President McKinley
Page 48
Seeing a looming floor disaster, McKinley sent for three loyal congressmen—Payne, Grosvenor, and John Dalzell of Pennsylvania—and authorized them to let the word out quietly that he now favored the compromise measure. Grosvenor, often viewed as the president’s House mouthpiece, speculated on the House floor that “nothing would give the President greater sorrow and regret than the defeat of this bill.” But several GOP free-traders refused to yield. The president summoned four of them for quiet face-to-face entreaties—and persuaded all four to vote for the measure. He also fashioned two compromise concepts designed to unify the party: reducing the tariff to 15 percent of Dingley rates and giving the legislation an expiration date in two years. Also, all revenues from the tariff would be sent to Puerto Rico to benefit its inhabitants.
That pulled enough Republicans along to win passage for the measure in a close vote of 172 to 161. But Republicans left nothing to chance. As the New York Times reported, “Six men were brought from beds of sickness, two of them from hospitals.” The afternoon of the vote, during a carriage ride with Ida, McKinley predicted the bill would pass with either six or eleven votes to spare. It was the latter. Though few in Washington knew it, the president had saved the bill with his last-minute maneuverings.
Then it was on to the Senate, where a similar drama played out. On March 2 the island’s financial difficulties prompted McKinley to call for an immediate congressional appropriation of $2 million for the island—amounting to the duties already collected from there. The House passed the measure within two hours of getting the request. The Senate approved a similar measure some days later but loaded it up with Democratic amendments designed for election-year showboating. It took McKinley’s intervention to get the conference committee to restore the bill essentially to its original form.
But the tariff measure, now commingled with legislation by Foraker to establish a civilian government in Puerto Rico, occupied the Senate for five weeks. Again free-trade Republicans balked at supporting a measure that imposed a tariff on Puerto Ricans and excluded the island’s people from constitutional protection. Even Kohlsaat’s Chicago Times-Herald blasted the president’s retreat and called his performance “the first almost irreparable mistake of his Administration.”
The Senate challenge required some further presidential maneuvering, including the issuance of an “authoritative statement” from an unnamed Cabinet member outlining in detail the evolution of the president’s thinking throughout the controversy and staking out his convictions on both the tariff and constitutional matters. After much pulling and hauling and some minor amendments, the Senate passed the bill on April 3 by a vote of 40 to 31. On April 11, the House concurred in the Senate’s amendments, and McKinley signed the measure the next evening at seven o’clock.
The president took some hits on his handling of the nettlesome issue. The New York Times, normally pro-McKinley, stated, “We do not recall . . . an instance in which the President of the United States has pursued so openly a course so contradictory, involving such flagrant departure from the usually accepted standard of political good faith, with such stolid indifference to the opinion of his countrymen and such stubborn silence when candid speech was demanded.” The president himself was reported to have lamented to a friend, “I made a mistake in my message.” The mistake, a costly one, was in clinging to his leadership of indirection when a bold approach was needed, either in behalf of his original position or of the subsequent revision. But the ultimate outcome served Puerto Rico well, and the president’s timely actions saved the legislation from a likely death.
* * *
ON FEBRUARY 4, the president got word that Secretary Hay had negotiated with British ambassador Sir Julian Pauncefote important amendments to the old Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The revisions would terminate the requirement that the United States and Britain must cooperate in the construction and maintenance of any isthmian canal and that neither nation could fortify or exclusively control the waterway. In London, Lord Salisbury had softened his earlier effort to tie abrogation to American flexibility on a festering Alaska-Canada border dispute. Pauncefote had convinced London that the U.S. government under McKinley would never accept that linkage but might give Britain special canal access. Besides, said Pauncefote, the U.S. Congress was demonstrating a frisky resolve to proceed with a canal project even in defiance of Clayton-Bulwer. Better, he counseled, to get ahead of that wave.
McKinley thrilled at the news. He knew a canal across Central America would essentially double the U.S. Navy’s global strength by assuring quick interoceanic passage of U.S. warships and would also boost U.S. trade. Musing on the development with Cortelyou, the president praised Hay’s talents, modesty, and “handsome” behavior—and added with a laugh that since the time of John Sherman’s tenure, when he had acted as his own secretary of state, “things have gone on beautifully.” Noting a recent derisive observation that Hay had been “educated in the English school,” the president suggested a good retort would be, “Yes, he was trained under Abraham Lincoln.” But Hay possessed a trait that could prove problematic in Washington’s give and take: he treated with disdain members of Congress, whom he considered mere grubby politicians engaged in activity far less lofty than that of diplomats. This would serve him ill after Hay and Pauncefote signed the revised treaty on February 5 at eleven, and McKinley sent the document to the Senate before noon.
Americans reacted with civic glee. The treaty, opined the New York Press, “adds another and crowning triumph to the series of diplomatic achievements with which Secretary Hay has dignified and rendered notable the annals of President McKinley’s administration.” Hay deserved “the congratulations of his friends and the thanks of his countrymen” for correcting a U.S. diplomatic “blunder” of fifty years before.
