupied barracks at the
Beirut Airport. A total of 241 marines,
many of them sleeping at the time, were
killed. Shortly afterward, all the U.S.
forces were withdrawn, having failed to
calm the situation in Lebanon.
The Reagan administration did, how-
ever, order quick military action shortly
after the bombing. On October 21, 1983,
6,000 American troops invaded the
Caribbean nation of Grenada, which the
president claimed had become a satellite
of communist-led Cuba. It was true that
Fidel Castro’s government was helping

to construct a huge airfield on the island.
Over 100 people died as a result of the
invasion, which “rescued” about 1,000
American students, many of them
attending medical school. The patriotic
feeling that swept the United States
somewhat offset the despair over the
Beirut bombing. Twenty years later,
President George W. Bush would dupli-
cate the tactic of attacking another nation
in retribution for a terrorist attack some-
where else.
Beginning in 1993, a series of terror-
ist attacks were attributed to the Al
Qaeda movement led by Saudi-born
Osama bin Laden. First, a car bomb det-
onated in the garage of one of the World
Trade Center towers killed 6 and injured
more than 1,000 others. Five years later,
simultaneous terrorist attacks on U.S.
Embassy buildings in Nairobi, Kenya,
and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed a
dozen Americans and hundreds of local
citizens. In October 2000, the USS Cole,
a navy destroyer refueling at the port of
Aden, suffered extensive damage and the
loss of 17 lives when an explosive-laden
boat rammed into it. As disconcerting as
these incidents were, they in no way pre-
pared the United States for the devastat-
ing attacks of September 11, 2001.
Americans had great difficulty under-
standing the concept of suicide bomb-
ing. Like the truck driver in Beirut,
however, some terrorists are prepared to
sacrifice their lives for a cause. In the
late 20th century, the United States
established increasingly strict security
procedures to prevent terrorists from
hijacking aircraft. Experience with pre-
vious hijackings suggested that tem-
porarily acceding to perpetrators’
demands could have positive outcomes.
Prior to September 11, no one antici-
pated that the hijackers themselves
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 353
might be suicide bombers. Conse-
quently the passengers and crew on
board four hijacked domestic commer-
cial flights that morning were unpre-
pared to cope with this new escalation of
terrorist strategy.
In this instance, the aircraft, filled
with highly flammable aviation fuel,
were transformed into the suicide
bombers’ weapons. Two smashed into
the towers of the World Trade Center in
New York City and one crashed into the
Pentagon near Washington, D.C. Pas-
sengers and crew members on the
fourth hijacked jetliner learned of these
attacks by cell phones and chose to sac-
rifice their own lives to save others.
That airplane plummeted to earth in
Pennsylvania.
Intensifying Americans’ sudden sense
of dread and vulnerability were several
anthrax-laced letters sent to politicians
and business leaders. The perpetrator of
this biological attack has never been
identified definitively. The administra-
tion of President George W. Bush
quickly concluded, however, that mem-
bers of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda
organization had planned and executed
the destruction of the World Trade
Center. It also maintained that the
Taliban, an Islamic extremist group
ruling Afghanistan, was shielding the
terrorist leader and his followers.
Less than a month after the New York
catastrophe, the Bush administration
collaborated with the government of
Great Britain in launching the first phase
of the war on terror. Its objective was to
oust the Taliban from power in
Afghanistan and to seek out and destroy
the Al Qaeda organization. The capture
of Osama bin Laden was a primary
objective. The assault began with an
extensive aerial bombing campaign,
354 | Section 5
followed by the deployment of ground
troops. The Taliban government col-
lapsed in November, but Osama bin
Laden evaded capture.
Other nations sent troops and support
as the conflict continued. In 2006, a
NATO force took responsibility for
much of the fighting. Along the way, the
foreigners helped install a replacement
government headed by Hamid Karzai.
Taliban attacks persisted through 2008,
however, and no end to the nation’s
instability was in sight. Even more dis-
concerting, the Al Qaeda organization
also persisted and its leader remained at
large, probably in northwestern Pakistan.
The war on terror fundamentally
affected the American people both at
home and abroad. Heightened airport
security is an obvious manifestation. The
Bush administration cited the war on ter-
ror to justify expanded internal and exter-
nal intelligence activities, some of which
may have violated basic constitutional
protections. In that sense, the war on terror
has come to resemble the Red Scare of the
1950s. Even as it has raised Americans’
anxieties and fueled unhealthy xenopho-
bia, its effectiveness in protecting the
United States from international terrorism
remains in question.
Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect
of the war on terror was its extension to
Iraq. The Bush administration conducted
a concerted publicity campaign, for both
domestic and foreign consumption, link-
ing the regime of Saddam Hussein to
international terrorism. In fact, there is
no conclusive evidence that either the
Iraqi government or the Iraqi people had
any part in the 9/11 attacks or any sym-
pathy with Al Qaeda or its objectives.
The enormously costly effort to change
the regime in Iraq and establish stability
there diverted resources and attention
from the war on terror. But, as with the
Grenada invasion 20 years earlier,
Americans initially cheered the deploy-
ment of U.S. forces overseas despite the
lack of any clear relationship between
Iraq and international terrorism.
See also: Bush Doctrine; Red Scare Again
References
Kellner, Douglas. From 9/11 to Terror War.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
2003.
Rogers, Paul. A War on Terror: Afghanistan
and After. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2004.
Valdez, Angela. We the People: The U.S.
Government’s Response Against Terror.
Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.
BIOGRAPHIES
Acheson, Dean (1893–1971)
Of the many targets of McCarthyism,
few sustained as much criticism as Pres-
ident Harry Truman’s secretary of state,
Dean Acheson. He presented a very
tempting target because he epitomized
the foreign policy elite. He attended Gro-
ton, Yale University, and then Harvard
Law School. Standing six feet, eight
inches tall, he was a commanding pres-
ence in any group, and he used his
stature and erudition to humble others.
After clerking for Supreme Court Justice
Louis Brandeis and pursing a successful
private law practice, he was appointed
undersecretary of the treasury in 1933.
He knew little about finance and dis-
agreed with some of President Franklin
Roosevelt’s initiatives, so he resigned
after only a few months. Interestingly
enough, when he returned to federal
service in 1941 as assistant secretary of
state, he emerged as a leading policy
maker in international economic affairs,

participating in the creation of the Inter-
national Money Fund, the World Bank,
and the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT). After World War II,
he moved up to the department’s number
two position, undersecretary of state,
where he worked closely with General
George Marshall, who headed the State
Department during Truman’s first term.
Marshall and Acheson were the chief
architects and publicists for the administra-
tion’s containment policy, and Acheson’s
role was especially important in the
development of the Truman Doctrine,
the Point Four Program, and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
When Marshall became secretary of
defense, Truman named Acheson to
replace him as secretary of state. He
began his tenure at the State Department
pursuing what turned out to be an unpop-
ular approach to China. He publicly
attributed communist leader Mao
Zedong’s victory in 1949 to weakness on
the part of Nationalist leader Chiang
Kai-Shek. After the communist takeover,
Acheson proposed that the United States
extend recognition to the new regime
and exploit its hostility to the Soviet
Union to further U.S. Cold War goals.
When Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy
began his virulent anticommunist cam-
paign, he seized upon Acheson’s views
as evidence that he was “soft on commu-
nism.” McCarthy also maintained that
the secretary of state was responsible for
staffing the State Department with com-
munists or communist sympathizers.
Early in 1950, Acheson took another
step that provided fodder for his critics.
Addressing the National Press Club, he
identified a “defensive perimeter” in
Asia that the United States was commit-
ted to defend. Significantly he left both
Formosa and South Korea outside the
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 355
perimeter. When North Korean troops
invaded the South in June 1950, however,
Acheson strongly urged President Truman
to respond militarily. Some also charge
Acheson with convincing Truman to initi-
ate American involvement in Vietnam.
Despite continuing criticism from right-
wing commentators, Truman retained
Acheson as his secretary of state through
the end of his administration in 1953.
Acheson retired from public office and
wrote a Pulitzer Prize–winning account of
his service. He also acted as an informal
policy resource. For example, he was one
of the group that advised President John F.
Kennedy during the critical 13 days of the
Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
See also: Containment; Marshall Plan;
Marshall, George C.; North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO)
Reference
Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My
Years in the State Department. New York:
Norton, 1969.
Dulles, John Foster
(1888–1959)
As both a grandson and a nephew of for-
mer secretaries of state, John Foster
Dulles seemed destined to hold that posi-
tion as well. He was born in Washington,
D.C., graduated from Princeton Univer-
sity, spent a year at the Sorbonne, and
then returned to the District to study law
at George Washington University. While
still a student he began participating in
high-level international affairs. His grand-
father, former secretary of state John W.
Foster, invited him to attend the 1907
Hague Peace Conference. As a commis-
sioned army officer during World War I,
Dulles worked in the United States at the
War Industries Board. That experience,
356 | Section 5
and the fact that his uncle, Robert Lans-
ing, was secretary of state, paved the way
for him to participate in the Versailles
Peace Conference in 1919. For the next
two decades Dulles practiced law in New
York City, building an enviable reputation
as an expert in international law. That
expertise brought him to the attention of
fellow New Yorker Thomas E. Dewey.
With every expectation that he would
head the State Department if his candi-
date won, Dulles served as chief foreign
policy advisor for both of Dewey’s unsuc-
cessful presidential campaigns. Despite
his partisan identification, his encyclope-
dic knowledge and analytical talents con-
vinced President Harry Truman to invite
John Foster Dulles to participate in the
San Francisco conference that established
the United Nations. Governor Dewey
appointed Dulles to replace Senator
Robert Wagner when he stepped down in
1949, but Dulles lost the seat in a special
election held that fall. His record of par-
ticipation in bipartisan affairs convinced
President Truman to give him sole author-
ity to negotiate a postwar peace treaty
with Japan. The resulting document was
Dulles’s finest diplomatic achievement.
By 1952, Dulles had abandoned biparti-
sanship to become the Republican Party’s
most knowledgeable critic of the Truman
administration’s containment and Korea
policies. When Dwight Eisenhower won
the presidency in 1952, he immediately
installed Dulles in the position he had
long coveted: secretary of state. He
remained in that post almost until his
death in 1959. As secretary, Dulles
attached memorable names or phrases to
the Eisenhower administration’s policies.
For example, he called for the “libera-
tion” or “rollback” of Soviet authority in
Eastern Europe, advocated “massive
retaliation” against the Soviet Union,
championed “open skies” to allow aerial
monitoring of nuclear weapons testing,
and warned of an “agonizing reappraisal”
of U.S. relations with its European allies.
He not only advocated “brinkmanship”
but took great pride in claiming to have
exercised it several times in the 1950s.
Perhaps overly sensitive to the Red Scare
paranoia about communism, Dulles
behaved as the epitome of a committed
Cold Warrior. That may also have led to a
rigidity in his thinking and actions that
contributed to several failed or ineffective
policy initiatives. It proved especially
counterproductive, for example, in his
relations with Middle Eastern nations.
Contemporary critics complained that
President Eisenhower too often allowed
Dulles to call the tune in international
affairs, but subsequent analysts have con-
cluded that the president exerted consid-
erable restraint on his energetic
subordinate. In his defense, Dulles served
as secretary of state during a period when
the United States was forced to adapt to
the rapidly changing Cold War and the
rise of strident nationalism around the
world. Dealing with these issues proved
extraordinarily challenging, even to a man
with Dulles’s impeccable foreign policy
credentials.
See also: Brinkmanship; Land for Peace; Lib-
eration of Eastern Europe; Massive Retalia-
tion
Reference
Immerman, Richard H. John Foster Dulles:
Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S.
Foreign Policy. Wilmington, DE: Schol-
arly Resources, 1999.
Kissinger, Henry (1923–)
Like many other Jews, Heinz Alfred
Kissinger fled Nazi Germany to come
to the United States in 1938. He

