John L.

O'Sullivan on Manifest Destiny, 1839

Excerpted from "The Great Nation of Futurity," The United States Democratic Review,
Volume 6, Issue 23, pp. 426-430. The complete article can be found in The Making of
America Series at Cornell University

The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the
Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of
human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any
other nation; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of
them, and still less with all antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our
national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an
untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future
only; and so far as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral,
political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be
the great nation of futurity.
It is so destined, because the principle upon which a nation is organized fixes its destiny,
and that of equality is perfect, is universal. It presides in all the operations of the physical
world, and it is also the conscious law of the soul -- the self-evident dictates of morality,
which accurately defines the duty of man to man, and consequently man's rights as man.
Besides, the truthful annals of any nation furnish abundant evidence, that its happiness,
its greatness, its duration, were always proportionate to the democratic equality in its
system of government. . . .
What friend of human liberty, civilization, and refinement, can cast his view over the past
history of the monarchies and aristocracies of antiquity, and not deplore that they ever
existed? What philanthropist can contemplate the oppressions, the cruelties, and injustice
inflicted by them on the masses of mankind, and not turn with moral horror from the
retrospect?
America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no
reminiscences of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations,
of the rights of conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement. Our annals describe
no scenes of horrid carnage, where men were led on by hundreds of thousands to slay one
another, dupes and victims to emperors, kings, nobles, demons in the human form called
heroes. We have had patriots to defend our homes, our liberties, but no aspirants to
crowns or thrones; nor have the American people ever suffered themselves to be led on
by wicked ambition to depopulate the land, to spread desolation far and wide, that a
human being might be placed on a seat of supremacy.
We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all
their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on
its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts,
and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. We are the nation of human progress,
and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no
earthly power can. We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our national
declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other lands, that "the gates of hell" -- the
powers of aristocracy and monarchy -- "shall not prevail against it."
The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its
magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest
to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple
ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High -- the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall
be a hemisphere -- its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens, and its
congregation an Union of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions,
calling, owning no man master, but governed by God's natural and moral law of equality,
the law of brotherhood -- of "peace and good will amongst men.". . .
Yes, we are the nation of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement.
Equality of rights is the cynosure of our union of States, the grand exemplar of the
correlative equality of individuals; and while truth sheds its effulgence, we cannot
retrograde, without dissolving the one and subverting the other. We must onward to the
fulfillment of our mission -- to the entire development of the principle of our organization
-- freedom of conscience, freedom of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits,
universality of freedom and equality. This is our high destiny, and in nature's eternal,
inevitable decree of cause and effect we must accomplish it. All this will be our future
history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man -- the immutable
truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which
are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high
example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry
the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely
more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is
destined to be the great nation of futurity?
Josiah Strong on Anglo-Saxon Predominance, 1891
It is not necessary to argue to those for whom I write that the two great needs of mankind,
that all men may be lifted up into the light of the highest Christian civilization, are, first, a
pure, spiritual Christianity, and second, civil liberty. Without controversy, these are the
forces which, in the past, have contributed most to the elevation of the human race, and
they must continue to be, in the future, the most efficient ministers to its progress. It
follows, then, that the Anglo-Saxon, as the great representative of these two ideas, the
depositary of these two greatest blessings, sustains peculiar relations to the world's future,
is divinely commissioned to be, in a peculiar sense, his brother's keeper. Add to this the
fact of his rapidly increasing strength in modern times, and we have well-nigh a
demonstration of his destiny. In 1700 this race numbered less than 6,000,000 souls. In
1800, Anglo-Saxons (I use the term somewhat broadly to include all English speaking
peoples) had increased to about 20,500,000, and now, in 1890, they number more than
120,000,000, having multiplied almost six-fold in ninety years. At the end of the reign of
Charles 11, the English colonists in America numbered 200,000. During these two
hundred years, our population has increased two hundred and fifty-fold. And the
expansion of this race has been no less remarkable than its multiplication. In one century
the United States has increased its territory ten-fold, while the enormous acquisition of
foreign territory by Great Britain-and chiefly within the last hundred years-is wholly
unparalleled in history. This mighty Anglo-Saxon race, though comprising only
one-thirteenth part of mankind, now rules more than one-third of the earth's surface, and
more than one-fourth of its people. And if this race, while growing from 6,000,000 to
120,000,000, thus gained possession of a third portion of the earth, is it to be supposed
that when it numbers 1,000,000,000, it will lose the disposition, or lack the power to
extend its sway? ...
