Reflection

Motivation and Purpose in Primary Sources

Analyzing Motives for Imperialism

In dealing with primary sources, two of the most important factors is understanding the motivation and purpose behind the original author. What is the difference between motivation and purpose? They are basically cause and effect. Motivation is the "cause" -- the reason why the source was written. It is the background for the source. Purpose is the "effect" -- the impact or result. Sometimes cause is more complex than appears on the surface. For example, a law states the outcome lawmakers hope to achieve. In a basic sense, motivation is that they wanted that goal. However, motivation goes deeper than just the desire to achieve a goal. Motivation includes the attitudes or beliefs behind that goal. Furthermore, individual motives may be different, but compatible enough to support a like policy. While the effect is the law, the causes may be many. To complicate matters further, in a longitudinal study, or a study of changes over time, the law may not be the singular effect. Contrasting primary sources may reveal unintended effects of a law. Court cases are primary sources and the verdicts in these cases may expose a changing interpretation of the law, which might prompt a student to inquire about changing societal attitudes and values.

Looking for Motivation and Purpose

Study the following source excerpts with the following questions in mind:

· Which passages reveal the author’s motive?

· Is there any evidence to suggest the author’s beliefs are singular or are they shared by the public?

· How have historians analyzed the motives of national leaders?

Who is the author of this source? can you locate the footnote containing the Author information? What other important data is provided in the footnote?

Source 1: “the Pacific is the future”

MR. PRESIDENT, I address the Senate at this time because senators and members of the House on both sides have asked that I give to Congress and the country my observations in the Philippines and the Far East…..

Mr. President, the times call for candor…. The Philippines are ours forever, "territory belonging to the United States," as the Constitution calls them…. And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets…. We will not retreat from either…. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient…. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world…. And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength and Thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world….

This island empire is the last land left in all the oceans…. If it should prove a mistake to abandon it, the blunder once made would be irretrievable…. If it proves a mistake to hold it, the error can be corrected when we will…. Every other progressive nation stands ready to relieve us….

But to hold it will be no mistake. Our largest trade henceforth must be with Asia. The Pacific is our ocean. More and more Europe will manufacture the most it needs, secure from its colonies the most it consumes. Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. She is nearer to us than to England, Germany, or Russia, the commercial powers of the present and the future. They have moved nearer to China by securing permanent bases on her borders. The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East.

...It will be hard for Americans who have not studied them to understand the people…. They are a barbarous race, modified by three centuries of contact with a decadent race…. The Filipino is the South Sea Malay, put through a process of three hundred years of superstition in religion, dishonesty in dealing, disorder in habits of industry, and cruelty, caprice, and corruption in government…. It is barely possible that 1,000 men in all the archipelago are capable of self government in the Anglo-Saxon sense....

But, Senators, it would be better to abandon this combined garden and Gibraltar of the Pacific, and count our blood and treasure already spent a profitable loss than to apply any academic arrangement of self-government to these children…. They are not capable of self-government…. How could they be? They are Orientals, Malays, instructed by Spaniards in the latter's worst estate.... They know nothing of practical government except as they have witnessed the weak, corrupt, cruel, and capricious rule of Spain…. What magic will anyone employ to dissolve in their minds and characters those impressions of governors and governed which three centuries of misrule has created? What alchemy will change the oriental quality of their blood and set the self-governing currents of the American pouring through their Malay veins? How shall they, in the twinkling of an eye, be exalted to the heights of self-governing peoples which required a thousand years for us to reach, Anglo-Saxon though we are?

Mr. President, this question is deeper than any question of party politics; deeper than any question of the isolated policy of our country even; deeper even than any question of constitutional power. It is elemental. It is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth. He has made us adepts in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. Were it not for such a force as this the world would relapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man. We are trustees of the world's progress, guardians of its righteous peace. The judgment of the Master is upon us: "Ye have been faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many things."

Mr. President and Senators, adopt the resolution offered, that peace may quickly come and that we may begin our saving, regenerating, and uplifting work.... Reject it, and the world, history, and the American people will know where to forever fix the awful responsibility for the consequences that will surely follow such failure to do our manifest duty....[footnoteRef:1] [1: “Policy Regarding the Philippines,” Congressional Record, 56th Congress, 1st Session (9 January 1900), 704-712. Senator Albert Beveridge (R-Ind) before Congress. ]

Source 2: “the Strenuous Life”

In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who pre-eminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes-to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research-work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation.

