d American doctrine
as applicable to any race we may judge to be our inferior.

This doctrine will be applied hereafter, unless it be abandoned,
to the Negro at home. Senator Tillman of South Carolina well
said, and no gentleman in the Senate contradicted him: "Republican
leaders do not longer dare to call into question the justice
or the necessity of limiting Negro suffrage in the South."
The same gentleman said at another time: "I want to call your
attention to the remarkable change that has come over the
spirit of the dream of the Republicans. Your slogans of the
past--brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God--have gone
glimmering down through the ages. The brotherhood of man
exists no longer." These statements of Mr. Tillman have never
been challenged, and never can be.

I do not mean here to renew the almost interminable debate.
I will only make a very brief statement of my position:

The discussion began with the acquisition of Hawaii. Ever
since I came to the Senate I had carefully studied the matter
of the acquisition of Hawaii. I had become thoroughly satisfied
that it would be a great advantage to the people of the United
States, as well as for the people of Hawaii.

Hawaii is 2,100 miles from our Pacific coast. Yet if a line
be drawn from the point of our territory nearest Asia to the
Southern boundary of California, that line being the chord
of which our Pacific coast is the bow, Hawaii will fall this
side of it. Held by a great Nation with whom we were at war,
it would be a most formidable and valuable base of supplies.
We had sustained a peculiar relation to it. American missionaries
had redeemed the people from barbarism and Paganism. Many
of them, and their descendants, had remained in the Islands.
The native Hawaiians were a perishing race. They had gone
down from 300,000 to 30,000 within one hundred years.

The Japanese wanted it. The Portugese wanted it. Other nations
wanted it. But the Hawaiians seemed neither to know nor care
whether they wanted it or no. They were a perishing people.
Their only hope and desire and expectation was that in the
Providence of God they might lead a quiet, undisturbed life,
fishing, bathing, supplied with tropical fruits, and be let
alone.

We had always insisted that our relation to them was peculiar;
that they could not be permitted to fall under the dominion
of another power, even by their own consent. That had been
declared by our Department