ABSTRACT
Alpheus H. Snow graduated from Harvard Law School in 1883. He was a member of the executive council of the American Society of International Law and was a lecturer on colonial government at George Washington University from 1908 to 1909, reflecting an 'especial interest in the government of dependent and semi-civilized nations'. However, Snow did not believe the United States was an empire in the European tradition, which manifested Europeans' assumptions of the inequality of the people's of the world, not their equality. As Americans of the revolutionary era had rejected the British government's insistence on their inequality, Americans now could offer the world the same opportunity. America was no longer merely an asylum for people's realization of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but a global agent for these inalienable rights. More pertinent, Snow believed the Declaration of Independence grounded a policy for America's new territorial possessions.
