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The Routledge Handbook of American Military and Diplomatic History
1865 to the Present
Antonio S. Thompson, Christos G. Frentzos
U.S. Overseas Expansion in the Post-Civil War Era
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Stephen McCullough
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3
U.S. OVERSEAS EXPANSION IN
THE POST-CIVIL WAR ERA
Stephen McCullough
After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the United States embarked on low-key expansion until
the Spanish–American War in 1898. The main goal of the U.S. government was the acquisition
of naval bases in the Caribbean and Pacific, and the spread of U.S. trade and commercial interests. The changes in naval propulsion, from sail to steam, meant that the United States Navy
needed coaling stations to project power overseas. As American merchants and companies
sought new overseas markets for manufactured goods and foodstuffs, they expected the U.S. flag
to follow for protection.1 Along with the economic imperatives driving U.S. expansion, American racism and the Protestant missionary impulse also influenced U.S. policy. The Spanish–
American war in 1898 was merely the culmination, not the beginning, of U.S. imperialism.2
Following the cessation of hostilities, the United States faced a lengthy Reconstruction of the
former Confederate states with a new president. Republicans hoped Andrew Johnson would
favor a harsh Reconstruction, only to be cruelly disappointed as the former senator from Tennessee sought to quickly bring the South back into the Union with no protection of AfricanAmerican rights.3
When Radical Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1866 election and frustrated his
domestic policies, Johnson turned to foreign policy to garner popular support. He inherited Secretary of State William Seward, and by 1866 Seward was the dominant cabinet member of the
Johnson administration.4 Seward embarked on a territorial expansion campaign that also sought to
breathe new life into the Monroe Doctrine. The policy had remained dormant since being issued
in 1823 as the United States did not have the military or economic power to enforce it.5 During
the Civil War, the United States had been unable to prevent a French intervention in Mexico. At
the end of the war, General Ulysses S. Grant dispatched 50,000 men to the Texas border under the
command of General Phillip Sheridan to intimidate the French. Seward successfully diplomatically
pressured French emperor Napoleon III to announce a French withdrawal.6
Seward pursued an expansion policy that sought to gain new territory for the United States as
well as coaling stations in the Caribbean.7 He sought naval bases in Haiti and the Dominican
Republic, only to be rebuffed by Haiti and foiled by a Dominican revolution.8 His attempt to buy
the Virgin Islands from Denmark failed when a hurricane struck the islands and the Senate refused
to ratify the annexation treaty.9 He negotiated a treaty with Columbia to give the United States the
right to build a canal across the Panamanian isthmus, but the Columbian Senate rejected it. The
United States failed to gain any new Caribbean territory during his tenure.
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S. McCullough
In the Pacific, however, Seward enjoyed more success as the United States started its path
to becoming the dominant Pacific power. In 1867, the Navy claimed Midway Island under
an 1850 law encouraging the seizure of uninhabited islands with possible guano deposits.10
The island proved of little value until the 1930s when Pan American airlines used it as a
fueling station for its Clipper service, and the Navy developed air bases on the island. The
Japanese attempted an invasion in June 1942, only to be defeated in the pivotal naval battle
of Midway.
If the seizing of Midway attracted little attention, Seward’s purchase of Alaska was hotly
debated within the country and the Senate in 1867. The United States had eyed annexing
Canada since the American Revolution. The failure of U.S. invasions in both the Revolution
and the War of 1812 had not cooled the lust of expansionists like Seward toward Canada.
