The peril of the republic of the United States of America

Front matter

BBBiilKilllli m.

Sy I ■ P^BJCY. m ^MApAN^

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

Preface

About ten years ago I became deeply interested in those prophecies of the Bible which relate to the history of this world. As on the sacred page I read and pondered over the outlines of the great events of earth, both past and yet to be, I determined to make a thorough study of human histories, for the double purpose of satisfying myself as to the truthfulness of the Bible concerning what had already transpired, and that through these things I might better understand what was yet to come.

In 1891 my friend and fellow worker, Alonzo T. Jones, wrote his- "Two Kepublics, or Rome and the United States of America." It was my privilege to read this remarkable work in the proof; and, from the general field of the annals of mankind, my attention was specifically turned to the prophetical and philosophical history of the Republic of Rome and the Republic of the United States. During the past nine years, having occupied the chair of history in the College at this place, my duties have accorded me abundant opportunity to pursue my cherished theme.

With me the study of the great events of the present has been with the one desire that, guided by the Word of God, I might, through the things transpiring around me, read correctly the events which are yet to take place. The matters touched upon in this little book were long ago recorded in sacred, prophetic Writ. They vitally concern the welfare and peace of the United States, and are intimately connected with the deeds which will ultimately bring to a close the long and tragic history of the world. We are apt to believe that we live in better times than those with which others have been favored; but those wonderful words of James Russell Lowell apply just as much to the present time as to any time in past history : —

"Careless seems the great Avenger: history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt false systems and the Word. Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."

4 PREFACE.

Firmly believing that it is my duty as a minister of the gospel,

ambassador of Jesus Christ, to warn men and women what

a ill be, I have written that which follows, that in life

and spirit they may transfer their allegiance and citizenship from

the kingdoms of this world to the kingdom of our Lord and of

blch kingdom, according to the seer, shall never be

shall Btand forever and ever.

In writing this little work I have not sought to bring hidden

to light, but rather to make plain the meaning, philosophy,

facts already well known, generally accredited, and

cknowledged by thinking men. I have drawn freely

from the 1 speeches of others. Many times I have quoted

their words rather than to write my own. I have done this for the

in that their thoughts were my thoughts, and that in giving

their language I could at once give their ideas and my own without

er of injustice to them. I wish to acknowledge the assistance

1 in making these things plain from the speeches of

r, of Massachusetts; Mason, of Illinois; Baker of

and Daniells, of West Virginia; also from Mr. Chas. F.

of Hoston, and Prof. Carl Schurz, of New York. The

thought and careful study which these eminent men have

d this subject, although perhaps only from the standpoint of

cal and philosophical, in contradistinction to prophetical, his-

jreat help to me in many ways.

In commending my work to the public, I have only to say that

I have written has been written with an earnest desire to do

lis may escape the ruin which is surely to come upon

I it has been written with malice toward none, with

r all, with firmness in the right as God has given me to

Percy T. Magan.

I

Chapter I. Pagb

The United States comes into existence over a principle — All men created equal — "Consent of the governed " doctrine — Declaration of Independence one of great general principles — Comments on the Declaration by Charles Sumner — The Roman theory of unlimited power — The European theory of unlimited power — The American theory of limited power — Opinion of John Quincy Adams — Thackeray on the painting in the rotunda — The American principle of government — the Bible doctrine of government — God and the nations.

Chapter II

The American Civil war a contest over a great principle — Lincoln's great Gettysburg speech — The Declaration means just what it says — Lincoln's ideas of the Declaration — Judge Douglas's ideas of the Declaration — The ideas of the Fathers of the nation concerning the meaning of the Declaration of Independence — Thomas Jefferson on slavery — James Madison on slavery — A house divided against itself can not stand.

CHAPTER IH.

The nation as it issued from the Civil war — The sorrows of Cuba — Causes of the revolution in Cuba — Sufferings of the Cuban people — The causes of their sufferings — Declaration of war against Spain by the United States — Reasons for the war — Not for the increase of territory — Forcible annexation, criminal aggression.

Chapter IV

The beginnings of Spain — Visigoths become Roman Catholics — The Saracens arrive in Spain — Magnificent civilization of the

I CONTENTS.

Their bouses, gardens, and libraries, and contribution- to BCience Their burning contrasted with papistical The Saracens conquered by the Spaniards — The Is attempt to convert the Saracens — Odious persecutions — Expulsion of the Saracens from Spain — Degradation of Spain.

