Union, Nation, or Empire: The American Debate Over International Relations, 1789-1941

494 Pages·2009·8.835 MB·English

by  David C. Hendrickson

U N IO N , NATIO N,
OR EMPIRE
AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT
Wilson Carey McWilliams and Lance Banning
Founding Editors
UNION, NATION,
OR EMPIRE
The American Debate over
International Relations,
1789-1941
David C. Hendrickson
University Press of Kansas
© 2009 by the University Press of Kansas
All rights reserved
Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045),
which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated
and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University,
Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of
Kansas, and Wichita State University
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hendrickson, David C.
Union, nation, or empire : the American debate over international
relations, 1789-1941 / David C. Hendrickson.
p. cm. — (American political thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7006-1632-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
i. United States—Foreign relations. 2. United States—Foreign
relations—Philosophy. 3. International relations—Philosophy.
I. Title.
E183.7.H42 2009
327.73—dC22 2008047058
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication is recycled and contains 30 percent
postconsumer waste. It is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of
the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials Z39.48-1992.
TO CLELIA, WESLEY. WHITNEY AND MARINA
The Union of these States is the all-absorbing topic of the day; on it all
men write, speak, think, and dilate, from the rising of the sun to the
going down thereof.
DANIEL WEBSTER, JUNE x8, 1851
CO N TEN TS
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
PART ONE. INTRODUCTION
i. The Problem and Its Modes 3
z. American Internationalism 6
3. Imperialism and Nationalism 13
PART TWO. THE AGE OF REVOLUTION AND WAR
4. The Rival Systems of Hamilton and Jefferson 25
5. The Causes of War 35
6. Louisiana! 47
7. Balances of Power 54
PART THREE. A RAGE FOR FEDERATIVE SYSTEMS
8. The Confederation of Europe 69
9. New World and Old World 78
10. To the Panama Congress 94
11. Into the Deep Freeze 104
PART FOUR. THE TRAVAILS OF THE UNION
iz. Great and Fearfully Growing m
13. The Title Page 118
14. Constitutional Disorder 124
15. Decentralizing Tendencies 13z
16. The Hope of the World 140
PART FIVE. EMPIRE AND ITS DISCONTENTS
17. Reds and Whites 147
18. The Removal of the Cherokee 157
19. Annexation of Texas and War with Mexico 165
zo. The Great Debate of 1848 173
zi. Intervention for Nonintervention: The Kossuth Tour
PART SIX. INTO THE MAELSTROM
zz. Invitation to a Beheading 195
23. Causes of the War, Causes of the Peace zoi
Vitt Contents
24. D.I.V.O.R.C.E. 212
25. The Tragedy of Civil War 222
PART SEVEN. “AT LAST WE ARE A NATION”
26. The New Nation 229
27. A New Birth of Freedom? 235
28. “Free Security” and “Imperial Understretch” 242
29. A World of Its Own 249
30. The Unionist Paradigm Revisited 254
PART EIGHT. A COMMISSION FROM GOD
31. The New Nationalism and the Spanish War 261
32. Imperialism and the Conquest of the Philippines 266
33. Informal Empire and the Protection of Nationals 277
34. Seward and the New Imperialism 285
PART NINE. THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM COMES AND GOES
3$. Before the Deluge 293
36. “Great Utterance” and Madisonian Moment 300
37. Safe for Democracy 305
3 8. The Liberal Peace Program Goes to Paris 313
39. The Great Debate of 1919 323
PART TEN. THE CRISIS OF THE OLD ORDER
40. Nationalism, Internationalism, and Imperialism in the 1920s 343
41. The Great Depression and Economic Nationalism 349
42. Isolation and Neutrality 353
43. The Final Reckoning 357
Short Titles and Selected Bibliography 37$
Notes 385
Index 451
PREFACE A N D
ACK N O W LED G M EN TS
The subject of this book is the way that American leaders have understood
the world of international relations. It presents a history of international
thought as seen through the prism of America's political experience from the
founding until American entry into World War II. The domain of ‘‘interna­
tional relations” as a field of study is potentially elastic because it can reach
to all aspects of the relationship among distinct peoples. In entering this
world, we confront a series of antinomies that have played a role in map­
ping what is a large and sprawling terrain: war versus peace, realism versus
idealism, civilization versus barbarism, free trade versus protection, liberty
versus despotism, freedom versus slavery, intervention versus noninterven­
tion, nationalism versus internationalism, force versus law, empire versus
equilibrium, union versus independence. Alongside these fearful antino­
mies stand a series of constructions—empire, nation, republic, state system,
union, federative system, partnership, concert, alliance, society of states—
around which certain questions cluster: what they are, how they adapt and
change in response to circumstances, what values and interests they preserve
or threaten. All these various conceptions are part of the discourse of inter­
national relations; they are essential concepts that enable us to construct
“mental maps” of the intellectual world. They convey, in summary fashion,
the basic subject matter of this book. We want to know how American lead­
ers thought about and utilized these concepts with a view to understanding
the basics of their international thought.
The American approach to international relations was distinguished by
a multiplicity of questions that kept recurring, to which every generation
proffered answers:
Do democracies live in peace with one another or are they as addicted
to war as monarchies?
Does the anarchical character of the international system conduce
toward war?
Are the nations capable of forming federative systems to secure
international cooperation, in advance of the hostility that has often
prevailed, or are they doomed to self-help and conflict?
ix
X Preface and Acknowledgments
Would thickening ties of commercial interdependence make for peace
or embroil nations in dependencies that would end in embittered
conflict?
In a union of states» does expansion unleash centripetal or centrifugal
forces?
What role should the balance of power or resistance to aggression play
in relations among states?
When is war justified?
Should states adhere to a policy of nonintervention in the domestic
affairs of other states» or might they properly intervene in some
circumstances?
What is civilization, and how should “civilized powers” treat with
“barbarians”?
Are free institutions compatible with slavery?
Is empire compatible with free institutions?
These questions illustrate the range of empirical and normative questions
that were searchingly addressed in the past, all of which might comfort­
ably be asked about the world of the early twenty-first century. In effect,
American history moves through a series of debates—many of them “great
debates”—in which these protean questions get canvassed in relationship to
the key events of the day.
At the core of this book is the attempt to exhibit what those debates were
about, that is, to set forth and illuminate the central claims of the various
advocates, the theories about the political world to which appeal was made,
and the prescriptions advanced for the conduct of American statecraft in
both its external and its internal dimensions. I am especially keen on under­
standing the way in which these various debates bore on matters of ideology,
identity, and institutions. Internationalism, nationalism, and imperialism
constitute herein the three ideologies of international relations that provide
distinctive frames of reference from which these theoretical questions are
addressed. These ideologies, in turn, have their analog in conceptions of
American identity and institutions that are focused on union, nation, or
empire.
Despite my interest in the various questions of international theory, my
method is historical. Only by setting these debates in the context of ongoing
events, I have believed, is it possible to make sense of them, and the book
is organized as a narrative keyed to the great events of American history.
I try to understand these events as much as possible through the voices of
the participants themselves. My emphasis, in keeping with the approach
of Thucydides, is on the dialectical confrontation of opposing arguments.