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“What Are the Philippines Going to Do to Us?” E. L. Godkin on Democracy, Empire and Anti-imperialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2012

MYLES BEAUPRE
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Abstract

From his position as editor of the Nation from 1865 until 1899, E. L. Godkin steered one of the liberal standard-bearers in a transatlantic network of cosmopolitan liberals. From this position he helped define nineteenth-century cosmopolitan liberalism. However, while Godkin fitted in the mainstream of liberal thought in 1865, by the time he retired he occupied the conservative fringe. Godkin never made the transition from a nineteenth-century cosmopolitan liberalism to a newer nationalistic democratic liberalism because democracy failed him. Instead of peace, commerce, and learning, democracy created an American Empire rooted in war, protectionism, ignorance, jingoism, and plunder, culminating in the Spanish–American War. Godkin's critique of American imperialism was thus based on his pessimistic but perceptive reading of the flaws of American democracy. Godkin believed that the rise of “jingoist” democracy had doomed the American “experiment” and thought that the nation had slipped into the historical, degenerative cycle of empire. By tracing Godkin's increasingly bitter warnings about the dangers of democracy in the second half of the nineteenth century, we can catch a glimpse of a dying worldview that questioned the ability of democracy to act as a moral force in the world.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , August 2012 , pp. 711 - 727
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 Quoted in Richard E. Welch Jr., Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine–American War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 139.

2 Schirmer, Daniel B., Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Co., 1972)Google Scholar; Welch, Richard E. Jr., Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine–American War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Berkeley Tompkins, E., Anti-imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890–1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayers, David, Dissenting Voices in America's Rise to Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Butler, Leslie, Critical Americans: Victorian Intellectuals and Transatlantic Reform (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McFarland, Gerald W., Mugwumps, Morals & Politics, 1884–1920 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Sproat, John G., “The Best Men,” Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Tucker, David M., Mugwumps: Public Moralists of the Gilded Age (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Beisner, Robert L., Twelve against Empire: The Anti-imperialists 1898–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Blodgett, Geoffrey, “The Mugwump Reputation, 1870 to the Present,” Journal of American History, 66 (March 1980), 867–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 See Vance, Norman, The Victorians and Ancient Rome (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 222–46Google Scholar.

6 See Armstrong, E. L. Godkin: A Biography, 5–16.

7 For the liberal debate about empire see Semmel, Bernard, The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire: Theories of Imperialism from Adam Smith to Lenin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Bell, Duncan (ed.), Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Semmel, Bernard, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howe, Anthony, Free Trade and Liberal England, 1846–1946 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Silberner, Edmund, The Problem of War in Nineteenth Century Economic Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946)Google Scholar; Howard, Michael, War and the Liberal Conscience (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1978)Google Scholar. For international law see Bell; Angie, Antony, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Koskenniemi, Martti, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

8 The Nation was coincidentally had the same name as an Irish liberal newspaper that was a staunch advocate of home rule, which Godkin read with enthusiasm as a teenager.

9 (Godkin, E. L.), “The Momentous Decision,” Nation, 65 (16 Dec. 1897), 468Google Scholar, E. L. Godkin, unless otherwise noted, authored all Nation editorials cited in this essay. Daniel C. Haskell's two-volume The Nation Index 1865–1917 (New York: New York Public Library, 1953) has been an invaluable tool in making it possible to identify Godkin's editorials, all of which were published unsigned.

10 Ibid., 469.

11 “Jamming Through,” Nation, 65 (9 Dec. 1897), 449.

12 “The Danger of the Hour,” Nation, 1 (21 Sept. 1865), 357.

13 “The Mexican Moral,” Nation, 5 (18 July 1867), 52. Also see Ogden, 45–47.

14 “Congress and the Education Test,” Nation, 3 (20 Dec. 1866), 497–98.

15 Armstrong, E. L. Godkin: A Biography, 137–39.

16 See Edwards, Rebecca, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 213–23Google Scholar. “The Late Riots,” Nation, 25 (2 Aug. 1877), 68–69. Armstrong, E. L. Godkin and American Foreign Policy, 36–37; and idem, The Gilded Age Letters, 456. Armstrong calls Godkin a reactionary while discussing his reaction to the Pullman strike and other labor protests.

17 In a series of editorials in the 1870s Godkin connected the Paris Commune, communism, labor unions, and protectionism as “an uprising against society itself,” and a direct threat to property and cultivation. See “The ‘Red’ Rising in Paris,” Nation, 12 (23 March 1871), 193–94; “La Commune,” Nation, 12 (18 April 1871), 253–54; “ ‘The Commune’ and the Labor Question,” Nation, 12 (18 May 1871), 333–34; “How Protection Effects Labor,” Nation, 12 (25 May 1871), 352–53; “The Assembly and the Commune,” Nation, 12 (25 May 1871), 377–79; “Communistic Morality,” Nation, 12 (15 June 1871), 413–14; “The Late Riots,” 68–69; and “The Causes of Industrial Depression,” Nation, 27 (3 Oct. 1878), 206–7.

18 “The Difficulties of Arbitration,” Nation, 14 (8 Feb. 1872), 84. Also see “The Use of the Geneva Arbitration,” Nation, 15 (29 Aug. 1872), 133–34, and “Peace,” Nation, 11 (24 Dec. 1870), 432–34.

19 “Arbitration,” Nation, 40 (7 May 1885), 378.

20 For Godkin and Blaine see Armstrong, E. L. Godkin and American Foreign Policy; and a number of letters in Armstrong, The Gilded Age Letters: to Charles Eliot Norton, 22 March 1876, 232–33; to James Bryce, 28 Feb. 1882, 281–82; to Richard Watson Gilder, 9 June 1884, 313–14; to James Bryce, 17 Oct. 1884, 315–16; and to James Bryce, 23 Nov. 1884, 316–17.