America is to have the great preponderance of numbers and of wealth, and by the logic of
events will follow the scepter of controlling influence. This will be but the consummation
of a movement as old as civilization--a result to which men have looked forward for
centuries. John Adams records that nothing was "more ancient in his memory than the
observation that arts, sciences and empire had traveled westward; and in conversation it
was always added that their next leap would be over the Atlantic into America." He
recalled a couplet that had been inscribed or rather drilled, into a rock on the shore of
Monument Bay in our old colony of Plymouth:
The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends,
And empire rises where the sun descends. . .
Mr. Darwin is not only disposed to see, in the superior vigor of our people, an illustration
of his favorite theory of natural selection, but even intimates that the world's history thus
far has been simply uy for our future, and tributary to it. He says: "There is apparently
much truth in the belief that the wonderful progress of the United States, as well as the
character of the people, are the results of natural selection; for the more energetic,
restless, and courageous men from all parts of Europe have emigrated during the last ten
or twelve generations to that great country, and have there succeeded best. Looking at the
distant future, I do not think that the Rev. Mr. Zincke takes an exaggerated view when he
says: 'All other series of events-as that which resulted in the culture of mind in Greece,
and that which resulted in the Empire of Rome-only appear to have purpose and value
when viewed in connection with, or rather as subsidiary to, the great stream of
Anglo-Saxon emigration to the West.' "
There is abundant reason to believe that the Anglo-Saxon race is to be, is, indeed, already
becoming, more effective here than in the mother country. The marked superiority of this
race is due, in large measure, to its highly mixed origin. Says Rawlinson: "It is a general
rule, now almost universally admitted by ethnologists, that the mixed races of mankind
are superior to the pure ones"; and adds: "Even the Jews, who are so often cited as an
example of a race at once pure and strong, may, with more reason, be adduced on the
opposite side of the argument." The ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, were
all mixed races. Among modem races, the most conspicuous example is afforded by the
AngloSaxons.... There is here a new commingling of races; and, while the largest
injections of foreign blood are substantially the same elements that constituted the
original Anglo-Saxon admixture, so that we may infer the general type will be preserved,
there are strains of other bloods being added, which, if Mr. Emerson's remark is true, that
"the best nations are those most widely related," may be expected to improve the stock,
and aid it to a higher destiny. If the dangers of immigration, which have been pointed out,
can be successfully met for the next few years, until it has passed its climax, it may be
expected to add value to the amalgam which will constitute the new Anglo-Saxon race of
the New World. Concerning our future, Herbert Spencer says: "One great result is, I
think, tolerably clear. From biological truths it is to be inferred that the eventual mixture
of the allied varieties of the Aryan race, forming the population, will produce a more
powerful type of man than has hitherto existed, and a type of man more plastic, more
adaptable, more capable of undergoing the modifications needful for complete social life.
I think, whatever difficulties they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations they
may have to pass through, the Americans may reasonably look forward to a time when
they will have produced a civilization grander than any the world has known."
It may be easily shown, and is of no small significance, that the two great ideas of which
the Anglo-Saxon is the exponent are having a fuller development in the United States
than in Great Britain. There the union of Church and State tends strongly to paralyze
some of the members of the body of Christ. Here there is no such influence to destroy
spiritual life and power. Here, also, has been evolved the form of government consistent
with the largest possible civil liberty. Furthermore, it is significant that the marked
characteristics of this race are being here emphasized most. Among the most striking
features of the Anglo-Saxon is his money-making power, a power of increasing
importance in the widening commerce of the world's future. We have seen . . . that,
although England is by far the richest nation of Europe, we have already outstripped her
in the race after wealth, and we have only begun the development of our vast resources.
Again, another marked characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon is what may be called an
instinct or genius for colonizing. His unequaled energy, his indomitable perseverance,
and his personal independence, made him a pioneer. He excels all others in pushing his
way into new countries. It was those in whom this tendency was strongest that came to
America, and this inherited tendency has been further developed by the westward sweep
of successive generations across the continent. So noticeable has this characteristic
become that English visitors remark it. Charles Dickens once said that the typical
American would hesitate to enter heaven unless assured that he could go farther west.
Again, nothing more manifestly distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon than his intense and
persistent energy, and he is developing in the United States an energy which, in eager
activity and effectiveness, is peculiarly American.
