.'Biy 
 
 opf/ie as I 
 

 THE HISTORIC POLICY OF THE Ul\ 
 STATES AS TO ANNEXATION. 
 
 A 
 
 «V 
 
 
 
 C ' A PAPER READ BEFORE THE 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 AT Chicago, July 13, 1893. 
 
 By SIMEON E. BALDWIN, l.hh^ 
 
 '-X.'S' 
 
 President of the New Haven Colony HisTORiOAi^^dofflfl.^'^ '-*P £-- 
 
 Reprinted from the "Yale Review" for August, 189t 
 
/;■> ;-l 
 
i 
 
 THE HISTORIC POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 AS TO ANNEXATION. 
 
 The United States, according- to President Lincoln, 
 was " formed in fact by the Articles of Association in 
 1774." But the self-styled " Continental Congress," which 
 framed those Articles, represented and claimed to repre- 
 sent but a small portion of the American continent. The 
 eleven colonies, whose delegates met at Carpenters Hall, 
 October 20th, 1774, and those of the three counties of 
 Delaware who sat with them on equal terms, though 
 really a part of the proprietary government of Pennsyl- 
 vania, were in actual possession of but a narrow strip of 
 territory on the Atlantic seaboard, running back no 
 farther than the line of the Alleghanies. To the south- 
 ward lay Georgia, East Florida, West Florida and 
 Louisiana; to the northward Nova Scotia, and Canada; 
 and on their western frontiers Parliament had recently 
 put the boundary of the new Province of Quebec. 
 
 It was the hope of Congress that their ranks might be 
 swelled by the accession of all the British colonies or 
 provinces on our continent. On October 26th a stirring 
 appeal to unite in the Articles of Association, adopted 
 two days before, was addressed to the inhabitants of 
 Quebec. " We def}' you," wrote Congress, " casting 
 your view upon ever}^ side, to discover a single circum- 
 stance, promising from any quarter the faintest hope of 
 liberty to you or your posterity, but from an entire 
 adoption into the Union of these colonies." .... 
 " What," it was urged, " would your great countryman, 
 Montesquieu, say to you, were he living to-day? Would 
 not this be the purport of his address? * Seize the oppor- 
 tunity presented to you by Providence itself. You have 
 been conquered into liberty, if you act as you ought. 
 This work is not of man. You are a small people, com- 
 pared to those who with open arms invite you into a 
 fellowship. A moment's reffection should convince you 
 
which will be most for your interest and happiness, to 
 have all the rest of North America your unalterable 
 friends, or your inveterate enemies. The injuries of 
 Boston have roused and associated every colony from 
 Nova Scotia to Georgia. Your province is the only link 
 wanting to complete the bright and strong chain of union. 
 Nature has joined your country to theirs. Do you join 
 your political interests.' . . . . " We are too well 
 acquainted with the liberality of sentiment distinguishing 
 your nation to imagine that difference of religion will 
 prejudice you against a hearty amity with us. You know 
 that the transcendent nature of freedom elevates those 
 who unite in her cause above all such low minded infirm- 
 ities."' 
 
 The address concluded with the recommendation that 
 they should choose a Provincial Congress, which might 
 send delegates to the next Continental Congress to be 
 held at Philadelphia in May, 1775, and formally accede to 
 the existing confederation, so that in resisting future 
 aggressions they might rely no longer on the small 
 influence of a single province, " but on the consolidated 
 powers of North America." 
 
 The Annual Register for 1775 truly says that "of all 
 the papers published by the American Congress, their 
 address to the French mhabitants of Canada discovered 
 the most dextrous management, and the most able method 
 of application to the temper and passions of the parties 
 whom they endeavored to gain."' 
 
 A correspondence with Canadian patriots was also be- 
 gun by the Massachusetts committee of safety, and Sam- 
 uel Adams was particularly earnest in his efforts to gain 
 their support. 
 
 In May, 1775, another address to the inhabitants of 
 Canada was adopted by Congress, from the pen of Jay. 
 It declared that " the fate of the Protestant and Catholic 
 col(3nies was strongly linked together," and that Congress 
 yet entertained hopes of a union with them in the defence 
 of their common hberty.^ 
 
 ' Journals of Congress, I, 64. ' History of Europe, 32. 
 
 * Journals of Congress, I, 109. 
 
5 
 
 During the session of this Congress, an address from 
 the inhabitants of several parishes in Bermuda was re- 
 ceived, and a Canadian once appeared upon the floor. 
 In November, the inhabitants of a district in Nova Scotia, 
 which had elected a committee of safety, applied for 
 admission into " the Association of the United Colonies.'" 
 
 The proceedings of this Congress have come down to 
 us in a very unsatisfactory state, owing to the fact that 
 it was not deemed safe to print in the official journals all 
 that was done. After forty years, a large part of what 
 was originally suppressed was published by the govern- 
 ment, under the style of the " Secret Journals of Con- 
 gress," but no attempt was made to combine the two 
 records or to supply an index to the whole. 
 
 In July, 1775, Dr. Franklin brought forward a plan 
 which had apparently been drawn up for submission in 
 May, for " Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union " 
 between " the United Colonies of North America." They 
 provided for the accession of all the other British Colon- 
 ies on the Continent, that is, Quebec, St. John's, Nova 
 Scotia, East and West Florida, and the Bermuda Islands.'' 
 Notwithstanding the care taken to suppress this pro- 
 ceeding, a copy of the paper got across the ocean and 
 was printed in full in the Annual Register for 1775.^ 
 
 In the latter part of this year. Congress despatched 
 agents to Canada and others to Nova Scotia to inquire 
 particularly into the disposition of their inhabitants re- 
 specting a union of interests with the more Southern 
 Colonies. The Assembly of Jamaica had sent in a me- 
 morial to the King in Council, which, while disclaiming 
 any thought of forcible resistance, set up the claims of 
 their inhabitants to self-government in language nearly as 
 strong as that used by the Continental Congress.* The 
 latter body responded in an address to the Assembly of 
 Jamaica, thanking them for their sympathy, and saying 
 that, while " the peculiar situation of your island forbids 
 your assistance," they were glad at least to have their 
 good wishes. 
 
