On January 9th, 1900, Senator Albert J. Beveridge gave one of the most ignorant speeches a Senator could give to his colleagues. His ideas within the speech were greedy and would have made our founding fathers roll over in their grave. In his speech he listed reason after reason for taking over the Philippines and many of them were not proven very well. Beveridge gives about five poorly thought out reasons justifying Americas attempt to colonize the Philippines. His fives things were trade, resources, religion, the natives were "barbarous," and because he wanted to keep up with other countries. This speech was given after the Treaty of Paris was signed by President McKinley.
The Treaty of Paris was signed on December 10th 1898 and it declared that Cuba was to go free, but Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines were to be ceded to the United States. This was a huge step back for the United States because we built this country on the idea of democracy and self government. They completely took this away from those three nations and decided their fate. This lead to a rebellion of the Filipino people and they choose Emilio Aguinaldo to be their president in this time of despair. This was the same guy who helped the Americans defeat the Spanish about two years prior during the Spanish-American War. This all leads up to what the Senator of Indiana, Albert J. Beveridge had to say on American Imperialism.
He starts out his speech talking about how the Philippines will forever be in the hands of the United States and that the United States will not retreat from it. He says "This island empire is the last land left in all of the oceans." He also states that we are better off by just taking it over and if it was a mistake we can always just give it back and everything will be alright, but if we do not take over the Philippines and then down the road it looks like we should have, we can not just go back on our word and take it over.