US Territorial Acquisitions

Territorial acquisitions directly hurt the United States by creating external and internal political conflicts while it helped the country in an indirect and less forceful way through economic benefits resulting from effects of expansion. There is no doubt that it aided the nation by creating more room for living space and attracting an immense amount of European immigrants, which fueled the industrialization movement by supplying laborers. The new territory gained also opened more land to farming, which eventually supplied both the industrialized North and King Cotton South with food crops. Further helping the United States was universal white manhood suffrage, which was made available through the new class of the American citizen found in the new western territories.
Despite the help brought to the United States through territorial acquisitions, the country was more hurt by these gains. The Louisiana Purchase, which the state of Missouri was carved out of, developed an internal conflict over the issue of slavery and if it would be carried deeper into the nation or restricted to the present states. This conflict strengthened sectional tensions and widened the gap between the North and the South. Other territorial gains included the sharing of Oregon with Britain and the invasion of Florida, previously run by Spain. These two issues were discussed in the Congress of Vienna after Europe began the movement away from and against democracy. The United States was gaining more land and more power. European claims to the Caribbean and South America were becoming threatened by the presence of America. The result were reactions from Russia, moving into the country through Alaska, and Britain, which attempted to sway the United States towards their side. Either way, there was great foreign resentment of this new country. The acquisition of Texas increased America's troubles through the resulting Mexican resentment towards the country. This territorial gain also increasingly enraged the issue over slavery because Texas, if admitted to the Union, would upset the balance of slave states versus free states previously acquired with the Missouri Compromise.