THE PROBLEM OF EMPIRE

Godkin came of age in a world dominated by empire.Footnote ⁴ He grew up in a rural Irish Protestant household outside Dublin. His father, a strong supporter of Irish home rule and a Presbyterian minister left his pulpit because of his politics and became a writer and journalist. In addition to his personal experiences with empire, Godkin received an education that studied imperialism in detail. A classical education at the elite Royal Academical Institution in Belfast and the Silcoates School near Leeds would have left Godkin well versed in Roman history.Footnote ⁵ Later, his historical education in empires expanded at Queen's College in Belfast, where he was introduced to the liberalism of John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and George Grote and their critiques of colonialism.Footnote ⁶ These experiences introduced imperial rule as both a political and a historical fact as well as a theoretical economic, political, and moral problem.Footnote ⁷

It should come as no surprise, then, that from the founding of the Nation following the Civil War until his retirement in 1899, Godkin used its editorial pages to examine empire and its intersection with the American “experiment.”Footnote ⁸ The lesson that Godkin drew from his experience and education and expounded in his editorials was an old one: the antithesis of a republic, empire led to degeneration and collapse. A few months before the beginning of the Spanish–American War, he wrote that when the Roman Senate began a policy of expansion, “it launched Rome on a new career, which was to build up the Roman empire, but it sealed the fate of Roman republicanism.”Footnote ⁹ To contemplate a similar move for the United States invited “the complete failure of ‘the great experiment.’ ” Godkin pleaded that American expansion not follow the violent and bloody path of Rome but spread “through knowledge and trade, and law, and liberty, and brotherly kindness; that no other modes of expansion were known to us, and that we were sure none other could bring permanent peace and prosperity.”Footnote ¹⁰

This editorial, written to oppose the annexation of Hawaii, enumerated the key themes of Godkin's thoughts on empire and imperialism. These included the bloody, violent, and failed examples of other empires, the temptation of territorial expansion, the incompatibility of imperialism with republicanism, and an idealistic belief in the possibility of non-imperial American expansion. That America had expanded west in the form of self-governing colonies (or states) justified Godkin's hopeful tone because the United States had thus far avoided the degeneration of imperialism.

In 1897, while opposing the annexation of Hawaii, Godkin wrote (implausibly, from the point of view of the American Indians),

American expansion had been, up to that point, a democratic act. It had settled the West not through imperialist conquest but through the slow spread of the democratic system. Now this belief was not any less firmly held for being untrue. Godkin believed that America was embarking on a series of conquests of new territory fundamentally different from what had occurred before. By embracing the conquest of places in the Pacific and the Caribbean, the country turned its back on its traditions and exceptionalism for the lure of imperialism.

GODKIN'S VISION OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: THE PROMISE AND THREAT

With Union victory in the Civil War, men like Godkin had celebrated the new opportunities that northern victory represented for moral and economic development. In an editorial written in September 1865 Godkin warned that if President Johnson's vision of Reconstruction was allowed to assert itself the opportunities presented by victory would be dashed in the face of southern “hatred of democracy, the contempt for human rights, the horror of equality before the law, the proneness to violence which always results from inequality.” Further, he doubted that the southern states could

For Godkin, an educated citizenry was the key to the establishment of this social organization, for “the only sure defenses of freedom and independence are the education and intelligence of the individual citizen, and the general respect for family and property and life which results from education and from education only.”Footnote ¹³ To that end Godkin suggested securing the democratic system by linking suffrage with an education test. For Godkin, the education test did not in any sense limit the vote in an antidemocratic way. The test, in fact, provided the most democratic way to decide who could or could not vote. As he argued in an editorial, a person could lie about property, wealth, or background in order to gain access to the suffrage. Education (specifically literacy), on the other hand, solved the problem because it was impossible to fake, easy to test, and universally accessible with the abolition of slavery. In fact, by linking education and the right to vote “the general effect would be to stimulate education, to discredit ignorance, and to bring the whole community ever more under the influence of the pulpit and the press.”Footnote ¹⁴ Only by linking education and suffrage would a democracy of quality rather than quantity prevail. Within a few years, however, Godkin began to doubt his earlier assumptions about the progressive possibilities of the voting public and developed a darker view of democracy and its possible collusion with imperialism.

