The job of leading the assault on China’s Dagu forts fell to British Rear Admiral James Bruce, who was far more competent than Seymour. Bruce planned his operation meticulously and fostered a harmonious relationship among Alliance admirals. He crafted a plan of taking the forts with about 1,000 men who would land behind the installations and attack from the rear, with the big guns of the Western warships repressing Chinese firepower. A British naval force simultaneously would attack four Chinese destroyers moored on the riverbank. Bruce initiated his two-pronged attack at 2 a.m. on June 17, and by breakfast all four forts were in Allied hands. The British Navy captured the four Chinese destroyers. Western casualties were minimal in both operations.
U.S. Admiral Kempff, following instructions from Washington that he avoid hostilities unless subjected to a Chinese act of war, didn’t participate in the operation. But he cleverly positioned the USS Monocacy, under Commander Frederic Wise, near the battle. When it took a shell, Kempff calculated that this was indeed the act of war he needed. Subsequent orders received from Washington read, “Act in concurrence with other powers so as to protect all American interests.”
Meanwhile Seymour’s contingent—haggard, hungry, and surrounded by Boxers and Chinese troops—stumbled upon a Chinese armory filled with food and ammunition. It saved them. Seymour managed to get word of his whereabouts to Western officers at Tianjin, who promptly sent out a rescue party. Still, the admiral lost 285 men, including sixty-five killed, in his ill-considered expedition. The next challenge was the mortal threat to Westerners at Tianjin, surrounded by Chinese combatants who shelled the Western enclave with such persistence that the streets at times “were simply canals of moving lead,” in the words of an American mining engineer (and future U.S. president), Herbert Hoover. The British consul wrote to Admiral Bruce, “Reinforcements are most urgently required.” It took two tries, but on June 23 the Western forces managed to cut a wide swath through Chinese forces and secure the safety of Tianjin’s Westerners. They were greeted with “shouting and cheering and crying and weeping for joy.”
But the Chinese still held most of the city, and Cixi ordered 20,000 Chinese troops to surround the area, shell the Western enclave, and overrun the Europeans, Japanese, and Americans. The Alliance mustered nearly 7,000 troops for an assault on the city. Storming it from two sides on July 13, the attacking forces initially failed to penetrate the twenty-foot-high perimeter walls. But the next day a brave Japanese soldier managed to blow away one of the heavy gates (dying in the effort), and Alliance soldiers stormed through to score what the New York Times called a “brilliant victory.” Chinese troops fled, and the Alliance now possessed a secure staging area for a march to Beijing. Some 250 soldiers of the allied armies died in the fighting, with another 500 wounded. The city was essentially destroyed, with much looting and killing by allied troops.
During this time, the fate of the embassy staffs and other beleaguered foreigners in Beijing remained unknown. In Washington, McKinley fretted through the information blackout. He ordered another 1,300 officers and men dispatched to Dagu and instructed General MacArthur in the Philippines to prepare for sending more if needed. He queried Hay about the possibility of assembling all American citizens in China “in places of safety on the coast, where our ships can give them succor.” Hay responded that it would be too dangerous to move Americans through China’s feverish countryside. He shared McKinley’s anxiety “in regard to this most trying crisis” and the “great affliction to sit apparently helpless . . . knowing what scenes of tragic horror are taking place . . . and not being able to prevent them.” In mid-July, the president cut short his Canton vacation and rushed back to Washington for a hurriedly scheduled Cabinet meeting to determine if he should call a special congressional session to authorize a full complement of 10,000 troops to China. Root and Long assured him that those forces were available without any special congressional action.
Hay worked assiduously through China’s ambassador to Washington, Wu Ting-fang, to open a communications channel to Conger. Wu succeeded, and Conger sent an encrypted message through Wu’s channel that said, “For one month we have been besieged British Legation under continued shot and shell from Chinese troops. Quick relief only can prevent general massacre.” Reaching Washington on July 20, it was authenticated and then conveyed immediately to the president, who was “much gratified by the news,” particularly since British newspapers had reported for days that all foreigners in Beijing had been slaughtered. Conger later revealed to the U.S. consul at Tianjin, J. W. Ragsdale, that a cease-fire had been established with Chinese troops after five weeks of continuous assault. He said some fifty marines from all nations had been killed and many more wounded. “We have provisions for several weeks, but little ammunition,” wrote Conger. “If they continue to shell us as they have done we cant hold out long. Complete massacre will follow.”
With the Beijing foreigners safe but still vulnerable and with Tianjin and Dagu now secure, Alliance forces promptly began preparations for a relief expedition. The nations mustered 18,000 troops (including 2,200 Americans) for the eighty-mile trek to Beijing, with high prospects for combat against Chinese forces along the way. The contingent set out on August 4 at 3 a.m., with expectations that it would take two weeks to reach the capital.
