Chapter IV · Merritt and Aguinaldo

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.

Julius Cæsar, Act IV., Sc. 2.

Major-General Wesley Merritt’s account of the operations of the troops under his command in the First Expedition to the Philippines may be found in volume i., part 2, War Department Report for 1898. He left San Francisco accompanied by his staff, June 29, 1898, arrived at Cavite, Manila Bay, July 25th, received the surrender of the city of Manila August 13th, and sailed thence August 30th, in obedience to orders from Washington to proceed without unnecessary delay to Paris, France, for conference with the Peace Commissioners. According to General Merritt’s report, about the time he arrived Aguinaldo had some 12,000 men under arms, with plenty of ammunition, and a number of field-pieces. The late lamented Frank D. Millet has preserved for us, in his Expedition to the Philippines, some valuable and intimate studies of this army of Filipino besiegers whom our troops found busily at work when they arrived in the Islands:

It was an interesting sight at Camp Dewey to see the insurgents strolling to and from the front. Pretty much all day long they were coming and going, never in military formation, but singly, and in small groups, perfectly clean and tidy in dress, often accompanied by their wives and children, and all chatting as merrily as if they were going off on a pigeon shoot. The men who sold fish and vegetables in camp in the morning would be seen every day or two dressed in holiday garments, with rifle and cartridge boxes, strolling off to take their turn at the Spaniards.

The reader will readily understand that there were many times as many volunteers as guns. Mr. Millet continues:

When they had been at the front twenty-four hours they were relieved and returned home for a rest. They generally passed their rifles and equipments on to another man and thus a limited number of weapons served to arm a great many besiegers. They had no distinctive uniform, the only badge of service being a red and blue cockade with a white triangle bearing the Malay symbol of the sun and three stars, and sometimes a red and blue band pinned diagonally across the lower part of the left sleeve. * * * Many of them * * * had belonged to the native volunteer force. * * * The recruits were soon hammered into shape by the veterans of the rank and file. * * * Their men were perfectly obedient to orders * * * and they made the most devoted soldiers. There was no visible Commissary or Quartermaster’s Departments, but the insurgent force was always supplied with food and ammunition and there was no lack of transportation. The food issued at the front was mostly rice brought up in carromatas to within a few hundred yards of the trenches, when it was cooked by the women. * * * Each man had a double handful of rice, sometimes enriched by a small proportion of meat and fish, which was served him in a square of plantain leaf. Thus he was unencumbered with a plate or knife or fork and threw away his primitive but excellent dish when he had “licked the platter clean.” It was noticeable that the insurgents carried no water bottles nor haversacks, and no equipments indeed, but cartridge boxes. They did not seem to be worried by thirst like our men.

While the Spanish troops now remained quietly in Manila, the Filipino forces made themselves masters of the entire island except that city.

As to the political conditions which prevailed in southern Luzon, particularly in the Camarines, in August and the fall of 1898, information derived from one who was there then would seem appropriate here. Major Blanton Winship, Judge Advocate’s Corps, U. S. A., Major Archibald W. Butt, the late lamented military aide to President Taft, and the writer, lived together in Manila, in 1900, at the house of a Spanish physician, a Dr. Lopez, who had been a “prisoner” at Nueva Caceres, a town situated in one of the provinces of southern Luzon (Camarines) in the fall of 1898. Dr. Lopez had a large family. They had also been “prisoners” down there. No evil befell them at the hands of their “captors.” They had the freedom of the town they were in. They had good reason to be pretty well scared as to what the insurgents might do to them. But they were never maltreated. The main impression we got from Dr. Lopez and his family was that the political grip of the Aguinaldo government on southern Luzon was complete during the time they were “prisoners” there. If anybody doubts the absoluteness of the grip of the Revolutionary government on the situation in the provinces which were represented at the Bacoor convention of August 6, 1898, above mentioned, when the Filipino Declaration of Independence was signed and proclaimed, let him ask any American who had a part in putting down the Philippine insurrection what a presidente, an insurrecto presidente, in a Filipino town, was in 1899 and 1900. He was “the whole thing.” Even to-day the presidente of a pueblo is as absolute boss of his town as Charles F. Murphy is of Tammany Hall. And a town or pueblo in the Philippines is more than an area covered by more or less contiguous buildings and grounds. It is more like a township in Massachusetts. So that when you account governmentally for the pueblos of a given province, you account for every square foot of that province and for every man in it. For several years before our war with Spain, nearly every Filipino of any education and spirit in the archipelago belonged to the secret revolutionary society known as the Katipunan. This had its organization in every town when Dewey sank the Spanish fleet and landed Aguinaldo at Cavite. The rest may be imagined.

