African American Soldiers in the Philippine War: An

AFRIC AN AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN THE PHILIPPINE WAR: AN EXAMINATION OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUFFALO SOLDIERS DURING THE SPANISH AMERICAN WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1898-1902 Christopher M. Redgraves Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2017 APPROVED: Geoffrey D. W. Wawro, Major Professor Richard Lowe, Committee Member G. L. Seligmann, Jr., Committee Member Richard G. Vedder, Committee Member Jennifer Jensen Wallach, Committee Member Harold Tanner, Chair of the Department of History David Holdeman, Dean of College of Arts and Sciences Victor Prybutok, Dean of the Toulouse Graduate School Redgraves, Christopher M. African American Soldiers in the Philippine War: An Examination of the Contributions of Buffalo Soldiers during the Spanish American War and Its Aftermath, 1898–1902. Doctor of Philosophy (History), August 2017, 294 pp., 8 tables, bibliography, 120 titles. During the Philippine War, 1899 – 1902, America attempted to quell an uprising from the Filipino people. Four regular army regiments of black soldiers, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry served in this conflict. Alongside the regular army regiments, two volunteer regiments of black soldiers, the Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth, also served. During and after the war these regiments received little attention from the press, public, or even historians. These black regiments served in a variety of duties in the Philippines, primarily these regiments served on the islands of Luzon and Samar. The main role of these regiments focused on garrisoning sections of the Philippines and helping to end the insurrection. To carry out this mission, the regiments undertook a variety of duties including scouting, fighting insurgents and ladrones (bandits), creating local civil governments, and improving infrastructure. The regiments challenged racist notions in America in three ways. They undertook the same duties as white soldiers. They interacted with local “brown” Filipino populations without fraternizing, particularly with women, as whites assumed they would. And, they served effectively at the company and platoon level under black officers. Despite the important contributions of these soldiers, both socially and militarily, little research focuses on their experiences in the Philippines. This dissertation will discover and examine those experiences. To do this, each regiment is discussed individually and their experiences used to examine the role these men played in the Philippine War. Also addressed is the role ideas about race played in these experiences. This dissertation looks to answer whether or not notions on race played a major role in the activities of these regiments. This dissertation will be an important addition to the study of the Philippine War, the segregated U. S. Army, and African American history in the modern period. Copyright 2017 by Christopher M. Redgraves ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my family. My parents Mike and Mary, and my brother David. They have all been a great source of support throughout my education. Without their support I doubt I would have come this far. I would like to thank the staff and faculty of Salisbury University and the University of North Texas. Both have helped me along the way to improve myself and become better. The financial aid offered by the UNT history department greatly benefited my research. I would like to thank Dr. Geoffrey Wawro. Dr. Wawro agreed to work with me in the later stages of my dissertation and has been a great asset to the completion and improvement of this dissertation. I would also like to thank the rest of my committee; Dr. Richard Lowe, Dr. G. L. Seligmann, Jr., Dr. Richard G. Vedder, and Dr. Jennifer Jensen Wallach. All contributed to making my dissertation into a better product. I would like to thank the National Archvies and Records Administration and the United States Army Heritage and Education Center. These facilities and their staff greatly aided me in finding and using much of the material presented in this dissertation. I would like to thank the Scroggs Memorial Scholarship program, the Barsanti Graduate Scholarship program, and the Sumners Foundation. All three provided me with funds, which helped to lessen the financial burden of my degree. Lastly, I would like to thank Stanfield Lodge #217 for allowing me to use the dining room as my office this last year. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………………….iii CHAPTERS 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 2. BUFFALO SOLDIERS AND THE PHILIPPINES……………………………………..13 3. THE NINTH CAVALRY………………………………………………………………..63 4. THE TENTH CAVALRY……………………………………………………………...106 5. THE TWENTY-FOURTH INFANTRY……………………………………………….138 6. THE TWENTY-FIFTH INFANTRY…………………………………………………..186 7. THE FORTY-EIGHTH & FORTY-NINTH VOLUNTEERS…………………………229 8. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………273 BIBLOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………….284 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This dissertation will examine and analyze the contributions of African American soldiers during the Philippine War (1898-1902). This subject lacks a thorough review. Previous studies of these soldiers focused on their experiences with racial prejudice in the United States and not on the military aspects of their service. While this dissertation will discuss the racial attitudes of American citizens in general and the Army in particular, it will also examine the African American experience of military service in the Philippine War. The Army and American public alike felt African American soldiers would work better with the Filipino people than white soldiers. One of the main goals of this work is to find out if this belief held true. The United States acquired the Philippine Islands after the Spanish American War of 1898. The resulting American occupation of the islands created friction with the inhabitants, which eventually exploded into war. The Philippine War provided America with a difficult set of problems. The Filipino people rose up in rebellion against Spanish rule prior to the arrival of American forces in the spring of 1898. The United States quickly moved to annex the islands. For the Filipinos, annexation came as a shock, since they expected the Americans to set them free. Instead, the United States attempted to replace the Spanish as the rulers of the islands. Hostility quickly turned to violence and the Philippine War began.1 The war lasted four years and the American public found the conflict highly controversial. Unlike previous wars, the United States Army fought to subdue a foreign people fighting for their freedom. Americans waged war on the American Indian from the start of colonization. However, American citizens considered the Indian Wars a domestic affair and l Brian McAllister Linn, The Philippine War, 1899 – 1902 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 3. 1 different from the events happening in the Philippines. The war also saw violence on a scale unfamiliar to the American people. U. S. forces burned villages, targeted civilians, and engaged in torture. Much of the American public saw these actions as black marks on the national character.2 Into this bloody conflict came the African American regiments of the U. S. Army. The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry, and the Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth Volunteer Regiments all served in varying capacities during the war. The first of these regiments arrived in mid-July of 1899, and remained in the Philippines for the duration of the war.3 The use of African American soldiers drew mixed reactions from a wide range of Americans. Racists questioned the loyalty of these men, fearing they would not fight against fellow dark-skinned peoples.4 Anti-imperialists, both white and black, disliked the idea of using African American soldiers to subdue dark-skinned people, while racial inequality still existed in America.5 The Army saw these soldiers as valuable assets. These regiments acquired a great deal of combat and field experience from serving in the American West. Different elements of the Ninth, Tenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Fifth also served with great distinction during the Spanish American War. Small and chronically underfunded, the Army refused to do without its African American soldiers.6 2 David J. Silbey, A War of Frontier and Empire; The Philippine-American War, 1899 – 1902 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), xvi. 3 Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle for Empire; Letters from Negro Soldiers, 1898 – 1902 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1987), 241. 4 Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation;” The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899 – 1903 (London: Yale University Press, 1982), 80. 5 Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898 – 1903 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 258. 6 Marvin Fletcher, The Black Soldier and Officer in the United States Army, 1891 – 1917 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1898), 49. 2 Starting with the Civil War the African American community felt service in the Army would improve their position in American society. This belief continued throughout the Indian Wars and carried over into the Spanish American and Philippine Wars.7 Black leaders also debated the hypocrisy of loyally serving the same society that supported or ignored Jim Crow laws and lynchings.8 The soldiers themselves expressed a belief in the value of their service. For the duration of the

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