Albert J. Beveridge’s Senate

 Passage 1 is an excerpt from Albert J. Beveridge’s Senate 

campaign speech, “March of the Flag,” on September 16th, 1898. 

Passage 2 is adapted from William Jennings Bryan’s speech, 

“The Paralyzing Influence of Imperialism,” which he delivered 

to attendees of the Democratic National Convention in Kansas 

City, Missouri, on August 8th, 1900. Beveridge’s speech helped 

him win the election and become a Senator for Indiana, which 

ultimately made him one of the leading advocates of American 

expansion. 

Passage 1 

 Fellow-Citizens: It is a noble land that God has 

given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world; a 

land whose coast lines would enclose half the countries 

of Europe; a land set like a sentinel between the two 

imperial oceans of the globe; a greater England with a 

nobler destiny. It is a mighty people that He has planted 

on this soil; a people sprung from the most masterful 

blood of history; a people perpetually revitalized by the 

virile… working-folk of all the earth; a people imperial 

by virtue of their power, by right of their institutions, 

by authority of their heaven-directed purposes—the 

propagandists and not the misers of liberty. It is a 

glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen 

people; a history whose keynote was struck by Liberty 

Bell; a history heroic with faith in our mission and our 

future; a history of statesmen, who fung the boundaries 

of the Republic out into unexplored lands… a history of 

soldiers, who carried the fag across blazing deserts and 

through the ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates 

of sunset; a history of a multiplying people, who overran 

a continent in half a century… a history divinely logical, 

in the process of whose tremendous reasoning we fnd 

ourselves to-day… 

 Tink of the thousands of Americans who will pour 

into Hawaii and Porto Rico when the Republic’s laws 

cover those islands with justice and safety! Tink of the 

tens of thousands of Americans who will invade… the 

Philippines when a liberal government… shall establish 

order and equity there! Tink of the hundreds of 

thousands of Americans who will build a… civilization 

of energy and industry in Cuba, when a government of 

law replaces the double reign of anarchy and tyranny!—

think of the prosperous millions that Empress of Islands 

will support when, obedient to the law of political 

gravitation, her people ask for the highest honor liberty 

can bestow, the sacred Order of the Stars and Stripes, 

the citizenship of the Great Republic! 

Passage 2 

 If it is right for the United States to hold the Philippine 

Islands permanently and imitate European empires in 

the government of colonies, the Republican party ought 

to state its position and defend it, but it must expect the 

subject races to protest against such a policy and to resist 

to the extent of their ability. 

 Te Filipinos do not need any encouragement from 

Americans now living. Our whole history has been an 

encouragement not only to the Filipinos, but to all who 

are denied a voice in their own government. If the 

Republicans are prepared to censure all who have used 

language calculated to make the Filipinos hate foreign 

domination, let them condemn the speech of Patrick 

Henry. When he uttered that passionate appeal, “Give 

me liberty or give me death,” he exprest a sentiment 

which still echoes in the hearts of men. 

 Let them censure Jefferson; of all the statesmen of 

history none have used words so offensive to those who 

would hold their fellows in political bondage. Let them 

censure Washington, who declared that the colonists 

must choose between liberty and slavery. Or, if the

statute of limitations has run against the sins of Henry 

and Jefferson and Washington, let them censure Lincoln, 

whose Gettysburg speech will be quoted in defense of 

popular government when the present advocates of force 

and conquest are forgotten. 

 Some one has said that a truth once spoken can never 

be recalled. It goes on and on, and no one can set a limit 

to its ever-widening infuence. But if it were possible to 

obliterate every word written or spoken in defense of the 

principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, 

a war of conquest would still leave its legacy of perpetual 

hatred, for it was God himself who placed in every 

human heart the love of liberty. He never made a race of 

people so low in the scale of civilization or intelligence 

that it would welcome a foreign master. 

 Tose who would have this Nation enter upon a 

career of empire must consider, not only the effect of 

imperialism on the Filipinos, but they must also calculate 

its effects upon our own nation. We cannot repudiate the 

principle of self-government in the Philippines without 

weakening that principle here

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