An American

There are many characteristics that are essential to true Americanism; among these, none is more prominent than an inborn desire, not only to obtain personal liberty, but, also, to see justice done to others.
We, as Americans, say, with loving pride, that we are citizens of that one fair land whose single boast has always been that it was free .
Oppression of the weak and ignorant, by those who are wiser and stronger than they, has, always, aroused in us pronounced, and, often, openly expressed, indignation. More than once, have we, as a nation, arrayed ourselves upon the side of the down-trodden and pitiful, and, in every such instance, we have greatly increased and enhanced the well-being of those whose cause we have espoused.
We have never gone out of our way to look for trouble, being more inclined to attend to our own affairs than to oversee those of our neighbors, and, yet, when, repeatedly, gross acts of injustice and cruelty have been forced under our observation, we have, at times, been aroused to a state of what we have honestly believed to be righteous indignation, and, in these circumstances, we have conducted ourselves in accordance with our ability and the fervor of our convictions.
Prior to the evening of February fifteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, our relations with the government of Spain were amicable; while we, as a people, sympathized, to some extent, with the uprisings of native Cubans, yet, those who were at the head of our national affairs did not, in any instance, uphold or palliate the unlawful acts of the insurrectionists; but, during the hours of darkness of that never-to-be-forgotten night, a dastardly and totally inexcusable deed, in spite of the recent renewal of our friendly intercourse with the Spanish government, made of that nation a foe to be contended against with all the might that was in us.
While our only object, in the beginning of the Spanish-American war, was to teach the Spaniard the lesson he had so richly deserved to learn, at the same time, as the results of autocratic misrule were brought, more and more closely, under our direct observation, we took much honest pride in the reflection that we were not only resenting, as became free and enlightened men and women, an injury to our own well-beloved country, but that we were, at the same time, giving to a people, whose necks were raw and bleeding from the yoke of a tyrannical exercise of absolute power, an opportunity to throw off that yoke, and become, in due time, a self-governed and a self-respecting and an independent nation.