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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

Race and Responsible Government: Woodrow Wilson and the
Philippines

presented by

William Christopher Hamel

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
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6/01 c:/ClRC/DaieDue.965-p.15

RACE AND RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT:
WOODROW WILSON AND THE PHILIPPINES

By

William Christopher Hamel

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulﬁlment of the requirements
For the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of History

2002

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ABSTRACT

RACE AND RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT:
WOODROW WILSON AND THE PHILIPPINES

By

William Christopher Hamel
Woodrow Wilson never wavered in his belief that “Americanism,” his term for the
Americanization of the international mind, constituted the best path to progress at home
and abroad. Accepting the myth of American exceptionalism, he believed that America
should not become entangled with Europe lest its character become eroded. A new
foreign policy, “thoroughly American” in purpose, had to be devised. Wilson sought
acceptance of American democratic values by other societies in order to “redeem” them.
This would permit American leadership in the world without involving the United States
in the Old World’s diplomacy and wars. Wilson’s faith in American exceptionalism is
evident in his ideas about how to regenerate the world through the proliferation of
democracy. He translated the experiences of America’s democratic growth into principles
that were universally applicable throughout the world. Wilson believed that if the
twentieth-century world was to be open, safe and free, then it must become more like
America. Democracy had to be based on “civic manhood,” the cultural and political
requisite of political stability. “Civic manhood,” the quintessential virtue of mature races
and the cornerstone of Americanism, involved a demonstrated commitment to Anglo-
Saxon culture; an observance of progressive change from above; a faith in free enterprise;
and an embrace of Protestant Christianity. Wilson considered the propagation of this
blueprint for nation-building to be America’s mission in the world. Americanism

transcended Anglo-Saxonism, the “White Man’s Burden,” and the Social Gospel

movement. While its dimensions were complex and oﬁen contradictory, the objective of
Americanism was simple: the ﬁrsion of American and world conceptions of progress,
security, and prosperity through the worldwide extension of American-style democracy.
Wilson ﬁrst articulated his view of America’s mission in the world in association with the
Philippine question. He believed it was critical to keep Philippine policy in line with
America’s redemptive mission in the world. Failure to do so would yield disastrous
consequences for democracy in the Philippines and America’s credibility as “redeemer

nation.”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE
BEFORE MANILA BAY

The End of Exceptionalism

The Crisis of a Frontierless Democracy
America’s Edmund Burke

Opposition to Empire

CHAPTER TWO

WAR, EMPIRE, AND REGENERATION
War with Spain
“What Ought We to Do?”
“Civic Manhood” and Reunion
“Civic Manhood” and Regeneration

CHAPTER THREE

APOSTLE OF AMERICANISM
“The Practical Question of Democracy”
“Errand to the World”
“A Purple Garment for Their Nakedness?”
“The Good Citizen’s Burden”

CHAPTER FOUR
RETURN TO FIRST PRINCIPLES
In Whose Image?
Ending America’s Frontier in the Philippines
The Question of Policy
The Question of Personnel

CHAPTER FIVE
SHIFTING THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN
“The Dreaded Policy”

The New Commission
The Harrison-Riggs Administrative Crisis

CHAPTER SD(

REDEFINING THE COLONIAL BOND
December 1913 — February 1914
May — October 1914
December 1914 - March 1915
September 1915 - May 1916
May —August 1916

BIBLILOGRAPHY

99
102
117
127
137

141
143
157
161
174

l 79
184
1 94
204

224

226
241
251
262
279

282

 

Introduction

There can be little doubt that the twentieth century has been a century of
Americanization. The world has come under America’s economic and cultural inﬂuence
to a far greater extent than any other nation’s. Appropriately enough, the twentieth
century opened with the publication of an essay by an Englishman, William T. Stead,
forecasting the “Americanization of the World.” Stead documented the outpouring of
American economic and cultural inﬂuence beyond the United States’ continental
boundaries since 1890, creating the basis for America’s emerging global preeminence.l

Since the publication of Stead’s essay in 1900, the process of Americanizing the
world through cultural and economic expansion has never ceased, irrespective of shiﬁs
and turns in ofﬁcial United States foreign policy. In 1941 , in a famous Life editorial
entitled “The American Century,” prominent publisher Henry Luce characterized
America as “the dynamic center of ever-widening spheres of enterprise, . . the training
center of the skillﬁil servants of mankind, . . the Good Samaritan. . . and the powerhouse
of the ideals of Freedom and Justice.” Reﬂecting the views of many twentieth-century
policy makers and citizens, Luce suggested that American expansion, always benign,
always uplifting, seemed based not on military force or government design but on the
wonders of its private industry, the skill of its experts, the goodness of its
philanthropists.2 The collapse of communism and socialism throughout much of the

Eurasian continent and America’s military victory against a “Mesopotamian

 

1 William T. Stead, “Americanization of the World” (1900), in Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the
American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945 (Toronto, 1982), 15.
2 Frank A. Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: United States Foreign Policy and Cultural
Relations, 1938-1950 (New York, 1981), 42-43.

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’3 near the end of the century inspired former President George H. W.

megalomaniac’
Bush to proclaim that the moment had ﬁnally arrived for America to complete its mission
of Americanizing the world through the establishment of a “new world order.”4 In recent
months, President George W. Bush, responding to the atrocities of September 11, 2001 ,
followed in his father’s footsteps and raised the unspoken mandate for Americanization
as perhaps the only means to bring order, stability, predictability and security to the
world. Americanism, or the idea of Americanizing the international mind as a panacea for
solving the world’s problems, has persisted among American policy makers throughout
the twentieth and into the early twenty-ﬁrst centuries.

Woodrow Wilson, one of the chief architects of Americanism, began thinking
about Americanism in the decade before the Spanish-American War in the context of
American national development amidst the turmoil of an industrializing world. He labored
to turn ideology into policy, ﬁrst as a prominent academic and then as president, leaving a
mark on American foreign policy still recognizable in the twenty-ﬁrst century: America
still sees itself as exceptional, believes it is the “redeemer nation,” and seeks to convert
the rest of the world to its particular brand of democracy. Wilson expressed the
principles of Americanism in the twentieth century in political, gender and racial terms;
the underlying principles of globalization, though now discussed in cultural and
commercial language, propose a Western view of cultural superiority and uniformity in
the twenty-ﬁrst century that reﬂect Wilson’s concept of Americanism. Wilson’s

development of political theory as an academician at Princeton, especially his “discovery”

 

3 New York Times, February 11, 1991.

4 Robert W. Tucker, “Brave New World Orders: Woodrow Wilson, George Bush, and the ‘Higher

of Edmund Burke during that pivotal period of United States history at the end of the
western frontier, was to shape the policies be implemented as president of the United
States. It is possible to trace the evolution of Wilson’s statecraﬁ from its early theoretical
inﬂuences, from Burke and others, to his own practical application of his reﬁned theories
in the Philippines during America’s empire years. Although Wilson’s ideas about
America’s redemptive mission evolved and matured between 1890 and 1912, the primary
principles associated with his concept of Americanism found expression in his foreign
policy between 1913 and 1921.

Traditionally, historians and biographers have contended that Wilson did not
seriously consider the place and role of the United States in the world before his ascent to
the presidency. For these scholars, Wilson’s preconceptions and patterns of behavior in
dealing with Mexico from 1913 on formed his general approach to foreign affairs. Given
this perspective, it naturally follows that Wilson’s Mexico policy was critical in shaping the
parameters of his European wartime diplomacy and that, in turn, his policies vis-a-vis the
belligerents in Europe molded the debate over the Covenant of the League of Nations. Thus,
for those historians who subscribe to this view of how Wilsonian statecraft evolved, it
would seem that little changed in Wilson’s mind between 1913 and 1921: immoral
autocracies attacked moral democracies which necessitated the eradication of the former.5

This approach to understanding Wilson and his thinking about foreign affairs,

 

Realism’” New Republic 206, No. 8 (February 24, 1992), 24-34.

5 For this perspective, see John M. Cooper, In, “‘An Irony of Fate’: Woodrow Wilson's Pre—World
War I Diplomacy” Diplomatic History 111, No. 4 (Fall 1979), 425-438; Arthur S. Link, editor, Woodrow
Wilson and a Revolutionary World, 1913-1921 (Chapel Hill, 1982); Kendrick A. Clements, Woodrow Wilson,
World Statesman (Boston, 1987), especially 124-146; and Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow
Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Princeton, 1992).

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however, is fundamentally ﬂawed. This reductionist perspective compartrnentalizes
Wilson’s conception of and approach to foreign affairs into tightly organized, logical
models from which he never deviated. Indeed, such compartrnentalization dominates both
ends of the historiographical spectrum concerning the history of Wilson’s statecraﬁ. On one
end, Wilson, seen as the champion of national self-determination, anti-colonialism and anti-
irnperialism, best epitomizes liberal internationalism.6 On the other end, Wilson’s
worldview is portrayed as having as its central themes large-scale corporate capitalism at
home and economic expansion abroad in order to shore up the new industrial world order.7
This traditional perspective also presumes that Wilson had not given any systematic
attention to foreign affairs or to America’s role in the world before “fate” forced the
problems of the world upon him after his election to the presidency. This “irony of fate”
perspective originated in the opening volume of Ray Stannard Baker’s Woodrow Wilson:
Life and Letters, published in 1931, when Baker opened his narrative on Wilson’s foreign
policy by quoting a remark that the president-elect had reportedly made to a ﬁiend before
his inauguration in March 1913: “It would be an irony of fate if my administration had to
deal chieﬂy with foreign affairs.” Since 1931, that remark and the implications behind it

have shaped the conventional view of Wilson’s conception of and approaches to American

 

6 Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Wilsonian Statecraﬂ: Theory and Practice of Liberal Internationalism During
World War I (W ilrnington, DE, 1991); Arthur S. Link, ed., Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace
(Arlington Heights, IL, 1979); John M. Cooper, Jr. and Charles E. Neu, eds., The Wilson Era: Essays in Honor
of Arthur S. Link (Arlington Heights, IL, 1991), especially the essays by Cooper, Neu, and Thomas J. Knock.

7 N. Gordon Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: A merica's Response to War and Revolution
(London, 1968); Robert Freeman Smith, The United States and Revolutionary Nationalism in Mexico, 1916-
1932 (Chicago, 1972); Lloyd C. Gardner, Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution,
1913-1923 (London, 1984); Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the
Mexican Revolution (Chicago, 1981); David Healy, Drive to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean
(Madison, WI, 1988); and Linda B. Hall, Oil, Banks, and Politics: The United States and Postrevolutionary
Mexico, 1917-1924 (Austin, TX, 1995).

 

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foreign policy.8

Those scholars who have investigated the evolution of Wilson’s thinking about
foreign affairs before his presidency have in general approached the problem from the
perspective of his foreign policies as president. As a result, their attention has tended to
focus on particular strands of Wilson’s thinking concerning foreign affairs, usually out of
the context in which Wilson originally conceived them. The classic example of this
approach is Harley Notter’s The Origins of the Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson.
Although Notter’s analysis of the evolution of Wilson’s conception of world affairs is
insightful in parts, he adheres strictly to the view that Wilson had always championed anti-
colonialism and national self-determination in the world.9

An examination of Wilson’s papers, edited and unedited, reveals, however, that
Wilson began to conceptualize systematically what should be America’s relationship with
the rest of the world long before he became president. Also, his ideas about American
foreign relations underwent numerous revisions throughout his career, although some core
ideas remained constant. Concern about the viability and integrity of democracy at home
and abroad constituted one of these constants. Several events in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries — the “loss” of the continental frontier in the early 18903, the relatively
quick and decisive American victory over a presumably corrupt European power in 1898,

and the decision to annex the Philippines — prompted Wilson to consider and reconsider

 

8 Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters (Garden City, 1931) IV, 55. See also
Richard W. Leopold, “The Problem of American Intervention, 1917: An Historical Retrospect” World Politics
11 (April 1950), 405-425; Daniel M. Smith, “National Interest and American Intervention, 1917: An Historio-
Geographical Appraisal” Journal of American History LII (June 1965), 5-24, and Cooper, “‘An Irony of
Fate,” 425-437.

9 Harley Notter, The Origins of the Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson (Baltimore, 193 7).

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democracy’s seemingly changing fortunes in the United States and the world.

Following the “loss” of the ﬁ'ontier line in 1890, Wilson, then an academic and a
popular orator on the nation’s lecture circuit, expressed considerable “frontier anxiety” and
feared the erosion of what he considered to be America’s exceptional character. Although
Wilson eschewed overseas expansion before 1898 as a means of replicating the beneﬁts of
the continental frontier, he sought other instruments of regeneration that were more in
keeping with America’s traditional “beneﬁcient isolationism” and “exemplar role” in the
world. He embraced and expounded the “enlightened conservatism” of Edmund Burke to
still the revolutionary fervor of an industrializing America, and he developed a new
paradigm, called “civic manhood,” to address the emasculating effects of industrialization,
urbanization, and unrestricted immigration in a “frontierless” society. For Wilson, the
cultivation and maintenance of “civic manhood,” or the mature political character and moral
discipline that Americans had acquired over centuries of democratic development, remained
necessary for continued national growth and stability. Before the Battle of Manila Bay in
1898, Wilson conceived “civic manhood” only in an American context. In this respect, he
evaluated and elucidated “civic manhood’s” regenerative qualities only as a part of his
dialogue on the “university ideal,” proposing that the chief mission of Princeton and other
universities in post-frontier America was to prepare America’s intellectual elite for
meaningful contributions as administrators and reformers by training them in specially
designed university programs and through leadership ﬁ'om the top.

Although the war against Spain was a brief affair, Wilson understood that the
conﬂict and its consequences marked a “deﬁning moment” not only in the course of

American national development but also in international history. In short, the Spanish-

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American War revolutionized America’s position and role in the world. The rise to
prominence in the world meant the end of America’s “exemplar role” and the beginning of
a “crusader role” for the United States in achieving its mission to “redeem” politically
immature peoples with the blessings of American-style democracy. In the years following
the war with Spain, Wilson wrote dozens of essays and delivered numerous addresses on
what he called “the practical question of democracy,” or how democratic principles and
values were put into actual use in the conduct of governments.

Wilson’s faith in American exceptionalism is clearly evident in his ideas about
how best to regenerate the world through the proliferation of democracy. He translated
the experiences of America’s democratic growth since the early seventeenth century into
political principles that were, at least in his mind, universally applicable in societies
throughout the world. Wilson believed that if the twentieth-century world was to be open,
safe and free, then it must become more like America. Democracy, if it was to be viable
and durable, had to be based on “civic manhood,” which was a cultural as well as a
political requisite. According to Wilson, “civic manhood,” the quintessential virtue of
politically mature races and the cornerstone of Americanism, involved a demonstrated
commitment to Anglo-Saxon democratic principles and practices; a consistent observance
of slow, deliberate, progressive change from above for the purpose of eradicating
society’s inequities; a faith in free enterprise which included support for free and open
access for commerce and investment; and an embrace of Protestant Christianity, viewed
by Wilson as the spiritual precondition for modernity. Wilson considered the propagation
of this blueprint for nation-building to be America’s mission in the world. Possessing

both secular and religious roots, Americanism transcended the doctrine of Anglo-

 

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Saxonism, the “White Man’s Burden,” and the Social Gospel movement at home and
abroad. While its dimensions were complex and often contradictory, the objective of
Americanism, according to Wilson, was simple: the fusion of American and world
conceptions of progress, security, and prosperity through the worldwide extension of
American-style democracy and Anglo-Saxon civilization. Indeed, Wilson consistently
embraced Americanism as the panacea for the nation’s and the world’s ills.

Wilson ﬁrst articulated his view of America’s “crusader role” in the world in
association with American-East Asian relations in general and the Philippine question in
particular. He declared that while the war in Cuba had opened his eyes to the multitude of
iniquities and antagonisms in the world and to the part that the United States was to play
in ameliorating them, the acquisition of the Philippines dictated that East Asia would be
the ﬁrst place American leadership and inﬂuence was to be felt. Wilson’s center of
attention in East Asia, however, did not focus on China. While many contemporary
American elites and subsequent scholars viewed China as a tabula rasa for progressivism
abroad, Wilson argued that it would be in the Philippines, as a dependency of the United
States, where America’s regenerative efforts in East Asia would be felt ﬁrst. More than
anywhere else in the region, it would be in the Philippines that America’s image would be
remade and the “moral basis” of American foreign policy established and vindicated for
the rest of the world to observe. By fulﬁlling its obligation to the Filipino people, Wilson
declared, the United States could then “patent to all the world” Burke’s “spoken but
forgotten truths” about how societies acquire liberty and democracy.

How did the nation propose to accomplish its duty in the Philippines? “This we

shall do,” Wilson wrote in 1899, “not by giving them out of hand our codes of political

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morality or our methods of political action, the generous gifts of complete individual
liberty or the full-fangled institutions of American government, -- a purple garment for
their nakedness, -- for these things are not blessings, but a curse, to undeveloped peoples,
still in the childhood of their political growth.” Rather, the United States would fulﬁll its
duty in the Philippines by providing a colonial government that “shall moralize them by
being itself moral, elevate and steady them by being itself pure and steadfast, inducting
them into the rudiments of justice and freedom.” Filipinos, Wilson reasoned, needed the
aid of American political character and the spirit of disinterested service in their
preparation for nationhood, not the premature extension of American democratic
institutions and practices. Only after Filipinos had acquired “civic manhood,” a process
requiring generations of slow maturation, could they then govern themselves as a free
people in an independent nation.10

Wilson argued that American colonial policy in the Philippines should concentrate
on creating conditions in the Islands that would be conducive to the establishment and
growth of “civic manhood,” the moral basis of self-govemment, among Filipinos. This
task required the United States to identify all attitudes, customs, and institutions in the
Philippine political and cultural landscape that might impede the development of a
democratic spirit among the Filipino people. For Wilson, cultivating democracy in the
Philippines, where he saw a parallel to frontier conditions, would require American “acts
of redemption,” or purging the Filipino cultural and political environment of its many

vices and iniquities in order to pave the way for democracy. These acts, he argued, could

 

10 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, in Arthur 8. Link, ed., The Papers of
Woodrow Wilson [hereaften PWW], 69 volumes (Princeton, 1966-1994), XII, 19.

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not be accomplished by mere example. They would require the supervision of men with
mature “civic manhood” - that is, Anglo—Saxon Protestants nurtured for generations in
democracy. Thus, the entire solution to the Philippine question “lay, less in our methods
than in our temper. We must govern as those who learn; and they must obey as those who
are in tutelage. They are children and we are men in these deep matters of justice and
government.”1 1
Wilson saw in the Philippine question an opportunity for the United States to
provide the world with a blueprint for implementing conservative democratic values and
institutions. Doing so, he believed, would strengthen democracy in the United States as
well as demonstrate democracy’s intrinsic excellence in the world. For Wilson, therefore,
the Philippines not only represented a nation that needed to be rescued by the United
States but also America’s newest safety valve which he believed would yield the same
beneﬁts as the continental ﬁ'ontier. These objectives were not seen as mutually exclusive,
but as mutually fulﬁlling. America, as a nation with maturity and exceptional character,
had the responsibility to assist and supervise the Philippines in becoming a mature
democracy. Doing so not only reinforced “civic manhood” among American elites at
home but also demonstrated American leadership in the world as the “redeemer nation.”
Thus, it is with Wilson’s understanding of and approach to the Philippine question,
beginning long before his political career and following through to the passage of the
second Jones bill in 1916, that we can see the consistent underlying principles of his

conception of America’s place and role in world affairs.

As president, Wilson’s approach to the Philippine question, while not in support of

 

” Ibid., 14-15, 19. Quotation on 19.

10

the Republican Party’s policy of indeﬁnite retention of the Islands, also differed from the
Democratic Party’s traditional platform. Wilson, the ﬁrst Democratic president since the
annexation of the Philippines, did not support immediate and complete independence for
the Islands as anti-imperialist Democratic policy dictated. In the national elections of 1900,
1904 and 1908, the Democratic Party’s plank on the Philippines called for release of the
Archipelago at the earliest juncture. It is important to look back to Wilson’s intellectual
development and beyond political expediency to understand his decision to pursue a
different policy in the Philippines than that of his Republican predecessors. Between 1913
and 1916 Wilson sought to redeﬁne the Filipino-American colonial bond, not render it more
permanent by continuing the Republican policy of attracting retentionist constituencies or
sever it by fulﬁlling the Democratic Party’s pledge to grant immediate and complete
independence once Democrats ascended to power in Washington. Instead, Wilson
supported only those colonial policy initiatives that extended greater domestic autonomy to
Filipinos to prepare them for eventual independence at some unspeciﬁed time in the futtue.
Although Wilson made eventual independence the official objective of American policy in
the Philippines, he remained ﬁrm in his view, held since 1898, that Filipinos required
several generations of American-supervised experience in self-govemment before they
would possess the mature political character necessary for governing themselves in a
responsible manner. Wilson also made it clear in those years before the United States
entered the First World War that it was critical to bring America’s Philippine policy back
into line with America’s redemptive mission in the world. Failure to do so, he believed,
would have disastrous consequences for democracy in the Philippines and America’s

credibility as the world’s “redeemer nation.”

11

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Chapter One

Before Manila Bay
Students of American history generally view the last decade of the nineteenth century as
the “Great Divide” - on one side lies “old America” and on the other lies “modern
America.”l While historians disagree about the exact dates of this “historical watershed,”2
one can construct a strong case that the 18905 saw the gradual disappearance of old
America and the rather less gradual emergence of the new. Few American elites, deﬁned
by virtue of their greater inﬂuence, advantage and authority, had expressed concern about
the deleterious effects of America’s rapid industrial and economic expansion before the
nineties. The Panic of 1893, however, jarred them out of their complacency. The next
four years of depression, the worst economic collapse the nation had experienced up to
that time, revealed that the country was on the threshold of a quickly changing
environment in which labor unrest, corporate malfeasance, and social upheaval seemed to
threaten the very fabric of American democracy. Confronted by southern and western
populism, labor socialism, the traumatic Pullman strike, bloody textile and coal mine
strikes, and the marching bonus armies, the conservative power structure in the United
States could easily imagine the worst in the nineties. Not least among those

considerations accounting for elites’ anxieties at the end of the nineteenth century was

 

I Henry Steele Commager discusses the 18905 as a “watershed” in The American Mind: An
Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the I880s (New Haven, CT, 1950), 41-54. See
also, Marcus Cunliffe, “American Watersheds,” American Quarterly XIII (Winter 1961), 480-494; Harold
U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform and Expansion, 1 890-1900 (New York, 1956), 1-22; and David Healy, US
Expansionism: The lmperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison, WI, 1970), 99-109.

2 Henry F. May assigns the dates of the “Great Divide” to the years between 1912 and 1917 during

which “our time” is separated from “a completely vanished world.” See his masterful The End of American
Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time, 1912-191 7 (New York, 1969).

12

their fear that America’s uniqueness and exceptional character seemed to be in its ﬁnal
moments.3

The 18908 became the occasion for reviewing society’s weaknesses, articulating
the nation’s stresses, and expressing concern over the presumed erosion of American
exceptionalism. Discussions of race relations, the immigrant question, urban reform, and
the direction of foreign policy led to a more fundamental questioning of the durability and
quality of American democracy, and whether or not it had begun to degenerate. Some
observers even raised the disconcerting possibility that the economic depression and the
social strife of the 18903 might prove permanent. At the heart of this fear was the
assumption that the boom times of the years before the Panic of 1893 had resulted from
special and non-recurring factors, and could not be expected to return. Chief among these
special considerations had been the continental frontier and its presumed regenerative
impact on national character and development. Because the dynamism of the frontier had
begun to fade in the 18705 and 18805, some American elites, experiencing what became
known as “frontier anxiety,”4 began re-exarrrining old assumptions, ideas, and policies to
determine whether or not they had become obsolete. The preservation of American

exceptionalism, which, presmnably, had been intrinsically tied to the course of western

 

3 Faulkner, Politics, Reform and Expansion, 1890-1900, 72-93; John W. Chambers 11, The
Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, [890-1920 2nd edition (New York, 1992), 1-24; and
Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York, 1987), 110-140.

4 David Wrobel’s The End of A merican Exceptionalism: Frontier A nxiety ﬁom the Old West to the
New Deal (Lawrence, KS, 1993) is by far the best analysis of the anxiety Americans experienced about the
“loss” of the frontier in the half-century after 1890. See also, Lee Benson, “The Historical Background of
Turner’s Frontier Essay,” Agricultural History XXV (April 1951), 50-82; Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land:
The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA, 1950), 201-210, 250-260; and David Johnson,
ed., “Special Issue: American Culture and the American Frontier,” American Quarterly XXXIII, No.
5(1981).

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expansion since the early seventeenth century, was of critical importance to these
conservative elites. They searched for new instruments of national regeneration that
would render the nation’s character, values, and institutions immune to the changing
conditions of national life. In their search for other regenerative principles to replace the
vanishing frontier line, they oﬁen proved willing to promote and adopt various internal
and domestic solutions. Touted as progressive reform, some of these “remedies”
fundamentally altered the nature and course of national development as the United States
moved into the twentieth century.

Not least among those American elites who experienced “frontier anxiety” and
searched for new instruments of national regeneration in the last decade of the nineteenth
century was Woodrow Wilson, then a professor of political economy and jurisprudence at
Princeton. People can and do transcend their environment but even the most reclusive
scholar responds to the events and trends of the day. In the case of Wilson, the loss of the
western safety valve and the turbulence throughout the United States resulting from the
Panic of 1893 intertwined to shape signiﬁcantly his ideas and values. Wilson
acknowledged the vital role played by the western safety valve in stabilizing and
safeguarding American democratic growth before 1890. But with the frontier gone, he
understood that America would have to adjust its national life and leadership to ensure
continued democratic growth. Attributing unrestricted immigration, mounting urban
problems, and the rise of the “new sectionalism” to the closing of the frontier, Wilson

warned his students and the general public that it would be much more difficult for the

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American people to live up to the responsibilities of citizenship at the end of the
nineteenth century than at the end of the eighteenth. Wilson, in response to the crisis of
the 18903, thought long and hard about how best to safeguard conservative reform and
change, national regeneration, and continued democratic growth in a frontierless society.
He ultimately adopted Edmund Burke as his new political master to guide him through
the troubled political seas, echoing Burke’s exaltation of “enlightened conservatism” with
its emphasis on respect for order, obedience to law, and pursuit of progressive reform

from above, all hallmarks of Wilson’s political thought in the nineties.

The End of Exceptigaism

On April 20, 1891, the Superintendent of the Eleventh Census (1890) issued a bulletin
declaring that the “frontier line” had vanished: “In the discussion of its extent, its
westward movement, etc, it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census
reports.”5 While expressions of “frontier anxiety” had been common in the 18703 and
18803, the superintendent’s report crystallized concerns over America’s future as a
frontierless democracy. As David Wrobel has written, “What many feared, the census
conﬁrmed.”6

Although scholars now acknowledge that signiﬁcant portions of the North
American continent remained unsettled by 1890 and that the potential for further

expansion of the domestic market system remained considerable, to the mind of the 18903

 

5 US. Census Office, 1 1'” Census, 1890, “Distribution of Population According to Density: 1890,”
Extra Census Bulletin No. 2 (April 20, 1891), l.

6 Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism, 30-31.

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the disappearance of the “frontier line” possessed tremendous emotional and symbolic
importance. “The American people,” a brooding Henry Adams wrote in his
autobiography, “were wandering in a wilderness in the last decade before the new century
much more sandy than the Hebrews had ever trodden about Sinai; they had neither
serpents nor golden calves to worship. They had already lost the sense of worship.”
Adams, grandson and great-grandson of past presidents, suggested that more than
anything else “the closing of the frontier” accounted for the general malaise that gripped
the nation in the 18903.7 The English world-traveler and future statesman, James Bryce,
drove this point home more clearly: “The West is the most American part of America;
that is to say, the part where those features which distinguish America from Europe come
out in the strongest relief.” Watching America’s frontier era draw to a close, Bryce asked
what many Americans believed would become the central question of the day: where in
the ﬁrture could the American people ﬁnd “a land of ﬁeedom and adventure and mystery”
to equal the vanishing “frontier line?” Where could men “discover a ﬁeld in which to
relieve their energies when the Western world of adventure is no more?” Bryce declared
that an “epochal age” was coming to an end in the course of American national
development.8

Nothing synthesized the prevailing anxieties about the loss of the “frontier line”
more succinctly than Frederick Jackson Tumer’s seminal paper on “The Signiﬁcance of
the Frontier in American History,” presented on a hot July evening before a session of the

American Historical Association at the World’s Colurnbian Exposition in Chicago.

 

7 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (New York, 1906, 1931), 328.

8 James Bryce, The American Commonwealth 2 volumes (New York, 1888), II, 681, 930.

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Turner began and ended his long exposition with the assertion that the loss of the frontier
marked “the closing of a great historic movement” - “the ﬁrst period of American
history.” He told his audience that “the crucible of the frontier” had ﬁrnctioned as an
insmrment of national regeneration during this formative period of American
development. “Westering,” or the process of constant westward expansion, had served as
the nation’s life force, shaping the contours of America’s exceptional character.
Accordingly, the frontier had eroded class distinctions, dissolved the corrupting inﬂuence
of the Old World, cultivated a strong commitment to political and economic equality, and
“prompted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people.” The
struggle of man against nature on the untamed frontier in the West had also developed
“the stalwart and rugged qualities of the frontiersman,” making him more disciplined and
self-reliant than his more urbane counterpart in the eastern cities. Furthermore, the
abundance of opportunity secured by the store of free or cheap land promoted democratic
thought and action. As long as there remained opportunity, Turner argued, democracy
could thrive. “And each ﬁ'ontier” had furnished “a new ﬁeld of opportunity, a gate of
escape ﬁ'om the bondage of the past.” In this way, continental expansion over the course
of the nineteenth century had steadied national development and democratic growth in the
United States by creating a balanced society in which tensions that might have yielded
social strife were dissipated westward along with surplus capital, goods, and people.9
Historians have keenly debated both the meaning and validity of Turner’s frontier

thesis since he ﬁrst presented his paper in the closing decade of the nineteenth century.

 

9 Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Signiﬁcance of the Frontier in American History,” ﬁrst published
in the Proceedings of the F arty-ﬁrst Annual Meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Madison,
1894), 79-112, and reprinted in The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920), 1-38.

17

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The analysis here offered is not intended to evaluate the problems and perspectives of this
rich and long-running debate in American historiography. Instead, it is concerned with the
idea that Turner’s essay was not only an original historical synthesis of the American
past, but also a classic expression of frontier anxiety. The frontier, the wellspring of
American patriotism, socioeconomic mobility, optimism, nationalism and individualism,
had vanished. American exceptionalism, the product of a long continuous history of
“westering,” would begin to erode unless new instruments of national regeneration were
located. Thus, Turner’s paper not only shook up the American historical profession
concerning the genesis of America’s democratic spirit and thought, but also exacerbated
fears that the nation had reached a critical juncture in its development. America’s political
and social institutions would stagnate, Turner said, without the economic energy created
by expanding the frontier. '0

Many Americans looked ahead with much apprehension to a nation without free
land in the west to regenerate it. Notwithstanding the fact that the western safety valve
never operated in the direct manner that its proponents imagined,ll its “loss” seemed to

serve as an explanation for every adverse development of the decade.12 So persistently did

 

'0 Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism, 35-37, and Allan G. Bogue, Frederick Jackson
Turner: Strange Roads Going Down (Norman, OK, 1998), 91-99.

H Even as devoted a defender of Turner as Ray Allen Billington has written that a “direct safety
valve” did not operate as most people assumed in nineteenth-century America. See his America ’s Frontier
Heritage (New York, 1966), 23-46.

‘2 The literature on the safety valve concept is vast. Most of it has been referenced in annotated
form in Vernon E. Mattson and William E. Marion, Frederick Jackson Turner: A Reference Guide (Boston,
1985). Notable examples include Joseph Schafer, “Concerning the Frontier as a Safety Valve," Political
Science Quarterly LII (September 1937), 407-420; Norman J. Simler, “The Safety-Valve Doctrine Re-
Evaluated,” Agricultural History XXXII (October 1958), 250-257; Ellen von Nardoff, “The American
Frontier as a Safety Valve: The Life, Death, Reincarnation, and Justiﬁcation of a Theory,” Agricultural
History XXXVI (July 1962), 123-142; and William F. Deverell, “To Loosen the Safety Valve: Eastern

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Americans of the nineties call attention to the disappearance of the “frontier line” that it
seemed at times to be exercising a greater inﬂuence on history as a memory than it ever
did as a fact. Thus, although a review of the historical literature demonstrates that the
reality of the frontier as a direct safety valve is unconvincing, the qualitative evidence
suggests that most Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries believed
that the frontier did indeed serve as a direct safety valve. In this respect, the ﬁontier was
viewed as the greatest, most benign force in American life — the source of America’s
greatness and exceptionalism. Its perceived termination caused much agony over the loss
of qualities that the frontier had supposedly generated, compelling some American
reformers to attempt to offset those losses with replacements for the western safety valve.
As a result, a closed-frontier theme became an integral part of the great debate on reform
and renewal in the United States throughout the nineties and after.13

Among Turner’s ﬁrst converts to the frontier thesis was his ﬁiend and teacher,
Woodrow Wilson. Intellectual interaction between the two scholars stimulated their
thinking about American history. In 1889, Wilson, who offered a
course under the general title “Administration” over a ﬁve-week period each spring at
Johns Hopkins from 1888 to 1898, had beﬁiended Turner when they had lived in the
same boardinghouse in Baltimore. A graduate student at that time, Turner not only
attended the lectures but also enjoyed long discussions with Wilson after dinner. He had
written of Wilson in a letter to his ﬁancée, “Dr. Wilson is here. Homely, solemn, young,

glum but with that ﬁre in his face and eye that means that its possessor is not of the

 

Workers and Western Lands,” Western Historical Quarterly XIX (August 1988), 269-285.

13 Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism, 29-67, and Smith, Virgin Land, 250-260.

19

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common crowd?” The two provincials, Wilson from the South and Turner from the
West, spent many evenings discussing American history and the role of the sections in the
nation’s development. The inﬂuence went in both directions. Wilson credited Turner for
“all I ever wrote on the subject of the West?“ For his part, Wilson encouraged and
guided Turner as the latter worked out his frontier thesis. Wilson contributed to Turner’s
“general conceptions of history,” especially by interesting him in the ideas of Walter
Bagehot, a nineteenth-century English political theorist. Bagehot’s theory of the organic
growth of institutions deeply impressed Turner which, in turn, helped him explain the
transformation of the United States from a traditional, rural society into a modern, urban
nation. Nearly thirty years later, Turner would recall, “All my ideas and ambitions were
broadened and enriched by Woodrow Wilson’s conversations?“

A few days after Turner had presented his famous paper to the American
Historical Association, he read it to Wilson, who was visiting the young historian's home
in Madison, Wisconsin. Wilson accepted Turner’s conclusion that the western frontier

had shaped both American society and character since the earliest colonial times. Indeed,

Wilson, as a leading political scientist and historian at that time, became the ﬁrst

 

'4 Letter, Turner to Caroline Sherwood, February 13, 1889, PWW, VI, 88.

'5 Letters, Wilson to Turner, August 23, 1889, ibid., 368-371; Turner to Wilson, January 23, 1890,
ibid., 478-479; Wilson to Turner, December 10, 1894, ibid., IX, 101-102; and Report of Proceedings,
Herbert Baxter Adams, 12til Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, December 31, I896,
ibid, X, 89-90.

'6 Letter, Turner to William E. Dodd, October 7, 1919, in Wendell H. Stephenson, “The Inﬂuence
of Woodrow Wilson on Frederick Jackson Turner,” Agricultural History XIX (October 1945), 249-253,
and Bogue, Frederick Jackson Turner, 356-357. See also, Letters, Turner to Wilson, December 20, 1893,
PWW, VIII, 417, and Turner to Wilson, December 24, 1894, ibid., IX, 118-119.

20

prominent scholar to endorse the frontier thesis. ‘7
Like Turner, Wilson understood the West not so much as a section but as a “stage
of development,” one that had quickened American life, given it a more democratic spirit,
and widened the practical meaning of freedom in the nation.
A distinct sensitivity to the western frontier and its regenerative impact upon American
national development became a basic element in Wilson’s view of American history. In
the ﬁrst chapter of Division and Reunion (1893), a volume written for the Longrnans,
Green series “Epochs of American History” covering the years from 1829 to 1889,
Wilson explained “his own vision” of the signiﬁcance of continental expansion in
American national development. He offered a ﬁrm rejoinder to those Europeans who
criticized the American tendency to equate “mere bigness and wealth” with greatness. In
a subchapter on American development entitled “A Material Ideal,” Wilson attempted to
disclose the secret of the history of the country and the ambitions of its people:
The obvious fact is that for the creation of the nation conquest
of her proper tenitory from Nature was ﬁrst necessary; and this
task, which is but recently completed, has been idealized in the
popular mind. A bold race had derived inspiration from the size,
the difficulty, the danger of the task. . . .
Expansion had meant nationalization; nationalization had
meant strength and elevation of view [emphasis mine]. “Be strong backed,
brown-handed, upright as your pines; by the scale of a hemisphere shape
your designs,” is the spirited command of enthusiasm for the great physical

undertaking upon which political success was conditioned.18

Wilson later referred to the passage above as “an inspiring programme” and as

 

'7 Letters, Turner to Wilson, July 26, 1893, ibid., VIII, 278-279; Wilson to Ellen A. Wilson, July
29, 1893, ibid., 293; and Wilson to Caleb T. Winchester, August 17, 1893, ibid., 312-313.

‘8 Wilson, Division and Reunion, 1829-1889 2nd edition (New York, 1893, 1929), 4.

21

“the moral of our history.”19 Rather than writing a more conventional sort of history,
Wilson sought to formulate principles, emotions, and practices that identiﬁed society as a
whole both to itself and in relation to the rest of the world. For him, the most important
historical principle of the American experience was that the expansion of the country,
besides being an impetus to the growth of nationalism, ensured the “expansion of the
correct sort of democratic feeling and method,” the very thing that made America unique
in the world?"

In an article in Forum, Wilson elaborated further on the regenerative inﬂuence of

66'

America’s mtense and expanding western life.” Continental expansion, he argued, had
ameliorated the divisive problems associated with sectionalism and, in part, had settled
the slavery question. Furthermore, America's frontier experience had produced “the
typical Americans” - men like George Washington, who, Wilson wrote, had got his
experience and his ideas of what ought to be done for the country through his contact
with the wilderness. He added that Washington “had conceived the expansion of the
country much more liberally than others of his generation” and had “looked conﬁdently
forward to many a great national enterprise which even yet we have not had the spirit to
undertake.”21 The passage above is representative of how Wilson turned historical actors

into symbols of forces that molded America's national character. Wilson intended his

reconstruction of the “national design” to convey important meanings about what he

 

'9 Wilson, Address, “The Course of American History,” May 16, 1895, PWW, IX, 273.
20 . . . . .
Wilson, Dtvtszon and Reunion, 15.

2' Wilson, “Mr. Goldwyn Smith’s Views on Our Political History," Forum XVI (December 1893),
489-499. Quotation on 497.

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considered the exceptional qualities of the American nation. In this respect, Washington's
vision, as explained by Wilson, involved the transformation of America from a country
plagued by private and regional visions of progress and prosperity into a single nation that
was genuinely national in its approach to political and economic development. Wilson
contended that an examination of Washington's life made it clear that only continental
expansion had made such a vision of national maturity possible; westward expansion,
“the secret of nationality in America,” had reconciled the essential contrasts in the young
republic's political economy by forging a pact between interest and polity that resulted in
“national perfection.”22

Wilson understood that the close of the frontier raised new challenges for the
American polity. America’s exceptional character would have to be preserved and
developed further without the unique perspective borne of the frontier, and
socioeconomic pressures would increase as the migrating nation turned back on itself.
“The free lands are gone,” Wilson warned. Americans would have to “make their life
sufﬁcient without this easy escape.”23 At the same time that the nation was losing the
safety valve of the frontier, it was being buffeted by the escalating pressures of
industrialization and urbanization, a growing number of immigrants from southern and
eastern Europe, mounting labor strife, and a surge in sectional and populist unrest.
Clearly, Wilson interpreted the loss of the ﬁ'ontier as a signiﬁcant event in American

national development. In his mind, everything else paled in comparison as modernization,

 

22 Wilson, George Washington (New York, 1897), 64—66, 142, 242, 245, and Essay, “The Making
of the Nation,” April 15, 1897, PWW, X, 225-226.

23 Wilson, “The Course of American History,” May 16, 1895, ibid,, IX, 257-274.

23

or what he called “continued progress toward mastery over nature,”24 threatened to
transform American society beyond recognition in the absence of a western safety valve

to temper its excesses.

The Crisis of a F rontierless Democracy
The root cause of Wilson’s anxiety about the changing character of the United States in
the post-frontier era was the unprecedented growth of the economy in the decades
following the Civil War. The four-year war powerfully stimulated the economy, although
historians disagree about how much expansion would have occurred anyway. The growth
continued apace during the tumultuous years of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age.
Between 1865 and 1900 the population of the United States more than doubled to 71
million, and the nation’s gross domestic product nearly tripled. Raw statistics concerning
the incredible growth in the production of staple crops, raw materials, and basic
manufactures during this period offer convincing evidence of rapid economic expansion:
wheat, 256 percent; com, 222 percent; reﬁned sugar, 460 percent; coal, 800 percent; and
steel rails, 523 percent. In the textile industry the number of spindles more than
quadrupled. The “estimated true value” of taxable property increased by over 446 percent.
Investments in railroad securities, most of it European in origin, rose by over 470 percent

and miles of track in operation by over 567 percent.25 In newer industries the growth,

 

24 Wilson, Notes for Lectures, “Politics," March 5, 1898-April 29, 1900, ibid., X, 464-476.
Quotation on 466.

25 Percentages are compiled from statistics in US. Bureau of Census, Historical Statistics of the
United States, Colonial Times to 1970 2 volumes (Washington, DC, 1975), I, 8, 224, 512, 590, 592-594;
ll, 693-694. See also, Robert Higgs, The Transformation of the American Economy, 1865-1914: An
Interpretation (New York, 1971); Edward G. Kirkland, Industry Comes of A ge: Business, Labor, and

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starting from near zero, was so great as to render percentages meaningless. The
production of crude petroleum rose from three million barrels in 1865 to over ﬁfty-ﬁve
million barrels in 1898, making America the world’s largest producer of oil within a
single generation. By 1900 the United States produced ten million tons of steel per year,
surpassing the annual production of Britain and Germany combined. As Paul Varg has
written, by the end of the nineteenth century the American nation “had become the
Hercules of the economic world?“
Modernization, however, proved to be a mixed blessing for the United States.
Industrial growth, which continued unabated into the new century, produced major
problems and inequities as well as substantial gains. Harsh urban life, perilous factory
conditions, a scarred physical environment, and an unprecedented concentration of wealth
in the hands of a few accompanied America’s postwar economic expansion. The rise and
spread of big business, the maturation of the industrial base, and the explosion of
corporate mergers which tripled the number of trusts between 1895 and 1904 all stirred
anxiety that equality of economic opportunity was fast approaching an eclipse.” Also, the
strains of transition from a rural, agrarian society to an urban, industrial nation, together
with massive ﬂows of foreign immigration and internal migration, exacerbated tensions

along class, race, and ethnic lines. Wilson feared that the nation seemed to be acquiring a

 

Public Policy, 1860-1897 (New York, 1961), 52, 164, 400; and David M. Pletcher, “1861-1898: Economic
Growth and Diplomatic Adjustment" in William H. Becker and Samuel F. Wells, Jr., eds., Economics and
World Power: An Assessment of American Diplomacy Since 1 789 (New York, 1984), 1 19-171.

26 Paul A. Varg, America from Client State to World Power; Six Major Transitions in United
States Foreign Relations (Nontran and London, 1990), 103.

27 Glenn Porter, The Rise ofBig Business, 1860-1920 2"6 edition (Arlington Heights, IL, 1992),
75-90, and Naomi R. Lamoreaux, The Great Merger in American Business, 1895-1904 (New York, 1985).

25

 

large, unruly proletariat composed mainly of recent immigrants from southern and eastern
Europe who possessed little understanding of or loyalty to American democratic
principles and institutions. The signs of disorganization, even disintegration, seemed to
be everywhere, directly threatening Wilson’s middle-class America that had been
dominated by a homogeneous Anglo-Saxon Protestant political culture. American
cultural exceptionalism, especially the distinct absence of class conﬂict, seemed at an
end.28

In spite of Wilson’s faith in the potential of human progress and continued
democratic grth in the post-frontier era, this faith oﬁen betrayed a failure to accept the
pluralism of a modern urban society. Wilson viewed policies that promoted strict racial
control and the aggressive assimilation of ethnic minorities as vital to the preservation of
American cultural exceptionalism. The prospect of a frontierless nation exacerbated his
fears over the assirnilative capacity of America, particularly in lieu of the fact that the
number of immigrants was increasing in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Nearly
four million immigrants (not including Canadians and Mexicans)29 entered the United
States between 1891 and 1900. Although Wilson himself never advocated restriction, he
did note in his 1889 address commemorating the centennial of George Washington’s
inauguration that “there is no longer that quick reception and Americanization of these
immigrants which we see in earlier days.” Wilson warned that though the United States

had proven democracy possible in a large nation by its success in integrating sixty million

 

28 Faulkner, Politics, Reform and lirpansion, 1890-1 900, 72—93; Chambers, The Tyranny of
Change, l-24; and Painter, Standing at Armageddon, 1 10-140.

29 . . . . . . . . . ..
Immrgratlon authorltles 1n the United States ceased to count "overland unmlgratlon from
Canada and Mexico after 1884.

26

people into one representative system, its national character was being “diluted” by the
“heterogeneous horde of immigrants” arriving at America’s shores. “We are receiving
into our own equable blood,” he declared, “the most feverish blood of the restless old
world.”30
Wilson lamented the changing ethnic character of the “new immigration” because
it threatened to change the character of American democracy. For him, the maintenance
of political consensus in the United States rested in large part upon racial culture and
conditioning rather than upon a relationship between economic and social conditions.
Thus, Wilson asserted, “the ultimate danger of variety and heterogeneity” in the
American population in the post-ﬁontier era was “national disintegration.” An increasing
proportion of immigrants originated from southern and eastern Europe as well as East
Asia while a steadily diminishing proportion came from northwestern Europe. This
demographic shift had begun in the late 18705 and gained momentum in the 1880S and
18908. By 1896, immigration from southeastern Europe surpassed that from northwestern
Europe for the ﬁrst time in American history. By 1900, more than ten million people of
foreign birth were living in the United States, of whom more than seven million came
from Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.31 Wilson claimed that these “new immigrants,”

in contrast to the “old immigrants” from northern Europe who ﬁrst settled and built

America, were less intelligent and energetic and therefore less deserving or capable of

 

30 Wilson, “Speech on the One llundredth Anniversary of the Inauguration of George
Washington,” April 30, 1889, PWW, VI, 176-182.

3' Reports of the Immigration Commission (Washington, DC, 191 1), ill, 8- [2; Statistical Atlas of
the United States, I900 (Washington, DC, 1903), 70-75; and Walter F. Wilcox, Studies in American
Demography (Ithaca, NY, 1940), 159-174.

27

assimilation. He dreaded the contaminating inﬂuence of the “new immigrants” on
American political culture: “Immigrant minds cast in every mould of race — minds
inheriting every basis of environment, warped by the diverse histories of a score of
different nations, threatens our Saxon habits of government.” Wilson felt Anglo-Saxon
institutions had to be preserved by honoring the traditions from which “our ﬁrst strength
was derived,” but they were threatened by “restless forces” and “anarchic turbulence” of
European democracy brought to the United States by immigrants who did not have the
beneﬁt of Anglo-Saxon conditioning. Without the western frontier the United States no
longer seemed able to assimilate and acculturate the incoming ﬂood. “Yearly,” he wrote,
“our own temperate blood, schooled in self-possession, and to the measured conduct of
self-government,” was receiving a “partial corruption of foreign blood.” Europe was
exporting its “habits,” and its political philosophy, “a readiness to experiment in forms of
government.”32

Wilson assumed that industrialization would ultimately transform the United
States into a more uniﬁed and homogeneous nation. Although he anticipated that
America’s new industrial cities would eventually emerge as the new ﬁontier, absorbing
the immigrants and “Americanizing” them, in the meantime the different stages of

industrialization in the various regions of the country heightened sectional antagonisms.

Wilson, therefore, viewed “a sectional struggle for supremacy in the control of

 

32 Wilson, “The Nature of Democracy in the United States,” The Atlantic Monthly LXIV
(November 1889), 577-588. See also, Wilson, Public Lecture, “The Evils of Democracy,” November 25,
1890, PW W, V11, 80-82; Untitled Address, June 12, 1895, ibid., 1X, 287-291; and Untitled After-Dinner
Speech, December 21, 1896, ibid, X, 82-85.

28

government” as the gravest threat to national development in the post-frontier era.33

A southerner himself, Wilson believed he understood the perils associated with
the sectionalization of the national idea. Having been reared in the South during the Civil
War and Reconstruction era, he had witnessed ﬁrst hand the tragedy of disunion and the
long painful road to reunion, still incomplete in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
In an address on Abraham Lincoln in 1909, Wilson conﬁded in the audience that his
earliest recollection was “standing at my father’s gateway in Augusta, Georgia, when I
was four years old, and hearing someone pass and say that Mr. Lincoln was elected and
there was to be war.”34 Also, in his study of American history, Wilson had concentrated
much of his attention on the sectional crisis of the 18503 that culminated in one of the
bloodiest wars of the century. Although Wilson defended the South’s constitutional right
to secede from the Union in 1861, he depicted secession as a misguided solution that
ultimately led to ruinous consequences for southern civilization. In an early essay on John
Bright, he wrote “because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy.”
Wilson's view of secession as “misguided,” however, did not derive solely ﬁom his
conviction that slavery constituted an immoral institution, as some of his biographers
claim,35 but also from his conclusion that an independent South would still have been

dominated by a more powerful, industrializing North. Throughout, Wilson maintained

 

33 Wilson, Essay, "The Making of the Nation," ca. April 15, 1897, ibid., X, 217—236. Quotation on
219.

34 Wilson, Address, "Abraham Lincoln: A Man of the People,” February 12, I909, ibid., XIX, 33-
46. Quotation on 33.

35 See, for example, Arthur S. Link, “Woodrow Wilson: The American as Southerner,” Journal of
Southern History XXVI (February 1970), 3-17, and John M. Mulder, Woodrow Wilson: The Years of
Preparation (Princeton, 1978), 69.

29

that the South could prosper only as part of the United States, not separate from it.36

The memories and lessons that Wilson discerned from the Civil War and
Reconstruction era shaped his perception of the political crisis then looming just beyond
the horizon in the United States. He believed that the absence of a community of interests
in the 18808 and 18908 between radicalized farmers in the South and West and
reactionary manufacturers and industrialists in the Northeast allowed the prospect of
bloody sectional conﬂict to rear its ugly head once again in the American political
landscape. The “new sectionalism,” as he described it, developed ﬁom an unprecedented
diversiﬁcation of economic interests throughout the country in which “some sections
[were] at one stage of development, some at another; some with one hope and purpose for
America, some with another.” Unfettered economic grth had created regions of
backwardness in the United States. Industrialization, coupled with the termination of the
frontier, had destroyed the “common standar ” in opinion and policy that underlay
national life.37

The victims and victors of the “new sectionalism” polarized into two intransigent
camps that, according to Wilson, facilitated the rise of new sectional politicos on the

national scene. Like the sectional leaders of the 18508 and 18608, each possessed a

 

36 Wilson, Oration, “John Bright,” ca. March 1880, in Ray S. Baker and William E. Dodd, eds.,
College and State: Literary and Political Papers (1875-1913) (New York, 1925), I, 43-59. Wilson wrote
Albert Bushnell Hart, editor of the “Epochs of American History” series, that concern about the danger of
renewed sectional conﬂict in the absence of a frontier was one of the reasons why he decided to write
Division and Reunion, 1829-1889. Letter, Wilson to Albert Bushnell Hart, December 20, 1892, PWW, VIII,
60-61.

37 Wilson, Essay, “A Calendar of Great Americans," ca. September 15, 1893, ibid., VIII, 368-3 80;
Minutes, Meeting of the Alumni of the University of Virginia, June 12, 1895, ibid., IX, 286-287; Untitled
Address, June 12, 1895, ibid., 287-291; and Essay, “The Making of the Nation," April 15, 1897, ibid, X,
217-236.

30

distinctly parochial vision of American national development that failed to take into
account the national interest. In one camp the Populists, led by William Jennings Bryan,
seemed to threaten revolution with their loud demands for immediate and sweeping
change. In the other the entrenched legal-political establishment, represented by
Tammany Hall bosses and their allies in Washington, persisted in undermining any
movement toward substantive reform for fear that it would produce changes in the
political status quo. A despairing Wilson sounded the tocsin: “The conviction is
becoming painfully distinct among us . . . that these contrasts of condition and differences
of interest between the several sections of the country are now more marked and
emphasized than ever before.”38

Wilson placed the lion’s share of the blame for the “new sectionalism” in the
United States at the doorstep of the federal government. The western safety valve was
gone and the national government lacked the authority to devise policies that treated the
diverse parts of the country separately. Wilson painted a bleak picture of the political
situation in Washington in his essays and lectures: while the grave social and economic
problems of the day indicated that the American system was maturing, demonstrating the
need for decisive national leadership, the federal government seemed rudderless, staying a
course of drift and reaction. Instead of acknowledging that the nation was in the grips of a
serious domestic crisis that required far-reaching reform, America’s political leaders
responded to the increasing sectionalization of the national interest only with haste,

ignorance, intemperance and fatuity. Wilson warned that if leaderless government

 

3“ Wilson, Essay, “The Making of the Nation,” April 15, 1897, ibid., 217-236.

31

persisted and Washington continued to abdicate its responsibilities in locating a new
safety valve for the nation’s excesses, then the processes of change transforming America
would become even more perilous, making another sectional conﬂict inevitable.39
Wilson identiﬁed the acrimonious relationship that existed between the executive
and legislative branches of the federal government as the chief source of inefficiency in
late nineteenth-century America: “Congress and the President now treat one another
almost like separate governments. . . . What we need is harmonious, consistent,
responsible party government, instead of a wide dispersion of function and
responsibility?“ The president’s ability to lead the nation had been severely curtailed by
Congress in the decades after the Civil War, but Congress, dominated by partisan politics
and special interest groups, had failed to provide a coherent plan for national regeneration
as well. Wilson pointed out that both houses suffered from a notable lack of efﬁcient
organization in which unrelated standing committees determined all legislation, with no
clear plan, no single deﬁnite purpose. Because the speaker appointed all the members of
the standing committees in the House of Representatives, he tended to govern that
chamber in “an autocratic manner,” precluding any serious debate about the national
polity. Wilson often referred to the speaker of the House as “the silent master of men and
policies” whose agenda mirrored his own concerns about maintaining the political status

quo rather than initiating constructive reform.41

 

3" Ibid.; Public Lecture, “Political Liberty, Political Expediency, Political Morality, in a
Democratic State,” December 24, 1894, ibid., IX, 106-118; Address, “Ideals of Democracy,” October 15,
1896, ibid., X, 6-9; and Address, “Leaderless Government,” August 5, 1897, ibid., 288-304.

