Time & Perspective Quote by William H. Wharton

Wharton’s sentence performs a neat political sleight of hand: it politely “passes over” the messy human cost of colonization while cashing in the moral credit that cost is meant to generate. In one breath, “toil and suffering and danger” is framed as background noise, a kind of unarguable hardship story that doesn’t need proof because it flatters the audience. Then he pivots to what he actually wants to argue about: legitimacy. “Redemption and cultivation” is the tell. Those words don’t just describe farming; they smuggle in theology and improvement ideology, implying the land was fallen, wasted, or improperly used until the colonists arrived to save it.

The intent is bureaucratic and strategic: set aside the sentimental epic of settlement and move the reader toward “civil condition,” “conduct,” and “history of the government” - the language of institutional evaluation. That’s where claims are won or lost in the 1830s Atlantic world: by demonstrating orderly governance, stable laws, and a narrative of responsible statecraft. If this sits in the Texas independence era (Wharton was a leading Texian figure), the subtext sharpens: we’ve already earned our right to be taken seriously; now judge us as a polity, not a frontier anecdote.

The rhetorical move also functions as insulation. By declaring certain suffering “attended” redemption, he naturalizes it - as if danger were weather, not a consequence of dispossession, conflict with Mexico, or violence against Indigenous peoples. He invites sympathy without inviting scrutiny, then steers the conversation to governance, where recognition and power are negotiated.