THE CHALLENGE TO IMPERIALISM.
XVII The New Imperial Alignment 229
XVIII The Challenge in Europe 243
XIX The American Worker and World Empire 256
The American Empire
I. THE PROMISE OF 1776
1. _The American Republic_
The genius of revolution presided at the birth of the American Republic,
whose first breath was drawn amid the economic, social and political
turmoil of the eighteenth century. The voyaging and discovering of the
three preceding centuries had destroyed European isolation and laid the
foundation for a new world order of society. The Industrial Revolution
was convulsing England and threatening to destroy the Feudal State.
Western civilization, in the birthpangs of social revolution, produced
first the American and then the French Republic.
Feudalism was dying! Divine right, monarchy, aristocracy, oppression,
despotism, tyranny--these and all other devils of the old world order
were bound for the limbo which awaits outworn, discredited social
institutions. The Declaration of Independence officially proclaimed the
new order,--challenging "divine right" and maintaining that "all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
Life, liberty and happiness were the heritage of the human race, and
"whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a
new government laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem likely to effect their
safety and happiness."
Thus the rights of the people were declared superior to the privileges
of the rulers; revolution was justified; and the principles of
eighteenth century individualism were made the foundation of the new
political state. Aristocracy was swept aside and in its stead democracy
was enthroned.
2. _The Yearning for Liberty_
The nineteenth century re-echoed with the language of social idealism.
Traditional bonds were breaking; men's minds were freed; their
imaginations were kindled; their spirits were possessed by a gnawing
hunger for justice and truth.
Revolting millions shouted: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" Sages
mused; philosophers analyzed; prophets exhorted; statesmen organized
toward this end.
Men felt the fire of the new order burning in their vitals. It purged
them. They looked into the eyes of their fellows and saw its reflection.
Dreaming of liberty as a maiden dreams of her lover, humanity awoke
suddenly, to find liberty on the threshold.
Through the ages mankind has sought truth and justice. Vested interests
have intervened. The powers of the established order have resisted, but
the search has continued. That eternal vigilance and eternal sacrifice
which are the price of liberty, are found wherever human society has
left a record. At one point the forces of light seem to be winning. At
another, liberty and truth are being ruthlessly crushed by the
privileged masters of life. The struggle goes on--eternally.
Liberty and justice are ideals that exist in the human heart, but they
are none the less real. Indeed, they are in a sense more potent, lying
thus in immortal embryo, than they could be as tangible institutions.
Institutions are brought into being, perfected, kept past their time of
highest usefulness and finally discarded. The hopes of men spring
eternally, spontaneously. They are the true social immortality.
3. _Government of the People_
Feudalism as a means of organizing society had failed. The newly
declared liberties were confided to the newly created state. It was
political democracy upon which the founders of the Republic depended to
make good the promise of 1776.
The American colonists had fled to escape economic, political and
religious tyranny in the mother countries. They had drunk the cup of its
bitterness in the long contest with England over the rights of taxation,
of commerce, of manufacture, and of local political control. They had
their fill of a mastery built upon the special privilege of an
aristocratic minority. It was liberty and justice they sought and
democracy was the instrument that they selected to emancipate themselves
from the old forms of privilege and to give to all an equal opportunity
for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Political democracy was to place the management of community business in
the hands of the people--to give them liberty in the control of public
affairs. The highest interest of democracy was to be the interest of the
people. There could be no higher interest because the people were
supreme. The people were to select the public servants; direct their
activities; determine public policy; prescribe the law; demand its
enforcement; and if need be assert their superior authority over any
part of the government, not excepting the constitution.[1]
Democracy, in politics, was based on the idea that public affairs could
best be run by the public voice. However expert may be the hand that
administers the laws, the hand and the heart that renders the final
decision in large questions must belong to the public.[2]
The people who laid the foundations for democracy in France and the
United States feared tyranny. They and their ancestors had been, for
centuries, the victims of governmental despotism. They were on their
guard constantly against governmental aggression in any form. And they,
therefore, placed the strictest limitations upon the powers that
governments should enjoy.
Special privilege government was run by a special class,--the hereditary
aristocracy--in the interest and for the profit of that class. They held
the wealth of the nation--the land--and lived comfortably upon its
produce. They never worked--no gentleman could work and remain a
gentleman. They carried on the affairs of the court--sometimes well,
sometimes badly; maintained an extravagant scale of social life; built
up a vicious system of secret international diplomacy; commanded in time
of war, and at all times; levied rents and taxes which went very largely
to increase their own comfort and better their own position in life. The
machinery of government and the profits from government remained in the
hands of this one class.
Class government from its very nature could not be other than
oppressive. "All hereditary government over a people is to them a
species of slavery and representative government is freedom." "All
hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.... To inherit a
government is to inherit the people as if they were flocks and
herds."[3]
4. _The Source of Authority_
The people were to be the source of authority in the new state. The
citizen was to have a voice because he was an adult, capable of
rendering judgment in the selection of public servants and in the
determination of public policy.
All through history there had been men into whose hands supreme power
had been committed, who had carried this authority with an astounding
degree of wisdom and integrity. For every one who had comported himself
with such wisdom in the presence of supreme authority, there were a
score, or more likely a hundred, who had used this power stupidly,
foolishly, inefficiently, brutally or viciously.
Few men are good enough or wise enough to keep their heads while they
hold in their hands unlimited authority over their fellows. The pages of
human experience were written full of the errors, failures, and abuses
of which such men so often have been guilty.
The new society, in an effort to prevent just such transgressions of
social well being, placed the final power to decide public questions in
the hands of the people. It was not contended, or even hoped that the
people would make no mistakes, but that the people would make fewer
mistakes and mistakes less destructive of public well-being than had
been made under class government. At least this much was gained, that
the one who abused power must first secure it from those whom he
proposed to abuse, and must later exercise it unrestrained to the
detriment of those from whom the power was derived and in whom it still
resided.
The citizen was to be the source of authority. His word, combined with
that of the majority of his fellows, was final. He delegated authority.
He assented to laws which were administered over all men, including
himself. He accepts the authority of which he was the source.
5. _The American Tradition_
This was the American tradition. This was the language of the new, free
world. Life, liberty and happiness; popular sovereignty; equal
opportunity. This, to the people of the old countries was the meaning of
America. This was the promise of 1776.
When President Wilson went to Europe, speaking the language of liberty
that is taught in every American schoolroom, the plain people turned to
him with supreme confidence. To them he was the embodiment of the spirit
of the West.
Native-born Americans hold the same idea. To them the Declaration of
Independence was a final break with the old order of monarchical,
imperial Europe. It was the charter of popular rights and human
liberties, establishing once for all the principles of self-government
and equal opportunity.
The Statue of Liberty, guarding the great port of entrance to America,
symbolizes the spirit in which foreigners and natives alike think of
her--as the champion of the weak and the oppressed; the guardian of
justice; the standard-bearer of freedom.
This spirit of America is treasured to-day in the hearts of millions of
her citizens. To the masses of the American people America stands to-day
as she always stood. They believe in her freedom; they boast of her
liberties; they have faith in her great destiny as the leader of an
emancipated world. They respond, as did their ancestors, to the great
truths of liberty, equality, and fraternity that inspired the eighteenth
century.
The tradition of America is a hope, a faith, a conviction, a burning
endeavor, centering in an ideal of liberty and justice for the human
race.
Patrick Henry voiced this ideal when, a passionate appeal for freedom
being interrupted by cries of "Treason, treason!" he faced the objector
with the declaration, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"
Eighteenth century Europe, struggling against religious and political
tyranny, looked to America as the land of Freedom. America to them meant
liberty. "What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude,"
wrote Tom Paine. "The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other
is becoming the admiration, the model of the present." ("The Rights of
Man," Part II, Chapter 3.) The promise of 1776 was voiced by men who
felt a consuming passion for freedom; a divine discontent with anything
less than the highest possible justice; a hatred of tyranny, oppression
and every form of special privilege and vested wrong. They yearned over
the future and hoped grandly for the human race.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "It is, Sir, the people's constitution, the people's government,
made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the
people."--Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne, 1830. "Speeches and
Orations." E. P. Whipple, Boston, Little, Brown and Co., p. 257.
[2] Tom Paine held ardently to this doctrine, "It is always the interest
of a far greater number of people in a Nation to have things right than
to let them remain wrong; and when public matters are open to debate,
and the public judgment free, it will not decide wrong unless it decides
too hastily!" "Rights of Man," Part II, Ch. 4.
[3] "Rights of Man," Thomas Paine. Part II, Chapter 3.
II. THE COURSE OF EMPIRE
1. _Promise and Fulfillment_
A vast gulf yawns between the inspiring promise that a handful of men
and women made to the world in 1776, and the fulfillment of that promise
that is embodied in twentieth century American life. The pre-war
indifference to the loss of liberty; the gradual encroachments on the
rights of free speech, and free assemblage and of free press; the
war-time suppressions, tyrannies, and denials of justice; the subsequent
activities of city, state, and national legislatures and executives in
passing and enforcing laws that provided for military training in
violation of conscience, the denial of freedom of belief, of thought, of
speech, of press and of assemblage,--activities directed specifically to
the negation of those very principles of liberty which have constituted
so intimate a part of the American tradition of freedom,--form a
contrast between the promise of 1776 and the twentieth century
fulfillment of that promise which is brutal in its terrible intensity.
Many thoughtful Americans have been baffled by this conflict between the
aims of the eighteenth century and the accomplishments of the twentieth.
