Crucible of Empire- Interview of Beisner

7/30/2019 Crucible of Empire- Interview of Beisner

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Robert BeisnerBold=Sections of the interview which were not filmed.

START INTERVIEWTAPE #013 CONTD

INT: What were the early objections to imperialism?DIRECTIONALBEISNER: Well, as the -- ah, anti-imperialists for the most part

tended to be older people, ahm, they were old Republicans, many of them oldenough to have been in on the founding of the Republican Party, and they stood intheir own views for very, ah, clear and important things. And it disturbed 'em agreat deal to see the country moving toward war in 1897 and '98. They thoughtthey had, in McKinley, a President who shared their views, and, ah, McKinleyactually reassured some of them, including the anti-imperialist Carl Schurz, thatthere "would be no jingo nonsense in my administration." When me began toactually move not only then into war, but beyond that to annexation of territories,they felt terribly betrayed. And that, I think, accounts for some of their anger,some of the, ah, ah, anguish that actually shows up in their dissent.

INT: Who was Carl Schurz?BEISNER: Carl Schurz had been a fascinating person. He, ah,

immigrated to the United States after the failure of the revolutions in Germany in1848. He'd had an extraordinary career for half a century. He was an old man by1898, but he'd been a political reformer. He had fought in the Union Armies, risento the level of general in the Civil War. He'd been a member of the Senate. He'dbeen Secretary of the Interior. He'd been a newspaper editor, ah, constantly

involved in reform efforts in the -- ah, throughout the latter part of the 19thcentury. In the course of the anti-imperialist protest, ahm, Schurz frames one ofthe arguments most articulately that many anti-imperialists shared and that seemsmost distant from our own time because this is really blatantly racist argument,sortof a con-- combination of racism, constitutionalism, and political principle. Andthe argument was that it would be totally contrary to American traditions and theConstitution to acquire an empire of people that you then don't bring into theUnion in full form as voting citizens. And there's -- Schurz held the parallel beliefthat it was impossible to give the vote to people who lived in the tropics. I meanliterally emphasized tropics and said it was impossible to have a democracy intropical circumstances. So he had basically a syllogism there. You can't let

people in without giving them the vote. You can't give the vote to people from thetropics. Therefore, you don't seize the territory.

INT: Did Schurz believe that the US would share a commonalitywith Europe and he wanted to avoid that?

BEISNER: Yes. Anti-imperialists ...DIRECTIONAL

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BEISNER: Anti-imperialists in general looked upon the seizing ofan empire in 1898 and '99 as essentially a reversal of American civilization.

There's a scholar who once wrote that "China is a civilization pretending to be astate." And in some respects, anti-imperialists thought of the United States not asa state, but as a church. And it was a little bit as though, ah, we had abandoned allthe tenets of the religion, the civic religion in 1898. And what that represented tothem was that we had become an ordinary country. And the way they thought ofwhat an "ordinary country" was, was in European terms. So to simplify that alittle bit, many of them defined American identity, American nationalism in termsof a series of negatives about "We are not like" this, that, and the other. And allthose negatives were identified with Europe. "We're not autocratic. We're not --we don't we have the, ah, war-like habits of the Europeans," and so forth. In 1898and '99 they felt that the United States had gone over to that. So that also felt likea tremendous betrayal of principles and it accounts for some of the reallydespairing tone in some anti-imperialist protest. There were people among theanti-imperialists who talked constantly in their letters in their rhetoric about howhorrible they feel, how depressed they feel, howdespairing they feel. And at leastone very prominent anti-imperialist, ah, who, like others, had been an immigrant tothe United States originally, the editor E.L. Godkin, goes back to Britain, where hecame from originally because he's so disgusted by American imperialism.

INT: How did the anti-imperialists react to the sinking of theMaine?

BEISNER: In the weeks preceding the war ...