This is due partly to the fact that Americans are much better fed than Europeans, and
partly to the undeveloped resources of a new country, but more largely to our climate,
which acts as a constant stimulus. Ten years after the landing of the Pilgrims, the Rev.
Francis Higginson, a good observer, wrote: "A sup of New England air is better than a
whole flagon of English ale." Thus early had the stimulating effect of our climate been
noted. Moreover, our social institutions are stimulating. In Europe the various ranks of
society are, like the strata of the earth, fixed and fossilized. There can be no great change
without a terrible upheaval, a social earthquake. Here society is like the waters of the sea,
mobile; as General Garfield said, and so signally illustrated in his own experience, that
which is at the bottom to-day may one day flash on the crest of the highest wave. Every
one is free to become whatever he can make of himself; free to transform himself from a
rail splitter or a tanner or a canal-boy, into the nation's President. Our aristocracy, unlike
that of Europe, is open to all comers. Wealth, position, influence, are prizes offered for
energy; and every farmer's boy, every apprentice and clerk, every friendless and penniless
immigrant, is free to enter the lists. Thus many causes co-operate to produce here the
most forceful and tremendous energy in the world.
What is the significance of such facts? These tendencies infold the future; they are the
mighty alphabet with which God writes his prophecies. May we not, by a careful laying
together of the letters, spell out something of his meaning? It seems to me that God, with
infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in
the world's future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a
comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East
have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration, which
millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates, meet to-day on
our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the
earth are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is coming when the pressure of
population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and
Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history-the final competition of
races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. Long before the thousand millions
are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in this stock and strengthened in the
United States, will assert itself. Then this race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty
of numbers and the might of wealth behind it-the representative, let us hope, of the largest
liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization-having developed peculiarly
aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself
over the earth. If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico,
down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa
and beyond. And can any one doubt that the results of this competition of races will be
the "survival of the fittest?" "Any people," says Dr. Bushnell, "that is physiologically
advanced in culture, though it be only in a degree beyond another which is mingled with
it on strictly equal terms, is sure to live down and finally live out its inferiority. Nothing
can save the inferior race but a ready and pliant assimilation. Whether the feebler and
more abject races are going to be regenerated and raised up, is already, very much of a
question. What if it should be God's plan to people the world with better and finer
material?"
 The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
President Theodore Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904
Foreign Policy
In treating of our foreign policy and of the attitude that this great Nation should
assume in the world at large, it is absolutely necessary to consider the Army and the
Navy, and the Congress, through which the thought of the Nation finds its expression,
should keep ever vividly in mind the fundamental fact that it is impossible to treat our
foreign policy, whether this policy takes shape in the effort to secure justice for others or
justice for ourselves, save as conditioned upon the attitude we are willing to take toward
our Army, and especially toward our Navy. It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for
a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its purposes, or
to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse
to provide this force. If there is no intention of providing and keeping the force necessary
to back up a strong attitude, then it is far better not to assume such an attitude.
The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to
bring ever nearer the day when there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of
justice. There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run
as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a
wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or
shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false teachings,
have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed
self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from their own minds their shortcomings, their
ignoble motives, by calling them love of peace. The peace of tyrannous terror, the peace
of craven weakness, the peace of injustice, all these should be shunned as we shun
unrighteous war. The goal to set before us as a nation, the goal which should be set before
all mankind, is the attainment of the peace of justice, of the peace which comes when
each nation is not merely safe-guarded in its own rights, but scrupulously recognizes and
performs its duty toward others. Generally peace tells for righteousness; but if there is
conflict between the two, then our fealty is due first to the cause of righteousness.
Unrighteous wars are common, and unrighteous peace is rare; but both should be
shunned. The right of freedom and the responsibility for the exercise of that right can not
be divorced. One of our great poets has well and finely said that freedom is not a gift that
tarries long in the hands of cowards. Neither does it tarry long in the hands of those too
slothful, too dishonest, or too unintelligent to exercise it. The eternal vigilance which is
the price of liberty must be exercised, sometimes to guard against outside foes; although
of course far more often to guard against our own selfish or thoughtless shortcomings.
