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The Navigation Act of 1660

No goods or commodities whatsoever shall be imported into or exported out of any lands, islands, plantations or territories to His Majesty belonging, in Asia, Africa or America, in any other ship or ships . . . but in such ships . . . as do truly and without fraud belong only to the people of England or Ireland, or are of the build of and belonging to any of the said lands, . . . and whereof the master and three fourths of the mariners at least are English. . . .

And no sugars, tobacco, cotton-wool, indigoes, ginger, fustic or other dyeing wood, of the growth, production or manufacture of any English plantations in America, Asia or Africa, shall be shipped . . . to any land . . . other than to such other English plantations, . . . or to the kingdom of England or Ireland.

Source: An Act for the Encouraging and Increasing of Shipping and Navigation (England, 1660), adapted. Public domain.

Supreme Court, Worcester v. Georgia, 1832

The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves, or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress. The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation is, by our constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States.

Source: John Marshall, opinion of the Supreme Court, Worcester v. Georgia, 1832. Public domain.

John L. O'Sullivan, magazine essay, 1845

Other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.

Source: John L. O'Sullivan, "Annexation," United States Magazine and Democratic Review, New York, 1845, adapted. Public domain.

George F. Kennan, telegram from Moscow, 1946

In summary, we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure. . . . [Soviet power] is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw, and usually does, when strong resistance is encountered at any point.

Source: George F. Kennan, telegram from the US embassy in Moscow to the Secretary of State, February 22, 1946, adapted. Public domain.