If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill. Last year we could not help being brought face to face with the problem of war with Spain. All we could decide was whether we should shrink like cowards from the contest, or enter into it as beseemed a brave and high-spirited people; and; once in, whether failure or success should crown our banners. So it is now. We cannot avoid the responsibilities that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. All we can decide is whether we shall meet them in a way that will redound to the national credit, or whether we shall make of our dealings with these new problems a dark and shameful page in our history. To refuse to deal with them at all merely amounts to dealing with them badly. We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright.

“When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass you by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.”[footnoteRef:2] [2: Roosevelt, Theodore. 1899. “The Strenuous Life.” In Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses. New York: The Century Co. 1901.]

Source 3: U.S. Exports[footnoteRef:3] [3: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of the Census, 1960, pp. 550-551.]

U.S. Exports In Millions of Dollars / Year	China	Japan	Australia / Oceania
1900	15	29	41
1897	12	13	23
1894	6	4	12
1888	5	4	15
1875	1	2	5

Motivation and Purpose in Secondary Sources

Secondary sources may be designed to be informative, analytical, or persuasive. Informative texts are straightforward: they tell readers about a subject. Textbooks, reference books, encyclopedias, travelogues are all examples of concise informative sources. You may also find informative writing in scholarly journals and reports, however these sources may attempt to provide information about certain aspects while ignoring other facts and details so it is important to remain suspicious about the motive of the writer while reading informative works, as these types of sources are not immune to bias.

Persuasive writing is one of the more popular forms of writing. As a student, you encounter views designed to convince you of a particular perspective. News articles and speeches are often written in a way that sways the reader to agree with a particular thought or view. Commercials and advertisements are certainly written to convince the viewer or reader to agree with one side or product. Persuasive writing is noticeably biased, however, that does not mean readers should chunk persuasive pieces to the corner and ignore them. These sources continue to offer a better understanding of a view within the broader spectrum of popular thoughts on a topic.

Analytical writing looks more specifically at a subject or event. This style of writing breaks the subject/topic into parts, studying each component. Explaining how something works or happened might qualify as analytical. In the following selection, historian John Hollitz offers insight into the changing beliefs of historians about what motivated U.S. imperialism.

Source 4: Hollitz, Thinking Through the Past

Historians have been drawn to the decision to annex the Philippines for several important reasons. When the United States took control of the country, it broke with its own revolutionary past and anti-colonial ideals. The decision for empire also provides a powerful case study—for some, a cautionary tale—regarding the unintended consequences of intervening in foreign lands. In this case, of course, that consequence was a prolonged, bloody military struggle far from American shores. Finally, Philippine annexation occurred just as the United States has arrived as a great power, a status it holds more than a century later. To many historians, then, American imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century represents an important key for understanding the rise of the United States as a global power.

If historians do not dispute the importance of Philippine annexation, they do not necessarily agree about the reasons for it. Often, their explanations reflect conflicting views about the most important influences on foreign policy. Some scholars argue that democratic or popular influences play an important role in shaping policy; others contend that elites dominate decision making. Still others insist that American foreign policy has been shaped primarily by powerful ideas and cultural forces. For the better part of a century, explanations for Philippine annexation have reflected these competing views about influence. The result has been a fierce debate among historians not only about the forces propelling American imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century, but about the nature of foreign policy in a democratic society.

One argument, an extension of President William McKinley’s own explanation at the time, emphasized a humanitarian impulse behind American overseas expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. In this view, the decision to go to war with Spain so as to liberate Cuba from the oppressive Spanish rule naturally spilled over to a desire to keep the Philippines once the war was over. Annexation would “uplift” the Filipinos and prevent another oppressive power from seizing an independent but weak Philippines. Proponents of this view maintain that the American empire was thus “accidental” in nature. An unthinking response to events in Cuba and the Philippines, it was carried out without forethought or assessments about American strategic or economic interests. In other words, the decision for empire was an “aberration” that was unrelated to the needs of America’s expanding industrial economy.

