not only brought the expected economic and educational benefits of modernization, it also introduced problems. The massive flood of immigration from abroad and the growing power of big businesses combined to create issues that would cause hotly contested debates and, at times, violence in the United States. These social issues soon coalesced into the Progressive Movement in which widespread social activism and political reform sought to address the social and political ills within American society.
The use of amphibious warfare and the quick success it produced in the Spanish-American War allowed for large numbers of American personnel to be deployed and stationed abroad outside the continental United States. No longer being used to protect the empty frontier for the movement and settlement of the American population, the military was instead being used to keep foreign peoples compliant with American political administration and economic development. Certain elements within American society were originally wary of this new use of the American military based on their understanding of the United States’ exceptionalism and uniqueness. While the major powers were caught up in colonial and territorial expansion over weaker peoples, the United States saw itself as an exception to the rule. In Ludmilla Popkova’s study of Russian press coverage of the Spanish-American War, the general consensus of American actions came in the aftermath of the conflict. At first, “The declaration of war against the Spanish monarchy, in the name of defending the freedom and independence of Cuba, as such raised no objections, since it approved the humane goals of the United States. But as events developed, the [periodicals] in [their] summer issues began to express doubt as to whether those goals really were liberation and humanitarianism.”141 It could be argued that the American republic was no better than the other major powers, as shown by its expansion across North America and its extermination of the American Indian tribes; therefore, American expansion beyond the geographic constraints of North America was simply part of the United States’ Manifest Destiny.
To some Americans, imperialism was simply an extension of Manifest Destiny, and the Pacific and Caribbean were regions of the world that were the natural preserve for the United States’ expansionism. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, the American population welcomed the Spanish-American War, where “populists stopped watching the money power, Republicans ceased troubling themselves over repudiation, Democrats forgot the deficit…. The indelible marks of regionalism were all but obliterated as northerners and southerners joined to fight under the same flag…. Immense crowds greeted trains rushing soldiers to the front.”142 These same elements believed that embracing imperialism was essential for the United States in order to continue American territorial expansion, gain recognition as a world power, and contribute to the development and benefit of lesser, underdeveloped peoples. The conquests of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spain provided such opportunities to spread American political, social, and economic benefits and bring these parts of the world into the enlightenment of democracy. William Alden Smith, a member of the committee on foreign affairs in Congress in the late nineteenth century, advocated annexation. He argued, “Annexation is not new to us. In my humble opinion the whole North American continent and every island in the gulf and the Caribbean Sea and such islands in the Pacific as may be deemed desirable are worthy of our ambition. Nor that we are earth hungry, but, as a measure of national protection and advantage, it is the duty of the American people to lay peaceful conquest wherever opportunity may be offered.”143
Anti-imperialists were quick to organize against this mainstream thought and formed the American Anti-Imperialist League. This group felt that the United States should not embrace global imperialism and expansion over foreign peoples because doing so violated the fundamental beliefs that inspired the United States to fight Great Britain for independence during the late eighteenth century: freedom, democracy, and national self-determination. William James, a renowned American philosopher and psychologist during the late nineteenth century, bemoaned, “What could be a more shameless betrayal of American principles? What could be a plainer symptom of greed, ambition, corruption and imperialism?”144 Imperialism also violated the Monroe Doctrine, in which American interests were limited to just the Western Hemisphere. According to Steve J. S. Ickringill, “Discussion about the Monroe doctrine intensified after the negotiation of the truce and the American invasion of the Philippines in August of 1898. Now the question of the consequences of the war and its importance for the world community definitely arose. Some liberals would not part with the ideal of the United States as a peace-loving and freedom-loving state, which began military intervention for purely humanitarian and defense purposes.”145
Anti-imperialists were a large segment of the American population who saw the United States’ use of amphibious warfare as simply a means to gain control over Spanish colonies for the sake of American prestige and glory. This technology represented everything that the anti-imperialist did not want the American republic to pursue in terms of an overseas colonial empire and exploitation of native peoples. Harold Baron’s study of the Democratic Party’s involvement in the anti-imperialist movement stated that the anti-imperialists’ moralistic arguments regarding the use of the American military in the violent oppression of indigenous peoples, such as the Filipinos, was seen as interconnected with big business trusts and monopolies. Direct access to new markets and cheap labor and resources through the deployment of the military was seen as a potential threat to the political and social fabric of the American republic. Instead of the government representing the people, the anti-imperialists feared that the wealthy, elite portions of American society were controlling domestic and foreign affairs.146 Therefore, the ability of the United States to now deploy thousands of troops overseas outside the geographic interests of the Western Hemisphere was a dangerous piece of technology that could potentially corrupt American exceptionalism into being no better than the world’s other colonial powers. These American military adventures and the long-term occupation of these overseas territories compromised mainstream democracy in the United States. Involvement in these overseas territories appeared to some people as economic preserves for big business interests. In addition, the increasing number of lives lost in brutal counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines, as well as the brutal accounts of atrocities taking place against the Filipino population, only enraged anti-imperialists and applied more pressure on the American political leadership to reconsider its imperialist position and consider another course of action that would prepare the Philippines for eventual self-government and independence.147
The growing debate between imperialists and anti-imperialists over the United States’ newly acquired overseas territories also led to friction over the issue of big businesses subverting the American free enterprise system through the establishment of trusts, monopolies, cartels, and economic combinations that could potentially harm competition. While the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 was meant to prevent big business from having too much control and influence over the United States’ economy, the federal government was not yet aggressively executing it.148 American expansion overseas was argued to be big business behind the scenes unduly influencing the federal government to use military force to take new lands for economic exploitation and creation of new markets exclusive to American industries without the competition of other foreign industrial powers. As a consequence, antitrust organizations and proponents naturally aligned with the anti-imperialists as another front to combat big business interests as well as to garner more support and attention for their cause. Ernest Crosby’s poem “The Real White Man’s Burden” (with apologies for utilizing Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “White Man’s Burden”) captured some of the essence of the concerns of the anti-imperialist segments of the American population:
Take up the White Man’s burden,
Send forth your sturdy kin
And load them down with Bibles
And cannon-balls and gin.
Throw in a few diseases
To spread in tropic climes,
For there the healthy [people]
Are quite behind the times.
