Industrial Empire

In 1845, the United States had only a tenuous hold on its western territories. Washington asserted its sovereignty over the lands that it had acquired from France in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, but its effective control over much of that region was limited. Between 1812 and 1836, the United States had admitted into the Union three states from the eastern margin of the Louisiana Purchase: Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas. To the west and northwest of that tier of states, however, was a vast region that in 1845 was titled – unglamorously but accurately – the Unorganized Territory. Powerful, largely autonomous native groups, notably the mounted, bison-hunting nomads of the Great Plains, held sway in the region. To the south, Mexico controlled the territory between the Great Plains and California, including the strategically important San Francisco Bay (although, like the United States, Mexico ceded effective control over much of the interior to native groups). To the northwest, the United States shared sovereignty over the Puget Sound and Columbia River region with Great Britain, but the British were truly in control. “If we ever did occupy Oregon,” one member of the House of Representatives said in January 1845, “it is certain we do not occupy it now.” ¹