A CENTURY OF EXPANSION

CHAPTER I

THE OPENING OF THE DOOR

A PHILOSOPHER, equally genial and keen, has observed that the education of a man, to be complete, should begin several generations before he is born. A measure of that principle may be applied to the history of the territorial expansion of the American Republic. That expansion began before the Republic was born. The actual acquisition of new lands by the United States began only a century ago, in the purchase of the Louisiana territory from France. The processes and conditions which led to it, and which made it not only possible but inevitable, had an earlier date, preceding the formation or even the conception of the Republic. It will be seen, on consideration, that the territorial and political expansion, and even the so-called "imperialism," which formed so striking a feature of our nineteenth century history, were anticipated in the very circumstances of the Columbian discovery of America.

That discovery was effected by a man belonging to a people who were no longer a nation, who had already fallen into apparently irretrievable decay, whose feeble life was sustained by the mouldering remnants of past greatness, and who had at that time neither the ambition nor the capacity to found new colonies or to play a new part in the drama of the world. Italy was then in fact what Metternich in later years cynically declared it to be, "a geographical expression," and little more. Columbus was, it is true, also the representative and agent of another but kindred people, who did form a nation and a power, and that nation was then seemingly in the ascendant. But it had already implanted within itself the fatal elements of sure and swift decline. It was a power then, and for a century more, mighty for conquest, but inapt and impotent for effective colonization. The result was that when Columbus "found a new world for Leon and Castile" he gained for that kingdom something with which the latter was incompetent to deal. By virtue of his adventures Spain might claim ownership of the whole western hemisphere. But what would she, what could she, do with it?

History soon began to give its inexorable answer to that question. Spain was able to conquer, but not to hold; to spoil, but not to cultivate. Through sheer inability to occupy all her newfound world, she was compelled to share it with other and rival powers. For herself she managed

to retain for a long time the major portion, including especially those regions most suited to spoliation and least to permanent and important settlement, and some of those which were SO remote, so inaccessible, and so little known as to be for the time beyond the ready reach of rivalry. But that portion of America lying nearest to Europe and resembling Europe most in natural characteristics, and therefore best suited to be the scene of lasting and extensive European colonization, she was in the course of a century compelled largely to relinquish to other powers, and especially to France and England. The minor settlements of Holland and Sweden soon vanished as political entities, leaving, however, important and valuable elements for incorporation into the English colonies. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, then, just after the treaty of Ryswick, the North American continent was partitioned substantially as follows:

Spain, under title of original discovery and of the bull of Pope Alexander VI in 1493, claimed, and nominally possessed, all south of the thirtythird parallel of latitude east of the Perdido River, all south of the Arkansas River between the Sabine River and the Rocky Mountains, and all west of the Rocky Mountains as far north and south as man had ventured. Thus she was mistress of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from near Charleston, South Carolina, southward to Central America,

with the exception of Louisiana, and of the entire Pacific coast of the continent.

France possessed all north and east of the Penobscot River, the valley of the St. Lawrence and basin of the Great Lakes, and the interior of the continent from the Alleghany Mountains to the Rocky Mountains as far south as the Spanish boundary line, and to the Gulf in Louisiana, between the Perdido and Sabine rivers.

England had what was left; namely, the narrow strip of Atlantic littoral, from the Penobscot River in Maine to Cape Romaine in South Carolina, extending inland to the base of the Alleghany Mountains.

Besides having thus by far the least colonial possessions, England had also by far the smallest domain at home in Europe, and was much the smallest in population and in apparent resources and prowess. She was, however, differentiated from the others in several marked respects, to her own incalculable advantage. In after years one of her own sons described her as "a nation of shopkeepers." The description was largely true, and by no means unworthy of a great people. She had, in her people if not always in her rulers, the genius of practicality. While Spain was seeking new lands for the sake of the gold that could be extracted from them, and France for the sake of the "glory" to be won from carrying her lilied standard far and wide, England was establishing