I have mingled freely
This docoument is written by a black solider who is in the Phillippine islands in 1899. He speaks about the horrors of expansion. He writes about the American Soilders as opposed to spaniards. he says even though the the spanish have very harsh laws they treat the people better as opposed to Americans who treat them same as They would treat a black person in U.S. at that time. He hears testimony from american soliders who don't get paid enough and they make it up in other ways like grave robbing. He even speaks of a Soilder who cut off a womans hand to get a really nice bracelet. It seems the horrors of war happens no matter which country is fighting. He belives that we should not take the islands this way and that its "high way robbery and not expansion".
posted by Anonymous at 12:05 PM
1 Comments:
A good summary of the facts stated in the letter. But how does this relate to a class about propaganda and mass persuasion? What does the harsh reality described here tell us about the distance between the idealism of speeches and the cruelties of warfare? Is this a letter describing the emancipation of a nation? Or is it unfair to compare what we practice with what we preach? I think that many Americans firmly believed that we were acting in the best interests of the populations that we liberated from Spain. The outcome of that war does not necessarily negate our good intentions. Perhaps it should make us think twice about the difficulties of intervention and nation building.
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