Volume II Part 27 (1/2)

It was in 1859, and in the article now under debate, that I used this language as a fair exposition of Mr. Douglas' plans:

”The people of a Territory have all the rights of the people of a State; and therefore there are no Territories belonging to the American Union, but all are by the silent negative operations of the Const.i.tution of the United States, converted into independent sovereign members of the North American Confederacy. We commend this system to the advocates of popular sovereignty. It offers many advantages. It will not be possible for the people or the Congress of the United States to resist the admission of new States, inasmuch as their consent will not be asked. It avoids all unpleasant issues. It provides for new slave States; it disposes of Utah; it settles, in antic.i.p.ation, all questions that may grow out of the annexation of the Catholic Mexican States; and it permits the immigrants from the Celestial Empire to re-establish their inst.i.tutions, and take their places as members of this Imperial Republic.” This statement of Mr. Douglas' policy in the interest of slavery is not a far-away prophecy of the doings under President McKinley's administration.

I have reached a point in this discussion when this remark may be justified: No impartial reader of my article of 1859 can fail to discover that the discussion did not involve the question now raised.

The issue was this: Are the Territories bound by the Const.i.tution to become States in the American Union against the judgment of the people, and are the existing States bound to accept a new State and that without regard to its inst.i.tutions? This was the theory of Mr.

Douglas, and it was a theory designed to provide a certain way for the increase of slave States. My argument was aimed at that policy.

At the end of my article there is a summary by propositions which contains declarations that were outside of the controversy with Mr.

Douglas.

One of these has been quoted, and quoted in error as evidence of my inconsistency. I read the proposition: ”The Const.i.tution of the United States may be extended over a Territory by the treaty of annexation, or by a law of Congress, in which case it has only the authority of the law; but the Const.i.tution by the force of its own provisions is limited to the people and the States of the American Union.”

In this general proposition there are several minor and distinct propositions.

1. The Const.i.tution may be extended over a territory by a treaty of annexation. This is now my distinct claim in regard to Porto Rico and the Philippines, a position that I have uniformly maintained.

2. The Const.i.tution may be extended to a territory by law, _in which case it has only the authority of law._

As to this statement I can only say I may have had in mind instances of such legislation as may be found in the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

When we say that the Const.i.tution of its own force, applies to the Territories, we refer to the parts that are applicable to the Territories as distinguishable from the parts that relate to States exclusively. It is a provision of the Const.i.tution that

”No State shall make any law impairing the obligation of contracts.”

In terms this limitation does not extend to Territories. Congress might extend the limitation, but the Act of limitation would have only the force of law.

3. ”The Const.i.tution by the force of its own provisions is limited to the _people_ and States of the American Union.” This is only a declaration that the Const.i.tution does not apply to other states and communities. The word _people_ includes the inhabitants of the Territories as well as the inhabitants of the States. If there could have been a doubt in 1859 of the validity of this interpretation, the doubt has been removed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The inhabitants of Territories are thereby made citizens of the United States, are brought within the jurisdiction of the Const.i.tution, and as citizens they are put upon an equality with the citizens of the States. They are of the _people_ of the American Union, and as such they are under the Const.i.tution of the United States.

These are the opening words of the amendment:--

”All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

We have no subject cla.s.ses in America excepting only such as have been created, temporarily, as I trust, in Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands, by the policy of President McKinley, and all in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution, which reads thus:

”Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

President McKinley claimed jurisdiction over the Philippine Islands and consequently the inhabitants are ent.i.tled to the benign protection of this provision of the Const.i.tution. There cannot be any form of involuntary servitude imposed upon any American citizen without a violation of this fundamental law. Hence it is that the administration is forced to deny citizens.h.i.+p to the inhabitants of the Island and to a.s.sert the claim that the President and Congress may govern the inhabitants of territories acquired by purchase, as in the case of the Philippine Islands, or by conquest, as in the case of Porto Rico, as they might be governed if the Const.i.tution did not exist. And this, we are told by the President and his supporters, is not imperialism, but a process of extending the blessings of liberty and civilization to the inferior races of the earth.

The claim of the President is the a.s.sertion of a right in Congress to establish a system of peonage or even of slavery in Alaska, Hawaii, and the rest. Your representative finds himself called to the defence of this doctrine. Thus is the amendment to the Const.i.tution made of no effect in the Territories.

The character of President McKinley's policy is set forth in his own words and they justify the charge of imperialism.

In his speech of acceptance he said:--”The Philippines are ours, and American authority must be supreme throughout the Archipelago. There will be amnesty, broad and liberal, but no abatement of our rights, no abandonment of our duty; there must be no scuttle policy.” What is the meaning of this language? Is it not an a.s.sertion of absolute, unconditional, permanent supremacy over the millions of the islands?

Imperialism is not a word merely. It is a public policy.

The President denounces imperialism, and with emphasis he declares that we are all republicans in America. None of us are imperialists.

Our answer is this: In the language that I have quoted the President describes himself as an imperialist. The test of Republicanism is the Thirteenth Amendment. The President is subjecting ten million people to involuntary subserviency under his rule. This, by whatever name called, is the imperialism that we denounce.