Abstract
Further illustrating the intimate connection between foreign and domestic questions, imperialists and anti-imperialists also discussed whether overseas expansion was democratically sanctioned at home. Irving Kristol’s above-cited dichotomy captures the two different poles between which the debaters’ justifications oscillated. The imperialists invoked “the people”—public opinion and the majority principle—and their opponents emphasized “ideals”—the institutions and traditions of American democracy. These emphases reflect the distinction that theorists make between procedural and substantive democracy. Procedural democracy addresses the ways in which decisions are made, for example whether the people are sufficiently consulted in the decision-making process. Substantive theories, on the other hand, analyze the outcome and the institutions that form the basis of democratic government.2
The American intellectual tradition has two profound commitments: to “ideals” and to “the people.” It is the marriage of these two themes that has made the American mind and given it its characteristic cast—which might be called transcendentalist populism.
Irving Kristol (1967)1
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Notes
Irving Kristol, “American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 45 (July 1967), 600.
Russell L. Hanson, The Democratic Imagination in America: Conversations with Our Past (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 398–400;
Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), Chapter 12. Preference for procedural arrangements in Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (1962; rpt. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1990), and, more accessible, “Towards a Communication-Concept of Rational Collective Will-Formation: A Thought Experiment,” Ratio Juris 2 (July 1989), 144–54;
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).
Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Democracy and Its Critics, Chapters 10–11.
William McKinley, “Speech at Marshalltown, Iowa, October 11, 1898,” in William McKinley, Speeches and Addresses of William McKinley, from March 1, 1897 to May 30, 1900 (New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., 1900), 91. For contemporary opinion, see Washington Post, October 17, 1898; Henry C. Lodge to Cushman K. Davis, October 31, 1898, Box 13, Lodge Papers. McKinley to Day, October 25, 1898, Reel 4, McKinley Papers.
Charles Emory Smith, “McKinley in the Cabinet Room,” Saturday Evening Post, October 11, 1902, as cited in Lewis L. Gould, The Spanish-American War and President McKinley (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1988), 104. For McKinley’s weak leadership,
compare Julius W Pratt, Expansionists of 1898: The Acquisition of Hawaii and the Spanish Islands (1936; rpt. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964), 337;
Richard Hofstadter, “Manifest Destiny and the Philippines,” in Daniel Aaron, ed., America in Crisis (New York, 1952), 179–80. For the opposite view,
see Richard E. Welch, Jr., “William McKinley: Reluctant Warrior, Cautious Imperialist,” in Norman A. Graebner, ed., Tradition and Values: American Diplomacy 1865–1945 (Lanham and London: University Press of America, 1985), 44;
Ephraim K. Smith, “A Question from Which We Could Not Escape:’ William McKinley and the Decision to Acquire the Philippine Islands,” DH 9 (Fall 1985), 373;
Ephraim K. Smith, “William McKinleys Enduring Legacy: The Historiographical Debate on the Taking of the Philippine Islands,” in James C. Bradford, ed., Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War & Its Aftermath (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993), 204–49.
Lodge to Day, Lodge to Davis, August 11, 1898, Box 13, Lodge Papers. William C. Widenor, Henry Cabot lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 110–4.
McKinley, “Speech at Dinner of the Home Market Club, Boston, February 16, 1899,” Speeches and Addresses, 190; Whitelaw Reid, later Aspects of our New Duties (New York: Henry Hall, 1899), 5–7.
McKinley, Speech at the Banquet of the Union League, Philadelphia, November 24, 1900, Reel 84, McKinley Papers. On imperialism and the election, see ARR 21 (March 1900), 270–1; Albert Shaw to Theodore Roosevelt, April 4, 1900, Reel 4, Roosevelt Papers. Imperialism also dominated a pre-election issue of the NAR (171; October 1900). William Jennings Bryan, “Liberty, Not Conquest,” in William Jennings Bryan et al., eds., Republic or Empire? The Philippine Question (Chicago: Independence Company, 1899), 28–9.