CHAPTER V. Th> - Inquisition 52

Tie i-on for the Inquisition — Everything based on the

Bible — Treatment of i be Albigenses — Stories circulated concerning the Jews —Position of Queen Isabella — Ideas of King Ferdinand V.: idences thai a .lewish conversion was not sincere — The hall "f torture — Modes of torture — Why the people of Cuba and the Philippine Islands rebelled against Spain.

CHAPTER VI. The Council op Blood ..... 61

Free Bpiril of the Hollanders — Crimes of Charles the Fifth in

II land Philip the Second and Bloody Mary — The Edict of

1550 Fearful persecutions — William the Silent — Hollanders

to England, and the commerce of Holland declines — The

preachers "f the Reformation — Field preaching under guard —

p-meetings in Holland — Composition of the Council of Blood

Deeds of the Council of Blood —All the inhabitants of Holland

demned to death — The siege of Leyden — Relief of Leyden —

ading of the Dutch Republic.

Chapter VII

man Imit.hiai.ism — National Apostasy ... 79

Wh ras conquered Why America, was chosen to conquer

tting sun of Spanish glory — An old "World power is

driven from Cuba, but an Old World idea invades the United

The doctrine that mighl makes right— The doctrine

ikes might —American Imperialism —The Declara-

■ mocked at The forcible annexation of the

\ D. 1809 ideas of the Declaration— Jefferson

Ideas of John Fiske — James G. Blaine on

Macaulaj on colonial empires — The American

ion a war against the colonial system —Supreme Court

dependencies — The national records

1 to dependencies, In the organization of the Northwest

CONTENTS. 7

Territory, treaty of cession with France over Louisiana purchase, in the treaty of Washington over the Floridas, in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo over California, Nevada, etc., and in the Gadsden and Alaskan purchases — A change of front on the "government by consent" doctrine — The purchase of the Philippines — Recent opinions on the "consent of the governed " doctrine — In the track of King George — Grand words from Carl Schurz — Criminal aggression — Can the government endure half citizen, half colonial? — The command, "Silence!" — Liberty at the point of the bayonet — Lord Macaulay on slavery in the West Indies — Is history a fable?

Chapter VIII

What is manifest destiny? — God's dealings with the nations — The case of Nebuchadnezzar — The Most High ruleth in the kingdoms of men — Story of the Philippine revolt against Spain — Cruelties of the Spaniards — Aguinaldo and the Americans — The great seal of the United States — Opinions of George Francis Adams — Principles born at Lexington and buried at Manila — Admiral Dewey's estimate of the Filipinos — Can the Filipinos be made good American citizens? — Is it a Christian duty for the United States to forcibly annex the Philippines? — Christ and civil government — "The Bible in one hand and the shotgun in the other" doctrine — Is the United States a Christian nation? — Militarism and democracy — God uses nations as instruments — The case of Assyria — "My Country, 1899" — The Recessional Ode — The task of the forefathers and the task of the sons — Is it Live through all time, or Die by suicide? — Which way shall the tide of destiny set?

Chapter IX

The two great republics — Cause of the transformation of Rome from a republic to a military monarchy — How nations lose their own freedom — The case in the Philippines — Parallel between the last days of the republic of Rome and the present time in the United States — Roman expansion — A Roman war in the cause of humanity — The liberty that was not given to the Greek republics — Rome's treatment of allies — Opinion of Rollin on the Roman expansion policy — American expansion in reality contraction — When will Cuba be vacated — How God punishes nations — Not political theories, but prophetical principles — The Bible

8 CONTENTS.

concerning the Roman republic — The Bible ncerning Roman expansion — Bible prophecies relating to the United States — The ed book, why opened now? — The ruin of Rome and the peril of fche-United States.

CHAPTER X. v ob Armageddon? ...... 166

Maiming peace and preparing for war — China the storm center —The czar's manifesto and the Peace and Disarmament Conference — The United States formerly the champion of peace — The Monroe doctrine — The advent of the United States in the

at, does it portend peace or war? — Washington's farewell address — Carl Sohurz on the English alliance — "What shall be th>- sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" — Position of Jerusalem in the world — Position of the United States in the world — The vision of the great image — The ten kingdoms of prophecy — The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom — The Image struck upon the feet — The reason for this — The kings of the East — Turkey and the great powers — Prophecies concerning Russia — The apostasy of the United States — All nations in rebellion — The armies of heaven — The kingdom and citizens of our Lord and of his Christ.

Appendix

Thk I'mti bs and Slavery in the Sulus . . 189

THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC.

