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It's 1901 and we're at Faniel Hall in Boston.

Back in the halcyon days of the American Revolution, this was home-based to radicals like Sam Adams and John Hancock.

Here, in 1773, the first ever meeting over Boston's tea crisis was held

before the rabble steeped in patriotic fervor, famously boiled over

and dunked that tea in the harbor. But today, it's a brand new age, the dawn of the 20th century,

and Americans are confronting a new crisis filled with irony. Just two years earlier in 1890,

the Treaty of Paris had ended the Spanish-American War

and granted to the United States what it never planned to possess far-flung territories in the Pacific and beyond.

Colonies, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, a nation that had once struggled so mightily to shed its own

colonial skin had now molted into an imperial power. For the crowd crammed into this historic

hall, this is a gross betrayal of the principles upon which American blood had been shed.

From the rostrum, the speaker thunders.

The political philosophy that Jefferson embodied in the Declaration of Independence,

is it true?

Is it still an ideal for 20th century America,

freer and more prosperous than in the days of her youth?

War has plutocracy bred tyrants,

and we must give up our ancient faith.

How that question is answered

...