Regional Responses to Imperialism

During the presidency of William McKinley, the American republic joined the ranks of the imperial powers. It annexed Hawaii in 1897, seized the Spanish possessions of Puerto Rico, Guam and Philippines in 1898, sent 5,000 troops to China in 1900 and made Cuba a protectorate in 1901. The Spanish-American War was one of the most popular conflicts in American history. Every region supported it—especially the south. Of four new major generals, two were aging Confederate veterans who in combat referred to the Spanish as “the Yankees.”

But during the war there were rumblings of dissent, and later a full-fledged anti-imperialist movement which opposed the acquisition of territory against the wishes of their inhabitants, and protested against the American suppression of popular insurrections in the Philippines and Cuba. Anti-imperialism was a regional movement, centered in New England. Its leading spokesmen in the Senate were George Hoar of Massachusetts and Eugene Hale of Maine. The Anti-imperialist League was founded in Boston. There was support from other parts of the nation, but historian Frank Friedel found that New England was its stronghold. This regional pattern has appeared many times in American history, from the War of 1812 and the Mexican War to the Vietnam War and the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s.¹³