The facts they admit. For explanation, either they may say, "It was the
war," implying that with the cessation of hostilities and the return to
a peace basis, the situation has undergone a radical change; or else
they blame some individual or some organization for the extinction of
American liberties.
Great consequences arise from great causes. A general break-down of
liberties cannot be attributed to individual caprice nor to a particular
legislative or judicial act.
The denial of liberty in the United States is a matter of large import.
No mayor, governor, president, legislature, court, magnate, banker,
corporation or trust, and no combination of these individuals and
organizations could arbitrarily destroy the American Republic.
Underneath personality and partisanship are working the forces which
have stripped the American people of their essential liberties as the
April sun strips the mountains of their snow.
No one can read the history of the United States since the drafting of
the Declaration of Independence without being struck by the complete
transformation in the forms of American life. The Industrial Revolution
which had gripped England for half a century, made itself felt in the
United States after 1815. 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.
These economic changes have brought political changes. The American
Republic has been thrust aside. Above its remains towers a mighty
imperial structure,--the world of business,--bulwarked by usage and
convention; safeguarded by legislation, judicial interpretation, and the
whole power of organized society. That structure is the American
Empire--as real to-day as the Roman Empire in the days of Julius Caesar;
the French Empire under the Little Corporal, or the British Empire of
the Great Commoner, William E. Gladstone.
Approved or disapproved; exalted or condemned; the fact of empire must
be evident even to the hasty observer. The student, tracing its
ramifications, realizes that the structure has been building for
generations.
2. _The Characteristics of Empire_
Many minds will refuse to accept the term "empire" as applied to a
republic. Accustomed to link "empire" with "emperor," they conceive of a
supreme hereditary ruler as an essential part of imperial life. A little
reflection will show the inadequacy of such a concept. "The British
Empire" is an official term, used by the British Government, although
Great Britain is a limited monarchy, whose king has less power than the
President of the United States. On the other hand, eastern potentates,
who exercise absolute sway over their tiny dominions do not rule
"empires."
Recent usage has given the term "empire" a very definite meaning, which
refers, not to an "emperor" but to certain relations between the parts
of a political or even of an economic organization. The earlier uses of
the word "empire" were, of course, largely political. Even in that
political sense, however, an "empire" does not necessarily imply the
domain of an "emperor."
According to the definition appearing in the "New English Dictionary"
wherever "supreme and extensive political dominion" is exercised "by a
sovereign state over its dependencies" an empire exists. The empire is
"an aggregation of subject territories ruled over by a sovereign state."
The terms of the definition are political, but it leaves the emperor
entirely out of account and makes an empire primarily a matter of
organization and not of personality.
During the last fifty years colonialism, the search for foreign markets,
and the competition for the control of "undeveloped" countries has
brought the words "empire" and "imperialism" into a new category, where
they relate, not to the ruler--be he King or Emperor--but to the
extension of commercial and economic interests. The "financial
imperialism" of F. C. Howe and the "imperialism" of J. A. Hobson are
primarily economic and only incidentally political.
"Empire" conveys the idea of widespread authority, dominion, rule,
subjugation. Formerly it referred to political power; to-day it refers
to economic power. In either case the characteristics of empire are,--
1. Conquered territory.
2. Subject peoples.
3. An imperial or ruling class.
4. The exploitation of the subject peoples and the conquered
territory for the benefit of the ruling class.
Wherever these four characteristics of imperial organization exist,
there is an empire, in all of its essential features. They are the
acid-test, by which the presence of empire may be determined.
Names count for nothing. Rome was an empire, while she still called
herself a republic. Napoleon carried on his imperial activities for
years under the authority of Republican France. The existence of an
empire depends, not upon the presence of an "emperor" but upon the
presence of those facts which constitute Empire,--conquered territory;
subject peoples; an imperial class; exploitation by and for this class.
If these facts exist in Russia, Russia is an empire; if they are found
in Germany, Germany is an empire; if they appear in the United States,
the United States is an empire none the less surely,--traditions,
aspirations and public conviction to the contrary notwithstanding.
3. _The Preservation of Empire_
The first business of an imperial class is the preservation of the
empire to which it owes its advantages and privileges. Therefore, in its
very essence, imperialism is opposed to popular government. "The
greatest good to the greatest number" is the ideal that directs the life
of a self-governing community. "The safety and happiness of the ruling
class" is the first principle of imperial organization.
Imperialism is so generally recognized and so widely accepted as a
mortal foe of popular government that the members of an imperial class,
just rising into power, are always careful to keep the masses of the
people ignorant of the true course of events. This necessity explains
the long period, in the history of many great empires, when the name and
forms of democracy were preserved, after the imperial structure had been
established on solid foundations. Slow changes, carefully directed and
well disguised, are necessary to prevent outraged peoples from rising
against an imperial order when they discover how they have been sold
into slavery. Even with all of the safeguards, under the control of the
ablest statesmen, Caesar frequently meets his Brutus.
The love of justice; the yearning for liberty; the sense of fair play;
the desire to extend opportunity, all operate powerfully upon those to
whom the principles of self-government are dearest, leading them to
sacrifice position, economic advantage, and sometimes life itself for
the sake of the principles to which they have pledged their faith.
Therein lies what is perhaps one of the most essential differences
between popular government and empire. The former rests upon certain
ideas of popular rights and liberties. The latter is a weapon of
exploitation in the hands of the ruling class. Popular government lies
in the hopes and beliefs of the people. Empire is the servant of
ambition and the shadow of greed. Popular government has been evolved by
the human race at an immense sacrifice during centuries of struggle
against the forms and ideas that underly imperialism. Since men have set
their backs on the past and turned their faces with resolute hope to the
future, empire has repelled them, while democracy has called and
beckoned.
Empires have been made possible by "bread and circuses"; by appealing to
an abnormally developed sense of patriotism; by the rule of might where
largess and cajolery have failed. Rome, Germany and Britain are
excellent examples of these three methods. In each case, millions of
citizens have had faith in the empire, believing in its promise of glory
and of victory; but on the other hand, this belief could be maintained
only by a continuous propaganda--triumphs in Rome, school-books and
"boilerplate" in Germany and England. Even then, the imperial class is
none too secure in its privileges. Always from the abysses of popular
discontent, there arises some Spartacus, some Liebknecht, some Smillie,
crying that "the future belongs to the people."
The imperial class, its privileges unceasingly threatened by the popular
love of freedom--devotes not a little attention to the problem of
"preserving law and order" by suppressing those who speak in the name of
liberty, and by carrying on a generous advertising campaign, the object
of which is to persuade the people of the advantages which they derive
from imperial rule.
During the earlier stages in the development of empire, the imperial
class is able to keep itself and its designs in the background. As time
passes, however, the power of the imperialist becomes more and more
evident, until some great crisis forces the empire builders to step out
into the open. They then appear as the frank apologists, spokesmen and
defenders of the order for which they have so faithfully labored and
from which they expect to gain so much.
Finally, the ambition of some aggressive leader among the imperialists,
or a crisis in the affairs of the empire leads to the next step--the
appointment of a "dictator," "supreme ruler" or "emperor." This is the
last act of the imperial drama. Henceforth, the imperial class divides
its attention between,--
1. The suppression of agitation and revolt among the people at
home;
2. Maintaining the imperial sway over conquered territory;
3. Extending the boundaries of the empire and
4. The unending struggle between contending factions of the ruling
class for the right to carry on the work of exploitation at home
and abroad.
4. _The Price of Empire_
Since the imperial or ruling class is willing to go to any lengths in
order to preserve the empire upon which its privileges depend, it
follows that the price of empire must be reckoned in the losses that the
masses of the people suffer while safeguarding the privileges of the
few.
As a matter of course, conquered and dependent people pay with their
liberty for their incorporation into the empire that holds dominion over
them. On any other basis, empire is unthinkable. Indeed the terms
"dependencies," "domination," and "subject" carry with them only one
possible implication--the subordination or extinction of the liberties
of the peoples in question.
The imperial class--a minority--depends for its continued supremacy upon
the ownership of some form of property, whether this property be slaves,
or land, or industrial capital. As Veblen puts it: "The emergence of the
leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership." ("Theory of
the Leisure Class," T. Veblen, New York. B. W. Huebsch, 1899, p. 22.)
Necessarily, therefore, the imperial class will sacrifice the so-called
human or personal rights of the home population to the protection of its
property rights. Indeed the property rights come to be regarded as the
essential human rights, although there is but a small minority of the
community that can boast of the possession of property.
The superiority of ruling class property rights over the personal rights
and liberties of the inhabitants in a subject territory is taken as a
matter of course. Even in the home country, where the issue is clearly
made, the imperial class will sacrifice the happiness, the health, the
longevity, and the lives of the propertyless class in the interest of
"law and order" and "the protection of property." The stories of the
Roman populace; of the French peasants under Louis XIV; of the English
factory workers (men, women and children) during the past hundred years,
and of the low skilled workers in the United States since the Civil
War, furnish ample proof of the correctness of this contention. The
life, liberty and happiness of the individual citizen is a matter of
small importance so long as the empire is saved.
