UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title African Americans and the Spanish-American War and Philippine Insurrection: Military Participation, Recognition, and Memory, 1898-1904 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6n09f9g0 Author Russell, Timothy Dale Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE African Americans and the Spanish-American War and Philippine Insurrection: Military Participation, Recognition, and Memory, 1898-1904 Doctor of Philosophy in History by Timothy Dale Russell June 2013 Dissertation Committee: Dr. V.P. Franklin, Chairperson Dr. Molly McGarry Dr. Rebecca Kugel Copyright by Timothy Dale Russell 2013 The Dissertation of Timothy Dale Russell is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. V. P. Franklin, without whose direction and invaluable assistance this dissertation would not have been possible. Thank you for providing the wisdom, patience, and expertise that guided me through this endeavor. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Rebecca Kugel and Dr. Molly McGarry, for their mentorship and support through the years. I would like to thank my loving wife Vera, my parents Mike and Betty Russell, and Peter and Sheila Woodington, for their constant support and encouragement as I labored through the dissertation process. Thank you for providing the foundation and stability that kept me buoyed and focused on achieving this goal. I would also like to offer my heartfelt appreciation to Lance Eisenhauer, Jon Ille, and Dr. Owen Jones, who were always ready to lend a welcome ear and offer kind advice. Thank you for your friendship, I will cherish it always. Finally, I wish to take a moment to remember those dear family members who I have lost in the past year, and whose influence I will carry with me always. My grandparents, Ezra and Bettie Ellis, whose example and life lessons taught me the meaning of facing and overcoming life’s challenges, thank you. To Suzie Q, thanks for seeing me through the peaks and valleys of graduate school, your presence was always a comfort to me. I miss you all so much! iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION African Americans and the Spanish-American War and Philippine Insurrection: Military Participation, Recognition, and Memory, 1898-1904. by Timothy Dale Russell Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in History University of California, Riverside, June 2013 Dr. V. P. Franklin, Chairperson The Spanish-American War, which began in 1898, coincided with a virulent campaign of racial violence and legal segregation directed at African Americans throughout the “Jim Crow” South. As the jingoism of the day stirred American nationalism, the question of whether to support the war against Spain was much more complicated to even the most patriotic African Americans as they faced an unceasing assault on their civil rights. Utilizing numerous editorials from the black press, and letters from African Americans written to President William McKinley, the Secretary of War, the U.S. Army Adjutant General, and various state governors, this dissertation analyzes the African American response to the Spanish-American War, and discusses how they attempted to use the conflict as a new battleground in the larger struggle for equal rights. By outlining the efforts of African Americans to be allowed to volunteer for the army during the war with Spain this study shows how they considered the opportunity to fight to be a right as American citizens. Additionally, I detail how once African Americans earned the right to form volunteer regiments they strove to guarantee the fair treatment of black soldiers, and v labored to insure that African American service and sacrifice was honored and remembered properly. Finally, I chart the evolution of disillusionment as it became increasingly apparent that their contribution to the war effort would not bring lasting change. vi Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………...1 Chapter One: A Desire to Serve: The Campaign to Join the Army During the Spanish-American War.......................................9 Chapter Two: Defining the Way They Served, The Campaign to Become Officers…………………………………..56 Chapter Three: Embattled Patriots: the Experience of African American Soldiers and Civilians During the Spanish-American War……………………………………….