Acquiring Alaska from Russia would create additional pressure on Great Britain to give Canada
to the United States. It would have the additional bonus of expelling Russia from North
America, leaving Great Britain as the last European imperial power on the continent. Seward
negotiated a treaty with Russia that sold Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million. Critics
denounced the treaty as “Seward’s Folly” because Alaska seemingly had little value. The Radical
Republicans’ fierce opposition to the Johnson administration seemingly doomed the treaty’s
ratification until Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, the chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, gave an impassioned speech that turned around Republican opinion. For
less than two cents an acre, the United States received one of the great bargains in history with
the addition of a territory that ultimately proved to be rich in gold and oil.11
In 1868, General Ulysses S. Grant easily won the White House and entered office favoring
U.S. expansion.12 His selection of Hamilton Fish as secretary of state, however, contradicted this
because Fish remained steadfastly opposed to expansion throughout his eight years in office.13 In
1869, Grant’s private secretary, Orville Babcock, and the president of the Dominican Republic
concocted a plan to annex that country to the United States. Both men and their cronies would
financially benefit from expansion because they bought up prime real estate in the hope that
prices would rise once the country was a U.S. territory. The Dominican annexation failed
because of the opposition of Sumner in the Senate.14
Fish became the dominant member of the Grant cabinet, and controlled policy on the role
of the United States in the Cuban rebellion that had started in 1868.15 Known as the Ten Years’
War, the conflict threatened to drag the United States into a war with Spain. The Cuban rebels
used the United States as their base of operations and attempted to buy arms and munitions and
enlist American volunteers. The Cuban-American community raised money for the rebellion
and attempted to buy influence in Washington by bribing public officials, including Grant’s
secretary of war, John Rawlins, and journalists.16 The longer the war dragged on, the greater the
chance that the United States would be drawn in. Fish tried twice, in 1869 and then again in
1875, to offer U.S. mediation between the Cuban insurgents and the Spanish government, but
both times Madrid refused to consider the offer.17
Fish sought to end the fighting to avert U.S. entry into the war, but his worst fears were
almost realized in 1873 with the Virginius affair. The Cuban rebels bought a former Confederate
blockade runner, hired an American captain and crew and used the ship to smuggle men and
munitions to the island. In November 1873, the Spanish Navy captured the ship while it was
flying the American flag and proceeded to execute 42 Americans and Cuban passengers and
crew. Newspapers and politicians across the United States demanded either war or Spanish
repartitions for the massacre and dishonor to the American flag. War was averted only by a
Spanish apology and the discovery that the Virginius was not entitled to fly the American flag.18
The 1873 war scare, though, demonstrated that the United States Navy had become obsolete
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U.S. Overseas Expansion Post-Civil War Era
and indeed, decrepit. When the fleet gathered off Key West, Florida, many of the ships’ engines
broke down under the strain. The Nation mocked the U.S. Navy as “almost useless for military
purposes.”19
The pitiful state of the Navy during the crisis helped inspire the naval reforms and renaissance
in the 1880s.20 As Great Britain and other leading naval powers experienced a technological
revolution, much of the U.S. Navy in the 1870s was either obsolete wooden sailing ships or
monitors that could only sail in calm, offshore waters. When war erupted between Chile and
her neighbors Peru and Bolivia, the U.S. Pacific squadron dispatched to protect American interests was hopelessly outclassed by the Chilean Navy. In order for the United States to assert itself
within the hemisphere and globally, the Navy had to be modernized and enlarged. It also
needed to be intellectually reinvigorated to develop new missions and goals.
The man who came to dominate U.S. naval policy and strategy well past his death was
Captain (later Rear Admiral) Alfred Thayer Mahan.21 With the creation of the Naval War
College in Newport, RI to teach midlevel officers strategy, the U.S. entered a new era of strategic thinking.22 Appointed as a professor in 1885, Mahan’s book The Influence of Seapower upon
History, 1660–1783 created modern strategy and tactics.23 Mahan called for the building of a
large American fleet, to be dominated by capital ships, whose primary purpose was to seek out
and destroy the enemy’s fleet. U.S. naval strategy since the American Revolution had been
based on attacking the enemy’s merchant shipping. Mahan called for the concentration of power
at sea and defeating the enemy in a decisive battle. His writings and philosophy not only inspired
the creation of the modern U.S. Navy, but also deeply influenced Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm
II and his quest for naval parity with Great Britain.24
Beginning in the 1880s, the U.S. Navy underwent a technological revolution.25 The introduction in 1883 of the so-called ABC cruisers (the Atlanta, Boston and Chicago) heralded a new
era in U.S. naval construction. These all-steel ships, while small compared to their European
counterparts, were the first modern U.S. warships, despite their retention of sails as backup to
steam engines.
In the Pacific, it would be the Navy that spread U.S. influence and imperialism. Because of
the vast nature of the area, oftentimes naval officers created U.S. policy.26 In 1871, a joint effort
by the U.S. minister to China, Frederick Low, and Rear Admiral John Rodgers attempted to
open Korea to relations and trade with the United States. Though the effort failed, Washington’s interest in Korea remained.27 In 1880, Secretary of State James G. Blaine sent Rear Admiral
Robert Shufeldt on the USS Ticonderoga to open relations. Shufeldt had extensive service in
China, and believed that the Navy’s role was opening up the region to U.S. commerce and
influence.28 The mission ultimately failed due to the Korean government not wanting to provoke
Japan, which had imperial ambitions for the country.