 ' Journals of Congress, I, 230, 244. ^ Secret Journals of Congress, I, 283. 
 3 State Papers, 252. •» Ann. Reg. for 1775 ; Hist, of Europe, 101. 
 
Soon afterwards three commissioners were appointed 
 to repair to the Northern frontier, and endeavor " to in- 
 duce the Canadians to accede to a union with these Col- 
 onies " and to send delegates to Congress.' The com- 
 missioners were authorized to pledge them " the free 
 enjoyment of their religion,'"^ and to raise, if possible, a 
 Canadian regiment for the Continental army. A few 
 men did enlist, and such accessions were received from 
 time to time that at last a full regiment was organized 
 and officered, and a second one projected/ 
 
 Early in 1776 another set of commissioners, headed b}' 
 Franklin, were dispatched directly to Canada on a similar 
 errand, bearing addresses from Congress, which were 
 printed in French and English, and circulated extensively 
 among the people.* The instructions of the commissioners 
 were to assure the Canadians that their interests and ours 
 were inseparably united, and to urge them to join us as a 
 " sister colon}-." 
 
 No impression seemed to be made by the addresses, 
 and it was soon discovered that quite an adequate reason 
 existed in the fact that not one out of five hundred of the 
 population could read. Dr. Franklin, on his return, said 
 that if it were ever thought best to send another mission, 
 it should be one composed of schoolmasters. With a 
 few of the leaders there, Franklin had better success, 
 and during a fortnight something like a provisional 
 government was set up, under his auspices, which, how- 
 ever, melted into thin air on the approach of British 
 troops.*" 
 
 In June, 1776, Congress sent two ships to the Bermudas, 
 carrying provisions, to relieve the distress caused by our 
 non-importation association, and with directions to inquire 
 into the disposition of the inhabitants, respecting a union 
 of interests with ours.^ 
 
 ' Wa^ington strongly urges this course, in his letters from camp. Writ- 
 ings; Spark's Ed. iii, 173. 
 ^ Journals of Congress, I, 242. 
 " Writings of Washington, Sparks' Ed. , iv, 267. 
 
 * Secret Journals of Congress, I, 42. * Journals of Congress, I, 305. 
 
 * Secret Journals of Congress, I, 46. 
 
It is probable that the report was not encouraging, for 
 when in July, 1776, Franklin's scheme for confederation 
 was reported on by the committee which had had it under 
 consideration for a year, the provision for bringing in the 
 other English colonies was struck out, except so far as re- 
 lated to Canada. She was to have the right to admission 
 on request, but no other colony was to be admitted with- 
 out the consent of nine States. ^ 
 
 Provision was made by Congress, as soon as these Arti- 
 cles were agreed on and sent out to the States for ratifica- 
 tion, (Nov. 29, 1777) for having them translated into French 
 and circulated among the Canadians, with an invitation 
 " to accede to the union of these States.'"^ 
 
 Our invasions of their territory, however, and their ill- 
 success, had left little of the spirit of united resistance to 
 British authority. Had the declaration of independence 
 been made as early as the more fiery patriots would have 
 had it, it is not impossible that Canada and Nova Scotia 
 would have been swept into the current. Samuel Adams 
 wrote in July, 1776, to a friend, that had it come in 1775, 
 Canada, in his opinion " would at this time have been one 
 of the United Colonies."^ 
 
 In the fall of 1776, Franklin, then about to sail on his 
 European mission, submitted to the secret committee of 
 Congress his scheme for proposals of peace. These were 
 that Great Britain should acknowledge our independence, 
 and sell us Quebec, St. John's, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, 
 East and West Florida and the Bahamas. In addition to 
 payment of the purchase money, we were to grant free 
 trade to all British subjects, and guarantee to Great Bri- 
 tain her West India islands. In the paper explaining this 
 scheme, Franklin states that, as to the colonies to be pur- 
 chased, " it is absolutely necessary for us to have them 
 for our own security. "■* 
 
 ' Secret Journals of Congress, I, 390 ; Annual Register for 1776, State 
 
 Papers, p. 269. 
 ^ Secret Journals of Congress, II, 54. ^ Life of Samuel Adams, II, 434. 
 4 Franklin's Works, I, 143. 
 
8 
 
 In letters to English friends, while in France, he 
 expressed similar views, saying that discord would con- 
 tinually arise on the frontiers unless peace were cemented 
 by the cession of Canada, Nova Scotia, and the Floridas.' 
 
 John Adams entertained opinions of the same kind. In 
 April, 1782, while in Holland, he was advised by Henry 
 Laurens, one of our foreign commissioners who had been 
 captured by a British man-of-war, and put in the Tower 
 on a charge of treason, but was now at large on parole, 
 that many of the opposition in England favored the sur- 
 render of Canada and Nova Scotia. Mr. Adams replied 
 that he feared that we could never have a real peace, with 
 Canada or Nova Scotia in the hands of the English, and 
 that at least we should stipulate in any treaty of peace 
 that they should keep no troops or fortified places on the 
 frontiers of either.^ 
 
 A few days later, Dr. Franklin submitted to Mr. Oswald, 
 with whom, as the Commissioner of Great Britain, the 
 treaty of peace was afterwards negotiated, a paper sug- 
 gesting the dangers of maintaining a long frontier be- 
 tween countries the roughest of whose people would 
 always inhabit their borders and outposts, and that Great 
 Britain might well cede Canada to us, on conditions of a 
 perpetual guaranty of free trade with that province, and 
 a provision for indemnity for the losses both of Canadian 
 loyalists and of Americans whose property had been 
 burned in British invasions, out of the proceeds of sales 
 of the public lands remaining ungranted.' 
 
 The influence of France was from the first thrown 
 against the enlargement of the United States by the ac- 
 cession of any more of the British Colonies. As most of 
 these had once been hers, she doubtless hoped that they 
 might, some day, become again part of their mother 
 country. Our treaty with her, of 1778, stipulated that 
 should she capture any of the British West India islands, 
 it should be for her own benefit, while if we should occupy 
 
 ' Franklin's Works, I, 311. 
 
 ^ See Washington's letter to Landon Carter, of May 30, 1778, to the same 
 
 effect. Writings, Spark's Ed., v, 389. 
 3 Franklin's Works, I, 480. 
 
the Northern colonies or the Bermudas, they should " be 
 confederate with or dependent upon the said United 
 States." 
 
