The campaign aroused deep feeling on both sides and was warmly contested in the Central States. It became apparent early in the cam paign that the Democratic ticket would carry the Western and Southern States and that the Republican ticket would sweep the Eastern States. A very large vote was polled, total that year being nearly 2,000,000 in excess of the total vote of four years before. The Republican party secured a popular plurality of 601,854. The electoral vote stood: McKinley and Hobart, Bryan and Sewall, 176.
Between 1896 and 1900 there was an im provement in industrial conditions, an increase in the volume of money and a series of wars throughout the world. In 1898 the United States interfered in behalf of the Cubans and became involved in a war with Spain, which war resulted in Cuban independence; but during the war a naval victory in the Philippines put this nation in temporary control of those islands and resulted in our possession of them as an indemnity for the expenses incurred in behalf of the Cubans. The cession of the Philippine Islands to the United States raised a question which has not yet been settled. The sentiment is at present divided, the Democrats favoring the immediate promise that independ ence will be given as 'soon as a stable govern ment is established, this independence to be accompanied by protection from outside inter ference. Some of the Republicans desire that the Philippine Islands be held under a colonial system and others desire that the islands be given a territorial form of government with a view to ultimate statehood.
The Democratic convention which met at Kansas City, 4 July 1900, endorsed the Declara tion of Independence and adopted the following platform: We, the representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, assembled in national convention on the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Inde pendence, do reaffirm our faith in that immortal proclama tion of the inalienable rights of man and our allegiance to the Constitution framed in harmony therewith by the fathers of the Republic. We hold with the United States Supreme Court that the Declaration of Independence is the spirit of our government, of which the Constitution is the form and letter.
We declare again that all governments instituted among men derive their Just powers from the consent of the gov erned; that any government not based upon the consent of the governed is tyranny,. and that to impose upon any
people a government of force is to substitute the methods of imperialism for those of a republic. We hold that the Constitution follows the flag, and denounce the doctrine that an Executive or Congress, deriving their existence and their powers from the Constitution, can exercise lawful authority beyond it or in violation of it.
We assert that no nation can long endure half republic and half empire, and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.
Believing in these fundamental principles, we denounce the Porto Rican law, enacted by a Republican Congress against the protest and opposition of the Democratic mi nority, as a bold and open violation of the nation's organic law and a flagrant breech of the national good faith. It imposes upon the people of Porto Rico a government with out their consent and taxation without representation. It dishonors the American people by repudiating a solemn pledge made in their behalf by the commanding general of our army, which the Porto Ricans welcomed to a peaceful and tuiresisted occupation of their land. It doomed to poverty and distress a people whose helplessness appeals with peculiar force to our Justice and magnanimity.
In this, the fast act of its imperialistic programme, the Republican party seeks to commit the United States to a colonial policy inconsistent with republican institutions and condemned by the Supreme Court m numerous decisions.
We condemn and denounce the Philippine policy of the present administration. It has involved the public in unnecessary war, sacrificed the lives of many of our noblest sons and placed the United States, previously known and applauded throughout the world as the champion of freedom, in the false and un-American position of crushing with mili tary force the efforts of our former allies to achieve liberty and self-government. The Filipinos cannot be citizens with out endangering our civilization; they cannot be subjects without imperiling our form of government, and as we are not willing to surrender our civilization or to convert the republic into an empire, we favor an immediate declaration of the nation's purpose to give the Filipinos: first, a stable form of ,V second, independence; and, third, protection from outside interference, such as has been given for nearly a century to the republics of Central and South America.