(3) A third column under General MacArthur, proceeding up the railroad to the capture of Tarlac, the third insurgent capital, and thence still up the railroad to its end at Dagupan, driving the enemy’s forces before it toward the line held by the first two columns.
On October 12th, General Lawton moved up the Rio Grande from a place called Aryat, a few miles up stream from where the railroad crosses the river at Calumpit, driving the insurgents before him to the northward and westward. His command was made up mainly from the 3d Cavalry and the 22d Infantry, together with several hundred scouts, American and Maccabebee. On the 20th San Isidro was again captured. That was the place Lawton had evacuated in May previous. Arriving in the Islands with Colonel E. E. Hardin’s regiment, the 29th U. S. Volunteer Infantry, on November 3, 1899, the writer was immediately detailed to the Maccabebee scouts, to take the place of Lieutenant Boutelle, of the regular artillery, a young West Pointer from Oregon, who had been killed a day or two previous, and reported to Major C. G. Starr, General Lawton’s Adjutant-General in the field (whom he had known at Santiago de Cuba the previous year) at San Isidro on or about November 8th. Major Starr said: “We took this town last spring,” stating how much our loss had been in so doing, “but, partly as a result of the Schurman Commission parleying with the insurgents General Otis had us fall back. We have just had to take it again.” General Lawton garrisoned San Isidro this time once for all, and pressed on north, capturing the successive towns en route. Meantime, General Young’s cavalry, and the Maccabebee scouts under Major Batson, a lieutenant of the regular army, and a medal-of-honor graduate of the Santiago campaign, were operating to the west of the general line of advance, striking insurgent detachments wherever found and driving them toward the line of the railroad. By November 13th, Lawton’s advance had turned to the westward, according to the concerted plan of campaign above described, garrisoning, as fast as they were taken, such of the towns of the country over which he swept as there were troops to spare for. We knew that Aguinaldo had been at Tarlac when the advance began, and every officer and enlisted man of the command was on the qui vive to catch him. By November 18th, General Lawton’s forces held a line of posts extending up the eastern side of the plain, and curving around across the northern end to within a few miles of the gulf of Lingayen.
On November 6th, General Wheaton set sail from Manila for Lingayen Gulf, with 2500 men of the 13th Regular and 33d Volunteer Infantry, and a platoon of the 6th Artillery, convoyed by the ships of the navy, and next day the expedition was successfully landed at San Fabian, “with effective assistance from the naval convoy against spirited resistance,” says Secretary of War Root, in his annual report for 1899. The navy’s assistance on that occasion was indeed “effective,” but such passing mention hardly covers the case. In the first place, they selected the landing point, their patrols being already familiar with the coasts. As soon as the transports were sighted, about eleven o’clock on the morning of November 7th, Commander Knox, the senior officer present, who commanded the Princeton, and Commander Moore, of the Helena, went out to meet and confer with General Wheaton. This done, the landing was effected under protection of the navy’s guns. Besides the naval vessels above named, there were also present the Bennington under Commander Arnold, the Manila under Lieutenant-Commander Nazro, and two captured Spanish gun-boats small enough to get close in shore, the Callao, and the Samar. The troops were disembarked in two columns of small boats towed by launches. Lieutenant-Commander Tappan in charge of the Callao, and Ensign Mustin, commanding the Samar, were especially commended in the despatches of Admiral Watson, commander-in-chief of the Asiatic squadron. Both bombarded the insurgent trenches at close range during the landing, and Mustin actually steamed in between the insurgents and the head of the column of troop-boats, so as to intercept and receive the brunt of their fire himself, and, selecting a point about seventy-five yards from the enemy’s trenches whence he could effectually pepper them, ran his ship aground so she would stick, and commenced rapid firing at point blank range, driving the enemy from his trenches, and enabling Colonel Hare of the 33d, and those who followed, to land without being subjected to further fire while on the water.[27]
On the 11th of November, Colonel Hare with the 33d Volunteer Infantry and one Gatling gun under Captain Charles R. Howland of the 28th Volunteer Infantry, a lieutenant of the regular army, and a member of General Wheaton’s staff, proceeded southeastward to San Jacinto, and attacked and routed some 1200 to 1600 intrenched insurgents, Major John A. Logan being among our killed. The enemy left eighty-one dead in the trenches, and suffered a total loss estimated at three hundred. While space does not permit dwelling on the details of engagements, it may be remarked here, once for all, that the 33d Volunteer Infantry, Colonel Luther R. Hare commanding, made more reputation than any other of the twenty-five regiments of the volunteer army of 1899, except, possibly, Colonel J. Franklin Bell’s regiment, the 36th. This is no reflection on the rest. These two were lucky enough to have more opportunities. In meeting his opportunities, however, Colonel Hare, like Colonel Bell, proved himself a superb soldier; his field-officers, especially Major March,[28] were particularly indefatigable; and his men were mostly Texans, accustomed to handling a rifle with effect. Space also forbids following Captain Howland and his Gatling gun into the engagement of November 11th, but from the uniformity with which General Wheaton’s official reports commend his young aide’s bravery and efficiency on numerous occasions in 1899–1900, it may be safely assumed that those qualities were behind that Gatling gun at San Jacinto. There was a vicious rumor started after the San Jacinto fight and given wide circulation in the United States, that Major Logan was shot in the back by his own men. I saw a major surgeon a few days later who had been an eye-witness to his death. He said an insurgent sharpshooter shot Major Logan from a tree, and that the said sharpshooter was promptly thereafter dropped from his perch full of 33d Infantry bullets. Says General Wheaton’s despatch of November 12th: “Major Logan fell while gallantly leading his battalion.”[29]
On November 5th, General MacArthur, with a strong column, composed mainly of the 9th, 17th, and 36th Regiments of Infantry, two troops of the 4th Cavalry, two platoons of the 1st Artillery, and a detachment of scouts, advanced up the railroad from Angeles, in execution of his part of the programme.[30] Angeles is some distance up the railroad from Calumpit, where the railroad crosses the Rio Grande.[31] General MacArthur’s column encountered and overwhelmed the enemy at every point, entering Tarlac on November 12th, and effecting a junction with General Wheaton at Dagupan, the northern terminus of the Manila-Dagupan Railroad, 120 miles from Manila, on November 20th.
