Night Came to Me

By Luisa A. Igloria on June 30, 2024

Excerpt from William McKinley's 1899 speech before a delegation 
of Methodist church leaders, defending  his decision to support 
the annexation of the Philippines:  

"...I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light 
and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came 
to me this way—I don't know how it was, but it came: (1) That we 
could not give them back to Spain—that would be cowardly 
and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France 
and Germany—our commercial rivals in the Orient—that would be 
bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them 
to themselves—they were unfit for self-government—and they 
would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's 
was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them 
all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize 
them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our 
fellow-men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and 
went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for 
the chief engineer of the War Department (our map-maker), and I 
told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States 
(pointing to a large map on the wall of his office), and there 
they are, and there they will stay while I am President!"

[Erasure/Strikeout Poem:]

night came to me

anarchy and misrule

the chief War department

a map on the wall