Chapter II · Dewey and Aguinaldo

Armaments that thunderstrike the walls

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake

And monarchs tremble in their capitals.

Childe Harold.

The battle of Manila Bay was fought May 1, 1898. Until the thunder of Dewey’s guns reverberated around the world, there was perhaps no part of it the American people knew less about than the Philippine Islands.

They were bothering me. I was getting my squadron ready for battle, and these little men were coming on board my ship at Hong Kong and taking a good deal of my time, and I did not attach the slightest importance to anything they could do, and they did nothing; that is, none of them went with me when I went to Mirs Bay. There had been a good deal of talk, but when the time came they did not go. One of them didn’t go because he didn’t have any tooth-brush.

Senator Burrows: “Did he give that as his reason?”

Admiral Dewey: “Yes, he said ‘I have no tooth-brush.’”

They used to come aboard my ship and take my time, and finally I would not see them at all, but turned them over to my staff.

Now the lack of a tooth-brush is hardly a valid excuse for not going into battle, however great a convenience it may be in campaign. But the absence of orders from your commanding officer stands on a very different footing. Aguinaldo had not yet arrived. Three hundred years of Spanish misgovernment and cruelty is not conducive to aversion to fictitious excuses by the lowly in the presence of supreme authority. The answer was amusingly uncandid, but disproved neither patriotism nor intelligence.

Aguinaldo arrived at Hong Kong from Singapore a day or so after Admiral Dewey had sailed for Manila. Of the battle of May 1st, no detailed mention is essential here. Every schoolboy is familiar with it. It will remain, as long as the republic lasts, a part of the heritage of the nation. But the true glory of that battle, to my mind, rests, not upon the circumstance that we have the Philippines, but upon the tremendous fact that before it occurred the attitude of our State Department toward an American citizen sojourning in distant lands and becoming involved in difficulties there had long been, “Why didn’t he stay at home? Let him stew in his own juice”; whereas, since then, to be an American has been more like it was in the days of St. Paul to be a Roman citizen.

May 16th, our consul at Hong Kong, Mr. Wildman, succeeded in getting the insurgent leader and his staff off for Manila on board the U. S. S. McCulloch by authority of Admiral Dewey. Like his colleague over at Singapore, Consul Wildman was bent on the rôle of Warwick. Admiral Dewey was quite busy there in Manila Bay the first two or three weeks after the battle, but yielding to the letters of Wildman, who meantime had constituted himself a kind of fiscal agent at Hong Kong for the prospective revolution in the matter of the purchase of guns and otherwise, the Admiral told the commanding officer of the McCulloch that on his next trip to Hong Kong he might bring down a dozen or so of the Filipinos there. The frame of mind they were in on reaching Manila, as a result of the assurances of Pratt and Wildman, is well illustrated by a letter the latter wrote Aguinaldo a little later (June 25th) which is undoubtedly in keeping with what he had been telling him earlier:

And at the time, they were.

“Every American citizen who came in contact with the Filipinos at the inception of the Spanish War, or at any time within a few months after hostilities began,” said General Anderson in an interview published in the Chicago Record of February 24, 1900, “probably told those he talked with * * * that we intended to free them from Spanish oppression. The general expression, was ‘We intend to whip the Spaniards and set you free.’”

Aguinaldo came to see me. I said, “Well now, go ashore there; we have got our forces at the arsenal at Cavite, go ashore and start your army.” He came back in the course of a few hours and said, “I want to leave here; I want to go to Japan.” I said, “Don’t give it up, Don Emilio.” I wanted his help, you know. He did not sleep ashore that night; he slept on board the ship. The next morning he went on shore, still inside my lines, and began recruiting men.