A crisis in imperial affairs is always regarded, by the ruling class, as
a legitimate reason for curtailing the rights of the people. Under
ordinary circumstances, the imperial class will gain rather than lose
from the exercise of "popular liberties." Indeed, the exercise of these
liberties is of the greatest assistance in convincing the people that
they are enjoying freedom and thus keeping them satisfied with their
lot. But in a period of turmoil, with men's hearts stirred, and their
souls aflamed with conviction and idealism, there is always danger that
the people may exercise their "unalienable right" to "alter or abolish"
their form of government. Consequently, during a crisis, the imperial
class takes temporary charge of popular liberties. Every great empire
engaged in the recent war passed through such an experience. In each
country the ruling class announced that the war was a matter of life and
death. Papers were suppressed or censored; free speech was denied; men
were conscripted against will and conscience; constitutions were thrust
aside; laws "slumbered"; writers and thinkers were jailed for their
opinions; food was rationed; industries were controlled--all in the
interest of "winning the war." After the war was won, the victors
practiced an even more rigorous suppression while they were "making the
peace." Then followed months and years of protests and demands, until,
one by one, the liberties were retaken by the people or else the
war-tyranny, once firmly established, became a part of "the heritage of
empire." In such cases, where liberties were not regained, the plain
people learned to do without them.
Liberty is the price of empire. Imperialism presupposes that the people
will be willing, at any time, to surrender their "rights" at the call of
the rulers.
5. _The Universality of Empire_
Imperialism is not new, nor is it confined to one nation or to one race.
On the contrary it is as old as history and as wide as the world.
Before Rome, there was Carthage. Before Carthage, there were Greece,
Macedonia, Egypt, Assyria, China. Where history has a record, it is a
record of empire.
During modern times, international affairs have been dominated by
empires. The great war was a war between empires. During the first three
years, the two chief contestants were the British Empire on the one hand
and the German Empire on the other. Behind these leaders were the
Russian Empire, the Italian Empire, the French Empire, and the Japanese
Empire.
The Peace of Versailles was a peace between empires. Five empires
dominated the peace table--Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the
United States. The avowedly anti-imperial nations of Europe--Russia and
Hungary--were not only excluded from the deliberations of the Peace
Table, but were made the object of constant diplomatic, military and
economic aggression by the leading imperialist nations.
6. _The Evolution of Empire_
Empires do not spring, full grown, from the surroundings of some great
historic crisis. Rather they, like all other social institutions, are
the result of a long series of changes that lead by degrees from the
pre-imperial to the imperial stage. Many of the great empires of the
past two thousand years have begun as republics, or, as they are
sometimes called, "democracies," and the processes of transformation
from the republican to the imperial stage have been so gradual that the
great mass of the people were not aware that any change had occurred
until the emperor ascended the throne.
The development of empire is of necessity a slow process. There are the
dependent people to be subjected; the territory to conquered; the
imperial class to be built up. This last process takes, perhaps, more
time than either of the other two. Class consciousness is not created in
a day. It requires long experience with the exercise of imperial power
before the time has come to proclaim an emperor, and forcibly to take
possession of the machinery of public affairs.
7. _The United States and the Stages of Empire_
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; and the character of the
forces that are now shaping public policy, proclaim to all the world the
fact of empire.
The chief characteristics of empire exist in the United States. Here are
conquered territory; subject peoples; an imperial, ruling class, and the
exploitation by that class of the people at home and abroad. During
generations the processes of empire have been working, unobserved, in
the United States. Through more than two centuries the American people
have been busily laying the foundations and erecting the imperial
structure. For the most part, they have been unconscious of the work
that they were doing, as the dock laborer, is ordinarily unconscious of
his part in the mechanism of industry. Consciously or unconsciously, the
American people have reared the imperial structure, until it stands,
to-day, imposing in its grandeur, upon the spot where many of the
founders of the American government hoped to see a republic.
The entrance of the United States into the war did not greatly alter
the character of the forces at work, nor did it in any large degree
change the direction in which the country was moving. Rather, it brought
to the surface of public attention factors of American life that had
been evolving unnoticed, for generations.
The world situation created by the war compelled the American imperial
class to come out in the open and to occupy a position that, while
wholly inconsistent with the traditions of American life, is
nevertheless in keeping with the demands of imperial necessity. The
ruling class in the United States has taken a logical step and has made
a logical stand. The masters of American life have done the only thing
that they could do in the interests of the imperial forces that they
represent. They are the victims, as much as were the Kaiser and the Czar
on the one hand, and the Belgians and the Serbs on the other, of that
imperial necessity that knows no law save the preservation of its own
most sacred interests.
Certain liberal American thinkers have taken the stand that the
incidents of 1917-1918 were the result of the failure of the President,
and of certain of his advisers, to follow the theories which he had
enunciated, and to stand by the cause that he had espoused. These
critics overlook the incidental character of the war as a factor in
American domestic policy. The war never assumed anything like the
importance in the United States that it did among the European
belligerents. On the surface, it created a furore, but underneath the
big fact staring the administration in the face was the united front of
the business interests, and their organized demands for action. The
far-seeing among the business men realized that the plutocratic
structure the world over was in peril, and that the fate of the whole
imperial regime was involved in the European struggle. The Russian
Revolution of March 1917 was the last straw. From that time on the
entrance of the United States into the war became a certainty as the
only means of "saving (capitalist) civilization."
The thoughtful student of the situation in the United States is not
deceived by personalities and names. He realizes that the events of
1917-1918 have behind them generations of causes which lead logically to
just such results; that he is witnessing one phase of a great process in
the life of the American nation--a process that is old in its principles
yet ever new in its manifestations.
Traditional liberties have always given way before imperial necessity.
An examination of the situation in which the ruling class of the United
States found itself in 1917, and of the forces that were operating to
determine public policy, must convince even the enthusiast that the
occurrences of 1917 and the succeeding years were the logical outcome of
imperial necessity. To what extent that explanation will account for the
discrepancy between the promise of 1776 and the twentieth century
fulfillment of that promise must appear from a further examination of
the evidence.
III. SUBJUGATING THE INDIANS
1. _The Conquering Peoples_
The first step in the establishment of empire--the conquest of territory
and the subjugation of the conquered populations,--was taken by the
people of the United States at the time of their earliest settlements.
They took the step naturally, unaffectedly, as became the sons of their
fathers.
The Spanish, French, and English who made the first settlement in North
America were direct descendants of the tribes that have swept across
Europe and portions of Asia during the past three or four thousand
years. These tribes, grouped on the basis of similarity in language
under the general term "Aryan," hold a record of conquest that fills the
pages of written history.
Hunger; the pressure of surplus population; the inrush of new hordes of
invaders, drove them on. Ambition; the love of adventure; the lure of
new opportunities in new lands, called them further. Meliorism,--the
desire to better the conditions of life for themselves and for their
children--animated them. In later years the necessity of disposing of
surplus wealth impelled them. Driven, lured, coerced, these Aryan tribes
have inundated the earth. Passing beyond the boundaries of Europe, they
have crossed the seas into Africa, Asia, America and Australia.
Among the Aryans, after bitter strife, the Teutons have attained
supremacy. The "Teutonic Peoples" are "the English speaking inhabitants
of the British Isles, the German speaking inhabitants of Germany,
Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, the Flemish speaking inhabitants of
Belgium, the Scandinavian inhabitants of Sweden and Norway and
practically all of the inhabitants of Holland and Denmark."
("Encyclopedia Britannica.")
This Teutonic domination has been established only by the bitterest of
struggles. During the time when North America was being settled, the
English dispossessed first the Spanish and later the French. Since the
Battle of Waterloo--won by English and German troops; and the Crimean
War--won by British against Russian troops--the Teutonic power has gone
unchallenged and so it remains to-day.
The dominant power in the United States for nearly two centuries has
been the English speaking power. Thus the Americans draw their
inspiration, not only from the Aryan, but from the English speaking
Teutons--the most aggressive and dominating group among the Aryans.
Three hundred years ago the title to North America was claimed by Spain,
France and Great Britain. The land itself was almost entirely in the
hands of Indian tribes which held the possession that according to the
proverb, is "nine points of the law."
The period of American settlement has witnessed the rapid dispossession
of the original holders, until, at the present time, the Indians have
less than two per cent of the land area of the United States.[4]
The conquest, by the English speaking whites, of the three million
square miles which comprise the United States has been accomplished in a
phenomenally short space of time. Migration; military occupation;
appropriation of the lands taken from the "enemy;" settlement, and
permanent exploitation--through all these stages of conquest the country
has moved.
The "Historical Register of the United States Army" (F. B. Heitman,
Washington, Govt. Print., 1903, vol. 2, pp. 298-300) contains a list of
114 wars in which the United States has been engaged since 1775. The
publication likewise presents a list of 8600 battles and engagements
incident to these 114 wars. Two of these wars were with England, one
with Mexico and one with Spain. These, together with the Civil War and
the War with Germany, constitute the major struggles in which the United
States has been engaged. In addition to these six great wars there were
the numerous wars with the Indians, the last of which (with the
Chippewa) occurred in 1898. Some of these Indian "wars" were mere
policing expeditions. Others, like the wars with the Northwest Indians,
with the Seminoles and with the Apaches, lasted for years and involved a
considerable outlay of life and money.
When the Indian Wars were ended, and the handful of red men had been
crushed by the white millions, the American Indians, once possessors of
a hunting ground that stretched across the continent, found themselves
in reservations, under government tutelage, or else, abandoning their
own customs and habits of life, they accepted the "pale-face" standards
in preference to their own well-loved traditions.
The territory flanking the Mississippi Valley, with its coastal plains
and the deposits of mineral wealth, is one of the richest in the world.
Only two other areas, China and Russia, can compare with it in
resources.
