American Anti-Imperialist League Totally Explained

Everything about The American Anti-imperialist League totally explained

The American Anti-Imperialist League was established in the United States on June 15, 1898 to battle the American annexation of the Philippines, officially called insular areas. The Anti-Imperialist League opposed annexation on economic, legal, and moral grounds. The original organization was founded in New England and was absorbed by a new national Anti-Imperialist League. Prominent statesman George S. Boutwell served as president from the League's inception in 1898 to his death in 1905. Lawyer and civil rights activist Moorfield Storey was president from 1905 until the League dissolved in 1921.
   Many of the League's leaders were classical liberals and "Bourbon Democrats" (Grover Cleveland Democrats) who believed in free trade, a gold standard, and limited government; they opposed William Jennings Bryan's candidacy in the 1896 presidential election. Instead of voting for protectionist Republican William McKinley, however, many, including Edward Atkinson, Moorfield Storey, and Grover Cleveland, cast their ballots for the National Democratic Party presidential ticket of John M. Palmer and Simon Bolivar Buckner. The 1900 presidential election caused internal squabbles in the League. Particularly controversial was the League's endorsement of William Jennings Bryan, a renowned anti-imperialist but also the leading critic of the gold standard. A few League members, including Storey and Villard, organized a third party to both uphold the gold standard and oppose imperialism. This effort led to the formation of the National Party, which nominated Senator Donelson Caffery of Louisiana. The party quickly collapsed, however, when Caffery dropped out, leaving Bryan as the only anti-imperialist candidate.
   A leader and founding member of the League was Mark Twain, who defended its views in the following manner:
Mark Twain was vice president of the league from 1901 until his death in 1910.
   An editorial in the Springfield Republican, the leading anti-imperialist daily newspaper in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, declared, "Mark Twain has suddenly become the most influential anti-imperialist and the most dreaded critic of the sacrosanct person in the White House that the country contains." By the second decade of the twentieth century, the League was only a shadow of its former strength. Despite its anti-war record, it didn't object to U.S. entry into World War I (though several individual members did oppose intervention). The Anti-Imperialist League disbanded in 1921.

Selected list of members

Well-known members of the League included:

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., retired brigadier general, former president of Union Pacific Railroad (1884-90), author
Jane Addams, social reformer, sociologist, first woman to win Nobel Peace Prize
Edward Atkinson, entrepreneur, abolitionist, classical liberal activist
Ambrose Bierce, journalist, critic, writer
George S. Boutwell, politician, author, former U.S. Treasury Secretary (1869-73)
Andrew Carnegie, entrepreneur, industrialist, philanthropist
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), author, satirist, lecturer
Grover Cleveland, former President of the United States (1885-89, 1893-97), Bourbon Democrat
John Dewey, philosopher, psychologist, educational reformer
Finley Peter Dunne, columnist, author, humorist
Edwin Lawrence Godkin, co-founder and editor of The Nation (1865-99), publicist, writer
Samuel Gompers, labor leader, founder and president of the American Federation of Labor (1886-1924)
William Dean Howells, realist author, literary critic, editor
William James, psychologist, philosopher, writer
David Starr Jordan, ichthyologist, peace activist, university president
Josephine Shaw Lowell, progressive reformer, founder of the New York Consumers League
Edgar Lee Masters, poet, dramatist, author
William Vaughn Moody, professor, poet, literary figure
Carl Schurz, German revolutionary, retired brigadier general, former U.S. Interior Secretary (1877-81)
Moorfield Storey, lawyer, former president of the American Bar Association (1896-97), first president of the NAACP (1909-15)
William Graham Sumner, sociologist, classical economist, author
Oswald Garrison Villard, journalist, classical liberal activist, later member of the America First Committee

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