attended the City College of New York,
became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and
then joined the army as an intelligence
officer in 1943. After leaving the serv-
ice with the rank of captain in 1949, he
enrolled in Harvard University where
he earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and
doctoral degrees. His alma mater then
hired him to join the faculty in both the
Department of Government and the
Center for International Affairs. His
scholarly books and articles won him
wide respect, and Republican Nelson
Rockefeller relied on his advice on
international affairs. Kissinger left
Harvard in 1969 to become President
Richard Nixon’s national security advi-
sor. After his reelection in 1973, the
president named Kissinger secretary of
state, a position he retained through the
end of President Gerald Ford’s term in
1977. Both Nixon and Kissinger took
pride in pursuing concrete foreign pol-
icy objectives rather than the vaguer,
idealistic approaches of earlier admin-
istrations. They inherited a discourag-
ing war in Vietnam. Even though
candidate Nixon had claimed to know
how to end American involvement in
the war, it continued for almost
five years after his election. As national
security advisor, Kissinger was inti-
mately involved in the twists and turns
of Nixon’s war policy. Some believe
Kissinger was the chief proponent of
such actions as the ill-fated Cambodia
incursion. Meanwhile, he was the lead
negotiator in protracted talks with rep-
resentatives of the North Vietnamese
government. Just before the U.S. presi-
dential election in October 1972,
Kissinger announced that “peace was at
hand,” but South Vietnamese president
Nguyen Van Thieu objected to the
arrangements. Only after a massive
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 357
U.S. bombing campaign on Hanoi and
Haiphong, did Kissinger and his coun-
terpart, Le Duc Tho, agree to final
terms for a cease-fire. Both men were
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their
efforts, but the North Vietnamese
statesman refused to accept it.
Kissinger is also credited with develop-
ing and implementing the policy of
détente. He personally paved the way
for Nixon’s dramatic visit to Beijing in
1972 and was a key negotiator of the
Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty the
president signed in Moscow later that
year. Kissinger’s involvement in Latin
American affairs was less laudable.
Nixon assigned him the task of
responding to the election of commu-
nist Salvador Allende as president of
Chile, and the result was U.S. encour-
agement and complicity in a military
coup that resulted in Allende’s death.
Kissinger did work hard to resolve dif-
ferences between Israel and its Arab
neighbors after the 1973 Yom Kippur
War. He engaged in exhausting shuttle
diplomacy, repeatedly visiting the cap-
itals of the countries involved and try-
ing to smooth ruffled feathers. Henry
Kissinger apparently hoped Ronald
Reagan would reappoint him to head
the State Department in 1981, but he
had to settle for less prestigious assign-
ments. He has continued to participate
in an advisory capacity on both govern-
ment and corporate boards and com-
missions. He remains a leading
exponent of an aggressive U.S. foreign
policy, one that is particularly popular
with conservative Republicans even
though his attitudes and actions as sec-
retary of state generated considerable
criticism both at home and abroad.
Henry Kissinger was one of the most
influential secretaries of state in
358 | Section 5
American history, so it is hardly sur-
prising that he was, and remains, a con-
troversial character.
See also: Détente; Shuttle Diplomacy; Tet
Reference
Dallek, Robert. Nixon and Kissinger, Part-
ners in Power. New York: HarperCollins,
2007.
Marshall, George C.
(1880–1959)
General George C. Marshall’s distin-
guished career encompassed both mili-
tary and diplomatic service. Although
born in Pennsylvania, he graduated from
the Virginia Military Institute and was
commissioned in the regular army. Early
in his career, he exhibited remarkable
talent at organizational and staff work.
General John J. Pershing took Marshall
to France with the American Expedi-
tionary Force (AEF) and relied on him
for tactical planning as well as liaison
with the commands of other nations. In
the late 1920s, Marshall served as head
of the Infantry School at Fort Benning,
Georgia, which trained many of those
who would distinguish themselves in
World War II. Although he was only a
brigadier general when the war began in
1939, President Franklin Roosevelt
installed him as army chief of staff. For
two years he superintended the training
and equipping of a rapidly growing
army and laid the groundwork for even
more dramatic expansion should the
United States enter the war. After Pearl
Harbor, Marshall became chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff where he served
as Roosevelt’s leading military advisor.
Marshall attended all of the Allied sum-
mit conferences. Although he had much
to do with planning the D-Day invasion,
Roosevelt considered him too valuable a
confidant to send him to lead the inva-
sion. Congress awarded him five stars as
General of the Army in 1944. Perhaps
his most frustrating assignment came
next; he spent nearly two years in China
trying to prevent a civil war between the
Nationalists and the Communists. Presi-
dent Harry Truman brought Marshall
back to Washington as secretary of state
in 1947, just in time for him to play a
key role in developing the U.S. response
to the Cold War. His most famous initia-
tive, the Marshall Plan, earned him a
Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. In 1950,
Truman named Marshall secretary of
defense, responsible for managing the
Korean War. He backed Truman when
the president removed controversial
general Douglas MacArthur from com-
mand, a move that brought Marshall
into the crosshairs of Senator Joseph
McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade.
Marshall’s reputation for sound advice,
selfless service, and outstanding organi-
zational skill easily survived this ideo-
logical onslaught. He was a dedicated
and able statesman whose reliable and
invaluable performance in trying cir-
cumstances won universal respect.
See also: Limited War (Korea); Marshall Plan;
Second Front
Reference
Stoler, Mark A. George C. Marshall:
Soldier-Statesman of the American
Century. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
McNamara, Robert
Strange (1916–)
Born in San Francisco and educated at
the University of California at Berkeley,
Robert S. McNamara headed east,
where he earned a business degree and

then taught at Harvard University. He
accepted a commission in the U.S.
Army in 1943 and resigned with the
rank of lieutenant colonel in 1946. Hired
by the struggling Ford Motor Company,
McNamara became one of the so-called
wonder boys who used modern manage-
ment and cost accounting methods to
restore the company to prominence. In
late 1960, the company acknowledged
his contributions by naming him its
president, the first chief executive who
was not a member of the founding Ford
family. Just five weeks later, McNamara
resigned to join President John F.
Kennedy’s cabinet as secretary of
defense, a position he occupied for the
next seven years. One of his first acts as
secretary was to encourage the president
to authorize the ill-conceived Bay of
Pigs assault. Although he deeply regret-
ted that decision, McNamara was quite
proud of his participation in the advisory
group that shaped Kennedy’s response to
the Cuban Missile Crisis. From his first
days at the Pentagon, McNamara applied
many of the same management methods
he had used at Ford to analyze systems,
encourage efficiency, and cut costs.
McNamara rethought U.S. nuclear strat-
egy, criticizing the Eisenhower adminis-
tration’s doctrine of massive retaliation
and working toward a policy eventually
called assured destruction. It involved a
nuclear weapons capability formidable
enough to deter any potential nuclear
threat from the Soviet Union or China.
Once the Soviet Union had built up its
own nuclear arsenal, the concept became
known as mutual assured destruction
(MAD). Secretary McNamara also
favored a “flexible force” approach that
emphasized counterinsurgency training
for conventional and limited conflicts.
An example of this new direction was
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 359
the formation of special forces units
like the Green Berets. For better or
worse, this emphasis equipped the
United States to defend South Vietnam
from the guerilla warfare Ho Chi Minh
was waging. After Congress approved
the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, President
Lyndon Johnson relied on McNamara’s
proven administrative and management
skills to implement the escalation of the
U.S. military commitment in Southeast
Asia. The secretary of defense was not
uniformly popular with military profes-
sionals, however, and he became increas-
ingly disillusioned at their unending
requests for more troops and equipment
in a war that seemed interminable. As
early as 1966, McNamara’s growing
doubts about the escalation and the war
itself became known, so few were sur-
prised when he tendered his resignation
early in 1968. Johnson accepted it only
to appoint McNamara to the position of
president of the World Bank. McNamara
remained at the bank for the next 12
years. Of all the officials intimately
involved in planning and executing U.S.
policy during the Vietnam Era, Robert
McNamara has subsequently expressed
the most profound skepticism and doubts
about the goals and conduct of the
longest war in American history.
See also: Bay of Pigs; Brinkmanship; Tet;
Tonkin Gulf Incident;
Reference
McNamara, Robert S., with Brian VanDe-
Mark. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and
Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Vintage
Books, 1966.
Rumsfeld, Donald (1932–)
When Donald Rumsfeld resigned his
position as secretary of defense after
360 | Section 5
Democratic Party victories in the
midterm elections of 2006, he had
become one of the most controversial
figures associated with the administra-
tion of President George W. Bush. It
was a disappointing conclusion to a
long career in public service. Naval
ROTC scholarships helped fund
Chicago native Rumsfeld’s education
at Princeton University, and he served
as a navy pilot and flight instructor for
three years after graduating with a
degree in political science. In 1957, he
joined the staff of an Illinois congress-
man and then dabbled in banking
before winning his own seat in the U.S.
House of Representatives as a Republi-
can in 1962. After four terms in Con-
gress, he resigned in 1969 to work in
various positions in President Richard
Nixon’s administration. In 1973, the
president named him ambassador to the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), Rumsfeld’s only major diplo-
matic assignment. When Nixon resigned,
Rumsfeld returned to Washington to par-
ticipate in Gerald Ford’s transition
team and then to serve as the new pres-
ident’s chief of staff. In 1975, Ford ele-
vated Rumsfeld to the position of
secretary of defense and chose Dick
Cheney to replace him at the White
House. Rumsfeld was the youngest per-
son ever to head the Defense Depart-
ment, but he had relatively little time to
shape the institution because Democrat
Jimmy Carter won the presidency in
1976. After leaving Washington, Rums-
feld continued to serve on government
commissions and panels, but he
devoted his major efforts to heading
various businesses, including a long
stint as CEO of G. D. Searle, a pharma-
ceutical giant. During this period, he
remained very active in the neoconser-
vative political movement, an associa-
tion that helped convince President
George W. Bush to reinstall him as sec-
retary of defense in 2001. In his first
few months, Rumsfeld’s elaborate plans
for restructuring the armed serves
stirred resentment among military pro-
fessionals, but the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001, changed the
national security landscape far more
fundamentally than Rumsfeld’s bureau-
cratic proposals. The secretary of
defense emerged as the leading cabinet
advocate of the Bush Doctrine. Military
operations in Afghanistan began almost
immediately, and Rumsfeld was one of
the most outspoken proponents of
extending them into nearby Iraq.
Although the initial phases of the Iraq
war went reasonably well, Rumsfeld
rapidly came under fire from both left
and right-wing commentators. Hardly
alone in the Bush administration in
anticipating a brief, successful war, his
position made him a natural target as
the conflict persisted and changed into a
bitter battle among contending factions
inside Iraq. Meanwhile, it became
increasingly clear that the Defense
Department had failed to provide Amer-
ican troops with adequate equipment
and training to deal with an insurgency.
Even more embarrassing to Rumsfeld
were revelations of inappropriate
behavior by those involved in dealing
with inmates in facilities like the
infamous Abu Ghraib prison. Many
expected President Bush to replace his
controversial subordinate at the start of
his second term, but Rumsfeld
remained in office. His reputation con-
tinued to deteriorate until his resigna-
tion two years later. When he left office,
American armed forces were strained to
the limit, and U.S. prestige around the

world had reached a very low ebb. With
the exception of the president himself
and Vice President Dick Cheney, Don-
ald Rumsfeld is the man most widely
seen as responsible for the U.S. failure
to achieve its objectives in Iraq.
The Cold War and After, 1945– | 361
See also: Bush Doctrine; War on Terror
Reference
Cockburn, Andrew. Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall,
and Catastrophic Legacy. New York:
Scribner, 2007.
This page intentionally left blank
 Chronology

Eighteenth Century
1756 Great Britain promulgates its Rule of 1756.
1775–1883 Revolutionary War between the United States and Great
Britain.
1776 The Continental Congress develops the Plan of 1776.
1778 Benjamin Franklin negotiates a Treaty of Alliance with France.
1783 The Treaty of Paris between the United States and Great
Britain ends the Revolutionary War.
1792 Captain Robert Gray establishes the first of many U.S. Oregon
claims.
1793 George Washington issues his Proclamation of Neutrality.
1794 John Jay’s Treaty is signed with Great Britain.
1795 Thomas Pinckney’s Treaty is signed with Spain.
1796 George Washington’s Farewell Address urges continued
neutrality.
1797 The XYZ Affair raises tensions between the United States and
France.
1798–1800 Quasi-War between the United States and France.

Nineteenth Century
1803 Thomas Jefferson arranges the purchase of Louisiana.
1807–1809 Thomas Jefferson imposes the Embargo Act on all shipping to
and from the United States.

363
364 | Chronology

1810 War Hawks elected to Congress call for war against Great
Britain.
1811 The No-Transfer Doctrine regarding Florida sets a precedent
for the Monroe Doctrine.
1812–1814 War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain.
1814 The Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812 on the principle of
uti possedetus.
1819 John Quincy Adams negotiates the Transcontinental Treaty,
in which Spain cedes Florida.
1823 James Monroe’s Doctrine asserts U.S. preeminence in the
Western Hemisphere.
1836 Texas Revolution.
1841 Oregon fever sweeps the United States.
1842 The Webster-Ashburton Treaty resolves boundary issues
between the United States and Canada.
1844 Caleb Cushing signs a trade treaty that opens the China
market to Americans.
John Calhoun defends slavery in the Pakenham Letter.
1845 John Tyler signs a congressional joint resolution admitting
Texas to the United States.
James Polk’s Corollary reaffirms the Monroe Doctrine.
John O’Sullivan coins the phrase “manifest destiny”.
1846–1848 Mexican War between the United States and Mexico.
1846 James Wilmot’s Proviso calls for the exclusion of slavery from
new territories.
1854 Matthew Calbraith Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa opening
Japan to outside contact.
American diplomats in Europe issue the Ostend Manifesto
asserting a U.S. claim to Cuba.
1861–1865 Civil War between the United States and the Confederacy.
1861 Great Britain and France extend recognition as a belligerent
to the Confederacy.
1867 William Seward purchases Alaska from Russia.
1871–1872 The United States and Great Britain resolve the Alabama
Claims through international arbitration.
1889 James Blaine promotes Pan-Americanism.
1893 American planters revolt in Hawaii, setting the stage for U.S.
annexation in 1898.
 Chronology | 365

1895 Richard Olney’s Corollary restates and strengthens the

Monroe Doctrine.
1895–1898 Cuban Revolution against Spain.
1898 Spanish-American-Cuban War.
Anti-imperialists oppose U.S. colonization.
1899 John Hay promulgates the Open Door Policy for China.

