From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (50 page)

The crisis was evidenced in various ways. The growing militancy of labor—there were 1,400 strikes in the year 1894 alone—and the use of force to suppress it produced a threat to social order that frightened solid middle-class citizens. The violence that accompanied the 1892 Homestead "massacre" in Pennsylvania, where private security forces battled workers, and the Pullman strike in Illinois two yeas later in which thirteen strikers were killed was particularly unsettling. The march on Washington of Jacob Coxey's "army" of unemployed in the spring of 1894 to demand federal relief and the Populist "revolt" of embattled southern and western farmers proposing major political and economic reforms portended a radical upheaval that might alter basic institutions.

The nation also appeared threatened from abroad. The uneasy equilibrium that had prevailed in Europe since Waterloo seemed increasingly
endangered. The worldwide imperialist surge quickened in the 1890s. The partition of Africa neared completion. Following Japan's defeat of China in their 1894–95 war, the European powers turned to East Asia, joining their Asian newcomer in marking out spheres of influence, threatening to eliminate what remained of the helpless Middle Kingdom's sovereignty, perhaps shutting it off to American trade. Some Europeans spoke of closing ranks against a rising U.S. commercial menace. Some nations raised tariffs. Britain's threat to impose imperial preference in its vast colonial holdings portended a further shrinkage of markets deemed more essential than ever in years of depression.
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The gloom and anxiety of the 1890s produced a mood conducive to war and expansion. They triggered a noisy nationalism and spread-eagle patriotism, manifested in the stirring marches of John Philip Sousa and outwardly emotional displays of reverence for the flag. The word
jingoism
was coined in Britain in the 1870s. Xenophobia flourished in the United States in the 1890s in nativist attacks upon immigrants at home and verbal blasts against nations that affronted U.S. honor. For some Americans, a belligerent foreign policy offered a release for pent-up aggressions and diversion from domestic difficulties. It could "knock on the head . . . the matters which have embarrassed us at home," Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge averred.
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The social malaise also aroused concern about issues of manhood. The depression robbed many American men of the means to support their families. A rising generation that had not fought in the Civil War and remembered only its glories increasingly feared that industrialism, urbanization, and immigration, along with widening divisions of class and race, were sapping American males of the manly virtues deemed essential for good governance. The emergence of a militant women's movement demanding political participation further threatened men's traditional role in U.S. politics. For some jingoes, a more assertive foreign policy, war, and even the acquisition of colonies would reaffirm their manhood, restore lost pride and virility, and legitimize their traditional place in the political system. "War is healthy to a nation," an Illinois congressman proclaimed. "War is a bad thing, no doubt," Lodge added, "but there are far worse things both for nations and for men," among which he would have included dishonor and a failure vigorously to defend the nation's interests.
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Changes at home and abroad convinced some Americans of the need to reexamine long-standing foreign policy assumptions. The further shrinkage of distances, the advent of menacing weapons, the emergence of new powers such as Germany and Japan, and the surge of imperialist activity persuaded some military leaders that the United States no longer enjoyed freedom from foreign threat. Isolated from civilian society, increasingly professionalized, their own interests appearing to be happily aligned with those of the nation, they pushed for a reexamination of national defense policy and the building of a modern military machine. They promoted the novel idea (for Americans, at least) that even in time of peace a nation must prepare for war. Army officers added Germany and Japan to the nation's list of potential enemies and warned of emerging threats from European imperialism, commercial rivalries, and foreign challenges to an American-controlled canal. They began to push for an expanded, more professional regular army based on European models.
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Advocates for the new navy offered more compelling arguments and achieved greater results. The most fervent and influential late nineteenth-century advocate of sea power was Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, son of an early superintendent of West Point. A mediocre sailor who detested sea duty, the younger Mahan salvaged a flagging career by accepting the post of senior lecturer at the new Naval War College. While putting together a course in naval history, he wrote his classic
The Influence of Seapower upon History
(1890). Mahan argued that the United States must abandon its defensive, "continentalist" strategy based on harbor defense and commerce raiding for a more outward-looking approach. Britain had achieved great-power status by controlling the seas and dominating global commerce. So too, he contended, the United States must compete aggressively for world trade, build a large merchant marine, acquire colonies for raw materials, markets, and naval bases, and construct a modern battleship fleet, "the arm of offensive power, which alone enables a country to extend its influence outward." Such moves would ensure U.S. prosperity by keeping sea lanes open in time of war and peace. A skilled publicist as well as an influential strategic thinker, Mahan won worldwide acclaim in the 1890s; his book became an international best seller. At home, a naval renaissance was already under way. Mahan's ideas provided a persuasive rationale for the new battleship navy and a more aggressive U.S. foreign policy.
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Some civilians also called for an activist foreign policy, even for abandoning long-standing strictures against alliances and inhibitions against overseas expansion. Such policies had done well enough "when we were an embryo nation," a senator observed, but the mere fact that the United States had become a major power now demanded their abandonment.
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As a rising great power, the United States had interests that must be defended. It must assume the responsibility for its own welfare and for world order that went with its new status. "The mission of this country is not merely to pose but to act . . . ," former attorney general and secretary of state Richard Olney proclaimed in 1898, "to forego no fitting opportunity to further the progress of civilization."
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Since Jefferson's time, Americans had sought to deal with pressing internal difficulties through expansion, and in the 1890s they increasingly looked outward for solutions to domestic problems. With the disappearance of the frontier, it was argued, new outlets must be found abroad for America's energy and enterprise. In a world driven by Darwinian struggle where only the strongest survived, the United States must compete aggressively. The Panic of 1893 marked the coming of age of the "glut thesis." America's traditional interest in foreign trade now became almost an obsession. Businessmen increasingly looked to Washington for assistance.
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Many Americans agreed that to compete effectively in world markets the United States needed an isthmian canal and island bases to protect it. In the tense atmosphere of the 1890s, some advocates of the so-called large policy even urged acquisition of colonies.

