Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/215

Rh  for what you are, with our gratitude for what you have achieved, with our good wishes for your welfare, with our solemn vows to be worthy of you! 



Whenever there is a project on foot to annex foreign territory to this Republic the cry of “manifest destiny” is raised to produce the impression that all opposition to such a project is a struggle against fate. Forty years ago this cry had a peculiar significance. The slaveholders saw in the rapid growth of the free States a menace to the existence of slavery. In order to strengthen themselves in Congress they needed more slave States, and looked therefore to the acquisition of foreign territory on which slavery existed—in the first place, the island of Cuba. Thus to the pro-slavery man “manifest destiny” meant an increase of the number of slave States by annexation. There was still another force behind the demand for territorial expansion. It consisted in the youthful optimism at that time still inspiring the minds of many Americans with the idea that this Republic, being charged with the mission of bearing the banner of freedom over the whole civilized world, could transform any country, inhabited by any kind of population, into something like itself simply by extending over it the magic charm of its political institutions. Such sentiments had been strengthened by the revolutionary movements of 1848 in Europe, which invited a comparison between American and European conditions and stimulated in the American a feeling of assured superiority, as well as of generous sympathy with other less-favored nations. There was,