4" Wilson, Essay, “Mr. Cleveland’s Cabinet,” ca. March 17, 1893, ibid, VIII, 160-178.

4' Wilson, Address, “Leaderless Government,” August 5, 1897, ibid, x, 288-304. Quotation on

32

Similarly, Wilson contended that the Senate had acquired “a sort of Romo-Polish
character” since the Civil War in which its administrative powers had become magniﬁed
over the years at the expense of the president. Members of the Senate’s standing
committees behaved in a manner that expected the president and his cabinet to acquiesce
to them, especially in the realm of ﬁnancial and foreign affairs. The standing committees,
however, did not constitute the locus of power in that upper chamber. Instead, Wilson
declared, “a few senators of distinction” presided over the affairs of the nation through a
wide network of patronage that extended into the standing committees. Such an
arrangement prevented the emergence of disinterested leadership in governing the
national agenda, Wilson charged, and it resembled anything but checks and balances in
government. Such an arrangement constituted nothing less than “government without
order, showing a confused interplay of forces in which no man stands at the helm to steer,
whose course is beaten out by the shifting winds of personal inﬂuences and popular
opinion.”42

Clearly, Wilson was convinced that the future of American democratic institutions
hung in the balance in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Before 1890, the frontier
had tempered the pace and nature of change in the United States, ensuring slow but steady
democratic growth. Westward expansion had served as the organizing principle upon
which the whole of American national development had been based for more than two

centuries: “The idea of manifest destiny furnished that standard of political expediency in

America. Westward expansion taught Americans how to be masters . . . and provided

 

._ ._ _.___..- . . -. -—.- _.._._.._._

 

297.

42 Ibid. Quotation on 298-299.

33

them with experience in becoming democratic.”43 He insisted that only the unbounded
economic prosperity and unprecedented freedom from social disorder and discontent
afforded by the western safety valve had made it possible for the government to conduct
national affairs in spite of the dysfunctional relationship between the president and
Congress. Thus, for Wilson, the disappearance of the frontier near the close of the
nineteenth century held serious implications for the continuation of American democratic
growth and stability into the next century. A new regenerative principle upon which
future political action could be based had to be located before the specter of social
revolution, produced by the throes of industrialism and the “new sectionalism,” could

sweep the country.“

America’s Edmund Burke
Wilson’s frontier-based historical synthesis of American national development seemed to
provide a clear justiﬁcation for overseas expansion. In reality though, Wilson did not
believe that the loss of the frontier could be offset by an expansionist foreign policy.
Instead, Wilson’s attention in the years immediately preceding the Spanish-American
War focused exclusively on locating and propagating “internal solutions” to the problem
of national degeneration in the absence of a western safety valve. It was in this ﬂame of

mind that Wilson abandoned his long-time mentor Walter Bagehot after whom he had

 

43 Wilson, “Political Liberty, Political Expediency, Political Morality, in a Democratic State,”
December 20, 1894, PWW, IX, 106-118. Quotation on 108.

44 Wilson, “Leaderless Government,” August 5, 1897, ibid., X, 288-304. See also, Niels A.
Thorsen, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson, 1875-1910 (Princeton, 1988), 52-69, and Henry W.
Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 263-265.

34

self-consciously modeled himself up to that time, and turned back to the more pragmatic,
eighteenth-century British statesman Edmund Burke to ﬁnd the political principles that
would guide the nation through the storm of political, economic, and social upheaval.”5

Aﬂer rereading Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1893, Wilson
composed a public lecture on him. Wilson's discussion of Burke’s reactions to the
popular excesses of the French Revolution in the 17908 offers much insight into his own
fears about the increasing potential for social revolution in America in the 18908. He
considered Burke’s message about good government, democratic growth, and the
cultivation of strong political character “timeless,” possessing “a quality of permanence.”
For Wilson, the universal quality of Burke’s prescription for national regeneration derived
from the fact that his generalizations about political development were never based on
abstract propositions, but upon “the great principles of conduct . . . [and] the general
experiences of the English-speaking race.” A master of the principles of conduct and
habit, Wilson argued that Burke represented the authentic voice of Anglo-Saxon peoples
and that his words, still valid a century after they were ﬁrst written, should serve “as a
sort of motto of the practical spirit of our race in the affairs of government?"6

Wilson viewed himself as “America's Edmund Burke.” He believed that Burke’s

 

45 Wilson’s gradual shill from Bagehot to Burke in his political thought can be traced in the
following three addresses: Wilson, Public Lectures, “Democracy,” December 5, 1891 , PWW, VII, 344-369;
“Edmund Burke: The Man and His Times," ca. August 31, 1893, ibid., VIII, 318-343; and “Walter
Bagehot,” January 16, 1896, ibid., IX, 381-3 83. See also, David P. F idler and Jennifer M. Welsh, eds.,
Empire and Community: Edmund Burke ’s Writings and Speeches on International Relations (Boulder, CO,
1999).

46 Wilson, “Edmund Burke: The Man and His Times,” ca. August 31, 1893, ibid, VIII, 318-343.
Shortly before Wilson composed this lecture, he was asked to edit Burke’s private and public papers.
Wilson declined the offer because “though Burke be my master in all things political, he bristles with
allusions that would call - would cry out - for annotation. It would be the death of me, if 1 were to
undertake it.” Letter, Wilson to Caleb T. Winchester, May 29, 1893, ibid., 219-220.

35

principles of “enlightened conservatism” could provide the American people with a road
map to guide the nation out of the chaos and disorientation of the 18908. Acknowledged
as one of the country’s leading political scientists and most accomplished orators, Wilson
delivered more than a hundred addresses in various cities across the United States
throughout the decade before the Spanish-American War, expounding upon what he
considered the core Burkean virtues of respect for order, obedience to law, and pursuit of
progressive reform from above. His purpose was to offer the American people a program
of national regeneration in the absence of a frontier. America in the 18908, like Burke’s
England in the 17908, had to be made immune to radical and unproven political theories
that had found their ﬁrllest and most devastating application in the French Revolution.47
Throughout the nineties, Wilson told his audiences that the critical question
conﬁ'onting the nation was not whether a reorganization of the national polity was
necessary, but what approach to reorganization should be adopted. For him, the choices
seemed only too clear: Americans could embrace either the “speculative innovation” of
the Populists and other proponents of radical change from below, or Burke’s doctrine of
gradual, constructive reform from above. Wilson equated the former with eighteenth-
century French radical thought. Populists, he argued, relied too heavily on the literary and
theoretical genius of the French philosophes which, in the end, proved to be nothing more
than misleading generalizations based on abstract principles devoid of any practical
understanding of democratic institutions or how they developed. Mirroring observations

made by Burke a century earlier, Wilson warned that “revolutionary liberty” was nothing

 

47 Wilson, “Edmund Burke and the French Revolution,” The Century Magazine LXII (September
1901), 784-792. See also, Thorsen, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson, 143-145; Mulder, Woodrow
Wilson, 126—128; and August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1991), 112.

36

more than a delusion:

To innovate is not to reform. . . . The former alters the substance

of the objects themselves, and gets rid of their essential good as

well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them; reform is not

a change in the substance or in the primary modification of the

object, but a direct application of a remedy to the grievance

complained of.48
In this respect, Wilson pointed out that the chief ﬂaw in the ideological politics of the
Populists, like their French predecessors, stemmed from their failure to understand that
republican institutions could not be “made over at will.” Democratic growth could never
be achieved through a revolution from below: “Neither Rousseau, the apostle of all that
was forceful, unreal, and misleading in politics, nor the gospel of the Rights of Man, with
its irrational talk of majority rule and of the paramount signiﬁcance of reason, possessed
any understanding of the true nature of liberty.” Wilson, therefore, deemed the Populist
vision of American national development as “radically evil and corrupting, unﬁt for free
men.”49

Clearly, Wilson believed that the Populist approach to the regeneration of
American democracy posed a direct threat to America’s exceptional character because it
contradicted every principle concerning the growth of liberty that had been revealed in the
course of the American experience. Burke’s explication of practical politics marked the

only correct and durable road to national regeneration. Genuine democratic growth,

possessing an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary character, could only be achieved

 

'8 Wilson, “Edmund Burke: The Man and His Times,” ca. August 31, 1893, PWW, V111, 318-343.
Quotation on 336.

49 Ibid. Quotation on 340-341. See also Wilson, Public Lecture, “Edmund Burke,” October 22,

1897, ibid., X, 326-329, in which Wilson explains in detail the parallel between the Populists of the 18908
and the French philosophes of the 17908.

37

through Burke’s prescription of “slow progressive modiﬁcation, deliberate adjustment
and patient accommodation of general opinion and purpose to changing social and
political conditions from generation to generation.”50 The Burkean approach to national
regeneration, as interpreted by Wilson, required that all laws and reforms be shaped
according to the historical, physical, intellectual, and accidental conditions of the nation.
Change, if it was to be constructive and progressive, had to be efficient, that is, prudent,
based on established tradition and rooted in the national experience.51
Wilson, upon his adoption of a Burkean approach to national reform, listed the
injection of “disinterested national statesmanship” into the American polity as an
essential prerequisite to “liberating” the national government from the stranglehold of
sectional-partisan politics and redeeming American democratic values: “The ﬁ'ontier is
gone; it has reached the Paciﬁc. The key to the conduct of our democracy now is
leadership.”52 In light of the absence of the ﬁ'ontier, American national development into
the twentieth century depended upon the cultivation and rise of a new political elite who

possessed “the ideals of the English-speaking race, . . [and] the inspirations of character,

spirit and thought of the nation which they would serve.” Wilson prescribed a new

 

5° Ibid.

5] Ibid. Wilson promoted a Burkean approach to national regeneration in a number of essays and
addresses throughout the 18908. See especially, Wilson, Essay, “The True American Spirit,” October 27,
1892, ibid., VIII, 37-40; Address, “The Ethics of the State,” October 30, 1894, ibid., IX, 99-100; Public
Lecture, “Political Liberty, Political Expediency, Political Morality, in a Democratic State,” December 30,
1894, ibid., 106-118; Address, “The Nature of the State in Its Relation to Society,” February 21, 1895,
ibid., 211-213; Address, “Montesquieu,” December 13, 1895, ibid., 361-363; Public Lecture, “De
Tocqueville, the Student of Democracy,” January 10, 1896, ibid., 374-377; Address, “Liberty,” February 5,
1897, ibid., X, 145-149; Notes for an Address, “Forms of Government,” October 29, 1897, ibid., 332-333;
and Public Lecture, “Alexis de Tocqueville,” November 5, 1897, ibid., 336—338.

52 Wilson, “A Calendar of Great Americans,” ca. September 15, 1893, ibid., VIII, 368-380.
Quotation on 380.

38

American statesman: “The great men of our future must be of the composite type of
greatness: sound-hearted, hopeful, disinterested, conﬁdent of the validity of liberty,
tenacious of the deeper principles of American institutions.” Only after such leadership
emerged on the national scene could Americans “be of one mind, our ideals ﬁxed, our
purposes harmonized, our nationality complete.”53
As a common theme in his public addresses throughout the nineties, ‘eivic
manhood,’ the idea of nurturing patriotism through character formation, quickly emerged
as the centerpiece of Wilson’s effort to redeem American democratic institutions and
preserve American exceptionalism in the absence of the frontier. Wilson elucidated his
views concerning the cultivation of “patriotic citizenship” in a widely reported-on address
commemorating Princeton’s sesquicentennial in October 1896. Throughout the speech,
he particularly emphasized the important role that universities would play in imparting a
sense of national duty to a budding modern American elite. Educators possessed the
responsibility of not only providing their students with a fundamental body of knowledge,
but also of instilling in them a “spirit of service to the nation.” Wilson charged
universities with the task of aiding society in the difficult but imperative transition from
an agrarian set of values to an industrial set. Theirs was a mission of character
regeneration among students who, in turn, would eventually lead the effort to redeem
America through constructive reform from above. Throughout his life, Wilson never

wavered in his conviction that disinterested public service comprised the principal

component of national regeneration: “The life of service provides the only road to

 

53 Ibid

39

”54

freedom and liberty.
Wilson also proposed that the education of a patriotic and service-oriented elite
required the development of a uniquely American “university ideal.” Such an ideal
involved the establishment of a core curriculum based on instruction in national history
and in democratic thought and institutions. For Wilson, the study of history offered
instructive practical wisdom to Americans because it illuminated for them those
characteristics that raised the nation to greatness: Anglo-Saxon racial stock, America’s
geographic isolation, and mature political character, which he described as “civic
manhood.” Because “the days of glad expansion” were gone, Wilson argued, the
university had to replace the vanished frontier in teaching “each man his place in the
republic,” and in instilling in America’s future leaders a nationalistic point of view that
included an understanding of and unwavering devotion to distinctly American democratic
institutions, values, and practices.55
To ensure the rise of “civic manhood” in politics to “stand ﬁrm against the
crowd,” Wilson declared that the administration of national policy had to be liberated
from the spoils system. For Wilson, patronage undermined American political character.

The “moral rottenness” that patronage spawned in American political life threatened not

only governmental efficiency, but “the fundamental virtues of our civilization” as well. A

 

54 Wilson, Address, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service,” October 21, 1896, ibid, X, 11-31.

55 Ibid. See also, Wilson, Address, “Should an Antecedent Liberal Education Be Required of
Students of Law, Medicine, and Theology?” July 26, 1893, ibid., VIII, 285-292; Essay, “University
Training and Citizenship,” ca. June 20, 1894, ibid., 587-596; Address, “Legal Education of
Undergraduates,” ca. August 23, 1894, ibid., 646-657; Outline for an Address, “Patriotic Citizenship,”
September 29, 1897, ibid., X, 320-321; Public Lecture, “What Patriotism Means,” December 11, 1897,
ibid., 351-352; Address, “Patriotism in the Time of Peace,” December 14, 1897, ibid., 353-355; and
Address, “Patriotism, The Duty of Religious Men,” December 20, 1897, ibid, 365-366.

40

symbol of national shame and degeneration, the spoils system destroyed the confidence of
ordinary citizens in democratic institutions and saddled the nation with a despotic
bureaucracy bent on retaining control of the machinery of government. Patronage
undermined morality in government, Wilson argued, and without “Christian character” in
public affairs, all efforts at reform were futile.56 After 1894, Wilson became active in the
“municipal reform movement,” especially in Baltimore. Describing the spoils system as
“undemocratic,” he argued that the practice of patronage allowed city bosses to dominate
nearly every aspect of Baltimore’s municipal life. As a remedy, Wilson called for the
“thorough reform” of the nation’s civil service in which standards of honesty and
efﬁciency for public officials were established and observed. Like other progressive
reformers, he considered the adoption of the merit system for political appointments as
the sine qua non of good government. In addition, Wilson emphasized the need to
“relearn the virtues” inherent in the earlier ﬁontier communities by reintroducing the
institutions of the “common council” and the “town meeting” in municipal government.
Doing so would temper the designs of self-interested urban bosses with public opinion.57
Wilson also argued that the centralization of power in the executive branch of the

federal government and the reinstitution of meaningful debate in Congress were

 

5" Wilson, Address, “Patriotic Citizenship,” September 29, 1897, ibid, 320-321.

57 Ibid.; Wilson, “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly 11 (June, 1887), 197-
222; Public Lectures, “Good Government in Cities,” February 20, 1896, PWW, 1X, 437; “Modern City and
the Organization of Its Government,” February 26, 1896, ibid., 449-454; “City Departments and
Commissions,” February 28, 1896, ibid., 461-465; “Problems of City Government,” February 29, 1896,
ibid., 468-473; “Organization of Cities,” March 3, 1896, ibid, 477-480; and “The City and the State,”
March 4, 1896, ibid., 482-483. For Wilson’s involvement in Baltimore’s municipal reform movement, see
Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest, 60; Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, 195-199; and James B. Crooks,
Politics and Progress: The Rise of Urban Progressivism in Baltimore, [895-191] (Baton Rouge, LA,
1968), 13-47.

41

important keys to ridding the nation of the spoils system. To achieve both of these
political reforms, Wilson promoted the idea of emulating the British practice of
appointing the most capable members of Congress to the president’s cabinet which, in
turn, would allow them to present and argue the executive’s policies in the legislature. A
cabinet-style government would provide a mechanism for an efficient and healthy
relationship between the two branches and, more importantly, would give the president
more latitude and power in directing national affairs.58 The reinstitution of substantive
debate in Congress, Wilson estimated, would eventually reduce the inﬂuence of blind
partisanship and special interests in government, and induce “the best men” to seek office
based upon merit, not patronage ties. The natural selection of debate would therefore
ensure that only the nation’s most qualiﬁed and skillful elites rose to positions of
government leadership in Washington.59

Wilson described his proposal for centralizing political power in the executive
branch as “the nationalization of the motive power of government.” Accordingly, the
president represented the interests of the nation, the homogeneous state, while Congress
represented only sectional and special interest constituencies. For Wilson, giving the
executive “an originative voice” in determining national policies would simply mark “a
return to our ﬁrst models of statesmanship and political custom” that had existed during
the formative years of the American republic. Congress would be relegated to a

consulting body once again, thus allowing for a genuinely national vision to emerge to

 

58 Wilson, “Government Under the Constitution,” ca. June 26, 1893, PWW, V111, 254-270.

59 Ibid. See also, John G. Sproat, “The Best Men Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New
York, 1968), 257-271.

42

guide the United States into the next century.60

As the United States stumbled toward the twentieth century, little occurred to
encourage Wilson to believe that his message of conservative national regeneration was
having much of an impact on people's attitudes toward reform and development. Instead,
evidence abounded that American elites were turning to other approaches to constructive
change. In this regard, Wilson noted that many in America looked to the principles of
“scientiﬁc management” as well as to technical education to serve as the new standard of
political efficiency. At the center of the efficiency craze, Frederick W. Taylor fashioned
methods aﬂer the exact sciences -- experiment, measurement, generalization -- to ﬁnd the
laws of management, like the laws of nature, that would be impartial and above sectional
and class prejudice. The objective of “scientiﬁc management” was to produce a society in
which all human activity would become planned, coordinated, and controlled under the
continuous supervision of “efficiency experts.” The supposed promise it held for
Americans concerned about national development in the late nineteenth century was a
world in which political corruption and incompetence, sectionalism, and class conﬂict
would be absent.61 Wilson objected to this proposed panacea, however, contending that
science could have at best only a limited effect in resolving the nation's problems.

Science,” he declared, “has not changed the laws of social growth and betterment?"2

 

60 Wilson, “Leaderless Government,” August 5, 1897, PW W, X, 288-304.

6’ For the principles of “scientiﬁc management,” see Samuel Hays, The Response to lndustrialism,
1885-1914 (Chicago, 1957), 48-70, and Samuel Haber, Eﬂiciency and Uplift: Scientiﬁc Management in the
Progressive Era, 1890-1920 (Chicago, 1964), 99-116.

62 Wilson, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service,” October 21, 1896, PW W, X, 1 1-31. Quotation on
12.

43

Instead, Wilson argued, national regeneration through character formation should be at
the heart of all progressive reform in America. For him, individual character and national
success were bound together in an inseparable compact that left little room for science.63
As “frontier anxiety” continued to mount throughout the decade of the nineties,
some American elites began to question whether the various “internal solutions” to the
vanishing frontier were sufficient by themselves in preventing the further erosion of
American exceptionalism. Perhaps inevitably, attention turned to various “external
solutions,” including the creation of new territorial frontiers outside the continental
United States, to augment the effort at home to end the deterioration in national character.
For these reforrn-minded Americans, expansionism, whether continental or extra-
continental, would remain the principal instrument of national regeneration. While there
was no single, overriding frontier-based argument for overseas expansion, several
manifestations of the closed-frontier theme surfaced frequently in expansionist rhetoric
and became more common as the crisis of the nineties worsened. Some proponents of
overseas expansion asserted that new frontiers were required to keep alive those “rugged
manly virtues” that had been fostered in the American wildemess.”4 Others articulated the

need to locate new ﬁelds of action abroad to prevent the development of a dangerous

surplus of energy that had been necessary in the development of the continent.65 For his

 

'53 [bid

64 Roosevelt championed this theme in The Wilderness Hunter (New York, 1893), reprinted in The
Works of Theodore Roosevelt 23 volumes (New York, 1926). See also, David H. Burton, “The Inﬂuence of
the American West on the Imperialist Philosophy of Theodore Roosevelt,” Arizona and the West XIV
(January 1962), 5-26; Frank Ninkovich, “Theodore Roosevelt: Civilization as Ideology,” Diplomatic
History X (Summer 1986), 221-245; and Richard Slotkin, “Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt’s
Myth of the Frontier,” American Quarterly XXXIII (Winter 1981), 608—637.

65 See General Thomas Jordan, “Why We Need Cuba,” Forum XI (June 1891), 559-567, and

44

part in the emerging debate on American overseas expansion, Wilson described himself
as “an anti-jingo” though he acknowledged “the jingo may have his uses — to shake us out

of a too comfortable lethargy.”66

Opposition to Empire
As the crisis of the nineties deepened, many elites in the United States had reached the
conclusion that overseas expansion was critical to the future of national development and
to the preservation of the nation’s unique character. Inﬂuential expansionists of the day,
including Josiah Strong, Brooks Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Alfred T. Mahan, Senators
Henry Cabot Lodge (Republican-MA), Orville Platt (Republican-CT) and Albert J.
Beveridge (Republican-IN), placed great emphasis on the “loss” of the continental
frontier in their arguments for securing a greater share of the world’s commerce and
annexing an overseas empire in the Caribbean and Paciﬁc. Their arguments ensured that
the closed-frontier leitmotif would become an integral part of the debate on an American
“large policy” in the late nineteenth century.

For those expansionists who linked the closing of the frontier with the need for
further territorial expansion, it was simply a question of offsetting domestic land
exhaustion through the acquisition of new territories. Most frontier-related expansionist
designs in the 18808 and early 18908 were directed towards Canada. Articles and

editorials appearing in the North American Review, Review of Reviews and other popular

 

Arthur C. James, “Advantages of Hawaiian Annexation,” North American Review CLXV (December 1897),
758-760.

66 Wilson, Address, “Patriotism in Time of Peace,” PW W, X, 353-355. Quotation on 354.

45

journals through the mid-18908 made much of “Canadian opportunities” in the light of
land exhaustion in the United States. Arguments wavered between “Continental Union”
and outright annexation, but always emphasized the vastness of Canada’s resources that
presumably could alleviate the “frontier anxiety” then being experienced in the United
States. Although such arguments dwindled following the trimnph of the British-oriented
Tories over Canada’s Liberal Party in the 1891 general election, the territorial designs on
America’s northern neighbor established a precedent for expansionists’ overseas schemes
in the nineties.67

Throughout the nineties, American expansionists’ demands grew to include
annexation of Hawaii, construction of an American-controlled isthmian canal through
Central America, development of a first-class navy based upon a heavy battleship force
rather than commerce-raiding light cruisers, acquisition of a larger share of the world’s
commerce, especially in East Asia, eradication of the European presence and inﬂuence in
the Western Hemisphere, and the extension of “Anglo-Saxon Christian Civilization” to
the far corners of the earth through increased missionary activity and enlightened
colonization schemes. Such an assertive foreign policy was necessary, expansionists
argued, because the technological revolution in armaments, warships, and

communications had made the world smaller and more threatening. Notwithstanding the

 

6’ Prosper Bender, “The Annexation of Canada,” North American Review cxxx1x (July 1884),
42-50; Justin S. Morrill, “18 Union with Canada Desirable?” Forum VI (January 1889), 452-464; Erastus
Wirnan, “Has Not the Time for the Capture of Canada Come?” North American Review CXLVIII (August
1890), 212-222; and SA. Thompson, Editorial, “The Great Canadian Northwest,” Review of Reviews X
(November 1894), 545. For historians’ evaluations of the movement to annex Canada in the 18808 and
18908, see Gordon T. Stewart, The American Response to Canada Since I 776 (East Lansing, MI, 1992),
17, 103; Donald Warner, The Idea of Continental Union: Agitation for the Annexation of Canada to the
United States, 1849-1893 (Lexington, KY, 1960), 226-238; Karel D. Bicha, The American Farmer and the
Canadian West (Lawrence, KS, 1968); and Harold M. Troper, Only Farmers Need Apply: Oﬂicial
Canadian Government Encouragement of Emigration from the United States (Toronto, 1972).

46

fact that the United States, insulated by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, was not menaced
by strong neighbors and faced the smallest visible threat to its national security of all the
great powers, the competitive ethic of Social Darwinism had strengthened the perception
that the world was rapidly contracting, being divided between winners and losers. In this
respect, proponents of a “large policy” believed that America had reached an important
milestone in its national development; the nation either had to assert its place among the
great powers or decline into relative obscurity.68

While expansionists sought justiﬁcation for their designs in Turner’s writings
about the critical role of the frontier in American national development, they had easier
access to similar arguments in the writings of Wilson. Ironically, though both of these
young scholars bemoaned the loss of the frontier because of continental expansion’s
“proven” restorative qualities, neither viewed extracontinental expansion as a potential
panacea to the nation’s ills. Both Turner and Wilson opposed overseas expansion.”

Despite his writings on the regenerative qualities of continental expansion, Wilson

consistently opposed calls for an assertive foreign policy and extracontinental expansion

 

68 These factors are discussed at length in Robert L. Beisner’s excellent From the 01d Diplomacy
to the New, 1865-1900 (Arlington Heights, IL, 1986), 72-95. See also, Healy, US Expansionism, 99-209;
Ernest R. May, American Imperialism: A Speculative Essay (New York, 1968); Walter LaFeber, The New
Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, [860-1898 (Ithaca and London, 1963); Frederick Merk,
Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation (New York, 1963), 228-266; and
Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 170-200.

69 Some historians have argued that Turner was an avowed expansionist in the 18908. See, for
example, William A. Williams, “The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy,” Pacific Historical
Review XXIV (August 1955), 379-395, and Lawrence S. Kaplan, “Frederick Jackson Turner and
Imperialism,” Social Science XXVII (January 1952), 12-16. Both these historians, however, overestimate
Turner’s own imperialism in their efforts to determine his role in shaping the expansionist temper of the
nineties. In fact, Turner opposed overseas expansionism. See, Turner, “The Problem of the West” in The
Frontier in American History, 205-221; Ambrosius, “Turner’s Frontier Thesis and the Modern American
Empire,” 332-339; and Wilbur R. Jacobs, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s Views on International Politics, War
and Peace,” Australian National University Historical Journal VI (November 1969), 10-15.

47

before 1898. He believed that while an expansionist foreign policy aimed at securing
greater access to overseas markets may in fact lessen economic tensions at home in the
short term capturing a larger share of overseas commerce did not address the more
fundamental issue at hand in the 18908: how to regenerate democratic institutions and
ensure an equality of economic opportunity in a rapidly industrializing America that no
longer possessed a frontier. In this respect, Wilson opposed the adoption of a “large
policy” because it was devoid of any regenerative qualities and principles.

Wilson, in the years before the Spanish-American War, was always more
distressed by the loss of the domestic frontier than he was optimistic about the prospects
of new compensatory frontiers overseas. He characterized the agitation for an
expansionist foreign policy as “reckless and misguided,” reasoning that neither the United
States nor the world would be served by the adoption of such a policy. Responding to
scaremongers like Roosevelt who ﬁightened the public with alarmist rhetoric about
potential aggressors in the Western Hemisphere, Wilson contended that the “common
danger” to America was not the threat of foreign invasion, but the harsh reality that
Americans were divided and not of a “common mind” on the question of national
regeneration. For him, the threat of revolution and anarchy within the United States
seemed more credible than an invasion by some foreign enemy. Any distraction ﬁom
addressing the ominous tensions and imbalances at home would certainly hold dire
consequences for the American polity.70

At the heart of Wilson’s opposition to ending what he called “beneﬁcient

 

70 See for example, Wilson, “Mr. Cleveland as President,” The Atlantic Monthly LXXIX (March
1897), 289-300, and “The Making of the Nation,” ca. April 15, 1897, PWW, X, 217-236.

48

isolationism” before 1898 was his conception of the relationship between domestic and
foreign affairs as essentially antagonistic and competitive. He identiﬁed at least two areas
of antagonism. First, Wilson feared that the adoption of a “large policy” would ultimately
divert precious resources, including reform-minded administrators, away from reform
initiatives needed at home. His admonishment of Cleveland in 1893 for appointing
Walter Q. Gresham, an experienced judge from the West, as secretary of state is
indicative of this attitude: “It seems a pity to waste so ﬁne a Secretary of Interior, as it
seems certain Mr. Gresham would have made, on the novel ﬁeld of foreign affairs.”7|
Gresham’s experience and administrative talents could have been better utilized, at least
to Wilson, in spearheading domestic reform rather than overseeing foreign affairs.72 Later
that same year, however, he applauded the Democratic administration’s handling of the
“Hawaiian matter,” largely because Cleveland stood ﬁrm in not allowing the distant crisis
to overshadow or circumvent his commitment to securing civil service reform and a
viable currency policy.73

Second, Wilson contended that an expansionist foreign policy would ultimately
entangle the United States in the Old World’s diplomacy that, in turn, would create more

problems for America in the world. Although the extension of American inﬂuence abroad

might yield access to greater foreign markets and enhance the prestige of the United

 

7' Wilson, “Mr. Cleveland’s Cabinet,” ca. March 17, 1893, ibid., VIII, 160-178. Quotation on 164.

72 According to Wilson, Gresham’s experience as a western judge afforded him “a minute
knowledge of questions of the interior, the questions of interstate commerce, of railway monopoly on the
grand scale, of land grants and agricultural depression.” On the other hand, Gresham possessed no
experience in foreign affairs: “The experienced officials of the State Department will ﬁnd their new chief
naif and ignorant about many things which seem to them obvious arrangements of Providence.” Ibid, 164,
and Letter, Wilson to Albert Shaw [editor of Review of Reviews], March 4, 1893, ibid., 158.

73 Wilson, “A Calendar of Great Americans,” ca. September 15, 1893, ibid., 368-3 80.

49

States in the eyes of the great powers, it would do so only at a terrible cost. Recalling the
diplomatic principles outlined by George Washington in his “Farewell Address,” Wilson
warned that adoption of a “large policy” would tragically embroil the nation in imperial
scrambles, colonial wars, entangling alliances and general war scares that marked late
nineteenth-century international relations.“

Wilson pointed to recent developments within the British Empire to underscore
his apprehensions about the “entanglements” inherent in a policy of overseas expansion.
Since the Treaty of Berlin (1878), Britain had increasingly become committed to far-
reaching foreign and imperial policies resulting in the addition of over four million square
miles and sixty-six million people to her empire. A concomitant of this expansion had
also been near continuous British involvement in costly colonial conﬂicts in Egypt and
Sudan, West and South Africa, Central and Southeast Asia, and in many other remote
regions of the world. Wilson noted two other events in the mid-18908 that further
complicated Britain’s international position: the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894, which
united Britain’s two most formidable adversaries; and, partly as a consequence of the
stalemate produced in Europe by this alliance, the sudden enthusiasm by all the great
powers for imperial and naval expansion. Britain was placed on the defensive as relations
with the other powers became strained over conﬂicting national interests and imperial
claims. International antagonisms deepened, threatening the world with perpetual political
instability and general war. Confronted throughout the world by new rivalries, new

pressures, and the ever-increasing burden of imperial defense, Britain’s era of “splendid

 

7" Wilson, “Mr. Cleveland’s Cabinet,” March 17, 1893, ibid., 160-178; George Washington, 117-
121; and “The Making of a Nation,” ca. April 15, 1897, PWW, X, 217-236.

50

isolationism” seemed to be in its ﬁnal moments. Given Wilson's assumptions and
misgivings about what he viewed as the liabilities of a “large policy,” it is not difficult to
understand why he wished to see the United States spared from a fate similar to that of
Britain.75

Moreover, Wilson’s belief that the United States was a model for other nations to
emulate strengthened his conviction that America needed to remain aloof from the Old
World. Identifying the nation’s destiny with the fate of freedom in the world, he
eschewed any international crusades for America. Only by avoiding the enormous
economic and constitutional threats produced by entangling alliances and foreign wars,
regardless of how small, could America fulﬁll its mission as an example to oppressed
peoples everywhere. Professing what political scientist Robert Tucker has called “an
exemplar role” for the United States in the world,76 Wilson believed that America was
destined to set an example to the world both in the principles of society it entertained at
home and in the policies it pursued abroad. Although this myth in the American
diplomatic tradition, originating in the ﬁrst decades of the American republic in order to
strengthen the perception of separateness between the Old and New Worlds, was clearly
being challenged in the late nineteenth century by those who emphasized the importance
of expanding America’s foreign markets and acquiring new sources of cultivable land,

Wilson strictly adhered to it in the years before the Spanish-American War.77

 

75 Ibid.; Wilson, “Govemment Under the Constitution,” ca. June 26, 1893, ibid., VIII, 254-270;
and Untitled Memorandum for an Interview, ca. December 18, 1895, ibid, IX, 365-366.

76 Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas
Jeﬂerson (New York, 1990), 11.

77 . . . . . .
For Wilson as “the great exemplar” of the natlonal convretlon that Amerlca stood for somethlng

51

Wilson often held up the Cleveland administration as a model of caution and self-
restraint in the conduct of foreign affairs in the 18908. Cleveland, in opposing Republican
plans to create a protectorate over Nicaragua, announced that such a policy contradicted
“the tenets of a line of precedents from Washington’s day, which proscribe entangling
alliances with foreign states.”78 Such statements drew praise from Wilson. He especially
lauded Cleveland’s determination to resolve through international arbitration Canadian-
American disagreements regarding the fur seals dispute in the Bering Sea, as well as the
president's refusal to annex Hawaii after the American-engineered “Honolulu revolution”
in January 1893.79 Following the resumption of the Cuban revolution in February 1895
after Spain suspended the island’s constitutional guarantees of 1878, Wilson lauded
Cleveland’s wisdom of avoiding hostilities with Madrid and its European allies while still
making the Spanish insular authorities “feel the pressure of our own opinion.”80
Ironically, when approached by Henry M. Alden, editor of Harper 's Magazine, to write a
feature article on “Spain vs. America,” Wilson declined. He wrote Alden that the
Cleveland administration's diplomatic skill and tact in handling the “Cuban problem”

would preclude any “lingering interest” in Spanish-American relations."

Wilson, however, found himself out of sorts with the Cleveland administration's

 

Order (Princeton, 1992), 1- 14.

78 George Roscoe Dulebohn, Principles of Foreign Policy under the Cleveland Administration
(Philadelphia, 1941), 91.

7’ Wilson, “Mr. Clevelands Cabinet,” ca. March 17, 1893, PWW, VIII, 160-178.
8° Wilson, “Mr. Cleveland as President,” The Atlantic Monthly LXXIX (March 1897), 289-300.

8’ Letters, Henry M. Alden to Wilson, May 14, 1896, and Wilson to Alden, May 15, 1896, PII'W,
IX, 502 and 503-504, respectively.

52

response to the Anglo-Venezuelan imbroglio in 1895. In a memorandum for an interview
with a New York Times correspondent, he criticized Cleveland for being “too blunt” in his
demand for immediate arbitration of the boundary dispute. Wilson viewed the
administration's efforts to force the issue by broadening the scope of the Monroe Doctrine
during the crisis as perilous to long-standing American interests and objectives in the
Western Hemisphere.82

He contended that precluding a European presence in the region would ultimately require
that the United States either establish “a protectorate or dictatorship over South America .
. . [or] let the internal rivalries and disorders of that Continent run what course they will,
provided no European Power have any interest in them.” Such a course of action seemed
to Wilson not only impractical in light of America’s own domestic problems but
dangerous as well. On one hand, direct intervention into the internal affairs of Latin
America would constitute not only a contravention of international law, but also would
entangle the United States in a politico-military quagmire of immense proportions for an
indeﬁnite period of time. On the other hand, interference in European interests in the
region not only threatened hemispheric stability, but almost certainly would precipitate a
serious international crisis, perhaps even a general war, in America's backyard. Wilson
questioned whether a boundary dispute in tropical America warranted bringing about “a
deadly war between the two branches of the English race, in whose hands lie, if they be
united, the future destinies of the world.” Such a conﬂict, he portended, would have dire

consequences for civilization itself: “The disaster of it, . . no man can adequately imagine;

 

82 Wilson’s concern about the distortion of the “original meaning” of the Monroe Doctrine can be
traced to the early 18808. See, Wilson, Notes for 8 Debate, “Was the Monroe Doctrine Founded upon 8
Wise Policy?” ca. May 4, 1880, ibid., I, 652-653.

53

the disgrace of it, if provoked on a slight cause, no man could speak.”83

Notwithstanding Wilson's repeated caveats about the adoption of an assertive
foreign policy, events moved quickly towards war between the United States and Spain
following the destruction of the armored cruiser Maine in early 1898. At 9:40 on the
evening of February ﬁfteenth Maine exploded in Havana harbor, killing 260 Americans.
Soon afterward, the jingo press in the United States screamed for vengeance. Most
newspapers carried the couplet of the hour: “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!”84
Not everyone became caught up in the emotion of the moment, however. In
correspondence with his spouse, Ellen Axson Wilson, Wilson proclaimed the explosion
in the warship's interior in Havana harbor “a most inoportune [sic] accident,” an
extraordinary coincidence likely caused by “an unknown chemical reaction.” Although
the exact cause of this naval disaster remained unknown, he feared that “some Senators
and their friends” would endeavor to use the incident “to cause a still worse explosion in
Cuba!” Accordingly, Wilson correctly predicted that “a disastrous war” between the
United States and Spain would erupt within the year.85

As it turned out, the outbreak of war between the United States and Spain in 1898
caused an even greater furor than Wilson could have imagined. The conﬂict not only
transformed America into a world power but also compelled Wilson to reconceptualize

the relationship between overseas expansion and national development. In this respect,

 

83 Wilson, Untitled Memorandum for Interview, ca. December 18, 1895, ibid., 365-366.
8" David Traxel, I898: The Birth ofthe American Century (New York, 1998), 100-1 13.

85 Letters, Wilson to Ellen Axson Wilson, February 16, 1898, and Ellen Axson Wilson to Wilson,
February 17, 1898, ibid, X, 397 and 400-401, respectively.

54

the events of 1898 proved to be a "deﬁning moment" in the evolution of Wilson's
political thought. In the months and years following the Battle of Manila Bay, Wilson
oﬁ’ered extensive commentary on the signiﬁcance of the Spanish-American War for
American national development, extolled the creation of an extracontinental frontier in
the Philippines, and articulated America's new role in world affairs. Shifting America's
mission in the world ﬁom one of “exemplar” to “crusader,” Wilson consistently
maintained after 1898 that Americans, having mastered the art of self-govemment more
extensively and effectively than any other people in the history of the world, were duty-
bound to proliferate the doctrine and practice of self-govemment throughout the globe.

Doing so, he believed, would strengthen democracy at home.

55

Chapter Two
War, Empire, and Regeneration

After completing Problems of the Far East shortly before the outbreak of the Sino-
Japanese War in 1894, George Nathaniel Curzon, the future Viceroy of India, inscribed
the book “to those who believe that the British Empire is, under Providence, the greatest
instrument for good that the world has seen.” Hoping that war in Northeast Asia could be
averted, he avowed that the best hope of salvation for the “old and moribund institutions
of Asia” was to be derived from the ascendancy of British character in that part of the
world.”1

Curzon readily acknowledged that empire had a “reﬂex inﬂuence upon England”
as well. The ponderous responsibilities of empire affirmed British character by cultivating
qualities such as loyalty, duty, and superiority among young Englishmen entrusted with
overseeing British interests in distant lands. Curzon noted that the Englishman he met on
his “investigative missions” to East Asia was “the ﬁnest of his type;” the imperial
experience had “ﬁred a ﬁne glaze on manly characters originally molded at home.” The
larger atmosphere of life and sense of responsibility engendered by overseas expansion
inculcated in him “broader views of men and things,” and freed him from the pettiness of
a home existence that was apt to be consumed in party conﬂict and class strife. It was
expected, Curzon wrote, that when these colonial elites returned to England after serving
the empire they would bring with them their administrative experience and their polished

character, both requisites for the moral regeneration of Victorian society.2

 

’ George Curzon, Problems of the F or East: Japan-Korea-China (London, 1894), xiv.

2 Ibid., 414-122. Quotation on 417.

56

Curzon’s analysis of empire as an instrument of regeneration abroad and at home
offers insight into why Wilson embraced the imperial idea after 1898. To a degree
incomprehensible at the beginning of the twenty-first century, empire at the end of the
nineteenth century formed an indispensable part of a people’s conﬁdence in their nation
and in themselves. Possession of overseas colonies seemed to demonstrate almost any
desirable characteristic anyone cared to name — commercial enterprise, disinterested
leadership, good government, individual self-sacriﬁce, etc. Experiencing the throes of
industrialization at home and great-power competition abroad in the late nineteenth
century, Wilson placed a premium on such empire-engendered attributes. He viewed the
rekindling of patriotism, that part of the moral code that bound a people together socially
and nationally, as essential to national survival. For Wilson, empire seemed but a “larger
patriotism,” an instrument of regeneration that provided a constructive and systematic
critique of the status quo.

After 1898, Wilson embraced what British imperial historian Bernard Porter has
called “constructive imperialism,” or the idea that empire beneﬁted the colonizer, the
colonized, and the world in general.3 He assumed that empire could regenerate not only a
“backward world” but also American society. Overseas expansion held out the promise of
realigning human social character with the changing conditions of material life at home
following the “loss” of the frontier. Thus, for Wilson, the Spanish-American War and
subsequent acquisition of an overseas empire not only compelled him to rethink his

position on the ﬁrture of the United States as a colonial power, but also called into

 

3 Bernard Porter, The Lion ’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, [850-1983 2"d edition
(New York and London, 1984), 188-195.

57

question the proper relationship between domestic and foreign affairs. He wrestled not
only with the problems directly raised by the conﬂict but inquired into how empire might
ameliorate the increasing fragmentation of society, ensure the durability of American
democratic institutions in a rapidly changing world, and redeﬁne the nation’s role in

world affairs.

War with Spain

 

Historians often describe the war with Spain as America’s shortest, most popular, and
least painful war.4 At its outset, Americans ﬂocked to recruiting stations and enlisted in
what they heralded as a glorious expedition to demonstrate American right and might.
According to one observer, the Spanish-American War “was as hard to get into as later
world wars were hard to keep out of.”5 Although the regular army rejected seventy-ﬁve
percent of all applicants, some 77,000 out of 102,000 men, and the volunteer units
refused twenty-ﬁve percent in pre-muster physicals and an equal proportion after

induction, the commanding general still complained that the Army had admitted 100,000

 

4 The Spanish-American War and the events surrounding it have been the subject of scores of
books. H. Wayne Morgan’s America ’s Road to Empire: The War with Spain and Overseas Expansion
(New York, 1965) remains the most succinct and balanced study; David F. Trask’s The War with Spain in
1898 (New York, 1981) is the most comprehensive single-volume work; and John L. Offner’s An Unwanted
War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain Over Cuba, [895-1898 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1992) is the
best international history of the war. Other useﬁrl volumes include Louis A. Perez, J r., Cuba Between
Empires, 1878-1902 (Pittsburgh, PA, 1983); David Traxel, 1898: The Birth of the American Century (New
York, 1998); Ivan Musicant, Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the
American Century (New York, 1998); and Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-Ameriean War and the
Birth of American Imperialism, [895-1902 2 volumes (New York and London, 1972).

5 Edward Thornton Heald, Typescript of Radio Broadcast, “‘McKinley’s Own’ and the Spanish-
American War,” February 12, 1950, in Gerald F. Linderman, The Mirror of War: American Society and the
Spanish-American War (Ann Arbor, MI, 1974), 63.

58

more men than were needed or could be equipped.6

War almost seemed healthy and many treated the conﬂict as if it were a necessary
commodity in very short supply.7 American elites from all political persuasions were not
immune to such lofty assumptions. John Hay, the American ambassador to Britain, later
recalled to his friend Theodore Roosevelt that the conﬂict with Spain had been “a
splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with great spirit, favored
by that fortune which loves the brave.”8 In Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, the “Great
Commoner” who had spearheaded the Populist crusade, was no less swept away by the
call to arms. He offered his services to President William McKinley and soon thereafter
assumed command of the Third Nebraska Regiment.9 Roosevelt, who resigned as
assistant secretary of the navy to command a contingent of the colorful Rough Riders in
Cuba, declared: “This is going to be a short war. I am going to get into it and get all there
is out of it.”lo And that he did. In the words of historian John Milton Cooper, Jr., “except

for the acquisition of the Philippines, the political making of Theodore Roosevelt looms

 

6 “Report of the Adjutant General, US Army, 1899,” 11, as quoted in Army War College Study
No. 20, Resources of the United States - Men (Washington, DC, 1900), 40, and Nelson A. Miles, Serving
the Republic (New York and London, 1911), 270.

7 On the immense popularity of the Spanish-American War, see Margaret Leech, 1n the Days of
McKinley (New York, 1959), 151-193; Marcus M. Wilkerson, Public Opinion and the Spanish-American
War: A Study in War Propaganda (Baton Rouge, LA, 1931, reprint edition, 1967); Joseph E. Wisan, The
Cuban Crisis as Reflected in the New York Press, 1895-1898 (New York, 1934); and George W. Auxier,
“Middle Western Newspapers and the Spanish-American War, 1895-1898,” Mississippi Valley Historical
Review XXVI (March 1940), 523-534.

8 Letter, John Hay to Theodore Roosevelt, July 27, 1898, quoted in William R. Thayer, The Life
and Letters of John Hay 2 volumes (Boston, 1915), II, 337.

9 William J. Bryan and Mary Baird Bryan, The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (Philadelphia,
1925), 119.

'0 Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1979), 612-613.

59

as the most significant consequence of the Spanish-American War.”11

In reality, however, the “splendid little war” consisted of little more than two
overly glarnorized naval victories at Manila Bay in the Philippines in May 1898 and at
Santiago Bay in Cuba the following July. Spanish naval genius had all but vanished by
1898. Although the Spanish navy had appeared reasonably strong on paper, its ships were
antiquated and poorly maintained. Spain’s coastal defenses in Cuba were in even worse
shape. When Spanish forces at the climax of the war prepared to train their coastal
batteries on American warships lying off Santiago, they discovered that ﬁve cannon were
relics of the eighteenth century and a sixth bore the date 1668. The American navy, three
times as large as Spain’s, comprised newer, faster, and more powerful warships,
including four ﬁrst-class modern battleships, chieﬂy because of the inﬂuence of Captain
Alfred T. Mahan and his coterie of naval enthusiasts on congressional appropriations in
the 18908. Spain possessed nothing remotely comparable, nor could it even match the
lone American second-class battleship and the several armored cruisers. Consequently,
there was never any doubt about the outcome of the naval war. Commodore George
Dewey and the Asiatic squadron fell on Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo’s Philippine
squadron in the early hours of May 1 and destroyed all seven Spanish warships. Two
months later, Rear Admiral William T. Sampson’s naval force intercepted and destroyed
Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete’s squadron as it sortied out of Santiago. At a cost of
three American casualties, Spanish sea power in the western Paciﬁc and Caribbean had

been destroyed.12

 

H Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest, 38-3 9.

12 French Ensor Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain: The Spanish-American

60

On land, the Marines landed at the mouth of Guantanamo Bay and secured a
temporary harbor for coaling and replenishing Sampson’s blockading ﬂeet off Santiago.l3
The Army’s only signiﬁcant campaign, however, ended in near disaster that merely
demonstrated the ineptness of its commander, General William R. Shafter, and of the
War Department in procuring and transporting supplies to ﬁght a war outside the
continental United States. Supplies had been quickly dispatched to Florida, but since no
one knew anything about logistics a jam of nearly a thousand boxcars crammed every
siding from Tampa to Columbia, SC. More often than not, the equipment that seeped
through to the troops proved inadequate. Shoes fell apart on the ﬁrst march, ponchos
disintegrated in the tropical rain, and rations were spoiled. Not surprisingly, the supply
problems turned into a great scandal and several political and military careers were
ruined. Actually, the era itself was mostly to blame for the logistics nightmare. The
Spanish-American War occurred during the high noon of unbridled capitalism.
Unscrupulous contractors, trying to expand their proﬁt margins, produced inferior
military equipment, and an unregulated packing industry shipped spoiled rations to the
war front.”

In spite of these deﬁciencies, American forces, after landing successfully at

Siboney and Daiquiri, advanced toward Santiago. Uncoordinated attacks against ﬁerce

 

War 2 volumes (New York, 1911), I, 39; William R. Braisted, The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1897-
1909 (Austin, TX, 1958), 21-32; and Trask, The War with Spain in 1898, 95-107, 257-285.

13 Allan R. Millett, Semper F idelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York,
1980), 132-134, and Bernard C. Nalty, The United States Marines in the War with Spain revised edition,
Marine Corps Historical Reference Pamphlet (Washington, DC, 1967).

'4 Traxel, 1898, 154-170.

61

opposition left the Americans bloodied but in possession of San Juan Hill and El Caney
on the outskirts of the city. Shatter, shaken by a thousand casualties and a near-
debilitating attack of gout, decided to halt the advance and opened negotiations for the
city’s surrender. Day by day the Army extended its trenches until a horseshoe of works
invested Santiago. The Cuban adventure came to an abrupt end on July 17 when
McKinley, displaying some skill in diplomacy, promised a quick trip back to Spain for all
enemy troops who surrendered unconditionally. Spanish soldiers hauled down their
ensign over the Govemor’s Palace, ending four centuries of rule in Cuba.ls

The Spanish capitulation in Cuba occurred not a moment too soon. Disease had
begun to decimate Shafter’s command. Battle deaths in the Spanish-American War were
relatively light as wars go: less than four hundred Americans fell to enemy ﬁre. American
soldiers and sailors faced far greater danger ﬁ'om diseases contracted at staging areas in
the American South and on station in Cuba and the Philippines. More than ten times as
many, over ﬁve thousand Americans, succumbed to typhoid, malaria, yellow fever, and
dysentery as to Spanish bullets. So inadequate were the ﬁeld hospitals and sanitation
conditions in the camps that George Kennan, a writer and vice-president of the American
Red Cross, cried out in frustration: “If there was anything more terrible in our Civil War,
I am glad I was not there to see it!”16 Also, thousands of American troops fell victim to
the notion that there existed a link between moral force and physical vitality, causing

many to ignore basic sanitary precautions. As a result, widespread illness remained this

 

‘5 Ibid., 171-236.

16 George Kennan, Campaigning in Cuba (New York, 1899), I33.

62

- 17
war’s constant compamon.

Notwithstanding these stark military realities, American elites wasted little time in
locating reasons for self-congratulation. Prewar advocates of an American “large policy”
spoke of vindication as their long-time agitation for an expansionist foreign policy ﬁnally
paid off. For them, the war with Spain, in spite of the heavy casualties due to disease and
mismanagement, indicated that the United States had ascended to world power. Again, it
was Roosevelt who best expressed this essential paradox of the war. Roosevelt, in the
same week that he drafted his famous “round-robin” letter (signed by General Shatter and
the entire Fifth Corps staff) to the Associated Press complaining of the War Department’s
apparent unwillingness to evacuate the Army in the face of “absolute and objectless ruin”
due to the deteriorating health situation in Cuba, also wrote to Lodge with equal passion
that because American forces had not lost a battle on land or sea in the sixteen weeks of
war, the military prowess of the United States as a great power had been ﬁrmly and
irrevocably established.l8

Moreover, the war with Spain alleviated American elites’ anxieties over the future
development of the nation. A surprising number of them believed that the conﬂict had
occurred at a propitious moment in the course of American national development. For

them, the signiﬁcance of the Spanish-American War and the decision to acquire an

 

’7 “Annual Report of the Adjutant-General to the Secretary of War, 1 November 1898” in Annual
Report of the Secretary of War, 1898 (Washington, DC, 1899), 273. See also, Cosmas, An Army for
Empire, 245-294, and AB. Feuer, The Santiago Campaign of 1898: A Soldier’s View of the Spanish-
American War (Westport, CT, 1993), 111-120.

18 Letters, Roosevelt to Shatter, August 3, 1898, in Elting E. Morison and John Blum, eds., The
Letters of Theodore Roosevelt 8 volumes (Cambridge, MA, 1951-1954), 11, 865-866, and Roosevelt to
Lodge, July 31, 1898, ibid., 861-864.

63

overseas empire was that these events had led to the articulation of a set of values that
had little appeal in the normal course of liberal politics, with their emphasis on prudence,
instrumental action, and self-interest. The events of 1898 had engendered a higher plane
of thought and action in America, turning men’s minds from parochial, self-centered
interests to more national and international concerns.

For some Americans, therefore, the most signiﬁcant development arising from the
war was not successful military action abroad in the Caribbean and East Asia but the
unmistakable impulse toward selﬂess and disinterested behavior that was expressed as a
consequence of popular patriotism in the wake of the conﬂict. A8 a result, American
elites, including those responsible for policy in the McKinley administration, devoted
more attention and energy to reﬂecting upon the vitality of national emotions emanating
from the experience of waging a successﬁrl war against a European power than to
clarifying the ambiguities inherent in America’s war aims.19 The turn of international
events had stirred unselﬁsh patriotism among the American people, inculcating in them
the principles of duty, self-discipline, and disinterested service to the nation that, in turn,
evaporated the sectional animosities, class divisions, and the politics of drift and evasion

that had pervaded much of the decade before the war. According to one observer, the

 

’9 Much of the historiography concerning the Spanish-American War and subsequent acquisition
of an overseas empire continues to center on the formulation and evolution of American war aims,
especially the still sketchy facts surrounding the timing of McKinley’s decision to annex the entire
Philippine Archipelago. See, Paolo Coletta, “McKinley, the Peace Negotiations, and the Acquisition of the
Philippines,” Pacific Historical Review XXX, No. 4 ( I 961), 341-350; H. Wayne Morgan, William
McKinley and His America (Syracuse, NY, 1963), 374-423; Joseph A. Fry, “Essay Review: William
McKinley and the Coming of the Spanish-American War: A Study of the Besmirching and Redemption of
an Historical Image,” Diplomatic History 111, No. 1 (Winter 1979), 77-97; Lewis Gould, The Presidency of
William McKinley (Lawrence, KS, 1980), 123-152; Offner, An Unwanted War, 195-196; Ephraim K.
Smith, “William McKinley’s Enduring Legacy: The Historiographical Debate on the Taking of the
Philippine Islands” in James C. Bradford, ed., Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War and Its
Aftermath (Annapolis, MD, 1993), 205-250; and Louis A. Perez, Jr., The War of 1898: The United States

events of 1898 had engendered a “new civic spirit” among Americans which broadened
their understanding of “true statesmanship . . . [and] national duty.”20 In short, America’s
new “large policy” seemed to offer a way out of the morass and confusion that
characterized much of the last decade of the nineteenth century.21

Not just prewar advocates of a “large policy” thought along these lines in 1898.
Americans across the political spectrum, including those who had opposed American
adventurism in the world throughout the eighties and nineties, viewed the signiﬁcance of
the war in this same prism: the war with Spain, waged ostensibly to liberate other
peoples, had redeemed American society and institutions as well. Evidence of the
emergence of such a consensus among elites, albeit a brief one, abounds. At one end of
the political spectrum, many American Socialists and Fabians supported the war. They
rationalized that the conﬂict had not been unleashed upon the people by their government
but instead had been demanded by the people themselves. Although the Spanish-
American War was of such brief duration as to preclude any signiﬁcant outpouring of
socialist criticism with respect to its conduct, after the cessation of hostilities Marxist and
non-Marxist Socialists alike attempted to place the war and what they believed would be

its consequences in a “proper” historical perspective.22 While a few anti-war F abians

 

and Cuba in History and Historiography (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998).

