The American Polypus

With all of the policy dilemmas faced as a consequence of maintaining the American Empire, it is often reminded that the United States has departed from its founding intention; that it ought not to outstrip itself from simply being a Republic.

But, consider that Benjamin Franklin was an early champion of American imperial ambition. If not under the rubric of British colonialism, which he advocated until the bitter end, Franklin metaphorically suggested that imperial expansion should follow the model of the polypus, whence a limb breaks off only to regenerate a new organism. As we read in paragraph 23 of his Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. (1751)...

In fine, A Nation well regulated is like a Polypus; take away a Limb, its Place is soon supply'd; cut it in two, and each deficient Part shall speedily grow out of the Part remaining. Thus if you have Room and Subsistence enough, as you may by dividing, make ten Polypes out of one, you may of one make ten Nations, equally populous and powerful; rather, increase a Nation ten fold in Numbers and Strength.

Or, thirteen fold, as the case may be. At the moment of disseveration, as he voyaged back to Philadelphia in the Spring of 1775, Franklin wrote in a letter of 3/22 to his son William (a loyalist) that...

...in former Cases great Empires had crumbled first at their Extremities from this Cause, that Countries remote from the Seat and Eye of Government which therefore could not well understand their Affairs for want of full and true Information, had never been well governed, but had been oppress’d by bad Governors, on Presumption that Complaint was difficult to be made and supported against them at such a Distance. Hence such Govrs. had been encouraged to go on, till their Oppressions became intolerable. But that this Empire had happily found and long been in the Practice of a Method, whereby every Province was well governed, being trusted in a great Measure with the Government of itself, and that hence had arisen such Satisfaction in the Subjects, and such Encouragement to new Settlements, that had it not been for the late wrong politicks, (which would have Parliament to be omnipotent, tho’ it ought not to be so unless it could at the same time be omniscient) we might have gone on extending our Western Empire adding Province to Province as far as the South Sea.

So, in fact, the new creature of the disseveration would extend to the Pacific and beyond. In August 1945, the imperial ambition would be christened across the South Sea with the atomic baptism of Japan, under the auspice of the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, who, we gratuitously note, was a member of the Order of Skull & Bones (322).