Edward Atkinson

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Edward Atkinson (February 10, 1827 - 1905) was a founder of the Anti-Imperialist League.

Cartoon of Erving Winslow and Edward Atkinson of the Anti-Imperialist League mourning Aguinaldo's capture. By the imperialist paper, New York Tribune, reprinted Literary Digest, 22 (April 13, 1901).

He was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. In the decade before the Civil War, Atkinson was a successful entrepreneur as an executive of some of the leading cotton mills of New England. Later, he was head of the Boston Insurance Company.

He also fought against slavery by supporting the Free-Soil Party and a Boston committee to aid escaped slaves. Growing weary of compromise, he soon began raising money to pay for rifles and ammunition to support the insurgent guerrilla force of John Brown.

Inspired by the ideas of Adam Smith, Richard Cobden, and John Bright, Atkinson became a leading publicist for free trade. In many ways, he can be described as the American counterpart to Frédéric Bastiat. He spoke out against the inflationist ideas of William Jennings Bryan and others but, unlike some, favored the total denationalization, or privatization, of money.

He campaigned for Grover Cleveland and participated in the formation of the Clevelandite National Democratic Party (United States) third party in 1896. Atkinson was appalled by the colonialist and imperialist policies of the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations in the wake of the Spanish-American War. He reacted by becoming a full-time activist in the American Anti-Imperialist League.

As a vice president of that organization, Atkinson wrote to the United States Department of War for a list of soldiers serving in the Philippines so that he might send them his privately published pamphlets.

Failing to receive a reply, Atkinson announced to the press that he was sending copies to General's Lawton, Miller, and Otis, Admiral Dewey, the correspondent J. F. Bass, and to Jacob Shurman and Dean Worcestrer on the Philippine Commission.

On February 17, 1899, Edward Atkinson sent three pamphlets entitled:

"The Cost of a National Crime," detailing the American military oppression of the Filipinos and the spiraling cost of the war to American taxpayers.
"The Hell of War and Its Penalties"
"Criminal Aggression: By Whom Committed?"

...in order to test the right of citizens of the United States to the free use of the mail."

United States Postmaster General Charles Emory Smith foolishly took the bait and ordered that the pamphlets be seized in San Francisco, declaring the pamphlets "seditious". The United States Attorney General hinted that he would charge Atkinson with treason and sedition. In the end, officials decided that charging him would only make the seventy-two year old into a martyr.

The U.S. imperialist press called Atkinson a "latter-day copperhead". Atkinson seemed to enjoy the infamy. Atkinson effusively and sacrastically thanked the Administration for calling national attention to his essays and increasing their demand in every state in the union.^[1]

[edit] Footnotes

↑ *Miller, Stuart Creighton (1982). "Benevolent Assimilation" The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02697-8., page 107; Boston Herald, 22 April, 23, 24, 1899; New York Times, 23 April 1899; San Francisco Call, 24 April 1899