….115 Chapter Four: The Case of John W. Calloway………………………170 Chapter Five: Disillusion and Revolt………………………………...218 Chapter Six: The African American Battle For Memory in the Spanish-American War………………………………269 Epilogue: Assessing the Changes…………………………………….319 Bibliography………………………………………………………….336 vii Introduction The Spanish-American War offered American citizens an opportunity not only to demonstrate their love of country, but also to put those patriotic feelings into practice by joining the U.S. Army. For many Americans it was considered a civic obligation to answer the nation’s call at a time of crisis in exchange for the benefits of citizenship. For African Americans, the Spanish-American War was a much more complicated issue, which stirred powerful and conflicting emotions. The war took place during the same period that “Jim Crow,” or legal segregation, was being established throughout the South. On the eve of the war with Spain, African Americans were striving to protect and maintain their eroding civil rights in the face of virulent racial discrimination. The Spanish-American War seemed to offer an opportunity to display African Americans’ patriotism and their willingness to carryout the responsibilities of American citizenship, and possibly convince white Americans that they deserved full and equal rights. Many African Americans displayed their sincere patriotism and expressed a desire to fight against Spain. However, when considering the African American response to the Spanish-American War, one cannot divorce the conflict abroad from the racial struggle at home. The U.S. Army and many white Americans were unenthusiastic about the idea of incorporating African Americans into the volunteer army organized immediately after the declaration of war, and but for a few exceptions, most black Americans were omitted from the first call for volunteers. This omission led to outcry, direct action, and 1 resistance to such blatantly prejudicial policies by African Americans who wanted to fight in the war. There have been several important studies on African Americans and the Spanish- American War. The initial works came in the years immediately following the conflict. Works such as Hershel V. Cashin’s Under Fire With the Tenth U.S. Cavalry (1899), Edward A. Johnson’s History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War (1899), and Theophilus Gould Steward’s Buffalo Soldiers The Colored Regulars in the United States Army (1904) added the African American contribution to the narrative of the Spanish-American War.1 These studies were compiled in the same manner as African American historians George Washington Williams and Joseph T. Wilson who offered comprehensive histories of African Americans and the U.S. military. George Washington Williams’ History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 and Joseph T. Wilson’s The Black Phalanx, presented counter-histories highlighting African Americans as active participants in U.S. history, inserting them into key moments of the nation’s past where they had been mostly silenced or omitted by mainstream white historians. Cashin, Johnson, and Steward added a new chapter to the already rich history of African American military service.2 After T.G. Steward’s Buffalo Soldiers was published in 1904, there were very few historical studies on African Americans in the Spanish-American War until the 1970s. 1 Herschel V. Cashin and Others, Under Fire With the U.S. Tenth Cavalry, (New York 2 George Washington Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880, (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883); Joseph T. Wilson, The Black Phalanx: African American Soldiers in the War of Independence, War of 1812, and the Civil War, (Hartford, Connecticut: American Pub. Co., 1890). 2 However, that particular decade witnessed the emergence of important works on the topic. Two notable works were Marvin Fletcher’s The Black Soldier and Officer in the United States Army, 1891-1917 and Jack D. Foner’s Blacks and the Military in American History. Foner’s work covers African American service throughout all of the United States’ wars, from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam. As such, Foner only offers one chapter on the Spanish-American War, but it provides a good overview of the challenges black soldiers faced in that conflict. Marvin Fletcher’s study deals more extensively with the Spanish-American War, discussing army life on duty and off for African American soldiers, and explores the important issue of African American soldiers and their relationship with, and treatment by, the American public. Fletcher also delves into the complicated history of black officers in the Army during the latter part of the nineteenth century, and the struggles they faced not only at West Point, but also while on active service. He presents a brief, but informative, history of two of the first African American graduates of West Point, Henry Ossian Flipper and Charles Young. Fletcher’s history, however, focuses primarily on the regular U.S. Army and ignores the volunteer regiments formed once war was declared in late April 1898.3 Published a year after Foner and Fletcher’s works was Willard B. Gatewood Jr.’s Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898-1903. In this history Gatewood, who was a prolific author on the subject, offered a foundational study on the African American involvement in the Spanish-American War and the Filipino Insurrection. He 3 Jack D. Foner, Blacks and the Military in American History, A New Perspective, (New York: Praeger Publisher, 1974); Marvin Fletcher, The Black Soldier and Officer In the United States Army 1891-1917, (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1974).