2" L. s. Rowe, “Inﬂuence of the War on Public Life,” Forum xxv11 (March 1899), 52450.
Quotation on 53.

2’ Morgan, America ’s Road to Empire, 111-115; Lewis L. Gould, The Spanish-American War and
President McKinley (Lawrence, KA, 1982), 121-138; Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 107-
135; and Varg, America, From Client State to World Power, 128-166.

22 Howard H. Quint, “American Socialists and the Spanish-American War,” American Quarterly
X (1958), 131-141; David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America (New York, 1955), 81-98; and
Daniel Bell, “Marxian Socialism in the United States” in Donald Egbert and Stow Persons, eds., Socialism

65

resorted to Social Darwinian tenets to dwell on the physical and moral degeneration
accompanying armed conﬂict, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Gilman), the acknowledged
“poetess laureate of American Socialism,” elicited considerable poetic license to arrive at
a diametrically opposite conclusion: “Never was the force of natural selection used to
better advantage” than in war, she declared. War developed “physical strength, hardihood,
courage, and endurance” while leaving “the coward, the weakling, and the fool” on the
ﬁeld of battle. War brought out the “tenderest [sic] and noblest emotions . . . and the
highest virtues.” Mirroring the sentiments of Roosevelt who proclaimed that all the great
masterful races had been ﬁghting races, Stetson described war as the world’s greatest
“socializer.”23
At the other end of the political spectrum, Wilson, who had been active since the
Panic of 1893 in promoting a strict Burkean approach to national reform and
regeneration, painted a similar picture of the war’s signiﬁcance for American national
development. This nation, Wilson said, was forced “by history and the implications of
the census of 1890 onto the world scene.” The United States gained “new ﬁ'ontiers . . .
beyond the seas.” Commemorating the 125th anniversary of the battle of Trenton in the
American War for Independence, Wilson summed up a common sentiment about the war

with Spain, an opinion that has been generally shared by historians from his day to ours in

thinking about American foreign policy before the First World War: “No war ever

 

and American Life 2 volumes (Princeton, 1952), I, 313-316.

23 American Fabian IV (June 1898), 6. See also, Mary A. Hill, “Charlotte Perkins Gilrnan: A
Feminist’s Struggle with Womanhood,” Massachusetts Review XXI (Fall 1980), 503-526, and Gail
Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-
1917 (Chicago, 1995), 121-169.

66

transformed us quite as the war with Spain transformed us. We have witnessed a new
revolution. We have seen the transformation of America completed. The battle of Trenton
was not more signiﬁcant than the battle of Manila. The nation that was one hundred and
twenty-ﬁve years in the making has now stepped forth into the open arena of the
world.”24

Wilson thought deeply about the domestic implications and consequences of
America’s war with Spain. He participated actively in the heated arguments about
overseas expansion swirling throughout the country in the months and years following the
Battle of Manila Bay, and articulated what he considered to be a constructive imperialist
ideology for the United States. Wilson often invoked the saving grace of the imperial
commitment in his public essays and lectures, arguing that America’s one hope in an age
of increasing degeneration of character was the creation of an empire in order to continue
to draw upon the regenerating spirit of expansionism. His was a generalized vision of
overseas expansion, a worldview that rendered the principal elements of American
patriotism, or what he called “civic manhood,” distinctly imperial. For Wilson, the idea of
empire as an instrument for motivating people and activating the best traits of individual
character subsumed all other meanings of empire. Although he understood the burden that
acquiring and sustaining an empire imposed on the United States, he ﬁrmly believed the
beneﬁts worth that burden.

Wilson, in the months following the war, emerged as a champion of what he

considered to be the tangible merits of the newly-forged relationship between overseas

 

24 Wilson, Address, “The Ideals of America,” December 26, 1901, PW W, XII, 208-227. Quotation
on 215-216.

67

expansion and national development. Wilson believed he possessed a vital, if not an
entirely new, historical insight to reveal, whose purpose was to effect a positive change in
American attitudes about the relationship between empire abroad and reform at home.
Through his public lectures and essays on the nature and character of American history in
general and American expansion in particular, Wilson proffered his audiences a
constructive vision of empire after 1898: overseas expansion in the twentieth century, like
continental expansion during the nineteenth, would serve as an instrument for the

political regeneration of the United States.

“Whgt Ought We to Do?”

 

Despite his opposition to a “large policy” before 1898 and his initial reservations about
ﬁghting a war against a European power outside the continental United States, Wilson
claimed that “wartime revelations” about Cuban and Filipino suffering at the hands of the
Spanish ultimately convinced him that the Spanish-American War was both inevitable
and correct.25 In an unpublished personal memorandum entitled “What Ought We to
Do?,” written just before the cessation of hostilities, Wilson curtly dismissed allegations
that the war with Spain had been fought for territorial aggrandizement, economic
opportunity, or strategic advantage: “We did not enter upon a war of conquest. We had
neither dreamed of nor desired victories at the ends of the earth and the spoils of war had
not entered our calculations.” He rejected all arguments that viewed the war as the

beginning of American imperialism, at least what be perceived as “European chauvinistic

 

25 It is impossible to determine precisely what Wilson’s immediate response to the outbreak of war
had been. There exists an unusual gap in both the edited and unedited versions of his Papers from April 21
to May 28, 1898.

68

imperialism.”26
Instead, Wilson asserted that American action against Spain had been motivated
by “an impulse of human indignation and pity.” Americans witnessed at their doorsteps a
government unmindful of justice and mercy, contemptuous both in its observance of
individual liberty and in its practice of democratic principles. Americans took up arms
only when compelled to choose between a just war of liberation or acquiesce in cruelty
and barbarism. Clearly, Wilson argued, Spanish colonial authorities in Cuba and the
Philippines revealed themselves as oppressive and thus, not ﬁt to govern other peoples.
Widespread corruption, insensitive policies, and insatiable greed had cost Spain its
empire, not American dreams of glory. Wilson concluded his memorandum: “We have
not made ourselves a nation of j ingoes by undertaking this war.”27
Although such altruistic assertions were common enough in the United States in
the summer of 1898, this particular memorandum is signiﬁcant because it marked a
fundamental shift in Wilson’s conception of the relationship between American foreign
relations and national regeneration. The public display of nationalistic zeal before and
during the conﬂict, the celebration of a quick and relatively inexpensive victory against a
European power, and the general determination to retain the Philippines despite the
Tagalog uprising of Emilio Aguinaldo convinced Wilson that an imperial foreign policy
contained the key to a restoration of national unity. No longer did the relationship

between domestic and foreign affairs seem remote and antagonistic to him. The “brief

 

26 Wilson, Personal Memorandum, “What Ought We to Do?” ca. August 1, 1898, PWW, X, 574-
576.

27 Ibid. Quotation on 576.

69

season of war” demonstrated that the two spheres were interrelated and complementary,
parts of a comprehensive whole.28

The closed-frontier leitmotif formed an important part of Wilson’s conception of
American expansionism after 1898. For him, the nation had conquered its domestic
frontier and then had ventured outward to extend the boundaries of the republic to the
Philippines. In June 1899, Wilson, addressing the problem of what to do with the nation’s
new overseas colonies, emphasized the continuity of purpose between continental and
extracontinental expansion. America had for nearly three hundred years followed a single
law of development, he wrote, “the law of expansion into new territory.” Although the
acquisition of noncontiguous territory appeared to be a departure from traditional
American expansionism, Wilson was conﬁdent that the ideals and principles that had
been worked out in the course of the “old expansion” would ensure the satisfactory
resolution of any problems that might arise in the “new expansion.” In short, Wilson
expected that the Philippines would serve adequately as America’s newest safety valve.29

Later that year Wilson seemed even more assured that the nation’s imperialist

thrust was in keeping with its original democratic purpose. In an address entitled “The

 

28 For the evolution of Wilson’s drinking about the constructive relationship between overseas
empire and domestic reform after the Spanish-American War, see Wilson, Untitled Address, January 14,
1899, PWW, XI, 93-94; Address, “Our Obligations,” December 14, 1899, ibid., 297-300; Public Lecture,
“Americanism,” December 7, 1900, ibid., XII, 42-44; Essay, “Democracy and Efficiency,” ca. October 1,
1900, PWW, XII, 6-20 [published in The Atlantic Monthly LXXXVII (March 1901), 289-299]; Address,
“The Ideals of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid., 208-227; Edward G. Elliott [a PhD candidate at
Princeton], Memorandum, “Conversation with Woodrow Wilson,” January 5, 1903, ibid., XIV, 320-325;
and Wilson, Address, “The Expansion and Character of the United States,” April 29, 1903, ibid., 433-434.

29 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., XII, 11. Although this
important essay was not published until 1901, Wilson had set down his ﬁrst thoughts in shorthand in his
pocket notebook in June 1899. Wilson, Pocket Notebook, undated, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 12. See
also, Wilson, “Our Last Frontier,” Berea Quarterly IV (May 1899), 5-6.

70

Ideals of America,” Wilson remarked that the extension of America’s frontier across the
Paciﬁc to the Philippines was not an aberration for the nation. Overseas expansion could
be expected to yield the same beneﬁts for American national development as continental
expansion: “Inevitably, we made new frontiers for ourselves beyond the seas, accounting
for the seven thousand miles of ocean that lie between us and the Philippine Islands no
more than the three thousand which once lay between us and the coasts of the Paciﬁc.”
The great pressure of a people moving always to new frontiers, he argued, “ruled our
course and formed our policies like a Fate. It gave us, not Louisiana alone, but Florida
also. It forced war with Mexico upon us, and gave us the coasts of the Paciﬁc. It swept
Texas into the Union. It made for Alaska a territory of the United States. Who shall say
where it will end?”30 After reading the article version of this address that appeared in The
Atlantic Monthly in 1902, Roosevelt, now president following the assassination of
McKinley the year before, invited Wilson to meet with him at the White House to discuss
the merits of America’s new overseas empire.3 1
Although Wilson never ventured to Washington to become part of Roosevelt’s
inner circle, he participated actively in the “great debate” on American imperialism.
Wilson, however, did not believe he ﬁt easily into either of the two highly vocal general
positions that emerged on the Philippine question. He argued that while “the bombastic
[imperialist] majority” erred on the side of an uncritical embrace of all things imperial,

including becoming involved in the Old World’s rivalries and alignments, “the

 

30 Wilson, Address, “The Ideals of America,” December 26, 1901, PWW, XII, 208-227. Quotation
on 215.

31 Letter, Roosevelt to Wilson, December 6, 1902, ibid., XIV, 265. The article version of “The
Ideals of America” appeared in The Atlantic Monthly XC (December 1902), 721-734.

71

pessimistic [anti-irnperialist] minority” remained too narrow-minded in its reactionary
distaste of any overseas commitments. In his mind, neither end of the spectrum was
founded upon any serious consideration because neither correctly linked the ideology of
American expansionism to the preservation of American exceptionalism. In this respect,
Wilson worried that only a few seemed to understand that America’s victory over Spain
and subsequent imperial venture had reaffirmed the intrinsic relationship that had existed
between territorial expansion and national regeneration. Accordingly, although he
described the events of 1898 as a revolution, they were actually more a revelation, a
manifestation of the crystallizing and strengthening of the principles and traditions that
had gone before. Wilson argued that those who grasped the crucial theme of expansion in
American national development would ﬁnd within themselves a heightened and practical
historical consciousness, binding together the past of America and her future.32

Not everyone was in agreement, however. Americans who feared the implications
and consequences of an overseas empire —- who believed that colonial expansion would
propel the United States into the vortex of international power politics, contradict its
democratic principles, and reverse the entire course of its national development —
launched an anti-imperialist movement, a campaign of opposition that ﬂourished for two
years before losing momentum after the election of 1900. Hundreds of politicians,
academics, labor leaders, and private citizens denounced American overseas expansion in
newspapers and magazines, made countless speeches on the perils of colonial expansion,

opposed the acquisition of Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in congressional

 

32 Wilson, Untitled Address, January 14, 1899, PWW, XI, 93-94; Essay, “The Signiﬁcance of
American History,” September 9, 1901, ibid., XII, 179-184; and Public Lecture, “Americanism,” November
20, 1904, ibid., XV, 536-539.

72

debates, and organized anti-imperialist leagues and associations at the municipal, state,
regional and national levels. Organized in June 1898, the Anti-Imperialist League
(reconstituted as the American Anti-Imperialist League in 1899) became the most potent
force opposing overseas empire in the aftermath of the war with Spain. Fear provided the
undercurrent of the anti-imperialists’ opposition to overseas expansion, and the variety of
their apprehensions mirrored the diversity and heterogeneity of the movement’s
membership. If some feared for the “timeless principles” of the Declaration of
Independence, others feared for the national debt with the existence of a large peacetime
army and navy, the integrity of the Monroe Doctrine, the tradition of civilian rule in the
United States, the international reputation of the nation as a beacon of anti-colonialism,
the political prospects of the Democratic party, the incorporation of inferior “tropical
races” into the American polity, and the distraction of resources and leadership away
from domestic reform.33

Although a myriad of concerns shaped the American anti-imperialist mind,
Wilson took particular exception to the idea that a republic and an empire were
antithetical entities and that the United States could not be both at the same time. Wilson
countered that America’s expansionist policy had evolved quite naturally out of the
nation’s past. Wherever he spoke in the early years of the century, Wilson reminded his

audiences that the idea of expansion had been the only appropriate instrument available

 

33 Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The A nti-lmperialists, 1898-1900 (New York,
1968); E. Berkeley Tompkins, Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890-1920
(Philadelphia, 1970), 95-235; Richard E. Welch, Jr., Imperialists vs Anti-Imperialists: The Debate Over
Expansionism in the 1890s (Itasca, IL, 1972); Roger Bresnahan, ed., In Time of Hesitation: American
Imperialists and the Philippine-American War (Quezon City, 1981); Lewis Feuer, Imperialism and the
Anti-Imperialist Mind (Buffalo, NY, 1986); and Jim Zwick, “Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and the
Anti-Imperialist League, 1899-1920,” Proceedings of the 1994 Maxwell Colloquium (Syracuse, NY, 1995),
105-1 10.

73

for the task of regeneration throughout the course of American development. He
maintained that little difference existed in the nature and purpose of overseas expansion
ﬁ'om that of continental expansion. The same adventurous impulse that created English
America in the seventeenth century had propelled the United States into Latin America
and East Asia over two centuries later. Wilson claimed that the year 1898 constituted a
benchmark in American development not because it signaled the beginning of the end of
the republic as propounded by some anti-imperialists, but because 1898 marked the
beginning of the next stage of national growth. He indicated that the country had
experienced three major “processes of development” divided by centuries up to the
moment when Dewey’s naval squadron entered Manila Bay: the seventeenth century had
been devoted to “getting a foothold on the continent;” the eighteenth century to “getting
rid of the F rench;” and the nineteenth to “the making of the Nation.” The acquisition of
the Philippines marked the beginning of the next stage of national development,
America’s rise to world power.34 Thus, whereas Mark Twain, William Dean Howells,
Henry B. Fuller and other critics of empire feared the implications and consequences of
extracontinental expansion, contending that the annexation of the Philippines reversed the

whole progression of American democratic growth up to that time,35 Wilson asserted the

 

34 Wilson, Public Lecture, “Americanism,” November 20, 1904, PW W, XV, 536-539. Quotation
on 537. See also, Wilson, Address, “Democracy,” June 15, 1898, ibid., X, 556; Address, “What It Means to
be an American,” January 17, 1902, ibid., XII, 238-239; and Address, “The Expansion and Character of the
United States,” April 29, 1903, ibid., XIV, 433-434.

35 Jim Zwick, “An Empire is not a Frontier: Mark Twain’s Opposition to United States
Imperialism,” Over Here: Reviews in American Studies XV (Summer-Winter 1995), 58-70; Philip S. F oner,
Mark Twain: Social Critic (New York, 1958), 239-307; William M. Gibson, “Mark Twain and Howells:
Anti-Imperialists,” New England Quarterly XX (December 1947), 435-470; Henry B. Fuller, The New F lag
(Chicago, 1899); and Robert Johnson, The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations
(Cambridge, MA, 1995), 26-33.

74

 

opposite. He denied that there had been any meaningful departure from traditional values
and principles in 1898 when Dewey steamed into Manila Bay. Rather, Wilson viewed
empire and democracy as complementary: “There has been a singular unity in our
national task, . . and these new duties thrust upon us will not break that unity. They will

instead perpetuate it, . . [and] make it complete, if we keep but our integrity and our old-

time purpose.”36

Wilson also challenged the anti-imperialist contention that acquisition of an
overseas empire meant the denigration of America’s ﬁnest documents — the Declaration
of Independence which spoke against the holding and governing of alien peoples without
their consent; Washington’s Farewell Address which warned against entangling alliances
with European powers or active intervention in European affairs; the Monroe Doctrine
which cautioned against an active foreign policy outside the Western Hemisphere. Most
galling to Wilson were the arguments of Moorﬁeld Storey (president of the Anti-
Imperialist League), Senator George F. Hoar (Republican-MA), and other anti-
imperialists that the acquisition of the Philippines marked a violent break with
constitutional precedent.37 Promoting a broad constructionist perspective, Wilson claimed
“the Constitution was not made to ﬁt us like a strait-j acket.” The founding fathers had
intended for the Constitution to be an organic entity, capable of responding constructively
to the constantly changing Meﬁcan political economic landscape. In this way, Wilson

argued, the Constitution was designed to facilitate national development, not conﬁne it.

 

36 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, PW W, X11, 1 1.

37 See, for example, “Prospectus,” Springﬁeld Daily Republican, January 6, 1900. For “the ﬁght
over the fathers,” see Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics
Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT, 2000), 156-179.

75

 

Republican institutions, analogous to living tissue, needed to experience “normal growth
and healthful expansion” to survive. The powers of democratic government must
therefore “make shift to live” and adapt themselves to the new circumstances of
development: “It would be the very negation of wise conservatism to throttle them with
deﬁnitions too precise and rigid.” Thus, Wilson concluded that it was the elasticity of the
Constitution and the principles upon which it was based that served as the key to
America’s ability to overcome all obstacles to national development, including the
challenges posed by overseas expansion. “If it were not so,” he argued, ‘Vve would long
ago have snapped the chords.”38
Wilson promoted the imperial idea after the war, lending his active support to
“constructive imperialism.” Indeed, it was Wilson’s belief that the new “large policy”
gratiﬁed national self-esteem and possessed certain speciﬁc regenerative qualities that
constituted the most important part of his emerging perspective on overseas empire. The
Philippines, he argued, provided “a new frontage for the nation, -- the frontage toward the
Orient.” And this “new frontage,” Wilson declared without reference to the nearly eight
million Filipinos who lived in the Islands, would serve as America’s “new region beyond,

unoccupied, unappropriated [sic] — an outlet for its energy, a new place of settlement and

of achievement for its people.” Empire in Asia, like the continental frontier before 1890,

 

38 Wilson, Notes for Lectures, “Constitutional Government,” September [9, 1898-November 20,
1900, PWW, X], 4-30; Public Lecture, “Constitutional Government,” October 28, I898, ibid., 44-47, 49-52,
57-62; Address, “The Expansion and Character of the United States,” April 29, 1903, ibid., XIV, 433-434;
and Address, “Our Elastic Constitution,” January 28, 1904, ibid., XV, 142-143. For a scholarly assessment
of Wilson’s interpretation of the Constitution, see Christopher Wolfe, “Woodrow Wilson: Interpreting the
Constitution,” Review of Politics XLI (January 1979), 121-142; John A. Rohr, “The Constitutional World
of Woodrow Wilson” in Jack Rabin and James S. Bowman, eds., Politics and Administration: Woodrow
Wilson and American Public Administration (New York, 1984), 31-49; and Daniel D. Stid, The President
as Statesman: Woodrow Wilson and the Constitution (Lawrence, KS, 1998), 6—65.

76

would provide a ﬁeld of political action for the United States where the political
character, capacity, principles, and organizations of the nation could be tested and
strengthened. Just as the British had sought colonies at the ends of the earth to unleash
their energy and give vent to their enterprise, Americans, “a like people in every impulse
of mastery and achievement,” also needed to expand into new territories “to keep the
wholesome blood of sober and strenuous systematic work warm within us.” Wilson
contended that an empire in the Caribbean and the western Paciﬁc would “perpetuate
within us the spirit of initiative and energy” that, in turn, would make American
democracy more efﬁcient, and hence, more durable.39

Although Wilson did not view himself as part of a dialogue on gender politics, he
employed the language of gender to discuss the regeneration of American statesmen at
home and abroad. He demonstrated a concern about American masculinity, his own, and
the nation’s. He called for American renewal in terms of “civic manhood” and deprecated
American mediocrity by describing it as unmanly. For Wilson, strengthening the United
States into a recognized power meant inculcating the character of men and meant
reinvigorating the masculine character of the country, in contrast to what be perceived as

“feminization” in other parts of the world.40

 

3’ Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, PWW, xu, 12.

40 For the scholarly discussion of the place of gender in the age of American imperialism, see
Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 107-155; Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, l-44; Amy
Kaplan, “Romancing the Empire: The Embodiment of American Masculinity in the Popular Historical
Novel of the 18905,” American Literary History Ill (December 1990), 659—690; Laura Wexler, Tender
Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of US. Imperialism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000), 266-268; and Amy
Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham, NC, 1993).

77

“Civic Manhood” and Reunion

 

Wilson noted in his essays and addresses as well as in his private correspondence that
evidence of America’s national transformation in 1898 seemed to abound. In an address
called “Our Obligations,” Wilson declared that the patriotic fervor of the Spanish-
American War had transformed “civic manhood” in the United States, giving a much-
needed boost to the nation’s virility. When the nation faced a foreign challenge,
Americans from all walks of life and every region of the country, impelled by the pull of
God, glory, and love of country, stepped to the front to offer their services to their nation
for the ﬁrst time since the Civil War. Wilson explained that the war with Spain offered
American men an opportunity to celebrate their manhood, to take a stand and uphold the
honor and dignity of the nation. Without hesitation, without stopping to negotiate or
arbitrate, Americans responded to the call of arms to defend the nation’s honor and
reputation. And this “splendid outburst of Americanism,” he explained, provided the
catalyst for ending the general malaise that had pervaded much of public life in the
nineties. Wilson asked: “What does the conquest of the Philippines mean?” Answering
his own rhetorical question, he declared that it meant this country has young men who
prefer dying in the ditches of the Philippines to spending their lives in idleness behind the
counters of a dry goods store in our eastern cities. I think I should prefer that myself?“ In
his comparative biography of Wilson and Roosevelt, Cooper contends that Wilson, like
Roosevelt, wanted to ﬁght in the war against Spain. He had apparently conﬁded in his

brother-in-law Stockton Axson that “he regretted he was not free to enlist in the Armed

 

41 Wilson, Address, “Our Obligations,” December 14, 1899, PW W, XI, 297-300. Quotation on
299.

78

Forces and ﬁght.”42 Later, as president-elect, Wilson conveyed a somewhat romantic
view of death in combat to his closest political adviser, Colonel Edward M. House. While
Wilson denounced the “economic proposition of war” as ruinous, he surprised House
with his admission that “there was no more glorious way to die than in battle.”43

Yet, for Wilson, “civic manhood” involved much more than the then-current idea
of patriotism as a chauvinistic sentiment of military glory and conquest. He described
“civic manhood” as an important political principle marked by the core values of balance,
order, restraint, and disinterested opinion and action. Constant and vigilant patriotic
thought and action cultivated individual character within the patriot himself, transforming
him into a mature public-minded citizen who could then contribute to the regeneration of
American national character by serving his nation. Although this particular conception of
patriotism brought Wilson to high levels of abstraction, he described “civic manhood” as
the cornerstone of future progress at home and abroad.44

Foremost, the impulse toward patriotism produced by the war seemed to have

dispelled the sectional illusions of self-conﬁdence and self-sufﬁciency that had worried

 

42 Ray S. Baker biography, September 1931, Papers of Ray Stannard Baker, Box 100, as quoted
in Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest, 57-58, 374n.

‘3 Edward M. House, Diary Entry, February 14, 1913, PWW, xxvrr, 1 12-116. Quotation on I 13.

44 “Civic manhood” constituted an important theme in Wilson’s public lectures throughout the
“great debate” on empire. See Wilson, Address, “What Patriotism Means,” December 11, 1897, PWW, X,
351; Notes for an Address on Patriotism, January 16, 1898, ibid., 365; Public Lecture, “Patriotism,”
November 19, 1898, ibid., XI, 86-87; Public Lecture, “Patriotism,” February 22, 1899, ibid., 107-108;
Address, “Spurious versus Real Patriotism,” October 13, 1899, ibid., 244; Newspaper Report, “Patriots and
Politics,” January 3, 1900, Philadelphia Public Ledger, January 3, 1900, in ibid., 356-357; Newspaper
Report, “Patriotism,” February 2, 1900, Richmond Dispatch, February 2, 1900, in ibid., 382-383;
Newspaper Report, “Patriotism,” November 30, 1901, Greenville News, November 30, 1901, in ibid., XII,
204; Newspaper Report, “Patriotism,” January 30, 1902, Worcester Daily Telegram, January 30, 1902, in
ibid., 258-264; and Newspaper Report, “Patriotism,” April 26, 1902, Indianapolis News, April 26, 1902, in
ibid., 350-351.

79

Wilson before the outbreak of the war. In an article entitled “The Reconstruction of the
Southern States,” Wilson joined President McKinley and others in declaring that the
Spanish-American War had signaled the triumph of a reconciled union nearly thirty-ﬁve
years after the Civil War. The conﬂict had rendered the vision of American nation-
building national in scope and purpose once again: “A government which had been in its
spirit federal became, almost of a sudden, national in temper and point of view.” Not
since the Jacksonian era, Wilson wrote, had the nation been so united; southemer and
northerner, conservative and liberal, all came together to support the conﬂict in genuine
patriotic fashion.45

Several historians have described the war with Spain as the culminating point for
much of the reunion-oriented ideology that had been building in the preceding decades.46
Politicians, journalists, and sectional apologists depicted soldiers in blue and gray
standing together for the cause of humanity, freedom, and civilization. In the weeks
following the destruction of the Maine and the publication of the condescending De Lorne
letter, the New York World emerged as an important outlet for southern writers who

elucidated Dixie’s dedication to upholding America’s honor in 1898.47 In an article

 

45 Wilson, “The Reconstruction of the Southern States,” The Atlantic Monthly LXXXVII (January
1901), 1-15. Quotation on 2-3. See also, Wilson, Historical Essay, “State Rights (1 850-1860),” ca.
December 20, 1899, PWW, XI, 303-348.

46 Ella Lonn, “Reconciliation Between the North and South,” Journal of Southern History XIII,
No. 1 (February 1947), 3-26; Paul H. Buck, The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 (Boston, 1937); Dewey A.
Grantham, Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation of Progress and Tradition (Knoxville, TN, 1983),
126-127; and Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, I 865-1 900 (Chapel Hill,
1993), 178-185.

47 Silber suggests that the letter authored by Spanish ambassador Enrique Dupuy de Lorne in
February 1898, describing McKinley as “a weak man, a bidden for the admiration of the crowd” and
denigrating the character of American womanhood, did more to galvanize southern support for war than the
sinking of the Maine. Silber, The Romance of Reunion, 182-185.

80

suggestively entitled “Against a Foreign Foe the Nation Is as One Man,” Varina Davis,
Jefferson Davis’ widow, explained that “Southern men can never cease to be Americans,
and are for Americans against the world in arms.”48 In another article, Leslie ’s Weekly
announced that the actions of Dewey, a northeastemer, at Manila and Fitzhugh Lee, a
southemer and relation of the Old Sou ’s “marbleman” Robert E. Lee, at Havana had
made the country “forget everything of the past, excepting our national glory, and are
proving that, after all, we are a nation and not a mere collection of states.” Veterans on
both sides, the article concluded, could now acknowledge that the Civil War belonged to
a bygone age and celebrate their reunions together.49

Though Wilson espoused the ideology of reunion, he criticized some of the more
colorful depictions of southemers at war in Cuba and the Philippines as jingoistic and
silly. Wilson declined to write articles on two “southern heroes” of the war, Naval
Constructor Richmond P. Hobson and Major General Joseph Wheeler, explaining to
Albert Shaw, editor of Review of Reviews, that he did not wish to contribute to such
hagiography. An article on “the hero of Santiago,” Wilson wrote, seemed a bit of an
exaggeration since Hobson (of Alabama) failed in his mission to lock Cervera’s squadron
in Santiago harbor by sinking a collier in the narrow part of the harbor entrance. The fact

that the failed exploit by Hobson had captured the hearts and minds of the southern press

 

48 Varina Davis, “Against a Foreign Foe the Nation Is as One Man,” New York World, April 3,
1898.

49 Even McKinley noted the war’s healing effect on the nation’s sectional divisions. See Letter,
William McKinley to John B. Gordon [commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans], July 23,
1898, Papers of William McKinley [hereafter cited as McKinley Papers], series 2, reel 18, and Letter, H. C.
Burleigh [Union veteran] to McKinley, August 22, 1898, ibid., reel 4.

81

hardly constituted a reason to lionize the “splendid fellow” of Alabama50 Commenting
on the “true blue Unionism of General Wheeler at San Juan,” he reminded Shaw that in
the excitement of the charge up the hill, Wheeler yelled, “Give it to the damn Yankees,
boys; give it to them!”5 I A couple of years later, Wilson shared the stage with Hugh
Gordon Miller, a fellow alumnus of the University of Virginia, in extolling the many
masculine virtues of Abraham Lincoln and his statesmanship. He took exception,
however, to his colleague’s claim for Virginia “all the credit for what was good and noble
and patriotic in Lincoln.” Wilson claimed much less for Virginia, arguing that it had been
the western frontier and all of its challenges that made Lincoln the man he was — “a
typical American.” Describing Miller’s speech as nothing more than “a plea for the New
South,” Wilson told the audience that Miller’s analysis must have received its inspiration
from “Aesop’s Fables, the Bible, and Pilgrim’s Progress.”52
Wilson embraced more freely the implications of race within the new patriotic
consensus.53 He viewed the patriotic reconciliation of northemers and southemers during
the war as the reunion of the Anglo-Saxon race in America, a conﬁrmation of the natural
racial unity of northemers and southemers. In an after-dinner speech before the New

England Society of New York City, Wilson contrasted the Puritan contribution to

American character, “the single principle of discipline, of order, of polity,” with the sense

 

50 Letters, Albert Shaw to Wilson, June 13, 1898, PWW, X, 560-562; Wilson to Shaw, June 20,
1898, ibid., 566.

5‘ Letter, Wilson to Shaw, October 14, 1898, ibid., x1, 32-33.
52 Fragrnentary Report of a Lincoln Birthday Dinner, February 13, 1902, ibid., XII, 267-271.

53 For the debate on race within the context of the “gospel of reunion” in 1898, see David W.
Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA, 2001).

82

of adventure and “the spirit of restless seeking” of the Scotch-Irish of his own southern
ancestry. His forebears, he claimed, provided the aspiration, the daring, and the
restlessness that pushed the United States across the continent. Placing himself squarely
in the tradition of American expansionism, Wilson said he prayed that the time might
never come “when we are not ready to do new things, when we are not ready to
acknowledge that the age has changed.” He concluded: “Now gentlemen, will you follow
the Scotch-Irish across the continent and into the farther seas of the Paciﬁc? Will you
follow the Star of Empire with these men who will follow anything which they think will
drop proﬁt or amusement?”4

In his call for the nation to follow the Scotch-Irish “to the ends of the earth,”
Wilson emphasized southern racial purity and homogeneity, a point that became
increasingly signiﬁcant in the nation’s emerging racial discourse. Southern whites,
Wilson pointed out, stood in sharp contrast to the North’s own motley mixture of
immigrant groups that was then diminishing the old Puritan stock in New England. The
South had always been more homogeneous than the North, Wilson argued, and perhaps
more distinctly American in its characteristics, because Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the
South had never been challenged and overcome by the hordes of new immigrants arriving
in the United States. In Wilson’s estimation, the war had demonstrated that the nation
could no longer ignore or reject the South, steeped in its proud Anglo-Saxon heritage,
especially in light of the continuing inﬂux of foreign immigrants into northern cities and

the acquisition of an overseas empire inhabited by millions of nonwhites. In his article

 

’4 Wilson, After-Dinner Speech, December 22, 1900, PWW, x11, 52-53.

83

“The Reconstruction of the Southern States,” he argued that it would be difﬁcult to find a
population more American, that is, Anglo-Saxon, than in the South. Because of their
racial heritage, southern whites could better protect and teach the principles of freedom
and democracy at home and abroad, certainly better than those who descended from alien
cultures. None of the immigrant communities in America, Wilson wrote, possessed “the
same love for the United States, the same love of liberty,” as Anglo-Saxon southemers,
whose fathers had always been free.55

Wilson celebrated the fact that the war-engendered “gospel of reunion” had
encouraged Americans throughout the nation to re-evaluate southern white civilization in
a more approving light. This fresh perspective was especially evident in the area of race
relations. He wrote to a former student in September 1900 that the men who favored
acquiring the Philippines on the grounds that Filipinos were unﬁt for self-govemment
could hardly have afforded to apply another logic to the “Negro Question” in the South.
The new manifest destiny seemed to conﬁrm Wilson in his view, held since his twenties,
that because southemers possessed an innately better understanding of the “Negro
Question,” the nation should acquiesce in the South’s judgment on what form race
relations in the United States should take. He wrote with a hint of smugness that the
acquisition of an overseas empire compelled Lodge and other Republicans to look upon

”56

the so-called “force bill psychology that had lingered in Congress for most of the

 

55 Wilson, “The Reconstruction of the Southern States,” The Atlantic Monthly LXXXVII (January
1901), 1-15, and Historical Essay, “State Rights (1850-1 860),” ca. December 20, 1899, PWW, XI, 303-348.

56 In 1888, President Benjamin Harrison recommended that Congress pass a federal elections bill
to restore the integrity of the Fifteenth Amendment by supervising congressional elections in the South. In
1890 Lodge, then chair of a special committee in the House, introduced such a bill, precipitating some of
the ﬁercest sectional battles in Congress since Reconstruction. Southern Democrats quickly labeled the

84

nineties threatening to resurrect “Carpetbagger rule” in the South as “a youthful
indiscretion” which it was now prudent to forget. Like many southern middle-class
whites, Wilson interpreted the nation’s embrace of empire as signaling the transformation
of the “Mississippi Plan” of racial segregation, educational discrimination, and political

subordination into America’s approach to race relations.57

“Civic Manhood” and Regeneration
Wilson observed that the sudden transformation of the United States into a world power
had registered an immediate impact on the nation’s federal system of government. The
issues of war and foreign affairs reversed the traditional distrust of executive power. This
change was manifested in the shift in the location of authority within the national
government from congressional dominance to presidential leadership. Wilson noted that
once the nation became embroiled in war, McKinley was propelled into a position of
genuine leadership to steer the United States through the stormy seas of international

relations. Assessing the impact of the events of 1898 on American political institutions in

 

proposed legislation as a “Force Bill” aimed at eroding their hold over the South’s electorate, and some
even propagated the rumor that, if passed, the US Army would reoccupy the South to enforce the law. The
bill’s defeat in 1891 meant that the last genuine effort by Congress to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment in
the South was abandoned until 1957. Congressional Record, 51"t Congress, 1" session, 6934; Henry Cabot
Lodge and Terrence V. Powderly, “The Federal Election Bill,” North American Review CLI, No. 406
(September 1890), 257-273; and Homer E. Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter, The Presidency of Benjamin
Harrison (Lawrence, KS, 1987), 62-65.

57 Letter, Wilson to Allen W. Corwin, September 10, 1900, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 12.
Historians generally identify “the nadir of the black experience in America” with America’s imperial
moment at the turn of the century. See John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to
Freedom: A History ofAfrican Americans 7'h edition (New York, 1994), 247-263; Willard B. Gatewood,
Jr., Black Americans and the White Man ’s Burden, 1898-I903 (Urbana, IL, 1975), l-40; Daniel Walden,
“Race and Imperialism: The Achilles Heel of the Progressives,” Science and Society XXXI, No. 2 (Spring
1967), 222-232; Rubin F. Weston, Racism in United States Imperialism: The Inﬂuence of Racial
Assumptions on American Foreign Policy, 1893-1946 (Columbia, SC, 1972), 4-36; and Michael Hunt,
Ideology and US Foreign Policy (New Haven, 1987), 46-91.

85

a new preface for the ﬁfteenth edition of Congressional Government, Wilson wrote:
“Much of the most important change to be noticed is . . . the greatly increased power and
opportunity for constructive statesmanship given the President by the plunge into
international politics and into the administration of distant dependencies, which has been
the war’s most striking and momentous consequence.”58
Wilson now viewed the adoption of an American “large policy” as a manifestation
of strong government, a condition emanating ﬁ'om a consciousness of matured strength
and resolve. He asserted, “As long as we have only domestic subjects we have no real
leaders, but we cannot have a foreign policy without the leadership of the executive.” In
this respect, Wilson argued that the translocation of authority should be interpreted as a
return to the political reality that had existed during the ﬁrst twenty-six years of the
republic. This period of American history had been marked by the nation’s struggle to
survive in an unsympathetic and hostile international environment, a time when foreign
affairs predominated over domestic issues. The necessity of an active foreign policy in
that era had elevated the president to a position of national prominence, providing him
with an “originative voice” in directing national affairs: “Once more it is our place among

the nations that we think of; once more our Presidents are our leaders. . . . And this

centring [sic] of our thoughts, this looking for guidance in things, this union of our hopes,

 

58 Wilson, Untitled Address, January 14, 1899, PW W, X], 93-94, and Congressional Government
15th edition (Boston, 1900), xi. See also Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States (New
York, 1908), 59, 78; “Democracy and Eﬁ'lciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, PWW, X11, 9-10; and “The [deals
of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid., 227. Captain French E. Chadwick, commander of the battleship
New York, corresponded with Wilson about the need to do away with checks and balances in the American
federal government. A member of Roosevelt’s inner circle, Chadwick had managed to convince the
assistant secretary of the navy (before he resigned to join the Rough Riders) to order a copy of Wilson’s
Congressional Government to be placed aboard every active US warship as mandatory reading for serving
American naval ofﬁcers. Letters, Captain French E. Chadwick to Wilson, November 10, 1899, PWW, XI,
275-276, and Chadwick to Wilson, November 24, 1899, ibid., 289-290.

86

will not leave us what we were. Here is a new life to which to adjust our ideals.”59

The hallmark of Wilson’s “constructive imperialism” was his view of the new
colonial empire as a training ground for America’s future statesmen. Because colonial
administrators possessed mature character forged from governing multitudes of alien
peoples in the distant tropics, as demonstrated by the British imperial experience, Wilson
claimed that the eventual rise of such a select group of administrators to positions of
responsibility in the United States would foster a new, vigorous tone in public affairs:
“Although we have forgot our own preparatory discipline of governance . . . these new
tasks will undoubtedly teach us that same discipline.”60 Propounding the ideas and
sentiments of Curzon, Sir Charles Dilke, James Anthony Froude, and others in Britain
who espoused a constructive imperialist ideologyf’l Wilson proposed that American civil
servants, after obtaining experience in colonial administration, should return to the United
States to put to good use their talents as administrators and reformers. Mirroring Curzon’s
view of “the reﬂex inﬂuence” of empire, Wilson expected American tutelage in the
Philippines to not only lead to the eventual “civilization” of Filipinos but also the rise of
able, seasoned administrators to spearhead progressive reform in the United States, the

professionalization of America’s civil service, and the end of boss politics in American

 

59 Wilson, Untitled Address, January 14, 1899, ibid., 93-94, and Public Lecture, “Americanism,”
November 20, 1904, ibid., XV, 536-539.

60 Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” ca. October 1, I900, ibid., Xll, 17-18. Quotation on 17.

6‘ Porter, The Lion ’s Share, 188-195. See also, Sir Charles Di Ike, Greater Britain 2 volumes
(London, 1869); James Anthony F roude, Oceana, or England and Her Colonies (New York, 1886); and
Curzon, Problems of the Far East, 414-422.

87

cities.62
Although Wilson anticipated that the number of American elites employed in
governing America’s overseas empire would be small, he stated that they should be well
educated, selected by competitive examination, and schooled in the practices of colonial
government. To help meet this need for a new colonial elite, Wilson, still espousing the
“university ideal” about which he said much in the years before the war with Spain,
argued that the events of 1898 had made it even more imperative that universities like
Princeton restructure their curricula to provide the central training ground for America’s
future statesmen. In an address before the Princeton alumni of St. Louis, Wilson sounded
very much like a mugwump when he declared that the twentieth-century university in
America should prepare young men to draw useful lessons ﬁ'om the history of the nation
and apply them to the needs of the country in the present. Universities like Princeton
should “look back to the past and while ﬁtting young men for useful work should
especially build up character, i.e. civic manhood, and instill in them the best ideas of the
part [past] and the principles which have guided them to the highest achievements.”63

To help make sure Princeton did its part in training an American colonial elite to

govern the new dependencies, Wilson solicited funding for the creation of a chair in

 

62 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, PW W, XIV, 17-18. E. L. Godkin
made a similar observation in “The Conditions of Good Colonial Government,” Forum XXVII (April
1899), 190-203.

63 News Report ofa Talk, November 21, 1901, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 22, 1901, in
PWW, XII, 202-203. For more on Wilson’s conception of the “university ideal” in the age of empire, see
Wilson, Public Lecture, “Politics,” May 18, 1899, ibid., X1, 119; News Report, “Annual Literary Banquet,”
May 7, 1901 , ibid., X11, 140-141; Inaugural Address, “Princeton for the Nation’s Service,” October 25,
1902, ibid., XIV, 170-185; and Address, “The True University Spirit,” November 6, 1902, ibid., 201-202.

88

“Colonial Politics?”4 He wrote to friends and colleagues throughout the United States
and Britain soliciting nominations for a suitable candidate to occupy a chair in colonial
politics at Princeton. To Walter Hines Page, editor of The Atlantic Monthly, Wilson wrote
that he wanted to avoid locating someone who could only “teach politics from the
politician’s point of view.” Instead, his principal concern was to secure a candidate who
“understood the new world affairs into the midst of which we ﬁnd the country thrown.”
To Shaw, Wilson reiterated that he did not want a “professional politician,” but “a
scholar, a man of culture, a man tolerant of accomplished fact (i.e., not an anti-
imperialist). Our chief practical purpose is to study the new problems of government
which expansion has brought us face to face.” To James Bryce, Wilson added that the two
brothers, John W. and Robert Garrett (both graduates of Princeton) who endowed the
chair, were “not at all sorry to see the United States make her venture in foreign war and
the government of dependencies.” The brothers’ principal objective in making the gift
was “to provide lectures of a thorough sort on Administration as a Science and on the
government of dependencies in particular as an experience, — on the actual methods, i.e.
of success (England’s success, for example) in that manner of half rule, half coaching in
slow development and gradual self-help.” In concluding his letter to Bryce, Wilson
suggested, “We have thought it not unlikely that we should ﬁnd the man we wanted in

England.”65

 

64 “Anonymous donors” gave Princeton a gift of $1 00,000 to create an endowed chair in Politics.
Letter, Francis L. Patton [president of Princeton University] to Nancy F. McCormick [widow of Cyrus
McCormick], April 4, 1899, ibid., X1, 113.

65 Letters, Wilson to Walter Hines Page, June 7, 1899, ibid., 126-127; Wilson to Shaw, June 8,
1899, ibid., 127; and Wilson to Bryce, August 10, 1899, ibid., 217-218.

89

Indeed, in the summer of 1899, Wilson combined a holiday in England with a
somewhat casual search for a suitable Englishman who might be available to ﬁll the new
chair at Princeton. At Oxford, Wilson met with Sir William J. Ashley, Sir William
Markby (Reader in Indian Law), and Professor Albert V. Dicey (V irnerian Professor of
English Law) to solicit their recommendation of “some young, or youngish, English
university man who would be worth considering.” The three endorsed Hugh E. Egerton,
the author of A Short History of British Colonial Policy,‘"6 because they believed he
would accept the position at Princeton if offered. Wilson was not entirely unfamiliar with
Egerton; his name had ﬁrst been suggested to him by A. Lawrence Lowell, then a lecturer
on Government at Harvard, the previous spring. Shortly after his meeting with the three
Oxford professors, Lowell wrote Wilson that Charles P. Lucas of the Colonial Ofﬁce and
noted author of the seminal A Historical Geography of the British Colonies67 also
endorsed Egerton’s candidacy.68

Wilson wrote to Bryce, then on holiday in Italy, to inquire further into Egerton’s
credentials. Admittedly, Wilson wrote that all he knew about Egerton was that he was
British and an afﬁrmed imperialist. Bryce effectively killed Egerton’s candidacy,
however, writing that Wilson should take his time in making the appointment as “no
person occurs to me off-hand in England as specially well-suited for the post.” While

acknowledging that there would “certainly be sure advantages in getting an Englishman if

 

66 Hugh Edward Egerton, A Short History of British Colonial Policy (London, 1897).

67 Charles P. Lucas, A Historical Geography of the British Colonies 5 volumes (Oxford, 1888-
1901).

68 Letter, A. Lawrence Lowell to Wilson, August 6, 1899, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 12.

90

he were plainly of the right sort,” Bryce suggested a different search strategy to Wilson.
Rather than secure an inexperienced young graduate from Oxford or Cambridge for the
position, he proposed that it might be possible to locate an experienced colonial official
“who had been in India and retired early because the climate did not suit him.” Finding a
candidate with ﬁrst-hand experience in colonial administration, Bryce surmised, would be
a far greater asset to Princeton than a young university graduate. He, therefore, urged
Wilson to write to Sir Arthur Godley, the under secretary of state for India, for a
recommendation.69

While Wilson may have been attracted to the idea of ﬁnding a British colonial
administrator to ﬁll the new chair, he acknowledged in a letter to Ellen that his colleagues
at Princeton might have “one or two serious objections.”70 There is no evidence that he
ever wrote Godley or any other official in the India Office or Colonial Office. A
demanding schedule in the fall of 1899 forced Wilson to suspend his search for a suitable
candidate until the following spring. In March and April, he renewed his search with a
new vigor, soliciting recommendations from Roosevelt (then governor of New York),
Turner, Shaw, Franklin H. Giddings (a sociologist at Columbia University), Arthur T.
Hadley (president of Yale University), and Jacob G. Schurrnan (president of Cornell
University and former president of the First Philippine Commission). Roosevelt,
expressing “the greatest interest” in Wilson’s search, replied that while he knew exactly

“the ﬂag of man you want, . . I am not at all sure that I know the m.” [emphasis

 

69 Letters, Wilson to James V. Bryce, August 10, 1899, PWW, X1, 217-218, and Bryce to Wilson,
August 7, 1899, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 12.

70 Letter, Wilson to Ellen Wilson, August 4, 1899, PW W, X1, 204-207. Quotation on 205.

91

Roosevelt’s] Thus, he only offered Wilson some “essentially Burkean advice” on what
manner of candidate he should secure for Princeton:

He must be a scholar, a man of broad culture — emphatically an

academic man in the sense of having received a thorough training and

being in hearty sympathy with the men who know that from the days

of the Federalists down and up, the theorist is the safe guide for the

practical man; and yet he must also be thoroughly practical in the sense

that he must understand that theories have to be proved in practice.

Now to combine these traits with the capacity to teach would be a rather difﬁcult

problem.71

Although Roosevelt wrote that he could not think of a single man to put forward
for the new chair, Turner replied to Wilson’s request with three potential candidates:
Henry Morse Stephens, Paul S. Reinsch, and Carl Becker. Turner described Stephens, a
British professor of Modern European History at Cornell who was then teaching a course
entitled “World Empires” at the University of Wisconsin, as “a force” because of his
“inﬂuence over students.” Stephens was scheduled to offer a special course on “Colonial
Politics” at Madison later in the spring. Though Turner admitted that he had never heard
Stephens lecture, Wilson should become acquainted with him because “he is full of
ideas.”72 Turner, however, preferred Reinsch, a former student and colleague at the
University of Wisconsin who was then laboring on a manuscript on comparative colonial

administration.73 Indeed, he was probably the ﬁrst scholar to examine colonialism from

the standpoint of both colonial powers and subjugated peoples. Reinsch’s only weakness,

 

71 Letters, Roosevelt to Wilson, March 13, 1900, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 12, and Wilson to
Ellen Wilson, March 15, 1900, PWW, XI, 515-516.

72 Letter, Turner to Wilson, March 12, 1900, ibid., 506-507. Quotation on 506.

73 Paul S. Reinsch, Colonial Government: An Introduction to the Study of Colonial Institutions
(New York, 1902).

92

Turner wrote, was his young age (31 in 1900) and his rudimentary understanding of the
principles of administration. As it turned out, Reinsch eventually rejected formal
colonialism as constructive for either the colonizer or the colonized, but remained an
ardent economic expansionist who ﬁrmly believed in the potential of the China market.
He later served as Wilson’s minister to China between 1913 and 1921.74 Turner listed
Becker as his last recommendation. Becker, another one of Turner’s students, was
considered an authority on British colonial politics in America in the eighteenth century.75
Turner thought Wilson should consider him for the chair should Stephens and Reinsch
decline. In his reply, Wilson thanked Turner for his suggestions, reminding him once
again that it was “one of the abiding disappointments of my life that we cannot be
colleagues” at Princeton. Concerning the candidates, Wilson agreed that Stephens seemed
“the very man” for the position, but now thought better of hiring an Englishman: “He is
an Englishman, and in this absurdly sensitive country of ours I feel conﬁdent it would
create a bad impression to set an Englishman up in one of our universities to teach us

Politics, -- especially the colonial politics concerning which we must, whether we will or

 

74 Reinsch’s ﬁrst major work on the international relations of East Asia, World Politics at the End
of the Nineteenth Century, as Inﬂuenced by the Oriental Situation (New York, 1900), had already caught
the eye of expansionists who were concerned about the growth of foreign markets, especially in China. See
Paul A. Varg, The Making of a Myth: The United States and China (East Lansing, MI, 1968), 36-57.

75 Becker’s dissertation, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1 760-1 776,
not published until 1909, was a meticulous reconstruction of politics in a colony long known for its divisive
public affairs. In it, Becker introduced the idea that the American Revolution should be studied as a dual
movement: the revolt was an imperial struggle over “home rule,” particularly over what types of rights
colonists possessed; and it was also concerned with the distribution of power in the colonies — or as Becker
put it in his most famous formulation, “of who should rule at home.” One can only speculate what his
impact on the contours of America’s colonial policies in its dependencies might have been had Becker been
offered the chair in Colonial Politics at Princeton.

93

not, take our lesson from England in any case?76

Wilson received from Giddings, who was himself writing a book on the
relationship between empire and democracy,77 a “short list” of ﬁve candidates: Jeremiah
W. Jenks, a professor of political economy at Cornell; Henry Jones Ford, a journalist and
lecturer who was then managing editor of the Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph; Westel W.
Willoughby, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins; Leo S. Rowe, a political
science professor at the University of Pennsylvania; and Isaac A. Loos, a political science
professor at the State University of Illinois. Giddings topped the list with Jenks because
of his excellent research on English and Dutch colonies in Asia.78 Though listed second,
Giddings described Ford as an excellent candidate because he “possessed a clearer grasp
and a sounder knowledge of colonial politics than anyone.”79

Before Wilson could narrow the list to a few candidates, Francis L. Patton,
president of Princeton University, settled on John Huston Finley, a journalist and former
president of Knox College, as his candidate for the chair. Patton, from the very beginning

of the search, had not possessed the donors’ or Wilson’s conviction that the new chair

should focus on colonial administration. Instead, his sole interest in the search centered

 

76 Letters, Turner to Wilson, March 12, 1900, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 13, and Wilson to
Turner, March 10 and April 4, 1900, PWW, XI, 498-499 and 531-533, respectively.

77 Franklin H. Giddings, Democracy and Empire (New York and London, 1900).

78 Jeremiah W. Jenks, “English Colonial Fiscal Systems in the Far East,” American Economic
Association Publications 111 (1900), and Economic Questions on the English and Dutch Colonies in the
Orient (New York, 1902). Wilson had already eliminated Jenks as a possible candidate. Without
explanation, he wrote Shaw that Jenks was “just a little to [sic] much of a philistine for us.” Letter, Wilson
to Shaw, June 8, 1899, PWW, X1, 127.

79 Letter, Franklin H. Giddings to Wilson, April 4, 1900, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 13.
Lawrason Riggs, an 1883 graduate of Princeton and attorney in Baltimore, had ﬁrst suggested Ford to
Wilson in October 1899. Letter, Lawrason Riggs to Wilson, October 16, 1899, P W, X1, 262.

94

on locating “a man as good as Professor Woodrow Wilson” to strengthen Princeton’s
rather emasculated Department of Jurisprudence and Politics.80 Finley’s reputation as a
reforrn-minded educator who had transformed Knox College into a modern institution of
higher education seemed to ﬁt the bill for Patton and the Board of Trustees, and he was
soon hired." Wilson, who had taught Finley at Johns Hopkins in the early 18905, did not
oppose his candidacy and reportedly found in him “the gentleman and scholar in the
broad and genial meanings of those words” for which he had been searching.82 Finley
remained at Princeton for three years, teaching innovative courses on imperial expansion.
When he left Princeton in June 1903 to become president of the City College of New
York and then editor of the New York Times, Wilson, now president of Princeton,
replaced him with Harry A. Garﬁeld, the son of the twentieth president of the United
States, James Garﬁeld. As an attorney in Cleveland, Garﬁeld had immersed himself in
municipal reform, civil service reform, and the reorganization of the US consular service.
He shared Wilson’s commitment to the “university ideal” of training privileged young
men in the liberal arts for leadership in community, national, and world affairs.
Throughout his career at Princeton, Garﬁeld offered an annual senior lecture course
entitled “Government of Dependencies” for aspiring students of colonialism. Some of his
graduates, as well as Wilson’s, eventually made their way to the Philippines and other

overseas outposts to serve America’s interests abroad.83 Also in 1903, Princeton, through

 

80 Letter, Patton to Nancy F. McCormick, April 4, 1899, ibid., 113.
81 Letter, Francis Patton to John W. Garrett and Robert Garrett, June 15, 1900, ibid., 551-552.
82 Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, 227.

