Carl Schurz

“ No more brutal appeal to sordid greed, no appeal so utterly hostile to the vital principles of our free institutions, expressed in the most high-sounding verbiage of American patriotism, has ever been addressed to our people. If this be the spirit animating the youth of America, then the great American Republic will soon cease to be an encouragement to the progress of political liberty and become a warning example to all the world. ”

“ Many of our rich men have become imperialists, believing that the possession of the Philippines, in whatever way acquired, will offer favorable chances of gain to speculative capitalists. Have they thought of it that the doctrine of might, not needing to be scrupulous about right, may be applied not only to the unscrupulous might of arms and not only to the unscrupulous might of wealth, but also, in a democracy, to the might of numbers becoming unscrupulous? And this is the tendency of imperialism in this democratic republic. ”

“ It is not mere light-minded hero-worship that moves the American people to celebrate the anniversary of Washington's birth as a national holiday. Preëminent among the monumental figures of the world's history stand the founders of nations; and preëminent among them stands he whose virtue, fortitude and wisdom are honored by all mankind without a dissenting voice. ”

“ If we permit the great wrong attempted by the Administration to be consummated, our moral credit with the world will be gone forever. Having started in our Spanish war with the solemn proclamation that this would be a war of liberation and not of conquest, and then having turned that war into one of land-grabbing and self-confessed “criminal aggression,” nobody will ever again believe in any profession of virtue or generosity we may put forth. ”

“ Neither have we a right to say that the Philippine people must be held to be incapable of independent government if they cannot form an ideal republic, in which liberty and peace and order and honesty will reign in unclouded sunshine. They may easily be as orderly as Kentucky and as honestly governed as the city of New York. What if they have their troubles and turmoils? They may be like some South American republics, or develop into something like the orderly dictatorship in Mexico. Do we question the title of those countries to their independence? ”

“ And what of the danger that, if we recognize the independence of the Philippines, some other power will at once rush in to clutch them? Does any sane man believe that there will be such a danger if this great Republic forbids it? And why should not American diplomacy succeed in bringing the powers most nearly concerned to an agreement to declare the Philippines neutral territory as Belgium and Switzerland are in Europe? ”

“ I can hardly imagine any kind of government more repellent than a democracy that has ceased to believe in anything, and in which all ambitions are directed towards a selfish use of power.
And in this direction the policy of imperialism is evidently driving us. Have you considered what this means? What will it lead to if our people accept the teaching that all our traditional creeds about liberty and the rights of men are mere sentimental rubbish; that the most solemn professions and pledges may be repudiated if they stand in the way of our ambition ”

“ The people will find, if they have not found it already, that a great wrong has been done in their name, which, unless it be undone, so far as it can be, will cover them with eternal disgrace. I challenge any one of the President's defenders to point out in the whole history of the world a single act of perfidy committed by a republican government more infamous than that which has been committed by this Administration against our confiding Filipino allies. Show me a single one! You will search for it in vain in all the annals of mankind. ”

“ What a democracy, based upon universal suffrage, like ours needs most to insure its stability is an element of conservative poise in itself. This can be furnished only by popular faith in the principles underlying the democratic institutions; by popular reverence for high ideals and traditions; by popular respect for constitutional forms and restraints. Take away these conservative and ennobling influences, and the only motive forces left in such a democracy will be greed and passion. ”

“ It consisted in the fact that the first President of this Republic furnished in himself, by his character, the principles he followed, the motives that inspired him and the wisdom of his policies, the most perfect model of a republican chief magistrate in the history of the world—a President to whose teachings and example all his successors—indeed, all those wielding public power in this Republic—could with the utmost confidence look for safest guidance. Surely, no other nation has ever been so signally blessed. ”

“ But the conscience of the American people was not dead. A new condition soon illumined the question as with a flood of new light. The popular conscience suddenly rose up in its might and did not rest until slavery was wiped out.
Let the imperialists not delude themselves. If the present Congress fails to undo the great wrong that has been done, appeal will be taken to the people. ”

“ They would have considered it an insult to the great and magnanimous American Republic to entertain on their part even the slightest suspicion that our professions of unselfish purpose were a mere humbug, and that while liberating one people we were capable of scheming the subjugation of another because we coveted their land. In one word, as ever so many of their proclamations showed, they expected their independence because they believed the American people to be an honest people, and the American government to be an honest government. ”

“ For more than three-quarters of a century—a war of our own making and the period of our civil conflict excepted—the American people have enjoyed the inestimable boon of a substantially unarmed peace in perfect security. Until recently we valued this priceless privilege so heartily and proudly that we looked down with pitying superiority upon the nations of the Old World, seeing them grievously burdened with their monstrous military and naval establishments ”

