the Tidewater region of Virginia, where growing tobacco had enriched the planter class temporarily while impoverishing the soil. Far-thinking residents understood that the future lay inland, and that the wealthy landowners, such as Washington’s friends the Fairfaxes, could thrive only by obtaining, then selling, lands there. In the course of Washington’s life, the balance of power tipped, so that Americans could swarm into the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys. The Native Americans, without French backing, had no way of driving them out.

Washington had dreamed of a future in which American Indians eventually assimilated into the now-dominant culture, a future in which the Indian men would cross the gender gap within their own society to become farmers and artisans. In effect, Native Americans would vanish, becoming in time like other immigrants, a part of a free, prosperous, generally Protestant yeomanry. Native American men, however, were unwilling to do women’s work and were even more hostile to the unmanly academic work necessary to becoming doctors and lawyers.

Some tribal leaders, usually of mixed ancestry, tried to persuade their fellows that the alternative to assimilation was destruction. However, young hotheads, especially the Red-Sticks of the Creeks, preferred to fight to the last. Andrew Jackson gave the southern civilized tribes a choice of assimilation or moving west. Some tribal leaders, seeing their members succumbing to drink and gambling, had already decided to put as much distance between themselves and white civilization as possible; Jackson sent many of the rest to join them. Jackson was the prototype of the new Southerner: a patriarch who took care of his women, his children, and his slaves—and Native Americans, too. Jackson was argumentative, dislikable, and ready to use violence to defend his honor. The South as a region, and America as a proud and expansive nation, reflected this new concept of manhood.

The Mexican War was the product of aggressive acquisitiveness justified by love of personal liberty and freedom—liberty and freedom won by depriving “lesser” races and cultures of theirs. In addition, there was a strong conservative desire to bring order out of chaos, and few areas were more chaotic than the Mexican Republic and its almost empty northern territories. Antonio López de Santa Anna shared many of the Southerners’ attitudes and beliefs, but his interests began and ended with himself, not his nation. He was willing to sell as much Mexican soil as necessary to hold onto power. Northerners, who wanted land as much as Southerners, saw the growth of slave power as a threat to their own liberty.

The Civil War arose when Northerners insulted Southern concepts of patriarchy by saying that slavery was wrong and frustrating Southern wishes to expand. The war began as a struggle for power but became a moral crusade to abolish slavery. In its aftermath came the great disappointment—President Ulysses S. Grant chose neither to force racial equality on the South nor to guarantee it for Native Americans. He was content to protect civil rights, confident that assimilation would come in due time. Congressional limits on the size of the Army also affected what he could do in the South and in the West. Grant’s naïve racist paternalism was doomed to fail.

By this time Americans had come to assume a close connection between liberty and empire, and while they refused to acknowledge that America was an imperialist state, they were willing to use force to impose liberty and democracy on people who were not ready for it or did not want it.

The Philippines were the unintended acquisition of a war fought for the noblest of motives, the end of Spanish tyranny in Cuba. The wisdom of allowing Cuba to go its own way was proven in the Philippines, where the United States found itself fighting a long colonial war. Cultural imperialism there was fully represented in the MacArthur family, where a father-son dynasty dominated politics and war for half a century. In The Dominion of War, Douglas MacArthur’s many personal vanities and military mistakes are painted against a background of American popular culture—motion pictures and novels that demonstrate white America’s view of itself and the world, a view which ignores racial minorities, dissenting opinions, and non-Protestant values and beliefs. Casual racism was an integral part of America’s self-satisfied conceit that its social, economic, and political systems were models for the rest of the world.

This, and the chaos following World War II, required the United States to intervene abroad, first in Korea, then in Vietnam and elsewhere, usually in the name of protecting freedom from Soviet and Chinese Marxism but without an acknowledgment that the United States now possessed an empire that must be defended.

There were some who were open about America’s military responsibilities—Douglas MacArthur, more than anyone. Others, such as Harry S. Truman, wanted foreigners to work out their destinies in their own ways. Even Truman, however, succumbed to political reality—if the United States did not take the lead in fighting communism, then who would?

Thus the United States became involved in a redefinition of its racial beliefs, a rethinking of taboos and prejudices which eventually led to the end of legal segregation, a breakdown of gender roles and a more tolerant view of foreigners. This process, marked by wars in Korea and Vietnam, has not been completed. The contradictions between believing in liberty and desiring to impose democracy on other peoples are still felt. Americans continue to see themselves as righteous and well-meaning, justified in the military interventions, even when faced by obvious resistance on the part of those who are supposed to benefit from American sacrifices. Wars are unpredictable, and many of its consequences cannot be foreseen.

The Powell Doctrine was a effort to put restraints on America’s reformist and imperialist ambitions. Its tenets include, first, no war except as a last resort; second, no war without complete public support; and, third, the use of overwhelming force. Authors Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton see the first Gulf War as the embodiment of this doctrine. They are noncommittal on the wars of 2002 and 2003, but they suggest that theses conflicts illustrate well the dilemma they have described, the importance of the interplay of concepts of liberty, of empire, and Americans’ divided views about war and a strong military.

It is important for Americans to see that previous visions of the past—especially the struggles against the British Empire—are outdated. Wars have made the United States an imperial power. A strong American military is necessary, but there is no consensus on how to exercise its power legitimately and wisely. A proper understanding of American history is the first step to the development of such a consensus.