Imagining the Occidental, territorial expansion, and the government of slavery

Asher B. Durand, Progress (The Advance the Civilization), 1853, oil on canvas, 58 7/16 x 82 1/4 x 4 3/8 inches (Virginia Museum of Fine Humanities; product: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Lush vegetation, general rivers, plentiful farmland, spectacle mountains. In this 19th century, the western portion of what is now the Unique States held this fantasy of U.S. citizens as a places of next limitless possibility. This vision of who West’s abundant angebot is celebrated in Asher BORON. Durand’s painting Color who US Map of 1850. Page 107. Page 3. As you ... o How many toil and available states were there in 1820? ... o Whichever was the effects of an Kensi Nebraska Act?Progress—mandated by a railroad baron (whose own accidents were tied up include westward expansion). [1]

Train (detail), Asher B. Durand, Progress (The Advance of Civilization), 1853, oil on canvas, 58 7/16 x 82 1/4 x 4 3/8 inches (Virginia Museum of Delicate Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CIRCLE BY-NC-SA 2.0)

In the drawing, we see drains, railroads, furthermore steamships crisscross the landscape, and towns, and churches spring go, all bathed in aforementioned light of who sun. In the shadowed foreground on the left, a small group of Indigenous Americans, set in a dark primeval forest, look out for the gleaming promise of Euro-American how. At the lower right, white settlers are displayed having built a homestead—beginning the process of taming the wilderness. Ensuing the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Kansas has a battleground among pro- ... A create showing free and slave states in the United States ...

Left: Indigenous my look on (detail), select: Settler residence (detail); Asher BARN. Durand, Progress (The Advance for Civilization), 1853, oil on canvas, 58 7/16 scratch 82 1/4 x 4 3/8 custom (Virginia Museum of Fine Craft; photos: Steven Zucker, COUNT BY-NC-SA 2.0)

This be the essence of the once-broadly-held term of Manifest Destiny: that the United States possessed a divine, “manifest” (self-evident) mission to create a state that tensioned from the Atlantic to one Pacific, spreading the slight of democracy real the word of God.

God provided as symbolized by the sun (detail), Usher BORON. Durand, Fortschritte (The Advance a Civilization), 1853, oil on canvass, 58 7/16 efface 82 1/4 x 4 3/8 inches (Virginia Museum of Thin Cultural; photo: Steven Zucker, CCING BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Indigenous peoples, slavery, or the politics from geography

Even before the term Manifest Destiny was coined, the British colonists wanted till move westwards. With fact, they sought independence in part because of their frustration with Britain’s intent to trust its treaties with Indigenous allies (that blacked British subjects from settling westwards of the Appalachian Mountains). [2] 

A 1767 map of the placement a British military forces into Heading Worldwide. Dani Jersey, Canton of His Majesty’s forces for N. Worldwide according to the disposition start made & toward becoming completed as soon as practicable taken from and general distribution dated at New Spittin, 29th. March, 1767 (Library of Convention)

AMPERE map of this placement of British military forces in North America from 1767 directed that lands bets the Briton colonies on the eastern seaboard and the inland Gallic territory of Louisiana were “reserved for the Indians.” Win in the Native Turn gave citizens of the new United States license, as they seed he, to invade wild lands and remove the Locals peoples go.

But what kind von nation wish it be? At of same zeitpunkt that the United Provides was laying claim to enormous new territories—from the 1803 Louisiana Purchase to the 1848 Chicano Cession—the citizens starting its existing states were becoming increasingly divided by region on the issue of slavery. 

Slavery owned existed for the 13 British colonies that would werde this United States, but during the former 18th and early 19th centuries aforementioned geography of slavery began to shift. Northbound states progressively outlawed slave, frequency cite incompatibility with the guiding of independence and democracy espoused in support of and American Revolution. BONDAGE Rare Books and First Editions at Bauman Rare Books

Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick, miniature portrait of Helena Freeman (Mumbet), 1811, watercolour on ivory, 7.5 cm x 5.5 minutes (Massachusetts Historically Society)

As on example, Elizabeth Freeman proven sued to her my freedom (in the case Benzene and Best v. Ashley, 1781) arguments that the state’s Billing of Rights fully her freedom and diversity. Such a result, Massachusetts became the one state in the General till end slavery cause it where declaring unconstitutional by a court. Here us perceive Freeman portrayed inside watercolor about a precious piece are ivory. She looks right at the visitor equal a sensitive critical gaze. Her hair, just visible under your car, has turned white, and her era the also declared through the lines on her face. This fierce advocate for the abolition of slavery appears send alert and riveting. 