By September, 1898, Aguinaldo was absolute master of the whole of Luzon. Before the Treaty of Paris was signed (December 10, 1898), in fact while Judge Gray of the Peace Commission was cabling President McKinley that not to leave the government of the Philippines to the people thereof “would be to make a mockery of instructions,” Aguinaldo had become equally absolute master of the situation throughout the rest of the archipelago outside of Manila.

Toward the end of July, 1898, our Manila Consul, Mr. Williams, who was one of our consular triumvirate of would-be Warwicks, or “original Aguinaldo men,” of 1898, used to have nice talks with Aguinaldo about the lion and the lamb lying down together without the lion eating the lamb, and in one instance, at least, he goes so far as to represent Aguinaldo as willing to some such arrangement—e. g., annexation, or some vague scheme of dependence. But whenever we hear from Aguinaldo over his own signature, we hear him saying whatever means in Tagalo “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” For instance, at page 15, of Senate Document 208, he writes Williams, under date of August 1st, with fine courtesy:

I congratulate you with all sincerity on the acuteness and ingenuity which you have displayed in painting in an admirable manner the benefits which, especially for me and my leaders, and in general for all my compatriots, would be secured by the union of these islands with the United States of America. Ah! that picture, so happy and so finished * * * This is not saying that I am not of your opinion * * * You say all this and yet more will result from annexing ourselves to your people * * * You are my friend and the friend of the Filipinos and have said it. But why should we say it? Will my people believe it? * * * I have done what they desire, establishing a government * * * not only because it was my duty, but also because had I acted in any other manner they would fail to recognize me as the interpreter of their aspirations, and would punish me as a traitor, replacing me by another more careful of his own honor and dignity.

On the afternoon of the 28th [of July, 1898], General Greene received a verbal message from General Merritt suggesting that he juggle the insurgents out of part of their lines, always on his own responsibility, and without committing in any way the commanding general to any recognition of the native leaders or opening up the prospect of an alliance. This General Greene accomplished very cleverly.

Mr. Millet then goes on to tell how General Greene persuaded one of Aguinaldo’s generals (Noriel) to evacuate certain trenches so he (Greene) could occupy them, “with a condition attached that General Greene must give a written receipt for the entrenchments.” This condition, Mr. Millet says, was imposed by “the astute leader” (Aguinaldo). General Greene’s “cleverness” consisted in purposely failing and omitting to give the receipt, which Mr. Millet says “looked very much like a bargain concluded over a signature, and was a little more formal than General Greene thought advisable.” The key to this sorry business may be found in the first paragraph of General Merritt’s instructions to all his generals at the time:

“I am quite unable to explain,” says Mr. Millet (p. 61), “why we did not in the very beginning make them understand that we were masters of the situation, and that they must come strictly under our authority.” The obvious reason was that a war of conquest to subjugate a remote people struggling to be free from the yoke of alien domination was sure to be more or less unpopular with many of the sovereign voters of a republic, and more or less dangerous therefore, like all unpopular wars, to the tenure of office of the party in power. So that in entering upon a war for conquest, a republic must “play politics,” using the military arm of the government for the twofold purpose of crushing opposition and proving that there is none.

