From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (42 page)

This does not mean that expansionist sentiment did not exist or that foreign policy was not important in these years. On the contrary, the Civil War in many ways confirmed the importance of foreign policy to the survival of the republic. An expansionist vision persisted, especially in the persons of Seward and his successor, Hamilton Fish. If there were few new acquisitions, Seward and Fish nonetheless resumed the push to the Caribbean and Pacific initiated in the 1840s and 1850s, charting the course of a new empire and taking the first steps toward its realization. Those historians who view the postwar years as a great hiatus between two eras of expansion miss the essential continuity of America's outward thrust.

Toward its southern and northern neighbors, Mexico and Canada, the United States demonstrated remarkable restraint during and immediately after the war, accepting as permanent the boundaries carved out in the antebellum period. In furtherance of Napoleon's grand design, French troops occupied Mexico City in June 1863. Later that year, Napoleon installed as ruler of Mexico the well-meaning but dull-witted Archduke Maximilian, brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria. Maximilian and his equally naive wife, Carlotta, undertook with enthusiasm the "holy work" of saving Mexicans from their own fecklessness, stabilizing the country, and fending off the march of republicanism in the Western Hemisphere.
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Civil War combatants perceived the dangers and opportunities of these developments to their respective causes and dealt with them accordingly. Despite its professed commitment to the principle of self-determination, the Confederacy sought to accommodate the new Mexican government to curry favor with Napoleon and perhaps gain recognition. Fearful of antagonizing the Union, Napoleon politely rebuffed southern overtures. Seward responded with a policy of "cautious moderation." He had refused to recognize the puppet government and warned that at some future point the United States might remove it by force. On the other hand, he also declined to assist the Mexican resistance forces of Benito Juarez. The United States would practice in regard to Mexico "the non-intervention which they require all foreign powers to observe in regard to the United States," he informed the Europeans.
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To keep Napoleon off balance, he left uncertain what the United States might do in the future.