Chapter I. A Nation's Birthright

The advent of the United States upon history's stage broke the dawn of a new era, not alone for the Old Thirteen, but for all mankind. The principles of freedom enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence were pregnant with weal for tens of thousands in other climes, and for millions then unborn, as well as for the embattled farmers who fought at Lexington and Concord.

The new nation appealed not to tables of dynasty and royal succession to prove her title to life or her right to existence as a sovereign state among peers. Discarding these, her founders bore her into the arena upon certain self-evident truths. Her people assumed their equal and separate station among the powers of the earth by "the laws of nature and of nature's God." 1

Hitherto the doctrine had prevailed that the Almighty had created one class to govern and another class to be governed. States. men had universally held that all men were not created equal, and ecclesiastics had not been slow in seconding their teachings. When from time to time philosophers had arisen inculcating ideas of liberty and equality, they had been branded as anarchists by the state and as atheists by the church. Many a time both the civil and religious powers had buried their own differences of opinion and claims of jurisdiction in order that they might form a union for the sole purpose of more effectively dealing swift and summary punishment to these disturbers of the existing order of things. The rack, the fagot, and all the ingenious and exquisite tortures which the Inquisition could devise had been freely employed to wring from unwilling lips the desired recantation.

i Declaration of Independence, par. 1.

Id THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC.

to the time of our glorious Revolution the doctrine that

rnments derive their just powers from the consent of the gov-

i was wholly unknown in national practise. The princes and

atatea of the nations of Europe had entrenched themselves

behind that wickedest of all political tenets, the divine right of

This they amplified till it might better have read, the divine

right of kings to govern wrong. With the aid of this as their creed,

they bad outraged in their subjects the inborn sense of manhood to

Bach an extent that by the time the close of the eighteenth century

vrae reached it was well nigh extinct ; and the majority of the human

family, worn out by the struggle of centuries, were about to sink

into a long sleep of political death from which it seemed almost

impossible that there should be an awakening.

But the -park of light and life still burned; and a few bold sen- 9, the reflection of a few brave hearts, kindled a pillar of fire to guide mankind out of the wilderness of medieval political errors into the Canaan of governmental truth. As are the ten commandments and the golden rule in divinity, so are the precepts that rnments derive their just powers from the consent of the gov- I. and that all men arc created equal, in civility. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are indeed the New and Old Testaments in things pertaining to Coesar, the one Berving as a commentary in the light of which the other be interpreted." Immortal are the words of Jefferson, the sage of Monticello; grand in their simplicity and "noble roughness : " — • When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for on'- people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the rate and equal Btation to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. :i (hc.nl respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the nation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are [ual . that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . that among these are life, liberty, and the purof happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instill riving their just powers from the consent of the i

The Declaration of Independence is a declaration of great general principles, as well as a recital of certain specific grievances. It was never written to meet the exigencies of one particular time or people. No nation prior to this one had ever declared it as a principle good for all mankind that all men are created equal, or that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. None of the great nations of Europe ever taught or ever believed these precepts. They were born simultaneously with the American Republic. They constituted her christening robe and her birthright, peculiarly her own, and the first infant cry of her national life. That nation of the old world which has ever been the foremost in promulgating doctrines of freedom and liberty did not believe these things, for she it was who fought them. She did not even believe them in their most limited sense for her most limited self, — the isle of England, as distinguished from colony and dependency. Much less, therefore, did she consider them as divine and immortal truths, applicable to all times and places, and worthy of being the basis of government among men in every kindred and nation and tongue and tribe and people.

Well has Charles Sumner said: —

' ' The words that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed are sacred words, full of life-giving energy. Not simply national independence was here proclaimed, but also the primal rights of all mankind. Then and there appeared the angel of human liberation, speaking and acting at once with heaven-born strength, breaking bolts, unloosing bonds, and opening prison doors ; always ranging on its mighty errand, wherever there are any, no matter of what country or race, who struggle for rights denied ; now cheering Garibaldi at Naples, as it had cheered Washington in the snows of Valley Forge, and especially visiting all who are downtrodden, whispering that there is none so poor as to be without rights which every man is bound to respect, none so degraded as to be beneath its beneficent reach, none so lofty as to be above its restraining power; while before it despotism and oligarchy fall on their faces, like the image of Dagon, and the people everywhere begin to govern themselves. "

And again he says : —

• ' These words in the Declaration of Independence were not uttered in vain. Do you suppose them idle? Do you suppose them

12 PERIL OP THE REPUBLIC.

mere phrase or generality'.'' No such thing. They are living words, bich this country is solemnly bound, and from which it can never escape until they are fulfilled. Your statutes can not contain any limitation which inflicts an indignity upon any portion of the human family . "

yet again : —

"The Declaration of Independence is the twofold promise; first,

that all are equal in rights, and secondly, that just government

ly on the consent of the governed, being the two great

political commandments on which hang all laws and constitutions.

rnly, and you will keep all. Write them in your

Statutes; write them in }'our hearts. This is the great and only final

settlement of all existing questions. To this sublime consecration

of the Republic let us aspire."

