The 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory was a watershed event for the fledgling United States. Adding some 829,000 square miles of territory, the Louisiana Purchase set a striking precedent of Presidential power and brought to the surface profound legal and constitutional questions. As the nation continued to expand westward and into the Pacific and Caribbean, critical social, political and constitutional questions arose that greatly tested American resolve and reshaped the nation's founding premises. In this exciting collection, Sanford Levinson and Bartholomew Sparrow bring together noted scholars in American history, constitutional law, and political science to examine role that the Louisiana Purchase played in shaping both the expansionist policies of the nineteenth century and critical interpretations of the Constitution. The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion, 1803–1898 provides a fascinating overview of how the U.S. Constitution and the American political system is inextricably tied to

Brings together noted scholars in American history, constitutional law, and political science to examine the role that the Louisiana Purchase played in shaping both the expansionist policies of the 19th century and critical interpretations of the Constitution.

When President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from cash-strapped France in 1803, he doubled the size of the United States without really knowing what he was getting. He dispatched Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their Corps of Discovery to explore a territory that would include part or all of fifteen future states and to seek a water route to the West Coast. Westward expansion began immediately, all for the bargain price of 15 million dollars. This book richly explores this fascinating part of history.

Provides a critical re-evaluation of US territorial expansionism and imperialism from 1783 to the presentThe United States has been described by many of its foreign and domestic critics as an aempirea Providing a wide-ranging analysis of the United States as a territorial, imperial power from its foundation to the present day, this book explores the United States acquisition or long-term occupation of territories through a chronological perspective. It begins by exploring early continental expansion, such as the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, and traces US imperialism through to the controversial ongoing presence of US forces at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The book provides fresh insights into the history of US territorial expansion and imperialism, bringing together more well-known instances (such as the purchase of Alaska) with those less-frequently discussed (such as the acquisition of the Guano Islands after 1856). The volume considers key historical debates, controversies and turning points, providing a historiographically-grounded re-evaluation of US expansion from 1783 to the present day.Key FeaturesProvides case studies of different examples of US territorial expansion/imperialism, and adds much-needed context to ongoing debates over US imperialism for students of both History and PoliticsAnalyses many of the better known instances of US imperialism (for example, Cuba and the Philippines), while also considering often-overlooked examples such as the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa and GuamExplores American imperialism from a aterritorial acquisition/long-term occupationa viewpoint which differentiates it from many other books that instead focus on informal and economic imperialismDiscusses the presence of the US in key places such as Guantanamo Bay, the Panama Canal Zone and the Arctic

Empires and Colonies provides a thoroughgoing and lively exploration of the expansion of the seaborne empires of western Europe from the fifteenth century and how that process of expansion affected the world, including its successor, the United States. Whilst providing special attention to Europe, the book is careful to highlight the ambivalence and contradiction of that expansion. The book also illuminates connections between empires and colonies as a theme in history, concentrating on culture while also discussing the rich social, economic and political dimensions of the story. Furthermore, Empires and Colonies recognizes that whilst a study of the expansion of Europe is an important part of world history, it is not a history of the world per se. The focus on culture is used to assert that areas and peoples that lack great economic power at any given time also deserve attention. These alternative voices of slaves, indigenous peoples and critics of empire and colonization are an important and compelling element of the book. Empires and Colonies will be essential reading not only for students of imperial history, but also for anyone interested in the makings of our modern world.

The Picky Eagle explains why the United States stopped annexing territory by focusing on annexation's domestic consequences, both political and normative. It describes how the US rejection of further annexations, despite its rising power, set the stage for twentieth-century efforts to outlaw conquest. In contrast to conventional accounts of a nineteenth-century shift from territorial expansion to commercial expansion, Richard W. Maass argues that US ambitions were selective from the start. By presenting twenty-three case studies, Maass examines the decision-making of US leaders facing opportunities to pursue annexation between 1775 and 1898. US presidents, secretaries, and congressmen consistently worried about how absorbing new territories would affect their domestic political influence and their goals for their country. These leaders were particularly sensitive to annexation's domestic costs where xenophobia interacted with their commitment to democracy: rather than grant political representation to a large alien population or subject it to a long-term imperial regime, they regularly avoided both of these perceived bad options by rejecting annexation. As a result, US leaders often declined even profitable opportunities for territorial expansion, and they renounced the practice entirely once no desirable targets remained. In addition to offering an updated history of the foundations of US territorial expansion, The Picky Eagle adds important nuance to previous theories of great-power expansion, with implications for our understanding of US foreign policy and international relations.

By the time Abraham Lincoln asserted in 1858 that the nation could not “endure permanently half slave and half free,” the rift that would split the country in civil war was well defined. The origins and evolution of the coming conflict between North and South can in fact be traced back to the early years of the American Republic, as Stephen G. Hyslop demonstrates in Building a House Divided, an exploration of how the incipient fissure between the Union’s initial slave states and free states—or those where slaves were gradually being emancipated—lengthened and deepened as the nation advanced westward. Hyslop focuses on four prominent slaveholding expansionists who were intent on preserving the Union but nonetheless helped build what Lincoln called a house divided: Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and James K. Polk and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who managed a plantation in Mississippi bequeathed by his father-in-law. Hyslop examines what these men did, collectively and individually, to further what Jefferson called an “empire of liberty,” though it kept millions of Black people in bondage. Along with these major figures, in all their conflicts and contradictions, he considers other American expansionists who engaged in and helped extend slavery—among them William Clark, Stephen Austin, and President John Tyler—as well as examples of principled opposition to the extension of slavery by northerners such as John Quincy Adams and southerners like Henry Clay and Thomas Hart Benton, who held slaves but placed preserving the Union above extending slavery across the continent. The long view of the path to the Civil War, as charted through the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras in this book, reveals the critical fault in the nation’s foundation, exacerbated by slaveholding expansionists like Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, and Douglas, until the house they built upon it could no longer stand for two opposite ideas at once.

An argument for why emergencies are no excuse for extralegal action by presidents Using emergency as a cause for action ultimately leads to an almost unnoticed evolution in the political understanding of presidential powers. The Constitution, however, was designed to function under “states of exception,” most notably through the separation of powers, and provides ample internal checks on emergency actions taken under claims of necessity. Thomas Crocker urges Congress, the courts, and other bodies to put those checks into practice.

State of White Supremacy investigates how race functions as an enduring logic of governance in the United States, perpetually generating and legitimating racial hierarchy and privilege.

"51 Imperfect Solutions told stories about specific state and federal individual constitutional rights, and explained two benefits of American federalism: how two sources of constitutional protection for liberty and property rights could be valuable to individual freedom and how the state courts could be useful laboratories of innovation when it comes to the development of national constitutional rights. This book tells the other half of the story. Instead of focusing on state constitutional individual rights, this book takes on state constitutional structure. Everything in law and politics, including individual rights, comes back to divisions of power and the evergreen question: Who decides? The goal of this book is to tell the structure side of the story and to identify the shifting balances of power revealed when one accounts for American constitutional law as opposed to just federal constitutional law. The book contains three main parts-on the judicial, executive, and legislative branches-as well as stand-alone chapters on home-rule issues raised by local governments and the benefits and burdens raised by the ease of amending state constitutions. A theme in the book is the increasingly stark divide between the ever-more democratic nature of state governments and the ever-less democratic nature of the federal government over time"--