That view did not long go unchallenged. In fact, early in the twentieth century many historians believed that the search for overseas markets explained both the war with Spain and the subsequent decision for empire. In the 1930s, for example, historian Charles Beard argued that McKinley’s decision for war reflected his close ties to expansionist business leaders. This interpretation was especially popular during the Great Depression, when economic issues were on the minds of many people. American generally held business responsible for the country’s economic ills, and “war profiteers” were under investigation by the U.S. Senate for their role in World War I. At the same time, historian Julius Pratt argued that another influential, elite group was more responsible for American imperialism than profit-minded businessmen. In Expansionists of 1898 (1936), Pratt concluded that many prominent business leaders actually opposed going to war with Spain. Vocal and well-placed officials such as Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge pushed McKinley to war with Spain. Only when these expansionists pressed for retaining the Philippines, Pratt concluded, did the business community finally join the annexationist chorus.

Later, many historians rejected arguments about the responsibility of these elite groups for American overseas expansion. Reminded by World War II of the powerful effects of mass hysteria, in the postwar years they emphasized the emotional or irrational nature of American overseas expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. In their view, McKinley and the Congress were swept toward war and colonialism by a public whipped to a frenzy by so-called yellow journalism—the sensationalist coverage of Spanish oppression in Cuba. The decision for war, then, was an “unthinking” response by political leaders to popular passion. As historian Ernest May argued in Imperial Democracy (1961), William McKinley was simply unable to withstand the tide of public opinion and “led his country unwillingly toward a war that he did not want.” A little later, historian Richard Hofstadter extended this thesis when he concluded that Americans were suffering from a collective “psychic crisis” in the 1890s brought on by economic depression and social turmoil related to industrialization. Increasingly frightened about their own prospects at home, Hofstadter concluded, Americans were especially susceptible to manipulation by the yellow press, which offered them the prospect of overseas conquests as a cure for their own frustrations. As in the humanitarian-impulse interpretation, America’s unthinking decisions for war and empire were aberrations that had more to do with popular influence on the government than with concerns for overseas markets.

Historiography is the study of evolving scholarly interpretations on a specific event. As scholars latch on to new evidence and form new interpretations, old theories may be discredited. When trying to understand an event, it is important to know how leading scholars have shifted their thinking and why. Sometimes old theories re-emerge as most valid.

….Closer to our own time, many historians have stressed the important role of culture in shaping the past, even in the field of foreign relations. These historians emphasize the ideological rather than purely economic motives behind overseas expansion, in particular the belief in the duty of the “Anglo-Saxon race” to uplift “uncivilized” peoples. In Spreading the American Dream (1982), for instance, Emily Rosenberg argued that assumptions about the superiority of Anglo-Saxons and of American political, religious, and economic institutions propelled American expansion at the turn of the century. In Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (1987), historian Michael Hunt likewise argued that an ideological stew containing generous portions of chauvinism and racism led many Americans to assume that they could simply remake other societies. [footnoteRef:4] [4: Hollitz, John. Thinking Through The Past: A Critical Thinking Approach to U.S. History, Vol. 2, 4th Ed. (Wadsworth, Cengage Learning), 2010, pg. 79-81.]

Source 5: Harvest of Empire

Victory in the Spanish-American War and the sudden acquisition of overseas colonies made the nation uneasy at first. True, Frederick Jackson Turner and others were espousing the view that territorial expansion and Anglo-American freedom were inseparable, and most Americans believed that, but occupying foreign lands and lording over their peoples seemed to contradict the very liberties for which the nation had fought its own revolution. Not surprisingly, the war with Spain led to our first anti-imperialist movement—against suppression of the Filipino independence movement.

On the whole, outright territorial annexations ceased after 1898. Wars of conquest, the sanctioning of armed invasions by filibuster groups, the purchase of territories, gave way to gunboat diplomacy and to a more disguised yet far more extensive system of financial domination. Economic conquest replaced outright political annexation, as the region evolved into the incubator for the multinational American corporation. By 1924, Latin America accounted for nearly half of all foreign U.S. investment, according to one U.S. Department of Commerce estimate.