Twentieth Century
1900 The Boxer Rebellion sweeps China.
1901 Orville Platt’s Amendment dictates Cuba’s relationship to the
United States.
1903 Panama revolts from Colombia and signs a canal treaty with
the United States.
1904 Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine is
based on his big stick policy.
1905 The Algeciras Conference in Spain determines the
international status of Morocco.
Theodore Roosevelt’s mediation helps end the Russo-Japanese
War.
1909 The United States proposes a neutralization scheme to limit
foreign influence in China.
1912 William Howard Taft extends Dollar Diplomacy to Latin
America.
1914–1918 The Great War, later called World War I.
1914–1917 The United States declares neutrality regarding the war in
Europe.
1916–1917 John Pershing leads the U.S. Punitive Expedition in Mexico.
1917 Germany begins waging unrestricted submarine warfare
(January).
The Russian Revolution overthrows the czarist government
(March).
The United States enters World War I (April).
The United States institutes a non-recognition policy regarding
the Soviet government (October).
1917–1918 John Pershing leads the American Expeditionary Force in
France.
1918 Woodrow Wilson announces his Fourteen Points plan for a
postwar peace settlement.
366 | Chronology

1918 U.S. armed forces undertake a Siberian expedition in the

USSR.
1919 The U.S. Senate fails to ratify the Versailles Treaty creating the
League of Nations.
1919–1920 An anticommunist Red Scare sweeps the United States.
1927 The Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed to outlaw war.
1930s The United States retreats into isolation from international
affairs.
Franklin Roosevelt promulgates the Good Neighbor Policy for
Latin America.
1932 Henry Stimson’s Doctrine refuses to recognize Japan’s
expansion in China.
1937 Franklin Roosevelt unsuccessfully proposes a quarantine of
aggressive nations.
Japan invades China, opening the first phase of World War II.
1939–1945 World War II expands to Europe, Africa, and Asia.
1940 Franklin Roosevelt’s Charlottesville Address promises material
support to allied war efforts.
1941 Franklin Roosevelt implements the Lend-Lease program to aid
Allied war efforts.
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill issue the Atlantic
Charter.
Japan attacks the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.
The United States declares war on Japan, Germany, and Italy.
1941–1945 The Grand Alliance of the United States, the USSR, and Great
Britain fights fascism.
1942 Franklin Roosevelt proposes his Four Policemen plan for the
postwar world.
1944 The United States and Great Britain establish a second front,
with a cross-channel invasion of France.
1945 Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin meet at the Yalta Conference.
Allied leaders sign the Declaration on Liberated Europe at the
Yalta Conference.
The United States engages in atomic diplomacy, with the
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The United Nations is established.
1947–1989 Cold War between the United States and the USSR.
1947 George Kennan advocates containment of the USSR.
 Chronology | 367

1947 Harry Truman’s Doctrine justifies aiding peoples fighting

against communism.
1948 George Marshall’s Plan extends economic and reconstruction
aid to Europe.
The United States recognizes the independence of Israel.
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is signed
in Geneva.
1948–1949 The United States, Great Britain, and France carry out the
Berlin Airlift.
1949 The United States and 11 other nations form the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
1949–1954 The United States is swept by a Red Scare again.
1950 The National Security Council develops the NSC-68 plan for
fighting the Cold War.
1950–1953 The Korean War, a limited war, ends with restoration of prewar
boundaries.
1950s Eisenhower’s administration unsuccessfully promotes the
liberation of Eastern Europe.
1956 John Foster Dulles defines brinkmanship.
1957 The Soviet Union orbits Sputnik.
1960 A U-2 spy plane from the United States is shot down over the
over the USSR.
1961 Central Intelligence Agency–backed Cuban exiles engage in
the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.
1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis ends when the USSR withdraws its
nuclear weapons from Cuba.
1964 The Tonkin Gulf Resolution authorizes escalation of U.S.
participation in the Vietnam War.
1964–1973 The United States is engaged in direct combat in the Vietnam
War.
1967 UN Resolution 242 calls for Israel to exchange occupied land
for peace.
1968 North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive convinces the United States to
seek a negotiated settlement.
1969 Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger promulgate a policy of
détente.
1970 U.S. troops participate in an incursion into Cambodia.
1973–1976 Henry Kissinger engages in shuttle diplomacy in pursuit of
Middle East peace.
368 | Chronology

1979–1980 The Iranian Hostage Crisis results from the invasion of the
U.S. Embassy in Teheran.
1984 Ronald Reagan’s administration becomes entangled in the
Iran-Contra affair.
1991 George H. W. Bush conducts the Gulf War to free Kuwait from
Iraqi occupation.

Twenty-first Century
2001 George W. Bush announces a war on terror as the United
States invades Afghanistan.
2003 The George W. Bush Doctrine justifies a preemptive invasion of
Iraq.
 Index

Note: Italics indicate illustrations. An italicized d following a page number indicates

a document.

Aberdeen, Lord, 113 Hawaii and, 152

Abu Ghraib, 360 Jay’s Treaty and, 14
Acheson, Dean, 288, 299, 322, 327, New Manifest Destiny and, 164
336, 354–355 trade and, 21
Act of Havana, 32 Aguinaldo, Emilio, 136–137, 187
Adams, Charles Francis, 73, 74, 106, Al Qaeda, 81, 291, 353, 354
108, 114–115 Alabama, C.S.S., 70, 73–75, 108, 109,
Adams, John 115, 155
basics, 37–38, 60 Alamo, 111
France and, 2, 5, 28, 39, 40, 41 Alaska, 22, 70, 71–73, 125, 184–185,
recognition and, 44 230
Treaty of Paris and, 51 Albany Regency, 127
See also XYZ Affair Alberstone, Lord, 185
Adams, John Quincy Aldrich, Nelson, 180
expansionism, 22, 103, 111 Alexander I, Czar, 16, 71
Monroe Doctrine and, 22, 23–24 Alexander II, Czar, 71, 72
separation of the spheres and, 16, 90 Algeciras Conference, 133–134, 170,
Treaties, 7, 31, 48, 49, 50, 56 227
Adams, Samuel, 29 Alien and Sedition Act, 41
Adee, Alvey, 191 Allenby, George, 219
Afghanistan, 81, 291, 353 Allende, Salvador, 357
Africa, 227, 257, 301, 333 Alliances
Agriculture basics, 3–6
embargoes and, 9 France, with, 1, 5–6, 39, 41, 42

369
370 | Index
Alliances (continued)
Great War and, 204, 228–229
Spain with France, 4. See also
Geneva Accords; Grand
Alliance; North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO); Treaty
of Alliance
Alperowitz, Gar, 210
Alsace and Lorraine, 217, 218, 226
Amador, Manuel, 172
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipo-
tentiary, 38
America First, 239
American Expeditionary Force, 201,
203–205, 277, 358
American Federation of Labor, 255
“American Progress” (Gast), 89
Anglo-French Wars, 77
Anglophobia, 184, 192
Annexations, 30, 31, 128, 265. See also
specific territories
Antarctica, 67, 129
Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM), 300
Anti-Com-Intern Pact, 250
Antietam, Battle of, 108
Anti-imperialism, 134–137, 152, 153,
187. See also Imperialism
Arabic (ship), 267
Arab-Israeli conflict, 301
Arabs, 315–316, 318, 337, 338. See
also Land For Peace
Arbitration, 70, 73–75, 185, 193, 236
Argentina, 198, 222
Armed neutrality, 14, 36
Aroostook War, 113
Arthur, Chester A., 174, 197
Ashburton, Lord, 100, 113–114. See
also Webster-Ashburton Treaty
Asian trade, 115, 116. See also specific
countries
Astor, John Jacob, 69, 99, 115–116
Aswan dams, 316–317, 317
Atlantic Charter, 202, 205–208, 207d,
223
Atlantic Wall, 257
Atomic Diplomacy, 203, 208–211, 278,
284, 287, 317, 323, 329, 331
Eisenhower and, 344
Soviet response, 339
Vietnam and, 341
See also Massive Retaliation
Austin, Moses and Stephen, 110–111
Austria, 15, 16, 22, 134, 219, 227, 228,
284, 320
Austro-Hungarian Empire, 218, 226
Axis powers (WWII), 32, 241
Babcock, Orville, 109, 149
Baez, Bonaventure, 109
Bagot, George, 100
Balance of Power, 158, 170, 226, 299
Balfour Declaration, 314
Balkans, 218, 227
Baltic republics, 296
Barbados, 188
Barbary Wars, 149
Baruch, Bernard, 204
Batista y Zaldívar, Fulgencio, 221, 281,
282
Battle of Britain, 257
Battle of the Bulge, 259
Bay of Pigs, 280, 281–283, 359
Bayard, James A., 7, 56, 167
Bayard, Thomas F., 6, 150
Beard, Charles, 245
Beauregard, P. T. G., 80
Begin, Menachem, 319, 338
Beirut, 352
Belgium, 163, 218, 219, 228
Belize, 31
Ben-Gurion, David, 314
Berlin, 269, 279, 283–286
Berlin Wall, 340
Bernadotte, Folke, 315–316
Bickley, George W. L., 78
Biddle, James, 99
Bidlack, Benjamin A., 116, 171
Big Stick Diplomacy, 132, 137–141
Bin Laden, Osama, 353–354
Birney, James G., 86, 102

