idea about the Territories which the opponents of the Philippine policy
are now trying to read into the name "United States." The constitutional
provision previously cited about citizenship illustrates the same
point. It says "all persons born," etc., "are citizens of the United
States _and of the State wherein they reside_." There is no possibility
left here that Territories are to be held as an integral part of the
United States, in the sense in which the Constitution, in this clause,
uses the name. If they had been, the clause would have read, "and of
the State _or Territory_ in which they reside." For these opinions
high authorities are also cited, including debates in the Senate, acts
of Congress, the constant practice of the Executive, and most of the
judicial rulings of the last half-century that seem to bear upon the
present situation.
[Sidenote: The Outcome not Doubtful.]
It has been thought best, in an explanation to readers in another
country of the perplexity arising in the American mind, in a sudden
emergency, from these disputed points in constitutional powers, to set
forth with impartial fairness and some precision the views on either
side. It is essential to a fair judgment as to the apparent hesitation
since this problem began to develop, that the real basis for the
conflicting opinions should be understood, and that full justice should
be done to the earnest repugnance with which many conscientious
citizens draw back from sending American youth to distant tropical
regions to enforce with an armed hand the submission of an unwilling
people to the absolute rule of the Republic. It should be realized,
too, how far the new departure does unsettle the practice and policy of
a century. The old view that each new Territory is merely another
outlet for surplus population, soon to be taken in as another State in
the Union, must be abandoned. The old assumption that all inhabitants
of territory belonging to the United States are to be regarded as
citizens is gone. The idea that government anywhere must derive its
just powers only from the consent of the governed is unsettled, and
thus, to some, the very foundations of the Republic seem to be shaken.
Three generations, trained in Washington's warnings against foreign
entanglements, find it difficult all at once to realize that advice
adapted to a people of three millions, scattered along the border of a
continent, may need some modifications when applied to a people of
seventy-five millions, occupying the continent, and reaching out for
the commerce of both the oceans that wash its shores.
But whatever may be thought of the weight of the argument, either as to
constitutional power or as to policy, there is little doubt as to the
result. The people who found authority in their fundamental law for
treating paper currency as a legal tender in time of war, in spite of
the constitutional requirement that no State should "make anything but
gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts," will find there
also all the power they need for dealing with the difficult problem
that now confronts them. And when the constitutional objections are
surmounted, those as to policy are not likely to lead the American
people to recall their soldiers from the fields on which the Filipinos
attacked them, or abandon the sovereignty which Spain ceded. The
American Government has the new territories, and will hold and govern
them.
A republic like the United States has not been well adapted hitherto to
that sort of work. Congress is apt to be slow, if not also changeable,
and under the Constitution the method of government for territories
must be prescribed by Congress. It has not yet found time to deal with
the Sandwich Islands. Its harsher critics declare it has never yet
found time to deal fairly with Alaska. No doubt, Executive action in
advance of Congress might be satisfactory; but a President is apt to
wait for Congress unless driven by irresistible necessities. He can
only take the initiative through some form of military government. For
this the War Department is not yet well organized. Possibly the easiest
solution for the moment would be in the organization of another
department for war and government beyond the seas, or the development
of a measurably independent bureau for such work in the present
department. Whatever is done, it would be unreasonable to expect
unbroken success or exemption from a learner's mistakes and
discouragements. But whoever supposes that these will result either in
the abandonment of the task or in a final failure with it does not know
the American people.
VII
OUR NEW DUTIES
This commencement address was delivered on the campus at Miami
University, Oxford, Ohio, at the celebration of its seventy-fifth
anniversary, June 15, 1899.