This garden spot came into the possession of the English speaking whites
almost without a struggle. It was as if destiny had held a door tight
shut for centuries and suddenly had opened it to admit her chosen
guests.
History shows that such areas have almost always been held by one
powerful nation after another, and have been the scene of ferocious
struggles. Witness the valleys of the Euphrates, the Nile, the Danube,
the Po and the Rhine. The barrier of the Atlantic saved North America.
Had the Mississippi Valley been in Europe, Asia or Northern Africa, it
would doubtless have been blood-soaked for centuries and dominated by
highly organized nations, armed to the teeth. Lying isolated, it
presented an almost virgin opportunity to the conquering Teutons of
Western Europe.
Freed by their isolated position from the necessity of contending
against outside aggression, the inhabitants of the United States have
expended their combative energies against the weaker peoples with whom
they came into immediate contact,--
1. The Indians, from whom they took the land and wrested the right
to exploit the resources of the continent;
2. The African Negroes who were captured and brought to America to
labor as slaves;
3. The Mexicans, from whom they took additional slave territory at
a time when the institution of slavery was in grave danger, and
4. The Spanish Empire from which they took foreign investment
opportunities at a time when the business interests of the country
first felt the pressure of surplus wealth.
Each of these four groups was weak. No one of them could present even
the beginnings of an effectual resistance to the onslaught of the
conquerors. Each in turn was forced to bow the knee before overwhelming
odds.
2. _The First Obstacle to Conquest_
The first obstacle to the spread of English civilization across the
continent of North America was the American Indian. He was in possession
of the country; he had a culture of his own; he held the white man's
civilization in contempt and refused to accept it. He had but one
desire,--to be let alone.
The continent was a "wilderness" to the whites. To the Indians it was a
home. Their villages were scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
from the Gulf to Alaska; they knew well its mountains, plains and
rivers. A primitive people, supporting themselves largely by hunting,
fishing, simple agriculture and such elemental manual arts as pottery
and weaving, they found the vast stretches of North America none too
large to provide them with the means of satisfying their wants.
The ideas of the Indian differed fundamentally from those of the white
man. Holding to the Eastern conception which makes the spiritual life
paramount, he reduced his material existence to the simplest possible
terms. He had no desire for possessions, which he regarded--at the
best--as "only means to the end of his ultimate perfection."[5] To him,
the white man's desire for wealth was incomprehensible and the white
man's sedentary life was contemptible. He must be free at all times to
commune with nature in the valleys, and at sunrise and sunset to ascend
the mountain peak and salute the Great Spirit.
The individual Indian--having no desire for wealth--could not be bribed
or bought for gold as could the European. The leaders, democratically
selected, and held by the most enduring ties of loyalty to their tribal
oaths, were above the mercenary standards of European commerce and
statesmanship. Friendly, hospitable, courteous, generous, hostile,
bitter, ferocious they were--but they were not for sale.
The attitude of the Indian toward the land which the white men coveted
was typical of his whole relation with white civilization. "Land
ownership, in the sense in which we use the term, was unknown to the
Indians till the whites came among them."[6] The land devoted to
villages was tribal property; the hunting ground surrounding the village
was open to all of the members of the tribe; between the hunting grounds
of different tribes there was a neutral territory--no man's land--that
was common to both. If a family cultivated a patch of land, the
neighbors did not trespass. Among the Indians of the Southwest the
village owned the agricultural land and "periodically its governor,
elected by popular vote, would distribute or redistribute the arable
acres among his constituents who were able to care for them."[7] The
Indians believed that the land, like the sunlight, was a gift of the
Great Spirit to his children, and they were as willing to part with the
one as with the other.
They carried their communal ideas still farther. Among the Indians of
the Northwest, a man's possessions went at his death to the whole tribe
and were distributed among the tribal members. Among the Alaskan
Indians, no man, during his life, could possess more than he needed
while his neighbor lacked. Food was always regarded as common property.
"The rule being to let him who was hungry eat, wherever he found that
which would stay the cravings of his stomach."[8] The motto of the
Indian was "To each according to his need."
Such a communist attitude toward property, coupled with a belief that
the land--the gift of the Great Spirit--was a trust committed to the
tribe, proved a source of constant irritation to the white colonists who
needed additional territory. As the colonies grew, it became more and
more imperative to increase the land area open for settlement, and to
such encroachments the Indian offered a stubborn resistance.
The Indian would not--could not--part with his land, neither would he
work, as a slave or a wage-servant. Before such degradation he preferred
death. Other peoples--the negroes; the inhabitants of Mexico, Peru and
the West Indies; the Hindus and the Chinese--made slaves or servants.
The Indian for generations held out stolidly against the efforts of
missionaries, farmers and manufacturers alike to convert him into a
worker.
The Indian could not understand the ideas of "purchase," "sale" and
"cash payment" that constitute essential features of the white man's
economy. To him strength of limb, courage, endurance, sobriety and
personal dignity and reserve were infinitely superior to any of the
commercial virtues which the white men possessed.
This attitude of the Indian toward European standards of civilization;
his indifference to material possessions; his unwillingness to part with
the land; and his refusal to work, made it impossible to "assimilate"
him, as other peoples were assimilated, into colonial society. The
individual Indian would not demean himself by becoming a cog in the
white man's machine. He preferred to live and die in the open air of his
native hills and plains.
The Indian was an intense individualist--trained in a school of
experience where initiative and personal qualities were the tests of
survival. He placed the soles of his moccasined feet firmly against his
native earth, cast his eyes around him and above him and melted
harmoniously into his native landscape.
Missionaries and teachers labored in vain--once an Indian, always an
Indian. The white settlers pushed on across mountain ranges and through
valleys. Generations came and went without any marked progress in
bringing the white men and the red men together. When the Indian, in the
mission or in the government school did become "civilized," he gave over
his old life altogether and accepted the white man's codes and
standards. The two methods of life were too far apart to make
amalgamation possible.
3. _Getting the Land_
The white man must have land! Population was growing. The territory
along the frontier seemed rich and alluring.
Everywhere, the Indian was in possession, and everywhere he considered
the sale of land in the light of parting with a birth-right. He was
friendly at first, but he had no sympathy with the standards of white
civilization.
For such a situation there was only one possible solution. Under the
plea that "necessity knows no law" the white man took up the task of
eliminating the Indian, with the least friction, and in the most
effective manner possible.
There were three methods of getting the land away from the Indian--the
easiest was by means of treaties, under which certain lands lying along
the Atlantic Coast were turned over to the whites in exchange for larger
territories west of the Mississippi. The second method was by purchase.
The third was by armed conquest. All three methods were employed at some
stage in the relations between the whites and each Indian tribe.
The experience with the Cherokee Nation is typical of the relation
between the whites and the other Indian tribes. (Annual Report of the
Bureau of Ethnology. Vol. 5. "The Cherokee Nation," by Charles C.
Royce.)
The Cherokee nation before the year 1650 was established on the
Tennessee River, and exercised dominion over all the country on the east
side of the Alleghany Mountains, including the head-waters of the
Yadkin, the Catawba, the Broad, the Savannah, the Chattahoochee and the
Alabama. In 1775 there were 43 Cherokee towns covering portions of this
territory. In 1799 their towns numbered 51.
Treaty relations between the whites and the Cherokees began in 1721,
when there was a peace council, held between the representatives of 37
towns and the authorities of South Carolina. From that time, until the
treaty made with the United States government in 1866, the Cherokees
were gradually pushed back from their rich hunting grounds toward the
Mississippi valley. By the treaty of 1791, the United States solemnly
guaranteed to the Cherokees all of their land, the whites not being
permitted even to hunt on them. In 1794 and 1804 new treaties were
negotiated, involving additional cessions of land. By the treaty of
1804, a road was to be cut through the Cherokee territory, free for the
use of all United States citizens.
An agitation arose for the removal of the Cherokees to some point west
of the Mississippi River. Some of the Indians accepted the opportunity
and went to Arkansas. Others held stubbornly to their villages.
Meanwhile white hunters and settlers encroached on their land; white men
debauched their women, and white desperadoes stole their stock. By the
treaty of 1828 the United States agreed to possess the Cherokees and to
guarantee to them forever several millions of acres west of Arkansas,
and in addition a perpetual outlet west, and a "free and unmolested use
of all the country lying west of the western boundary of the above
described limits and as far west as the sovereignty of the United States
and their right of soil extend" (p. 229). The Cherokees who had settled
in Arkansas agreed to leave their lands within 14 months. By the treaty
of 1836 the Cherokees ceded to the United States all lands east of the
Mississippi. There was considerable difficulty in enforcing this
provision but by degrees most of the Indians were removed west of the
river. In 1859 and 1860 the Commissioner of Indian affairs prepared a
survey of the Cherokee domain. This was opposed by the head men of the
nation. By the Treaty of 1866 other tribes were quartered on land owned
by the Cherokees and railroads were run through their territory.
Diplomacy, money and the military forces had done their work. The first
treaty, made in 1721, found the Cherokee nation in virtual possession of
the mountainous regions of Southeastern United States. The twenty-fourth
treaty (1866) left them on a tiny reservation, two thousand miles from
their former home. Those twenty-four treaties had netted the State and
Federal governments 81,220,374 acres of land (p. 378). To-day the
Cherokee Nation has 63,211 acres.[9]
A great nation of proud, independent, liberty-loving men and women,
came into conflict with the whites of the Carolinas and Georgia; with
the state and national governments. "For two hundred years a contest
involving their very existence as a people has been maintained against
the unscrupulous rapacity of Anglo-Saxon civilization. By degrees they
were driven from their ancestral domain to an unknown and inhabitable
region" (p. 371). Now the contest is ended. The white men have the land.
