A nouveau-riche term used to describe American
imperialism from sea to shining sea, or
simply put,
Whitman's way of telling it like it is.
"Yankeedoodledom is going ahead with the resistless energy of a sixty-five-hundred-thousand-horsepower steam engine! It is carrying before it South and West, and may one day put the Canadas and Russian
America in its
fob pocket! Whether it does these things in a conventionally “genteel” style or not, isn’t the thing: but that it
will tenderly regard human life, property and rights, whatever step it takes, there is no doubt.”