Abraham Lincoln Quotes

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

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

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

We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is Manifest Destiny.

I regarded and still regard the proposed annexation of Hawaii as not only opposed to our national policy but as a perversion of our national mission. The mission of our nation is to build up and make a great country out of what we have, instead of annexing islands

We are destined to own and control the whole western continent from Baffin's bay to the Caribbean sea ... we need not be in a hurry. When the fruit is ripe, it will fall into our hands.

Manifest Destiny on the hoof

Manifest destiny was on the march, and it was unfortunate that Mexico stood in the path.

America has always been the richest and most secure, and sometimes the most dangerous country in the world. In the early years, the danger was to everybody near us, slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans. It finally expanded in 1898 to the Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines.

If you look at the history of the U.S., we were an empire long before we were a nation.

The nation did not begin to realize the extraordinary possibilities of the vast Western territory until its attention was thus suddenly and definitely concentrated on the Pacific by the annual addition of over fifty million dollars to the circulating medium.

I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people.

When we acquired California and New- Mexico this party, scorning all compromises and all concessions, demanded that slavery should be forever excluded from them, and all other acquisitions of the Republic, either by purchase or conquest, forever.

American imperialism is often traced to the takeover of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii in 1898.

The rise of the presidency began with the Louisiana Purchase, which in 1803 doubled the land mass of the United States. History taught the framers that, just as Rome changed from republic to empire with conquest of new lands, territorial acquisition would lead to the centralization of political power.

You ask me if I am in favor of admitting a slave state to the union. Whenever it becomes necessary for us to acquire more territory for our growth and progress, I am for it.

Fifty-four Forty or Fight!

It is our glory that whilst other nations have extended their dominions by the sword we have never acquired any territory except by fair purchase or, as in the case of Texas, by the voluntary determination of a brave, kindred, and independent people to blend their destinies with our own.

I certainly am not willing to involve the country in a foreign war for the object of acquiring Texas.

Who is James K. Polk?

We must march from ocean to ocean .... We must march from Texas straight to the Pacific Ocean, and be bounded only by its roaring wave .... It is the destiny of the white race, it is the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Who believes that a score of victories over Mexico, the annexation of half her provinces, will give us more Liberty, a purer Morality?

Let it be signified to me through any channel ... that the possession of Florida is desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished. [It was.]

We must have the Floridas and Cuba.

We have quietly and almost without observation, annexed all the country between here [Ottawa] and the Rocky Mountains.