Albert J. Beveridge, “The American Constitution,” in Albert J. Beveridge, The Meaning of the Times and Other Speeches (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1908), 5; Beveridge., CR, 56/1, 1900: 711.
Samuel Gompers, “Imperialism: Its Dangers and Wrongs,” American Federationist 5 (November 1898), 183;
compare Edwin D. Mead, The Present Crisis (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis Publishers, 1899), 2; Adams to Schurz, January 13, 1899, Box 126, Schurz Papers.
Bryan, “America’s Mission,” Republic or Empire, 37. On the impact of the peace treaty debate among anti-imperialists, see Richard E. Welch, Jr., “Senator George Frisbie Hoar and the Defeat of Anti-Imperialism, 1898–1900,” Historian 26 (1964), 376–9. While Senator Hoar was critical of Bryan, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), 2: 321–3, Samuel Bowles defended him in “Question Still Open,” Springfield Republican, February 7, 1899.
Edward Clark to Beveridge, March 24, 1900; C. C. Brinkley to Beveridge, March 13, 1900; J. Bennett Gordon to Beveridge, March 14, 1900; Box 125, Beveridge Papers. Compare John D. Long to McKinley, March 10, 1900, Reel 9, McKinley Papers; George Lyman to Lodge, February 12, 1900, Box 15, Lodge Papers. Göran Rystad Ambiguous Imperialism: American Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics at the Turn of the Century (Stockholm: Esselte Studium, 1975), Chapters 2–3.
George Boutwell, Address in NEAIL, Report of the Second Annual Meeting of the New England Anti-Imperialist League, November 24, 1900 (Boston: NEAIL, 1900), 15–6.
S. E. DeRockin [?] to Bryan, November 8, 1900; Fred L. Francis to Bryan, November 12, 1900, Box 25, Bryan Papers. E. Berkeley Tompkins, Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890–1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), 235, on the post-election break of Bryan and the mugwumps.
Lodge to Adams, June 20, 1898, Box 39, Lodge Papers; Geoffrey Blodgett, “The Mind of the Boston Mugwump,” MVHR 48 (March 1962), 633;
compare Geoffrey Blodgett, “The Mugwump Reputation, 1870 to the Present,” JAH 66 (March 1980), 869. The median age of the anti-imperialists was fifty-eight, whereas that of the imperialists was fifteen years below that;
Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation:” The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), 117; E. Berkeley Tompkins, “The Old Guard: A Study of the Anti-Imperialist Leadership,” Historian 30 (May 1968), 366–88. On mugwump prophecies of doom before “imperialism,”
compare Robert Beisner, Twelve against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900 (2nd ed.; Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1968; rpt. 1985), Chapter 1. The sense of displacement, a “status revolution,” is Richard Hofstadter’s main argument about the rise of the progressive movement out of mugwumpery, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), Chapter 4.
James Madison (Publius), No. 51, The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York and Scarborough, Ontario: New American Library, 1961), 323–4. On differences between democratic traditions,
see Ernst Fraenkel, Deutschland und die westlichen Demokratien, ed. Alexander v. Brünneck (1964; enlarged edition, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1990).
Carl Schurz, “The Issue of Imperialism,” in Frederic Bancroft, ed., Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, 6 vols. (New York and London: G. R Putnam’s Sons, 1913), 6: 35;
Edwin Godkin, “The President’s Popularity,” The Nation 68 (April 6, 1899), 252. On 1890s jingoism, see Hofstadter, “Manifest Destiny and the Philippines,” 176–83. For mugwump critiques of jingoism, see Beisner, Twelve Against Empire, 74–6; Schurz, “About Patriotism,” HW (April 16, 1898), 363.
Godkin to Charles Eliot Norton, July 1, 1899, bms Am 1083, Godkin Papers; Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895; rpt. New York: Viking Press, 1960). Schurz, Our Future Foreign Policy, Address at the National Conference at Saratoga, NY, August 19, 1898, Rare Books and Pamphlets Collection, Missouri Historical Society; Beisner, Twelve Against Empire, 73. On the influence of Gilded Age unrest,
compare Iriye , From Nationalism to Internationalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 146.