OUR NEW DUTIES
Sons and Friends of Miami: I join you in saluting this venerable mother
at a notable waymark in her great life. One hundred and seven years ago
the Congress voted, and George Washington approved, a foundation for
this University. Seventy-five years ago it opened its doors. Now, si
monumentum quæris, circumspice. There is the catalogue. There are the
long lists of men who so served the State or the Church that their
lives are your glory, their names your inspiration.[5] There are the
longer lists of others to whom kinder fortune did not set duties in the
eye of the world; but Miami made of them citizens who leavened the lump
of that growing West which was then a sprawling, irregular line of
pioneer settlements, and is now an empire. Search through it, above and
below the Ohio, and beyond the Mississippi. So often, where there are
centers of good work or right thinking and right living--so often and
so widely spread will you find traces of Miami, left by her own sons or
coming from those secondary sources which sprang from her example and
influence, that you are led in grateful surprise to exclaim: "If this
be the work of a little college, God bless and prolong the little
college! If, half starved and generally neglected, she has thus
nourished good learning and its proper result in good lives through the
three quarters of a century ended to-day, may the days of her years be
as the sands of the sea; may the Twentieth Century only introduce the
glorious prime of a career of which the Nineteenth saw but modest
beginnings, and may good old Miami still flourish in sæcula sæculorum!"
[5] Much attention had been attracted, as the date for this
celebration approached, to the numerous sons of this small
college who had in one way or another become prominent; and the
newspapers printed long lists of them. Among the names thus
singled out in the press were Benjamin Harrison, of the class of
1852, President of the United States, 1889-93; William Dennison,
class of 1835, Governor of Ohio, 1859-63, and Postmaster-General
under Abraham Lincoln; Caleb B. Smith, 1826, Secretary of the
Interior in the same Administration; General Robert C. Schenck,
1827, Chairman Ways and Means Committee in House of
Representatives, Major-General in the Civil War, and United
States Minister to Brazil and to Great Britain; William S.
Groesbeck, 1834, Congressman, counsel for Andrew Johnson in the
impeachment proceedings, and United States delegate to the
International Monetary Congress, 1878; Samuel Shellabarger, 1841,
Congressman, member of the Crédit Mobilier Investigation, and of
the United States Civil Service Commission; Oliver P. Morton,
1845, War Governor of Indiana, and United States Senator; Charles
Anderson, 1833, Governor of Ohio; James Birney, 1836, Governor of
Michigan; Richard Yates, 1830, War Governor of Illinois, and
United States Senator; Milton Sayler, 1852, Speaker House of
Representatives; John S. Williams, 1838, the "Cerro Gordo
Williams" of the Mexican War, United States Senator from
Kentucky; George E. Pugh, 1840, United States Senator from Ohio;
James W. McDill, 1853, United States Senator from Iowa; General
Samuel F. Carey, 1835, Congressman from Ohio, and temperance
orator; Albert S. Berry, 1856, Congressman from Kentucky; Dr.
John S. Billings, U.S.A., 1857, head of New York Library; David
Swing, 1852, the Chicago clergyman; General A. C. McClurg, 1853,
the Chicago publisher; Henry M. MacCracken, 1857, Chancellor of
New York University; William M. Thomson, 1828, author of "The
Land and the Book"; Calvin S. Brice, 1863, railway-builder, and
United States Senator; etc.
But the celebration of her past and the aspirations for her future
belong to worthier sons--here among these gentlemen of the Board who
have cared for her in her need. I make them my profound acknowledgments
for the honor they have done me in assigning me a share in the work of
this day of days, and shall best deserve their trust by going with
absolute candor straight to my theme.
[Sidenote: New Duties; a New World.]
