Question

What did people for and against agree on about imperialism?
What did mark twain believe about imperialism?
What did William McKinley believe about imperialism?
How did they work in support or opposition to imperialism?
Were there any key events in their lives that affected there beliefs about imperialism?

Answer 1

1.The US was never completely isolated from the rest of the world. Trade made the US an active member of world affairs. It was during the period of the 1890s that the US foreign policy became influenced by imperialism. During that decade, the US became the most important industrial power in the world. That meant we had to find markets and areas to obtain raw materials. Business was also looking at other areas in the world as potential customers for our products. The US military, especially the Navy, was growing and expanding in other areas of the world where we had not had the ability to go in force before. The war with Spain and the presidency of T. Roosevelt also made the US a major economic, military, and imperialistic power.ANTI: There were many groups that were against imperialism as a policy for the United States. Prior to the Civil War, many northerners were opposed to acquiring more territory in the west because they feared the spread of slavery. After the Spanish-American War, some of the old "Radical Republicans" and other members of Congress opposed the idea of acquiring colonies. A large portion of the Democratic Party, led by William Jennings

Answer 2

2. Mark Twain on Imperialism
I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies.
Why not spread its wings over the Phillippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.

I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Phillippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. . .

It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.