In liberty, therefore, was the nation conceived; to these two propositions was it Bacredly dedicated and solemnly sealed in the blood one. As the Bible declares that all men are equal before the /. ■ i. i ■ . that God is no respecter of persons, so the Declaraallirms that all men are equal before the law, and that this equality is their own unalienable and primal right. The Declaration nol mean that all men are equal in all respects. But it does . and it does say that they are equal in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And in this it recognizes the nobility of man as the creation of God, and makes no exception or kction in favor of an}' human caste or human lineage. '•Obviously, men are not born equal in physical strength or in .1 capacity, in beauty of form or in health of body. Diversity or inequality in these respects is the law of creation. But this lality is in no particular inconsistent with complete civil or cal equality. •The equality declared by our fathers in 1776, and made the fundamental La* oi Massachusetts in 1780, was equality before the law. [ts object was to efface all political or civil distinctions, and olish all institutions founded upon birth. 'All men ^recreated equal ie Declaration o\ Independence. 'All men are born

nd equal,' says the Massachusetts Bill of Rights. These are not vain words. Within the sphere of their influence, no person can be created, no person can be born, with civil or political privileges not enjoyed equally by all his fellow citizens; nor can any institutions be established, recognizing distinctions of birth. Here is the great charter of every human being drawing vital breath upon this soil, whatever may be his conditions, and whoever may be his parents. He may be poor, weak, humble, or black ; he may be of Caucasian, Jewish, Indian, or Ethiopian race; he may be born of French, German, English, or Irish extraction ; but before the constitution of Massachusetts all these distinctions disappear. He is not poor, weak, humble, or black; nor is he Caucasian, Jew, Indian, or Ethiopian ; nor is he French, German, English, or Irish ; he is a man, the equal of all his fellow-men. ... To some it [the state] may allot higher duties, according to higher capacities; but it welcomes all to its equal hospitable board. The state, imitating the divine justice, is no respecter of persons. " 2

This is the true doctrine of civil government, this is the Bible doctrine for civil government.

There is still another principle in the Declaration of Indepen dence which is worthy of notice here. The doctrine of the nations of medieval times was that "might makes right." If a nation possessed enough arbitrary power and physical force to accomplish a certain end, no matter how criminally aggressive, no matter how tyrannical or despotic that end might be, the power to do was always supposed to prove the rightfulness of the thing done. And back of this time, in the dawn of European history, in the days of the Eoman Republic, that nation had held to the doctrine of " Vox Populi vox Dei, " — " The voice of the people is the voice of God ; " in other words, the Roman doctrine was that if the majority of the people approved of a thing, it must be right.

But the Declaration of Independence, with one simple yet sweeping statement, disowns, disclaims, and discards both the Roman and the medieval theories, and substitutes in their place a principle beyond comparison with them for its lofty and^ holy teachings. In the last paragraph of that immortal document it is written that these United Colonies as free and independent States "have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do."

aChas. Sumner, "Works," Vol. II, pp. 341, 342.

14 TIIK PERIL OK THE REPUBLIC.

Wrapped in these words was a new doctrine. Here was the enunciation of a principle hitherto unheard of. Heretofore sover- \ had been considered as being unlimited and illimitable. But the Declaration of Independence brought to the birth a new principle, that right is superior to all earthly power, whether vested in prince or potentate or in a republican form of government. With the founders of this government it was not a question of what the nation was able to do, but contrariwise, what was right for the nation to do. I quote once more from the great Sumner : —