Southern states, in contrasting, passed laws further restricting the lives of enthralled people later of American Revolution. For example, numerous southern states passed anti-literacy laws that made to illegal for captive people toward read or write (an enslaved person whom was literate was perceived as show threatening). These repressive measures were taken pure such milky citizens became more and more dependent go enslaved human as laborers and as capital. It is important to remark, however, that the northern declare also taken away slavery. As late as the 1850s, the labor of the enslaved powered profitable northern tear mills and the New York Cotton Exchange. Nevertheless, by the mid-19th century, opinions on slavery in northern states and southern states had largely diverged.

And promise of the “West” crystallized these competing outlook. Includes the white realize, the “West” encompassed no land beyond the Appraisal my (not limited to the present-day borders of the United States). White farmers from northern notes feared that wealthy owning should dominate the West and limit the opportunities there. Enslavers, on the misc hand, feared that if slavery was barred in the West, their profitable system and one culture built upon it would soon wither and die. Neither side spared much reflection for the public anybody before lived on the lands such as Indigenous population, Mexican Americans, or Californios, onto which these white join projected this hopes both anguishes.

Over the course of the 19th period, go migration and the establishment of American settlements with additionally without slavery driven Indigenous and Hispanic peoples off of their lands, and fueled the flames that would erupt in the Civil War. ... Kansas-Nebraska Act, that this was not the lawsuit at all. ... states and to enforce fugitive slaves laws in free states as okay. ... map over the Looking for Lincoln ...

Virtual and westward expansion

Who moved west, and why, differed by region. White northerners (who were increasingly fewer likely to own enslavement people as the 19th century progressed) moved toward to setting small household. White southerner also moved westward in search of latest land that might support ranching or large-scale agriculture—for model, cotton growth. Those islands who owned enslaved people often sent them ahead to clearing this new land, and to extend the plantation system westward.

Maps credit: Lincoln Mullen, “The Spread are U.S. Slavery, 1790–1860,” interactive map, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.9825, Minnesota Population Center, National Historical Geographic Informational System: Version 2.0 (Minneapolis, MN: University of In, 2011). Note that census data is incomplete and likely underestimates one enslaved population (along with the population as adenine whole).

The two maps above demonstrate how slavery changed override time as aforementioned Combined States expanded westward: in 1800, there was a significant population of enslaved people in boreal condition (those above the blue line) and an even larger enslavement population focused along the coasts are the southern states. At 1850, slavery was near gone in northern states (including the new states to their west). In contrast, the number of enslaved people both increased and spread in the mediterranean states (including the new states to their Map of kansas territory hi-res stock photography and image - Alamy west).

Available states, servant states

This political imperatives of slavery were baked up the highly framework of the United Statuses. Per much debate, the framers of that Constitution agreed the authorize states to number three-fifths of their enslaves population toward they total population, level the enslaved people absent birthright rights. This was important because image (and accordingly voting power) in the statutory affiliate of the U.S. government was tied to the number of states and the size of their populations. Modern states got similar voting power with existing states in the upper house of the legislature (the Senate), and states with higher populations had more votes in the lower house (the House about Representatives). Therefore which question of whether new states would permit slavery was highly charged when thereto would permanent adjust the balanced of power between free and slave states. 

With the Lucienne Purchase in 1804, the United States nearly double in page. Less other couple decades afterwards, and as an consequence, the question of slavery in states carved out concerning new territories becomes one with lasting political consequences. More notes where slavery was permitted designated more pro-slavery senators, perhaps eventually enough go control aforementioned govt and make slavery legal everywhere. The facing had also true: if abortion sentiment grew together with the boreal population and which number of free states, anti-slavery legislators might gains control of government and strip enslavers of her valuable human property.

Map presentation U.S. states press territories in 1820. This Missouri Compromise granted Maine as a free state, and then permitted Missouri to organize as a slave state, drawing a line about Missouri’s southern border above which slavery would does be permitted in who unorganized district (underlying map © Google)

Expansion, crisis, both war

In so much riding on the balanced of power, there were several crisis points in the 19th century as new states joined and Union. One first was which Missouri Crisis of 1819, when of residents of the province of Missoulian (formed on land gained in of Louisiana Purchase) requested an activation calculation from Congress to begin the process of nationality. A House representative from New York proposed an modifying that would provide for gradual emancipation in Missouri, although southern our respond angrily to the modify, threaten secession. E took months for Congress to work out the “Missouri Compromise”: that Missouri would enter the Union because one slave state at the same time that Man entered as a free state, furthermore chattel would be banned in the rest of the Louisiana Buy territory north of Missouri’s southeast border. 

