After the victory in the Spanish-American War, the United States was known as a world power. Many Americans believed that the nation should expand and claim land overseas due to Manifest Destiny being already complete. During the war, the United States acquired the Philippine archipelago located in Southeast Asia which made the Philippines in the hands of the United States in which President McKinley prayed over what to do with it. The supporters of the annexation of the Philippines gave many reasons why annexation was positive and helpful to the country, one of them being the White Mans Burden”: The idea that Americans are superior and they have a moral duty to civilize and sanitize the Filipino people. But however, the most important factor that led to President McKinleys decision to annex the Philippines is the idea that it could become the window for the United States to lucrative Chinese markets. This opportunity provided lots of raw materials and overseas markets for the country as it rapidly industrialized materials. This decision by McKinley became a part of the Treaty of Paris with Spain, which the United States Senate then had to ratify or reject. While many Americans supported and agreed with McKinley and the annexation, the ant
i-imperialists believed that annexing the Philippines meant that Filipino nationalists would fight against the United States as they had fought against Spain. The hypocrisy of the annexation was clear to the Philippines because Americans had fought the war with Spain in order to free the country of Cuba, and now we’re taking control of the Philippines. The United States had always been fighting for democracy and if the United States annexed the Philippines, it would be against their beliefs and opinions in self-determination. Labor unions, like the AFL, were against the annexation because of the fear of competition from cheap Filipino labor. Despite the opposition, President McKinley still decided on annexing the Philippines which caused more chaos. The Filipinos refused to be controlled and used by another foreign country and rebelled which resulted in two years of guerilla warfare which resulted in the Filipinos dream of independence being crushed. During this era, the Supreme Court ruled that the Filipino people would not be entitled to the full rights of American citizenship. The United States took overseas colonies with no intention of ever making them states, unlike the territories that were added to the Union during Manifest Destiny.