Otherwise he was constantly advising and encouraging him. Why? Let the Admiral answer: “I knew that what he was doing—driving the Spaniards in—was saving our troops.”7 In other words they were daily dying that American soldiers might live, on the faith of the reasons for which we had declared war, and trusting, because of the words of our consuls and the acts of our admiral, in the sentiment subsequently so nobly expressed by Mr. McKinley in his instructions to the Paris peace Commissioners:

That was no ordinary occasion, that midsummer session of the Senate Committee in 1902. It was a case of the powerful of the earth discussing a question of ethics, even as they do in Boston. The nation had been intoxicated in 1898 with the pride of power—power revealed to it by the Spanish War; and in a spirit thus mellowed had taken the Philippines as a sort of political foreign mission, forgetting the injunction of the Fathers to keep Church and State separate, but not forgetting the possible profits of trade with the saved. A long war with the prospective saved had followed, developing many barbarities avenged in kind, and the breezes from the South Seas were suggesting the aroma of shambles. “How did we get into all this mess, anyhow?” said the people. “Let us pause, and consider.” Hear the still small voice of a nation’s conscience mingling with demagogic nonsense perpetrated by potent, grave, and reverend Senators:

Admiral Dewey: “I do not think it makes any difference what my opinion is on these things.”

Senator Patterson: “There is no man whose opinion goes farther with the country than yours does, Admiral, and therefore I think you ought to be very prudent in expressing your views.”

Senator Beveridge (Acting Chairman): “The Chairman will not permit any member to lecture Admiral Dewey on his prudence or imprudence.”

This of course would read well to “Mary of the Vine-clad Cottage” out in Indiana, whose four-year-old boy was named George Dewey—, or to her counterpart up in Vermont who might name her next boy after the brilliant and distinguished Acting Chairman, in token of her choice for the Presidency.

Senator Patterson: “I was not lecturing him.”

Senator Beveridge: “Yes; you said he ought to be prudent.”

Apropos of why he accepted Aguinaldo’s help, the Admiral also said:

If Dewey and MacArthur were right, then, about the situation around Manila in 1898, it was a case of an entire people united in an aspiration, and looking to us for its fulfilment.

When the American troops reached the Philippines and perfected their battle formations about Manila, and the order to advance was given, they did “march in,” to use Admiral Dewey’s expression above quoted. But they did not let the Filipinos have a finger in the pie. The conquest and retention of the islands had then been determined upon. The Admiral’s reasons for saddling his protégé with a series of bloody battles and a long and arduous campaign are certainly stated with the proverbial frankness of the sailorman: “I wanted his help, you know.” But what was Aguinaldo to get out of the transaction, from the Dewey point of view?

The truth is that instead of leaving everything to the chance of our continuing in the same unselfish frame of mind we were really in when the Spanish-American War started, Aguinaldo and his people, not sure but what in the wind-up they might even be thrown back upon the tender mercies of Spain, played their cards boldly and consistently from the beginning with a view of organizing a de facto government and getting it recognized by the Powers as such at the very earliest practicable moment. They believed that the Lord helps those who help themselves. They had anticipated our change of heart and already had it discounted before we were aware of it ourselves. They were already acting on the idea that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty while public opinion in the United States concerning them was in a chrysalis state, and trying to develop a new definition of Liberty which should comport with the subjugation of distant island subjects by a continental commonwealth on the other side of the world based on representative government. The prospective subjects did not believe that a legislature ten thousand miles away in which they had no vote would ever give them a square deal about tariff and other laws dictated by special interests. They had had three hundred years of just that very sort of thing under Spain and instinctively dreaded continuance of it. That their instincts did not deceive them, our later study of Congressional legislation will show. The Filipinos had greatly pondered their future in their hearts during the last twelve months of Spain’s colonial empire, watching her Cuban embarrassments with eager eye.

Having seen the frame of mind in which they approached the contract implied in Admiral Dewey’s cheery words, “Well now, go ashore there and start your army,” what were the facts of recent history within the knowledge of both parties at the time? What had been the screams of the American eagle, if any, concerning his moral leadership of the family of unfeathered bipeds?

These speeches went forth to the world almost like a part of the message itself. And Admiral Dewey, like every other American, in his early dealings with Aguinaldo, after war broke out, must have assumed a mental attitude in harmony with these announcements. But the world said, “All this is merely what you Americans yourselves call ‘hot air.’ We repeat, ‘We are from Missouri.’” Then we said: “Oh very well, we will show you.” So in the declaration of war against Spain we inserted the following:

Fourth: That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people.

