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Bryan or McKinley? The Present Duty of American Citizens.
VII. President McKinley or President Bryan?
by North American Review, The
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The American people have come to know that each of the
candidates for the Presidency is a man of strong and forceful
personality. The notion that either is a man of weak intelligence,
or uncertain will, controlled by some stronger nature, has gone by.
President McKinley has not only been Chief Executive of the
United States for nearly four years, but he has been Chief
Executive in his own mind. I was told - what I do not doubt in
the least - by an eminent Senator who was at one time popularly
supposed to make up the Presidents mind for him every morning,
that he had been to the White House to talk politics with the
President but twice during the whole winter, except on such local
matters as all Senators are consulted about, and that, in many
of his visits to the President in leisure hours, politics or public
affairs were not mentioned at all. President McKinley has
exerted a large personal force, concealed in a quiet courtesy of
manner, and tempered by great kindness of heart and considerate
respect for other men, ever since he entered the public service
as a young soldier during the War of the Rebellion.
It is but the idlest folly to deny that Mr. Bryan, who, in a
single speech, took by storm the National Convention of a great
party then full of an exultant, though vain, hope of triumph,
compelled it to discard all its old leaders and to adopt him and
his theories, and who, after one signal defeat, has maintained
himself not merely as a leader, but a dictator, in spite of the
remonstrances of the wisest, ablest and most popular of the
party chieftains, is possessed of a strong will, a vigorous
understanding, and an earnest and steadfast purpose. Without being
President, he has twice compelled the Democratic party to take
him as a candidate, and dictated a platform setting forth his
own opinions, or the doctrines he thinks will command success
for him in his political aspirations. If he shall be President,
he will compel his party to renominate him again on such a
platform as he shall think fit. There have been Presidential
elections in which the personal quality of the candidate made
little difference, except as he might happen to have more or
less the gift of attracting votes. Pierce would have done pretty
much the same thing as Buchanan did, and Buchanan as Pierce
did. Monroe would have done pretty much the same thing as
Madison. Sherman would have done pretty much the same thing
as Harrison. Seymour would have done pretty much the same
thing as McClellan. But each of the candidates this year not
only means to be elected President if he can, but means to be
President himself after he is elected.
There are two classes of men whose minds are made up. I
will not say that all argument will be thrown away upon them.
But all arguments I can make would be thrown away upon them.
One is the zealous partisan, who follows party wherever it leads.
To him the party and its President, or its candidate for the
Presidency, are what the Holy Father and the Church are to
the devout Catholic. He has no opinion of his own. He looks
to his party to furnish his platform and political leader, as the
zealous devotee of the Church looks to it alike for doctrine and
for spiritual guide.
The other class comprehends a great variety of men -
Populists, Socialists, Anarchists - men who think the free coinage of
silver a panacea for all sorrows; men who have a special crotchet
which they think will reconstruct society. To neither of these,
nor to the thorough Democratic partisan, is it worth while to
address political discussion now.
There are two classes of men open to argument. Many of
them are still undecided. If they unite to support Mr. McKinley,
it will make his election sure.
First, there is the conservative Democrat. He is probably a
free-trader, unless, as is quite apt to be the case, he is himself
engaged in a protected industry. He has no faith in the
National authority to protect the negro, or to secure fair elections.
He has been a Democrat always, as was his father before him,
unless possibly he may be the son of a Hunker Whig who opposed
the war and the Constitutional amendments. He has a general
dislike of Republican ways and Republican leaders. But he
believes in public honesty, in sound finance, in the authority of
the Supreme Court; and he has no sort of respect for Mr. Bryan,
for Populism, or Socialism, and does not wish to risk the safety
of his investments, or the value of his comfortable property. He
is doubting whether it is not better to continue Republican power
for another term, and calmly bear the ills we have, than to fly
to those we know not of, under Mr. Bryan. He hopes, also, that
if Bryan be thoroughly defeated once more, the Democratic party
may be purified, and be fit again for his support. I think he
will vote for McKinley, or he will not vote at all. But he will
not look to me for counsel, and I have nothing in the way of
argument adapted to persuade him.
The other man in doubt is the Anti-Imperialist Republican.
