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Holding the Line: Fighting Land Pirates and Apaches on the Border

Rachel St. John

in Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border

This chapter explores both the alternate versions of spatial organization and power that persisted and evolved in the borderlands and how the nation-states managed to suppress them in the first four ... More

This chapter explores both the alternate versions of spatial organization and power that persisted and evolved in the borderlands and how the nation-states managed to suppress them in the first four decades of the border's existence. In order to establish military authority and make the boundary line a meaningful marker of territorial sovereignty, the Mexican and U.S. militaries had to defeat two very different threats—the first from filibusters from outside the region and the second from Apache people who had long lived in the borderlands. While both of these struggles revealed how far the United States and Mexico still had to go before they could claim to fully control the borderlands, they also provided evidence of the subtle ways in which the boundary line had already begun to change the landscape of power in the region.Less

Chapter 8

Roger G. Kennedy

in Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character

Two charges were laid against Aaron Burr by Thomas Jefferson in the winter of 1806–7: planning an expedition against the possessions of Spain, and treason. The term “filibuster”, meaning overland ... More

Two charges were laid against Aaron Burr by Thomas Jefferson in the winter of 1806–7: planning an expedition against the possessions of Spain, and treason. The term “filibuster”, meaning overland piracy by private armies, is often used to describe the activity Jefferson accused Burr of getting involved with. This chapter deals with activities from 1770 until 1794, largely in Kentucky and Tennessee, that led George Washington first to issue an executive order against filibustering and then to cause it to be proscribed by statute. Washington wished to prevent French-sponsored filibustering against Spanish Florida and Louisiana. Jefferon's treason charge against Burr stemmed from the latter's alleged attempt to lead a secession from the Union of the states and territories lying west of the Appalachians. One of Jefferson's principal witnesses against Burr with regard to filibustering and to secessionist plots was James Wilkinson.Less

Chapter 9

Roger G. Kennedy

in Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character

Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson learned from Edmund-Charles Genêt on July 5, 1793, that French agents of sedition were headed for Kentucky. Jefferson had taken an oath of office to a United ... More

Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson learned from Edmund-Charles Genêt on July 5, 1793, that French agents of sedition were headed for Kentucky. Jefferson had taken an oath of office to a United States government led by George Washington, who had made clear his opposition to filibustering irruptions anywhere. Alexander Hamilton in 1798 and Aaron Burr in 1806 insisted that they would prefer to take up arms against Spain only after the United States had declared war. As others were in complicity with France's plots of the 1790s and wept for the failure of the Whiskey Rebellion, as William Blount conspired with Britain and John Sevier with Spain, as Harry Innes and James Wilkinson encouraged the Kentucky separatists and Jefferson said nothing, Burr never took Jefferson's acquiescent posture toward separatism. In 1804, when it was the Federalists' turn, he rebuffed them. Jefferson, on the other hand, was a centrifugal force while out of power, and he invented the doctrine of nullification, and ultimately came to espouse a strong central government only when he was president.Less

Time

Peter Knoepfel

in Public Policy Resources

Within each policy formulation and implementation process, the options available to the actors are limited both by the rules governing decision-making (institutions) and the related time budgets, ... More

Within each policy formulation and implementation process, the options available to the actors are limited both by the rules governing decision-making (institutions) and the related time budgets, which clearly demonstrate the resource-related character of time. Time is frequently scarce, especially for those who consider that the need for a public intervention is urgent (usually the beneficiary groups). Other actors can wait (frequently the target groups) or they may even try to gain time by interrupting both policy formulation and, particularly, policy implementation activities. Thus, (subjective) Time is definitively an omnipresent public action resource. The chapter uses examples from all kinds of emergency policies or policies that are deliberately delayed and hampered through the adoption of time-consuming strategies by one of the three actor groups (environmental policies, natural disaster policies, climate adaption policies, spatial-planning policies). The chapter stresses the role of procedural deadlines, moratoria, time-consuming appeal procedures and, again, the relational character of the resource.Less

Courts Cannot Unknot Congress

Jasmine Farrier

in Constitutional Dysfunction on Trial: Congressional Lawsuits and the Separation of Powers

This chapter highlights five complex member lawsuits against legislative processes which resulted in mixed outcomes for the member-litigants. First is the deficit-reduction case surrounding the 1985 ... More

