How to Hide an Empire

by Daniel Immerwahr

  53 “dead war” … “This war cannot last”: Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 135.

  54 “very great difficulties”: WTR, 11:49.

  55 thirty thousand Spanish troops … eight thousand Spanish soldiers: Balfour, End of the Spanish Empire, 39.

  56 Tell Aguinaldo come: Felipe Agoncillo, To the American People (Paris, 1900), 40.

  57 his whole force: Joseph L. Schott, The Ordeal of Samar (New York, 1964), 151.

  58 “the greatest vigor”: Trumbull White, Our New Possessions (Chicago, 1898), 79.

  59 “By day”: Autobiography of George Dewey, Admiral of the Navy (New York, 1913), 247.

  60 “utter tatterdemalions”: WTR, 11:49.

  61 “We should have been better off”: Louis A. Pérez Jr., Cuba Between Empires: 1878–1902 (Pittsburgh, 1983), 201.

  62 “I will never accept”: Ibid., 209.

  63 “willing to surrender”: Quoted in Musicant, Empire by Default, 569.

  64 One minute after: White, Our New Possessions, 104.

  65 “This is not the Republic”: Pérez, Cuba Between Empires, xv.

  5. EMPIRE STATE OF MIND

  1 “could not have told”: Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York, 1989), 104.

  2 fewer than ten U.S. citizens: Michael Adas, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America’s Civilizing Mission (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 131.

  3 Dewey doubted: Autobiography of George Dewey, Admiral of the Navy (New York, 1913), 185.

  4 “I walked the floor” … “and there they are”: James F. Rusling, “Interview with President McKinley,” Christian Advocate, January 22, 1903, 137.

  5 “It does look”: Quoted in Susan Schulten, The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880–1950 (Chicago, 2001), 178. For imperial maps in general, see 38–44, 176–80.

  6 They offered suggestions: Daniel Immerwahr, “The Greater United States: Territory and Empire in U.S. History,” DH 40 (2016): 378–80.

  7 “The term ‘United States of America’”: Archibald Ross Colquhoun, Greater America (New York, 1904), 253.

  8 eleven unambiguous references: The Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Washington–Taft (1789–1913) digitally searched at APP. I counted only instances of America that clearly referred to the United States, not the Americas or the British North American colonies. George Washington, Special Message, May 31, 1790; Washington, Inaugural Address, 1793; John Adams, Inaugural Address, 1797 (used twice); Andrew Jackson, “Regarding the Nullifying Laws of South Carolina,” 1832; Martin Van Buren, Inaugural Address, 1837; James Polk, First Annual Message, 1845 (though Polk also refers to “the nations of America” in the same speech); Abraham Lincoln, “Remarks at a Fair in the Patent Office,” 1864; Chester Arthur, First Annual Message, 1881; Arthur, Third Annual Message, 1883; Grover Cleveland, Third Annual Message, 1895.

  9 patriotic songs: Samuel F. Smith, who wrote the words of “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” called his 1831 composition “America,” but it was nevertheless known as “My Country ’Tis of Thee” and its lyrics don’t mention America. On Columbia, see Thomas J. Schlereth, “Columbia, Columbus, and Columbianism,” Journal of American History 79 (1992): 937–68.

  10 “For some thirty,” etc.: Beckles Wilson, The New America: A Study of the Imperial Republic (London, 1903), 255, 256. Wilson also noted that the British were far more likely to refer to the United States as America, often getting corrected (before 1898) by U.S. interlocutors.

  11 In one two-week period: The ten above-cited speeches from 1789–1898 contain eleven references to America. Roosevelt, in his trip to California, used the name twelve times in ten different speeches (all in APP): Remarks at Barstow, May 7, 1903; Address at San Bernardino, May 7, 1903; Address at Pasadena, May 8, 1903; Address at Santa Barbara, May 9, 1903; Address at San Luis Obispo, May 9, 1903 (two mentions); Remarks at Stanford University, May 12, 1903; Address at the Mechanic’s Pavilion in San Francisco, May 13, 1903; Address at the Dedication of a Navy Memorial Monument in San Francisco, May 14, 1903; Address at Truckee, May 19, 1903 (two mentions); Remarks at Dunsmuir, May 20, 1903.

  12 The anthems changed: “America the Beautiful” was originally a poem titled “Pike’s Peak,” written in 1893 by Katharine Lee Bates. It languished in obscurity, though, until it was republished (1904) and set to music (1910).

