"Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers"

Come from the wells where he did lie.

"An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

"He dried his wings: like gauze they grew:
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew."

To others, older perhaps, but at any rate more deeply impressed with the difference apt to develop between dreams and actualities, the situation calls to mind a comparison, more historical it is true, but less inspiriting so far as a commitment to the new policy is concerned. At the risk, possibly, of offending some of those present, I will venture to institute it. In the fourth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, I find this incident recorded: "The devil taketh him [the Saviour] up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him." Now, historically speaking, and as a matter of scriptural exegesis, that this passage should be accepted literally is not supposable. Satan, on the occasion referred to, must not be taken to have presented himself to the Saviour in propriâ personâ with his attributes of horns, tail, and cloven hoof, and made an outright proposition of extra-territorial sovereignty. It was a parable. He who had assumed a lofty moral attitude was tempted by worldly inducements to adopt a lower attitude,—that, in a word, common among men. It was a whispering to Christ of what among nations, is known as "Manifest Destiny;" in that case, however, as possibly in others, it so chanced that the whispering was not from the Almighty, but from Satan. Now if, instead of recognizing the source whence the temptation came, and sternly saying, "Get thee hence, Satan," Christ had seen the proposition as a new Mission,—thought, in fact, that he heard a distinct call to Duty,—and so, accepting a Responsibility thrust upon him, had hurried down from the "exceeding high mountain," and proceeded at once to lay in a supply of weapons and to don defensive armor, renouncing his peaceful mission, he would have done exactly—what Mohammed did six centuries later!

I do not for a moment mean to suggest that, as respects the voice of "Manifest Destiny," there is any similarity between the case of the Saviour and that which we, as a people, are now considering. I am not a prophet, nor do I claim prophetic insight. We are merely historical investigators, and, as such, not admitted into the councils of the Almighty. Others doubtless are, or certainly claim to be. They know every time, and at once, whether it is the inspiration of God or the devil; and forthwith proclaim it from the house-tops. We must admit—at any rate no evidence in our possession enables us to deny—the confidential relations such claim to have with either or both of the agencies in question,—the Divine or the Infernal. All I now have in mind is to call attention to the obvious similarity of the positions. As compared with the ideals and tenets then in vogue,—principles of manhood, equality before the law, freedom, peace on earth, and good-will to men,—the United States, heretofore and seen in a large way, has, among nations, assumed a peculiar, and, from the moral point of view, unquestionably a lofty attitude. Speaking historically it might, and with no charge of levity, be compared with a similar moral attitude assumed among men eighteen centuries before by the Saviour. It discountenanced armaments and warfare; it advocated arbitrations, and bowed to their awards; spreading its arms and protection over the New World, it refused to embroil itself in the complications of the Old; above all, it set a not unprofitable example to the nations of benefits incident to minding one's own business, and did not arrogate to itself the character of a favorite and inspired instrument in the hands of God. It even went so far as to assume that, in working out the inscrutable ways of Providence, character, self-restraint, and moral grandeur were in the long run as potent in effecting results as iron-clads and gatling-guns.

Those who now advocate a continuance of this policy are, as neatly as wittily, referred to in discussion, "for want of a better name," as "Little Americans," just as in history the believers in the long-run efficacy of the doctrines of Christ might be termed "Little Gospellers," to distinguish them from the admirers of the later, but more brilliant and imperial, dispensation of Mohammed. That the earlier, and less immediately ambitious, doctrine was, in the case of the United States, only temporary, and is now outgrown, and must, therefore, be abandoned in favor of Old World methods, especially those pursued with such striking success by Great Britain, is possible. As historical investigators we have long since learned that it is the unexpected which in the development of human affairs is most apt to occur. Who, for instance, in our own recent history could ever have foreseen that, in the inscrutable ways of the Almighty, the great triumph of Slavery in the annexation of Texas, and the spoliation of that inferior race which inhabited Mexico, was, within fifteen years only, to result in what Lincoln called that "terrible war" in which every drop of blood ever drawn by the lash was paid by another drawn by the sword? Again, in May, 1856, a Representative of South Carolina struck down a Senator from Massachusetts in the Senate-chamber at Washington; in January, 1865, Massachusetts battalions bivouacked beside the smoking ruins of South Carolina's capital. Verily, as none know better than we, the ways of Providence are mysterious, and past finding out. None the less, though it cannot be positively asserted that the world would not have been wiser, more advanced, and better ordered had Christ, when on that "exceeding high mountain," heard in the words then whispered in his ear a manifest call of Duty, and felt a Responsibility thrust upon him to secure the kingdoms of the earth for the Blessings of Liberty and the Bible by so small a sacrifice as making an apparently meaningless obeisance to Satan, yet we can certainly say that the world would now have been very different from what it is had He so done. And so in the case of the United States, though we cannot for a moment assert that its fate and the future of the world will not be richer, better, and brighter from its abandonment of New World traditions and policies in favor of the traditions and policies of the Old World, we can say without any hesitation that the course of history will be greatly changed by the so doing.

