Elisha Benjamin Andrews

“ As a practical politician in the better sense of the word McKinley was a master. Repeatedly, at critical junctures, he saved his following from rupture, while the opposition became an impotent rout. Hardly a contrast in American political warfare has been more striking than the pitiful demoralization of the Democracy in the campaign of 1900 compared with the closed ranks and solid front of the Republican array. Anti-imperialists like Carnegie and Hoar, silver men like Senator Stewart, and the low-tariff Republicans of the West united to hold aloft the McKinley banner. ”

“ Europe declared that we had hopelessly broken with our ideals. Cynics there applied to the United States the Scriptures: “Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like one of us? . . . How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!”
The New Cuban Police as organized by ex-Chief of New York Police, McCullagh. ”

“ The military and commercial advantages of our position at the doorway of the East, our duty to protect lives and property imperilled by the insurgents, and our manifest destiny to lift up the Filipino races, were dwelt upon. The argument having chief weight with most was that there seemed no clear avenue by which we could escape the policy of American occupation save the dishonorable and humiliating one of leaving the islands to their fate—anarchy and intestine feuds at once, conquest by Japan, Germany, or Spain herself a little later. ”

“ To the Philippines, though Spain’s de facto sovereignty there was hardly more than nominal, our title, whether or not good as based on conquest, was unimpeachable considered as a cession by way of war indemnity or sale. Nor, according to the weight of authority, could the right of the federal power to acquire these islands be denied. But did “the Constitution follow the flag” wherever American jurisdiction went? If not, what were the relations of those outlands and their peoples to the United States proper? Could inhabitants of the new possessions emigrate to the United States proper? ”

“ Ordinarily at feud with one another, these tribes all now united in ghost dances, looking for the Great Spirit or his Representative to appear with a high hand and an outstretched arm to bury the white and their works deep underground, when the prairie should once more thunder with the gallop of buffalo and wild horses. ”

“ Drenched by night, roasted by day, haversacks which had been cast aside for battle lost or purloined, supply trains stalled in the rear, fighting by day, by night digging trenches and rifle-pits—little wonder that many lost heart and urged withdrawal to some position nearer the American base. Shafter himself for a moment considered such a step. But General Wheeler, on the fighting line, set his face against it, as, upon reflection, did Shafter. A bold demand for surrender was sent to General Toral, commanding the city, while Admiral Sampson came to confer with Shafter for a naval assault. ”

“ Filipinos of aught like cosmopolitan intelligence numbered less than 100,000. Below them were the half-breeds, perhaps 500,000 strong, white, yellow, or brown, according to the special blend of blood. They were “intelligent but uneducated, active but not over industrious. They loved excitement, military display, and the bustle and pomp of government.” Farther down still were the vast toiling masses neither knowing nor caring much who governed them. Only in suffering were they experts, having learned of this under the iron heel of Spain all there was to be known. ”

“ While, shortly before, the Democratic cause was desperate, now McKinley, famed for his resemblance to Napoleon, and nominated on the anniversary of Waterloo, seemed already to hear the waves lashing the lonely shores of St. Helena. The gold standard, he said, not any “threat” of silver, disturbed business. The wage-worker, the farmer, and the miner were as truly business men as “the few financial magnates who in a dark room corner the money of the world.” “We answer the demand for the gold standard by saying, ‘You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. ”

“ In 1894-1895, just as “Home Rule for Cuba” had become a burning issue in Spain, martial law was proclaimed in Havana, precipitating the last and successful revolution.
American interest in the island, material and otherwise, was great. The barbarity and devastation marking the wars made a strong appeal to our humane instincts; nor could Americans be indifferent to a neighboring people struggling to be free. The suppression of filibustering expeditions taxed our Treasury and our patience. ”

“ In 1879 the Army invaded America, landing at Philadelphia, where, as in the Old Country and in other American cities, pitiable sin and wretchedness grovelled in obscurity. In 1894 there were in the United States 539 corps and 1,953 officers, and in the whole world 3,200 corps and 10,788 officers. Without proposing any programme of social or political reform, and without announcing any manifesto of human rights, the Salvationists uplifted hordes of the fallen, while drawing to the lowliest the notice, sympathy, and help of the middle classes and the rich. Army discipline was rigidly maintained. ”