I shall speak of the new duties that are upon us and the new world that
is opening to us with the new century--of the spirit in which we should
advance and the results we have the right to ask. I shall speak of
public matters which it is the duty of educated men to consider; and of
matters which may hereafter divide parties, but on which we must refuse
now to recognize party distinctions. Partizanship stops at the
guard-line. "In the face of an enemy we are all Frenchmen," said an
eloquent Imperialist once in my hearing, in rallying his followers to
support a foreign measure of the French Republic. At this moment our
soldiers are facing a barbarous or semi-civilized foe, who
treacherously attacked them in a distant land, where our flag had been
sent, in friendship with them, for the defense of our own shores. Was
it creditable or seemly that it was lately left to a Bonaparte on our
own soil to teach some American leaders that, at such a time, patriotic
men at home do not discourage those soldiers or weaken the Government
that directs them?[6]
[6] "MY DEAR SIR: I have received your letter of the 23d inst.,
notifying me of my election as a vice-president of the
Anti-Imperialist League. I recognize the compliment implied in
this election, and appreciate it the more by reason of my respect
for the gentlemen identified with the league, but I do not think
I can appropriately or consistently accept the position,
especially since I learn through the press that the league
adopted at its recent meeting certain resolutions to which I
cannot assent.... I may add that, while I fully recognize the
injustice and even absurdity of those charges of 'disloyalty'
which have been of late freely made against some members of the
league, and also that many honorable and patriotic men do not
feel as I do on this subject, I am personally unwilling to take
part in an agitation which may have some tendency to cause a
public enemy to persist in armed resistance, or may be, at least,
plausibly represented as having this tendency. There can be no
doubt that, as a matter of fact, the country is at war with
Aguinaldo and his followers. I profoundly regret this fact;...
but it is a fact, nevertheless, and, as such, must weigh in
determining my conduct as a citizen....
"CHARLES JEROME BONAPARTE.
"BALTIMORE,
"May 25, 1899."
Neither shall I discuss, here and now, the wisdom of all the steps that
have led to the present situation. For good or ill, the war was fought.
Its results are upon us. With the ratification of the Peace of Paris,
our Continental Republic has stretched its wings over the West Indies
and the East. It is a fact and not a theory that confronts us. We are
actually and now responsible, not merely to the inhabitants and to our
own people, but, in International Law, to the commerce, the travel, the
civilization of the world, for the preservation of order and the
protection of life and property in Cuba, in Porto Rico, in Guam, and in
the Philippine Archipelago, including that recent haunt of piracy, the
Sulus. Shall we quit ourselves like men in the discharge of this
immediate duty; or shall we fall to quarreling with each other like
boys as to whether such a duty is a good or a bad thing for the
country, and as to who got it fastened upon us? There may have been a
time for disputes about the wisdom of resisting the stamp tax, but it
was not just after Bunker Hill. There may have been a time for hot
debate about some mistakes in the antislavery agitation, but not just
after Sumter and Bull Run. Furthermore, it is as well to remember that
you can never grind with the water that has passed the mill. Nothing in
human power can ever restore the United States to the position it
occupied the day before Congress plunged us into the war with Spain, or
enable us to escape what that war entailed. No matter what we wish, the
old continental isolation is gone forever. Whithersoever we turn now,
we must do it with the burden of our late acts to carry, the
responsibility of our new position to assume.
When the sovereignty which Spain had exercised with the assent of all
nations over vast and distant regions for three hundred years was
solemnly transferred under the eye of the civilized world to the United
States, our first responsibility became the restoration of order. Till
that is secured, any hindrance to the effort is bad citizenship--as bad
as resistance to the police; as much worse, in fact, as its
consequences may be more bloody and disastrous. "You have a wolf by the
ears," said an accomplished ex-Minister of the United States to a
departing Peace Commissioner last autumn. "You cannot let go of him
with either dignity or safety, and he will not be easy to tame."
[Sidenote: Policy for the New Possessions.]
But when the task is accomplished,--when the Stars and Stripes at last
bring the order and peaceful security they typify, instead of wanton
disorder, with all the concomitants of savage warfare over which they
now wave,--we shall then be confronted with the necessity of a policy
for the future of these distant regions. It is a problem that calls for
our soberest, most dispassionate, and most patriotic thought. The
colleges, and the educated classes generally, should make it a matter
of conscience--painstakingly considered on all its sides, with
reference to International Law, the burdens of sovereignty, the rights
and the interests of native tribes, and the legitimate demands of
civilization--to find first our national duty and then our national
interest, which it is also a duty for our statesmen to protect. On such
a subject we have a right to look to our colleges for the help they
should be so well equipped to give. From these still regions of
cloistered thought may well come the white light of pure reason, not
the wild, whirling words of the special pleader or of the partizan,
giving loose rein to his hasty first impressions. It would be an ill
day for some colleges if crude and hot-tempered incursions into current
public affairs, like a few unhappily witnessed of late, should lead
even their friends to fear lest they have been so long accustomed to
dogmatize to boys that they have lost the faculty of reasoning with
men.