Hay’s triumph came not a moment too soon, as canal enthusiasts in Congress intended to push Nicaraguan canal legislation without regard to the Clayton-Bulwer constrictions or to the competing Panamanian concept then under study by McKinley’s Walker Commission. In mid-January, the House Inter-State and Foreign Commerce Committee reported a bill nearly identical to the previous Congress’s Hepburn bill, and within days the corresponding Senate committee embraced the same concept. Both houses were poised to roll over Clayton-Bulwer and deliver a diplomatic insult to Britain, thus greatly embarrassing McKinley and Hay. Prompt action on the new Hay-Pauncefote Treaty could deflect that rebellion.
Then came a hitch. Senators discovered a provision in the treaty making the waterway “open, free and neutral” to all nations at all times. This meant the United States couldn’t fortify the canal or keep out hostile ships even in wartime. The Boston Daily Globe speculated that this would “stir up a war of opinions that will prevent its final ratification by the Senate.” Hearst’s intemperate New York Journal went wild with indignation. “Has McKinley suddenly gone crazy?” asked the paper, then answered, “No, he has simply allowed a fool to make a fool of him.” The Journal identified the first fool as Hay, “fresh from England and English flattery,” more attuned to the rarefied salons of London than “this common country.” The paper concluded, “It is his peanut head that accepted the treaty which poor McKinley has been gulled into laying before the American public.”
Despite such fulminations, McKinley didn’t immediately recognize the depth of the disaffection. Reported the New York Times, “There is the best authority for saying that the President believes that when the treaty comes to be considered most of the opposition to it will be removed.” He was heartened when Alabama’s John Morgan, the Senate’s leading canal expert, expressed satisfaction with Hay’s handiwork. Hay attributed the firestorm to the self-important politicians he had never liked anyway. It was, he said, an “exhibition of craven cowardice, ignorance and prejudice” by “the howling fools in the Senate.” Of course those howling fools had felt the secretary’s imperious scorn for months, which no doubt partially explained their own arrogant reaction to Hay’s diplomatic product.
On March 12 a disheartened Hay submitted his resignation. Lingering after the morning Cabinet meeting, he handed McKinley an envelope. “Mr. President,” he said, “here are some communications which I hope you will read at your leisure.” The committee action, wrote Hay in an explanatory note, “indicates views so widely divergent from mine in matters affecting . . . the national welfare and honor, that I fear my power to serve you . . . is at an end.” He feared also that the newspaper attacks on him had generated so much political animosity that it could harm the president should he remain as secretary.
After clearing his desk that evening, the president pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote a reply. “Nothing could be more unfortunate than to have you retire from the Cabinet,” he wrote, adding that Hay’s work had had his “warm approval,” and he would “cheerfully bear whatever criticism or condemnation may come.” Then he offered the older man a bit of avuncular counsel: “We must bear the atmosphere of the hour. It will pass away. We must continue working on the lines of duty and honor. Conscious of high purpose and honorable effort, we cannot yield our posts however the storm may rage.” The president returned Hay’s resignation letter, and the secretary continued his duties. Hay wrote back, “I cannot [adequately] express my feeling of gratitude and devotion.” He called the president’s letter “touching and beautiful.”
But the two men still faced the intertwined challenges of the treaty and the Hepburn legislation. Senators demanded at least two amendments beyond the Davis language that McKinley couldn’t abide, particularly one that excised a provision inviting the participation of other powers. He called to the White House senators Lodge, Foraker, and Aldrich to meet with him and Hay and establish some common ground. The senators said the treaty would go down without the two additional amendments; with them it would pass, and the Hepburn frenzy could be stopped. The president countered that the treaty was excellent as negotiated and should be ratified without amendment.
But he could see that that wasn’t possible. In order to get Lodge to halt the Hepburn juggernaut he would have to give the Senate what it wanted on Hay-Pauncefote. When in May the House passed the Hepburn bill with an overwhelming vote of 224 to 36 and sent it to an expectant Senate, Lodge dutifully led an effort to block its progress pending disposition of the Hay-Pauncefote matter and release of the Walker Commission report. That kicked the Hepburn bill over to the next session. The New York Times hailed the Senate’s Hepburn blockage as “a triumph for the Administration and for decency and dignity.” In the meantime Hay and Pauncefote had crafted a seven-month ratification extension for the treaty, giving both nations more time to craft a compromise.
Once again the president managed to maneuver through political thickets that threatened to upend an important agenda. He didn’t get things moving in his desired direction with any speed or smoothness. But Hepburn was on hold, and the treaty was still alive.