 The adoption of the present Constitution of the United 
 States, in abrogating, by the voice of the majority, the 
 Articles of Confederation, was a revolutionary proceeding, 
 which threw two States out of the Union. North Caro- 
 lina and Rhode Island, by refusing to ratify the work of 
 the Convention of 1787, put themselves for a time certainly 
 very near the position of foreign States. This conse- 
 quence of their action was strongly urged in the North 
 Carolina convention. " In my opinion " said Gov. John- 
 son, one of its members, "if we refuse to ratify the 
 Constitution, we shall be entirely out of the Union, and 
 can be considered only as a foreign power. It is true 
 the United States may admit us hereafter. But they may 
 admit us on terms unequal and disadvantageous to us." 
 " It is objected," replied the next speaker, " we shall be 
 out of the Union. So I wish to be. We are left at liberty 
 to come in at any time."' "In my opinion, said James 
 Iredell, afterwards a Justice of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, " when any State has once rejected the 
 Constitution, it cannot claim to come in afterwards as a 
 matter of right. If it does not in plain terms reject, but 
 refuses to accede for the present, I think the other States 
 may regard this as an absolute rejection, and refuse to 
 admit us afterwards, but at their pleasure, and on what 
 terms they please."'' 
 
 When, however, in 1789 and 1790 these States reluc- 
 tantly sent in their ratifications, no question was made 
 about receiving them on equal terms with those by which 
 the new government had been originally organized, and 
 they came in on a footing of right. 
 
 The United States of 1789 was in many respects a 
 political combination of foreign communities. The At- 
 lantic was almost the sole means of communication 
 between the Northern and Southern States. The Hud- 
 
 1 Elliot's Debates, IV, 223, 4. * ibid 331. 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 son helped to bind Eastern New England to New York ; 
 the Ohio and the Mississippi might lead from one scat- 
 tered settlement to another; but of those who lived 
 twenty miles from navigable water, it was only the favored 
 or the adventurous few who had ever visited any State, 
 except their own. 
 
 To such a people there could be nothing startling in the 
 acquisition of foreign territory. It could hardly be more 
 foreign than much that was already within the Union. It 
 could hardly be more distant, for a voyage from Phila- 
 delphia to London or Marseilles took less time and money, 
 and involved less risk and hardship, than a trip to Cincin- 
 nati or Natchez. 
 
 Gouverneur Morris said, at the time of the Louisiana 
 purchase, that he had known since the day when the 
 Constitution was adopted that all North America must at 
 length be annexed.' 
 
 At the close of the Revolutionary War, both England 
 and America regarded the long frontier on the north of 
 the United States as not unlikely to be soon the scene of 
 renewed hostilities. John Adams, in October, 1785, 
 writes from abroad to the Secretary of State, that some 
 of the opposition in Great Britain were saying "that 
 Canada and Nova Scotia must soon be ours ; there must 
 be a war for it ; they know how it will end, but the sooner 
 the better; this done, we shall be forever at peace; till 
 then, never." 
 
 But we had a boundary still more difficult to the south- 
 ward. The end of the Seven Years' War in Europe had 
 seen France cede to Spain New Orleans, with so much of 
 her Louisiana territory as lay west of the Mississippi, and 
 the rest to Great Britain. A cession from Spain of her 
 claims on the Floridas had confirmed these as English 
 possessions, and made the Mississippi their western bound- 
 ary, but during our Revolutionary War, Spain had 
 recaptured them, and -her title was confirmed by the 
 peace of 1783. 
 
 In 1800, Spain ceded back her Louisiana territories to 
 
 ' Writings, iii, 185. » Works, viii, 333. 
 
II 
 
 France, and the century opened with Spain bounding us 
 below Georgia, and France hemming us in at the mouth 
 of the Mississippi, and by an undefined and, perhaps, in- 
 definable stretch of territory running from the Gulf up 
 towards the Canadian line. 
 
 The leaders of the Revolutionary period who survived 
 were united in the belief that it was vital to our interests 
 to acquire the French title, Hamilton, ^ John Adams^ and 
 Gouverneur Morris,^ were of this mind, not less than 
 Jefferson, Madison, and Livingston. 
 
 There was a serious question as to our right to make 
 the purchase, and the administration represented the party 
 which regarded the government as one of delegated 
 powers to be strictly construed. The great leader of the 
 other school, Daniel Webster, declared, in 1837, during 
 the heat of the controversy over the admission of Texas, 
 that he did not believe the framers of the Constitution 
 contemplated the annexation of foreign territory, and 
 that, for his part, he believed it to be for the interest of 
 the Union " to remain as it is, without diminution and 
 without addition."^ We have now, however, more light 
 as to the real intention of the founders, from the published 
 letters of Gouverneur Morris, whose pen put the Consti- 
 tution in form. No " decree de crescendo imperioy he 
 wrote at the time of the Louisiana purchase, was inserted 
 in it, because no boundaries could be wisely or safely as- 
 signed to our future expansion. " I knew as well then as 
 I do now that all North America must at length be 
 annexed to us, — happy, indeed, if the lust of possession 
 stop there."' 
 
 If, on the other hand, it had been intended to keep the 
 Union forever within the limits then existing, we may be 
 sure that an express prohibition would have been inserted. 
 This was Gallatin's view when Jefferson consulted his 
 cabinet as to the Louisiana negotiation. The adverse 
 position, he wrote to the President, must be that " the 
 United States are precluded from and renounce altogether 
 
 1 Works, vi, 402. » Ljfe and Works, ix, 631. 
 
 3 Writings, iii, 185. • * Works, i, 357. 
 
 ^ Diary and Works, ii, 443. 
 
12 
 
 the enlargement of territory, a provision sufficiently im- 
 portant and singular to have deserved to be expressly 
 inserted." Jefferson's reply to this letter shows his own 
 opinion more fully than it is elsewhere given in his cor- 
 respondence. " There is," he wrote, " no constitutional 
 difficulty as to the acquisition of territory, and whether, 
 when acquired, it may be taken into the Union by the 
 Constitution as it now stands, will become a question of 
 expediency."' 
 