Expanding American trade and interests in China became a dominant theme of U.S. foreign
policy from the Civil War to the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.29 China was seen as an untapped
market but with the establishment of European concessions throughout the country, U.S. business interests needed the American government to keep it open to American goods. U.S. diplomats pursued an “Open Door” policy that would prevent outright annexation of Chinese
territory by European countries and Japan and force all nations to treat imports equally in their
sphere of influences in China.30 The United States sought to treat China as an equal, but racism
often intervened. The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 granted the United States most-favored status
in China while allowing for Chinese emigration into the United States. While Chinese labor
helped build the transcontinental railroad, it also sparked a racial backlash that led to the 1882
Chinese Exclusion Act. While Americans at home protested Chinese immigration, they encouraged the Christianization of the country by U.S. missionaries.31
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S. McCullough
If the United States was interested in economic expansion in China, it desired to annex
Samoa and Hawaii. In Samoa, the United States was caught up in a three-power struggle with
Great Britain and Germany. In 1885 and 1887, two crises erupted that threatened to create a
war in the South Pacific. A timely typhoon in 1889 sunk German and American warships and
prevented the outbreak of hostilities. Passions ultimately cooled in part due to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s desire to avoid war. The three nations ultimately negotiated a division
of the islands.32 Without a shot, the United States gained the strategic harbor of Pago Pago,
foreshadowing later expansion into the Pacific.
Hawaii was seen by many Americans as a natural target for expansion. A reciprocity treaty
with the United States in 1875 left the island kingdom a U.S. economic satellite. In 1889, U.S.
Secretary of State James G. Blaine negotiated a treaty with the Hawaiian minister to the United
States (an American working for U.S. business interests in Hawaii) that would have turned the
islands into an American protectorate. The treaty died when the Hawaiian king rejected it, but
American interest in the kingdom was hardly at an end.33 Besides economic interests, the United
States feared that either Great Britain or Japan would seize control of the islands.34 In January
1893, a coup by U.S. business interests, backed by marines and sailors from USS Boston, overthrew the Hawaiian queen, Liluokalani, and the U.S. consul declared the islands under U.S.
protection. The new Grover Cleveland administration refused to consider U.S. annexation, but
it was clear that Hawaii’s days as an independent nation were nearing an end. In 1898, the
islands would become a U.S. territory.
American interest in Hawaii was driven by strategic and economic interests.35 From 1865 to
1897, economic imperialism drove U.S. foreign policy as U.S. businesses desired to open up
new markets to American goods. The Gilded Age was a period where business interests came
to control American politics, ushering in a period of unprecedented corruption where seemingly every political office was for sale to the highest bidder.36 Business and government worked
together to expand U.S. exports.37 Great Britain dominated trade with Latin America, and both
Republican and Democratic administrations wanted to open those markets to American goods
and crops.38
While the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed that the United States would not tolerate further
European expansion in the Americas, U.S. leaders after the Civil War saw it as a justification to
remove European influence in the area as well.39 Not until World War I, however, would the
United States supplant Great Britain as the leading economic power in the region.40 American
companies and investors actively pursued investment in Latin America. U.S. companies would
by 1900 control the banana trade from Central America and turn countries like Guatemala and
Nicaragua into corporate fiefdoms.41
The United States by 1897 was poised for economic expansion, not only throughout the
Americas but into Asia as well. This interest in China motivated in part the decision to keep the
Philippines after the Spanish–American War. The United States by 1897 was on the verge of
dramatic territorial and economic expansion overseas. If the country was not yet a world power,
it was on the verge of being so.
Notes
1 The best economic history of U.S. expansion in the nineteenth century is David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: American Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere, 1865–1900 (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1998). A more dated study from the New Left perspective is William
Appleman Williams, The Roots of the Modern American Empire: A Study of the Growth and Shaping of Social
Consciousness in a Marketplace Society (New York: Random House, 1969).
