President McKinley

by Robert W. Merry

  Finally, the Spanish governor-general, Fernando Primo de Rivera, entered into an agreement with Aguinaldo whereby the rebel leader and his associates would leave the country in exchange for $800,000 and numerous civic reforms, including press freedom, Philippine representation in the Spanish Cortes, secularization of the much-despised monastic orders, and a general amnesty for all insurgents. Moving to Hong Kong, Aguinaldo distributed half of the $800,000 to his fighters but retained the rest as a “trust fund” pending evidence that Primo would live up to the bargain. He didn’t, and Aguinaldo initiated plans for resuming the fight.

  That was the state of play on April 25, 1898, when the United States declared war on Spain (retroactive to April 21). Immediately the relationship between Aguinaldo and McKinley’s government took on a serious aspect—as well as multiple complications. On April 24 Aguinaldo, traveling through Singapore, met with U.S. consul E. Spencer Pratt and offered to resume his fight in conjunction with the U.S. Navy’s looming Philippine action. Pratt telegraphed this news to Dewey in Hong Kong, who asked that Aguinaldo rendezvous with the Americans there. Aguinaldo rushed to the British treaty port but arrived just after Dewey’s departure for his epochal Philippine mission.

  The Pratt-Aguinaldo meeting soon became engulfed in controversy. According to Aguinaldo, Pratt courted him with “honeyed phrases” and promised U.S. support for Philippine independence. Pratt denied that he had issued any such commitment, which of course he had no authority to do. No one would ever know for sure which version was correct, but for years the dispute would unsettle U.S. relations with the renewed Philippine insurgency.

  In any event, U.S. naval officials transported Aguinaldo and seventeen other revolutionary chiefs to Manila Bay, where they landed at Cavite, about thirteen miles south of the capital, and soon began outfitting a new rebel force with guns, ammunition, and other materiel, much of it obtained from the Americans. By this time Dewey had destroyed the Spanish fleet and taken control of Manila Bay, but he knew American forces must occupy the city to protect his fleet from shore batteries and force a Spanish surrender. Aguinaldo could help by attacking the Spanish military in the regions surrounding Manila. Dewey met with the rebel leader on May 19 and offered encouragement, as well as the weapons. Aguinaldo once again insisted that the American had extended U.S. support for Philippine independence. Dewey denied it. But an informal alliance had been forged.

  In a few weeks Aguinaldo’s renewed force was attacking the Spanish authority. “They were very successful,” wrote Greene in his memo to McKinley, “the native militia in Spanish service capitulating with their arms in nearly every case without serious resistance.” Other militia units retreated into Manila, allowing Aguinaldo to gain sway over more and more surrounding countryside. “The situation is very grave,” reported a Spanish army officer named Augusti, who warned that Manila soon could fall to the rebels. He said the “white population of the suburbs, fearing they will be massacred by the rebels,” had entered fortified areas of Manila, even though they were vulnerable to an anticipated U.S. naval bombardment. They preferred bombardment to massacre, he explained.

  On June 23 Aguinaldo issued a proclamation declaring a new “revolutionary” government in the islands, with himself as revolutionary president—the “personification of the Philippine people”—with a tenure lasting “until the revolution triumphs.” Greene characterized Aguinaldo’s civic structure as “a Dictatorship of the familiar South American type,” although he allowed that Aguinaldo insisted his ultimate aim was a true republic.

  In the meantime, McKinley grappled with the internal squabbling between generals Nelson Miles and Wesley Merritt over how big a force should be sent to the Philippines. He settled the matter, as we have seen, by ordering 20,000 troops there under Merritt, though he purposely remained vague on the mission. Soon Merritt had an advance contingent of 11,000 troops at Cavite, ready to take the capital. Spain had 15,000 men inside the city, along with 50,000 to 70,000 civilians. And Aguinaldo’s Army of Liberation boasted between 13,000 and 15,000 men surrounding the city.

