ABSTRACT
"The year 1898 is a great landmark in the history of the United States," wrote William Graham Sumner, and virtually every American novelist or poet who thought about such matters concurred. American writers flocked to the anti-imperialist cause: Democrat, Republican, Populist, socialist, high Brahmin and low prole, from the roughest frontier humorist to the rarefied Henrys, Adams and James. Imperialism was working a less subtle alteration on American civilization. Even more than the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War brought within the American ambit persons of—however distinguished and venerable their culture—strikingly alien stock. Informal strictures on public speech, which are usually far more rigid and confining than legal bans, were fewer in 1899 than today, and American poets had a field day skewering their jingo brethren.