After General Lawton had finished his part of the round-up, he had a final conference with General Young on November 18th at Pozorubio, which is near the northeastern border of the plain, bade him good-bye, and soon afterward went south to dispose of a body of insurgents who were giving trouble near Manila. It was in this last expedition that he lost his life at San Mateo about twelve miles out of Manila on December 19, 1899.
The first of the two purposes of the great Wheaton-Lawton-MacArthur northern advance, viz., the dispersion of the insurgent army of northern Luzon had been duly accomplished. The other purpose had failed of realization. Aguinaldo had not been captured. He escaped through our lines.
Such is in brief the story of the destruction of the Aguinaldo government in 1899 by General Otis, or rather by Mr. Root. But the trouble about it was that it would not stay destroyed. It “played possum” for a while, the honorable President retiring to permanent headquarters in the mountains “with his government concealed about his person,” as Senator Lodge put it later in a summary of the case for the Administration, before the Senate, in the spring of 1900. If the distinguished and accomplished senator from Massachusetts, in adding at that time to the gaiety of nations, had had access to a certain diary kept by one of Aguinaldo’s personal staff throughout that period, subsequently submitted, in 1902, to the Senate Committee of that year, he could have swelled the innocuous merriment with such cheery entries as “Here we tightened our belts and went to bed on the ground”—the time alluded to being midnight after a hard day’s march without food, the place, some chilly mountain top up which the “Honorable Presidente” and party had that day been guided by the ever-present and ever-willing paisano (fellow countryman) of the immediate neighborhood—whatever the neighborhood—to facilitate them in eluding General Young’s hard riding cavalry and scouts. The writer has no quarrel with Senator Lodge’s witticism above quoted, having derived on reading it, in full measure, the suggestive amusement it was intended to afford. It is true that about all then left of the “Honorable Presidente’s” government, for the nonce, was in fact concealed about his person. It was of a nature easily portable. It needed neither bull trains, pack ponies, nor coolies to carry it. It consisted solely of the loyal support of the whole people, who looked to him as the incarnation of their aspirations. Said General MacArthur to the Senate Committee in 1902 concerning Aguinaldo: “He was the incarnation of the feelings of the Filipinos.” “Senator Culberson: ‘And represented the Filipino people?’ General MacArthur: ‘I think so; yes’.”[32] We of the 8th Army Corps did not know what a complete structure the Philippine republic of 1898–9 was until, having shot it to pieces, we had abundant leisure to examine the ruins. To admit, in the same breath, participation in that war and profound regret that it ever had occurred, is not an incriminating admission. In this case as in any other where you have done another a wrong, by thrashing him or otherwise, under a mistake of fact, the first step toward righting the wrong is to frankly acknowledge it. As soon as Aguinaldo’s flight and wanderings terminated in the finding of permanent headquarters, he began sending messages to his various generals all over Luzon and the other islands, and wherever those orders were not intercepted they were delivered and loyally obeyed. This kept up until General Funston captured him in 1901. One traitor among all those teeming millions might have betrayed his whereabouts, but none appeared. The obstinate character and long continuance of the warfare in northern Luzon after the great round-up which terminated with the final junction of the Lawton, Wheaton, and MacArthur columns near Dagupan, as elsewhere later throughout the archipelago, was at first very surprising to our generals. It had been supposed that to disperse the insurgent army would end the insurrection. As events turned out, it only made the resistance more effective. So long as the insurgents kept together in large bodies they could not hide. And as they were poor marksmen, while the men behind our guns, like most other young Americans, knew something about shooting, the ratio of their casualties to ours was about 16 to 1.[33] When General MacArthur began his advance on Tarlac, General Lawton his great march up the valley of the Rio Grande, and General Wheaton his closing in from Dagupan, Aguinaldo with his cabinet, generals, and headquarters troops abandoned Tarlac, their capital, and went up the railroad to Bayambang. Here they held a council of war, which General MacArthur describes in his report for 1900 (from information obtained later on) as follows:
At a council of war held at Bayambang, Pangasinan, about November 12, 1899, which was attended by General Aguinaldo and many of the Filipino military leaders, a resolution was adopted to the effect that the insurgent forces were incapable of further resistance in the field, and as a consequence it was decided to disband the army, the generals and the men to return to their own provinces, with a view to organizing the people for general resistance by means of guerrilla warfare.[34]
This had been the plan from the beginning, the council of war simply determining that the time to put the plan into effect had arrived. Accordingly, the uniformed insurgent battalions and regiments broke up into small bands which maintained a most persistent guerrilla warfare for years thereafter. During those years they seldom wore uniforms, disappearing and hiding their guns when hotly pursued, and reappearing as non-combatant peasants interrupted in agricultural pursuits, with invariable protestations of friendship. Hence all such came to be known as amigos (friends), and the word amigo, or friend, became a bitter by-word, meaning to all American soldiers throughout the archipelago an enemy falsely claiming to be a friend. And every Filipino was an “amigo.”