In a well-written two page, double-spaced 12
point font essay, (500 words minimum) please
examine and answer the following questions.
The excerpts from The March of the Flag by
Albert J, Beveridge will provide the reader with
the widely-held view that it was imperative for
the United States to expand into the world. The
counterargument made by the American AntiImperialist
League (both of which are below)
held that such imperialism was not only wrong,
but quite un-American. After examining both
sides, won’t you brilliantly address the
following questions?
1. How did Beveridge justify his belief that
the United States should actively seek to
occupy and dominate other territories? How
did he use economic, social, cultural and even
religious arguments to make his case?
2. The members of the American AntiImperialist
League (which included Andrew
Carnegie and Mark Twain, to name but two
members) presented an opposite view that was
vehemently against those like Beveridge. Why
did this group oppose America’s new “manifest
destiny” and what are the best arguments, in
your opinion, that they presented?
3. Which view do you find more compelling?
Is one side right and the other wrong?
4. Do you think that America’s new
imperialism was a reaction to world event or
was it simply an extension of manifest destiny
on a world scale? (The Tindall and Shi text may
provide some help here.)
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Document 1
Although the ostensible reason for declaring
war against Spain was to stop the oppression
of Cubans, the McKinley administration
decided to dispatch Commodore George
Dewey’s naval task force to Manila Bay, where
on May 1, 1898, it destroyed the Spanish
Pacificfleet and took control af the Philippines.
Spain ceded the Philippines to the United
States in the Treaty of Paris, which officially
ended the war on December 10, 1898. This
posed an unexpected dilemma. What was to be
done with the Philippines now that they were
in American hands? Those supporting
annexation were led by a small but prominent
group of imperialists that included Theodore
Roosevelt, Senators Henry Cabot Lodge and
Albert Beveridge, and fohn Hay, soon to
become secretary of state.In the following
selection, Beveridge articulated why he
supported annexation of the Philippines-and
perhaps other areas in the future.
(From Albert Beveridge. ‘The March of the
Flag,”in Congressional Record, 56.th Cong., 1st
sess.,9 January 1900, pp. 4-12.)
September 16, 1898
Fellow citizens, it is a noble land that God has
given us; a land that can feed and clothe the
world; a land whose coast lines would enclose
half the countries of Europe; a land set like a
sentinel between the two imperial oceans of
the globe, a greater England with a nobler
destiny. It is a mighty people that he has
planted on this soil; a people sprung from the
most masterful blood of history; a people
perpetually revitalized by the virile, manproducing
workingfolk of all the earth; a people
imperial by virtue of their power, by right of
their institutions, by authority of their heavendirected
purposes – the propagandists and not
the misers of liberty.
It is a glorious history our God has bestowed
upon his chosen people; a history whose
keynote was struck by Liberty Bell; a history
heroic with faith in our mission and our future;
a history of statesmen who flung the
boundaries of the Republic out into unexplored
lands and savage wildernesses; a history of
soldiers who carried the flag across the blazing
deserts and through the ranks of hostile
mountains, even to the gates of sunset; a
history of a multiplying people who overran a
continent in half a century; a history of
prophets who saw the consequences of evils
inherited from the past and of martyrs who
died to save us from them; a history divinely
logical, in the process of whose tremendous
reasoning we find ourselves to-day.
Shall the American people continue their
resistless march toward the commercial
supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions
broaden their blessed reign as the children of
liberty wax in strength, until the empire of our
principles is established over the hearts of all
mankind?
Have we no mission to perform, no duty to
discharge to our fellow-man? Has the Almighty
Father endowed us with gifts beyond our
deserts and marked us as the people of his
peculiar favor, merely to rot in our own
selfishness, as men and nations must, who
take cowardice for their companion and self for
their Deity – as China has, as India has, as Egypt
has?
Shall we be as the man who had one talent and
hid it, or as he who had ten talents and used
them until they grew to riches? And shall we
reap the reward that waits on our discharge of
our high duty as the sovereign power of earth;
shall we occupy new markets for what our
farmers raise, new markets for what our
factories make, new markets for what our
merchants sell – aye, and, please God, new
markets for what our ships shall carry?
