In his Tuesday article on Trump’s bizarre and immoral Palestine plan, Tom DiLorenzo connects the plan to President Lincoln’s obsession with deporting the black population of the United States to a “colony” in Africa or Central America.
There is an interesting postscript to all this in the form of the Grant administration’s attempt to annex Santo Domingo, what is today known as the Dominican Republic.
As DiLorenzo notes, Lincoln was personally obsessed with his colonization plan, and that he was “hard at work until his dying day counting how many ships it would take“ to carry out his plan. The idea did not totally die with Lincoln, however.
By the time Ulysses S. Grant was sworn in in 1869, he was already supporting an ongoing plan to annex Santo Domingo for several reasons. This attempt to annex the island country was just the latest of three, and the US had made similar attempts in 1854 and 1866. In all three cases, chief among the political motivations was political pressure from large business interests who believed that large American enterprises could more effectively exploit the mineral and agricultural resources of the island.
While cronyism and cynical imperialism appear to have been a major factor, the Grant administration needed other allies to bring about annexation. Many of Grant’s allies from these other interest groups were driven by factors such as expanding US military capabilities in the region. Historian Harold Pinkett writes:
From the beginning of his term in 1869 President Grant was surrounded by many persons who were interested in the annexation of Santo Domingo. Some of these individuals supported annexation for essentially patriotic reasons. Chief among this group of the President’s associates were Admiral Daniel Ammen and Senator Cornelius Cole of California who wished to strengthen the American navy and protect a proposed isthmian canal by acquiring Carib bean naval bases. The President himself was impressed with the idea that territorial expansion would increase the prestige of the United States.
And you thought Trump was unique and there was something new under the sun, you may have to think again. The American Empire has tried to be the Empire since 1869 and Grant. So, Trump’s plans with Greenland, Canada and Gaza are not so far-fetched that he was just plain coo-coo for CocoPuffs. The situation would have been much the same as taking over the totally demolished Gaza Strip, except that the poorest country, Haiti would be next door. I guess there is nothing new under the sun, even CocoPuff’s craziness.