The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-12-08
HOW TO CONQUER MEXICO.

is of necessity bound, forced, obligated ana
compelled to expand her boundary lines until
they shall be made to embrace all OF North
and South American and the .neighborlng
islands Their ideal of the perfected COM
mon wealth is an elliptical figure extending
from the North Pole to Cape Horn, and
swelling out to the east and the west
so as to include all the outlying spots
where, in the globes history, the land
has raised its head above its briny
Counterpart. With these citlzsns,
however little regard they may have for the
Constitution of theii country, the Monroe
doctrine becomes something divinely sacred.
They feel in the centres of their hearts that
foreign monarchs should have no foothold on
this occidental hemisphere. They look with
envious eyes upon Canada, nominal de-
tendency of government almost as republic
can, almost as free and almost as respectable
as our own. They want to annex Canada,
and they would do it except for two classes OF
opponents British people who want free
trade with the Canadians, and secondly,
the Canadians who want free trade
with the British islands, and cheap and
very effectual government besides. Canada
is discreet and coy maiden whom no Brig
ham Young can now persuade to "seal her
self to the federal family, which would at once
treble her taxes.
These manifest destiny men look with still
more envious aud vastly more greedy eyes
upon Cuba, the spouse of dilapidated Spain,
the gem of the continental coronet, the rem
nant of her once magnificent and most pro-
fitable empire upon the Western Con-
tinent; a possession to which old Spain
in her pride and her decadence
adheres with that energy, that devotion and
that uncalculating attachment with which the
old always cling to what is endeared to them
by long possession. Spaniards are bound by
all their notions of honor, by all their instincts
of pride, by all their national traditions. to
hold Cuba with that tenacious grip which ma
tional death alone can relax. Offer the starv-
ing and famished Spaniard price for his
island worth more than all Cuba and all Spain
and he will turn away with indignant scorn
Offer to take from him his island by force of
arms, and at once is developed spirit, an
enthusiasm, and power like that of the days
of Ferdinand and Philip.
Baffisd and repealed thus at the North and
at the South, and disappointed as to Canada
and Cuba, the men of Destiny turn their
hungry eyes upon poor Mexico, who has had
no respite from invasion, incursions, machi-
nations and revolutions since the days of the
last of the Montezumas. Every new raid OF
cattle thieves from the southern shore of the
Rio Grande Is hailed with delight as tending
to increase the chance for war In their
imaginations they have already raised fifty
thousand volunteers, marched into the valley
of Mexico, re-occupied the Grand Plaza and
made the streets of the ancient capital gay
with the banners and bright with the gleam-
ing bayonets of the legions from the great
Northern Republic. They have already map
ped out all of northern Mexico into bounty
lands, and have projected suudry railroad
routes from the Gulf to the Pacific Ocean.
These men of destiny do nothing else but
dream. Their saltpetre.scented hopes and
bloody anticipations are not likely to be soon
realized. The sober sense and solid con-
science of the masses of the American peo-
pie are against all wars that can be avoided,
snd against all acquisitions based upon injus-
tice and attended with bloodshed.
There is, however, a way in which Mexico
can be subdued-a way in which the CLEAN
of the bayonet, the rattle of musketry, the
thunder of artillery, the splintering of shells,
the clash of colliding columns, the blsre of
bugles and the groans of dying men will not
figure at ALL
We ahould say that this subjugation should
begin by building a railway from the Pacific
to the Mississippi, close along the northern
border of Mexico. This would double the
wealth of all the Mexican country for four
hundred miles south of our road and induce
the inhabitants to build branch roads to de-
velop their industries. Ten years is but
brief period for the contamination of any
great piece of national business, but in less
than ten years the Northern States of Mexico
would be ripe an eager for peaceful annex.
alton. But without annexing that region the
enterprise of our capitalists would meet the
hearty favor of the Mexicans in running an
other great railway from the mouth of the
Rio Grande, southwest across the Republic
to Mazatlan, one of the finest harbors on
the Pacific coast.
The completion of such a road, chiefly by
means of American capital, opening an
avenue to marke; for an immense region,
would practically identify with our Republic
all the Inhabitants of Tamaulipas, Nueva
Leon, Coahuila, chihuahua, Sonora, Cinaloa,
Durango, Guadalaxara, Zacatecas and San
Luis Potosi And every decade new ad-
vance would be made, securing all the fruits
of conquest, but without humiliation to
Mexico, without waste of treasure and with
out the shedding of the blood OF a warlike in
vasion. The Mexican people would be still free,
and more securely free than ever before; but