Charles Francis Adams - Imperialism and The Tracks of Our Forefathers
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Charles Francis Adams >> Imperialism and The Tracks of Our Forefathers
"Imperialism"
AND
"The Tracks of Our Forefathers"
A PAPER READ BY
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
_Before the Lexington, Massachusetts, Historical Society_
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1898
"In a word, many wise men thought it a time wherein those two miserable
adjuncts, which Nerva was deified for uniting, _imperium et libertas_, were
as well reconciled as is possible."--_Clarendon's History of the Rebellion,
B. 1. Sec. 163._
"I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither wander
nor stumble."--_Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America._
BOSTON
DANA ESTES & COMPANY
210 SUMMER STREET
1899
"IMPERIALISM"
AND
"THE TRACKS OF OUR FOREFATHERS."
What the feast of the Passover was to the children of Israel, that the
days between the nineteenth of December and the fourth of January--the
Yuletide--are and will remain to the people of New England. The Passover
began "in the first month on the fourteenth day of the month at even,"
and it lasted one week, "until the one and twentieth day of the month at
even." It was the period of the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb, and the
feast of unleavened bread; and of it as a commemoration it is written,
"When your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service?
that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who
passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote
the Egyptians. Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt
in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years." And thus, by their yearly
Passover, were the Jewish congregations of old put in mind what farewell
they took of the land of Egypt.
So our own earliest records tell us that it was on the morning of
Saturday, of what is now the nineteenth of December, that the little
exploring party from the _Mayflower_, then lying at her anchor in
Provincetown Harbor, after a day and night of much trouble and danger,
sorely buffeted by wind and wave in rough New England's December seas,
found themselves on an island in Plymouth Bay. It was a mild, "faire
sunshining day. And this being the last day of the weeke, they prepared
ther to keepe the Sabath. On Munday they sounded the harbor, and marched
into the land, and found a place fitt for situation. So they returned to
their shipp againe [at Provincetown] with this news. On the twenty-fifth
of December they weyed anchor to goe to the place they had discovered,
and came within two leagues of it, but were faine to bear up againe; but
the twenty-sixth day, the winde came faire, and they arrived safe in
this harbor. And after wards tooke better view of the place, and
resolved wher to pitch their dwelling; and the fourth day [of January]
begane to erecte the first house for commone use to receive them and
their goods." Such, in the quaint language of Bradford, is the calendar
of New England's Passover; and, beginning on the nineteenth of December,
it ends on the fourth of January, covering as nearly as may be the
Christmas holyday period.
Is there any better use to which the Passover anniversary can be put
than to retrospection? "And when your children shall say unto you, What
mean you by this service? ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the
Lord's passover, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses."
So the old story is told again, being thus kept ever green in memory;
and, in telling it, the experiences of the past are brought insensibly
to bear on the conditions of the present. Thus, once a year, like the
Israelites of old, we, as a people, may take our bearings and verify our
course, as we plunge on out of the infinite past into the unknowable
future. It is a useful practice; and we are here this first evening of
our Passover period to observe it.
This, too, is an Historical Society,--that of Lexington, "a name," as,
when arraigned before the tribunal of the French Terror, Danton said of
his own, "tolerably known in the Revolution;" and I am invited to
address you because I am President of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, the most venerable organization of the sort in America, perhaps
in the world. Thus, to-night, though we shall necessarily have to touch
on topics of the day, and topics exciting the liveliest interest and
most active discussion, we will in so doing look at them,--not as
politicians or as partisans, nor from the commercial or religious side,
but solely from the historical point of view. We shall judge of the
present in its relations to the past. And, unquestionably, there is
great satisfaction to be derived from so doing; the mere effort seems at
once to take us into another atmosphere,--an atmosphere as foreign to
unctuous cant as it is to what is vulgarly known as "electioneering
taffy." This evening we pass away from the noisy and heated turmoil of
partisan politics, with its appeals to prejudice, passion, and material
interest, into the cool of a quiet academic discussion. It is like going
out of some turbulent caucus, or exciting ward-room debate, and finding
oneself suddenly confronted by the cold, clear light of the December
moon, shining amid the silence of innumerable stars.