  It was a delicate military and diplomatic situation. Merritt’s orders, direct from McKinley, were to occupy Manila without letting the insurgents in. But it wasn’t clear how he could do that with Aguinaldo’s forces surrounding the land perimeter of the city and its suburbs. Prospects for success increased when General Greene entered into a negotiation with one of his Spanish counterparts whereby the Spanish abandoned a portion of their left wing, permitting Greene’s troops to take a position adjacent to Manila Bay. Thus the Americans could supply their troops from the sea and protect the supply route with Dewey’s big guns. It appeared that the Spaniards would rather deal with the Americans than with Aguinaldo, which didn’t surprise Greene. As he wrote to McKinley, “The Spanish officials have intense fear of the Insurgents; and the latter hate them, as well as the friars, with a virulence that can hardly be described.”

  The Spanish at Manila now were in a hopeless position—hemmed in by hate-filled rebels, with Americans besetting them also from the sea and from their enclave at the Spaniards’ left flank. But when the new governor-general asked Madrid for permission to surrender, his superiors promptly dismissed him. His replacement cleverly entered into negotiations with Dewey, through the Belgian consul. He suggested that, if the Americans attacked, he would hold out only so long as he must to avoid besmirching his honor. Accordingly on August 13 Merritt’s forces attacked two Spanish positions near the beach, inducing a surrender not only of those positions but of the entire city.

  Hearing of the American attack, Aguinaldo’s forces rushed into the suburbs and were stopped from entering the city by a phalanx of American forces. Now the Americans and the insurgents faced each other along an extended line around Manila. But Merritt and Dewey had fulfilled their mission of taking the city while keeping the insurgents out. Spain’s economic hub in Asia had been seized, her regional position destroyed. All this occurred a day after Secretary Day and Ambassador Cambon signed the Protocol ending the Spanish-American War, news of which had not yet reached Manila.

  Six weeks later, as McKinley studied Greene’s memorandum and discussed it extensively with the general, some fundamentals came into focus. One was that Spain’s Philippine sovereignty could never be restored; the ethnic and political animosities were simply too intense. That was the one point on which nearly all Filipinos agreed. Any effort in that direction would unleash a catastrophic civic upheaval—and likely lure other Western powers into the region.

  Beyond that, Greene favored a certain circumspection toward Aguinaldo. “He is not devoid of ability” as a guerrilla fighter, wrote Greene, but educated Filipinos in the major cities viewed him as “lacking in ability to be at the head of affairs.” These urban opinion leaders would align with Aguinaldo or anyone else to destroy the Spanish imperium, but afterward they favored “the support of some strong nation for many years” as a necessary transition to independence. Greene urged the president to view Aguinaldo’s movement as largely a Tagalog phenomenon, lacking significant support not only from the urban intelligentsia but also from the Visayan tribe of the central islands, which had remained aloof from the insurrection.

  Finally, Greene argued that the islands’ abundant economic opportunities couldn’t be exploited effectively without a central governing entity ensuring unfettered internal trade. A subdivided archipelago, he suggested, would be hampered by a tangle of tariffs, commercial inefficiency, and economic stagnation.

  Reading and rereading Greene’s report, talking with him extensively, and pursuing other avenues of inquiry, McKinley concluded America must take all of the Philippines. Commander Bradford had crystallized the military folly in a partial acquisition that couldn’t easily be defended from major powers swooping down to grab other available land parcels. Greene’s point about the commercial necessity of a united archipelago resonated with the president. Then there was the civic disruption sure to emerge from any lingering power vacuum, with
local tribes and groups in fierce competition for position and power and with ambitious nations—Germany and Japan in particular—interjecting themselves into the mess and spreading even more chaos. The president remained mindful of the intense hatreds that had emerged among various groups during the dysfunctional Spanish rule. And he felt a responsibility, having essentially kicked Spain out of the Philippines, to stabilize the archipelago as quickly as possible to minimize the bloodshed of transition. Also, as he told a group of Methodists visiting the White House in November 1899, he felt a humanitarian obligation to educate the Filipinos and to “uplift and civilize” them.