83 Letter, Wilson to the Board of Trustees of Princeton University, March 9, 1904, PWW, XV,

95

an initiative designed by Wilson to engender “civic manhood” in America’s wards, began
admitting Filipino students. Called pensionados, these Filipino students comprised the
best and brightest that the Philippines had to offer for training as the Islands’ ﬁrture
leaders.84 When Garﬁeld retired as professor of politics in 1908, Wilson hired Ford to
replace him because of his reputation as an authority on the relationship between political
parties and nation building.85

While the search for a chair in “Colonial Politics” continued, Wilson, with a
portion of the funds provided by the Garrett brothers, organized a series of public lectures
at Princeton on the subject of colonial administration to further his ideals of “civic
manhood” more immediately during the patient process of implementing proper
university training for future leaders. He inquired whether or not W. Alleyne Ireland, a
distinguished author of several books on comparative colonialism, might consent to
offering several lectures in this series. Ireland had caught Wilson’s eye in the fall of 1899
with the publication of his seminal Tropical Colonization, a book that delineated
Ireland’s “principles of white colonization in the dark Tropics.” These principles were the
culmination of nearly a dozen years research by Ireland in British, Dutch, and French

colonies in Southeast Asia, the West Indies, and South America.86 Other contributors to

 

183-184, and Lucretia G. Comer, Harry Garﬁeld ’3 First Forty Years: Man of A ction in a Troubled World
(Cleveland, 1965).

8“ Letter, Wilson to Charles McAlpin, May 27, 1903, PWW, xrv, 464.
85 Letter, Wilson to Garﬁeld, April 10, 1908, ibid., xvru, 259.

86 Letter, Wilson to Walter Hines Page [editor of The Atlantic Monthly], October 4, 1899, PWW,
XI, 243-244. Alleyne Ireland, Tropical Colonization: An Introduction to the Study of the Subject (New
York and London, 1899). In 1901, Ireland was appointed “Colonial Commissioner” of the University of
Chicago and returned to Southeast Asia to continue his study of British, French, Dutch, and American
colonial systems. He published a synthesis of his multi-volume report to the University of Chicago as The

96

the lecture series included former President Grover Cleveland who spoke on the 1895
Venezuelan boundary dispute, and Toyokichi Iyenaga, one of Wilson’s former students
who offered a succession of lectures entitled “The Situation in the Far East” and “Two
Thousand Miles on Horseback Across Persia and Asiatic Turkey.”87

Wilson offered a public lecture in this series as well. Simply entitled “Self-
Govemment,” Wilson delivered his lecture on December 13, 1900 at Princeton’s
Leavenworth Hall in which he warned that the army in the Philippines was in danger of
supplanting America’s stated colonial policy of “benevolent assimilation” with their
“vindictive ruthlessness” in pacifying the Islands. Here Wilson contrasted the ideal of the
disinterested benevolent government of dependencies with the reality of personal agendas
in the Philippines characterized by the antithesis of “civic manhood.” Dismayed by
published accounts in the nation’s major newspapers of American war atrocities, accusing
soldiers of torture, indiscriminate killing and the butchery of entire villages, he declared
that “a dark cloud” hung over the American colonizing effort in the Philippines. While
clearly unwilling to abandon the Islands and leave them to their own fate, Wilson called
for an end to the Army’s brutal counterinsurgency campaign.88 The subsequent

congressional investigation into army abuses against Filipino citizens ultimately led to the

courts-martial and forced retirement of several military commanders. Among them was

 

Far Eastern Tropics: Studies in the Administration of Tropical Dependencies (Boston, 1905). See also
Ireland’s less well-known The Province of Burma: A Report Prepared on Behalf of the University of
Chicago (Boston, 1907).

87 Wilson, Personal Memorandum, March 27, 1901, PWW, x11, 114-1 15, and Letter, Tokoyichi
Iyenaga to Wilson, February 14, 1902, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 13.

88 Wilson, Public Lecture, “Self-Govemment,” December 13, I900, PW W, XI, 48.

97

Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith, commander of the Sixth Separate Brigade, who
ordered one of his subordinates to turn the island of Samar into a “howling wildemess”
and to shoot any male inhabitant over the age of ten.89

For Wilson, however, the removal of such commanders in the ﬁeld often came too
late. The numerous reports of wartime atrocities, including American soldiers’ resort to
the much-publicized “water cure” to obtain enemy intelligence, not only threatened public
support for the colonizing mission at home but also undermined America’s credibility as
a benevolent power in the Philippines and throughout much of the rest of the world. In
this respect, Wilson reminded his audiences throughout the “great debate” on empire that
there was much more at stake in the paciﬁcation of the Filipino insurrection than the
effective transition of Philippine sovereignty from Spain to the United States. America’s
reputation as the world’s “redeemer nation” hung in the balance as well. America’s
mission to spread democracy to the four comers of the world depended upon the United
States assuming a disinterested disposition. In the Philippines, this meant pursuing a
colonial policy aimed at uplifting Filipinos, not asserting American interests at the point

of a bayonet.

 

89 The savagery of the Philippine-American War and the still controversial issue of wartime
atrocities committed by both Americans and Filipinos during its course are documented in John M. Gates,
Schoolbooks and Krags: The United States Army in the Philippines, 1 898-1902 (Westport, CT, 1973), 248-
269; Stuart C. Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1 899-1903
(New Haven, 1982); Richard E. Welch, Jr., Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-
American War, 1899-1902 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1979), 133-149; and Brian M. Linn, The US. Army and
Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1989).

98

 

Chapter Three
Apostle of Americanism

In an address called “The Expansion and Character of the United States,” Wilson
explained to the University Club of St. Louis that while he expected the new colonies in
the Caribbean and western Paciﬁc to ﬁmction as the United States’ newest safety valve
much like the Trans-Mississippi West had done before 1890, this “new expansion”
differed from the “old expansion” in at least one signiﬁcant way. The war with Spain and
the subsequent annexation of overseas colonies marked an important milestone in
America’s status and role in the world.1 For him, the events of 1898 signaled a “deﬁning
moment” in international history in which the United States, no longer immune to
ominous forces then emerging on the world scene, had assumed its place among the great
powers. “There is no masking or concealing the new order of the world,” Wilson wrote in
an article that was eventually published in The Atlantic Monthly. “A new era has come
upon us like a sudden vision of things unprophesied [sic], and for which no polity has
been prepared.”2

Yet Wilson, though convinced that America could not remain oblivious to the rest
of the planet, still did not wish to see the nation dragged into Europe’s imperial rivalries
or forced to rely on a large standing army or on alliances with other powers. Accepting
the myth of American innocence and virtue, he believed that the United States must not

become entangled with the Old World lest its exceptionalism become eroded. Instead, a

 

‘ Wilson, Address, “The Expansion and Character of the United States,” April 29, 1903, PW W,
XIV, 433-434.

2 Wilson, “Article, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., XlI, 6-20. Quotation
on 11.

99

new foreign policy, dynamic in nature and “thoroughly American” in purpose, had to be
devised. Thus, once the ascent of the United States to world power rendered it impossible
to maintain America’s traditional separation from the Old World, Wilson actively sought
universal acceptance of American democratic values and institutions by other societies in
order to “redeem” them. This would, in his view, permit American leadership and control
over international relations without involving the United States in the Old World’s
diplomacy and wars. Wilson never wavered in his belief that “Americanism,” his term for
the Americanization of the international mind, constituted the best path to progress and
prosperity at home and abroad.3

Wilson’s conception of the Philippine question and America’s redemptive
mission in the world reﬂected progressive America’s arrogance toward the nonwestem
world. Wilson believed that the United States possessed the moral right and duty to
intervene whenever and wherever it deemed necessary to safeguard democracy. The
Philippines had fallen into the lap of the United States. Whatever the circumstances of the
Archipelago’s acquisition, America was duty bound to democratize the Islands.

According to Wilson, the completion of America’s mission in the Philippines possessed

 

3 For Wilson’s concept of “Americanism” before his ascent to the presidency, see Wilson, Personal
Memorandum, “What Ought We to Do?” ca. August 1, 1898, ibid., X, 574-576; Article, “Democracy and
Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., Xll, 6-20; Public Lecture, “Americanism,” December 7, 1900, ibid,
42-44; Address, “Americanism,” February 27, 1901, ibid, 98-99; Essay, “The Real Idea of Democracy: A
Talk,” ca. August 31, 1901, ibid., 175-179; Address, “The Ideals of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid.,
208-227; Untitled Address, May 3, 1902, ibid., 359-363; Address, “The Expansion and Character of the
United States,” April 29, 1903, ibid., XlV, 433-434; Public Lecture, “Americanism,” November 20, 1904,
ibid 536-539; Untitled Address, June 11, 1905, ibid., XVI, 120-121; Untitled Address, February 23, 1906,
ibid., 315-318; and Address, “Americanism,” March 22, 1906, ibid, 340-341. See also, Arthur A. Ekirch,
Jr., Ideas, Ideals, and American Diplomacy: A History of Their Growth and Interaction (New York, 1966),
22-39; Ernest L. Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America ’s Millennial Role (Chicago, 1968), 173-
175; Sidney Bell, Righteous Conquest: Woodrow Wilson and the Evolution of the New Diplomacy (Port
Washington, NY, 1972), 10-44; and Tony Smith, America ’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide
Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1994), 37-59.

100

 

signiﬁcant implications for America’s credibility as “redeemer nation” in East Asia and
the world.

The real problem in Wilson’s thinking about foreign affairs in general and the
Philippine question in particular derived from his provincial, culture-bound biases.
Wilson assumed the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race and civilization, and hence, the
inferiority of others. He failed to see the weaknesses of his own society in the context of
other cultures and the strengths of other cultural values. He simply could not imagine a
society that did not desire American-style democracy. In this respect, Wilson was hardly
different from other American progressive imperialists.4 Embodying cultural absolutism,
he assumed that all societies, in recognizing the intrinsic excellence of American values
and institutions, endeavored to adopt the American blueprint for national development
and democratic growth.

Merging nineteenth-century tenets with the historical experience of America’s
political, economic, and social development, Wilson elevated the beliefs and experiences
of America’s “exceptional historical circumstance” into general developmental laws that
he believed were universally applicable to societies throughout the world. Thus, in order

to become a modern democratic state, Wilson contended that it was necessary for a

 

4 The relationship between progressivism, imperialism, and racism has been a topic of much
discussion among historians. See, William E. Leuchtenburg, “Progressivism and Imperialism: The
Progressive Movement and American Foreign Policy, 1898-1916,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review
XXXlX, No. 3 (December, 1952), 483-505; Barton J. Bernstein and Franklin A. Leib, “Progressive
Republican Senators and American Imperialism, 1898-1916: A Re-Appraisal,” Mid-America L, No. 3
(1968), 163-205; Joseph M. Siracusa, “Progressivism, Imperialism, and the Leuchtenburg Thesis, 1952-
1974,” Australian Journal of Politics and History XX, No. 3 (1974), 312-325; Gerald W. Markowitz,
“Progressivism and Imperialism: A Return to First Principles,” Historian XXXVII, No. 2 ( 1975), 257-275;
Robert M. Crunden, Ministers of Reform: The Progressives ’ Achievement in American Civilization, 1889-
1920 (New York, 1982), 225-273; Michael Pearlman, To Make Democracy Safe for America: Patricians
and Preparedness in the Progressive Era (Urbana, IL, 1984); and Robert Johnson, The Peace Progressives
and American Foreign Relations (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 23-33.

101

society to replicate as near as it could America’s own developmental experience.
Generally speaking, this process included a demonstrated commitment to Anglo-Saxon
democratic principles and practices; a consistent observance of slow, deliberate,
progressive change from above for the purpose of eradicating society’s inequities; a faith
in free enterprise which included support for ﬁ'ee and open access for commerce and
investment; and an embrace of Protestant Christianity, viewed by Wilson as the spiritual
precondition for modernity. Wilson considered the propagation of this blueprint for
nation-building to be America’s mission in the world. Possessing both secular and
religious roots, “Americanism” transcended the doctrine of Anglo-Saxonism, the “White
Man’s Burden,” and the Social Gospel movement at home and abroad. While its
dimensions were complex and often contradictory, the objective of “Americanism,”
according to Wilson, was simple: the fusion of American and world conceptions of
progress, security, and prosperity through the worldwide extension of American-style
democracy and Anglo-Saxon civilization. Indeed, it is difficult to exaggerate the degree
of conﬁdence that Wilson consistently exhibited in “Americanism” as the panacea for the

nation’s and the world’s ills.

“The Practical Question of Democracy”
Wilson’s chief interest in America’s redemptive mission following the Spanish-American
War focused almost exclusively on how best to regenerate the world through the
proliferation of American democratic principles and institutions. This problem called into
question the international dimensions of what Wilson called “the practical question of

democracy,” or how democratic principles were put into actual use in the conduct of

102

governments.S Whereas most agreed that democracy was the best form of government,
considerable disagreement existed whether or not it was the strongest, especially given
the spotty record of the world’s march toward democracy since the late eighteenth
century. Wilson lamented the historical fact that although the nineteenth century had been
“above all others a century of democracy,” the world seemed no more convinced of its
efficacy at the end of the century than it had been at the beginning.6

Wilson was convinced that the chief dilemma in the modern world movement
toward democracy stemmed from the general misconception about how democratic
principles were adopted, put into action, and spread. In his opinion, too many societies
had relied on “the literary genius” of J ean-Jacque Rousseau and the other French
philosophes that was devoid of any practical understanding of democratic institutions or
how they developed over time.7 Wilson was consistently critical of French democratic
thought because it held that the republican form of government, assumed to be as old as
the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, was simply a matter of contract and deliberate
arrangement, a political condition that could be adopted or discarded overnight. This
approach to democracy seemed extremely dangerous to Wilson because it advanced the
misguided tenet that governments could be made over at will which, in turn, promoted the
idea that revolution from below constituted a natural and legitimate concomitant of

democratic growth. Also, he noted that the philosophes’ treatises on democracy were

 

5 Wilson, Address, “The Real Idea of Democracy: A Talk,” ca. August 31, 1901, PWW, XII, 175-
179.

6 Ibid. See also, Wilson, “Democracy,” June 15, 1898, ibid., x, 556.

7 Wilson, “The Real Idea of Democracy: A Talk,” ca. August 31, 1901, ibid., XII, I77.

103

devoid of any discussion of “civic manhood,” or a society’s political character, in
determining the possibility or potential durability of self-govemment in various cultures.
One only needed to examine the nineteenth century, he contended, to see the destructive
consequences of this essentially French conception of democracy. Democratic revolution
had failed miserably throughout the European continent and elsewhere, resulting more
often than not in chaos rather than order, individual bondage rather than liberty, and
anarchy rather than democracy.8

Democracy’s “eccentric inﬂuence” in France in the late eighteenth century and
“revolutionary operation” in the South American republics in the early nineteenth century
had engendered suspicions and doubts about democracy’s durability and stability. Those
historical episodes seemed to demonstrate that democracy possessed only the power to
intoxicate, not regenerate. The root of the problem, according to Wilson, derived from the
fact that too few had adopted “the masculine and practical genius of the English mind” or
“hard experience” when coming to terms with the “practical question of democracy.” No
one had effectively articulated in those societies the principles upon which democracy
resth and achieved a synthesis of its parts: “For lack of proper synthesis, [democracy]
limps and is threatened with incapacity for the great social undertakings of our modern
time.” In this respect, Wilson implied that democracy’s proper synthesis involved more

than mere political organization; a “synthesis of principle” must precede a “synthesis of

 

8 For Wilson’s criticism of the French philosophes and their conception of democracy, see Wilson,
Public Lecture, “Self-Govemment,” December 13, 1900, PWW, XI, 46-48; Address, “The Real Idea of
Democracy: A Talk,” ca. August 31 , 1901, ibid., XII, 175-179; Address, “The Ideals of America,”
December 26, 1901, ibid., 217; and Address, “Thomas Jefferson,” April 16, 1906, ibid., XVI, 362-369. See
also, Wilson’s published essay “Edmund Burke and the French Revolution,” The Century Magazine LXII
(September, 1901), 784-792.

104

II

form.” 9 For him, self-govemment was the end result of a speciﬁc set of conditions and
not a mere doctrine that anyone could embrace. It was the product of slow development,
conservative habit, mature political character; it was not an outcome of violent upheavals
like the French Revolution and the Latin American Wars for Independence.lo
Wilson believed that the United States was uniquely qualiﬁed to teach the world
“the essential and permanent principles and structures of self-govemment.” Americans,
who had known nothing but self-govemment since the colonies had been founded,
understood that “discipline, the long drill of order and obedience to law,” an essential
component of “civic manhood,” comprised the basis of democracy.11 Expounding upon a
progressive philosophy of history, he reminded his audiences that only the American
democratic experience had demonstrated that “continued and progressive evolution of
constitutional institutions” lay behind the development of self-govemment. The seeds of
this organic process had originated in the institutions of local government where
individuals slowly learned the habits of self-govemment. This local political training,
when continued for several generations, prepared people for full participation in their
national affairs. Thus, Wilson concluded, the logical outcome of “local self-direction”
after several centuries of preparation was “national self—direction,” better known a decade

later as “national self—deterrnination.”'2

 

9 Wilson, “The Character of Democracy in the United States,” The Atlantic Monthly LXIV
(November, 1889), 577-588. Quotation on 588.

'0 Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” ca. October 1, I900, PW W, Xll, 6-7.
” Ibid., 14.

‘2 Wilson, “Editor’s Study,” ca. January 1901, PWW, XII, 60-64. For Wilson’s philosophy of
history, see Wilson, Unpublished Historical Essay, “On the Writing of History,” ca. June 17, 1895, PWW,

105

Wilson, ever the Tumerian enthusiast, maintained that there was something
exceptional about America’s ﬁrst settlers - chosen men who possessed initiative, energy,
courage, and sagacity - who leﬁ their European homes to create something better in the
New World. The American environment, with its particular conditions and challenges,
transformed these men in which all that was decadent and degenerate of the Old World
fell away.l3 Yet this transformation did not constitute a radical break with the past. While
Wilson went to great pains to demonstrate that American democratic institutions were not
indebted to earlier European revolutionary movements that lacked organic development,
he extolled the British origins of self-govemment in the United States. For him, the
American system was simply “the logical fulﬁllment of the English political system” in
that the American people, after inheriting the essentials of British political institutions,
values and practices, eventually acquired the necessary experience to govern themselves
and then broke away from the mother country. Wilson, however, denied that there had
been anything revolutionary about America’s democratic development. The American
people had only expanded the process of local self-govemment until it had become a
deeply ingrained quality of American national life. Britain, Wilson pointed out, “had had
self-govemment time out of mind, but in America English self-govemment had become
popular self-govemment.”M In this respect, Wilson maintained that America’s democratic

experience had set the nation apart from the rest of the world. He told his audiences that

 

IX, 293-305; Letter, Wilson to John Genung [professor of rhetoric at Amherst College], May 30, 1900,
ibid., X1, 543; and Ambrosius, Wilsonian Statecraft, 3-10.

‘3 Wilson, Address, “What It Means to be an American,” April 26, 1902, PW W, XII, 351-354.

'4 Wilson, “The Ideals of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid, X11, 220.

106

even Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville” had recognized and praised the
exceptional character of American democracy, noting its potential for redeeming
European political institutions.16

Wilson argued that there was much more to America’s exceptionalism than the
mere growth and spread of self-govemment “from coast to coast across the great
continent.”l7 Underlying the genius of American self-govemment was “civic manhood,”
the presence of individual self-govemment, or what Wilson referred to as “self-mastery.”
For him, “civic manhood” was the moral basis of self-govemment — that is, control over
one’s self — which preceded and made possible the development of its political form.l8
Since the late 18803, Wilson consistently maintained that some degree of maturity in a
people’s character was essential to the formation of an independent, self-goveming
community:

Democracy is not merely a body of doctrine, or simply a form of

government. It is a stage of development. It is not created by aspirations or

by a new faith. It is built up by slow habit; its process is experience, its

basis old want, its meaning national organic unity and effectual life. . . .

Immature peoples cannot have it, and the maturity to which it is
vouchsafed is the maturity of freedom and self-control, and no other. It is

 

'5 In his lectures, Wilson insisted that De Tocqueville was not a Frenchman but a “Northman”
[Norman], an important distinction, at least in Wilson’s mind, because “the things that make us steady in
government we get from the Normans.” See, Wilson, Review of De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,
ca. January 19, I883, PW W, 11, 295-296; Lecture, “De Tocqueville, The Student of Democracy,” January
10, 1896, ibid., IX, 374-377; Notes, De Tocqueville’s Recollections, April 11, 1897, ibid., X, 214-215;
Lectures, “Alexis De Tocqueville,” November 5, 1897, ibid., 336-338; and “Alexis De Tocqueville,” March
19,1901,ibid., XII,111.

“5 Wilson, “Edmund Burke and the French Revolution,” The Century Magazine LXII (September,
1901), 784-792; Lecture, “Alexis De Tocqueville,” March 19, 1901, PWW, X11, 1 l l; and “Democracy and
Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., 6-7.

17 Wilson, “The Signiﬁcance of American History,” in Harper ’s Encyclopedia of A merican
History (New York, 1901), I, xxviii.

18 Wilson, “The Ideals of America,” December 26, I901, PWW, XII, 221-222.

107

conduct and its only stable foundation is character.”
Wilson argued that human character could be developed only under proper authority and
tutelage. The British, for instance, always obeyed their king and Parliament. Obedience,
therefore, formed the basis of effective government, and the essential prerequisite to
obedience was discipline, or self-control and love for order. The ideal ﬁee man was one
who possessed self-control, or the power to keep his “natural desires and instincts under
his command in order to produce a well-balanced personality.” In this sense, Wilson held
that self-control or “individual self-govemment,” encompassing within itself the qualities
of self-cultivation, self-discipline and self-direction, comprised the ﬁrndamental basis of
“civic manhood,” the essential component of political character required for democracy.20

Indeed, Wilson’s writings from the late 18808 until his death in 1924 are replete
with expositions on the essential relationship between “civic manhood” and democratic
development. For him, character constituted the very spirit of self-govemment, the center
around which the entire democratic system revolved. Reasoning that character composed
the critical element both in those who govern and in the governed, Wilson argued that
laws and constitutions in themselves were not enough to sustain democracy. He believed
the excesses of the “Great Terror” during the French Revolution had borne out that

political maxim. Instead, “civic manhood,” or the moral duty of a person to take the right

action according to his conscience inﬂuenced by a mature sense of justice and a healthy

 

'9 Wilson, “The Character of Democracy in the United States,” The Atlantic Monthly LXIV
(November, 1889), 577-588. Quotation on 582.

2° Wilson, “The Ideals of America,” December 26, 1901, PWW, XII, 218.

108

regard for the common good, formed the basis of self-govemment.2|
In this sense, Wilson distinguished sharply between self-govemment and self-

deterrnination. Although the term “national self-determination” did not emerge until the
First World War, Wilson had been aware of the basic principle since the late 18805. He
referred to it as “national self-direction.” It is likely that he ﬁrst came across the idea that
self-government is a matter of “character-training” from his reading of Bagehot, and then
Burke. In any case, the question of readiness for self-govemment was no mere academic
exercise in political philosophy for Wilson. He ﬁrmly believed that every people or nation
possessed an abstract right to self-govemment in the political sense, but only if they
demonstrated that they were capable of self-govemment in the ethical sense could that
right be exercised. That is, only those people with mature character, who possessed
control over themselves as individuals, were qualiﬁed to govern themselves. Thus,
Wilson argued that the critical issue for the proliferation of democratic principles abroad
involved the relationship between liberty and government.22

Liberty, deﬁned by Wilson as “the privilege of maturity, of self-control, of self-
mastery, and a thoughtﬁrl care for righteous dealings,” was something that all cultures
could develop, but only after cultivating it over a long period of time under proper

tutelage: “Liberty is not itself government. In the wrong hands, — in hands unpracticed

 

21 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., 14, and Address, “Religion
and Patriotism,” July 4, 1902, ibid., 474-478.

22 For Wilson’s pre-war understanding of “national self-detennination” and the concept’s
eighteenth-century origins, see Derek Heater, National Self-Determination: Woodrow Wilson and His
Legacy (New York, 1994), 1-14. Although Alfred Cobban’s National Self-Determination (London, 1944)
remains the standard work on the intellectual origins and political history of national self—detennination, see
also Berch Berberoglu, The National Question: Nationalism, Ethnic Conﬂict, and Self-Determination in the
Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, 1995), and John Lynch, Latin America Between Colony and Nation (New
York, 2001).

109

and undisciplined, — it is incompatible with democratic government. Discipline must
precede it, if necessary, the discipline of being under masters.”23 Democracy, the apex of
the long evolution of constitutional government, was analogous to human adulthood in
that self-govemment developed in those societies which had achieved the maturity of
freedom tempered by self-command. Thus, all societies seeking democracy must ﬁrst
cultivate “civic manhood” or “adult self-reliance, self-knowledge, and self-control, adult
soberness and deliberateness of judgment and sagacity in self-govemment, adult vigilance
of thought and quickness of insight” in its citizens. Real progress toward democracy
could occur only in those societies that had been adequately prepared for democratic
institutions. Societies that did not ﬁrst establish what Wilson called the “moral basis” of
democracy could not have it.24

Race constituted an important criterion in Wilson’s consideration of whether or
not a society possessed the mature political character necessary for self-govemment and
self-determination. He gave little attention, however, to the biological considerations of
race (eugenics) or to religious-based justiﬁcations of racial inequality. Instead, Wilson
expressed interest principally in the socio-political aspects of race, particularly the role of
race in the rise and fall of civilizations. To be sure, he did draw distinctions among the
various peoples of the world on the basis of physical features, above all skin color.
Guided by the poles of black and white, Wilson ranked the various peoples of the world

and their cultures: those with the whitest skin were positioned on the highest rung of the

 

23 Wilson, “The ldeals of America,” December 26, 1901, PW W, XII, 218.

24 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, I900, ibid., 7.

110

racial ladder, while those with the darkest skin were relegated to the lowest rung. This
hierarchical view of race proved attractive to Wilson because it offered a ready and useful
way to understand the larger world and America’s place in it. Rather than dissect the
complex and subtle patterns of other cultures, this worldview required no more than an
understanding of easily grasped polarities and superﬁcial characteristics.25

Signiﬁcantly, Wilson held that skin color implied a speciﬁc level of political and
moral development in which the “Anglo-Saxon race” provided the unquestioned standard
of measurement. Thus, for Wilson, “superior races” spoke English, possessed “civic
manhood” and exercised democratic rights and privileges responsibly, and enjoyed both
material abundance and high moral standards. He deemed “inferior races” woefully
deﬁcient in all of these standards of civilization. Yet, Wilson, in the context of the two
main varieties of “Social Darwinism,” subscribed to “Reformed Darwinism” rather than
“Conservative Darwinism”!6 In this respect, he argued that all races possessed the
capacity to “progress” and become “civilized.” Political and moral progress for “inferior

races” was possible but only through “acts of redemption,” acts that required the direct

 

25 Wilson’s concept of race is delineated in Ambrosius, Wilsonian Statecraﬂ, 4-7; Henry
Blumenthal, “Woodrow Wilson and the Race Question,” Journal of Negro History, XLVIII, No. 1
(January, 1963), 1-21; and Saunders, In Search of Woodrow Wilson, 3-4, 14-15. For an excellent analysis of
the concept of racial hierarchy that informed Americans’ attitudes toward race during this period, see Hunt,
Ideology and US. Foreign Policy, 46-91; Frank Furedi, The Silent War: Imperialism and the Changing
Perception of Race (New York, 1999), 25-45; Michael Krenn, Race and US. Foreign Policy in the Ages of
Territorial and Market Expansion, 1840-1900 (New York, 1998); Walter B. Michaels, Our America:
Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism (Durham, NC, 1995); and Paul Kramer, “Empire, Exceptions, and
Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule Between the British and United States Empires, 1880-1910” Journal of
American History LXXXVIII, No.4 (March 2002), 1315-1353.

26 The distinctions between “Conservative Darwinism” (the proposition that “immature races”
were irredeemable) and “Reformed Darwinism” (the proposition that “immature races” were redeemable)
are delineated in Robert C. Bannister, Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in A nglo-American Social
Thought (Philadelphia, 1989), 137-163, and Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American
Thought, 1860-1945 (Cambridge, 1997), 104-122, 151-183.

111

assistance of those races already knowledgeable and skilled in the art of democracy.27
Wilson’s writings on the place of Aﬁican Americans in American society in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries offer much insight into the importance of
race in his political thought. Since the 1870s, Wilson had echoed the popular but
misguided notion held by southern middle class whites that the chief danger inherent in
the “Negro Question” derived from the premature extension of political privileges to
Aﬁican Americans after the Civil War.28 Nearly two generations after the war, however,
Wilson still could not detect any progress in African Americans’ political maturity; he
viewed them as completely devoid of “civic manhood.” In 1901, Wilson described the
freedmen as:
a vast, laboring, landless, homeless class, once slaves, now free; unpracticed in
liberty, unschooled in self-control; never sobered by the discipline of self-support,
never established in any habit of prudence; excited by a freedom they did not
understand, exalted by false hopes; bewildered and without leaders, and yet
insolent and aggressive; sick of work, covetous of pleasure, -- a host of dusky
children untimely put out of school.29

A gradual and carefully measured approach to the questions of black suffrage and

economic opportunity was required because African Americans, in Wilson’s mind, did

 

27 Wilson, Notes for an Address, “Forms of Government,” October 29, 1897, PWW, X, 332-333.
See also, Ronald L. Numbers’ chapter on Darwinism in the American South in Darwinism Comes to
America (Cambridge, 1998), 58-75.

28 Wilson, Diary Entry, July 19, 1876, PWW, I, 156; Marginal Notes to Letter by A.H.H. Stuart in
Philadelphia American, ca February 5, 1881, ibid., 11, 19-25; Unpublished Articles, “Stray Thoughts from
the South,” ca. February 22, 1881, ibid., 26-31; “The Politics and Industries of the New South,” ca. April
30, 1881 , ibid., 49-55; Marginal Notes to De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, ca. January 19, 1883,
ibid., 293-295; Unpublished Article, “Culture and Education at the South,” March 29, 1883, ibid., 326-332;
Review of James Bryce’s American Commonwealth, January 31, 1889, ibid., VI, 61-76; and Untitled
Address, June 12, 1895, ibid., IX, 287-291.

29 Wilson, “The Reconstruction of the Southern States,” The Atlantic Monthly LXXXVII (January,
1901), 1-15. Quotation on 6.

112

not yet possess the mature moral character or political discipline necessary for
participation in responsible government. As African Americans demonstrated their ﬁtness
for citizenship and self-govemment, such privileges should be granted to them, but not
before. Wilson contended that the South had been “solid” on this issue which, in turn,
doomed Reconstruction to fail: “It is a simple enough matter to understand what choice
an English people would make when the alternatives presented to them were, to be ruled
by an ignorant and inferior race, or to band themselves in a political union not to be
broken till the danger had passed.”30

Despite his benevolent paternalism towards African Americans, Wilson’s racial
prejudice often got the better of him. He remained deeply conscious of racial differences
in all social contexts throughout his life and disapproved strongly of any attempt to
establish the social equality of whites and blacks. As president of Princeton, Wilson saw
no practical role for Aﬁican Americans in higher education and continued the long-
established policy at Princeton of refusing them admittance.31 In a letter to a subordinate
at Princeton, dated October 30, 1903, he wrote of the need to reserve “all menial
services” on campus for blacks because whites, in doing such work, would suffer an

inevitable loss of self-respect.32 When addressing the plight of Aﬁican Americans in his

 

30 Letter, Wilson to William A. MacCorkle [governor of West Virginia], January 31, 1901, PW W,
XVI, 565. Wilson’s interesting letter was an afﬁrmative response to MacCorkle’s address the previous
spring before the Southern Conference on Race Problems in Alabama in which the governor declared that
the central question confronting the South was “how to give the Negro the Franchise without imperiling
Southern Civilization.” Both men agreed that African Americans should not be given the vote until they
were qualiﬁed for it “by education and the acquisition of property,” until they possessed the necessary
character for the exercise of political rights. In the meantime, southern whites should remain “solid” in their
opposition to black suffrage.

3' Saunders, In Search of Woodrow Wilson, 35-36.

32 Letter, Wilson to Morgan P. Robinson, October 30, 1903, PW W, XV, 32.

113

public speeches about democracy and liberty at home and abroad, Wilson often did so in
the context of well-wom “darkey jokes,” making blacks the butt of his political humor.33
While on holiday in Scotland in 1908, Wilson, in a conversation with a friend,
condemned all social intercourse between the races because it would inevitably lead to
intermarriage, a development that “would degrade the White nations, for in Africa the
Blacks were the only race who did not rise.”34
Underlying Wilson’s racial prejudice was his assumption that Anglo-Saxon
civilization formed the high point of racial development. In this context, he believed that
it was not an accident or simple act of good fortune that the English-speaking race had
succeeded in establishing and preserving the most liberal, yet stable, form of popular
government in the world. Only the United States, Britain, and the so-called “white
settlement” colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Aﬁica fully realized
that modern democracy was actually no older than the late eighteenth century, a product
of the Enlightenment.” Only these societies understood that democracy was a stage of
political development built up by slow habit, not merely a form of government to be
adopted in a moment of sweeping change: “Democracy is a principle within us, not a

mere form of government.”36 Extolling the virtues of democracy’s evolutionary, rather

than revolutionary, nature, Wilson believed that the stability of democracy in Anglo-

 

” See for example, Wilson, Notes for an Address, June 30, 1904, ibid., 400, and News Report of
an Address in Providence, Rhode Island, February 10, 1906, ibid., XVI, 309-310.

3“ Diary Entry, Mary Yates, July 31, 1908, ibid., xvrrr, 386.
35 Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., X11, 7.

3" Ibid., 9.

114

Saxon civilization rested upon its suitability to the moral character, political
temperament, and mature stage of racial development of the English-speaking world.
Those societies possessed the ethical qualities and mature character necessary for self-
government and self-determination. No other society could expect to obtain democracy
without ﬁrst cultivating “civic manhood,” as did the English-speaking world, over a
period of several generations.37
Thus, Wilson believed that the American democratic experience exempliﬁed the
proper relationship between self-determination and self-government. Grossly
oversimplifying early American history, he argued that Americans broke away from
British sovereignty only after centuries of cultivating democratic institutions and practices
under British tutelage. Because the leaders of the American Revolution had been patient
and allowed liberty to mature in the colonies before breaking away from the British
Empire, he contended that they should be viewed not as revolutionaries but as a
“generation of statesmen.” During the course of the American War for Independence,
“the Founding Fathers fought, not to pull down, but to preserve liberty, . . a familiar thing
they had and meant to keep.”38
The dismal record of the world’s failure in cultivating democracy, however,
seemed proof enough to Wilson of the general ignorance of the proper relationship
between self-determination and self-government. He deduced that the chief lesson to be

discerned from democratic struggle outside the United States was that democratic

institutions and proper habits of thought could not be adopted in any simple or quick

 

37 Ibid., 14-15.

38 Wilson, “The Ideals of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid., XII, 213.

115

manner. Democracy, more a reﬂection of character and experience than political
organization, could not be exported throughout the world in any conventional sense. The
success of democratic growth on a global scale depended upon qualities and conditions
that it did not itself create, but only obeyed. Thus, democracy’s stability and durability
hinged upon its suitability to the particular social, political, racial, and economic
conditions of the people for whose beneﬁt and administration it had been framed, not
upon democracy’s intrinsic excellence as expounded by the French philosophes.”
Wilson insisted in the years after the Spanish-American War that despite the
obvious failures of democracy in the nineteenth century, the world must continue to make
strides toward developing democratic institutions. He ﬁrmly believed that democracy,
under proper leadership and guidance, could still have a progressive impact on the
international environment. Unlike previous world systems, a world order based on
democratic growth would “emphasize the virtues of character, exalt the purposes of the
average man to some high level of endeavor, and promote the principle of assent and the
ideals of patriotism, duty, and brotherhood.”40 Democracy would have a unifying effect
on the divided nations and regions of the world, much like it had on the United States,
forged on the frontier, tested by the Civil War, and reaffirmed by the war with Spain.“

Before the healing could commence, however, the world ﬁrst needed to learn

 

39 Ibid.; Wilson, “Liberty in the Light of Experience,” January 14, 1900, ibid., XI, 374-375;
“Freedom,” February 24, 1900, ibid., 439-441; “Democracy and Efficiency,” ca. October I, 1900, ibid.,
XII, 7; and “The Real Idea of Democracy: A Talk,” ca. August 31, 1901, ibid., 175-179.

40 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., X11, 8.

4' Ibid., 14-15; Wilson, Public Lecture, “Americanism,” December 7, 1900, ibid., 42-44; Untitled
Address, May 3, 1902, ibid, 359-363; and Public Lecture, “Americanism,” November 20, 1904, ibid, XV,
536-539.

116

what democracy was and how to obtain it. This comprised the context in which Wilson
thought about America’s redemptive mission in the world. Although Britain had assumed
much of the responsibility for promoting and facilitating the development of democracy
in the world up to that time, Wilson declared that the twentieth century would be marked
by active American leadership and a closer union with the English-speaking peoples in

. . . . . 4
achrevrng this mlSSlon. 2

“Errand to the World”
Wilson ﬁrst articulated his new view of America’s role and mission in the world in
association with American-East Asian relations in general and the Philippine question in
particular. He declared that while the war in Cuba had opened his eyes to the multitude of
iniquities and antagonisms in the world and to the part that the United States was to play
in ameliorating them, the acquisition of the Philippine Islands dictated that East Asia
would be the ﬁrst place American leadership and inﬂuence was to be felt. It was only
after the decision to annex the Philippines, Wilson argued, “that we awakened to our real
relationship with the rest of mankind.” Before the Battle of Manila Bay “only a few
Europeans who were burrowing and plotting and dreaming in the mysterious East”
understood that the world was in the throes of dramatic change and that a new
international order was on the threshold of emerging.43

Wilson was referring to the unprecedented shift in the balance of power in East

 

42 Wilson, Public Lecture, “The Theory of Organization,” November 2, 1898, ibid., XI, 66; Public
Lecture, “Liberty in Light of Experience,” January 14, 1900, ibid, 374-375; and Public Lecture,
“Freedom,” February 24, 1900, ibid, 439-441.

43 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., XII, 18-19.

117

 

Asia, precipitated by the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-1895. The war ended with the
Treaty of Shimonoseki in which China relinquished all claims to Korea, paid Japan an
indemnity, and ceded it Taiwan and the Pescadores, thus starting the formation of the
Japanese empire. China’s display of weakness in the war against Japan had also set in
motion an imperialist scramble for special rights and privileges in which Russia, Britain,
Germany, France, and Japan struggled to carve out their respective spheres of inﬂuence
on the Asian continent in case China collapsed completely. The concessions extracted
from China were economic and political. The powers forced loans on the Chinese
government which were secured by Chinese tax revenues, such as maritime customs.
Long-term leases of Chinese territory were granted, including the right to develop
economic resources such as mines and railroads. Germany leased territory in Shandong;
Russia leased Port Arthur in the southern Liaodong Peninsula and received special rights
in Manchuria; France held leases on land around Guangzhou Bay; and Britain acquired
Weihaiwei and the New Territories, adjacent to the Kowloon area of Hong Kong. Often
the powers combined leaseholds, railroad rights, and commercial privileges to create a
“sphere of interest,” an area that the respective powers policed with their own troops,
dispensed their own justice, and perpetuated their own cultural norms. As a result of the
scramble to carve up “the Chinese melon,” the international environment in East Asia had
become fraught with uncertainty and intense rivalries, a situation that made the region

susceptible to turmoil and perhaps even war.44

 

44 For the dramatic shift in the balance of power in East Asia after 1895, see William L. Langer’s
classic, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890-1902 2"d edition (New York, 1951), 167-191 , 385-412, 445-
480; Paul Kennedy’s excellent synthesis, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and
Military Conﬂictﬁ'om 1500 to 2000 (New York, 1987), 249-256; and William R. Keylor’s insightful, The
Twentieth Century World: An International History 2"d edition (New York, 1992), 14-20.

118

 

In his reﬂection on these events in East Asia, Wilson reasoned that America’s rise
to power in the region in 1898 had been as timely as it was inevitable.45 He believed that
the “scramble for Asia” by the great powers at the end of the nineteenth century, like the
scramble for colonies and concessions in Aﬁica earlier in the century, marked the
unleashing of the “dark . . . undemocratic forces” of Europe into the region. Abhorring
the prospect of the “Europeanization” of Asia as much as he did the “Europeanization” of
America, Wilson defended the McKinley administration’s decision to annex the
Philippines as an honorable course of action because “only the United States represented
the light of day” in East Asia. Thus, Wilson described the events culminating in the
acquisition of an empire in the western Paciﬁc as “unexpected but necessary, . . as if part
of a meat preconceived plan for changing the world.” The events of 1898 had
demonstrated that the international community was becoming more interdependent so
that no nation, not even the United States, could remain aloof indeﬁnitely: “The whole
world is now a single vicinage; each part has become a neighbor to the rest.”46 In his
personal memorandum, “What Ought We to Do?,” Wilson summed up most succinctly
the dilemma confronting the United States in East Asia:

The world into which they [the armored cruisers of the US Asiatic Squadron]

have brought us is a very modern world. It is not like any other the nations have

lived in. In it civilization has become aggressive, and we are made aware that
choices are about to be made as vital as those which determined the settlement
and control of North America. The question is not, Shall the vital nations of

Europe take possession of the territories of those which are less vital and divide

the kingdoms of Africa and Asia? The question is now, Which nations shall
possess the world? England, Russia, Germany, France, these are the rivals in the

 

45 Wilson, “What Ought We to Do?,” ca. August 1, 1898, PW W, X, 574-576.

46 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., XII, 12-13, 18.

119

new spoliation: -- perhaps only England, Germany, and Russia, for France cannot
keep the same course for two months together. . . . Of a sudden we stand in the
midst of these. What ought we to do?47
With these words, Wilson believed he had proclaimed the end of traditional
American isolationism and its concomitant “exemplar” role for the United States. Such a
policy had been appropriate while America matured into adulthood in the
nineteenth century. The war with Spain, however, signaled the completion of America’s
third century of national development and awakened Americans from their “provincial
slumber.” The “new era” in world politics, Wilson argued, would be marked by the
United States’ new role as “redeemer nation”:
We dare not stand neutral. All mankind deems us the representatives of the
moderate and sensible discipline which makes free men good citizens, of
enlightened systems of law and a temperate justice, of the best experience in the
reasonable methods and principles of self-govemment, of public force made
consistent with individual liberty; and we shall not realize these ideals at home, if
we suffer them to be hopelessly discredited amongst the peoples who have yet to
see liberty and the peaceable days of order and comfortable progress. We should
lose heart ourselves, did we suffer the world to lose faith in us as the champion of
these things.48
Wilson explained to his audiences that traditional American isolationism had died
a natural death at the Battle of Manila Bay. The nation’s diplomatic principles had not
been scrapped arbitrarily by the McKinley administration in prosecuting its war with
Spain and in acquiring an overseas empire. Those principles had simply evolved in

response to the new international environment in which the country found itself after

peace had been concluded. Wilson underscored his emphasis on the continuity of

 

47 Wilson, “What Ought We to Do?,” ca. August 1, 1898, ibid., X, 576.

48 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., XII, 10-11. See also, Wilson,
Public Lecture, “Our Obligations,” December 14, 1899, ibid., XI, 297-300, and Untitled Public Lecture,
January 30, 1904, ibid, XV, 147-149.

120

American diplomatic principles with the following interpretation of Washington’s
Farewell Address:
Washington never said that America should never [emphasis Wilson’s] stand in
the competition of foreign powers. Instead, Washington seems to have meant: “I
want you to discipline yourselves and stay still and be good boys until you grow
up, until you are big enough to stand the competition of foreign countries, until
you are big enough to go abroad in the world. Wait . . . until you not need be
afraid of foreign inﬂuence, and then you shall be ready to take your part in the
ﬁeld of the world.”49
Wilson elaborated on this perspective of Washington’s Farewell Address at an annual
banquet of the Sons of the Revolution four years later. He told his audience that
Washington never counseled against the United States assuming a “crusader” role in the
world; he only cautioned as to what alliances America formed. Indeed, Wilson argued,
Washington, as a product of America’s frontier experience, was far too practical to have
ever insisted that his advice on foreign policy for one generation of statesmen be pertinent
to another and later generation. Instead, “the keynote” of Washington’s last public
address as president did not touch on any “imperative standards of policy,” only on what
“precepts of character” were required for each generation of American statesmen when
confronting the world’s dangers. In other words, Washington, according to Wilson, had
not prescribed “the whole policy of the nation.” He had merely addressed the need for
each generation to develop “thoughtful citizens” who understood the value of
disinterested statesmanship when safeguarding America’s interests abroad.50

Yet, among American imperialists in 1898, Wilson’s emphasis on the leadership

of the United States in the international relations of East Asia differed ﬁom that of the

 

4’ Wilson, After-Dinner Speech, December 22, 1900, ibid., XII, 57.

50 Wilson, Address, “George Washington,” February 22, 1905, ibid., XVI, 1 1-12. Quotation on 12.

121

better-known Roosevelt-Lodge circle. Whereas the latter group tended to view the war
with Spain and the annexation of the Philippines as evidence of America’s capability and
willingness to share in the responsibilities of the other great powers in maintaining a
balance of power on the Asian continent, Wilson, however, perceived those same events
as a signal to the rest of the world that the United States intended to redeem East Asia by
nurturing and safeguarding democratic grth in the region. These two divergent views,
one no less imperialist in outlook than the other, derived from fundamentally different
conceptions of what the chief guiding principle of American diplomacy should be.
Roosevelt and his circle of intimates believed that America’s paramount concern in East
Asia was the maintenance of a balance of power in which no single power or combination
of powers would be permitted to dominate the Asian continents ' Wilson, on the other
hand, argued that it should be the proliferation of democratic principles and practices, or
the effective Americanization of the region. Although Wilson never rejected power
politics out of hand, including the resort to war as an instrument of national policy,52 he
reﬁlsed to believe that Roosevelt’s approach to international relations would ever produce
a more progressive world order because of its association with militarism and navalism.
Wilson reminded his audiences that it was America’s “high ideals,” or “[its] love of

liberty and the ambition to show other nations the road to happiness and how to be rid of

 

51 Roosevelt’s policies in East Asia have been the subject of a number of ﬁne monographs. See, for
example, Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of A merica to World Power (Baltimore and
London, 1956, 1984), 172-334; Raymond A. Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan (Seattle and London,
1967); David H. Burton, Theodore Roosevelt: Conﬁdent Imperialist (Philadelphia, 1968), 58-131; Oscar
M. Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, [897-1909 (Quezon City, P1, 1970); and Lewis L.
Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence, KS, 1991), 73-99, 173-195.

52 See Frederick S. Calhoun’s insightful treatment of this question in, Power and Principle: Armed
Intervention in Wilsonian Foreign Policy (Kent, OH, 1986).

122

 

tyranny and injustice,” that constituted the source of American great-power status, not the
nation’s “practical aptitudes.” Only steady progress towards achieving an open and
democratic world based on American values and institutions could ensure international
tranquility and stability in the long term.53

Wilson, alarmed by the prospect of China and the rest of the Asian continent
becoming partitioned like Aﬁica, criticized the great power scramble for East Asia as
unenlightened and inefficient, at least in the sense that such scrambles required the
maintenance of a large military and naval presence in the region. In his mind, such
imperialist behavior failed to distinguish between progressive and regressive inﬂuences, a
fact that even Britain had failed to understand when staking out its imperialist interests in
Aﬁica after the Treaty of Berlin?4 Wilson pointed to the growing power of czarist Russia
in East Asia after 1895 to illustrate his point. China’s crushing defeat in its war with
Japan opened the door for “autocratic Russia” to become a keen competitor with the
“democratic powers” (the United States and Britain) for inﬂuence in northeast Asia.
Wilson warned that a “Russian-dominated Chinese Empire,” based on “policies of
exclusiveness and a tradition of irresponsible authority,” not only threatened to limit or
even eliminate valuable American commercial opportunities in the so-called “China
market,” but “the Slav” also posed a signiﬁcant threat to the presence of Anglo-Saxon

civilization in the region. If left unchecked, Wilson warned, the world would soon be

 

53 Wilson, Address, “The Statesmanship of Letters,” November 5, 1903, PWW, XV, 41. See also,
Wilson, “Americanism,” December 7, 1900, ibid., XII, 42-44; “The Ideals of America,” December 26,
1901, ibid., 211-213; and Address, “This is True Patriotism,” February 17, 1904, ibid., XV, 169-173.

54 Wilson, “Government Under the Constitution,” ca. June 26, 1893, ibid., VIII, 254-270, and
Untitled Memorandum for an Interview, ca. December 18, 1895, ibid., IX, 365-366.

123

conﬁonted with “another Caesar or Napoleon” on the Eurasian continent.55

Wilson argued that the United States should do all it could to prevent China from
being absorbed into the already vast Russian empire. He did not believe, however, that an
increase in the American navy’s presence in the region or the establishment of naval
stations along the Asian littoral would achieve the desired end. Instead, it was much
better to open “the stagnant civilizations of the East” and redeem them with the
benevolent and uplifting blessings of American civilization. To this end, Wilson endorsed
the “Open Door” policy, promulgated by the United States in two unilateral declarations
to the powers in 1899 and 1900, demanding equal access for American and other foreign
nationals to markets in an undivided China. Secretary of State John Hay’s “Open Door
Notes” to the powers expressed well the United States’ twin aims in China of upholding
the principle of unfettered access to markets within the powers’ respective spheres of
inﬂuence (September 1899) and preserving China’s territorial and administrative integrity

following the Boxer Rebellion (July 1900).56 In keeping the door open in northeast Asia,

 

55 Wilson, Address, “Americanism,” February 27, 1901, ibid., XII, 98-99. Quotation on 99. For
Wilson and the Russian menace in northeast Asia, see Wilson, “The Theory of Organization,” November 2,
1898, PW W, XI, 6; “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., XII, 18-19; and “Our Elastic
Constitution,” January 28, 1904, ibid., XV, 143. For the Russo-American rivalry in northeast Asia before
the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), see Paul A. Varg, The Making of a Myth: The United States and
China, [897-1912 (East Lansing, 1968), 58-71; Michael H. Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door:
Manchuria in Chinese-American Relations, 1895-1911 (New Haven and London, 1973), 53-85; and
Warren 1. Cohen, America ’3 Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations 3rd edition (New
York, 1990), 50-53.

56 The ﬁrst “Open Door Note” is located in Memorandum, John Hay to Joseph H. Choate,
September 6, 1899, in US. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter F RUS],
1899 (Washington, DC, 1900), 131-133. The second “Open Door Note” is located in John Hay, Circular to
the Powers, July 3, 1900, in F RUS, 1900 (Washington, DC, 1901), 299. For the events surrounding their
promulgation, see William H. Becker, “1899-1920: America Adjusts to World Power,” in William H.
Becker and Samuel F. Wells, Jr., eds., Economics and World Power: An Assessment of American
Diplomacy Since 1789 (New York, 1984), 173-223; Kenton J. Clymer, John Hay: The Gentleman as
Diplomat (Ann Arbor, MI, 1975), 143-156; and Varg, The Making of 0 Myth, 24-26.

124

Wilson told his audiences, the United States could begin to “play its part, and a leading
part at that,” in “moderating the export of European standards to the East.” Wilson, as did
many Americans, proved utterly naive about what the United States could actually hope
to accomplish with its “Open Door” policy in China. Nevertheless, he delighted in the
fact that America’s redemptive mission, reafﬁrmed by the war with Spain, bound the
nation to such a course of action in East Asia.57

Later, in a public address on the relationship between the Constitution and
American foreign policy, Wilson pointed to the Senate’s ratiﬁcation (December 1903) of
a Sino-American commercial treaty as “clear evidence” of the beneﬁts of “Americanism”
in northeast Asia. The commercial treaty, much broader in scope than the title implied,
had been concluded in October 1903 between the United States and China in spite of the
ill will in Beijing regarding Chinese exclusion laws in America. The agreement extended
certain rights to American citizens in China and contained an article ensuring
comprehensive protection for missionaries and their converts. The treaty also addressed
tariff questions, including the regressive likin (a tax on commerce) that was to be
abolished, mining regulations, protection of patents, copyrights and trademarks. It also
called for the creation of a uniform national currency, the reform of the Chinese judicial
system, and the prohibition of the importation of morphine and other addictive narcotics

into Chinese cities.58 Most importantly, Wilson argued, the Manchurian cities of Mukden

 

57 Wilson, Address, “Americanism,” February 27, 1901, PW W, XII, 99. See also, Wilson, Citation
for an Honorary Degree, “John Hay,” October 20, 1900, ibid., 28-29.

58 The text of the treaty is located in FRUS, 1903 (Washington, DC, 1904), 91-1 19. See also, New
York Times, December 19, 1903, which described the treaty as “the most important convention made by the
United States with any Oriental country.” According to several scholars, the Chinese understood that they
were offering major concessions to the United States regarding potential modiﬁcation of Chinese exclusion

125

and Antung were to be opened to American residence, trade, and “the free ﬂow of
American ideas.” Wilson declared that the agreement marked an important milestone in
progressive reform in northeast Asia which, in turn, bolstered China’s ability to resist
further Russian encroachments into Manchuria: “We hear that a door is going to shut in
Manchuria, and we slapped a wedge in it so it could not while everybody else among the
nations waited to hear it slam.” Wilson also claimed that America’s new assertive but
disinterested role in China, as represented by the Sino-American commercial treaty, had
given “foreign statesmen pause” because they now understood that Americans were
serious about redeeming the region: “Now, we so conﬁdently walk into complicated
situations and do what occurs to us. . . . We are a sort of pure air blowing in world
politics, destroying illusions and cleansing places of morbid miasmatic gases.”59
Wilson’s center of attention in East Asia, however, did not focus on China. While
many contemporary American elites and subsequent scholars viewed China as a tabula
rasa for progressivism abroad, Wilson argued that it would be in the Philippine Islands,
as a dependency of the United States, where America’s regenerative efforts in East Asia
would be felt ﬁrst. More than anywhere else in the region, it would be in these Islands
that America’s image would be remade and the “moral basis” of American foreign policy

established and vindicated for the rest of the world to observe. By ﬁrlﬁlling its obligation

to the Filipino people, Wilson declared, the United States could then “patent to all the

 

laws in America, but signed the treaty any way in the hope -— never to be realized - of securing American
assistance in moderating Russian ambitions in Manchuria. Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door, 68-
76; Clymer, John Hay, 151-153; and Delber L. McKee, Chinese Exclusion versus the Open Door Policy,
1900-1906: Clashes Over China Policy in the Roosevelt Era (Detroit, 1977), 15-27.

