How the territorial and population expansion of the USA in 250 years transformed the country into a power marked by divisions

In retrospect, it is possible to trace many of President Donald Trump's key policy promises—limiting immigration and expanding U.S. power and territory—back to the country's earliest distinctions and divisions. The founders of the United States had high hopes for their new nation. His success, however, was far from guaranteed. Heated debates over slavery, the constitution, and the economic and political system created clear divisions among the population. Although the country nearly doubled in size after purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, when the U.S. went to war again with Great Britain in 1812, it was not guaranteed that the nation would hold out. “Anyone who has watched the colonies try to create this nation would say: All we have to do is stay here and wait until they fall apart and then go back and rebuild them,” said Heather Cox Richardson, professor of U.S. history at Boston College and author of Letters From an American, available on Substack. Although America's future in those early years was uncertain, the forces that contributed to the nation's future trajectory were already in place. Colin Woodard, director of the Nationality Laboratory at Salve Regina University, divides the US into a series of distinct identities linked to these early fissures. The northern region, which Woodard calls "Yankeeland," has its roots in early Puritan settlers who fled religious persecution in Europe, with later additions of German and Scandinavian settlers helping to cement a pluralistic outlook. A central strip, which he calls "Greater Appalachia," was initially populated by independent-minded Scots and Irish. His political outlook, shaped in part by his experience with English oppression in the British Isles, was much more suspicious of government authority. "For them, freedom means maximizing the autonomy and freedom of the individual, and any increase in government power means, axiomatically, that individuals are less free," Woodard said. "It's the opposite of the Greater New England Yankee philosophy." Meanwhile, the Deep South was made up of a class of landowners, some of whom had moved from slave plantations in the Caribbean, who formed an "oligarchic, hierarchical society." By 1828, the US had already expanded into the Pacific, with the acquisition of Oregon. Getty Images via BBC Although American identity is defined by the competing cultures of those who arrived from abroad, the first full century of the United States' existence would include the concerted attempt to erase the culture of the indigenous peoples who occupied the land for centuries before the first Europeans arrived in the Atlantic. As the nation continued to expand westward, the movement acquired an ideological force of its own, as some Americans believed it was the nation's "manifest destiny" to expand not just to the Pacific, but throughout the Western Hemisphere. This territorial expansion took these cultures to new points of convergence and conflict. The interior West, with its inhospitable landscape, more closely resembled the Appalachian wilderness and attracted individuals with equally austere individualistic views. Along the Pacific coast, these values ??conflicted with those of the traders and sailors who had moved from the American Northeast. In the modern era, these divisions are evident on a presidential election map – with "red states" controlled by Republicans and "blue states" controlled by Democrats. The US Northeast and West Coast are known as bastions of liberalism – and much more supportive of government intervention in everyday life – while the American South, from Texas to Florida, and the interior West have become the bastions of Republican conservatism. The 20th century saw an explosion of immigrants from all over the world coming to the US. Getty Images via BBC Although the US largely stopped expanding geographically in the late 19th century, the population continued to grow dramatically – largely due to immigration. "One of the things that's really at the heart of the United States of America is immigration," Richardson said. "The only thing that unites us is the concept that we can build the future we want." The first wave of migration began in the 1840s and lasted until 1889, bringing approximately 14 million people to the country's shores, mainly from northern and western European nations. The next wave, of more than 18 million migrants, came from southern and eastern Europe and stretched from 1890 through the 1920s. With each wave came an inevitable backlash, as Americans feared that the newcomers would take their jobs and threaten their way of life. Quotas and restrictive legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act soon followed. The Immigration Act of 1924 limited immigration so drastically that it can be seen by a distinct curvature on the US annual population growth graph. The most recent wave of migration began in the 1960s, when these restrictions were lifted. Since then, more than 70 million immigrants have entered the U.S., many from Asia and Latin America, including approximately 18 million from Mexico alone. In 2024, 14.8% of the US population was made up of immigrants – a number equivalent to the historic peak in 1890, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Immigration accounted for 84% of total US population growth. According to Woodard, the first waves of immigration – driven mainly by industrialization – helped to increase the political power of the American North. And this geographic imbalance contributed to further fueling ideological divisions. Southern leaders pushed for territorial expansion – and the expansion of slave states – to ensure they maintained political power at the national level, before seceding completely, starting the Civil War. But modern trends have reversed this geographic division. Many immigrants — and people from the North — are now drawn to the South, especially by the thriving economies of cities in Texas and Florida. Meanwhile, a recent wave of illegal immigrants at the U.S. southern border has heightened tensions. Trump's populist conservatism, therefore, can be seen as a response to changes in the centers of power in the United States. Upon returning to the White House, Trump fulfilled his campaign promise to promote mass deportations. However, he expressed nostalgia for 19th-century territorial expansion, speaking of acquiring Greenland, repatriating the Panama Canal, and adding Canada and Venezuela as the "51st state" of the United States. His version of American expansionism is therefore a kind of mirror image of the last 250 years of history. The country spent its first century expanding physically, then stopped trying to conquer new territories and focused — sometimes hesitantly — on opening the nation to immigrants. Now, Trump has changed course, aiming to once again expand the physical borders of the United States and limit the number of people the country allows to enter. Trump and his supporters assert that the character of the American nation is in danger of being fundamentally and permanently altered. “We won’t have a country anymore” is a common Trump refrain about the dangers of mass immigration. “This doesn’t come out of nowhere,” Woodard said. "We have the metal struggle in American history: are we a civic nation dedicated to...a soiros Americanas by blood and descent?" In the immensity of world history, 250 years are a mere instant, a flash, a blink of an eye. But for the US, 250 years have been transformative – even if the divisions at the heart of the nation and concerns about its future have been a constant.