  But McKinley was in no hurry to reveal his thinking. He foresaw a dual danger of hostilities with Aguinaldo’s Tagalog insurgents and heightened anti-expansionist fervor at home. Most ominously, the two could feed off each other—the rebels pressing their fight in hopes of sapping McKinley’s political standing in America, and annexation opponents in America getting more agitated and numerous as the war lingered. Given that intertwined threat, he would bide his time and move stealthily, reverting to his tried-and-true leadership of incrementalism. Certainly this could lead to swipes that once again he was demonstrating his characteristic indecisiveness and cowardice. But that was nothing new, and he long since had learned to ignore such attacks.

  In the meantime he would press his resolve to establish U.S. sovereignty over the full archipelago even if that meant war with Aguinaldo. The president articulated this resolve in responding to a communication from Dewey and Merritt, who asked, “Is Government willing to use all means to make the natives submit to the authority of the United States?” The query arrived in Washington on August 17, and the president’s response, delivered through General Corbin, went out the same day: “The President directs that there must be no joint occupation with the insurgents.” The army must preserve peace, protect property, and maintain stability in the islands, said Corbin: “The insurgents and all others must recognize the military occupation and authority of the United States and the cessation of hostilities proclaimed by the President. Use whatever means in your judgment are necessary to this end.”

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  AS THE PRESIDENT grappled with the Philippine question, he turned his attention also to the peace negotiations with Spain that shortly would commence in Paris. On September 15 he met with his peace commissioners for three and a half hours, then lunched privately with its chairman, Judge Day. At the next day’s Cabinet meeting, Day resigned as secretary of state and received from the president a memorandum of instruction. It said Spain’s departure from Cuba and the Caribbean was an “imperative necessity” justifying the stark terms of the Protocol. The Philippines, however, “stand upon a different basis” because there was no particular imperative, from the U.S. standpoint, that Spain leave Asia. On the other hand, “the presence and success of our arms at Manila imposes upon us obligations which we cannot disregard.” Thus did the president signal the direction of his thinking.

  The president emphasized to Day that he wanted frequent and timely cables on all significant developments as the negotiations proceeded. The cables should go directly to him and not be sent through the State Department, though the new secretary of state, John Hay, certainly would be kept informed. By late September, with Day established in Paris, the judge began sending chatty memos to the president filled with updates, gossip, observations, and explanations—just what the president wanted and knew he would get from his longtime Canton friend.

  In addition McKinley dropped a “hint” to Commissioner Whitelaw Reid that he would welcome private letters from Paris. He knew the newspaperman’s pronounced vanity would stir him to file long, discursive memos filled with great orotundity as well as piquant observations. Despite Reid’s self-importance, he was a man of considerable intellect and sharp insight.

  The big question before the commissioners, of course, was the Philippines. McKinley wasn’t prepared to reveal his full thinking on that subject, but he wanted his negotiators to follow the same avenues of inquiry that he had pursued. Thus in early October he sent to Paris copies of General Greene’s report—“valuable notes and memoranda,” as Hay described the document in a cover memo. At McKinley’s instruction, Hay also sent memos related to an incident at the White House concerning a visit there by two men who presented themselves as representatives of Aguinaldo’s declared government in the Philippines. The men, Felipe Agoncillo and Sixto Lopez, on their way to Paris to try to influence the peace negotiations, called on October 1, 1898, at 10:15 a.m. With State Department official Alvey Adee as interpreter, the president received them and inquired as to their purpose. Agoncillo said they wished to lay before the president, on behalf of Aguinaldo and the Filipino people, a statement of the political situation in the Philippines for U.S. consideration in pursuing a negotiated peace.