59 Wilson, Address, “Our Elastic Constitution,” January 28, 1904, PWW, XV, 142-143. Quotations
on 143.

126

world” Burke’s “spoken but forgotten truths” about how societies acquire liberty and

democracy.60

“A Purple Garment for Their Nakedness?”
Wilson believed that much of the focus and energy of the “great debate” on empire in the
United States was misplaced. For him, the central issue of the Philippine question was not
whether or not the United States should have acquired the Islands, a topic about which
much was said and written during the “great debate.” Months before McKinley decided to
annex the Archipelago,6| Wilson had already reached the conclusion that acquisition of
the Philippines was a fait accompli that could not be undone without damaging the
nation’s honor.62 He argued that the American people, particularly the anti-imperialists,
should cease their unending debate about the right and wrong of acquiring an overseas
empire and concentrate instead on the chief question confronting the United States as a
colonial power, that is, how to tutor “immature peoples” in the art of self-govemment.

Although the United States proposed to grant some measure of self-govemment

 

60 Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” ca. October I, 1900, ibid., XII, 19, and “The ldeals of
America,” December 26, 1901, ibid., 21 1-213.

6' Although the documentary record is incomplete, the best surviving evidence suggests that
McKinley did not ﬁnally decide to annex the entire Philippine archipelago until late October 1898. Before
that time, the president supported only the cession of “a port and the necessary appurtenances selected by
the United States” (June 1898), and then later, the entire island of Luzon (July 1898). On October 25,
McKinley ﬁnally instructed Secretary Hay to cable the American peace commissioners in Paris that “the
acceptance of the cession of Luzon alone, having the rest of the Islands subject to Spanish rule, can not be
justiﬁed on political, commercial or humanitarian grounds. The cession must be of the whole archipelago or
none. The latter is wholly inadmissible and the former must therefore be required.” Cable, William Day to
John Hay, June 3, 1898, Papers of John Basset! Moore, Box 192; McKinley, Personal Memorandum, July
26, 1898, McKinley Papers, series 1, reel 4; Telegram, Hay to Day, July 28, 1898, ibid.; Memorandum,
Day to the Duke of Alrnodovar del Rio, July 30, 1898, ibid.; and Memorandum, McKinley to Hay, October
25, 1898, FRUS, 1898 (Washington, DC, 1899), 931-935.

62 Wilson, “What Ought We to Do?,” ca. August 1, 1898, PWW, x, 575.

127

to the Filipino people under the provision of the Treaty of Paris, Wilson worried that
policy makers in Washington did not know how to go about it. In a letter to Allen
Corwin, a former student, he explained that the intellectual confusion surrounding “the
practical question of democracy” stemmed from the near complete lack of attention
afforded it by scholars. Wilson, in response to Corwin’s inquiry about the Supreme
Court’s deliberations on whether or not the Constitution “followed the ﬂag” to the new
overseas possessions, offered the following rejoinder:
The “Consent of the Governed” is a part of constitutional theory which has, so far,
been developed only or chieﬂy with regard to the adjustment or amendment of
established systems of government. Its treatment with regard to the affairs of
politically undeveloped races, which have not yet learned the rudiments of order
and self-control, has received next to no attention. . . . I shall have to tackle the
problem myself more formally than I have yet tackled it.63
How did the nation propose to accomplish its duty in the Philippines? “This we
shall do,” Wilson wrote in 1899, “not by giving them out of hand our codes of political
morality or our methods of political action, the generous gifts of complete individual
liberty or the full-fangled institutions of American government, -- a purple garment for
their nakedness, -- for these things are not blessings, but a curse, to undeveloped peoples,
still in the childhood of their political growth.” Rather, the United States would ﬁrlﬁll its
duty in the Philippines by providing a colonial government that “shall moralize them by
being itself moral, elevate and steady them by being itself pure and steadfast, inducting

them into the rudiments of justice and freedom.” Filipinos, Wilson reasoned, needed the

aid of American political character and the spirit of disinterested service in their

 

63 Letter, Wilson to Allen w. Corwin [Princeton, Class of 1895], September 10, 1900, ibid., xr,
573. Concern about the general ignorance of how to cultivate democracy in areas inhabited by “immature
peoples” had, in part, informed Wilson’s efforts to establish a chair of “Colonial Politics” at Princeton in
1899-1900.

128

preparation for nationhood, not the premature extension of American democratic
institutions and practices. Only after Filipinos had acquired “civic manhood,” a process
requiring generations of Slow maturation, could they then govern themselves as a free
people in an independent nation.64

Wilson argued that American colonial policy in the Philippines should concentrate
on creating conditions in the Islands that would be conducive to the establishment and
growth of “civic manhood,” the moral basis of self-govemment, among Filipinos. This
task required the United States to identify all attitudes, customs, and institutions in the
Philippine political and cultural landscape that might impede the development of a
democratic spirit among the Filipino people. For Wilson, cultivating democracy in the
Philippines, where he saw a parallel to frontier conditions, would require American “acts
of redemption,” or purging the Filipino cultural and political environment of its many
vices and iniquities in order to pave the way for democracy. These acts, he argued, could
not be accomplished by mere example. They would require the supervision of men with
mature “civic manhood” — that is, Anglo-Saxon Protestants nurtured for generations in
democracy. Thus, the entire solution to the Philippine question “lay, less in our methods
than in our temper. We must govern as those who learn; and they must obey as those who
are in tutelage. They are children and we are men in these deep matters of justice and
government.”65

In his understanding of Filipino deﬁciencies, Wilson proved shortsighted and

stubborn. He ascribed the manifold problems the United States would face in

 

64 Wilson, “Democracy and Efﬁciency,” ca. October I, 1900, ibid., XII, 19.

65 Ibid., 14-15, 19. Quotation on 19.

129

institutionalizing the rule of law in the Philippines to the racial character of the
predominant Malay stock. Although Wilson relegated Malays above Africans and African
Americans on the racial ladder, he believed that most Filipinos were devoid of virtue and
mature character. Malays, according to Wilson, were superstitious, self-interested,
unprincipled liars and thieves. Some of these deﬁciencies in character, he maintained,
were the products of having been colonized for centuries by an inferior Spanish
civilization that inculcated few virtues and many vices among its subjects:
No people can form a community or be wisely subjected to common forms of
government who are as diverse and heterogeneous as the people of the Philippine
Islands. . . . They are of many races, many stages of development, economically,
socially, politically disintegrate, without community of feeling because without
community of life, contrasted alike in experience and in habit, have nothing in
common except that they have lived for hundreds of years together under a
government which held them always where they were when it ﬁrst arrested their
development.66
Only the Ottoman empire surpassed that of the Spanish in “miseducating [sic] its
subjects.”67 Wilson argued that one did not have to look far to see that Filipinos bore the
scars of colonial subjugation, especially a weak political character and degraded sense of
morality which ran counter to the prerequisite of “civic manhood.” Like all other
“immature races,” Wilson surmised, Filipinos did not possess the political character or
experience necessary to govern themselves.68

Wilson chided anti-imperialists and Filipino independistas who argued that the

Philippine people should be awarded home rule or complete independence right away. It

 

66 Wilson, “The ldeals of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid., 224.

67 Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” ca. October 1, 1900, ibid., 8. See also, Address, “The
Statesmanship of Letters,” November 5, 1903, ibid., XV, 41 .

68 Ibid., and Wilson, “The Ideals of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid., 220-222.

130

would be useless, he said, to extend to them American codes of political morality,
methods of political action, or democratic institutions without ﬁrst preparing them for it.
The apparatus of self-govemment had to be preceded ﬁrst by the development of
character. In Wilson’s view, American sovereignty in the Philippines did not restrict
Filipino freedom, but provided the basis for it. Premature separation, severing the bonds
too soon, would not make Filipinos free, but would render the Philippines “a rudderless
boat adrift.” Wilson declared that Filipino resistance to American rule constituted a direct
challenge to “the entire mystique of manifest destiny” upon which two centuries of
American expansion and democratic growth had rested. America’s was a proven,
“reliable democracy.” For Filipinos to attempt to break away in insurrection before they
had been adequately prepared for self-govemment invited anarchy, not democracy.69
Because America’s status as a great power and its mission as the redeemer nation
hung in the balance, Wilson never wavered in his support of the Philippine War. Yet, he
remained critical of reports of extreme brutality and censorship of the press in the
Philippines. In an address called “Self-Govemment,” Wilson, in reference to the arrny’s
efforts to censor the press’s coverage of the war, insisted that Washington should not
pursue its policies in secret. The very guarantee of popular government lay in publicity, in
the public’s faith in and knowledge of the govemment’s present and future attitudes and
actions. He criticized the military policy of censorship as unwarranted in that it was
inconsistent with every principle of self-govemment in the American democratic
experience. This was hardly the way to begin the process of regenerating Filipino

institutions and attitudes. Wilson offered American colonial authorities a caveat: if the

 

69 Wilson, Address, “Americanism,” February 27, 1901, ibid., 98-99.

131

United States failed in the Philippines, then it would fail in the rest of the world.70

Yet, despite his concerns about brutality and censorship, Wilson made it clear that
the United States could hardly afford to lose the war in the Philippines. Sounding more
like John Foster Dulles’ expositions on the critical nature of the domino theory in Cold
War strategy than Burke’s reﬂections on the excesses of the French Revolution, Wilson
warned that “Aguinaldo’s Insurrection” menaced the development of American-style
democracy not only in the Philippines, but also throughout East Asia. If successful, the
insurrection threatened to become the harbinger for the introduction of the radical and
“unproven” French vision of democracy in the region. Its spread, therefore, had to be
contained and rooted out before it destroyed the prospects of “genuine democracy” in
East Asia. Wilson also warned that if American colonial authorities allowed the
Philippine War to devolve into a long, violent war of attrition, then America’s credibility
as a disinterested power in the region and the world would suffer. He, therefore, viewed a
quick and decisive conclusion to the Philippine insurrection as imperative.7|

Wilson labeled the ideology of the Philippine Revolution as radical and
misguided. He offered as evidence of Filipino political immaturity the fact that leaders of
the Katipunan, the chief revolutionary organization, had based their constitutional ideas
upon the precedents set in Latin America in the early nineteenth century.72 Only the
United States, Wilson explained in a public lecture at Princeton, could teach Filipinos “to

love order and instinctively yield to it;” only the United States could give them discipline

 

70 Wilson, “Self-Govemment,” December 13, 1900, ibid., 46-48.

7‘ Wilson, “The ldeals of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid., XII, 217.

132

necessary for the attainment of the true and lasting form of freedom.”73 The only hope for
democracy in the Philippines required Filipino insurrectos and their American
sympathizers [the anti-imperialists] to abandon French revolutionary ideology and
embrace the reality that, “The consent of the Filipinos and the consent of the American
colonists to government . . . are radically different things.”74 As for the Philippine
insurrection, Wilson referred to it as an unfortunate movement in which the vast majority
of Filipino peasants had been duped by a few Tagalog elites who successfully cajoled
them into rebellion. Although their poor political training prevented them from realizing
it, Filipinos needed American redemption.75
It was in this context that Wilson rejected the popular image of General Emilio
Aguinaldo, the young president of the Philippine Republic, as “the Philippine George
Washington.” He denied that Filipino insurrectos were ﬁghting their American
Revolution. In July 1899, Mrs. Wilson wrote her husband of her attendance at an
“illustrated lecture on the Phillipines [sic] . . . at the most aristocratic church in Chicago.”
She recounted how a portrait of Aguinaldo, dressed like George Washington, received
wild applause from the congregation while that of Dewey, dressed in the uniform of an

eighteenth-century British admiral, received only silent scorn. Wilson sent a curt reply to

his wife, branding the congregation “foolish and ignorant.” Describing Aguinaldo as a

 

72 G. F. Zaide, Philippine Constitutional History (Manila, 1970), 86.
73 Wilson, “Freedom,” February 23, 1900, PWW, X], 439.
7" Letter, Wilson to Allen W. Corwin, September 10, 1900, ibid., 573.

75 Wilson, “Self-Govemment,” December 13, 1900, ibid., XII, 46-48; “Americanism,” February
27, 1901, ibid., 98-99; and Untitled Address, May 3, 1902, ibid., 359-363

133

“subtile youth,” Wilson seemed to take offense to Aguinaldo being likened to the more
mature and statesmanlike Washington.76 In “The Ideals of America,” he wrote that
Aguinaldo seemed more like Napoleon, “a little dictator” seeking power at the expense of
the people. The Philippine insurrection then, in its “leaderless excesses,” seemed more
like the French Revolution. Like France, Wilson contended, the Philippines were quickly
devolving into “a nation frenzied, distempered, seeking it knew not what, — a nation
which poured its best blood out in vain sacriﬁce, which cried of liberty and self-
govemment until the heavens rang and yet ran straight and swift to anarchy.”77
Thus, Wilson counseled his audiences that the only appropriate way to understand
the Philippine war was to view it in the manner that Burke had looked upon the French
Revolution in the late eighteenth-century. American anti-imperialists should suspend their
support of Aguinaldo’s government in Malolos until they had learned how liberty was to
be combined with government, public force and the maintenance of an army, the
protection of property, ﬁscal stability, social and civil manners, and religious freedom.
Wilson posited that if it had taken France over a century to effect the combination it
originally sought in the 17905, then the Philippines could not possibly be prepared for
complete self-govemment after centuries of corrupt and ineffective colonial rule by

Spain.78 Even in England, many generations of slow, patient political development had

been required before self-govemment could take hold. Wilson asserted that although the

 

7" Letters, Ellen A. Wilson to Wilson, July 13, 1899, ibid., x1, 167-168, and Wilson to Ellen A.
Wilson, July 23, 1899, ibid., 183-186.

77 Wilson, “The ldeals of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid., XII, 217.

78 Ibid., 217-218.

134

origins of English local self-govemment could be traced to the Magna Carta in 1215,
complete self-govemment remained elusive in England until 1832 when reforms
transformed the House of Commons into a model of representative government. The
Filipino people, he declared, should not hope to achieve self-govemment any sooner or in
any other manner.79
Wilson declared that much of the confusion in the United States and the
Philippines about the American military presence in the Islands derived from a lack of
understanding of what America’s mission in the Archipelago entailed. He therefore
determined to set the American and Filipino peoples straight on the matter. In numerous
public speeches and essays, Wilson pleaded for patience with respect to settlement of the
Philippine question, declaring that much more was at stake for the United States than
many people seemed to realize. Foremost, America’s credibility as a leader in
proliferating the correct sort of liberty throughout the world, which he described as the
cornerstone of America’s salvation in a hostile international environment, depended in
large part on the establishment of a benevolent colonial policy in the Philippines that
successfully cultivated democratic principles and practices. The American people should
realize that affairs in the Philippines could not be settled quickly because “the natives are
still too inexperienced to undertake to carry on a government so intricate as that with
which we govern ourselves.” To pull out of the Archipelago too soon would yield
disastrous consequences for the United States in the region and in the world because it

would signal that Americans had lost faith in the correct type of liberty. But when would

American tutelage in the Philippines end? Wilson argued that day lay in the distant future.

 

7’ Ibid.

135

He maintained that Americans would “instinctively know,” as “apostles of liberty and
self-govemment” when to make the separation. The decision, however, should not be left
to the Filipinos to decide. In one estimate at the turn of the century, Wilson stated that it
would take at least three or four generations of diligent effort on the part of the Filipino
people before they would be prepared for self-govemment, and much longer before they
were capable of self-determination and independence.80
In the meantime, Filipinos were to undergo a long and arduous process of national
development. Wilson outlined the basic elements of making a nation in the Philippines.
First and foremost, the Filipino people, plagued by tribalism and geographical isolation,
needed to be “knit together” into a homogeneous, organic community. This community
would gradually come to understand the balance between authority and ﬁ'eedom at the
individual and societal levels. Universal education, Wilson wrote in “The Ideals of
America,” provided the key to melding such a diverse people and culture together. As in
the United States, the teacher in the Philippines would play a crucial role in shaping the
future nation’s political and economic leaders by inculcating “civic manhood” within
them and acquainting them with the character and Spirit of democratic institutions. Just as
importantly, Wilson argued that education was not enough: “Books could but set the
mind free, can but give it the freedom of the world of thought.” For Filipinos to become
schooled in the practical affairs of democracy, they must be permitted to participate in the
day-to-day workings of their government. This contact with their polity, Wilson believed,

if intelligently utilized, would transform Filipinos into citizens whose politics and ethics

would be informed by “civic manhood.” Participation in the insular government, Wilson

 

8° Wilson, “Americanism,” February 27, 1901, ibid., 98-99.

136

concluded, was critical if Filipinos were to govern their own affairs some day. “And once
they accepted the compulsions of American character and the standards of life, they
would be entitled to partnership with us, and they Shall have it.” Finally, Wilson wrote, if
Filipinos remained true to the course the United States set out for them, then they would

have “an advantage we did not have until our hard journey was more than half made.”81

“The Good Citizen’s Burden”
Between 1902 and 1912, Wilson took up what one of his colleague’s called the “Good
Citizen’s Burden.”82 Although Wilson became preoccupied with the responsibilities
associated with being president of Princeton (1902-1910) and then governor of New
Jersey (1910-1912), he remained very much in demand as a popular lecturer on political
issues of the day. In that capacity, Wilson tried to keep the Philippine question in front of
the public with speeches and several essays. Though he was not nearly as proliﬁc in his
writing or as available for public lectures, Wilson continued to speak about what he
considered the key points in “Americanism” regarding America’s responsibilities in the
Philippines and the world throughout this period. Although it is not possible to discern
from his remarks any real concern about the speciﬁcs of the colonial administrative
apparatus that the United States established in the Islands after 1898, it is clear that be
consistently held that the nation’s primary task in the Philippines was to prepare the

Filipino people for self-govemment. As long as the United States remained true to its

 

81 Wilson, “The Ideals of America,” December 26, 1901, ibid., 222, and “Democracy and
Efficiency,” ca. October 1, I900, ibid., I4-15.

32 Letter, Henry C. Gollan to Wilson, November 10, I910, ibid., xxn, 14.

137

purpose in the Islands, Wilson wrote, then the other nations of the world would know
America as its true self, a disinterested power.83

Although Wilson continued to emphasize the important themes of pursuing only
gradual progressive democratic development from the top down in the Philippines, there
were two new emphases in his discussion of the Philippine question. First, on April 16,
1906, in an address on Thomas Jefferson, Wilson told an attentive New York audience
that he no longer viewed the Philippines as America’s safety valve. Although he argued
that distance and climate were the main culprits that prevented the Islands from
developing into an outlet for American surplus goods, population and energy, Wilson
cited yet another reason that would assume more importance in his political thought as he
began to move into national politics.84

Beginning in 1906, Wilson emerged as an important critic of the Republican
administration in the Philippines. Though he remained convinced that the United States
had no recourse but to annex the Islands in 1898, Wilson chided Republicans for not
subordinating American material interests in the Philippines to the far more critical
mission of preparing Filipinos for self-govemment. To direct policy in the Philippines in
such a manner that American interests are served rather than those of the Filipino people,

Wilson argued, threatened America’s integrity as a disinterested power in the world. This

new Republican policy in the Philippines, a manifestation of the emerging foreign policy

 

83 Wilson’s major addresses on the Philippine question during this period include the following:
Wilson, Untitled Address, February 3, 1906, PWW, XVI, 292-299; Untitled Address, February 23, 1906,
ibid., 315-318; Address, “Americanism,” March 22, 1906, ibid., 340-341; Address, “Thomas Jefferson,”
April 16, 1906, ibid., 362-369; Presidential Address, November 29, 1907, ibid., XVII, 529-545; and
Treatise, “Constitutional Government in the United States,” March 24, 1908, ibid., XVIII, 69-216.

8" Wilson, Address, “Thomas Jefferson,” April 16, l906, ibid., xvr, 362-369.

138

known as “dollar diplomacy,” compelled Wilson to renounce the Islands as America’s
outlet. Although “dollar diplomacy” did not come into full fruition until the Taft
administration (1909-1913), Wilson opposed Republican policies that subordinated
Filipino national development to American business interests in the Philippines as early
as 1906. Although Wilson did not abandon the idea that the United States needed to
continue its occupation of the Philippines in order to continue its mission of guiding
Filipinos to nationhood, thereafter, however, he never spoke of the Philippines as
America’s frontier, except in the context of ending that part of America’s emerging
“special relationship” with the Islands.85

In some ways, Wilson’s last years at Princeton were years of disappointment and
decline. As he moved into his ﬁfties after 1905 he had to come to grips with the
possibility of retiring from Princeton without accomplishing many of his goals.86 The
opportunity to enter politics in the winter of 1909-1910 as an aspirant for the
gubernatorial nomination of the Democratic party in New Jersey presented Wilson with
what must have seemed like a godsend, another avenue for implementing the ideas he had
spent a lifetime developing. It was at this time, some of his biographers claim, that
Wilson, faced with the necessity of positioning words and ideas to please rather than put
off thousands of voters, abandoned all commitment to any basic set of issues. Beginning
with Wilson’s repudiation of the Philippines as America’s safety valve as early as 1906

and ending with his electrifying statement in December 1912 that he expected the United

 

8’ Ibid.

“6 Saunders, In Search of Woodrow Wilson, 3139; Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, 312404; Mulder,
Woodrow Wilson, 187-228; and Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 155-204.

139

States to soon abandon its frontier in the western Paciﬁc, some historians have
emphasized these episodes to conﬁrm the picture of Wilson as an opportunistic politician
seeking election as a Democrat.87

For these scholars, Wilson rendered his perspective on the Philippine question as
expendable, a necessary move to bring his views into line with those of the Democratic
Party. Another more considered perspective, however, is that Wilson saw the potential of
the political arena to be a more immediate and more effective forum for his ideas to
create meaningﬁrl change at home and abroad. The presidential campaign of 1912
illuminates this perspective. Wilson refashioned the position of the Democratic Party on
the Philippine question to align more closely with his evolving understanding of what

America’s role in the Philippines Should be.

 

87 Saunders, In Search of Woodrow Wilson, 41-51, and Bell, Righteous Conquest, 29-44.

140

Chapter Four
Return to First Principles

Scholars generally claim that Wilson said very little about foreign affairs during the
presidential campaign of 1912.1 Yet, it is clear that in a number of campaign speeches
Wilson continued his castigation of the Taft administration’s “dollar diplomacy” and
ﬁnancial imperialism. “We must,” he announced at a Democratic rally in early
November, “shape our course of action by the maxims of justice and liberality and good
will, think of the progress of mankind rather than of the progress of this or that
investment, of the protection of American honor and the advancement of American ideals
rather than always of American contracts, and lift our diplomacy to the levels of what the
best minds have planned for mankind.” Although Wilson assumed that free trade
beneﬁted all concerned, he called for the subordination of the pursuit of material wealth
to the “higher goal . . . [of] serving mankind in humanity and justice.” To that end, he
pledged to “redeem” American foreign and economic policy by rooting out all vestiges of
“dollar diplomacy,” including its Republican supporters, wherever he found them.2

Wilson repeated this theme in the ﬁrst of two addresses at a daylong event in
Staunton, Virginia (his birthplace) commemorating his ﬁfty-sixth birthday on December
28. Standing on the steps of the main building of the Mary Baldwin Seminary, Wilson

told a cheering audience “the world was facing the future with a new attitude and a new

 

I Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 228-263; Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive
Era, 1910-1917 (New York, 1954), 1-24; and Kendrick A. Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson
(Lawrence, 1992), 15-30.

2 Wilson, Message to Democratic Rallies, November 2, 1912, PW W, XXV, 502-503. See also,
Wilson, “A Non-Partisan Talk to the Commercial Club of Omaha,” October 5, I912, ibid., 341.

141

outlook upon the opportunities of life? The United States in the early twentieth century,
he said, had begun to assume the attitude it possessed at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, a time when “humanity, the rank and ﬁle of men, . . [was] served, and honestly
served, by the institutions of government.” Wilson declared that the recent breath of fresh
air into the American polity [ie, his election as president] had occurred not a moment too
soon because in recent years too many businessmen had “got drunk with the mere wine of
prosperity, and for a little while forgot that our mission was not to pile up great wealth,
but to serve mankind in humanity and justice.” So now, he explained, “we are learning
again that the service of humanity is the best business of mankind,” and that only by
serving the world in a disinterested manner could the United States achieve for itself “the
honors of the world.” Wilson put American businessmen on notice: “They are not going
to be allowed to make money except for a quid pro quo, that they must render a service or
get nothing.” Businessmen and their political allies must be reminded, “It is service that
digniﬁes, and service only.”3
Throughout the presidential campaign of 1912, Wilson continued his attacks on
the Taft administration’s “dollar diplomacy.” He viewed it as an anathema to the spread
of American-style democracy in the world because it called into question America’s
position and reputation as a disinterested power. Following his election to the presidency,
Wilson sought to make good his campaign promise and began “rehabilitating” America’s
relations with the rest of the world. Although passage of his “New Freedom” legislative
agenda of domestic reform remained his principal focus, Wilson moved to disassociate

the United States from “dollar diplomacy” in Mexico, Latin America, China, and the

 

3 Wilson, Untitled Address, December 28, I912, ibid., 626-632.

142

 

Philippines. While historians have explained his successes and failures in East Asia and
the Western Hemisphere in this effort, an assessment of the formation of Wilson’s

Philippine policy in 1912 and 1913 remains incomplete.

In Whose Image?

 

Although foreign affairs did not ﬁgure prominently in the presidential election of 1912,
voters were offered several distinct options regarding the Philippine question. Each of
these alternatives not only spoke to the question of Philippine independence, but involved
different approaches to nation building. Because of the split between Taft and Roosevelt
in the Republican Party and the existence of considerable disaffection among moderate
and conservative Democrats regarding the predominance since 1896 of William Jennings
Bryan and the agrarian wing in the Democratic Party, the political platforms of the parties
reﬂected a wider range of perspectives on the key issues of the election. As a result,
candidates possessed greater latitude in Shaping their respective party’s plank regarding
the Philippine question than ever before.

Republicans, standing pat on Taft’s retentionism, declared in their party platform
that America’s “special relationship” with the Filipino people should remain insulated
from partisan politics. Supported by the colonial officers of the Bureau of Insular Affairs
(BIA), the part of the War Department responsible for administering the Islands,
Republicans emphasized the need for continuity in America’s Philippine policy.4 Taft, the

Republican incumbent, was hardly ambivalent on the Philippine question. Although Taft

 

4 Republican National Committee, Republican Textbook 1912 (New York, 1912), 276.

143

had originally opposed annexation of the Philippines in 1898, his service as president of
the Second Philippine Commission (1900), the ﬁrst civil governor of the Islands (1901-
1904), Roosevelt’s secretary of war (1 904-1908) and Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor
as president (1909-1913), earned him the reputation as America’s foremost authority on
Philippine affairs. While on the campaign trail to win re-election, Taft and his circle of
supporters boasted that he possessed more intimate knowledge of the Philippines than any
other “living individual?” But while Taft had coined the phrase “the Philippines for the
Filipinos,” had worked diligently to inaugurate an “era of good feelings and cooperation”
in the Islands following the devastating Philippine War, and had waged a successful
political campaign to secure legislation authorizing the creation of the Filipino Assembly,
all facts he wanted propagated during the election campaign, his perspective on Filipino
self-govemment and independence mirrored that of the most staunch retentionist who
desired holding on to the Philippines indeﬁnitely. To him, several generations of patient
effort on the part of both American insular authorities and Filipino elites were required
before Filipino self-govemment, much less complete independence, could become
anything more than academic.6

Throughout the so-called “Taft era” in Philippine-American relations, Taft had
consistently adhered to the Republican Party’s unspoken objectives in the Philippines.

First, the United States, emphasizing good American government over Filipino self-

 

5 Letter, William Taft to Horace Taft, December 10, 1912, Papers of William Howard Taft
[hereafter Taft Papers], series 3, reel 126.

6 Oscar Alfonso, “Taft’s Early Views on the Filipinos,” Solidarity IV (June 1969), 52-58, and

Ralph Eldin Minger, William Howard Taft and United States Foreign Policy: The Apprenticeship Years,
1900-1908 (Urbana, IL, 1975), 26-101.

144

government, extended gradually a sort of autonomy to Filipinos by slowly Filipinizing the
insular government from the bottom up. In this way, aspiring Filipino elites would be
afforded some measure of self-govemment, but only in the municipal and provincial
levels of government, the lower ranks of the Philippine Civil Service (PCS), and the
Assembly, the lower chamber of the Philippine Legislature. American insular authorities,
however, would continue their tight hold over the machinery of colonial government by
maintaining a permanent American majority on the Philippine Commission, the upper
house of the Legislature, and by retaining a decisive American presence in the executive
bureaus of the PCS.7

Second, Taﬁ and his Republican successors believed that economic development
of the Philippines must precede political independence. Taft was convinced that without
the creation of a solid economic infrastructure, self-government would quickly degenerate
into either dictatorship or anarchy. W. Cameron Forbes, who served as secretary of
commerce and police (1906-1909) and then as governor general (1909-1913) during the
Taft administration, best exempliﬁes this particular view of nation building in the
Philippines. As far as Forbes was concerned, a free soul meant economic solidarity.
Looking to the future in 1912, he estimated that when the rate of wages in the Philippines
had reached two pesos per day and exports and imports had increased ﬁve times per

capita above that year’s levels, then the Islands might be strong enough to sustain an

 

7 A good treatment of Republican policies in the Philippines between 1900 and 1913 can be found
in, Stanley, A Nation in the Making, 51-176; Brands, Bound to Empire, 60-103; and Glenn Anthony May,
Social Engineering in the Philippines: The Aims, Execution, and Impact of American Colonial Policy,

1 900-1913 (Westport, CT, 1980), 41-73, 129-175.

145

independent government.8

Finally, Republicans, including Taﬁ, refused to address publicly the issue of
Philippine independence, and took particular care to avoid any speciﬁc statement about
the conditions and timing of American withdrawal from the Islands. Taft’s views on
Philippine independence reﬂected those held by the majority of his party and by
retentionists in the United States and the Philippines.9 As early as 1902 he testiﬁed before
a closed hearing of the Senate Committee on Philippine Affairs that complete
independence was not a realistic objective of American policy in the Islands, “at least for
the remainder of the twentieth century.”10 Indeed, the United States should not even
consider the introduction of congressional legislation that held out the promise of
independence. To do so, Taﬁ argued, would precipitate continuous agitation among
Filipinos for immediate separation which, in turn, would undermine American nation-
building programs in the Islands. “My own judgment,” he told the Senate Committee, “is
that the best policy, if a policy is to be declared at all, is to declare the future intention of
the United States to hold the Islands indeﬁnitely, until the people shall show themselves
ﬁt for self-govemment, under a gradually increasing popular government.”ll Popular self-
govemment, however, was not the same thing as independence. Indeed, Taft never

believed it likely that Filipinos would ever gain complete independence. Instead, he

 

8 Cablenews American, February 8, I912.
9 Lewis B. Gleeck, Jr., The Manila Americans, 1901-I964 (Manila, PI, 1974), 1-101.

10 Tait, Conﬁdential Testimony before the US Senate Committee on Philippine Affairs, February
20, 1902, Senate Document No. 33], 57th Congress, 1" Session, 325.

11 Ibid. See also, House Committee on Insular Affairs, Committee Reports, Hearings, and Acts of
Congress Corresponding Thereto [hereafter HCIA, Committee Reports, 1901-1903] 57‘h Congress, 1” and

146

reasoned that if the United States provided stable, efficient government in the Islands,
then Filipinos would eventually recognize that the advantages of continued American
sovereignty — defense against a foreign power, peace and order in the countryside, a
preferential tariff —— outweighed those of independence. prromises to the Filipino people
were to be made, Taft argued, then the United States should promise to extend only
dominion status, or what he described as “quasi-independence,” to the Philippines in the
distant future. '2

Even after his tenure in the insular government Taft continued to offer further
explanation of his views on American nation building in the Philippines and the prospect
of eventual withdrawal. Amidst increasing agitation for independence among Filipino
elites during the Russo-Japanese War, Taft wrote to a colleague in Washington:

The policy of the Administration is the indeﬁnite retention of the Philippine

Islands for the purpose of developing prosperity and the self-governing

capacity of the Filipino people. The policy rests on the conviction that the

people are not now ready for self-govemment, and will not be for a long

time; certainly not for a generation, and probably not for a longer time than

that, and that until they are ready for self-govemment it would be a violation

of trust for the United States to abandon the Islands.13

Taft eventually took his retentionism public but only aﬁer Democrats
secured a majority in the House in the 1910 congressional elections and made
Philippine independence part of their legislative agenda. In an after-dinner address
before the Military Order of the Carabao, an organization of American army

veterans who had fought in various Philippine campaigns since 1898, Taft declared:

 

2"(1 sessions, 1901-1903, 1, 322—323.
'2 HCIA, Committee Reports, 1901—1903, 1, 327.

'3 Letter, Taft to John N. Blair, March 16, 1905, BIA Records, File 364/72.

147

“My judgment is that we are likely to retain the Philippines for a considerable time .
. . we cannot honorably part with them until they are able to have a government in
which due process of law will be observed and able to meet responsibilities toward
all the nations of the world.” Predicting that the colonial bond would actually never
be severed, the president reassured his retentionist-leaning audience, “I am very
certain that as they go on and learn the commercial advantage of their enjoyment of
the markets of the United States, as they appreciate what has come to them under
the guiding hand of the United States, they will not be anxious to have that absolute
separation which may be dangerous to them, and dangerous to all those who are
concerned in the separation.”14

Renegade Republicans, disaffected Democrats and odd others who made up the
Progressive coalition in the election of 1912 offered a second, albeit less uniform,
perspective on the Philippine question. Reﬂecting the diversity of the so-called “Bull
Moose” Party’s rank and ﬁle, members of the Progressive coalition embraced a wide
variety of views on the issue ranging from indeﬁnite retention to immediate separation.
Thus, failing to locate a plank broad enough for all to stand on, the Progressive Party
downplayed the Philippine question in its bid to capture the presidency.”

At ﬁrst glance, the Progressive Party’s catholic approach to the Philippine

question is difficult to comprehend given the fact that most Americans and Filipinos

viewed its presidential candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, as the person most responsible for

 

‘4 Tait, After-Dinner Speech, February 22, 1911, Cablenews-American, February 23, 1911.

15 Progressive National Committee, A Contract with the People (New York, 1912).

148

the American acquisition of the Islands in 1898.16 But Roosevelt proved more ambivalent
on the Philippine question than commonly believed. On the one hand, Roosevelt
contended that Filipinos would be better off if they remained under American tutelage
until democratic institutions and values could take root. He estimated that American
nation building in the Philippines would require at least a century of diligent effort and
considerable investment before Americans could withdraw. On the other hand, Roosevelt
began to speak out in favor of Philippine independence, beginning in 1902 and more
frequently after 1905, but only if independence could be guaranteed by international
treaty.17

Several considerations account for this gradual but decisive shiﬁ in Roosevelt’s
thinking about the Philippine question. First, the experience of the Philippine War in
which the United States resorted to “civilizing Filipinos with a Krag” seriously dampened
Roosevelt’s and the American public’s enthusiasm for holding on to the Philippines. He,
like McKinley, had not bargained for a war that ultimately involved at one time or
another nearly all the units of the US Army and eventually claimed the lives of nearly
4000 Americans and more than 220,000 Filipinos. Sickened by the news of the ruthless

devastation of the Philippine countryside as a result of America’s reconcentration

 

‘6 In explaining how the United States, “like a lady throwing a stone,” aimed at Cuba and hit the
Philippines in 1898, the American public and subsequent historians traditionally emphasized the role played
by Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the navy, in instructing Dewey to prepare to undertake offensive
operations against Spanish naval forces in Manila Bay. Upon the declaration of war, Dewey carried out
Roosevelt’s orders and the Philippines fell to the United States. Variations of this account of how the
United States came to possess an empire in the Philippines persisted in American and Filipino history texts
until the 19705. See Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy revised edition (New York, 1969), 393-394;
Samuel E. Morison, Henry S. Commager and William Leuchtenburg, The Growth of the American Republic
(Boston, 1975), II, 255; and Teodoro A. Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People 5th edition (Quezon City,
PI, 1977), 188-189.

17 Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 49-76.

149

 

strategy, Roosevelt conﬁded to his ﬁ'iend James Cardinal Gibbons, the archbishop of
Baltimore, that he wished Dewey had spared the United States of its burdensome
responsibilities in the Philippines by steaming back to Hong Kong after destroying the
Spanish naval squadron in Manila Bay.18 After the war, the absence of substantial
American ﬁnancial investment in the Philippines compounded by the slow growth of
Philippine-American trade informed Roosevelt’s growing apathy towards the Philippine
question. Even more important in this respect was Japan’s stunning victory over Russia in
1905, an event that prompted American war planners to begin postulating a war between
Japan and the United States over hegemony in the western Paciﬁc. Afterwards, Roosevelt
began to speak more freely of the possibility of an American withdrawal from the
Philippines. He offered his most notorious statement on this issue immediately following
the Japanese-American “war scare” in 1907:

The Philippines form our heel of Achilles. They are all that makes the

present situation with Japan dangerous. . . . Personally I should be glad to

see the Islands made independent, with perhaps some kind of international

guarantee for the preservation of order, or with some warning on our part

that if they did not keep order we would have to interfere again; this among

other reasons because I would rather see this nation ﬁght all her life than to

see her give them up to Japan or any other nation under duress.”
Lest he alienate potential supporters from the Republican ranks at the election polls,

Roosevelt preferred to remain silent on the Philippine question while on the

campaign trail in 1912.

 

18 Letter, Roosevelt to James Cardinal Gibbons, March 22, 1902, in John J. Gallagher, “The
Theodore Roosevelt Letters to Cardinal Gibbons,” The Catholic Historical Review XLIV, No. 4 (January
1959), 440-456.

19 Letter, Roosevelt to Taft, August 2 l , 1907, in Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines,
74-75.

150

Democrats marked out a position distinctly different from those of Republicans
and most Progressives. Reaffirming the Democratic Party’s plank on the Philippine
question since the election of 1900, party leaders characterized American imperialism as
“an inexcusable blunder” which had incurred enormous loss of life and property for both
Americans and Filipinos, rendered the United States a more vulnerable power in Asia,
and laid the nation open to the charge of abandoning the American principles of anti-
colonialism, anti-militarism, and self-govemment based on the “consent of the
governed.” Democrats, therefore, pledged to grant independence to the Philippines as
soon as a stable insular government controlled by Filipinos could be established. The
archipelago’s territorial integrity would be guaranteed by the United States until its
“neutralization” could be arranged by international treaty. To provide adequate insular
defense until the details of neutralization could be worked out, the Democratic platform
stipulated the retention of such territory in the Islands as may be necessary for coaling
stations and naval bases. Apparently, Democrats assumed that they would encounter little
difﬁculty in transforming the Philippines into the “Belgium of Asia” through international
treaty because they offered no alternative plan of insular defense if the neutralization
initiative failed?"

Actually, the Democratic Party’s platform on the Philippine question, adopted on
July 2, 1912 at the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, represented a
compromise between the left-wing members of the party who desired a plank calling for
immediate and complete independence and moderate-conservative Democrats who

sought a plank pledging only eventual independence in the distant future. Originally,

 

20 Democratic National Committee, The Democratic Textbook, 1912 (New York, 1912), 30.

151

Bryan, supported by other western and southern Democrats, had intended to inject the
date of July 4, 1921 into the platform as the date when the United States would withdraw
its sovereignty from the Philippines. House Democrats had proposed this date in their
deliberations of Representative William A. Jones’ (Democrat-Virginia) Philippine
independence bill, known as the ﬁrst Jones bill, which he had introduced on the House
ﬂoor in March 1912. Senator James O’Gorman (Democrat-New York), however, opposed
the idea as “decidedly impractical.” Surveying his party’s losses in the 1900, 1904 and
1908 presidential elections, O’Gorman pointed out that “Republican imperialism” in the
Philippines had hardly served Democratic presidential candidates as a successful
campaign issue. Thus, rather than estrange voters at the polls with such a radical plank, he
thought it wise to replace the pledge to early independence with a plank calling for
eventual independence under American protection. The stage seemed to be set for
Democrats to split once again over the Philippine question.21
The intervention of Manuel Luis Quezon, the young Filipino resident
commissioner who represented Philippine interests in the House, into the emerging
controversy between Bryan and O’Gorman ultimately saved the Democratic Party from a
potentially embarrassing schism. Although Quezon had worked tirelessly since 1910 to
push the Philippine question to the head of the congressional docket, he reportedly
conﬁded in Bryan and Senator John Sharp Williams (Democrat-Mississippi), the

principal author of the party’s national platform, that Filipinos would not object to a

pledge of eventual independence. The Philippine people would be better served, the

 

2' William J. Bryan, A Tale of Two Conventions: Being an Account ofthe Republican and
Democratic National Conventions of June I 912 (New York, 1912), 12-14.

152

resident commissioner contended, if the Democrats adopted a less speciﬁc platform in
order to win the presidential election; afterwards, with a Democrat in the White House
supported by a Democratic majority in Congress, a more speciﬁc date for independence
could be determined in a Philippine independence bill. Bryan bowed to Quezon’s logic
and acquiesced in the adoption of the more open-ended plank concerning Philippine
independence.22

Wilson’s candidacy for the presidential nomination may have been saved by
Quezon’s timely intervention at the Baltimore convention. Wilson had already decided to
side with O’Gorman and other moderate Democrats during the controversy in Baltimore.
He deemed it essential to support the effort to dilute Bryan’s Philippine plank which
promised “guaranteed independence” in eight years time once the Democrats won the
presidency. Wilson still believed Filipinos lacked sufficient cultural homogeneity and
mature political character to govern themselves responsibly. American tutelage, albeit in
a new form to offset the retentionist constituencies then in control of insular affairs,
would have to continue for an unspeciﬁed length of time.23

As it turned out, a number of Democrats, including several prominent veterans of
the anti-imperialist campaign, also supported the effort to “soften” the Philippine plank.
No longer viewing the Philippine question as a burning issue in the Democratic Party,
these dissenters encouraged party leaders at the Baltimore convention to focus on other
problems, including the tariff, the trusts, and militarism. It was along these lines that

David Starr Jordan, one of the most respected veterans of the anti-imperialist movement

 

22 Letter, Charles w. Bryan to Wilson, July 25, 1912, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 29.

23 Letter, Wilson to Oscar Underwood, July 22, 1912, ibid,

153

at the turn of the century, wrote to Wilson just before the opening of the National
Democratic Convention in Baltimore. He pleaded with the New Jersey governor not to
allow his candidacy to become bogged down in “the Philippine quagmire.” Instead,
Jordan argued that the Democratic Party should focus its attention on more important
domestic issues, especially the “elimination of monopoly business” within the American
political economy. As for foreign affairs, Jordan advised that Democrats should work to
empty the State Department of all pro-business forces, especially Secretary Knox.24

Ignoring the pet issues of the agrarian wing of the Democratic Party, however,
was politically dangerous for any Democrat seeking election into the White House in the
ﬁrst decade of the twentieth century. Notwithstanding the “softening” of some anti-
imperialists’ positions on the Philippine question, Wilson certainly would have faced an
uphill battle to secure Bryan’s endorsement for the nomination had Quezon not stepped
into the fray and supported a more moderate plank. Wilson, well aware that he would
have to secure the “Great Commoner’s” blessing if he wanted to be president, had already
laid the foundation for a political rapprochement when he met with Bryan the previous
summer to discuss the key issues of the upcoming presidential campaign. During one of
“the hour-long consultations” at the govemor’s mansion in Trenton, Bryan had produced
a letter written by Wilson in August 1911 declaring, “I do not believe the inhabitants of
the Philippine Islands are prepared for independence. I believe that they should be

prepared for independence by a steadily increasing measure of self-government.”25 Bryan

 

2“ Letter, David 5. Jordan to Wilson, June 25, 1912, ibid., reel 28.

25 Letter, Wilson to Unidentiﬁed Person [William F. McCombs], August 15, 1911, PWW, XXIII,
267.

154

had solicited the letter from Wilson himself by having William F. McCombs, a loyal
partisan within the Democratic Party, send Wilson a list of nineteen questions on various
national issues, including the Philippine question, to which all potential candidates for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 1912 were to provide responses. The query had
been published in The Commoner in July 1911.26 Wilson reportedly stood his ground with
Bryan on the Philippine question. Bryan responded by urging Wilson to read the
Democratic platforms of the 1900, 1904 and 1908 campaigns as well as his much
published speech called “Imperialism” which he had delivered on the occasion of his
acceptance of the Democratic presidential nomination in 1900.27 According to at least one
political biography of Wilson, Bryan made it clear that it was necessary for Wilson to
reconsider his position on Philippine independence, especially if he wanted to be the
Democratic candidate in the 1912 election.28

Actually, it had been Erving Winslow, the long-time secretary of the Anti-
Imperialist League, who had suggested to Bryan that Wilson might be politically
vulnerable on the Philippine question. Winslow had written to Wilson in the spring of

1910, asking him to use his popularity as a public lecturer to “put forward, for

 

26 The Commoner, July 21, 1911, in Paolo E, Coletto, William Jennings Bryan 11: Progressive
Politician and Moral Statesman, 1909-1 915 (Lincoln, NE, 1969), 21 1, and “Mr. Bryan’s List,” Literary
Digest XLlll (July 29, 1911), 156.

27 Following Wilson’s nomination as the Democratic candidate for president at the Baltimore
convention, Bryan instructed his brother Charles, publisher of The Commoner, to send Wilson copies of his
articles and speeches on the Philippine question. Letters, Charles W. Bryan to Wilson, July 25, 1912,
Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 29; William J. Bryan to Wilson, July 26, I912, ibid.; and Wilson to Charles
Bryan, August 5, I912, ibid.

28 Letter, Bryan to Wilson, August 20, 1911, PWW, XXIII, 284. See also, James Kemey, The
Political Education of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1926), 161-166, and Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Road
to the White House (Princeton, 1947), 317-318.

155

continuance until a satisfactory result is attained, the well established Democratic
doctrine that outlying possessions are impossible under the Government of the United
States.” Winslow argued that the anti-imperialist movement in the United States needed
to spare no effort in the next session of Congress to bring the American chapter on
imperialism to a close. Taft, “a believer in permanent colonialism,” had begun the process
of removing the legal barriers in the Philippines preventing the “exploitation and the
control of the [friar] lands by forces that would be inﬂexibly opposed to independence.”
Although Wilson declined Winslow’s invitation to join the ranks of the Anti-Imperialist
League, he requested further information on the League’s position concerning the
Philippine question, especially anything the secretary may have on the friar lands
controversy. Winslow quickly dispatched a copy of his soon-to-be-published essay

”29

“Perverted Philippine Policy as well as copies of Representative John A. Martin’s

speeches on the House ﬂoor condemning the Republican Party’s exploitation of
Philippine resources.30
Wilson, realizing that he did not ﬁt perfectly within the Democratic anti-
imperialist tradition, saw the merits in not elevating the potentially divisive Philippine
question into an important campaign issue. He was well aware from his experience in the
“great debate” on empire at the turn of the century that the Philippine question was a

particularly sensitive issue among southern and western Democrats. These fellow

Democrats had already challenged his nontraditional views on the issue of empire.

 

29 Erving Winslow, “Perverted Philippine Policy,” Buffalo National Monthly 1 (April, 1910), 312-
313.

3° Letters, Winslow to Wilson, March 31, 1910, PWW, xx, 309; Wilson to Winslow, April 1,
1910, ibid., 309n; Winslow to Wilson, April 2, 1910, ibid., 312-313.

156

Wilson knew that to speak out strongly against Philippine independence, raising the
hackles of these strong dissenters prior to the election, would bode ill not only for his
election as the Democratic presidential candidate, but ultimately for the long term

interests of the Philippines.

Ending America’s Frontier in the Philippines
The election of 1912 proved to be an unmitigated disaster for Republicans, who were
split between party regulars and “Bull Moose” progressives. Wilson received 435
electoral college votes compared with 88 for Roosevelt and 8 for Taft. But Wilson was
elected president of the United States with less than forty percent of the popular vote. He
polled 6.3 million votes against the combined Roosevelt-Taft total of 7.6 million. In
Congress, Democrats won 51 of the 96 seats in the Senate and 291 of the 435 House
seats.31 The Philippine question had played a negligible role in the campaign of 1912, as
Wilson’s campaign centered on economic issues. Even the Anti-Imperialist League,
though content with a Democratic victory, acknowledged that precious few voters took
notice of the issue at the polls that November.32 Five weeks after the election, however,
Wilson included a short but electrifying statement about the fate of the Philippines in his
second “Staunton address” (December 28, 1912). The president-elect’s remark that
afternoon suggested to many people in the United States and the Philippines that Wilson

intended to make good on the Democratic party’s pledge to withdraw from the Islands as

 

3‘ Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1-24.

32 Record Book of the Executive Committee Meetings of the Anti-Imperialist League, from March
25, 1909 to September 25, 1914 (Boston, 1915), 219.

157

soon as possible.

Indeed, historians have traditionally pointed to Wilson’s second “Staunton
address” to mark his most deﬁnitive statement on what policy he intended to pursue in
the Philippines. Delivered before a cheering crowd at the Military Academy in Staunton,
much of what the president-elect said that afternoon was unimpressive. But then, in the
middle of “a very grotesque story” about a barroom ﬁght between “an eastern blacksmith
and a western bully” in an unnamed frontier community, Wilson offered the following
aside: “The Philippines are our present ﬁontier, and we don’t know what rich things are
happening out there, and are presently, I hope, to deprive ourselves of that frontier?”
Though Wilson had not intended to say anything speciﬁc about the future destiny of the
Philippines that day, his words precipitated a ﬁerce political ﬁrestorm in the United States
and the Philippines concerning the future course of Philippine-American relations. While
independistas discerned from the president-elect’s statement that he intended to fulﬁll the
Democratic party’s pledge to grant independence to the Philippines, making the
J effersonian principle of “consent of the governed” his new siren call in insular affairs,
retentionists interpreted the remark as an official proclamation that Wilson planned to

pursue a “policy of scuttle” in the Islands, abandoning Filipinos to their own fate in a

hostile international environment.34

 

33 Wilson, Untitled Address, December 28, 1912, PW W, XXV, 632-640. Quotation on 635.

34 Traditional accounts of Wilson’s “Staunton Address” as the “clearest statement” of the new
president’s approach to the Philippine question can be found in, Roy W. Cuny, Woodrow Wilson and F or
Eastern Policy 1913-1921 (New York, 1968), 69-70; Brands, Bound to Empire, 104-107; Charles B.
Elliott, The Philippines To the End of the Commission Government: A Study in Tropical Democracy
(Indianapolis, 1917), 418; Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 227-228; Daniel R. Williams,
The United States and the Philippines (Garden City, NY, 1925), 145-148; Ruth Cranston, The Story of
Woodrow Wilson: Twenty-Eighth President of the United States, Pioneer of World Democracy (New York,
1945), 137-138; William E. Dodd, Woodrow Wilson and His Work 6th edition (Garden City, NY, 1924),

158

In reality, Wilson had not intended to communicate either message to the
interested parties. To better understand what the president-elect meant that afternoon, it is
necessary to examine the other speeches Wilson made on the campaign trail in which he
hinted at his thoughts and concerns regarding the Philippine question. In an address on
August 7, 1912 that criticized the Taft administration’s “dollar diplomacy,” Wilson
explained that it was necessary for the United States to “return to the ﬁrst principles” it
had outlined for itself in 1898 in holding and governing the Islands. The nation needed to
remember its disinterested duty in the Philippines, that is to prepare Filipinos for self-
govemment and assist them in their efforts to achieve nationhood:

In dealing with the Philippines, we should not allow ourselves to stand upon any

mere point of pride, as if, in order to keep our countenance in the families of

nations, it were necessary for us to make the same blunders of selﬁshness that
other nations have made. We are not the owners of the Philippine Islands. We
hold them in trust for the people who live in them. They are theirs, for the uses of
their life. We are not even their partners. It is our duty, as trustees, to make
whatever arrangement of government will be most serviceable to their freedom
and development.35
Nearly two months later, in an address on the importance of conservation delivered to the
National Conservation Congress in Indianapolis, Wilson again repudiated his earlier
position that overseas empire in the Philippines served as America’s safety valve
following the “loss” of the continental frontier in 1890. He told the crowd of
professionals that the absence of a territorial frontier had prompted the United States to

acquire the Islands in “a moment of unreﬂective reaction.” Wilson argued: “We were so

eager for a frontier that we established a new one in the Philippines, in order, as Mr.

 

117, 132-133; and Manuel L. Quezon, The Good Fight (New York, 1946), 126.

35 Wilson, Campaign Speech in Sea Girt, NJ, August 7, 1912, PWW, XXV, 3-18. Quotation on
14-15.

159

Kipling would say, to satisfy the feet of our young men.” He regretted that the enduring
image of the Philippines as America’s frontier had culminated in a policy that placed
American economic and ﬁnancial interests in the Islands above the future welfare of the
Filipino people. Not only had the attempt to transform the Philippines into a safety valve
for America’s surplus goods, population and energy failed due to distance and climate,
but the view that America possessed a frontier in the Islands had distorted the overriding
American mission to act as a disinterested power in preparing Filipinos for self-
govemment. Wilson, in perfect Tumerian form, proclaimed its termination.’6
Taken collectively, Wilson’s remarks about the Philippine question in 1912 do not
suggest that he intended to abandon the Philippines at the earliest opportunity. In 1912-
1913, he still did not believe Filipinos ready for complete self-government, much less
independence. Wilson had made this clear to the different factions of the Democratic
party in the presidential campaign. Nor did his comments about the Philippine question
while on the campaign trail suggest that Wilson was in concurrence with the Republican
approach to nation building in the Philippines, one that emphasized fostering economic
development over engendering democratic growth. In fact, he viewed the Taft
administration’s pursuit of “dollar diplomacy” in the Philippines, as much as he
condemned Taft’s policies in Mexico and China, as an anathema to America’s mission in

the world. Simply put, Wilson, in a most abstract and open-ended way, declared on

December 28 an end to a policy that placed American interests above those of Filipinos,

 

36 Wilson, Untitled Address, October 3, 1912, ibid., XXV, 312-321. Quotation on 316. See also
Wilson’s address before an audience in Richmond, Virginia in which he argued that because of the limited
beneﬁts of overseas expansion, the United States needed to locate “a new modus vivendi in America for
happiness . . . something to replace the frontier.” Wilson, Untitled Address, February 1, 1912, ibid., XXIV,
101-117. Quotation on 105.

160

but without severing the colonial bonds between the two countries. His grappling with the
issues of policy and personnel in his efforts to remake America’s approach to the

Philippine question bear this fact out.