Godkin's faith that democracy might be a force for good in the world if combined with widespread educational uplift was shaken by a series of personal and political events between 1870 and 1884. In April 1873, Godkin's daughter Frances suddenly died after a brief illness. This death, closely following the death of a son at birth, broke Godkin's wife Fanny, who died two years later. Devastated, Godkin briefly considered suicide. He retreated to Cambridge to mourn, bought a house, and stayed for several years.Footnote ¹⁵

The effects of these personal tragedies on Godkin are hard to specify. Easier to gauge, however, are the effects of the economic and political upheavals of the 1870s and 1880s. The United States slipped into a depression in 1873 that engendered waves of strikes and protests. In 1877, this period of protest culminated in the Great Uprising, which only ended after Army and state militia troops fired upon strikers and protesters in Martinsburg, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh – government actions that Godkin applauded – and riots occurred in Chicago and San Francisco.Footnote ¹⁶ He interpreted these violent strikes, along with international events like the Paris Commune in 1871, which he had long connected to trade unionism, as an assault by democracy on private property. Property was sacred and any defense of it justified.Footnote ¹⁷ That the masses would attack the very foundations of civilization left Godkin extremely rattled about the prospects of democracy and moved him in a conservative direction.

The change was dramatic. In 1872 – the same year as the Liberal Republican movement – he was able to write about the power of law and of moral men to transform the collective morality of a nation, though he worried that “we overestimate the reasonableness of men.”Footnote ¹⁸ Thirteen years later, in 1885, however, he would write,

Nothing symbolized the drift in American democracy and drew Godkin's ire more than the Republican politician James G. Blaine. Godkin despised Blaine, the Speaker of the House in 1869 and a perennial Republican presidential hopeful, who epitomized for him the corrupt and pandering politician. In 1880, Blaine assured James A. Garfield's nomination at the Republican convention and in turn was appointed Secretary of State in 1881. Though he held the position for only nine and a half months, Blaine quickly earned the nickname “Jingo Jim” by pursuing aggressive new foreign policies such as canal schemes in Central America and the annexation of Hawaii – all moves sure to appall Godkin.Footnote ²⁰

In the 1870s, Godkin had begun to worry that “the growth of commerce and manufactures, and the increased complication of the social machine, render[ed] the smallest derangement of it anywhere a concern and trouble to all nations.”Footnote ²¹ Unfortunately, the people had become convinced by politicians that one nation's losses were another's gain, that international commerce opposed the national interest, that disputes required the “pugilists’” approach, and national dishonor followed any admittance of wrongdoing. That the people supported these tactics and the nation when it “put on the manners and morals of a swashbuckler, and offer ‘satisfaction’ to anyone who complains of its behavior,” demonstrated for Godkin that men like Blaine had derailed his hopes that America would be a cultivated presence in international relations.Footnote ²²

By 1884, Godkin had remarried and led the “mugwump” revolt over Blaine's nomination for President – which cost Blaine the election. Despite restoring normalcy to his personal life and stopping Blaine's ascension to the presidency, Godkin's pessimism about the course of recent history grew, and he predicted that with the likes of Blaine in control the future held “mangled corpses on the great-battlefields, and rejoice over the number of buildings destroyed and ships sunk.Footnote ²³ There are two interesting things about this editorial. First, it concerned the rise of militancy among Britons and their demand for war over an imperial clash with Russia in Afghanistan. The political world that Godkin thought of, wrote for, and worried about extended beyond the United States to encompass the entire European and imperial stage.Footnote ²⁴ Democracy not only threatened civilization in America by supporting politicians like James “Jingo Jim” Blaine, but around the world it attacked property with strikes and conflicts like the Paris Commune and called for Russian blood. Second, for Godkin the term ‘democracy’ was no longer being used as it had been in 1865. In that year he warned of the threat of southern intransigency to democracy.Footnote ²⁵ By the mid-1880s, however, after the examples of violence and urban rioting and the rise of pseudo-populist leaders of the 1870s, Godkin warned that democracy, the people, were being seduced by their “barbarous instincts” and the lure of spoils offered by unscrupulous politicians. Godkin feared that this democracy – ruled by its instincts – threatened civilization itself. It had become part of the problem of imperialism, not part of the solution.