He has been saying all his life that all men are created equal
in political rights, and that governments derive their just powers
from the consent of the governed. He thinks the United States
have no right to hold vassals or subjects. He is a great
expansionist; but the expansion he believes in is the extension of the
country by adding new States and enlarging the population of
freemen. He believes there is such a thing as Imperialism, in
spite of the disclaimer of his Republican friends. When anybody
says the Philippine Islands are ours, he understands that to be
Imperialism, and he replies, "The Philippine Islands belong
to the Philippine people." When anybody says, "We will estab-
lish for them such good government as we think they are fit
for," he answers, "That is Imperialism. They are entitled to
establish for themselves such government as they think good and
fit for themselves." That he calls Anti-Imperialism. He is
considering just now, painfully and sorrowfully, whether he will
vote the Republican ticket or no. Perhaps he will listen to a
few suggestions before he decides. To him I wish to appeal.
First. Either William McKinley or William J. Bryan is to
be the next President. Unless you vote for one or the other,
you will vote in the air. You may as well leave your vote with
the census officer, or with the grocer, as with the election officer,
unless you vote for one or the other of these two men.
Now, some things have happened in the past which, however
you regard them, cannot be helped now. The treaty with Spain
has been ratified. We have had eighteen months of war in the
Philippine Islands. Instead of another Japan, taking its high
rank among the powers of the earth; instead of Cuba, sending
its youth to our shores, grateful to us as their liberators from
centuries of oppression, to sit docile learners at our feet, we
have a sullen, angry and shattered people. Whatever has caused
all this, whether it was a mistake, or whether it was the inevitable
cost of the discharge of a great duty, we cannot help it now.
We have to deal with the future.
Now, the only question for the Republican Anti-Imperialist
is, whether the chance that Mr. Bryan and the Democrats will
do what the Republican Anti-Imperialist thinks should be done
in the future, which will not be done by Mr. McKinley and the
Republicans, is worth the price he is to pay for it if he votes
for Mr. Bryan. It is not whether we should instantly
withdraw from the Philippine Islands; it is not whether the
abandonment of our claim to hold them in subjection be worth
accomplishing at the cost of national bankruptcy, or financial distress,
at the cost of free trade and the ruin of our manufactures, at
the cost of repeating again the nightmare of Democratic
administration. If we concede that we are willing to go through with
that, if we can only get back to the Declaration of Independence
again, still that is not the important question now. The
important question now is: Is there anything that Mr. Bryan can
be trusted to do about it that is worth the cost of giving him
the power to do what he will do, if he can, in other matters?
Now, let us understand exactly the price we are asked to
pay, and then let us understand exactly what reasonable hope there
is that Mr. Bryan can or will accomplish anything for the
independence of the Philippine people, if he be elected. You agree,
my friend, that the free coinage of silver at 16 to 1 means
national dishonor, great injury to business, the reduction by
half of all savings, the destruction of the standard of value
making all business transactions gambling transactions, and a
great reduction, not only of the savings of the wage-earner, but
of the wages he is to earn hereafter. Now, can Mr. Bryan put
us on a silver basis, and will he? He says he will, and he says
he can.
At Knoxville, Tenn., Sept. 16, 1896, he said: "If there is
any one who believes the gold standard is a good thing, or that
it must be maintained, I warn him not to cast his vote for me,
because I promise him it will not be maintained in this country
longer than I am able to get rid of it."
And at Topeka, when he accepted the Populists nomination
the other day, he told them:
" No Populist, however sanguine, believes it possible to elect
a Populist President at this time, but the Populist party may be
able to determine whether a Democrat or a Republican will be
elected.
"If the fusion forces win a victory this fall, we shall see the
reform accomplished" - he was speaking of monetary reform -
before the next Presidential election, and with its
accomplishment the people will find it easier to secure any
remedial legislation which they may desire."
He means to do just that thing. He believes he can do it by
Executive power, and believes, as he says, that with its
accomplishment the people will find it easier to secure any remedial
legislation which they may desire. Monetary reform first,
remedial legislation next, is what he promises to do.
Mr. Secretary Gage says he can do it, and that he can do it
by the exercise of the lawful power now lodged in the Executive.
