Up to our own day American
history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization
of the Great West....The frontier is the line of the most rapid
and effective Americanization....The frontier promoted the formation
of a composite nationality for the American people....The legislation
which most developed the powers of the national government, and
played the largest part in its activity, was conditioned on the
frontier....The pioneer needed the goods of the coast, and so
the grand series of internal improvements and railroad legislation
began, with potent nationalizing effects....But the most important
effect of the frontier has been the promotion of democracy here
and in Europe. As has been indicated, the frontier is productive
of individualism....It produces antipathy to control, and particularly
to any direct control....The frontier states that came into the
Union in the first quarter of a century of its existence came
in with democratic suffrage provisions, and had reactive effects
of the highest importance upon the older states....
To the frontier the American
intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness
and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that
practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients....What
the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of
custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions
and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier
has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of
Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery
of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution,
the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first
period of American history.
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The
Significance of the Frontier in American History," 1893
The two great needs of mankind,
that all men may be lifted into the light of the highest Christian
civilization, are, first, a pure, spiritual Christianity, and,
second, civil liberty....It follows then, that the Anglo-Saxon,
as the great representative of these two ideas, the depository
of these two great blessings, sustains peculiar relations to
the world's future, is divinely commissioned to be, in a peculiar
sense, his brother's keeper.
Josiah Strong, 1885
God has not been preparing
the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years
for nothing but vain and idle self-admiration. No....He has made
us adept in government that we may administer government among
savage and senile peoples....He has marked the American people
as His chosen nation to finally lead in the redemption of the
world.
Senator Albert J. Beveridge,
1900
The West Indies drift toward
us, the Republic of Mexico hardly longer has an independent life....With
the completion of the Panama Canal all Central American will
become part of our system. We have expanded into Asia, we have
attracted the fragments of the Spanish dominions, and reaching
out into China we have checked the advance of Russia and Germany....The
United States will outweigh any single empire....The whole world
will pay her tribute.
Brooks Adams, 1902
I transmit to the Senate...the
annexation of the Dominican Republic to the United States....I
feel an unusual anxiety for the ratification of this treaty,
because I believe it will rebound greatly to the glory of the
two countries interested, to civilization, and to the extirpation
of the institution of slavery....
The acquisition of the Dominican Republic is desirable because
of its geographical position. It commands the entrance to the
Caribbean Sea and the Isthmus transit of commerce. It possesses
the riches soil, best and most capacious harbors, most salubrious
climate, and the most valuable products of the forest, mine,
and soil of any of the West Indian Islands.
President Grant, 1870, on a
treaty of annexation of the Dominican Republic
The island of San Domingo,
situated in tropical waters, and occupied by another race, of
another color, never can become a permanent possession of the
United States. You may seize it by force of arms or by diplomacy,
where a naval squadron does more than the minister, but the enforced
jurisdiction cannot endure. Already by a higher statute is that
island set part to the colored race....
I protect against this legislation as another stage in a drama
of blood. I protest against it in the name of Justice outraged
by violence, in the name of Humanity insulted, in the name of
the weak trodden down, in the name of Peace imperiled, and in
the name of the African race, whose first effort at Independence
is rudely assailed.
Senator Charles Sumner's response,
1870
First. In the cause of humanity
and to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation,
and horrible miseries now existing there [in Cuba], and which
the parties to the conflict are either unable or unwilling to
stop or mitigate....
Second. We owe it to our citizens in Cuba to afford them that
protection and indemnity for life and property....
Third. The right to intervene may be justified by the very serious
injury to the commerce, trade, and business of our people and
by he wanton destruction of property and devastation of the island.
President McKinley's call for
war against Spain, 1898
When next I realized that the
Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know
what to do with them....I walked the floor of the White House
night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell
you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty
God for light and guidance....And one night late it came to me
this way....
(1) that we could not give them back to Spain--that would be
cowardly and dishonorable;
(2) That we could not turn them over to France or Germany--our
commercial rivals in the Orient--that would be bad business and
discreditable;
(3) That we could not leave them to themselves--they were unfit
for self-government--and they would soon have anarchy and misrule
worse than Spain's war;
(4) That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them
all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and
Christianize them as our fellow men for whom Christ also died.
President McKinley on the Philippines
Thus...duty and interest alike,
duty of the highest kind and interest of the highest and best
kind, impose upon us the retention of the Philippines, the development
of the islands, and the expansion of our Eastern commerce.
Henry Cabot Lodge
The opposition tells us that
we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer,
the rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority
from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are
capable of self-government. We govern the Indians without their
consent; we govern the territories without their consent; we
govern our children without their consent. I answer, would not
the natives of the Philippines prefer the just, humane, civilizing
government of the Republic to the savage, bloody rule of pillage
and extortion from which we have rescued them?
Senator Albert J. Beveridge,
1900
A self-governing state cannot
accept sovereignty over an unwilling people. The United States
cannot act upon the ancient heresy that might makes right.
Platform of the Anti-Imperialist
League
If we seek merely swollen,
slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests
where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk
of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will
pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the
world.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1900
There is a homely adage which
runs, "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."
If the American nation will speak softly and yet build and keep
at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy,
the Monroe Doctrine will go far.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1901
It is not true that the United
States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards
the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are
for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the
neighboring countries stable, orderly and prosperous....Chronic
wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening
of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere,
ultimately require intervention...[and] force the United States,
however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or
impotence, to the exercise of an internal police power.
Roosevelt Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine, 1904