21 “Peace,” Nation, 11 (24 Dec. 1870), 432–33.

22 “Something More about Our ‘Case’,” Nation, 14 (21 Mar. 1872), 181.

23 “Arbitration,” 378.

24 Hobsbawn, Eric, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987)Google Scholar; Schoonover, Thomas, Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003)Google Scholar; Torruella, Juan, Global Intrigues: The Era of the Spanish–American War and the Rise of the United States to World Power (San Juan: La Editorial, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2007)Google Scholar. Also see Ferguson, Niall, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York: Basic Books, 2003)Google Scholar; idem, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). Of course many historians have examined and continue to examine American imperialism in a national rather than an international context. See Ninkovich, Frank, The United States and Imperialism (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001)Google Scholar; and Beisner, Robert L., From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865–1900 (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1986)Google Scholar.

25 See “The Danger of the Hour,” 357; or this essay at n.12.

26 “A Propos of the Philippines,” Nation, 67 (22 Sept. 1898), 216.

27 “What to Do with the Philippines,” Nation, 67 (6 Oct. 1898), 254.

28 Godkin, E. L., “The Conditions of Good Colonial Government,” Forum, 27 (April 1899), 196Google Scholar.

29 “Protectorates,” Nation, 8 (21 Jan. 1869), 46.

30 “The Annexation Fever,” Nation, 8 (15 April 1869), 289–90.

31 For examples of the traditional view see Beisner, Twelve against Empire, 232–35; Sproat, “The Best Men”, 29–36. For the reevaluation see Butler, Critical Americans, 8, 104–5.

32 “The St. Domingo Row,” Nation, 11 (29 Dec. 1870), p. 432.

33 “The Momentous Decision,” Nation, 65 (16 Dec. 1897), 469.

34 “Protectorates,” Nation, 8 (21 Jan. 1869), 44–46.

35 “What Is the Use of Going to College,” Nation, 4 (4 April 1867), 275.

36 “General Harrison on Hawaii,” Nation, 57 (23 Nov. 1893), 384.

37 “Democratic Fatalism,” Nation, 67 (1 Dec. 1898), 404.

38 “The Genesis of Our Samoan Trouble,” Nation, 48 (7 Feb. 1889), 108.

39 “Straight Lines,” Nation, 66 (13 Jan. 1898), 23–24.

40 For carpetbaggers and the South see the “New San Domingo Scheme,” Nation, 16 (23 Jan. 1873), 52.

41 “Modern Law Makers,” Nation, 47 (20 Dec. 1888), 493.

42 See Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism; McClintock, Anne, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar; McCartney, Paul T., Power and Progress: American National Identity, the War of 1898, and the Rise of American Imperialism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

43 “Imperialism,” Nation, 65 (30 Dec. 1897), 511.

44 “Patriotism,” Nation, 54 (4 Feb. 1892), 83.

45 “Concerning War as a Remedy,” Nation, 54 (28 Jan. 1892), 65.

46 “Mr. Lowell,” Nation, 40 (28 May 1885), 436.

47 For the Alabama Controversy see Cook, Adrian, The Alabama Claims: American Politics and Anglo-American Relations, 1865–1872 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

48 For example, see “Unfaithful Counselors,” Nation, 67 (29 Sept. 1898), 235–36; and “Public Opinion and Empire,” Nation, 67 (13 Oct. 1898), 270.

49 “The Canal Treaty,” Nation, 39 (25 Dec. 1884), 538–39.

50 “The Nicaragua Canal,” Nation, 39 (18 Dec. 1884), 516.

51 See Semmel, Bernard, Liberalism and Naval Strategy: Ideology, Interest, and Sea Power during the Pax Britannica (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986)Google Scholar.

52 “Fictitious War,” Nation, 58 (29 March 1894), 225.

53 See “Navalism,” Nation, 54 (21 Jan. 1892), 44; and “Militarism in a Republic,” Nation, 62 (5 March 1896), 190.

54 “The New Political Force,” Nation, 66 (5 May 1898), 336.

55 “The Secret of Warriorism,” Nation, 54 (24 March 1892), 223. Also see “The Influence of the Press,” Nation, 65 (25 Nov. 1897), 410–11; “The New Political Force,” Nation, 66 (5 May 1898), 336; “Literature and War,” Nation, 67 (6 Oct. 1898), 252–53.

56 “Military and Warlike Nations,” Nation, 69 (26 Oct. 1899). Though Godkin writes that he draws this distinction from a military writer it is remarkably similar to Herbert Spencer's division of the world's social and political structures into militant and industrial. See Semmel, The Liberal Ideal of the Demons of Empire, 104–6.

57 “Military and Warlike Nations,” 69.

58 “The Education of War,” Nation, 66 (21 Apr. 1898), 296.

59 On liberal political economy see Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism; Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England; Silberner, The Problem of War in Nineteenth Century Economic Thought; Anthony Howe, “Free Trade and Global Order: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Vision,” in Duncan, Victorian Visions of Global Order, 26–46.

60 “‘Losses’ in Foreign Trade,” Nation, 53 (10 Dec. 1891), 443.

61 “The Real Problem,” Nation, 61 (26 Dec. 1895), 458.

62 “Peace,” Nation, 11 (24 Dec. 1870), 432–34.

63 “Mr. Foster on International Trade,” Nation, 39 (18 Dec. 1884), 517; and “‘Losses’ in Foreign Trade,” 443.

64 “War or Peace,” Nation, 66 (21 April 1898), 297.

65 Armstrong, The Gilded Age Letters, to James Bryce, 18 March 1901, 542.