He was referring to McKinley’s notable “benevolent assimilation” proclamation of December 21, in which the president declared U.S. sovereignty over the Philippines. The military authority maintained by the United States in the city and harbor of Manila, stated the president, “is to be extended with all possible dispatch to the whole of the ceded territory.” But the president sought to assure Filipinos, asserting, “We come, not as invaders or conquerors, but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, in their employments, and in their personal and religious rights.” Those cooperating with this new military authority, “either by active aid or by honest submission,” would receive the reward of American support and protection. “All others will be brought within the lawful rule we have assumed, with firmness if need be, but without severity so far as may be possible.”
McKinley crafted this language to reassure Filipinos of America’s amity and cooperation. That’s why Corbin thought the proclamation could be used to placate rebel anxieties at Panay. But many in the Philippines viewed it as inimical to everything they wanted for their country. Even Otis feared certain passages could prove incendiary, so he made the remarkable decision of toning down certain passages before forwarding the document to Aguinaldo. It was a serious lapse in judgment. Worse, he inadvertently sent to General Miller at Panay the original version without informing him that it had been edited. When Miller passed it along to an Iloilo rebel leader, he promptly sent it to Aguinaldo, who quickly concluded the Americans were playing some kind of double game.
Miller eventually left Iloilo, but Otis’s splenetic approach and Aguinaldo’s suspicion and anger contributed to tensions already well established by the military situation on Luzon, with America controlling Manila and its suburbs and Aguinaldo’s 30,000-strong force dominating the countryside. As one observant soldier put it, “I believe it only a matter of time when there will be a clash, for the two armies’ outposts are within a mile or two of each other, and a single shot from either side would precipitate a general engagement.”
Back in Washington, it wasn’t surprising that this unstable situation would agitate many senators already uncomfortable with the breadth of McKinley’s Philippine policy—and particularly the Iloilo misadventure. A floor debate on January 11 revealed serious reservations based on questions of diplomatic and constitutional propriety. Democratic senator Augustus Bacon of Georgia introduced a resolution disclaiming any U.S. intent “to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said islands” beyond the time when the Filipinos could organize a government (presumably under Aguinaldo). A resolution by Nebraska’s Populist senator William Allen declared that any military action against the Filipino insurgency would be “an act of war unwarranted on the part of the President and the exercise of Constitutional powers vested exclusively in Congress,” which had never authorized any such war against Filipinos.
Undergirding both resolutions was the conviction that the United States had no right under the Constitution or international law to annex the Philippines. But Ben Foraker vehemently disagreed. “Among the powers of nationality,” declared the Ohioan, “are the powers to make war and to make treaties.” Implicit in those powers was “the power to acquire territory by conquest or otherwise and to inherit all the consequences that may accrue through war.”
On January 25, Cushman Davis, one of the U.S. peace commissioners and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged ratification of the peace treaty to forestall “continued uncertainty, renewed encouragement to the insurgent Filipinos . . . and a prolongation of the state of war with much of its horrors,” as the New York Times characterized his remarks. He seemed confident of victory, the paper reported, but added that President McKinley, following his normal routine of poring over newspaper reports and talking extensively with senators of both parties, had concluded that ratification might face difficulty.
The president was right. On February 1, the Washington Post reported that “the lack of sufficient votes is very evident,” and senatorial vote counters said the president remained two votes shy of success. When further resolutions emerged attacking the president’s Philippine policy and foreswearing any U.S. interest in annexing the Philippines, some Republicans urged acceptance of one of these resolutions to ease the way for ratification. The president opposed that approach and even seemed to join some senators who would let the treaty die before allowing a Senate minority to dictate policy. As McKinley viewed it, he had surveyed his Philippine options thoroughly and had reached a sound conclusion based on logic. He hadn’t set out to turn America into an Asian colonial power; the war had done that. But now, responding to events as they unfolded, he would pursue steadfastly the only policy that made sense to him. The president worked the issue assiduously, lobbying wayward senators and dangling patronage and other favors in an effort to cadge votes.
To bolster his political standing further, he announced creation of yet another commission, this one to study the Philippine situation and formulate policy options. He named to the group Charles Denby, a Democrat and former minister to China; Dean C. Worcester, a University of Michigan zoologist who had traveled extensively through the islands; and Cornell University president Jacob Gould Schurman. When he asked Schurman to head the group, the academician initially demurred, saying he opposed U.S. dominance over the archipelago.
“Oh . . . that need not trouble you,” McKinley assured him. “I didn’t want the Philippine Islands, either.” That’s why, he said, he crafted protocol language that left his options open. But “in the end there was no alternative.” Somehow Schurman accepted this as reassurance and took the position. The commission left for Manila on January 31.
