Note 40 — Chapter XII · Otis and the War (Continued)

The territory occupied and finally “pacified” by General Young, with the effective assistance of the officers heretofore mentioned, and many other good men and true, was ultimately organized into a military district, which was called the First District of the Department of Northern Luzon. As territory was fought over, occupied, and finally reduced to submission, that territory would be organized into a military district by the commanding general or colonel of the invading column, under the direction of the division commander. The military “Division of the Philippines,” which was succeeded by the Civil Government of the Philippines under Governor Taft in 1901, of course covered all the territory ceded by the Treaty of Paris. It was divided into four “Departments,” the Department of Northern Luzon, the Department of Southern Luzon, the Department of the Visayas,40 and the Department of Mindanao and Jolo. General Young commanded the First District of the Department of Northern Luzon—which included the three west coast provinces north of Lingayen Gulf, and the three adjacent mountain provinces—from the time he led his brigade into that region in pursuit of Aguinaldo until shortly before Governor Taft’s inauguration in the summer of 1901. Many were the combats, great and small, of General Young’s brigade, in compassing the task of crushing the resistance in that part of Luzon into which he led the first American troops in the winter of 1899–1900. The resistance was obstinate, desperate, and long drawn out, but when he finally reported the territory under his command “pacified,” it was pacified. A soldier’s task had been performed in a soldierly manner. The work had been done thoroughly. General Young gave the Ilocano country a lesson it never forgot, before politics had time to interfere. We have never had any trouble in that region from that day to this.