 It was a time, moreover, for action rather than for 
 deliberation. Between a question of constitutional con- 
 struction on the one hand, and on the other, a possible 
 French army under a Napoleon, ascending the Mississippi 
 to reconquer a New World, the administration was not 
 disposed to hesitate long as to the choice. Jefferson 
 made the purchase, and the people approved the act. 
 Never were fifteen millions of American money better 
 spent. 
 
 The next opportunity to add to our possessions came 
 in 1819, when we bought the Floridas of Spain, or at least 
 a release of her title and pretensions to them, and the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, being soon after- 
 wards called upon to say what relation we bore to the 
 new acquisition, held, to the surprise of some of the strict 
 constructionists among our public men, that the right of 
 the United States to wage war and to make treaties nec- 
 essarily implied the right to acquire new territory, whether 
 by conquest or purchase. This decision came from the 
 lips of our greatest Chief Justice, John Marshall, and 
 has been repeatedly reaffirmed by his successors on the 
 bench.2 
 
 Neither the Louisiana nor the Florida purchase had 
 presented the question of the absorption of a foreign 
 sovereignty. North Carolina and Rhode Island had 
 finally acceded to the Union, not in such a character, but 
 as having been members with the other States of a per- 
 petual Confederation, for which there had been substi- 
 tuted a new form of government. 
 
 ' Gallatin's Writings, i, 114. 
 
 « Mormon Church, v, United States, 136 U. S. Rep., 1, 43. 
 
13 
 
 In 1836, however, came an application by the republic 
 of Texas for admission into the Union, as a new and equal 
 State. 
 
 The dominant population there had always been com- 
 posed of immigrants from the United States. John 
 Quincy Adams, when President, had endeavored to buy 
 it from Mexico, 1 and similar propositions from President 
 Jackson had also been made without success.^ In 1836, 
 Texas claimed to have achieved her independence, and 
 sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate a treaty 
 of annexation. Mexico regarded her still as one of her 
 provinces, and the United States delayed recognition of 
 the new government until it should have proved its ability 
 to defend its own existence. This was deemed sufficiently 
 established after a year or two, and we, as well as the 
 leading European powers, maintained diplomatic relations 
 with Texas for several years, while the question of annex- 
 ation was pending. 
 
 The opposition to the measure was led by John Quincy 
 Adams, who introduced into the House of Representa- 
 tives, in 1838, this resolution: 
 
 ''Resolved, That the power of annexing the people of 
 any independent foreign state to this Union is a power 
 not delegated by the constitution of the United States to 
 their congress, or to any department of their government, 
 but reserved by the people. That any attempt by act of 
 congress or by treaty would be a usurpation of power, 
 unlawful and void, and which it would be the right and 
 the duty of the free people of the Union to resist and 
 annul." 
 
 If, he said, Texas is annexed, it would be such a viola- 
 tion of our national compact as " not only inevitably to 
 result in a dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it, 
 and we not only assert that the people of the free States 
 ought not to submit to it, but we say with confidence 
 that they would not submit to it." 
 
 On the other hand, many of the Southern leaders 
 announced that if Texas were not annexed, and thus an 
 
 > In 1827. Diary, vii, 239. ' Jackson offered $5,000,000 for it in 1835. 
 
opportunity offered for the extension of slavery, there 
 would be a dissolution of the Union by the act of the 
 South. 
 
 Early in 1844, a treaty of annexation was concluded, 
 but the Senate rejected it by a vote of more than two to 
 one. The admission of Texas was made the main issue 
 in the Presidential election of the year. The Democratic 
 party favored it in their platform, and won a decisive 
 victory. President Tyler, thereupon, in his message to 
 Congress at its December session, recommended that the 
 verdict of the people be ratified by an Act of annexation, 
 which should adopt and make into law the terms of agree- 
 ment already agreed on by the two governments. 
 
 A compromise bill was passed, by which the consent of 
 Congress was given to the erection of Texas into a new 
 State of the United States, but the President was author- 
 ized, should he deem it better to accomplish the same 
 purpose by a treaty, to proceed in that manner. Presi- 
 dent Tyler promptly approved the Act, and believing 
 that any treaty he might negotiate would fail in the 
 Senate, proceeded under the legislative clause, and on the 
 last day of his term of office hurried off an envoy to 
 Texas to obtain the consent of that Republic. This was 
 promptly given, and Texas, therefore, came into the 
 Union in 1845, not by treaty but by virtue of a statute of 
 the United States supported by similar legislation of her 
 own. 
 
 It is obvious that this mode of proceeding trenched 
 directly on the importance of the States, in so far as they 
 can be regarded as constituents of the Federal govern- 
 ment. Treaty making was confided by the Constitution 
 exclusively to the President and Senate, while the com- 
 position of the Senate was made such as not only to 
 secure, upon every question of that nature, an equal voice 
 to each State, but to guaranty a minority of the States 
 against being overborne by anything less than two-thirds 
 of all. The Texas precedent gave the popular branch 
 equal powers as to the admission of a foreign State, and 
 made the votes of a bare majority of the upper house 
 sufficient. 
 
15 
 
 From a very early period Cuba has been regarded by 
 leading Southern statesmen as a desirable acquisition for 
 us. In 1809, Jefferson wrote in regard to this to Presi- 
 dent Madison, that " it will be objected to our receiving 
 Cuba that no limit can then be drawn to our future 
 acquisitions. Cuba can be defended by us without a 
 navy ; and this develops the principle which ought to 
 limit our views. Nothing should ever be accepted which 
 would require a navy to defend it.'" 
 
 A few years later, John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of 
 State, in his instructions to our minister to Spain, wrote 
 that Cuba and Porto Rico were natural appendages to our 
 continent, and Cuba had become " an object of transcend- 
 ent importance to the commercial and political interests 
 of our Union. Its commanding position, with reference 
 to the Gulf of Mexico and the West India seas; the 
 character of its population ; its situation midway between 
 our southern coast and the island of San Domingo ; its 
 safe and capacious harbor of Havana, fronting a long line 
 of our shores destitute of the same advantage ; the nature 
 of its productions and of its wants, furnishing the supplies 
 and needing the returns of a commerce immensely profit- 
 able and mutually beneficial, give it an importance in the 
 sum of our national interests with which that of no other 
 foreign territoi-y can be compared, and little inferior to 
 that which binds the different members of this Union 
 together. Such, indeed, are, between the interests of that 
 island and of this country, the geographical, commercial, 
 moral, and poHtical relations formed by nature, gathering 
 in the process of time, and even now verging to maturity, 
 that, in looking forward to the probable course of events 
 for the short period of half a century, it is scarcely possi- 
 ble to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to 
 our Federal Republic will be indispensable to the contin- 
 uance and integrity of the Union itself. 
 