The Cherokees have a little patch of territory; government support; free
schools and the right to accept the sovereignty of the nation that has
conquered them.
The theory upon which the whites proceeded in taking the Indian lands is
thus stated by Leupp,--"Originally, the Indians owned all the land;
later we needed most of it for ourselves; therefore, it is but just that
the Indians should have what is left."[10]
4. _The Triumph of the Whites_
The early white settlers had been, in almost every instance, hospitably
or even reverentially welcomed by the Indians, who regarded them as
children of the Great White Spirit. During the first bitter winters, it
was the Indians who fed the colonists from their supplies of grain;
guided them to the better lands, and shared with them their knowledge
of hunting, fishing and agriculture. The whites retaliated with that
cunning, grasping, bestial ferocity which has spread terror through the
earth during the past five centuries.
In the early years, when the whites were few and the Indians many, the
whites satisfied themselves by debauching the red men with whiskey and
bribing them with baubles and trinkets. At the same time they made
offensive and defensive alliances with them. The Spanish in the South;
the French in the North and the English between, leagued themselves with
the various tribes, supplied them with gunpowder and turned them into
mercenaries who fought for hire. Heretofore the Indian had been a free
man, fighting his wars and feuds as free men have done time out of mind.
The whites hired him as a professional soldier and by putting bounties
on scalps, plying the Indians with whiskey and inciting them by every
known device, they converted them into demons.
There is no evidence to show that up to the advent of the white men the
Indian tribes did any more fighting among themselves than the nobles of
Germany, the city states of Italy or the other inhabitants of western
Europe. Indeed there has recently been published a complete translation
of the "Constitution of the Five Nations," a league to enforce peace
which the Indians organized about the year 1390, A. D.[11] This league
which had as its object the establishment of the "Great Peace" was built
upon very much the same argument as that advanced for the League of
Nations of 1919.
When the whites first came to North America, the Indians were a
formidable foe. For years they continued to be a menace to the lonely
settler or the frontier village. But when the white settlers were once
firmly established, the days of uncertainty were over, and the Indians
were brushed aside as a man brushes aside a troublesome insect. Their
"uprisings" and "wars" counted for little or nothing. They were inferior
in numbers; they were poorly armed and equipped; they had no reserves
upon which to draw; there was no organization among the tribes in
distant portions of the country. The white millions swept onward. The
Indian bands made a stand here and there but the tide of white
civilization overwhelmed them, smothered them, destroying them and their
civilization together.
The Indians were the first obstacle to the building of the American
Empire. Three hundred years ago the whole three million square miles
that is now the United States was theirs. They were the American people.
To-day they number 328,111 in a population of 105,118,467 and the total
area of their reservations is 53,489 square miles. (Statistical Abstract
of the U. S., 1918, pp. 8 and 776.)
FOOTNOTES:
[4] The total number of square miles in Indian Reservations in 1918 was
53,490 as against 241,800 square miles in 1880. (Statistical Abstract of
the United States, 1918, p. 8.)
[5] "The Indian of To-day," C. A. Eastman. New York, Doubleday, 1915, p.
4.
[6] "The Indian and His Problem," F. E. Leupp. New York, Scribners,
1910, p. 23.
[7] Ibid., p. 24.
[8] Ibid., p. 10.
[9] "Referring to your inquiry of November 20, 1919, concerning the
Cherokee Indian Reservation, you are advised that the Cherokee Indian
country in the northeastern part of Oklahoma aggregated 4,420,068 acres.
"Of said area 4,346,223 acres have been allotted in severalty to the
enrolled members of said Cherokee Indian Nation, Oklahoma. Twenty-two
thousand eight hundred and eighty acres were disposed of as town lots,
or reserved for railway rights of way, churches, schools, cemeteries,
etc., and the remaining area has been sold, or otherwise disposed of as
provided by law.
"The Cherokee tribal land in Oklahoma with the exception of the possible
title of said Nation to certain river beds has been disposed of.
"In reference to the Eastern band of Cherokees, you are advised that
said Indians who have been incorporated hold title in fee to certain
land in North Carolina, known as the Qualla Reservation and certain
other lands, aggregating 63,211 acres."--Letter from the Office of
Indian Affairs. Dec. 9, 1919, "In re Cherokee land."
[10] "The Indian and His Problem," F. E. Leupp. New York, Scribners,
1910, p. 24.
[11] See Bulletin 184, New York State Museum, Albany, 1916, p. 61.
IV. SLAVERY FOR A RACE
1. _The Labor Shortage_
The American colonists took the land which they required for settlement
from the Indians. The labor necessary to work this land was not so
easily secured. The colonists had set themselves the task of
establishing European civilization upon a virgin continent. In order to
achieve this result, they had to cut the forests; clear the land; build
houses; cultivate the soil; construct ships; smelt iron, and carry on a
multitude of activities that were incidental to setting up an old way of
life in a new world. The one supreme and immediate need was the need for
labor power. From the earliest days of colonization there had been no
lack of harbors, fertile soil, timber, minerals and other resources.
From the earliest days the colonists experienced a labor shortage.
The labor situation was trebly difficult. First, there was no native
labor; second, passage from Europe was so long and so hazardous that
only the bold and venturesome were willing to attempt it, and third,
when these adventurers did reach the new world, they had a choice
between taking up free land and working it for themselves and taking
service with a master. Men possessing sufficient initiative to leave an
old home and make a journey across the sea were not the men to submit
themselves to unnecessary authority when they might, at will, become
masters of their own fortunes. The appeal of a new life was its own
argument, and the newcomers struck out for themselves.
Throughout the colonies, and particularly in the South where the
plantation culture of rice and tobacco, and later of cotton, called for
large numbers of unskilled workers, the labor problem was acute. The
abundance of raw materials and fertile land; the speedy growth of
industry in the North and of agriculture in the South; the generous
profits and expanding markets created a labor demand which far
outstripped the meager supply,--a demand that was met by the importation
of black slaves from Africa.
2. _The Slave Coast_
The "Slave Coast" from which most of the Negroes came was discovered by
Portuguese navigators, who were the first Europeans to venture down the
West coast of Africa, and, rounding the "lobe" of the continent, to sail
East along the "Gold Coast." The trade in gold and ivory which sprang up
as a result of these early explorations led other nations of Europe to
begin an eager competition which eventually brought French, Dutch,
German, Danish and English commercial interests into sharp conflict with
the Portuguese.
Ships sailing from the Gold Coast for home ports made a practice of
picking up such slaves as they could easily secure. By 1450 the number
reaching Portugal each year was placed at 600 or 700.[12] From this
small and quite incidental beginning there developed a trade which
eventually supplied Europe, the West Indies, North America and South
America with black slaves.
Along the "Slave Coast," which extended from Cape Verde on the North to
Cape St. Martha on the South, and in the hinterland there lived Negroes
of varying temperaments and of varying standards of culture. Some of
them were fierce and warlike. Others were docile and amenable to
discipline. The former made indifferent slaves; the latter were eagerly
sought after. "The Wyndahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were
generally the most highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and
industrious, cheerful and submissive."[13]
The natives of the Slave Coast had made some notable cultural advances.
They smelted metals; made pottery; wove; manufactured swords and spears
of merit; built houses of stone and of mud, and made ornaments of some
artistic value. They had developed trade with the interior, taking salt
from the coast and bartering it for gold, ivory and other commodities at
regular "market places."
The native civilization along the West coast of Africa was far from
ideal, but it was a civilization which had established itself and which
had made progress during historic times. It was a civilization that had
evolved language; arts and crafts; tribal unity; village life, and
communal organization. This native African civilization, in the
seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was confronted by
an insatiable demand for black slaves. The conflicts that resulted from
the efforts to supply that demand revolutionized and virtually destroyed
all that was worthy of preservation in the native culture.
When the whites first went to the Slave Coast there was comparatively
little slavery among the natives. Some captives, taken in war; some
debtors, unable to meet their obligations, and some violators of
religious rites, were held by the chief or the headman of the tribe. On
occasion he would sell these slaves, but the slave trade was never
established as a business until the white man organized it.
The whites came, and with guile and by force they persuaded and
compelled the natives to permit the erection of forts and of trading
posts. From the time of the first Portuguese settlement, in 1482, the
whites began their work with rum and finished it with gun-powder. Rum
destroyed the stamina of the native; gun-powder rendered his intertribal
wars more destructive. These two agencies of European civilization
combined, the one to degenerate, the other to destroy the native tribal
life.
The traders, adventurers, buccaneers and pirates that gathered along the
Slave Coast were not able to teach the natives anything in the way of
cruelty, but they could and did give them lessons in cunning, trickery
and double dealing. Early in the history of the Gold Coast the whites
began using the natives to make war on commercial rivals. In one famous
instance, "the Dutch had instigated the King of Fetu to refuse the
Assins permission to pass through his territory. These people used to
bring a great deal of gold to Cape Coast Castle (English), and the Dutch
hoped in this way to divert the trade to their own settlements. The King
having complied and plundered some of the traders on the way down, the
Assins declared war against him and were assisted by the English with
arms and ammunition. The King of Sabol was also paid to help them, and
the allied army (20,000 strong) inflicted a crushing defeat on the
Fetus."[14]
On another occasion, the Dutch were worsted in a war with some of the
native tribes. Realizing that if they were to maintain themselves on the
Coast they must raise an army as quickly as possible, they approached
the Fetus and bargained with them to take the field and fight the
Komendas until they had utterly exterminated them, on payment of $4,500.
