The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912

by James H. Blount

We have the bridge. It has cost us dearly. Battle not yet over. It is a battle however.[36]

It was in this battle of Zapote River that Lieutenant William L. Kenly, of the regular artillery, did what was perhaps the finest single bit of soldier work of the whole war,[37] in recognition of which his conduct in the battle was characterized as “magnificent” by so thorough a soldier as General Lawton, who recommended him to be brevetted for distinguished gallantry in the presence of the enemy, with this remark:

As General Ovenshine says, speaking of Lieutenant Kenly and his battery, “This is probably the first time in history that a battery has been advanced and fought without cover within thirty yards of strongly manned trenches.”[38]

For what he did on that occasion, Kenly ought to have had a medal of honor, which, except life insurance and a good education, is the finest legacy any government can enable a soldier to bequeath to his children. If the war had been backed by the sentiment of the whole country, as the Spanish War was, he would have gotten it. As it was, the only thing he ever got for it, so far as the writer is advised, was to have his name spelt wrong in an account of the incident in the only book wherein there has yet been attempted a record of the many deeds of splendid daring that marked the only war into which this nation ever blundered.[39]

While there were divers and sundry movements of our troops hither and thither, and much sacrifice of life, after General Lawton’s Zapote River campaign in June, no substantial progress was made in conquering and occupying the Islands until the fall following the Zapote River campaign above mentioned, when the twenty-five regiments of volunteers were organized and sent out. All that was done until then, after the capture of San Fernando, may be summed up broadly, by saying that we protected Manila and held the railroad, as far as we had fought our way up it. It is true that the city of Iloilo had been occupied on February 11th, the city of Cebu shortly afterward, the island of Negros, an oasis of comparative quiet in a great desert of hostility, a little later; also that a small Spanish garrison at the little port of Jolo in the Mohammedan country near Borneo had also been relieved by a small American force on the 19th of May. But these irresolute movements accomplished nothing except to deprive our force at the front of about 4000 men and to awaken the Visayan Islands to active and thorough organization against us.

Preparatory to an understanding of the fall campaign, in which patchwork and piecemeal warfare was superseded by the real thing, it will now be necessary to consider the political—or let us call it, the politico-military—aspect of the first half year of the war.

