But such a system, we are told, is contrary to our Constitution and to the spirit of our institutions.
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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It is not clear that the founders of the Government expected even all the territory we possessed at the outset to be made into States.
The inhabitants of the territory were not consulted; there was no provision that they should even be guaranteed a republican form of government like the States; they were secured no right of representation and given no vote.
So, too, when it came to acquiring new territory, there was no thought of consulting the inhabitants.
The power of the Government to deal with territory, foreign or domestic, precisely as it chooses was understood from the beginning to be absolute; and at no stage in our whole history have we hesitated to exercise it.
The question of permanently holding the Philippines or any other conquered territory as territory is not, and cannot be made, one of constitutional right; it is one solely of national duty and of national policy.
They cannot be contemplated with unmixed confidence by any; and to all who think, they must be a source of some grave apprehensions.
Plainly, this unwelcome war is leading us by ways we have not trod to an end we cannot surely forecast.
It will certainly secure to Cuba and Porto Rico better government.
It will furnish an enormous outlet for the energy of our citizens, and give another example of the rapid development to which our system leads.
It has already brought North and South together as nothing could but a foreign war in which both offered their blood for the cause of their reunited country--a result of incalculable advantage both at home and abroad.
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.