| Reading Guide for Week 3 | |
|
Tuesday 1784 saw the first of a series of land ordinances issued by Congress in its different forms; in 1784 it was a unilateral Continental Congress, whereas in 1789 it became the bicameral United States Congress. These land ordinances envisioned a controlled process with respect to westward expansion, akin to the desire of British imperial authorities articulated in a 1763 proclamation about settlement dynamics in the North American colonies — i.e, those colonies that became the future independent United States. The Continental Congress in 1784 also envisioned an orderly process in which territories would be purchased from various Native American polities, and then in turn parcels of land would be sold to American settlers. It was also the expectation that those new American settlements would eventually be incorporated into the United States as new states, once they met certain qualifications. Many complex realities were not anticipated in this early experimental ordinance, which is why it would be revised and refined already in 1787 and subsequently. In the background was the fact that much of the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River — granted to the United States by the British empire in a 1783 treaty — was, for one thing, claimed by various individual states, and was not in the control of the federal government. It would be, after many effectively diplomatic negotiations between the national government — still only in embryo form — and the state governments. The letter by Henry Knox, a week into his service as the first U.S. Secretary of War, discussed some of the complex realities. The borderlands quickly became a zone of contention and conflict, which created a major headache for Knox. From Knox’s perspective, imperialism was a burden. For Native Americans, it was an escalating threat. For white settlers, it was a hindered goal that needed solving and supporting. Those settlers inflicted harm, and created their own harm’s way, and then clamored for “protection” from the national government. Thursday In 1796 George Washington famously stepped away from the Presidency, relinquishing power in stark contrast to the monarchical mode of governance: for a lifetime, and then passed down preferably to a son. Washington’s sense of the international order was focused mainly on Europe across the Atlantic, with Native Americans registered merely as pawns in European imperial games. When Washington fretted about international diplomacy, he fretted mainly abut Europe, especially given the outbreak of French Revolutionary Wars engulfing Europe as of 1792. He did not want the United States to be treated as a mere pawn. Washington advocated neutrality, hoping that the United States could avoid entanglement in the wars that seemed incessantly to beset Europe in past and present ... and into the future, until the era of the European Union in the latter 20th century. Washington’s foreign policy was prudent, too, given that the United States lacked fiscal stability and military strength in the 1790s, and was knotted in conflicts with Native Americans to the west. A year later, the new U.S. President succeeding Washington, John Adams, articulated less principled and more pragmatic concerns. How to defend the long eastern seaboard of the United States, without a navy, in the face of the powerful navies of Britain and France? How to protect American commercial shipping plying the waters of the world in search of trade partners? Adams reaffirmed Washington’s principle of neutrality, to avoid being treated as a pawn, but Adams was very conscious that the world could reach American shores, and that Americans were reaching into the wider world beyond Europe. Hence, Adams would, for instance, be the U.S. President who signed the law establishing a U.S. Navy, in 1798, albeit a tiny one compared to Britain and France. |