American Anti-Imperialist League

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The American Anti-Imperialist League was formed in the USA on June 15, 1898 to fight the United States annexation of the Philippines and other U.S. territories, officially called insular areas. The Anti-Imperialist League opposed annexation on economic, legal, and moral grounds. Its president, George S. Boutwell, was a former United States Secretary of the Treasury.

Well-known members of the League included:

Many of the top leaders were classical liberals and Grover Cleveland Democrats who believed in free trade, a gold standard, and limited government and thus had opposed William Jennings Bryan's candidacy in 1896. Instead of voting for protectionist Republican William McKinley, however, many, including Edward Atkinson, Moorfield Storey, and Grover Cleveland, had cast their ballots for the National Democratic Party (United States) presidential ticket of John M. Palmer and Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr.

For this reason, the 1900 presidential election led to many internal squabbles. Particularly controversial was the League's endorsement of Bryan, the leading critic of the gold standard, in the 1900 presidential election. A few League members, including Storey and Villard, worked to organize a third party that would both uphold the gold standard and oppose imperialism. This effort led to the formation of the National Party (United States) which nominated Senator Donelson Caffery of Louisiania. The party quickly imploded, however, when Caffery dropped out, leaving Bryan as the only anti-imperialist candidate.

Samuel Clemens, under his pen name Mark Twain was vice president of the league from 1901 until his death in 1910.[1] Many but not all of Mark Twain's neglected and previously uncollected writings on anti-imperialism appeared for the first time in book form in 1992.

The Springfield Republican which was the leading anti-imperialist daily newspaper in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, published an editorial saying, "Mark Twain has suddenly become the most influential anti-imperialist and the most dreaded critic of the sacrosanct person in the White House that the country contains."[2]

By the second decade of the twentieth century, the League was only a shadow of its former strength. Despite its antiwar record, it did not object to U.S. entry into World War I. The Anti-Imperialist League disbanded in 1921.

Contents

[edit] References

  • David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1900,"Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000), 555-75.
  • Mark Twain. Jim Zwick, ed. Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War. (Syracuse University Press: July 1, 1992) ISBN 0-8156-0268-5
  • Jim Zwick, Friends of the Filipino People Bulletin
  • Jim Zwick, Militarism and Repression in the Philippines
  • Jim Zwick, "Prodigally Endowed with Sympathy for the Cause:" Mark Twain's Involvement with the Anti-Imperialist League" (Ephemera Society of America (January 1, 1992) ASIN B0006R8RJ8

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War, Mark Twain, Syracuse University Press, ISBN 0-8156-0268-5
  2. ^ Ibid p. xix

[edit] See also

[edit] External links and sources

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