DIRECTIONALBEISNER: In the weeks preceding the war and as the clamor for

war grew, some people who came to be known as anti-imperialists weren't reallyalert to the fact that something drastic was about to happen yet. So if you tracethem back to the early months of 1898, you don't find them engaged in anyparticular political activity. Others, frankly, were pro-war and there were somewho entered the war thinking this is a great opportunity to liberate the Cubans andstrike a blow for freedom, and so forth. Ahm, the predominant number, however,were very concerned because they, ahm, generally speaking, distrusted this kind ofemotional nationalism. And one reason they did was because it was such ademocratic sentiment and many anti-imperialists were far from being utterly

convinced democrats, small "D" democrats. They were, ahm, ah, in many casessort of aristocratic in their habits, views. Ahm, this is by means true of all ofthem, but skeptical about democracy and very worried about a sort of a popularrabble being able to push the country into the war. It wasn't that any of them wereparticularly making a brief for Spain, however. So that you don't find one of thehuge differences between the dissent at time of the Spanish-American War and

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dissent at the time of the Vietnam War, for example, was that you don't find anti-imperialists in 1898 making a brief for Spain or saying, "We should allow Spain to

stay in Cuba." What they were focused on was the threat to American institutions,to American ideals, and so forth of moving in an imperial direction, whereas themore radical wing of the anti-war movement and the Vietnam War did in fact takepositions that could be labeled as pro-North Vietnamese or pro-communist andmade arguments on behalf of, ah, why it was legitimate for the revolution to beallowed to occur in Vietnam.

INT: Was Grover Cleveland's anti-imperialism ...DIRECTIONALBEISNER: Anti-imperialism is made up of Republicans,

Democrats, and political independents. You can sort of say different thingsabout each one.

DIRECTIONALBEISNER: Politically speaking, anti-imperialists made up three

main groups. First of all, there was a very large number of Democrats who endedup being opposed to imperialism in one form or another. Large numbers of them,as you follow them through the events of 1898 and 1899, don't look like peoplefull of political conviction. They're simply, you know, "This is something theRepublicans are doing. So it's convenient to oppose them." Ahm, and there areDemocrats who sort of straddle lines, ah, during the movement. That -- thatinclude -- that group included, however, some Democrats who clearly felt verystrongly about imperialism. And among the most conspicuous was former

President Grover Cleveland, who, while he had been in office immediately prior toMcKinley's term, had tried to extricate the United States from Hawaii, forexample, clearly held anti-imperialist principles very strongly, spoke outvehemently against imperialism all through the 1898-99-1900 period. But therearen't too many Democrats like that. Ah, then a very small number, but veryconspicuous, ah, Republicans. Imperialism in 1898, of course, becomes aRepublican program. And so to speak out against imperialism is to speak outagainst your President and your party. So this was done sparingly, but it was doneby some very prominent people, including George Hoar, who was a long-term --ah, long-time Senator from Massachusetts who leads the fight against the treaty in1899 within the Senate. Speaker of the House Thomas Reed of Maine was a

Republican who was also very against imperialism. Former President Harrison,ahm, although very much an expansionist in his own term, that is, somebody whopromoted the expansion of American power, growth of the American Navy and soforth, drew the line at acquiring colonies and was an anti-imperialist as well, butdemonstrated in the way he carried out his anti-imperialism, so to speak, ah, theambivalence of a party person. He spoke privately, wrote privately about his

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views, but said nothing publicly until after McKinley was safely re-elected in 1900and then he comes out. The most important group of all in terms of numbers,

leadership, organizational work, the group, for example, that organized the Anti-Imperialist League beginning with meetings in Boston in June 98, ah, wereindependents of all sorts. And, ah, the easiest label for them is simply politicalindependence, but a term common at the time was "mugwumps". And mugwumpswas a term to describe people originally who were banned in the Republican Partyin the 1884 election because they were unhappy with the Presidential nominee.But the term came to represent people who simply abandoned the whole idea ofpolitical party loyalty. They were people who advocated independence as aposition. And, ah, that group tended to be very heavily, ahm, concentratedamong, ah, writers, intellectuals, university professors, ahm, heavilyconcentrated in New England. Ah, if you had to do a demographic profile ofthem in 1898, they were old male northeastern New Englanders, graduates ofHarvard and Yale. Ahm, they might very well remember the Civil War in thefamily in the Republican Party. They were that old, or they were the sons ofthose people. Like the sons of William Lloyd Garrison, Thomas WentworthJergenson(?), former Abolitionists.

