Must they be developed through the territorial stage into independent States in the Union? or, if not, how govern or get rid of them?
Whitelaw Reid
The Public Record
Whitelaw Reid was an American politician, diplomat and newspaper editor, as well as the author of Ohio in the War, a popular work of history.
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What place was there in the American system for territories that were never to be States, for colonies, or for the rule of distant subject races?
Up to this time, from the outbreak of the war, the Administration had found the American people united in its support as they had hardly been united for a century.
On the other hand, some prominent members of the Administration party led off in protests against the retention of the Philippines on constitutional, humanitarian, and economic grounds, pronouncing it a policy absolutely antagonistic to…
In the universal ferment of opinion and discussion that ensued, the opponents of what is assumed to be the Administration policy on the new possessions have seemed to rely chiefly on two provisions in the Constitution of the United States…
Another, apprehended by the laboring classes, who are already suspicious from their experience with the Chinese, would be an enormous influx, either of cheap labor or of its products, to beat down their wages.
Jefferson's phrase in the Declaration of Independence, to the effect that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
They claim that, under this, Congress has absolute power to do what it will with the Philippines, as with any other territory or other property which the United States may acquire.
But it is denied that Congress is under any obligation to confer a republican form of government upon a territory whose inhabitants are unfit for it, or to adopt any form of government devised with reference to preparing it for ultimate…
It is further denied that Congress is under any obligation, arising either from the Constitution itself or from the precedents of the Nation's action under it, to ask the consent of the inhabitants in acquired territory to the form of…
Thus Article XIII says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude ... shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.