of "Trusts."
In the elections of 1892, when Cleveland was returned for a second time
after an interval of Republican rule under Harrison, the Populists
showed unexpected strength and carried several Western States. In 1896
Democrats and Populists combined to nominate William Jennings Bryan as
their candidate, with a programme the main plank of which was the free
coinage of silver, which, it was thought, would weaken the hold of the
moneyed interests of the East upon the industries of the Continent. The
Eastern States, however, voted solid for the gold standard, and were
joined, in the main, by those Southern States which had not been
"reconstructed" and were consequently not included politically in the
"Solid South." The West, too, though mainly Bryanite, was not unanimous,
and McKinley, the Republican candidate, was returned. The Democratic
defeat, however, gave some indication of the tendencies which were to
produce the Democratic victory of 1916, when the West, with the aid of
the "Solid South," returned a President whom the East had all but
unanimously rejected.

McKinley's first term of office, saw the outbreak and victorious
prosecution of a war with Spain, arising partly out of American sympathy
with an insurrection which had broken out in Cuba, and partly out of the
belief, now pretty conclusively shown to have been unfounded, that the
American warship _Maine_, which was blown up in a Spanish harbour, had
been so destroyed at the secret instigation of the Spanish authorities.
Its most important result was to leave, at its conclusion, both Cuba and
the Philippine Islands at the disposal of the United States. This
practically synchronized with the highest point reached in this
country, just before the Boer War, by that wave of national feeling
called "Imperialism." America, for a time, seemed to catch its infection
or share its inspiration, as we may prefer to put it. But the tendency
was not a permanent one. The American Constitution is indeed expressly
built for expansion, but only where the territory acquired can be
thoroughly Americanized and ultimately divided into self-governing
States on the American pattern. To hold permanently subject possessions
which cannot be so treated is alien to its general spirit and intention.
Cuba was soon abandoned, and though the Philippines were retained, the
difficulties encountered in their subjection and the moral anomaly
involved in being obliged to wage a war of conquest