The maxim which makes all fair in war often covers a multitude of sins. But let us turn for a moment from strategy to principle, and see what two other distinguished American war correspondents were thinking and saying about the same time. Writing to Harper’s Weekly from Cavite, under date of July 16th, concerning the work of the Filipinos during the eight weeks before that, Mr. O. K. Davis said: “The insurgents have driven them [the Spaniards] back over twenty miles of country practically impassable for our men. * * * Aguinaldo has saved our troops a lot of desperately hard campaigning * * *. The insurgent works extend clear around Manila, and the Spaniards are completely hemmed in. There is no hope for them but surrender.” Writing to the same paper under date of August 6th, Mr. John F. Bass says: “We forget that they drove the Spaniards from Cavite to their present intrenched position, thus saving us a long-continued fight through the jungle.” This gentleman did not tackle the question of inventing a new definition of liberty consistent with alien domination. He simply says: “Give them their liberty and guarantee it to them.” In the face of such plucky patriotism as he had witnessed, political casuistry about “capacity for self-government” would have hung its head. Yet Mr. Bass was by no means a novice. He had served with the British army in Egypt in 1895, through the Armenian massacres of 1896, and in the Cretan rebellion and Greek War of 1897. His sentiments were simply precisely what those of the average American not under military orders would have been at the time. After the fall of Manila he wrote (August 17th): “I am inclined to think that the insurgents intend to fight us if we stay and Spain if we go.”

When General Merritt left Manila on August 30th, he proceeded to Paris to appear before the Peace Commission there. His views doubtless had great weight with them on the momentous questions they had to decide. But his views were wholly erroneous, and that they were so is not surprising. As above stated, he did not even meet Aguinaldo, purposely holding himself aloof from him and his leaders. He never did know how deeply they were incensed at being shut out of Manila when the city surrendered. In his report prepared aboard the steamship China, en route for Paris, he says: “Doubtless much dissatisfaction is felt by the rank and file of the insurgents, but * * * I am of the opinion that the leaders will be able to prevent serious disturbances,” etc. (p. 40). If General Merritt had caught the temper of the trenches he would have known better, but he saw nothing of the fighting prior to the final scene, nor did he take the field in person on the day of the combined assault on the city, August 13th, and therefore missed the supreme opportunity to understand how the Filipinos felt. Says General Anderson in his report:

In the Civil War, General Merritt had received six successive promotions for gallantry, at Gettysburg, Yellow Tavern, Five Forks, etc., and had been with Sheridan at Winchester. So the way he “commanded” the assault on Manila is proof only of the obligations we then owed the Filipinos. They had left very little to be done.

In his account of General Merritt’s original personal disembarkation at Cavite, Mr. Frank Millet acquaints his readers with a Philippine custom we afterwards grew quite familiar with and found quite useful, of keeping your shoes dry in landing from a rowboat on a beach by riding astride the shoulders of some husky native boatman. The boatmen make it a point of special pride not to let their passengers get their feet wet. Mr. Millet tells us that a general in uniform looks neither dignified nor picturesque under such circumstances, and that therefore he will not elaborate on the picture, but that it is suggestive “more of the hilarious than of the heroic.” Presumably when General Merritt went ashore on August 13th, from the despatch boat from which he had been watching the assault on Manila, to receive the surrender of the Spanish general, he followed the same custom of the country he had used on the occasion of his original disembarkation. So that in the taking of Manila, we were probably literally, as well as ethically, like General Mahone of Virginia as he is pictured in a familiar post-bellum negro story, according to which the general met a negro on a steep part of the road to heaven, told him that St. Peter would only admit mounted parties, mounted the negro with the latter’s consent, rode on his back the rest of the toilsome journey to the heavenly gate, dismounted, knocked, and was cordially welcomed by the saint at the sacred portal thus: “Why how d’ ye do, General Mahone; jess tie yoh hoss and come in.”