As the ink dried on the Constitution in 1787, the Founding Fathers--having just ended Britain's colonial hegemony--would have likely been very surprised to know that a little more than a century later the United States would have colonies of its own. From this perspective, America's Gilded Age imperialism is quite a shock. It is therefore not surprising that many would later view the period as Samuel Flagg Bemis did: a "Great Aberration" (May 4). Was American imperialism …showed first 75 words of 1620 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1620 total…even if the United States is not currently in the business of grabbing island colonies, it is still very much interested in one of the major objectives of Gilded Age imperialism, the opening of foreign markets. From this perspective, the events of 1898 do not appear to be a Great Aberration so much as the most vivid expression of an expansionist theme in American foreign policy born prior to the Civil War and still alive today.