The Spanish–American War confirmed this for Godkin. Within two months of the explosion and sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 the United States had destroyed two Spanish fleets, invaded and occupied Cuba and Puerto Rico, seized the Philippines, and annexed Hawaii and Samoa. For the first time, the United States found itself in possession of lands distant from the North American continent and thus a potential empire. By August 1898, Spain admitted defeat and accepted Cuban independence, which Congress had pledged to respect during the war. Neither Spain nor the United States, however, made any mention of the Philippines. In this vacuum, a growing chorus of politicians, journalists, and self-proclaimed patriots called for retaining the Philippines as an American colony, military base, and doorway to China.

Throughout the fall of 1898, Godkin became increasingly alarmed by the talk of making the Philippines a colony. He thought the United States incapable of governing a colony and clear of any responsibility “to civilize [the Philippines] and give them good government.” He even argued that it would not be “wickedness and wrong of which we should be guilty if we gave them back to Spain.”Footnote ²⁶ In October, Godkin worried that “this question is not, ‘What are we going to do with the Philippines?’ but ‘What the Philippines is going to do to us?’ ” He wondered about “the effect on our government and public morals of the possession of a distant province, occupied by an alien race.”Footnote ²⁷ The temptation of empire, as Godkin feared, proved too great and on 4 February 1899 the American military opened fire on Filipino irregulars in Manila, beginning a bloody colonial war and taking a step towards imperialism.

Although Godkin disapproved of the United States' imperial adventures, he developed ideas about how to navigate its new role in the world and mitigate its effects. He suggested, perhaps sarcastically, that to exist as both an empire and a democratic republic America needed a colonial civil service based on the British model. The corrupting potential of an empire would overwhelm a democratic system. The management of a colony needed “a permanent body removed from, and uninfluenced by, the vicissitudes of party politics at home.”Footnote ²⁸ Only such a body, filled with cultivated men, could govern the Philippines for the good of its people and thus protect the moral character of the United States. In essence Godkin recommended that the Philippines be governed by the cosmopolitan liberal elite that failed to guide America democracy.

THE RISE OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

Godkin's growing disillusionment with democracy and his worries about empire linked the classical liberal critique of empire with the well-known republican critique of democracy through the language of degeneration and corruption. By invoking the long-established republican discourse of degeneration Godkin transformed his liberal opposition to American imperialism and into a powerful and evocative moral indictment of American democracy and government.

The links between corruption and imperialism and corruption and democracy had worried Godkin since Grant's attempt to annex the island of St. Domingo in the late 1860s. In an editorial littered with classical Roman references, he feared that “the work of our Government will not bear expansion without a proportionate increase of corruption.”Footnote ²⁹ The source of this corruption lay in the semi-barbarous population of the island that would drain attention, money, and interest away from needed domestic affairs and reforms to ensure the success of the American experiment.Footnote ³⁰

The danger that the semi-barbarous posed to democracy lay behind much of Godkin's opposition to imperialism. To engage in overseas imperial expansion would bring other races into the body politic of the republic. Godkin, along with many other Victorian anti-imperialists, has been often accused of being an outright racist, but this view is now being challenged.Footnote ³¹ Whatever the final verdict, race played an important role in how Godkin viewed the world. In the case of St. Domingo, he worried about “making citizens of 200,000 ignorant Catholic Spanish negroes” who had, in his opinion, “thus far shown themselves utterly incapable of self-government, and who, nevertheless, eagerly desire peace and quiet, and would be very much obliged to anyone who would undertake to supply them.”Footnote ³²

