Carlos Martinez de Yrugo Quotes

Sir, our natural boundary is the Pacific Ocean. The swelling tide of our population must and will roll on until that mighty ocean interposes its waters, and limits our territorial empire.

It being perhaps the only large tract of country and certainly the first which lying out of the boundaries of the Union will be settled by the people of the United States.

The States which form the northern border of the United States westward from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast include an area several times larger than France and could contain ten Englands and still have room to spare.

We are destined to own and control the whole western continent from Baffin's bay to the Caribbean sea ... we need not be in a hurry. When the fruit is ripe, it will fall into our hands.

We must march from ocean to ocean .... We must march from Texas straight to the Pacific Ocean, and be bounded only by its roaring wave .... It is the destiny of the white race, it is the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Find the shortest & most convenient route of communications between the U. S. & the Pacific Ocean.

It is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand … and cover the whole northern if not the southern continent.

Some persons were to be sent in search of the river Missouri in order to discover whether it had any communication with the Pacific Ocean …

For nearly three centuries the dominant fact in American life has been expansion. With the settlement of the Pacific coast and the occupation of the free lands, this movement has come to a check. That these energies of expansion will no longer operate would be a rash prediction; and the demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for an interoceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon the seas, and for the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries, are indications that the movement will continue. The stronghold of these demands lies west of the Alleghenies.

It is, beyond question, the destiny of our race to spread themselves over the continent of North America, and this at no distant day.

People began to understand that with the acquisition of California the nation had obtained practically half a continent, of which the future possibilities were almost unlimited, so far as the development of natural resources and the genera production of wealth were concerned.

The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads.

The destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent -- to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean... to change darkness into light and confirm the destiny of the human race.

The white men in the East are like birds. They are hatching out their eggs every year, and there is not room enough in the East, and they must go elsewhere; and they come out West, as you have seen them coming for the last few years.

Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.

The nation did not begin to realize the extraordinary possibilities of the vast Western territory until its attention was thus suddenly and definitely concentrated on the Pacific by the annual addition of over fifty million dollars to the circulating medium.

We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is Manifest Destiny.

The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement, explain American development.

I regarded and still regard the proposed annexation of Hawaii as not only opposed to our national policy but as a perversion of our national mission. The mission of our nation is to build up and make a great country out of what we have, instead of annexing islands

Let us complete the grand design of Columbus, by putting Europe and Asia into communication, and that to our advantage, through the heart of our country. Let us give to his ships, converted into cars, a continuous course, unknown to all former times. Let us make the iron road, and make it from sea to sea.

The power that rules the Pacific ... is the power that rules the world. And, with the Philippines, that power is and will forever be the American Republic.

We must have the Floridas and Cuba.

The departure of the fleet was momentous. It drove me to prayer. I could see in it America's assertion of her right to control the Pacific in the interest of civilization and humanity.

I would be quite willing personally to leave the whole country as a wilderness for the next half-century, but I fear that if Englishmen do not go there, Yankees will.

We have quietly and almost without observation, annexed all the country between here [Ottawa] and the Rocky Mountains.