they be developed through the territorial stage into
independent States in the Union? or, if not, how govern or get rid of
them? What place was there in the American system for territories that
were never to be States, for colonies, or for the rule of distant
subject races?

Up to this time, from the outbreak of the war, the Administration had
found the American people united in its support as they had hardly been
united for a century. The South vied with the North, the West forgot
the growing jealousy of the East, the poor the new antagonism to the
rich, and the wildest cow-boys from Arizona and New Mexico marched
fraternally beside scions of the oldest and richest families from New
York, under the orders of a great Secessionist cavalry general.

But now two parties presently arose. One held that there was no
creditable escape from the consequences of the war; that the
Government, having broken down the existing authority in the capital of
the Philippines, and practically throughout the archipelago, could
neither set up that authority again nor shirk the duty of replacing it;
that it was as easy and as constitutional to apply some modification of
the existing territorial system to the Philippines as it had been to
Alaska and the Aleutians; and that, while the task was no doubt
disagreeable, difficult, and dangerous, it could not be avoided with
honor, and would ultimately be attended with great profit. On the other
hand, some prominent members of the Administration party led off in
protests against the retention of the Philippines on constitutional,
humanitarian, and economic grounds, pronouncing it a policy absolutely
antagonistic to the principles of the Republic and the precursor of its
downfall. In proportion as the Administration itself inclined to the
former view, the opposition leaders fell away from the support they had
given during the war, and began to align themselves with those members
of the Administration party who had opposed the ratification of the
treaty. They were reinforced by a considerable body of educated and
conservative public opinion, chiefly at the East, and by a number of
trades-union and labor leaders, who had been brought to believe that
the new policy meant cheap labor and cheap manufactures in competition
with their own, together with a large standing army, to which they have
manifested great repugnance ever since the Chicago riots.

[Sidenote: Anti-Administration View of the Constituti