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 | History of American states: America Becomes Fifty States |  | | | The History of American States #7
America Becomes Fifty States
By
Ralph Enos
With the admission of Washington to the Union as a state (#42) in 1889, the United States filled out its continental geographical limits. To its citizens it must have seemed like former dreams of “manifest destiny” had come true. Only isolated territories remained—the Mormon enclave of Deseret in the intermountain west, the Indian Territory in the southern great plains, the hot and dry, sparsely populated territories of Arizona and New Mexico on our southwestern border with Mexico.
The Mormons were exiled from Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846. Under the dynamic leadership of Brigham Young, they immediately and massively moved west. On June 24, 1847 Young proclaimed “This is the place,” and their advanced party settled in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. In 1848 the territory was ceded to the United States by Mexico as part of the spoils from the Mexican War. The settlers immediately petitioned Congress to become the state of Deseret with Young as elected governor. Instead Young was appointed governor of the territory, renamed Utah.
The mostly Mormon settlers in Utah petitioned for statehood in 1849, 1856, 1862, 1872, 1882, and 1887—being denied each time. The problem was the Mormon practice of polygamy, which church leaders adamantly defended, suffering fines, property confiscation, or even exile as consequence. In 1890 the church yielded and outlawed polygamy. On January 4, 1896 Utah became America’s 45th state.
In 1809 a number of southern Indians petitioned President Jefferson for a territory west of the Mississippi where they could have hunting grounds unmolested by the white man. At first these grounds were in what would become Arkansas, but when the Indian Territory was established the allocated land was farther west. In 1834 Congress set apart the territory north of Texas for possession by five southern tribes—the Cherokees, Creek, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws—and the Quapaw agency. Most of the tribal members resettled at the time but some Cherokees remained. These were forcibly removed in 1838 and trekked west on what became known as “the trail of tears.” As the 19th century wore on, additional tribes—Sacs, Foxes, Osages, Kansas, Pottawatomies, Shawnees, Wichitas, Pawnees, Poncas, Nez Percès, Otoes, Missouris, Iowas, Kiowas, Kickapoos, Comanches, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes—were settled in one or another portion of the territory. Notwithstanding all this settlement, a prime portion of the Indian Territory was still unsettled. On April 22, 1889 this portion was opened to settlement by any one. On that day the great land rush occurred when 20,000 settlers lined up on the border and at noon rushed to homestead the land. Congress carved the Oklahoma Territory out of the Indian Territory to comprise this new polity, and for the next fifteen years the Indian and Oklahoma Territories existed side by side.
Although the five original tribes by treaties with the U.S. were allowed to make and administer their own laws, by the early 1890s, whites had commingled with the native Americans and the Indian Territory had become a refuge for fugitives from American justice. In 1893, congress established the Dawes Commission to induce the tribes to consent to government from Washington and in 1898 this was accomplished. In 1906, congress authorized the Indian and Oklahoma Territories to qualify for admission as one state. On November 16, 1907 Oklahoma was admitted as the 46th state.
New Mexico, America’s 47th state, was in fact the second to be permanently settled. The region of the Rio Grande Valley north of El Paso was a Spanish colony from 1598 until 1821 when it passed to Mexico. In 1846, after the outbreak of the war between the U.S. and Mexico, Colonel Stephen W. Kearney occupied Santa Fe on August 18, and New Mexico became American. Its population at the time qualified it to be a state, but Civil War antagonisms—a Confederate army briefly occupied the capital in 1861—prevented congress from granting it statehood. The New Mexico Territory was organized in September 1850 when Utah was split off from the Mexican Cession; in 1861 Nevada and Colorado Territories were organized out of New Mexico and in 1863, Arizona was split off and New Mexico assumed its present size. On January 12, 1912 New Mexico became the 47th state.
