President McKinley

by Robert W. Merry

  On October 25, the same day as the president’s Cuban debt decision, he sent a letter to Day. “I am greatly pleased with the progress you are making and the manner in which you are presenting the American case,” he wrote by way of preamble. As the commission neared serious consideration of the Philippine question, he would like to get the commissioners’ sentiments on the issue. Then, dropping his own coyness, he added, “There is a very general feeling that the United States, whatever it might prefer . . . is in a situation where it cannot let go. The interdependency of the several islands, their close relations with Luzon, the very grave problem of what will become of the part we do not take, are receiving the thoughtful consideration of the people, and it is my judgment that the well-considered opinion of the majority would be that duty requires we should take the archipelago.”

  The commissioners quickly responded to the president’s request, starting with Day, whose outlook McKinley already knew. Day felt the country “shall be embarrassed in a peremptory demand for the entire group” because the Protocol left the final disposition to negotiation. “There is little room for negotiation,” he wrote, “when one party demands at the outset all that is to be negotiated about.” He wanted just Luzon and perhaps a few other strategic islands. Senators Frye and Davis, joined by Reid, favored taking the full archipelago, with a payment to Spain for the islands if necessary. Senator George Gray favored “moderation, restraint and reason in victory” over being a “ruthless conqueror,” though precisely what he would take remained vague.

  But the president already had crafted his policy, as he made clear in an October 28 instruction sent to the commissioners through Hay. “Grave as are the responsibilities and unforeseen as are the difficulties which are before us,” he wrote, “the President can see but one plain path of duty—the acceptance of the archipelago.” Spain must be extricated from the Philippines; no other power could be allowed in; that left the United States, motivated “by the single consideration of duty and humanity.”

  McKinley argued for basing his Philippine claim upon the right of conquest, but the commissioners unanimously countered that that could not be sustained with any diplomatic propriety because Manila didn’t fall until after the Protocol was signed. “I wish to submit to your careful consideration,” wrote Day to his boss, “that we should not take the untenable ground that Spain should cede the islands because of any right of conquest, great or small, achieved after the Protocol was executed.” If no treaty emerged, he added, the United States could proceed with military operations that would trigger a true definition of conquest. But of course a successful negotiation was far preferable, and thus a different approach would be necessary. In the end, the U.S. commissioners based their claim on the requirement of an indemnity to be paid by Spain to cover America’s costs in prosecuting a war forced upon it by the Iberian nation. But the president also responded favorably to Senator Frye’s suggestion that a substantial payment to Spain could ease the way for a final settlement. If the commissioners thought the United States should pay “a reasonable sum of money to cover peace improvements which are fairly chargeable to us under established precedents,” wrote Hay to Paris, the president “will give cheerful concurrence.”

  When the Americans issued their formal demand for the Philippine archipelago on October 31, the Spanish representatives responded with a barrage of objections and requests for delay as they mustered further arguments for why the demand couldn’t be justified, violated the terms of the Protocol, reflected poorly on America, and so on. They evinced a reluctance to even consider such harsh terms lest they be pilloried in Madrid and their careers destroyed. “Yesterday everybody was predicting that we would get no treaty,” Reid wrote the president on November 15.

  McKinley stood firm but sought to break down Spanish resistance by authorizing a $20 million payment to accompany the Philippine cession. Reid began to get a sense of brighter prospects. “I think & know from inside news from Madrid,” he wrote the president, “. . . that the Queen Regent is now convinced that nothing can be gained by contending either for the debt or for the Philippines & that she is anxious to accept the inevitable & end the agony.” The Spanish government receded on November 28. Twelve days later the commissioners signed the final treaty, corresponding largely to the terms of the Protocol and McKinley’s subsequent instructions on the Philippines. The president got all he wanted: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam; Spain out of Cuba and the Caribbean, with no debt assumed by the United States. All this for $20 million pulled out of a growing U.S. Treasury. It still needed Senate ratification, but the outcome, however contingent, represented a signal achievement.

