to our national expansion and consolidation." And after Louisiana came the United States claims to Oregon. "Philosophy of History" was a favorite pastime of Mr. Scott and he applied it in his later life to the main currents of United States history—Northern and Southern. On July 11, 1902, when introducing Henry Watterson[1] at Gladstone, near Oregon City, he reviewed these two strains of national life in an address which awakened Mr. Watterson's admiration.
IXEXPANSION OF NATIONAL TERRITORY
The hew expansion across the Pacific following the Spanish War was, in Mr. Scott's opinion, a logical pursuit of national ends. It opened a new destiny for the American republic. It meant great national power at sea, and expansion of ocean commerce, leading to American dominion of the Pacific; "the nation's wider horizon is seaward" (July 12, 1898). It followed a law of constant expansion of territory—a law of national progress which had united the country and ever extended its frontier. It would prove anew the assimilating power of the American State; would broaden the country's spirit and its outlook on the world, because intercourse with other nations gives the most powerful stimulus to progress and no nation liveth unto itself alone. It would banish from home politics fallacies which would be generated otherwise out of American isolation; among such had been fiat money and absurdities of socialism. It would promote the growing leadership of America among the great powers. The Democratic Party was then fighting the changed policy, calling it "imperialism" and "militarism" and "government without consent of governed"—issues of Bryan from 1898 to 1904. Mr. Scott scored the opposition as an affront to American intelligence. These issues were false and unworthy of a political party which for generations had negatived them in domination of negroes in the South. Filipinos would not be "enslaved," as the Democratic Party asserted would be their fate under American rule, but would be accorded larger measure of political and personal freedom than they ever had before or could have under any other govern-
- ↑ Henry Watterson, editor Louisville Courier-Journal.
