This political cartoon,((Keppler, Udo J., Artist. A trifle embarrassed / Keppler. , 1898. N.Y.: Published by Keppler & Schwarzmann, August 3. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2012647587/. )) titled “A Trifle Embarrassed,” was created by Udo J. Keppler 1891. Keppler, born in 1872, started his career ((Glassmeyer, Emily. “Student Profile of Cartoonist Udo J. Keppler.”  Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. Columbus, OH. 2019. https://library.osu.edu/site/cartoons/2019/06/14/student-profile-of-cartoonist-udo-keppler/ )) of political cartooning from a young age, learning from and working with his father. This specific cartoon was published in 1898, in Puck Magazine which was founded by his father Joseph Keppler Sr. After the Civil War ended in 1865, The United States was fully engaged in isolationism even as other powerful nations began expanding. However, by the time this cartoon was published the United States was an Imperial power. According to Adam Burns, author of American Imperialism: The Territorial Expansion of the United States, 1783-2013, “Almost all historians would accept that the United States had an ‘imperialist moment’ at the end of the nineteenth century when, in the wake of the Spanish-American War of 1898, it annexed far-flung territories but withheld full admission to the union.”((Burns, Adam. “Introduction: Defining an Empire.” In American Imperialism: The Territorial Expansion of the United States, 1783-2013, 1-7. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Accessed December 3, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0514c.5.)) America’s early conquests included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, the annexation Texas in 1845 after it’s rebellion from Mexico which resulted in the Mexican-American War and also helped with the addition of the New Mexico territory, and California which was also relinquished by Mexico to the United States in the Mexican-American War. These States are depicted by Keppler as children frolicking inside a gateway labelled “U.S. Asylum.” These territories were relatively close, if not exactly adjacent, to already established United States territory. Keppler clearly saw the addition of these territories as providing asylum to their inhabitants. This is likely due to the very popular vision of “Manifest Destiny” during this time period. American’s, including Keppler, felt that America had a God-given destiny to expand from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific Ocean. By 1898, this vision had been seen through and the United States certainly extended from sea to sea.

The vision of Manifest Destiny shifted from the North American continent, to a more worldly one. The United States began its journey of imperialism in the 1870s with Samoa and Hawaii, both of which are still United States territories today. Hawaii was annexed as a State in 1898, following the United States overthrowing their monarch Queen Liliʻuokalani. Hawaii’s annexation resulted in a more aggressive imperialist push that resulted in the Spanish-American War, or the War of 1898, over Cuba. Cuba had been a colony of Spain but, due to its proximity, did a lot of trading with the United States. Cuba’s rebellion against Spain began the War, which ended that same year in Cuba’s independence. The Treaty of Paris which ended the war, also gifted Puerto Rico to the United States. At the time, the United States was looking to establish colonial rule in the Philippines which incited the Phillippine-American War in 1899 after this cartoons publication.((Eperjesi, John. The Imperialist Imaginary : Visions of Asia and the Pacific in American Culture. Reencounters with Colonialism–New Perspectives on the Americas. Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Press, 2005. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=nlebk&AN=761106&site=eds-live.)) Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines are all pictured by Keppler as crying babies in a basket that is being handed to Uncle Sam and Columbia by Manifest Destiny. The depiction of these countries is an interesting peek into the way that Americans viewed these other countries, at least for the author of this cartoon they seemed to him to be difficult to handle. Also, perhaps, that these countries were incapable of governing themselves due to the racist view that man white people had of any non-European.((Brody, David. Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and Imperialism in the Philippines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=nlebk&AN=336764&site=eds-live. )) This seems especially true when depicted in contrast with the “children” already inside the gates. Uncle Sam serves as a common personified symbol for the United States itself created in the early 19th century. Columbia((“Goddess of Liberty Figure.” National Museum of American History. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_693815 )), the woman draped in stars, expressed a similar symbology for the United States and sometimes for the concept of liberty that was ever so popular in American culture. In the caption of the cartoon, Keppler has Uncle Sam saying: “Gosh! I wish they wouldn’t come quite so many in a bunch; but, if I’ve got to take them, I guess I can do as well by them as I’ve done by the others!” It is made clear especially through this captioning that Keppler, and likely most Americans, viewed each new addition, no matter how it was acquired, as being rescued by the graces of the United States.