The Laws That Shaped America

Fifteen Acts of Congress and Their Lasting Impact

Dennis W. Johnson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135837563
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

For better and sometimes for worse, Congress is a reflection of the aspirations, wants, and priorities of the American people. It reflects the kaleidoscope of special interests and unselfish service to others, of favors sought and sacrifices made. During each two-year session of Congress, thousands of pieces of legislation are proposed, many hundreds are given serious consideration, but far fewer are eventually enacted into law. Most enactments have limited impact, affect few, and are quietly forgotten in the flow of legislative activity. However, a small number of laws have risen to the level of historical consequence. These are the laws that have shaped America, and they are the subject of this book.
Which pieces of legislation were the most significant for the development of the nation? Which have had an immediate or lasting impact on our society? Which laws so affected us that we could not imagine how our lives would be without them? Dennis W. Johnson vividly portrays the story of fifteen major laws enacted over the course of two centuries of American democracy. For each law, he examines the forces and circumstances that led to its enactment--the power struggles between rival interests, the competition between lawmakers and the administration, the compromises and principled stands, and the impact of the legislation and its place in American history.

1 WESTWARD EXPANSION

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Louisiana Purchase Ratification of 1803

Excepting only the Constitution, for at least seventy years, the Ordinance of 1787 was the most famous of American state papers.

Francis S. Philbrick (1965)

No event in all American history, not the Civil War, nor the Declaration of Independence nor even the signing of the Constitution, was more important.

Bernard DeVoto (1953) on the Louisiana Purchase

During the early decades of the seventeenth century, French traders and missionaries explored the St. Lawrence River valley and established settlements and trading posts at Quebec, Montreal, and other sites. These expeditions led them westward to the river’s source, the “Sweet Seas,” as the Great Lakes were designated on contemporary French maps. The Europeans were told by several tribes of Native Americans that beyond the Great Lakes was a magnificent river that flowed to the sea. This vast but unfamiliar and unexplored land soon would be claimed in its entirety by France. At a colorful pageant staged before the chiefs of fourteen tribes, French colonial authorities in 1671 declared that not only were the Great Lakes annexed to the kingdom of Louis XIV, but also “all other countries, rivers, lakes … those discovered and to be discovered, bounded on one side by the Northern and Western seas, and on the other by the South Sea, this land in all its length and breadth.”¹

Two years later, the colonial government began its voyages of discovery, sending Louis Joliet and Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette to find and explore this great river, which the Indians called the “Father of Waters,” the Mississippi. They did not reach the mouth of the Mississippi, but knew that it would empty into the Gulf of Mexico. At the end of their voyage, the twenty-nine-year-old Joliet wrote Governor Comte de Frontenac, “the great river … having been discovered in these last years of 1673 and 1674 … passes between Florida and Mexico to empty into the sea, crossing the most beautiful country that has ever been seen. I have never, even in France, seen anything more beautiful than the prairies I have admired here, nothing could be more pleasing than the variety of groves and forests …”²

Five years later Robert Cavelier de La Salle followed up on Joliet’s explorations and reached the mouth of the great Mississippi. There on April 9, 1682, in a ceremony of possession, La Salle annexed this territory and gave it the name La Louisianne, in honor of his king.³

The next year, at the end of his four-year voyage of discovery to the upper Mississippi Valley, Father Louis Hennepin wrote to the King: “It seems, Sire, that God had destined you to rule this territory, because of the happy coincidence between your glorious name and the name Louis by which the Indians designate the sun … [T]he name of Your Majesty is ever on their lips, for they undertake nothing without first paying homage to the sun under your name of Louis.”⁴

It was a land so immense, so wild and bountiful, beyond the seemingly impenetrable Appalachian mountains, reaching from the northern headwaters of the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. These vast reaches of forest and plains were populated mostly by Native Americans, as they had been for centuries. Voyageurs, missionaries, and fur traders were the first European settlers, followed later by squatters, land speculators, and adventurers. By the early 1700s, the French had established forts and trading posts throughout the territory: at Detroit, three villages on the Mississippi, a settlement on the Wabash River at Vincennes, and, most importantly, the village of New Orleans. The French occupation at the mouth of the Mississippi was particularly important. Henri de Tonty, La Salle’s successor, saw the land’s commercial and military importance: from a port at New Orleans, the French could bring furs and iron ore from the interior, dispatch troops to Mexico, and, most crucially, prevent the British from gaining mastery over the West.

