Answer:
This group believed that imperialist countries often govern people against their will. The empire established by Spain was a good example of this situation. For example, the people of the Philippines didn’t want to be ruled by Spain.
The United States was a country that established its government and its reputation by fighting against Great Britain, which ruled the people and didn’t follow the will of the people it ruled. The Anti-Imperialist League felt that if the United States was going to pursue an imperialist policy, it would be violating one of its founding principles: that government should be based on the consent of the governed. For example, when the United States took over the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, the people of the Philippines didn’t want the United States to rule them. As a result, American imperialist policy was inconsistent with the ideals of democracy and inconsistent with the concept of a government based on democratic principles. It was also inconsistent with the ideals of the American Revolution. The British colonists fought for their freedom because the British government didn’t listen to their wishes and concerns. If the United States became imperialist, it would be viewed as a country that was not any different than Spain or Great Britain.
A new kind of democracy
The founding generation of American statesmen was an exclusive class: with the exception of John Adams, every US president until 1824 was an elite slaveholder from Virginia. Born into wealth and raised to be masters of others, they saw themselves as belonging to a better class of people that were naturally suited to leadership. Many of them were alarmed by how eagerly ordinary Americans embraced the democratic spirit of the Revolution. They even sought to rein in the political influence of the masses when framing the US Constitution.
But the revolutionary ideals of equality and democracy had captured the imagination of the American people, who embraced the notion that political participation should be for everyone, not just property-owning elites. During the first half of the nineteenth century, barriers preventing white men from participating in politics fell across the United States. None of the new states entering the Union required white men to own property in order to vote, and by the Civil War, all but one of the original thirteen states had eliminated property requirements. Voters, not state legislatures, began to choose presidential electors.
This expansion of the franchise has been dubbed Jacksonian Democracy, as the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 became symbolic of the new “politics of the common man.” The older generation of politicians looked on in horror when Jackson’s inauguration turned into a stampede, breaking china and furniture in the White House.