  * * *

  THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, William McKinley had displayed a tendency to view events through a prism of idealism and thus sometimes distort reality with language that didn’t quite reflect the world as it really was. In hailing the country’s great military victory over Spain and its acquisition of new, far-flung territories, he resisted the reality that America had embarked upon an imperial venture. Certainly he wasn’t naïve about the intentions of Emilio Aguinaldo, capable of mustering an army of 30,000 combatants in the cause of Philippine independence. Yet in issuing a proclamation on America’s vast new role in the archipelago, he talked of “benevolent assimilation” and promised that America would demonstrate that “we come, not as invaders or conquerors, but as friends.” A short time later, in a Boston speech, he proclaimed, “Our concern was not for territory or trade or empire, but for the people whose interests and destiny, without our willing it, had been put in our hands.”

  But of course territory, trade, and empire all emerged from the war’s outcome, and many Americans thrilled to the idea that their country now was pursuing its destiny far beyond its North American boundaries. Why, after all, had the United States built its powerful navy over the previous several years, including years of McKinley’s presidency? As the Philadelphia Press crowed after Dewey’s Manila Bay victory, “Sea power counts and in the world’s wide work it is the first and last thing which does count.” The paper noted that fourteen years earlier, a Naval Board of Experts had recommended eighteen battleships. “The report was laughed at. Does any one laugh now?”

  Mahan and Lodge and Roosevelt knew what it was all about. It was about projecting power into the world for purposes of trade and wealth and national prestige around the globe. And, yes, there was an element of helping less developed peoples, but ultimately it was about power. McKinley knew that also, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. Perhaps McKinley’s cousin and lifelong friend William Osborne captured the reality in a way the president couldn’t express. McKinley’s recent tour of speeches on the results of victory, Osborne said, were “a triumphant march of what they call Imperialism.” He touted his cousin’s presidency as a “history making Administration.”

  It was indeed history-making. Godkin’s Nation noted that McKinley’s installation of a military governor in the Philippines “initiates the first experiment which this nation has ever tried in the control of a territory at a great remove from our shores.” The magazine said the country had hardly even begun to contemplate the implications of such a revolutionary experiment. Carl Schurz, the great anti-imperialist, took a dim view of it all and warned McKinley of widespread opposition in the country to the annexation of far-away lands. “I . . . predict,” he wrote, “that this popular feeling against such political entanglements by the proposed annexations will very much grow in intensity as the burdens which the imperialistic policy will put upon us, become more apparent to the public mind.”

  Whatever currents of opposition might emerge in America or in the acquired territories, McKinley had set his course. And he moved now, in his slow and deliberate but very stubborn way, to execute the policies he had established for himself and his country.

  — 22 —

  War’s Aftermath

  RATIFICATION, BAD BEEF, AND AN OMINOUS NEW CONFLICT

  Ida McKinley was sitt
ing in the White House Red Room on May 6, 1899, when a contingent of guests arrived for one of those ceremonial visits that marked a significant part of Ida’s daily routine. This particular group included a New York teenager named Pauline Robinson, tied to the rich and influential DuPont family of Delaware; another New York debutante, Miss Lee; and the wife and daughter of Washington’s Episcopal bishop. When introduced to the first lady, Miss Robinson executed a perfect “Dodworth curtsy” and perceived that Mrs. McKinley seemed to like “pomp and flattery.” As the first lady, dressed in blue, her favorite color, put down her knitting to receive the guests, she noted “with evident pride” that she had knitted 4,000 pairs of slippers, including one that fetched $300 at a charity fair the previous year. “Look here,” she said, opening a bag of yarn and presenting a photo of the president she kept always with her during such labors, “I am never idle, and this is a great incentive to work.”

  In conversing with her guests, the first lady seemed particularly enamored of Pauline. “My dear,” she entreated her, “draw your chair up closer to me.” When the young woman said it was a privilege to meet her, Ida brushed aside the flattery.

