A Continental Country

The United States did not begin as a continent. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France roughly doubled the country’s claimed land. Later came Florida, Texas annexation, the Mexican-American War and the Southwest, Oregon Country, Alaska (1867), and Hawaii (1898, statehood 1959).

Westward expansion is also a story of dispossession. Treaties with Native nations were made and broken; the Trail of Tears, reservation policy, and the reservation-era wars are part of how the map was filled. The civics test still asks you to name an American Indian tribe because those nations remain.

The 19th century’s other wars — 1812, Mexican-American, Spanish-American — sit beside industrialization, railroads, and immigration. By 1912, with Arizona and New Mexico, the contiguous map looked like the one on classroom walls. Alaska and Hawaii completed the fifty in 1959.