Some people think Mr. Gage is mistaken in his conception of
the extent of the Executive power under existing laws. But
whether he be mistaken or no, have you any doubt that Mr.
Bryan agrees with him, and that he will not hesitate to do what
he now promises to do, what he has the great authority of the
Republican Secretary of the Treasury for saying that he can
lawfully do? You think to do it means national dishonor and
business ruin. So you are to pay national dishonor and business
ruin as part only of the cost of getting a President who now
professes to agree with you about the Philippine Islands.
Now, in four Southern States, by an ingenious device, they
have undertaken to legalize the disfranchisement of the negro,
and to overturn all the Constitutional amendments. Two other
States are about doing the same thing. If they succeed, there
can be no question that the same thing will be done in
every other Southern State, with one or two possible exceptions.
Now, with that accomplished, there will be disfranchised ten
million American citizens at home. It will give the Southern
white Democrats fifty or sixty Representatives, and the same
number of votes in the Electoral College, not dependent upon
numbers, and representing sheer usurpation. It will not only
disfranchise ten million American citizens in the Southern States,
whose numbers are, of course, to increase with every census, but
it will disfranchise to that extent the free white citizens of the
North. In every future election, the Republican party of the
North is to play against Tammany Hall and the Southern
Democracy, and the latter will hold these loaded dice. It may
be that we cannot baffle the purpose which has already been so
far accomplished. But the express mandate of the Constitution
is that in such case the representation of the offending States
shall be proportionately diminished. I am not now waving the
bloody shirt. I am not now reviving the old issues. I am not
now talking about election laws, or laws for the suppression of
violence. I am simply calling your attention to the question,
whether you mean to be disfranchised yourselves, and to have
fifty or sixty Southern Democratic Representatives in the national
House of Representatives to vote you down for the indefinite
future. Now, nobody will dream for a moment that, if Bryan
and the Democratic party shall come into power, this
Constitutional mandate will be obeyed. And you, a Republican; you, a
friend of equality; you, who believe that governments derive their
just power from the consent of the governed; you, who believe
that all men are equal in political rights; you, who mean that
your government, at least, shall rest on your own consent, and
that you are yourself equal in political rights to the best Southern
Democrat that ever trod the countrys soilare asked to sustain
this thing in the next Presidential election by your vote, because
Mr. William J. Bryan says he is in favor of justice and freedom
and independence in the Far East.
Another thing: I agree that it is not equal in importance
to the two considerations I have stated. You have believed that
the prosperity of the American workman, and of the American
employer, the prosperity of labor and capital alike, the comfort
of the workman's home, the independence of American
manufacture, depend on our protective system for which you have been
working and voting ever since you came to manhood. Will Mr.
Bryan and his party have learned anything by experience? They
are pledged to overthrow that if they can, and they ask you,
without disguise of their purpose, to help them to overthrow that,
if they can.
Another thing: Mr. Bryan stands in 1900 on the platform
of 1896. He will, if he can, fill the Supreme Court of the United
States, whose membership is now largely composed of old men,
with judges of his way of thinking. You are to commit to him
that august tribunal, which has been our rock of defense and
our ark of safety so often. When you bring a President into
power, you bring with him into power, as his counsellors, the
men who have been his political companions and advisers, and
who have contributed most to his elevation. I will not name
names. But the intelligent Republican who is hesitating as to
his duty now, knows very well who are the active and efficient
Bryan men, South and North, East and West. Whom will he
consult in Massachusetts? Whom will he consult in New York
city and State? Whom will he consult, whose advice will he
take, in the West, and in the South? Mr. Tillman, of South
Carolina, of whom I have no word of disrespect, reported the
Democratic platform to the Convention at Kansas City. He is,
I think, an honest, manly and able statesman. He has a
marvellous gift of racy speech. He has become the dominant power
in his own State and section, where he overthrew the old
Democratic leaders, like Hampton and Butler, with one hand, and put
the Republican majority of his State under his feet with the
other. This is what he said last winter in the Senate. The
terrible, tragic meaning of his words is almost forgotten in our
admiration for the manly frankness of the avowal.
