In our last episode, we discussed the American people's insatiable drive to go west and its

culmination in Louisiana Purchase. That event doubled the size of the country and stretched

America's borders into the Rocky Mountains. But Americans continue to look further west to lands

beyond the Rockies. They dreamed of expanding what President Jefferson called

the Empire of Liberty. Some even imagined the United States as a continental power stretching

from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They fantasized about spreading liberty throughout the

Western Hemisphere. Of course, there were many problems with this dream. The lands beyond the Louisiana Territory were populated by Native Americans, and those

lands were claimed first by Spain and then by Mexico.

And then there were the moral questions.

After all, the United States was a republic.

Do republics expand?

Wouldn't expansion entail conquest? The republics conquer territory? After all,

the United States was based on the idea of the consent of the governed. Wouldn't conquest violate this

principle? But what if conquering that territory was done in the name of liberty? What if expansion

would bring freedom and opportunity to liberty? What if expansion would bring freedom

and opportunity to millions? And if that conquest happened, how would slavery figure in all this?

That in itself was a whole other issue. We began with the issue of expansion in the last episode,

but the expansion into Louisiana came from diplomacy. What if it came

through war or the threat of war? In the years after Jefferson's administration, a new

generation rose to American leadership. They inherited the ideals of the founding, as well as its

contradictions and unresolved questions.

In this episode, we will see how that generation rose to deal with that inheritance,

...