 " It is obvious, however, that for this event we are not 
 yet prepared. Numerous and formidable objections to 
 the extension of our territorial dominions beyond sea 
 
 ' See also John Quincy Adams' Diary, v, 38. 
 
i6 
 
 present themselves to the first contemplation of the sub- 
 ject ; obstacles to the system of policy by which alone 
 that result can be compassed and maintained are to be 
 foreseen and surmounted, both from at home and abroad ; 
 but there are laws of political as well as of physical gravita- 
 tion ; and if an apple, severed by the tempest from its 
 native tree, cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, 
 forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with 
 Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only 
 towards the North American Union, which, by the same 
 law of nature, cannot cast her off from its bosom. "^ 
 
 The immediate object in view was to prevent Great 
 Britain from acquiring Cuba. Jefferson wrote to Presi- 
 dent Monroe, at about the same time (1823) that, should 
 Great Britain take it, he would not be for going to war 
 for it, " because the first war on other accounts will give 
 it to us, or the island will give itself to us when able to 
 do so." If we could get it peaceably, he said, it " would 
 fill up the measure of our well being." President Polk 
 tried to buy it from Spain, and a hundred millions is said 
 to have been the sum offered. 
 
 In 1852, Great Britain and France proposed to us the 
 formation of a tripartite agreement, b}'^ which each power 
 should disclaim forever anj' intention to obtain possession 
 of the island, and all undertake to discountenance any 
 attempts to acquire it on the part of any other govern- 
 ment. President Fillmore declined the overture, but in 
 referring to it in his annual message, said, that were Cuba 
 " comparatively destitute of inhabitants or occupied by a 
 kindred race, I should regard it, if voluntarily ceded by 
 Spain, as a most desirable acquisition. But under exist- 
 ing circumstances, I should look upon its incorporation 
 into our Union as a very hazardous measure. It would 
 bring into the Confederacy a population of a different 
 national stock, speaking a different language, and not 
 likely to harmonize with the other members." 
 
 President Fillmore had, however, proposed and entered 
 into a somewhat similar convention, two years before, 
 with Great Britain, with reference to Central America. 
 
 1 Wharton's Dig. of Int. Law, I, 361. 
 
17 
 
 By this the contracting parties covenanted that neither 
 would ever occupy, colonize, or assume any dominion 
 over any part of it. Mr. Buchanan, while our min- 
 ister to England in 1854, in alluding to this Clayton- 
 Bulwer convention of April 19, 1850, in a communication 
 to the British foreign department, used this language: 
 
 " Both parties adopted this self-denying ordinance for 
 the purpose of terminating serious misunderstandings 
 then existing between them, which might have endangered 
 their friendly relations. Whether the United States 
 acted wisely or not in relinquishing their right as an inde- 
 pendent nation, to acquire territory in a region on their 
 own continent, which may become necessary for the secu- 
 rity of their communication with their important and 
 valuable possessions on the Pacific, is another and a differ- 
 ent question. But they have concluded the convention ; 
 their faith is pledged, and under such circumstances, they 
 never look behind the record." 
 
 The treaty of 1848, which closed the Mexican War, had 
 given us, on payment of $15,000,000, New Mexico and 
 California, and in 1853 another cession from Mexico — the 
 " Gadsden purchase," added Southern Arizona at a cost 
 of $10,000,000 more. These new possessions turned pub- 
 lic attention to the necessity of a canal across the isthmus 
 of Panama, and it was in the negotiations with reference 
 to the status of such a canal that the covenant just men- 
 tioned in the Clayton-Bulwer convention was proposed 
 by our government and accepted by Great Britain. But 
 the prospect of such a canal made the command of the 
 entrance to the Gulf of Mexico doubly important to us, 
 and gave a new color to our diplomacy regarding Cuba. 
 Edward Everett, in one of his communications to the 
 British minister, when Secretarj^ of State, in 1852, said 
 that " territorially and commercially it would in our hands 
 be an extremely valuable possession. Under certain 
 contingencies it might be almost essential to our safety." 
 
 The Ostend manifesto of 1854 emphasized these con- 
 siderations, and intimated quite strongly that if a peace- 
 ful cession could not be accomplished, a conquest might 
 be dictated by the law of self-preservation. 
 3 
 
i8 
 
 President Buchanan devoted three pages of his second 
 annual messag-e, in 1858, to the Cuban question, referring 
 to the fact that former administrations had repeatedly en- 
 deavored to purchase the island. The increasing trade of 
 the Mississippi valley, he said, and the position of Cuba 
 as commanding the mouth of the river rendered its pos- 
 session " of vast importance to the United States," and, 
 trusting in the efficacy of ready money, he recommended 
 an appropriation by Congress, to enable him to make an 
 advance to Spain, should he be able to negotiate a cession, 
 immediately on the signature of the treaty, and before its 
 ratification by the Senate. A bill appropriating $30,000,- 
 000 was thereupon introduced in the House, and favorably 
 reported, but no further progress was made. In his 
 messages of 1859 ^"^ i860, the President repeated his 
 recommendation of a purchase, urging that it would se- 
 cure the immediate abolition of the slave trade ; but the 
 forces that were working towards something greater, the 
 aboHtion of slavery, were such as to render any serious 
 consideration of the Cuban question now impossible. 
 
 An Act passed under the Buchanan administration, 
 which is still on the statute books. Rev. Stat. Title LXXII, 
 expHcitly affirms the power of the United States to 
 acquire foreign territory by right of discovery, and is also 
 of importance as one of the few laws by which large 
 powers, not belonging strictly to the executive function, 
 have been placed by Congress in the hands of the President. 
 This statute provides that whenever any of our citizens 
 discovers and takes possession of any guano deposits on 
 any island, rock or key, which does not belong to any 
 other government, "such island, rock or key may at the 
 discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining 
 to the United States." All laws as to crimes and offences 
 committed on the high seas are extended over such places. 
 Trade in the guano is to be regulated as is our ordinary 
 coasting trade. The United States shall not be obliged 
 to retain possession of such places after the guano has 
 been removed. 
 