But it wasn’t clear Conger and the other legation people could hold out that long. The empress dowager and her son, increasingly frightened at prospects of losing their country, turned their government over to anti-Western hardliners while also seeking help from America and France in mediating an accord between the kingdom and the other Western countries. A communication from Emperor Zaichun to McKinley, delivered through Wu, pleaded for the president to “devise measures and take the initiative in bringing about a concert of the powers for the restoration of order and peace.” McKinley replied that he couldn’t accept such a mission until China gave assurance of the condition of the legation people, fostered open communication between them and their governments, removed all danger to their lives and liberty, and cooperated with the relief expedition. He chided the emperor with a reminder that U.S. troops had entered China only to protect Americans “who were sojourning in China in the enjoyment of rights guaranteed them by treaty and by international law.”
The New York Times, reflecting widespread sentiment among increasingly apprehensive Americans, editorialized, “If the Oriental intellect in its twistings and turnings is capable of comprehending Western ideas set forth in straightforward speech the grave rebuke which President McKinley has found it necessary to administer directly to the Emperor himself ought to serve as an admonition that Chinese ways are no longer to be tolerated.” The hapless emperor and his mother were in a bind, unable to rid their capital of the foreigners who were at the heart of the hostilities; unable to rein in the Boxers, whose fulminations had precipitated the crisis; and unable to stop the multinational foreign army bent on seizing their imperial city.
The rescue expedition, under a kind of makeshift command structure, encountered significant resistance during its first two days on the road to Beijing. After the foreign army routed the Chinese in both encounters, however, the opposing army and Boxer mobs simply vanished. The way to Beijing was open.
But the Western military victories near Tianjin enraged the Beijing mob, placing the legation people in ever greater danger. One Beijing escapee, a pro-Western Chinaman named Cho-Ta, said the capital bulged with 100,000 Boxers and Qing troops bent on killing any Christian converts or Westerners they could get their hands on. Some 2,000 to 3,000 converts had been killed, he said, and more than 4,000 “peaceful citizens” also had been slain. Conger reported that the Chinese had resumed firing upon the legation compound, and the Chinese government continued to insist that Westerners leave their enclave, which would mean “certain death.” Washington considered the situation “very grave,” reported the Times, adding that officials feared for the foreigners’ survival prospects “if active hostilities should begin against
the legationers.” Washington sent to the imperial government a “sharp demand for compliance with the requirements previously formulated by President McKinley.”
Alliance forces reached Beijing on August 15 and pummeled it with artillery fire, but the Chinese army held off the assault with abundant small-arms fire from the big outer walls. Japanese and Russian troops positioned themselves to the northward of the Tung-Chow Canal, while American and British forces occupied the south side. At nightfall the Japanese blew up the two eastern gates of the city, while the Americans and British entered through two southern gates. Detachments of each contingent, facing heavy resistance, forced their way through Beijing toward the legations, where the parties met and opened up communications. British troops from India entered the British legation grounds at 1 p.m. the next day, the Americans arriving at 3.
“The emaciated tenants could have lasted but little longer,” reported the Associated Press; they had only three days’ rations, consisting mostly of horseflesh and rice, doled out at only a pound a day, as the New York Times reported. Four thousand shells fell in the legation compound during the fifty-five-day siege, killing some sixty-five people and wounding 160. The Chinese government collapsed as the emperor and his mother fled the city before the Alliance arrival to avoid the inevitable despoliation of Beijing and its Forbidden City. The Times of London reported, “Peking is now entirely under foreign control. Looting is proceeding systematically.”
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ALLIANCE UNITY, REMARKABLY tight during the legation crisis, now dissipated over questions of Chinese punishment, the Chinese future, and procedures for the coming negotiation. McKinley steadfastly opposed any China dismemberment, Western territorial aggrandizement, or efforts to overthrow the Qing government. He also accepted Cixi’s designated negotiator, Li Hongzhang. Hay considered Li “an unmitigated scoundrel . . . thoroughly corrupt and treacherous.” But, added the secretary, “he represents China and we must deal with him.” McKinley didn’t want the process disrupted by such trivialities as Li’s suitability to negotiate for China. The focus, he believed, should be on “indemnity for the past and security for the future,” as the New York Times explained.
On August 28 the president convened an all-day Cabinet meeting—the longest of his presidency—to deal with Russia’s embrace of McKinley’s basic principles. The night before, both the president and Secretary Root had crafted ideas for an appreciative reply, and those documents now served as the basis for the discussion. When Cabinet members neared consensus, Root and the president retired to separate rooms to dictate their respective versions. Cortelyou, with his usual interest in procedure, noted that the meticulous, deliberate Root—“one might almost say labored”—took forty-five minutes to produce his beautifully fashioned argument. The straight-ahead McKinley, by contrast, rendered his version, some two or three times longer than Root’s, in about ten minutes.
The final statement reiterated Hay’s open door policy and leveraged the Russian position by praising it. It squared also with a July 3 statement from Hay—a kind of follow-up to his “open door” note—saying the United States opposed any actions by Alliance nations to abandon the open door compact or carve up China. Now in late August the U.S. government “receive[d] with much satisfaction the repeated and frank declaration that Russia has no designs of territorial acquisition in China; and that, equally with the other Powers now operating in China, Russia has sought the safety of her legation in Peking and to help the Chinese Government to repress the troubles.”