The territory of Arizona, established in 1863, originally had its southern boundary at the Gila River. The country south of the Gila, part of Mexican Sonora state, was eyed by Americans as a route for a southern transcontinental railroad, so in 1853, Secretary of State James Gadsden effected its purchase, thus rounding out the continental boundaries of the U.S. On February 14th 1912, Congress admitted Arizona as the 48th state after initially rejecting its 1910 constitution because it included a provision for the popular recall of judges. Only after the state removed the offending clause did it achieve statehood; immediately afterward Arizonans amended their constitution to reinstate the offending clause.
Alaska, “Seward’s Icebox” was discovered by Europeans by Vitus Bering, a Dane in the service of the Russian tsar, in 1741. Russia colonized Alaska beginning in 1799 under the Russian-American Company whose chief factor was Alexander Baranoff, headquartered in Sitka. Russian interest in northwest North America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries—primarily for exploitation of furs and fishing—ran into similar interests of the United States and Great Britain and Russia signed treaties with those two nations in 1824 and 1825. The agreement with Great Britain established the boundaries of Russian Alaska and British North America giving Russia a coastal strip down to 54° 50’ north latitude (today’s “Southeast” Alaska). The impetus for the purchase of Alaska came from northwestern fishing interests. A memorial from the new Washington Territory in 1866 recommended its purchase.
For nearly a century Alaska remained largely unpopulated by Europeans, even during the great Klondike gold rush in the late 1890s. During WWII Alaska became important to hemisphere defense and, in fact, two Aleutian Islands, Kiska and Attu were briefly occupied by Japan. After the war the military importance of Alaska as a frontier in the Cold War with the Soviet Union (Soviet territory was only a scant 80 miles across the Bering Strait) brought increased population and the demand for statehood. The question was: does the “constitution follow the flag” and oblige the national government to grant all the rights and privileges of citizenship to indigenous peoples in territories we have acquired. If so, is there any objection to allowing these people to become fully participating states? In 1959, Congress settled the issue and Alaska was admitted as the 49th state.
Alaska was admitted paired with Hawaii, another detached and remote territory, acquired by the U.S. in 1898. Originally the Hawaiian Islands were known as the Sandwich Islands, after the British Lord Sandwich, a patron of Captain James Cook, who made the European discovery of the islands in 1778. The native Hawaiian people were Polynesian and under their king Kamehameha I, were self-ruling. Gradually, however, foreigners settled in the islands: first missionaries from New England, then planters, then various members of the sea professions—whalers, naval seamen, castaways—all came to a clamorous residency. In the late 19th century, western governments, particularly Great Britain, France, and the U.S. took an interest in the islands for their strategic value, located at the crossroads of the north Pacific. The native Hawaiian kings and queens needed support from these foreign governments and vacillated from one to another. In 1854, King Kamehamha III opened negotiations with the U.S. in the wake of the successful manifest destiny drive which succeeded in the U.S. acquiring California, Texas, Oregon, and New Mexico, but these were terminated when the king died.
The following two kings were pro-British, and when the Kamehameha dynasty ended in 1874, there came a period of intense political jockeying between pro-American factions and those who wanted to free the nation of undue foreign influence. In 1893, Queen Lilioukalani was deposed and a republic established, with annexation by the United States as its aim.
The new republic did not get anywhere with the anti-expansionist second administration of Grover Cleveland, but in 1897, the administration of William McKinley took a kinder attitude toward annexation. In the middle of the War with Spain, Congress quietly annexed Hawaii, seeing it as a necessary naval station for supporting the hostilities in the Philippines.
The exposed geography of Hawaii was an issue during World War II as the Japanese attacked our naval base at Pearl Harbor, home of the Pacific Fleet. Also of concern were the large number of Japanese-Americans who had populated the islands since annexation. With peace in 1945 the Japanese issue seemed to have been resolved once and for all: the Japanese-Americans had served America loyally. Hawaii petitioned Congress for admission as a state. This was finally granted on August 21, 1959 when Hawaii was admitted as the 50th state.
(1,602 words)
Submitted by Ralph Enos on September 17 2004 - 00:41:26
Posted by Tedd_C on June 30 2005 - 21:29:31 - 0 Comments |
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