Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippine Insurrection John Davenport

7 Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippine Insurrection John Davenport In our history, perhaps no single armed conflict has touched the collective soul of the American people as deeply as the war in Vietnam. In what became a multimedia event, the war in Indochina presented American soldiers in a new light. For the first time, it was thought, our troops were fighting a war of aggression, a war for empire. This empire however, was not a product of the 1960s, nor was it the denouement of the post-World War II realignment. Long before young soldiers found themselves fighting for their lives in places such as Khe Sanh and Da Nang, other young Americans had fought this nation’s first imperial war in Asia -- the Philippine Insurrection. From 1899-1902, the United States fought to extinguish the flame of independence which had flared in the Philippines following the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War. An aggressive newcomer on the imperial stage, America was a nation which had cut its teeth on a patrimony of “manifest destiny.” For many people in the United States, freedom and liberty emanated from our shores. Counted among this number was the energetic young governor from New York, Theodore Roosevelt. From his earliest appearance in the public limelight, Roosevelt expressed an abiding belief in the superiority of western culture and the rectitude of Western expansion, particularly the American variant. This belief shaped his personal and life profoundly and affected his conduct as President of the United States. Nowhere is this evinced more clearly than in his conduct of the American war in the Philippines between his assumption of power in 1901, and his declaration of the islands’ pacification in July 1902. The month of March, 1899, saw American troops continuing an advance outwards from Manila which had begun a month earlier. Different readings of an agreement between the Filipinos and Americans, concerning guarantees of the former’s independence, had caused tensions which escalated to the point where a minor incident triggered a war. An American sentry fired on a Filipino patrol, and within days the Americans were driving the ill-equipped and poorly trained Filipinos away from their capital city into the surrounding countryside. By March 19, Manila was held securely by the Americans; by March 31, it was reported that “greater damage and heavy losses” had been suffered by the Filipinos. It could be boasted, without exaggeration, that “nowhere was the enemy able to retard the advance.”1 As the war progressed in the Philippines, controversy over the American presence in the archipelago grew. People such as Andrew Carnegie, former President Grover Cleveland, Lester Brune, Chronological History of United States Foreign Relations (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985), 423-426. Adjutant-General’s Official Correspondence, vol. II. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902), 873-876. Hereafter referred to as AGC. Moorefleld Storey, ed., Secretary Root’s Record (Boston: George Ellis Co., 1902), 7. Text-fiche. Karl Irving Faust, Campaigning in the Philippines (San Francisco: The Hicks-Judd Company, 1899; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1970), 118-240. 8 and William Jennings Bryan, spoke out forcefully against the war. David Starr Jordan, in a speech given at Stanford University, urged the government to withdraw from the islands “as soon as in dignity we can.” 2 Ex-President Cleveland, in a fit of sarcasm, demanded that if the Filipinos “prefer something different from the plan for their control which we propose,” then they “should be slaughtered.” William Jennings Bryan warned that “the conquest of the Philippines. ..will certainly prove embarrassing to those who still hold to the doctrine which underlies a republic.” “Military nile,” of the type which would be needed in the islands, he continued, “is antagonistic to our theory of government.” Yet, possibly the sharpest and most personal attack of all was reserved for the toothy, young New Yorker who was beginning to make his presence felt on the national political scene. “It is not the armed savagery of the Philippines which threatens America,” remarked William Lloyd Garrison of the Peace Union,” but the savagery that Theodore Roosevelt represents.” Although stung by such attacks, Governor Roosevelt soon proved that he could give as good as he got. Comparing the anti-imperialists to the copperhead Democrats of the Civil War, Roosevelt expressed his contempt for the people who were “really chagrined at every American triumph, while they showed very poorly concealed satisfaction over every American shortcoming.” 