US Presidency
1900

Spain has been ejected from the Western Hemisphere and our flag floats over her former territory. Cuba has been liberated and our guarantees to her people will be sacredly executed. A beneficent government has been provided for Porto Rico. The Philippines are ours and American authority must be supreme throughout the archipelago. There will be amnesty broad and liberal but no abatement of our rights, no abandonment of our duty. There must be no scuttle policy. We will fulfill in the Philippines the obligations imposed by the triumphs of our arms and by the treaty of peace; by international law, by the Nation's sense of honor, and, more than all, by the rights, interests, and conditions of the Philippine people themselves. No outside interference blocks the way to peace and a stable government. The obstructionists are here, not elsewhere.