  “My dear, wait till you meet the President—then I shall consider you to have been truly honored.” She launched into a series of highly entertaining and favorable stories about “the Major.” Miss Lee, who seemed to have heard some of these stories, repeatedly said, “Oh, I have heard about that.” Ida, becoming visibly irritated at the idea that her anecdotes were not fresh, turned to Pauline and addressed her in a confidential tone: “There is no use in telling Miss Lee anything. She knows it all.”

  As if by magic, the president appeared and sought to take the sting out of Ida’s petulance. He presented her with a bouquet of her favorite flowers, lilies of the valley, which she received with evident delight. But when the president sought diplomatically to terminate the visit so she could attend a scheduled meeting with a Lutheran minister, Ida once again turned peevish. “That makes no difference to me,” she snapped. “Does it to you?”

  Well, replied the president, seeking to soothe his wife with a bit of repartee, perhaps Lutherans didn’t matter, but he certainly liked Methodists and Episcopalians. Ida was not amused. “What about Presbyterians?!” she barked. That was, of course, her own denomination.

  “Why my dear,” replied the president, “of course I like Presbyterians.” That seemed to mollify her, and she rose for her next appointment. Before departing, she turned to Miss Robinson and handed her the bouquet of flowers she had just received. The stunned young lady later wrote in a letter home, “Everyone seemed to think that was an unusual thing for Mrs. McKinley to do.”

  That small incident reflected a central reality of William McKinley’s life: however preoccupied he might become with affairs of state or burdens of war, Ida always commanded a significant share of his attention. And sometimes this attention went beyond his well-known tender solicitude and extended to warding off the occasional displays of pique and querulousness that could lead to tense and embarrassing moments. McKinley usually could humor Ida with lighthearted banter mixed with a touch of firmness, but it was never clear what form her moods would take or what might trigger a tantrum. It wasn’t merely a matter of avoiding embarrassment. More important was McKinley’s ability to present to the nation a true first lady, performing the tasks and responsibilities traditionally associated with that role. Thus the president could never relax his resolve to buoy his wife’s moods and maintain her contentment with notes of devotion, affectionate attention, and lilies of the valley.

  Given this imperative and Ida’s need for travel and leisure time with him, McKinley regretted his inability to break away for significant vacation time during 1898, and he planned now to reverse that. He also anticipated significant travel for speeches touting his record and promoting his agenda. Sojourning south in December for eleven public appearances in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, he hailed what he considered a new national spirit of post–Civil War unity, fostered by the patriotism of the recent war. “Sectional lines no longer mar the map of the United States,” he declared in Atlanta, to great applause. “Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other.” Clearly he remained committed to burying the bloody shirt.

  With the war over, McKinley also picked up the pace of White House socializing. At a small January 8 dinner, the president and Treasury Secretary Gage led others in singing Methodist hymns. Mark Hanna seemed to enjoy the music but didn’t join in. In early 1899 the McKinleys held five evening receptions, one drawing nearly 8,000 visitors, and in mid-January the president and Ida entertained the Washington diplomatic corps at a lavish White House dinner. Later that month Lyman and Cornelia Gage entertained the president and Ida at an evening repast that the Washington Post called “one of the most beautifully appointed dinners ever served in Washington.” The Gages’ oval table was festooned with Farleyense ferns and, yes, lilies of the valley.

  But tasks of state never receded far from the president’s mind. After two years as president, he had developed a distaste for government officials preoccupied with their own worth. “How these men try to magnify the importance of their work,” he complained to Cortelyou, later praising the modesty of a particular government official. “We hear a great deal about him,” said the president, “but not from him.” Clearly the admonitions of Mother McKinley remained lodged in his consciousness.

  Even with war’s end, McKinley anticipated many challenges in 1899. Looming large was the need to secure Senate ratification of the Paris peace accord. McKinley knew that the rising crescendo of anti-imperialist sentiment could rattle his effort to get the required two-thirds vote, and events in the Philippines could rattle it even more. Aside from that, national politics soon would be roiled by the coming report of McKinley’s Dodge Commission investigating army incompetence and possible corruption.

