Manifest Destiny, Progressivism, War, and the Roaring Twenties 189expansion with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803 , followed
by the acquisition of Florida in 1821 , the acquisition of Texas in 1845 , and
the seizure of territories from Mexico following the Mexican War in
1848 , including the Gadsden Purchase in 1853 , when the United States
paid “conscience money” of $ 10 million for a strip of land south of the Gila
River in Arizona and New Mexico that had been seized four years ear-
lier. Then, in 1867 , William Seward, secretary of state under Presidents
Lincoln and Johnson, negotiated a treaty with Rus sia by which Alaska
was acquired for $ 7. 2 million. To all these acquisitions there was spirited
opposition: Federalists denounced the Louisiana Purchase as unconsti-
tutional, Jackson was denounced for his seizure of Florida, Whigs fulmi-
nated against war with Mexico, and Seward suffered personal abuse for
the outrageous cost of Alaska. The acquisition of Alaska was called
“Seward’s Folly.” But the discovery of gold and later oil and gas more
than justified the purchase of Alaska as far as cost was concerned.
The physical expansion of the nation continued with the annexation
of the Hawaiian Islands in July 1898. American missionaries, mer-
chants, and planters had established economic and cultural ties with
the islands starting in the 1830 s. But in a successful revolt Americans
deposed the reigning monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, in 1893 and erected
a government that lasted until Congress, during the McKinley admin-
istration in 1898 , passed a joint resolution annexing the islands, de-
spite the strong opposition of anti-imperialists in both the Republican
and the Democratic parties. One of the great attractions in possessing
these islands, aside from their being a lucrative market and a source of
exotic fruits, such as the pineapple, was the fact that they provided re-
fueling bases and naval facilities for the United States at a time when it
was continuing to reach across the seas and bring its supposedly en-
lightened system of government to a needy and eager world. Two years
later Congress granted Hawaii territorial status.
By the end of the nineteenth century the United States had such a
congratulatory sense of its success in developing an industrial society
committed to individual freedom and demo cratic rule, combined with its
genuine humanitarian regard for the suffering of those living under im-
poverished conditions and dictatorial rule, that it slowly renewed its be-
lief in its mission to spread freedom and democracy around the globe.
This was Manifest Destiny revisited. The idea was first enunciated in