The following is an excerpt from an essay written by William Graham Sumner, titled "On Empire and the Phillippines" and written during the Spanish-American War in 1898. Though an avid supporter of Social Darwinism, Sumner criticizes the US's imperial ambition to annex the Philippines, arguing that American expansion overseas will inevitably drag the nation into endless, resource-draining wars to suppress indigenous uprisings. Though some Americans argued that it was the US's duty to "bless" the people of the Philippines as well as other overseas populations with civilization, Sumner strongly argued against spreading the American way of life abroad, advocating instead for Americans to stick to the nation's founding principle of liberty and "[leave] people to live out their own lives in their own way, while [Americans] do the same."
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