Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/217

Rh Only very few of the public men of the time still delighted in “manifest-destiny” dreams. The most prominent among them was Seward, who in 1868 predicted that “in thirty years the city of Mexico would be the capital of the United States,” and whose brain was constantly busy with schemes of annexation. But public opinion received his projects with marked coldness. The purchase of Alaska found very scant favor with the people, and it would have failed but for Sumner's efforts and the popular impression that Russia had in some way done us a service in critical times, and that it would be ungracious to repel an arrangement agreeable to this friendly power. Moreover, Alaska being a part of the American continent in a high northern latitude, its acquisition appeared less objectionable than that of non-continental territory, especially in the tropics. Seward's treaty with Denmark for the purchase of St. Thomas died of inanition in the Senate, where everything of the kind was received with instinctive apprehension. When President Grant sought to effect the annexation of Santo Domingo, neither the gorgeous pictures drawn of the advantages to be gained, nor General Grant's personal prestige, nor the determined efforts of his powerful Administration, could prevail against the adverse current of public opinion, or save the treaty from defeat in the Senate.

The recent attempt made by President Harrison to precipitate the Hawaiian Islands into our Union has again stirred up the public interest in the matter of territorial expansion, and called forth the cry of “manifest destiny” once more. This attempt would no doubt already have been buried under popular disapproval had not Republican politicians and newspaper writers seen fit, for the purpose of making party capital, to defend President Harrison's action, and to discredit the cautious course of President Cleveland with deceptive appeals to American