In any event the experiment will be one of surpassing interest to the historical observer. Some years ago James Russell Lowell was asked by the French historian, Guizot, how long the Republic of the United States might reasonably be expected to endure. Mr. Lowell's reply has always been considered peculiarly happy. "So long," said he, "as the ideas of its founders continue dominant." In due course of time we, or those who follow us, will know whether Mr. Lowell diagnosed the situation correctly, or otherwise. Meanwhile, I do not know how I can better bring to an end this somewhat lengthy contribution to the occasion, than by repeating, as singularly applicable to the conditions in which we find ourselves, these verses from a recent poem, than which I have heard none in the days that now are which strike a deeper or a truer chord, or one more appropriate to this New England Paschal eve:

"The tumult and the shouting dies,
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

"Far-called our navies melt away,
On dune and headline sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

"If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law—
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

"For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard—
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on thy people, Lord!
Amen."

Taken in connection with the foregoing paper, the following-letter, addressed to the Hon. Carl Schurz, is self-explanatory:

    Boston, December 21, 1898.

My Dear Mr. Schurz:

In a recent letter you kindly suggest that I submit to you a sketch of what, I think, should be said in an address such as it is proposed should now be put forth by the Anti-Imperialist League to the people of the United States.

I last evening read a paper before the Lexington Historical Society, in which I discussed the question of extra-territorial expansion from the historical point of view. A copy of this paper I hope soon to forward you. Meanwhile, there is one aspect, and, to my mind, the all-important aspect of the question, which, in addressing an historical society, was not germane. I refer to the question of a practical policy to be pursued by us, as a nation, under existing conditions. That Spain has abandoned all claim of sovereignty over the Philippine islands admits of no question. Whether the United States has accepted the sovereignty thus abandoned is still an open question; but this I do not regard as material. Nevertheless, we are confronted by a fact; and, whenever we criticise the policy up to this time pursued; we are met with an inquiry as to what we have to propose in place of it. We are invited to stop finding fault with others, and to suggest some feasible alternative policy ourselves.

To this we must, therefore, in fairness, address ourselves. It is, in my judgment, useless to attempt to carry on the discussion merely in the negative form. As opponents of an inchoate policy we must, in place of what we object to, propose something positive, or we must abandon the field. Accepting the alternative, I now want to suggest a positive policy for the consideration of those who feel as we feel. I wish your judgment upon it.

There has, it seems to me, been a great deal of idle "Duty," "Mission," and "Call" talk on the subject of our recent acquisition of "Islands beyond the Sea," and the necessity of adopting some policy, commonly described as "Imperial," in dealing with them. This policy is, in the minds of most people who favor it, to be indirectly modelled on the policy heretofore so successfully pursued under somewhat similar conditions by Great Britain. It involves, as I tried to point out in the Lexington paper I have referred to, the abandonment or reversal of all the fundamental principles of our government since its origin, and of the foreign policy we have heretofore pursued. This, I submit, is absolutely unnecessary. Another and substitute policy, purely American, as contradistinguished from the European or British, known as "Imperial," policy, can readily be formulated.

This essentially American policy would be based both upon our cardinal political principles, and our recent foreign experiences. It is commonly argued that, having destroyed the existing government in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, we have assumed a political responsibility, and are under a moral obligation to provide another government in place of that which by our action has ceased to exist. What has been our course heretofore under similar circumstances? Precedents, I submit, at once suggest themselves. Precedents, too, directly in point, and within your and my easy recollection.

I refer to the course pursued by us towards Mexico in the year 1848, and again in 1866; towards Hayti for seventy years back; and towards Venezuela as recently as three years ago. It is said that the inhabitants of the islands of the Antilles, and much more those of the Philippine archipelago, are as yet unfitted to maintain a government; and that they should be kept in a condition of "tutelage" until they are fitted so to do. It is further argued that a stable government is necessary, and that it is out of the question for us to permit a condition of chronic disturbance and scandalous unrest to exist so near our own borders as Cuba and Porto Rico. Yet how long, I would ask, did that condition exist in Mexico? And with what results? How long has it existed in Hayti? Has the government of Venezuela ever been "stable"? Have we found it necessary or thought it best to establish a governmental protectorate in any of those immediately adjacent regions?

What has been, historically, our policy—the American, as distinguished from the European and British policy—towards those communities,—two of them Spanish, one African? So far as foreign powers are concerned, we have laid down the principle of "Hands-off." So far as their own government was concerned, we insisted that the only way to learn to walk was to try to walk, and that the history of mankind did not show that nations placed under systems of "tutelage,"—taught to lean for support on a superior power,—ever acquired the faculty of independent action.