The Question of Policy

 

Although Wilson decided very early on in his presidential campaign that he needed to
reverse the current trend in Philippine-American relations, he understood silence was his
best ally until he learned exactly what the conditions were in the Philippines. His
Staunton address, however, had produced waves of praise and criticism in the United
States and the Philippines. Worse still were the wild speculations in the national press
about what extreme courses of action he intended to pursue in the Islands. According to
one retentionist-leaning newspaper, the central question of the day was, “Would the
United States abandon the Philippines tomorrow, next month, or next year?”37 Even
before Wilson was elected president, correspondence began to pour in daily, inundating
him with unsolicited advice about how best to resolve the Philippine question.38
Actually, Wilson sought to steer a middle course in the Philippines. He wanted to

redirect policy away from its essentially economic emphasis to one that focused on

preparing Filipinos for home rule and eventual independence. Before announcing any

 

37 Washington Post, January 3, 1913.

38 See for example, Letters, Edwin D. Mead [director of the World Peace Foundation] to Wilson,
June 12, I912, PW W, XXIV, 494-495; Leon Lambert [member of the Philippine delegation to the
Democratic National Convention] to Wilson, July 2, 1912, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 28; William
Oldham [secretary for the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church] to Wilson,
August 7, 1912, ibid., reel 30; Christian Hanlin [“the oldest Princeton man serving in the Philippines”] to
Wilson, September 7, 1912, ibid.; and James Ross [prominent Manila attorney] to Wilson, November 28,
1912, ibid., reel 34.

161

policy, however, Wilson understood that he ﬁrst needed to learn what conditions existed
in the Islands. In this respect, he pleaded for patience, instructing his closest advisers to
downplay the issue in public until he could decide upon a proper course of action for the
Philippines that was based on accurate and detailed knowledge of conditions in the
Archipelago. But even among the members of his Cabinet, there was no consensus. Their
opinions on the Philippine question varied widely, ranging from Secretary of State
Bryan’s fervent anti-imperialism to Secretary of Commerce William C. Redﬁeld’s out-
spoken retentionism.39
After being deluged from all quarters with unsolicited and contradictory
information concerning conditions in the Philippines and what alterations in policy and
personnel were necessary there, Wilson quickly came to the conclusion that he would
have to go outside ofﬁcial channels if he was to have the beneﬁt of accurate information
about the Islands. The president-elect decided to dispatch a personal envoy on an
“tmofﬁcial tour” of the archipelago to provide him with “ﬂesh and unbiased information”
about conditions in the Philippines. He turned to Henry Jones Ford. In their discussion of
the proposed mission, Wilson advised Ford not to present himself as the president-elect’s
personal envoy, but to introduce himself as an academic seeking information for a new
manuscript. This cover, Wilson reasoned, would allow Ford to investigate the political
and cultural landscape in the Philippines free from the inﬂuence of either American
colonial authorities or Filipino political leaders. Once Ford accepted the assignment,

Wilson moved to secure private ﬁnancing for the conﬁdential mission.40

 

3’ Letter, William c. Redﬁeld to Wilson, March 24, 1913, ibid., series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel 191.

40 The Princeton Bank advanced Ford $7,000 for his mission to the Philippines. Letter, Edward

162

Ford seemed well suited to the task before him. Born in Baltimore, he established
himself as a journalist and reformer in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He came
to Wilson’s attention in 1898 with the publication of The Rise and Growth of American
Politics: A Sketch of Constitutional Growth, the ﬁrst and most important of several books
he wrote on American government and history. In this book, Ford documented the failure
of political parties in America to initiate and implement disinterested reform because, as
reﬂections of human nature, parties were self-seeking and acquisitive. Yet, political
parties remained necessary in the United States because they carried out political
functions more effectively than any other institution or organization. The breakthrough
contribution of this book, however, was Ford’s analysis of how disparate peoples, like the
new immigrants arriving in the United States, came to view themselves as belonging to a
homogeneous whole, uniﬁed by common interests. The party system, Ford wrote, served
as the mechanism by which immigrants in America were drawn into the political life of
the nation. The interaction between parties and immigrants resulted in a political
apparatus that eventually became structurally cosmopolitan and composed of immigrant
populations characterized by multiple layers of identity. These identities were expressed
in various allegiances: to their particular ethnic group, their neighborhood, communities
of interest, and ﬁnally, the party machines that, in turn, ﬁlsed them into large-scale groups
whose interests transcended ethnicity and locality.41 Wilson believed that Ford’s analysis

possessed implications for understanding how Filipinos, a people strongly affected by

 

Howe to Wilson, September 5, 1913, ibid.

41 Henry Jones Ford, The Rise and Growth of A merican Politics: A Sketch of Constitutional
Development (New York, 1898).

163

ethnic diversity and geographical isolation, might forge a nation for themselves under
American tutelage. Also, he and Ford were close friends and professional colleagues.
Wilson had placed Ford on his shortlist of candidates for the chair of Politics at Princeton
in 1900, and eventually hired him in 1908 when Garfield retired from that position.
Wilson and Ford also served together as members of the ﬁrst advisory board of the Short
Ballot Association in 1909. In 1912, Governor Wilson appointed Ford to the New Jersey
Banking and Insurance Commission, where he became a trusted political adviser. Ford, as
a Catholic, a conservative Democrat, an experienced reformer and an authority on
democratic government, seemed just the man Wilson wanted for carrying out “a secret
mission of investigation and evaluation” in the Philippines.42
While enroute to Manila aboard the Paciﬁc Mail steamship Mongolia, Ford had
ample time to plan his two-month junket in the Philippines. After interviewing a number
of his fellow passengers, “Philippine ofﬁcials from whom I obtained information of
value,” Ford decided on an itinerary that would eventually take him to most of the
principal Islands of the archipelago. Upon his arrival in Manila (March 14, 1913), Ford
found the city still buzzing with excitement from Wilson’s “Staunton address” and the
president’s support for “free sugar.” After spending a day in the capital, he wrote to the
president that he thought better of dallying too long in Manila because of the Manila
American community’s anxious ruminations about their fate under a Democratic

president. Most Americans in the city seemed keen only on dispensing to anyone who

would listen “copious supplies of fact and comment” about Filipino incapacities for self-

 

42 Richard S. Corwin, “Henry Jones Ford,” American Political Science Review XIV, No. 4
(1925), 813-816.

164

government.43

Ford traveled extensively throughout the Philippines. Accompanied by his
Spanish-speaking son Howard (who had served with the army in the Philippines) as
secretary, Ford ﬁrst toured the troubled province of Pampanga in Luzon where he had
heard rumors of an impending mutiny by the Philippine Constabulary. He then made his
way to the Muslim South where he described the American community in J 010 as
“virtually in a state of siege.” Despite the vigorous efforts of the US Army under General
John Pershing to disarm “the Moros,” Ford wrote that it had been impossible for him to
travel into the countryside without a heavily armed escort. At the end of April, some six
weeks after arriving in the Islands, Ford sent his ﬁrst recommendations to Wilson.
Expecting to ﬁnd Filipinos divided, uneducated, and even primitive, Ford discovered
otherwise: “The notions with which I came from the States have long since been thrown
overboard and I have acquired new ones that are now in . . . orderly shape.” Without
explanation, Ford described the situation in the Philippines as “very grave,” requiring
“radical treatment.” The replacement of the governor general seemed necessary, he
concluded, but it alone would not suffice as a solution: “The defects are such as rise
naturally out of the policy adopted, and the remedy lies far more in a change of policy
than in a change in men.”44

After a three-week tour of the central and southern Islands, Ford journeyed to the

American hill station at Baguio where he interviewed Governor Forbes and other

American ofﬁcials about various points of insular administration on which he had heard

 

‘3 Letter, Henry J. Ford to Wilson, March 15, 1913, PWW, xxvn, 188-189.

44 Letter, Ford to Wilson, April 30, 1913, ibid., 370-371.

165

critical comment. During the course of his interviews, Ford apparently made his real
purpose in the Philippines known to the governor general, a fact Forbes related in his
journal.45 Following the week-long series of interviews, Forbes dispatched a long cable
to the BIA, explaining how Ford admitted that he had been “favorably impressed” with
the political and economic conditions in the Islands, especially the absence of any serious
misconduct by him or his administration. According to the governor general, Ford also
expressed his view that Filipinos were not ready for home rule or anything akin to
independence.46 In the end, however, Forbes decided not to risk what Ford might report to
Wilson or the American people, and took steps to discredit him and his ﬁndings. The
governor general released several articles for publication in retentionist newspapers in the
Philippines and the United States that he had found “the anti-imperialist Ford” ill-
informed about Filipino culture and, therefore, completely unsuited for the mission with
which he had been assigned by the president. In one article, Ford’s conclusions about
Filipino capacities for self-govemment were dismissed as “wholly imaginary.”47

On May 19, Ford departed the Philippines for the United States. The next day, he

stopped over at Hong Kong and wrote a hurried but signiﬁcant letter to Wilson. Ford

 

45 Forbes, Journal Entry, May 16, 1913, Journal of W. Cameron Forbes [hereafter Forbes ’
Journal], V, 236. Forbes later wrote that he believed, erroneously as it turned out, that Ford had revealed
his true purpose in visiting the Islands because he had been won over to the insular govemment’s point of
view about the Filipino people’s shortcomings in respect to self-govemment. Forbes, The Philippine
Islands 2 volumes (Boston, 1928), II, 268.

46 Brigadier General Frank McIntyre, chief of the BIA, related this correspondence to Wilson, via

Tumulty. See, Memorandum, McIntyre to Tumulty, May 5, 1913, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel
19].

47 Letter, Bertha Ford to Wilson, June 2, 1913, ibid., series 2, reel 49. Mrs. Ford enclosed various
newspaper articles from the New York Herald , the Washington Post, Newark Evening News, and Trenton
State Gazette, all dated May 20, 1913, which condemned her husband’s “ﬁndings” in the Philippines before
he reported them in an ofﬁcial report to the president the following September.

166

headed his missive “Private — Personal — Unoﬂicial ” and requested the president to
destroy the letter after reading it. The tone of Ford’s letter was sharp and direct as he
ﬁnally revealed to Wilson the root of the problem in the Philippines as he found it. Ford
alleged that the Forbes’ administration had misrepresented the facts about conditions in
the Philippines in order to justify the Republican policy of indeﬁnite retention. Many
Americans in the Islands, including those in the highest positions of the insular
government, “would be gratiﬁed if the situation here should be embroiled so as to make
trouble for you.” Warning of “partisan exploitation” and even “sedition,” Ford counseled
Wilson that “in administrative circles there are evidences of a desire to block
independence and discredit the Filipino Assembly and put the leaders in a hole.” Ford
wrote of “an orchestrated plot” by Dean C. Worcester, one of the most out-spoken
retentionists in the insular government, to launch a highly visible “anti-slavery crusade”
in the Philippines. The purpose of the crusade was to illuminate for the American people
the existence of “slavery” in the Islands, a revelation likely to railroad any independence
campaign in the near future. Also, Worcester, by implying that several of the Assembly’s
most prominent leaders were indeed slaveowners, sought to impugn Filipino character
and discredit the Assembly as a legitimate governing body. Ford wrote that he believed
Worcester would release his “fmdings” on Filipino slavery when Congress moved to take
action on Philippine independence.48

Ford did not deliver the ﬁnal version of his report to Wilson until September
1913, after the appointment of Francis Burton Harrison as governor general and the

inauguration of a new policy in the Philippines. The president apparently never read the

 

‘8 Letter, Ford to Wilson, May 20, 1913, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 49.

167

document, which numbered nearly one hundred pages. But Wilson was aware of the
report’s conclusions from his correspondence with Ford while the latter was in the
Islands. The report reviewed the impact of popular education and the “gradual initiation
in the practice of government according to American ideas” on the Philippine people.
Ford found that the initial impact had been positive, but the “indeﬁnite postponement of
self-govemment” had contributed to growing unrest in the Philippines. He rejected the
arguments that tribalism, linguistic diversity, and illiteracy were so troublesome as to
preclude greater self-govemment or even independence. The discord in the Philippines,
according to the ofﬁcial Ford report, was caused by the failure of previous colonial
administrations to comply with the avowed purpose of the United States in the Islands.
Ford argued that the time had come to recognize the mature political character of the
Filipino people. Their capacity for self-government had been consistently undervalued
because American colonial officials in Washington and Manila had been guided by an
“excessively narrow view” of constitutional government. The successive Republican
administrations in the Philippines, Ford wrote, had insisted upon “Filipino adherence to
American political traditions in a country where they have no historical basis and are
incompatible with social conditions.” While the Filipino people might have been
incapable of maintaining a “just and effective government” under an American
constitution, Ford insisted that they were “capable of carrying on successfully a
government of the type they desire.” Finally, Ford concluded that the United States
should end the “temporary commission government” established in 1900, and allow

Filipinos to draft a constitution that would go into effect at the discretion of the

168

president.49

While Ford investigated conditions in the Islands, the War Department had
already begun to take steps to put its stamp on Wilson’s Philippine policy. Charged with
manifold tasks — raising and training an army, undertaking public works, and
administering the nation’s colonial empire — the War Department in 1913 was a loose
collection of independent ﬁefdoms, bereft of centralized direction. Cabinet secretaries
came and left with the regularity of presidential elections, while the bureau chiefs, closely
tied to key committees in the Congress, endured and prospered within their separate
bailiwicks. Lindley M. Garrison, the new secretary of war, was a prominent attorney from
Camden, New Jersey who was serving as vice chancellor of the state when Wilson was
elected governor. Although Garrison did not possess any evident convictions on the
Philippine question when he assumed office in March 1913, he quickly adopted the BIA’s
position of indeﬁnite retention as his own.50

Garrison looked to the Bureau of Insular Affairs for guidance on the Philippine
question. The official position of the BIA reﬂected that of its new chief, Brigadier
General Frank McIntyre, who had served as Major General Clarence Edwards’ assistant
before becoming chief of the BIA. McIntyre praised the achievements of the previous
Republican administrations in the Philippines. On the issue of Filipinization of the insular

government, he wrote to Garrison: “Brieﬂy, the Filipino as distinguished ﬁom a small

class of ambitious caciques has been given more power in his government than is

 

49 Henry Jones Ford, Memorandum for the President, September 26, 1913, Records of the Bureau
of Insular Aﬂairs [hereafter , BIA Records], Record Group 350, National Archives, File 364/295-296.

’0 Daniel R Beaver, “Lindley M. Garrison (1864-1932),” American National Biography (New
York and Oxford 1999), Vlll, 758-759.

169

exercised by any oriental people, and all the agencies which are supposed to work
advancement of a people in popular self-govemment are being used to the greatest
practicable extent for the Filipino.” As for changes and future policy, he recommended
ﬁve actions, economic in emphasis: the removal of all suspension of the ﬁiar land sales in
order to create economic opportunity in the Islands; an increase in the maximum size of
the blocs of public land that could be sold to private individuals from 40 acres to 1,235
acres (from 16 hectares to 500); the elimination of all remaining restrictions and
limitations on reciprocal free trade; the acquisition of congressional authority to issue $10
million in new bonds to ﬁnance public improvements; and the acquisition of authority
from Congress to revise the complicated arrangement of currency reserve funds, so as to
make them a liquid resource of the government. In short, McIntyre desired a continuation
of Taft’s policy of emphasizing economic development of the Philippines over political
programs aimed at preparing Filipinos for self-govemment.5 ’

To supplement this economic analysis by McIntyre, Garrison turned to Felix
Frankﬁrrter for recommendations regarding administrative reforms in the insular
government. At that time, Frankfurter was a young attorney serving in the War
Department as special assistant in charge of the BIA’s legal affairs. As the bureau’s chief
legal representative, he had defended executive authority and the prerogatives of imperial
administration in the Philippines on several occasions in the last years of the Taft

administration.52 Not surprisingly, Frankfurter’s advice on how to proceed in the

 

5' Memorandum, McIntyre to Garrison, March I, 1913, BIA Records, File 119/72.

52 Michael E. Parrish, Felix F rankﬁlrter and His Times: The Reform Years (New York and
London, 1981), 44-45.

170

Philippines was notably more conservative than that beginning to come in from Ford.
When it came to models of colonial rule, Frankﬁrrter preferred that of Lord Cromer in
Egypt. Cromer, who had served as British proconsul in Egypt from 1883 and 1907, had
extended to Egyptian authorities a wide breadth of freedom in administration under the
umbrella of British rule. Quoting often from Cromer’s Modern Egypt, 53 Frankﬁrrter
sought to incorporate Cromer’s principles of colonial rule, particularly the principal tenets
of indirect rule, into American governance of its dependencies.54

In F rankfurter’s view, the insular government was by virtue of the organic act of
1902 “pro tanto, an autonomous government.” He therefore argued that the existing
structure would serve adequately for future evolution toward ﬁrll Filipino self-
govemment. Like McIntyre, he distinguished between the people as a whole and what he
called “a small, masterful, highly educated, wealthy minority, who have on the whole, but
little community of interest and little sympathy with the great masses.” The responsibility
of the United States was to the whole people, and therefore devolution of control into the
hands of Filipinos must be slow enough to allow the emergence of a broad-based polity.
Otherwise there would be unrepresentative, oligarchical government. Nevertheless, the
government must be purposeful and energetic in meeting its responsibility; it must not
allow further loss of momentum such has had recently occurred. As for the future,
Frankfurter recommended that wholesale changes either in personnel or institutions be

avoided, as compromising America’s instruction of Filipinos in “the value of continuity

 

53 Lord Cromer (Evelyn Baring Cromer), Modern Egypt 2 volumes (London, 1908).

54 Felix Frankfurter, Diary Entries, October 24, 1911 and November 6, 1911, in Joseph P. Lash,
From the Diaries of Felix Frankfurter (New York, 1975), 107-109 and 118, respectively.

171

and stability in political administration.” Instead, the existing vacancy in the office of
insular secretary of commerce and police should be ﬁlled by a man in perfect agreement
with administration policy, who in due course could be promoted to replace Forbes as
governor general. In the meantime, the Wilson administration should clarify national
policy toward the Philippines, ending the evasiveness of the past, but being careful to
stress continuity and to avoid demoralizing American civil servants in the Islands.55

By mid-April, Garrison had reached his own conclusions about how best to
proceed in the Philippines with respect to policy. Improving upon the advice of McIntyre
and Frankfurter, he recommended to the president a four-point plan: ﬁrst, appoint a new
governor general of exceptional vigor, judgment, and insight; second, in commissioning
the new governor general, end the prevailing uncertainty and deﬁne clearly the
administration’s intentions; third, after the governor general had been given an
opportunity to break into his new office, appoint a Filipino majority on the Commission;
fourth, avoid any commitment to a speciﬁc date for independence, so as to preserve
ﬂexibility to respond to unforeseeable circtunstances. This plan, Garrison reasoned, had
the advantage of enabling the administration to act in highly visible ways to end the
existing stalemate between the Commission and the Assembly without having to seek any
additional congressional action. Indeed, to a Democratic president seeking to vindicate
party criticism of Republican policies in the Philippines without severing the colonial
bond, giving Filipinos an immediate majority on the Commission, which, in effect,

extended to them control of the legislative process, seemed a satisfactory solution. Yet,

 

55 Memorandum, Felix Frankfurter to the Secretary of War, March 12, 1913, BIA Records, File
141/76.

172

awarding Filipinos control of the legislative process hardly constituted a surrender of
American authority in the Philippines. The Filipino majority on the Commission would
be counterbalanced by continued American executive review and control. Although the
governor general could not veto legislation, such a check could be exercised by the
secretary of war or, in the last resort, by Congress.56 Of critical importance to the Wilson
administration was the fact that reconstituting the Commission did not require any action
by Congress. While structural changes of the insular government required congressional
amendment of the organic act of 1902, the president, through his appointive power, could
alter the Commission membership at will. In late May or early June, Garrison explained
his ideas to Bishop Brent, still in the United States lobbying for retention, who in turn
tried them out on Quezon. The resident commissioner found them acceptable and
predicted they would satisfy Filipino public opinion. Garrison was elated. He believed he
had found the formula for resolving the Philippine question, and for the rest of his tenure
as secretary of war he stuck to this view. Garrison met with Wilson at the end of April,
about the time when the president began receiving his ﬁrst alarming reports from Ford.
Wilson kept his own counsel until passage of the Underwood bill which provided for the
downward revision of the tariff and established free trade between the United States and
the Philippines. In his conference with Garrison, however, Wilson adopted Ford’s
recommendation that there would have to be signiﬁcant changes in personnel as well as

policy in the Philippines.57

 

56 Although there seems to have been no instance of a secretary of war exercising veto power,
there is evidence that American colonial officials assumed that such power existed. See report of an
interview between Forbes and Taft in 1912. Forbes, The Philippine Islands, 1, 103n.

57 Garrison, Memorandum for the President, Subj.: “Concerning the Philippines,” April 24, 1913,

173

The Question of Personnel

Wilson ran through an extensive list of potential candidates for the position of governor
general shortly after his election. The position carried with it an annual salary of $20,000,
making it the highest paid position that the president could appoint. Thus, there was no
shortage of applicants for the position of governor general.58

Before his selection of Francis Burton Harrison as governor general in August
1913, Wilson considered a dozen or more potential candidates for the position of
governor general. The president-elect ﬁrst offered the post to William McAdoo, who
promptly rejected the offer. “For McAdoo,” Colonel Edward House wrote in his diary, “it
was a Cabinet place or nothing.”59 In mid-Januaryl 191 3, the New York Times reported
that Wilson was considering New York City police commissioner Rhinelander Waldo
because of his experience in the Islands as a soldier and administrator, but nothing came
of the rumor.60 In March, Henry Ide, former governor general of the Philippines, wrote to
Wilson from the American embassy in Madrid to express serious misgivings about James
H. Blount’s candidacy for the position. Blount had been lobbying for the appointment, via
Bryan, since November 1912, using his new book, The American Occupation of the
Philippines, 1898-1912 as his springboard. Although Blount possessed considerable

experience in the Islands and was an avowed anti-imperialist, Ide wrote, “the former

 

BIA Records, File 141/78, and Letter, Garrison to Wilson, June 13, 1913, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle
44, reel 191.

58 The salaries of ambassadorships to Britain, Japan, Germany, and the other great powers topped
$17,500 per year, some $2500 less than that of the governor general of the Philippines. Letter, Bryan to
Wilson, with enclosure, ca. January 1, 1913, ibid., series 2, reel 48.

59 Edward M. House, Diary Entry, January 8, 1913, PWW, XXVII, 20-24.

60 New York Times, January 14, 1913.

I74

judge’s mind is in a haze, under the inﬂuence of a drug [opium].” Ide’s letter effectively
killed Blount’s candidacy.“

By April, a potentially serious rift emerged between Wilson and Garrison over the
issue of appointing a new govemor general in April. Rumor in the Philippines had it that
Wilson planned to offer the post to Joseph E. Davies in return for his strong support
during the election campaign.62 Alarmed by the prospect of patronage being injected into
the colonial government, Garrison wrote a long letter to the president on April 2, detailing
the reasons why he opposed Davies’ appointment. He described him as a young lawyer
who had made himself a reputation as “an energetic, political worker” who did an
outstanding job as secretary of the National Committee of the Democratic Party in the
election of 1912, but he had accomplished nothing of substance. The position of governor
general required the services of “a man of the very highest capacity.” It seemed hardly
ﬁtting to Garrison to reward “a political worker” with “probably the most important
position outside of your Cabinet,” and, most importantly to Garrison, “a position which,
above all things, should be free from the suggestion of politics.” To appease Wilson, the
secretary of war recommended Ford as a good candidate for the position: “His character,
his aloofness from politics, his seasoning, the maturity of his judgment, the searching
quality of his mind, and the irresistible way in which he pursues things to their ultimate

reaches . . . would gratify the expectations of the public concerning the man who should

 

61 Letter [Conﬁdential], Henry lde to Wilson, March 1 l, 1913, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle
44, reel 191. See also, Letters, Blount to Joseph Tumulty [the president’s executive secretary], January 28,
1913, ibid., series 2, reel 41; Blount to Tumulty, ca. January 30, 1913, ibid.; and Blount to Wilson, March
24, I913, ibid., reel 42.

62 See for example, The Manila Times, April 12, 1913.

175

occupy that position.” Garrison suggested that Ford should consult Forbes about the
situation, learn everything he could from Forbes about conditions in the Philippines, and
“then go in at the appointed date.” Garrison surmised that even if Ford served as governor
general for only a short time, “it would tide us over the existing embarrassment” until a
more permanent candidate could be found. In the meantime, Davies could be appointed
governor of Puerto Rico, “a most practical school in the business of colonial
administration?”53 Later that spring, Garrison wrote the president that he was in the
process of compiling a list of suitable candidates, but advised Wilson to wait to make the
appointment until more was known about conditions in the Philippines. Wilson
concurred, writing that he wanted to “cover the whole ﬁeld” before deciding.64

Finally, at the beginning of August, Wilson was ready to move on the Philippine
question. In mid-August, Francis Burton Harrison, a New York congressman who served
as the second-ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Ways and Means and an
outspoken anti-imperialist, called upon Quezon in behalf of the candidacy of Oscar
Crosby, his ﬁiend. Quezon was struck by the idea of winning the job for Harrison
himself. His qualiﬁcations seemed right from the Filipino perspective, and, as a member
of Congress, he was almost sure to be conﬁrmed easily. Quezon broached the idea and
Harrison assented. Quezon then spoke to Representative Jones about Harrison’s
candidacy and then mentioned it to Bryan as if it had been his own idea. On August 16,

Bryan passed Harrison’s name to Wilson, with his own and Jones’ endorsement. That

 

63 Letter, Garrison to Wilson, April 2, 1913, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 48.

64 Letters, Garrison to Wilson, April 8, 1913, PWW, XXVII, 274, and Wilson to Garrison, April
10, 1913, ibid., 282-283.

176

same day, Quezon saw Bryan and gave Harrison his support. Bryan asked him to put it in
writing and on August 19, after having received a receptive acknowledgment of his ﬁrst
note from Wilson,65 forwarded this expression of support from the resident commissioner
to the president.”6 In the meantime, Quezon met with Oscar Underwood, chairman of the
House Committee on Ways and Means, and Senator Gilbert M. Hitchcock, chairman of
the Senate Committee on the Philippines, both of whom added their endorsement of
Harrison. That left only Garrison to be heard from. The secretary of war was at that
moment out of town on a tour of army posts in the west. Wilson sounded him out by
cable and received his endorsement on August 19. The following day, Harrison’s
nomination was decided upon.67

Once the Senate conﬁrmed his nomination, Harrison, then vacationing in Maine,
faced the practical problems associated with a sudden move more than halfway around
the world. From the BIA, he received a stream of miscellaneous information and advice
on various problems in the Philippines.68 From friends, relatives, and importunate
strangers came a ﬂood of congratulatory letters and telegrams that had to be packed for

answer from Manila. Returning to Washington, he received instructions from Wilson

 

65 Letter, Wilson to Bryan, August 18, 1913, Wilson Papers, series 2, reel 49.

66 Letters, Quezon to Bryan, August 16, 1913, enclosed in Bryan to Wilson, August 19, 1913,
ibid., and Wilson to Bryan, August 20, 1913, ibid.

67 The key documents for understanding this much misunderstood episode are Letters, Quezon to
Storey, August 22, 1913, Papers of Manuel L. Quezon [hereafter Quezon Papers], Bentley Historical
Library [hereafter BHL], reel 4; Quezon to Willis, August 23, 1913, ibid.; Cable, Quezon to Osmefla,
August 20, 1913, ibid; Letters, Bryan to Wilson, undated, received at the White House on August 16, 1913,
Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel 191; and Garrison to Wilson, August 20, 1913, ibid

68 Memorandum on the Philippine Tariff, August 23, 1913, Papers of Francis Burton Harrison
[hereafter Harrison Papers], Box 50, and Letter, Frank McCoy to Harrison, August 30, 1913, ibid

177

before taking the oath of ofﬁce on September 2.69 Meanwhile, the BIA had turned its
attention to the problem of obtaining, on very short notice, suitable accommodations for
Harrison, his wife, and four children on the Paciﬁc Mail steamer Manchuria, scheduled to

depart San Francisco on September 10.

 

69 Letter, McIntyre to Harrison, August 27, 1913, ibid Roy W. Curry says that Harrison received
his instructions from Wilson the preceding Sunday, citing Francis B. Harrison, The C orner-Stone of
Philippine Independence: A Narrative of Seven Years [hereafter Cornerstone] (New York, 1922), 5. See
Roy W. Curry, Woodrow Wilson and Far Eastern Policy, I 913-192 I (New York, 1957), 76. While the
discrepancy is relatively minor, it illustrates the fact that Harrison’s Cornerstone must be used with care.
While it seems to be generally accurate in the outline of events and is an excellent source for Harrison’s
attitudes, it is strongly biased and polemic in tone and purpose as are most of the writings on the Philippine
question during this period. Harrison collected material for such a manuscript off and on during his tenure
in the Philippines. He may have begun Cornerstone before leaving the Islands in 1921, but he completed
the book in haste while in Scotland. His publisher and ﬁiend, Morgan Shuster, wanted to take advantage of
public interest in the Philippines, aroused by the Wood-Forbes investigation then in progress, and pressed
Hanison for “a quick manuscript.” As a result, Hanison seems to have relied more on memory than the
evidence, even the evidence of his own ﬁles deposited in the Library of Congress, as his guide in many
cases and details. In short, much of what can be found in Cornerstone is inaccurate. See, Letters, Norbert
Lyons to Harrison, April 21, 1917, Harrison Papers, Box 41, and Morgan Shuster to Harrison, July 18,
1921, ibid., Box 43.

178

Chapter Five
Shifting the White Man’s Burden

The “new era” in the Philippine-American encounter began with long blasts from the ice
plant whistle on October 6, 1913. On that day, a US naval escort of four destroyers,
assembled off the island fortress of Corregidor, sighted the steamer Manchuria as it
steamed across Manila Bay with Harrison, the new American governor general, as its
most distinguished passenger. At the familiar signal, thousands of Filipinos, Americans,
and curious foreigners swarmed into the streets and went down to the Luneta, Manila’s
largest park, to catch a glimpse of the new chief executive. It would be several hours
before the Manchuria could dock, but the crowds remained cheerful, ﬁlling the plazas
and boulevards with noise and excitement. Along the waterfront, bands assembled with
ostentatious ﬂourishes of brass and drums, while the harbor itself came alive with gaily
decorated vessels of all shapes and sizes. Years later, Harrison would remember the
festive spirit of this day with pride and affection. Never had an incoming governor
general been accorded such a welcome. And if this was partly because previous chief
executives were already serving in the Islands when appointed, it was equally true that
none had so appealed to the hopes and dreams of most Filipinos.l

As Harrison’s appointment and inauguration had broken precedent,2 so did the

policy he announced upon his arrival. Speaking through Quezon, who translated, the new

 

1 Harrison, Cornerstone, 50-51; The Manila Times, October 7, I9 I 3; Philippine Free Press,
October 11, 1913; and La Vanguardia, October 7, 1913.

2 Not only did Harrison not possess any ﬁrst-hand experience in the Philippines before his
appointment as governor general but he also had taken the oath of office in Washington rather than in
Manila. The Washington Post, September 3, I913.

179

governor-general delivered a three-point message prepared by Wilson for the Filipino
people. First, Harrison outlined for the cheering throng the president’s official position on
“colonial stewardship,” declaring “we consider ourselves as trustees acting not for the
advantage of the United States, but for the beneﬁt of the Philippine people.” All future
policy initiatives in the Archipelago would focus on serving Filipino interests, not
preserving American advantages. Second, Harrison read Wilson’s pledge that eventual
independence would constitute the ultimate objective of America’s Philippine policy. The
president eschewed any commitment to a speciﬁc timetable for the United States’
withdrawal from the Philippines. Yet, Wilson’s words made it clear how he intended to
proceed in resolving the Philippine question: “Every step we take will be taken with a
view to the ultimate independence of the Islands . . . and after each step taken experience
will guide us to the next.” Finally, Harrison declared that Wilson, to demonstrate good
faith on the previous two promises, had ordered that an immediate step be taken toward
Filipino home rule in the form of granting Filipinos a majority on the Philippine
Commission. The eight-member Commission (in addition to the governor general who
presided over it as president) served as both the upper house of the Philippine Legislature
and the executive body of the insular government. As Filipinos already controlled the
Assembly, the lower chamber of the Legislature, granting Filipinos an immediate
majority on the Commission would afford Filipinos considerable autonomy in directing
the legislative affairs of the Islands. Harrison told the enthusiastic crowd that Wilson had
proposed this important step toward Filipino self-govemment “in the conﬁdent hope and
expectation that immediate proof will thereby be given, in the action of the Commission,

of the political capacity of those native citizens who have already come forward to

180

represent and lead their people in affairs.”3

After delivering Wilson’s personal message, Harrison read his own carefully
prepared address. Promising that his administration would be forward-looking,
optimistic, and insistent upon Filipino partnership rather than American domination, the
governor general expressed that he was in “complete accord” with the president’s
approach to the Philippine question. Harrison did not stop there, however. Describing
himself as “an instrument in the further spread of democratic government,” he proclaimed
the dawn of “a new era” in Philippine-American relations:

We do not believe that we can endow you with the capacity

for self-govemment. That you must have acquired for your—

selves; the opportunity for demonstrating it lies before you

now in an ever widening ﬁeld. Thus, we place within your

reach the instruments of your own redemption. The door

of opportunity stands open and under Divine Providence the

event is in your hands.4

Not surprisingly, Filipino reaction to Harrison’s “inaugural address” was
euphoric. Thousands erupted in jubilation, welcoming the Democratic governor general
as the harbinger of a new era of F iIipino-American cooperation. The newspaper La
Vanguardia, a resolute opponent of American retentionism, attracted widespread
attention in Manila and Washington with an editorial claiming that Harrison’s address

had done more to “dissolve existing prejudices and obstacles” in Philippine-American

relations than all the combined speeches of the previous American colonial

 

3 For the complete text of Han'ison’s speech, see Inaugural Address and Message of Governor-
General Francis Burton Harrison to the Third Philippine Legislature, Delivered in October 1913 (Manila,
1913), 7-9. With slightly different punctuation, the same message appears in the Philippine Free Press,
October 1 1, 1913. For Wilson’s message to the Philippine people, read by Harrison, see Telegram, Wilson
to Harrison, September 25, 1913, PWW, XXVII], 323-324.

4 The Manila Times, October 7, 1913.

181

administrations. According to the laudatory editorial, Harrison’s statements that day
“revived in a most admirable and complete manner the faith of Filipinos in the justice of
the American people.”5 In the days and weeks that followed, many of the published
Filipino accounts of the governor general’s remarks painted a similar picture. Harrison, in
less than a day, had seemingly managed to disarm much of the antagonism and suspicion
that had pervaded Philippine-American relations since 1898. At the opening of its new
session on October 16, the Assembly went so far as to pass a resolution commemorating
the arrival of the Democratic governor general and his new policy: “We believe that
happily the experiments of imperialism have come to an end, and that colonial
exploitation has passed into history. Hence, in only a few days, a good understanding has
been arrived at between Americans and Filipinos, which in the past thirteen years could
not take root.”6

Such pronouncements were not wasted on Harrison. They seemed to ﬁll him with
an overwhelming sense of self-importance. In a letter to his friend James W. Gerard,
Wilson’s ambassador to Germany, Harrison wrote unabashedly that his “inaugural
address” marked an important milestone in Philippine-American relations. The
immediate result seemed to be “an entire cessation of most of the ill-feeling toward the
United States on the part of Filipinos.” Overnight, Philippine newspapers had ceased
attacking the continued American presence in the Islands and adopted “a most

enthusiastic ﬂame of mind about President Wilson and his Philippine policy.” More

 

5 La Vanguardia, October 8, 1913, quoted in Cable, Harrison to the Secretary of War, October 8,
1913, Harrison Papers, Cablebook, I913-1914.

6 A copy of this resolution is located in Cable, Philippine Assembly to the Secretary of War,
October 18, 1913, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel 191.

182

importantly, Harrison wrote, the stalemate that had existed between Filipino legislators in
the Assembly and American colonial authorities on the Commission since 1907 had
already begun to dissipate. Somewhat naively, the new governor general portended that
once the process of selecting Filipinos to serve on the Commission was ﬁnished, a
necessary reform to end the “racial divisions” that had stultiﬁed the work of the insular
government, then Americans and Filipinos could ﬁnally get on with the business of
preparing the Philippines for independence.7

In spite of the predominantly glowing images emanating from Manila concerning
the end of American colonialism and the beginning of a new F ilipino-American
partnership aimed at preparing the islanders for independence as soon as possible, it soon
became clear that Filipinization of the insular government would hardly be a smooth and
painless affair. While enroute to Manila, Harrison had only a month in which to master
memoranda and books on the Philippines ﬁrmished by the BIA, to prepare his “inaugural
address,” and to begin planning a program of Filipinization, the cornerstone of Wilson’s
Philippine policy. With the Philippine Legislature scheduled to convene on October 16,
just ten days after Manchuria was due to dock in Manila, there would be scant time for
dealing with administrative problems, particularly with delicate matters of personnel. Yet,
Wilson’s commitment to granting Filipinos an immediate majority on the Commission
and Harrison’s pledge to implement a comprehensive Filipinization program throughout
the Philippine government suggested that immediate and sweeping changes both in the

Commission and in the insular government would be the hallmark of the new

 

7 Letter (Conﬁdential), Harrison to James W. Gerard, December 15, 1913, Harrison Papers, Box
31.

183

administration. As Harrison soon learned, however, neither could be accomplished

without inviting trouble both in the Philippines and in the United States.

“The Dreaded Policy”

During the ﬁrst couple of years of Harrison’s administration, the question of personnel —
Filipinization of the Commission and the PCS, salaries, bureau reorganization, and job
security - constituted the most explosive issue with which he had to deal. The issue was
also relevant to the legislative situation that he had inherited from the previous
Republican administration. For two years, a deadlock between the American-dominated
Commission and the Filipino-dominated Assembly had prevented passage of an
appropriations act. Throughout the insular revenue crisis, Governor Forbes, empowered
by the organic act of 1902, extended by proclamation the appropriation of the preceding
year. As a result, when Harrison arrived in the Philippines in October 1913, the
appropriation bill of 1911 remained in effect.8

Meanwhile, an additional source of friction had developed in the insular
government. Forbes believed that his administrative authority included the power to
reapportion funds, so long as he did not exceed the total appropriation of 1911. By careful
management, he had been able to provide salary increases for some American colonial
administrators as a means of retaining them in the insular government. Other funds were
expended on recruiting Americans for the PCS and even creating new positions for

Americans. Filipino leaders denounced this as a usurpation of authority, unwarranted by

 

8 Forbes, The Philippine Islands, 1, 282-283; 11, 143-148.

184

the organic act of 1902, but the question never reached the courts nor was it officially
considered in Washington. The matter was simply left to Harrison to sort out.9 Much of
the ﬁiction that existed could be traced to the structure of the insular government,
particularly to the fact that legislative power was divided between the Assembly, elected
by and responsible to Filipino voters, and the Commission, appointed by and responsible
to the president of the United States. In the face of Forbes’ efforts to strengthen the
retentionist constituencies in the insular government, conﬂict between the Assembly and
the Commission, if not inevitable, certainly became predictable. Moreover, it should be
noted that the famed “deadlock” over appropriation bills was less irresponsible than it
appeared. The work of the insular government had continued, appropriations had been
extended by proclamation, and Osmeﬁa, the speaker of the Assembly, had remained on
cordial terms with Forbes.l0

It is not surprising that Harrison, recently warned by McIntyre of a need for
economy and fresh from a legislative career of his own in Congress, should have
sympathized with the Assembly and deplored what appeared to be executive
presumption. Later, he wrote Bryan that the Republicans had effectively stalled
Filipinization of the insular government by being “enthusiastically imperialistic” in their
appointment of retentionist-leaning Americans.ll Harrison already had been irritated to
discover that a number of positions, including that of assistant executive secretary, had

been ﬁlled only a few weeks before his arrival. Although Harrison allowed several of the

 

9 Harrison, Cornerstone, 48-49, and The Manila Times, October 8, 1913.
‘0 Hayden, The Philippines, 173-174, and Forbes, The Philippine Islands, 11, 145.

” Letter, Harrison to Bryan, May 28, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 32.

185

appointments to stand, he dismissed the new assistant executive secretary, Thomas Cary
Welch, after serving a single month.l2

During the new governor general’s ﬁrst week in Manila, therefore, while several
Filipinos were being considered for appointment to the reconstituted Commission, further
changes in government personnel began making headlines. It was not changes within the
classiﬁed civil service that attracted the most immediate and venomous criticism of the
Manila American community and their ﬁiends in the United States, however. Far more
dramatic were resignations submitted by non—classiﬁed officials, the bureau chiefs and
their assistants. Five days after dismissing Welch, Harrison ﬁred two senior Americans in
the PCS: Charles H. Sleeper, the director of lands, who had originated the scheme under
which sales of unoccupied ﬁiar lands in large tracts were legalized; and the collector of
customs, Henry B. McCoy, who was persona non grata with the new administration
because of his political activities as Republican national committeeman in the
Philippines. A few days later, Harrison dismissed without explanation the prosecuting
attorney and chief of police for Manila,‘3 and accepted the resignation of John R. Wilson,

assistant director of lands, who refused to serve under a Filipino.14 A week later, on

 

'2 Cables, Harrison to McIntyre, September 30, 1913, BIA Records, File 397/62-63; McIntyre to
Harrison, October 1, 1913, Ibid.; Harrison to McIntyre, October 2, 1913, ibid. The Manila Times reported a
rumor that Han'ison even suggested that Welch not accept the increase over his former salary for the month
he served as assistant executive secretary. The Manila Times, October 8, 1913.

13 Despite headlines in The Manila Times, the dismissal of the Manila city ofﬁcials did not have
any political overtones. The chief of police and other municipal ofﬁcials were implicated in a bribery
scandal involving prostitution that had been exposed late in the Forbes administration. See Diary Entry,
Forbes, January 1 l, 1912, Forbes Journal, V, 96-97. The documents, including carbons and digests of
testimony, relating to the 1912 investigations of the police chief and several other City of Manila employees
are located in Harrison Papers, Box 28.

14 Cable, Harrison to the Secretary of War, November 7, 1913, ibid., Cablebook, 1913-1914.

186

October 11, Harrison announced that no more resignations of Americans in the insular
government would be requested, but the next day he ﬁred the director and assistant
director of printing. These two ofﬁcials were dismissed for insubordination, as they had
introduced a petition to Bureau of Printing employees protesting the reduction in salaries
proposed by Harrison to deal, in part, with the seven million peso deﬁcit confronting the
colonial government. Although further dismissals were few and stemmed from non-
political causes, the damage had already been done. These limited number of dismissals
of Americans in the insular government with political overtones provided an introduction
to the Harrison administration that was to obscure more important aspects of Democratic
rule in the colony.15

Rumors of mass resignations and ﬁrings, punctuated by some genuine dismissals,
soon followed and inspired a mood of hysteria if not panic within the Manila American
community.16 Anticipating the resignations of civil service executives quickly became a
favorite pastime among Manila Americans. Reporting Harrison’s statement of October
11, The Manila Times commented that it had been “a week of wild speculation in official
circles. During that period nearly every man of importance on the civil list was
ﬁguratively decapitated.”l7 Since Harrison often acted abruptly, with little forewaming

and rarely much explanation, he was partly responsible for the continuing apprehension

 

15 Ibid. For the impact of these dismissals on the Manila American community, see, Letters,
General Franklin Bell [commander of the Philippine Division] to General Leonard Wood, November 9,
I913, ibid., Box 29, and James Ross [chairman of the Democratic Party in the Philippines] to J. F.
Bromﬁeld [manager, China Mutual Life Insurance Company], August 25, 1917, ibid., Box 33.

16 See especially The Manila Times, October 8-20, 1913. In the United States, Dean Worcester
and other retentionists greatly exaggerated the number of dismissals and resignations in their interviews
with the press. See, New York Times, November 18, 1913, and New York Sun, March 28, 1914.

'7 The Manila Times, October 12, 1913.

187

and excitement.18 On the other hand, the English-language press and the vast majority of
resident Americans actively opposed Harrison and his policies. It seems possible,
therefore, that the issue of personnel was seized upon as the ﬁrst legitimate outlet for the
Manila American community’s dissatisfaction with the new governor general.l9

Press criticism of Harrison in the United States mounted steadily following these
initial dismissals. The predominantly Republican press carried frequent interviews of
disgruntled Americans aniving back in the United States following their resignation or
termination.20 Taft and other prominent retentionists used these interviews as backdrops
for their attacks on Wilson’s “New Freedom” policy in the Philippines. Taft even blasted
Wilson in an interview because the president had taken offense at the blatant racism of
the skits and songs at the annual “wallow” of the Military Order of the Carabao. Wilson

had instructed Garrison and Josephus Daniels, the secretary of the navy, to reprimand

 

18 Harrison refused to defend himself or his actions in public against attacks ﬁ'om the press or
private citizens, although he expressed gratitude to those who spoke on his behalf. His brother Fairfax
Harrison recommended employment of a competent writer to handle publicity and public relations, but the
governor general took no action. Harrison claimed that because most of the attacks were based upon
inaccurate information, once the true facts became known then opposition would cease or at least be
discounted properly. This seems a bit naive for a former congressman, but it was a position consistently
expressed in private correspondence and in reports to the War Department. Letters, Harrison to Fairfax
Harrison, November 1, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 32; Harrison to Garrison, February 19, 1914, ibid.,
Box 51; Harrison to Garrison, November 5, 1914, BIA Records, File 59/89. In one letter, Harrison
explained that he had not responded to the attacks against his administration, which he believed was the
work of an organized group, because he felt it best to make his reports to the secretary of war or the
president rather than to the press. Letter, Harrison to AP. Stokes, April 30, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 31.

'9 McIntyre, writing in 1915, thought that the hostility of the Manila American community, openly
expressed from the ﬁrst day of Harrison's arrival in the Philippines until his departure eight years later, may
have conﬁrmed the governor general in his radicalism. Senate Document 242, Special Report of Brigadier
General Frank McIntyre, Chief of the Bureau of Insular A ﬂairs, upon His Recent Trip to the Philippine
Islands, December I, 1915 [hereafter, Special Report of McIntyre, 1915], 64th Congress, lst session, 6, in
BIA Records, File 7519/33 '/2.

2° See for example, New York Times, October 12, 1913, November 15, 1913, November 18, 1913,
and December 3, 1913.

188

army and navy officers who were responsible for the Military Order of the Carabao
program.”

The situation was not as straightforward as Harrison’s critics often claimed.
Harrison’s Filipinization of the civil service was connected to several larger, more
perennial, issues involving the insular government. The Philippine Civil Service Law,
when passed in 1900, had been one of the most progressive in the world. Colonial
authorities throughout the world recognized the colonial bureaucracy that evolved from
that act as one of the most efficient and well trained in all of Asia.22 Wilson, Harrison,
and Nacionalista leaders, however, protested that Republican colonial administrators had
forgotten that the chief mission of the American presence in the Philippines was to train
Filipinos in the art of self-govemment and prepare them for eventual independence. The
Democratic and Nacionalista criticism of Republican attitudes and actions regarding
F ilipinization was not without foundation. The permanent directors of the PCS agreed
that F ilipinization of the insular government had not progressed satisfactorily under the
successive Republican administrations, although the report of 1909 suggested that a
major reason was the lack of qualiﬁed Filipinos for higher positions in the service.23

Another aspect of the problem involved a proposed general reorganization of the

bureaus and offices. McIntyre had suggested this as one way of meeting the insular ﬁscal

 

2' Ibid., December 20, 1913.

22 Onofre D. Corpuz, The Bureaucracy in the Philippines (Quezon City, PI, 1957), 236.

’3 Report ofthe Philippine Commission, 1909 (Washington, 1910), 70. The issue of Filipinization
concerned only the insular government because municipal and provincial governments had always included
large numbers of Filipinos among their officials. By 1913, Filipinos controlled nearly all of the municipal
and provincial government positions in the Philippines. Forbes, The Philippine Islands, 1, 153-154, 160-
163.

189

deﬁcit. Critics of the insular government charged that some bureaus had outlived their
useﬁrlness in whole or in part, that others overlapped one another, and that many had
more workers than work. In addition, the original distribution of the bureaus among the
departments had reﬂected the ﬁrst commissioners’ personal inclinations rather than any
internal logic. A general reorganization in 1905, inspired by problems similar to those
facing Harrison in 1913, had redistributed some of the bureaus and had reduced the
percentage of Americans as well as the total number of employees. As a solution,
reorganization had proved unpopular in 1905 and would be equally so in 1913. Yet, it
was not a prospect that seemed to concern either Harrison or McIntyre.24

Finally, there was the perennial headache of the high rate of turnover of
Americans in the civil service. Since 1903, the number of voluntary separations or
resignations in any twelve-month period had ranged from a low of 376 (14 percent of
Americans employed in the service) in 1909 to 787 (24 percent of Americans employed
in the service) in 1904. In order to maintain the number of Americans in the service, it
had been necessary to bring large numbers of new employees from the United States each
year, always at considerable expense. Nor was it always the misﬁts who voluntarily left
the civil service. According to the Director of the Civil Service in 1906, good men rarely
wanted to stay more than two to ﬁve years, whereas it often proved difficult to induce the

inefficient to resign.25

 

24 Memorandum, McIntyre to Harrison, September 4, 1913, BIA Records, File I998/84.

25 Director of Philippine Civil Service, Annual Report, 1906, quoted in Special Report of
McIntyre, 1915, I3, BIA Records, File 7519/33 '/2. See also, Letter, Garrison to Forbes, November 18, 1914,
Harrison Papers, Box 46.

190

To these more or less familiar problems, Harrison brought what was less a new
policy than a new tempo. Armed with Ford’s report on conditions in the Philippines, the
governor general believed that the insular government had been transformed into an
entrenched retentionist-leaning bureaucracy that retarded unnecessarily the employment
of capable Filipinos. Harrison moved quickly to remedy the problem with a vigorous
Filipinization program. But the governor general knew he would soon have on his hands
a public relations war for the hearts and minds of the American people. He later wrote in
Cornerstone that American retentionists in the Philippine government “stood together
upon the issue of Filipinization, like the Old Guard at Waterloo, ready to die, but never to
surrender.”26

Harrison saw in the normally high resignation rate within the insular service an
opportunity to replace Americans with Filipinos while acting within the bounds of civil
service regulations. That this was accomplished to a considerable extent is supported by
the statistics. There were 475 fewer Americans in the permanent civil service on July 1,
1914, than there had been on January 1, 1913, yet during the same eighteen-month period,
665 Americans had resigned, a fairly normal number. Meanwhile, 253 had been separated
from the service on an “involuntary” basis, a category that included a few who had died

while in service, those dismissed “for cause” under civil service rules, and those whose

jobs were eliminated in the drive for economy. It seems apparent that a high proportion of

 

26 .
Hamson, Cornerstone, 76.

191

the reduction in American personnel must have resulted from ﬁlling vacancies, arising
from normal occurrences, with Filipinos rather than with Americans.27

Yet, it should be understood that there was little need for Harrison to put pressure
upon the lower level employees of the service. The resignations that normally occurred
each year were enough to provide opportunity for Filipinization of the PCS.
Dissatisfaction with the policies of the new regime, including salary cuts approved by the
legislature, certainly increased the number of vacancies. Also, Harrison’s defenders and
critics often overlooked the impact of the First World War in draining even more
American personnel from the PCS. Not only was recruitment made more difficult by the
war, but also the rate of separations increased enormously as Americans left the Islands
for military service and business opportunities.28 Wholesale persecutions and violations
of the law, as were alleged in the press, were hardly necessary.

As governor general, Harrison was limited in his power of appointment and
dismissal of bureau chiefs, their assistants, and a few other high officials.29 Harrison and
his supporters sometimes used this technical fact to refute charges that he had dismissed

hundreds of Americans from the service. Actually, the govemor’s inﬂuence was

 

27 Of the 155 “involuntary” separations from the insular government in 1914, 10 employees had
died, 18 were separated “for cause,” and 127 were dismissed because of a reduction in force or the
abolition of their positions. Report of the Philippine Commission, 1916, 28-29.

28 For the impact of the First World War on the PCS, see Letter, Worcester to the Wood-Forbes
Mission, August 4, 1921, in “Selected Letters ﬁ'om Prominent and Representative Businessmen of Long
Residence in the Philippines Regarding the Islands. Characteristic of American Sentiment in the
Philippines.” BIA Records, File 22639/A-B-l. This document is part of the unpublished portion of the
Wood-Forbes exhibits.

’9 BIA, Philippine Civil Service: RevisedAcl and Rules, March 1912 (Washington, DC, 1915).
For the powers of the governor general vis-a-vis the insular service, see Sections 1, l4, and 17 of the
Revised Civil Service Act, 3, 8-9. See also, Civil Service Rules, Rule 10 (“Appointment and Employment”)
and Rule 12 (“Procedure in Reductions, Separations, and Suspensions”), 21-22.

192

considerable, and Harrison demonstrated on more than several occasions that he was not
shy about wielding it. A month after arriving in the Islands, he wrote Garrison a long
letter requesting him to terminate all civil service examinations in the United States for
appointments to the insular service, “except for really technical positions.” Harrison
explained why he believed such a dramatic move was necessary:
Filipinization of the service, although so often promised in the past, has made
very little headway. The bureaus are top heavy with Americans and the Filipinos
really have very little share in the management of their own government. If they
are ever to be tested as to their political capacity, I conceive it to be my duty to
give them a chance to ﬁll whatever vacancies may occur in offices for which they
are palpably ﬁtted.30
The governor general also wasted little time in introducing legislation to make life in the
insular government less attractive to Americans already serving. He extended existing
regulations prohibiting American officials from participating in Philippine politics to
participation in American political parties in the Islands.31 Harrison also moved to put an
end to the Republican policy of encouraging insular officials to engage in business
activities in the Philippines. He issued an executive order announcing that the authority to
permit government employees to engage in business “will not be favourably [sic]
exercised except under most exceptional cases.” Harrison explained in his ﬁrst annual
report his principal reason for issuing such an order:
Under policies announced by all [Washington] administrations, that American

occupation of the Islands is not to be permanent, the official with investments here
is apt to be unduly inﬂuenced in his attitudes towards such a policy, as well as to

 

30 Letter, Harrison to Garrison, October 24, 1913, Harrison Papers, Box 5 l .

31 Circular of the Director of the Civil Service, December 9, 1913, in Report of the Philippine
Commission, 1914, 31.

193

believe he was being forced to suffer unfair hardship if his turn came to return to
the United States under the process of ﬁlipinization.32

In December, however, the governor general learned that a group of army officers,
including General Pershing who was governor of Moro Province, and Americans in the
insular government had received Forbes’ permission to join British nationals in obtaining
a large timber concession in Mindanao. The Kolarnbugan Company acquired a twenty-
year concession of nearly 94,000 square acres of prime timberland on the shore of Iligan
Bay in Lanao Province. Supported by the War Department, Harrison threatened to
withdraw the concession, which forced the Americans to drop out of the consortium.
Soon after, Garrison issued an order prohibiting army officers from “entering into any
commercial enterprise” or taking part in any enterprise involved “in the use of any right,

privilege or concession [to] the property or public right of the Philippine people.”33

The New Commission
Harrison’s arrival in Manila and his dramatic pronouncement of a “new era” in
Philippine-American relations also precipitated much maneuvering among Filipino elites
for inﬂuence with the Democratic govemor-general. While the Manila American
community focused its attention on the sweeping changes then occurring within the ranks
of the PCS, Filipino political rivals and partisan leaders competed with one another for

Harrison’s ear, especially concerning whom among their counUymen should be appointed

 

32 Report of the Philippine Commission, 1914, 30.

33 Harrison, Executive Order No. 103, in ibid., 30-31. See also, Cables, Harrison to the Secretary
of War, December 12, Harrison Papers, Cablebook, 1913-1914; Garrison to Harrison, December 16, 1913,
ibid.; Harrison to the Secretary of War, December 17, 1913, ibid.; and Harrison to the Secretary of War,
January 7, 1914, ibid.