Addressing ourselves, therefore, to the subject in hand, the question at
once suggests itself,--What year in recent times has been in a large way
more noteworthy and impressive, when looked at from the purely
historical point of view, than this year of which we are now observing
the close? The first Passover of the Israelites ended a drama of more
than four centuries' duration, for "the sojourning of the children of
Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years; and at
the end of the four hundred and thirty years all the hosts of the Lord
went out from the land of Egypt." So the Passover we now celebrate
commemorates the closing of another world drama of almost precisely the
same length, and one of deepest significance, as well as unsurpassed
historic interest. These world dramas are lengthy affairs; for, while we
men are always in a hurry, the Almighty never is: on the contrary, as
the Psalmist observed, so now, "a thousand years in his sight are but as
yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." The drama I
have referred to as this week brought to its close, is that known in
history as Spanish Domination in America. It began, as we all know, on
the twenty-first of October, 1492; it has been continuous through six
years over four centuries. It now passes into history; the verdict may
be made up.
So far as I personally am concerned,--a matter needless to say of very
trifling consequence,--this verdict was rendered a year ago. It was
somewhat Rhadamanthine; but a twelve-month of further reflection has
shown no cause in any respect to revise it. In referring to what was
then plainly impending, in December, 1897, before the blowing up of the
battleship _Maine_, before a conflict had become inevitable, I used this
language in a paper read to the Massachusetts Historical Society: "When
looking at the vicissitudes of human development, we are apt to assume a
certain air of optimism, and take advancement as the law of being, as a
thing of course, indisputable. We are charitable, too; and to deny to
any given race or people some degree of use in the economy of Nature, or
the plan of Creation, is usually regarded as indicative of narrowness of
view. The fatal, final word "pessimist" is apt to be whispered in
connection with the name of one who ventures to suggest a doubt of this
phase of the doctrine known as Universalism. And yet, at this time when,
before our eyes, it is breathing its last, I want some one to point out
a single good thing in law, or science, or art, or literature,--material,
moral or intellectual,--which has resulted to the race of man upon earth
from Spanish domination in America. I have tried to think of one in
vain. It certainly has not yielded an immortality, an idea, or a
discovery; it has, in fact, been one long record of reaction and
retrogression, than which few pages in the record of mankind have been
more discouraging or less fruitful of good. What is now taking place in
Cuba is historical. It is the dying out of a dominion, the influence of
which will be seen and felt for centuries in the life of two continents;
just as what is taking place in Turkey is the last fierce flickering up
of Asiatic rule in Europe, on the very spot where twenty-four centuries
ago Asiatic rule in Europe was thought to have been averted forever. The
two, Ottoman rule in Europe, and Spanish rule in America, now stand at
the bar of history; and, scanning the long four-century record of each,
I have been unable to see what either has contributed to the accumulated
possessions of the human race, or why both should not be classed among
the many instances of the arrested civilization of a race, developing by
degrees an irresistible tendency to retrogression."
This, one year ago; and while the embers of the last Greco-Turkish
struggle, still white, were scarcely cold on the plain of Marathon. The
time since passed has yielded fresh proof in support of this harsh
judgment; for, if there is one historical law better and more
irreversibly established than another, it is that, in the case of
nations even more than in the case of individuals, their sins will find
them out,--the day of reckoning may not be escaped. Noticeably, has
this proved so in the case of Spain. The year 1500 may be said to have
found that country at the apex of her greatness. America had then been
newly discovered; the Moor was just subdued. Nearly half a century
before (1453) the Roman Empire had fallen, and, with the storming of
Constantinople by the Saracens, disappeared from the earth. That event,
it may be mentioned in passing, closed another world drama continuous
through twenty-two centuries,--upon the whole the most wonderful of the
series. And so, when Roman empire vanished, that of Spain began. It was
ushered in by the landfall of Columbus; and when, just three hundred
years later, in 1792, the subject was discussed in connection with its
third centennial, the general verdict of European thinkers was that the
discovery of America had, upon the whole, been to mankind the reverse of
beneficent. This conclusion has since been commented upon with derision;
yet, when made, it was right. The United States had in 1792 just
struggled into existence, and its influence on the course of human
events had not begun to make itself felt. Those who considered the
subject had before them, therefore, only Spanish domination in America,
and upon that their verdict cannot be gainsaid; for, from the year 1492
down, the history of Spain and Spanish domination has undeniably been
one long series of crimes and violations of natural law, the penalty for
which has not apparently even yet been exacted in full.