Of this, with us, fundamental truth, the British race itself furnishes a very notable example. In the forty-fourth year of the Christian era the island of Great Britain was occupied by what the "Imperial" Romans adjudged to be an inferior race. To the Romans the Britons unquestionably were inferior. Every child's history contains an account of the course then pursued by the superior towards that inferior race, and its results. The Romans occupied Great Britain, and they occupied it hard upon four centuries, holding the people in "tutelage," and protecting them against themselves, as well as against their enemies. With what result? So emasculated and incapable of self-government did the people of England become during their "tutelage" that, when Rome at last withdrew, they found themselves totally unfitted for self-government, much more for facing a foreign enemy. As the last, and best, historian of the English people tells us, the purely despotic system of the imperial government "by crushing all local independence, crushed all local vigor. Men forgot how to fight for their country when they forgot how to govern it."[3 - Green's Short History (Ill. Ed.). Vol. I. p. 9.] The end was that, through six centuries more, England was overrun, first by those of one race, and then by those of another, until the Normans established themselves in it as conquerors; and then, and not until then, the deteriorating effect of a system of long continued "tutelage" ceased to be felt, and the islanders became by degrees the most energetic, virile, and self-sustaining of races. As nearly, therefore, as can be historically stated, it took eight centuries for the people of England to overcome the injurious influence of four centuries of just such a system as it is now proposed by us to inflict on the Philippines.[4 - The Roman legions were withdrawn from Great Britain in 410; Magna Charta was signed in June, 1215, and the reign of French kings over England came to a close in 1217. It is a striking illustration of the deliberation with which natural processes work themselves out, that the period which elapsed between the withdrawal of Rome from England, and the recovery of England by the English, should have exceeded by more than a century the time which has as yet elapsed since England was thus recovered.] Hindostan would furnish another highly suggestive example of the educational effects of "tutelage" on a race. After a century and a half of that British "tutelage," what progress has India made towards fitness for self-government? Is the end in sight?

From the historical point of view, it is instructive to note the exactly different results reached through the truly American policy we have pursued in the not dissimilar cases of Hayti and Mexico. While Hayti, it is true, has failed to make great progress in one century, it has made quite as much progress as England made during any equal period immediately after Rome withdrew from it. And that degree of slowness in growth, which with equanimity has been endured by us in Hayti, could certainly be endured by us in islands on the coast of Asia. It cannot be gainsaid that, through our insisting on the policy of non-interference ourselves, and of non-interference by European nations, Hayti has been brought into a position where it is on the high road to better things in future. That has been the result of the prescriptive American policy. With Mexico, the case is far stronger. We all know that in 1848, after our war of spoliation, we had to bolster up a semblance of a government for Mexico, with which to negotiate a treaty of peace. Mexico at that time was reduced by us to a condition of utter anarchy. Under the theory now gaining in vogue, it would then have been our plain duty to make of Mexico an extra-territorial dependency, and protect it against itself. We wisely took a different course. Like other Spanish communities in America, Mexico than passed through a succession of revolutions, from which it became apparent the people were not in a fit condition for self-government. Nevertheless, sternly insisting on non-interference by outside powers, we ourselves wisely left that country to work out its own salvation in its own way.

In 1862, when the United States was involved in the War of the Rebellion, the Europeans took advantage of the situation to invade Mexico, and to establish there a "stable government." They undertook to protect that people against themselves, and to erect for them a species of protectorate, such as we now propose for the Philippines. As soon as our war was over, we insisted upon the withdrawal of Europe from Mexico. What followed is matter of recent history. It is unnecessary to recall it. We did not reduce Mexico into a condition of "tutelage," or establish over it a "protectorate" of our own. We, on the contrary, insisted that it should stand on its own legs; and, by so doing, learn to stand firmly on them, just as a child learns to walk, by being compelled to try to walk, not by being kept everlastingly in "leading strings." This was the American, as contradistinguished from the European policy; and Mexico to-day walks firmly.

Finally take the case of Venezuela in 1895. I believe I am not mistaken when I say that, during the twenty-five preceding years, Venezuela had undergone almost as many revolutions. It certainly had not enjoyed a stable government. Through disputes over questions of boundary, Great Britain proposed to confer that indisputable blessing upon a considerable region. We interfered under a most questionable extension of the Monroe Doctrine, and asserted the principle of "Hands-off." Having done this,—having in so far perpetuated what we now call the scandal of anarchy,—we did not establish "tutelage," or a protectorate, ourselves. We wisely left Venezuela to work out its destiny in its own way, and in the fullness of time. That policy was far-seeing, beneficent, and strictly American in 1895. Why, then, make almost indecent haste to abandon it in 1898?

