"Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? - An Essay Based on the Political Philosophy of the American - Revolution, as Summarized in the Declaration of - Independence, towards the Ascertainment of the Nature of - the Political Relati by Alpheus H. Snow
page 40 of 86 (46%)
page 40 of 86 (46%)
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directly the opposite of the system of Europe which was based on the
proposition that 'all men are created unequal,' or that "some are created equal and some unequal," and the Declaration of Independence was a declaration of an American System, as opposed to the European System. If this interpretation be correct, it was to preserve this American System that President Washington advised against 'political connection' with Europe, and that President Jefferson warned America against "entangling alliances," it was this American System which President Monroe and President Adams declared to have extended itself throughout this hemisphere; it was this American System to preserve which the Civil War was fought and to the maintenance of which President Lincoln rededicated the American people on the field of Gettysburg, it is this American System which President Roosevelt has upheld against the forces in our midst, which on the one side have, by the wrongful use of accumulations of wealth, sought to establish a doctrine of inequality based on the possession of property, and on the other side, by denying the rightfulness of all accumulations of wealth, have sought to establish a doctrine that the inequalities of physical wealth and intellectual ability are to be destroyed, instead of being employed, by those endowed with great wealth or great ability, as the common wealth, in helping each and all to secure their unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and thus to realize the divine right of equality, it is this American System which the American Congress under the leadership of President McKinley and President Roosevelt, has actually applied in the determination of our relations with the Insular regions, so that they are to-day free states _de facto_ connected and united with the American Union as the Justiciar State, and so that it needs only our recognition to convert them into free states _de jure_ and to bring into legal existence a Greater American Union of Free States of which |
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