194

to the Commission. Harrison was immediately drawn into the Nacionalista party’s bid to
dominate both houses of the Philippine Legislature.

Since both Forbes and Worcester had already resigned from the insular
government, the Commission in October 1913 included only three Americans: the new
governor general, Acting Governor Newton W. Gilbert, and Acting Secretary of
Commerce and Police Frank Branagan. As anticipated, Gilbert and Branagan resigned
within a few days after Harrison’s arrival.34 More unexpectedly, however, three of the
four Filipino commissioners also submitted their resignations, obviously upon request by
the governor general. In view of his “inaugural address” at the Luneta, it is not surprising
that both the American and Filipino press expressed bewilderment and indignation over
this executive action. Harrison defended the sacking of both American and Filipino
commissioners by arguing that he needed colleagues willing to give unqualiﬁed and
vigorous support to the new administration. The Manila Times, recalling his reputed
Tammany connections, countered that Harrison simply wanted to “clear the decks” in
order to appoint commissioners who would “accept the Tammany boss of southern origin
as their undisputed political master.” Other retentionist-leaning newspapers quickly
followed suit and accused the Democrats of inaugurating “an era of partisan politics” in
35

Philippine-American relations.

Harrison’s “clearing of the decks,” however, involved more than partisan

 

34 Instructions to ask for Branagan’s resignation came from the BIA. See Cable, McIntyre to
Harrison, October 6, 1913, BIA Records, File 3828/1581. Harrison, on the other hand, asked for Gilbert’s
resignation himself in order to smooth the way for further policy changes. Cable, Hanison to McIntyre,
October 8, 1913, ibid., Gilbert Personnel File.

35 The Manila Times, October 8, 9, 10, 1913, quotation from October 10, 1913; Philippine Free
Press, October 9, 1913; and Cablenews-American, October 12, I4, 1913.

195

housecleaning. Indeed, his explanation for requesting the resignation of all the
commissioners rather than just the Americans possessed considerable merit. Retentionists
who emphasized the importance of maintaining continuity of personnel or of selecting
men with previous experience in the insular government could not have been unaware
that such policies would have institutionalized resistance to the Democratic
administration and its Filipinization program. They themselves ignored the fact that the
Manila American community comprised the Republican Party’s largest and most loyal
retentionist constituency. At best, it was misleading for the local American press to
suggest “for the ﬁrst time party politics has been allowed to enter into the consideration
of the Philippine question.”36
Nevertheless, the motive for demanding resignations of the Filipino
commissioners was in part political, but it was Philippine rather than American politics
that played the role of partisan villain in this case. The Partido Nacionalista, already in
control of four-ﬁfths of the Assembly seats, took advantage of Harrison’s sweep of the
Commission to eradicate political opposition in the executive body. Nacionalista leaders
in the Assembly, especially Osmeiia, viewed three of the four sitting Filipino
commissioners, Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera, Benito Legarda and Jose Luzuriaga, as
political adversaries because they were leaders in the Partido Progresista Nacional, the
party that had collaborated with American retentionists. Without noting his own excellent
relationship with Forbes before the Democrats ascended to power, Osmeﬁa charged that

because Progresistas no longer possessed the conﬁdence of the Filipino people, they

should be removed from power. The speaker pointed out that Benito Legarda, one of the

 

36 The Manila Times, August 25, 1913, in Harrison Papers, Box 27.

196

ﬁrst resident commissioners sent to Washington, had lost his bid for re—election in 1911
because he had persistently and vocally opposed independence. More likely, the speaker
insisted upon the dismissal of the three Progresistas rather than permit them to remain on
the Commission where they could possibly frustrate the Partido Nacionalista’s legislative
agenda.37

Whatever the motivation, this precipitant pruning of the Commission threw an
intolerable workload upon Harrison and Rafael Palma, the one remaining commissioner.
Since Wilson would appoint the new American commissioners, Harrison could do little
to hasten the completion of the process of establishing a new Commission. In the
meantime, the BIA authorized the new regime to begin searching for qualiﬁed Filipino
candidates to serve on the Commission. Turning to Osmef’ta for suggestions, Harrison’s
original plan called for submitting a list often or twelve names, furnished by the speaker,
to the Assembly for approval. From the approved list of candidates the secretary of war
would recommend ﬁve for appointment to the Commission.38

Unwittingly, Harrison’s proposal for a selection process for the Filipino
commissioners put him at odds with Garrison and the War Department who resisted
relinquishing any authority or inﬂuence over the membership of the Commission. The
secretary of war wanted to maintain control of the selection process, desiring to appoint
only conservative Filipinos who supported American retention of the Philippines and
embraced gradual Filipinization of the insular government. Garrison not only disapproved

of Harrison’s consulting the Assembly on an official basis in the matter of appointments,

 

37 Liang, Philippine Parties and Politics, 89-93.

3" Ibid.

197

but also wished to avoid precedents implying that the governor general possessed ﬁnal
authority in the selection of commissioners. He wanted it clearly understood that ﬁnal
executive authority concerning Philippine affairs would continue to rest with the BIA in
the War Department. Garrison ordered Harrison to submit to him a list of ten Filipino
candidates, arranged in order of preference, from which he would choose ﬁve
commissioners.39
Without officially consulting the Assembly, Harrison entered into several lengthy
conversations with Osmeﬁa about potential candidates. The speaker impressed upon him
the need to sit a majority of Nacionalistas on the Commission to ensure a smooth
legislative process. Harrison also consulted a number of other Filipino leaders including
Cayetano S. Arellano, chief justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, the two resident
commissioners, and at least one American, Colonel James G. Harbord, the chief of the
Philippine Constabulary. While the documents do not reveal the full range of counsel
received by Harrison, it is clear that Osmer‘ia’s recommendations won the day. Harrison
submitted a list of twelve candidates,"0 the majority of whom were Nacionalistas, to the
secretary of war with the recommendation that at least two of the ﬁve receive portfolios,

preferrably the secretaries of public instruction and of ﬁnance and justice. Following “a

brief but loud conference” with Wilson in the White House, a livid Garrison reluctantly

 

39 Cable, Harrison to the Secretary of War, October 11, 1913, Harrison Papers, Cablebook, 1913-
I914.

40 In order of preference, the list included Rafael Palma of Manila, Victorino Mapa of Iloilo, Jaime
C. de Veyra of Leyte, Vicente llustra of Batangas, Vicente Singson-Encarnacion of llocos Sur, Alberto
Barretto of Zambales, Einisio Jakosalem of Cebu, Espiridpo Guangco of Iloilo, Francisco Ortigas of
Manila, Leon Guerrero of Manila, Rafael Corpus of Zambales, and Galicano Apacible of Batangas. Cable,
Harrison to the Secretary of War, October 11, 1913, Harrison Papers, Cablebook, 1913-1914.

198

approved the ﬁve Filipinos who headed the ﬁnal list.41 The secretary of war’s attempt to
exert inﬂuence over the Commission through the appointment of the Filipino
commissioners came to an abrupt end when Wilson sent their names to the Senate on
October 15. Conﬁrmation followed in due course and, on October 30, the new
commissioners were sworn into ofﬁce.42

By virtue of his previous administrative experience and his position as the third
ranking member of the Partido Nacionalista, Rafael Palma topped the short list
submitted to the secretary of war. Typical of Nacionalista leaders, he had studied law at
the University of Santo Tomas in the early 18905 where he had become acquainted with
Osmeﬂa and Quezon. After graduation, he had held ofﬁce under the Spanish but had
turned to journalism before the Philippine Revolution of 1896. He served on the editorial
staff of General Antonio Luna’s newspaper La Independencia and, during the early years
of the American occupation, worked on El Renacimiento. During these same years, Palma
practiced and taught law in Manila. In 1907, however, he entered politics as a member of
the First Assembly and the following year was appointed to the Commission. He and
Osmefla founded El Ideal, the Partido Nacionalista organ since 1907, but did not play an
active role in its management. Harrison had recommended that Palma be made secretary

of public instruction, but the BIA refused. American public education policy, the

 

4‘ Rafael Palma, My Autobiography (Manila, 1953), 97, and Hayden, The Philippines, 170-172.
Note that Osmefla, not Quezon, played the decisive role in selecting the new Filipino commissioners.
Although he was consulted before the list was submitted to Washington, the resident commissioner seems to
have had little or no voice in the matter.

42 Cables, Harrison to McIntyre, October 8, I913; McIntyre to Harrison, October 8, 1913;
Harrison to McIntyre, October 11, I913; McIntyre to Harrison, October 1], 1913; Harrison to McIntyre,
October 13, 1913; Han'ison to McIntyre, October 15, 1913, BIA Records, Files 397/64-397/68. The Manila
Times, October 16, 31,1913.

199

cornerstone of America’s “civilizing” effort in the Philippines, would remain ﬁrmly in the
hands of American colonial administrators. Later, the Jones Act of 1916 would require
that the vice-govemor, who presumably would always be an American, head the
Department of Public Instruction.43

Victorino Mapa of Iloilo, second on the short list, possessed both administrative
and judicial experience, having served both as alcalde (mayor) of Iloilo and, since 1901,
as associate justice of the Philippine Supreme Court. Osmei’la, supported by Arellano, had
insisted upon Mapa, a member of the minority Partido Progresista Nacional, because of
his known sympathy for the Partido Nacionalista ’s legislative agenda. Appointed
secretary of ﬁnance and justice as well as commissioner, Mapa was the only Filipino to
receive a portfolio. Third on Harrison’s list was Jaime C. de Veyra, who, like Palma, was
a prominent journalist turned politician. He helped found El Nuevo Dia and served on the
staffs of El Renacimiento and E1 Ideal. De Veyra had acquired political experience as
governor of Leyte Province for one term and as a member of the Assembly for two terms.
Because of his “unusual eloquence” on the issue of Philippine independence as well as
his loyalty to the Partido Nacionalista, Quezon had employed de Veyra brieﬂy as editor
of The Filipino People, the Nacionalistas’ principal organ in the United States.44

In contrast to the previous three candidates, Vicente Ilustre, a brilliant attorney
and talented poet, possessed no previous government experience. Having been a
prominent member of the Hong Kong junta in the 18908 he was credited with helping to

direct the revolution against Spanish authority in the Islands. Indeed, American colonial

 

‘3 Cable, Harrison to the Secretary of War, October 13, 1913, BIA Records, File 397/66.

44 Ibid.

200

authorities still considered him an insurrecto in 1913. Politically independent, Ilustre
proved more suspicious of American intentions in the Philippines and more aggressive in
his agitation for immediate and complete independence than his Nacionalista colleagues.
Yet Osmeﬁa desired his appointment in order to maintain close tabs on Ricarte’s
revolutionary organization in Hong Kong. The ﬁnal selection, Vicente Singson-
Encarnacion, who, like Palma, had known Quezon and Osmeﬁa at the University of Santo
Tomas, was also something of a political enigma. Having served in the Assembly since
its creation in 1907, Singson was a prominent member of the Partido Progresista
Nacional in 1913. Distinctly conservative and largely interested in Philippine economic
development, Harrison contended that Singson’s commercial and ﬁnancial knowledge
would be helpful to the Commission’s efforts to reorganize American economic policy in
the Philippines.45

Thus, by the end of October 1913, less than a month aﬁer Harrison’s arrival in the
Islands, the Nacionalistas secured most of the seats on the Commission, giving them
effective control of both the upper and lower houses of the Philippine Legislature. Of the
ﬁve Filipinos sitting on the Commission, only two, Mapa and Singson, were members of
the opposition. Harrison revealed later, however, that Mapa and Singson had been chosen
because of their sympathy for the Partido Nacionalista ’s legislative agenda. For Harrison,
giving the majority party the lion’s share of the seats on the Commission seemed the best
way to end the existing stalemate between the Commission and the Assembly, and then

set a course for eventual independence. Apparently, it never dawned on him that he was

 

‘5 Ibid.

201

helping to lay the foundation of single-party rule in the Philippines.46

Notwithstanding the complexity of Philippine politics at the beginning of the
twentieth century," it seems reasonable to conclude that most Filipino elites acquiesced
in Nacionalista domination of the legislative process for the same reason as the new
governor general. After all, at the heart of the two issues that had split the Commission
and Assembly since 1907 (control of appropriations and the alleged existence of slavery
in the Islands) was the capacity of Filipinos to govern themselves. Not surprising,
following the end of the long deadlock and the restoration of harmony between the two
houses, the Third Philippine Legislature aggressively attacked these two problems,
passing the ﬁrst appropriations act since 1910 and enacting a sweeping anti-slavery law.
Also, before the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the Legislature created
a Public Utility Commission, supported Harrison’s efforts to reorganize the top-heavy
PCS, established for the ﬁrst time a civilian government in Moroland, reorganized the
judiciary, and ended the policy of selling friar lands in large tracts to American
corporations, effectively frustrating Republican machinations to attract American

investment capital to the Philippines.48

 

46 Harrison, Cornerstone, 65. See also, Benedict Anderson, “Cacique Democracy in the
Philippines: Origins and Dreams,” New Left Review 169 (May/June 1988), 3-31; Harry J. Benda, “Political
Elites in Colonial South-East Asia: An Historical Analysis.” Comparative Studies in Sociology and History
V11 (1965), 233-251; and Dale S. Miyagi, “Neo—Caciquismo: Origins of Philippine Boss Politics, 1875-
1896,” Paciﬁc Asian Studies I (April 1976), 20-34.

47 See, for example, Michael Cullinane’s insightful dissertation ‘Ilustrado Politics: The Response
of the Filipino Educated Elite to American Colonial Rule, 1898-1907’ unpublished dissertation, University
of Michigan, 1989.

48 Letter, Harrison to Garrison, May 28, I914, Harrison Papers, Box 32. Concerning the divisive
issues confronting the Assembly and Commission between 1907 and 1913, see Peter G. Gowing, Mandate
in Moroland: The American Government of Muslim Filipinos, 1899-1920 (Quezon City, PI, 1977); Rodney
J. Sullivan, Exemplar of Americanism: The Philippine Career of Dean C. Worcester (Ann Arbor, MI,

202

 

 

Yet, another consideration, oﬁen overlooked by students of Philippine politics,
helps explain why Filipino elites acquiesced in the Nacionalistas ’ monopoly on the
Commission. Notwithstanding their political affiliations, the ﬁve Filipinos appointed to
the Commission imparted ethnic and, to some degree, regional balance to the upper house
of the Legislature. Palma and Ilustre were Tagalogs ﬁ'om Luzon; Mapa was Ilongo (or
Western) Visayan; de Veyra was a Wari-wari (or Eastern) Visayan; and Singson an
Ilocano. Filipino elites viewed the presence of such an ethnic and regional balance on the
new Commission as the ﬁrst step to overcoming the Philippines’ tremendous
ethnocultural and regional diversity, then looked upon in Washington as an obstacle to
Philippine nation building.”

Adding four Filipinos to the Commission on October 30 had raised the total
membership of that body to six, but it had also leﬁ three vacancies, including
three of the four departmental secretaryships. Mapa’s assumption of his duties as
secretary of ﬁnance and justice provided a distinct improvement over the preceding
month in which Harrison and Palma had sat together as the upper house of the Legislature
while dividing the executive responsibilities between themselves. During the interim
before the arrival of the new American commissioners, Palma served as acting secretary
of public instruction, and Harrison retained personal control over both the Department of

Interior and the Department of Commerce and Police. For a time, Harrison apparently

 

1991), 171-176; Frank Jenista, Jr., “Conﬂict in the Philippine Legislature: The Commission and the
Assembly from 1907 to 1913,” in Norman G. Owen, et al., eds., Compadre Colonialism: Philippine-
American Relations, 1898-1946 (Manila, PI, 1971), 35-48; and Vicente A. Pacis, “The Enduring Relevance
of Sergio Osmeﬁa,” Bulletin. American Historical Collection (Manila), Vl, No. 3 (JulyeSeptember 1978),
26-41.

49 Letter, Harrison to Garrison, October 24, 19 l 3, Harrison Papers, Box 51.

203

 

expected, and may have even hoped, that additional appointments would be delayed until
the following spring, affording him time to forge a working relationship with the Filipino
commissioners before their American colleagues arrived.50

Garrison, however, would hear none of it. Still reeling from his failed attempt to
exercise authority over the Commission through the selection of Filipino commissioners
who would support only slow, conservative change in the insular government, he decided
to secure the selection of at least one of the American commissioners who would have a
moderating inﬂuence within the Harrison administration. Despite the fact that only one
Filipino commissioner possessed a portfolio, Garrison deemed it necessary to impose
some balance on the Commission by securing the appointment of American
commissioners who would temper Harrison’s, and the Nacionalistas’, legislative agenda.
Ultimately, the secretary of war’s efforts to manipulate the membership of the
Commission produced an administrative crisis within the Commission that very nearly

culminated in a new, more explosive Filipino-American administrative stalemate.

The Harrison-Eggs Administrative Crisis
Since his election, Wilson had received numerous suggestions for appointments to
the Philippine Commission. Equating the position with the rank and prestige of a third
assistant secretary of state, Wilson and House sifted through scores of potential
appointees during the winter and spring of 1912-1913. There is some evidence that House

might have considered the Commission a political dumping ground for “deserving

 

50 Letter, McIntyre to Joseph P. Tumulty, October 30, 191 3, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44,
reel 19].

204

Democrats” who were considered inappropriate for other more sensitive posts. In this
respect, House suggested that Governor John E. Osborne of Wyoming be appointed to the
Commission just so Secretary of State Bryan could not appoint him as ﬁrst assistant
secretary of state. Neither House nor Wilson believed Osborne ﬁt for service in the State

Department because he had “neither the culture nor the training for it.”5 '

Other potential
candidates included Captain A.M. Wilson, a member of the Democratic State Central
Committee of Oregon, who had campaigned vigorously for Wilson in the Paciﬁc
Northwest, and Dudley Field Malone, also an enthusiastic supporter of Wilson’s “New
Freedom” platform in the election of 1912. When asked by the press on May 15, 1913
whether he was approaching the moment when he would appoint new commissioners,
Wilson responded that he had not “lost sight of it.” He simply had not located the “best
men” for the job.52

Garrison, however, became increasingly vexed by the continuing vacancies on the
Commission, especially aﬁer the Philippine Legislature opened a new session following
the appointment of the Filipino members of the Commission. Garrison wanted to round
out the Commission with conservative Americans before Harrison could effect any
radical changes in Philippine policy. Therefore, the secretary of war resolved to locate
“suitable” American candidates with all dispatch, urging Wilson to immediate action.

Already under ﬁre from Republicans and Progressives for not ﬁlling key government

posts with qualiﬁed Americans within a reasonable time frame since his inauguration,

 

5' House, Diary Entry, February 21, 1913, PWW, XXVII, 125-127.

52 Letters, 3.5. Haney to Wilson, December 7, 1912, Wilson Papers, series 4, ﬁle 44A, reel 192;
W.H. Cochran to Wilson, December 12, 1912, ibid.; Wilson, Miscellaneous Notes, ca. March-April, 1913,
ibid.; and Wilson, Press Conference (Washington, DC), May 15, 1913, PWW, XXVII, 430-435.

205

Wilson gave in. In less than a month after the Senate’s conﬁrmation of the Filipino
commissioners, Wilson completed the Commission by appointing Henderson S. Martin
of Kansas as Harrison’s vice-governor and secretary of public instruction, Winfred T.
Denison of New York as secretary of interior, and Clinton Riggs of Maryland as secretary
of commerce and police.’3

Unfortunately for Garrison, however, American political considerations rather
than candidates’ interest in or knowledge of the Philippines dictated two of the three
American appointments to the Commission, namely Martin and Denison. Since Harrison,
Riggs, and Denison all came from the eastern part of the United States, Martin’s
midwestem origins offered regional balance. More importantly, Wilson needed to reward
Kansas Democrats for their narrow victory in swinging the state to the Democratic party
in the 1912 presidential election. A well known Democrat and attorney, Martin had
served as chairman of the state central committee for six years and as campaign manager
for gubernatorial candidate George H. Hodges, a loyal supporter of Wilson. By November
1913, the president had begun to consider Martin for the Philippine Commission to repay
his political debt to Hodges’ and Martin’s friends in the Kansas Democratic party.
Although no record exists of Garrison’s reaction to Martin’s candidacy, Wilson did
encounter some opposition from Senator William H. Thompson (Democrat-Kansas).
Thompson feared Martin’s appointment might prejudice his case for a “Mr. Caldwell,”
who had solicited a diplomatic post in Persia. The president insisted, however, writing to

Thompson “1 [have] had in mind for Kansas something much bigger than a diplomatic

 

53 Congressional Record, 63rd Congress, lst session, 6010, and Letter, Harrison to Garrison,
September 30, 1913, Harrison Papers, Box 51.

206

appointment, namely, a Commissionership to the Philippines, for which I hoped to secure
Mr. Henderson Martin. This is one of the most important appointments I shall have to
make, and I am sure you will appreciate my feeling in the matter.” Thompson yielded,
apparently with good grace.54

A semblance of bipartisanship was introduced with the appointment of Denison, a
Republican who had bolted to the Progressives in 1912. Born in Maine, the Harvard-
educated Denison ﬁrst gained political prominence in connection with his investigation of
the American Sugar Reﬁning Company as assistant attorney general of New York.
Denison’s anti-trust crusading, however, earned him political enemies in New York,
including Thomas S. Sharrette, the powerful member of the New York Board of General
Appraisers. When the Wilson administration expressed interest in the young attorney as a
candidate for the Philippine Commission, Sharrette and his allies recruited the aid of
Senator Reed Smoot (Republican- Utah) to block Denison’s appointment. Again,
unforeseen circumstances forced Wilson to expend valuable political capital to secure his
candidate’s appointment to the Philippine Commission. While Denison waited in San
Francisco, Wilson maneuvered behind the scenes to secure his conﬁrmation by the
Senate. Reservations for the long ocean voyage to Manila were made by Denison on
seven separate occasions, only to be canceled at the last minute when no word came from

Washington. Wilson eventually prevailed and the Senate conﬁrmed him on January 27,

 

54 Letters, Wilson to Bryan, November 21 and 22, 1913, Papers of William .1. Bryan [hereafter
Bryan Papers], microﬁlm series, and Wilson to Senator William H. Thompson, November 24, 1913,
Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44A, reel 192. Although no third party had organized in Kansas in the
1912 presidential election, the Republican split between Roosevelt and Taft paved the way for a narrow
Democratic victory there. See June G. Cabe and Charles A. Sullivant, Kansas Votes: National Elections,
1859-1956 (Lawrence, KS, 1957), 30, 56.

207

1914. Denison leﬁ San Francisco for Manila on February 3, arriving there two weeks
later.55

Garrison had managed to engineer only Riggs’ appointment to the Commission.
The secretary of war had suggested Riggs to Wilson in order to give “political balance” to
the Commission. Cognizant of the retired Baltimore manufacturer’s ﬁrm opposition to
any relaxation of American political or economic controls in the Philippines, Garrison
hoped that Riggs’ presence on the Commission would offset any radical departure from
existing insular policies. Suspicious of Harrison’s relationship with Quezon and uncertain
of the new governor general’s precise views concerning a timetable for Philippine
independence, Garrison thought it necessary to appoint to the Commission someone with
a “conservative outlook on the Filipino question” who could neutralize the Partido
Nacionalista ’s inﬂuence on the new colonial administration. More importantly, Garrison
saw in Riggs a way for him to keep tabs on Harrison and to exert a moderating inﬂuence
in the Commission. Although it is not clear to what extent Wilson agreed with his
secretary of war on the need to “balance” the Commission with a retentionist, the
president consented to Riggs’ appointment and the Senate conﬁrmed him without
incident.56

Riggs’ appointment to the Commission, however, proved to be far more

troublesome than Garrison or Wilson could have imagined. First, Riggs’ conservatism on

 

55 Letters, McIntyre to Harrison, November 30, 1913, BIA Records, Denison Personnel File;
Wilson to Senator Thomas J. Walsh, January 21, 1914, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel 19];
Wilson to Senator Willard Saulsbury, January 21, 1914, ibid.; Saulsbury to Wilson, January 23, 1914, ibid.;
and Telegram, McIntyre to Denison, January 27, 1914, BIA Records, Denison Personnel File.

56 Letter, Garrison to Wilson, October 17, 1913, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel 191;
The Manila Times, November 25, 1913; and Cable, Quezon to Harrison, June 23, 1914, Harrison Papers,

208

the Philippine question very quickly alienated him from his more liberal-minded
colleagues on the Commission. His unwavering defense of the Republican policy of
indeﬁnite retention became a source of embarrassment for the Harrison administration
and an object of resentment for Nacionalista leaders. Indeed, McIntyre later wrote: “Mr.
Riggs was probably, on the Philippine question, more conservative than any man who had
ever been on the Commission, Republican or Democrat.”57 Moreover, because the
secretary of war had personally lobbied for his appointment, Riggs’ staunch retentionism
called into question Garrison’s commitment to Wilson’s Philippine policy, ultimately
creating an embarrassing situation for both the War Department and the White House that
was not completely resolved until Garrison’s resignation in early 1916. Second, and most
important, Riggs, as secretary of commerce and police, believed he held a position of
power virtually equal to that of the governor general. This notion inevitably precipitated a
serious administrative crisis in the Islands in which both Riggs and Harrison called upon
their respective allies in Manila and Washington for support.58

This administrative crisis, emanating from the appointment of Riggs to the
Commission rather than the retentionist public relations campaign then being waged in
Washington and Manila, very nearly led to Harrison’s resignation as governor general.
The crisis is signiﬁcant in that it illuminates the extent of the efforts by Garrison,
McIntyre and the War Department to temper Harrison’s policy of rapid F ilipinization

which, in their estimation, threatened the efficiency of the colonial government and

 

Box 34.
57 Special Report of McIntyre, I 915, 74, in BIA Records, File 7519/33 '/2.

53 Ibid.

209

moved Filipinos dangerously close to a date of separation from the United States. Had
this little-known crisis ended with Harrison’s resignation rather than that of Riggs,
another stalemate between the Commission and the Assembly would certainly have
materialized and the credibility of Wilson’s “New Freedom” policy in the Philippines
would have been damaged beyond repair.

The genesis of the administrative crisis can be discerned in a series of
conversations between Riggs and War Department ofﬁcials before the former departed
the United States for his post in the Philippines. While in Washington, Riggs had
apparently been informed by McIntyre that the organic act of 1902 speciﬁed that the
governor general was simply ﬁrst among equals in the Commission with no special
executive powers. Riggs failed to take notice, however, that, in practice, the executive
power of the governor general had been assumed, exercised, and accepted with little or no
question for over twelve years. As events turned out in 1914 and 1915, the chief of the
BIA lost his nerve when it came to experimenting with commission government in the
absence of an effective executive.59

Riggs also claimed to draw authority from an interview he had with Garrison
before leaving Washington. At that time, the secretary of war reportedly had promised
him a free hand in running the Department of Commerce and Police without interference
from Harrison. Although Garrison leﬁ no comment or memorandum from their meeting,
making it impossible to determine precisely what had transpired between the two men, it

seems incredible that he would have authorized a single commissioner to by-pass the

 

59 James C. Biedzynski, ‘Frank McIntyre and the Philippines,’ unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio
University, 1990, 158-159.

210

chief insular executive, ignoring traditional lines of authority, and report directly to the
War Department. Yet, it should be remembered that Garrison had been only mildly
supportive of Harrison’s appointment as governor general, believing him to be in
Quezon’s pocket. Also, Riggs had been Garrison’s personal choice for the position.
Perhaps in discussing their general agreement on the need for only slow, conservative
change in the Philippines, and in expressing interest in any personal observations his
ﬁiend might offer, Garrison had given Riggs some grounds for belief that he was being
accorded a special position on the Commission.60
In any case, the fact that Riggs believed he did not need to report to or accept the
directions of Harrison guaranteed a clash with the governor general. Unfortunately, such a
clash was not long delayed because Riggs arrived in Manila with a grievance on his lips.
In December 1913, the Philippine Legislature abolished the Bureau of Navigation, which
had been part of the Department of Commerce and Police. While the reorganization
seemed justiﬁed on the whole, both McIntyre and Garrison suspected that personal
grudges toward “persons formerly connected with the Department of Commerce and

Police and with the Bureau of Navigation” had been partly responsible for the abolition of

the bureau, the sale of some of its assets, and the dispersal of its functions.61 The

 

6" Letters, Harrison to Garrison, May 31, 1914 and July 6, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 34. The
following cables contain the best descriptions of what Harrison understood Riggs to be claiming concerning
authority conferred upon him by Garrison. Although Riggs complained that Harrison’s characterizations of
his claims to special authority were misleading, Riggs’ own discussion of the authority to be exercised by
department secretaries and by the governor general conﬁrm Harrison’s general statement on this point. See
Cable, Riggs to Garrison, June 18, 1914, BIA Records, File 4150/69. See also the report of a conversation
between Harrison’s personal secretary, Samuel Ferguson, and McIntyre, in which the chief of the BIA
reported that Garrison thought some of the difficulty between Harrison and Riggs “due to the fact that he
had not been deﬁnite enough with Riggs in outlining to him the feature of subordination.” Cable, Ferguson

to Harrison, December 21, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 32.

6' Letter, Garrison to Harrison, August 7, 1914, BIA Records, File 4150/70. One of these persons

21]

legislation required that some of the bureau’s assets, notably the marine railways and
repair shops, be put on the auction blocks. In addition, the bureau’s Division of Port
Works and Lighthouse Construction was transferred to the Bureau of Public Works while
the Division of Navigation and Lighthouses somewhat illogically was transferred to the
Bureau of Customs within the Department of Finance and Justice, now under the
supervision of the lone Filipino commissioner with portfolio.62

Riggs had heard about these changes while still in the United States. After taking
the oath of office, he protested vigorously against permitting a reduction in his
department before he could reach the Islands. To appease Riggs, Garrison suggested that
the commissioner investigate the situation when he arrived in Manila and, if the facts
warranted it, the legislation could be vetoed in Washington. It was with this in mind that
Riggs arrived in the Philippines in February 1914, several weeks after the legislation had
been put into effect. Harrison had supported the abolition of the Bureau of Navigation
and, while obliged to allow an investigation into the facts by Riggs, he believed that he
was simply hurnoring the newest commissioner in an unnecessary project. If, however, he
had hoped that Riggs would eventually drop the matter, Harrison became disillusioned by
the report submitted by his secretary of commerce and police to the War Department in

May 1914. Riggs not only concluded that the Bureau of Navigation had been both

 

was Captain Frank Helm, chief of the Bureau of Navigation, who was in the United States when the
Philippine Legislature passed the bill and who apparently met with Riggs in Washington to inform him
about conditions in the Islands. Another retentionist targeted by Filipino legislators may have been Riggs’
predecessor, Frank Branagan.

62 Philippine Commission Report, 1914, 8, 121, and Letter, Harrison to Garrison, January 11,
1914, Harrison Papers, Box 51. For a summary of the controversy, including an evaluation of the
legislation abolishing the Bureau of Navigation, see McIntyre, “Memorandum: Bureau of Navigation -
Philippine Islands,” August 7, 1914, BIA Records, File 4150/70C.

212

effective and efficient before its “unwarranted reorganization,” but he also contended that
the legislation abolishing the bureau had been illegal. In response to Riggs’ ﬁndings,
Garrison decided to meet the commissioner halfway, ordering the return of the Division
of Navigation and Lighthouses to the Department of Commerce and Police but refusing to
accept Riggs’ conclusion that the legislation had been illegal.63

No sooner had Garrison penned his response to Riggs, however, that the political
sparring between Harrison and his secretary of commerce and police took a more serious
turn and developed into a major administrative crisis that threatened to disrupt the newly-
found spirit of Filipino-American cooperation. To be sure, Garrison’s apparent
vindication of Riggs’ allegation that the new governor general had exceeded his authority
in reorganizing the Department of Commerce and Police made Harrison unsure of his
position with the War Department, especially in any conﬂict with Riggs. He could hardly
help wondering to what extent Garrison would support Riggs or whether there had been
some secret understanding between the two when he secured a Philippine
commissionership for him. Aﬂer all, the secretary of war’s opposition to any radical
departure in American policy in the Philippines that pushed the Islands closer towards
complete independence was well known. In addition, the absence of a clear statement of
support by Garrison for the governor general in the face of a barrage of attacks by
retentionists in Manila and Washington since his arrival in the Philippines simply
conﬁrmed Harrison in his bewilderment. He believed that at best he lacked support in the

War Department and at worst he was being undermined, perhaps with Riggs as a potential

 

63 Letter, Riggs to Garrison, May 26, 1914, BIA Records, File 4150/67; Cables, Harrison to
Garrison, January 11, March 31, and May 8, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 51; Garrison to Hanison, July 2,
1914, ibid., Box 46; and Garrison to Harrison, August 7, 1914, BIA Records, File 4150/70.

213

successor.64

Quezon exacerbated Harrison’s misgivings with frequent cables elucidating his
distrust of Riggs and his War Department benefactors. In one such cable, Quezon
complained that Riggs, before departing the United States for the Philippines, refused to
confer with Congressman Jones about the impending Philippine independence bill in
Congress. Riggs reportedly described the second Jones bill as “a dead letter,” explaining
that he had already met with Taﬁ and Forbes on numerous occasions and they had
provided him with all the counsel he required on the subject of Philippine
independence.65

In addition, knowledge that the Manila American community endeavored to make
good use of the strained relations between Harrison and Riggs by supporting the latter’s
efforts to curb, if not completely thwart, Filipinization of the insular government
exacerbated the emerging crisis within the Commission. Prior to Riggs’ arrival in Manila,
retentionists had attempted to recruit Martin, a Republican, to their cause, hoping to drive
a wedge between the new vice-govemor and governor-general. The retentionist ploy
backﬁred, however, as both Martin and Harrison ultimately saw through it and moved
even closer together on policy matters.66 Because Denison held views similar to those of

Harrison concerning Filipino capacities for self-govemment, the Manila American

community was forced to center its hopes on Riggs to restrain Harrison and wreck his

 

64 Harrison, Cornerstone, 70-71.
65 Cable, Quezon to Harrison, May 10, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 51.

66 Cable, Harrison to Garrison, March 31, 1914, ibid.

214

Filipinization program.67

Throughout, Riggs maintained that he was not subject to Harrison’s direction in
the management of the Department of Commerce and Police. He argued that the governor
general’s official relationship with the insular department heads was entirely advisory in
nature, not supervisory. Harrison ultimately decided to chance it and cabled the secretary
of war, requesting that the War Department issue an ofﬁcial memorandum outlining in
detail the proper relationship between the governor general and the executive department
secretaries. Certain of Wilson’s conﬁdence in him, Harrison also requested that the
president be consulted.68 Garrison’s reply, however, only stipulated that the organic act of
1902 required the governor general to have direct authority within the insular bureaus and
departments:

Secretaries of Departments exercise their executive control under the

general supervision of the Governor General. This general rule applies in

all cases where the performance of a speciﬁc duty by a particular person is

not required by law. In many cases, the Governor General, by law, is given

direct authority within bureaus and departmentsf’9
Clearly, Garrison had consulted only BIA ﬁles for such a vague and indecisive statement
that allowed both Harrison and Riggs to interpret it favorably. Even more alarming to
Harrison, however, was the fact that he could discern no evidence that the secretary of

war had ever consulted Wilson about the emerging crisis within the Commission.70

 

67 Cable, Harrison to Quezon, May 11, 1914, Quezon Papers, BHL, reel 4, and Letter (Personal
and Conﬁdential), Harrison to Andrew Peters, May 2, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 31.

68 Cable, Harrison to the Secretary of War, May 31, 1914, ibid., Box 34.
69 Letter, Garrison to Harrison, June 8, 1914, ibid.

70 Letter (Personal and Conﬁdential), Harrison to Peters, May 2, 1914, ibid., Box 31.

215

 

Thoroughly dismayed by the secretary of war’s apparent refusal to censure Riggs’
challenges to his executive authority as governor general, Harrison became despondent
and contemplated resigning in protest. He wrote to his brother Fairfax Harrison, the new
director of the Southern Railroad Company, that Riggs was “trying to destroy my
administration, being used as a political medium for special interests here, and appears to
believe himself the especially delegated and empowered representative of the Secretary of
War. . . . Only direct intervention by the President himself can prevent my position from
becoming untenable.”71 It was at this point in the crisis that Harrison, uncertain of the
War Department’s support for him or his policies, decided to break with the established
chain of command and reach out indirectly to the secretary of state for backing in
Washington. After all, it had been Bryan, presumably at the urging of Quezon, who ﬁrst
brought Harrison’s nomination for governor general to Wilson’s attention the year before.
Harrison reasoned that Bryan could be trusted to do what Garrison and the War
Department seemed unwilling to do -- intercede on his behalf with the president. To this
end, the governor general cabled his brother in Baltimore, instructing him to deliver a
message, encrypted in classiﬁed diplomatic code, to the State Department describing the
impending administrative crisis in Manila.72

Fairfax, upon receipt of the message, reported that Bryan expressed sympathy for
the governor general’s predicament and promised to see Wilson before anyone else,
presumably Garrison. No evidence exists, however, that Bryan ever met with the

president to discuss the administrative controversy in the Philippines. Perhaps the

 

7] Cable, Harrison to Fairfax Harrison, May 31, 1914, ibid., Box 34.

72 Ibid., and Harrison, Cornerstone, 70-71.

216

secretary of state thought twice about becoming embroiled in an affair that did not
directly concern the State Department. In any case, nothing came of Harrison’s approach
to Bryan for assistance.73

As it turned out, Nacionalista leaders saved the day for Harrison. Osmeﬁa,
convinced that Riggs was “thoroughly anti-Filipino,” complained to Quezon that the
Filipino members of the Commission no longer had conﬁdence in Riggs as an
administrator who had the best interests of the Philippines at heart. Indeed, most Filipino
elites, Osmeﬁa advised, looked upon the secretary of commerce and police as an
“uncompromising retentionist” determined to unseat Harrison and to impede
Filipinization of the insular government at every opportunity. Upon receipt of this
information, Quezon took it upon himself to inquire into the War Department’s
perspective on the emerging administrative crisis in Manila. Garrison’s response that the
Harrison-Riggs conﬂict was nothing more than a “petty hassle between two stubborn
colonial administrators” infuriated the resident commissioner. Quezon quickly deduced
that his only recourse was to bring the administrative crisis into “the light of day” on the
House ﬂoor and inform the White House that the conﬂict between Harrison and Riggs
constituted a direct political confrontation between American retentionists and “the most
liberal proconsul that the Islands had ever witnessed in nearly three centuries of colonial
subjugation.” Quezon cabled Osmeffa that it was clear that the objective of the
retentionists acting in concert in Washington and Manila was to compel Harrison to

resign as governor general, an act that would delay the achievement of Filipino home rule

 

73 Letters, Fairfax Harrison to Harrison, June 24, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 34, and Fairfax
Harrison to Samuel Ferguson, June 1, 1914, ibid.

217

for at least a decade. Like Harrison, Quezon concluded that only decisive executive action
by Wilson could rescue the situation and save the governor general from the War
Department’s retentionist machinations.74

Quezon bypassed Garrison as he often preferred to do and conferred with Wilson
in the White House in June 1914 about the political crisis in Manila. Earlier that spring,
the president had begun conferring with Jones and other congressional leaders about the
need to pass a revised version of the Jones bill in the next session of Congress to provide
the Philippines with a new organic act that would insulate the Filipinization process from
partisan politics and retentionist back-sliding. Notwithstanding Wilson’s expressed
support for the so-called second Jones bill, the resident commissioner understood that, by
advising the president in person that Riggs “had positively lost the conﬁdence of the
Filipino commissioners,” he was testing the president’s commitment to Filipinization and
the movement towards greater Filipino autonomy. So did Wilson. Without hesitation,
Wilson reportedly instructed Quezon to do everything within his power to make it
emphatically clear to all parties in the Philippine Legislature that he possessed complete
conﬁdence in Harrison. In the meantime, he would communicate to the War Department
his strong support for the governor general and his actions. Wilson subsequently wrote to
Garrison, “I would back him [Harrison] up in everyt_hing unless the Governor was
absolutely wrong [emphasis Wilson’s]. . . . I would back him up to the extent of asking
everybody’s resignation before I would overrule him.” Wilson expressed his fears

concerning the administrative crisis in Manila in a conﬁdential memo to Tumulty. “Any

 

74 Cables, Osmeﬁa to Quezon, June 20, 1914, Quezon Papers, BHL, reel 4; Quezon to Osmef‘la,
June 22, 1914, ibid.; and Quezon to Harrison, n.d. [ca. June 20, 1914] and June 23, 1914, Harrison Papers,
Box 34.

218

kind of trouble in the Islands,” he wrote, could “undermine all the administration’s hard
wor ” for the cultivation of democracy in the Islands.” Nevertheless, upon learning of the
president’s endorsement of him, Harrison cabled Quezon that all doubts had been
dispelled “in the minds of any persons in this community that he was working along the
lines desired by the President.”76
The Harrison-Riggs administrative crisis, however, was hardly over. The
controversy reached its apex in August 1914 when Riggs challenged the governor
general’s authority over control of the Philippine Constabulary. Upon an appeal by two
American residents, Riggs dispatched all available Constabulary troops, supported by
reserves from the City of Manila Police Department, to San Juan, a poverty-ridden suburb
of Manila, to suppress a rumored Filipino insurrection. Although American fears of such
an event proved illusory, the affair brought the crisis within the Commission to a head
because Riggs never informed his superior about the seemingly impending insurrection or
about the measures he proposed to take to suppress it. Retentionists had long promulgated
rumors of an impending second general insurrection in the Philippines as part of their
efforts to discredit the argument that peace and order prevailed in the Islands and that
Filipinos, as a mature and disciplined race who embraced peaceful progress, were capable

of greater autonomy or independence. Riggs’ deployment of the Constabulary to suppress

the long-awaited insurrection received widespread coverage by the press in the

 

75 Letters, Wilson to Garrison, June 8, 1914, BIA Records, File 2026/24, and Wilson to Tumulty,
July 5, 1914, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel 191.

76 Cables, Quezon to Harrison, J une 25, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 34; Quezon to Osmef'la, June
26, 1914, Quezon Papers, BHL, reel 4; Quezon to Samuel Ferguson, July 6, 1914, ibid.; and Harrison to
Quezon, July 2, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 51.

219

Philippines and the United States, lending a certain quality of legitimacy to the
retentionist rumors.77

Outraged that he had been kept in the dark about “the threat” of insurrection and
incensed over Riggs’ unilateral decision to deploy the Constabulary, Hanison
reprimanded his subordinate and insisted that he be informed about all questions
concerning public order in the Islands. Thereafter, Riggs was instructed to brief the
governor general each morning regarding all threats, real and imagined, that might affect
the safety of the public and was ordered never to dispatch the Constabulary without ﬁrst
obtaining the governor general’s official consent. Of course, Riggs considered Harrison’s
dressing him down as an infringement upon his authority as secretary of commerce and
police and conﬁdently requested that the question of the governor general’s proper
authority over the executive departments once again be submitted to the secretary of war
for clariﬁcation.78

In addition to cabling Garrison for further clariﬁcation of the lines of authority,
Harrison asked his brother to appeal once more to Bryan for support. Still disappointed in
the secretary of state’s response earlier in the summer, Fairfax decided to meet with
Garrison instead. Following two lengthy conversations, the secretary of war convinced
Fairfax that his subsequent inaction in resolving the crisis derived from a memorandum

from Vice-Governor Martin, reporting that the tension between Harrison and Riggs was

 

77 The Manila Times, August 24 and 26, 1914. Even the outbreak of general war in Europe failed
to push news of the “insurrection” in the Philippines off the front pages of American newspapers. See New
York Times, August 26, 1914, and Washington Evening Star, August 29, 1914. See also, Harrison,
Cornerstone, 150-151.

78 Cable, Harrison to the Secretary of War, August 28, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 34.

220

not serious but merely a matter of learning to work together.79 More importantly, Garrison
assured Fairfax that if the crisis ever devolved into having to make a choice about
retaining either Harrison or Riggs, the War Department would recall Riggs.80

Clearly, the secretary of war’s tune had changed. Believing Riggs had overstepped
his bounds, Garrison cabled Harrison that the governor general possessed direct authority
over the Constabulary. His ruling on the subject proved sufﬁciently sharp in tone to carry
its own warning to Riggs. Although no further direct clashes between Harrison and Riggs
occurred afterward, the fact that Riggs had alienated himself from the remaining
commissioners meant that he would have to go. Some talk of ﬁnding a diplomatic post
for Riggs, perhaps in Siam [Thailand], surfaced, but by the spring of 1915, ill health
forced Riggs to return to the United States on medical leave. He never returned to the
Philippines and eventually resigned from public office on October 31, 1915.81 Of course,
Riggs’ departure ﬁ'om the Islands angered many within the Manila American community
who blamed Harrison personally for his demise.82

The resolution of the Harrison-Riggs administrative controversy in the governor

general’s favor proved doubly signiﬁcant. First, not only had Hanison maintained control

over his department secretaries, but he also thwarted the Manila American community’s

 

79 Cable, Martin to Garrison, July 3, 1914, BIA Records, Martin Personnel File.
80 Letter, Fairfax Harrison to Harrison, September 15, 1914, Harrison Papers, Box 34.

8' Letter, Harrison to Fairfax Harrison, November 1, 1914, ibid., Box 32; Cables, Quezon to
Osmeiia, December 18, I914, Quezon Papers, BHL, reel 4; McIntyre to Harrison, February 24, 1915,
Harrison Papers, Box 32; Letter, Mary Cromwell Riggs to Lawrason Riggs, March 20, 1915, BIA Records,
Riggs Personnel File; Cables, McIntyre to Harrison, March 24, 1915, Harrison Papers, Box 38; Garrison to
Harrison, May 6, I915, ibid.; and McIntyre to Harrison, October 30, I915, ibid.

82 See for example, The Manila Times, November 8, 1915, in Harrison Papers, Box 35.

221

and the War Department’s efforts to temper his ambitious Filipinization program. More
than the public attacks by retentionists in the United States and the Philippines, the
Harrison-Riggs imbroglio had very nearly culminated in the governor general’s
resignation. Only Wilson’s support for Harrison, at Quezon’s suggestion, saved the
situation for the supporters of Filipinization. The controversy had prompted the president
to make clear his support for the fundamental shifts then occurring in American policy
and personnel in the Philippines.

Second, Harrison’s triumph ensured that the Nacionalistas would possess
hegemony over the legislative process in the insular government. With the crisis over and
the potential for a new stalemate ended, Harrison and the Nacionalista oligarchy turned
their attention to ousting retentionist constituencies in other parts of the Philippine
government. Afterwards, Filipinization of the insular government continued unabated
without further serious challenges from within the Philippines.

Before his tenure as governor general ended in 1921, Harrison, now safely at the
helm, directed the gradual transformation of the insular government from one of
Americans aided by Filipinos, to one of Filipinos assisted by Americans. But whether or
not Filipinization of the Philippine government would survive beyond Harrison’s tenure
depended upon the success of Wilson and his advisers in redeﬁning the colonial bond. In
the end, everyone with a vested interest in the Philippine question understood that the
long-term success of Harrison’s efforts to shift “the White Man’s Burden” rested upon the
Wilson administration’s ability to secure passage of a new organic act in Congress that
declared eventual independence as the objective of America’s Philippine policy and

reorganized the insular government to provide greater self-govemment for the Filipino

222

people.

223

Chapter Six

Redeﬁning the Colonial Bond
On December 2, 1913, Wilson, in his ﬁrst state of the union address before both houses
of Congress, announced that his administration would formulate a new organic act for the
Philippines aimed at redeﬁning America’s colonial bond with its Filipino wards.
Contrasting the “mere military despotism” that existed in Mexico under Victoriano
Huerta to which the president adamantly opposed and his administration’s Filipinization
program in the Philippines which was laying the cornerstone of Filipino self-government
in “a thoughtful and permanent manner,” Wilson declared that he intended to transform
the Islands into a showcase for democracy in Asia He stated that the successful
transformation of the Philippines into an Asian dominion formed an important part of his
emerging foreign policy towards the nonwestem world. In this respect, Wilson asserted
that the cultivation of genuine Filipino self-government under American tutelage would
not only demonstrate America’s disinterestedness as a world power whereby the United
States acted as the “friend and champion of constitutional government” throughout the
world, but the establishment of a stable Philippine government controlled by Filipinos
and assisted by a few Americans would also serve as an effective blueprint for how other
nonwestem societies, such as Mexico, should approach democratic reform. Thus, Wilson
concluded, his administration’s ultimate objective in the Philippines was “to set up as
quickly as possible a government which all the world will see to be suitable to a people
whose affairs are under their own control.” As for when the United States would
relinquish sovereignty over the Philippines, Wilson never alluded to any speciﬁc

timetable nor offered details about any necessary preconditions before ﬁnal separation

224

could be completed. Instead, the president spoke only in general terms, declaring that his
administration would continue to “extend and perfect step by step the system of self-
govemment in the Islands, making test of them and modify them as experience discloses
their successes and failures.”1

Some historians, in explaining Wilson’s apparent unwillingness to delineate a
precise timetable for Philippine independence, have emphasized the role of domestic
politics in tempering the president’s public remarks about the issue. In the year between
Wilson’s Staunton address in which the president-elect declared that America’s fi‘ontier
in the Islands was at an end and his ﬁrst state of the union address, the debate on the
Philippine question had become polarized into two camps at opposite ends of the political
spectrum. At one end, southern and western Democrats under Secretary of State Bryan,
Representative William A. Jones (Democrat-Virginia), and Senator John S. Williams
(Democrat-Mississippi), supported by the aging but still vocal leaders of the Anti-
Imperialist League, continued to argue for the adoption of a policy of immediate and
complete independence. At the other end, conservative Progressives and Republicans
under former President Taft, supported by the Catholic Church, the War Department and
the business community in the United States and the Manila American community in the
Philippines, remained solid in their support for permanent retention. Wilson and moderate
Democrats found themselves stuck in the middle with little room to maneuver in
redeﬁning America’s relationship with the Philippine people. For these historians then,

the existence of a serious rift not only between Democrats, Republicans, and Progressives

 

l Wilson, Annual Message before Congress, December 2, 1913, PW W, XXIX, 3-1 I. Quotations on

225

over the future status of the Philippines, but also within the Democratic ranks in Congress
and within Wilson’s own cabinet, dictated that prudence govern the president’s actions on
the issue lest he court disaster for his “New Freedom” legislative agenda and his party’s
political future.2

While it is clear that polarization among Democrats and others concerning
Philippine independence did indeed shape the debate on the provisions of a new organic
act, Wilson’s support for early separation cannot be assumed. On the contrary, Wilson
never publicly entertained a speciﬁc date for Philippine independence; his general
statements on the question since 1898 were consistent in supporting complete separation
only after several generations of American tutelage. Also, Wilson still did not equate self-
govemment with self-determination or independence. Instead, he wanted to forge a new
organic act in Congress that would extend more self-government to Filipinos without
severing the colonial bonds until some unspeciﬁed date in the future. Yet, accomplishing
this political feat required the president to create and maintain a new consensus on the
Philippine question, one that embraced a more moderate and gradual approach to

separation.

December 1913 — February 1914
When the regular session of the Sixty-third Congress convened in December 1913, the
prospects that any Philippine legislation would reach the ﬂoor were not bright. In spite of

his call for action on the Philippine question in his ﬁrst annual message to Congress,

 

2 Johnson, Peace Progressives, 34-70, and Golay, Face of Empire: United States-Philippine
Relations, 1898-I946 (Madison, WI, 1998), 183-184.

226

Wilson had already attached priority to passage of his central banking and antitrust
measures which he expected to be controversial and time consuming. Impatient to act,
however, Quezon and Osmeﬁa moved forward to shape the contours of any new
Philippine legislation, including the deﬁnition of the conditions and timetable for the
withdrawal of American sovereignty from the Islands. For them, the determination of the
timing and circumstances of independence constituted the most critical part of any new
organic act. Although the exigencies of Filipino politics had dictated that the two
Nacionalista leaders make immediate and complete separation ﬁ'om the United States
their magnetic slogan to ride to political power in the Islands, neither supposed the
Philippines ready for absolute independence. Instead, both Quezon and Osmeﬁa desired
only two objectives: an official American assurance of eventual independence, and the
achievement of complete Filipino home rule under American protection. Although they
understood that public support for anything less than immediate and complete
independence was tantamount to political suicide in the Philippine political landscape,
they believed American withdrawal from the Islands would yield even more disastrous
consequences not only for the Partido Nacionalista but also for the Archipelago itself.3
Wilson’s personal ambiguity and vague public rhetoric concerning the Philippine
question since his inauguration had only added to the Nacionalista leadership’s anxiety.
Even after the controversy over the selection of a governor general had been resolved
with Harrison’s appointment, the president had continued to desist from offering any

deﬁnitive statement on the timing of and conditions for Philippine independence. As a

 

3 Dapen Liang, The Development of Philippine Political Parties (Hong Kong, 1939), 88-89.

227

result, worried Filipino leaders could only grope in the dark about what would be the
Democratic administration’s timetable for complete American separation.

The rapid pace and sweeping nature of Harrison’s F ilipinization program
reinforced the Nacionalista leaders’ sense of urgency. On the one hand, Osmeﬁa feared
that continued precipitate action by the Harrison administration would eventually impair
the efficiency of the insular government that, in turn, would jeopardize Filipino claims
that they were prepared for home rule. When presented with a list of American employees
in the Philippine Civil Service by Harrison and asked to identify those who should be
replaced by Filipinos, Osmeﬁa refused. Instead, the speaker advised that radical changes
should be delayed until the governor general could acquire personal knowledge of men
and conditions in the Philippines. Harrison, however, remained undeterred. He responded
to Osmeffa’s plea for moderation by stating that since he had already started the job of
rooting out American retentionists in the insular government, he had to be thorough.4
Quezon, on the other hand, interpreted the governor general’s genuine devotion to early
independence and the vigor and speed with which he pursued that end as a possible
opening phase of “a policy of abandonment” by the Wilson administrations

Even more alarming to the resident commissioner was the nascent but growing
threat posed to the Quezon-Osmeffa hold over the Partido Nacionalista by Teodoro
Sandiko’s growing radical wing within the party. Sandiko, a revered veteran of the

Philippine Revolution who maintained close ties with Emilio Aguinaldo’s Katipunan and

 

4 Hayden, The Philippines, 100-101; Kalaw, Aide-de-C amp, 105; and Stanley, A Nation in the
Making, 212-213.

5 Cables, Osmeﬂa to Quezon, May 20, 1913, Quezon Papers, BHL, reel 3; Quezon to J. McDill,
July 3, 1913, ibid; and Letter, Maximo M. Kalaw to A.V. Villanueva, November 17, 1913, ibid, reel 4.

