rather extended excerpts from this early apostle of Manifest Destiny, Baylies reached his climax when, in his peroration, he exclaimed : “To diffuse the arts of life, the light of science, and the blessings of the gospel over a wilderness, is no violation of the laws of God; it is no invasion of the rights of man to occupy a territory over which the savage roams, but which he never cultivates. . . The stream of bounty which perpetually flows from the throne of the Almighty ought not to be obstructed in its course, nor is it right that his benevolent designs should be defeated by the perversity of man.”[1]
During the ensuing two decades, little happened to elicit similar exuberant predictions regarding the Pacific Coast and its destiny. And yet the idea lay not far below the current of thought and appeared occasionally on the surface in western newspapers. For instance, in 1825 the Ohio State Journal, speaking of the Oregon country, said: “One fourth part of this territory, that part which contains the Oregon harbor, will, at a future day, enter the Republican Confederacy as Oregon State; and the City of Oregon, will arise on its banks, which shall rival New York or Philadelphia in their wealth and population. Then the busy hum of commerce and the shouts of freemen, shall re-echo from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.”[2] Five years later the Buffalo Journal reviewed the irresistible westward march of American pioneers. “This course of empire,” said the editor, “may—must be stayed, when the shore of the Pacific has been reached.”[3] In a speech in the House of Representatives Caleb Cushing rejoiced in “the spectacle of the Anglo-American stock extending itself into the heart of the Continent . . . advancing with, as it were, the preordination of inevitable progress, like the sun moving westerly in the heavens, or the ascending tide on the seashore, or, in the striking language of a foreign traveller, as a deluge of civilized men rising unabatedly and driven onwards by the hand of God.” When the settlers should reach the Pacific he desired them to
- ↑ Annals of Congress, 17 cong., 2 sess., 421, 422, 682-3, 688.
- ↑ Quoted from the Ohio State Journal in the Detroit Gazette, January 3, 1826.
- ↑ Quoted from the Buffalo Journal in The Arkansas Advocate, June 9, 1830.