Von Bismarck, Otto, 150, 226
Bizonia, 284
Blaine, James Gillespie, 131, 171, 173,
174–175, 191–192, 197
Blockades, 74, 106, 107–108, 115, 138,
186, 187, 243, 266. See also
Paper Blockade
Blount, James H., 153, 197
Boers, 184
Boland Amendment, 313d
Bolsheviks, 247, 255, 260
Bonaparte, Joseph, 41
Bonaparte, Napoléon, 9, 15, 18, 32, 33,
41
Borah, William, 233
Borders. See Boundaries, U.S.
Bosnia, 227
Boston Tea Party, 29
Boundaries, U.S.
Canada and, 66, 96, 113
Cold War, 321
embargoes and, 9–10
Mexican War and, 92, 94, 112
Scott and, 123
Treaties and, 50, 51, 69, 112–114
Webster and, 129
See also Expansionism; Natural
Boundaries
Boxer Rebellion, 132, 141–143, 169,
176
Bradley, Omar, 257, 258, 323
Von Braun, Werner, 339
Brazil, 98
Brezhnev, Leonid, 299–300
Briand, Aristide, 233, 275
Bribes, 60
Bright, John, 302
Brinkmanship, 280, 286–291, 298, 356
Bryan, William Jennings, 147, 192–193,
242–243, 261
Bryan-Chamorro Agreement, 147
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 310
Buchanan, James, 105
Bullitt, Charles E., 248
Bullock, John D., 73, 155
Index | 371
Bulwer, Henry, 119. See also Clayton-
Bulwer Treaty
Bunau-Varilla, Philippe, 172, 173
Bunche, Ralph, 316, 337
Burlingame, Anson, 116–117
Burr, Aaron, 68, 95
Bush, George H. W., 281, 291, 302–303,
306, 307. See also Gulf War
Bush, George W., 160, 293, 309, 361
first shot tradition and, 81
See also Bush Doctrine; War on Terror
Bush Doctrine, 281, 291–294
Butler, Anthony, 111
Calhoun, John Caldwell, 43, 85–86,
117–118
California, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 121
Cambodia, 280, 294–296, 343, 357
Camp David Accords, 280, 319, 338
Canada
basics, 3, 41, 52
boundaries and, 55, 66, 96, 98, 113,
127
disputes with, 69, 184–185, 194
fishing arbitration and, 74
free trade and, 303
Manifest Destiny and, 90, 103
NAFTA and, 302, 303, 306
NATO and, 328
war hawks and, 59
See also individual leaders
Canals, 118–119, 132, 138, 147, 230,
321. See also Panama Canal
Canning, George, 16, 22, 24, 63, 66,
100
Capitalism, 254
Cárdenas, Lázaro, 222
Career officers, 7
Caribbean
basics, 71
Dollar Diplomacy and, 132, 147
Gunboat Diplomacy and, 151
Monroe Doctrine and, 24
no-transfer principle and, 31–32
Panama Canal and, 138
372 | Index
Caribbean (continued)
Rule of 1756 and, 47, 48
Treaty of Paris and, 52
See also Sugar
Carnegie, Andrew, 136, 179
Carolina Railroad Company, 120
Carranza, Venustiano, 181, 182, 183, 222
Carson, Kit, 121
Carter, Jimmy, 301, 309, 310, 311, 312,
319
Casablanca Conference, 224–225, 259
Cash and carry, 246
Castlereagh, Lord, 15–16
Castro, Cipriano, 137, 138
Castro, Fidel, 221, 280, 281–282,
352–353
Catholicism, 111
Cazneau, William L., 109
Censorship, 156, 243
Central America
Dollar Diplomacy and, 146–147
filibustering and, 78
Iran-Contra and, 311–314
See also specific countries
Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA), 303–304
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
282, 283, 287, 312, 332. See
also U-2s
Chamberlain, Joseph, 167
Chambers, Whittaker, 335, 336
Chamorro, Emiliano, 148
Chamorro, Violeta, 314
Chargé d’affaires, 6, 191
Charlottesville Address (F. Roosevelt),
240d
Cheney, Richard, 291, 361
Chesapeake Affair, 12
Chiang Kai-shek, 225, 249, 250, 262,
271, 274, 287, 355
Chile, 174, 192, 357
China
basics, 132
Burlingame and, 116
Civil War and, 77
Cushing and, 119
diplomats and, 7
Dollar Diplomacy and, 147–148
France and, 25, 76, 77, 162, 168
Gadsden and, 120
Germany and, 142, 143, 162
Great Britain and, 25, 76, 77, 142,
143, 162, 168, 169
Japan and, 142, 161, 162, 163, 169,
202, 211, 249, 250, 252–253,
260, 261–262
Kellogg-Briand Pact and, 233–234
Lend-Lease and, 241
McKinley, William and, 142, 143,
168
non-recognition and, 248–249
recognition and, 46
Red Scares and, 336
revolutions, 162
F. Roosevelt and, 214, 225, 246, 254
Russia and, 142, 143, 161, 163, 169,
248, 271
Russo-Japanese War and, 156–158
Shufeldt and, 196
Soviet Union and, 299
sugar and, 189
tariffs and, 76
trade and, 25, 70, 75–77, 274, 303,
304
United Nations and, 263, 299
Wilson, Woodrow and, 162–163. See
also Boxer Rebellion; Nation-
alist China; Neutralization;
Open Door Policy; People’s
Republic of China; individual
leaders
China Incident, 250, 252
Chinese Revolution (1911), 162
Christian Social Darwinism, 163–164
Christians, 315
Chronology, 363
Churchill, Winston, 202, 224, 257, 347.
See also Atlantic Charter;
Grand Alliance; Yalta
Conference
 Index | 373

Civil War F. Roosevelt and, 207, 253

basics, 131, 163 United Nations and, 262, 263, 270
China and, 77 See also North Atlantic Treaty Orga-
consequences of, 78, 97, 163, 164, 179 nization (NATO)
First Shot Tradition and, 70 Colombia (New Granada), 22, 116, 171,
no-transfer principle and, 31 172–173
recognition and, 45 Colonialism
Russia and, 71–72 British, 167, 224, 227, 237, 315
slavery and, 96–97 Fourteen Points and, 218–219
trade and, 25, 37, 179 Japanese, 229–230, 261
See also Confederacy; Recognition League of Nations and, 237
as a Belligerent; individual Marshall Plan and, 325
leaders mission, democratic, and, 160
Clarendon, Lord, 73 Root and, 196
Clark, Clifford, 341–342 sugar and, 188
Clark, George, 99 U.S., 230
Clay, Henry See also Expansionism; Imperialism;
basics, 7 Open Door Policy
Cuba and, 103 Colorado, 189
Oregon fever and, 102 Comecon, 325
tariffs and, 117 Cominform, 325
Texas and, 86 Commerce. See Trade
treaties, 50, 56 Committee of Secret Correspondence,
Tyler and, 85 37, 62
War of 1812 and, 59 Committee to Defend America by Aid-
Clay, Lucius, 284 ing the Allies, 239
Clayton, John Middleton, 118–119, 119 Common Market, 302
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 54, 116, 118d, Communism
171 basics, 201, 202, 280, 281, 327
Cleveland, Grover Central American, 312
Cuba and, 145 Europe and, 324, 325, 327, 328, 329
expansionism and, 134, 135, 136, Granada and, 352
153, 197 Greek/Turkish, 347, 348, 349
Great Britain and, 165, 167 Korea and, 322
tariffs and, 180, 190 Middle East and, 309, 310, 316
Clinton, Bill, 303 Republican Party and, 319, 326, 336
Coahuila-Texas, 111 Yalta Conference and, 269, 271
Coal, 150 See also Bay of Pigs; Communist
Cobden, Richard, 302 International (Comintern);
Coercive Acts, 29–30 Containment; McCarthy,
Collective security Eugene; Red Scares; individual
Bush Doctrine and, 291 leaders; specific communist
Hull and, 214, 274 countries
League of Nations and, 214, 220, Communist International (Comintern),
232, 236 247, 248, 255
374 | Index
Concert of Europe, 15, 16, 31
Confederacy, 70, 73, 87, 88, 106–109,
124, 125. See also Civil War;
CSS Alabama; King Cotton
Diplomacy; individual leaders
Conference for European Economic
Cooperation, 324
Conger, Edwin H., 142, 142–143
Congress of Vienna, 15, 226, 299
Conquest of territory, 55–57
Conscription, military, 203–204, 239,
295, 343
Consensus, 303
Constitution, U.S., 19, 42
Constitutional Convention, 62
Consuls-general, 7, 70, 75, 84,
120–121, 122, 150, 153, 161,
162, 196
Containment, 279, 296–298, 319, 325,
343
Contras, 312–313
Coolidge, Calvin, 220, 222, 233, 237,
256
Co-Prosperity Sphere of Interest in
Greater East Asia, 250
Coral Sea, 230
Costa Rica, 313
Cotton, 112. See also King Cotton
Diplomacy
Crimean War, 226
Cromwell, William Nelson, 172,
172–173, 173
CSS Alabama, 70, 73–75, 108, 109,
115, 155
Cuba
Atomic Diplomacy and, 287–288
Cold War and, 280
communism and, 327
expansionism and, 164
filibustering and, 78
Gunboat Diplomacy and, 150–151
non-recognition and, 249
Olney and, 195
Roosevelt, F. and, 221
Roosevelt, T. and, 139
Root and, 195
Soviets and, 340
sugar and, 188, 190
tariffs and, 180
Teller Amendment and, 197
U-2s and, 351
Cuban Missile Crisis, 283, 287–288,
289d–290d, 349, 351, 359
Cuban Rebellion, 30, 78, 143–146, 154
Cushing, Caleb, 25, 70, 76, 119–120,
168
Customs services, 139, 147, 178
Cyprus, 331
Czechoslovakia, 219, 260, 319, 325,
335
Danish West Indies, 31
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 353
Davie, William R., 41
Davis, Jefferson, 80
Dawes Plan, 273, 274, 324
D-day, 225
De facto governments, 45. See also spe-
cific governments
De jure governments, 45
Deane, Silas, 3, 6, 37, 61
Debs, Eugene, 195, 255
Declaration on Liberated Europe, 208,
269, 270d, 297, 347
Delcassé, Théophile, 133
Democratic Party
basics, 60
expansionism and, 72
Hawaii and, 154
League of Nations and, 237
neutrality and, 242
platform of 1844, 102d
tariffs and, 179, 180, 190
Texas and, 86
Van Buren and, 127, 128
W. Wilson and, 220
See also individual Democrats
Democratic Republicans, 60
Denmark, 14
Department of Defense, 332
 Index | 375

Depressions, economic, 90, 101, 127, World War II and, 257, 258, 259
135, 144, 165, 189–190. See See also Massive Retaliation
also Great Depression Ellsworth, Oliver, 41
Détente, 280, 298–302, 357 Embargo Act (1807), 9d
Dewey, George, 151, 154, 186, 193–194 Embargoes
Díaz, Adolfo, 147 basics, 2, 7–11, 28–29, 30
Díaz, Porfiro, 146, 181 cotton, 88
Dictators, 221 Cuba and, 288
Dingley Tariff Act, 180 Ethiopia and, 238, 245
Diplomats, 6–7. See also Lend-Lease and, 239
Plenipotentiaries neutrality and, 252, 253
Disarmament, 202, 211–214, 218, 220 sugar, 190
Dole, Sanford, 153 Embassies, 6
Dollar Diplomacy, 132, 146–149, 161, Emperasarios, 111
164 Empire. See Anti-Imperialism; Imperi-
Dominican Republic, 109, 139, 147, alism
178, 220, 221 Empress of China (ship), 168
Domino Theory, 344 England. See Great Britain
Dulles, Allen, 349 Entente Cordiale, 227
Dulles, John Foster, 279, 286–287, 317, Entente Powers, 216, 217, 243. See also
319, 320, 331. See also specific countries
Massive Retaliation Era of Good Feelings, 59
Dumbarton Oaks meeting, 263 Erlanger, Emile, 88
Dunkirk, 257 Estonia, 219, 296
Dutch Indonesia, 250 Ethiopia, 238, 252–253
Duties (on goods), 47–48 European Defense Community (EDC),
Duvalier, François (“Papa Doc”), 221 331
European Relief Program. See Marshall
East Germany, 320 Plan
Eastern Europe, 280, 296–297, European Union (EU), 302
319–321, 324, 332. See also Evolution, human, 164
Declaration on Liberated Expansion and Civil War, 1830–1880,
Europe; specific countries 69
Eastern front, 223 Expansionism
Egypt, 315, 316–317, 319, 338. See American, 30–31
also individual leaders Anti-imperialism and, 137
Eisenhower, Dwight D. Astor and, 115
Cuba and, 282 Blaine and, 173
Korea and, 287, 323 Calhoun and, 117
McCarthy and, 337 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and, 119
NATO and, 329 Hawaii and, 151–152
Soviet Union and, 279, 285, 298, Iraqi, 306
320 Japanese, 162
tariffs and, 305 Mexican War and, 94
Vietnam and, 344 natural boundaries and, 96
376 | Index
Expansionism (continued)
New Manifest Destiny and, 163
Oregon fever and, 102
Polk and, 103
ratification and, 43
Seward and, 125
Soviet, 210, 282, 296–298, 319
Soviet Union and, 223
Texas and, 86–87
Treaty of Paris and, 175–176
See also Annexations; Colonialism;
Imperialism; Jingoism;
Manifest Destiny; Monroe
Doctrine; New Manifest
Destiny; specific countries and
territories
Extradition, 114
Extraterritoriality, 76
Fabens, J. W., 109, 110
Fall, Albert B., 248
Far East
basics, 132
Hughes and, 273
Jay’s Treaty and, 14
T. Roosevelt and, 139–140
Washington Naval Conference and,
213
Yalta Conference and, 269, 271
See also Boxer Rebellion; Russo-
Japanese War; specific
countries
Fascism, 202, 222, 223, 245, 246, 249,
252, 269, 279, 335. See also
individual leaders
Fashoda Incident, 227
Federal Republic of Germany, 284
Federalism, 90–91
Federalists
basics, 59–60, 63
embargoes and, 9
France and, 5, 40
Great Britain and, 14
neutrality and, 27
Pinckney’s Treaty and, 35
Sedition Act and, 41
XYZ Affair and, 61
54º 40’, 22, 24, 71, 100, 102, 103
Filibustering, 70, 77–79, 105, 128
Fillmore, Millard, 83, 105
Financial aid, 298. See also Lend-Lease
Finland, 219
First Continental Congress, 29, 30
First Manchurian Crisis, 248
First Neutrality Act, 245
First shot tradition
basics, 79–82
Civil War and, 70
Cuba and, 105, 146
Great War and, 244, 266, 268
Mexican War and, 92
Vietnam and, 343
World War II and, 249
Fish, Hamilton, 74, 75
Fletcher, Frank, 230
Florida, 17, 30, 31, 34, 43, 49, 59, 77,
95. See also Transcontinental
Treaty
Foch, Ferdinand, 204
Ford, Gerald, 296
Fordney-McCumber Act, 180
Foreign Enlistment Act, 108
Foreign Relations (periodical), 191, 297
Foreign Service Act (1924), 7
Formosa, 76–77, 249, 287, 355
Fort George, 99–100
49th Parallel, 71, 100, 102–103
Foster, John, 153
Four Policemen, 203, 214–215, 263
Fourteen Points, 160, 201, 202, 211,
215–220, 216–217d, 232, 236
Fox Blockade, 32
France
1776–1830, 1, 2, 3–5, 6, 8, 10
Berlin and, 284
Caribbean and, 109
China and, 25, 76, 77, 162, 168
Confederacy and, 106
cotton and, 87–88
Cuba and, 105

