Anti Imperialist League And US Foreign Policy
As the Spanish American War drew to a close in 1898, a group of influential Americans representing the Northeastern intelligentsia met in Boston’s Faneuil Hall to form the Anti-Imperialist League. The League opposed the Treaty of Paris, the Platt Amendment, and the occupation of the Philippines. As the Philippine War began in 1899, the League publicized atrocities committed by American troops against the Filipino people. Most Americans, however, rejected the ideologies of League members and supported imperialist policies.
The Anti-Imperialist League Includes Old School Republican Leaders
The League’s Platform begins with the statement that, “imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free.” [1] Members of the League believed that imperialism was contrary to the fabric of American democracy, pointing out that the nation had gained independence by fighting against Great Britain, a colonial power.
Some saw the extension of American hegemony as ultimately resulting in a weaker nation. Harvard University professor Moorfield Storey, a League member, took his cue from ancient history: “When Rome began her career of conquest, the Roman Republic began to decay.” [2] According to Warren Zimmermann, the League saw the extended occupation of Cuba and the annexation of the Philippines as a “perversion of American values.” [3]
Andrew Carnegie, the Gilded Age steel magnate who had come from Scotland as a youth to pursue the American Dream, bankrolled the League. One of the few business connected members, Carnegie asked, “Are we to exchange Triumphant Democracy for Triumphant Despotism?” Other League members included Mark Twain, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and Senator George Hoar, the venerable Massachusetts Senator.
Carl Schurz Supports the Anti-Imperialism League
A key leader and founder of the League was Carl Schurz, another immigrant who, at age 23, had fled Germany in the wake of the Revolutions of 1848. Schurz was an early supporter of the new founded Republican Party in the early 1850s and became a friend of Abraham Lincoln. Serving in the Civil War as a Major General, Schurz went on to become a Cabinet Secretary under James Garfield and a Senator from Missouri. Schurz, a Mugwump since 1884, was the conscience of the League.
The Platt Amendment and the Annexation of the Philippines
The Platt Amendment gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba whenever a perceived threat became apparent to the US government. Coerced into putting the Platt Amendment into the new Cuban Constitution, Cubans viewed the document as a mockery of full sovereignty. Although the League opposed the Amendment, some members supported it like Senator Hoar who voted in favor of the Amendment in the Senate.
Far more serious was American conduct in the Philippines. The League denounced “the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror” and published examples of atrocities. The Gardener Report of 1902, a secret accounting of American acts of brutality in the Philippines compiled by Major Cornelius Gardener, was made public by a Senate Committee chaired by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. The report seemed to justify everything the League had been saying.
The League followed up the release of the Gardener Report with the publication of the confession of Major C. Waller, whose graphic stories included detailed use of water torture by American soldiers. [4] The methods employed were identical to modern forms of similar torture known as “water-boarding.” The tenacity of the League in popularizing such stories forced President Teddy Roosevelt to demand a full explanation and accounting of the military.
Assessment of the League Shows a Lack of Popular American Support
Although the League was unable to redirect American foreign policy, its statements prevailed upon the national conscience, reminding Americans and their leaders that unique values characterized the United States. The presidential elections of 1900 and 1904 demonstrated that Americans supported imperialism and American foreign policy endeavors. But the League did not fail. Keeping in the forefront the moral debate on imperialism, the efforts of its members may have mitigated American actions.
Sources:
[1] Platform of the Anti-Imperialist League.
[2] Quoted in First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power, by Warren Zimmermann, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), p. 341.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (Random House, 2001), see pp. 99ff.
Also:
Hans L. Trefousse, Carl Schurz: A Biography (Fordham University Press, 1998).
No comments:
Post a Comment