  When the president sent the Paris treaty to the Senate on January 4, the Washington Post predicted that perhaps seventy of the Senate’s ninety senators would vote aye. But military developments in the Philippines, mixed with political developments at home, threatened the president’s policy. The Philippine story begins with the new U.S. military governor, sixty-year-old General Elwell S. Otis, a rotund fellow with muttonchop whiskers dominating an otherwise bland face. He possessed an impressive résumé: decorated for his Civil War and Indian conflict service; a Harvard law degree; founder of the army’s staff academy at Leavenworth, Kansas. But after replacing Wesley Merritt on August 29, 1898, Otis confirmed his reputation as a managerial fusspot obsessed with minute details. Always in motion, he seldom moved forward. General Arthur MacArthur, who served under him, viewed him as “a locomotive bottomside up on the tracks, with its wheels revolving at full speed.” Further, his pomposity often led to careless decision making.

  Otis proved adept at cleaning up a squalid, dysfunctional Manila left by the Spanish, with garbage piling up, disease rampant, and inhabitants starving. In keeping with McKinley’s humanitarian view of American interventionism, U.S. forces organized police and garbage collection operations, built health facilities, immunized children, established military courts, and reopened schools. But Otis adopted an arrogant attitude toward Aguinaldo and his insurgent forces, echoed in his troops’ bigoted view of the indigenous people and frequent abusive behavior toward them. Otis actually felt a need to issue an order forbidding his troops from using the word nigger and other derogatory terms when referring to Filipinos in their presence.

  But Aguinaldo quickly discerned that the American general didn’t take seriously either his military capabilities or his political resolve. It would never be known if a more conciliatory approach could have averted hostilities, given the gulf between American and insurgent aims—McKinley believing his country had acquired sovereignty over the Philippines through war and negotiation; Aguinaldo insisting he spoke for the Filipino people in declaring his country’s independence, forming his government, and assuming the
role of revolutionary president. But Otis’s approach, largely approved by Washington officials with little appreciation for the delicate nature of the situation, exacerbated tensions in the islands.

  On September 8 Otis issued an ultimatum to Aguinaldo (approved by the president) ordering him, “respectfully,” to remove his troops from Manila, including its suburbs. If the insurgent leader didn’t comply within a week, declared Otis, “I shall be obliged to resort to forcible action, and . . . my Government will hold you responsible for any unfortunate consequences that may ensue.” Aguinaldo pleaded with Otis to remove the incendiary language calculated to humiliate the Filipinos. In a second letter, Otis toned down the wording a bit, but not much, and he refused to withdraw the first ultimatum (simply leaving Aguinaldo free to ignore it). The insurgent leader removed his troops, and Otis quickly concluded that Aguinaldo would be a soft touch. “Affairs much more satisfactory,” he wired Washington on September 15, Aguinaldo’s deadline day for compliance. “Manila quiet and business progressing favorably. No difficulty anticipated.”

  Later, when Otis got reports of a possible massacre of remaining Spaniards at Iloilo on Panay island, he sought authorization from Washington to send a contingent of troops there under General Marcus Miller. Permission was granted—but only if the Spanish could be rescued without violence. “It is most important,” wrote Corbin to Otis, “that there be no conflict with the insurgents.” When Miller arrived, the Spaniards already had left, but he landed troops anyway, generating bitterness in equal measure among Philippine insurgents and American anti-imperialists. Meanwhile Washington was getting the jitters over increasing prospects for violence. Corbin wired stern instructions to Otis: “The President considers it of first importance that a conflict brought on by you be avoided at this time if possible.” Then, demonstrating Washington’s naïveté, Corbin asked, “Can not Miller get into communication with insurgents, giving them President’s proclamation and . . . assuring them that while [the United States] will assert its sovereignty, that its purpose is to give them a good government and security in their personal rights.”