One theatre of the war was in the Philippines, where American and Spanish forces battled at Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. Commodore George Dewey, commanding the U.S. Navy's Asiatic Squadron, in a matter of hours, defeated a Spanish squadron under Admiral Patricio Montojo. Dewey's squadron was the only naval force in the Far East without a local base of its own, and was beset with coal and ammunition problems. Despite these problems, the Asiatic Squadron not only destroyed the Spanish fleet but also captured the harbor of Manila. Following Dewey's victory, Manila Bay was filled with the warships of Britain, Germany, France and Japan. The German fleet acted provocatively, but when Dewey called the bluff of the Germans, threatening conflict if the aggression continued, the Germans backed down.
Emilio Aguinaldo was a Filipino leader who had led rebellion against Spanish rule in the Philippines in 1896. Dewey had brought him to the Philippines from exile in Hong Kong to rally more Filipinos against the Spanish colonial government. By June, U.S. and Filipino forces had taken control of most of the islands, and on June 12, Aguinaldo proclaimed the independence of the Philippines.
On August 13, with American commanders unaware that a cease-fire had been signed between Spain and the U.S. on the previous day, American forces captured the city of Manila from the Spanish. This battle ended Filipino-American collaboration, because the American action of preventing Filipino forces from entering the captured city of Manila was deeply resented by the Filipinos. This later led to the Philippine–American War, which would prove to be more costly to the US than the Spanish–American War. The U.S. had sent a force of some 11,000 ground troops to the Philippines. Armed conflict broke out between U.S. forces and the Filipinos when U.S. troops began to take the place of the Spanish in control of the country after the end of the war. For years Aguinaldo led resistance to the Americans, until his capture on March 23, 1901 (112 years ago today)
McKinley was unsure what to do with the Philippines, annex them as a US territory or grant them their independence. In his book, Miller does a good job of describing the competing arguments and the difficult decision that McKinley had to make. He writes at pages 236-7:
Yet for every voice clamoring for empire, another wailed against it. A group of prominent politicians and business leaders formed what they called the Anti-Imperialist League, spearheading a movement that quickly built support.
The list of those opposed to annexing the archipelago read like a who's who of American politics, commerce and the arts. Former President Grover Cleveland referred to the ideas as the "dangerous perversions" of conquest. Mark Twain was moved to write, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness", a stinging satire of imperialism aimed at McKinley and others with similar ambitions. And surprisingly, Andrew Carnegie chimed in too.
In fact, Carnegie was among the most ardent anti-imperialist campaigners, penning magazine and newspaper editorials, working the halls of Congress, and even meeting with the President. John Hay could hardly believe Carnegie's manic devotion to the cause. "Andrew Carnegie really seems to be off his head," he wrote. "He writes me frantic letters, signing them 'Your Bitterest Opponent.'"
The arguments were as varied as they were passionate. Some opposed taking the islands purely for reasons of race. Admitting ten million Asians, most of whom were Catholic and didn't speak English, was not an idea that many Americans cared to contemplate. Others cited the U.S. Constitution, which made no mention of colonies or boundaries when it said government derived its power from the "consent of the governed." Still others contemplated that an imperial policy would damage the American psyche and tarnish its ideals of freedom and democracy.
There was also the very real prospect that Aguinaldo and his men, who had fiercely defended themselves against one foreign conqueror, might be ready to do battle with another. Henry Adams weighed in with his usual biting style: "I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines... where... we must slaughter a million or two foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric railways."
Good arguments could be made for both options: grant the Philippines their independence and freedom, or shoulder the burden of "civilizing" them. McKinley agonized over the conflict until a hint of divine intervention helped crystallize the answer.
He explained his final decision to the General Missionary Committee of the Methodist Episcopal Church: "One night late it came to me this way - I don't know how it was, but it came... that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift them and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the Chief Engineer of the War Department and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States, and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President."