 The island of Navassa, some two miles long, lying be- 
 
19 
 
 tween San Domingo and Jamaica, discovered in 1857, is 
 now a part of the United States, under this Act of 1856. 
 Not long ago there were a hundred and fifty persons Hv- 
 ing on it, all engaged in the removal of the guano. One 
 of them killed another, and was promptly punished by 
 the Courts of the United States. 
 
 Under President Lincoln's administration, the country 
 had enough to think of in trying to preserve its territory, 
 without endeavoring to enlarge it. He did, however, 
 recommend to Congress in 1861, the consideration of a 
 colonization scheme by which the freedmen of the South 
 and such of our free colored population as might desire it, 
 might be transported to some foreign land, where in a 
 climate congenial to them, they might build up a new 
 community. To carry out this plan, " may," he said, " in- 
 volve the acquiring of territory and also the appropriation 
 of money beyond that to be expended in the territorial 
 acquisition. Having practiced the acquisition of territory 
 for nearly sixty years, the question of constitutional 
 power to do so is no longer an open one with us. . . . 
 On this whole proposition, including the appropriation of 
 money with the acquisition of territory, does not the 
 expediency amount to absolute necessity : — that without 
 which the Government itself cannot be perpetuated ? " 
 
 When, a year later, slavery was abolished in the District 
 of Columbia, $500,000 was appropriated to aid in coloniz- 
 ing such of the freedmen as might wish to emigrate, in 
 Hayti or Liberia. A few were aided to leave the country 
 in this way, most of whom were taken by the government 
 to lie a Vache, off the coast of New Granada, and the 
 rest to Liberia. 
 
 Alaska was bought of Russia, by treaty, in 1867, for 
 $7,200,000. The House of Representatives insisted for a 
 time on the necessity of an Act of Congress to legalize the 
 purchase, but the Senate refused to concur in this view, 
 and the point was finally yielded. By this acquisition we 
 came into possession not only of a part of the continent 
 remote from our own, but of distant islands, some of them 
 over two thousand miles from the nearest point of sea 
 
20 
 
 coast previously within our jurisdicton. The test of con- 
 tiguity, as determining the right of annexation, was now, 
 therefore, finally and deliberately abandoned. It was 
 abandoned also with almost unanimous acquiescence, 
 since there were but two votes in the Senate against the 
 ratification of the treaty. 
 
 Had President Jackson had his way, a similar position 
 would probably have been taken by our government 
 thirty years before, for. in 1835, he authorized our minis- 
 ter to Mexico to offer her half a million dollars for a 
 cession of the bay of San Francisco and the adjacent 
 shore.' 
 
 In the same year which witnessed the purchase of 
 Alaska, Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State, also negotiated 
 a treaty with Denmark for the cession of the West India 
 islands of St. Thomas and St. John, on our paying her 
 $7,500,000 for them. President Johnson, in his annual 
 message for 1867, thus alludes to their proposed annexa- 
 tion : 
 
 " In our revolutionary war, ports and harbors in the 
 West India islands were used by our enemy, to the great 
 injury and embarrassment of the United States. We had 
 the same experience in our second war with Great Britain. 
 The same European policy for a long time excluded us 
 even from ti'ade with the West Indies, while we were at 
 peace with all nations. In our recent civil war the rebels, 
 and their piratical and blockade-breaking allies, found 
 facilities in the same ports for the work, which they too 
 successfully accomplished, of injuring and devastating the 
 commerce which we are now engaged in rebuilding. We 
 labored especially under this disadvantage, that European 
 steam vessels, emplo3^ed by our enemies, found friendly 
 shelter, protection, and supplies in West Indian ports, 
 while our naval operations were necessarily carried on 
 from our own distant shores. There was then a universal 
 feeling of the want of an advanced naval outpost between 
 the Atlantic coast and Europe. The duty of obtaining 
 such an outpost peacefully and lawfully, while neither 
 doing nor menacing injury to other States, earnestly en- 
 gaged the attention of the Executive department before 
 
 1 Whart. Int. Law Dig., I, 557. 
 
21 
 
 the close of the war, and it has not been lost sight of since 
 that time. A not entirely dissimilar naval want revealed 
 itself during the same period on the Pacific coast. The 
 required foothold there was fortunately secured by our 
 late treaty with the Emperor of Russia, and it now seems 
 imperative that the more obvious necessities of the Atlan- 
 tic coast should not be less carefully provided for. A 
 good and convenient port and harbor, capable of easy 
 defence, will supply that want. With the possession of 
 such a station by the United States, neither we nor any 
 other American nation need longer apprehend injury or 
 offence from any transatlantic enemy. I agree with our 
 early statesmen that the West Indies naturally gravitate 
 to, and may be expected ultimately to be absorbed by the 
 continental States, including our own. 1 agree with them 
 also that it is wise to leave the question of such absorption 
 to this process of natural political gravitation. The 
 islands of St. Thomas and St. John's, which constitute a 
 part of the group called the Virgin islands, seemed to 
 offer us advantages immediately desirable, while their 
 acquisition could be secured in harmony with the princi- 
 ples to which I have alluded." 
 
 At this time the relations of President Johnson to the 
 Senate were anything but harmonious, and mainly from 
 this cause, I think, the treaty was rejected in 1868, although 
 the inhabitants of both islands had alread}^ voted in favor 
 of annexation. 
 
 Shortly after Gen. Grant's accession to the Presidency, 
 he concluded the negotiation with the Dominican Repub- 
 lic, begun by Secretary Seward at the close of the pre- 
 ceding administration,' of a treaty of annexation of so 
 much of the island of San Domingo as was not included 
 within the limits of Hayti. As in the case of Texas, two 
 independent sovereignties thus contracted for the absorp- 
 tion of one into the other, but unlike Texas, San Domingo 
 was not to enter the Union as one of the States that 
 compose it. The treaty was rejected by a tie vote in the 
 Senate. In his next message to Congress, the President 
 earnestly recommended legislative action in the same di- 
 rection. 
 
 ' Seward's Works, v. 29. 
 