As we shall see, a series of military occupations early in the century—sometimes brief, sometimes lasting decades, but always for the most spurious of reasons—allowed U.S. banks and corporations to gain control over key industries in every country. Latin American ventures sprang up on Wall Street overnight as sugar, fruit, railroad, mining, gas, and electric company executives raced south on the heels of the marines. Thanks to the aid of pliant local elites and of U.S. diplomats or military commanders who often ended up as partners of managers of the new firms, the newcomers quickly corralled lucrative concessions while the host countries fell deeper into debt and dependence.

Nowhere did the new U.S. policy leave such as profound legacy as in Puerto Rico. When General Nelson Miles landed in the town of Guánica on July 25, 1898, in the midst of the Spanish-American War, most Puerto Ricans greeted his arrival and rejoiced at his promise to end Spanish colonialism. “Our purpose is not to interfere with the existing laws and customs which are beneficial for your people,” Miles declared in a proclamation. Few imagined then that the island would remain a U.S. possession for the entire twentieth century, or that it would become the most important colony in our own country’s history. Two years after the occupation started, Congress passed the Foraker Act, which declared the island a U.S. territory and authorized the president to appoint its civilian governor and top administrators. The new law permitted islanders their own House of Delegates, but it reserved for Congress the right to annul any laws those delegates passed. It assigned trade, treaty, postal, sanitary, and military powers to the federal government and it gave the islanders only one nonvoting delegate in Congress. In many ways, the Foraker Act gave Puerto Ricans less self-government than they had enjoyed under Spain. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, after all, Puerto Ricans had been citizens of Spain and island voters had sent as many as sixteen voting delegates to the Spanish Cortes. And, in 1897, Spain had promulgated a new Charter of Autonomy, which gave the island virtual sovereignty.

The Foraker Act, though, went beyond disenfranchising Puerto Ricans. It forbade the island from making commercial treaties with other countries and it replaced the Puerto Rican peso with the American dollar, while devaluing the peso. This made it easier for U.S. sugar companies to gobble up Puerto Rican-owned lands. As a result, thousands of former independent coffee farmers joined the ranks of the mushrooming agricultural proletariat.

Legal challenges to the new law quickly led to several precedent-setting cases before the Supreme Court. Known as the “Insular Cases,” they were all decided by a narrow one-vote margin, yet they have provided the principal legal backing for this country’s holding of colonies to the present day. They are the equivalent for Puerto Ricans of the Dred Scott Decision for African Americans. Ironically, the same group of justices ruled in Dred Scott and the Insular Cases. The pivotal decision was Downes v. Bidwell in 1901. In that case, the Court ruled that “the Island of Porto Rico is a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States within the revenue clauses of the Constitution.” Since the island was not an incorporated territory of the United States, as the frontier territories had been, the Court ruled that the Constitution did not automatically apply in Puerto Rico unless Congress specifically granted Puerto Ricans citizenship. In his dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan issued a most eloquent rebuttal to the horrendous implications of the decision: “The idea that this country may acquire territories anywhere upon the earth, by conquest or treaty, and hold them as mere colonies or provinces, the people inhabiting them to enjoy only such rights as Congress chooses to accord to them, is wholly inconsistent with the spirit and genius as well as with the words of the Constitution.”

Between 1900 and 1901, more than five thousand Puerto Ricans were transported to Hawaii in a dozen shiploads under contract to the Hawaii Sugar Planters Association. It was a traumatic odyssey, first by ship to New Orleans, then by train to San Francisco, then by ship again to Honolulu, and scores escaped along the way from the harsh treatment they received. The bulk of the migrants eventually settled on Oahu, where the founded the first major Puerto Rican community outside their homeland.

Back in Washington, Congress repeatedly turned down petitions by Puerto Rican leaders for full self-rule and eventual statehood for the island. Its refusal angered even the most avidly pro-annexation leaders, like Dr. Julio Henna and Jose Celso Barbosa. By 1914, the full Puerto Ricans House of Delegates, frustrated by the U.S. intransigence, asked Washington to cede the island its independence. Congress responded instead with the Jones Act in 1917, imposing U.S. citizenship on all Puerto Ricans over the unanimous objection of their House of Delegates.

“The Congress of the United States,” declared Minnesota representative Clarence Miler, “says to the people of Porto Rico, once and for all that they are part of the United States domain and will always remain there; that the legislation for independence in Porto Rico must come to a decided and permanent end.”