In theory, Godkin did not believe in innate and eternal differences in race. Instead, he believed in a stadial concept of society that began with savages and ended in industrial civilizations like America and Britain. These stages of social development did align with racial divisions but terms like “thus far” and his belief in educational uplift indicate that – eventually and hypothetically, at least – these semi-barbarous races would be capable of governing themselves. Despite this, the threat that other races posed to the practice of democracy in America now concerned Godkin. He feared them because the only form of annexation that the American system knew – based on the expansion west – quickly incorporated new territories into the nation. If this tradition continued, in the case of places like St. Domingo and Hawaii, the result would be to invite a heterogeneous group of races into the franchise and potentially give them a pivotal role in elections.

The alternative to incorporating these groups, if annexation occurred, was to deny them access to the political system. Godkin found this equally objectionable. To deny a group “the jus suffraggii from the outset, would be to invite the destruction of this republic at an early date.”Footnote ³³ The most obvious solution to this dilemma for Godkin was for the country to stay true to its roots and resist the temptation of overseas expansion. This wish happened in the case of St. Domingo in the 1860s and 1870s, but by the time of the Hawaiian controversy in the 1890s, annexation seemed to be all but assured. At this point, Godkin began to entertain the idea of a protectorate, something he had rejected in the case of St. Domingo, as a better alternative to political incorporation.Footnote ³⁴ The idea of a protectorate, as he saw it, would give the United States control over the foreign affairs and the defense of the island without any of the corresponding responsibilities to its people or allowing them access to the vote that would come with incorporation or annexation.

Godkin was caught in a bind. As a liberal he supported the spread of democratic governance and did not want to see suffrage denied to a people because of conquest. Yet he also feared the degenerative effects of uncultivated people on American democracy. Uncultivated American voters, he had learned, supported the drive to establish an American imperial presence in the world. If the United States established an empire it would incorporate more barbarous people into the body politic at a time when “the class of men of the highest culture [already bore] a smaller proportion today to the total population … than it has borne at any other period.”Footnote ³⁵ The key lay in cultivation, which would naturally lead individuals to resist the temptations of imperial conquest, but democracy in America elevated and celebrated the uncultivated.

Godkin feared not only corruption and degeneration that less-developed groups brought into the body politic by imperialism; he also feared the individual moral corruption of empire. In other words, Godkin feared corruption from both above and below. This dual fear of individual and institutional degeneration intimately linked the corruption of the political institutions of the nation and his worries about democracy:

American democracy put in power men already corrupted or susceptible to the corruption engendered by empire. The republic was “assailed by the very same class of men at whose hands all republics have perished – men who admire force and abhor discussion.”Footnote ³⁷ Either way, the degeneration of democracy and the rise of empire were mutually supporting processes.

For example, in what Godkin referred to as the “Samoan troubles,” he traced the entire controversy over the annexation of the islands to a single jingo adventurer sent by the government, Colonel Steinberger, who hoped to make a fortune in plunder by having the American government take over the island for a coaling station.Footnote ³⁸ The same occurred in Hawaii. On that island, the sons of missionaries had gained control over most of the land through fraud and graft, and proceeded to overthrow Queen Liliuokalani, declare an independent nation, and ask for admission into the republic.Footnote ³⁹ The source of democratic corruption and empire (the two were one and the same) was the possibility of enormous unchecked profits. This came as no surprise to Godkin, who, despite founding the Nation as a journal dedicated to the newly freed slaves of the South and to its Reconstruction, soon came to deplore what he saw as the plundering of the South by carpetbaggers. He saw little difference between carpetbaggers heading south in the 1860s and adventurers heading into the Caribbean and the Pacific in the years that followed. They both were searching for plunder that would then corrupt the country.Footnote ⁴⁰

