1900's Law and Justice | The Insular Cases: The Constitution Follows The Flag

Acquisition of an Empire.

By 1900 the United States had acquired Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico and was maintaining a protectorate over Cuba. What would be the legal status of the people of these places? Were they subjects or citizens? What relationship would they have with the United States? What rights would they have? None of these questions had a clear answer, nor were all Americans comfortable with the idea of being an imperial power. In 1900 the Democratic Party, with William Jennings Bryan again its presidential nominee, tried to make imperialism an issue in the campaign. Imperialism, Democrats argued, was a ploy by wealthy capitalists to distract American workers from domestic problems and to exploit cheap overseas labor. These new territories would require a large military force— in fact, a U.S. army of sixty-five thousand would spend three years suppressing the Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo's...