For the next thirty years, the island remained a direct colony, its Anglo governors appointed by the President, its population virtually ignored by Congress, and U.S. policy toward it controlled by a handful of American sugar companies. The companies so exploited their workers that in the 1930s and 1940s, Puerto Rico became notorious as the poorhouse of the Caribbean and as a hotbed for strikes and anti-American violence. Not until 1948, in response to a growing nationalist movement and to pressure from the United Nations to end colonialism, did Congress allow Puerto Ricans to elect their own governor. Four years later, the United States approved a form of limited self-rule, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which exists to this day.

The U.S. presence in the Dominican Republic began in the nineteenth century with dictator Ulises Heureaux, who saddled his country with massive foreign debt. To stave off bankruptcy, he hatched a refinancing plan in 1892 with the country’s Dutch creditors and some New York investors. As part of the scheme, the Dutch sold their debt to a newly formed U.S. firm, the Santo Domingo Improvement Company, one of whose officers was a member of President Benjamin Harrison’s cabinet. The new firm paid off the Dutch bonds and secretly gave Heureaux millions of dollars in new loans. Heureaux, in turn, gave the firm control of the national bank and one of the country’s two railroads.

Only after Heureaux’s assassination in 1896 did the new Dominican government discover that the former president had racked up $34 million in debt, the bulk of it to foreign creditors. The country’s annual customs revenues, its main source of income at the time, was a mere $2 million. A good portion of the debt, it turned out, had been fraudulently marketed by the Improvement Company to unsuspecting Catholic farmers in Europe who thought they were lending money to the Dominican religious order, not the Dominican Republic!

When a financial crisis hit in 1905, and customs revenues plummeted, the new government suspended debt payments, which prompted several European powers to threaten intervention to collect their money. President Roosevelt, worried that sea lanes to his unfinished Panama Canal might be imperiled by a European occupation, stepped in and offered to consolidate the Dominican debt with a new loan from a New York bank. Roosevelt insisted, however, that the Dominicans turn over all customs revenues to a U.S.-appointed agent and earmark the lion’s share of it for debt service. No longer would they be able to raise government spending or increase taxes without U.S. consent.

From that point on, the country was effectively a financial protectorate. Once Roosevelt’s overseers arrived, they jump-started additional legal reforms to benefit foreign investors. In 1906, for instance, they pressured the government to grant tax exemptions to all sugar produced for export. In 1911, they convinced it to permit the division of communally owned lands, making it easier for sugar growers to enlarge their holdings. Each time Dominican officials balked at some new demand from Washington, Yankee warships appeared offshore to force their submission.[footnoteRef:5] [5: Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire, A History of Latinos in America. (New York: Penguin Books), 2000. Juan Gonzalez has won numerous journalism awards and has been declared one of the most influential Hispanics in the country. Born in Puerto Rico, Gonzalez graduated from Columbia University and works as a columnist with New York’s Daily News.]

Why do we study Motivation and Purpose?

There is an old cliche which states "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." This is based on the idea that history is cyclical -- that it goes through cycles of economic ups and downs, peacetime to wartime, trends in fashion or technology, etc. However, this also brings with it the belief that these cycles are inevitable. People fall into the habit of saying to themselves, "I cannot change this. We are just in the economic downturn, but it will get better." That is not true. In the words of one of my former professors, "it is not that History repeats itself; it's that people keep making the same mistakes." He was true in a much broader sense. People are motivated by the same factors today that they were a hundred or a thousand years ago. Over time, humans might have changed what they want, but greed is still a strong motivator.

The next source is a speech given by Emilio Aguinaldo, the first President of the Philippines. As you read, take notice of instances where Aguinaldo recognizes the intertwining of motivation and historical cyclicality. Are Aguinaldo’s comments reflective of individual motives, national motives, or is there a universal angle to the beliefs and fears expressed in his speech?

A Case Against the United States

We Filipinos have all along believed that if the American nation at large knew exactly, as we do, what is daily happening in the Philippine Islands, they would rise en masse, and demand that this barbaric war should stop. There are other methods of securing sovereignty--the true and lasting sovereignty that has its foundation in the hearts of the people…

And, did America recognize this fact, she would cease to be the laughing stock of other civilized nations, as she became when she abandoned her traditions and set up a double standard of government --government by consent in America, government by force in the Philippine Islands.

