Identity elements
Reference code
Name and location of repository
Level of description
Title
Date(s)
- 1898 (Creation)
Extent
5 pages
Name of creator
Biographical history
Model School student and Thencanic Society member, 1890s. Later a Princeton graduate and a judge of the U.S. District Court for New Jersey. Grandson of Trenton mayor (1877-1879) Daniel Bodine. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7743728/joseph_lamb-bodine
Content and structure elements
Scope and content
Content note: This document contains racist and white supremacist language.
As part of his oration at a meeting of the Thencanic Society, Joseph Bodine prepared these remarks on future U.S. foreign policy. Just months after the end of hostilities between Spain and the United States (and before a peace treaty had been signed!), Bodine takes the "anti-imperialist" tack, although he couches his position in racist and white supremacist ideas about the supposed inability for self-government of the peoples in the U.S.'s new colonies. His perspective aligned with many of the so-called anti-imperialists following the Spanish-American War, in that he opposed U.S. expansion but did so on the grounds that such conquered peoples were unfit to live under the U.S. Constitution. In all, this provides an interesting snapshot of one political stance in the immediate aftermath of the war. Transcription included.