Analysis: The March of the Flag

Date: September 16, 1898

Author: Albert J. Beveridge

Genre: speech

Summary Overview

By the close of the nineteenth century, Americans had done the impossible: they had occupied and settled an entire continent, and they had done it in a single generation. Beginning in the 1840s and completed by the 1890s, settlers and pioneers, mainly coming from the East, had rushed toward the Pacific in a mad orgy of construction, cultivation, and violence. Wherever they went they built towns and cities, laid track, and dispossessed what they considered to be a primitive native population. The force that drove them, beyond the promises of easy riches and the allure of fresh beginnings, was an absolute conviction that they were agents of God himself, tasked by holy writ to bring civilization to savagery. As the frontier finally closed and a new uncertain century loomed ahead, this sense of divine exceptionalism turned outward, toward places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, culminating in the birth of American imperialism.

Defining Moment

Americans have always been fascinated by the West. The promises of opportunity, prosperity, and reinvention, along with the naturally fertile landscape of the Pacific coast, all coalesce to create an idea often too powerful to resist. Adventure, mystery, and danger, all serve to only sweeten the pot. In the mid-nineteenth century, a generation of Americans and newly-arrived immigrants took it upon themselves to follow the trails, or ride the rails, to a new, undiscovered country. Most of the pioneers who set off from places like Chicago and Independence, Missouri, went in the hopes of claiming a plot of land: a homestead that they could then pass on to future generations. Others followed news of gold and silver strikes, or promises of work in building the vast tracks meant to finally connect the two distant coasts.

All the while, as the government fanned the flames of expansion, as boosters drummed up excitement, a new philosophy was forming in the minds of many Americans, which aimed to explain what was fast becoming one of the largest migrations in human history. It was called Manifest Destiny, the singular belief that the United States generally, and Westward expansion specifically, were consecrated by the divine. Although the view was not universally accepted, most notably by many in the Republican party, the notion that God favored the growth of the United States over other nations, appealed strongly to those struggling to start over on the frontier. America was exceptional. Americans were exceptional, blessed by the Almighty in their deeds, whether that be building homesteads or driving Native peoples off their lands. Such notions of divine authority helped justify the annexation of Oregon Territory and the war with Mexico.

As the frontier finally closed in the 1890s, the notion of Manifest Destiny began to change. In this new version, America had a responsibility to spread its brand of exceptionalism beyond its shores. It was for the United States to civilize and pacify the savage world, to spread democracy, and further national interests. The argument made was that if America was destined to forever change the world, it needed to pursue a policy of perpetual expansion. In April 1898, bolstered by this new imperialist philosophy, the United States went to war against Spain. Officially sanctioned to liberate Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spanish rule, the move was really made to gain those territories in order expand American interests. Immediately afterward, debate erupted between those for and against annexation. The arguments used would set American foreign policy for the next hundred years.

Author Biography

Albert Jeremiah Beveridge was born in Ohio in 1862. Hailing from an English background, Beveridge was raised with the same frontier attitudes as millions of Americans. To gain success and achieve God's will, one had to work hard and take rather than wait for something to be given. Growing in prominence as a pro-expansionist orator, often speaking on behalf of political candidates for major office, Beveridge was elected to the US Senate under the Republican ticket in 1899. A loyal Roosevelt progressive, Beveridge followed his former commander-in-chief to the Progressive Party in 1912, effectively ending his own political career. Eventually, Beveridge became a historian, writing several highly influential works, including a biography of Justice John Marshall, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize. By the end of his life, the former firebrand imperialist began to regret many of his former expansionist leanings, and before his death in 1927, he gave many speeches warning about the unchecked growth of American power.

Document Analysis

In a campaign speech given in late 1898, Albert Beveridge is arguing for annexation of the former Spanish colonies won during the Spanish-American War, but generally, he is also pushing for a policy of unrestrained imperialism. In his opinion, the United States has only to gain by expanding outward beyond its borders—new resources, new markets, and most importantly, a new progression in American authority.

The speech begins with the language of Manifest Destiny. God is invoked several times to describe the special place that America holds in the world. Americans are the chosen people, placed on Earth, on this continent to transform it into a new Eden and, from there, strike out to build God's kingdom across the whole of the world. Over the nineteenth century, Beveridge argues, thanks to the will of great thinking men such as Thomas Jefferson, the United States was transformed from a savage wilderness into a glorious new republic. But if the nation were to stop there, if expansion were to stop with the conquering of the West, Beveridge warns, America will slide backward, becoming something more closely resembling China, or India, or Egypt—a once great empire, now only a shadow of itself.

For Beveridge, the projection of American power is not governance of others without consent, it is the right and responsibility of the American people. How are the populations of places like Cuba and the Philippines to govern themselves when they are incapable of self-rule? Much like the civilized European imperial powers, America must serve as a shepherd, a parent caring for undeveloped children. In the process, the United States stands to gain wealth and resources, which it can then use to better rule over those inferior nations. This imperialist credo, Beveridge continues, is nothing new in American history. It has been a driving force since the nation's founding and must continue to be. Not only out of duty to God, but to the world as a whole. Because America is the driving force for good and freedom throughout the globe. Without the leadership of the United States, Beveridge hints, conflict may be unavoidable in the future.

Beyond Beveridge's arguments for God, for destiny, and markets, is the persistent use of the march as a rhetorical device: marching westward, marching forward, marching always toward progress. In this way, Beveridge is able to make an argument for imperialism based not just in a sense of Manifest Destiny, linked to the work of the Founding Fathers, but also as biological inevitability. To resist expansion is to resist the very course of social evolution. It is tantamount to reverting to a more primitive state.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Braeman, John. Albert J. Beveridge: American Nationalist. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1971. Print.

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.

Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. New York: Time Books, 2006. Print.

Morgan, Robert. Lions of the West. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2012. Print.