AP US History Document Based Question

Directions: Your answer to the following question should be based on the accompanying documents and your understanding of the historical era. In your essay, you should refer to relevant historical facts and developments not mentioned in the documents, as well as ideas found in the documents.

To what extent was the American-Philippine War a logical extension of American foreign policy during the second half of the 19th Century? Use the documents and your knowledge of the period from 1850 to 1900 to construct your response.

Document A


Document B

Source: Secretary of State James G. Blaine's invitation to Latin American leaders to attend a Pan-American Congress. (1881)

“The time is ripe for a proposal that shall enlist the good will and active cooperation of all the states of the western hemisphere, both north and south, in the interest of humanity .... The President extends to all the independent countries of North and South America an earnest invitation to participate in a general congress to be held in the city of Washington .... for the purpose of considering and discussing the methods of preventing war between the nations of America.”

Document C

Source: Josiah Strong. Our Country. (1885)

“A marked characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon is what may be called an instinct or genius for colonizing. His unequaled energy, his indomitable perseverance, and his personal independence, made him a pioneer. He excels all others in pushing his way into new countries .... It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world's future .... There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and wild soon be taken .... Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history--the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled.”

Document D

Source: Grover Cleveland. Message to Congress on the withdrawal of the treaty for annexation of Hawaii. (1893)

“I conceived it to be my duty .... to withdraw the treaty from the Senate .... While naturally sympathizing with every effort to establish a republican form of government, it has been the settled policy of the United States to concede to people of foreign countries the same freedom and independence in the management of their domestic affairs that we have always claimed for ourselves.”

Document E

Source: William McKinley' Message to Congress on war with Spain. (1898)

“I ask the Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the Government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government, capable of maintaining Order and Observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquility and the security of its citizens as well our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes.”

Document F

Source: Platform Of the American Anti-imperialist League. (1899)

“We hold that the, policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is “criminal aggression” and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our government.”

Document G

Document H

Source: Supreme Court Decision. Downes v. Bidwell, (one of the Insular Cases) 1901.

"We are also of opinion that the power to acquire territory by treaty implies, not only the power to govern such territory, but to prescribe upon what terms the United States will receive its inhabitants, and what their status shall be in what Chief Justice Marshall termed the "American empire. . . . Indeed, it is doubtful if Congress would ever assent to the annexation of territory upon the condition that its inhabitants, however foreign they may be to our habits, traditions, and modes of life, shall become at once citizens of the United States. In all its treaties hitherto the treaty-making power has made special provisions for this subject . . . . In all these cases there is an implied denial of the right of the inhabitants to American citizenship until Congress by further action shall signify its assent thereto . . . .

It is obvious that in the annexation of outlying and distant possessions grave questions will arise from differences of race, habits, laws and customs of the people, and from differences of soil, climate and production, which may require action on the part of Congress that would be quite unnecessary in the annexation of contiguous territory, inhabited only by people of the same race, or by scattered bodies of native Indians."

Document I


Document J

Source: Albert Beveridge. Speech in the Senate. (1900)

“Mr. President .... the Philippines are ours forever, "territory belonging to the United States," as the Constitution calls them And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient .... This island empire is the last land left in all the oceans. If it should prove a mistake to abandon it, the blunder once made would be irretrievable .... But to hold it will be no mistake.”