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History

1. How does McKinley's take on the Philippines (pg950) compare with the Founder's vision of America?

The similarities between McKinley's take on the Philippines with the Founder's vision of America, is 

 

2. How did America's approach to diplomacy change from Samoa to Hawaii to Cuba (and Spain) and the Philippines?

 

3. Where did progressives come from and what did they want?

 

 

4. How did progressives view the government? 

 

 

5. What major mistakes did Wilson make in regards to making/ratifying the Treaty of Versailles? What did he do to alienate/ isolate......  his own country during this process?

 

Consequences of Victory

Victory in the War of 1898 boosted American self-confidence and reinforced the self-serving belief that the United States had a manifest destiny to reshape the world in its own image.

In 1885, the Reverend Josiah Strong wrote a best-selling book titled Our Country in which he used a Darwinian argument to strengthen the appeal of manifest destiny. The "wonderful progress of the United States," he boasted, was an illustration of Charles Darwin's concept of "natural selection," since Americans had demonstrated that they were a "superior" civilization that represented "the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civiliza- tion" in the world, a race of superior people destined to "spread itself over the earth."

Europeans agreed that the United States had now made a forceful entrance onto the world stage. The Times of London announced that the American vic- tory over Spain must "effect a profound change in the whole attitude and pol- icy of the United States. In the future America will play a part in the general affairs of the world such as she has never played before."

 

Taking the Philippines

The United States soon substituted its own imperialism for Spain's. If the war had saved many lives by ending the insurrection in Cuba, it had also led the United States to take many lives in suppressing the anti-colonial insurrection in the Philippines. The acquisition of America's first imperial colonies cre- ated a host of moral and practical problems, from the difficulties of impos- ing U.S. rule on native peoples to those of defending far-flung territories. 

 

mckinley's motives

The Treaty of Paris had left the political status of the Philippines unresolved. American business leaders wanted the United States to keep the islands so that they could more easily penetrate the markets of nearby China. As Mark Hanna, President McKinley's top adviser, stressed, controlling the Philippines would enable the United States to "take a large slice of the commerce of Asia." American missionary organizations, mostly Prot- estant, also favored annexation; they viewed the Philippines as a base from which to bring Christianity to "the little brown brother."

Not long after the United States took control, American authorities ended the Roman Catholic Church's status as the Philippines' official religion and made English the official language, thus opening the door for Protestant mis- sionaries in the region.

These factors helped convince McKinley of the need to annex "those darned islands." He explained that one night late it came to me this way—I don't know how it was, but it came: (1) that we could not give them back to Spain—that would be cow- ardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France or Germany—our commercial rivals in the Orient—that would be bad busi- ness 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 over there worse than Spain's was; and (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, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep and slept soundly.

In this brief statement, McKinley had summarized the motivating ideas of American imperialism: (1) national glory, (2) commerce, (3) racial superior- ity, and (4) evangelism. American negotiators in Paris finally offered Spain $20 million for the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, which would serve as a coaling station for ships headed across the Pacific.

Meanwhile, in addition to annexing Hawaii in 1898, the United States also claimed Wake Island, between Guam and Hawaii, which would become a vital link in a future transpacific telegraph cable. In 1899, Germany and the United States agreed to divide the Samoa Islands.

 

debating the treaty

By early 1899, the Senate had yet to rat- ify the Treaty of Paris with Spain because of growing opposition to a global American empire. Anti-expansionists argued that annexing the former Spanish colonies would violate the longstanding American principle embodied in the Constitution that people should be self-governing rather than colonial sub- jects. Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana, however, argued that the ideal of democracy "applies only to those who are capable of self-government." In his view, the Filipinos were incapable of governing themselves. His friend The- odore Roosevelt put it more bluntly. The Filipinos, he declared, were "wild beasts" who would benefit from American-imposed discipline: "There must be control! There must be mastery!"

The opposition might have killed the treaty had not the most prominent Democratic leader, William Jennings Bryan, argued that ending the war would open the way for the future independence of the Philippines. His position con- vinced enough Senate Democrats to support the treaty on February 6, 1899, by the narrowest of margins: only one vote more than the necessary two thirds majority.

President McKinley, however, had no intention of granting independence to the Philippines. He insisted that the United States take control of the islands as an act of "benevolent assimilation" of the native population. A California newspaper gave a more candid explanation: "we do not want the filipinos. we want the philippines."

Many Filipinos had a different vision. In January 1899, they declared again their independence and named twenty-nine-year-old Emilio Agui- naldo president. The following month, an American soldier outside Manila fired on Aguinaldo's nationalist forces, called insurrectos, killing two. The next day, the U.S. Army commander, without investigating the shooting, ordered his troops to assault the insurrectos, thus igniting a full-scale conflict that continued for weeks. General Elwell S. Otis rejected Aguinaldo's proposals for a truce, say- ing that "fighting, having begun, must go on to the grim end." He would accept only unconditional surrender.

On June 2, 1899, the Philippine Republic declared war against the United States. Since the insurrectos more or less controlled the Philippines outside Manila, what followed was largely a war of conquest at odds with the founding principle of the United States: that people have the right to govern themselves. The war would rob the Filipinos of the chance to be their own masters.

 

the philippine-american war (1899-1902)

The effort to crush Filipino nationalism lasted three years and involved some 126,000 U.S. troops, four times as many as had been sent to liberate Cuba. It cost the American government $600 million and took the lives of 200,000 Filipinos (most of them civilians) and 4,234 American soldiers. 