  McKinley carefully explained that he would be pleased to listen but only with the understanding that they were private Philippine citizens and not representatives of Aguinaldo or any political entity within the islands. Accepting the distinction, Agoncillo launched into a brief disquisition on the travails of the Filipino people and the importance of independence.

  McKinley interjected to ask if Agoncillo would make his communication informally and in writing to Adee. He promised to read the statement and give it due consideration. Agoncillo accepted the invitation, whereupon the president instructed Adee to emphasize once again the terms under which he had consented to receive them.

  McKinley considered it crucial to convey to his peace negotiators that nothing had passed between these men and the United States that could be construed as U.S. recognition of any Aguinaldo government or official standing within the Philippines. As Hay wrote to the U.S. commissioners, “Following his purpose of not receiving these gentlemen as envoys or recognizing in any way the character of their mission, the President does not propose to commend them to you.” He once again touted “the careful and elaborate memoranda submitted by General Greene.” Clearly the president wanted to nudge his negotiators toward his own thinking without revealing the substance of it. Indeed when the Chicago Tribune’s Joseph Medill visited the president at the White House and suggested he should state “directly and openly” his intention to acquire all of the Philippines, McKinley “expressed some annoyance.”

  By October 5 the U.S. negotiators saw what kind of intransigence they could expect from their Spanish counterparts. Day wrote to the president, “You would be astounded at the ingenuity and persistence with which our opponents undertake to enlarge the meaning of these clear articles.” First, the Spaniards demanded that the Americans accept, before any further discussions commenced, the principle of “status quo” in the Philippines—meaning restoration of full Spanish authority. The Americans rejected that out of hand as outside the spirit of the Protocol, which stipulated it was a matter for negotiation. The Spanish commissioners acquiesced with a “conciliatory” tone that led Day to conclude the demand was more a test than a serious proposal.

  Then the Spanish commissioners threw a wrench into the discussions by demanding that the United States assume the large Cuban debt, “the expense,” Day wrote to McKinley, “of years of Spanish misrule, and . . . of its barbarous persecution of the people of Cuba.” Debt goes with sovereignty, insisted the Spanish, to which the Americans replied that the United States had never asked for sovereignty in Cuba and the Protocol didn’t address the question. After getting clearance from the president, Hay wrote to Day, “We are still free to regard it as acceptance in trust for people of Cuba without express obligations in treaty.” A historical survey indicated that there was no serious precedence in international law for the idea that debt inevitably goes with sovereignty.

  But the nettlesome issue consumed the negotiators through much of October and generated fear on the part of some American negotiators that the discussions could break down. “I hope we shall be able to get a treaty,” Day wrote to McKinley on October 23, “but am a little pessimistic
about it.” Two days later McKinley rendered a final decision on the debt question, and Hay wired Day, “The President directs me to say that under no circumstances will the Government of the United States assume any part of what is known as the Cuban debt.”

  Later that night Reid met with his longtime Spanish friend, the ambassador to Paris Fernando León y Castillo. When Reid informed Castillo of the president’s decision, “he seemed almost to break down,” Reid informed the president in a back-channel letter. “It is cruel, cruel, most cruel,” the despondent ambassador moaned. He urged that the matter be put aside pending a determination on whether the United States would grant some concession elsewhere. If that wasn’t possible, said Castillo, the Spanish commissioners would be completely repudiated at home, and the negotiations would break down. Upon leaving, he sighed, “My old friend, pray God that you and your country may never have to submit to the lot of the vanquished!”

  Having determined his position on the Cuban debt, McKinley now turned his attention decisively to the Philippines. And not a moment too soon. Admiral Dewey on October 18 sent a dispatch to Navy Secretary Long urging quick action to avert a looming crisis in the islands. “Spanish authority has been completely destroyed in Luzon,” he wrote, “and general anarchy prevails [outside] the city and Bay of Manila. Strongly probable that Islands to the south will fall into same state soon. Disturbing reports have been received of inhuman cruelty practiced on religious and civil authorities.”