22 
 
 " The acquisition of San Domingo," he said, " is desira- 
 ble because of its geographical position." . . . "At 
 present our coast trade between the States bordering on 
 the Atlantic and those bordering on the Gulf of Mexico 
 is cut into by the Bahamas, and the Antilles. Twice we 
 must, as it were, pass through foreign countries to get by 
 sea from Georgia to the West coast of Florida." . . " The 
 acquisition of San Domingo is an adherence to the * Mon- 
 roe Doctrine ' ; it is a measure of natural protection ; it is 
 asserting our just claim to a controlling influence over the 
 great commercial traffic soon to flow from West to East 
 by way of the Isthmus of Darien." 
 
 Congress responded to these appeals by sending an able 
 commission. Senator Wade, President Andrew D. White, 
 and Dr. Samuel G. Howe of Boston, to visit San Do- 
 mingo. They reported in favor of its annexation, but the 
 project went no farther. 
 
 The opposition to Grant in this matter was started by 
 Charles Sumner, then at the head of the Senate Commit- 
 tee on Foreign Relations, who seems to have been gov- 
 erned largely by his interest in the colored race.' To 
 them, he believed, belonged " the equatorial belt." They 
 had established a republic in Hayti. If San Domingo 
 were annexed to the United States, Hayti must inevitably 
 decline, and there would be a new argument for those 
 who denied the capacity of the negro for self-government. 
 
 Down to the close of the reconstruction period, which 
 followed the Civil War, there was, indeed, no time after 
 the Louisiana purchase when the question of the right 
 and policy of annexation, with respect to any foreign ter- 
 ritory, was not determined by every public man largely 
 in accordance with his views of its bearing on the future 
 of the Southern blacks. Grant, himself, was looking to 
 San Domingo as the site of further States of our Union, 
 peopled and governed by colonies of our new class of 
 freed men. 
 
 The American people, in the words of Henry Adams, 
 began the century with the " ambition to use the entire 
 continent for their experiments."'" Jefferson was their 
 
 ' Memoir and Letters, iv, 448. ^ History of the United States, ii, 301. 
 
23 
 
 leader, and of all American statesmen he best understood 
 and represented the popular sentiment of his day. What 
 Lincoln was to the North, Jefierson was to the country. 
 But Jefferson had the larger, though less balanced mind. 
 He was an idealist and an optimist. With equal rights 
 and opportunties to every citizen, and to every State, he 
 feared no extension of territory for a Union resting on 
 community of interest and individual liberty. Jefferson 
 never believed that the prosperity of the South was de- 
 pendent on the institution of slavery, but, for half a 
 century, among his successors in the conduct of the 
 government, were many who did. Our policy as to 
 annexation, therefore, soon became a sectional question, 
 and so continued until the Southern negro was given 
 not only freedom, but the right of suffrage. 
 
 President Grant's administration in 1872, by an agree- 
 ment between one of our naval officers and the chief of 
 Tatuila, one of the Samoan islands, obtained the exclusive 
 privilege of establishing a coaling station at the port of 
 Pango Pango, and President Hayes took possession of 
 the privilege ceded in 1879. 
 
 The arts of civilization were introduced into the Sand- 
 wich Islands by American missionaries in the first quarter 
 of this century, and their trade has always been largely 
 with this country. They lie three hundred miles nearer 
 San Francisco than the outermost of the Aleutian islands, 
 which came to us as a part of the Alaska purchase. In 
 1843, ^" English officer, without authority, took posses- 
 sion of Hawaii, in behalf of the Queen, but this action 
 was promptly disavowed by his government. Our Sec- 
 retary of State, Mr. Legare, wrote, upon this event, to 
 our minister to England, that these islands bore such 
 peculiar relations to us that we might feel justified in 
 interfering by force to prevent their conquest by any 
 of the great powers of Europe.' Great Britain and 
 France, however, allayed any ill-feeling on the part of 
 our government by a convention made during this year, 
 
 ' Whai-t. lut. Law, Dig., I, 418. 
 
24 
 
 by which each covenanted never to take possession of 
 the islands or assume a protectorate over them. 
 
 In 1853, Mr. Marcy, as Secretary of State, in instruc- 
 tions to our minister to France, wrote of them thus : " It 
 seems to be inevitable that they must come under the 
 control of this Government." Two years later he in- 
 formed our minister to Hawaii that we would receive 
 the transfer of territorial sovereignty of the islands. In 
 1868, the subject was again brought up, but Secretary 
 Seward, fresh from his disappointments with reference to 
 the Danish West Indies, wrote our minister that the time 
 was unfavorable for the consideration of annexation pro- 
 positions by the United States. 
 
 By the treaty of reciprocity in 1875, the two countries 
 were drawn closer together, and the commerce between 
 them was soon doubled. 
 
 Early in the present year, a treaty of annexation was 
 laid before the Senate, but withdrawn on the accession 
 of the new administration. In his message accompanying 
 the treaty, President Harrison said that the deposition of 
 the Queen had left but two courses open to the United 
 States, the assumption of a protectorate, or annexation. 
 The views of the present administration may be inferred 
 from President Cleveland's first message, in 1884, in which 
 he said, " I do not favor a policy of acquisition of new and 
 distant territory, or the incorporation of remote interests 
 with our own." 
 
 The annexation of Canada, so ardently desired by 
 Franklin and all the statesmen of the Revolution, has 
 never since that period been made a subject of formal 
 diplomatic discussion. Its growth in wealth and popu- 
 lation, and its federation into a great Dommion of many 
 provinces, are evidently paving the way to independence. 
 When that time comes, annexation will follow. 
 
 Her institutions are every year becoming better fitted 
 to coalesce with our own, as her provinces, each with a 
 life and history of its own, participate by their represen- 
 tatives in general legislation at a common capital, under 
 an executive who, during his term of office, is more 
 
25 
 
 secure in his position than the prime minister of Great 
 Britain, and hardly more subject to the pleasure of the 
 sovereign. 
 
 The French Canadians are of a different race and 
 tongue and religion from that of most of the Americans 
 of the Revolutionary era. But if they were not afraid 
 to admit them to citizenship of the United States in the 
 eighteenth century, surely we need not be when the time 
 comes, in the twentieth. The Americans of to-day are a 
 composite race, and universal religious toleration has 
 made us sensible that men's religious beliefs are danger- 
 ous to the community only when they are forced to con- 
 ceal or suppress them. The Roman church has frankly 
 accepted the right of every people to such form of 
 government as they may choose for themselves, and the 
 million of Catholics in Canada would be no more, as 
 such, a factor in American politics than the million of 
 Catholics who arc to-day inhabitants of New York, or 
 the more than a million who are citizens of New England. 
 