Of those national crimes four stand out in special prominence,
constituting counts in a national indictment than which history shows
few more formidable. These four were: (1) The expulsion, first, of the
Jews, and then of the Moors, or Moriscoes, from Spain, late in the
fifteenth and early in the sixteenth centuries; (2) the annals of "the
Council of Blood" in the Netherlands, and the eighty years of
internecine warfare through which Holland fought its way out from under
Spanish rule; (3) the Inquisition, the most ingenious human machinery
ever invented to root out and destroy whatever a people had that was
intellectually most alert, inquisitive, and progressive; and, finally
(4), the policy of extermination, and, where not of extermination, of
cruel oppression, systematically pursued towards the aborigines of
America. Into the grounds on which the different counts of this
indictment rest it would be impossible now to enter. Were it desirable
so to do, time would not permit. Suffice it to say, the penalty had to
be paid to the uttermost farthing; and one large instalment fell due,
and was mercilessly exacted, during the year now drawing to its close.
Spanish domination in America ceased,--the drama ended as it was
entering on its fifth century,--and it can best be dismissed with the
solemn words of Abraham Lincoln, uttered more than thirty years ago,
when contemplating a similar expiation we were ourselves paying in blood
and grief for a not dissimilar violation of an everlasting law,--"Yet,
if God wills that this mighty scourge continue until all the wealth
piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be
paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years
ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether!'"
But not only is this year memorable as witnessing the downfall and
complete extirpation of that Spanish rule in America which began with
Columbus, but the result, when it at last came about, was marked by
incidents more curiously fitting and dramatic than it would have been
possible for a Shakspeare to have conceived. Columbus, as we all know,
stumbled, as it were, on America as he sailed west in search of
Asia,--Cipango he was looking for, and he found Cuba. It is equally well
known that he never discovered his mistake. When fourteen years later he
died, it was in the faith that, through him, Europe had by a westward
movement established itself in the archipelagoes of Asia. And now, at
last, four centuries afterward, the blow which did most to end the
American domination he established was struck in Asiatic waters; and,
through it and the descendants of another race, America seems on the
threshold of realizing the mistaken belief of Columbus, and by a
westward movement establishing the European in that very archipelago
Columbus failed to reach. The ways of Providence are certainly not less
singular than slow in movement.
But the year just ending was veritably one of surprises,--for the
historical student it would, indeed, seem as if 1898 was destined to
pass into the long record as almost the Year of Surprises. We now come
to the consideration of some of these wholly unanticipated results from
the American point of view. And in entering on this aspect of the
question, it is necessary once more to remind you that we are doing it
in the historical spirit, and from the historical point of view. We are
stating facts not supposed to admit of denial. The argument and
inferences to be drawn from those facts do not belong to this occasion.
Some will reach one conclusion as to the future, and the bearing those
facts have upon its probable development, and some will reach another
conclusion; with these conclusions we have nothing to do. Our business
is exclusively with the facts.