30
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U.S. Overseas Expansion Post-Civil War Era
2 The best overall study of U.S. foreign policy during this period is Robert L. Beisner, From the Old
Diplomacy to the New, 1865–1900 (New York: Crowell, 1975).
3 For a complete history of Reconstruction, see Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–77 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988).
4 For a complete history of the Johnson presidency, see Albert Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson
(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1979).
5 For a complete history of the Monroe Doctrine in the nineteenth century, see Jay Sexton, The Monroe
Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011). An older
but still useful work is Dexter Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1963).
6 See Alfred J. Hanna and Kathryn Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1971). Also “ ‘Weakness offers Temptation’:
William H. Seward and the Reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine,” Diplomatic History 19 (Fall 1995):
583–599. For U.S.–French relations, see Henry Blumenthal, France and the United States: Their Diplomatic Relations, 1789–1914 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970). And for U.S.–
Mexican relations, see Thomas Schoonover, Dollars over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in
Mexican–United States Relations, 1861–67 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1978).
7 The best treatment of Seward’s policies is Ernest N. Paolino, The Foundations of American Expansionism:
William Henry Seward and U.S. Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973). See also
Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967) and John
Taylor, William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, Inc., 1996). For a
first-hand account of Seward’s tenure in the State Department, see his son’s (who served as undersecretary of state) memoirs: Frederick Seward, Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and
Diplomat,1830–1915 (New York: Putnam Publishers, 1916).
8 For U.S.–Haitian relations, see Rayford W. Logan, Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941). For U.S.–Dominican relations, see Charles
Tansill, The United States and Santo Domingo, 1798–1873: A Chapter in Caribbean Diplomacy (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938).
9 For a complete history of U.S.–Danish relations that ultimately led to the Virgin Islands being acquired
by the United States in 1917, see Charles Tansill, The Purchase of the Danish West Indies (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1932).
10 The United States would go on to claim numerous islands in the Caribbean and Pacific under this law.
See Jimmy M. Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994).
11 See Ronald J. Jensen, The Alaska Purchase and Russian–American Relations (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975) and Paul Holbo, Tarnished Expansion: The Alaska Scandal, the Press, and Congress,
1867–1877 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1983). For Sumner’s role in securing the
ratification of the treaty, see David H. Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York:
Random House, 1970).
12 The best one-volume biography of Grant is William McFeely, Grant (New York: W.W. Norton and
Co., 1981), but while strong on his presidency, it is less than satisfactory on his military career. McFeely
paints a very unsympathetic portrait of Grant. Also strong on his political career and a more favorable
assessment of the man is Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001). A popular
history that can safely be ignored because of its superficiality is Geoffrey Perret, Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier
and President (New York: Random House, 1997).
13 The only biography of Fish is Allan Nevins, Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration
(New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1936). There is a pressing need for a modern study of Grant
and Fish’s foreign policy.
14 For a complete history of the failed Dominican annexation, see William Javier Nelson, Almost a Territory: America’s Attempt to Annex the Dominican Republic (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press,
1990). To place the annexation attempt in an international perspective, see Luis Martínez-Fernández,
“Caudillos, Annexationism and the Rivalry between Empires in the Dominican Republic, 1844–1874,”
Diplomatic History 17 (Fall 1993): 571–598. To understand the role of Haiti, see Rayford Logan, Haiti
and the Dominican Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). For the treaty’s defeat in the
U.S. Senate, see Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man and W. Stull Hull, Treaties Defeated by the
Senate: A Study of the Struggle between President and Senate over the Conduct of Foreign Affairs (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933).
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15 The best modern study on U.S.–Cuban relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is Jose
M. Hernandez, Cuba and the United States: Intervention and Militarism, 1868–1933 (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2010).
16 Hamilton Fish diary, November 6, 1875. Library of Congress. For the role of the Cuban-American
community during the war, see Gerald E. Poyo, With All, and for the Good of All: The Emergence of
Popular Nationalism in the Cuban Communities of the United States, 1848–1898 (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1989).
17 For the 1875 U.S. mediation offer, see Jay Sexton, “The United States, the Cuban Rebellion, and the
Multilateral Initiative of 1875,” Diplomatic History 30 (Summer 2006): 335–365. There is no study of
the 1869 offer.
18 The only modern study of the Virginius incident is Richard Bradford, The Virginius Affair (Boulder:
Colorado Associated University Press, 1980).