Schurz, “Militarism and Democracy,” Address at the American Academy of Political and Social Science, April 4, 1899, excerpted in New York Times, April 8, 1899 (emphasis mine); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1967), 282.
John Greville Agard Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton and London, 1975); Hanson, The Democratic Imagination in America, 92–5.
Godkin , “The Old Constitution,” The Nation 68 (January 12, 1899), 22; Schurz, “I am Firmly Convinced ...,” CR, 56/1, 1900, Appendix: 649. Compare Blodgett, “Mind of the Boston Mugwump,” 623.
Beveridge, The Young Men of America, Speech at Tomlinson Hall, Indianapolis, October 18, 1900, Box 297, Beveridge Papers. Fabian Hilfrich, “The Corruption of Civic Virtues by Emotions: Anti-Imperialist Fears in the Debate on the Philippine-American War (1899–1902),” in Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, ed., Emotions and American History: An International Assessment (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 51–65.
Spooner, CR, 55/3, 1899: 1378; Harry Pratt Judson, “Our Federal Constitution and the Government of Tropical Territories,” ARR 19 (January 1899), 67;
similarly David Jayne Hill, “The Fiction of ‘Imperialism,’” n.d., Republican Documents—1900, Widener Library. William A. Peffer, “A Republic in the Philippines,” NAR 168 (February 1899), 318.
On “implied powers” and foreign relations, compare Louis Henkin, Foreign Affairs and the Constitution (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1972), 17;
Bartholomew H. Sparrow, The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2006), 40–51.
Quoted after Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 228. On the Supreme Court decisions, see Sparrow, Insular Cases.
Hoar to A. P. Putnam, January 9, 1899, Box 189, Hoar Papers; Godkin, “Revolutionary Imperialism,” The Nation 67 (July 28, 1898), 69;
Sumner, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain,” 1898, rpt. Sumner, War and Other Essays (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919), 314;
Schurz, “Thoughts on American Imperialism,” Century Magazine 56.5 (September 1898), 786.
McKinley, “Speech at Madison, WI, October 16, 1899,” “Address at Minneapolis, MN, October 12, 1899,” Speeches and Addresses, 319, 262–9; Reid, Later Aspects, 13–4; Beveridge, “The March of the Flag,” Meaning of the Times, 50. RNC, Republican Campaign Text-Book 1900 (Milwaukee: Press of the Evening Wisconsin Co., 1900), 78–92.
Sumner, “Earth Hunger or the Philosophy of Land Grabbing,” 1896, rpt. Albert Galloway Keller and Maurice R. Davies, eds., Earth Hunger and Other Essays, 2 vols. (2nd ed.; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1913), 1: 174–207; Hoar, CR, 56/1, 1900: 4284. Edward Atkinson, “Criminal Aggression: By Whom Committed?,” Senate Document, No. 163, 56th Cong., 1st sess, 37.
Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987), 40.
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (3rd ed.; New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1988), Chapter 1.
On geographical predestination, see Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History (1935; rpt., Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1963), Chapter 2.
McKinley, “Address before the Tenth Pennsylvania Regiment, United States Volunteers, Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, August 28, 1899,” Speeches and Addresses, 216. Theodore Roosevelt, “Address at the Grant Anniversary at Galena, IL,” April 27, 1900, in State of New York, ed., Public Papers of Theodore Roosevelt, Governor—1900 (Albany: Brandow Printing Company, 1900), 242–3.
The recommendation to reject appropriations in Atkinson, The Anti-Imperialist 1.4 (August 20, 1899), 1. For the refusal, see Hoar, CR, 57/1, 1902: 2026. Edward Keynes, Undeclared War: The Twilight Zone of Constitutional Power (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982), 44.
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Hilfrich, F. (2012). Democracy at Home: Democratic Sanction for Foreign Policy. In: Debating American Exceptionalism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230392908_5
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