Alexander Hamilton: Letter to Harrison Gray Otis on Westward Expansion

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Harrison Gray Otis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts in 1797. He was a staunch Federalist, so his views on the centralization of the federal government were compatible with Hamilton's. Throughout the late 1790s the United States faced the threat of war with revolutionary France, a threat that erupted into naval battles during the Quasi-War of 1798–1800. In preparation for possible war with France on land, the United States maintained a large standing army. Many of Hamilton's contemporaries, including President John Adams, wanted to demobilize the army; Adams feared that such an army, with nothing to do, would turn unruly and pose a threat to domestic peace. In this letter to Otis written in 1799, Hamilton makes a startling proposal: The United States should maintain its army and use it to conquer western lands currently owned by France and Spain.

Hamilton begins by noting that the threat from France had not fully abated and that he would support Congress in passing a law authorizing the president to use force if necessary against France. He argues that in so doing, the nation could prepare itself for war if negotiations failed and “disable her [France] to do the mischief which she may meditate.” He goes on to point out the possibility that the French had plans to occupy the “nation” of Louisiana. (“Louisiana” does not refer only to the modern-day U.S. state but also to the vast swath of territory west of the Mississippi River almost to the Rocky Mountains.) Hamilton goes on to argue that the United States should take possession of those lands for two reasons. One is to “obviate the mischief of their falling into the hands of an active foreign power”; the other is “to secure to the United States the advantage of keeping the key to the Western country.” He is also concerned about Spain's ownership at the time of Florida. Hamilton believes that an “adequate military force” would enable the president to wrest control of these lands, box in Spain's empire in Mexico and South America, and hasten the nation's westward expansion.

It would be Hamilton's ideological opponent, Thomas Jefferson, who would acquire Louisiana in 1803 from the French through the Louisiana Purchase—accomplished without force of arms. Nevertheless, Hamilton's letter is noteworthy as one of the earliest indications of the belief that the new nation should pursue what would come to be called its “Manifest Destiny” to spread civilization across the North American continent.