Speaking largely, but still with all necessary historical accuracy,
America has been peopled, and its development, up to the present time,
worked out through two great stocks of the European family,--the
Spanish-speaking stock, and the English-speaking stock. In their
development these two have pursued lines, clearly marked, but curiously
divergent. Leaving the Spanish-speaking branch out of the discussion, as
unnecessary to it, it may without exaggeration be said of the
English-speaking branch that, from the beginning down to this year now
ending, its development has been one long protest against, and
divergence from, Old World methods and ideals. In the case of those
descended from the Forefathers,--as we always designate the Plymouth
colony,--this has been most distinctly marked, ethnically, politically,
industrially.
America was the sphere where the European, as a colonist, a settler,
first came on a large scale in contact with another race. Heretofore, in
the Old World, when one stock had overrun another,--and history
presented many examples of it,--the invading stock, after subduing, and
to a great extent driving out, the stock which had preceded in the
occupancy of a region, settled gradually down into a common possession,
and, in the slow process of years, an amalgamation of stocks, more or
less complete, took place. In America, with the Anglo-Saxon, and
especially those of the New England type, this was not the case. Unlike
the Frenchman at the north, or the Spaniard at the south, the
Anglo-Saxon showed no disposition to ally himself with the
aborigines,--he evinced no faculty of dealing with inferior races, as
they are called, except through a process of extermination. Here in
Massachusetts this was so from the outset. Nearly every one here has
read Longfellow's poem, "The Courtship of Miles Standish," and calls to
mind the short, sharp conflict between the Plymouth captain and the
Indian chief, Pecksuot, and how those God-fearing Pilgrims ruthlessly
put to death by stabbing and hanging a sufficient number of the already
plague-stricken and dying aborigines. That episode occurred in April,
1623, only a little more than two years after the landing we to-night
celebrate, and was, so far as New England is concerned, the beginning of
a series of wars which did not end until the Indian ceased to be an
element in our civilization. When John Robinson, the revered pastor of
the Plymouth church, received tidings at Leyden of that killing near
Plymouth,--for Robinson never got across the Atlantic,--he wrote: "Oh,
how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some before you had
killed any! There is cause to fear that, by occasion, especially of
provocation, there may be wanting that tenderness of the life of man
(made after God's image) which is meet. It is also a thing more glorious
in men's eyes, than pleasing in God's or convenient for Christians, to
be a terror to poor, barbarous people." This all has a very familiar
sound. It is the refrain of nearly three centuries; but, as an
historical fact, it is undeniable that, from 1623 down to the year now
ending, the American Anglo-Saxon has in his dealings with what are known
as the "inferior races" lacked "that tenderness of the life of man which
is meet," and he has made himself "a terror to poor, barbarous people."
How we of Massachusetts carried ourselves towards the aborigines here,
the fearful record of the Pequot war remains everlastingly to tell. How
the country at large has carried itself in turn towards Indian, African,
and Asiatic is matter of history. And yet it is equally matter of
history that this carriage, term it what you will,--unchristian, brutal,
exterminating,--has been the salvation of the race. It has saved the
Anglo-Saxon stock from being a nation of half-breeds,--miscegenates, to
coin a word expressive of an idea. The Canadian half-breed, the
Mexican, the mulatto, say what men may, are not virile or enduring
races; and that the Anglo-Saxon is none of these, and is essentially
virile and enduring, is due to the fact that the less developed races
perished before him. Nature is undeniably often brutal in its methods.