Throughout the earlier part of the eighteenth century, French and British forces had fought for control of Canada, New France and the interior of the American wilderness. Young George Washington and his troops skirmished with French forces in western Pennsylvania, sparking the Seven Years’ War, the largest conflict of the eighteenth century; in America it was befittingly called the French and Indian War. The British finally conquered the French in the fateful battle of Quebec on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and Montreal fell the following year. When the Paris Peace Treaty was signed in 1763, ending the Seven Years’ War, the French had lost to the British New France (Canada) and the immense wilderness beyond the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. France’s reluctant ally, Spain, claimed the mostly unexplored territory west of the Mississippi and was given New Orleans. Both Britain and Spain claimed portions of West Florida, while Spain ceded the rest of Florida to the British.

Of immediate importance to American colonists was the Proclamation of 1763, a royal decree which prohibited them from settling in the new British-controlled areas beyond the crest of the Appalachian mountains. The area west of the mountains was to be a preserve for Native Americans. The proclamation was based not on benevolent accommodation but on a pragmatic assessment of the Indian threat to British America. Ottawa chief Pontiac, a former ally of the French, led a rebellion in August 1763, exacting a terrible toll on western settlers and the outpost of Detroit; other tribes attacked the key British fort at Michilimackinac and the smaller fort at Green Bay. The undermanned British authorities above all wanted to avoid a costly war with the Indians.⁵ But many colonial land speculators and settlers were furious, seeing this proclamation as yet another example of British high-handedness and restrictions of their freedom to emigrate to this new territory. The proclamation did not stop colonists from moving into the restricted areas; it only fueled the distrust that had been building up between them and the mother country.

Another key event affecting western lands occurred during the Revolution when Major George Rogers Clark captured the former French outposts of Kaskaskia and Cahokia (in current southern Illinois on the Mississippi River) and then in 1779 captured the British Fort Sackville near Vincennes (Indiana). These military victories set the stage for the acknowledgment of American possession of the western lands at the Paris peace conference of 1783, which officially ended the Revolutionary War.

Following the war, the new nation was faced with one of its most vexing problems, the settlement of western lands. Land charters had been granted to the individual colonies and then to the states, but not to the Confederation itself. About half of the thirteen states had no western claims, while the others were rich in chartered land-grants. There was continued acrimony between the haves and the have-nots, with the sniping becoming so acute that it held up ratification of the Articles of Confederation for three years. Finally, Virginia, by far the biggest land claimant, ceded its western holdings to the national government; other land-rich states followed suit.

Nearing its last year of operation, the Confederation Congress enacted its most significant piece of legislation, the Northwest Ordinance. The Ordinance dealt with the Northwest Territory, the lands west of the Appalachians and above the Ohio River, in what would later become the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and a small portion of Minnesota. The Northwest Ordinance determined that new lands would eventually become full and equal states, not colonies of the original thirteen states. This principle, which was not at all inevitable at the time, applied not only to the five states carved out of the Northwest Territory but to nearly every new state thereafter. The Northwest Ordinance also proclaimed the first national version of a bill of rights, borrowing its language from the English Bill of Rights and the Massachusetts Constitution. Most remarkably, the Northwest Ordinance established the principle that slavery would not be allowed in the states carved out of the Northwest Territory. It was an imperfect gesture, and one that was scoffed at in the emerging southern territories, but it was the first, and only, national articulation of anti-slavery policy before the Civil War. The Ordinance also confirmed the consequential principle that land would be set aside in each six-mile-square township for public education. Although written in sometimes impenetrable language, lacking the grace and force of the others, the Northwest Ordinance stands with the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as one of the most important early American state documents.

In the last years of the eighteenth century, the United States was facing deteriorating relations with France, its ally during the Revolutionary War. The two countries were engaged in what became known as the Quasi War, with the real threat of open hostilities. The new president, Thomas Jefferson, who for much of his public career had been sympathetic to French culture, policies, and alliances, was shocked to learn that Spain had secretly given back to France the lands west of the Mississippi it had gained in 1763. France now posed a bigger threat than Spain or England, and, with Napoleon’s expanding imperial ambitions, the American government feared a strong European power on its western borders. For the moment, however, American western lands were no longer of great strategic importance to Napoleon, who was looking elsewhere to satiate his imperial ambitions. With the unexpected and catastrophic defeat of French troops sent to quell an on-going slave insurrection in Saint Domingue (Haiti) and the prospects of renewed warfare with Britain, Napoleon in 1803 decided to unload New Orleans and the western lands.

American envoys in Paris, James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston, were instructed to purchase the port of New Orleans and West Florida from the French, or to encourage the French to persuade Spain to sell West Florida if the French did not own it (such was the murkiness of the land claims). Instead, the Americans were handed the land deal of all times, the entire Louisiana territory west of the Mississippi. The boundaries were not clear, nor were the long-range consequences of the purchase. If the United States agreed to the purchase, it would double its territory in one fell swoop and remove a powerful European threat from its frontier. Most Americans and policymakers were elated; but the devil was in the details.

