The “super-frigates” like the USS Constitution might have fared very well against the smaller RN frigates in the War of 1812, but they wouldn’t have lasted three broadsides against a First Rate sail of the line like HMS Victory. To be a world power at that point in time you needed to have a squadron of real ships of the line. I believe the USN was badly outclassed by its European counterparts up until around the Civil War.
Remember, the criteria is not when did the U.S. emerge as a world power. I think most would agree that happened between the Spanish-American War and WWI. Its when could the U.S. have been a world power. I would guess that between 1845 and 1865 that it was well on its way and by 1865 that it was probably equal or close to anybody.
But can the U.S. be considered a world power post Civil War with half of the country a strong industrial nation and the other half with an economy in ruins (and some would argue many of the economic problems in the South are still a result of Civil War/Reconstruction). I think you need to give the South time to recover.
I would place the time as Cleveland’s second term (1893-1897). McKinley’s Tarriff was shown to be disasterous, the beginning of the end of the protectionist mentality hurting American farmers. Also, his response to the Panic of 1893 helped stabilize the US economy and his acquiring of Hawaii started the overseas manifest destiny we see come into full bloom in the Spanish American War.
It is interesting to see what would have happened if Cleveland had not been such an isolationist in foreign policy.
The problem is that title of the thread asks “when did”, while the first post asks “At what time was the US capable of”. These are two different questions.
And is it militarally? economically? impearialism? what does it mean to “go toe to toe”?
The OP undoubtedly means Militarily. Given our internal focus during most of the 1800’s, that might be difficult to judge. To be sure, if external powers had forced us to look outside ourselves and defend our nation, we could have ramped up pretty well at any point post-civil war. But as I presume, probably contrary to some, that ‘capable of’ includes the desire and interest in doing so, then I have to go back to my original answer, the Spanish-American War of 1898, which is when we actively stepped onto the world stage and declared ourselves a world power by seizing the colonies of a declining world power. In those days, it was Empire and Colonies that made one a “Power”, and that is when we made ourselves one in such a way as to be recognized by the other Powers.
In 1939 our weapons were a mess also. Not Civil War, but way out of date when compared to the Germans. I think the important point is what the country was capable of, not what it did when there was no threat on the horizon.
May I throw something else into the mix? The mid to late 1800’s were marked by huge advances in agricultural productivity by Deere & Co. et al. If the USA had tried to extend itself, wouldn’t those advances have accelerated?
But if you penalized the U.S. for that, you’d also have to penalize Russia for its Potemkin Villages, England for Ireland, etc. The South was still pretty much a train wreck during WWI, yet it didn’t have much affect on the country’s status as a power. I think the North, on its own, would compare favorably size and population-wise to core of the other world powers circa 1865.
I’d also say around the time of the Civil War. Manufacturing capability and military strength took a giant leap forward then, as political imperative joined with technological possibilities. The U.S. Navy at the close of the Civil War was the equal if not the superior of any other navy in the world, including a large fleet of ironclads (granted, most of those were for shallow-water sailing). The double-turreted monitor USS Miantonomoh’s 1866-67 Atlantic crossing and European cruise was a sensation; the Times of London wrote, “The wolf is in our fold; the whole flock [the Royal Navy] is at its mercy.” For ground forces, the Union Army at the end of the war was massive, well-trained and well-equipped. A Prussian military observer in Washington for the 1865 Grand Review reportedly gasped, “An army like this could conquer the world!”
But that was never the U.S. intent in the 19th century, and within a few years the army and navy were demobilized, leaving pretty much a hollow shell. There was never the national will at the time to become a “world power” as we would now think of it.
I heard that in 1938, the USA had a smaller Army than Portugal! General George Patton was given command of the the only armored regiment in the US Army-and had to pay for spare parts out of his own pocket!
Indeed, correct. It was long standing US policy to ramp up the military for fighting, and then scale down afterwards. I believe after the Spanish-American war, the US Military was downsized to about 17,000 troops. (exact numbers are at home, will post then if you would like).
It was only after WWII, and the perception of the Soviet Union as a long term opponent, and the needs to have boots on the ground in Asia and Europe that the US kept a large scale military.
Today, we are dealing with the long term consequences of that. What will happen in another 20 years, I just don’t know.
To address the OP, I have to agree with the 1860’s as being the point as well. Before that point, the logistical ability of the US just didn’t really have what it took to shift men, material and goods to maintain a “World Power” level of production (imo). Afterwards, they did, and could. They chose not to, but they could have.
The US military was traditionally (until after 1945 - hence Eisenhower’s speech warning of the rising power of the military-industrial complex) rewarded (or punished, depending on your perspective) for winning wars by being dramatically down-sized directly after. For this reason alone, I think military capability has little to do with the capability of being a world power; the capability to rapidly put an entire country on a war footing and outperform your enemies in creating and supplying a military, as well as the capability to project power abroad, has a lot more to do with it.
Four examples:
In 1860, the US Army was largely state militias, only loosely grouped together into a whole with a unified command and control coming about only with the advent of war. Once the war started, however (and more so in the North than the South due to more industrialization) the Army was rapidly re-organized, re-armed, and re-trained with modern equipment. The turn-around was less than a year from a bunch of hick local state militias with obsolete weapons, training, and tactics to a unified, armed and modernized army that was the equal of any other country in the world. It took a bit longer in the South, but it still happened rather quickly.
In 1897, the military was tiny. It was called the US Army, but again was largely state militias joined together loosely at best and used largely for internal policing and western expansion with only occasional and brief extra-continental forays. Once the war with Spain started, however, again we had an incredibly rapid turn-around and the technology gap closed incredibly quickly and soon we were more well-armed and more modern then our enemies.
In the run-up to the Great War, the US was behind in nearly every military area - ships of the line, infantry arms, tanks, everything. Yet again, our industrial power led to an incredibly rapid re-arming and updating of our soldiers so that by the time they deployed our military was the equal of, if not the better of, any other European army and with a better logistical structure behind them to keep them full of ammo and beans and enough surplus production to help feed and arm our allies as well.
Finally, in 1938, the US military was a joke compared to any European power. Few soldiers, few guns, almost no tanks, airplanes, or ships; spare parts were sparse and hard to come by, and most of the weapons systems were hand-made rather than made through mass production - the M1911 .45 ACP pistol, the Thompson sub-machine gun, and the M1 Garand, staples of the US Infantry load-out in WW2, were hand-made until 1939 when they were started to be created through mass-production means. The Navy probably was the best off of any service and at least had a few modern ships especially battleships, but the Army was still flying paper-winged biplanes with hand-dropped small bombs in 1938. By 1940, the Air Corps was fully modernized and we were building dramatic numbers of ships, planes, guns, and tanks for lend-lease; further extension of this industrial capability after Pearl Harbor meant we were basically fully modernized as a military as well as outperforming any other nation on earth industrially to keep our troops in ammo and beans and again had enough surplus capability to feed and arm our allies as well as our own people with only limited conservation on our own people.
So to me, the key answer to the question of ‘when could the US have become a world power’ is as soon as our industrial capability and logistical infrastructure could support projection of power globally, could support the creation and maintenance of a large army capable of international operations, and could do both of those without too adversely impacting standard of living and capability of civilian industrial improvements.
So I would say somewhere around 1850 or so, although internal matters and politics meant it didn’t happen until much later.