The relationship between empire and democracy was undeniable for Godkin. If American democracy continued to be uncultivated and degenerate, the allure of empire would grow, which in turn would only degrade democracy further. History and liberalism had taught him that if America turned towards imperialism then the rise of empire would be matched and supported by the corruption of democracy. Godkin set himself the task of halting the degeneration of democracy and breaking the dangerous hold empire had over the popular imagination. The apparent failure of widespread cultivation and of those men of high culture to step forward to lead and restrain the nation because “of a certain jealousy or suspicion on the part of democracy everywhere of men who rise to eminence in other ways than through popular favor” was a bitter pill for Godkin to swallow.Footnote ⁴¹

Nothing characterized the failure of democracy more than the rise of the jingo. Jingoism, the unabashed call for war based on a confluence of patriotism, honor, and manliness, has long been linked in American history to the rise of imperialism at the turn of the century.Footnote ⁴² Jingoes believed, Godkin wrote,

He scorned the attempts of jingoes to corrupt the character of true patriotism. A true patriot, according to Godkin, did not trumpet his love of country and

The jingo rejected this ideal, making clear to Godkin “that the old dueling view of honor, and of fighting as a remedy, is by no means extinct in the conduct of national affairs.”Footnote ⁴⁵

As the interior life of the country deteriorated so did the nation's behavior internationally. In 1885, Godkin felt compelled to state what he believed should have gone without saying:

As jingoes like Blaine came to influence the conduct of the nation, they embarked on a “vigorous foreign policy.” Blaine or men of his ilk had pursued a scheme to annex Cuba in 1873 that almost resulted in war with Spain. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, the outlandish demands and threats made by American politicians and newspapers had almost derailed the arbitration of the Alabama controversy and led to calls for war against Great Britain.Footnote ⁴⁷ Without cultivated, cosmopolitan individuals at the helm, Godkin felt the nation slipping into chaos and savagery.Footnote ⁴⁸

War posed a distinct problem, not only for Godkin, but for all late nineteenth-century liberals. Few were complete pacifists but they deplored the waste and violence done to men, property, and character in its name. Liberals had long recognized that, as Rome discovered with the Germanic lands and Britain with Egypt in the 1880s, empire had a logic of its own. Godkin called it the “well-known law of political gravitation,” that once sovereignty extended overseas, the dangers, responsibilities, and corruption of imperialism necessitated a slow spread of that sovereignty over greater and greater swaths of territory.Footnote ⁴⁹

For example, during the controversy over the purchase of land in Nicaragua in the 1880s, Godkin argued that building and fortifying a canal in a foreign nation was the first step down the slippery slope of imperialism.Footnote ⁵⁰ He saw a direct connection between territorial expansion and the growth of the military. Godkin worried that plans for naval expansion, like those advanced by Captain Thomas Mahan, would fuel the jingo in his pursuit of war and empire.Footnote ⁵¹ He argued,

Godkin worried that the Navy would come to play the same role in American politics as the Army did in Europe and involve the country in a never-ending series of wars. The distance that separated America and Europe kept the country safe but also naive and forgetful about the dangerous relationship between the military and imperialism.Footnote ⁵³

This naivety posed an acute problem because, in America, war was ultimately a decision taken by the masses and “when war breaks out, therefore, it is really brought about by the influences which have acted most powerfully on the popular mind in its favor.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Ironically, the most powerful influence on the popular mind was journalism, or, more specifically for Godkin, yellow journalism. As he aged, Godkin became more critical of his own profession and could not understand why “in no country but our own are these youths allowed to stir up bellicose passions in the public press, and propose to fight first and negotiate after.”Footnote ⁵⁵

The effect of such jingoist propaganda was the opposite of cultivation; it turned America into what Godkin called a “warlike nation.”Footnote ⁵⁶ A warlike nation, in contrast to a military nation like Germany “that keeps its army in a constant readiness for action,” did not concern itself “in getting ready to fight, but in fighting.”Footnote ⁵⁷ By 1899, when Godkin wrote this editorial, he had about given up hope for America. The country had embarked on an imperial adventure ignoring every one of his warnings. Democracy did not hinder empire; it had in fact become empire's biggest supporter.