19 “How should we fight Spain,” The Nation, 4 December, 1873, 864.
20 An older but still useful study on the U.S. Navy during this era is Harold and Margaret Sprout, The Rise
of American Naval Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944).
21 The only full-length biography of Mahan is William D. Puleston, Mahan: The Life and Work of Captain
Alfred Thayer Mahan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1939). A joint biography of Mahan,
Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, John Hat and Elihu Root that is quite useful for placing
Mahan’s influence on U.S. imperialism is Warren Zimmermann, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made their Country a World Power (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). For Mahan’s influence on the U.S. Navy, see Mark L. Schulman, Navalism and the Emergence of American Sea Power,
1882–1893 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995).
22 For the Naval War College’s role in U.S. expansion, see Ronald H. Spector, The Professors of War: The
Naval War College and the Development of the Naval Profession (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press,
1977).
23 Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Seapower Upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1890).
24 For the role of Mahan in the birth of the German Navy, see Robert Massie, Dreadnought: Britain,
Germany and the Coming of World War I (New York: Random House, 1991).
25 A good study of the new technological advancements the fleet enjoyed is Stephen K. Stein, From Torpedoes to Aviation: Washington Irving Chambers and Technological Innovation in the New Navy, 1876 to 1913
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007).
26 The best overall study of the role of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific in spreading U.S. influence prior to
the 1890s is David F. Long, Gold Braid and Foreign Relations: Diplomatic Activities of U.S. Naval Officers,
1798–1883 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988).
27 For the role the U.S. Navy played in East Asia, see Robert E. Johnson, Far China Station: The U.S.
Navy in Asian Waters, 1800–1898 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979).
28 A first-rate biography of Shufeldt is Frederick C. Drake, Empire of the Seas: A Biography of Rear Admiral
Robert Shufeldt USN (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984).
29 For the role of commerce in U.S.–China relations during the era, see Thomas McCormick, China
Market: America’s Quest for Informal Empire, 1893–1901 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967).
30 The best study on the role of U.S. diplomats in China is David L. Anderson, Imperialism and Idealism:
American Diplomats in China, 1861–1898 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
31 The best works on the activities of U.S. missionaries in China are Wayne Flint and Gerald W. Berkley,
Taking Christianity to China: Alabama Missionaries in the Middle Kingdom, 1850–1950 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997) and Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries
in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
32 Paul Kennedy, The Samoan Tangle: A Study in Anglo-German–American Relations (New York: Barnes
and Noble, 1974). Older but still useful is George H. Ryden, The Foreign Policy of the United States in
Relation to Samoa (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1933). A popular history of the U.S.–
German showdown in Samoa is Edward P. Hoyt, The Typhoon that Stopped a War (New York: D.
McKay Co., 1968).
33 Blaine is one of the more fascinating characters in U.S. diplomatic history. For his influence, see
Edward P. Crapol, James G. Blaine: Architect of Empire (Wilmington, DE: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000).
34 For the U.S.–Japanese rivalry over Hawaii, see William M. Morgan, Pacific Gibraltar: U.S.–Japanese
Rivalry over the Annexation of Hawaii, 1885–1898 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011).
32
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35 The classic and essential New Left work that stresses the economic motivation of U.S. imperialism is
Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansionism, 1860–1898 (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1963). See also LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
36 To fully understand the corruption of the Gilded Age, see Jack Beatty, Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of
Money in America, 1865–1900 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007).
37 To understand how the two worked together on this one goal, see William H. Becker, The Dynamics
of Business–Government Relations: Industry and Exports, 1893–1921 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981).
38 The best volume on U.S. trade with its American neighbors during the Gilded Age is David M.
Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: American Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere,
1865–1900 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998). For the Anglo-American economic competition in the Western Hemisphere, see Joseph Smith, Illusions of Conflict: Anglo-American Diplomacy
toward Latin America, 1865–1896 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979). To understand
how a region was tied to the world economy, see the excellent Bonham Richardson, The Caribbean in
the Wider World, 1492–1992 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
39 To better understand the no-transfer clause of the Monroe Doctrine, see John A. Logan, No Transfer:
An American Security Principle (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961).
40 The best overall study on U.S.–Latin American relations is Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A
History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
41 A detailed history of the role of the United States in the banana trade is Lester Langley and Thomas
Schoonover, The Banana Men: American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880–1930
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995).
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