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The American Anti-Imperialist League was established in the United States on June 15, 1898 to battle the American annexation of the Philippines, officially called insular areas. The Anti-Imperialist League opposed annexation on economic, legal, and moral grounds. The original organization was founded in New England and was absorbed by a new national Anti-Imperialist League. Prominent statesman George S. Boutwell served as president from the League's inception in 1898 to his death in 1905. Lawyer and civil rights activist Moorfield Storey was president from 1905 until the League dissolved in 1921.

Many of the League's leaders were classical liberals and "Bourbon Democrats" (Grover Cleveland Democrats) who believed in free trade, a gold standard, and limited government; they opposed William Jennings Bryan's candidacy in the 1896 presidential election. Instead of voting for protectionist Republican William McKinley, however, many, including Edward Atkinson, Moorfield Storey, and Grover Cleveland, cast their ballots for the National Democratic Party presidential ticket of John M. Palmer and Simon Bolivar Buckner. The 1900 presidential election caused internal squabbles in the League. Particularly controversial was the League's endorsement of William Jennings Bryan, a renowned anti-imperialist but also the leading critic of the gold standard. A few League members, including Storey and Villard, organized a third party to both uphold the gold standard and oppose imperialism. This effort led to the formation of the National Party, which nominated Senator Donelson Caffery of Louisiana. The party quickly collapsed, however, when Caffery dropped out, leaving Bryan as the only anti-imperialist candidate.

Mark Twain was vice president of the league from 1901 until his death in 1910.^[1] An editorial in the Springfield Republican, the leading anti-imperialist daily newspaper in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, declared, "Mark Twain has suddenly become the most influential anti-imperialist and the most dreaded critic of the sacrosanct person in the White House that the country contains."^[2]

By the second decade of the twentieth century, the League was only a shadow of its former strength. Despite its anti-war record, it did not object to U.S. entry into World War I (though several individual members did oppose intervention). The Anti-Imperialist League disbanded in 1921.

Well-known members of the League included:

• Charles Francis Adams, Jr., retired brigadier general, former president of Union Pacific Railroad (1884-90), author
• Jane Addams, social reformer, sociologist, first woman to win Nobel Peace Prize
• Edward Atkinson, entrepreneur, abolitionist, classical liberal activist
• Ambrose Bierce, journalist, critic, writer
• George S. Boutwell, politician, author, former U.S. Treasury Secretary (1869-73)
• Andrew Carnegie, entrepreneur, industrialist, philanthropist
• Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), author, satirist, lecturer
• Grover Cleveland, former President of the United States (1885-89, 1893-97), Bourbon Democrat
• John Dewey, philosopher, psychologist, educational reformer
• Finley Peter Dunne, columnist, author, humorist
• Edwin Lawrence Godkin, co-founder and editor of The Nation (1865-99), publicist, writer
• Samuel Gompers, labor leader, founder and president of the American Federation of Labor (1886-1924)
• William Dean Howells, realist author, literary critic, editor
• William James, psychologist, philosopher, writer
• David Starr Jordan, ichthyologist, peace activist, university president
• Josephine Shaw Lowell, progressive reformer, founder of the New York Consumers League
• Edgar Lee Masters, poet, dramatist, author
• William Vaughn Moody, professor, poet, literary figure
• Carl Schurz, German revolutionary, retired brigadier general, former U.S. Interior Secretary (1877-81)
• Moorfield Storey, lawyer, former president of the American Bar Association (1896-97), first president of the NAACP (1909-15)
• William Graham Sumner, sociologist, classical economist, author
• Oswald Garrison Villard, journalist, classical liberal activist, later member of the America First Committee

• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1900,"Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000), 555-75.
• Mark Twain. Jim Zwick, ed. Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War. (Syracuse University Press: July 1, 1992) ISBN 0-8156-0268-5
• Jim Zwick, Friends of the Filipino People Bulletin
• Jim Zwick, Militarism and Repression in the Philippines
• Jim Zwick, Prodigally Endowed with Sympathy for the Cause: Mark Twain's Involvement with the Anti-Imperialist League (Ephemera Society of America (January 1, 1992) ASIN B0006R8RJ8

• Treaty of Paris
• New Imperialism
• Classical Liberalism
• History of United States imperialism

• Library of Congress webpage with short description
• The League's Platform, from the Internet History Sourcebooks Project at the History Department of Fordham University
• Recalling the Anti-Imperialist League - a fact-based article about the anti-imperialist league with some conclusions and parallels toward the end.
• Historical Documents pertaining to the Anti-Imperialist League, at Liberty and Anti-Imperialism.