Instead, therefore, of finding our precedents in the experience of England, or that of any other European power, I would suggest that the true course for this country now to pursue is exactly the course we have heretofore pursued under similar conditions. Let us be true to our own traditions, and follow our own precedents. Having relieved the Spanish islands from the dominion of Spain, we should declare concerning them a policy of "Hands-off," both on our own part and on the part of other powers. We should say that the independence of those islands is morally guaranteed by us as a consequence of the treaty of Paris, and then leave them just as we have left Hayti, and just as we left Mexico and Venezuela, to adopt for themselves such form of government as the people thereof are ripe for. In the cases of Mexico and Venezuela, and in the case of Hayti, we have not found it necessary to interfere ever or at all. It is not yet apparent why we should find it necessary to interfere with islands so much more remote from us than Hayti, and than Mexico and Venezuela, as are the Philippines.

In this matter we can thus well afford to be consistent, as well as logical. Our fundamental principles, those of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Monroe Doctrine, have not yet been shown to be unsound—why should we be in such a hurry to abandon them? Our precedents are close at hand, and satisfactory—why look away from them to follow those of Great Britain? Why need we, all of a sudden, be so very English and so altogether French, even borrowing their nomenclature of "imperialism?" Why can not we, too, in the language of Burke, be content to set our feet "in the tracks of our forefathers, where we can neither wander nor stumble?" The only difficulty in the way of our so doing seems to be that we are in such a desperate hurry; while natural influences and methods, though in the great end indisputably the wisest and best, always require time in which to work themselves out to their results. Wiser than the Almighty in our own conceit, we think to get there at once; the "there" in this case being everlasting "tutelage," as in India, instead of ultimate self-government, as in Mexico.

The policy heretofore pursued by us in such cases,—the policy of "Hands-off," and "Walk alone," is distinctly American; it is not European, not even British. It recognizes the principles of our Declaration of Independence. It recognizes the truth that all just government exists by the consent of the governed. It recognizes the existence of the Monroe Doctrine. In a word, it recognizes every principle and precedent, whether natural or historical, which has from the beginning lain at the foundation of our American polity. It does not attempt the hypocritical contradiction in terms, of pretending to elevate a people into a self-sustaining condition through the leading-string process of "tutelage." It appeals to our historical experience, applying to present conditions the lessons of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela. In dealing with those cases, we did not find a great standing army or an enormous navy necessary; and, if not then, why now? Why such a difference between the Philippines and Hayti? Is Cuba larger or nearer to us than Mexico? When, therefore, in future they ask us what course and policy we Anti-Imperialists propose, our answer should be that we propose to pursue towards the islands of Antilles and the Philippines the same common-sense course and truly American policy which were by us heretofore pursued with such signal success in the cases of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela, all inhabited by people equally unfit for self-government, and geographically much closer to ourselves. We propose to guarantee them against outside meddling, and, above all, from "tutelage," and make them, by walking, learn to walk alone.

This, I submit, is not only an answer to the question so frequently put to us, but a positive policy following established precedents, and, what is more, purely American, as distinguished from a European or British, policy and precedents.

    I remain, etc.,
    Charles Francis Adams.

Hon. Carl Schurz,

16 E. 64th Street, New York City.

notes

1

"Obviously, men are not born equal in physical strength or in mental capacity, in beauty of form or health of body. Diversity or inequality in these respects is the law of creation. But this inequality is in no particular inconsistent with complete civil or political equality.

"The equality declared by our fathers in 1776 and made the fundamental law of Massachusetts in 1780, was Equality before the Law. Its object was to efface all political or civil distinctions, and to abolish all institutions founded upon birth. 'All men are created equal,' says the Declaration of Independence. 'All men are born free and equal,' says the Massachusetts Bill of Rights. These are not vain words. Within the sphere of their influence, no person can be created, no person can be born, with civil or political privileges not enjoyed equally by all his fellow-citizens; nor can any institutions be established, recognizing distinctions of birth. Here is the Great Charter of every human being drawing vital breath upon this soil, whatever may be his conditions, and whoever may be his parents. He may be poor, weak, humble, or black,—he may be of Caucasian, Jewish, Indian, or Ethiopian race,—he may be born of French, German, English, or Irish extraction; but before the Constitution of Massachusetts all these distinctions disappear. He is not poor, weak, humble, or black; nor is he Caucasian, Jew, Indian, or Ethiopian; nor is he French, German, English, or Irish; he is a MAN, the equal of all his fellow-men. He is one of the children of the State, which, like an impartial parent, regards all its offspring with an equal care. To some it may justly allot higher duties, according to higher capacities; but it welcomes all to its equal hospitable board. The State, imitating the divine Justice, is no respecter of persons."—Works of Charles Sumner, Vol. II., pp. 341-2.

2