What has really been unsettled, if anything, by the Peace of Paris and the preceding war, has been the current American idea as to the sphere of national activities, and the power under the Constitution for their extension. It is perfectly true that the people did not wish for more territory, and never dreamed of distant colonies. There had always been a party that first opposed and then belittled the acquisition of Alaska. There was no considerable popular support since the Civil War for filibustering expeditions of the old sort against Cuba. There was genuine reluctance to take the steps which recent circumstances and the national committals for half a century made almost unavoidable in the Sandwich Islands. Now suddenly the United States found itself in possession of Cuba, Porto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The first impression was one of great popular perplexity. What was to be done with them? Must they be developed through the territorial stage into independent States in the Union? or, if not, how govern or get rid of them? What place was there in the American system for territories that were never to be States, for colonies, or for the rule of distant subject races? Up to this time, from the outbreak of the war, the Administration had found the American people united in its support as they had hardly been united for a century. The South vied with the North, the West forgot the growing jealousy of the East, the poor the new antagonism to the rich, and the wildest cow-boys from Arizona and New Mexico marched fraternally beside scions of the oldest and richest families from New York, under the orders of a great Secessionist cavalry general.