When the first duty is done, when order is restored in those commercial
centers and on that commercial highway, somebody must then be
responsible for maintaining it--either ourselves or some Power whom we
persuade to take them off our hands. Does anybody doubt what the
American people in their present temper would say to the latter
alternative?--the same people who, a fortnight ago, were ready to break
off their Joint Commission with Great Britain and take the chances,
rather than give up a few square miles of worthless land and a harbor
of which a year ago they scarcely knew the name, on the remote coast of
Alaska. Plainly it is idle now, in a government so purely dependent on
the popular will, to scheme or hope for giving the Philippine task over
to other hands as soon as order is restored. We must, then, be prepared
with a policy for maintaining it ourselves.
Of late years men have unthinkingly assumed that new territory is, in
the very nature of our Government, merely and necessarily the raw
material for future States in the Union. Colonies and dependencies, it
is now said, are essentially inconsistent with our system. But if any
ever entertained the wild dream that the instrument whose preamble says
it is ordained for the United States of _America_ could be stretched to
the China Sea, the first Tagal guns fired at friendly soldiers of the
Union, and the first mutilation of American dead that ensued, ended the
nightmare of States from Asia admitted to the American Union. For that
relief, at least, we must thank the uprising of the Tagals. It was a
Continental Union of independent sovereign States our fathers planned.
Whoever proposes to debase it with admixtures of States made up from
the islands of the sea, in any archipelago, East or West, is a bad
friend to the Republic. We may guide, protect, elevate them, and even
teach them some day to stand alone; but if we ever invite them into our
Senate and House, to help to rule us, we are the most imbecile of all
the offspring of time.
[Sidenote: The Constitutional Objection.]
Yet we must face the fact that able and conscientious men believe the
United States has no constitutional power to hold territory that is not
to be erected into States in the Union, or to govern people that are
not to be made citizens. They are able to cite great names in support
of their contention; and it would be an ill omen for the freest and
most successful constitutional government in the world if a
constitutional objection thus fortified should be carelessly considered
or hastily overridden. This objection rests mainly on the assumption
that the name "United States," as used in the Constitution, necessarily
includes all territory the Nation owns, and on the historic fact that
large parts of this territory, on acquiring sufficient population, have
already been admitted as States, and have generally considered such
admission to be a right. Now, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall--than whom no
constitutional authority carries greater weight--certainly did declare
that the question what was designated by the term "United States" in
the clause of the Constitution giving power to levy duties on imposts
"admitted of but one answer." It "designated the whole of the American
empire, composed of States and Territories." If that be accepted as
final, then the tariff must be applied in Manila precisely as in New
York, and goods from Manila must enter the New York custom-house as
freely as goods from New Orleans. Sixty millions would disappear
instantly and annually from the Treasury, and our revenue system would
be revolutionized by the free admission of sugar and other tropical
products from the United States of Asia and the Caribbean Sea; while,
on the other hand, the Philippines themselves would be fatally
handicapped by a tariff wholly unnatural to their locality and
circumstances. More. If that be final, the term "United States" should
have the same comprehensive meaning in the clause as to citizenship.
