PREFACE THE purport of the term "expansion" is sometimes carelessly misunderstood. It is, apparently, supposed to apply to nothing but acquisition of territory, and to that of recent date; to wit, our annexation of Porto Rico and the Philippines. Such a conception is inadequate and misleading. Expansion is no new thing, and it is not measured by any geographical scale. Its history begins with the history of the nation, and both its causes and its effects are intimately intertwined with almost every fibre of our national being. The expansion of the human body is a process of physical growth which is maintained incessantly so long as vitality is in the ascendant. When growth ceases the man begins to die. Moreover, it involves something far more than increase of physical bulk and stature. It is accompanied by a corresponding and, indeed, largely consequent development of the intellectual and spiritual nature. We may not say that the mind and soul are always developed commensurately with the physical body. But it is unquestionable that their development does largely depend upon the development of the physical powers and upon the extension of activities which this makes both possible and necessary. A person leading the life of a babe in swaddling clothes could never hope to attain the intellectual and spiritual development of an active man of affairs. The same principle is applicable to the state. Territorial expansion increases power, enlarges the sphere of activity, adds to responsibilities and duties, creates new problems for solution, leads to new relationships, and thus induces constitutional that is, intellectual and moral-development of the nation. This is generally true of growing states. It is especially true of a new country under a constitutional government, in which the process of expansion began, practically, with the foundation of the state and has been maintained at intervals ever since. The history of American expansion is therefore something far more than a record of geographical extension, or even of wars and treaties. It involves the history, in large measure, of constitutional development and interpretation, of domestic institutions, of foreign relations, and of our whole national life. It is, moreover, a consistent and logical history. The physical growth of a man is a steady, persistent process, not an irregular series of disconnected spasms. We may say the same of our territorial expansion. However widely and irregularly separated by time, the individual acts of territorial acquisition are all intimately and essentially related. Order and design characterize them. The law of cause and effect is dominant among them. In the first step of expansion, in colonial times, every subsequent step was forecast and made inevitable. From Washington at Great Meadows to Dewey in Manila Bay the span, in both time and space, is enormous, but it is a span of unbroken links of cause and effect, coherent, logical, and inevitable. The history of American expansion, then, must trace this sequence of causes and effects. It must also note where national necessity here and there impinges upon the line to direct it hither or thither, and where in return the processes of expansion exert their influence upon the development of national institutions and the whole course of national thought and life. To do this with all possible completeness might well be a long lifework, and involve a publication of encyclopædic compass. The present essay has no such ambition. It aims to present the salient features of the great story, succinctly yet with sufficient comprehensiveness, at least, to suggest where it does not instruct. It aims, moreover, to deal justly with the varying phases of the checkered story. For it is not all pride and sunshine. The nation has not always acted wisely and well. There are things to condemn as well as to commend. Acts are not always necessarily right just because our own country performs them. The best that we can claim, and we can truly claim it, is that, on the whole, our expansion has been a sound and beneficent growth, contributing to elevation of mind and spirit as well as to enlargement of area on the map of the world; so that out of all the storm and stress of disputed and sometimes devious ways— "Earth's biggest country's got her soul, And risen up earth's greatest nation." It is in such confident faith that these pages have been penned, and in such a spirit that they are laid before the American people. NEW YORK, June, 1903. W. F. J. |