The Path of Empire: A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power

by Carl Russell Fish

It was not, however, the urging of these forces alone which made the undecided feel that the annexation of the Philippines was bound to come. The situation itself seemed to offer no other solution. Gradually evidence as to the local conditions reached America. The Administration was anxious for the commissioners to have the latest information, and, as Admiral Dewey remained indispensable at Manila, General Merritt was ordered to report at Paris, where he arrived on the 6th of October. He was of the opinion that the Americans must remain in the Philippines, and his reports were sustained by a cablegram from Dewey on the 14th of October reading: "Spanish authority has been completely destroyed in Luzon, and general anarchy prevails without the limits of the city and Bay of Manila. Strongly probable that islands to the south will fall into the same state soon." The history of the previous few years and existing conditions made it highly improbable that Spanish domination could ever be restored. The withdrawal of the United States would therefore not mean the reestablishment of Spanish rule but no government at all.

As to the regime which would result from our withdrawal, Admiral Dewey judged from the condition of those areas where Spanish authority had already ceased and that of the Americans had not yet been established. "Distressing reports," he cabled, "have been received of inhuman cruelty practised on religious and civil authorities in other parts of these islands. The natives appear unable to govern." It was highly probable, in fact, that if the United States did not take the islands, Spain would sell her vanishing equity in the property to some other power which possessed the equipment necessary to conquer the Philippines. To many this eventuality did not seem objectionable, as is indicated by the remark, already quoted, of an American official to certain Germans: "We don't want the Philippines; why don't you take them?" That this attitude was foolishly Quixotic is obvious, but more effective in the molding of public opinion was the feeling that it was cowardly.

In such a changing condition of public sentiment, McKinley was a better index of what the majority wanted than a referendum could have been. In August he stated: "I do not want any ambiguity to be allowed to remain on this point. The negotiators of both countries are the ones who shall resolve upon the permanent advantages which we shall ask in the archipelago, and decide upon the intervention, disposition, and government of the Philippines." His instructions to the commissioners actually went farther:

"Avowing unreservedly the purpose which has animated all our effort, and still solicitous to adhere to it, we cannot be unmindful that, without any desire or design on our part, the war has brought us new duties and responsibilities which we must meet and discharge as becomes a great nation on whose growth and career from the beginning the Ruler of Nations has plainly written the high command and pledge of civilization.

"Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship cannot be indifferent.... Asking only the open door for ourselves, we are ready to accord the open door to others.

"In view of what has been stated, the United States cannot accept less than the cession in full rights and sovereignty of the island of Luzon."

The American commissioners were divided. Day favored the limited terms of the instructions; Davis, Frye, and Reid wished the whole group of the Philippines; Gray emphatically protested against taking any part of the islands. On the 26th of October, Hay telegraphed that the President had decided that "the cession must be of the whole Archipelago or none." The Spanish commissioners objected strongly to this new development, and threatened to break off the negotiations which otherwise were practically concluded. This outcome would have put the United States in the unfortunate position of continuing a war which it had begun in the interests of Cuba for the quite different purpose of securing possession of the Philippines. The Spanish were probably not without hopes that under these changed conditions they might be able to bring to their active assistance that latent sympathy for them which existed so strongly in Europe. Nor was the basis of the claim of the United States entirely clear. On the 3d of November the American commissioners cabled to the President that they were convinced that the occupation of Manila did not constitute a conquest of the islands as a whole.

By this time, however, the President had decided that the United States must have the islands. On the 13th of November, Hay telegraphed that the United States was entitled to an indemnity for the cost of the war. This argument was not put forward because the United States wished indemnity but to give a technical basis for the American claim to the Philippines. In the same cablegram, Hay instructed the commissioners to offer Spain ten or twenty millions for all the islands. Upon this financial basis the treaty was finally concluded; it was signed on December 10, 1898; and ratifications were exchanged on April 11, 1899.

The terms of the treaty provided, first, for the relinquishment of sovereignty over Cuba by Spain. The island was to be occupied by the United States, in whose hands its subsequent disposition was left. All other Spanish islands in the West Indies, together with Guam in the Ladrones, were ceded to the United States. The whole archipelago of the Philippines, with water boundaries carefully but not quite accurately drawn, was ceded to the United States, which by the same article agreed to pay Spain $20,000,000. All claims for indemnity or damages between the two nations, or either nation and the citizens of the other, were mutually relinquished, the United States assuming the adjudication and settlement of all claims of her own citizens against Spain.

This treaty, even more than the act of war, marked a turning point in the relation of the United States to the outside world. So violent was the opposition of those who disapproved, and so great the reluctance of even the majority of those who approved, to acknowledge that the United States had emerged from the isolated path which it had been treading since 1823, that every effort was made to minimize the significance of the beginning of a new era in American history. It was argued by those delving into the past that the Philippines actually belonged to the Western Hemisphere because the famous demarcation line drawn by Pope Alexander VI, in 1493, ran to the west of them; it was, indeed, partly in consequence of that line that Spain had possessed the islands. Before Spain lost Mexico her Philippine trade had actually passed across the Pacific, through the Mexican port of Acapulco, and across the Atlantic. Yet these interesting historical facts were scarcely related in the mind of the public to the more immediate and tangible fact that the annexation of the Philippines gave the United States a far-flung territory situated just where all the powerful nations of the world were then centering their interest.