A Thematic Unit on American Expansionism

Earlier this summer, The New York Times Magazine published an article about Guam, a small island in the Pacific Ocean with less than two hundred thousand inhabitants. Residents of Guam, most of whom are ethnic CHamoru, are disenfranchised US citizens, with no right to vote or representation in Congress. How Guam came to be part of the US, when it is 5000 miles from California and only 1500 from Japan, is part of the story of American expansionism.

When I taught US history at Columbia Independent School in 2011-2014, I included a unit on how the US has grown to its present size in my class. When I first published Teaching US History Thematically, in 2017, I realized I couldn’t fit all the units I taught into the word and page-count that Teachers College Press had given me. With regrets, I cut three units from my curriculum—this one, as well as one on religion, and one on the checks and balances among the three branches of government. In the introduction to the 2017 edition, I promised to include document lists for these additional units in blog posts. Finally, I am making good on that promise. Teachers who have extra time in the year may want to include it. Or it could provide inspiration for a related thematic unit they design themselves.  

This unit is important because students tend to take for granted that the US stretches from coast to coast, plus Alaska and Hawaii. I did include John Gast’s painting “Manifest Destiny” and Mark Twain’s words on imperialism in the Foreign Policy unit, so students would at least have those as reference points, and teachers might return to or fast forward to those if they pursued this unit on expansion.

But there is so much else to discuss. Students may be unaware of the US’s relationship to Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. They may not have thought about why and how Alaska and Hawaii came to be US states, despite being thousands of miles from the mainland. The assumptions that the US had the right to take over the territories of indigenous peoples around the world, and that those people are better off under US rule, can be critically examined.   

I liked to start the unit by showing students an animation showing US territorial expansion over time, explaining that we would investigate how and why the US sought to grow. The unit question I used was “Should the US try to get bigger and stronger?” My 21st Century Issue question was “Should Puerto Rico become the 51st state?”, and it still seems relevant. Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón, Puerto Rico’s elected, non-voting member of Congress, could be the historical figure for this unit. The proposed 2023 Puerto Rico Status Act could serve a document, which would allow Puerto Ricans to vote for statehood, independence, or sovereign status in free association with the US.

Here are some other questions, events, historical figures, and documents that might be used in this unit:

1.     How did Chief Powhatan want to relate to British colonists? (1607: Jamestown settlement; Chief Powhatan; Chief Powhatan’s Address to John Smith)

2.     How did Thomas Jefferson justify the Louisiana Purchase? (1803: Louisiana Purchase; Thomas Jefferson; Thomas Jefferson’s Annual Message to Congress, 1803)

3.     How did Andrew Jackson react to indigenous people and self-emancipated slaves working together to hold territory in Florida? (1817: Seminole Wars begin; Andrew Jackson; Marine Battle Seminole Indians in the Florida War)

4.     How did the conflict over slavery influence US expansion? (1820: Missouri Compromise; Henry Clay; Missouri Compromise)

5.     What were the arguments for Manifest Destiny? (1836: Battle of the Alamo; John L. O’Sullivan; The Great Nation of Futurity)

6.     How did the US take over Mexican territory? (1846-1848: Mexican-American War; James K. Polk; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo)

7.     Why did some native Hawaiians resist US annexation? (1898: Annexation of Hawaii; Liliuokalani: Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen)

8.     Why did the US declare war on Spain? (1898: Spanish-American War; William McKinley: Message to Congress Requesting a Declaration of War with Spain)

9.     Compare arguments for and against US imperialism (1898: US Annexation of the Philippines; Emilio Aguinaldo: The True Version of the Philippine Revolution)

It’s important, in this unit, to include a balance of historical figures who supported US expansion, like Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, with people who resisted US annexation, including Hawaiian queen Lilioukalani, and Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo. This makes the summit a more meaningful discussion. I never had a chance to use Aguinaldo’s impassioned words in my class, but I can attest that students loved Queen Lilioukalani’s memoir. Visual sources such as paintings representing the Seminole War invite students to analyze how conflict and expansion were represented—I link to one above, but a comparison among several would be even better.

Over the course of the unit, students came to see a pattern in how colonial officials related with indigenous people, and how the US treated residents of Hawaii and the Philippines. This prepared them to question the status of places like Puerto Rico and Guam, and to debate difficult tensions like balancing US national security interests with human rights. I’m excited to hear what other trends students and teachers will notice if they pursue this unit. Feel free to suggestion additional documents and resources!