The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912. James H. Blount
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I observe that Your Excellency has announced yourself dictator and proclaimed martial law. As I am here simply in a military capacity, I have no authority to recognize such an assumption. I have no orders from my government on the subject.22
Yet General Anderson’s letter to the Adjutant-General of the army of July 18th23 uses the words “since reading the President’s instructions to General Merritt,” etc., showing that he had a copy of them; and those instructions order and direct (see ante) that as soon as the commanding general of the American troops arrives he is to let the Filipinos know that “the powers of the military occupant are absolute and supreme and immediately operate upon the political condition of the inhabitants.” A charitable view of the matter would be that, technically, those were Merritt’s orders, not Anderson’s. But the whole scheme was to conceal the intention to assume supreme authority and keep Aguinaldo quiet “until,” as General Merritt afterwards expressed it in his report, “I should be in possession of the city of Manila, * * * as I would not until then be in a position to * * * enforce my authority, in the event that his [Aguinaldo’s] pretensions should clash with my designs.”24
The same day that General Anderson wrote Aguinaldo his billet doux about the dictatorship, viz., July 22d, he cabled Washington a much franker and more serious message; which read: “Aguinaldo declares dictatorship and martial law over all islands. The people expect independence.” The very next day, July 23d, he wrote Aguinaldo asking his assistance in getting five hundred horses, and fifty oxen and ox-carts, and manifesting considerable impatience that he had not already complied with a similar request previously made “as it was to fight in the cause of your people.”25 The following day, July 24th, replying to General Anderson’s letter of the 22d wherein General Anderson had advised him that he was as yet without orders concerning the question of recognizing his government, Aguinaldo wrote:
It is true that my government has not been acknowledged by any of the foreign powers, but we expected that the great North American nation, which had struggled first for its independence, and afterwards for the abolition of slavery, and is now actually struggling for the independence of Cuba, would look upon it with greater benevolence than any other nation.26
That cablegram of July 22d, above quoted, in which the commanding general of our forces in the Philippines advises the Washington government, “The people expect independence,” is the hardest thing in the published archives of our government covering that momentous period for those who love the memory of Mr. McKinley to get around.27 After the war with the Filipinos broke out Mr. McKinley said repeatedly in public speeches, “I never dreamed they would turn against us.” You do not find the Anderson cablegram of July 22d in the published report of the War Department covering the period under consideration. General Anderson addressed it to the Secretary of War and signed it, and, probably for lack of army cable facilities, got Admiral Dewey to send it to the Secretary of the Navy for transmission to the Secretary of War.28 Certain it must be that at some Cabinet meeting on or after July 22, 1898, either the Secretary of the Navy or the Secretary of War read in the hearing of the President and the rest of his advisers that message from General Anderson, “The people expect independence.” The object here is not to inveigh against Mr. McKinley. It is to show that, as Gibbon told us long ago, in speaking of the discontent of far distant possessions and the lack of hold of the possessor on the affections of the inhabitants thereof, “the cry of remote distress is ever faintly heard.” The average American to-day, if told the Filipinos want independence, will give the statement about the same consideration Mr. McKinley did then, and if told that the desire among them for a government of their people by their people for their people has not been diminished since the late war by tariff taxation without representation, and the steady development of race prejudice between the dominant alien race and the subject one, he will begin to realize by personal experience how faintly the uttered longings of a whole people may fall on distant ears.
We saw above that in a letter written July 21st, the day before the telegram about the “people expect independence,” which letter must have reached Washington within thirty days, General Anderson not only notified Washington all about Aguinaldo’s government and its pretensions, but stated that at the request of Admiral Dewey he had made no protest against it.29 Yet straight on through the period of General Merritt’s sojourn in the Islands, which began July 25th, and terminated August 29th, we find no protest ordered by Washington, and we further find the purpose of the President as announced in the instructions to Merritt, “The powers of the military occupant are absolute and supreme” throughout the Islands, not only not communicated to the Filipino people, but deliberately suppressed from the proclamation published by General Merritt pursuant to those instructions.30
Comments and conclusions are usually impertinent and unwelcome save as mere addenda to facts, but in the light of the facts derivable from our own official records, is it any wonder that General Anderson, a gallant veteran of the Civil War, and perhaps the most conspicuous figure of the early fighting in the Philippines, delivered an address some time after he came back home before the Oregon Commandery of the Loyal Legion of the United States31 on the subject, “Should republics have colonies?” and answered the question emphatically “No!”
1 Congressional Record, December 5, 1898.
2 See p. 2938, S. D. 331 (1902).
3 Congressional Record, December 5, 1898, p. 5.
4 Senate Document 169, 55th Cong., 3d Sess. (1898).
5 Ib.
6 Hon. Frank A. Vanderlip, August, 1898 Century Magazine.
7 See p. 85, S. D. 208, 1900.
8 See General Orders No. 101, series 1898, Adjutant-General’s Office, Washington, July 18, 1898, a copy of which accompanied the President’s message to Congress of December, 1898, and may be seen at p. 783, House Document No. 1, 55th Cong., 3d Sess., 1898–9.
9 For a copy of this proclamation, see p. 86, S. D. 208, 56th Cong., 1st Sess.
10 S. D. 208, p. 8.
11 S. D. 331, p. 2976, Hearings before Senate Committee, 1902.
12 S. D. 208, 56th Cong., 1st Sess., 1900, p. 16.