If these self-evident truths are kept before us, and only if they are so kept before
us, we shall have a clear idea of what our foreign policy in its larger aspects should be. It
is our duty to remember that a nation has no more right to do injustice to another nation,
strong or weak, than an individual has to do injustice to another individual; that the same
moral law applies in one case as in the other. But we must also remember that it is as
much the duty of the Nation to guard its own rights and its own interests as it is the duty
of the individual so to do. Within the Nation the individual has now delegated this right to
the State, that is, to the representative of all the individuals, and it is a maxim of the law
that for every wrong there is a remedy. But in international law we have not advanced by
any means as far as we have advanced in municipal law. There is as yet no judicial way
of enforcing a right in international law. When one nation wrongs another or wrongs
many others, there is no tribunal before which the wrongdoer can be brought. Either it is
necessary supinely to acquiesce in the wrong, and thus put a premium upon brutality and
aggression, or else it is necessary for the aggrieved nation valiantly to stand up for its
rights. Until some method is devised by which there shall be a degree of international
control over offending nations, it would be a wicked thing for the most civilized powers,
for those with most sense of international obligations and with keenest and most generous
appreciation of the difference between right and wrong, to disarm. If the great civilized
nations of the present day should completely disarm, the result would mean an immediate
recrudescence of barbarism in one form or another. Under any circumstances a sufficient
armament would have to be kept up to serve the purposes of international police; and
until international cohesion and the sense of international duties and rights are far more
advanced than at present, a nation desirous both of securing respect for itself and of doing
good to others must have a force adequate for the work which it feels is allotted to it as its
part of the general world duty. Therefore it follows that a self-respecting, just, and
far-seeing nation should on the one hand endeavor by every means to aid in the
development of the various movements which tend to provide substitutes for war, which
tend to render nations in their actions toward one another, and indeed toward their own
peoples, more responsive to the general sentiment of humane and civilized mankind; and
on the other hand that it should keep prepared, while scrupulously avoiding wrongdoing
itself, to repel any wrong, and in exceptional cases to take action which in a more
advanced stage of international relations would come under the head of the exercise of
the international police. A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink
into helplessness before the powers of evil.

Policy Toward Other Nations of the Western Hemisphere

It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as
regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their
welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly,
and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our
hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency
and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it
need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence
which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as
elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western
Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the
United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to
the exercise of an international police power. If every country washed by the Caribbean
Sea would show the progress in stable and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt
Amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the
republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all question of
interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at an end. Our interests and those
of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if
within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to
them. While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured
that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would
interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their
inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the
United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of
American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or
anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately
realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from the responsibility of
making good use of it.
In asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in taking such steps as we have taken in regard
to Cuba, Venezuela, and Panama, and in endeavoring to circumscribe the theater of war
in the Far East, and to secure the open door in China, we have acted in our own interest
as well as in the interest of humanity at large. There are, however, cases in which, while
our own interests are not greatly involved, strong appeal is made to our sympathies.
Ordinarily it is very much wiser and more useful for us to concern ourselves with striving
for our own moral and material betterment here at home than to concern ourselves with
trying to better the condition of things in other nations. We have plenty of sins of our own
to war against, and under ordinary circumstances we can do more for the general
uplifting of humanity by striving with heart and soul to put a stop to civic corruption, to
brutal lawlessness and violent race prejudices here at home than by passing resolutions
and wrongdoing elsewhere. Nevertheless there are occasional crimes committed on so
vast a scale and of such peculiar horror as to make us doubt whether it is not our manifest
duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval of the deed and our sympathy with
those who have suffered by it. The cases must be extreme in which such a course is
justifiable. There must be no effort made to remove the mote from our brother’s eye if we
refuse to remove the beam from our own. But in extreme cases action may be justifiable
and proper. What form the action shall take must depend upon the circumstances of the
case; that is, upon the degree of the atrocity and upon our power to remedy it. The cases
in which we could interfere by force of arms as we interfered to put a stop to intolerable
conditions in Cuba are necessarily very few. Yet it is not to be expected that a people like
ours, which in spite of certain very obvious shortcomings, nevertheless as a whole shows
by its consistent practice its belief in the principles of civil and religious liberty and of
orderly freedom, a people among whom even the worst crime, like the crime of lynching,
is never more than sporadic, so that individuals and not classes are molested in their
fundamental rights--it is inevitable that such a nation should desire eagerly to give
expression to its horror on an occasion like that of the massacre of the Jews in Kishenef,
or when it witnesses such systematic and long-extended cruelty and oppression as the
cruelty and oppression of which the Armenians have been the victims, and which have
won for them the indignant pity of the civilized world.