The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912. James H. Blount
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the insurgents.16
This report not only corroborates Aguinaldo’s claims of August 6th, but it also concedes to the Aguinaldo people eight other important provinces—four south of the Pasig River with a total population of about 630,000,17 the only four of southern Luzon not included in Aguinaldo’s claim of August 6th, thus conceding him practically all of Luzon south of the Pasig; and it furthermore concedes him four great provinces of northern Luzon with a total population of nearly 600,000.18 General Bell states that these last are “still in the possession of the Spanish,” but practically certain to be with the insurgents in the very near future. “Insurgents have been dispatched to attack the Spanish in these provinces,” says the Bell report.
In this same report Major Bell said: “There is not a particle of doubt but what Aguinaldo and his leaders will resist any attempt of any government to reorganize a colonial government here.”19 When the insurgent government was finally dislodged from its last capital and Aguinaldo became a fugitive hotly pursued by our troops, he started for the mountains of northern Luzon, passing through provinces he had never visited before. The diary of one of his staff officers, Major Villa, in describing a brief stop they made in a town en route (Aringay, in Union province) says: “After the honorable President had urged them [the townspeople] to be patriotic, we continued the march.”20 They certainly did “continue the march.” The Maccabebe scouts, of which the writer commanded a company at the time, took the town a few hours later, Aguinaldo’s rear-guard retiring after a brief resistance, following which we found, among the dead in the trenches, a major other than Villa. Certainly, to read this little extract from the diary of Aguinaldo’s retreat is to feel the pulse of northern Luzon as to its loyalty to the revolution at that time, and is corroborative of these claims of Aguinaldo made in August, 1898, supplemented, as we have seen them, by General Bell’s appraisal.
As to the political conditions which prevailed in southern Luzon, particularly in the Camarines, in August and the fall of 1898, information derived from one who was there then would seem appropriate here. Major Blanton Winship, Judge Advocate’s Corps, U. S. A., Major Archibald W. Butt, the late lamented military aide to President Taft, and the writer, lived together in Manila, in 1900, at the house of a Spanish physician, a Dr. Lopez, who had been a “prisoner” at Nueva Caceres, a town situated in one of the provinces of southern Luzon (Camarines) in the fall of 1898. Dr. Lopez had a large family. They had also been “prisoners” down there. No evil befell them at the hands of their “captors.” They had the freedom of the town they were in. They had good reason to be pretty well scared as to what the insurgents might do to them. But they were never maltreated. The main impression we got from Dr. Lopez and his family was that the political grip of the Aguinaldo government on southern Luzon was complete during the time they were “prisoners” there. If anybody doubts the absoluteness of the grip of the Revolutionary government on the situation in the provinces which were represented at the Bacoor convention of August 6, 1898, above mentioned, when the Filipino Declaration of Independence was signed and proclaimed, let him ask any American who had a part in putting down the Philippine insurrection what a presidente, an insurrecto presidente, in a Filipino town, was in 1899 and 1900. He was “the whole thing.” Even to-day the presidente of a pueblo is as absolute boss of his town as Charles F. Murphy is of Tammany Hall. And a town or pueblo in the Philippines is more than an area covered by more or less contiguous buildings and grounds. It is more like a township in Massachusetts. So that when you account governmentally for the pueblos of a given province, you account for every square foot of that province and for every man in it. For several years before our war with Spain, nearly every Filipino of any education and spirit in the archipelago belonged to the secret revolutionary society known as the Katipunan. This had its organization in every town when Dewey sank the Spanish fleet and landed Aguinaldo at Cavite. The rest may be imagined.
By September, 1898, Aguinaldo was absolute master of the whole of Luzon. Before the Treaty of Paris was signed (December 10, 1898), in fact while Judge Gray of the Peace Commission was cabling President McKinley that not to leave the government of the Philippines to the people thereof “would be to make a mockery of instructions,” Aguinaldo had become equally absolute master of the situation throughout the rest of the archipelago outside of Manila.
Toward the end of July, 1898, our Manila Consul, Mr. Williams, who was one of our consular triumvirate of would-be Warwicks, or “original Aguinaldo men,” of 1898, used to have nice talks with Aguinaldo about the lion and the lamb lying down together without the lion eating the lamb, and in one instance, at least, he goes so far as to represent Aguinaldo as willing to some such arrangement—e.g., annexation, or some vague scheme of dependence. But whenever we hear from Aguinaldo over his own signature, we hear him saying whatever means in Tagalo “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” For instance, at page 15, of Senate Document 208, he writes Williams, under date of August 1st, with fine courtesy:
I congratulate you with all sincerity on the acuteness and ingenuity which you have displayed in painting in an admirable manner the benefits which, especially for me and my leaders, and in general for all my compatriots, would be secured by the union of these islands with the United States of America. Ah! that picture, so happy and so finished * * * This is not saying that I am not of your opinion * * * You say all this and yet more will result from annexing ourselves to your people * * * You are my friend and the friend of the Filipinos and have said it. But why should we say it? Will my people believe it? * * * I have done what they desire, establishing a government * * * not only because it was my duty, but also because had I acted in any other manner they would fail to recognize me as the interpreter of their aspirations, and would punish me as a traitor, replacing me by another more careful of his own honor and dignity.
Now that we know what was in the Filipino mind when General Merritt arrived in the Philippines, let us see what was in the American military mind out there at the same time. Says General Merritt: “General Aguinaldo did not visit me on my arrival nor offer his services as a subordinate leader.” We trust the reason of this at once suggests itself from what has preceded, including General Anderson’s dealings with the insurgent chief. The latter wanted some understanding as to what the intentions of our government were, and what was to be the programme afterward, should he and his countrymen assist in the little fighting that now remained necessary to complete the taking of Manila. Those intentions were precisely what Merritt was determined to conceal. “As my instructions from the President fully contemplated the occupation of the Islands by the American land forces, and stated that ‘the powers of the military occupant are absolute and supreme and immediately operate upon the political condition of the inhabitants,’ I did not consider it wise to hold any direct communication with the insurgent leader until I should be in possession of the city of Manila.”21
On one occasion General Merritt passed through the village of Bacoor where Aguinaldo had his headquarters, but, says Mr. Millet22 in mentioning this, “They never met.” After the taking of the city, General Merritt remembered that with some 13,000 Spanish prisoners to guard, and a city of 300,000 people, all but a sprinkling of whom were in sympathy with the insurgent cause, on his hands, and an army of at least 14,000 insurgents—probably far more than that—clamoring without the gates of that city, and only 10,000 men of his own with whom to handle such a situation, frankness was out of the question, in view of his orders from the President.23 Therefore, on the day after the city surrendered, General Merritt issued a proclamation, copying24 verbatim from Mr. McKinley’s instructions (ante) such innocuous milk-and-water passages as the one which assured the people that our government “has