In the 19th century, it was unusual for anyone to use the name America. Most people referred to the United States. Searching through all the public statements and messages of the presidents from the nation's founding to 1898, one encounters only 11 references to the country as America, about one per decade. America doesn't appear in all the patriotic songs of the era. It's not in "Yankee Doodle" or the "Star-Spangled Banner". But after 1898, all this changed. This was the year that the United States acquired territories in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, which collectively contained an estimated 8 million non-white people. This was about 10% of the US population, and nearly the size of the African-American population (8.8 million). The US continued to acquire Hawai'i and half of Samoa. By the time its expansionist spree had stopped, it had gained more than seven thousand islands holding 8.5 million people. Counting Alaska, the overseas empire covered an area as large as the US had been in 1784, with a population more than twice its size. This expansion caused a trilemma for the US. The country had been founded on republicanism and white supremacy. It could not expand to territories with large non-white populations and hold on to both. Republicanism stood for the inalienable rights of man and forbade taxation without representation, whilst white supremacy meant that coloured people could have neither rights nor representation. William Jennings Bryan argued against empire and ran against McKinley in 1896 and 1900 on an anti-imperialist platform. Behind him were African Americans such as W.E.B. Dubois, as well as hardline white supremacists such as Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina. Andrew Carnegie offered to buy the Philippines for $20 million so he could set it free. The presidents of Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, Michigan, and Northwestern also threw in their support. Imperialists offered a different solution, one that would allow the US to keep its overseas territories. They were willing to sacrifice republicanism, especially when it came to "backward races". Meanwhile, the native populations of the overseas territories were hoping for a third option: jettison white supremacy. However, this option was never on the table. Empire was too seductive, and the imperialists won the day. Thus the United States became "America", an amalgam of republicanism for the majority-white mainland states, and colonial rule for the rest. --- Source: [[How to Hide an Empire]]