Twain was not just an anti-imperialist, he was the most famous anti-imperialist in the country. He became the vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York and chronicled the expanding war with withering sarcasm. “There must be two Americas,” he mused. “One that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land.” For that second America, Twain proposed adding a few words to the Declaration of Independence: “Governments derive their just powers from the
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