This chapter highlights five complex member lawsuits against legislative processes which resulted in mixed outcomes for the member-litigants. First is the deficit-reduction case surrounding the 1985 Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, known after its sponsors as the Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Act (GRH), where plaintiffs ostensibly won back power but Congress opted to delegate again. Second is a multiplaintiff suit against executive enforcement of a base-closing commission decision that required supermajorities to override. This case emphasizes the risk that Congress takes when it delegates power away and does not have an easy mechanism to regain control over processes and outcomes. Third is the Democratic House members' unsuccessful suit against their own chamber's rule that mandated a supermajority in order to raise taxes. Fourth is the landmark challenge of the 1996 Line Item Veto Act that has been used by later courts to more readily dismiss member standing, even as the item veto itself is ruled unconstitutional by private plaintiffs the next year. Fifth is a hybrid group of House members and private organizations against the Senate filibuster, which stopped the Dream Act.Less

Burr

Gwynne Tuell Potts

in George Rogers Clark and William Croghan: A Story of the Revolution, Settlement, and Early Life at Locust Grove

Before the Corps of Discovery had broken camp on the Missouri River on 11 July 1804, the vicepresident of the United States had mortally wounded Washington’s former treasury secretary. William ... More

Before the Corps of Discovery had broken camp on the Missouri River on 11 July 1804, the vicepresident of the United States had mortally wounded Washington’s former treasury secretary. William Croghan knew them both. Following the conclusion of his term as vicepresident, Burr made a tour of the South and West, correctly assuming his days in the capital had come to an end. In Louisville, Croghan, George Rogers Clark, Ohio senator Jonathan Dayton, and others had successfully won more than $100,000 from Indiana’s legislature to build a canal around the Falls of the Ohio. Burr, who was gathering a quasi-military unit at Blennerhassett’s Island, was keenly interested in the project, as the success of his project depended upon the navigation of the river. Burr dined at Locust Grove and joined his old friend’s canal company. Was it at Locust Grove that Clark and Croghan learned of Burr’s treason?Less

A Telegram, Algonquin, and an Abdication

Rodney Carlisle

in Sovereignty at Sea: U.S. Merchant Ships and American Entry into World War I

This chapter details the history of the Zimmermann Telegram, and shows that while it caused much political editorializing and may have aroused those who had previously been strong neutralists to ... More

This chapter details the history of the Zimmermann Telegram, and shows that while it caused much political editorializing and may have aroused those who had previously been strong neutralists to anger against Germany, it did not change the mind of Woodrow Wilson or his cabinet, and was not a casus belli, either in the narrow legal sense, nor in the broader historical one. The loss of the Algonquin is discussed, and the fact that it had just been transferred from British registry meant that it was not a clear act of war against the United States. Meanwhile, in Russia, the Tsar abdicated, and Americans perceived the revolution there as establishing a democratic form of government. Wilson asked Congress to enact a policy to arm merchant ships, which died in the Senate in a filibuster.Less

Lockean Liberalism and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Dan Shaw

in Stanley Cavell and the Magic of Hollywood Films

Skepticism about Congress is, of course, nothing new, though it may be at its height in Trump’s America. John Locke’s theory of a workable democracy as involving three branches of government, two of ... More

Skepticism about Congress is, of course, nothing new, though it may be at its height in Trump’s America. John Locke’s theory of a workable democracy as involving three branches of government, two of which must be directly responsive to the consent of the governed, is stirringly championed in one of Frank Capra’s most moving films, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Jefferson Smith’s use of the filibuster to block a graft ridden deficiency bill shows how effective Congressional institutions can actually be.Less

Bargaining Frequency and the Use of Conference Committees or Amendment Trading

Josh M. Ryan

in The Congressional Endgame: Interchamber Bargaining and Compromise

The House and Senate have two choices when considering how to resolve a bill: amendment trading or conferencing. Using each has implications for how a bill is resolved, and the use of each resolution ... More

The House and Senate have two choices when considering how to resolve a bill: amendment trading or conferencing. Using each has implications for how a bill is resolved, and the use of each resolution venue indicates the structures of the winning coalitions in each chamber. This chapter explores when amendment trading is used, when conference committees are used, and when no bargaining will be used as one chamber simply accepts the bill proposed by the other. The empirical results show that having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate is key to using post-passage bargaining, while high interchamber distance and a large coalition sizes in the Senate are important factors for conferencing.Less