Eastern Europe and, 321
Egypt and, 317
expansionism, 22
Fourteen Points and, 215, 216, 218,
219
Franklin and, 37, 44
Germany and, 226, 227, 257
Great War and, 204–205, 242, 243
imperialism of, 163
Lebanon and, 352
Lend-Lease and, 241
Louisiana and, 17, 30–31
Marshall Plan and, 324, 325
Morocco and, 133–134
most-favored-nation provisions and,
25
navy, 213
no-transfer principle and, 31
Panama Canal and, 171, 173–174
paper blockade and, 32–34
Plan of 1776 and, 36
Quasi-War with France and, 39
recognition and, 45–46
Rule of 1756 and, 46, 47
Russia and, 158, 260
Spain and, 16
sugar and, 188
Texas and, 112
Transcontinental Treaty and, 49
United Nations and, 263
World War II and after, 215, 257,
269, 331, 343, 344
See also French Revolution; Neutral-
ity; Seven Years’ War; XYZ
Affair; individual leaders of
France
Franco, Francisco, 246
Franklin, Benjamin
biography, 61–63
boundaries and, 112
plenipotentiary, as, 37–38
recognition and, 44–45
treaties with France and, 3, 4, 6, 36,
51
Franz Ferdinand, 228
Index | 377
Fraser, Simon, 99
Fredonia, 111
Free deposit, right of, 35
“Free ships,” 35, 36, 48
Free Trade, 174, 179, 180, 280,
302–304
Free-Soilers, 115, 116
Frelinghuysen, Frederick T., 174
Fremont, John C., 93, 121, 126
French and Indian War, 3, 47
French Indochina, 250
French Revolution, 15, 26–27, 45
Fuchs, Klaus, 336
Fumimaro Konoye, 208, 251
Fur trade, 115
Gadsden, James, 120
Gallatin, Albert, 7, 56, 63, 100
García, Samoza, 221
Gardoqui, Diego de, 42
Garfield, James A., 173, 192
Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 226
Gast, John, 89
GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs),
26, 280, 302, 303, 304–306,
355
De Gaulle, Charles, 214, 259, 331
Gauntánamo naval base, 176, 186, 221
General Agreement on Tariffs (GATT),
26, 280, 302, 303, 304–306,
355
Genêt, Edmond, 27–28, 45, 63–64
Geneva Accords, 344
Geneva arbitration, 74
Geneva naval conference, 213
Geneva Summit, 320
Genocide, 54
Gentlemen’s Agreement, 140
German Americans, 184, 232
German Democratic Republic (GDR),
285
Germany
arbitration and, 74
atomic bomb and, 209
China and, 142, 143, 162
378 | Index

Germany (continued) Gray, Robert, 69, 99

Cuba and, 176
détente and, 301
Far East and, 250
Fourteen Points and, 218
France and, 226, 227, 257
Great Britain and, 167
Great War and, 204–205, 227, 228,
229
Gunboat Diplomacy and, 151
imperialism of, 163
Japan and, 250
League of Nations and, 238
Morocco and, 133–134
navy, 211
neutrality/trade and, 243
New Manifest Destiny and, 164
Samoa and, 150
Soviet Union and, 340
Venezuela and, 137–138
World War II and after, 256–257, 269
See also Berlin; Fascism; German
Democratic Republic (GDR);
Great War; Nazi Germany;
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; Unre-
stricted Submarine Warfare;
West Germany; World War II
Geronimo, 198
Gerry, Elbridge, 60
Gettysburg, Battle of, 108
Global warming, 44, 54
God, 69, 89, 90, 96, 102, 103, 159, 163,
164, 314. See also Religion
Gold, 95, 165
Goldwater, Barry, 341
Gomulka, Wladyslaw, 320
Good Neighbor Policy, 178, 202,
220–222, 273, 281
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 286
De Gortari, Carlos Salinas, 302–303
Grand Alliance, 202, 203, 214,
222–226, 248. See also Decla-
ration on Liberated Europe;
Yalta Conference
Grant, Ulysses, 70–71, 109, 149
Great Britain, 106–109
1776–1830, 1, 2, 3–5, 8, 10–11, 57
Berlin and, 284
Blaine and, 192
boundaries and, 95, 113
G.W. Bush and, 292
canals and, 118–119
China and, 25, 76, 77, 142, 143, 162,
168, 169
Concert of Europe and, 15
Confederacy and, 106
cotton and, 87–88
Cuba and, 105, 176
Eastern Europe and, 321
Egypt and, 317
Fourteen Points and, 215–216,
218–219
Franklin and, 38, 44, 62
free trade and, 302
Great War and, 204–205, 228–229,
242, 243
Gunboat Diplomacy and, 150, 151
imperialism of, 163
impressment by, 11–13
Japan and, 158
Lend-Lease and, 239, 241
Marshall Plan and, 324
mercantilism and, 20
Middle East and, 133–134, 237, 309,
315, 352
navy, 213, 257
New Manifest Destiny and, 164
Oregon and, 98–101, 102
Panama and, 171
paper blockade and, 32–34
Pinckney’s Treaty and, 34
Plan of 1776 and, 35, 36
protectionism and, 178
recognition and, 44, 45
Rule of 1756 and, 46–48
Russia and, 260
sugar and, 188
tariffs and, 179
Texas and, 85, 112

Transcontinental Treaty and, 49
treaties and, 51–52
Truman Doctrine and, 347
20th century, in, 183
United Nations and, 263
Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and,
266–268
Van Buren and, 127
Venezuela and, 138
Vietnam and, 343
War on Terror and, 353
West Germany and, 331
World War II and, 202, 205–206
See also Arbitration; Grand Alliance;
Jay’s Treaty; Neutrality;
Nonimportation;
Rapprochement; Seven Years’
War; War of 1812; individual
leaders
Great Depression, 25–26, 180, 221,
244, 249, 261, 304, 334
Great War
anti-imperialism and, 137
basics, 132, 201, 203–205, 226–229
democratic mission and, 160
first shot tradition and, 81
isolationism and, 232
Nye committee and, 245
rapprochement and, 183, 185
Russia and, 247
tariffs and, 180
U.S. Army and, 203–205
See also Siberian Expedition; Unre-
stricted Submarine Warfare;
individual leaders
Greece, 297, 328, 331, 346, 347, 348, 349
Grenada, 352
Gresham, Walter Q., 195
Guadalcanal, 230
Guam, 136, 187, 230
Guatemala, 282
Guevara, Ché, 282
Guianas, 31, 165
Guiteau, Arthur J., 174
Gulf War, 281, 306–309, 352
Index | 379
Gunboat Diplomacy, 131, 149–151, 159
Haig, Alexander (British), 204
Haiti, 18, 109, 147, 220, 221
Half-Breeds, 174, 192
“Halls of Montezuma” addition to U.S.
Marine Corps battle hymn, 94
Halsey, Bull, 231
Hamilton, Alexander, 14, 40, 41, 96
Hanson, Ole, 255
Harding, Warren G., 180, 212, 231,
233, 237
Harriman, Edward H., 161–162, 274
Harris, Townsend, 70, 84, 120–121
Harrison, Benjamin, 135, 136, 153, 174,
179, 192
Harrison, William Henry, 55, 57, 59
Hatch, Davis, 110
Havana, Act of, 322
Hawaii
annexation of, 134, 135, 190, 192
basics, 131, 151–154
Olney and, 195
revolution, 197
Stevens and, 197
sugar and, 188, 189–190
tariffs and, 180
Hawley-Smoot Act, 180
Hay, John Milton, 132, 142, 143,
168–169, 171, 172, 173, 185,
194–195
Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, 173
Hayes, Rutherford B., 192
Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, 171, 185
Hearst, William Randolph, 144
Henry Pu Yi, 262
Herran, Tomás, 172
Herzegovina, 227
Hickey, Frederick, 99
Hideki Tojo, 208, 251
Hippisley, Alfred, 169
Hispaniola, 7, 18, 109, 149
Hiss, Alger, 336
Hitler, Adolf, 31, 223, 238, 259, 315
HMS Blossom, 99
380 | Index
HMS Calliope, 150
HMS Prince of Wales, 206
HMS Racoon, 99
Ho Chi Minh, 301, 342, 343, 344. See
also Geneva Accords
Ho Chi Minh Trail, 294–295
Hoar, George, 136
“Holes at the poles,” 67
Hollywood, 335
Holy Alliance, 16
Honduras, 128
Hong Kong, 75
Hoover, Herbert, 180, 220, 233, 248,
262, 332
Hoover, J. Edgar, 256
Hoover Commission, 332
Hopkins, Harry, 271–272
Hostage Crisis, 280, 309–311
House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), 335
Houston, Sam, 84, 112
Huerta, Victoriano, 181
Hughes, Charles Evans, 202, 212–213,
220, 237, 272–273
Hughes, Christopher, 56
Hull, Cordell, 214–215, 221, 251, 263,
304
Human rights, 44, 54, 301
Hungary, 219, 296–297, 319, 320–321
Hussein, Saddam, 291–292, 354
I-ho Tuan, 141–142
Imperialism, 146, 160, 163, 178, 187,
197, 248, 325. See also Anti-
Imperialism
Impressment, 2, 11–13
Income tax, 180
Independence, 1
Indians (Native Americans)
British and, 57, 59
Florida and, 49
Manifest Destiny and, 90, 91
Mosquitos (tribe), 118–119
Pinckney’s Treaty and, 34, 35
Scott and, 122–123
Indochina, 250, 251, 325. See also spe-
cific countries
Industrialization, 164, 179, 254–255,
302
The Influence of Seapower on History
(Mahan), 150, 155
Intelligence agencies, 283
Intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs), 339, 340
Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles
(IRBMs), 340
International Bureau of the American
Republics, 175
International Monetary Fund, 355
Internationalism, 27, 220, 232,
235–236, 242, 305. See also
United Nations
Intolerable Acts, 30
Intolerance, 159
Iran, 151, 280, 281, 303, 306, 309. See
also Iran-Contra
Iran-Contra, 311–314
Iran-Iraq War, 314
Iraq
G. W. Bush and, 291–294, 309, 354,
360
democratic mission and, 160
first shot tradition and, 81
Great Britain and, 215–216, 219, 314
Gulf War, 281, 306–309, 352
Iran and, 311
League of Nations and, 237
United Nations and, 307, 308
Irish Americans, 184, 232
Iron Curtain, 319, 325, 347
Island hopping, 202, 229–231
Isolationism
basics, 202, 220, 231–233
Great Depression and, 244
League of Nations and, 237
Lend-Lease and, 239, 241
Lodge and, 275, 276
NAFTA/WTO and, 302
Nye and, 276
Pearl Harbor and, 249

F. Roosevelt and, 252, 253–254
Stimson and, 262
Israel, 280, 314–316, 319, 337, 338,
352. See also individual leaders
Italy
alliances, 133
expansionism and, 22
Far East and, 250
Fourteen Points and, 218
League of Nations and, 238
Lebanon and, 352
Lend-Lease and, 241
Marshall Plan and, 325
navy, 213
Venezuela and, 138
World War II and, 257–258
See also Fascism; individual leaders
Iwo Jima, 231
Jackson, Andrew, 49, 56, 84, 111, 112
Jackson State University, 295
Japan
Atlantic Charter and, 208
Atomic Diplomacy and, 209–210
Big Stick Diplomacy and, 140–141
China and, 142, 161, 162, 163, 169,
202, 249, 250, 252, 261–262
Germany and, 250
Grand Alliance and, 223, 224
Great War and, 260
Harris and, 120
Hawaii and, 154
Korea and, 196
League of Nations and, 238
navy, 211–212, 213
New Manifest Destiny and, 164
opening of, 70, 82–84
Root and, 196
Second Manchurian Crisis and, 248
Soviet Union and, 223
sugar and, 189
Vietnam and, 343
World War II and after, 202–203, 271
See also Harris, Townsend; Island
Hopping; Pearl Harbor; Perry,
Index | 381
Matthew Calbraith; Quarantine
Speech; Russo-Japanese War
Jay, John, 20, 37–38, 42, 51, 64–65
Jay’s Treaty, 13–15, 21, 34, 39, 42–43,
47, 52, 60
Jefferson, Thomas
embargoes and, 2, 8, 10, 12, 30
expansionism and, 31, 35, 43
France and, 38
Inaugural Address, 137
isolationism and, 232
Louisiana and, 18, 19, 31
natural boundaries and, 96
neutrality and, 28
paper blockade and, 33
politics and, 60
Quasi-War with France and, 40, 41
See also Louisiana; Louisiana
Purchase
Jerusalem, 315
Jews, 315. See also Israel
Jingoism, 131, 144, 154–156, 188,
275
Johnson, Lyndon, 81, 160, 295, 341,
342, 344–346. See also Tet
Johnson, Reverdy, 73
Johnson-Clarendon Convention, 73
Joint Resolutions, 84–87, 154
Jordan, 315, 318, 338
Kalakaua, King, 152, 153
Kamikaze tactics, 231
Kampuchea, 296
Karzai, Hamid, 354
Kearny, Stephen Watts, 93, 121–122,
126
Kellogg, Frank B., 202, 233, 274–275
Kellogg-Briand Pact, 202, 233–235,
234d, 275
Kennan, George F., 297, 333
Kennedy, John F.
Berlin and, 286
Cuba and, 280, 281, 282, 288, 355
massive retaliation and, 327
Sputnik and, 340
382 | Index