  13 lands wrested from Mexico: Richard L. Nostrand calculates that those cessions incorporated 80,302 Mexicans into the United States, and the 1853 census report estimated the number of Indians in the new areas (including “Indians of the plains or Arkansas River”) at 205,000. Nostrand, “Mexican Americans circa 1850,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 65 (1975): 378–90; J.D.B. De Bow, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, DC, 1853), xciv. Together they make up 1.48 percent of the 1845 population of the United States as given in MPD. The Mexican annexations introduced an absolutely larger new population into the United States than the Louisiana Purchase did, but whether they introduced a relatively larger new population is hard to say because of poor counts of Indians.

  14 “We have never dreamt,” etc.: Speech on the War with Mexico, January 4, 1848, in Papers of John C. Calhoun, ed. Clyde Wilson and Shirley Bright Cox (Columbia, SC, 1999), 25:64, 65.

  15 “all the territory”: Louisville Democrat, March 9, 1848, quoted in Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation (New York, 1963), 151.

  16 “situated in tropical waters”: Quoted in Eric T. L. Love, Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), 66. Another important account of the conflict between racism and imperialism is Paul Frymer, Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion (Princeton, NJ, 2017).

  17 “We do not want”: Love, Race over Empire, 32.

  18 could not say how many Indians: Some Indians were counted, but because, by the Constitution, “Indians not taxed”—Indians living outside the U.S. political community—didn’t count toward congressional apportionment, they weren’t included in the census.

  19 1890 census report: Department of the Interior, Report on the Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, part 1, 1895, 963.

  20 8.8 million: Statistical Atlas of the United States, 1900 (Washington, DC, 1903), 25.

  21 “It is one thing”: Archibald R. Colquhoun, The Mastery of the Pacific (New York, 1904), 50–51.

  22 “I s’posed”: Thomas Brackett Reed’s remark, reported in Lemuel Quigg to Theodore Roosevelt, May 16, 1913, LTR, 2:921n.

  23 “pigmy State”: Love, Race over Empire, 103.

  24 “We ought to take Hawaii”: Roosevelt to James Bryce, September 10, 1897, LTR, 1:672.

  25 thirty-eight thousand of whom had signed: Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham, NC, 2004), 151.

  26 “lest his utterances”: Bryan, “Annexation,” 1899, in Murat Halstead, Pictorial History of America’s New Possessions (New Haven, CT, 1899), 545.

  27 a compelling argument: On the imperialism debates, see especially Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900 (New York, 1968), and David Healy, US Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison, WI, 1970).

  28 “God has given”: Albert J. Beveridge, “The Republic’s Task,” February 1899, in Patriotic Eloquence, ed. Robert I. Fulton and Thomas C. Trueblood (New York, 1900), 33.

  29 “who cant about ‘liberty,’” etc.: WTR, 13:329–30.

  30 political parties in Puerto Rico and the Philippines: Julian Go, American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures and the Philippines and Puerto Rico During U.S. Colonialism (Durham, NC, 2008).

  31 all the usual stops: “Omaha’s Colonial Exposition,” Weekly Register-Call (Central City, CO), July 7, 1899.

  32 “over a thousand”: “Greater America Exposition of 1899,” Daily Mining Record, 25 February
1899.

  33 “civilized Tagals,” etc.: “Gossip Gather in Hotel Lobbies,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans), March 30, 1899.

  34 “large encampment”: Greater America Exposition (Omaha, 1899), 13.

  35 thirty-five Filipinos: The story is from Michael C. Hawkins, “Undecided Empire: The Travails of Imperial Representation of Filipinos at the Greater America Exposition, 1899,” Philippine Studies 63 (2015): 341–63.

  36 “They are stylish,” etc.: Ibid., 356–57.

  37 series of connected cases: On the Insular Cases, see especially Christina Duffy Burnett and Burke Marshall, eds., Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution (Durham, NC, 2001); Bartholomew H. Sparrow, The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire (Lawrence, KS, 2006); and Gerald L. Neuman and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, eds., Reconsidering the Insular Cases: The Past and Future of American Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2015).

  38 “the supreme law”: Dorr v. United States, 195 U.S. 138, 155 (1904) (Harlan, J., dissenting).

