Amador ledger., 1900-09-07
EXPANDED AMERICA.
The Brave Beginning of Continuing
Course of American Expansion
and Imperialism.
No. 3.

When in 1888 the British governments
reached frame of mind that enabled
our commissioners to treat for peace on
the basis of independence for the thir-
teen original colonies, strict coustruc-
ton of the title to the territory claimed
by those colonies would have limited
the new republic to the Atlantic sea-
board east of the Allegheny mountains.
1t is true that some of the colonies
laid claim to indefinite extensions west,
such claims having been based on char
tered rights granted at different times
by kings of England; but these claims
were conflicting, and the territory
granted by these charters belonged to
France and Spain and continued so to
belong until after the French and Indian
war, which began i'll 1854, and in which
the British soldiers and American militia
jointly won the region east of the Mis-
sissippi from the French and annexed it
to the British possessions.
In 1774 all of this region west of the
Allegheny mountains was annexed to
Canada, and as Canada did not join
with the colonies in the Revolutionary
war our claim to that vast region was
slight
But our peace commissioners boldly
stood for the Mississippi river as west
ern boundary. They placed small in
sistence upon the claim as of right, but
great was the stress placed upon it as a
matter of policy. Fortunately Lord
Shelburne, the British premier, who
had ever been friendly to the colonists,
adopted liberal policy, confessing that
he not only wanted peace but reconcilia-
ton in the interest of British commerce,
and so wisely, and even generously,
fixed the western boundary at the Mis-
slssippi, the northern boundary to be
the center line of the chain of great
lakes at the north projected to intersect
the source of the Mississippi river. The
southern border was fixed at the Florida
line, not well defined, but coming at the
nearest point to within so miles of the
Gulf of Mexico.
0 Along the northern boundary there
was chain of British forts and settle
ments, along the western chain of
French settlements, along the southern
a chain of Spanish forts and settlements,
and throughout the interior there were
thousands of Indians who had been the
bloody allies of the French against the
British a generation before and had but
recently been the equally bloody allies
of the British against the colonists. In
the interior also were white settlements
of pioneers from the colonies. All told,
the population of this inland empire ran
up into hundreds of thousands.
Did any one suggest that the consent
of these inhabitants ought to be OBJ
tanned to their annexation to the new
republic? Did Thomas Jefferson, who
was appointed a member of the peace
commission Though he did not get away
from home before peace was concluded)?
Did any of the peace commissioners
raise that question : the sturdy John
Adams, the great lawyer Jay, the ven-
cradle and benevolent Franklin?
Not they. They stood for what their
country needed, and the whole confed-
Grafton of colonies broke out in exulta-
tion when the good news came that the
independence of the United States of
America had been acknowledged, with
imperial boundaries extending from the
great lakes southwark almost to the
gulf and from the Mississippi eastward
to the sea.
And in all that land no man was
made more joyful than Thomas Jeffer-
son.
This was the beginning of Expanded
America "a magnificent beginning
wrought by the founders of the re.
public, by men who had warred eight
years for political and civil liberty, by
men who knew what human rights are
as well as any group of men who ever
lived, and. knowing them, not only
stood bravely for them, but respected
them when possible to do so; but these
intensely practical patriots recognized a
foundation fact that theoretical patriots
are apt to overlook, viz: the technical
interests of the individual must some
times be subordinated to the manifest
well-being of the whole; consent of the
governed must be assumed where it can
not well be taken by vote or where
annexation is Indispensable to the ua.
tional welfare.
This vast territory SO annexed without
the consent of the governed is to this
day the heart of the Republic The
several colonies afterward ceded to the
general government (quit- claimed would
be better expression of the fact) their
respective claims to parts of the terri
tory, but the real acquisition was from
Great Britain at the concluding of peace
at the close of the Revolutionary war
and was WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE
GOVERNED.
And this was done with the hearty
Eo-operation and consent of the man
who held the pen that wrote, Govern
ments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed" the putative
father of the American democracy,
Thomas Jefferson.
But Thomas Jefferson, with all his
fondness for academic disputation, was
an intensely practical statesman. He
knew that the 200 years of actual prac-
tice in government by the self-governing
American colonies had equipped them
for national self-government, and that
it was therefore wrong to attempt to
govern them without their consent, but
he knew that the Indians and half
breeds inhabiting the upper Mississippi