Anti‐imperialist League

Anti‐imperialist League. Founded in 1899 to oppose U.S. annexation of the Philippines following the Spanish‐American War, the Anti‐imperialist League was the largest lobbying organization on a U.S. foreign‐policy issue through the end of the nineteenth century. The league, strongest in the Northeast, was an ideological heir of both the antebellum abolitionist movement and Mugwump critics of Gilded Age political corruption. Although the league attracted such notables as Andrew Carnegie, Jane Addams, William James, and the editor E.L. Godkin, its fate underscored the awkward nature of dissent against President William McKinley's policy toward the Philippines. Struggling to articulate a consistent message, league officials such as Erving Winslow, George Boutwell, and Edwin Burritt Smith offered a variety of arguments against annexation. These ranged from the contention that acquiring colonies would violate the Constitution and betray traditional American anti‐imperial ideals to charges that McKinley had exceeded his executive authority. This diffuse approach hampered the league's efforts to win support within the Republican party, where proponents of expansion, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan, maintained a strong following. After a scant two‐thirds majority in the Senate approved the Treaty of Paris, thus confirming the annexation, the league declined in strength, especially once war broke out between American forces and Filipino nationalists headed by Emilio Aguinaldo. Politically, the leadership's partisan affiliation prevented a working alliance with anti‐expansionist Democrats. Although Presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan promised to transform his 1900 campaign into a referendum on imperialism, his views on financial and racial issues differed from those of many Republican anti‐imperialists and divided league activists. Meanwhile, the drawn‐out conflict in the Philippines exposed league activists to charges of treason, causing a further decline in their political support and intensifying internal divisions about how forcefully to oppose McKinley's policy.
See also Expansionism; Hawai'i; Protectorates and Dependencies.

Bibliography

E. Berkeley Tompkins , Anti‐Imperialists in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890–1920, 1970.
Richard Welch Jr. , Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine‐American War, 1899–1902, 1979.

Robert David Johnson