The treaty had to be ratified within six month of its signing in Paris in April 1803, and there was a strong possibility that the quixotic Napoleon would renege on the deal. Word of the treaty did not reach President Jefferson until early July; then the president promptly called a special session of Congress to convene in October. While there were some major concerns, the treaty was ratified in short order; but larger questions emerged soon thereafter. What would become of this vast new territory? What were its exact boundaries? Would it belong to the federal government and follow the steps toward statehood outlined by the Northwest Ordinance? Would slavery be allowed? What would become of the fairly even balance of power between southern agrarian and northern mercantile states with this newly acquired land? Some of the answers had to await the conclusion of the War of 1812, the admission of Louisiana into the Union, and the bitterly fought battles around the statehood admission of Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. Some answers only came through blood and force in the Civil War.

The purchase of the Louisiana territory was of enormous consequence for the new nation on its way to becoming the dominant country in the Western hemisphere, in determining how the west would be settled, in wrestling with the complex issue of slavery, and in coming to grips with the concept of Union and the meaning of the Constitution.

The Northwest Ordinance

In America, the Seven Years War was touched off by a skirmish in the western wilderness of Pennsylvania. While the French troops occupied forts in the Ohio Valley, the Virginia colony claimed the land as its own; the British colonial and French governments were determined to use force to back up their competing claims. Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie dispatched a young officer, George Washington, to the western wilderness. On May 28, 1754, Washington together with Indian allies under Chief Tanaghrisson came upon an encampment of French soldiers under the command of Joseph de Jumonville. No one knows who fired the first volley, but the French were surrounded, quickly defeated, and butchered by Tanaghrisson’s warriors. This bloody, senseless skirmish marked not only the start of the Seven Years War, but also the beginning of the end of the French empire in North America.⁶

On February 10, 1763, Spanish, French, and British envoys gathered in Paris to sign the peace treaty that formally ended hostilities. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, France ceded to Britain its North American territories in French Canada and all the territory east of the Mississippi River. Earlier, in November 1762, through the Treaty of Fontainebleau, Louis XIV ceded to his ally and cousin Carlos III of Spain the territory of West Louisiana and the enormous area west of the Mississippi River. This was to compensate Spain for ceding Florida to Britain and to keep the Louisiana territory out of the hands of the British. With Canada ceded, Louisiana lost much of its importance to France, particularly with the French treasury losing money on this faraway outpost. But there was trouble almost immediately. To the French-speaking majority in the port of New Orleans, Spanish rule was unacceptable. Local rebels were determined to set up their own independent republic, and the Louisiana Revolt of 1768 caused serious problems for Spain until it was quelled the following year. Spain was a somewhat reluctant landlord, slow to establish authority in the Orleans Territory, unwilling to spend from its treasury, but recognized that the land was a valuable buffer between Britain and other Spanish claims in western America.⁷

Despite the Proclamation of 1763, which forbade colonists from entering the newly acquired western frontier, many ignored the Royal order and moved over the mountains. Most were newly arrived immigrants who would make a significant impact on the American frontier. From 1760 through 1775, at least 125,000 Protestant Irish, Scots, and English came to North America; so too did 12,000 German-speaking immigrants.⁸ Many of these immigrants headed directly to the frontier and to the West. In addition, some 84,000 African or West Indian slaves entered North America during this time, allowing southern planters to increase their land holdings and prompting poor whites to seek cheaper farm land on the frontier.⁹

During the Revolution, the western lands were in the balance. In 1778, on the instructions of Vir...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Westward Expansion: The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Louisiana Purchase Ratification of 1803
• 2 Slavery and the Territories: The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854
• 3 The Promise of Land: The Homestead Act of 1862 and the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862
• 4 Women’s Right to Vote: The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1919)
• 5 Protecting the Working Family: The National Labor Relations Act of 1935
• 6 The Grand Contract: The Social Security Act of 1935
• 7 The Promise to America’s Veterans: The GI Bill of 1944
• 8 The Recovery of Western Europe: The Marshall Plan of 1948
• 9 Ribbons of Highway: The Interstate Highway Act of 1956
• 10 Justice, Equality, and Democracy’s Promise: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• 11 Medical Care for the Elderly and Poor: The Medicare and Medicaid Act of 1965
• 12 Protecting the Environment: The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
• 13 The Laws That Shaped America
• Appendix: Other Major Legislation
• Notes