In light of China’s wanton destruction, however, the president distrusted the intentions of the other allies, particularly the rambunctious Germans, bent on expanding their presence around the world and agitated by the death of their ambassador. Japan seemed intent on taking Amoy in southeastern China, and even Britain appeared interested in territorial gains. The New York Times suspected these nations had been seduced by “the mighty temptations before them in the shape of land grabbing opportunities.” But before the end of August, Japan had announced its withdrawal from Amoy, and France embraced a policy of restraint. On September 8 the British also bought in.
Thus did Hay’s open door stratagem survive, along with the president’s underlying aim. “What I want,” he told a Canton friend, “is the friendship of China when the trouble is over.” Tied to the question of China’s fate and the harshness of the settlement was the question of whether the Alliance nations should remove most of their troops from Beijing as a sign of good faith or keep them there as bargaining leverage. The president wanted them out, partly because he didn’t want to give American anti-imperialists political fodder in an election year. Besides, the troops were needed in the Philippines, and he feared the unforeseen consequences of an extended military presence. “We want to avoid being in Peking for a long time,” he wrote to Hay, “and it must be a long time if we stay there for the diplomatic negotiations, and without our intending it, we may be drawn into currents that would be unfortunate.”
Hay, always the realist, countered that there was no choice but to remain in place pending the diplomatic outcome. “The dilemma is clear,” he said: the United States wanted out as soon as possible but didn’t want to appear weak or frightened. If the country departed, leaving Germany and Britain in Beijing, those powers would dominate the negotiations, “and we shall be left out in the cold.” McKinley bowed to Hay’s logic.
The powers struggled with other issues involving the starkness of the terms and the severity and extent of the punishments to be meted out. Germany in particular favored a pitiless approach, while McKinley pushed for more lenient measures designed to keep the Qing regime in place. When China issued an imperial decree degrading four princes and depriving a hard-line ringleader of his official privileges, the New York Times heralded it as “a complete justification of the course of the Administration.” On October 19, the Chinese envoys offered peace terms that recognized China’s responsibility for violating international law, accepted an indemnity regimen to be worked out in coming negotiations, and promised the safety and security of foreigners. The United States promptly accepted the proposals as a basis for negotiation, and within three weeks the eight powers reached agreement on the demands to be presented at the start of the coming parlay. The State Department authorized Conger to represent his country in the negotiations. Though many details remained, the great China crisis was over.
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THE CHINA EPISODE of 1900, and McKinley’s role in it, represented a watershed in America’s global position. Agriculture Secretary Wilson was correct, of course, in saying that the country’s victory over Spain had enlarged its diplomatic profile and expanded its influence. As Wilson understood, this was seen in the impact of Hay’s “open door” note on the great powers seeking aggrandizement in China. It was seen also in the aftermath of the Beijing siege, when the American president laid down his marker on the proper postsiege policies and never wavered. Eventually the other powers generally came around to McKinley’s view. No previous president had exercised this kind of diplomatic sway in a matter involving all the world’s greatest powers. Indeed without the Philippines and McKinley’s standing army and the burgeoning U.S. Navy, America couldn’t have marshaled the manpower to play a major role in the Beijing rescue. As Hay said in written musings at the height of the China crisis, “It is to Manila that we owe the ability to send troops and ships to the defence of our ministers, our missionaries, our consuls, and our merchants in China, instead of being compelled to leave our citizens to the casual protection of other powers, as would have been unavoidable had we flung the Philippines away.”
But it wasn’t just America’s new stature that represented a turning point in global power arrangements. It was reflected also in the emerging American global philosophy. Throughout the nineteenth century, great powers had nearly all been great colonial powers. That’s why Germany, now a force positioned strategically in Middle Europe, so desperately wanted colonies wherever they could be obtained.
But America, also emerging as a great power, seemed at least ambivalent about colonialism and perhaps even averse to it. Under McKinley and Hay, the United States didn’t rush into the China landgrab at a time when the colonial impulse threatened to gobble up that troubled kingdom and shut America out of its vast and rich markets. America had wrested Cuba from the clutches of colonial Spain and yet had demurred from acquiring it as its own colonial possession.
Of course McKinley had embraced the colonial impulse in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. But Hawaii and Puerto Rico were seen primarily as isolated strategic necessities rather than elements of a general colonial push. Anti-imperialists scoffed at this distinction, of course, but to McKinley it was real. As for the Philippines, the president clung to his conviction that he simply had had no choice but to take the entire archipelago, to secure America’s naval interests while preventing future turmoil in the islands. At the philosophical level, he justified it with gauzy notions about elevating uneducated and underprivileged peoples, giving them the gifts of modern economics and democratic practice, so much a part of the American ethos. His speeches during this time were replete with references to spreading humanitarian works along with American power. Again critics scoffed and tossed out suggestions of hypocrisy, but most Americans accepted the president’s sincerity on the matter. And the president certainly sought to fulfill that idealistic mandate.
President McKinley Page 50