The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912. James H. Blount
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It seems to me it did not take an international lawyer to see a good deal “there,” about independence. In a proclamation published at Tarlac in the latter part of 1899, which appears to have been a sort of swan-song of the Philippine Republic, Aguinaldo had said, in effect, “Certainly Admiral Dewey did not bring me from Hong Kong to Manila to fight the Spaniards for the benefit of American Trade Expansion,” and in this proclamation he claimed that Admiral Dewey promised him independence. It is true, that in a letter to Senator Lodge, which that distinguished gentleman read on the floor of the Senate on January 31, 1900, Admiral Dewey denounced this last statement as false. It is also true that those Americans are few and far between who will take Aguinaldo’s word in preference to Admiral Dewey’s. Certainly the writer is not one of them. But Aguinaldo is no Spanish scholar, being more of a leader of men than a master of language, and what sort of an interpreter acted between him and the Admiral does not appear. Certainly he never did get anything in writing from Admiral Dewey. But after the latter brought him to Manila, set him to fighting the common enemy, and helped him with guns and otherwise in quickly organizing an army for the purpose, the Admiral was at least put on inquiry as to just what Aguinaldo supposed he was fighting for. What did the Admiral probably suppose? He told the Senate Committee that the idea that they wanted independence “never entered his head.” The roar of mighty guns seems to have made it difficult for him to hear the prattlings of what Aguinaldo’s proclamations of the time called “the legitimate aspirations of a people.” The milk in the cocoanut is this: How could it ever occur to a great naval commander, such as Admiral Dewey, familiar with the four quarters of the globe, that a coterie of politicians at home would be so foolish as to buy a vast straggly archipelago of jungle-covered islands in the South Seas which had been a nuisance to every government that ever owned them? But let us turn from the Senate Committee’s studies of 1902 to the progress of the infant republic of 1898 at Cavite.
The same day the above proclamations of May 24th were issued, we find Consul Williams, now become a sort of amphibious civilian aide to Dewey, having his consular headquarters afloat, on the U. S. S. Baltimore, of the squadron, writing the State Department, describing the great successes of the insurgents, his various conferences with Aguinaldo and the other leaders, and his own activities in arranging the execution of a power of attorney whereby Aguinaldo released to certain parties in Hong Kong $400,000 then on deposit to his credit in a Hong Kong bank, for the purpose of enabling them to pay for 3000 stand of arms bought there and expected to arrive at Cavite on the morrow, and for other needed expenses of the revolutionary movement. He says, in part: “Officers have visited me during the darkness of the night to inform the fleet and me of their operations, and to report increase of strength. When General Merritt arrives he will find large auxiliary land forces adapted to his service and used to the climate.”34 Throughout this period Admiral Dewey reports various cordial conferences with Aguinaldo, though he is not so literary as to vivify his accounts with allusions to the weather. In one despatch he states that he has “refrained from assisting him * * * with the forces under my command”35—explaining to him that “the squadron could not act until the arrival of the United States troops.”
Six days after the issuance of the Dictatorship proclamations above mentioned, viz., on May 30th, Admiral Dewey cables the Navy Department36:
Aguinaldo, revolutionary leader, visited Olympia yesterday. He expects to make general attack May 31st.
He did not succeed entirely, but there was hard fighting, and the cordon around the doomed Spaniards in Manila and its suburbs was drawn ever closer and closer.
The remarkable feat of Aguinaldo’s raising a right formidable fighting force in twelve days after his little “Return from Elba,” which force kept growing like a snowball, is difficult, for one who does not know the Filipinos, and the conditions then, to credit. It is explained by the fact that Admiral Dewey let him have the captured guns in the Cavite arsenal, that Cavite was a populous hotbed of insurrection, and that many native regiments, or parts of regiments, quite suited to be the nucleus of an army, having lots of veteran non-commissioned officers, deserted the Spaniards and went over to the insurgents, their countrymen, as soon as Aguinaldo arrived.
On June 6th, we have another bulletin sent to the Navy Department by Admiral Dewey, transmitting with perceptible satisfaction further information as to the progress of his indefatigable protégé:
Insurgents have been engaged actively within the province of Cavite during the last week; they have had several small victories, taking prisoners about 1800 men, 50 officers; Spanish troops, not native.37
Along about this period Aguinaldo happens to get hold of a belated copy of the London Times of May 5, 1898. It contains considerable speculation on the future of the Philippines which casts a shadow over the soul of the president of the incipient republic. Having read President McKinley’s immortal State papers about the moral obliquity of “forcible annexation,” he is moved to write direct to the source of those noble sentiments. The letter is dated June 10, 1898. It is addressed, with a quaintness now pathetic, “To the President of the Republic of the Great North American Nation.” It greets the addressee with “the most tender effusion of” the writer’s soul, expresses his “deep and sincere gratitude,” in the name of his people, “for the efficient and disinterested protection which you have decided to give it to shake off the yoke of the cruel and corrupt Spanish domination, as you are doing to the equally unfortunate Cuba” and then proceeds to tell of “the great sorrow which all of us Filipinos felt on reading in the Times the astounding statement that you, sir, will retain these islands,” etc. He proceeds:
The Philippine people * * * have seen in your nation, ever since your fleet destroyed in a moment the Spanish fleet which was here * * * the angel who is the harbinger of their liberty; and they rose like a single wave * * * as soon as I trod these shores; and captured in ten days nearly the whole garrison of this Province of Cavite in whose port I have my government—by the consent of the Admiral of your triumphant fleet.38
The writer closes his letter with an impassioned protest against the occurrence of what is suggested in the Times, and speaks of his fellow-countrymen as “a people which trusts blindly in you not to abandon it to the tyranny of Spain, but to leave it free and independent,” and adds his “fervent prayers for the ever-increasing prosperity of your powerful nation.”39
But the signer of the foregoing letter did not spend all his time praying for us, as may be observed in this bulletin from Admiral Dewey concerning the way he was lambasting the common enemy, sent the Navy Department, June 12th:
Insurgents continue hostilities and have practically surrounded Manila. They have taken 2500 Spanish prisoners, whom they treat most humanely. They do not intend to attack city proper until the arrival of United States troops thither; I have advised.40
Four days later Washington chided the hapless Pratt at Singapore about having talked to Aguinaldo of “direct co-operation” with Admiral Dewey, saying: “To obtain the unconditional personal assistance of General Aguinaldo in the expedition to Manila was proper, if in so doing he was not induced to form hopes which it might not be practicable to gratify.”41 This communication goes on to advise Mr. Pratt that the Department cannot approve anything he may have said to Aguinaldo on behalf of the United States which would concede that in accepting his co-operation we would owe him anything. Yet it did not tell Admiral Dewey to quit coaching him, because the service he was rendering was too valuable. There is no communication to Admiral Dewey about “hopes which it might not be practicable to gratify” in the official