simply by extending over it the magic charm of its political institutions."[1]
Then there is the doctrine of pre-ordination or inevitability governing the westward progress of the "star of empire." For some it was divine command and the superintending guidance of Providence that furnished the irresistible impulse. Others based their prophecies on the ceaseless inward urge which had for so long been impelling Anglo-saxon peoples westward. Still others referred to the certainty that American dominion and American enterprise must seek their natural boundaries, as water seeks its level. All these are included in the meaning of Manifest Destiny as here used.
The writer feels no necessity to pass judgment on the sincerity or motives of those who eloquently propounded the views, hereafter mentioned or quoted, in regard to the unavoidable rôle which America was destined to play on both shores of the Pacific. Most of these men lived long before the day of the modern cynic and de-bunker. If there was dross mingled with the gold in their exaltation and enthusiasm, few of them were conscious of it. America was still the land of the free and the home of the brave. At the same time it is true that there were always those who denied the force of predestinarian logic; and at the close of the last century there were many critics who exposed selfish economic imperialism lurking behind finesounding phrases.
The definite formulation of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny no doubt belongs to the decade of the roaring forties. With respect to the Pacific Coast and the Pacific, however, it seems certain that the essential features of that idea were in men's minds at a considerably earlier date. Even Coleridge in his later years was constrained to say: "The possible destiny of the United States of America, as a nation of a hundred millions of freemen, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakespeare and Milton, is an august conception."[2]
- ↑ Carl Schurz, "Manifest Destiny" in Harper's Monthly, LXXXVII, 737 (1893).
- ↑ >Coleridge's Table Talk, quoted on the title page of Robert Greenhow, The History
