This paper about the same time had a cartoon depicting “The United States in 1900,” showing Uncle Sam bestriding the whole North American continent.
The New York World, in December, 1888, also published a map of North America to show what the United States would look like after Canada came in, and depicted our country divided up into twenty-eight new States and territories, and named to suit the Yankee taste. In connection with this map the World published an interview with Senator Sherman, in which he advocated strenuously the annexation of Canada to the United States, saying that “the fisheries dispute and the question of the right of free transit of American goods over Canadian railroads are a type of the disputes that have vexed the two nations for a century, and will continue to disturb them as long as the present conditions exist. To get rid of these questions we must get rid of the frontier.”
In the descriptive article on the map everything that could help to excite the cupidity of the people of the United States was said and with great ability, and Professor Goldwin Smith was cited as declaring:
It is my avowed conviction that the union of the English-speaking race upon this continent will some day come to pass. For twenty years I have watched the action of the social and economical forces which are all, as it seems to me, drawing powerfully and steadily in that direction.
The map and the articles accompanying it were evidently published to accustom the minds of the people of the United States to the idea of expansion and aggression:
What a majestic empire the accompanying map suggests; one unbroken line from the Arctic Ocean to the Torrid Zone. The United States is here shown as embracing nearly the whole of the North American continent. Having conquered the Western wilderness the star of Empire northward points its way. . . . There would be no more trouble about fishing treaties or retaliation measures, and peace with all nations would be assured, by making the United States absolute master of the vast Western continent. The Empire that this nation would embrace under such circumstances is so vast in extent that none other furnishes a parallel.
This is only an illustration of the feeling all over the United States at this period from 1888 to 1890. The newspapers and magazines were filled with articles and cartoons all pointing in the same direction. Mr. Whitney, a member of the United States Cabinet, even went so far as to say that four armies of 25,000 men each could easily conquer Canada, indicating that the question of attacking Canada had been thought of. General Benjamin F. Butler, in the North American Review, one of their most respectable magazines, speaking of annexation, said, “Is not this the fate of Canada? Peacefully, we hope; forcefully, if we must,” and in the truculent spirit of a freebooter he suggested that the invading army should be paid by dividing up our land among them. General J. H. Wilson, a prominent railway manager, presented a petition to the United States Senate in which he said:
The best and most thoughtful citizens were coming to look upon the existence of Canada, and the allied British possessions in North America, as a continuous and growing menace to our peace and prosperity, and that they should be brought under the constitution and laws of our country as soon as possible, peacefully if it can be so arranged, but forcibly if it must.
Then came the McKinley Bill especially bearing upon the articles where Canada’s trade could be most seriously injured. It was believed that traitors in our own country assisted in arranging this part of the tariff so as to strike Canada as severely as possible. As another instance of the unprincipled manner in which these conspirators carried on their work, the following Press dispatch was sent to some of the United States papers: