Organization composed mainly of old-fashioned liberal New England politicians, publicists, and intellectuals, who challenged America’s overseas territorial expansion at the close of the nineteenth century
Members founded the Anti-Imperialist League at a meeting in Faneuil Hall in Boston on June 15, 1898, in direct response to U.S. expansion in the Caribbean and Pacific at the dawn of the new century. At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War of 1898, the government secured possession of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines. Many Americans feared that the nation’s industrial growth would lead to an imperialist course of action in foreign affairs.
The center of the movement remained located in Boston, although local branches existed in Chicago, which became national headquarters briefly before the movement relocated back to Boston, St. Louis, San Francisco, and other cities. League leaders stoutly defended the Declaration of Independence and believed that all government derived its power from the consent of the governed. Gamaliel Bradford, Moorfield Storey, Edward Atkinson, Erving Winslow, and William A. Croffut led the battle against overseas territorial expansion. Political allies such as George S. Boutwell, Senator George F. Hoar, Representative Samuel W. McCall, and William Jennings Bryan combined forces with other prominent figures including David Starr Jordan, Samuel Gompers, William James, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Schurz, William Graham Sumner, and General Nelson A. Miles to argue that imperialism remained detrimental to the free-trade basis of competitive capitalism and diverted attention from the urgent need for domestic reform.
Writers William Vaughn Moody and Mark Twain lent their pens to the cause. Twain’s powerful essay “To the Person Sitting in the Darkness” remains one of the most persuasive pieces of anti-imperialist literature published in support of the league’s objectives.
Specifically, the league sought to discourage the McKinley administration from seizing the Philippines. Senate ratification of the Treaty of Peace Between the United States and Spain (known as the Paris Peace Treaty) on February 6,1899, however—followed two days later by the eruption of the Filipino-American War—transformed the league into a national movement with a mass constituency. The league worked with other anti-imperialist elements, and its membership expanded to more than 30,000 members. By October 1898, its campaign had reached close to 30 states. Finding receptive audiences, anti-imperialists distributed literature and placed speakers around the country as they pursued two simple goals: an immediate suspension of hostilities in the Philippines and a congressional pledge of Philippine independence.
The league’s periodical, the Anti-Imperialist, and pamphlets like Atkinson’s The Cost of a National Crime and The Hell of War and Its Penalties provided ample illustrations of the “repulsive and ghastly slaughter in the guerilla warfare in the Philippines.” But the league’s most original and compelling arguments focused on economic issues. Atkinson, a retired textile manufacturer, refuted the arguments of busi-nesspeople who maintained that America’s industrial economy would profit from the nation’s outward thrust. He pointed out that American sugar and hemp growers would face competition from Philippine producers and that American laborers would experience competition as well. New England jurist Storey boldly declared his opposition to the use of foreign capital to develop the Philippines since it would impose foreign influence on the islands. General Miles weighed in by observing that Wall Street would benefit the most from U.S. control of the Philippines.
Despite leveling a multitude of compelling economic arguments, the league’s movement had several contradictory elements. Southern anti-imperialists observed that American boys had not enlisted “to fight niggers” (referring to nonwhite Filipinos), while in Chicago the Black Man’s Burden Association objected strenuously to the Filipino-American War’s Anglo-Saxon racist overtones. Many in the movement had supported the Spanish-American War and failed to object to the colonial annexation of nearby Puerto Rico. Others opposed to colonial annexation rested their beliefs not so much on the principle of self-determination but rather in the conviction that economic imperialism would proceed more safely and smoothly if it was not burdened by the tasks of colonial administration. Whatever the position, the anti-imperialist effort rested more on abstract political and ideological principles than on strictly economic, religious, constitutional, or humanitarian considerations.
Marked by contradictory positions, the Anti-Imperialist League and its accompanying movement quickly dissolved, even with the revelation of atrocities committed in the Philippines by American troops. During the winter of 1899-1900, anti-imperialist efforts slipped from a campaign of mass mobilization into the utter confusion of electoral politics. Unable to halt war through popular agitation, the leaders of the league toyed with the prospect of mounting a third-party effort for the 1900 presidential election.
Surprisingly, most decided to support the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic leader who, though grudgingly, supported Senate ratification of the Paris treaty, which granted the United States control over the Philippines. This fact, combined with the rejection of Bryan’s candidacy by noted industrialist Andrew Carnegie (who thought Bryan a demagogue) and the success of American military forces in grinding down the “insurrection,” resulted in a McKinley victory even more decisive than in the election of 1896.
Between 250,000 and 600,000 Filipinos died as a result of the war, compared with 7,000 American troops. Early in February 1902, U.S. troops captured Filipino leader Emilio Aquinaldo. Within a few months Theodore Roosevelt, who had become president upon McKinley’s assassination the previous year, declared the war over. Congress immediately declared that the Philippines were to be constituted an unorganized territory of the United States. The Anti-Imperialist League’s influence proved ineffective in subsequent matters involving foreign policy.