But no sooner had this arrangement been made than the English paid the
Fetus an additional $4,500 to remain neutral![15]
Before 1750, when the competition for the slaves was less keen, and the
supply came nearer to meeting the demand, the slavers were probably as
honest in this as they were in any other trade with the natives. The
whites encouraged and incited the native tribes to make war upon one
another for the benefit of the whites. The whites fostered kidnaping,
slavery and the slave trade. The natives were urged to betray one
another, and the whites took advantage of their treachery. During the
four hundred years that the African slave trade was continued, it was
the whites who encouraged it; fostered it; and backed it financially.
The slave trade was a white man's trade, carried on under conditions as
far removed from the conditions of ordinary African life as the
manufacturing and trading of Europe were removed from the manufacturing
and trading of the Africans.
3. _The Slave Trade_
With the pressing demand from the Americas for a generous supply of
black slaves, the business of securing them became one of the chief
commercial activities of the time. "The trade bulked so large in the
world's commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that every
important maritime community on the Atlantic sought a share, generally
with the sanction and often with the active assistance of its respective
sovereign."[16]
The catching, holding and shipping of Negroes on the African coast was
the means by which the demand for slaves was met. With a few minor
exceptions, the whites did not engage directly in slave catching. In
most instances they bought their slaves from native brokers who lived in
the coast towns. The brokers, in turn, received their slaves from the
interior, where they were captured during wars, by professional raiding
parties, well supplied with arms and ammunition. Slave-catching, begun
as a kidnaping of individuals, developed into a large-scale traffic that
provided the revenue of the more war-like natives. Villages were
attacked and burned, and whole tribes were destroyed or driven off to
the slave-pens on the coast. After 1750, for nearly a hundred years, the
demand for slaves was so great and the profits were so large that no
pains were spared to secure them.
The Slave Coast native was compelled to choose between being a
slave-catcher or a slave. As a slave-catcher he spread terror and
destruction among his fellows, seized them and sold them to white men.
As a slave he made the long journey across the Atlantic.
The number of slaves carried away from Africa is variously estimated.
Claridge states that "the Guinea Coast as a whole supplied as many as
from 70,000 to 100,000 yearly" in 1700.[17] Bogart estimates the number
of slaves secured as 2,500 per year in 1700; 15,000 to 20,000 per year
from 1713 to 1753; in 1771, 47,000 carried by British ships alone; and
in 1768 the slaves shipped from the African coast numbered 97,000.[18]
Add to these numbers those who were killed in the raids; those who died
in the camps, where the mortality was very high, and those who committed
suicide. The total represents the disturbing influence that the slave
trade introduced into the native African civilization.
In the early years of the trade the ships were small and carried only a
few hundred Negroes at most. As the trade grew, larger and faster ships
were built with galleries between the decks. On these galleries the
blacks were forced to lie with their feet outboard--ironed together, two
and two, with the chains fastened to staples in the deck. "They were
squeezed so tightly together that the average space allowed to each one
was but 16 inches by five and a half feet."[19] The galleries were
frequently made of rough lumber, not tightly joined. Later, when the
trade was outlawed, the slaves were stowed away out of sight on loose
shelves over the cargo. "Where the 'tween decks space was two feet high
or more, the slaves were stowed sitting up in rows, one crowded into the
lap of another, and with legs on legs, like rider on a crowded
toboggan." (Spears, p. 71.) There they stayed for the weeks or the
months of the voyage. "In storms the sailors had to put on the hatches
and seal tight the openings into the infernal cesspool." (Spears, p.
71.) The odor of a slaver was often unmistakable at a distance of five
miles down wind.
The terrible revolt of the slaves in the West Indies, beginning in
1781, gave the growing anti-slavery sentiment an immense impetus. It
also gave the slave owners pause. The cotton-gin had not yet been
invented. Slavery was on a shifty economic basis in the South. Great
Britain passed the first law to limit the slave trade in 1788; the
United States outlawed the trade in 1794. In 1824 Great Britain declared
the slave trade piracy. During these years, and during the years that
followed, until the last slaver left New York Harbor in 1863, the trade
continued under the American flag, in swift, specially constructed
American-built ships.
As the restrictions upon the trade became more severe in the face of an
increasing demand for slaves, "the fitting out of slavers developed into
a flourishing business in the United States, and centered in New York
City." _The New York Journal of Commerce_ notes in 1857 that "down-town
merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged in buying
and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively little
interruption for an indefinite number of years." A writer in the
_Continental Monthly_ for January, 1862, says:--"The city of New York
has been until of late the principal port of the world for this infamous
commerce; although the cities of Boston and Portland, are only second to
her in distinction." During the years 1859-1860 eighty-five slavers are
reported to have fitted out in New York Harbor and these ships alone had
a capacity to transport from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves a year.[20]
The merchants of the North pursued the slave trade so relentlessly
because it paid such enormous profits on the capital outlay. Some of the
voyages went wrong, but the trade, on the whole, netted immense returns.
At the end of the eighteenth century a good ship, fitted to carry from
300 to 400 slaves, could be built for about $35,000. Such a ship would
make a clear profit of from $30,000 to $100,000 in a single voyage. Some
of them made as many as five voyages before they became so foul that
they had to be abandoned.[21] While some voyages were less profitable
than others, there was no avenue of international trade that offered
more alluring possibilities.
Sanctioned by potentates, blessed by the church, and surrounded with the
garments of respectability, the slave trade grew, until, in the words of
Samuel Hopkins (1787), "The trade in human species has been the first
wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business
has depended.... By it the inhabitants have gotten most of their wealth
and riches." (Spears, p. 20.) After the vigorous measures taken by the
British Government for its suppression, the slave trade was carried on
chiefly in American-built ships; officered by American citizens; backed
by American capital, and under the American flag.
The slave trade was the business of the North as slavery was the
business of the South. Both flourished until the Proclamation of
Emancipation in 1863.
4. _Slavery in the United States_
Slavery and the slave trade date from the earliest colonial times. The
first slaves in the English colonies were brought to Jamestown in 1619
by a Dutch ship. The first American-built slave ship was the _Desire_,
launched at Marblehead in 1636. There were Negro slaves in New York as
early as 1626, although there were only a few hundred slaves in the
colonies prior to 1650.
Since slave labor is economical only where the slaves can be worked
together in gangs, there was never much slavery among the farmers and
small business men of the North. On the other hand, in the South, the
developing plantation system made it possible for the owner to use large
gangs of slaves in the clearing of new land; in the raising of tobacco,
and in caring for rice and cotton. The plantation system of agriculture
and the cotton gin made slavery the success that it was in the United
States. "The characteristic American slave, indeed, was not only a
Negro, but a plantation workman."[22]
The opening years of the nineteenth century found slavery intrenched
over the whole territory of the United States that lay South of the
Mason and Dixon line. In that territory slave trading and slave owning
were just as much a matter of course as horse trading and horse owning
were a matter of course in the North. "Every public auctioneer handled
slaves along with other property, and in each city there were brokers,
buying them to sell again, and handling them on commission."[23]
The position of the broker is indicated in the following typical bill of
sale which was published in Charleston, S. C., in 1795. "Gold Coast
Negroes. On Thursday, the 17th of March instant, will be exposed to
public sale near the exchange ... the remainder of the cargo of negroes
imported in the ship _Success_, Captain John Conner, consisting chiefly
of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having been here
through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to the
climate."[24]
Such a bill of sale attracted no more attention at that time than a
similar bill advertising cattle attracts to-day.
During the early colonial days, the slaves were better fed and provided
for than were the indentured servants. They were of greater money value
and, particularly in the later years when slavery became the mainstay of
Southern agriculture, a first class Negro, acclimated, healthy, willing
and trustworthy, was no mean asset.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century slavery began to show itself
unprofitable in the South. The best and most accessible land was
exhausted. Except for the rice plantations of South Carolina and
Georgia, slavery was not paying. The Southern delegates to the
Constitutional Convention, with the exception of the delegates from
these states, were prepared to abolish the slave trade. Some of them
were ready to free their own slaves. Then came the invention of the
cotton gin and the rise of the cotton kingdom. The amount of raw cotton
consumed by England was 13,000 bales in 1781; 572,000 bales in 1820; and
3,366,000 bales in 1860. During that period, the South was almost the
sole source of supply.
The attitude of the South, confronted by this wave of slave prosperity,
underwent a complete change. Her statesmen had consented, between 1808
and 1820, to severe restrictive laws directed towards the slave trade.
After cotton became king, slaves rose rapidly in price; land, once used
and discarded, was again brought under cultivation; cotton-planting
spread rapidly into the South and Southwest; Texas was annexed; the
Mexican War was fought; an agitation was begun for the annexation of
Cuba, and Calhoun (1836) declared that he "ever should regret that this
term (piracy) had been applied" to the slave trade in our laws.[25]
The change of sentiment corresponded with the changing value of the
slaves. Phillips publishes a detailed table of slave values in which he
estimates that an unskilled, able-bodied young slave man was worth $300
in 1795; $500 to $700 in 1810; $700 to $1200 to in 1840; and $1100 to
$1800 in 1860.[26] The factors which resulted in the increased slave
prices were the increased demand for cotton, the increased demand for
slaves, and the decrease in the importation of negroes due to the
greater severity of the prohibitions on the slave trade.