Liberating Fictions: The Caribbean Imaginary in the Novels of Lucy Holcombe Pickens and Martin Delany

John Wharton Lowe

in Calypso Magnolia: The Crosscurrents of Caribbean and Southern Literature

This chapter concentrates on the enduring U.S. fascination with Cuba, beginning with Thomas Jefferson, and culminating in a consideration of two novels, Lucy Holcombe Pickens’s The Free Flag of Cuba, ... More

This chapter concentrates on the enduring U.S. fascination with Cuba, beginning with Thomas Jefferson, and culminating in a consideration of two novels, Lucy Holcombe Pickens’s The Free Flag of Cuba, a fictionalized account of the actual Narciso Lopez filibuster attempt to conquer the island, and Martin Delany’s neo-slave narrative about hemispheric insurrection, Blake: or the Huts of America. Both novels are shown to employ a “Cuban imaginary,” a necessity since neither author had travelled there. A parallel between the two quite different writers emerges in their common interest in colonizing lands South of the South, Pickens seeking to strengthen the South’s hand in the looming battle over slavery, Delany looking simultaneously at possibilities for hemispheric revolt and a new colony for emancipated slaves. These narratives are situated against the backdrop of Atlantic competitions between colonizing European powers, the history of the slave trade in the New World, other filibuster attempts, and the perplexing facts of Cuban history. The influences of the picaresque tradition, and that of the sentimental domestic novel - particularly Uncle Tom’s Cabin - receive consideration; a subsidiary subject is the contrast between the ports of New Orleans and Havana, and their common Spanish heritages.Less

Ordering Moral Deliberations

Robert A. Burt

Frank Iacobucci (ed.)

in Justice and Empathy: Toward a Constitutional Ideal

This chapter points out that judges are not the only actors through whom democratic values founded on empathic mutual respect and accountability can be promoted. At the center of this study is the ... More

This chapter points out that judges are not the only actors through whom democratic values founded on empathic mutual respect and accountability can be promoted. At the center of this study is the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the passage of which was threatened by a Southern filibuster that could be ended by a favorable vote for cloture. It turned out that one senator from Alaska was key to the favorable vote; his vote was cast in a most dramatic way, as he was ultimately persuaded by his realization of the moral significance of what was at issue. The chapter notes that the senator was not commanded by party leaders to vote but left alone to reflect on the matter—he was persuaded by his conscience to do the right thing.Less

US Expansionism during the Nineteenth Century: “Manifest Destiny”

Amy S. Greenberg

in The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume Two: The History of Empires

The dramatic nineteenth-century growth of the United States into a continental empire was justified by an ideology called “Manifest Destiny” which cast territorial expansionism as natural and ... More

The dramatic nineteenth-century growth of the United States into a continental empire was justified by an ideology called “Manifest Destiny” which cast territorial expansionism as natural and preordained. In reality, America’s territorial growth from thirteen colonies in 1776, to an imperial power embracing colonies in the Pacific by 1900, was the result of ongoing violence against Indian people by both settlers and the US army and an aggressive war against the neighboring republic of Mexico. Speculation, population increase, and slave labor all encouraged the rapid settlement of western lands, and allowed the federal government to successfully gain hegemony over much of the continent in the face of competing claims.Less

The Outsider

Terry Rugeley

in The River People in Flood Time: The Civil Wars in Tabasco, Spoiler of Empires

Chapter 4 constitutes the heart and soul of the book: the story of how a Cuban adventurer named Francisco de Sentmanat y Zayas was invited into Tabasco to assist the province’s federalists with their ... More

Chapter 4 constitutes the heart and soul of the book: the story of how a Cuban adventurer named Francisco de Sentmanat y Zayas was invited into Tabasco to assist the province’s federalists with their revolt against Mexico City. Like William Walker in Nicaragua, Sentmanat succeeded only two well, and ended up making himself the state’s absolute ruler. Because Mexico was then preparing a war to reclaim the breakaway province of Yucatán, president Antonio López de Santa Anna, hoping to neutralize surrounding regions, actually recognized Sentmanat as both governor and state military commander. Once the reconquest of Yucatán ended in failure, however, Mexican commanders took out their frustrations by invading Tabasco and driving out the Cuban. Sentmanat raised one more force, this time in New Orleans; but his second invasion of Tabasco failed, and after a round of executions, Sentmanat ascended into the heaven of Tabascan legend.Less