What was the state of the public mind on shore, and how was it prepared to receive his assurances of American aid? Consider the following picture in the light of its sombre sequel.

Tut! tut! says the casual reader. What did the Government at Washington know of all these goings on, that it should be charged later with having violated as binding a moral obligation as ever a nation assumed? It is true that the news of the Williams ovation, as in the case of the Pratt serenade, reached Washington only by the slow channels of the mail. But Washington did in fact receive the said news by due course of mail. When it came, however, Washington was nursing visions of savages in blankets smoking the pipe of peace with the agents of the Great White Father in the White House—i.e., thought, or hoped, the Filipinos were savages—and remained as deaf to the sounds of the Williams ovation as it had been to the strains of the Pratt serenade.

However, hardly had Admiral Dewey taken his binoculars from the gig that carried Aguinaldo ashore to raise his auxiliary insurrection, when he called his Flag Secretary, or the equivalent, and dictated the following cablegram to the Secretary of the Navy:

This sounds a little more serious than “earnest boys” alleging the lack of a toothbrush as an excuse for declining mortal combat, does it not? How valuable did this assistance prove? Admiral Dewey had to wait three and one half months for the army to arrive, and this is how the commanding general of the American forces describes conditions as he found them in the latter part of August:

In the early part of the next year, 1899, President McKinley sent out a kind of olive-branch commission, of which President Schurman of Cornell University was Chairman. The olive branch got withered in the sulphur of exploding gun-powder, so the Commission contented itself with making a report. And this is what they said concerning what followed the Dewey-Aguinaldo entente:

Aguinaldo, revolutionary leader, visited Olympia yesterday. He expects to make general attack May 31st.

He did not succeed entirely, but there was hard fighting, and the cordon around the doomed Spaniards in Manila and its suburbs was drawn ever closer and closer.

The remarkable feat of Aguinaldo’s raising a right formidable fighting force in twelve days after his little “Return from Elba,” which force kept growing like a snowball, is difficult, for one who does not know the Filipinos, and the conditions then, to credit. It is explained by the fact that Admiral Dewey let him have the captured guns in the Cavite arsenal, that Cavite was a populous hotbed of insurrection, and that many native regiments, or parts of regiments, quite suited to be the nucleus of an army, having lots of veteran non-commissioned officers, deserted the Spaniards and went over to the insurgents, their countrymen, as soon as Aguinaldo arrived.

On June 6th, we have another bulletin sent to the Navy Department by Admiral Dewey, transmitting with perceptible satisfaction further information as to the progress of his indefatigable protégé:

Along about this period Aguinaldo happens to get hold of a belated copy of the London Times of May 5, 1898. It contains considerable speculation on the future of the Philippines which casts a shadow over the soul of the president of the incipient republic. Having read President McKinley’s immortal State papers about the moral obliquity of “forcible annexation,” he is moved to write direct to the source of those noble sentiments. The letter is dated June 10, 1898. It is addressed, with a quaintness now pathetic, “To the President of the Republic of the Great North American Nation.” It greets the addressee with “the most tender effusion of” the writer’s soul, expresses his “deep and sincere gratitude,” in the name of his people, “for the efficient and disinterested protection which you have decided to give it to shake off the yoke of the cruel and corrupt Spanish domination, as you are doing to the equally unfortunate Cuba” and then proceeds to tell of “the great sorrow which all of us Filipinos felt on reading in the Times the astounding statement that you, sir, will retain these islands,” etc. He proceeds:

But the signer of the foregoing letter did not spend all his time praying for us, as may be observed in this bulletin from Admiral Dewey concerning the way he was lambasting the common enemy, sent the Navy Department, June 12th:

In reviewing the history of those times the writer has not been so careless as to have overlooked Senator Lodge’s elaborate speech in the Senate on March 7, 1900, wherein attention is called to the circumstance that a few days after Aguinaldo landed at Cavite, the Navy Department cabled cautioning Dewey to have no alliance with him that might complicate us, and that the Admiral answered he had made no alliance and would make none. But if actions speak louder than words, the Senator’s point does not rise above the dignity of a technicality.

