hodder: the duty of the scholar in politics. 65 



to all their wars If this broad interpretation be given to these 



declarations. . . .our peace will ever be disturbed, the gates of our 

 Janus will ever stand open, wars will never cease." 



Who, then, was the author of this so-called Monroe doctrine? It 

 was Polk, Polk the mendacious, as v. Hoist has called him, the 

 man who provoked a war of wanton conquest and based its 

 declaration upon a lie. It is Polk's doctrine and not Monroe's. 

 Not daring to sign his own name, he sought to give it authority by 

 attaching that of one of the founders of the republic. When and 

 *why was it proclaimed? It was at the very time we were engaged 

 in the annexation of Texas and the conquest of Mexico, the two 

 acts in our national history of which we have least reason to be 

 proud. Then it was that Polk twisted a declaration intended for 

 the protection of free institutions into an excuse for the extension 

 of human slavery. Its origin and purpose condemn it. 



The policy which had succeded in Texas and Mexico, Polk next 

 applied to Cuba. He first tried to buy Cuba but Spain replied 

 that rather than sell she would see the island sunk in the ocean. 

 Filibustering expeditions next tried to revolutionize Cuba, as 

 Houston had revolutionized Texas, but failed. We next threat- 

 ened Spain as Slidell had threatened Mexico. In the spirit of the 

 Polk doctrine, our ministers to Great Britain, France and Spain, 

 in the celebrated Ostend Manifesto* declared: 



"After we have offered Spain a price for Cuba far beyond its 

 present value and this shall have been refused, it will be time to 

 consider the question 'does Cuba, in the possession of Spain, 

 seriously endanger our internal peace and the existence of our 

 cherished union.' Should this question be answered in the 

 affirmative, then, by every law, human and divine, we shall be 



justified in wresting it from Spain if we possess the power We 



should be recreant to our duty, be unworthy of our gallant fore- 

 fathers, and commit base treason against our posterity should we 

 permit Cuba. . . .seriously to endanger or actually to consume the 

 fair fabric of our Union." 



But anti-slavery opinion in the North was setting strongly against 

 the slave power in its foreign as well as its domestic policy. The 

 first republican platform in 1856 resolved that "the highwayman's 

 plea that might makes right, embodied in the Ostend circular, was 

 in every respect unworthy of American diplomacy and would bring 

 shame and dishonor upon an}' government or people that gave it 

 their sanction." 



'•House Ex. Docs.. Vol. 10. No. 93; 2d Sess., 33 Cong., pp. 127-30. 