5. _Slavery for a Race_
The American colonists needed labor to develop the wilderness. White
labor was scarce and high, so the colonists turned to slave labor
performed by imported blacks. The merchants of the North built the ships
and carried on the slave trade at an immense profit. The plantation
owners of the South exploited the Negroes after they reached the states.
The continuance of the slave trade and the provision of a satisfactory
supply of slaves for the Southern market depended upon slave-catching in
Africa, which, in turn, involved the destruction of an entire
civilization. This work of destruction was carried forward by the
leading commercial nations of the world. During nearly 250 years the
English speaking inhabitants of America took an active part in the
business of enslaving, transporting and selling black men. These
Americans--citizens of the United States--bought stolen Negroes on the
African coast; carried them against their will across the ocean; sold
them into slavery, and then, on the plantations, made use of their
enforced labor.
Both slavery and the slave trade were based on a purely economic
motive--the desire for profit. In order to satisfy that desire, the
American people helped to depopulate villages,--to devastate, burn,
murder and enslave; to wipe out a civilization, and to bring the
unwilling objects of their gain-lust thousands of miles across an
impassable barrier to alien shores.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] "History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915,
vol. I, p. 39.
[13] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1908,
p. 43.
[14] "A History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray,
1915, vol. I, p. 144.
[15] Ibid., p. 150.
[16] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918,
p. 20.
[17] "History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915,
vol. I, p. 172.
[18] "Economic History of the U. S.," E. L. Bogart. New York, Longmans,
1910 ed., p. 84-5.
[19] "The American Slave Trade," J. R. Spears. New York, Scribners,
1901, p. 69.
[20] "The Suppression of the American Slave Trade," W. E. B. DuBois. New
York, Longmans, 1896, p. 178-9.
[21] "The American Slave Trade," J. R. Spears. New York, Scribners,
1901, p. 84-5.
[22] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918,
p. VII.
[23] Ibid., p. 190.
[24] Ibid., p. 40.
[25] Benton, "Abridgment of Debates." XII, p. 718.
[26] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918,
p. 370.
V. THE WINNING OF THE WEST
1. _Westward, Ho!_
The English colonists in America occupied only the narrow strip of
country between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic Ocean. The interior was
inhabited by the Indians, and claimed by the French, the Spanish and the
British, but neither possession nor legal title carried weight with the
stream of pioneers that was making a path into the "wilderness," crying
its slogan,--"Westward, Ho!" as it moved toward the setting sun. The
first objective of the pioneers was the Ohio Valley; the second was the
valley of the Mississippi; the third was the Great Plains; the fourth
was the Pacific slope, with its golden sands. Each one of these
objectives developed itself out of the previous conquest.
The settlers who made their way across the mountains into the valley of
the Ohio, found themselves in a land of plenty. The game was abundant;
the soil was excellent, and soon they were in a position to offer their
surplus products for sale. These products could not be successfully
transported across the mountains, but they could be floated down the
Ohio and the Mississippi--a natural roadway to the sea. But beside the
Indians, who claimed all of the land for their own, there were the
Spaniards at New Orleans, doing everything in their power to prevent the
American Colonists from building up a successful river commerce.
The frontiersmen were able to push back the Indians. The Spanish
garrisons presented a more serious obstacle. New Orleans was a well
fortified post that could be provisioned from the sea. Behind it,
therefore, lay the whole power of the Spanish fleet. The right of
navigation was finally obtained in the Treaty of 1795. Still friction
continued with the Spanish authorities and serious trouble was averted
only by the transfer of Louisiana, first to the French (1800) and then
by them to the United States (1803). Napoleon had agreed, when he
secured this territory from the Spaniards, not to turn it over to the
United States. A pressing need of funds, however, led him to strike an
easy bargain with the American government which was negotiating for the
control of the mouth of the Mississippi. Napoleon insisted that the
United States take, not only the mouth of the river, but also the
territory to the West which he saw would be useless without this outlet.
After some hesitation, Jefferson and his advisers accepted the offer and
the Louisiana Purchase was consummated.
The Louisiana Purchase gave the young American nation what it needed--a
place in the sun. The colonists had taken land for their early
requirements from the Indians who inhabited the coastal plain. They had
enslaved the Negroes and thus had secured an ample supply of cheap
labor. Now, the pressure of population, and the restless, pioneer spirit
of those early days, led out into the West.
Until 1830 immigration was not a large factor in the increase of the
colonial population, but the birth-rate was prodigious. In the closing
years of the eighteenth century, Franklin estimated that the average
family had eight children. There were sections of the country where the
population doubled, by natural increase, once in 23 years. Indeed, the
entire population of the United States was increasing at a phenomenal
rate. The census of 1800 showed 5,308,483 persons in the country. Twenty
years later the population was 9,638,453--an increase of 81 per cent. By
1840 the population was reported as 17,069,453--an increase of 77 per
cent over 1820, and of 221 per cent over 1800.
The small farmers and tradesmen of the North were settling up the
Northwest Territory. The plantation owners of the South, operating on a
large scale, and with the wasteful methods that inevitably accompany
slavery, were clamoring for new land to replace the tracts that had
been exhausted by constant recropping with no attempt at fertilization.
Cotton had been enthroned in the South since the invention of the cotton
gin in 1792. With the resumption of European trade relations in 1815 the
demand for cotton and for cotton lands increased enormously. There was
one, and only one logical way to meet this demand--through the
possession of the Southwest.
2. _The Southwest_
The pioneers had already broken into the Southwest in large numbers.
While Spain still held the Mississippi, there were eager groups of
settlers pressing against the frontier which the Spanish guarded so
jealously against all comers. The Louisiana Purchase met the momentary
demand, but beyond the Louisiana Purchase, and between the settlers and
the rich lands of Texas lay the Mexican boundary. The tide of migration
into this new field hurled itself against the Mexican border in the same
way that an earlier generation had rolled against the frontier of
Louisiana.
The attitude of these early settlers is described with sympathetic
accuracy by Theodore Roosevelt. "Louisiana was added to the United
States because the hardy backwoods settlers had swarmed into the valleys
of the Tennessee, the Cumberland and the Ohio by hundreds of
thousands.... Restless, adventurous, hardy, they looked eagerly across
the Mississippi to the fertile solitudes where the Spaniard was the
nominal, and the Indian the real master; and with a more immediate
longing they fiercely coveted the Creole provinces at the mouth of the
river."[27] This fierce coveting could have only one possible
outcome--the colonists got what they wanted.
The speed with which the Southwest rushed into prominence as a factor
in national affairs is indicated by its contribution to the cotton-crop.
In 1811 the states and territories from Alabama and Tennessee westward
produced one-sixteenth of the cotton grown in the United States. In 1820
they produced a third; in 1830, a half; and by 1860, three-quarters of
the cotton raised. At the same time, the population of the
Alabama-Mississippi territory was:--
200,000 in 1810.
445,000 in 1820.
965,000 in 1830.
1,377,000 in 1840.
Thus thirty years saw an increase of nearly seven-fold in the population
of this region.[28]
Meanwhile, slavery had become the issue of the day. The slave power was
in control of the Federal Government, and in order to maintain its
authority, it needed new slave states to offset the free states that
were being carved out of the Northwest.
Here were three forces--first the desire of the frontiersmen for "elbow
room"; second the demand of King Cotton for unused land from which the
extravagant plantation system might draw virgin fertility and third, the
necessity that was pressing the South to add territory in order to hold
its power. All three forces impelled towards the Southwest, and it was
thither that population pressed in the years following 1820.
3. _Texas_
Mexico lay to the Southwest, and therefore Mexico became the object of
American territorial ambitions. The district now known as Texas had
constituted a part of the Louisiana Purchase (1803); had been ceded to
Spain (1819); had been made the object of negotiations looking towards
its purchase in 1826; had revolted against Mexico and been recognized
as an independent state in 1835.
Texas had been settled by Americans who had secured the permission of
the Mexican Government to colonize. These settlers made no effort to
conceal their opposition to the Mexican Government, with which they were
entirely out of sympathy. Many of them were seeking territory in which
slavery might be perpetuated, and they introduced slaves into Texas in
direct violation of the Mexican Constitution. The Americans did not go
to Texas with any idea of becoming Mexican subjects; on the contrary, as
soon as they felt themselves strong enough, they declared their
independence of Mexico, and began negotiations for the annexation of
Texas to the United States.
The Texan struggle for independence from Mexico was cordially welcomed
in all parts of the United States, but particularly in the South.
Despite the protests of Mexico, public meetings were held; funds were
raised; volunteers were enlisted and equipped, and supplies and
munitions were sent for the assistance of the Texans in ships openly
fitted out in New Orleans.
No sooner had the Texans established a government than the campaign for
annexation was begun. The advocates of annexation--principally
Southerners--argued in favor of adding so rich and so logical a prize to
the territory of the United States, citing the purchase of Louisiana and
of Florida as precedents. Their opponents, first on constitutional
grounds and then on grounds of public policy, argued against annexation.
Opinion in the South was greatly aroused. Despite the fact that many of
her foremost statesmen were against annexation, some of the Southern
newspapers even went so far as to threaten the dissolution of the Union
if the treaty of ratification failed to pass the Senate.
The campaign of 1844 was fought on the issue of annexation and the
election of James K. Polk was a pledge that Texas should be annexed to
the United States. During the campaign, the line of division on
annexation had been a party line--Democrats favoring; Whigs opposing.
