IMPERIALISM
AND THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR
Interpreting
Primary Sources
Up to our
own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the
colonization of the Great West....The frontier is the line of the most rapid
and effective Americanization....The frontier promoted the formation of a
composite nationality for the American people....The legislation which most
developed the powers of the national government, and played the largest part in
its activity, was conditioned on the frontier....The pioneer needed the goods
of the coast, and so the grand series of internal improvements and railroad
legislation began, with potent nationalizing effects....But the most important
effect of the frontier has been the promotion of democracy here and in Europe. As has been indicated, the frontier is
productive of individualism....It produces antipathy to control, and
particularly to any direct control....The frontier states that came into the
Union in the first quarter of a century of its existence came in with
democratic suffrage provisions, and had reactive effects of the highest
importance upon the older states....
To the
frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with
acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to
find expedients....What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the
bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and
activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United
States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery
of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the
frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American
history.
--Frederick
Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 1893
The two
great needs of mankind, that all men may be lifted into the light of the
highest Christian civilization, are, first, a pure, spiritual Christianity,
and, second, civil liberty....It follows then, that the Anglo-Saxon, as the
great representative of these two ideas, the depository of these two great
blessings, sustains peculiar relations to the world's future, is divinely
commissioned to be, in a peculiar sense, his brother's keeper.
--Josiah
Strong, 1885
God has not
been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years
for nothing but vain and idle self-admiration.
No....He has made us adept in government that we may administer
government among savage and senile peoples....He has marked the American people
as His chosen nation to finally lead in the redemption of the world.
--Senator
Albert J. Beveridge, 1900
The West
Indies drift toward us, the Republic of Mexico hardly longer has an independent
life....With the completion of the Panama Canal all Central American will
become part of our system. We have
expanded into Asia, we have attracted the fragments of the Spanish dominions,
and reaching out into China we have checked the advance of Russia and
Germany....The United States will outweigh any single empire....The whole world
will pay her tribute.
--Brooks
Adams, 1902
I transmit
to the Senate...the annexation of the Dominican Republic to the United
States....I feel an unusual anxiety for the ratification of this treaty,
because I believe it will rebound greatly to the glory of the two countries
interested, to civilization, and to the extirpation of the institution of
slavery....
The
acquisition of the Dominican Republic is desirable because of its geographical
position. It commands the entrance to
the Caribbean Sea and the Isthmus transit of commerce. It possesses the riches soil, best and most
capacious harbors, most salubrious climate, and the most valuable products of
the forest, mine, and soil of any of the West Indian Islands.
--President
Grant, 1870, on a treaty of annexation of the Dominican Republic
The island
of San Domingo, situated in tropical waters, and occupied by another race, of
another color, never can become a permanent possession of the United
States. You may seize it by force of
arms or by diplomacy, where a naval squadron does more than the minister, but
the enforced jurisdiction cannot endure.
Already by a higher statute is that island set part to the colored
race....
I protect
against this legislation as another stage in a drama of blood. I protest against it in the name of Justice
outraged by violence, in the name of Humanity insulted, in the name of the weak
trodden down, in the name of Peace imperiled, and in the name of the African
race, whose first effort at Independence is rudely assailed.
--Senator
Charles Sumner's response, 1870
First. In the cause of humanity and to put an end
to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries now existing
there [in Cuba], and which the parties to the conflict are either unable or
unwilling to stop or mitigate....
Second. We owe it to our citizens in Cuba to afford
them that protection and indemnity for life and property....
Third. The right to intervene may be justified by
the very serious injury to the commerce, trade, and business of our people and
by he wanton destruction of property and devastation of the island.
--President
McKinley's call for war against Spain, 1898
When next I
realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not
know what to do with them....I walked the floor of the White House night after
night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went
down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance....And one
night late it came to me this way....
(1) that we could not give them back to
Spain--that would be cowardly and dishonorable;
(2) That we could not turn them over to France
or Germany--our commercial rivals in the Orient--that would be bad business and
discreditable;
(3) That we could not leave them to
themselves--they were unfit for self-government--and they would soon have
anarchy and misrule worse than Spain's war;
(4) That
there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the
Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them as our fellow men for
whom Christ also died.
--President
McKinley on the Philippines
Thus...duty
and interest alike, duty of the highest kind and interest of the highest and
best kind, impose upon us the retention of the Philippines, the development of
the islands, and the expansion of our Eastern commerce.
--Henry
Cabot Lodge
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. We govern the Indians without their consent;
we govern the territories without their consent; we govern our children without
their consent. I answer, would not the
natives of the Philippines prefer the just, humane, civilizing government of
the Republic to the savage, bloody rule of pillage and extortion from which we
have rescued them?
--Senator
Albert J. Beveridge, 1900
A
self-governing state cannot accept sovereignty over an unwilling people. The United States cannot act upon the
ancient heresy that might makes right.
--Platform
of the Anti-Imperialist League
If we seek
merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard
contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all
they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win
for themselves the domination of the world.
--Theodore
Roosevelt, 1900
There is a
homely adage which runs, "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go
far." If the American nation will
speak softly and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a
thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.
--Theodore
Roosevelt, 1901
It is not
true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as
regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their
welfare. All that this country desires
is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly and prosperous....Chronic
wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of
civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require
intervention...[and] force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant
cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an internal police
power.
--Roosevelt
Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, 1904
Questions
to think about:
1. What does Frederick Jackson Turner believe
was the significance of the frontier in American history? What might be the implications of the
closing of the frontier?
2. What did proponents of American expansion
argue? How did anti-imperialists
respond to their arguments?
3. What, in your view, were the relative
importance of economic interest, ideology, and strategic interest in
encouraging American imperialism?
4. What principles should govern American
foreign policy?
5. When should the United States interfere in
the internal affairs of a foreign country?