As the Civil War ended, pressures mounted to do something. Congress and the press denounced foreign intervention. "Defenders of the Monroe Doctrine" organizations sprang up across the country. Defying the neutrality laws, Americans began to provide sizeable clandestine assistance to Juarez.
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Before replacing Lincoln, Vice President Johnson had talked of war with Mexico as "recreation" for Union soldiers.
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"Now for Mexico!" General Grant shouted on the day after Appomattox. Like Johnson, Grant and other generals saw a Mexican operation as a means to keep a large and increasingly restive army occupied. Warning that the establishment of a monarchical government in Mexico was an "act of hostility" against the United States and might provide a haven for Confederates leading to a "long, expensive and bloody war," Grant proposed to Johnson possible military action or at least disposing of America's huge arms surplus by selling weapons to Mexican resistance forces.
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Bogged down in a struggle with Congress over intractable Reconstruction problems, Johnson left diplomacy in the capable hands of Seward. The secretary of state dealt with Mexico in a way that belied his carefully cultivated reputation for recklessness. He saw a needless war as a threat to an already embattled administration and to his lingering presidential ambitions.
Grant positioned fifty thousand troops along the Rio Grande. Their commander, the dashing cavalryman Gen. Philip Sheridan, declared substantial stocks of weapons surplus and placed them along the border after informing Mexicans of their location. But Seward blocked Grant's more aggressive proposals, contenting himself with ratcheting up diplomatic pressure on Napoleon and Austria. In November 1865, he warned that failure to remove European troops could mean war. He sent Gen. John Schofield to Paris with instructions to "get his legs under Napoleon's mahogany and tell him he must get out of Mexico."
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When Austria appeared on the verge of sending troops to back Maximilian, Seward warned he would consider it an act of war and the United States could not remain a "silent or neutral spectator." Aware that Austria was already deeply entangled in a crisis with Prussia, Seward exploited its vulnerability. His warning signaled France to speed its exit. Seward may also have hoped through diplomatic firmness to salvage a faltering administration.
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Pressure from the United States was not the only or perhaps even the most important reason for Napoleon's retreat. Juarez's forces waged deadly guerrilla warfare against the invaders. The inept Maximilian could never rally Mexican support, and his power did not extend beyond the presence of French troops. Increasingly absorbed with European problems, the unpredictable Napoleon quickly lost interest in Mexico and began to search for a way out without appearing to capitulate to the United States. Lacking French support and facing a crisis in Europe, Austria declined to test the sincerity of Seward's threats. Both governments left the hapless Maximilian to his own devices. He was thrown out of office and executed by a Mexican firing squad in June 1867. Without giving in to the more belligerent voices inside and outside of the government, Seward served notice on the Europeans that the temporary suspension of the Monroe Doctrine as a result of the Civil War had ended.
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A hotbed of intrigue and conflict during and immediately after the Civil War, Canada was also a potentially explosive issue. Easy access across the border made the northern neighbor a refuge for draft dodgers, bounty jumpers, and anti-war Copperheads, and therefore a source of great resentment to staunch Unionists. Canada also served as a base for Confederate guerrillas, including the legendary John Hunt Morgan. After 1864, the Confederate government mounted a desperate last-ditch effort
to open a second front in Canada by embroiling the Union in conflict with Great Britain. A series of cross-border raids was designed to harass Union territory and provoke conflict with Canada. The attacks amounted to little more than pinpricks and at times verged on comic opera, except for a raid into the Vermont town of St. Albans by Kentuckians in October 1864. The raiders robbed a bank, shot up, looted, and burned the town, and then fled back across the border. Local authorities and federal troops pursued them, threatening a clash. Canada's refusal to extradite the raiders or make prompt restitution infuriated the Union. Americans naturally resented the use of Canadian soil for hostile purposes and threatened to gain restitution by seizing it after the war or taking it in compensation for claims for damage done by the
Alabama
. Sensitive to Canada's vulnerability, the British took Union threats seriously, fearing that a victorious—or defeated—Union might seek revenge by attacking Canada.

Tensions persisted after Appomattox. Hotheads demanded cession of Canada as payment for the
Alabama
claims and other alleged British breaches of neutrality. Rebellions in Canada's western provinces and annexationist sentiment on the British Columbia frontier after the U.S. purchase of Alaska created opportunities for American troublemakers and aroused nervousness in Canada. The most divisive postwar issue was a series of raids into Canada by the so-called Fenians, Irish expatriates, some of them Union veterans, operating from bases in the United States. Neither Johnson nor Seward at first took the Fenians seriously. They may have taken secret pleasure at Canada's discomfiture now that the incursionist shoe was on the other foot. Their failure to enforce the neutrality laws swiftly and effectively caused anger and resentment in Canada.

Despite persisting provocations, officials on both sides kept tensions in check. The British were determined to prevent border conflicts from getting out of control. Canadian officials made serious if not always effective efforts to enforce neutrality laws, and after initial hesitation offered restitution for the St. Albans raid. A New Yorker, Seward knew and understood the cross border neighbors and gave no encouragement to those who urged supporting rebellions in Canada or even annexation as compensation. Grant and Fish acted more effectively than Johnson and Seward to enforce the neutrality laws and curb the Fenians.

