Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ... our three expansion epochs. Every intelligent student of American history should carefully read the great speech recently delivered in the Senate by Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, against the Philippine policy of the Government. It is one of three great speeches delivered in our national legislature against the policy of expansion by the respective leaders of the opposition in the several epochs of territorial extension; and when the student shall have carefully perused the obviously sincere and admittedly masterly argument of Senator Hoar he should turn back and read with equal care the great speech delivered in Congress by Josiah Quincy, of Boston, then the ablest of the Federal leaders, and afterward president of Harvard College, against the recognition of the Louisiana purchase by the admission of Louisiana as a State, and then as carefully study the great speech of Senator Corwin, of Ohio, against the acquisition of Mexican territory, delivered in 1847, when the war was in progress. These three great statesmen will stand out conspicuously in American history as the ablest opponents of the policy of expansion, and their arguments should be exhaustively studied to understand how the great Republic of the world was opposed in its advancement from the few feeble colonies of the eastern coast to a great nation of States, extending from the eastern to the western sea, and from the northern lakes to the southern gulf, with provinces of priceless value in the West Indies and the gateway to the Orient. Jefferson accomplished the purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon in 1803 for the sum of $15,000,000, and on the 2Oth cf December of that year the American flag was first raised in the city of New Orleans. Louisiana had been held alternately by...