START TAPE #014DIRECTIONALBEISNER: The Anti-Imperialist Movement really takes off in June

'98 after the organization of the Anti-Imperialist League. And the timing issignificant, because this is -- this is when it has become apparent that McKinley

has probably decided to, ah, take all of the Philippines for the United States. Andthe mood of that meeting is really interesting because, ahm, the -- the over-- theoverall sense was that extraordinarily momentous things were happening. One ofthe great writers, sardonic writers of the time, Ambrose Bearce, for example, oncewrote that, you know, taking an empire is not like smoking a cigarette. And thepeople who went to this meeting were of that view, and one of them said that, youknow, "Dewey took Manila with the loss of one man and all our institutions." Andthat's the mood of this -- of this meeting, and they -- ahm, they -- they gatheredtogether and framed what it is that they're for, what it is they're against. Ah, butfrom the outset there are arguments among them because they're -- they makedistinctions according to particular territories that are involved, for example.

Ahm, one of the principles you can notice is in a way the farther away from theUnited States the territory that McKinley is interested in acquiring, the morevirulent the opposition. And another principle might be, and I'll combine these ina second, is -- has to do with the degree of opposition to American imperialism.So American troops, for example, walk into Puerto Rico totally unopposed andthere's virtually nothing said about Puerto Rico in the Anti-Imperialist Movement.

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They don't oppose it. They hardly talk about it. Cuba, many of them are veryambivalent about. They're happy to get Spain out of Cuba. There are quite a few

anti-imperialists who reconcile themselves to some permanent relationship withCuba, but they're not -- they're not crazy about it. In the Philippines, virtuallyevery single anti-imperialist is opposed. And they're opposed because it's sodistant, because they are certain that involvement in the Philippines will pla--place the United States on a road for a permanent, ah, sort of career ofimperialism, will also propel it into conflict with other great foreign powers. Andthe population of the Philippines seems overwhelming and it's made up of dozensof different kinds of peoples, speaking all kinds of languages and all the sort ofsocial and racial and cultural, ahm, ah, I was going to say ambivalence, but it'smore than that. It's these people are very Anglo-Saxon minded and -- and thepeoples of the Philippines seem totally alien to them and they can't imagineabsorbing them in any form into the American republic. Ahm, but they also can'timagine ruling the Philippines. This is a very important part of their opposition tothe Philippines. They can't imagine ruling the Philippines without changing thenature of the American republic. They're history-minded people. They knowabout the history of empires and they don't think it's possible for a democracy tobe an empire, that trying to rule an empire thousands of mile abroad, they'reconvinced, will corrupt American democratic institutions.

DIRECTIONALINT: Talk about the Treaty of Paris from the anti-imperialist

perspective and Carnegie ...

BEISNER: I th -- my sense is that Carnegie treated the loan notvery lengthily, and then, ah, talking about the Senate just to bring him in as,you know, part of the story.

DIRECTIONALBEISNER: The debate in the Senate over the Treaty of Paris was

one of the most extraordinary in congressional history, and it came not that manymonths after an equally, but less known, ah, extraordinary debate about theannexation of Hawaii. Ahm, it goes on for several weeks. Ah, there's vigorousopposition to the treaty by, ahm, many Democrats, which -- who had taken this asa party position. And -- but the real rhetorical drive in opposition to the treatycomes from two Republicans who were fighting the President. And the most

conspicuous was George Hoar of Massachusetts. And the other was Eugene Hale,another New Englander from Maine. Hoar makes extraordinary -- makes anextraordinary battle in the treaty, ah, fight, including, ah, impassioned speechesabout how horrible he feels because he's opposing his party and he's opposing hisPresident. Hoar had been one of the most partisan Republicans in New England.The debate is complicated at the very last moment by the fact that just as the

