John MacDonald Quotes

Mr. Tyler acquired Texas by voluntary compact, and Mr. Polk California and New Mexico by successful war.

We must have the Floridas and Cuba.

Annexation of new land for America is injudicious in policy and wicked in fact.

You annex foreign land, not your own country.

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

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 is our glory that whilst other nations have extended their dominions by the sword we have never acquired any territory except by fair purchase or, as in the case of Texas, by the voluntary determination of a brave, kindred, and independent people to blend their destinies with our own.

Annexation [of Mexico] … because the United States is destined to supplant all other governments on this continent [and] … leading Mexico to a higher plane of civilization.

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.

Who believes that a score of victories over Mexico, the annexation of half her provinces, will give us more Liberty, a purer Morality?

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 waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair exchange.

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.

The acquisition of Canada this year … will be a mere matter of marching and will give us experience for the attack on Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.

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.

Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, 1793

Soon you’ll be whirled along by steam in a country now only inhabited by wild beasts and Indians

To-day, by reason of the immense augmentation of the American population, and the extension of their settlements throughout the entire west, covering both slopes of the Rocky Mountains, the Indian races are more seriously threatened with a speedy extermination than ever before in the history of the country.

The pioneer army perpetually... strikes to the front. Empire plants itself upon the trails.

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

Our great national drama was a westward expansion that conquered a native population rather than coexisting with it.

During the Civil War, the United States government had organized new territories in the West at a cracking pace, both to keep the Confederacy at bay and to bring the region's mines and farmland under government control.

Settling other people's land is an American tradition.