"Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers"

Historically speaking, the assertion in the Declaration of Independence has been fruitful of dispute. The very evening the present paper was read at Lexington the Mayor of Boston, in a public address elsewhere, alluded to the "imprudent generalizations of our forefathers," referring, doubtless, to what Rufus Choate, forty-two years before, described as "the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right" to be found in the Declaration, "that passionate and eloquent manifesto." Mr. Calhoun declared (1848) that the claim of human equality set forth in the Declaration was "the most false and dangerous of all political errors," which, after resting a long time "dormant," had, in the process of time, begun "to germinate and produce its poisonous fruits." Mr. Pettit, a Senator from Indiana, pronounced it in 1854, "a self-evident lie." In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debate in Illinois (1860) the question reappeared, Mr. Douglas contending that the Declaration applied only to "the white people of the United States;" while Mr. Lincoln, in reply, asserted that "the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration." The contention of Mr. Douglas had recently again made its appearance in the press as something too indisputable to admit of discussion. It is asserted that, in penning the Declaration, Mr. Jefferson could not possibly have intended to include those then actually held as slaves. On this point Mr. Jefferson himself should, it would seem, be accepted as a competent witness. Referring to the denial of his "inalienable rights" to the African, he declared at a later day, "I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just." What he meant will, however, probably continue matter for confident newspaper assertions just so long as anybody in this country wants to make out, as did Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, a plausible pretext for subjugating somebody else,—Indian, African, or Asiatic. As Mr. Lincoln expressed it, "The assertion that all men are created equal was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain, and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that but for future use. Its author meant it to be, as, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to all those who, in after times, might seek to turn a free people back into the paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant, when such should reappear in this fair land, and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack."—Works, Vol. I., p. 233.

3

Green's Short History (Ill. Ed.). Vol. I. p. 9.

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.