Senator Thomas Hart Benton, speech to Congress, 1846, justifying white supremacy

 

…It would seem that the White race alone received the divine command, to subdue and replenish the earth! For it is the only race that has obeyed it—the only one that hunts out new and distant lands, and even a New World, to subdue and replenish. Starting from western Asia, taking Europe for their field, and the Sun for their guide, and leaving Mongolians behind, the arrived, after many ages, on the shores of the Atlantic, which they lit up with the lights of science and religion, and adorned with the useful and elegant arts. Three and half centuries ago, this race, in obedience to the great command, arrived n the New World, and found new lands to subdue and replenish… The van of the Caucasian race now top the Rocky mountains, and spread down to the shores of the Pacific. In a few years a great population will grow up there, luminous with the accumulated lights of European and American civilisation. Their presence in such a position cannot be without its influence eastern Asia…Civilisation, or extinction, has been the fate of all people who have found themselves in the track of the advancing Whites, and civilisation, always the preference of the Whites, has been pressed as an object, while extinction has followed as a consequence of its resistance. The black and the Red race have often felt their ameliorating influence…

 



Back to Schedule I Building the American Nation Front Page I UCL History Department Home Page