Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
4.2 INTRODUCTION
By the second decade of the nineteenth century, the United States of America
had survived the War of 1812, its rst international crisis, and set its sights on
claiming more territory . Journalist John O’Sullivan claimed in his 1839 article
“The Great Nation of Futurity” that it was “the right of our manifest destiny to
overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given
us for the development of the great experiment of liberty.” However, it was more
money and military power that fueled Manifest Destiny than Providence. In terms
of territory, the United States more than tripled its total area between the beginning
of the nineteenth century and the Civil War. The rst great increase came from the
Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The United States government’s agreement to buy
more than 500,000,000 acres of French territory stretching from New Orleans to
the Rocky Mountains eectively doubled the United States’ landmass in one fell
swoop. Americans of European heritage did not take long to discover the valuable
agricultural land east of the Mississippi River within this new territory, then
occupied by Native Americans, and used force and coercion to move the tribes to
less-desirable land. This mass relocation of Native Americans culminated in the
“Trail of Tears,” a series of forced relocations of tribes from southeastern states to
an area that would eventually become Oklahoma spanning the 1830s and 1840s.
The borders of the country were further expanded when American emigrants to
the Mexican territory of Texas declared the region’s independence from Mexico
in 1835 and the United States annexed it in 1845, touching o the Mexican-
American War. When the war ended with the American capture of Mexico City
and the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1848, America claimed Texas as well as parts of
Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. The actions in Texas inspired American emigrants
in the Mexican territory of California to establish a similar independent republic
in 1846, and California ultimately came under United States rule and joined the
union in 1850. Finally, the Gadsden Purchase in 1853 stretched American borders
even further in that area, adding territory that ultimately became Arizona and
New Mexico. However much O’Sullivan’s prophecy may have cited Providence,
the United States achieved its continental borders through nancial and military
dominance.
America’s economic and technological growth also continued apace as America
became the center of the second Industrial Revolution. While the rst Industrial
Revolution had occurred in England around the 1760s to 1780s, America was the
stage for the second one in the early to mid—nineteenth century. At its root was
increased agricultural productivity as a result of acquiring land in the Midwest and
South; the former was ideal for grain and meat production and the latter for cotton,
all of which needed processing and contributed to the growth of those industries. At
the same time, improvements in agricultural technology—such as the mechanical
reaper, spinning machines, the cotton gin, and the automated our mill—made
it possible for a smaller percentage of the population to produce the necessary
amount of food, freeing up manpower for other industries. This productivity was
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