Hawaii is ours; Porto Rico is to be ours; at the
prayer of the people Cuba will finally be ours;
in the islands of the East, even to the gates-of
Asia, coaling stations are to be ours; at the very
least the flag of a liberal government is to float
over the Philippines, and I pray God it may be
the banner that Taylor unfurled in Texas and
Fremont carried to the coast – the Stars and
Stripes of glory.
And the burning question of this campaign is,
whether the American people will accept the
gifts of events; whether they will rise as lifts
their soaring destiny; whether they will proceed
upon the lines of national development
surveyed by the statesmen of our past; or
whether for the first American people doubt
their mission, question fate, prove apostate to
the spirit of their race, and halt the ceaseless
march of free institutions.
The Opposition tells us that we ought not to
govern a people without their consent. I
answer, The rule of liberty that all just
government derives its authority from the
consent of the governed, applies only to those
who are capable of self- government. I answer,
We govern the Indians without their consent,
we govern our territories without their consent,
we govern our children without their consent. I
answer, How do you assume that our
government would be without their consent?
Would not the people of the Philippines prefer
the just, humane, civilizing government of this
republic to the savage, bloody rule of pillage
and extortion from which we have rescued
them?
But, to-day, we are raising more than we can
consume. To-day, we are making more than we
can use. To-day, our industrial society is
congested; there are more workers than there
is work; there is more capital than there is
investment. We do not need more money – we
need more circulation, more employment.
Therefore we must find new markets for our
produce, new occupation for our capital, new
work for our labor. And so, while we did not
need the territory taken during the past
century at the time it was acquired, we do need
what we have taken in 1898, and we need it
now.
Think of the thousands of Americans who will
pour into Hawaii and Porto Rico when the
republic’s laws cover those islands with justice
and safety! Think of the tens of thousands of
Americans who will invade mine and field and
forest in the Philippines when a liberal
government, protected and controlled by this
republic, if not the government of the republic
itself, shall establish order and equity there!
Think of the hundreds of thousands of
Americans who will build a soap-and-water,
common-school civilization of energy and
industry in Cuba, when a government of law
replaces the double reign of anarchy and
tyranny! – think of the prosperous millions that
Empress of Islands will support when, obedient
to the law of political gravitation, her people
ask for the highest honor liberty can bestow,
the sacred Order of the Stars and Stripes, the
citizenship of the Great Republic!
What does all this mean for every one of us? It
means opportunity for all the glorious young
manhood of the republic – the most virile,
ambitious, impatient, militant manhood the
world has ever seen. It means that the
resources and the commerce of these
immensely rich dominions will be increased as
much as American energy is greater than
Spanish sloth; for Americans henceforth will
monopolize those resources and that
commerce.
Fellow Americans, we are God’s chosen people.
Yonder at Bunker Hill and Yorktown his
providence was above us. At New Orleans and
on ensanguined seas his hand sustained us.
Abraham Lincoln was his minister and his was
the Altar of Freedom, the boys in blue set on a
hundred battlefields. His power directed
Dewey in the East and delivered the Spanish
fleet into our hands on the eve of Liberty’s
natal day, as he delivered the elder Armada
into the hands of our English sires two
centuries ago. His great purposes are revealed
in the progress of the flag, which surpasses the
intentions of Congresses and Cabinets, and
leads us like a holier pillar of cloud by day and
pillar of fire by night into situations unforeseen
by finite wisdom, and duties unexpected by the
unprophetic heart of selfishness. The American
people cannot use a dishonest medium of
exchange; it is ours to set the world its example
of right and honor. We cannot fly from our
world duties; it is ours to execute the purpose
of a fate that has driven us to be greater than
our small intentions. We cannot retreat from
any soil where Providence has unfurled our
banner; it is ours to save that soil for Liberty
and Civilization. For Liberty and Civilization and
God’s promise fulfilled, the flag must
henceforth be the symbol and the sign to all
mankind – the flag!
Document Two:
Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist
League (1899)
Those opposed to the new
expansionism included Republicans and
Democrats, business leaders such as
Andrew Carnegie, the philosopher William
James, prominent scholars such as William
Graham Sumner, and literary figures such
as Mark Twain and William Dean Howells.