 The different provinces of Canada are so situated with 
 respect to each other, and the natural boundaries of sepa- 
 ration between most of them are such, that their trade 
 gravitates southward to the United States, in seeking its 
 center of distribution. What it has to sell, it can sell best 
 to us. What it needs to buy, it finds best here. 
 
 The immense area which the Dominion of Canada now 
 includes, it is beyond the powers of any mere colony or 
 group of colonies to bring under the full influences of 
 civilization. As fast as it approaches that end, so fast it 
 also approaches the necessity of independence of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 It is probable that Great Britain would make little ob- 
 jection to the severance from her possessions of so costly 
 and unremunerative a dependence. Before the negotia- 
 tion of the treaty of Washington, our Secretary of State, 
 Mr. Fish, in conversation with Sir Edward Thornton, the 
 British minister, said that our " Alabama " claims were 
 too large to be settled in money, and intimated that a 
 cession of Canada might be accepted as a satisfactory 
 adjustment. The reply was that England did not wish to 
 4 
 
26 
 
 keep Canada, but could not part with it without the con- 
 sent of its population.' 
 
 The original area of the United States, before the 
 Louisana purchase, was perhaps, a million of square 
 miles.^ That acquisition, and the subsequent cession of 
 the Floridas, much more than doubled our territory. 
 Texas then came to us with three hundred thousand 
 square miles, and Mexico, in 1848 and 1853, ceded a some- 
 what greater number. In Alaska, we received, in 1867, 
 an addition of over half a million, and thus our total area 
 now is a little more than 3,500,000 square miles. 
 
 Canada and Newfoundland cover about the same extent 
 of territory, or over 3,524,000 square miles, estimating for 
 part of British Columbia not yet accurately surveyed. 
 
 At the time of the Revolution, the latest authority on 
 American geography was the American Gazetteer, pub- 
 lished in London, in 1776. It gave the total area of the 
 North American continent, with a precision not aimed at 
 by modern statisticians, at 3,699,087 square miles. The 
 founders of the United States did not dream that the 
 narrow line of States they had drawn together could in a 
 century come to include a territory of three millions and 
 a half of square miles, and still have bej^ond them another 
 area of equal magnitude, and much of it of equal fertility 
 and natural resources, into which to expand, in the next 
 century. But that expansion 1 believe it is our destiny 
 to accomplish, and by no other means than those of peace 
 and mutual good will. The good faith of the nation was 
 pledged by the Clayton-Bulwer treaty against further 
 extension to the southward, though it is doubtful whether 
 this is still binding upon us f but the North American 
 continent with every island on the east, and the Hawaiian 
 group upon the west, all bound to it as satellites to their 
 
 ' Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, iv, 409. 
 
 " This is the estimate given in Morse's American Geography, published in 
 1793. 
 
 * See Eeport of Senate Committee on Foreign Relations of Dec, 22, 1892, 
 on Senate Bill No. 1218. 
 
27 
 
 planet will, if we continue in our historic policy as to an- 
 nexation, eventually come under the flag of the United 
 States. 
 
 It has been argued with great force by an eminent 
 authority on American constitutional law,' that our plan 
 of government makes no provision for a colonial system. 
 But the relations of an extra-territorial possession to the 
 United States can never be those of a colony to a 
 European power. Such a colony has generally been 
 treated as a dependency held for the benefit of the com- 
 mercial interests of the mother country. Its trade, con- 
 ducted by others and for others, has brought Httle benefit 
 to its own inhabitants, to whom the navigation laws im- 
 posed upon them by a distant power have often seemed 
 a kind of spoliation, under the name of protection. 
 
 But any possessions, separated from the continent, 
 which the United States 'may acquire, can rely on being 
 governed under some system devised for the interest of 
 all concerned, and administered by their own inhabitants, 
 so far as they may show a capacity for self-government. 
 
 Nor yet need we fear that the United States would not, 
 if the occasion demanded, rule with a strong hand, when 
 we recall the almost despotic system of administration 
 which under the administration of Jefferson was forced 
 upon the unwilling inhabitants of the Louisiana and 
 Orleans territories, and maintained until they had learned 
 the real quaUties and conditions of American citizenship. 
 
 Up to the present time the cost of such of our territory 
 as has come to us by purchase, has been, in all, as follows : 
 
 1803, Louisiana, $15,000,000 
 
 1819, Florida, 5,000,000 
 
 1848, California and New Mexico, 15,000,000 
 
 1853, Arizona 10,000,000 
 
 18G7, Alaska, 7,200,000 
 
 Total 152,200,000 
 
 ^ Judge Cooley in the Forum for June, 1893, vol. xv, p. 393. 
 
28 
 
 It has been cheaply bought, even if we add to these 
 sums the expenditures in the Seminole War, which fol- 
 lowed the Florida purchase, and of the Mexican War, 
 which had so close a connection with those which came 
 next. 
 
 The policy of annexation, up to the time of the Civil 
 War, was mainly pressed by Southern influence, and 
 largely in the interest of slavery. But slavery would 
 never have been overthrown, had not the country spread 
 out over the Northern portions of the Louisiana pur- 
 chase and the Pacific coast. It was the new States, on 
 new territory, that turned the balance against the South 
 in the final struggle. Into them poured the tide of immi- 
 gration which Southern statesmen had vainly hoped the 
 severity of Northern winters would repel. 
 
 A Congress of Southern Governors was held at Rich- 
 mond in April of this year, to devise means to attract 
 emigrants to their section of the country. I hope their 
 plans may prosper, but there is no stronger power in 
 directing movements of population than that of sentiment, 
 especially when resting on tradition. A public sentiment 
 against slavery kept immigration from the Southern States 
 while slavery endured, and a traditionary feeling keeps it 
 from them still. Another generation must pass away 
 before the Carolinas or Arkansas will be as attractive as 
 Nebraska and Oregon, to those who seek new homes 
 across the sea. 
 
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