* * *
AT AROUND 11:30 on the evening of Saturday, February 4, McKinley sat at his Cabinet Room table, dictating to Cortelyou passages for a forthcoming Boston speech. A White House aide interrupted to deliver a dispatch received earlier that day by the New York Sun. The paper’s Manila correspondent reported that Aguinaldo’s insurgents had initiated a general assault on U.S. forces in the Philippine capital; that U.S. forces had driven the Filipinos back with heavy losses to the insurgents; and that action continued. The president silently read it several times, then placed it on his table, leaned back in his chair, and mused, “It is always the unexpected that happens. . . . How foolish those people are. This means the ratification of the treaty; the people will understand now.”
At 8:05 the next morning he got official word from Dewey and later in the day a status report from Otis. The general said the insurgents had attacked U.S. outer lines with a large force, then renewed the attack several times through the night. By 4 a.m. the entire U.S. line managed to repulse the attack, push the insurgents back beyond their previous position, and capture several villages and defense works. “We are still driving enemy and think we will punish him severely,” wrote Otis. He later reported that fifty-nine U.S. servicemen had died in battle, along with 3,000 Filipinos. It wasn’t clear to later historians which side actually precipitated the battle, though the first shot likely had been fired by an American soldier. But the long face-off perimeter between the two armies was inherently unstable, and a conflict probably was inevitable. Certainly the McKinley administration hadn’t wanted a shooting war at that time.
But the war was on. It introduced new complexities into the Philippine situation and also threatened the president’s political standing if he couldn’t bring it to a quick conclusion. Given Aguinaldo’s troop strength of 30,000 and his demonstrated military capacity, a short war didn’t seem likely.
The events around Manila seemed to push the Senate vote toward a favorable outcome, helped along by a treaty endorsement from the country’s leading Democrat, William Jennings Bryan. But it was a near thing. On February 5, before news of the battle had sunk into the national consciousness, the New York Times ran the headline “Hangs Upon a Thread: Fate of Peace Treaty Still a Matter of Doubt.” The next day, with the vote scheduled for 3 p.m., the pape
r suggested the final two votes would almost certainly emerge, though they hadn’t yet been definitively identified. The Senate revealed its sentiment when it voted down an amendment seeking to place the Philippines on the same path toward independence granted to Cuba. Then came the ratification vote. First South Carolina’s Democratic senator John McLaurin announced his support, perhaps induced by patronage promises. Then Democrat Samuel McEnery of Louisiana offered his vote in exchange for a Senate roll call on his resolution declaring that U.S. Philippine policy “is not intended to incorporate the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands into citizenship of the United States.” (The measure passed the Senate but died in the House.) Finally, Republican John Jones of Nevada switched from nay to aye after the initial roll call.
The result was fifty-seven votes for ratification, one more than needed. Henry Cabot Lodge, a fierce treaty advocate, slumped in his Senate chair with relief. “It was the closest, hardest fight I have ever known,” he told Roosevelt, “and probably we shall not see another in our time where there was so much at stake.” Lodge’s Massachusetts colleague, the great anti-interventionist George Hoar, rushed to the White House the next morning to mend fences. When Lodge showed up and found the miscreant seated before the president, “with a beaming smile on his Pickwickian face,” the great interventionist could hardly believe it. “Only a few hours before,” Lodge’s friend Henry Adams fumed, “in the full belief that his single vote was going to defeat and ruin the administration, Hoar had voted against the treaty, and there he was, slobbering the President with assurances of his admiration . . . and distilling over him the oil of his sanctimony.”
But McKinley, true to his studied magnanimity, let pass Hoar’s rebellion out of a friendship that extended back many years and was distilled in an exchange some months earlier when the president encountered Hoar at a social function. The president asked what kind of mood his friend was in.
“Pretty pugnacious, I confess, Mr. President,” replied Hoar.
“I shall always love you, whatever you do,” said the president, taking his friend’s hand and showing a bit of mist in his eyes. But behind the mist, and the sincerity it betokened, was a calculation, no doubt, of the next time he would need Hoar’s vote.
* * *
MCKINLEY’S DODGE COMMISSION had served its early purpose well, lancing the boil of national outrage at reports of army mistreatment of America’s soldiers and getting the president’s party past the November elections with as little damage as possible. For more than two months, beginning in late September, the commissioners conducted 109 meetings and probed every aspect of the army’s wartime record (leaving aside only policy and strategic matters). They interviewed Secretary Alger along with all the major army bureau chiefs and other well-placed officers. They talked with scores of lesser officers, enlisted men, medical personnel, and charity workers. They pursued information in Chicago, Detroit, Harrisburg, Cincinnati, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Tampa.
What emerged was a narrative not much different from what the country already knew. Many problems were “the inevitable consequences of tropical campaigning and hasty mobilization,” as one historian later put it. Distribution difficulties stemmed from the effort to move so many men and so much materiel so quickly with so little functional infrastructure. The Medical Department, lacking prestige within the service, found itself slighted by top authorities, bereft of the supplies and materials needed to perform adequately. Incompetence undermined the Quartermaster Department, responsible for shipping medical supplies. Field commanders ignored sanitation instructions and often belittled medical personnel who tried to enforce them. In short order the Hospital Corps increased in number from just 791 personnel to nearly 6,000—still half of what was needed. Such a frenzied buildup generated inevitable administrative chaos.