General Otis’s folly had led him to advise Washington as early as November, 1898, that he could get along with 25,000 troops,[40] and the Otis under-estimate of the resistance we would meet if we took the Islands had undoubtedly influenced Mr. McKinley in deciding to take them. Twenty-five thousand troops was only 5000 more than General Otis had with him at the time he made the recommendation, and signified that he was not expecting trouble. The Treaty of Paris was signed on December 10, 1898, and on December 16th, President McKinley’s Secretary of War informed Congress that 25,000 troops would be enough for the Philippines.[41] When the treaty was ratified February 6, 1899, the war in the Philippines had already broken out. On March 2, 1899, two days before the 55th Congress expired, in fact on the very day that Congress appropriated the $20,000,000 to pay Spain for the Islands, an act was passed authorizing the President to enlist 35,000 volunteers to put down the insurrection in the Islands. The term of enlistment of these volunteers was to expire June 30, 1901. As the New Thought people would say “Hold the Thought!” June 30, 1901, is the end of our government’s fiscal year. That date, the date of expiration of the enlistment of the volunteer army raised under the act of March 2, 1899, is a convenient key to the whole history of the American occupation of the Philippines since the outbreak of our war with the Filipinos, February 4, 1899, including the titanic efforts of the McKinley Administration in the latter half of 1899 and the first half of 1900 to retrieve the Otis blunders; the premature resumption by Judge Taft, during and in aid of Mr. McKinley’s campaign for the Presidency in 1900, of the original McKinley Benevolent Assimilation programme, on the theory, already wholly exploded by a long and bitter war, that the great majority of the people welcomed American rule and had only been coerced into opposing us; and the premature setting up of the Civil Government on July 4, 1901. No candid mind seeking only the truth of history can fail to see that when President McKinley sent the Taft Commission to the Philippines in the spring of 1900, part of their problem was to facilitate Mr. McKinley in avoiding later on any further call for volunteers to take the place of those whose terms would expire June 30, 1901. The amount of force that has been needed to saddle our government firmly on the Filipino people is the only honest test by which to examine the claim that it is unto them as Castoria unto children. In February, 1899, the dogs of war being already let loose, President McKinley had resumed his now wholly impossible Benevolent Assimilation programme, by sending out the Schurman Commission, which was the prototype of the Taft Commission, to yearningly explain our intentions to the insurgents, and to make clear to them how unqualifiedly benevolent those intentions were. The scheme was like trying to put salt on a bird’s tail after you have flushed him. This commission was headed by President Schurman, of Cornell University. It arrived in March, armed with instructions as benevolent in their rhetoric as any the Filipinos had ever read in the days of our predecessors in sovereignty, the Spaniards. And the commission were of course duly astounded that their publication had no effect. The Filipinos in Manila tore them down as soon as they were put up. The instructions clothed the commission with authority to yield every point in issue except the only one in dispute—Independence. On this alone they were firm. But so were the people who had already submitted the issue to the arbitrament of war. Of course the Schurman Commission, therefore, accomplished nothing. It held frequent communication with the enemy in the field and came near an open rupture with General Otis, who was nominally a member of it. But even that unwise man knew war when he saw it, and knew the futility of trying to mix peace with war. War being hell, the sooner ’tis over the better for all concerned. After Professor Schurman had been quite optimistically explaining our intentions for about three months, under the tragically mistaken notion Mr. McKinley had originally derived from General Otis that the insurrection had been brought about by “the sinister ambition of a few leaders,”[42] General Otis wired Washington, on June 4th, “Negotiations and conferences with insurgent leaders cost soldiers’ lives and prolong our difficulties,”[43] adding with regard to the Schurman Commission: “Ostensibly it will be supported * * * here, and to the outside world gentle peace shall prevail,” but intimating that he would be very much gratified if the Department would allow him to handle the enemy, and stop Dr. Schurman from having their leaders come in under flags of truce to parley. After that Dr. Schurman’s activities seem to have been confined to the less mischievous business of gathering statistics. His mistake was simply the one he had brought with him, derived from President McKinley. He came back home, however, thoroughly satisfied that the Filipinos did of a verity want the independence they were fighting for, and quite as sure that republics should not have colonies as General Anderson’s experience had previously made him. It has long been known throughout the length and breadth of the United States that Dr. Schurman is in favor of Philippine independence.

On June 26th, just thirteen days after the Zapote River fight had stopped the insurgents on the south line from threatening almost the very gates of the city of Manila itself, General Otis had another attack of optimism. On that date he wired Washington: “Insurgent cause may collapse at any time.”[44] Finally, the war correspondents at Manila, wearied with the military press censorship whereby General Otis had so long kept the situation from the people at home, with his eternal “situation-well-in-hand” telegrams, got together, inspired no doubt by the example of the Roosevelt round robin that had rescued the Fifth Army Corps from Cuba after the fighting down there, and prepared a round robin of their own—a protest against further misrepresentation of the facts. This they of course knew General Otis would not let them cable home. However, they asked his permission to do so, the committee appointed to beard the lion in his den being O. K. Davis, John T. McCutcheon, Robert Collins, and John F. Bass. General Otis threatened to “put them off the island.” This did not bother them in the least. General Otis told the War Department afterwards that he did not punish them because they were “courting martyrdom,” or words to that effect. As a matter of fact, they were merely determined that the American people should know the facts. That of “putting them off the island” was just a fussy phrase of “Mother” Otis, long familiar to them. They were under his jurisdiction. But they were Americans, and reputable gentlemen, and he knew he was responsible for their right treatment. After General Otis had duly put the expected veto on the proposed cablegram of protest, the newspaper men sent their protest over to Hong Kong by mail, and had it cabled to the United States from there. It was published in the newspapers of this country July 17, 1899. A copy of it may be found in any public library which keeps the bound copies of the great magazines, in the Review of Reviews for August, 1899, pp. 137–8. It read as follows:

The undersigned, being all staff correspondents of American newspapers stationed in Manila, unite in the following statement:

We believe that, owing to official despatches from Manila made public in Washington, the people of the United States have not received a correct impression of the situation in the Philippines, but that those despatches have presented an ultra-optimistic view that is not shared by the general officers in the field.