Today, The United States is seen as a world power and has a sphere of influence in world culture, sports and economics. But it wasn’t always this way… When the country was just getting started, it faced many challenges, especially in the early 1800’s! Today, I am going to talk about a few presidents who faced these challenges and make some honorable mentions as well.
The year is 1803 and France is still at war with England. But this time, a then-34 year old Napoleon Bonaparte was leading the French army against the English horde. Finally showing those snobby English what for! However, to the surprise of grand total of no one: Wars. cost. Money. And France is desperately low on it! The only way to make some more cash to fund the war was to liquidate its colonial lands across the pond, in America. Napoleon is offering then-president Thomas Jefferson the entirety of the Louisiana Purchase, a whole 830,000 square mile stretch of land given to the French after a negotiation with Spain. And it’s all yours for $15 million USD! (or about 4 cents an acre.) Which is a bargain for that amount of land, especially in 1803! Jefferson was going to buy it on the spot! But there’s just one problem. It says nowhere in the Constitution that presidents can purchase land without the approval of the teache- I mean, Congress! And since approval from Congress could take weeks, maybe even months, and Napoleon was seen as kind of an unpredictable guy… This was a limited time offer. So now good ol’ Thomas here has a dilemma: Does he obey the Constitution, wait for approval and risk losing this huge potential acquisition? Or go buy it on the spot and go behind the back of The United States Congress, possibly putting his entire presidency in jeopardy and making a bad PR move? He ended up choosing to obey the constitution and wait for approval from Congress. And good choice, too! Because the Celestial Dice rolled in his favor that day and the debate in the Senate only lasted two days! Which is a scientific microsecond when you’re talking about Congress… Congress approved the acquisition of The Louisiana Purchase on October 20, 1803. The vote being 24 for it and 7 against it. The treaty was signed on October 31, 1803, And the Louisiana Purchase was incorporated into the United States as The Louisiana Territory. Whew! That was close! And that’s not all! Not only did Jefferson acquire The Louisiana Purchase, but he also did other things too! Some good, like the destroying of pirate strongholds, And some not so good, like the frickin Embargo Act… But I think we should stop talking about Jefferson and see other dilemmas other presidents faced, As well as how America rose to a world power.
Ah, James Madison! He is often credited with being the father of the constitution and helping us get through The War of 1812, Speaking of witch, Let’s talk about that! The War of 1812, said by many to be the forgotten war, was a conflict between Great Britain and The U.S of A. It started innocently enough, The British and French were capturing U.S. Ships and were impressing soldiers and already we have our first dilemma, But this time, it’s not just Madison who was divided, the whole nation was. Northerners were opposed to going to war about the impressionings while the Country Folk down in Sweet Home Alabama weren’t having any of it and were ready to kick some British behind! Tensions were growing and it wasn’t helping that the British were encouraging Indians to stir up some good old chaos with us and fighting between us and the Indians was common, But when we discovered that the Indians were using British guns, we were furious! The reasons for going to war were becoming clearer and clearer: From avenging the losses at sea to making the western frontier safer. But many questions came with this, Were we strong enough to go to war? What debt would come from this? What would Washington do? We first started with “If you agree to stop attacking American ships, the US will stop trading with your enemy” but then we found out that Napoleon was also secretly attacking ships headed for British ports, that filthy scoundrel! This made it even easier to go to war, so we did! On July 17, 1812 we declared war on Great Britain with only 7,000 poorly trained men and 16 warships, What the freak are we doing with ourselves? The Brits burned down our Capitol building and The White House during the war but that was the only major event during the war as a year later a peace treaty was signed! Ok… what was the point of that? Although neither side really won the war, it still had major effects on everything. The Indians were driven out of Ohio Valley, National pride surged and The Federalist Party was weakened. Good news for Madison!
p>Now what does this have to do with how we rose to a world power? Well, Jefferson, although he wasn’t in any wars, he did add to this country by getting us new land to cultivate, which helped us raise our economy and defending against pirates that might have given us some trouble down the line. Madison led us through the war of 1812 and if he didn’t we might have gotten conquered. But they both contributed in some way and without them, we would be an entirely different nation today.