Many of them joined the Anti-Imperialist
League, formed in Boston in 1898 for the
purpose of galvanizing public opinion
against the Philippine War and the evils of
imperialism. Anti-imperialists almost
prevented the annexation of the Philippines
through their lobbying efforts against the
Treaty of Paris, which the Senate ultimately
ratified by only one vote on February 6,
1899. The following excerpt outlines the
anti-imperialist critique of American foreign
policy.
Those opposed to the new expansionism
included Republicans and Democrats, business
leaders such as Andrew Carnegie, the
philosopher William James, prominent scholars
such as William Graham Sumner, and literary
figures such as Mark Twain and William Dean
Howells. Many of them joined the AntiImperialist
League, formed in Boston in 1898
for the purpose of galvanizing public opinion
against the Philippine War and the evils of
imperialism. Anti-imperialists almost prevented
the annexation of the Philippines through their
lobbying efforts against the Treaty of Paris,
which the Senate ultimately ratified by only one
vote on February 6, 1899. The following excerpt
outlines the anti-imperialist critique of
American foreign policy.
We hold that the policy known as imperialism is
hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism,
an evil from which it has been our glory to be
free. We regret that it has become necessary in
the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm
that all men, of whatever race or color, are
entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. We maintain that governments
derive their just powers from the consent of
the governed. We insist that the subjugation of
any people is “criminal aggression” and open
disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our
Government.
We earnestly condemn the policy of the
present National Administration in the
Philippines. It seeks to extinguish the spirit of
1776 in those islands. We deplore the sacrifice
of our soldiers and sailors, whose bravery
deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We
denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a
needless horror. We protest against the
extension of American sovereignty by Spanish
methods.
We demand the immediate cessation of the
war against liberty, begun by Spain and
continued by us. We urge that Congress be
promptly convened to announce to the
Filipinos our purpose to concede to them the
independence for which they have so long
fought and which of right is theirs.
The United States have always protested
against the doctrine of international law which
permits the subjugation of the weak by the
strong. A self-governing state cannot accept
sovereignty over an unwilling people. The
United States cannot act upon the ancient
heresy that might makes right.
Imperialists assume that with the destruction
of self-government in the Philippines by
American hands, all opposition here will cease.
This is a grievous error. Much as we abhor the
war of “criminal aggression” in the Philippines,
greatly as we regret that the blood of the
Filipinos is on American hands, we more deeply
resent the betrayal of American institutions at
home. The real firing line is not in the suburbs
of Manila. The foe is of our own household.
The attempt of 1861 was to divide the country.
That of 1899 is to destroy its fundamental
principles and noblest ideals.
Whether the ruthless slaughter of the Filipinos
shall end next month or next year is but an
incident in a contest that must go on until the
Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution of the United States are rescued
from the hands of their betrayers. Those who
dispute about standards of value while the
Republic is undermined will be listened to as
little as those who would wrangle about the
small economies of the household while the
house is on fire. The training of a great people
for a century, the aspiration for liberty of a vast
immigration are forces that will hurl aside
those who in the delirium of conquest seek to
destroy the character of our institutions.
We deny that the obligation of all citizens to
support their Government in times of grave
national peril applies to the present situation. If
an Administration may with impunity ignore
the issues upon which it was chosen,
deliberately create a condition of war
anywhere on the face of the globe, debauch
the civil service for spoils to promote the
adventure, organize a truth suppressing
censorship and demand of all citizens a
suspension of judgment and their unanimous
support while it chooses to continue the
fighting, representative government itself is
imperiled.
We propose to contribute to the defeat of any
person or party that stands for the forcible
subjugation of any people. We shall oppose for
reelection all who in the White House or in
Congress betray American liberty in pursuit of
un-American gains. We still hope that both of
our great political parties will support and
defend the Declaration of Independence in the
closing campaign of the century. . . .
[“Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist
League,” in Speeches, Correspondence, and
Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, ed.
Frederick Bancroft (New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1913), p. 77, n. 1. ]