Again, and on the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon when he came to America
left behind him, so far as he himself was concerned, feudalism and all
things pertaining to caste, including what was then known in England,
and is still known in Germany, as Divine Right. When he at last
enunciated his political faith he put in the forefront of his
declaration as "self-evident truths," the principles "that all men are
created equal;" that they are endowed with "certain inalienable rights,"
among them "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and that
governments derived "their just powers from the consent of the
governed." Now what was meant here by the phrase "all men are created
equal?" We know they are not. They are not created equal in physical or
mental endowment; nor are they created with equal opportunity. The world
bristles with inequalities, natural and artificial. This is so; and yet
the declaration is none the less true;--true when made; true now; true
for all future time. The reference was to the inequalities which always
had marked, then did, and still do, mark, the political life of the Old
World,--to Caste, Divine Right, Privilege. It declared that all men were
created equal before the law, as before the Lord;[1] and that, whether
European, American, Asiatic, or African, they were endowed with an
inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And to
this truth, as he saw it, Lincoln referred in those memorable words I
have already cited bearing on our national crime in long forgetfulness
of our own immutable principles. The fundamental, primal principle was
indeed more clearly voiced by Lincoln than it has been voiced before, or
since, in declaring again, and elsewhere that to our nation, dedicated
"to the proposition that all men are created equal," has by Providence
been assigned the momentous task of "testing whether any nation so
conceived and so dedicated can long endure," and "that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
The next cardinal principle in our policy as a race--that instinctive
policy I have already referred to as divergent from Old World methods
and ideals--was most dearly enunciated by Washington in his Farewell
Address, that "the great rule for us in regard to foreign nations is, in
extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little
political connection as possible;" that it was "unwise in us to
implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of
[Old World] policies, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her
friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and
enables us to pursue a different course.... Taking care always to keep
ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture,
we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary
emergencies."
Accepting this as firm ground from which to act, we afterwards put forth
what is known as the Monroe Doctrine. Having announced that our purpose
was, in homely language, to mind our own business, we warned the outer
world that we did not propose to permit by that outer world any
interference in what did not concern it. America was our field,--a field
amply large for our development. It was therefore declared that, while
we had never taken any part, nor did it comport with our policy to do
so, in the wars of European politics, with the movements in this
hemisphere we are, of necessity, more intimately connected. "We owe it,
therefore, to candor to declare that we should consider any attempt [on
the part of European powers] to extend their system to any portion of
this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."
On these principles of government and of foreign policy we have as a people
now acted for more than seventy years. They have been exemplified and
developed in various directions, and resulted in details--commercial,
economic, and ethnic--which have given rise to political issues, long and
hotly contested, but which, in their result from the purely historical
point of view, do not admit of dispute. Commercially, we have adopted what
is known as a system protective both of our industries and our labor.
Economically, we have carefully eschewed large and costly armaments, and
expensive governmental methods. Ethnically, we have avowed our desire to
have as little contact as possible with less developed races, lamenting the
presence of the African, and severely excluding the Asiatic. These facts,
whether we as individuals and citizens wholly approve--or do not approve at
all--of the course pursued and the results reached, admit of no dispute.
Neither can it be denied that our attitude, whether it in all respects
commanded the respect of foreign nations, or failed to command it, was
accepted, and has prevailed. Striking illustrations of this at once suggest
themselves.
In one respect especially was our attitude peculiar, and in its
peculiarity we took great pride. It was largely moral; but, though
largely moral, it had behind it the consciousness of strength in
ourselves, and its recognition by others. In great degree, and
relatively, an unarmed people, we looked with amaze, which had in it
something of amusement, at the constantly growing armaments and war
budgets of the nations of Europe. We saw them, like the warriors of the
middle ages, crushed under the weight of their weapons of offence, and
their preparations for defence. Meanwhile, fortunate in our geographical
position,--weak for offence, but, in turn, unassailable,--we went in and
out much as an unarmed man, relying on his character, his recognized
force, position, and peaceful calling, daily moves about in our frontier
settlements and mining camps amid throngs of men armed to the teeth with
revolvers and bowie knives. Yet, evidence was not lacking of the
consideration yielded to us when we were called upon, or felt called
upon, to assert ourselves. I will not refer to the episode of 1866,
when, in accordance with the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, we
intimated to France that her immediate withdrawal from Mexico was
desired; for then we had not laid down the arms we had taken up in the
Rebellion. But, without remonstrance even, France withdrew. In 1891,
under circumstances not without grounds of aggravation against us, a mob
in Valparaiso assaulted some seamen from our ships of war. Instant
apology and redress were demanded; and the demand was complied with. Yet
later, the course pursued by us in the Venezuela matter is too fresh in
memory to call for more than a reference. These are all matters of
history. When did our word fail to carry all desired weight?
