On Political Cartoons and the Anti-Imperialists

On Political Cartoons and the Anti-Imperialists: The above cartoon appeared in Harper's Weekly in September 1900. It depicts a fiery President McKinley firing a cannon into an effigy mocking him and the pageantry of imperialism. One October night in 1898, McKinley claimed to have been visited by God in a dream, Who told him to start building an American empire. The first step in that empire-building process would be war with Spain, which enabled the U.S. to acquire territories like Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. At the same time, however, there was a growing cohort of Americans who viewed these imperial acquisitions with disdain. Led in part by two Massachusetts Senators, George Boutwell and George Hoar, the Anti-Imperialist League actively opposed the McKinley/Roosevelt administrations in their attempts to expand America's power/reach around the world. The primary argument put forth by the anti-imperialists was that the U.S. got its start as a country thanks to anti-imperialism. Why did the country now want to take the same path as Britain or Spain? Imperial empires only seem to end in disaster.