We took the government away. We stuffed ballot boxes. We
shot them. We are not ashamed of it. The Senator from Wisconsin
would have done the same thing. I see it in his eye right now. He
would have done it. With that system - force, tissue ballots, etc - we
got tired ourselves. So we called a constitutional convention, and we
eliminated, as I said, all of the colored people whom we could under
the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.
I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that has
come over thc spirit of the dream of the Republicans; to remind you,
gentlemen from the North, that your slogans of the past -
brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God - have gone glimmering down the
ages. The brotherhood of man exists no longer, because you shoot
negroes in Illinois, when they come in competition with your labor,
as we shoot them in South Carolina, when they come in competition
with us in the matter of elections. You do not love them any better
than we do. You used to pretend that you did; but you no longer
pretend it, except to get their votes.
You deal with the Filipinos just as we deal with the negroes, only
you treat them a heap worse. [Congressional Record, February 26,
1900, pp. 2,347-2348.]
Now, if you elect Mr. Bryan, the one most powerful force in
Mr. Bryans counsel at the South will be Mr. Tillman, the rising
young leader of the powerful Democracy of that section, as in
New York it will be Richard Croker, who has been faithful to
Mr. Bryan and to his principles from the beginning, and who
is the political despot of the Empire State. There are twenty
million human beings, whose rights as freemen are at stake
ten million at home and ten million abroad. Will you consent
to put your heel on the ten million at home, and, standing on
their prostrate liberties, proclaim liberty to the nations of the
world? You believe Mabini and Aguinaldo fit for
self-government. So do I. You believe that Booker Washington is fit
for self-government: So do I. Shall we - as Mr. Bryan and the
Democratic party do, as Mr. Bryan and his Mugwump and
Independent supporters do - strangle Booker Washington with one
hand, and wave the flag over the head of Aguinaldo with the
other?
This is the price, or a part of the price, you are to pay. You
are to commit all the unknown questions of the unknown future
to Mr. Bryan and his Democratic allies, if you elect him to
power. What sort of statesmanship do you think they will
furnish, to deal with great questions that now confront us?
Abraham Lincoln said in 1864 that it was not a good plan
to swap horses while crossing the stream. Is it a good plan to
swap horses while crossing the dangerous and stormy Chinese
sea in a typhoon? What are you to get in the way of an
equivalent for the terrible price you are asked to pay? You
remember Dr. Franklins story - trite as the a-b-c or the
multiplication table; yet we may well repeat it, since the wit of man
cannot improve it - of the boy who paid too dear for his whistle.
Will you get anything from Mr. Bryan, except a whistle?
It is said by some of our friends that we wish to punish
President McKinley and the Republican party for the great
wrong they have committed. Which deserves being punished the
more, President McKinley and the Republicans who made the
treaty, and who voted for it, believing that the Philippine people
were semi-civilized, incapable of self-government, sure to fall
an easy prey to the ambition or greed of foreign nations, or wear
themselves out in domestic strife, or Mr. Bryan, who, thinking
as we do, by his personal influence caused the treaty to be ratified?
You and I think Mr. McKinley and the Republicans who
supported the treaty were all wrong in their belief. But the
President negotiated the treaty, and the Senate gave its consent.
Now, what did Mr. Bryan do? He thought the people of the
Philippine Islands were entitled to govern themselves. He
thought we had no Constitutional power to govern them. He
thought that to undertake that government was to convert this
Government into an Empire. He thought it was to do infinite
mischief to our citizenship, and infinite wrong to the people we
were to subjugate. Now, so believing, Mr. Bryan came to Wash-
ington and stabbed the cause of Anti-Imperialism in the back in
the hour of its assured victory. The treaty would have been
beaten, almost by a majority; at any rate, with a very large
vote to spare. Mr. Bryan put forth all his power as a great
political leader - the last candidate of his party for the
Presidency, certain to be its next candidate - to secure the adoption
of this treaty which contained and wrought, as he believed, all
these evils. I will not discuss his motive. But I cannot think
of any good rational explanation, except that, knowing very well
that he was more likely to be beaten on them in a time of
prosperity, he wished to keep this question alive for the campaign.
The Senate was the West Point of the resistance to Imperialism.
