American participation in imperialism drew its thrust from both economic and cultural justifications that derived from America's history of expansion; American imperialism varied only slightly across the first few generations of presidents as we will explore sampling from the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt through the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. America's earlier westward expansion became the fertile ground for American imperialistic justification. Although cultural justifications were used to maintain public interest in support of imperialism, economic justifications were seen as more important throughout the history of imperialism, even bridging the similarities between the imperial programs of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The most predominant justification for imperialism, at least for American business, was to expand its economic interests throughout the world. First, as the American domestic market for manufactured goods appeared to shrink, many American business interests began looking for ways to keep their businesses expanding; the best way to do this was to rival European imperialism and thus rival European markets (Hewitt, 622-624). Furthermore, during the 1870s and 1890s the business cycle was characterized by booms and then busts, but it was not until the depression of the 1890s that America saw its greatest economic contraction; this led both political and business leaders to seek foreign markets and create them (Hewitt, 623). Furthermore, not only were business leaders seeking to sell their assets abroad by acquiring territories as a springboard into new markets, an example of this was the acquisition of Guam and the Philippines to have easier access to the Chinese market, but corporate leaders were also trying to acquire you...... middle of paper ......investment there (Hewitt, 635). Although Woodrow Wilson sought to be a diplomatic imperialist, with so many American commercial interests abroad at stake, he many times failed to venture away from Theodore Roosevelt's imperialist program of using military force. Cultural justification was the face, or appearance, of imperialism while economic justification was its body, or prime mover. This was characterized from its birth until the first generations of presidents who had the opportunity to exercise the power of imperialism; this was demonstrated by the fact that presidents have always been willing to use American military might, even if a president like Woodrow Wilson swore he was against it, as soon as America's economic position was put at risk. American imperialism gained its acceptance in the minds of Americans, for both cultural and economic justifications, from the Western expansion that preceded it..