It was a brutal conflict fought in tropical heat and humidity. Racism spurred numerous atrocities by the Americans, many of whom referred to the Filipinos as "niggers." U.S. troops burned villages, tortured and executed prisoners, and imprisoned civilians in overcrowded concentration camps. A reporter for the Philadelphia Ledger noted that U.S. soldiers had "killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog." One U.S. soldier from Indiana celebrated the slaughter of an entire village in retaliation for the murder of an American: "I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger."

Both sides used torture to gain information. A favorite method employed by Americans was the "water cure," a technique to simulate drowning devel- oped in the Spanish Inquisition during the sixteenth century. (Today it is called waterboarding.) A captured insurgent would be placed on his back on the ground. While soldiers stood on his outstretched arms and feet, they pried his mouth open and held it in place with a bamboo stick. They then poured salt water into the captive's mouth and nose until his stomach was bloated, where- upon they would stomp on his abdomen, forcing the water, now mixed with gastric juices, out of his mouth. They repeated the process until the captive told the soldiers what they wanted to know—or died. "It is not civilized warfare," wrote the Philadelphia Ledger, "but we are not dealing with civilized people." 

Thus did the United States destroy a revolutionary movement modeled after America's own struggle for independence. Organized Filipino resistance collapsed by the end of 1899, but sporadic clashes continued for months there- after. On April 1, 1901, Aguinaldo swore an oath accepting the authority of the United States over the Philippines.

Against this backdrop, the debate over imperialism continued in the United States. In 1899, several groups combined to form the American Anti-Imperialist League. Andrew Carnegie footed the bills for the League and even offered $20 million to buy independence for the Filipinos. Other prominent anti-imperialists included Mark Twain, college presidents Charles Eliot of Harvard and David Starr Jordan of Stanford, and social reformer Jane Addams. Even former presidents Grover Cleveland and Ben- jamin Harrison urged President McKinley to withdraw U.S. forces from the Philippines.

The conflict to suppress Filipino independence had become "a quagmire," said Mark Twain, and the United States should "not try to get them under our heel" or intervene "in any other country that is not ours." He "opposed" the American eagle "putting its talons on any other land." Harvard philosopher 

William James was even more emphatic, arguing that imperialism had caused the United States to "puke up its ancient soul."

Senator George Frisbie Hoar led the opposition in Congress to annex- ation of the Philippines. Under the Constitution, he pointed out, "no power is given the Federal government to acquire territory to be held and gov- erned permanently as colonies" or "to conquer alien people and hold them in subjugation." 

Ministers denounced imperialism as un-Christian. Charles Ames, a prom- inent Unitarian leader, predicted that American imperialism would "put us into a permanent attitude of arrogance, testiness, and defiance towards other nations. . . . We shall be one more bully among bullies." Southern Demo- crats feared that giving civil rights to people of color would undermine white supremacy in America.

Samuel Gompers, the union leader, opposed converting the former Span- ish colonies into American colonies because he was convinced that immigrants would lower wage levels: "If these new islands are to become ours . . . can we hope to close the floodgates of immigration from the hordes of Chinese and the semisavage races coming from what will then be part of our own country?"

 

Organizing the New Colonies

 

In the end, the imperialists won the debate. Senator Albert J. Beveridge boasted in 1900: "The Philippines are ours forever. And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. . . . The power that rules the Pacific is the power that rules the world." He added that the U.S. economy was producing "more than we can consume, making more than we can use. Therefore we must find new markets for our produce." American-controlled colonies would make the best new markets. Without acknowledging it, Beveridge and others were using many of the same arguments that England had used in founding the American colonies in the seventeenth century.

On July 4, 1901, the U.S. military government in the Philippines gave way to civilian control, and William Howard Taft became the civil governor. In 1902, Congress passed the Philippine Government Act, which declared the islands an "unorganized territory"—in essence, it became an American colony not a terri- tory eligible for statehood. In 1917, the Jones Act affirmed America's intention to grant the Philippines independence, but that would not happen until 1946.

Closer to home, Puerto Rico had been acquired in part to serve as a U.S. outpost guarding the Caribbean Sea. On April 12, 1900, the Foraker Act established a government on the island, and its residents were declared citizens of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, not Spain; they were made dual citizens of the United States 1917. (As residents of a territory, not a state, Puerto Ricans cannot vote in American presidential elections. They pay billions each year in various federal taxes, but not the personal income tax.)

In Cuba, the United States finally fulfilled the promise of independence after restoring order, organizing schools, and improving sanitary conditions. The problem of widespread disease prompted the work of Dr. Walter Reed. Named head of the Army Yellow Fever Commission in 1900, he proved that mosquitoes carry yellow fever. The commission's experiments led the way to effective control of the disease worldwide.

In 1900, on President McKinley's order, Cubans drafted a constitution modeled on that of the United States. The following year, however, the Platt Amendment sharply restricted the Cuban government's independence by requiring that Cuba never sign a treaty with a third power, that it keep its debt within the government's power to repay it out of ordinary revenues, and that it acknowledge the right of the United States to intervene whenever it saw fit. Finally, Cuba had to sell or lease to the United States lands to be used for coal- ing or naval stations, a stipulation that led to a U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay that still exists today. 

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