sage of December 9, 1868, President Johnson, Mr. Seward still being Secretary of State, advocated the acquisition of "the several adjacent continental and insular communities as speedily as it may be done peacefully, lawfully, and without any violation of national justice, faith, or honor," and declared that, while foreign possession or control of them had "hindered the growth and impaired the influence of the United States," "chronic revolution and anarchy would be equally injurious." A joint resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives for the annexation of the Dominican Republic. An agent from Santo Domingo was then in Washington awaiting action. The project was warmly espoused by President Grant, and on November 29, 1869, two treaties were concluded, one for the annexation of the Dominican Republic and the other for the lease of Samana Bay. Both instruments were communicated to the Senate on January 10, 1870. They failed to receive that body's approval. In his last annual message to Congress, in 1876, President Grant recurred to the subject, reaffirming his belief in the wisdom of the policy that he had proposed.

In 1867 George Bancroft was instructed, while proceeding as minister to Berlin, to call at Madrid and sound the Spanish government as to the cession of the islands of Culebra and Culebrita, in the Spanish West Indies, to the United States as a naval station. The results of his inquiries were so discouraging that the subject was peremptorily dropped; but

the islands came into the possession of the United States under the treaty of peace with Spain of 1898.

The Môle St. Nicolas, in Hayti, was leased by the United States during the Civil War as a naval station. In 1891, however, the Haytian government declined to let the harbor again for a similar purpose.

References:

For a review of the Territorial Expansion of the United States, see

Moore's Digest of International Law, I, 429 et seq.;

Bancroft's (Frederic) Life of Seward;

Barbé Marbois's History of Louisiana;

Roosevelt's Winning of the West.

X

PAN AMERICANISM

THE American republics number just twenty-one. The youngest, Panama, which suddenly came into being late in 1903, was very shortly preceded in existence by Cuba. With the exception of the United States they are all, politically speaking, of "Latin" origin, and constitute what is for that reason called Latin America, occupying the vast region formerly ruled by Spain and by Portugal. The Portuguese dominions, though greater in extent than the connected continental area of the United States, are comprised in what was for sixty-seven years the empire, but is now the republic, of Brazil. The remaining nineteen countries were once colonies or provinces of Spain. When we speak of Pan Americanism we associate the countries of Spanish and of Portuguese derivation with the United States, and thus link together in our thoughts all the independent governments of America.

The chief significance to Spain of the American Revolution lay in the fact that it marked the beginning of the end of the old system of colonial

monopoly. In the Orient, as well as in America, colonies had been held by European nations purely for purposes of national exploitation. The movement for independence in America indicated the fact that the time would come when, with the development of colonial resources, dependence would be succeeded by independence.

For a number of years after the American Revolution the Spanish colonies in America continued to be comparatively quiet and contented. Grave misfortunes, however, awaited the mother country. In 1808 Spain was invaded. Her King, Charles IV., was forced to abdicate and to transfer to Napoleon all right and titles to the Spanish Crown and to its colonial possessions. On June 15, 1808, Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, was crowned King of Spain at Bayonne. The people of Spain refused to bow to alien rule. Juntas were formed in various parts of the country for the purpose of resisting in the name of Ferdinand VII., son of the dethroned monarch, the new government. Not long afterwards similar movements took place in South America. Loyalist juntas were formed, modelled on those that were organized in Spain. But owing to various causes, among which was the refusal of the Regency at Cadiz to recognize the American juntas, the loyalist movement in the colonies, although originally levelled against the Napoleonic government in Spain, was gradually transformed into a genuine movement for independence. As a result Spain,

after her legitimate government was restored, found herself at war with her American colonies.

In 1815 Simon Bolivar, then living in poverty and exile at Kingston, Jamaica, wrote the famous "prophetic" letter in which he declared that the destiny of America to be independent was “irrevocably fixed." On July 9, 1816, a congress at Tucuman declared the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, of which Buenos Aires was the head, to be a free and independent nation. In February of the following year the Chilean revolutionists gained at Chacabuco a decisive victory which presaged a similar declaration. On December 6, 1817, Henry Clay announced in the House of Representatives that he intended to move the recognition of Buenos Aires and probably of Chile.

In the struggle between Spain and her colonies the United States maintained a neutral position, although the sympathies of the people naturally ran strongly in favor of the revolutionists. In 1817 a commission consisting of Cæsar A. Rodney, John Graham, and Theodoric Bland, with Henry M. Brackinridge as secretary, was sent out to examine into the conditions existing in South America, and particularly in Buenos Aires and Chile. The views of the commissioners, which in many respects differed, were embodied in separate reports. These reports were duly submitted to Congress, as was also a special report from Joel R. Poinsett, who had acted as an agent of the United States at Buenos