U.S. interest in increasing foreign trade, expanding its national borders, and isolating itself from European conflicts shaped the nation's foreign policy and spurred government and private initiatives.
I. Struggling to create an independent global presence, U.S. policy makers sought to dominate the North America continent and to promote its foreign trade.
- Following the Louisiana Purchase, the drive to acquire, survey, and open up new lands and markets led Americans into numerous economic, diplomatic, and military initiatives in the Western Hemisphere and Asia.
- negotiating the Oregon border, annexing Texas, trading with China
- The U.S. sought dominance over the North American continent through a variety of means, including military actions, judicial decisions, and diplomatic efforts.
- Monroe Doctrine, Webster-Ashburton Treaty.
II. Various American grops and individuals initiated, championed, and/or resisted the expansion of territory and/or government powers.
- With expanding borders came public debates about whether to expand and how to define and use the new territories.
- designating slave/nonslave areas, defining territories for American Indians
- Federal government attempts to assert authority over the states brought resistance from state governments in the North and the South at different times.
- Hartford Convention, nullification crisis
- Whites living on the frontier tended to champion expansion efforts, while resistance by American Indians led to a sequence fo wars and federal efforts to control American Indian populations.
- War Hawks, Indian Removal Act, Seminole Wars
III. The American acquisition of lands in the West gave rise to a contest over the extension of slavery into the western territories as well as a series of attempts at national compromise.
- The 1820 Missouri compromise created a truce over the issue of slavery that gradually broke down as confrontations over slavery became increasingly bitter.
- As overcultivation depleted arable land in the Southeast, slaveholders relocated their agricultural enterprises to the new Southwest, increasing sectional tensions over the institution of slavery and sparking a broadscale debate about how to set national goals, priorities, and strategies.