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Senate is about to prepare for votes, the first news comes in that Filipinos haverebelled against American rule in the Philippines. And so there's a strong

sentiment that flashes through the Senate that "We have to support our boys in thePhilippines." And it's like there was a patriotism aroused instead of doubts. Imean the fighting in the Philippines causes a lot of people to have doubts, but inthe Senate it has the impact of turning a number of people who were thinking ofopposing the treaty into supporting it. The other thing that happens in the Senatedebate that's quite extraordinary is that near the end at a climactic moment,William Jennings Bryan, who's, of course, not in the Senate, but the prospectiveDemocratic nominee, again in 1900, suddenly reverses position and tellsDemocrats in the Senate that they should vote for the treaty on the grounds that itwould be better to deal with the issue of imperialism in the 1900 election insteadof here. And, ah, that outrages people like Hoar, and sort of confirms in his mindeverything he already thought about Democrats and Bryan and others. But, ah,even with those two extraordinary events, the Senate passes it by only two votes, amargin of two votes. Of course, it's (Unintell.) two votes over two-thirds, which ithad to be. So it's a very close call and, ahm ... I kind of lost that one.

DIRECTIONALBEISNER: One of the most remarkable people to appear in the

imperialist camp was Andrew Carnegie, a great millionaire and benefactor of goodcauses and so forth. Carnegie was an immigrant originally from Scotland andalthough he he'd some anti-English views in his youth, by the 1880s and 1890senamored of the extraordinary idea of uniting the two countries in some sort of

grand transatlantic union that would essentially headed by the United States, butthis was symbolized by the fact that Carneg-- Carnegie, ahm, vacationed everysummer in Scotland, where they owned a castle called Skibo. And on the top ofhis castle he flew a flag every time he was there that had the Union Jack on theone side and the Stars and Stripes on the other. He'd managed to sew this. Andso, depending upon how you looked at the flag, it'd be either British or American.Ah, he gets very angry about, ah, the seizure of the Philippines and he's beenarguing for years and years that American principles were democratic, anti-imperial, ah, that's what the country stood for and he sees the Republicans asbetraying this and he fights McKinley very strenuously, writes letters to prominentRepublicans all over the country, ah, using furious rhetoric at them. And at one

point, ahm, part of the treaty terms with Spain included the fact that United Statesgovernment paid Spain $20 million for the pil-- Philippines. Didn't simply seize itas the booty of war, but paid the Philippines. When that became known, ah,Carnegie, apparently sincerely, offered to pull out his checkbook and write a checkto the United States government for $20 million and in return for which he wantedMcKinley to give the Philippines their independence immediately.

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DIRECTIONALBEISNER: Another prominent business executive who was part of

the anti-imperialist movement, ah, was a man named Edward Atkinson fromBoston. He was mainly an insurance company executive, but he also dabbled in alot of other enterprises and he was kind of an amateur inventor as well. He onceinvented, ahm, what amounted to kind of an early version of the pressure cookerand argued that instead of striking for higher wages, workers could do much betterif they simply cooked more efficiently and recommended his Atkinson oven, forwhich workers thereafter always called him Shinbone (Unintell.) Atkinson. Ahm,Atkinson's main arguments about im-- about imperialism were economic. Andwhat he mainly did was contradict the arguments of imperialists, who saw thegreat commercial future for the United States through expansion. And Atkinsonargued with, ah, huge amounts of statistics always behind these arguments, whichhe loved to accumulate, that, ahm, the future of American commerce in places likethe Far East and Latin America was always going to be modest until thosecountries developed far more so they had greater purchasing power. He al--therefore, that the best place to -- for the Americans to continue to trade was withCanada and Western Europe. So em-- empire made no sense. And he -- and healso made the argument that in order for the United States to expand sales inplaces like China and the Far East, it didn't need empire. What it needed was openmarkets. So he argued for those. Ahm, so his economic arguments were veryinteresting, but the most interesting thing about Atkinson was his methods -- orwere his methods as an anti-imperialist.

DIRECTIONALCR 28DIRECTIONALBEISNER: I think the most extraordinary about anti-- Edward

Atkinson as an anti-imperialist were his methods. Most anti-imperialists wereessentially letter writers and speech makers. It was a very genteel kind of protest.Atkinson insisted on action all the time, and, ah -- and was sensationalistic as well.And one of the things that he did, for example, was publicized the degree to whichall armies of empire throughout history had succumbed to venereal disease. Andso he spread statistics all over the country in pamphlets about how the AmericanArmy in the Philippines would be blasted by venereal disease. Sent pamphlets --

got -- got addresses of soldiers, sent pamphlets to their mothers, ah, with thisinformation and so forth. And then he put all of his arguments together, economicarguments, arguments about political principle, venereal disease and so forth inone sort of unified pamphlet and then, ah, sent thousands of copies mailed to thePhilippines, addressed to American soldiers. And this was a test of a veryimportant political principle. Many anti-imperialists believed that one of the