'• But the great Declaration, not content with announcing certain rights as unalienable, and therefore beyond the control of any government, still further restrains the sovereignty, which it asserts by Bimply declaring that the United States have ' full power to do all acts and things which independent States may of right do.' Here is a well-defined limitation upon the popular sovereignty. The dogma of Tory lawyers and pamphleteers — put forward to sustain the claim of parliamentary omnipotence, and vehemently espoused by Dr. .Johnson in his 'Taxation no Tyranny' — was taught, that sovereignty is in its nature illimitable, precisely as it is now ly professed by Mr. Douglas for his handful of squatters. But this doctrine is distinctly discarded in the Declaration, and it is frankly proclaimed that all sovereignty is subordinate to the rule of Mark, now, the difference: all existing governments at that time, even the local governments of the colonies, stood on power without limitation. Here was a new government, which, taking its place among the nations, announced that it stood only on right, and claimed no sovereignty inconsistent with right." 3

I" 1837 John Quincy Adams in a Fourth of July oration at

i! \ port, said: — " The bov< reign authority conferred upon the people of the colonic by the Declaration of Independence could not dispense them, any individual citizen of them, from the fulfilment of their : obligations. The people who assumed their equal and sepaitation among the powers of the earth, by the laws of nature's hat very act acknowledged themselves bound to the observer those laws, and could neither exercise nor confer any power I with them."

1 Ehunner, " Works.'

Still further alluding to the self-imposed restraints upon the sovereignty which had been established, he said : —

' ' The Declaration acknowledged the rule of right paramount to the power of independent States itself, and virtually disclaimed all power to do wrong. This was a novelty in the moral philosophy of nations, and it is the essential point of difference between the system of government announced in the Declaration of Independence and those systems which had until then prevailed among men. . . . It was an experiment upon the heart of man. All the legislators of the human race until that day had laid the foundations of all government among men in power; and hence it was that in the maxims of theory, as well as in the practise of nations, sovereignty was held to be unlimited and illimitable. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed another law, ... a law of right, binding upon nations as well as individuals, upon sovereigns as well as upon subjects. ... In assuming the attributes of sovereign power, the colonists appealed to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions, and neither claimed nor conferred authority to do anything but for right."

"Well indeed has George Bancroft, America's greatest historian, said : —

"This immortal state paper, which for its composer was the aurora of enduring fame, was ' the genuine effusion of the soul of the country at that time,' the revelation of its mind, when, in its youth, its enthusiasm, its sublime confronting of danger, it rose to the highest creative powers of which man is capable. The bill of rights which it promulgates is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice that is anterior to the state. " 4

In a speech delivered in the United States Senate, Jan. 9, 1899, Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, refers to Thackeray's comment upon the great picture in the rotunda of the capitol. So beautifully and forcibly has he woven into his argument this incident, and another with it, that I take the liberty of giving it again in his own words, for they are far better than my own could be: —

"Thackeray, no mean judge of noble art, no mean judge of noble actions, was one day crossing the rotunda of this capitol in

4 Bancroft, " History of United States." Vol. IV, chap. 28.

THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC.

company with Charles Sumner. He stopped before the picture where the genius of the great artist of Connecticut has delineated on the imperishable canvas the scene when the Declaration of Independence was presented by Jefferson to the solemn sitting over which Hancock presided, and the new nation, born on the 19th of April, 1775, was baptized in the faith of our new gospel of liberty. He stood for a moment silent, and then said to Mr. Sumner, 'That's your painter.'

"Surely he was right. The foremost action of human history is fitly represented by the great work which we fondly hope is to be as enduring as time, enduring as the Republic, enduring as liberty. It is there, in the foremost place of honor which can be found on this earth. No Parthenon, no Saint Peter's, no Palace of the Escurial, no Sans Souci, not Westminster Abbey itself, can equal, at least to our eyes, this spot, where forever a great and free people declares its constitutional will.

" Beneath the great dome to which the pilgrim from afar first repairs when he visits the capital of his country, hangs the great picture which delineates the scene, when the nation was first baptized into immortal life. It was not only the independence of America which was then declared, it toas the dignity of human nature itself.

" "When Samuel Rogers visited the Dominican convent at Padua, an aged friar showed him the famous picture of 'The Last Supper' in the refectory of the convent. He said: —

" ' I have sat at my meals before it for seven and forty years, and such are the changes that have taken place among us — so many have come and gone in that time — that when I look upon the company there, upon those who are sitting at that table, silent as they are, I am sometimes inclined to think that we, not they, are the shadows.'

" As administrations, terms of presidential office, begin and end, as senators and representatives come and go before the silent figures in that immortal picture, it seems to me that we are but the shadows, while Hancock and Jefferson and Adams and Franklin and Ellsworth and Livingston are atill deliberating, still acting, still alive." 5

In the Book of books it is written that "the grass withereth, the flower fadeih: hut the word of our God shall stand forever; " and in