Kennedy, John F. (continued) Dollar Diplomacy and, 146

trade and, 305 1880–1914, 131
U-2s and, 351 expansionism and, 22, 164
Vietnam and, 344 filibustering and, 78
Kennedy, Robert F., 288, 341, 342 France and, 24
Kennedy Round, 305–306 Hughes and, 273
Kent State University, 295 legitimacy and, 16
Kerenski, Alexander, 247 Monroe Doctrine and, 21
Kettler, Baron von, 142 recognition and, 45
Khmer Rouge, 295, 296 Root and, 196
Khomeini, Ruhollah, 310, 311 See also Good Neighbor Policy; Platt
Khrushchev, Nikita, 282, 285, 287, 288, Amendment; specific countries
320, 340, 351 Lattimore, Owen, 336
Kim Il-Song, 321 Latvia, 219, 296
King Cotton Diplomacy, 70, 87–88, 107 Laurens, Henry, 51
Kissinger, Henry (Heinz Alfred), 280, Lawrence, T. E., 219
295, 298–299, 301, 337, 338, Le Duc Tho, 295, 301, 357
356–358 League of Nations
Knox, Philander C., 147–148, 162 basics, 137, 201, 202, 215, 232,
Knox-Castrillo Convention, 147 234–237, 275–276
Kolchak, Alexander, 260 enforcement of, 218, 219–220, 236d,
Konoye, Fumimaro, 208, 251 262, 314
Korea See also Fourteen Points
Acheson and, 355 Lebanon, 216
Japan and, 161, 261 Lee, Arthur, 3, 6, 37
massive retaliation and, 326 Legations, 6, 7
NSC-68 and, 333 Legitimacy, 2–3, 15–17, 25
Russia and, 156 Lend-Lease, 202, 206, 223, 238–242,
Shufeldt and, 196 240d, 272
See also Korean War Lenin, Nicolai, 247
Korean War, 210, 271, 279, 287, De Lessups, Ferdinand, 171
321–323 Levinson, Salmon, 233
Kosovo, 332 Lewis, Meriwether, 99
Kurds, 291, 293 Liberation of Eastern Europe, 319–321
Kuwait, 306, 307, 308, 352 Liberia, 122
Liberty Party, 86
Bin Laden, Osama, 353–354 Liliuokalani, Queen, 150, 153
Laird rams, 108, 115 Limited War (Korea), 321–323
Land for Peace, 280, 316–319, 338 Lincoln, Abraham, 70, 79–80, 124,
Lansing-Ishii Agreement, 211 129–130, 194. See also Civil
Laos, 294, 295 War
Latin America Lithuania, 219, 296
Big Stick Diplomacy and, 137, 139 Litvinov, Maxim, 248
Blaine and, 192 Livingston, Robert, 19, 38, 65–66
containment and, 333 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 155, 275–276
 Index | 383

Logan, George, 66 Oregon fever and, 101–102

Logan Act, 66 Santo Domingo and, 109
De Lôme, Enrique Dupuy, 145 Mao Zedong, 248–249, 271, 298, 299,
Lon Nol, 294 300, 322, 327, 333, 335
London naval conference, 213 Maps, 112–113
Long Telegram, 297 Marbois, Barbé, 19
López, Narciso, 78, 105 Marcy, William, 105
Louisiana, 17–19, 30, 34, 35, 68, 189 Marshall, George C., 336, 347, 355,
Louisiana Purchase, 2, 35, 38, 43, 66, 358–359. See also Marshall
84 Plan (European Relief
Ludendorff, Eric, 204 Program)
Lusitania, 193, 245, 267 Marshall, Humphrey, 76
Lytton, Lord, 238, 262 Marshall, John, 60
Marshall Plan (European Relief
MacArthur, Douglas, 209, 230–231, Program)
321, 322–323, 358 basics, 149, 279, 284, 296, 297–298,
Machado, Gerardo, 221 323–326, 347
Macon’s Bill Number 2, 10, 33 Eastern Europe and, 319
Madero, Francisco, 181 Vietnam and, 344
Madison, James Martí, José, 78, 144
basics, 2 Marx, Karl, 254–255
embargoes and, 10–11 Mason, James M., 106–107
expansionism and, 31 Mason, John Y., 105
filibustering and, 77 Massachusetts, 29, 30, 114, 159
Florida and, 49 Massive retaliation, 326–328
impressment and, 12 Mathews, George, 77
Oregon Claims and, 99 Matsu and Quemoy, 326
paper blockade and, 33 Maximilian, 16, 17
party of, 60 Mayaguez, 296
Quasi-War with France and, 40 Mayo, Henry T., 181, 182
War Message to Congress, 58d McCarthy, Eugene, 342
See also War of 1812 McCarthy, Joe, 327, 334–337, 356, 358
Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 150, 155 McKinley, William
Maine, 113, 114, 129 China and, 142, 143, 168
Malaria, 176 Cuba and, 145, 146, 175, 176, 185
Manchukuo, 261, 262 first shot tradition and, 80–81
Manhattan Island, 115 Hawaii and, 135, 153
Manhattan Project, 209 jingoism and, 156
Manifest Destiny Philippines and, 134
Alaska and, 71 Spain and, 78
basics, 69, 89–91 tariffs and, 144, 152, 153, 179–180,
Cuba and, 103–104 189, 190
democratic mission and, 160 McKinley Tariff Act, 144, 152,
filibustering and, 78 179–180, 190
natural boundaries and, 95 McLane, Robert, 76
384 | Index
McNamara, Robert Strange, 288, 341,
358–359
Mediation (Punitive Expedition), 182
Mediation (Russo-Japanese War),
156–159
Mercantilism, 1, 19–21, 47
Mexican Revolution, 78, 141, 151, 181
Mexican War, 38, 70, 79, 87, 91–95,
121, 123, 126
Mexico
basics, 16–17
Dollar Diplomacy and, 132
expansionism and, 22
filibustering and, 78
free trade and, 303
Good Neighbor Policy and, 221–222
Manifest Destiny and, 90, 91
Monroe Doctrine and, 24
no-transfer principle and, 31
recognition and, 46
T. Roosevelt and, 146
Slidell and, 125
Texas and, 110
Walker and, 128
Wilkinson and, 68, 69
W. Wilson and, 132, 247
See also Mexican Revolution; Mexi-
can War; Punitive Expedition;
individual leaders
Middle East, 301, 317, 337. See also
specific countries
Midway Island, 72, 230
Ministers, 6
Minnesota, 114
Mission, democratic, 159–161,
244, 247, 297. See also Mani-
fest Destiny; New Manifest
Destiny; Regime change
Missionaries, 76, 82, 101, 152
Mississippi River, 34, 35
independent nation and, 95–96
Mobile Act, 49
Molasses, 188
Molasses Act, 189
Molotov, Vyacheslav, 265, 320, 324
Monroe, James, 18, 38, 45, 49
Monroe Doctrine
anti-imperialism and, 137
basics, 3, 16, 21–24, 23d, 66
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and, 119
corollaries, 96–97d, 132, 139, 140d,
164, 165–168, 195
Cuba and, 144
democratic mission and, 159
Great Britain and, 184
isolationism and, 232
Manifest Destiny and, 90
no-transfer principle and, 30, 31
Roosevelt Corollary to, 220
Russia and, 71
Monroe-Pinckney Treaty, 100
Montgomery, Bernard, 257, 259
Morgan, J. P., 173, 243
Morocco, 133, 170, 227, 257
Morrow, Dwight, 222
Morse, Samuel F. B., 90
Moscow Summit, 300
Most Favored Nation, 1, 25–28, 84,
180, 305
Mukden Incident, 261
Mulroney, Brian, 302–303
Multiple Independently Targeted Reen-
try Vehicles (MIRVs), 301
Murray, William Vans, 41
Muslims, 133, 315
Mussolini, Benito, 250, 258
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD),
327, 359
Mutual Defense Assistance Bill, 329
NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement), 302, 303, 306
Nagy, Imre, 320
Nairobi, Kenya, 353
Napoléon III, 88, 106, 108, 125, 226
Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 316, 317, 318
National Aeronautics and Space Admin-
istration (NASA), 340
National Defense Education Act,
339–340

National Liberation Front (Vietnam),
344
National Security Act of 1947, 332
National Security Council, 279,
332–334
Nationalist China, 249, 250, 287, 299,
322, 352, 355
Native Americans. See Indians (Native
Americans)
NATO. See North American Free Trade
Agreement
Natural Boundaries, 95–98. See also
Boundaries, U.S.; Manifest
Destiny
Navigation Acts, 20
Nazi Germany, 30, 31–32, 315. See also
Hitler, Adolf
Netherlands, 37, 44, 112, 188
Neutrality
Alabama claims and, 73
basics, 26–28, 266
Cambodia and, 294
China Incident and, 252
Cold War and, 298
filibustering and, 77, 78
first shot tradition and, 81
French Revolution and, 1–2
Russo-Japanese War and, 158
1776–1830, 8
trade and, 35, 36, 48
Walker and, 128
war and, 46–48
World War II and, 233
Neutrality (1914–1917)
basics, 28, 193, 201, 229, 242–244
W. Wilson and, 134, 203, 204, 247
Neutrality Acts, 202, 238, 241,
244–246, 276
Neutrality Proclamation, 4, 26, 27d, 39
Neutralization, 132, 161–163
New Deal, 244, 272, 276, 334
New Granada (Colombia), 22, 116, 171,
172–173
New Manifest Destiny, 131, 134,
163–165
Index | 385
New Mexico
Gadsden Purchase and, 120
Manifest Destiny and, 89, 91
Mexican War and, 70, 92, 93, 94, 96
Villa and, 183
New Orleans, 17, 18, 35, 38, 55, 56, 193
New York Journal, 144
New York World, 144, 145
Ngo Dinh Diem, 344
Nguyen Van Thieu, 341, 357
Nicaragua, 78, 119, 128, 132, 147,
171–172, 178, 221, 312–314
Nicholas II, 228
Nicolay, John, 194
Nimitz, Chester, 230
9/11 attacks, 353, 354, 360
Nine-Power Treaty, 250
Nitze, Paul, 333
Nixon, Richard, 298–301, 336, 338,
342–343. See also Cambodia
Nixon Doctrine, 342–343
Nobel Peace Prizes, 156, 169–170, 196,
202, 234, 275, 357, 358
Nonimportation, 1, 8, 10–11, 28,
28–30
Nonintercourse Act, 10, 33
Non-recognition, 246–249, 261, 262.
See also Stimson Doctrine
Nootka Sound Convention, 98
Normalcy, 231
Normandy, 258
North, Oliver, 313
North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), 302, 303, 306
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO)
basics, 5, 54, 279, 328–332, 330d,
347, 355
Bush Doctrine and, 292
containment and, 296, 298
Eastern Europe and, 319
Poland and, 320, 331
War on Terror and, 354
No-Transfer Principle, 3, 30–32
Nouri al Maliki, 293
386 | Index
NSC-68, 279, 332–334
Nuclear weapons, 292, 308, 326, 333,
335. See also Atomic
Diplomacy
Nye, Gerald P., 242, 245, 276
Nye Committee, 245, 246, 276
Ohio, 34, 95
Oil, 215–216, 248, 306, 307, 308, 309,
315
Oil companies, 222, 252, 274
Okinawa, 231
Olney, Richard, 24, 132, 165, 184, 195
Olney Corollary, 132, 164–168,
165–167, 166d
Onís, Luis de, 48, 49, 50
Open Door Notes, 116, 132, 191, 261
Open Door Policy, 142, 158, 162, 164,
168–171, 170d, 194, 213
Operation Overlord, 258
Opium Trade, 76, 237
Opium Wars, 168
Oregon, 91, 114, 115
Oregon Claims, 63, 69, 71, 98–100
Oregon Fever, 69, 100–103
Oregon Trail, 101
Organic Act, 196
Organization for European Economic
Cooperation, 325
Organization of American States, 175
Ortega, Daniel, 312, 314
Ostend Manifesto (Cuba), 70, 103–106
O’Sullivan, John, 89
Oswald, Richard, 38, 44–45, 51, 52, 112
L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 18
Pacific Conference, 208
Pacifism, 193, 233–234
Pact of Paris, 233–235
Pakenham, George, 102
Pakenham Letter, 85–86d, 127
Pakistan, 350, 354
Palestine, 237, 314
Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), 310
Palestinians, 315
Palma, Tomás Estrada, 139
Palmer, A. Mitchell, 256
Palmerston, Lord, 102, 106
Panama, 132, 138, 151, 171–174
Panama Canal, 116, 171–174, 176, 185,
192, 194
Pan-American Union, 175
Pan-Americanism, 131, 173–175,
192
Paper Blockade, 32, 32–34, 107
Paris peace agreement (1972), 295
Parker, Alton B., 192
Parker, Peter, 76
Patton, George S., 257, 259
Pauncefote, Julian, 171
Payne, Sereno, 180
Payne Bill, 180
Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, 180
Peace commissioners, 7
Pearl Harbor, 81, 141, 152, 154, 202,
241, 249–252
Peel, Robert, 102–103
People’s Republic of China
basics, 248–249, 327, 332–334
détente and, 299
Japan and, 250
U-2s and, 352
Vietnam and, 287, 341, 343
See also Ho Chi Minh; individual
leaders
Perry, Matthew Calbraith, 55, 70,
83–84, 120, 121–122, 149
Perry, Oliver Hazard, 55, 122
Pershing, John J., 181, 182, 183, 203,
204–205, 276–277. See also
American Expeditionary Force;
Punitive Expedition
Persian Gulf, 151, 306, 309, 310. See
also Gulf War
Peru, 174, 192
Pétain, Henri, 257
Philippine Islands
basics, 134, 135, 136, 141, 230
Cuba and, 176

