Ilan Stavans Quotes

Mr. Tyler acquired Texas by voluntary compact, and Mr. Polk California and New Mexico by successful war.

A lot of the U.S. used to be part of Mexico, including Arizona. But they're a bit touchy about that right now.

I feel like the history between Israel and Palestine has a lot in common with the history between India and Pakistan.

Each colony became accustomed to planting new settlements and to claiming new boundaries.

The United States has been a global power since late in the 19th century.

Joe Smith and Brigham Young laid out Independence, but very soon thereafter enough citizens of the county collected to drive them off, after several stubborn fights.

the avowed pretension of the United States, to put themselves at the head of the confederacy of all the Americas, and to sway that confederacy against Europe (Great Britain included), is not a pretension identified with our interests, or one that we can countenance or tolerate. It is, however, a pretension which there is no use in contesting in the abstract; but we must not say anything that seems to admit this principle.

Unity was the real key to the success of the United States. The constitution of 1787 was in many respects the imposition of a central national government upon the quarrelsome states... In a country so constituted, the weaknesses of one state were compensated for by the strengths of another.

Convinced of its soundness, I feel it consistent with pure morality to lead the Indians towards becoming citizens, to familiarize them to the idea that it is for their interest to cede lands at times to the United States, and for us to procure gratifications to our citizens from time to time by new acquisitions of land

Destiny beckons us to hold and civilize Mexico.

Who is James K. Polk?

Throughout history, countries have sought to expand ….Today, the goal of most wars is too make countries smaller rather than larger.

It being perhaps the only large tract of country and certainly the first which lying out of the boundaries of the Union will be settled by the people of the United States.

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

[The U. S.] government possesses the power of acquiring territory, either by conquest or by treaty.

I do not believe that is our destiny to being engulfed into a Republican union (with the United States), renovated and inflamed with the wine of victory, of which he now drinks so freely...

I never was much interested in the Texas question … I never could see much good to come of annexation...

From the Rio Grande to the Arctic Ocean there should be but one flag and one country.

We shall never be able to think rationally about our own survival until we have the courage to say, in our own minds: We are Americans, White men of the West. This is our country because we took it from the Indians. And we have an unquestionable right to this country so long as we have the power and will to defend it.

At the time the United States government acquired the territory of California from Mexico, slavery had been abolished there nearly twenty years

The United States, of course, is determined to diversify Europe to such an extent that it becomes a meaningless entity.

The Mexican-American War had been unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States

My countrymen, the currents of destiny flow through the hearts of the people. Who will check them ? Who will divert them? Who will stop them?

… empires cannot be shattered and new states raised upon their ruins without disturbance. To create new boundaries is always to create new troubles. The one follows the other.

History will tell you that borders are not inevitable, they hardly existed at the end of the 19th century.