of the West, opposed the entire project and earnestly protested
against annexation.

In the feverish dreams of the slavery propagandists rose chimerical
projects of conquest and expansion at which a Caesar or an Alexander
would have stood aghast. Mexico and Central America were contemplated
as possible additions to the magnificent slave empire which they
saw rising out of the mists of the future. They began to talk of
the Caribbean Sea as an inland lake, of Cuba and the West Indies
as outlying dependencies, of the Pacific as their western coast,
and of the States that should thereafter be carved out of South
America. The enduring foundation of this tropical empire was to
be African slavery, and the governing power was to rest permanently
in the hands of a cultured aristocracy of slave-holders. The people
of the North-Atlantic States and heir descendents in the Northwest,
who churlishly held aloof from these intoxicating dreams, were to
be treated with generous justice and permitted to go in peace or
continue a minor adjunct of the great aristocratic Republic. Already
the irrepressible conflict had begun.

Douglas heartily accepted the plans of his party. He was by
temperament an ardent expansionist, a firm believer in the manifest
destiny of his country to rule the Western Continent, a pronounced
type of exuberant young Americanism. He was an unflinching partisan
seeking to establish himself in the higher councils of his party,
which was committed to this scheme of conquest. On May 13th,
1846, he delivered in the House a speech, in which he defended the
course of the Administration in regard to the Mexican War and, in
a spirited colloquy, instructed the venerable John Quincy Adams in
the principles of international law. He based his defense of the