and the war closed with the American army in
possession of the most valuable of Spain's remaining colonies.

The Spanish and American peace commissioners met in Paris in October to
fix a basis for settlement. An American demand that Cuba should be set
free, without debt, and left to the tutelage of the United States, and
that Porto Rico should become an American possession, was formulated
early in the autumn. There was less certainty about the retention of the
Philippines, for here the desire for expansion was checked by a
conservative opposition to the adoption of foreign colonies. The evil
effects of imperialism were already being pictured by those who had
opposed the war. The difficulties of returning the islands to Spain were
greater than those involved in their retention, and McKinley finally
determined that the cession must include the Philippine Archipelago, and
the island of Guam in the Ladrones. The chief of the American
commissioners was William R. Day, who had become Secretary of State
early in the war, and who was succeeded in that post by John Hay. Under
his direction the Treaty of Paris was signed December 10, 1898.

The war and the conquest of the Philippines hastened another though
peaceful expansion. The Hawaiian Islands had been a matter of interest
to the United States since the American missionaries had begun to work
there in the thirties. A growing, American, sugar-raising population had
long hoped for annexation and had carried out a successful revolution
shortly before 1893. Harrison had concluded a treaty of annexation with
the provisional government, but Cleveland had refused to approve it. On
July 7, 1898, however, the Newlands Resolution accomplished the
annexation of the republic, and in 1900 a regular territorial government
was provided for the group of islands. The spectacular journey of the
Oregon around Cape Horn revived the demand for an isthmian canal.
Expansion suddenly took possession of the American mind, and a new idea
of duty, summed up by Rudyard Kipling in _The White Man's Burden_,
filled a large portion of the press.

The United States had suddenly passed from internal debate over free
silver to war and conquest. At the end of 1898 the War Department, that
had proved its inadequacy in nearly every phase of the war, was forced
to develop a colonial policy for Porto Rico and the Philippines and to
guide Cuba to independence. It was still under the direction of General
Russell A