The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-12-11
rHy ANNEXATION POLICY.

President johnson does not misinterpret
present tendencies and future exigencies
when be remarks, in his last message, that a
comprehensive national policy would point to
the acquisition and incorporation into our fed
eral Union of the several adjacent.continental
and insular communities. The great trouble
with the communities referred to is that they
have occupied, with reference to the Euro
pean system, as exemplifed in the monarchi-
cal countries of Europe, and to the American
system, as exemplifed in the United States,
position analogous to that of those wretched
spirits described by Dante as lowering in
mid region and denied fellowship with either
He'll or Heaven. We will not, for the pres
ent, consider how the British provinces of
North America have been affected by this
source of infelicity. 1t is of more immediate
interest to study this question in its relation
to the insular territories which form a jeweled
coronet SO to say, for our great Southern
Mediterranean, the Gulf of Mexico The Pres
ident by no means overestimates the impor-
lance of the problems involved in the politi-
cal and social, and we may add, the industrial
and commercial conditions now existing or
imminent in those islands, when he says that
it will soon become necessary for the govern.
ment to lend some effective aid to the solu-
ton of these problems. He adds that they
have been especially pressed upon public at
tention by the two republics, or anarchies
rather, of the island of St. Domingo, and more
recently disclosed in the island of Cuba The
President is indeed, satisfied that the time is
now ripe for direct proposition to au-
mex Hayt and Dominica to the United
States. We think he might logically have
gone further, and included Cuba in the pre-
destined scope of annexation; and still
further, so as to embrace Jamaica in the
eventual sweep of what we have designated
as the American system. This we say in no
spirit of national vainglory, with no bigoted
zeal for that traditional, indefinite and some
what mythical thing called the "Monroe
doctrine" We know well enough, bitterly
enough, that the American system. as repre-
sented, or rather as misrepresented, of late
years by the government of the United
States, has appeared in aspects calculated to
be as repulsive to intelligent communities
suffering from political oppression and social
disorders, as the worst features of old Euro
pean despotisms. But it is not, we conceive,
in the nature of future developments of ele-
ments of growth and progress in this country
that its government can continue to be a
fragrant and sinister Misrepresentation of the
American system, and bold, wicked expo.
nent of retrogression, repression and stagna-
ton. And, moreover, there is, positively,
for the West India islands no final and per-
manent escape from the troubles now beset-
ting them, and the still greater troubles
which are in wait for them, except by coming
within the same political pale with the val
ley of the Mississippi, and participating in
the powerful and far reaching activities to
which heretofore all the various communities
in the United States have contributed and to
which the Union is indebted for whatever it |
has attained of grandeur and prestige Even |
were Cuba to hberate herself from Spanish |
dominion tomorrow, the expiring rule would |
bequesth to her bitter legacy in unqualified |
of one of the most ignorant and |
brutal of negro population, attended by |
social conflicts or antagonisms which would |
precipitate upon the island, if not the fate of
Hayti, the decay and stagnation of Jamaica.
The arbitrary rule of Spain will always be an
incubus upon Cuba. She ought to be hber-
ated, but the next step to consummate her
salvation is annexation