Abstract
The primary foreign policy issue after the War of 1898 was the acquisition of territory, and particularly the acquisition of the Philippines. The Teller Amendment barred the annexation of Cuba. Guam was of only marginal significance because it was geographically miniscule and had an equally small population. Guam, like other Pacific atolls acquired by the United States, would become a coaling station for trade and travel to the Far East. Puerto Rico, a more substantial island in size and population, was also not a controversial acquisition. Its proximity to the United States situated off the coast of Hispaniola in the Caribbean made its acquisition seem a logical extension of continental expansion. The Philippines, however, was highly controversial. It was the largest of Spain’s colonies with more than seven thousand islands—some as large as Kentucky and others as small as Washington, DC—with more than ten million people of various races, languages, and religions. What made the Philippines even more unlike Guam and Puerto Rico was its postwar military circumstances. The United States did not occupy the Philippines as it did the other territories. Only the harbor and parts of the city of Manila on the island of Luzon were under formal American military jurisdiction. The rest of the city was partially occupied by the revolutionary army of Emilio Aguinaldo, which also controlled several provinces surrounding Manila.
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Notes
Paolo Enrico Coletta, “Bryan, McKinley, and the Treaty of Paris,” Pacific Historical Review 26, no. 2 (May 1957): 142.
H. W. Brands, Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 26;
Howard Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1959), 115–21.
Carl Schurz, “About Patriotism,” Harper’s Weekly, April 16, 1898; Charles Eliot Norton, The Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, ed. Sara Norton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 65–71.
Reginald Horsman, “The Dimensions of an ‘Empire for Liberty,’” Journal of the Early Republic 9, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 7;
Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 48.
William McKinley, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: William McKinley, Messages, Proclamations, and Executive Orders Relating to the Spanish-American War (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1902), 218.
FRUS (1898), 932–33; John Dobson, Reticent Expansionism (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1988), 101.
William G. Carlton, “The Southern Politician-1900 and 1950,” The Journal of Politics 13, no. 2 (May 1951): 217.
Robert L. Beisner, Twelve against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898– 1900 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 139.
William Jennings Bryan, Republic or Empire: The Philippine Question (Chicago: Independence Company, 1899), 14–15.
Paolo Enrico Coletta, “McKinley, the Peace Negotiations, and the Acquisition of the Philippines,” Pacific Historical Review 30, no. 4 (November 1961): 175–78. Bryan was also under pressure from within the Democratic Party. Senator Arthur Pue Gorman, who unlike Bryan could vote on the Treaty, was his closest rival for the 1900 nomination. Gorman, also an anti-imperialist, was pushing the Democrats in the Senate to vote against the Treaty. By positioning himself as a proponent of the Treaty, Bryan distinguished himself from Gorman.
Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Transactions Publishers, 1913).
Richard R. F. Pettigrew, Imperial Washington: The Story of American Public Life from1870–1920 (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1922), 134–37.
Richard R. F. Pettigrew, The Course of Empire (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920), 233–34.
Richard E. Welch, Imperialists vs. Anti-Imperialists: The Debate over Expansion in the 1890s (Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1972), 82.
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© 2012 Michael Patrick Cullinane
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Cullinane, M.P. (2012). Opposing the Treaty of Paris. In: Liberty and American Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002570_3
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