American Empire

“ The foundations of Empire have been laid in the United States. Territory has been conquered; peoples have been subjugated or annihilated; an imperial class has established itself. Here are all of the essential characteristics of empire.
The American people have been busy laying the political foundations of Empire for three centuries. A great domain, taken by force of arms from the people who were in possession of it has been either incorporated into the Union, or else held as dependent territory. ”

“ Any one who is familiar with its history will realize at once that the United States is passing through some of the more advanced stages in the development of empire. The name "Republic" still remains; the traditions of the Republic are cherished by millions; the republican forms are almost intact, but the relations of the United States to its conquered territory and its subject peoples; the rapid maturation of the plutocracy as a governing class or caste; the shamelessness of the exploitation in which the rulers have indulged ”

“ Steam, transportation, industrial development, city life, business organization, expansion across the continent—these are the factors that have made of the United States a nation utterly apart from the nation of which those who signed the Declaration of Independence and fought the Revolution dreamed. ”

“ Will the Empire, however, last? Does it rest on permanent foundations, or is it only a political organism in a certain stage of decomposition? Will the younger nations as they grow to maturity be content to remain within it, or will they ultimately go the way of the American Colonies before them, as was thought to be inevitable a generation ago? Obviously the Empire is in a state of transition, and if it is to endure, its constitution must undergo great modifications. ”

“ This is the American people—locked in the arms of mighty economic and social forces; building industrial empires; compelled, by a world war, to reach out and save "civilization,"—capitalist civilization,—a people that, by its very ancestry, seems destined to follow the course of empire.
The sons and daughters of the native born American stock are, in the main, the descendants of the conquering, imperial races of the modern world. During recent times, three great empires—Spain, France and Great Britain—have dominated western civilization. ”

“ It is a fact curious enough, and worthy of some consideration, that the great war in the middle of the last century, which ended in the loss to France of her hopes of Indian influence and of empire, and in the seizure of her American Colonies by Great Britain, should have, according to the best of American statesmen and philosophical reasoners, led also to the establishment of [67] the United States, and the foundation of the greatest Republic the world has ever seen. ”

“ She, with her progeny, may almost claim to constitute a kind of Universal Church in politics. But, among these children, there is one whose place in the world's eye and in history is superlative: it is the American Republic. She is the eldest born. She has, taking the capacity of her land into view as well as its mere measurement, a natural base for the greatest continuous empire ever established by man. ”

“ The American plutocracy must carry on. It must consolidate its gains and move forward to greater achievements, with the goal clearly in mind and the necessities of imperial power thoroughly mastered and understood. ”

“ During the years when the leaders of American business life were spending the major part of their time in "getting rich," the sweep of social and economic forces was driving the United States toward its present imperial position. ”

“ America represented as a rising empire. Prospect of a fertile country, harbors and rivers covered with ships, new canals opening, cities arising amid woods, splendid sun emerging from a bright horizon. Motto,
"New worlds are still emerging from the deep, The old descending, in their turns to rise." * 6th. A grand illuminated representation of Louis the Sixteenth, the encourager of letters, the supporter of the rights of humanity, the ally and friend of the American people. 7th. The center arch, The Fathers in Congress. Motto, "Nil desperandum reipublicae." 8th. ”

“ The resulting Federal Union was a combination of strength and freedom such as the world had never seen. With this for its organic form, with its spiritual lineage drawn from the Puritan, the Quaker and the Cavalier, with Anglo-Saxon stock for its core, yet with open doors and assimilating power for all races, and with a continent for its field of expansion,—the American people became the leader and the hope of humanity. ”

“ Decisive battles, vast reforms, civil or religious, great scientific discoveries or mechanical inventions, dynastic changes, political revolutions, the union or dismemberment of states, the birth or death of republics, the rise or fall of empires—these are the deep notches in the groove of time, the mighty landmarks in the pathway of humanity. It is the fate of the American Union, involving the liberty of our country and mankind, that is to be decided in our approaching Presidential election. ”

“ It is these New England principles that I would engraft upon that great empire of the West, which to-day is so plastic in our hands, whose future we, to-day, have power to shape, but which to-morrow we shall be powerless to mould. ”

“ The cause of America is, in my humble opinion, the cause of the whole British empire; an empire which, from my youth, I have been taught to love and revere, as founded in the principles of natural reason and justice, and upon the whole, best calculated for general happiness of any yet risen in the world. ”

“ In the great scale of empire, you will decline, I fear, from the decision of this day; and the Americans will rise to independence, to power, to all the greatness of the most renowned states! For they build on the solid basis of general public liberty. ”

“ We gave them freedom, and let them govern themselves upon the true English principles which George Washington fought for, and which George III. fought against. The British Empire, of which we are so proud to-day, exists because the principles of George III. were knocked on the head at the battle of Bunker's Hill, and in the long war which followed it.... The United States of America are now a great nation, which is more numerous and more powerful than Great Britain. ”

“ But the attachment of many to their old allies, to whom they felt themselves obliged, of many others to the British nation, its modes of government and its commerce, occasioned such a stigma to mark them for a tie.
America should indeed forever have maintained a character of her own, that should have set her on high ground, whence she might have looked on from the pinnacle of independence and peace, and only have pitied the squabbles, the confusion, and the miseries of the European world. ”

