The Imperial Cruise Quotes

“As the American Aryan’s desire to expand across the Pacific grew, Christian ministers observed that heathen Japan needed salvation and that Japan’s seclusion policy was not God’s way. The missionary Samuel Wells Williams wrote, “I have a full conviction that the seclusion policy of the nations of Eastern Asia is not according to God’s plan of mercy to these peoples, and their government must change them through fear or force, that his people may be free.”13 In 1852, the secretary of the Navy, John Kennedy, wrote that Japan must recognize “its Christian obligation to join the family of Christendom.”14 Echoing similar arguments made earlier about Native American gold mines, the secretary of state, Daniel Webster, argued that Japan had “no right” to refuse the U.S. Navy’s “reasonable” request to commandeer Japanese sovereign soil for its coaling stations because the coal at issue was “but a gift of Providence, deposited, by the Creator of all things, in the depths of the Japanese islands for the benefit of the human family.”
― James D. Bradley, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War

“A popular U.S. Army marching song, “The Water Cure,” gleefully described the process: Get the good old syringe boys and fill it to the brim. We’ve caught another nigger and we’ll operate on him. Let someone take the handle who can work it with a vim. Shouting the battle cry of freedom. Chorus: Hurray. Hurrah. We bring the Jubilee. Hurray. Hurrah. The flag that makes him free. Shove in the nozzle deep and let him taste of liberty. Shouting the battle cry of freedom. We’ve come across the bounding main to kindly spread around Sweet liberty whenever there are rebels to be found. So hurry with the syringe boys. We’ve got him down and bound. Shouting the battle cry of freedom. Oh pump it in him till he swells like a toy balloon. The fool pretends that liberty is not a precious boon. But we’ll contrive to make him see the beauty of it soon. Shouting the battle cry of freedom. Keep the piston going boys and let the banner wave. The banner that floats proudly o’er the noble and the brave. Keep on till the squirt gun breaks or he explodes the slave. Shouting the battle cry of freedom. Chorus: Hurrah. Hurrah. We bring the Jubilee. Hurrah. Hurrah. The flag that makes him free. We’ve got him down and bound, so let’s fill him full of liberty. Shouting the battle cry of freedom.”
― James D. Bradley, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War