Sound Bites -- Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio commentary)
141-150 of 333 Sound Bites. [show all]
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141) [Humphrey] Gilbert's petition sought Elizabeth's sponsorship of a voyage to undertake the "discovering of a passage by the North, to go to Catala, and all other the east parts of the worlde." An accompanying treatise supported his petition's proposal of a fabled northwest passage to the East... this treatise was an innovative, if somewhat indiscriminate, drawing together of then available authorities and sources on colonizing theory and practices, as well as extra-European geography. (Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 152. )
142) Alanus's argument is based on the extreme hierocratic proposition that before the coming of Christ no ruler on earth had legitimate authority. Upon Christ's birth, however, all true authority (Alanus's term is dominium) belonged to the Savior, who unquestionably possessed and exercised both swords, earthy and spiritual. Before returning to his Father, Christ gave the two swords to Peter. Peter's papal successors had, in turn, granted the material sword to the emperor and all other rulers who accepted Christ and his chosen vicar. Alanus relied on familiar medieval anthropomorphic imagery to support his hierocratic, totalizing argument on the papacy's necessary control respecting earthly dominium: "The church is one body and so it shall have only one head or it will be a monster." (Alanus Anglicus, qtd. in Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 40.)
143) The Far East has its Mecca, Palestine its Jersualem, France its Lourdes, and Italy its Loretto, but America's only shrines are her altars of patriotism -- the first and most potent being Jamestown, the sire of Virginia, and Virginia the mother of this great Republic. (from a 1907 Virginia guidebook )
144) Firste seeke the kingdomme of god and the righteousness thereof, and all other thinges shalbe mynistred vnto you: Nowe the meanes to sende suche as shall labour effectually in this business ys by plantinge one or twoo Colonies of our nation vpon that fyrme, where they may remaine in safetie, and firste learne the language of the people nere adioyninge (the gifte of tongues beinge now taken awaye) and by little and little acquainte themselues with their manner and so with discrecion and myldenes distill into their purged myndes the swete and lively lignes of the gospel. The people goodd and of a gentle and amyable nature which willingly will obey. (Richard Hakluyt the Younger, A Discourse of Western Planting, 1584. )
145) The aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have regarded with the commiseration their history inspires. Endowed with the faculties and rights of men, breathing an ardent love of liberty and independence, and occupying a country which left them no desire but to be undisturbed, the stream of overflowing population from other regions directed itself on these shores; without power to divert or habits to contend against it, they have been overwhelmed by the current or driven before it. (Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805 )
146) The Care and Labour of providing for Artificial and Fashionable Wants, the sight of so many rich wallowing in Superfluous plenty, whereby so many are kept poor and distressed for Want, the Insolence of Office . . . and restraints of Custom, all contrive to disgust them [Indians] with what we call civil Society. (Benjamin Franklin, marginalia in Matthew Wheelock, Reflections, Moral and Political on Great Britain and Her Colonies, 1770 )
147)
One thing [that] you will discover
When you get next to one another
Is everybody needs some elbow room, elbow room.
It's nice when you're kinda cozy, but
Not when you're tangled nose to nosey, oh,
Everybody needs some elbow, needs a little elbow room.
That's how it was in the early days of the U.S.A.,
The people kept coming to settle though
The east was the only place there was to go.
The president was Thomas Jefferson
He made a deal with Napoleon.
How'd you like to sell a mile or two, (Or three, or a hundred, or a thousand?)
And so, in 1803 the Louisiana Territory was sold to us
Without a fuss
And gave us lots of elbow room.
Oh, elbow room, elbow room,
Got to, got to get us some elbow room.
It's the west or bust,
In God we trust.
There's a new land out there...
Lewis and Clark volunteered to go,
Good-bye, good luck, wear your overcoat!
They prepared for good times and for bad (and for bad),
They hired, Sacajawea to be their guide.
She led them all across the countryside.
Reached the coast
And found the most
Elbow room we've ever had.
The way was opened up for folks with bravery.
There were plenty of fights
To win land rights,
But the West was meant to be;
It was our Manifest Destiny!
The trappers, traders, and the peddlers,
The politicians, and the settlers,
They got there by any way they could. (Any way they could).
The Gold Rush trampled down the wilderness,
The railroads spread across from east to west,
And soon the West was opened up for - opened up for good.
And now we jet from east to west.
Good-bye New York, hello L.A.,
But it took those early folks to open up the way.
Now we've got a lot of room to be
Growing from sea to shining sea.
Guess that we have got our elbow room (elbow room)
But if there should ever come a time
When we're crowded up together, I'm
Sure we'll find some elbow room...up on the moon!
Oh, elbow room, elbow room.
Got to, got to get us some elbow room.
It's the moon or bust,
In God we trust.
There's a new land up there!
148) Certainly anyone who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not paid heed to the words of the Lord. . . . Both then are in the power of the Church, the material sword and the spiritual. But the one is exercised for the church, the other by the church, the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and soldiers, though at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword ought to be under the other and the temporal authority subject to the spiritual. (Pope Boniface VIII, qtd. in Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 29. )
149) The only well-known work in our field which seems to have been totally suppressed in the period [the 17th century] was Sepúlveda's Democrates Alter [Secundus], which argued that the Indians of the New World were natural slaves, and was suppressed on grounds of a moral disapprobation which we might well share today. (Bernice Hamilton, Political Thought in Sixteenth-Century Spain: A Study of the Political Ideas of Vitoria, DeSoto, Suárez, and Molina. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1963:10.)
150) [Humphrey Gilbert's] reign was one of unbridled terror against the Gaelic Irish. Noncombatant peasant farmers and herders were slaughtered in order to cut off the food supply to the Gaelic armies. Once Gilbert had conquered a region, he engaged in a gruesome ceremony with the surviving inhabitants, who received a pardon only on marching to Gilbert's tent and pledging loyalty. According to a contemporary, the path to Gilbert's tent was lined with the heads of the rebels who had recently been killed or executed. . . . He regarded the Irish as subhuman and was reported to have once claimed that he would not even submit his dog's ears to the speech of the most supposedly noble man among the barbarians. . . . Fear rather than love, Gilbert opined, was the emotion that the victor should instill in such detestable vanquished peoples. Imagine Genghis Khan supplemented by the lessons of Machiavelli's Prince: such was the widely admired character of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the first Englishman selected by Elizabeth to conquer America. (Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 151-52. )
