Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

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Saunders, Frederick. A Voice to America; or, The Model Republic, its Glory, or its Fall: with a Review of The Causes of the Decline and failure of the Republics of South America, Mexico, and of the Old World; Applied to the Present Crisis in the United States. New York: Edward Walker, 1855.

Frederick Saunders. A Voice to America; or, The Model Republic, its Glory, or its Fall: with a Review of The Causes of the Decline and failure of the Republics of South America, Mexico, and of the Old World; Applied to the Present Crisis in the United States. New York: Edward Walker, 1855. Title page.

Saunders predicted a sanguine future: “Throned between two oceans, we shall control the mercantile exchanges of the world, and with them the civilization and the welfare of mankind.”

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Hitherto, the energies of our republic have been expended in developing the immense resources of our extended territory. We have taken no position amongst the nations; our name, in fact, was scarcely mentioned. But the Russian war has summoned us to Europe; American diplomacy has made monarchs thoughtful; the United States have come to be regarded, not merely as a great nation, but as one to be courted and feared — a government capable of arbitrating in the affairs of the Old World, whose public opinion is respected, and whose favorable decision is regarded as a great moral power. Already, Europeans give us the possession of this entire continent. They apply the term American only to us. A Mexican, a Canadian even, is never, by them, called American; that name they consider ours alone. Europe, in fact, embraces the Monroe doctrine. Every month sees our influence increasing. Steam communication between the two continents has reached an unparallelled perfection, and yet is insufficient to meet the demands of our business men. A fortnight, a week, a day, nay, an hour, is too long to obtain information — ere long, the submarine telegraph will put America and Europe in momentary communication. All things tend to give our country an immense preponderance in European affairs — a preponderance which is now beginning to be felt, and is deprecated by the despots and tyrants of the Old World.

Such have the United States been — such they are to-day. What they will be a century from this time, is a question which it is beyond the power of human prescience to answer, except by estimate or conjecture. Of our future, some few elements may be considered capable of reasonably reliable prophecy. That every ten years of our future growth will surpass any preceding ten, is proved by our progress hitherto. The last decade of our physical and intellectual progress shows an advance greater than that of the preceding twenty years, and greater than any other fifty years. For territory, within the coming century we may have the entire continent of North America; for population, we shall have one hundred millions of people, not of an effete and overgrown stock, like that hideous monster, the Chinese race, but a people of vigorous youth, foremost in the blessings of freedom, and still marching onward, in the pure light of civilization, towards the highest human development.

The Anglo-American is the king of men. He possesses all the powerful and commanding nature of the Anglo-Saxon, the clear, cool head, the sober, calculating mind, the regard for law, the obstinate adherence to justice; but fused and fired by the pure bright air of America, and yet more by the wide freedom of American life, into the go-ahead and tireless energy, which endures no delay and brooks no opposition. The Anglo-American is the controlling type, the leading element of our future population.

America in 1950 promises to be, what the folly of the misproud Celestial so sillily calls his stolid people — the Central Nation. Already we stretch forth our hands to Europe and to Asia, and control the commerce of two oceans, and modify the politics of two continents. Europe, inspired by our example, already smokes and groans in the rising ferment of revolutions. We have opened the heretofore closed doors of distant Japan. American commerce and American civilization are striding inland, up the vast streams of the great Asiatic rivers and across her tremendous steppes. Even our missionaries among the heathen are driven by the logical results of Protestant Christianity to become founders of States and the promoters of independent political action. The Christianized kingdom of the Sandwich Islands, was converted and liberalized by Protestant missionaries. A Christian civilization has gone from us to commence the work of enlightening Africa, and has made a firm lodgment within the small but vigorous Republic of Liberia. Our missionary stations among the North American Indians, in Turkey and Armenia, in China, have been the centres of a light which has illuminated first the souls and then the minds of the barbarians, and which is gradually transforming them into self-governing and dignified communities. We have joined the Atlantic and the Pacific by railroad; we shall repeat the junction by telegraph and by canal. Throned between two oceans, we shall control the mercantile exchanges of the world, and with them the civilization and the welfare of mankind. It is not for us to rule with the barbarous violence of conquest. It is not for us to force a prostrating commercial system upon tributary millions by war, to steal colonies everywhere, to speckle the world with our garrisons, and then to boast that the drum-beat of our army ever greets the rising sun.

For us there is a safer, a surer, a nobler road, to a more desirable and enduring empire. Our destiny is to show the nations what is the greatest amount of national and individual happiness and prosperity which is possible under laws free and enlightened, and with a people self-governed and self-controlling. In the quiet and unaggressive fulfilment of that destiny we wield the lever which shall move the world.