The Declaration of Independence of June 18th is known to students of Philippine political archæology as the Proclamation establishing the “dictatorial” government. The principal thing it did was to supplement the absolute dictatorship proclaimed May 24th by provisions for organizing in detail. It also declared independence. A more elaborate Declaration followed on June 23d, known as the proclamation establishing the “revolutionary” government. This made provision for a Congress, a Cabinet, and courts. Of course it was only a paper government the day the ink dried on it. But we will follow it through its teething, and adolescence, to the attainment of its majority at an inauguration where the president was driven to the place of the taking of the oath of office in a coach and four, through a short and very self-respecting heyday, and a longer peripatetic existence, to final dissolution. The document of June 23d reminds us of a fact which in reading it at this late date we are apt to forget, viz., that the Filipinos did not know at what moment their powerful ally, the American squadron, might up anchor and sail away to the high seas, to meet another Spanish fleet; thus leaving them to the tender mercies of the Spaniards, possibly forever. So they were losing no time. In fact, they had set to work from the very beginning with a determination to try and secure recognition from the Powers at the earliest moment. In appealing to the public opinion of the world with a view of paving the way to recognition by the Powers—which recognition would mean getting arms for war with Spain or any other power without the inconveniences of filibustering—Aguinaldo says on behalf of his people in the proclamation of June 23d, above mentioned, that they “now no longer limit themselves to asking for assimilation with the political constitution of Spain, but ask for a complete separation (and) strive for independence, completely assured that the time has come when they can and ought to govern themselves.”

In my opinion these people are superior in intelligence and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races.47

But this is not all. On August 13th, the day after the Peace Protocol was signed, Mr. McKinley wired Admiral Dewey asking about “the desirability of the several islands,” the “coal and mineral deposits,” and in reply on August 29th, the Admiral wrote:

As a result of one year’s stay in Cuba, and six in the Philippines—two in the army that subjugated the Filipinos and four as a judge over them—I heartily concur in the above opinion of Admiral Dewey, but with this addition: Whatever of solidarity for governmental purposes the Filipinos may have lacked at the date of the Admiral’s communications, they were certainly welded into conscious political unity, as one people, in their war for independence against us.

In the 1609 or Douay (pronounce Dewey) version of the Bible, the Latin Vulgate, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer only says “Lead us not into temptation,” while Matthew adds “but deliver us from evil.” The Dewey suggestions to the Washington Government in 1898 remind a regretful nation of both the evangelical versions mentioned, for the first seems to say what Luke says, and the second seems to add what Matthew adds.

There is not an American who has known the Filipinos since the beginning of the American occupation who doubts for a moment that but for our intervention a Republic would have been established out there under the lead of Aguinaldo, Mabini, and their associates, which would have compared well with the republican governments between the United States and Cape Horn. The writer doubts very much if President Taft is of a contrary opinion. The real issue is, now that we have them, should we keep them in spite of the tariff iniquities which the Trusts perpetrate on them through Congress, until they have received the best possible tuition we can give them, or be content to give them their independence when they are already at least as fit for it as the Republics to the South of us, guaranteeing them independence by international agreement like that which protects Belgium and Switzerland?

Now why did Admiral Dewey repeat to his home government and emphasize on August 29th a suggestion so extremely pertinent to the capacity of the Filipinos for self-government which he had already made in lucid language on June 23d previous? The answer is not far to seek. General Anderson had arrived between the two dates, with the first American troops that reached the islands after the naval battle of May 1st, and brought the Admiral the first intimation, which came somewhat as a surprise of course, that there was serious talk in the United States of retaining the Philippines. “I was the first to tell Admiral Dewey,” says General Anderson in the North American Review for February, 1900, “that there was any disposition on the part of the American people to hold the Philippines if they were captured.” He adds: “Whether Admiral Dewey and Consuls Pratt, Wildman, and Williams did or did not give Aguinaldo assurances that a Filipino government would be recognized, the Filipinos certainly thought so, judging from their acts rather than from their words. Admiral Dewey gave them arms and ammunition, as I did subsequently at his request.”