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consequences of going into the, ah, sort of career of empire was that traditionalAmerican political principles, such as freedom of speech, would no longer be able

to hold. And Atkinson was testing this. And, sure enough, the -- as soon as theUS government learned about this pamphlet in the mailing, the Postmaster Generalhad the pamphlets seized and so they never reached the Philippines and Atkinsonwas able to, along with others, ah, was able to go the public then and say, "Yousee? This is what happens. If we seize the Philippines to go and become animperialist power, we'll no longer have our freedoms."

DIRECTIONALBEISNER: It's always been very hard to use Presidential elections

in American history as a referendum for any one particular subject, and that wasthe case in 1900 as well. Anti-imperialists found it very hard to figure out what todo about the election in 1900. And I've been able to figure out at least six differentpositions they took in the election. They were just fragmented all over the place.Some of them were so conservative in their political views otherwise, economicviews, that they simply swallowed hard and voted for McKinley and Republicansdown the line. Others went (Clears Throat) the opposite direction, voting forBryan and Democrats in Congress. Ah, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., one of theanti-imperialist leaders, came up with a scheme for what he called voting againstboth parties at the same time, which was very negative and fascinating. He saidwe should either vote for McKinley, ah, and then a Democratic Congress whowould restrain him from further imperial adventures, or we should vote for Bryanand then a Republican Congress to restrain Bryan from wild social experiments.

There were others who supported independents of one kind or another. The resultwas anti-imperialists were all over the place in the 1900 election. Ahm, but it wasvery hard to figure out what the election meant for the subject, anyway, becausethe two key opponents, of course, McKinley and Bryan, moved closer and closerin the campaign to one another, McKinley backing off from any idea of furtherexpansionism and Bryan getting closer and closer to the view that, well, this wasn'tso bad, after all, "We just won't do it anymore." And the fact that the election thenfinally had such ambiguous res-- significance for this issue was very bad news forthe Filipino rebels because they had seen in the Anti-Imperialist Movement, ah,the promise of a movement back in the United States that would become strongenough to, ahm, produce political results that would mean freedom and

independence for them. And they had, ah, actually, ah, helped, ah, supportAmerican anti-imperialists and sent letters to the United States, ah, saying, ah, youknow, how great the anti-imperialists were and so forth. Ahm, and the -- ahm,they -- they really discovered that the anti-imperialists would not be able to do thatfor them.

CUT

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DIRECTIONAL

DIRECTIONALBEISNER: Teddy Roosevelt despised the anti-imperialists and

constantly implied that they were of less than full masculine character, I mean interms like "nervous nellies" and others were constantly used.

INT: How was the movement revived?BEISNER: After the election of 1900, the Anti-Imperialist

movement just about disintegrated. Ah, but it revives, ah, very intensely, butinvolving a smaller group of people. These were probably the really hard coreanti-imperialists who cared deeply, most deeply. In 1901 and 1902, after reportscame out and were widely publicized that the US Army was committinghorrendous atrocities against Filipinos in the Philippine -- American-Philippinewar, and those finally came to result in widely publicized Army court marshalsand anti-imperialists publicized those a great deal, and strongly condemned, ah,the United States Army for that. Some of the people who became -- sort ofbecame the leaders in 1901 and 1902 were not the same who had been the mostprominent in 1898 and 1899. And one man in particular, Morefield Storing,Massachusetts, carries on as an anti-imperialist all the way into the years ofWoodrow Wilson and beyond, ah, fighting constantly the campaign to free thePhilippines.

DIRECTIONALINT: Talk about Mark Twain's shift.

BEISNER: Yeah. Twain writes his Essay to a Person Sitting inDarkness in 1902, I think, 1901 or '2, yes.

DIRECTIONALBEISNER: I don't know a whole lot about Twain. The reason I

don't know a whole lot about Twain is because when I did all my researchyears ago, I looked all him for me -- for him in 1898 and '99 as an anti-imperialist and he's not there.

DIRECTIONALBB: I remember something else. I think Twain was abroad for

much of '98 and '99. He was like touring Egypt and the Nile or something.DIRECTIONAL

INT: Reflect on the tremendous disillusionment after the war asto US identity.

DIRECTIONALBEISNER: The Anti-Imperialist Movement as a formal movement

does die really in 19-- with a few exceptions, in 1900 and 1901. And later protestmovements such as anti-war protesters in the 1960s, I don't know think particularly

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conscious of them, but a lot of the concerns that the anti-imperialists articulated in1898 and '99 are still with us and certainly echoed in the anti-imperiali-- in the

anti-war movement of the 1960s as well. And one of the key ones is the -- sort ofthis crushing sense that anti-imperialists felt that, you know, they have lostsomething terrible -- terribly important about America, that the belief which mightbe hubristic and arrogant or even ignorant that America is a totally unique anduniquely virtuous civilization, ah, they adhered to that. And they believed that1898-98 (sic) proved that they were wrong. And it was devastating. You find thatechoing again in the 1960s at the time of the Vietnam War when Americanprotesters said, "You know, this isn't the kind of war Americans fight. This is akind of war the French fight or the British fight or the Germans fight." And therewas a lot -- that -- that was echoed. Another -- the other, I think, key connectionbetween the anti-imperialist sense and their arguments and other later groups, ah,has to do with the whole idea of empire, whether it's a formal empire or a kind ofgreat power informal empire later, is incompatible with, ah, running a liberaldemocratic state. So that while democratic American political institutions inthe 1960s and so forth remain democratic at least in formal ways, ahm,oppositionists in the 1960s, ahm, were hounded by the FBI. Ah, their mail wasread. Ahm, their speech in some respect was curtailed. Ah, the FBI wasaccumulating files on all kinds of innocent Americans. And some of that canbe regarded as the consequences of, you know, this is what happens when yougo, ah, and you decide to become a great power and try to rule half of theworld.

DIRECTIONAL, CUT, DIRECTIONALINT: Talk about how the Anti-Imperialist Movement may have

given women a political voice.BEISNER: You know something I don't. It might be the case,

but I don't know a whole lot about it. I mean they're not ... I'll take a shot atin my own formulation. I don't know if you'll want it.

DIRECTIONALBEISNER: Women played a very inconspicuous role in the Anti-

Imperialist Movement, but that's because they still played a very inconspicuousrole in American politics and social movements generally. Ahm, the women thatI'm aware of in the late 19th century, the turn of the century, who were becoming

increasingly, ah, assertive, ah, eager to play a role in society, were preoccupyingthemselves with a lot of social issues in the cities and with immigrant groups, withchild welfare, matters of that sort. If you look at the rosters of the anti-imperialistleagues or all the subgroups within the Anti-Imperialist League, ahm, it's a malerole call. And, ahm, the men organized the groups, they ran the groups. Ahm,you, ah, find very few speeches on public platforms made by -- by anti-imperialist

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women. The only conspicuous person in the sense of a woman whose name, ah,Americans of our time will still remember is Jane Adams, who combined her

sensibilities and activities about, ah, cities and immigrant groups with heropposition to imperialism and was one of the most vigorous leaders in the Chicagocommunity of the Anti-Imperialist Movement. The other thing that's interesting isto examine the rhetoric of the imperialists of the time and see the degree towhich ...DIRECTIONAL, CUT, DIRECTIONAL

BEISNER: Many anti-imperialists leaders might in fact have beenuncomfortable if they had too many women allies at the time, because they werealready being assaulted by Teddy Roosevelt and others as, ah, being, ah, milliners,nervous nellies, and the gendered talk among anti-- among imperialists, excuse me,expansionists in attacking the anti-imperialists at the time was quite extraordinary.And, ah, there's clearly a cam-- an effort on the part of imperialists, howeverconscious it is, I don't know, to make the public think of these, ah, men as, ah, notmen. And the more allies that they might have had who were in fact feminine, themore they themselves might have felt handicapped.

END INTERVIEW

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Crucible of Empire- Interview of Beisner

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