It appeared the Dodge report would give the president what he had asked for: a basis for placing responsibility where it belonged and for taking appropriate action. Also, Grenville Dodge and his colleagues weren’t uncovering evidence of illegality or corruption. The scandal seemed contained, the narrative politically manageable.
Then the army’s commanding general, Nelson Miles, ripped up the narrative and injected into the controversy an incendiary new element. On December 21, he told the commission that defective food had been “one of the serious causes of so much sickness and distress on the part of the troops.” The problem, he said, was that the army’s commissary general, Charles Eagan, had supplanted the traditional approach of maintaining beef on the hoof with newfangled canned and refrigerated beef products. These products, Miles declared, contained “some serious defect” that sickened large numbers of troops. The next day he went further in an interview with Hearst’s intemperate New York Journal, which introduced its sensational story with the headline “Miles Makes Grave Charges against the Administration—Poisons Used in Beef Made the Soldiers Ill—Tons of Bad Meat Sent to Troops in Porto Rico—These Charges, He Declares, Contain Only a Few of the Facts Which [He] Has Gathered.”
Now the story had a focus that it previously had lacked. This suggested not only malfeasance on a grand scale but also an unconscionable insensitivity toward the health and well-being of the soldiers sent into harm’s way in behalf of their country. An outraged Alger became particularly sympathetic toward General Eagan, who was struck, said Alger, “with the suddenness and sharpness of a blow from an assassin’s knife out of the dark.”
Behind the Miles allegation was a series of petty controversies, irritations, and perceived slights that ballooned into a seething antipathy for Alger, McKinley, and most of his subordinate generals. After leading a contingent of reinforcements to Cuba to assist General Shafter outside Santiago, Miles took umbrage at a cable sent by Alger to Shafter clarifying that Miles would not supersede Shafter’s authority. Why this should rile the general was mystifying, since Miles and Alger had worked out the arrangement before his departure. The general again took umbrage following his quick victory against the Spanish in Puerto Rico. He wanted to arrange a surrender and Spanish evacuation of San Juan but received orders to remain in place pending the outcome of the Paris peace talks. So consumed with his own ego was Miles that he couldn’t see the diplomatic necessity in McKinley’s stand-pat order following the signing of the armistice protocol.
During his Puerto Rican campaign, Miles went public with his animosities in an interview with a friendly Kansas City Star reporter. He accused Alger of neutralizing his authority in Santiago, rejecting his program for containing yellow fever, publicly distorting his communications, and withholding crucial naval vessels from his Puerto Rican landing operation. Arriving in New York in September, he touted his own strategic brilliance to reporters and asserted credit for the victories in both Santiago and Puerto Rico. The Washington Post captured Miles in a headline: “Gen. Nelson A. Miles: Makes Up in Ambition What He Lacks in Modesty.”
In going after Alger, Miles chose an easy target. The secretary had seen his national standing decline sharply with the army incompetence scandals. Many reporters, intent on keeping the story alive, adopted Miles as the good guy who fought to protect his troops from the failings of Alger and also of Adjutant General Corbin, whose increasing power in the White House rankled Miles. An example centered on a plan to have returning troops from Puerto Rico and Santiago veterans from Montauk parade through New York in a celebratory demonstration. McKinley approved the plan contingent upon the troops being certified as physically fit. An exchange of telegrams revealed that most army officers involved, including Miles, considered the thing impractical, and the president withdrew his approval. That led to newspaper reports that a vindictive Corbin had canceled the parade to thwart public recognition of Miles. After talking with Miles in October, General Shafter warned Corbin that he was “wild with suppressed rage . . . breathing vengeance on the Department.”
Miles had first taken an interest in the beef matter in June, when he heard reports in Tampa that the troops were grumbling about th
e preserved meat. After his return from Puerto Rico he surveyed regimental commanders and received widespread condemnation of the canned beef. Yet at this point nobody had suggested the meat was tainted or contained poisons. That came from a longtime friend of Miles named William Daly, a Pittsburgh physician serving with Miles as a volunteer surgeon. Daly told Miles the meat had tasted of boric and salicylic acids, unsafe chemicals sometimes used to preserve meat. He later said he had tested the meat chemically and discovered acid traces. That was the sole basis for Miles’s allegation that the meat was poisonous.
Unquestionably the canned meat product was unsavory. Roosevelt said the troops wouldn’t touch the stuff unless very hungry. “At the best,” he said, “it was tasteless; at the worst, it was nauseating.” The Dodge Commission later would conclude that tropical temperatures produced liquefaction of the meat’s fat, thus making it “unpalatable,” as the Associated Press put it. “Most of the beef, though,” added the news service, “is found to have been satisfactory for emergency use, where fresh beef or beef on the hoof could not be procured.” There certainly was no evidence of actual taint. Even McKinley’s Cabinet tasted the product and found it “in perfect condition, wholesome and sweet.” And the AP said the statements of chemical treatment made by Miles and Daly were “not borne out by the chemical experts” who testified before the Dodge Commission.
President McKinley Page 41