“ So, that this very division of empire may, in the end, by the blessing of Providence, be the means of perpetuating our rights and liberties, by keeping alive in every state at once a sincere love of its own government, and a love of the Union, and by cherishing in different minds a jealousy of each, which shall check, as well as enlighten, public opinion. ”

“ For, be it remembered, it was the Revolutionary time. Republicanism ran high. America was synonymous with the Promised Land. To be a statesman in America was as great a dignity as to be prince in any empire on earth. ”

“ Does it not seem plain, therefore, in the shifting of places and combinations, that the British Empire and the United States are to be the chief factors in the new historical scenes of the twentieth century? ”

“ It is his hand which beckons us onward in the pathway of peaceful progress and expansion, of power and renown, until our continent, in the distant future, shall be covered by the folds of the American banner, and, instructed by our example, all the nations of the world, through many trials and sacrifices, shall establish the great principles of our constitutional confederacy of free and sovereign states. ”

“ An enterprising, ardent, restless population are spreading over our western wilds, and our cities are now the creations almost of a day.
But by what means has this national elevation and prosperity been attained? Shall we ascribe them to the wise, sagacious, and patriotic men, who guided our councils and led our armies? Shall we offer our homage and gratitude to Washington, Franklin, Adams, Otis, Henry, Jefferson, and a multitude of others, who periled fortune, liberty, life itself, to achieve our independence, and lay the foundation of our country's glory? ”

“ In no case would those at the head of the imperial government, aside from selfish motives, of which there were plenty, have thought it the part of either wisdom or justice to uphold the citizens of any one colony in a course that seemed to run counter to the interests of the Empire as a whole. ”

“ The wisdom and justice of the American governments, and the virtue of the inhabitants, may, if they are not deficient in the improvement of their own advantages, render the United States of America an enviable example to all the world of peace, liberty, righteousness, and truth. ”

“ The makers of the American Republic range themselves in two groups--Washington, Franklin and Jefferson--Clay, Webster and Lincoln--each of whom, having a genius peculiarly his own, gave himself and his best to the cause of national unity and independence. ”

“ The United States form a young republic, a confederacy which ought ever to be cemented by a union of interests and affection, under the influence of those principles which obtained their independence. ”

“ The inhabitants of the United States had much to experiment in the new rank they had taken, and the untrodden ground which they were now to explore, replete with difficulties not yet digested or apprehended by the most sagacious statesmen. They had obtained their independence by a long and perilous struggle against a powerful nation. ”

“ The allegiance of 13 states at once withdrawn by a solemn declaration from a government towards which they had looked with the highest veneration; whose authority they had acknowledged, whose laws they had obeyed, whose protection they had claimed for more than a century and a half — was a consideration of solemnity, a bold resolution, an experiment of hazard: especially when the infancy of the colonies as a nation, without wealth, resources, or allies, was contrasted with the strength, riches, and power of Great Britain. ”

“ After the Empire had come into existence, the point of view shifted somewhat, and, theoretically, the question became one of what advantage a policy might prove to the Empire as a whole, although, as its greatest aggregation of wealth and population, the source of protection, the seat of power, the centre of all exchanges, in a word, the heart of empire, the local interests of England would still outweigh those of any of the dependencies. ”

“ Angels rejoiced—monarchs trembled—patriots shouted a loud—AMEN!!! The torch of England's power over the Colonies expired in its socket—the birth of a new nation was celebrated by happy millions basking beneath the genial rays of the refulgent glories of the sun of Liberty. The harvest was past—the summer ended—our country saved. The stupendous work of political regeneration was accomplished—the Independence of the United States acknowledged—an honorable peace consumated. ”

“ An analysis of the State would take us back to the beginnings of society, to the complex of religious and personal and herd-impulses which has found expression in so many forms. What we are interested in is the American State as it behaves and as Americans behave towards it in this twentieth century, and to understand that, we have to go no further back than the early English monarchy of which our American republic is the direct descendant. ”

“ Whatever shall be the outcome of the rush of this huge industrial modern United States to its place among the nations of the earth, the formation of its Western democracy will always remain one of the wonderful chapters in the history of the human race. ”

“ The beginnings of settlement, scattered and unimportant, had in no way presaged the empire which was to develop within a half-century, and not only had territory been granted away recklessly, but the monarchs had been equally heedless of the future in the forms of government which they had permitted to grow up. ”

“ But here is an Empire of natural wealth in a vast region claimed and owned by the then foremost military power on the globe, quietly, speedily and with a friendly hand passing over to the youngest member of the family of nations, to be by it, in its inexperience in government, ruled and developed for the happiness and blessing of mankind. ”

“ Our young Republic had barely established her independence, and shaken off the lingering grasp of Great Britain from the forts and towns bordering on the Great Lakes; had only just begun to feel the young giant's blood in her veins, and to trust her own strength when measured with that of an older and adroit foe—when the nineteenth century dawned, in which so much has already been accomplished, though its seventh decade is but just completed. ”

“ The real significance of the American civil war is shown to consist in the vindicated strength and supremacy of the great pacific and constructive federative principle which is to dominate in the political future of civilization ”

“ The defence of the country would thus be placed on the spot, and the additional number would entitle the territory to become a State, would make the majority American, and make it an American instead of a French State. ”