“ When we have no further use for our Filipino allies, we begin peace negotiations with the common enemy from which our Filipino allies are sternly excluded, and behind their backs we purchase from the common enemy his title of sovereignty over them—a title utterly discredited by ourselves—so that from subjects of Spanish foreign rule they may become subjects of American foreign rule. And when then our late allies insist upon being free and refuse to be bought from the defeated enemy like a herd of cattle, we slaughter them by thousands. ”

“ Those who had the power to prevent or stop it by being simply faithful to the principles the American people have hitherto so proudly professed—they will be held forever answerable for this wanton and wicked war by impartial history, and no sanctimonious cant, no cunning sophistry, can disguise their guilt, or save them from that awful judgment. ”

“ And to enforce such a title of sovereignty resting, not upon anything akin to moral right, but at best upon a shrewd legal technicality which in private life every gentleman would despise, we have proceeded to kill thousands upon thousands of men and devastated the homes of thousands upon thousands of innocent people who had never done us any harm and whose only offense consisted in having confidently expected that the generous and liberty-loving Americans would be true to their professed principles, and who, being grievously disappointed in this, still wished to be free and independent. ”

“ We shall be guilty of the meanest as well as, in its consequences, the most dangerous iniquity a nation can commit—the betrayal of an ally. There is nothing so perfidious that thenceforth we shall not be thought capable of, and other nations will prudently take care not to make common cause with us for anything upon a mere assurance of good faith on our part. This is the “glory” we shall have won. Our sister republics in this hemisphere have looked upon the United States as their natural protector, and they were our natural friends. ”

“ The President's attempt, while constantly speaking of Congress as the ultimate arbiter, to anticipate the action of Congress, and thus to force its hand by accomplished facts, has advanced to a dangerous stage, but it has, after all, not quite succeeded; and if that spirit of liberty which gave birth to this Republic still lives, it will never succeed. Unless I am much mistaken, the people are still sovereign in this country, and they will not permit any President to purloin that sovereignty from them by a sleight of hand. ”

“ In this sense it may be said that geographic, climatic and other such conditions, which made the building up of a great democracy on this American soil so natural, were providential; that the rising up of an ideal leader at the beginning of our government was providential; that the peculiar situation of this republic among the powers of the earth, enabling it to build up that great democracy in the New World, untroubled by the jealousies and quarrels of other nations, was providential. ”

“ If the American people, even after the monstrous aberrations of their government, repudiate the policy of criminal aggression and renounce their conquests; if they declare that their profession of unselfish motive and generous purpose in the Spanish war was sincere, and must be maintained at any cost—what then? They will forever put to shame the detractors of the American democracy. ”

“ And can any sane man doubt that, whatever plans of imperial government may be devised, the rule of our race over another which we consider inferior will always be essentially arbitrary and consistently beneficent only when selfish interest permits it?
Listen to the wail of misery and despair coming from the Porto Ricans who were promised liberty and happiness under the American flag! Do not now powerful interests demand a policy which means to them poverty and oppression? ”

“ As to the Philippine Islands, our government, whatever otherwise its quality, will always be essentially government by garrison. Those who carried on their struggle for freedom will always remain the heroes of the people, and whatever banquet we as foreign rulers may spread to them, the shade of their betrayed and murdered independence will, like Banquo's ghost, always claim the first seat at the board. ”

“ The history of a century bears it out. Excepting the period of our civil war, we had, compared with other great powers, neither army nor navy. And yet our rights and our honor were safe all over the globe. The greatest sea-power on earth yielded to us far more deference than to any other nation. ”

“ We shall have betrayed the fundamental principles of our democracy, robbed the American people of their high ideals and beliefs, and thus destroyed the conservative element without which a democracy based on universal suffrage cannot long endure. ”

“ It may well be said that, however men may differ in their judgment of other heroes, George Washington's character has long ceased to be a subject of debate, the verdict which places him in the first rank among the great citizens in history being universally concordant and final. And when we honor his name we celebrate what is noblest and best and most glorious in our national being. ”

“ But what will become of the Philippine Islanders if unfit for independent government? Of course, every man who either himself wishes to keep the Philippines, or who serves the Administration, strenuously insists that the islanders are utterly unable to govern themselves. It is always so. He who seeks to make another man his subject, always maintains that the other is incapable of being a freeman. ”

“ Some time before our war with Spain broke out, its possible contingencies were attentively considered by the Administration. Commodore Dewey, commanding our Asiatic squadron, informed himself about the state of the Spanish power in those regions, and weeks before the declaration of war, on March 31, 1898, he reported to our government that he could destroy the Spanish fleet and reduce the defenses of Manila in a single day, and added: “There is every reason to believe that, with Manila taken, or even blockaded, the rest of the islands would fall either to the insurgents or ourselves.” ”

“ In constant fear of our greed and perfidy, they will, in case of critical complications, be inclined to coalesce even with Old-World powers against us, and we shall have secret or open enemies instead of trustful friends at our very doors. We shall have the Philippines with a population bitterly hating us, and, in case of trouble with some foreign power, eager to kindle a fire in our rear. ”