* * *
AT FIVE O’CLOCK on the afternoon of June 7, the first session of the Fifty-sixth Congress adjourned, leaving a number of important matters for subsequent sessions and subsequent Congresses: the Hay-Pauncefote treaty; the canal initiative; government structures for Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; the issue of corporate trusts, which the president had raised to a priority in his third Annual Message; calls for a reduction in war taxes that now seemed unnecessary because the war was over and tariff revenue was soaring; and a shipping subsidy measure that was the heartthrob of Senator Hanna. Not surprisingly, Godkin’s Nation looked at this incomplete agenda and excoriated the Republican president and Congress for their lassitude, though the magazine did acknowledge the significance of the Gold Standard Act. “On the whole,” declared the magazine, “this is not a review for a great party, secure in its possession of all branches of the Government, to be proud of.”
There was some truth in that. But the late war had placed before the president big burdens of governance, foreign relations, and a subsequent conflict—all of which pinned him down with matters that didn’t necessarily involve Congress. Employing his studied incrementalism, he had pushed forward on many fronts with the resolve to bring them to fruition when propitious times arrived in each instance. Certainly Congress couldn’t take over governance in the Philippines, for example, until the insurgency could be broken, and neither were the other new possessions ripe for congressional jurisdiction. The path ahead for the canal effort was filled with hazards and hurdles, but events seemed to be moving in the right direction. Further, though the Puerto Rican legislation had emerged only through an ugly process, it did eventually get done.
All in all, while it wasn’t a particularly impressive legislative record, the president seemed well positioned for the November election, when Americans would pronounce their judgment based on such large factors as economic performance, the nation’s global stature, the Philippine challenge, and their own well-being. These were the things that mattered to McKinley, which may be why he paid little heed to the reproofs of the Hearsts and the Godkins.
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China
FIRST STIRRINGS OF NONCOLONIAL IMPERIALISM
In March 1900, Secretary of State Hay publicly released the correspondence he had solicited from major European nations and Japan regarding an “open door” to China: equal treatment for countries pursuing trade and economic development in the Middle Kingdom. Hay wanted to halt the frenzy of the industrial powers carving up China into competing spheres of dominance. The frenzy threatened not only to destroy China’s ruling Qing dynasty, already struggling with rampant societal chaos, but also to heighten tensions among Western nations seeking strategic harbors, coaling stations, and economic exploitation in that Asian land. Under Hay’s plan, all nations would be given an equal hand in pursuing Chinese markets and other economic opportunities.
Although some of the responses were vague, Hay hailed them as an embrace of his “open door” concept. Most observers agreed. “Secretary Hay’s dexterous skill in completing his task,” asserted the London Globe, “has left nothing to be desired.” Many understood that President McKinley also contributed by thrusting America into the world as a power to be reckoned with. As Agriculture Secretary James Wilson told the New York Times, “A year ago no nation would have listened to a proposition of this kind, but the whole world listens to the United States now.” He added with a kind of wink that, if colonialism constituted the “White Man’s Burden,” as poet Rudyard Kipling had suggested, Hay had eased that burden considerably through expanded trade and wealth—manifest in the rise of U.S. exports to Asia from $26 million to $73 million in ten years.
On March 31, just days after Hay’s open door triumph, news dispatches from London reported that a Foreign Office official named William St. John Brodrick had informed Parliament that menacing disturbances had erupted in China against Western missionaries and Chinese Christians. The official said two British warships had been sent to Dagu, the coastal location nearest Beijing, to protect British lives and property. The United States also had sent a warship to Dagu, a response in part to an earlier attack by “secret society” mobs on an American medical mission near Chongjing. The mob “maltreated” native medical assistants, reported the Times, and murdered one of them.
These intertwined developments—Hay’s open door breakthrough and anti-Western protests in the Chinese countryside—reflected two sides of a geopolitical reality. One was China’s descent into a state of pathetic national weakness, inviting aggressive Western exploitation; the other was a seething anger among many Chinese at their accelerating national humiliation. This combustible mix was about t
o explode into a convulsion of mob violence throughout northern China that threatened mass slaughter of Western diplomats, missionaries, and other expatriates, including thousands of Americans.
The story of the Chinese-Western conflict goes back to the dawn of the eighteenth century and the outset of a demographic explosion in China that overpowered the Qing dynasty’s ability to govern. The Chinese population, just 150 million in 1700, soared to 430 million just a century and a half later. The Qing government neglected the infrastructure—dams, canals, dikes, roads—needed to keep agricultural production apace with this demographic surge. The result was poverty, hunger, banditry, societal breakdown, and the emergence of “secret societies” aimed at seizing control of territory and restoring stability. This culminated in what was called the “White Lotus Rebellion,” actually a widespread series of uprisings, which the dynasty put down only after eight years of hard fighting and national devastation.
But in the meantime it invited outside aggression. The full extent of the country’s weakness was seen in the Opium War of 1839–42, when China sought to curtail Britain’s lucrative Chinese opium trade. With superior firepower and warfare tactics, Britain scored successive battlefield victories, leading to the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which opened up five Chinese cities to British trade, including Shanghai, and imposed a robust indemnity upon the ruling dynasty. Hong Kong became a British crown colony.