The idea of overseas empire ran up against the nation's tradition of anti-colonialism, and in the 1890s, as so often before, Americans heatedly debated the means by which they could best fulfill their providential destiny. A rising elite keenly interested in foreign policy followed closely similar debates on empire in Britain and adapted their arguments to the United States.
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Some continued to insist that the nation should focus on perfecting its domestic institutions to provide an example to others. But as Americans became more conscious of their rising power, others insisted they had a God-given obligation to spread the blessings of their superior institutions to less fortunate peoples across the world. God was "preparing in our civilization the die with which to stamp nations," Congregationalist
minister Josiah Strong proclaimed, and was "preparing mankind to receive our impress."
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Racism and popular notions of Anglo-Saxonism and the white man's burden helped justify the imposition of U.S. rule on "backward" populations. Even while the United States and Britain continued to tangle over various issues, Americans hailed the blood ties and common heritage of the English-speaking peoples. According to Anglo-Saxonist ideas, Americans and Britons stood together at the top of a hierarchy of races, superior in intellect, industry, and morality. Some Americans took pride in the glory of the British Empire while predicting that in time they would supplant it. The United States was bound to become "a greater England with a nobler destiny," proclaimed Indiana senator and staunch expansionist Albert Jeremiah Beveridge.
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Convictions of Anglo-Saxonism helped rationalize harsh measures toward lesser races. While disfranchising and segregating African Americans at home, some Americans promoted the idea of extending civilization to lesser peoples abroad. Recent experiences with Native Americans provided handy precedents. Expansionists thus easily reconciled imperialism with traditional principles. The economic penetration or even colonization of less developed areas would allegedly benefit those peoples by bringing them the advantages of U.S. institutions. Arguing for the Americanization and eventual annexation of Cuba, expansionist James Harrison Wilson put it all together: "Let us take this course because it is noble and just and right, and besides because it will pay."
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The new mood was early manifest in the assertive diplomacy of President Benjamin Harrison and Secretary of State James G. Blaine. In response to attacks on American missionaries, Harrison joined other great powers in seeking to coerce the Chinese government to respect the rights of foreigners. He also ordered the construction of specially designed gunboats to show the flag in Chinese waters. The bullying of Haiti and Santo Domingo in a futile quest for a Caribbean naval base, the bellicose handling of minor incidents with Italy and Chile, and the abortive 1893 move to annex Hawaii all indicated a distinct shift in the tone of U.S. policy and the adoption of new and more aggressive methods.

A second Grover Cleveland administration (1893–97) killed the Republican effort to acquire Hawaii. Anti-expansionist and anti-annexation, Cleveland had a strong sense of right and wrong in such matters. He
recalled the treaty of annexation from the Senate and dispatched James Blount of Georgia on a secret fact-finding mission to Hawaii. Blount also opposed overseas expansion both in principle and on racial grounds. "We have nothing in common with those people," he once exclaimed of Venezuelans. He ignored the new Hawaiian government's frenzied warnings that Japan was waiting to seize the islands if the United States demurred. He concluded, correctly, that most Hawaiians opposed annexation and that the change of government had been engineered by Americans to protect their own profits. His report firmly opposed annexation.
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Facing a divided Congress and a nation absorbed in economic crisis, Cleveland was inclined to restore Queen Liliuokalani to power, but he also worried about the fate of the rebels. The queen had threatened to have their heads—and their property. Unable to get from either side the assurances he sought and unwilling to decide himself, he tossed the issue back to Congress. After months of debate, the legislators could agree only on the desirability of recognizing the existing Hawaiian government. Cleveland reluctantly went along.
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Even the normally cautious and anti-expansionist Cleveland was not immune to the spirit of the age. In January 1894, his administration injected U.S. power into an internal struggle in Brazil. Suspecting (probably incorrectly) that Britain sought to use the conflict to enhance its position in that important Latin American nation, Cleveland dispatched five ships of the new navy, the most imposing fleet the nation had ever sent to sea, to break a rebel blockade and protect U.S. ships and exports. When the navy moved on to show the flag elsewhere, private interests took on the task of gunboat diplomacy. With Cleveland's acquiescence or tacit support, the colorful industrialist, shipbuilder, and arms merchant Charles Flint equipped merchant and passenger ships with the most up-to-date weapons, including a "dynamite gun" that could fire a 980-pound projectile. He dispatched his "fleet" to the coast of Brazil. The mere threat of the notorious dynamite gun helped cow the rebels and keep the government in power, solidifying U.S. influence in Brazil. In November 1894, Brazilians laid the cornerstone to a monument in Rio de Janeiro to James Monroe and his doctrine.
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The following year, the Cleveland administration intruded in a boundary dispute between Britain and Venezuela over British Guiana, rendering a new and more expansive interpretation of that doctrine. The dispute had dragged on for years. Venezuela numerous times sought to draw the United States into it by speaking of violations of Monroe's statement. Each time, Washington had politely declined, and it is not entirely clear why Cleveland now took up a challenge his predecessors had sensibly resisted. He had a soft spot for the underdog. He may have been moved by his fervent anti-imperialism. He was undoubtedly responding to domestic pressures, stirred up in part by the lobbying of a shady former U.S. diplomat now working for Venezuela. Britain appeared particularly aggressive in the hemisphere, and the United States was increasingly sensitive to its position. Some Americans feared the British might use the dispute to secure control of the Orinoco River and close it to trade. More generally, Cleveland responded to the broad threat of a surging European imperialism and the fear that the Europeans might turn their attention to Latin America, thus directly threatening U.S. interests. He determined to use the dispute to assert U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.
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