But how did jingoism corrupt democracy and convince the popular mind to go to war? Godkin answered that the “infusion into the mind of a growing democracy of the doctrine that there is money in war would be, if successful, the most awful calamity that could befall the modern world.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Of all the justifications for empire and war the “false” doctrine that “trade follows the flag” most challenged Godkin's liberal view of the world.

Nineteenth-century economic liberalism held three core beliefs to be true. First, private property was sacred; second, trade encouraged peace; and third, laissez-faire economics accurately reflected human nature.Footnote ⁵⁹ The jingoes' call for war, pursuit of empire, and claim that international trade was a form of war struck at the center of Godkin's liberalism. Godkin believed that “civilization has from the earliest ages consisted in a persistent effort on the part of the human race to make the desirable things of life more easy of acquisition – that is, cheaper.”Footnote ⁶⁰ The jingoes sold war as a profitable venture when, in truth, if war came,

Jingoes, Godkin argued on the other hand, denied the link between trade and civilization and held that international commerce was in fact a type of war between nations. By spreading the doctrine “that one nation gains by another's losses,” the jingoes turned the liberal conception of free trade on its head. Militants wanted to pervert trade with tariffs and rhetoric because the spread of commerce made war less attractive and more disruptive.Footnote ⁶² In response, Godkin defended liberal laissez-faire economics as a reflection of human nature, stating “the fundamental idea of international commerce, that all trade is barter, or, in other words, is the exchange of goods for goods, and not the matching of population against population” and that “all foreign trade is trade between individuals.”Footnote ⁶³ Commerce was not war but a natural activity of individuals and the closer man followed his commercial nature the more cultivated he became. The natural tendency of commerce to produce the foundations of civilization and progress was an article of faith for liberals like Godkin. By twisting the nature of trade to support war and empire, jingoes corrupted the popular mind, so:

The jingoes had managed, in Godkin's mind, to turn the world upside down. War and empire were good, trade was a form of war between countries, and men like Blaine won elections or appointment to high office. Democracy's embrace of empire shook the foundations of late nineteenth-century liberalism. This forced men like Godkin, who viewed empire not as a type of body politic but as a process of corruption and decline, to choose between their faith in the common man and their liberal understanding of the world. The two were perhaps not only incompatible but also antithetical.

Democracy failed Godkin and the liberal men of cultivation who had high hopes following the Civil War. Instead of an American Republic based on peace, commerce, learning, and cosmopolitanism, democracy created an American Empire rooted in war, protectionism, ignorance, jingoism, and plunder. A hundred and ten years later the cosmopolitan liberalism that Godkin represented looks increasingly antiquated and unrelated to a liberalism that assumes the timelessness of its commitment to democracy.

The connections Godkin made between imperialism and democracy convinced him that the American “experiment” had betrayed its ideals and the moral possibilities it held for Britain, Ireland, Europe, and the rest of the world. He articulated an anti-imperialism that drew together a transatlantic liberal critique of empire and a pessimistic but perceptive reading of the flaws of American democracy. Godkin believed that the rise of “jingoist” democracy had doomed the American “experiment” and thought that the nation had slipped into the historical, degenerative cycle of empire that he and many others had hoped it would escape. At the end of his life, in fact, Godkin chose to leave the United States for Ireland and Britain because he “was not born in this country [and did] not want any one to suppose that I came here voluntarily to live under the caricature of civilized government.”Footnote ⁶⁵ In many ways his death in Torquay in southern England on 13 May 1902 was his final act of protest against American democracy's moral failings.