The sheer size of the Philippines would’ve prevented their statehood. With 100 million people, they’d have been entitled to 1/3rd the membership of Congress (although adjusted, would be 1/4th as the population of the U.S. would exceed 400m) or about 145 House members, most of them representing breathtakingly poverty-stricken areas and many of those would be Mohammadan Communists.
We’re fortunate the Filipinos wanted independence.
The South wanted Cuba to be a slave state. Of course, with the politics there, had Fidel been around if it had been made a state, he’d have just been another Democrat political boss, probably running the state from his lifetime Senate sinecure until going out feet first.
Yes, the Knights of the Golden Circle desired Cuba as another slave state but Spain still held possession of her when that idea was floated and Cuba wasn’t to become US territory until near the turn of the century, 47 years after the civil war broke out. The Philippines is only 5.5% Muslim versus 80.5% Roman Catholic and 10.8% Protestant.