Dewey and, 151
1899 insurrection, 187, 195
expansionism and, 164
guerrilla war and, 156
Hawaii and, 154
Pershing and, 276
rapprochement and, 184
Teller and, 198
U.S. Navy and, 186
Wood and, 198, 199
See also Dewey, George
Pickering, Timothy, 66
Pierce, Franklin, 105, 109
Pinckney, Charles Coatsworth, 60
Pinckney, Thomas, 34–35, 38
Pinckney’s Treaty, 2, 17, 34–35, 43, 49,
52
Pirates, 108, 126, 149
Plan of 1776, 2, 35–37
Platt, Orville, 176
Platt Amendment, 132, 175, 175–178,
177d, 187, 195, 221
Plenipotentiaries, 7, 37–39
Pleven, René, 331
Pleven Plan, 331
Poindexter, John, 313
Poinsett, Joel, 111
Point Four Program, 355
Poland, 218, 219, 265, 269, 296–297,
319, 320
Polignac Memorandum, 24
Polk, James K.
basics, 102
Cuba and, 104
first shot tradition and, 79
Manifest Destiny and, 91
Mexican War and, 91–93
Monroe Doctrine and, 24, 96–97d,
184
Oregon fever and, 102, 103
plenipotentiaries and, 38
South America and, 116
Texas and, 86
Trist and, 126
Portugal, 22, 98
Index | 387
Potsdam Conference, 283–284
Powell, Colin, 292
Preemptive military action, 291, 292
Presidents, 42. See also individual pres-
idents
Prevost, John B., 99
Privateers, 108
Proclamation of Neutrality, 26, 27d
Progressivism, 232, 276
Propaganda, 209, 229, 243, 245, 325
Protectionism, 129, 131, 178–181,
189–191, 302, 304
Protectorates, 187–188
Protestantism, 111
Prussia, 15, 226
Pu Yi, Henry, 262
Puerto Rico, 31, 136, 187
Pulitzer, Joseph, 144
Pullman Strike, 195
Punitive Expedition, 181–183
Al Qaeda, 81, 291, 353, 354
Quarantine, 288
Quarantine Speech, 250, 252–254,
253d–254d
Quasi-War with France, 39–42, 59, 61
Quintuple Alliance, 16, 31
Quitman, John A., 105
Racism, 136
Railroads, 90, 96, 120, 161–162, 234,
260, 271
Rapprochement, 183–185
Ratification, 42–44, 54
Reagan, Ronald, 280, 301, 311, 313,
314, 352. See also Iran-Contra
Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act
(1934), 26, 190, 221, 304
Reciprocity, 152, 174–175, 180, 185,
189, 302
Recognition, 44–46, 51, 261–262, 282.
See also Non-recognition
Recognition as a belligerent, 70,
106–109
Reconcentrados, 144–145
388 | Index
Reconstruction, 97–98
Red China. See People’s Republic of
China
Red Scares, 202, 254–256, 279, 327,
334–337, 354
Reed, Walter, 176
Regime change, 291, 292, 354
Religion, 16, 20, 39, 111, 248, 314. See
also God; specific religions
Republican Party
basics, 40, 60, 63, 116
communism and, 336
containment and, 301, 319
Hawaii and, 153–154
Iran-Contra and, 314
Korea and, 323
League of Nations and, 237
non-recognition and, 248
protectionism and, 179
tariffs and, 179–180, 302, 305
Truman Doctrine and, 347
See also individual Republicans
Retaliation, 298, 326–328
Revolutionary War (American), 1, 3, 26,
30, 79, 341
Rhode Island, 188
Rhodes, Cecil, 227
Righteous and Harmonious Band,
141–142
Rocketry, 339
Rockhill, William W., 143, 168
Rogers Act, 274
Romania, 296–297, 319
Rommel, Erwin, 257
Roosevelt, Franklin
Canada and, 185
Casablanca, at, 224
Cuba and, 178
democratic mission and, 160
first shot tradition and, 81
free trade and, 302, 304
isolationism and, 233
League of Nations and, 237
most-favored-nation provisions
and, 26
Pearl Harbor and, 250–252
Russia and, 248
Soviet Union and, 46
tariffs and, 180
United Nations and, 263
World War II and, 205
See also Atlantic Charter; Four
Policemen; Good Neighbor
Policy; Lend-Lease; New Deal;
Second Front; Yalta Conference
Roosevelt, Theodore
basics, 132
Caribbean and, 138, 151
Cuba and, 187
Dewey and, 193–194
Dollar Diplomacy and, 146
Great War and, 243
Hay and, 195
jingoism and, 155
mediation and, 156
Monroe Doctrine Corollary, 24, 139,
140d, 164
Morocco and, 133–134
Panama and, 171–173
Root and, 196
Rough Riders and, 176, 198
Russo-Japanese War and, 169
See also Big Stick Diplomacy
Roosevelt Corollary, 139, 140d, 164, 220
Root, Elihu, 139, 141, 176, 177–178,
185, 195–196, 237
Root-Takahira Convention, 196
Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel, 336
Rough Riders, 176, 198
Rule of 1756, 2, 8, 21, 46–48, 189
Rumsfeld, Donald, 188, 291, 359–361
Rush, Richard, 22, 63, 66, 66–67
Rush-Bagot Agreement, 66
Rusk, Dean, 288
Russell, John, 106, 119
Russell, Jonathan, 7, 56
Russia
Alaska and, 71
armed neutrality and, 36
China and, 142, 143, 161, 163, 169

Concert of Europe and, 15, 16
democratic mission and, 244
expansionism, 22
Fourteen Points and, 216, 218
Gallatin and, 63
Germany and, 227, 259
Great War and, 134, 204, 228, 229,
242, 247
Kellogg-Briand Pact and, 234
Monroe Doctrine and, 23
non-recognition and, 247–248
Oregon Claims and, 100
recognition and, 46, 247
W. Wilson and, 247
WTO and, 303
See also Bolsheviks; Russo-Japanese
War; Soviet Union; Treaty of
Ghent
Russian Federation, 332
Russo-Japanese War, 132, 140,
156–159, 161, 271
Sadat, Anwar, 319, 338
Sakhalin Island, 158
Salisbury, Lord, 167
Samoa, 149–150
Samoza family, 221
San Juan Islands, 74
San Martin, Ramón Grau, 221
Sandinistas, 312, 314
Sandino, Cesár Augusto, 221
Santa Ana, Antonio López de, 111–112
Santo Domingo, 70–71, 109–110, 149
Satellites, 352
Saudi Arabia, 306, 315
Schlieffen Plan, 134, 227
Schomburgk, Robert, 165
Schomburgk Line, 165
Scott, Winfield, 55, 93–94, 113,
122–123, 126, 127–128
Second Front, 202, 256–259
Second Manchurian Crisis, 237–238,
249
Second Neutrality Act, 245–246
Second Reich, 226
Index | 389
Secret Treaties, 216
Secretaries of State, 173. See also spe-
cific Secretaries of State
Security Council, UN. See United
Nations Security Council
Sedition Act, 41
Senate ratification, 42–43
Separation of the spheres, 90
Serbia, 227, 228
Service, John, 336
Seven Years’ War, 17
1778 Alliance. See Treaty of Alliance
Seventh Pan American Conference, 221
Seward, William H., 16–17, 31, 70, 72,
107, 115, 116, 123–125, 124d
Shafter, William, 187
Shaw, Samuel, 7, 75
Shiites, 291, 293, 308
Shotwell, James T., 233
Shufeldt, Robert Wilson, 196
Shuttle Diplomacy, 280, 337–338, 357
Siberian Expedition, 201–202, 259–261
Sihanouk, Norodom, 294
Sinclair, Harry, 248
Sino-Japanese War, 161
Six-Day War, 280, 316, 318
Six-Power Consortium, 162
Sixteenth Amendment, 180
Slavery
Adams (C.F.) and, 115
boundaries and, 113
Calhoun and, 117
Cuba and, 103, 105
expansionism and, 43, 96–97
Haitian, 18
Jay’s Treaty and, 13, 14
League of Nations and, 237
Manifest Destiny and, 91
mercantilism and, 20
Mexican War and, 93, 95
recognition of belligerents and, 108
sugar and, 188, 189
Texas and, 85–86, 111, 112
Webster and, 129
Webster-Ashburton Treaty and, 114
390 | Index
Slidell, John, 88, 92, 106–107, 125
Smith, Adam, 20
Smoot-Hawley Act, 304
Smugglers, 9–10
Social Darwinism, 163–164
Soulé, Pierre, 105
“The Sources of Soviet Conduct” (Ken-
nan under pseudonym X), 297
South Africa, 167, 184
South America, 16, 116. See also
specific countries
Southeast Asia, 294. See also specific
countries
Sovereignty, 175
Soviet Union
China and, 299
Cuba and, 280, 287–290
Eastern Europe and, 319, 320
Egypt and, 317
expansionism, 328, 346, 349
Gulf War and, 307
Iran and, 309
Korea and, 321, 323
League of Nations and, 238
Lend-Lease and, 239, 241
Marshall Plan and, 324, 325
massive retaliation and, 327
nuclear weapons, 209–210, 279, 330,
333, 335, 336, 339
sugar and, 190
United Nations and, 263
Versailles Treaty and, 201–202
World War II and, 202, 206
See also Bay of Pigs; Berlin; Bolshe-
viks; Containment; Grand
Alliance; Siberian Expedition;
Sputnik; U-2s
Spain
1776–1830, 4
Adee and, 191
American trade and, 42
Caribbean and, 109
civil war, 246
Cuba and, 103, 104, 105, 144, 145, 146
expansionism and, 22
filibustering and, 78
Florida and, 49
France and, 16
Gunboat Diplomacy and, 151
Jay and, 64, 65
Morocco and, 133–134
no-transfer principle and, 30–31
Oregon and, 98
Pinckney’s Treaty and, 34–35, 38
Plan of 1776 and, 36
Rule of 1756 and, 46, 47
South America and, 16
sugar and, 188
Texas and, 110
Transcontinental Treaty and, 43
Wilkinson and, 67–68
See also Fascism; Ostend Manifesto
(Cuba); Pinckney’s Treaty;
Seven Years’ War; Spanish-
American-Cuban War;
Transcontinental Treaty;
Transcontinental Treaty
(Florida)
Spanish-American-Cuban War
basics, 131–132, 135–136, 146, 156,
175, 185–188
first shot tradition and, 81
Hay and, 194
jingoism and, 154
Panama and, 171
results of, 184
Wood and, 198
See also Dewey, George; Ostend
Manifesto (Cuba); Platt
Amendment; individual leaders
Spheres of influence, 168–169
Spooner Act, 172
Spreckles, Klaus, 153
Sputnik, 280, 338–340, 350
Spying, 282, 285–286, 288, 290, 335,
339, 340, 349–352
St. Dominique, 18
Stalin, Joseph, 202, 209, 223, 225, 256,
264. See also Yalta Conference
Stalwart faction, 174, 192