Between the election and the passage of the joint resolution by which
annexation was consummated, it became a sectional issue,--Southern Whigs
favoring annexation and Northern Democrats opposing it.
So strong was the protest against annexation, that the treaty could not
command the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate. The matter was
disposed of by the passage of a joint resolution (March 1, 1845) which
required only a majority vote in both houses of Congress. President Polk
therefore took office with the mandate of the country and the decision
of both houses of the retiring Congress, in favor of annexation.
Mexico, in the meantime, had offered to recognize the independence of
Texas and to make peace with her if the Texas Congress would reject the
joint resolution, and refuse the proffered annexation. This the Texas
Congress refused, and with the passage, by that body, of an act
providing for annexation, the Mexican minister was withdrawn from
Washington, and Mexico began her preparations for war.
President Polk had taken office with the avowed intention of buying
California from Mexico. The rupture threatened to prevent him from
carrying this plan into effect. He therefore sent an unofficial
representative to Mexico in an effort to restore friendly relations.
Failing in that, he and his advisers determined upon war as the only
feasible method of obtaining California and of settling the diplomatic
tangle involved in the annexation of Texas.
4. _The Conquest of Mexico_
The Polk Administration made the Mexican War as a part of its
expansionist policy.
"Although that unfortunate country (Mexico) had officially notified the
United States that the annexation of Texas would be treated as a cause
of war, so constant were the internal quarrels in Mexico that open
hostilities would have been avoided had the conduct of the
Administration been more honorable. That was the opinion of Webster,
Clay, Calhoun, Benton, and Tyler.... Mexico was actually goaded on to
war. The principle of the manifest destiny of this country was invoked
as a reason for the attempt to add to our territory at the expense of
Mexico."[29]
After the annexation of Texas it became the duty of the United States to
defend that state against the threatened Mexican invasion.
Mexican troops had occupied the southern bank of the Rio Grande. General
Zachary Taylor with a small force, moved to a position on the Nueces
River. Between the two rivers lay a strip of territory the possession of
which was one of the sources of dispute between Mexico and Texas. What
followed may be stated in the words of one of the officers who
participated in the expedition: "The presence of the United States
troops on the edge of the territory farthest from the Mexican
settlements was not sufficient to provoke hostilities. We were sent to
provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico begin it" (p. 41).
"Mexico showing no willingness to come to the Nueces to drive the
invaders from her soil, it became necessary for the 'invaders' to
approach to within a convenient distance to be struck. Accordingly,
preparations were begun for moving the army to the Rio Grande, to a
point near Matamoras. It was desirable to occupy a position near the
largest center of population possible to reach without actually invading
territory to which we set up no claim whatever" (p. 45).[30]
The occupation, by the United States troops, of the disputed territory
soon led to a clash in which several United States soldiers were killed.
The incident was taken by the President as a sufficient cause for the
declaration of a state of war. The House complied readily with his
wishes, passing the necessary resolution. Several members of the Senate
begged for a delay during which the actual state of affairs might be
ascertained. The President insisted, however, and the war was declared
(May 13, 1846).
The declaration of war was welcomed with wild enthusiasm in the South.
Meetings were called; funds were raised; volunteers were enlisted,
equipped and despatched in all haste to the scene of the conflict.
The North was less eager. There were protests, petitions,
demonstrations. Many of the leaders of northern opinion took a public
stand against the war. But the news of the first victories sent the
country mad with an enthusiasm in which the North joined the South.
The United States troops, during the Mexican War, won brilliant--almost
unbelievable successes--against superior forces and in the face of
immense natural obstacles. Had the war been less of a military triumph
there must have been a far more widely-heard protest from Polk's enemies
in the North. Successful beyond the wildest dreams of its promoters, the
victorious war carried its own answer to those who questioned the
worthiness of the cause. Within two years, the whole of Mexico was under
the military control of the United States, and that country was in a
position to dictate its own terms.
The demands of the United States were mild to the extent of generosity.
Under the treaty the annexation of Texas was validated; New Mexico and
Upper California were ceded to the United States; the lower Rio Grande
was fixed as the southern boundary of Texas, and in considerations of
these additions to its territory, the United States agreed to pay Mexico
fifteen millions of dollars.
Under this plan, Mexico was paid for territory that she did not need and
could not use, while the United States gave a money consideration for
the title to land that was already hers by right of conquest, and of
which she was in actual possession.
The details of the treaty are relatively unimportant. The outstanding
fact is that Mexico was in possession of certain territory that the
ruling power in the United States wanted, and that ruling power took
what it wanted by force of arms. "The war was one of conquest in the
interest of an institution." It was "one of the most unjust ever waged
by a stronger against a weaker nation."[31]
Congressman A. P. Gardner of Massachusetts summarized the matter very
pithily in his debate with Morris Hillquit (New York, April 2, 1915),
"We assisted Texas to get away from Mexico and then we proceeded to
annex Texas. Plainly and bluntly stated, our purpose was to get some
territory for American development." (Stenographic report in the _New
York Call_, April 11, 1915.)
5. _Conquering the Conquered_
The work of conquering the Southwest was not completed by the
termination of the war. Mexico ceded the territory--in the neighborhood
of a million square miles--but she was giving away something that she
had never possessed. Mexico claimed title to land that was occupied by
the Indians. She had never conquered it; never settled it; never
developed it. Her sovereignty was of the same shadowy sort that Spain
had exercised over the country before the Mexican revolution.
The new owners of the Southwest had a very different purpose in mind. No
empty title would satisfy them. They intended to use the land. The
Indians--already in possession--resented the encroachments of the
invaders, but they fared no better than the Mexicans, or than their
red-skinned brothers who had contended for the right to fish and hunt
along their home streams in the Appalachians. The Indians of the
Southwest fought stubbornly, but the wars that meant life and death to
them were the merest pastime for an army that had just completed the
humiliation of a nation of the size and strength of Mexico. The Indians
were swept aside, and the country was opened to the trapper, the
prospector, the trader and the settler.
The Mexican War was a slight affair, involving a relatively small outlay
in men and money. The total number of American soldiers killed in the
war was 1,721; the wounded were 4,102; the deaths from accident and
disease were 11,516, making total casualties of 5,823 and total losses
of 15,618.[32]
The money cost of the Mexican War--the army and navy appropriations for
the years 1846 to 1849 inclusive--was $119,624,000. Obviously the net
cost of the war was less than this gross total,--how much less it is
impossible to say.
No satisfactory figures are available to show the cost in men and money
of the Indian Wars in the Southwest. "From 1849 to 1865, the government
expended $30,000,000 in the subjugation of the Indians in the
territories of New Mexico and Arizona."[33] Their character may be
gauged by noting from the "Historical Register" (Vol. 2, p. 281-2) the
losses sustained in the four Indian Wars of which a record is preserved.
In the Northwest Indian Wars (1790 to 1795) 896 persons were killed and
436 were wounded; in the Seminole War (1817 to 1818) 46 were killed and
36 were wounded; in the Black Hawk War (1831-2) the killed were 26 and
the wounded 39; in the Seminole War (1835-1842) 383 were killed and 557
wounded. These were among the most serious of the Indian Wars and in all
of them the cost in life and limb was small. Judged on this standard,
the losses in the Southwest, during the Indian Wars, were, at most,
trifling. The total outlay that was involved in the conquest of the vast
domain would not have covered one first class battle of the Great War,
and yet this outlay added to the territory of the United States
something like a million square miles containing some of the richest and
most productive portions of the earth's surface.
This domain was won by a process of military conquest; it was taken from
the Mexicans and the Indians by force of arms. In order to acquire it,
it was necessary to drive whole tribes from their villages; to burn; to
maim; to kill. "St. Louis, New Orleans, St. Augustine, San Antonio,
Santa Fe and San Francisco are cities that were built by Frenchmen and
Spaniards; we did not found them but we conquered them." "The Southwest
was conquered only after years of hard fighting with the original
owners" (p. 26). "The winning of the West and the Southwest is a stage
in the conquest of a continent" (p. 27). "This great westward movement
of armed settlers was essentially one of conquest, no less than of
colonization" (p. 370).[34] None of the possessors of this territory
were properly armed or equipped for effective warfare. All of them fell
an easy prey to the organized might of the Government of the United
States.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] "The Winning of the West," Theodore Roosevelt. New York, Putnam's,
1896, vol. 4, p. 262.
[28] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918,
pp. 171-2.
[29] "History of the United States," James F. Rhoades. New York,
Macmillan, 1906, vol. I, p. 87.
[30] "Personal Memoirs," U. S. Grant. New York, Century, 1895, vol. I.
[31] "Personal Memoirs," U. S. Grant. New York, Century, 1895, vol. I,
pp. 115 and 32.
[32] "Historical Register of the United States Army," F. B. Heitman.
Washington, Govt. Print., vol. 2, p. 282.
[33] "The Story of New Mexico," Horatio O. Ladd. Boston, D. Lothrop Co.,
1891, p. 333.
[34] "The Winning of the West," Theodore Roosevelt. Vol. I, p. 26, 27,
and Vol. II, p. 370.
VI. THE BEGINNINGS OF WORLD DOMINION
1. _The Shifting of Control_
During the half century that intervened between the War of 1812 and the
Civil War of 1861 the policy of the United States government was decided
largely by men who came from south of the Mason and Dixon line. The
Southern whites,--class-conscious rulers with an institution (slavery)
to defend,--acted like any other ruling class under similar
circumstances. They favored Southward expansion which meant more
territory in which slavery might be established.