  39 “without asking” … “no right to elect”: John W. Griggs, in The Insular Cases, Comprising the Records, Briefs, and Arguments of Counsel in the Insular Cases of the October Term, 1900, in the Supreme Court of the United States (Washington, DC, 1901), 333, 282.

  40 “To be called” … “section of the Chinese Empire” … “A great world power”: Ibid., 314, 367, 338.

  41 “the Constitution deals”: Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244, 251 (1901).

  42 “foreign to the United States”: Downes, 182 U.S. at 341 (White, J., concurring).

  43 “two national governments”: Downes, 182 U.S. at 380 (Harlan, J., dissenting). For an important caution about the degree to which the Insular Cases carved out a new “extraconstitutional zone” of unincorporated territories, see Christina Duffy Burnett, “Untied States: American Expansion and Territorial Deannexation,” University of Chicago Law Review 72 (2005): 797–879.

  44 “savages” … “alien races”: Downes, 182 U.S. at 279 and 287.

  45 “wreck our institutions,” etc.: Downes, 182 U.S. at 313 (White, J., concurring).

  46 not unusual for constitutional scholars: Sanford Levinson, “Installing the Insular Cases into the Canon of Constitutional Law,” in Duffy Burnett and Marshall, Foreign in a Domestic Sense, 122–23.

  47 ranked top of all 885: As of September 9, 2014, according to the U.S. Army Reserve, www.usar.army.mil/Featured/Army-Reserve-At-A-Glance/American-Samoa.

  48 “disembodied shade”: Downes, 182 U.S. at 372 (Fuller, C. J., dissenting).

  6. SHOUTING THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM

  1 Greater America Exposition: “Omaha’s Colonial Exposition,” Weekly Register-Call (Central City, CO), July 7, 1899.

  2 “there was something pathetic”: “Back from the Wars,” Denver Evening Post, July 2, 1899.

  3 “The Americans, not from mercenary motives”: Congressional Record, 57th Cong., 1st sess., 7708.

  4 “Under the protection”: Declaration of Philippine Independence, in Sulpicio Guevara, ed., The Laws of the First Philippine Republic (Manila, 1972), 204.

  5 the business of state-building: Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 98–100.

  6 “commemorating the flag”: Declaration of Philippine Independence, 206.

  7 “no joint occupation”: Executive Order, August 17, 1898, APP.

  8 “Yankee Beer Chute”: David Starr Jordan, Imperial Democracy (New York, 1899), 96.

  9 Prostitutes: Ken De Bevoise, Agents of Apocalypse: Epidemic Disease in the Colonial Philippines (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 86–87.

  10 “received in the Revolutionary camp”: Emilio Aguinaldo, True Version of the Philippine Revolution (Tarlac, Philippines, 1899), 42.

  11 “to be extended”: Executive Order, December 21, 1898, APP.

  12 “violent and aggressive”: John Morgan Gates, Schoolbooks and Krags: The United States Army in the Philippines, 1898–1902 (Westport, CT, 1973), 38.

  13 inaugural banquet: Renato Constantino, A History of the Philippines: From the Spanish Colonization to the Second World War (New York, 1975), 216.

  14 thirty thousand of them fled: Leon Wolff, Little Brown Brother: America’s Forgotten Bid for Empire Which Cost 250,000 Lives (London, 1961), 202.

  15 “Within an area”: “The Big Scare,” unknown paper, January 24, 1899, in Nicholson Scrapbooks.

  16 “I thought the best thing,” etc.: Interview with Grayson in Congressional Record, 57th Cong., 1st sess., 7634.

  17 war had begun: There are many histories of the Philippine War, especially between 1899 and 1902. I’ve relied especially on Glenn Anthony May, Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War (New Haven, CT, 1991); De Bevoise, Agents of the Apocalypse; Reynaldo C. Ileto, Knowing America’s Colony: A Hundred Years from the Philippine War (Manoa, 1999); Resil B. Mojares, The War Against the Americans: Resistance and Collaboration in Cebu: 1899–1906 (Quezon City, 1999); Brian McAllister Linn, The Philippine War, 1899–1902 (Lawrence, KS, 2000); Angel Velasco Shaw and Luis H. Francia, eds., Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899–1999 (New York, 2002); Kramer, Blood of Government; and David J. Silbey, A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 (New York, 2007).

  18 Someone following the war: On troop sizes, see Linn, Philippine War, 42.

  19 238 U.S. casualties: Ibid., 52.