Status quo antebellum, 99
Stettinius, Edward R., 264
Stevens, Edward, 7, 18
Stevens, John Leavitt, 150, 196–197
Stimson, Henry L., 202, 209, 220, 238,
262, 277–278
Stimson Doctrine, 202, 238, 249, 250,
261–262, 277
Stockton, Robert Field, 93, 121, 126
Stoeckl, Baron, 72
Straight, Willard, 161, 162
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties
(SALT-1 and -2), 300, 301, 357
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 301
Strikes, labor, 255–256
Submarines, 201, 241, 244, 257, 266–268
Sudan, 227
Suez Canal Crisis, 321
Sugar, 131, 144, 150, 152, 180,
188–190
Sugar Act, 189
Sugar Refining Trust, 153
Sumner, Charles, 72, 73–74, 109, 110
Sumner, William Graham, 136
Sun Yat-Sen, 162
Sunnis, 291, 293, 308
Superiority, belief in, 89–91
Sussex, 267
Sweden, 14
Sykes-Picot Agreement, 215–216, 218,
242
Symmes, John Cleves, 67
Syngman Rhee, 322
Syria, 216, 219, 315, 317, 318, 338
Taft, William Howard, 132, 146, 147,
161, 164, 180, 195, 196
Taft defines Dollar Diplomacy, 147d
Taft-Katsura Agreement, 141
Taiping Rebellion, 76
Takahira, Kogoro, 141
Taliban, 353–354
Talleyrand, 17–18, 38, 41, 60
Tansill, Charles, 245
Tariff of Abominations, 117
Index | 391
Tariffs
basics, 11, 131, 178–179
Calhoun and, 117
China and, 76
Japan and, 84
Latin America and, 221
most-favored-nation provisions and,
25–26
Pan-Americanism and, 173, 174
reduction of, 180, 221, 274, 305
sugar, 144, 189–191
See also Free Trade; General Agree-
ment on Tariffs (GATT);
McKinley, William; North
American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA);
Protectionism; specific tariff
acts; specific tariffs
Taxes, 178, 180, 189
Taylor, Zachary, 79, 92, 93, 118
Tea Act, 29
Teapot Dome Scandal, 248, 276
Teheran Conference, 225, 271
Telegraph, 90, 96
Teller, Edward, 136
Teller, Henry Moore, 197–198
Teller Amendment, 136, 146, 175, 187,
197, 198d
Terrorism, 81, 291, 294. See also War
on Terror
Tet, 280, 340–342
Texas, 43, 70, 84, 91, 96, 110–112, 117,
127. See also Mexican War;
Transcontinental Treaty
Texas Revolution, 110–112
Texicans, 111
Third Coalition, 18
Third Neutrality Act, 246
Von Tirpitz, Alfred, 267
Tito, Josip Broz, 319
Thant, U, 318
Tojo, Hideki, 208, 251
Tonkin Gulf Incident/Resolution, 280,
295, 340–341, 343–346,
345d–346d
392 | Index
Tower Commission, 313
Townshend, Robert, 29, 30
Townshend Acts, 30
Trade
Africa and, 133
Asian, 75–77, 115, 116
basics, 7
Cuba and, 282
France and, 4
Hawaii and, 152
Japan and, 82–84, 250–251
Louisiana and, 18
Marshall Plan and, 324
neutrality and, 2, 243
New Manifest Destiny and, 164
Oregon Claims and, 99
Pan-Americanism and, 174–175
Pearl Harbor and, 250, 254
recognition and, 45–46
recognition of belligerents and, 106,
107–108
Rule of 1756 and, 46–48
Spain and, 42
treaties and, 13, 14, 54
war and, 21
See also Blockades; Embargoes; Free
Trade; Mercantilism;
Nonimportation; Open Door
Policy; Plan of 1776;
Protectionism; Sugar; Tariffs
Trafalgar, 48, 218
Transcontinental Treaty (Florida), 2, 31,
43, 48–50, 95, 100, 110
Transportation. See Railroads
Trans-Siberian Railroad, 234, 260
Treaties, 50. See also specific treaties
Treaty of Alliance
basics, 3, 5d, 42, 51
France and, 39, 41, 64
legitimacy/recognition and, 4, 15, 44
negotiators, 61, 62
See also individual negotiators
Treaty of Amity and Commerce, 4, 25,
36, 37
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 216, 260
Treaty of Ghent, 2, 7, 13, 52, 54,
55–57, 99
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 38, 92,
94, 96, 126
Treaty of Kanagawa, 84
Treaty of Mortfontaine, 5, 36, 41, 52
Treaty of Paris (1763), 17
Treaty of Paris (1783)
basics, 13, 45, 50–54, 53–54d, 62
Franklin and, 38, 44
Jay and, 64–65
natural boundaries and, 95
Pinckney’s Treaty and, 34
Webster-Ashburton Treaty and, 112
See also individual negotiators
Treaty of Paris (1898), 175, 187
and annexation of Philippines, 137
Treaty of Peace, Amity and Commerce,
83d
Treaty of Portsmouth, 156, 157, 158
Treaty of San Ildefonso, 18
Treaty of Tanagawa, 122. See also
Wood and Water Treaty
Treaty of Tientsin, 25, 77, 116
Treaty of Tordesillas, 98
Treaty of Versailles, 43–44, 54. See also
individual negotiators
Treaty of Wangshia, 25, 76, 119, 168
Trent affair, 125, 129
Tripartite Pact, 250
Triple Alliance, 226–227
Trist, Nicholas, 38, 93, 94, 123, 126
Trizonia, 284
Trotsky, Leon, 216, 247
Trujillo, Rafael, 221
Truman, Harry S
Atomic Diplomacy and, 208,
209–211
Berlin and, 284
democratic mission and, 160
Israel and, 46, 314, 315
MacArthur and, 321
NSC-68 and, 333
tariffs and, 305
United Nations and, 264, 265
 Index | 393

See also Containment; MacArthur, Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, 266–268

Douglas; Marshall Plan; North Upshur, Abel, 85, 127
Atlantic Treaty Organization U.S. Air Force, 284, 294, 326, 339, 343,
(NATO); Truman Doctrine 344, 349
Truman Doctrine U.S. Army
basics, 279, 324, 328, 346–349, 18th century, 41
348d, 355 19th century, 122, 185, 186
Iran and, 309 20th century, 196, 198, 307, 331,
Red Scares and, 334 341, 346
See also Containment 9/11 and, 360
Turkey, 297, 331, 346, 347, 348, 349 Great War and, 203, 204–205,
Twain, Mark, 136 267–268
Tweed, William Marcy, 191 NATO and, 329
Twining, Nathan, 344 World War II and, 258–259
Tydings, Millard, 336 See also specific officers
Tyler, John, 43, 84–87, 113, 127 U.S. Constitution, 19, 42
U.S. Marines, 93–94
U Thant, 318 U.S. Navy
U-2s, 282, 285–286, 288, 290, 339, arbitration and, 74
340, 349–352 Cuba and, 176, 185–186, 188
U-boats, 266 Great War and, 268
Ukraine, 264, 271 Hawaii and, 197
UN Resolution 242, 316, 318d, 319, Iran and, 310
338 Japan and, 141
UN Security Council Resolution 242, Japanese and, 230–231
318d jingoism and, 155
United Kingdom. See Great Britain New Manifest Destiny and, 164
United Nations 1914–1945, 212–213
basics, 203, 208, 214–215, 225, Panama and, 171
262–265 Pearl Harbor and, 251
G. W. Bush and, 291, 292 Quasi-War with France and, 41
Far East and, 299, 322 Venezuela and, 138
Gulf War and, 307 Wilkes and, 129
Hussein and, 308 World War II and, 257
League of Nations and, 238 See also Gunboat Diplomacy; Wash-
Yalta Conference and, 268, 269 ington Naval Conference; indi-
See also Land For Peace; United vidual officers
Nations Security Council USS Black Warrior, 105
United Nations Security Council USS Buford, 256
basics, 203, 215, 238, 263, 264, 265, USS Caroline, 113, 114
270 USS Chesapeake, 8
G.W. Bush and, 292 USS Cole, 353
China and, 322, 332 USS Columbia, 99
Middle East and, 315, 316, 317, USS Constellation, 40
318d, 319, 338 USS Creole, 113, 114
394 | Index
USS Maine, 80–81, 135, 145–146,
151
USS Ontario, 99
USS Oregon, 171
USS Panay, 250, 252
USS Princeton, 126, 127
Utah, 189
Uti Possedetus (Treaty of Ghent), 2, 7,
13, 52, 54, 55–57, 99
Van Buren, Martin, 84, 112, 113,
127–128
Vance, Cyrus, 310
Vancouver, George, 98
Vandenberg, Arthur, 264, 347, 348–349.
See also Yalta Conference
Venezuela, 22, 137, 151, 165
Vergennes, Comte de, 3–4, 37, 44, 51
Versailles Treaty, 43–44, 201,
211, 215, 219, 232, 236–237,
275. See also Fourteen Points;
individual negotiators
Vest, George, 136
Vicksburg, Battle of, 108
Viet Cong, 344, 346
Vietnam War, 81, 160, 280,
298–299, 301, 326, 355, 359.
See also Cambodia; Tet; Tonkin
Gulf Incident/Resolution
Villa, Francisco “Pancho,” 182–183
Virginius (ship), 78
Vo Nguyen Giap, 342
Walker, William, 78, 128
Walker Tariff Act, 179
War Hawks, 57–59, 79, 117, 135
War of 1812
basics, 2, 11, 28
Calhoun and, 117
causes of, 32, 37, 47, 57, 189
first shot tradition and, 79
Oregon Claims and, 99
peace agreement, 7
Perry brothers and, 122
Scott and, 122
See also Treaty of Ghent
War of the Pacific, 174, 192
War on Terror, 281, 352–354
Warsaw Pact, 320, 331
Washington, George
embargoes and, 8
Farewell Address, 39d, 137
Great Britain and, 13
isolationism and, 232
neutrality and, 26, 27, 64
Oregon Claims and, 98
recognition and, 45
treaties, 2, 13–14, 34
wars, 17, 40
See also Neutrality Proclamation
Washington Naval Conference, 170,
211, 212–213, 273
Washington Treaty, 74
The Wealth of Nations (Smith), 20
Weapons of mass destruction, 292
Webster, Daniel, 69, 85, 100, 128–129.
See also Webster-Ashburton
Treaty
Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 69, 100,
112–114
Welles, Sumner, 221
West Germany, 325, 331
West Indies, 13, 14, 31, 42, 54. See also
specific countries
Western Front (Second Front, World
War II), 225, 256–259
Western Hemisphere, 131, 139. See also
Monroe Doctrine; Pan-
Americanism
Westmoreland, William, 342
Weyler, Valeriano, 144
Whalers, 10, 71, 82
Whigs, 79, 85, 86, 93, 94, 102, 105,
119, 123, 127, 129, 192
White, William Allen, 239
White Russia, 264, 271
Whitman, Marcus, 101
Whitney, Asa, 90, 96

Wilhelm II, 227, 228
Wilkes, Charles, 107, 129–130, 149,
151–152
Wilkinson, James, 67–68, 95
Willis, Albert S., 153
Wilmot Proviso, 93d
Wilson, Henry Lane, 181
Wilson, Woodrow
Bryan and, 193
China and, 162–163
democratic mission and, 160, 163
Dollar Diplomacy and, 147
first shot tradition and, 81
Gunboat Diplomacy and, 151
Latin America and, 132, 220
Mexico and, 247
neutrality and, 28, 243–244
rapprochement and, 185
recognition and, 46
Russia and, 247–248, 260–261
Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and,
266–267
Versailles Treaty and, 43–44
Index | 395
See also Fourteen Points; Great War;
League of Nations; Punitive
Expedition; Wilson-Gorman Act
Wilson-Gorman Act, 180, 190
Winthrop, John, 159
Women’s Committee for World
Disarmament, 212
Wood, Leonard, 176, 198
Wood and Water Treaty, 84, 120, 122
World Bank, 355
World Court, 237
World Trade Center bombings, 353, 354
World Trade Organization (WTO), 26,
280, 302, 303–304, 306
World War I. See Great War
World War II, 81, 137, 202, 205–208,
208–211, 250. See also Pearl
Harbor; individual generals
Wu Ting Fang, 142–143
XYZ Affair, 2, 40, 42, 59–61, 66
Yorktown, 4, 30
This page intentionally left blank
 About the Author

John Dobson is professor emeritus of history at Iowa State University and at Okla-
homa State University where he also served as dean of the College of Arts and Sci-
ence. Dr. Dobson is the author of several books, including ABC-CLIO’s Bulls, Bears,
Boom, and Bust.