CHAPTER VIII THE STATUS OF DEPENDENCIES (1898-1901) HE annexations of 1898 raised questions new to the Constitution and to American experience. The McKinley administration took the view that the Constitution and laws of the United States did not apply to newly acquired territory until extended by Congress; while Congress later assumed that in legislating for the territories it was not necessarily bound by all the provisions of the Constitution. After two years of popular discussion as to whether "the Constitution followed the flag," the Supreine Court of the United States sustained the positions taken by the president and by Congress. It seenis strange that, after a century of experience in annexing new territory, this question should still have been open to debate. There had never been a time when the territory of the United States consisted solely of states. When the Constitution was adopted, the bounds of the United States embraced an area organized into thirteen states and also a vast, undeveloped region west of the Alleghanies. A part of this national domain was subject to the Ordi |