“I would be quite willing, personally to leave the whole country a wilderness for the next half century, but I fear if Englishmen do not go there the Yankees will.”  [1]

-Sir John A. Macdonald, 1865

“I hope that you will hold fast to their British principles and that you may ever strive to cultivate close and affectionate connections with the mother country”.  [2]

-Jefferson Davis, speaking to cheering Canadians in Lennoxville Quebec, July 1867

In these two simple statements, one encounters an extraordinary anomaly: Not only did Canadian and Southern Confederations have the same British philosophical principles at their roots, but both attempted to re-design a specifically republican concept known as “Manifest Destiny” in the light of their own distorted images.

Where the original American doctrine of Manifest Destiny expounded by William Gilpin, Secretary of State Seward and Charles Sumner was driven by the uplifting of humanity to ever higher states of dignity, freedom and standards of living-  those perverse versions poisoned by “hereditary principles” of kings-subject/master-slave relationships which even TODAY contaminate the world’s comprehension of the term had the opposite effect of causing ever greater suppression of freedom, creative thought, and dignity in all those who came in contact with it.

An Imperialist Manifest Destiny from the South

When the Trans Continental Railway became a dominant factor in the national imagination of Americans in the early 1840s due in large part to the leadership of such visionaries as Asa Whitney and William Gilpin, the slave power of Virginia attempted to do nothing less than co-opt this vision with their own version of a southern trans-continental railway and plan to open up the west. The first serious attempt to co-opt this project was seen in the November 1849 Railroad convention in Memphis, Tennessee, which proposed that the disputed location of the impending trans-continental rail route be entirely controlled by the south. This convention was organized in response to the St. Louis convention that had occurred weeks earlier favoring a line controlled by the north. None other than Confederate General and later founder of the KKK Albert Pike played an instrumental role in this conference as did Jefferson Davis.

During a follow up Commercial Convention of the Southern and Western States in South Carolina on April 10, 1854, Albert Pike led in the adoption of a resolution calling for the formation of a privately owned company to build and operate the rail line outside of the authority of Washington which read “the Southern States, corporations and people, are entirely able to build said road, and that no time should be lost in doing so.”[3] This resolution was declared the first southern “declaration of independence” by many.

As Secretary of War in March 1853, Jefferson Davis led a $150 000 government-sponsored project to chart out the “most practical and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean”. Davis commanded George B. McClellan and Corps of Topographical Engineers to “discover, open up, and make accessible the American West.”

Of course this plan was motivated NOT by the idea of opening up the continent for true development and connecting human civilization to Asia as was dreamed by true patriots, but rather to spread principles of “master-slave” social organization and ultimately undo the republic.

Jefferson Davis’ preferred route obviously fell entirely between the 32nd and 35th parallels, which were entirely controlled by the slave power. Since part of the Davis route fell upon Mexican territory, $10 million were dispatched by President Franklin Pierce to purchase that land later to be known as the Gadsen Purchase significantly increasing the size of southern Arizona and New Mexico.

It should be added that many nominally “northern” proponents of Manifest Destiny, from the days of Thomas Jefferson on to the Civil War actually represented the interests of the British Empire and the Slave Power of Virginia. Not least among those “leaders” of the doctrine of expansion were Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin van Buren, James Polk and Franklin Pierce- all of whom merely used the term as a weapon to mass murder native Americans in order to clear great swaths of territory on the one side and launch un-necessary wars for territorial gain on the other. Some even wanted to extend rail to the Pacific in order to reach Asia- but only for the purpose of carrying on the lucrative practices of Opium dealing refined by the British and many of their Wall Street junior partners.

The genuine improvement of man and nature never entered their minds even once.

While the Southern perversion of Manifest Destiny was driven by a desire to spread the institution of slavery across the continent, another version of the doctrine was being concocted in the north by an Anglo-Canadian ambition to halt the immanent unification of Eurasia with America.

This logic was behind the version of Manifest Destiny promoted by such Canadian Founding fathers as George Brown, Sir Etienne Cartier, Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Alexander Galt as they attempted to block America’s immanent acquisition of British Columbia after the 1867 purchase of Alaska had made the extension of the newly finished Trans Continental railway to Eurasia through BC and Alaska a powerful force of strategy [7].

This surprise maneuver initiated in complete secrecy by Secretary of State William Seward, Russian Ambassador Stoeckl and their allies completely transformed the rules of the game which Britain always strove to monopolize. America’s new acquisition made the oft-forgotten colony of British Colombia a very hot commodity and unleashed a race for control of the Northwest of the Continent between slave owners and oligarchs on the one side and republican humanists on the other.

The vision of a new paradigm of relations amongst sovereign by development corridors from east and west was becoming increasingly inevitable in the minds of oligarchs and republicans alike with America’s prophet of the Manifest Destiny, William Gilpin now advocating loudly for his “cosmopolitan railway connecting the North America with Eurasia through the Bering Straits.

In the minds of Imperial geopoliticians, it was this positive vision for a world of win-win cooperation that had to be stopped at all costs. But how? The British Empire depleted its power enormously during the Crimean war (1853-56) to destroy Russia, the Civil War (1861-65) to destroy America, the Opium War (1856-1860) to destroy China not to mention suppressing the Great Rebellion of India (1857-58).

An Imperialist Manifest Destiny of the North

Canadian Historian David Mitchell, writing in his influential 1976 thesis “The American Purchase of Alaska and Canadian Expansion to the Pacific” hit the nail on the head when he stated “In a sense, Canadian Confederation was a conscious rejection of claims Americans made to “Manifest Destiny”. [8]

We are reminded that Mitchell was not exaggerating in the least when we revisit the words spoken by the great “Founding Father of Canada” and champion of Canada’s National Policy (1870-1878), Sir John A. Macdonald:

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

Was Macdonald a lone voice amongst Canada’s Fathers of Confederation who viewed Canadian expansion from purely British Geopoltical terms? Unfortunately, it is difficult to find even one “father of confederation” who did not share his view.

