Empire on the Pacific

In this stimulating volume, which was originally published in 1955, Professor Norman A. Graebner argues that historians have exaggerated the role played by the spirit of manifest destiny in the expansionism of the 1840s. In his view, neither the overland migrations nor eastern public opinion had any direct bearing on the diplomacy that won Oregon and California for the United States. Instead, the principal objective of every statesman from Jackson on was maritime: the acquisition of the harbors at San Diego, San Francisco, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca as gateways to the trade of the Orient. “Land was necessary to them merely as a right of way to ocean ports—a barrier to be spanned by improved avenues of commerce.” This diplomacy reached a climax under Polk and triumphed with the Trist mission and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, giving America “its empire on the Pacific.” It is upon this premise that Professor Graebner has built a reinterpretation of the diplomacy of the 1840s.

An invaluable addition to any American History library.