Benjamin Tillman

“ Ah, if we have no other consideration, if no feeling of humanity, no love of our fellows, no regard for others' rights, if nothing but our self-interest shall actuate us in this crisis, let me say to you that if we go madly on in the direction of crushing the Philippines into subjection and submission we will do so at the cost of many, many thousands of the flower of American youth. ”

“ What more do we want in the Philippines than the right of a protectorate, which will give us the control of their foreign policy, will keep away from those islands any outside interloper, or land-grabber, or robber who might desire to gobble them up and enslave the people? ”

“ We are at a crisis in our own history, when we must turn our faces away from this temptation, turn our backs upon the incentive which has led us thus far, or we must move forward remorselessly and relentlessly, doing our own country and our own people more harm than can result to those people, though we exterminate them from the face of the globe. ”

“ We have within our grasp, and possible of attainment, a glory and honor such as has never come to another nation in the history of the world-the honor of having fought a war for the love of liberty and humanity, animated by no greedy, selfish purposes hidden under the declaration. ”

“ The commercial instinct, which seeks to furnish a market and places for the growth of commerce or the investment of capital for the money making of the few, is pressing this country madly to the final and ultimate annexation of these people regardless of their own wishes and at whatever cost to them or us. ”

“ If we are to pass any resolution at all—and I desire that the Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. ALDRICH] who has this matter in charge shall give me his especial attention now—I think that resolution ought to be one which will pave the way to peace in the Philippines, rather than one which will be an aggravation of the war which has begun there. I know that it is natural for the American blood to flame up in anger when the flag is fired upon; I know it is natural for our race to want to fight, very often whether we have provocation or not, and whether we are right or wrong ”

“ President, which strikes one who will read the joint resolution with an analytical mind is the absolute uselessness, and the cold-blooded purpose its language conveys. It is simply an assertion of power and of right on the part of this Government to buy and sell those islands for our interest, not for theirs, and to ignore in toto every consideration which those people have a right to expect at our hands. ”

“ There are two forces struggling for mastery here, and the better instincts of every Senator within the hearing of my voice lead him to side with me in the proposition that we do not want to shoot people into a civilized condition if we know how to get around it. The two forces to which I have referred as struggling for mastery are liberty, light, and morality—in a word, Christianity—contending against ignorance, greed, and tyranny, against the empires of Mammon and Belial. ”

“ Those peoples are not suited to our institutions. They are not ready for liberty as we understand it. They do not want it. Why are we bent on forcing upon them a civilization not suited to them and which only means in their view degradation and a loss of self-respect, which is worse than the loss of life itself? ”

“ If a man fires upon the American flag, shoot the last man and kill him, no matter how many Americans have to be shot to do it.
The city of Manila is surrounded by swamps and marshes, I am told. A few miles back lie the woods and jungles and mountains. These people are used to the climate. They know how to get about, and if they mean to have their liberties, as they appear to do, at what sacrifice will the American domination be placed over them? ”

“ President, as far as my observation goes, and as I understand the present status of the American people, we have no Constitution left. The only rule which governs Congress now is the rule of the majority. We had an illustration of that when the Hawaiian treaty was rejected by the constitutional one-third, more than one-third refusing to ratify it, and the majority brought in and passed its resolution of annexation by which the Constitution was overridden. ”

“ We feel that we are entitled to make that declaration, for from every great center of opinion in Europe, from the remotest corners of Anglo-Saxon America, have come back to us the echoes of the resolution which we have taken, the favoring and approving echoes, recognizing in the policy of the Government an ambition higher than that which looks for military triumph or for territorial aggrandizement, but which seeks to signalize itself by walking in the plain and simple ways of right and justice, and which desires never to build up empire except In the happiness of the governed. ”

“ President, the question of liberation is one which will present two points of view. We can look at it from our side and then look at it from theirs. I have just presented a few of the ideas which have occurred to me as having actuated the Filipinos in firing upon the American flag, as they did last Saturday, and that was that they desired to obtain in the eye of international law the rights of belligerents and not become rebels after the cession, as would have occurred if they had fired yesterday evening or this morning, after we had ratified the treaty. ”

“ Senators will recall the fact that some twenty years ago the South African Republic, known as the Transvaal, inhabited by the Boers, was annexed to the British Empire by proclamation. A British diplomatic agent bad gone into that country to spy out the land, so to speak, to feel the temper of the people. ”

“ I have looked back down the vista of what history I have read, and I appeal to any Senator here who may be versed in history to correct me if I am wrong when I say there never has been in the history of mankind a precedent for the existing condition now at Manila between the United States and the Filipino insurgents. ”

“ I wish now to present for the consideration of Senators, and especially of those Senators who stand committed here to a proposition that they are opposed to expansion and are opposed to annexation, but desired to ratify the treaty in order to close the condition of war with Spain and then address themselves to what shall be done in the Philippine Islands afterwards—I say I wish to address to those Senators some remarks in regard to what appears to me our plain and bounden duty at this time, our duty not only to them, but more especially to ourselves. ”

“ We have in our veins the best blood of the northern races, who now dominate the world. While we make no pretenses—and it is a pity that we do not even stand up to the few we do make—we have here a religion whose essence is mercy. ”

“ I do not think anyone can justly charge that there is any politics or that there has been any politics in the determination of the vote of Senators on this question. It has been determined from other reasons than partisan purposes. While most of those who have opposed the ratification of the treaty belong to the party to which I belong, it may be said as a fact, upon which every American citizen can congratulate himself, that the other party gave to the opposition two of its ablest men, who have stanchly and from the very beginning stood here opposed to this new idea of imperialism. ”

“ So at least a great many votes that have gone to the treaty and have enabled it to become the law of the land, have been cast by men who have been in great doubt as to their duty, and have at last yielded rather to pressure than to any conscientious or calm consideration of the result. ”

“ If they went to war with the United States before the United States had a title to those islands in law, what is their legal status in international law? They can not be called rebels to us except from the extreme standpoint of legal technicality. We had no right in Manila so far as they were concerned; we only had rights there so far as Spain was concerned ”

“ President, what caused this last battle of Manila? The reports which we receive through our newspapers all come from American sources: they charge that the Filipinos wantonly attacked the American army, and that that army had a right to defend itself, which nobody assumes to deny. ”

“ It clings to us like the shirt of Nessus, and we are not responsible, because we inherited it, and your fathers as well as ours are responsible for the presence amongst us of that people. Why do we as a people want to incorporate into our citizenship ten millions more of different or of differing races, three or four of them? ”

“ When those regiments march back, if they return with decimated ranks, as they are bound to come, if we have to send thousands and tens of thousands of reinforcements there to press onward until we have subdued those ten millions, at whose door will lie these lives—their blood shed for what? ”

“ There are 10,000,000 of these people. some of them fairly well civilized, and running to the other extreme of naked savages, who are reported in our press dispatches as having stood out in the open and fired their bows and arrows, not flinching from the storm of shot and shell thrown into their midst by the American soldiers last Sunday. ”

“ I can only say that from my point of view. if it was right to defeat the treaty on Saturday, it was right to defeat it on yesterday.
I have never in my legislative experience in this body or in any other assemblage. heard so many speeches giving the most cogent reasons why a man should not vote for a proposition, followed by the acknowledgment that the speaker, notwithstanding, intended to give his vote in its support. ”