Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

by James M. McPherson

Whigs were not averse to extending the blessings of American liberty, even to Mexicans and Indians. But they looked askance at doing so by force. Befitting the evangelical origins of much Whig ideology, they placed their faith in mission more than in annexation. “ ‘As a city set upon a hill,’ “ the United States should inculcate the ideas of “true republicanism” by example rather than conquest, insisted many Whigs. Although it would “be a gain to mankind if we could spread over Mexico the Idea of America—that all men are born free and equal in rights,” said antislavery clergyman Theodore Parker in 1846, “we must first make real those ideas at home.” While the Democratic notion of progress envisioned the spread of existing institutions over space, the Whig idea envisaged the improvement of those institutions over time. “Opposed to the instinct of boundless acquisition stands that of Internal Improvement,” said Horace Greeley. “A nation cannot simultaneously devote its energies to the absorption of others’ territories and the improvement of its own.”