Sir Alexander Galt, a fellow father of Confederation and proponent of Canadian expansion, speaking to a crowd on May 22, 1867 in Lennoxville Quebec described his views on the need to extend confederation and rail to the Pacific:

“We cannot close our eyes to what is happening in the West… I for one look upon the acquisition of Russian America by the United States as their answer to the arrangements we have been making to unite among ourselves… If the United States desire to outflank us on the west, we must accept the situation and lay our hand on British Columbia and the Pacific Ocean. This country cannot be surrounded by the Unites States- We are gone if we allow it… “From the Atlantic to the Pacific” must be the cry in British America as much as it has ever been in the United States”

Another Father of Confederation George Brown, who ran the influential Toronto Globe and heavily promoted Canada’s trans-continental railway, wrote on July 10, 1867 that “Seward’s attempt to coerce Canada by the purchase of Walrussia has brought down upon him the laughter of mankind and has not altered one white the determination of the people of British America from Prince Edward Island to Cancouver to stand by the old flag to the last man and the last cartridge”

Sir George Etienne Cartier stated in 1865 dreaded the immanent annexation of Canada by saying “We must either have a Confederation of British North America or else be absorbed by the American Confederation.”

Cartier fought heavily for a trans continental railway and served as the lead negotiator in London organizing the emergency purchase of the vast territories known as “Rupert’s Land” from the Hudson’s Bay Company” for 300, 000 pounds in April 1869. Without this purchase, the extension of Canada’s rail to the Pacific and absorption of the isolated colony of British Columbia were impossible. Following up on the Hudson Bay purchase, Cartier also took the lead to transform the rebellion-ridden Red River Colony into the Province of Manitoba in 1870.

Showcasing his disdain for democracy, Cartier attacked the “democratic system which prevails in the United States,” and in a February 7, 1865 speech, professed his love of oligarchism by saying “in this country we must have a distinct form of government in which the monarchical spirit will be found.”

So in the year 1864, as one confederacy founded upon slavery was being shut down, a conference in Charlottown, Nova Scotia was unfolding preparing the groundwork for a new Confederacy founded upon Monarchical principles.

Post Script

Becoming aware of the nefarious agenda underlying Canada’s version of “Manifest Destiny” (sometimes called the “National Policy”) is not to diminish the extremely important role played by such rail engineers, scientists and inventors who blossomed during the Canadian Pacific Railroad’s construction. Whether initiated for right or wrong reasons, great projects that cause humanity to transcend our limits will always have positive humanizing effects, and oligarchy can never be certain that such a genie can be put back in the bottle.

The names of Thomas Keefer, William Hamilton Merritt, Isaac Buchanan, Wilfred Laurier, C.D. Howe remain some of the many Canadian names which should be celebrated to this day for their inspiring advance of the human condition. After all, one simply cannot pioneer a new frontier, master a new discipline, and awaken powers of creative reason while remaining the same small minded subject one was before the endeavor was undertaken.

So we must proceed optimistically into the new future being born before our eyes, knowing that even though ugly fallacies contaminate our past and our present traditions, the seeds have been planted for something new to be born now. Let us take confidence that in this new paradigm of win-win cooperation, the claws of monarchical principles will find less and less to hold onto as Zeus slips forever into oblivion.

 

Footnotes

[1] Letter to Sir Edward W. Watkin-1865.

[2] Citation from “With Faith and Goodwill: 150 Years of Canada-U.S. Friendship” edited by Arthur Milnes, Library and Archives Canada Publication 2017 p.24. It is noted that while Davis spoke these words at the Theatre Royale, the band on stage played Dixie. Pro-Confederacy mania became an odd phenomenon in post Civil War Canada during this time.

[3] Journal Proceedings of the Convention of Southern and Western States, April 10, 1854 pg. 39

[4] President Jackson’s “Trail of Tears” remains one of the  greatest injustices in American history. Enforcing the ill-begotten Removal Act of 1838, Jackson ordered the removal of 17 000 Cherokees from the American south east to “reservation lands” whereby an estimated 4000 died of hunger and disease. The newly emptied land was soon made available to cotton plantation “gentlemen” and their human cattle.

[5] The three Seminol Wars (1st: 1816–1819, 2nd: 1835–1842, 3rd: 1855–1858), and Mexican-American War of 1846-48 remain the most prominent examples. Surprisingly, new research by historian Robert Ingraham has also demonstrated that the American War with Britain of 1812-1816 was an unjust and un-necessary war launched by slave power-dominated American war hawks who in many cases were more ideologically beholden to a naïve view of continental expansion than actual justice. For more on the War of 1812 see Robert Ingraham’s Manhattan’s Struggle for Freedom vs the Slave Power of Virginia, Executive Intelligence Review May 8, 2015

[6] For more on the Anglo-American control of the global drug trade from the Opium Wars to the present, see Dope Inc: Britain’s Opium War Against the World, Executive Intelligence Review, 1978

[7] for a full exposition on this subject , see The Myth of Canada’s National Policy in this issue or David Mitchell’s 1976 paper “he American Purchase of Alaska and Canadian Expansion to the Pacific, Simon Fraser University, 1976

[8] David Joseph Mitchell, The American Purchase of Alaska and Canadian Expansion to the Pacific, Simon Fraser University, 1976

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