Napoleon is Coming! Maximilian is Coming?: The International History of the Civil War in the Caribbean Basin

Thomas Schoonover

in The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim

Thomas Schoonover contends in this chapter that before, during, and after the Civil War, Americans and Europeans competed diplomatically, economically, culturally, and sometimes militarily for ... More

Thomas Schoonover contends in this chapter that before, during, and after the Civil War, Americans and Europeans competed diplomatically, economically, culturally, and sometimes militarily for advantage in the countries of the Gulf-Caribbean region, often for purposes of social imperialism (improving conditions at home through foreign ventures). Schoonover argues that the Union was better situated to navigate this competition than the Confederacy because of its superior economic position. He gives particular attention to the French intervention in Mexico and argues that the Confederacy erred in its priorities in the Gulf-Caribbean region. Schoonover's chapter incorporates Spain, Prussia, and other countries into its narrative and cautions against ethnocentric treatments of the American past.Less

Minority-Party Power in the Senate and House of Representatives

Sean Gailmard and Jeffery A. Jenkins

in Why Not Parties?: Party Effects in the United States Senate

This chapter explores the conventional wisdom that the minority is considerably stronger in the Senate. If the Senate's institutional arrangements do confer more power on the minority party as ... More

This chapter explores the conventional wisdom that the minority is considerably stronger in the Senate. If the Senate's institutional arrangements do confer more power on the minority party as compared to the House's institutional arrangements, then standard measures of party power should reflect that reality. The chapter is organized as follows. It first discusses the data and measures used to explore minority-party power in the Senate. It then provides preliminary evidence of such power across three different legislative vehicles: Senate-originated bills, confirmation votes, and conference-committee reports. In doing so, it also makes explicit comparisons between minority-party power in the Senate and the House. Following this, it examines the determinants of minority-party power in the Senate for the three legislative vehicles in question and then compares these determinants to those associated with minority-party power in the House on similar legislative vehicles. There is some evidence that the Senate minority party possesses greater negative agenda control than the House minority party. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, the clearest formal source of the Senate minority's negative agenda control—the filibuster—appears not to be a significant instrument of power across a range of legislative vehicles.Less

The Civil War the World Made

Gregory P. Downs

in The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic

How did world events help create the Civil War? This chapter examines the impact of global revolutionary movements in shaping U.S. politics in the 1840s and 1850s crisis. Particularly it follows ... More

How did world events help create the Civil War? This chapter examines the impact of global revolutionary movements in shaping U.S. politics in the 1840s and 1850s crisis. Particularly it follows crises in Cuba and Spain over the survival of slavery and the resilience of imperial rule and follows Cuban exiles into U.S. politics to show their role in helping turn U.S. political debate toward expansion.Less

Filibustering and Majority Rule in the Senate: The Contest over Judicial Nominations, 2003–2005

Gregory Koger

in Why Not Parties?: Party Effects in the United States Senate

This chapter begins by explaining how simple majorities can reduce minority rights in the Senate even if a minority attempts to obstruct reform. It shows that senators can use unconventional tactics ... More

This chapter begins by explaining how simple majorities can reduce minority rights in the Senate even if a minority attempts to obstruct reform. It shows that senators can use unconventional tactics to circumvent a filibuster against a formal change in the standing rules of the Senate. It then assesses the frequency and partisanship of parliamentary rulings in the modern Senate. Finally, it turns to the fight over judicial nominations from 2003 to 2005, which culminated in a bipartisan agreement to preserve the right to filibuster while limiting the use of that right.Less

Conflict Avoidance in the Equatorial Atlantic

Mark C. Hunter

in Policing the Seas: Anglo-American Relations and the Equatorial Atlantic, 1819-1865

This chapter examines how sea power was utilised and adjusted by America and Britain in order to diffuse political tensions and keep the balance of power and their individual commercial endeavours ... More

This chapter examines how sea power was utilised and adjusted by America and Britain in order to diffuse political tensions and keep the balance of power and their individual commercial endeavours protected. In particular, it examines Anglo-American co-operation and conflict during the 1840s and 1850s; Spanish-American filibusters; naval policing; and the American Civil War. It concludes that by 1860, Britain and America were intent on avoiding conflict with one another, and that as civil war broke out in America, Britain avoided becoming embroiled in the conflict.Less