“ These united with the central Grand Basin in the peerless Court of Honor. The grounds and buildings were of surpassing magnitude and splendor. Interesting but simple features were the village of States, the Nations’ tabernacles, lying almost under the guns of the facsimile battleship Illinois, and the pigmy caravels, Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, named and modelled after those that bore Columbus to the New World. These, like their originals, had fared from Spain across the Atlantic, and then had come by the St, Lawrence and the Lakes, without portage, to their moorings at Chicago. ”

“ With few exceptions Southerners had become intensely loyal to the national ideal, faithfully abiding the arbitrament of the war, which alone, to their mind—but at any rate, finally and forever—overthrew the old doctrine that the Union was a compact among States, with liberty to each to secede at will. ”

“ So great was the fear of free silver in financial circles, corporations voted money to the huge Republican campaign fund. The opposition could tap no such mine. Never before had a national campaign seen the Democratic party so abandoned by Democrats of wealth, or with so slender a purse. ”

“ Washington not only as a remarkable negro, but as a remarkable man. Born poor as could be and fighting his way to an education against every conceivable obstacle, he had at the age of forty distinguished himself as a business organizer, as an educator, as a writer, and as, a public speaker. His modesty, discretion, and industry were phenomenal, at once constituting him a leader of his race and rendering his leadership valuable. ”

“ Colored people as a class lacked devotion to principle, also initiative and endurance, whether mental or physical. Colored deputies, of whom there were many in various parts of the South, so long as they acted under white chiefs, were, like most colored soldiers, marvels of bravery, defying revolvers, bowie knives, and wounds, and fighting to the last gasp with no sign of flinching ”

“ The Fish Commission, created by the Government in 1870, proved an important agency in promoting the great industries of fishing and fish culture. At the World’s Fair it appeared that the fishing business had made progress greater than many others which were much more obtrusively displayed, though the fishtrap, the fyke net, and the fishing steamer had all been introduced within a generation.
In no realm did invention and the application of science mean more for the country’s weal than in agriculture. ”

“ The Atlanta Exposition, opening on September 18, 1895, epitomized the Newest South. The touch of an electric button by President Cleveland’s little daughter, Marian, at his home on Buzzard’s Bay, Mass., opened the gates and set the machinery awhirl. Atlanta was a city of but 100,000, hardly more than 60,000 of them whites, yet her Fair not only excelled the Atlanta Exposition of 1881, that at Louisville in 1883, and the New Orleans World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition of 1884-5, all which were highly successful, but in many features outdid even the Centennial at Philadelphia. ”

“ No style of architecture could have contributed better to such gayety than the Spanish-Renaissance, light, ornate, and infinitely varied, lending itself to endless decoration in color and relief, and no more delicate compliment could have been paid our southern neighbors than this choice of their graceful and attractive designs. ”

“ The United States had become a mighty exporter of manufactured products, competing effectively with England, Germany, and France in the sale of such everywhere in the world.
American material supplied in large part the Russian Trans-Siberian Railroad. American food-stuffs and meats wakened agrarian frenzy in Germany. The island-hive of England buzzed loudly with jealous foreboding lest America capture her world-markets. ”

“ Bryan primarily, and then, mainly owing to his strong influence, also his party, misjudged the fundamental meaning of the country’s demand for monetary reform. The conjunction of good times with increase in the volume of hard money made possible by the world’s huge new output of gold, might have been justly taken as vindicating the quantity theory of money value, prosperity being precisely the result which the silver people of 1896 prophesied as certain in case the stock of hard money were amplified. ”

“ Democratic extremists proclaimed that Republicans slavishly served the rich and fiendishly ground the faces of the poor. Even moderate Democrats, who simply urged that protective rates should be reduced, more often than otherwise supported their proposals with out and out free trade arguments. As to President Cleveland himself no one could tell whether or not he was a free trader, but his discussions of the tariff read like Cobden Club tracts. The Mills bill, which passed the House in the Fiftieth Congress, would have been more a tariff for revenue than in any sense protective. ”