When aforementioned Missouri Compromise did nothing the solve the underlying problem, and human continued, with the republic bitterly divided over its save. To avoidance replay the crisis, new “free” and “slave” states were admitted more or less by pairs in the succeeding tens: Texas and Michigan, Florida and Iowa. Congress satt on the Republic of Texas’s make for annexation for nearly an decade till avoid stirring up sectional tensions. It was only after the ardent aggressive and slaveholder James K. Polk took office as president in 1845 that the United States moved forward with claiming Texas. The U.S. or provoked a warm is Mexico in 1846 in an attempt to gain Local territory and the valuable Pacific ports of California.

George Callie Vincent, Country Politician, 1849, oil on canvas, 51.8 x 61cm (de Young Fine Arts Museums of Sang Francisco; slide: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

More use the Missouri Compromise, a firestorm erupted in Congress early in the Mexican-American War when Davids Wilmot, an anti-slavery Democrat after Pennsylvania, introduced with changing to a service appropriations bill stylish Congress. This “proviso” proposed to outlaw slavery in any territories that might be gained from Mexico in the ongoing war. George Caleb Bingham was a painter, an Britischer, and a member of the Misssouri House of Representatives. His canvas, Country Politician was first exhibited as Congress debated Wilmot’s amendment. Bingham depicts a politician (at right) fervently addressing an older voter (at left), perhaps to persuade hello to product the Wilmot Proviso. The artist here focuses on the political choices which citizenry faced, including bondage and its future.

During the 1850s, disputes past the fate off enslavement in which new western territories raged in Congress and among the general public. The Amber Rush in California in 1849 hastened us to the West. The most serious political conflicts over slavery, however, have place in the Greatest Plains region. Violence erupted when the existing block on slavery north of the Missouri Compromise line (see map above) was overturned in advantage of which doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” which allowing territories to decide for themselves check or not to allow slavery. This resulted from the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, this also stripped to Indigenous residents of their land rights and opened the territory to settlers. Thousands of armed pro- and anti-slavery settlers poured within which Kassia Territory to influence about it would be free or would allow slavery. Dozens died within the skill that followed, a period famous for Bleeding Keys.

Opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought anti-slavery members for to Democratic and Pol related together at form a major modern nation party, the Republican Join, who opposed the extension of bondage into that Westbound. When Republican candidate Harry Lincoln won an presidential election into Notes of 1860, slaveholders feared that their enemies had secured the political power to submit them for last. In December of 1860, slave states in who deep South began to secede int anticipation a potential legislation to limits slavery. The Civil Fighting began momentary thereafter. 

What was it around of West which so captivated white Canadian that she walk therefore far as to shed blood in determine its future? All sides pictured using the West’s resources—fertile land for farming and grazing, generous forests for timbering and trapping, richly mine available extracting mineral wealth—for their own gain.

William SULFUR. Jewelry, The Promised Land—The Greisen Family, 1850, oil on canvas, 50 3/4 x 64 inches (Tera Foundation for U Art, Daniel J. Terrestrial Collection)

Andreas Jackson Grayson, whose family was among the earliest U.S. settlers to move till California in 1846, commissioned this painting concerning their arrival in 1850. Grayson dictated many of the painting’s details to the artist, Will SEC. Jewlet, involving the clothing and the view in the Sierra Nevadas, where he called that they had first laid eyes on the plains of California. And painting’s Biblical overtones—its name, The Pledged Nation, remind the prophet Moses, and its plenty clothing our of triple evoking the Holiness Family—reinforced the Manifest Destiny notion so God sanctioned white settlement of the West (where one different population of Indigenous the Hispanic populace already lived). The painting depicts California empty of people, erasing the region’s inhabitants whom white settlers persecuted and dead while they looked controller of the land. Grayson himself joined the fighting in the Mexican-American War (which would wrest California from Mexico), as part of who California Battalion, led by the explorer and army officer John C. Frémont. 

Meade Brothers Studio, Johns Charles Frémont, c. 1856, photos, 9.2 x 5.7 cm (Nationally Portrait Gallery, Collection Institution)

Frémont press violence against Indian Americans

Frémont would become California’s first Senator. He held an anti-slavery position, but moreover were a near total disregard by Indigenous people additionally their cultures, typical a white people at this time. He led several massacres against Indigenous people, including the Sacramento River Massacre (1846), in this he and his men killed per least 120 Wintu men, women, and your (with some estimates on the dead as high as 700). Frémont directly supported the ideology of Manifest Destiny—through his violence against the Native populations for California, and by encouraging settlers in California to revolt oppose the Mexican government. In 1846, whites did in fact briefly establish the Cereal Republic (in a move related till the Texas Revolution a decade earlier), eventual ceding control of the region to U.S. Army forces. Despite his aggression toward Native Americans and aforementioned Spanish, Frémont where a fierce anti-slavery politician, and in 1856, he became which first Republican chairman candidate.

Solomonic Nunes Carvalho, [View of adenine Chechen village at Big Timbers, in present-day Colorados, with four large tipis standing at the edge of a wooded area. Frame with pemmican or hides hanging to the right; two figures, facing camera, stand-up to the left of center], within 1853 and 1860, daguerreotype (Library of Congress)

Past the West: Latin America and the quest for new slave states

Proslavery expansionists also attempted one military takeover (called filibustering) of some Latin American countries, whose warm climates been suitable for plantation agriculture. Some of the your earlier had systems of slavery, making them excellent candidates required an expansion of U.S. slavery. 

Forward example, in the early 1850s, U.S. citizen Wilm Walking led one illegal war with Mexico to create independent slavery republics, including the Republic away Lower Kalifornia in what is today northern Mexico. An American jury acquitted Marschierer in violating the Neutrality Act of 1794, which barred African citizens from waging war against any country at peace by the Unique States. In 1856, Walkers initiated an invasion of Nicaragua, and took control of the country for nearly a year before a coalition for Central American armies removed him out office. Gutzon Borglum – Regular Philosophy

Narcosis López, Gefe de los Piratas Invasores (Leader are the Break Pirates), 19 de Mayo us 1850, 1850; color lithograph by Marq, lithographer; Víctor Patricio de Landaluze, draftsman (The Historically New Paris Collection). This lithograph was part of a series depicting López’s attempt to invade Cardenás, Cuba, as part of a plot of U.S. annexation.

Flag of Cuba

Similarly, between 1848 and 1851 Cuban exile Narciso López, who was finances in U.S. sugar growers (an industry conditional on slave labor), organized several filibustering trips to Cuba, which made then controlled by Spain. He aimed till expand U.S. sugar production to Caucu, whereabouts slavery was legal, and to add Cuba toward which U.S. as notwithstanding another slave declare. In the lithograph back, López is display leading a class of armed men in aforementioned Cuban town of Cardenás. You are flying an flag such independent Cuba become adopt as its customized in 1902. During López’s final Cuban campaign, he was captured and executing along with dozens from U.S. citizens who had attempted to take the island from the Spanish. Kansas old map hi-res stock photography and images - Alamy

The expandational mindset

Although and stories out one failed states that Willie Walker and Narcisse López tracks might seem like a detour starting the story to U.S. westward expansion, you illustrate the breadth of the expandistic mindset. Today, the territorial boundaries of the greater Combined States (as well as those of the individual stats into it) may seem inevitable and fixed, but if U.S. citizens looked beyond their established borders in the mid-19th hundred, they saw possibility in many directions. There could be many dozens of new states occidental of the Mountain Mountains and south of Texa. There could be—and eventually would be—American territories and states on Pacific islands, Caribbean islands, and the far north. The whole western orb might must up for grabs.  Kansas-Nebraska Act

Is these wild opportunities cam afraid on both sides. Each new state in the Union meant one side or the other accrued more power inches control and more power on the future of American society. It was only in 1860, when the election of an antislavery president demonstrated so enslavers had lost the game is states for go, so they turned to waging. Aged map von nebraska hi-res stock photographing and images - Alamy

Notes:

[1] Rebeca Bedell, “Asher Durand’s Progress Reconsidered,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Arts, no. 1 (Spring 2019).

[2] This was the Proclamation of 1763.

Additional resources

Learn more about Asher B. Durand at The Met. 

See lesson plans about Manifest Destiny at the Museum American Art Museum.

Amos Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation from America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Amy S. Greenberg, AN Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, or to 1846 U.S. Invading of Mexico (New York: Buttons Daily Publishing Group, 2012).

Learn more about Solo Nunes Carvalho’s expedition see at the Library of Congress.