At this moment scarcely a politician dares frankly avow unalterable opposition to the admission of Cuba, if she should seek it.
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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In any event, with Cuba a State, Porto Rico could not be kept a Territory.
And then, looming direct in our path, like a volcano rising out of the mist on the affrighted vision of mariners tempest-tossed in tropic seas, is the specter of such States as Luzon and the Visayas and Haiti.
They would have precedents, too, to quote, and dangerous ones.
It is only candid to add that the habit of regarding this as the necessary destiny of any United States Territory as soon as it has sufficient population has been universal.
It is no modern vagary, but the practice, if not the theory, of our whole national life, that would open the doors of our Senate and House, and give a share in the Government to these wild-eyed newcomers from the islands of the sea.
For the present States of the Union it would be an act of folly like that of a business firm which blindly steered for bankruptcy by freely admitting to full partnership new members, strangers, and non-residents, not only otherwise ill…
And it would be a distinct violation of the clause in the preamble that "we, the people,... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
There is the only safe ground--on the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.
The man that takes it farther sounds its death-knell.
We are in the Philippines, as we are in the West Indies, because duty sent us; and we shall remain because we have no right to run away from our duty, even if it does involve far more trouble than we foresaw when we plunged into the war…
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.