Partly in response to the perceived American threat, Britain created a federal union in Canada through the British North American Act of 1867. Most U.S. citizens quietly acquiesced, even though the word
dominion
in the new dependency's title gave some republican souls pause. Just as the British in 1776 had been certain that the new United States was not a viable entity, so also Americans believed that the new dominion of Canada would
collapse. They accepted as an article of faith what has been called the convergence theory, the belief that because U.S. ideology, trade, and culture were so important to a people so similar to themselves the two nations would converge and Canada would join the United States. Dominion status was a transitional stage. There was no need to push for annexation.
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The 1871 Treaty of Washington helped ease escalating post–Civil War tensions and laid the basis for a growing Anglo-American accord. The treaty is most often noted for its agreement to arbitrate the especially contentious
Alabama
claims dispute and for its resolution of long-standing spats over U.S.-Canadian boundaries and access to fisheries. It evoked from both sides quite extraordinary concessions, a British apology for damages done by the Confederate raiders and eventual U.S. abandonment of its exorbitant "indirect" claims against Britain for Civil War damages, the latter occasioned in large measure by a desperate U.S. need for British capital to finance its enormous war debt.
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A complex three-sided negotiation between the United States, Britain, and the Dominion of Canada, the Treaty of Washington also had major implications for North America. Much of the time was spent on Canadian issues. The result was tacit U.S. recognition of Canada's new status.
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Seward's moderation toward Mexico and Canada reflected his acceptance of the convergence theory, an integral part of his larger concept of America's destiny. Historians have vigorously debated whether his expansionism was opportunistic and ad hoc or reflected a larger design.
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The distinct pattern of his goals and the purposefulness of his actions strongly suggest the latter. But there is no debating that he was the key figure in mid-nineteenth-century expansion, the link between the Manifest Destiny movement of the 1840s and the overseas expansionism of the 1890s. In terms of his vision of the nation's destiny, he was the logical successor to Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, the latter of whom he referred to as a "patron, a guide, a counsellor, and a friend."
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His horizons extended well beyond the continentalism of his illustrious predecessors to the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Like the expansionists of the 1840s, Seward fused commercial with territorial objectives and moved a step beyond them in promoting the acquisition of overseas territory. He added to Henry Clay's views on economic development specific new concerns arising out of the nation's industrial growth and technological advancement. He strongly endorsed the Republican program of economic development: a national banking system; federal support for internal improvements such as a transcontinental railroad and cable to bind western territories to the Union; and a tariff to protect nascent industries. He added a vigorous commitment to promote investments and markets abroad. Moving beyond his Whig roots, he conceived various expansionist schemes to establish bases and coaling stations for a steam-powered navy in the Caribbean and Pacific. This naval power would in turn protect existing markets and help add new ones. Seward thus also provides a crucial link between U.S. foreign policy in the nineteenth century and in the twentieth.

Never satisfied with a "small policy," in Henry Adams's words, the secretary of state pursued multifarious projects to fulfill his expansive vision of nation's destiny. The seat of empire was moving steadily westward, he believed, and the struggle for world power would occur in Asia. He saw no need for colonies or wars of conquest. Territory would accrue to the United States by natural processes and should be acquired, as Andrew Johnson put it, "peacefully and lawfully, while neither doing nor menacing injury to other states."
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Seward's vision extended from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to the North Pole to East Asia (what he referred to, ethnocentrically, as the "Far West"). He had long envisioned the Caribbean as an American domain. The difficulty of chasing Confederate raiders "from our own distant shores" during the Civil War underscored the urgency of U.S. control. In January 1866, ostensibly for reasons of health, he toured the area in search of locations for naval bases and coaling stations in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. He negotiated treaties for acquisition of the Virgin Islands and Danish West Indies and for a naval base at Samana Bay in the Dominican Republic. He contemplated acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Tiger Island off the coast of Honduras. Laying the groundwork for fulfillment of a dream dating back to Clay, he negotiated with Colombia a treaty for the right-of-way to build a canal across the isthmus of Panama. His vision extended to the North Atlantic, where he eyed the purchase of Iceland and Greenland, and to the Pacific, where he looked into acquisition of the Hawaiian and Fiji
islands, proposed a naval base on the island of Formosa, and initiated preparations for an expedition to open the "hermit kingdom" of Korea to trade and Western influence. His cabinet colleague and sometime foe Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles called him a "monomaniac" on expansion. If he could live another thirty years, Seward once boasted, he would gain for the United States "possession of the American continent and the control of the world."
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