228

General Artemio Ricarte’s revolutionary junta in Hong Kong and Japan, ultimately broke
away from the Nacionalista fold and formed a third populist-based party, the Partido
Democrata Nacional. Commonly referred to as T erceristas, loyal Sandiko supporters
waged a campaign of criticism through their newspaper, Consolidacion (edited by Pedro
Gil and published in Tagalog), against the emerging Harrison-Osmeﬁa condominium of
power in Manila The Terceristas, suspicious of the speaker’s meteoric ascendance as the
governor general’s chief political adviser, charged that the current leadership of the
Partido Nacionalista failed to represent “the spirit of Filipino democracy.” The “Osmei’ia
oligarchy,” rather than an executive committee, dictated party affairs, and deluded the
Filipino people with promises of greater self-government that were never delivered. Both
Osmeﬁa and Quezon rationalized that a new Philippine bill was needed if the domestic
political threat from the left was to be neutralized and the alliance between the Harrison
administration and the leaders of the Partido Nacionalista preserved.6

While enroute to Washington to resume his duties as resident commissioner after
escorting Harrison to Manila, Quezon had an encounter with Japanese officials in
Yokohama that further exacerbated his apprehension about early Philippine
independence. According to a report ﬁled with the State Department by the American
consul general in Yokohama, Quezon was approached by “two Japanese agents” who
“informed the Resident Commissioner” that if the Wilson administration granted
independence to the Philippines in the near ﬁrture, an outcome that appeared likely given
the president’s public rhetoric on the issue, then “there would be an immediate beginning

of officially assisted emigration of Japanese to the Philippine Islands.” Documenting

 

6 Liang, The Development of Philippine Political Parties, 96-99.

229

Japan’s long-time interest in the Philippines as a critical element in Japanese southern
expansion, the consul general’s report stated that political leaders in Tokyo, following
Japan’s acquisition of Taiwan in 1895, developed a multifaceted colonization scheme to
dispatch commercial agents to the Philippines, open up markets for Japanese goods,
establish a “close, paternalistic relationship with the Filipinos,” and prepare for a time
when, after Philippine independence, more direct Japanese inﬂuence could be asserted in
the Islands’ affairs. More importantly, because the Chinese community controlled much
of the economic life of the Islands, Japanese merchants endeavored to supplant their
position, not necessarily with a view to immediate territorial seizure but in order to
facilitate Japanese economic penetration. In its conclusion, the consular report predicted
that if Japanese emigrants succeeded in establishing a viable Japanese community in the
Archipelago, then it would not be long before “an independent Philippine republic
became the emperor’s largest colony.”7

Thoroughly alarmed by the time he arrived in Washington in late December 1913,
Quezon quickly made his way to McIntyre’s office to inquire what Wilson had in store
for the Philippines. The BIA chief’s response could hardly have reassured the resident
commissioner as McIntyre confessed that he too possessed only vague notions about the
president’s ultimate plans for the Islands. He told Quezon, “Independence could come

tomorrow or in the next millennium.” Although McIntyre indicated that Wilson desired

 

7 Report No. 441, American Consulate General, Yokohama, December 12, 1913, BIA Records,
File 364/160. For Japan’s long-time interest in the Philippines, see Josefa M. Saniel, Japan and the
Philippines, 1868-1898 (Quezon City, PI, 1969); Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and
American Expansion, [897-191] (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 48-49, 57-59, 148-149; Mark R. Peattie, “The
Nanyo: Japan in the South Paciﬁc, 1885-1945” in Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The
Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-I945 (Princeton, 1984), 172-210; and Henry P. Frei, Japan ’s Southward
Advance and Australia: From the Sixteenth Century to World War II (Honolulu, 1991), 65-73.

230

the opinion of the secretary of war before moving forward on the Philippine question,
Garrison subsequently informed the resident commissioner that he had already passed the
provisions for a new organic act on to the president for consideration. Quezon then
contacted Wilson who blamed all inaction on Congress.8

Fearing that the threat of Japanese expansionism into the western Paciﬁc might
provide an additional incentive to abandon the Islands, Quezon, in subsequent discussions
with McIntyre, Garrison and Wilson, underscored the need for immediate “conservative
legislation” that pledged the United States to a policy of eventual Philippine
independence with American guarantees for insular defense.9 First, Quezon contended
that the introduction of conservative legislation was necessary to allay talk of immediate
and complete independence by the “southern Democratic block” in Congress. A recent
meeting with James L. Slayden (Democrat-Texas) convinced him that this small but vocal
contingent in Congress wanted “to get rid of the Philippine Islands, caring not a bit what
happened to us.” Quezon even told McIntyre that it had been commonly assumed in
Manila in 1911 and 1912 that Jones supported such a “policy of scuttle” when he argued
for American withdrawal by 1921 in his ﬁrst Philippine bill.lo

In the absence of any clear proposal by the Wilson administration and assuming
that the ﬁrst Jones bill would not be reintroduced in Congress following its demise in the

Senate in 1912, Quezon prepared a draft bill of his own. He conﬁded in McIntyre that the

 

8 Memorandum, McIntyre to Garrison, December 29, I913, BIA Records, File 4325/158.
9 Ibid.

m Memorandum, McIntyre to Garrison, January 17, 1914, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44,
reel 191.

231

principal objective of his bill was to delay Philippine independence for at least a quarter
century.11 A shrewd politician, the resident commissioner’s idea for a new independence
bill sought to neutralize the challenge of the Terceristas in the Philippines and the
southern peace progressives in the United States without disrupting the political status
quo in Manila or Washington. The contours of Quezon’s plan to reorganize the Philippine
government soon emerged in his discussions with McIntyre in January 1914. While the
president of the United States would continue to appoint the governor general and the
justices of the Philippine Supreme Court, all legislative authority in domestic matters
would become concentrated in an elected bicameral legislature. The new Philippine
Legislature would exercise power over public lands, natural resources, and tariff relations
other than those with the United States, subject to the approval of the American president.
In all legislative matters, the governor general would possess a reversible veto and the
president an absolute veto. As for independence, Quezon suggested that a census of the
Philippines be taken in 1915 and every tenth year thereafter. Whenever such a census
should indicate that seventy-ﬁve percent of adult males could read and write in any
language, or sixty percent of adult males were literate in English, then, provided that
peace, political stability and ﬁnancial responsibility existed throughout the Philippines,
the president could call a referendum on the question of independence. If the outcome

warranted it, then the Philippine Legislature could convene a constitutional convention to

 

H This discussion of Quezon’s proposal for a new organic act is based upon General Frank
McIntyre’s memoranda of nine private conversations between Quezon and himself in late December 1913
and early January 1914. McIntyre, Memorandum, January 17, I914, BIA Records, File 4325/158.

232

determine the necessary steps leading to eventual withdrawal of American sovereignty
and the recognition of Philippine independence. '2

Clearly, Quezon’s plan was a measure for achieving nearly complete home rule, at
least on domestic matters, not obtaining complete independence. Aware that the
necessary organization of personnel and resources could not be seemed in time for
conducting a census in 1915, the resident commissioner’s proposal would effectively
postpone the issue of American withdrawal until 1925. Yet such a plan involved great
political risk for Quezon in that he was promoting independence rhetorically without
pushing for it in practice. He requested, therefore, that McIntyre incorporate his ideas into
a draft bill and propose it as the BIA’s plan for resolving the Philippine question.
McIntyre expressed concern whether or not Osmei’la and the other Nacionalistas in the
Philippine Legislature would support the resident commissioner’s plan, especially if it
was proposed as “the BIA’s plan.” Quezon replied that vast majority of the members of
the Legislature would lend their support to the conservative proposal “under the right
circumstances.”'3

Harrison’s support for Quezon’s proposal, however, could not be assumed. When
McIntyre asked if the governor general had been informed about the plan, Quezon
replied: “My God, no! I think he believes in independence. He thinks he can turn us loose
in about four years.” Although McIntyre warned that it would be difficult to obtain the

administration’s commitment to any proposal for achieving Filipino home rule and

eventual independence which did not have the endorsement of the governor general, he

 

12 Ibid, and Memorandum, McIntyre to Garrison, January 17, 1914, ibid

'3 lbid

233

nevertheless agreed to draft such a bill. During the third week of January, the BIA chief
circulated a detailed memorandum on Quezon’s proposal to both Garrison and Wilson,
both of whom read it. In a personal memorandum to the president, Quezon pointed out
the proposed literacy prerequisite for independence, emphasizing the necessity of its
inclusion as not so much a precondition for independence but as a necessary measure to
preclude the introduction of a ﬁxed date for separation in any independence bill. The
resident commissioner also stressed the need to include American guarantees of Filipino
autonomy in any such measure given the dangerous reality of Japanese expansionism and
great-power competition on the Asian continent. After all, Quezon wrote Wilson, Filipino
apprehension concerning early independence derived “largely from the conduct of Japan
in the region.”'4
As it turned out, Wilson received Quezon’s plan for resolving the Philippine
question with genuine enthusiasm. House had already informed the president about
Quezon’s “secret mission” of seeking a pledge for “qualiﬁed independence” on
December 29. House also indicated to Wilson that some retentionists supported the
resident commissioner’s efforts. Among them, Bishop Brent had conﬁded in House that
he would endorse an official pledge to grant eventual independence to Filipinos because it
was the only measure that could silence the growing clamor for immediate and complete

separation from the Philippines. Brent warned that if Wilson “bowed to the imediatistas”

and granted independence to the Islands prematurely, he could expect “Mexican history to

 

'4 lbid, and Letter [Conﬁdential], Quezon to Wilson, January 16, 1914, Quezon Papers, BHL,
reel 4. Wilson’s papers are replete with numerous letters and newspaper clippings from both independistas
and retentionists expressing anxiety over Japan’s alleged plan to seize the Philippines. An example of such
anxiety can be found in Letter, Laeton Irwin to Wilson, August 20, 1914, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle
44, reel 191.

234

repeat itself in the Philippines.”15 Wilson found the resident commissioner’s diffidence
regarding early independence especially interesting. Although he failed to see merit in the
idea of holding a census every ten years or the requirement of a literacy qualiﬁcation as a
precondition for independence, he understood well the implications of Quezon’s proposal
for his own political dilemma regarding the Philippine question vis-a-vis southern and
western Democrats in Congress. Although Wilson consistently held to the premise that it
would require at least several generations before Filipinos could possibly work out the
kinks in their own democracy, he understood that opposing early Philippine independence
would place him at odds with the agrarian wing of the Democratic party, a development
that could wreck havoc with his other foreign policy initiatives, especially in Latin
America, as well as his “New Freedom” legislative agenda Quezon’s idea of postponing
the issue for twenty-ﬁve years seemed to offer the president a way out of this domestic
political vice.l6

On January 19, when Wilson met with Quezon in the White House, the president
“conceded” that he would not support immediate independence or any bill committing his
administration to an inﬂexible timetable or a speciﬁc succession of steps leading to
separation. Yet the president affirmed his commitment to eventual independence in
principle and pledged to entertain legislation in that session of Congress to extend even

greater autonomy to Filipinos in the insular government. Such a bill, Wilson agreed,

 

‘5 Letter, Brent to House, December 28, I913, PWW, xx1x, 164-167; House, Diary Entry,
December 29, 1913, lbid; and Letter, House to Wilson, January 23, 1914, ibid

“5 Wilson’s reactions to Quezon’s proposal can be found in the marginalia on his copy of the

draft. Quezon, Draft Proposal, no date, BIA Records, File 4325/56.

235

should also include a statement declaring eventual independence of the Islands as the
ultimate objective of America’s Philippine policy.l7

Once assured that Wilson would not sign any bill that speciﬁed early
independence, Quezon turned his attention to convincing his political allies in the Anti-
Imperialist League to support a measure that pledged only eventual independence rather
than immediate and complete separation. The resident commissioner resorted to
misrepresenting the facts to win over the League’s leadership. Portraying the president as
the author, Quezon sent his draft proposal to both Storey and Winslow for comments.18
The ploy seemed to have failed when Storey responded with a strong note of disapproval.
He especially objected to the idea of holding a census before addressing the Philippine
question because it would “likely postpone for ten years at least the independence of the
Islands.” The aging anti-imperialist recommended that either the census be taken more
often “or else provide in some other way for establishing the independence of the
Islands.” Even better, he argued, the White House should scrap the scheme in its entirety
and formulate another bill that was more in keeping with the Democratic party’s
traditional platform on the Philippine question:

The bill as a whole is unwise. . . . It looks to me as if it was calculated to

postpone rather than hasten independence. I should be disposed to

continue the pressures for a bill more like the Jones bill than to deﬁnitely
dispose of the subject by a bill like this one which relieves Congress from

 

'7 What exactly transpired between Wilson and Quezon in the White House is not known. Quezon,
however, reported his version of what was said in detail to both Erving Winslow and Osmefla. Letter,
Quezon to Winslow, January 19, 1914, Quezon Papers, BHL, reel 4, and Cable, Quezon to Osmefla,
January 20, 1914, ibid

18 Letters, Quezon to Storey and Winslow, February 3, I914, ibid.

236

the necessity of acting, and thereby fulﬁlling its platform promises. At the

same time, it gives us nothing which is in the least degree certain.‘9

In another calculated move, Quezon used Storey’s angry response to the proposal
as a vehicle for making sure that Wilson would make good on his promise to include a
preamble in the Philippine bill that proclaimed eventual independence as the unequivocal
objective of America’s policy in the Islands. Upon receipt of Storey’s scolding letter, the
resident commissioner relayed it to the president with a personal note attached. The Anti-
Imperialist League and its Democratic allies in Congress, he argued, would certainly
oppose such legislation unless the promise of eventual independence was made its
guiding principle: “If we can not have a deﬁnite promise with regard to the time when
independence shall be granted, we shall accept a mere declaration on the part of the
Congress that it is the purpose of the United States to grant eventual Philippine
independence.”20 After Wilson agreed a second time to endorse such a preamble, Quezon
then turned to disarm Storey and the other anti-imperialists: “The question is not what bill
will best suit us,” the resident commissioner wrote, “but what bill will suit the President
that can be accepted by us. . . . I am of the opinion that we had better accept any kind of
bill, provided it is in the right direction, rather than, with the determination of taking only

l.”2' Quezon had reported earlier to Winslow

what we would like to have, get nothing at al
that both Representative Jones, still chairman of the House Committee on Insular Affairs,

and Senator Gilbert Hitchcock, chairman of the Senate Committee on Philippine Affairs,

 

'9 Letter, Storey to Quezon, February 9, 1914, ibid
20 Letter, Quezon to Wilson, February 11, 1914, ibid

21 Letter, Quezon to Storey, February 12, I914, ibid

237

would not consider any legislation on the Philippine question unless they knew it had the
support of the president.22 Knowing that it would be impossible to obtain any legislation
without the approval of Wilson who wielded much inﬂuence among congressional
Democrats, Storey ultimately acquiesced in Quezon’s request that the energies of the
Anti-Imperialist League be redirected to induce the president to send “a special message”
to Congress recommending passage of legislation deﬁnitely promising eventual
independence but without a speciﬁc timetable.23

Whereas Quezon’s draft proposal had stirred anxiety among anti-imperialists in
the United States and certain Nacionalistas in Manila, McIntyre and the BIA embraced it.
Perhaps McIntyre’s assessment that Quezon’s proposal “apparently intended to provide
for a permanent relationship of the Philippine Islands to the United States” best explains
why.24 Yet there was some concern expressed over several of the draft bill’s
administrative provisions, especially those that sought to circumscribe the governor
general’s power to appoint and remove Philippine government officials. McIntyre
suggested that the bill be amended so as to strengthen the governor general’s control of
the executive departments to maintain the existing balance of power between Americans

and Filipinos in the Philippine govemment.”

 

22 Cable, Quezon to Winslow, January 17, 1914, ibid

23 Letters, Quezon to Storey, February 12, 1914, ibid, and Quezon to Winslow, February 19,
I914, ibid

24 Memorandum, BIA, subj.: “Bill to Provide a More Popular Government for the Philippine

Islands, Submitted by Messrs. Quezon and Eamshaw” February 21, 1914, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle
44, reel 191.

2’ lbid; McIntyre, Memorandum, May 13, 1914, BIA Records, File 4325/153; Cable, McIntyre to
Harrison, June 5, 1914, ibid, File 4325/64; and Letter, Garrison to Wilson, June 9, I914, ibid,, File
4325/70-71.

238

One last obstacle to the emerging consensus on a new organic act for the
Philippines had to be surmounted. While Quezon had been in Washington conferring
with Wilson and the War Department, Osmefla had been busy drafting his own proposal
for resolving the Philippine question. The speaker offered a radical departure from
Quezon’s scheme with his idea of convening a constitutional convention in Manila for the
purpose of allowing Filipino legislators to create their own governmental structure and
institutions. Upon ratiﬁcation of a Philippine constitution and the establishment of a
stable Philippine government, the United States should then transfer the sovereignty of
the Islands to the Filipino people. Though he did not ﬁx a date for independence in his
draft proposal, Osmeﬁa’s principal concern was to create a process that shifted the
responsibility of establishing a timetable for separation from Washington to Manila. In
this way, Filipinos could wrest control of their political destiny away from American
politicians who, at least ffom the Nacionalista perspective, tended to view the Philippine
question only in the context of American political exigencies.26

Quezon received the speaker’s draft proposal with mixed emotion. If passed by
Congress, the “Osmeﬁa bill” would authorize the convening of a constitutional
convention at an early date, thus moving the Philippines down the road to independence
sooner rather than later. Fearing that southern Democrats in Congress would embrace the
“Osmeffa bill” as their own and push for early separation, Quezon decided not to lend his
support to the plan. He cabled Osmefla on February 25 that Wilson had “rejected” his

proposal for a constitutional convention to settle the Philippine question. Actually, there

 

26 The contents of the Osmefla draft proposal are described in Cables, Osmei‘la to Quezon,
February 19 and 22, I914, Quezon Papers, BHL, reel 4.

239

is no evidence to suggest that the resident commissioner ever bothered to raise the idea
with either McIntyre or Wilson. Nevertheless, Quezon wrote to the speaker that he had
managed to wrangle two “valuable concessions” from the president: a preamble in a
Philippine bill that pledged the United States to a policy of eventual independence; and a
promise to create a “Philippine Congress with full power of legislation concerning
domestic matters.” Rather than quibble about a constitutional convention, Quezon
advised that the wise course of action was to accept Wilson’s “concessions” without
argument or amendment. Moreover, the declaration of a new policy that aimed to settle
the question of independence would undoubtedly permit ﬁrrther discussion of the timing
of ultimate separation. Perhaps then, Quezon suggested, could Osmefla’s request for a
Filipino constitutional convention be “reconsidered by the President.”27 The speaker’s
cabled reply was short but to the point: “My opinion is that the bill should be accepted if
nothing better possible to secure.”28
By the end of February 1914 then, Wilson, with considerable assistance from
Quezon, had managed to achieve a consensus in Washington and Manila on what the new
Philippine organic bill should include. Under pressure from both Osmeﬂa and the anti-
imperialists, Quezon eventually agreed to edit his bill, deleting the census and literacy
requirements but signiﬁcantly retaining a vague preamble in which the United States

pledged to grant independence when a stable government could be established. In this

respect, Quezon had altered the proposed bill’s tone but not its substance. In May, the

 

27 Cable, Quezon to Osmeﬁa, February 25, I914, ibid.

28 Cable, Osmefla to Quezon, February 25, I914, ibid

240

BIA submitted the resident commissioner’s draft bill as its own measure to the House

Committee on Insular Affairs for consideration.

May— October 1914

Leaders in the House had not planned to take up the Philippine question that session of
Congress. But once it became clear that the Senate was lagging far behind the House in
handling the nation’s business, the House leadership instructed Jones, the committee
chair, to report a Philippine bill. Throughout the month of June, Jones consulted with
Wilson, Garrison, and Hitchcock to ﬂesh out the ﬁne details of the Philippine bill.29
Garrison also cabled a copy of the draft bill to Harrison in Manila to obtain the reactions
from the commissioners. Harrison, Martin, Denison, and the Filipino commissioners
quickly endorsed the measure; Riggs dissented. Quezon sent a copy to Osmel’la who
secured the Partido Nacionalista ’s enthusiastic endorsement of the bill. Nacionalistas
then moved to organize a broad campaign to solicit resolutions of approval from
provincial boards and municipal councils throughout the Philippines.30

Garrison, however, could not ﬁnd much in the House bill to support. Reluctant to
authorize any further action in the Philippines until the fallout from Harrison’s policy of

vigorous Filipinization had dissipated, he instructed McIntyre to omit the proposed

preamble, which stated in its original version that it was the purpose of the United States

 

2’ Letters, Wilson to Jones, June 8, 1914, PWW, xxx, 160-161; Wilson to Jones, June 11, 1914,
ibid., 172; Wilson to Jones, June 25, I914, ibid, 213; Jones to Wilson, June 26, I914, ibid., 215-216;
Garrison to Wilson, June 26, 1914, ibid, 216; and Garrison to Wilson, June 30, 1914, ibid, 230.

30 Cables, Harrison to the Secretary of War, May 28, I914, BIA Records, File 4325/79; Harrison,
Martin, and Denison to Garrison, June 8, 1914, ibid., File 4325/66; Harrison to the Secretary of War, July
17, 1914, Harrison Papers, Cable Book, 1913-1914; and Congressional Record, 63'” Congress, 2"d session,

241

to recognize Philippine independence as soon as a stable government could be
established. In the meantime, the secretary of war sought Wilson’s counsel on the matter,
hoping the president would opt for an even more conservative course of action.31 The
president, however, refused to budge on the preamble. He had already given Quezon his
word twice on the matter. Besides, because the vague pledge of eventual independence in
the preamble was patterned after the 1912 Democratic plank on the Philippines, Wilson
believed that its rejection by him would smack of hypocrisy by the Democratic Party. As
the Washington press corps had already begun to hound him on the issue at every
opportunity, he did not want to offer them any more fodder for criticism.32 More
importantly, however, the president understood that the omission of the preamble would
have meant returning to ground zero with Quezon and the Nacionalistas on the Philippine
question. He could ill afford to alienate the Nacionalista leadership as their collaboration
was essential not only to securing conservative legislation on Philippine independence,
but also to the successful completion of American social engineering programs in the

Islands.33

 

16097.

3‘ Memorandum, Garrison to Wilson, June 19, 1914, BIA Records, File 4325/70-71, which
includes Garrison’s harsh analysis of the Jones bill. For the attempts of the War Department to inﬂuence the

second Jones bill as it emerged from the House Committee on Insular Affairs, see BIA Records, File
4325/63, 64, 68,69, 74, 75, 85.

32 . . . . . . . .
Wllson responded to numerous questlons concernmg a new organlc act for the Phrlrppmes 1n no
less than nine press conferences between April 2, 1914 and January 12, 1915. See Wilson, Press
Conferences, April 2, 1914, PWW, XXIX, 397-400; June 8, 1914, ibid, XXX, 158-160; June 25, 1914,
ibid, 208-209; July 6, 1914, ibid, 259-260; September 28, 1914, ibid., XXX], 87-89; October 26, I914,
ibid, 233-235; December 1, I914, ibid., 373-375; January 5, I915, ibid, XXXII, 13-17; and January 12,
I915, ibid, 54-58.

33 Memoranda, Garrison to McIntyre, May 13, 1914, BIA Records, File 4325/158, and McIntyre to
Garrison, May 26, 1914, ibid, File 4325/159.

242

Yet Garrison had to be placated as well. Wilson conferred with his secretary of
war and assured him that in addition to including an ambiguously worded pledge to
eventual independence in the preamble, the Philippine bill would contain speciﬁc
provisions aimed at strengthening the executive power of both the president and the
governor general in determining the course of America’s Philippine policy. Doing so
meant that the colonial bond would not be severed, only redeﬁned, and that the precise
timing and circumstances of separation would remain ﬁrmly in the hands of the president
and the War Department. In this respect, Wilson made it clear that he did not intend to
extend the principle of national self-determination to the Philippines, but only the
extension of Filipino self-govemment under the supervision of an empowered American
governor general.34

After sorting out his cabinet on the issue, Wilson announced in late June that he
desired passage of a Philippine bill in the current session of Congress extending “home
rule” to the Islands. When Jones introduced the House bill in early July, the president
endorsed it but hedged his commitment by stating that the bill “would not be insisted
upon as an administration measure.”35 Consideration of Jones’s bill by the House
committee resulted in extensive modiﬁcation, and Jones ultimately reintroduced a revised
version of the measure in August, which became known as the second Jones bill.36 The

preamble soon emerged as the most signiﬁcant and controversial component of the bill

 

3" Letter, Wilson to Garrison, June 4, 1914, PWW, xxx, 144.
35 Washington Post, June 25, 1914.

36 House Report No. 1115, “Political Status of the People of the Philippine Islands” 63rd
Congress, 2nd session, in House Reports, Miscellaneous, Serial 6560, 3 volumes (Washington, DC, 1914),
III, 14-15. [Hereafter cited as “Political Status of the People of the Philippine Islands.”]

243

because it sought to redeﬁne the relationship between the Philippines and the United
States by declaring eventual independence as the official objective of American policy
and by increasing Filipino participation in the insular government:

Whereas it was never the intention of the people of the United States in the

incipiency of the War with Spain to make it a war of conquest or for

territorial aggrandizement; and whereas it is, as it has always been, the

purpose of the people of the United States to withdraw their sovereignty

over the Philippine Islands and recognize their independence as soon as a

stable government can be established therein; and whereas for the speedy

accomplishment of such purpose it is desirable to place in the hands of the

people of the Philippines as large a control of their domestic affairs as can

be given them without, in the meantime, impairing the exercise of the

rights of sovereignty by the people of the United States, in order that, by

the use and exercise of popular franchise and governmental powers, they

may be the better prepared to fully assume the responsibilities and enjoy

all the privileges of complete independence.37

The second Jones bill also proposed signiﬁcant changes in the form of
government then operating in the Philippines. Jones argued that greater “control of their
affairs” should be granted Filipinos so they could “be the better prepared to fully assume
the responsibilities and enjoy all of the privileges of complete independence.”38 Of
critical importance to the Nacionalistas, the new organic bill provided for the abolition of
the appointive Philippine Commission, replacing it with a bicameral legislature composed
of a Senate and a House of Representatives. With the exception of two senators in the
upper chamber and nine representatives in the lower chamber who were appointed by the
governor general to represent “the Non-Christian Areas,” the Legislature would be

elective. Although the Partido Nacionalista stood to gain the lion’s share of seats in the

Senate which would ensure that party’s predominance in Philippine politics, the second

 

37 Congressional Record, 63rd Congress, 2n,d session, 16020.

33 Ibid., 16027.

244

Jones bill also reinforced the right of the United States to intervene and abrogate any
undesirable measures passed by the Legislature. Both Wilson and Garrison deemed this
check on Filipino self-govemment essential to preserving the colonial bond. The
governor general, who together with the justices of the Philippine Supreme Court would
be appointed by the president, would possess considerably more executive power in the
new government conﬁguration. The insular chief executive would appoint the heads of all
executive departments, subject, however, to the approval of the new Philippine Senate.
He also would supervise budget preparation and retain broad veto powers, including the
power to veto speciﬁc items in the annual appropriation bills.39 All Philippine legislation,
therefore, would remain subject to a “conditional veto” by the governor general and an
“absolute veto” by the president. Clearly, the second Jones bill did not threaten to sever
the essential tentacles of American colonialism in the Philippines.40
In addition, existing law prohibited the Philippine government ﬁ'om enacting tariff
legislation, raising income tax rates or issuing bonds, since these powers remained ﬁrmly
in the hands of the Congress. Congress also reserved the right to annul any legislation
passed in Manila if it was of a “dubious ﬁnancial nature.” McIntyre, in his annual report
to the secretary of war, had brought to congressional attention the need for customs, tariff

and currency reforms, but as he had pointed out, Congress had previously failed to enact

or consider such legislation due to heavy legislative loads.41 The problem became more

 

3’ “Political Status of the People of the Philippine Islands,” 14-15.
40 lbid See also, Letter, Wilson to Garrison, June 4, 1914, PWW, XXX, I44.

41 McIntyre, Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Insular A ﬂairs t0 the Secretary of War, 1914
(Washington, DC, 1915), 4-5.

245

acute in 1914. Tariff receipts had comprised the major source of revenue for the insular
government, but since a state of free trade existed between the United States and the
Philippines following passage of the Underwood Tariff in 1913 insular customs duties
had diminished rapidly. According to the majority report of the House Committee on
Insular Affairs, if the proposed legislation failed to gain approval, some type of ﬁnancial
assistance to the Philippines would become necessary. Under the proposed bill the
Philippine Legislature acquired the authority to pass acts relating to the tariff and
currency laws, disposition of public lands, timber and mining rights, regulation of
immigration, and redistricting the Islands, subject, however, to the president’s approval.
In addition, all trade relations between the United States and the Philippines remained
under the strict purview of Congress.42

Also, it was expected that the expansion of the voting franchise, provided by the
second Jones bill, would increase the representative nature of the Philippine government
but only slightly. Previously only adult men able to read either Spanish or English voted,
but the second Jones bill dropped this restriction and proposed to extend voting privileges
to men able to read and write in Tagalog or any other Filipino dialect.43 If Congress
passed the House measure without amendment, then the number of Filipinos eligible to
vote would increase only marginally from about 750,000 to 900,000, a ﬁgure still far less

than ten percent of the population.44

 

42 “Political Status of the People of the Philippine Islands,” 1 1-12.
43 Ibid, 14-15.

44 Congressional Record, 64th Congress, lst session, January 31, I916, I799.

246

Indeed, the second Jones bill was hardly a radical measure. The debate in the
House revealed few objections to the administrative features of the bill as majorities on
both sides of the aisle proved ready to grant Filipinos greater autonomy over their
domestic affairs. The minority report, authored by Clarence Miller (Republican-
Minnesota), Horace Towner (Republican-Iowa) and Simeon Fess (Republican-Ohio),
even agreed that there existed “a great need just now of legislation that would
immediately and materially beneﬁt the Filipinos.” In effect, these Republican members of
the House Committee on Insular Affairs praised the conservative tone of the proposed
bill’s administrative provisions.45

The main point of contention of the second Jones bill was the measure’s
preamble. As written, the preamble pledged “it is the purpose of the people of the United
States to withdraw their sovereignty over the Philippine Islands and to recognize their
independence as soon as a stable government can be established therein.” Knowing that
the “purpose” of the United States in the Philippines had been the key issue in the “great
debate” on empire at the turn of the century, Jones devoted considerable space in the
House committee report to defending the preamble of his bill. The preamble’s pledge of
eventual independence, he wrote, not only paralleled very closely the Philippine plank of
the Democratic party in 1912, but also conformed to the prevailing attitudes of both
parties on the question of Philippine independence. Jones reviewed statements by former
Presidents McKinley and Taft to illustrate this line of argument, concluding that

permanent retention of the Islands disregarded declarations by prominent Republicans as

 

45 House Report No. 1115, “Government of the Philippines” August 31, 1914, 63rd Congress, 2nd
session, in House Reports, Miscellaneous, Serial 6888, 3 volumes (Washington, DC, 1914), III, 2.
[Hereafter cited as “Government of the Philippines.”]

247

well as Democrats. Jones also pointed to the American people’s consistent opposition to
the idea of retaining the Philippines indeﬁnitely. This opposition, he wrote, was reﬂected
in the public’s “enthusiastic support” for the ﬁrst Jones bill in 1912. That bill had
proposed the immediate establishment of a practically independent government and a
grant of full independence on July 4, 1921. Although the ﬁrst Jones bill had failed to gain
approval in Congress, the dissenting arguments of the Democrats revealed that the
American public’s opposition to indeﬁnite retention of the Philippines was broadly based:
the American people viewed the possession of overseas colonies in the western Paciﬁc as
an anathema to traditional diplomatic principles and ideals; they believed that Filipinos,
having demonstrated their capacity for home rule, were deserving of complete
independence; they feared that retention of the Philippines invited disaster in view of the
fact that the Archipelago could not be defended adequately against foreign invasion and
occupation; and they assumed the Islands constituted an intolerable burden upon the
American treasury. The preamble, Jones concluded, reﬂected the sentiments of the
American people and its political leaders, embodied the hopes of Filipinos, and fulﬁlled
the promises made by the Democratic Party since 1900.46

For the ﬁrst time since the acquisition of the Philippines in 1898, Republicans
found themselves in a minority opposing an administration-sponsored bill calling for a
major change in colonial policy. But the Republican leadership in the House did not
panic. It was apparent that Congress, which had been in almost continuous session since

April 1913, would adjourn soon for the congressional elections of November. Presented

 

46 Ibid., September 28, 1914, 15834, and “Political Status of the People of the Philippine
Islands,” 3-9.

248

with an opportunity to inﬂict a legislative defeat on the Wilson administration, House
Republicans decided to ﬁlibuster the second Jones bill with amendments and charges that
the majority party intended to abandon the Philippines to an uncertain fate.47 Over the
eight days of debate during which the bill was open to revision, Republicans introduced
ninety-four amendments to the twenty-six sections of the bill and three amendments to
the preamble. All were painstakingly discussed and brought to a vote."8

Republicans also attacked what they viewed as the Democratic Party’s
inconsistent position on the Philippine question. According to the dissenting minority
report, “The fact that this bill is so much less radical than the bill of two years ago”
demonstrated the wisdom of Republican policy during the Taft era. House Republicans
attempted to embarrass the Democratic majority by indicating how much of a retreat the
new bill really was fi'om the ﬁrst, and asked why, since remarkable progress in Filipino
political capacities had been made since Harrison’s arrival in the Islands, the new
legislation remained so conservative.49 Jones responded that while he and other southern
peace progressives personally favored immediate and complete independence, the
majority of Democrats, including the president and most of his cabinet, did not. The

second Jones bill reﬂected the moderate aims of the Wilson administration and

 

47 “Government of the Philippines,” 4.

‘8 Congressional Record, 63rd Congress, 2“d session, 16082-16097, 16123-16138, 16213-16243,
16381-16403, 16424-16440, 16473-16502.

49 “Government of the Philippines,” 6.

249

conservative Democrats, not those of the peace progressives, their allies in the Anti-
Imperialist League, or the vast majority of F ilipinos.5 0
Finally, Republicans criticized the timing of the introduction of the Democratic
measure. Between the reporting of the bill by Jones and the time it came before the
House, war broke out in Europe. As a result, Republicans insisted that a public discussion
of the relationship between the United States and the Philippines was hardly appropriate
at that time because “the nations involved in the struggle have many interests and
territorial possessions in close proximity to the Philippines.” Even the mere discussion of
American withdrawal from the Islands, Republicans charged, might incite nationalist
uprisings in the nearby Dutch, British, and French colonies. Also, the seemingly
irresistible German offensive in Belgium and northern France, then taking place during
the House debate on the second Jones bill, had rendered moot all consideration for a
neutralization scheme to assure Philippine independence. Thus, Republicans argued that
any discussion of or move to grant independence to the Philippines would most likely be
viewed by the other powers as an American retreat from the region, a development that
might “lead nations with opposing interests to believe that the United States would not go
far in defense of possessions so lightly regarded by those in control of the government.”
Since some members of Wilson’s cabinet and congressional leaders in both houses
regarded the American presence in the Philippines as the linchpin to protecting United

States’ interests in the western Paciﬁc and East Asia, House Republicans, such as James

R. Mann (Republican-Illinois), anticipated that this perspective would carry considerable

 

50 Congressional Record, 63rd Congress, 2nd Session, September 28, I914, 15842-15845.

250

weight in the debate.5 1 Actually, the argument backﬁred. A small but vocal group of
southern and western Democrats took the House ﬂoor and urged the Wilson
administration to get the United States out of the Philippines “without strings,” that is,
without a commitment to guarantee the independence of a new Philippine republic.’2

Notwithstanding the arguments of the Republican minority and some Democrats,
the House approved the second Jones bill with the preamble intact on October 14, 1914
by a margin of 212 to 60. For the ﬁrst time, a majority in a house of Congress afﬁrmed its
intention to grant independence to the Philippines. The Philippine Commission and the
Assembly passed a joint resolution expressing “their highest appreciation and satisfaction
to the House of Representatives . . . for the favorable action taken in the matter of the

l ”53

Jones Bil Although the second Jones bill was sent to the Senate Committee on

Philippine Affairs for consideration, Congress adjourned ten days later without further

action on the measure.54

December 1914 — March 1915
Despite the Democratic Party’s failure to secure passage of the second Jones bill in the
second session of the Sixty-third Congress, Wilson and his advisers hoped to translate the

domestic legislation passed in 1913 and 1914 into Democratic gains in Congress in the

 

5' Ibid., 16473.

52 Ibid., 16542-16562.

53 House Report No. 1350, “Resolution Expressing Appreciation of the Philippine Legislature for
the Passage of the Jones Bill” December 14, 1914, 63rd Congress, 3rd Session, in House Documents,
Documents of a Public Nature serial 6888, 2 volumes (Washington, DC, 1915), 1, 1-2.

5"11nd,, 16623-16629.

25]

mid-tenn elections. The president drafted a long, carefully prepared statement summing
up his administration’s achievements that was widely circulated as a campaign
document.SS Despite his efforts, the Democrats suffered signiﬁcant losses in the House in
1914, which sorely disappointed Wilson. The president lamented to Colonel House that
the defeats would result in a decline of prestige for him both in Congress and in Europe.
House responded with a more optimistic assessment of the situation, arguing that the
Democrats fared better among farmers and labor in the West than anticipated. He also
underscored the fact that the Democrats were now facing a united Republican party
unlike in 1912. To prepare for victory in the next major federal election — the presidential
election of 1916 — House advised Wilson to “make your foreign policy the feature of your
administration during the next two years.”56
That Wilson embraced House’s advice is clearly evident in his second annual
message to Congress on December 8, 1914. After announcing to members of Congress
that his “New Freedom” program for regulating business was “virtually complete,” the
president declared that he intended to shiﬁ his focus to mediating an end to the war in
Europe before either the Central Powers or the Allies achieved victory. If the war
continued, Wilson argued, then either Russia or Germany would eventually emerge as the

master of the European continent, an outcome he labeled as an anathema to the

development of constitutional democracy in the world.57 While a discussion of Wilson’s

 

55 This campaign document can be found in Letter, Wilson to Oscar Underwood, October 17,
I914, PWW, XXX], 168-174.

56 House, Diary Entry, November 4, 1914, ibid., 265, and Letter, House to Wilson, November 30,
1914, ibid., 369-370.

57 Wilson, Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1914, ibid., 414—424.

252

diplomatic initiatives to mediate an end to the First World War does not fall within the
scope of this study,"8 his assumption that resolution of the Philippine question possessed
signiﬁcant implications for his overall foreign policy with the belligerent powers requires
explanation.

Wilson, nearing the end of his long message to Congress, addressed the
relationship between the Philippine question and his efforts to mediate an end to the war
in Europe and provide the world with a durable peace. Emphasizing the tradition of
American exceptionalism in the world, he described the United States as a disinterested
power destined to “counsel and obtain . . . a healing settlement of many a matter that has

”59 Because of America’s redemptive

cooled and interrupted the friendship of nations.
mission, Wilson explained that more than America’s credibility in the Philippines hung in
the balance with passage of the second Jones bill then awaiting action in the Senate. Its
quick passage by the Senate without major revisions and amendments, the president
declared, would send an unmistakable signal to the warring powers that the American
people were “the champions of peace and concord, . . a true friend to all the nations of the
world, because we threaten none, covet the possessions of none, desire the overthrow of
none.” Wilson asked the members of Congress:

How better, in this time of anxious questioning and perplexed policy, could we

show our conﬁdence in the principles of liberty, as the source as well as the
expression of life; how better could we demonstrate our own self-possession and

 

58 For Wilson’s diplomatic initiatives to mediate an end to the First World War, see David S.
Patterson, “Woodrow Wilson and the Mediation Movement,” The Historian XXXIII (August, 197]), 535-
556; Ambrosius, Wilsonian Statecraft, 35-96; Knock, T 0 End All Wars, 44-47, 67-69; Patrick Devlin, T 00
Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson ’s Neutrality (New York and London, 1975), 217-282, 344-471; and
Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, 1 lS-l4l.

59 Wilson, Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1914, PWW, XXX], 422.

253

steadfastness in the courses of justice and disinterestedness than by thus going

forward to fulﬁll our promises to a dependent people, who will now look more

anxiously than ever to see whether we have indeed the liberality, the

unselﬁshness, the courage, the faith we have boasted and professed.60
Hinging America’s greatness on its ability to convince the world of its genuine
disinterestedness, Wilson described the resolution of the Philippine question as a
necessary prerequisite for establishing the United States’ reputation as a credible neutral
power devoid of imperial interests. The president concluded his address with a caveat:
failure to pass the second Jones bill when the Senate reconvened could mean the
unnecessary continuation of the Great War until all the nations, including the United
States, became embroiled in its destruction.6|

Following Wilson’s strong appeal for action, the Senate Committee on Philippine
Affairs commenced hearings on the strengths and weaknesses of the second Jones bill on
December 14, 1914. The hearings, however, were dominated by testimony of the nation’s
most inﬂuential retentionists. Worcester began the hearings with a lecture and a
presentation of lantern slides collected during his long supervision of non-Christian
Filipinos to illustrate the “backwardness of the Filipino race.”62 Taft followed with a
negative assessment of Filipino capacities for complete self-govemment. Separation, he

argued, remained over a century away.63 Newton Gilbert, the former vice-govemor in the

Forbes administration, attacked the preamble as a dangerous precedence in Western

 

60 Ibid. Quotation on 417.
6| .
lb1d., 423-424.

62 Hearings before the Committee on the Philippines of the US. Senate on House Resolution
18459, in “Government of the Philippines,” 63rd Congress, 3rd session, 287-294.

63 Ibid., 364-369.

254

colonialism and blasted the Harrison administration for wrecking the Philippine
govemment’s efficiency with his Filipinization program.64 Only Morgan Shuster, who
had served with Taﬁ on the Philippine Commission, broke ranks with retentionists to
become the ﬁrst member of the Commission under Republican rule to testify in favor of
the second Jones bill."5

Retentionists in the Philippines, however, provided a solid front against passage
of the second Jones bill. In December 1914, they stepped up their campaign to discredit
the Hanison administration in the Islands and thereby undermine the second Jones bill.
As part of their larger effort to disparage Filipino capacities for self-govemment,
American counterintelligence personnel in the army and the Constabulary leaked stories
to leading American newspapers during the Senate committee hearings that a Filipino
rebellion alleged to involve disaffected Philippine Scouts was imminent. The accounts
reported that agents of Artemio Ricarte, a revolutionary general in exile in Japan, were
recruiting Filipinos and selling commissions in an army that would rise in a revolt when
Ricarte returned to lead it. Ricarte’s rebellion culminated in the “Christmas Eve
Uprising” in which a small number of unarmed Filipinos meeting in downtown Manila
were picked up by the police for sedition. Although the revolt failed to materialize,
leading Republican newspapers maintained a ﬂood of stories predicting the start of a
bloodbath in the Philippines, the likes of which had not been witnessed in Asia since the

“Great Mutiny” in India in the 1850s.66 Eventually, Garrison was forced to give a press

 

6" Ibid., 567-575.
65 Ibid., 543-550.

66 See for example the succession of front-page stories in the New York Times, December 15,

255

conference to challenge the veracity of such stories. He told the press corps that “this sort
of information is being cabled to the United States for the purpose of inﬂuencing the
legislation now pending in Congress . . . for I am unable to ascertain that there is any truth
whatever in these stories.”67

As it turned out, the second Jones bill proved controversial in the Senate
committee and was not reported until February 2, 1915, only thirty days before the Sixty-
third Congress was scheduled to expire. The committee amended the House bill
extensively to strengthen the American governor general’s ability to supervise the insular
government by enlarging his veto power over acts of the Philippine Legislature.
Executive power in the Philippine government was further augmented by amendments
providing for presidential appointment of the insular vice-govemor, an auditor with
independent powers, and the director of the PCS. In addition, the Senate committee
recommended that the executive responsibility of the vice-govemor, presumably always
an American, be expanded to include the Department of Public Instruction, which
supervised the Bureau of Education, the Bureau of Health, the Bureau of Science, and the
Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes.’38

Although most members of the Republican minority on the Senate committee

favored striking the so-called “radical preamble” from the bill, Hitchcock managed to

 

December 23, December 25, and December 26, 1914.
67 .
lb1d., December 28, 1914.

68 Senate Report No. 942, “Future Political Status of the People of the Philippine Islands”
February 2, 1915, in Senate Reports, Miscellaneous 2 volumes (Washington, DC, 1915), 1, 3-7, II, 212-214.
[Hereafter cited as “Future Political Status of the Philippine People.”] See also, Cables, Jones to Harrison,
March 10, 1915, Harrison Papers, Box 35; Hitchcock to Harrison, March 8, 1915, ibid; Quezon to
Harrison, March 1, 1915, ibid; and McIntyre, Memorandum, March 14, 1915, BIA Records, File 4325/155-
158.

256

convince them that dropping the preamble completely “would be construed in the
Philippine Islands as a declaration that independence was never to be given.”
Furthermore, Hitchcock argued that such an action would result in “widespread
disappointment and discontent among the majority of the natives which could end in
another general insurrection.” Notwithstanding the Senate committee’s support for the
administrative provisions of the second Jones bill, a small block of Republican senators
remained unmoved and threatened to ﬁlibuster the measure unless the pledge of eventual
independence was qualiﬁed in more speciﬁc terms or omitted altogether.‘59

Hitchcock, desperate to avoid a deadlock in the Senate committee, negotiated a
compromise in which the committee members agreed to change the preamble to state that
it was the purpose of the United States “to grant independence to the Philippine Islands
when in the judgment of the United States, the Filipino people have become ﬁtted for its
enjoyment.” Although the committee chairman described the amendment of the preamble
as a necessary evil to secure the ten-to-three vote by which the Senate committee reported
the bill, for many, however, the favorable vote seemed small compensation for the
emasculation of the preamble. In its watered down form, the preamble precluded any
future move by Filipinos to wrest control of the timing and conditions of independence
away from Washington in order to determine their own political destiny. In fact, the
Senate version of the preamble could permit unsympathetic administrations in the White

House to postpone independence indeﬁnitely.70

 

6’ Ibid., 1, 14.

70 Ibid. See also, Cables, Jones to Harrison, March 10, 1915, Harrison Papers, Box 35; Hitchcock
to Harrison, March 8, 1915, ibid.; Quezon to Harrison, March 1, 1915, ibid.; and McIntyre, Memorandum,
March 14, 1915, BIA Records, File 4325/155-158.

257

Once the second Jones bill had been reported to the Senate, Quezon cabled Manila
to reassure his Nacionalista colleagues that its revised preamble differed very little ﬁ'om
the House version. He added that none of the Senate committee’s revisions affected any
part of the bill deemed most important by Filipinos. These features included the creation
of an elective senate, the extension of the franchise to adult males literate in any
language, and a provision for the Philippine Legislature to reorganize the executive
departments and for the proposed Senate to conﬁrm all cabinet-level appointments.71
Osmeﬁa replied, however, that he opposed the new preamble because it called into
question Filipino capacities for self-determination. The speaker of the Assembly sent a
second cable to Quezon the next day warning that “spontaneous opposition to preamble is
growing rapidly.” He also expressed concern that the Progresista opposition in the
Assembly had poised itself to capitalize upon any endorsement by the Nacionalistas of
the revised preamble. Quezon cabled back that he understood Osmefia’s predicament in
the Assembly and promised to see the president about the need to amend the preamble
still ﬁrrther. He cautioned Osmeﬁa, however, “that we should not go as far as to defeat the
bill if we fail?”

Once it became clear that the debate on the second Jones bill in the Senate
committee had begun to bog down into partisan inﬁghting, Wilson decided to enter the
fray to lend the full weight of his ofﬁce to the pending legislation. During a brief train

stop in Richmond, Indiana, the president took the opportunity to “remind the Senate”

 

7] Cable, Quezon to Osmeﬂa, January 26, 1915, Harrison Papers, Box 29.

72 Cables, Osmefla to Quezon, January 27 and 28, 1915, in Vicente A. Pacis, President Sergio
Osmeﬁa: A Fully Documented Biography 2 volumes (Quezon City, PI, 1971), I, 200-201, and Quezon to
Osmeﬂa, January 30, 1915, Harrison Papers, Box 29.

258

publicly of the importance of the Philippine bill to his foreign policy. Wilson told the
small crowd that had gathered at the rear platform of his train that it was imperative for
the United States to do what it had promised the Filipino people, that is, prepare them for
self-govemment by allowing them to become skilled in the practice and custom of
democracy, and then grant complete independence to the Philippines. The completion of
the next stage in America’s mission in the Islands, Wilson declared, was critical at that
time because it would serve as a reminder to the world that “a nation that is habitually
true to its own exalted principles of action will know how to serve the rest of mankind
when the opportunity offers.”73 Four days later, Wilson, with his best poker face,
conﬁdently told the Washington press corps that he had seen or heard nothing from
Hitchcock to suggest that the Senate might fail to push the second Jones bill through in
the last moments of the Sixty-third Congress.74

Wilson expressed less conﬁdence behind the scenes, however. Once the strength
of retentionist opposition to the measure became more evident, the president conferred
with Garrison and Jones about the possibility of withdrawing the preamble from the bill,
which presumably would remove the major objection to its passage. In the end, Wilson
rejected this course of action because it would render the legislation meaningless in the
minds of most Filipinos.75 Even more threatening to Wilson than the staunch retentionism

of Republicans in the Senate was Garrison’s “decision” to resign as secretary of war.

 

73 Wilson, Remarks from a Rear Platform, January 8, 1915, PWW, xxxn, 28-29.
7" Press Conference, January 12, 1915, ibid., 54-58.

75 Memorandum, Garrison to Wilson, February 26, I915, ibid., 291-292, and Letter, Tumulty to
Wilson, February 26, 1915, ibid., 293.

259

Citing his continuous disagreements with the administration concerning Philippine policy
and Harrison’s “poor treatment” of Riggs which had culminated in his resignation,
Garrison wrote a memorandum to Henry S. Breckinridge, the assistant secretary of war,
stating that he believed the time had come to resign himself.76 On February 4, Wilson met
with Breckinridge in the White House to discuss the matter. Both agreed that Garrison’s
resignation would hurt the administration by wrecking havoc with the effort to secure
passage of the second Jones bill that session of Congress. But more than the fate of the
Philippine bill was at stake, at least in the president’s mind. Garrison’s abrupt departure
from the administration might even precipitate hard questions about the soundness of
Wilson’s approach to the Philippine question in general which could call into question his
“New Freedom” initiatives in the Islands. And news of the nation’s failure to keep its
word to the Filipino people, he feared, would stain America’s honor, a development that
was certain to wield a negative impact on House’s diplomatic efforts in Europe to explore
avenues for American mediation to an end of the war.77 At the very least, retentionists in
Washington and Manila would make much of the secretary of war’s resignation. Wilson
told Breckinridge that he could already imagine the newspaper headlines billing Garrison

as retentionism’s newest martyr.78

 

76 Memorandum, Garrison to Henry S. Breckinridge, February 1, 1915, ibid., 168-169.

77 Wilson expressed his concerns about the implications of “a failed Philippine policy” for House’s
peace mission to Europe in a long letter to Senator John Shafroth. Letters, Wilson to John Shafroth,
February 3, 1915, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel 191, and Shafroth to Wilson, February 10,
1915, ibid.

78 Breckinridge, Memorandum, “Interview with the President,” February 4, 1915, PWW, XXXll,
538-540.

260

Although Garrison ultimately wrote to Wilson that he decided not to resign, the
president understood that he needed to make every effort to win the secretary of war over
to his perspective. Accordingly, Wilson wrote Garrison a long personal letter explaining
in detail why he believed passage of the second Jones bill was critical to the nation’s, and
the world’s, interests:

I feel it is my duty to urge the passage, if it is at all possible at this session of the

Senate, of the Philippine bill, because, deeply important as the general power and

the conservation bills are, they do not touch, as the Philippine bill does, the

general world situation, from which I think it is our duty to remove every element
of doubt or disturbance which can possibly be removed. Such communication as

that we have received from the Governor General of the Philippines shows that a

very important element of native disturbance indeed will be removed if we can get

the Philippine bill through. If it must be a choice, therefore, among the bills, I

must give my preference to the Philippine bill.79

But time had run out. The second Jones bill came before Congress on the
unanimous consent calendar the day before mandatory adjournment. Senator John
Shafroth (Democrat-Colorado) made an impassioned plea for a vote on the measure.
Shafroth’s gesture, however, was a futile one, as the much-amended bill had no
possibility of passage in the time remaining. The Republicans in the Senate to whom he
appealed cut him short by objecting to consideration of the measure. Consequently,
momentum for the passage of the second Jones bill stalled in partisan bickering and
ultimately vanished with the Sixty-third Congress in March 1915.80

After the Senate failed to act on his Philippine bill, an angry Wilson brieﬂy toyed

with the idea of recalling the Senate for an extra session to secure passage of the measure.

Tumulty suggested that the president reconsider this idea as the American people’s

 

79 Letter, Wilson to Garrison, February 24, 1915, ibid., 285.

80 Congressional Record, 63rd Congress, 3“l session, 5342-5343.

261

attention was then focused on Germany’s decision to resume its campaign of unrestricted
submarine warfare, not the Philippine question.81 Wilson apparently agreed and instead
turned his attention to shoring up his own Philippine constituencies. He cabled Harrison
to assure the governor general that the second Jones bill had received the full support of
the administration and the party, and had “failed only because it was blocked by
Republican leaders . . . who would yield only if we withdrew assurance of ultimate
independence contained in the preamble.” This, Wilson promised, he would never do.
Sympathetic to Filipino sensibilities following such a public debate about their racial
maturity, Wilson also asked Harrison to extend his regards to the Filipino people,
assuring them that the vast majority of Americans, including those serving in Congress,
possessed a deep and abiding interest in their welfare. He requested that the governor
general convey his view to Filipinos that, “The people of the Islands have already proved
their quality and in nothing more than in the patience and self-control they have
manifested in waiting for the ﬁrlﬁllment of our promises.” The president concluded his
letter with a personal pledge to the Filipino people: “The bill will have my support until it

passes and I have no doubt of its passage at the next session of Congress.”82

September 1915 — Mav1916
The Sixty-third Congress expired in March 1915 with no plans to convene again until

December. McIntyre departed Washington to spend the summer investigating conditions

 

8' Letter, Tumulty to Wilson, February 26, 1915, PW W, XXXIl, 293.

82 Cable, Wilson to Harrison, March 6, 1915, BIA Records, File 4325/157. Several days later,
Wilson wrote Quezon a similar letter. Letter, