They said colonies halfway around the world would be costly to protect. A large army and navy would be needed. They said colonial policies violated important democratic ideas upon which the United States had been built. We went to war with Spain, they said, to free Cuba from its colonial masters...not to make ourselves masters of the Philippines.

DOUG JOHNSON: Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts led the Senate fight for the treaty. The opposition was led by the other Massachusetts senator, George Hoar, also a Republican.

Senator Lodge appealed to national pride. He urged the Senate not to pull down the American flag. Rejection of the treaty, he said, would dishonor the president and the country. It would show that we are not ready as a nation to enter into great questions of foreign policy.

Senator Albert Beveridge of Ohio also spoke in support of the treaty. Senator Beveridge said the Pacific would be of great importance in coming years. Therefore, he said, the power that rules the Pacific will be the power that rules the world. And, with the Philippines, that power is -- and forever will be – the United States.

STEVE EMBER: Senator Hoar spoke strongly against the treaty. He said that taking over the Philippines would be a dangerous break with America's past.

He said the greatest thing the United States had was its tradition of freedom. To take the Philippines, he said, would deny that tradition. It would violate the Constitution and the ideas contained in the Declaration of Independence: the idea that all men are created equal...and that government exists only with the permission of the governed.