6 Privately, he criticized his “barbarous friends on the other side of the political fence,” who were “half-hearted on the Philippine question.” Considering the fact that American boys were fighting for their lives in the archipelago, he express “regret that any American should go wrong at a time like this.” ‘ Roosevelt never hid his unabashed patriotism, nor did he hide attraction to the notion of American expansion. As American troops were battering away at the insurgents, Roosevelt was confidently, and publicly, announcing “I am an expansionist.” 8 Some months later on October 21, 1899, in a speech given at Cincinnati, the future president gave what was perhaps the most succinct and complete statement of his views on the issue of expansion: “Expansion is not only the handmaid of greatness, but, above all it is the handmaid of 2 Horace Newton Fisher, Principle of Colonial Government (Boston: L.C. Page and Company,1899), 3. 3 Alden March, History and Conquest of the Philippines (Philadelphia: J.C. Winston and Company, 1937), 244. Text-fiche. Ibid., 243. New York Times, 26 August 1899, p.4. 6 Herbert Ronald Farleger and Albert Bushnell Hart, eds., Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia (New York: Roosevelt Memorial Association, 1941), 245-246. 7 Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884-1918, vol. I. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), 389. 8 Ferleger, 170. 9 peace.. .every expansion of a civilized power is a conquest for peace.. .It means not only the extension of American influence and power, it means the extension of liberty and order, the bringing nearer by gigantic strides of the day when peace shall come to the whole earth.” Words such as these, spoken without equivocation, characterized the public orations of Theodore Roosevelt in 1899 and through out the war years. Time and again he made crystal clear his belief that “civilization” was synonymous with white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant culture. For Roosevelt, the expansion Euro-American culture was a positive good, an ennobling experience for the expanding power, as well as an edifying experience for the recipient of the former’s attention. Within this scheme, America held a unique position. America had not only a right, but a duty, to expand and share with the less “fortunate” of the world the civilization, peace, and liberty which were all by-products of its history. Without a doubt, Roosevelt declared, his countrymen could not “if they wish to retain their self-respect, refrain from doing their duty as a great nation.” 10 Nor did Roosevelt see this duty as something which could be accepted or rejected at will. The land of liberty had not asked for the responsibility of bestowing civilization upon its Asian charges, but like it or not, the former Spanish possessions were now ours. The force of American arms had won the Spanish war, now the United States was responsible for the future happiness and prosperity of the Philippines. Thus, “under no conceivable circumstances,” said Roosevelt, could we “turn [the FilipinosJ over to rapine and bloodshed” or “allow them to sink into a welter of blood and confusion.” Roosevelt’s resolve to hold the Philippines was hardened by the pressure of the insurgency. The major obstacle to the betterment of the islands, as Roosevelt saw it, was the “half-caste and native Christians, warlike Moslems, and wild pagans” of the archipelago who made up the forces of guerilla fighter Emillo Aguinaldo. 12 There probably would have been little argument from the future president over the characterization of the insurgents made by Elihu Root. In a Youngstown, Ohio speech given less than a month before the presidential election of 1900, the Secretary of War inveighed against the “haif-guerilla, half-bandit” Filipino insurgents who hindered the bestowal of “happiness, peace, and prosperity” which submission to American authority would ensure. 13 In fact,Roosevelt had welcomed the appointment of Root by William McKinley as a good first step toward putting down the insurrection. From his home in Oyster Bay, Roosevelt wrote Henry Cabot Lodge that “Root realizes that the first thing to do is smash the Philippine insurrection.” 14 Privately, Roosevelt admitted that while he hoped that, “the trend of events will speedily as may be justify us in leaving them,” he had, “never varied in my feeling that Ibid. 10 Eltin Morrison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. II. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1951), 1400. 11 Ibid., 1415. See also Ferleger, 426-428. 12 Ferleger, 427. 13 Storey, 8-9. 14 Lodge, 416. 10 1 we had to hold the Philippines.” 15 These were the thoughts of the man who, on September 15, 1901, became the President of the United States. Three months after President McKinley was felled by an assassin’s bullet in Buffalo, Roosevelt reiterated his determination to bring the Philippines to heel. The islands, he stated, would be looked after and “developed along American lines.” While he intended to “guarantee the islands against any kind of exploitation,” he nonetheless would do everything in his power to throw “them open to industrial development.” “Nothing better can be done for the islands,” he claimed.

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