It could not be captured unless the forces of one side
outnumbered the forces of the other two to one. It was as if some
great General and great political leader in the Revolution had
surrendered West Point to the British enemy, and had induced
the Continental Congress to declare by vote that George III. was
the lawful sovereign, and the British Parliament the lawful
legislature for the American Colonies. That vote made it the
Constitutional duty of the President to reduce the Philippine Islands
to subjection, and to restore order and peace. From that duty
he could be relieved only by an act of Congress, requiring the
assent of Senate and House, and his own Constitutional approval
an assent and approval which Mr. Bryan then knew full well
it was utterly preposterous to expect.
Mr. Justice Grier, giving the opinion of the Supreme Court
of the United States, in the Prize Cases, 2 Black, 665, declared
that although the President cannot initiate or declare war, he
is bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and
that by the acts of Congress of February 28, 1795, and March 3,
1807, he is authorized to call out the military and naval forces
of the United States to suppress insurrection against the
Government of the United States; and that although he does not initiate
war, he is bound to accept the challenge without waiting for any
special legislative authority, and must himself decide whether, in
fulfilling his duty in suppressing an insurrection, he is met with
such armed resistance as will compel him to give them the
character of belligerent, and that this is a question to be decided
by him.
Mr. Justice Nelson adds: The whole military and naval
power of the United States is put under the Presidents control
to meet such an emergency. There was some dissent as to other
parts of the opinion. But in this opinion the Court was
unanimous. These two judges were distinguished Democrats, and upon
the Court sat at the time Taney and Catron and Clifford.
In American Insurance Co. v. Canter, 1 Peters, 511, Chief
Justice Marshall says: "The Constitution confers absolutely on
the government . . . the power of acquiring territory, either
by conquest or by treaty. . . . If it be ceded by treaty, the
acquisition is confirmed, and the ceded territory becomes a part
of the nation to which it is annexed, either on the terms stipulated
in the treaty of cession, or on such as its new master shall
impose."
The treaty, whose adoption Mr. Bryan procured, by putting
forth his whole power to secure it, declared the people of the
Philippine Islands subjects of the United States. It made their
warfare insurrection against the Government of the United States.
It made it the Constitutional duty of the President to put that
insurrection down. It also affirmed and exercised the power of
the United States to purchase sovereignty over ten million people
for money, pledged the faith of the country for payment and
promised that Congress, and not the people concerned, should
dispose of their future. All these things Mr. Bryan helped to
do. He is more responsible for them than any other man in
the country, since the treaty left the hands of the Executive.
When you punish President McKinley and the Republican party
for what they did, you punish the country and you punish
yourself. Do you not think Mr. Bryan and his seventeen followers
who voted for the treaty deserve a little punishment also? You
can inflict that by saving and benefiting the country, without
endangering it in any degree.
Mr. Bryan says he thought the mischief would be cured by
the passage of the Bacon resolution affirming our purpose to
give that people self-government hereafter. Mr. Bryan, it seems
to me, must have known that the passage of such a resolution
was quite improbable, and that, if it had passed the Senate, it
would have been of no vigor or effect whatever, a mere idle
resolve, without any Constitutional potency, unless it were agreed
to by the House and approved by the President. The treaty
became the law of the land by the express terms of the
Constitution. A treaty is greater than a common statute, because it not
only is the law of the land, but it pledges the faith of the
American people. Now, how idle for a gentleman aspiring to the
great office of the Presidency to say: Oh, yes, I made it the
law of the land that it was the duty of Congress to govern the
people of the Philippine Islands; I bought them and paid for
them; I pledged the faith of the Government that this thing
should be done, and that this thing should be done in this way,
and I trusted to the chance hereafter that one House of Congress
alone might pass a resolution that they did not mean to keep on
in that policy.
But Mr. Bryan says he wanted to get the matter out of the
hands of the President, and into the hands of Congress. Now, in
the first place, his whole theory was and is that the Philippine
Islands is a matter with which Congress has rightfully or
Constitutionally nothing to do; and, in the second place, the method
he took was not calculated to take the matter out of the hands of
the President or to put it into the hands of Congress.
