=Peace Negotiations.=—­When the day for the first session of the conference arrived, the government at Washington apparently had not made up its mind on the final disposition of the Philippines.  Perhaps, before the battle of Manila Bay, not ten thousand people in the United States knew or cared where the Philippines were.  Certainly there was in the autumn of 1898 no decided opinion as to what should be done with the fruits of Dewey’s victory.  President McKinley doubtless voiced the sentiment of the people when he stated to the peace commissioners on the eve of their departure that there had originally been no thought of conquest in the Pacific.

The march of events, he added, had imposed new duties on the country.  “Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines,” he said, “is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship cannot be indifferent.  It is just to use every legitimate means for the enlargement of American trade.”  On this ground he directed the commissioners to accept not less than the cession of the island of Luzon, the chief of the Philippine group, with its harbor of Manila.  It was not until the latter part of October that he definitely instructed them to demand the entire archipelago, on the theory that the occupation of Luzon alone could not be justified “on political, commercial, or humanitarian grounds.”  This departure from the letter of the peace protocol was bitterly resented by the Spanish agents.  It was with heaviness of heart that they surrendered the last sign of Spain’s ancient dominion in the far Pacific.

=The Final Terms of Peace.=—­The treaty of peace, as finally agreed upon, embraced the following terms:  the independence of Cuba; the cession of Porto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States; the settlement of claims filed by the citizens of both countries; the payment of twenty million dollars to Spain by the United States for the Philippines; and the determination of the status of the inhabitants of the ceded territories by Congress.  The great decision had been made.  Its issue was in the hands of the Senate where the Democrats and the Populists held the balance of power under the requirement of the two-thirds vote for ratification.

=The Contest in America over the Treaty of Peace.=—­The publication of the treaty committing the United States to the administration of distant colonies directed the shifting tides of public opinion into two distinct channels:  support of the policy and opposition to it.  The trend in Republican leadership, long in the direction marked out by the treaty, now came into the open.  Perhaps a majority of the men highest in the councils of that party had undergone the change of heart reflected in the letters of John Hay, Secretary of State.  In August of 1898 he had hinted, in a friendly letter to Andrew Carnegie, that he sympathized with the latter’s opposition to “imperialism”; but he had added quickly:  “The only question