"Practically all we know is that thousands of native Haitians have been killed by American Marines, and that many of our own gallant men have sacrificed their lives at the behest of an Executive department in order to establish laws drafted by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. … I will not empower an Assistant Secretary of the Navy to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets borne by U.S. Marines."
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Presidents of the United StatesRepublican Party (United States) politiciansUnited States presidential candidates, 1920Politicians from OhioUnited States presidential candidates, 1916
Original Language: English
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Speech during Warren Harding's 1920 presidential campaign, criticizing Woodrow Wilson's Haitian policies; quoted in Democracy at the Point of Bayonets (1999) by Mark Penceny, p. 2. (The Assistant Secretary of the Navy he refers to is Franklin Roosevelt, who was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1920).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding
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Warren G. Harding
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