Page:Anglo-American relations during the Spanish-American war (IA abz5883.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/17



A prejudice or opinion when cherished by a people through several generations becomes embedded in common belief. The latter stage having once been reached, the feeling or judgment of the people is no longer susceptible to calm reason or sane argument. Such was the force of the anti-British feeling held by a great many Americans at the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century. It was an hostility rooted in colonial history and handed down by successive generations, each one finding some new grievance to add.

An analysis of those factors which tended to hold the