Name: 戰爭與擴張。美國曆史速成班 #17 (War & Expansion: Crash Course US History #17)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:08:52.000Z
Duration: 12 min 47 s
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Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. history and today we’re going to discuss

how the United States came to acquire two of its largest states, Texas and…there is

another one. Mr. Green! Mr. Green! I believe the answer

you’re looking for is Alaska. Oh me from the past, as you can clearly tell

from the globe, Alaskan statehood never happened. No I am referring of course to California.

Stan, are we using your computer today? Oh. Stan!

We’ve talked about westward expansion a few times here on CrashCourse, but it’s

usually about, like, Kentucky or Ohio. This time we’re going really west, I mean, not

like Hawaii west, but sea to shining sea west. intro

So you might remember that journalist John O’Sullivan coined the phrase Manifest Destiny

to describe America’s god given right to take over all the land between the Atlantic

and Pacific Oceans, regardless of who happened to be living there

Sorry Native Americans, Mexicans, French fur trappers, beavers, bison, prairie dogs, passenger

pigeons. I’m not going to go so far as to give God

credit for America’s internal imperialism, but I will say that our expansion had a lot

to do with economics, especially when you consider Jefferson’s ideas about the empire

of liberty. Stan, did I just say liberty? That means technically

I also have to talk about slavery, but we’re gonna kick the slavery can down the road until

later in the show. Just like American politicians did in the 19th century.

By 1860 nearly 300,000 people had made the trip that has been immortalized by the classic

educational video game “Oregon Trail,” which, by the way, is inaccurate in the sense

that a family of 6, even a very hungry one, cannot eat a buffalo.

But is extremely accurate in that a lot of people died of dysentery and cholera. Frickin

disease. So, Oregon at the time was jointly controlled

by the U.S. and Britain. Northern Mexico at the time included what are now Texas, Arizona,

Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and California. But New Mexico and California were the only

two with, like, big settlements. About 30,000 Mexicans lived in New Mexico, and about 3,500

in California, and in both places they were outnumbered by Native Americans. Okay, let’s

go to the Thought Bubble. When Mexico became independent, there were

only about 2,000 Tejanos there, so to encourage economic development, Mexico’s government

granted a huge tract of land to Moses Austin. Austin’s son Stephen made a tidy profit

selling off smaller parcels of that land until there were 7,000 American Americans there.

This made Mexico nervous so, backpedalling furiously, Mexico annulled the land contracts

and banned further emigration into Texas. Even though slavery was already abolished

in Mexico, up to now they had allowed Americans to bring slaves. Austin, joined by some Tejano

elites, demanded greater autonomy and the right to use slave labor. Thinking the better

of it, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana decided to assert control over the restive

territory with an army, turning the elite’s demands for autonomy into a full-scale revolt

for independence. On March 13, 1836, Santa Ana defeated the

American defenders of the Alamo, killing 187 (or 188, sources differ) Americans including

Davy Crockett. The Texas rebels would “remember the Alamo” and come back to defeat Santa

Ana at the battle of San Jacinto. And Mexico was forced to recognize Texas’s independence.

So Texas became the Lone Star Republic and quickly decided that it would be much better

to be a less lonely star and join the United States. So, in 1837, Texas’ Congress called

for union but all they heard back was, “not so fast, Texas.” Why? Because Texas wanted

to be a slave state, and adding another slave state would disrupt the balance in the Senate,

so Jackson and Van Buren did what good politicians always do: they ignored Texas.

And then after Martin Van Buren wrote a letter denouncing any plan to annex Texas on the

grounds that it would probably provoke a war, Democratic convention southerners threw their

support behind slaveholding Andrew Jackson pal, James K. Polk.

Polk just managed to get a presidential victory over perennial almost-president Henry Clay,

and seeing the writing on the wall, Congress annexed Texas in March of 1845, days before

Polk took office. Congress then forged an agreement with Britain to divide Oregon at

the 49th parallel, which restored the slave state/free state balance in the Senate.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. Hey, Stan, can I get the foreshadowing filter? I wonder if we’re

going to be able to keep that slave state/free state balance...forever.

The land-hungry James K. Polk had another goal as president: acquire California from

Mexico. He tried to purchase it from Mexico, but they

were like, “No,” which is Spanish for “No.”

So Polk decided to do things the hard way – he sent troops under future president

Zachary Taylor into this disputed border region. As expected, by which I mean intended, fighting

broke out between American and Mexican forces. Polk, in calling for a declaration of war,

claimed that the Mexicans had “shed blood upon American soil,” although the soil in

question was arguably not American, unless you think of America as being, you know, all

of this. A majority of Americans supported this war,

although to be fair, a majority of Americans will support almost any war. I’m sorry,

but it is true. At least at first. It was the first war fought by American troops

primarily on foreign soil, as most of the fighting was done in Mexico. Among the dissenters

was a Massachusetts Transcendentalist who is probably better known than the war itself.

Henry David Thoreau was in fact thrown in jail for refusing to pay taxes in protest

of the war and wrote “On Civil Disobedience” in his defence, which many American high-schoolers

are assigned to read and expected not to understand, lest they take the message to heart and stop

doing assignments like reading “On Civil Disobedience.”

Another critic was concerned about the increase in executive power that Polk seemed to show,

saying: “Allow the president to invade a neighboring country whenever he shall deem

it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to make war at pleasure”

That critic was none other than noted peacenik Abraham Lincoln, who would go on to do more

to expand executive power than any president in the 19th century except maybe Andrew Jackson.

Right so Santa Ana’s army was defeated in February 1847 but Mexico refused to give up.

So Winfield Scott, who had the unfortunate nickname “old fuss and feathers,” captured

Mexico City itself in September. A final peace treaty, the Treaty of Guadalupe

Hidalgo was signed in 1848, under which Mexico confirmed the annexation of Texas and further

ceded California as well as several other places that would later become states but

we couldn’t fit on the map. In return, the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million

and agreed to a no backsies deal in re Texas thereby freeing Mexico from the shackles of

Amarillo. I’m sorry Amarillians. No I’m not. I am. I am. I’m not. I am.

This is great, Stan. The people of Amarillo hate me, also the people of New Jersey, Alaska

is in the green-parts-of-not-America, We don’t even have Arizona and New Mexico on the chalkboard.

Pretty soon I will have alienated everyone. Anyway, thanks to the land from Mexico, our

dream of expanding from the Atlantic to the Pacific was finally complete. And as always

happens when dreams come true, trouble started. After the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, between

75,000 and 100,000 Spanish-speaking Mexicans and 150,000 Native Americans were under the

jurisdiction of the United States. Despite the fact that the treaty granted Spanish

descended Mexican “male citizens” legal and property rights, the Mexicans were still

seen as inferior to Anglo-Saxons whose manifest destiny it was, of course, to overspread the

continent. And the fact that these Mexicans were Catholic

didn’t help either, especially because in the eastern part of the United States, there

was a rising tide of anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant sentiment known as nativism.

And there was a new political party, The American Party, dedicated entirely to such sentiment.

They were referred to as the “Know-nothings” because when you asked them about their politics

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戰爭與擴張。美國曆史速成班 #17 (War & Expansion: Crash Course US History #17)

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