You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts
[QUOTE=Villainy;2938111]Yes the United States was formed by winning the Revolutionary War.
So, let's see:
Louisiana Purchase 828,000 sq miles.
Alaska Purchase 665,000 sq miles.
[/QUOTE]3,796,742 sq mi is the land mass of the United States of America.
Only 1,400,000 sq mi (more or less were legitimate purchases).
Leaves 2,386,724 sq mi acquired by war or 63%.
[QUOTE=Villainy;2937769]Another demonstration of abject ignorance of US History. The majority of the US land mass was [B]purchased[/B] YES that is right! [B]purchased[/B] from other countries that held claim to the land.[/QUOTE]We let you continue to believe a majority of the US land mass was purchased. But the rest of us, with sound minds and the ability to reason will stick to the facts and not worry about your beliefs.
Is that the best you got Villainy
[QUOTE=Villainy;2938999]More like you double faulted, again and again.[/QUOTE]Double Fault? Nah that is something I rarely do. [B]My spin kick second serve is not only consistent it is fierce.[/B] Get on the court with me and you be tripping over your own feet.
[QUOTE=Villainy;2938999][URL]https://history.state.gov/milestones/1801-1829/florida[/URL][/QUOTE]Do you even read the material in the citations you provide.
[I]Adams used the Jacksons military action to present Spain with a demand to either control the inhabitants of East Florida or cede it to the United States.[/I]
Supports my point entirely. It was not a purchase.
[B]Game Set and Match to Mr. Subcmdr[/B]
Reread what I said Villainy
[QUOTE=Gabacho;2938867]I believe Sub's argument (and feel free to correct me if I am wrong) is that the majority of the land making up the modern day US was acquired through land grabs rather than purchases. I'm not sure if the exact percentages but quite a bit of land was received through ill-gotten means.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Villainy;2939052]I disagree with your statement about the majority being land grabs. But your second statement "quite a bit of land was received through ill-gotten means" is a fair statement.
I was able to show with documentation that more than 50% of the US land mass (excluding waterways) was in fact purchased.
Sub cannot admit he was wrong so he argues that the Oregon Territory was a settlement in lieu of war with Great Britain in 1846. Oh wait! No it was extorted from Spain in 1821 as settlement of a war that never happened.
Now he has backed it up again.
Saying most of the land was not purchased. (he is wrong about that BTW). So he went from "very little" to a "less than a majority". But that last statement doesn't say the [B]majority of the current land mass was the result of land grabs[/B].
He just can't seem to decide what he believes, which is typical of people who shoot their mouth off and then try to back-fill their reasoning.[/QUOTE]I never said that the majority of the territory of the modern US was acquired through land grabs. I said that "I believe that Sub's argument was that the majority of the land that makes up the modern US was acquired through land grabs rather than purchases. " I then followed that up with my own statement in which I said: "I'm not sure of the exact percentages, but quite a bit of the land was received through I'll-gotten means. " which you agreed with.
As I learned in US History class in college, in the 18th and 19th centuries there was something called manifest destiny, in which the US believed all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific was rightfully theirs for the taking, regardless of native tribes who had been there for centuries and hand stakes to the land and regardless of other governments such as Mexico who had rightfully inherited the land from Texas to California and as far north as the Oregon territory, from its own independence it won against Spain.
The Lewis and Clark expeditions of 1804-05 were proof that the US claimed the land to the west that rightfully belonged to Spain and later to Mexico and respected neither Spain's nor Mexico's Sovereignty during those early years.
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_and_Clark_Expedition?wprov=sfla1[/URL]
The Texas Revolution is just one example of these land grabs the US was justifying under its manifest destiny doctrine.
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny?wprov=sfla1[/URL]
It is really no different than what Russia did in Crimea in 2014 and Ukraine as a whole in the ongoing conflict. Or how China has plans to retake Taiwan. But if the US did it is was okay it was alright but if others do it they are war criminals, you don't see the hypocracy in that??
There were other instances where gringos (either as individuals or with the backing of the US army) attempted other land grabs further south in Mexico during the 19th century but failed. One that comes to mind is the attempted land grab of Baja California and Sonora by a gringo by the name of William Walker in 1853-54.
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_of_William_Walker_to_Baja_California_and_Sonora?wprov=sfla1[/URL]
The Kingdom of Hawaii was also stolen in a similar type land grab. Also whenever the US fought wars it would steal territorial possessions away from the country it fought against, such as Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines were taken from Spain in the Spanish American war of 1898.
And Sub is correct that if you put a gun to someone's head and offer them a dollar for his or her iPhone, that isn't a fair purchase. No court on earth would rule that to be a fair purchase, but yet the US sends checks every year to Cuba for the lease of the land upon which the Guantanamo Bay Prison is situated, checks that Cuba has not cashed, not even one of them.
So I like I said, I'm not sure if it's a majority or minority of the square kilometers that make up the US, but I do know that quite a bit of it's land was received through I'll-gotten means and the US has demonstrated less than ethical behavior in its land expansion efforts.
-Gabcaho.