….You have been deceived all along the line. You have been greatly deceived in the personality of my countrymen. You went to the Philippines under the impression that their inhabitants were ignorant savages, whom Spain had kept in subjection at the bayonet’s point…. We have been represented by your popular press as if we were Africans or Mohawk Indians. We smile, and deplore the want of ethnological knowledge on the part of our literary friends. We are none of these. We are simply Filipinos.

…..You repeat constantly the dictum that we cannot govern ourselves…..With equal reason, you might have said the same thing some fifty or sixty years ago of Japan; and, little over a hundred years ago, it was extremely questionable, when you, also, were rebels against the English Government, if you could govern yourselves. You obtained the opportunity, thanks to political combinations and generous assistance at the critical moment…..Give us the chance; treat us exactly as you demanded to be treated at the hands of England, when you rebelled against her autocratic methods. . .

…. Now, here is an unique spectacle-- the Filipinos fighting for liberty, the American people fighting them to give them liberty. . . . You declared war with Spain for the sake of Humanity. You announced to the world that your programme was to set Cuba free, in conformity with your constitutional principles. One of your ablest officials gave it as his opinion that the Filipinos were far more competent to govern themselves than the Cuban people were.[footnoteRef:6] [6: Admiral George Dewey, telegram to the Dept. of the Navy, 23 June 1898: “[T]his people are far superior in their intelligence and more capable of self government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races." ]

You entered into an alliance with our chiefs at Hong Kong and at Singapore, and you promised us your aid and protection in our attempt to form a government on the principles and after the model of the government of the United States.

... In combination with our forces, you compelled Spain to surrender..... Joy abounded in every heart, and all went well...until…the Government at Washington….commenced by ignoring all promises that had been made and….by ignoring the Philippine people, their personality and rights, and treating them as a common enemy—

In the face of the world you emblazon humanity and Liberty upon your standard, while you cast political constitution to the winds and attempt to trample down and exterminate a brave people whose only crime is that they are fighting for their liberty.[footnoteRef:7] [7: "Aguinaldo's Case Against the United States, "North American Review, No. 514 (September 1899), pp. 425-432.]

Dissecting Images to Clarify Motivation

Historically, people have not been well educated. During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, illiteracy was widespread throughout the United States. In an effort to increase political interest and participation among the poorly educated, cartoons were produced. A few artists, such as Thomas Nast, became well known for their ability to translate political messages through art.

"A Bigger Job Than He Thought For. Uncle Sam—Behave, you Fool! Darn Me, If I Ain’t Most Sorry I undertook to Rescue You.” Personification of Emilio Aguinaldo and the United States. c. 1899 [footnoteRef:8] [8: The image rights for academic use are held by Granger Academic and are held in The Granger Collection. The image is also the cover photo of Donald Dewey’s The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartoons, New York University Press, 2008.]

"Before the United States intervened in behalf of these oppressed peoples. Philippines-Spanish oppression. Hawaii-Industrial slavery. Porto Rico, Cuba-Spanish yoke. Isthmus of Panama-Quinine. After the United States had rescued them from their oppression. Philippines-Philippine Assembly, Education, Busine[ss] Prosperity. Hawaii-Prosperity. Porto Rico-Prosperity. Cuba-Self gov't, prosperity. Panama Canal Zone-Health." [footnoteRef:9] [9: John T. McCutcheon, “What Has the United States Fought For,” in Chicago Tribune, 1914. Reprinted in Mark C. Anderson’s “What’s to Be Done With ‘Em?: Images of Mexican Cultural Backwardness, Racial Limitations and Moral Decrepitude in the United States Press 1913-1915,” Mexican Studies, Winter Vol. 14, No. 1]

Above: Political cartoon satirizing American and European imperialism made by J.S. Pughe in 1899. From the Library of Congress.

Below: “A Quiet Little Game. I wonder what card Uncle Sam has in his hand.”

Uncle Sam seated in restaurant looking at bill of fare containing "Cuba steak," "Porto Rico pig," etc. and talking to waiter "McKinley." [footnoteRef:10] [10: “Well, I Hardly Know Which To Take First!” The Boston Globe, 1898 May 28. Library of Congress. ]