Then Aguinaldo is to-day a citizen of the United States, and may yet
run for the Presidency. Still more. The Asiatics south of the China Sea
are given that free admission to the country which we so strenuously
deny to Asiatics from the north side of the same sea. Their goods,
produced on wages of a few cents a day, come into free competition in
all our home markets with the products of American labor, and the cheap
laborers themselves are free to follow if ever our higher wages attract
them. More yet. If that be final, the Tagals and other tribes of Luzon,
the Visayans of Negros and Cebu, and the Mohammedan Malays of Mindanao
and the Sulus, having each far more than the requisite population, may
demand admission next winter into the Union as free and independent
States, with representatives in Senate and House, and may plausibly
claim that they can show a better title to admission than Nevada ever
did, or Utah or Idaho.
Nor does the great name of Marshall stand alone in support of such
conclusions. The converse theory that these territories are not
necessarily included in the constitutional term "the United States"
makes them our subject dependencies, and at once the figure of
Jefferson himself is evoked, with all the signers of the immortal
Declaration grouped about him, renewing the old war-cry that government
derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. At different
periods in our history eminent statesmen have made protests on grounds
of that sort. Even the first bill for Mr. Jefferson's own purchase of
Louisiana was denounced by Mr. Macon as "establishing a species of
government unknown to the United States"; by Mr. Lucas as "establishing
elementary principles never previously introduced in the government of
any Territory of the United States"; and by Mr. Campbell as "really
establishing a complete despotism." In 1823 Chancellor Kent said, with
reference to Columbia River settlements, that "a government by Congress
as absolute sovereign, over colonies, absolute dependents, was not
congenial to the free and independent spirit of American institutions."
In 1848 John C. Calhoun declared that "the conquest and retention of
Mexico as a province would be a departure from the settled policy of
the Government, in conflict with its character and genius, and in the
end subversive of our free institutions." In 1857 Mr. Chief Justice
Taney said that "a power to rule territory without restriction as a
colony or dependent province would be inconsistent with the nature of
our Government." And now, following warily in this line, the eminent
and trusted advocate of similar opinions to-day, Mr. Senator Hoar of
Massachusetts, says: "The making of new States and providing national
defense are constitutional ends, so that we may acquire and hold
territory for those purposes. The governing of subject peoples is not a
constitutional end, and there is therefore no constitutional warrant
for acquiring and holding territory for that purpose."
[Sidenote: An Alleged Constitutional Inability.]
We have now, as is believed, presented with entire fairness a summary
of the more important aspects in which the constitutional objections
mentioned have been urged. I would not underrate by a hair's breadth
the authority of these great names, the weight of these continuous
reassertions of principle, the sanction even of the precedent and
general practice through a century. And yet I venture to think that no
candid and competent man can thoroughly investigate the subject, in the
light of the actual provisions of the Constitution, the avowed purpose
of its framers, their own practice and the practice of their
successors, without being absolutely convinced that this whole fabric
of opposition on constitutional grounds is as flimsy as a cobweb. This
country of our love and pride is no malformed, congenital cripple of a
nation, incapable of undertaking duties that have been found within the
powers of every other nation that ever existed since governments among
civilized men began. Neither by chains forged in the Constitution nor
by chains of precedent, neither by the dead hand we all revere, that of
the Father of his Country, nor under the most authoritative exponents
of our organic act and of our history, are we so bound that we cannot
undertake any duty that devolves or exercise any power which the
emergency demands. Our Constitution has entrapped us in no impasse,
where retreat is disgrace and advance is impossible. The duty which the
hand of Providence, rather than any purpose of man, has laid upon us,
is within our constitutional powers. Let me invoke your patience for a
rather minute and perhaps wearisome detail of the proof.
The notion that the United States is an inferior sort of nation,
constitutionally without power for such public duties as other nations
habitually assume, may perhaps be dismissed with a single citation from
the Supreme Court. Said Mr. Justice Bradley, in the Legal Tender Cases:
"As a government it [the United States] was invested with all the
attributes of sovereignty.... It seems to be a self-evident proposition
that it is invested with all those inherent and implied powers which,
at the time of adopting the Constitution, were generally considered to
belong to every government as such, and as being essential to the
exercise of its functions" (12 Wall. 554).