  20 lacked rifles … spears … bows and arrows … the “battalion”: Wolff, Little Brown Brother, 207, 219.

  21 gathered tin cans: May, Batangas, 173–74.

  22 melted church bells … matches … tree resins: Mojares, War Against the Americans, 75, 223n22.

  23 pearl divers: James R. Arnold, The Moro War: How America Battled a Muslim Insurgency in the Philippine Jungle, 1902–1913 (New York, 2011), 100.

  24 “residual army”: Emilio Aguinaldo with Vicente Albano Pacis, A Second Look at America (New York, 1957), 97.

  25 Tinio: Orlino A. Ochosa, The Tinio Brigade: Anti-American Resistance in the Ilocos Provinces, 1899–1901 (Quezon City, 1989), 30.

  26 seized the capital: What was a “capital” and what simply a headquarters is hard to tell. I’m relying on Aguinaldo’s own account from Second Look at America, 109.

  27 a single fatality: “The Capture of Malolos,” Manila Freedom, April 2, 1899.

  28 “no organized insurgent force”: MacArthur to Theodore Schwan, November 23, 1899, in Annual Reports of the War Department for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1900, 1900, 275.

  29 double, then triple: Frank Hindman Golay, Face of Empire: United States–Philippine Relations, 1898–1946 (Madison, WI, 1998), 65.

  30 One boy at the time: Carlos P. Romulo, Mother America: A Living Story of Democracy (Garden City, NY, 1943), 27.

  31 “I have been reluctantly compelled”: James H. Blount, The American Occupation of the Philippines, 1898–1912 (New York, 1913), 24.

  32 “largest man” … Twain reread Kim: Leland Krauth, Mark Twain and Company: Six Literary Reflections (Athens, GA, 2003), 215. See chap. 6 for the many connections between the two writers.

  33 “Take up”: Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden: An Address to the United States,” London Times, February 4, 1899.

  34 “red-hot imperialist,” etc.: “Mark Twain Home, an Anti-Imperialist,” New York Herald, October 15, 1900, in Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War, ed. Jim Zwick (Syracuse, NY, 1992), 5.

  35 “two Americas”: Twain, “To a Person Sitting in Darkness,” 1901, in ibid., 33–34.

  36 “Governments derive”: Ibid., xxx. Emphasis mine.

  37 modified flag: Ibid., 39.

  38 “criminal aggression”: Democratic Party Platform of 1900, APP.

  39 “Anti-Doughnut”: Twain, “Speech on Municipal Corruption,” in Zwick, Twain’s Weapons, 14–15.

  40 his literary estate: Jim Zw
ick, “Mark Twain’s Anti-Imperialist Writings in the ‘American Century,’” in Shaw and Francia, Vestiges of War, 38–56.

  41 “little brown brothers”: Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven, CT, 1982), 134, 296–97.

  42 “I’m only a common”: “The Little Brown Brother,” Life, October 15, 1903, 372.

  43 soldiers preferred gugu: On racial insults, see Kramer, Blood of Government, 124–30.

  44 “I Don’t Like a Nigger Nohow”: Willard B. Gatewood Jr., “Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle for Empire: Letters from Negro Soldiers, 1898–1920 (Urbana, IL, 1971), 244.

  45 black soldiers: George P. Marks III, ed., The Black Press Views American Imperialism (New York, 1971); Willard B. Gatewood Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898–1913 (Urbana, IL, 1975).

  46 Fagen: Michael C. Robinson and Frank N. Schubert, “David Fagen: An Afro-American Rebel in the Philippines, 1899–1901,” Pacific Historical Review 44 (1975): 80.

  47 sanitation, road-building, and education: Gates, Schoolbooks and Krags; Linn, Philippine War, 200–206; and Michael Adas, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America’s Civilizing Mission (Cambridge, MA, 2006), chap. 3.

  48 “hikers”: Oscar V. Campomanes, “Casualty Figures of the American Soldier and the Other: Post–1898 Allegories of Imperial Nation-Building as ‘Love and War,’” in Shaw and Francia, Vestiges of War, 134–62.

  49 Perhaps Filipinos helped: The complex issue of collaboration is treated skillfully and sensitively in Mojares, War Against the Americans, chap. 9.

  50 “blind giant”: Ileto, Knowing America’s Colony, 28.