“ What meaning could free institutions have for young voters who had never in all their lives seen an election carried save by these vicious means! New constitutions which should legally eliminate most of the negro vote were the alternative.
In Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, proof of having paid taxes or poll-taxes was (as in some northern and western States) made an indispensable prerequisite to voting, either alone or as an alternative for an educational qualification. ”

“ Colored population drifted from the country to cities, which probably accounted for the fact that in 1890 more negroes lived in the North than ever before. In the South itself, on the other hand, the movement of colored population was southward and westward, from the highlands to the lowlands, so that Kentucky, along with western Virginia, northeastern Mississippi, and rural parts of Maryland, North Alabama, and eastern Virginia, had, in 1890, fewer colored inhabitants than ten years previous.
These confusing data explain why few were rash enough to prophesy the fate of the American negro. ”

“ New issues—imperialism and the trusts—seemed certain to be vote-winners for the Democracy. The cause of anti-imperialism had taken deep hold of the public mind, drawing to its support a host of eminent and respected Republicans. The Democratic platform expressly named this the “paramount issue” of the campaign. The party in power defended its Philippine policy in the manner sketched at the end of the last chapter, ever asserting, of course, that so far as consistent with their welfare and our duties the Filipinos must be accorded the largest possible measure of self-government. ”

“ Moreover, our measures toward the Filipinos had alienated Cuba, so that the voluntary adhesion of this island to the United States, so desirable and once so easily within reach, was no longer a possibility; while the coercion of Cuba, in view of our profession when we took up arms for her, would be condemned by all mankind as national perfidy. ”

“ The sympathy of official Republicanism with the British in the Boer War tended to solidify the Irish vote as Democratic, but—and it was among the novelties of the campaign—Republicans no longer feared to alienate the Irish. The Government’s apparent apathy toward the Boers also drove into the Democratic ranks for the time a great number of Dutch and German Republicans. Colored voters were in this hegira, believing that the adoption of the “subject-races” notion into American public law and policy would be the negro’s despair. ”

“ Dewey furnished him arms and ammunition. The insurrection was reorganized on a grander scale than ever, with extraordinary ability, tact, energy, and success. Nearly every one of the Luzon provinces had its rebel organization. In each Aguinaldo picked the leader and outlined the plan of campaign. His scheme had unity; his followers were aggressive and fearless. Everywhere save in a few strongholds Spain was vanquished. At last only Manila remained. The insurgents must have captured 10,000 prisoners, though part of those they had at the Spanish evacuation were from the Americans. ”

“ Did our domestic tariff laws apply there as well as here? Must free trade exist between the nation and its dependencies? Were rights such as that of peaceable assemblage and that to jury trial guaranteed to Filipinos, or could only Americans to the manner born plead them?
On the fundamental question whether the dependencies formed part of the United States the Supreme Court passed in certain so-called “insular cases” which were early brought before it. Four of the justices held that at all times after the Paris Treaty the islands were part and parcel of United States soil. ”

“ Even waiving this consideration, men found in international law no such mid-status between sovereignty and non-sovereignty as anti-imperialists wished to have the United States assume while the Filipinos were getting upon their feet. Many made great point of minimizing the abuses of our military government and of dilating upon native atrocities. The material wealth of the archipelago was described in glowing terms. Only American capital and enterprise were needed to develop it into a mine of national riches. ”

“ It seemed that crimes against women, almost unknown before the war but now increasing at an alarming rate, proceeded not from ex-slaves, but from the smart new generation. Lynching for these offences was by some excused in that negroes would not assist in bringing colored perpetrators to justice, and in that a spectacular mode of punishment affected negroes more deeply than the slow process of law, even when this issued in conviction. ”

“ The war spirit welded North and South, permeating the Democracy even more than the party in power. Democrats would have at once recognized the Cuban Republic. This was at first the attitude of the Senate, which, upon deliberation, wisely forbore. It, however, on April 20th, joined the House in declaring the people of Cuba free and independent, adding that Spain must forthwith relinquish her authority there. The President was authorized to use the nation’s entire army, navy, and militia to enforce withdrawal. ”

“ Many gold people assumed as beyond controversy that free coinage would drive gold from the country and wreck public credit. Advocates of silver too little heeded the consequences which the mere fear of those evils must entail, impatiently classing such as mentioned them among bond-servants to the money power. ”