US Annexation of Canada
The United States aimed at extending its political sovereignty from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay. In his attitude towards all things military Jefferson was a demagogue, Madison a deskand-ledger politician, and none of their good points were of the least use in the raising, training or employment of armies. Jefferson was certain of immediate victory. Writing to Monroe in 1812 he said: 'The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.' Eustis, the secretary of War, was still more optimistic in a speech: 'We can take the Canadas without soldiers; we have only to send officers into the provinces, and the people disaffected toward their own Government will rally round our standard.' Both these absurd delusions were fully shared by the overwhelming majority of the American people, as was the equally absurd belief in the efficacy of untrained militia. There was nothing strange in this. Most English-speaking people hug the militia delusion to the present day. Every mass of inexperts is a mob. Every mob naturally likes to think an armed mob equal to an army; and every demagogue naturally likes to encourage a delusion so favourable to his own ascendancy. But his cry and the mob's echo, that irregulars mean victorious freedom while regulars mean tyrants and slaves, ignore the fundamental truths of the whole history of war, ignore the lessons of the fight for freedom then being fought against Napoleonic tyranny.
In the war of 1812, French and English Canadians fought side by side to drive back the American invaders. All through the 19th century they were ready to do the same again, when from time to time the annexationists seemed to be getting the upper hand in the United States. "Every true patriot, every man of statesmanlike habit, should look forward to the day when not a single European power will hold a foot of American soil. ... It is distinctly in the interest of civilization that the present States in the two Americas should develop along their own lines, and however desirable it is that many of them should receive European immigration, it is highly undesirable that any of them should be under European control." [Theodore Roosevelt, on the Monroe Doctrine, The Bachelor of Arts, March 1896].
As late as 1895, the disturbance created by the dispute between England and Venezuela, and finally settled by arbitration in favor of England, was regarded in Canada as the preliminary to a renewed outburst of American aggression. The gratuitous extension of the Monroe doctrine by Mr. Olney, Secretary of State under President Cleveland, in his memorable declaration to the effect that no European power could be tolerated any longer upon the American continent,1 was interpreted by many Canadians as the intentional denial of their own right to choose their own political connections. They consider that actual war was averted only by the timely fitting out of a British flying squadron, and finally by the complications with Spain, which turned the swelling tide of American jingoism into a different channel.
During the Spanish war Canadian sympathy with the Americans was modified by the hope that they would encounter sufficient resistance to take the edge off their jingoism. The feeling of distrust, which President Cleveland had revived, still remained, especially in Loyalist circles. Old men recalled the days when a popular American cry was "The Three C.s," — California, Cuba, Canada,—and the acquisition of the second resuscitated both the old forebodings and the old spirit of resolute defiance. Such apprehensions were not allayed after the war, when "expansion" became a political issue. According to imperialist Americans, such as Theodore Roosevelt, expansion was the "manifest destiny" of the American nation, which it was unpatriotic for anyone to resist. On the other side, the anti-imperialists, such as Mr. Carnegie, by way of offering an alternative to over - sea aggrandizement, urged that the natural line of expansion was in the direction of "coterminous territory," following the Russian rather than the British precedent, and avoiding the necessity of a big navy. Thus the anti-imperialist doctrine was almost as dangerous as that of the avowed expansionists, from a Canadian point of view.