But he says he wanted to get peace with Spain, and he did.
not want to run the risk of making amendments to the treaty to
which Spain might not consent. But he knew very well then
that the war with Spain was over. Her fleets were shattered,
her armies were captive, she had sued for peace, and her
Commissioners had said to the people of the United States in express
words, "We are in your power, and Spain is compelled to accede
to any terms you may dictate." How idle is any suggestion that
Spain would not gladly have acquiesced in an amendment of the
treaty which put the Philippine Islands on the same footing with
the people of Cuba. A cable dispatch would have brought the
eager consent of Spain to such an amendment in twenty-four
hours.
But Mr. Bryan says that if the treaty had been defeated, then
the President would have called, after the next 4th of March, an
extra session of the Senate, in which the Republican majority
would have been larger, and would have secured its ratification
then. I do not believe it. That would have required a delay
of several months, and if Mr. Bryan had exercised his influence
as a political leader against the treaty, instead of in its favor,
the two-thirds majority would never have been commanded for it.
But, talking of what the Senate would have done at its extra
session, can Mr. Bryan doubt that if he had got through his
resolution, which failed, that it would have been repealed in six
weeks? A treaty is the law of the land, as I have said, and
pledges the faith of the Government. The Senate cannot
abrogate it, if it would; and it will be a rare case when Congress and
the President will undertake to abrogate it, if they can. But
this empty resolution of Brother Bryans, if a majority had been
for it, and not against it, as it was, he knows as well as I do,
and his supporters know as well as you do, would have been
doomed to a life of less than six weeks, if it had ever been adopted.
If you look at Mr. Bryans promises as to silver, you will not
find them vague and unmeaning. He does not say, when he
talks about his financial schemes, that he shall call an extra
session of Congress, and hopes they will do something. He says the
thing will be done. He means business.
If you analyze Mr. Bryans assurances in regard to the
Philippine Islands, they do not differ much, practically, as to the future,
from those of the present Administration. In everything else we
have got the same Mr. Bryan and the same Democratic party.
If the Democratic campaign of 1896 was, as we all believed and
styled it then, a passionate crusade of dishonor, is it any less
a passionate crusade of dishonor now? Will the policy which
would have overthrown the public credit then not overthrow it
now? Will the policy which bronght suffering into the homes
of the American workingman in 1892 fail to accomplish the same
result in 1900? Will the ring of a dishonest dollar, or the outcry
against the disgrace of a broken promise, please the ear any better
in the new century than in the old?
Have the laws of trade, and the maxims of fiumee, and the
Constitutional rights of American citizens; has the authority and
supremacy of law; has the character of Tammany Hall; have the
purposes of the old Democratic leaders - changed in four years?
My zealous friend, the old story will repeat itself again. The
Southern Democrat will hold you as fish to his hook as long as he
wants you, and then he will toss you back, half dead, into the sea.
You and I think that the Republican party, whatever mistakes
it has made, has been true to freedom and justice and righteousness
in the past. The men who have composed it, and who still
compose it, have wrought everything for justice and righteousness
and freedom that has been wrought in this country for half a
century.
It has made, in my judgment, one great mistake. But with
these two parties standing side by side, promising justice and
good government to this Oriental people, I trust the party that
has made but one mistake, rather than the party whose sole
existence has been a mistake. I prefer the Government which the
Republican party has established at home, to the Governments
which the Democratic party has established and has sought to
establish at home. I prefer freedom and justice and equality and
local self-government after the pattern of New England and
Massachusetts, rather than after the pattern of Mississippi and
South Carolina. I like the gospel according to McKinley better
than the gospel according to Bryan. I do not believe that Mr.
Bryan or his associates will do better for ten million people of
another race in the Philippine Islands than they have done and
mean to do for ten million American citizens in the United States.
I have an assured hope, and an assured and confident faith, that
this matter, in spite of the mistakes of the past, will yet be
wrought out in accordance with the old principles of the American
people and the old principles of the Republican party. I thought
we ought to deal with the people of the Philippine Islands as
we dealt with the people of Cuba. It was a mistake not to do so.
But that having been done which was done, the war having gone
on, the next thing to do is to establish peace; and peace being
established, if that people prove intelligent and fit for
self-government, actually governing themselves in freedom and in honor,
and if they desire independence, they have the right to
independence; and if I know the American people, if I know the Republican
party, the people of the Philippines will find no obstacle to their
independence in the power of the American Republic.
GEORGE F. HOAR.
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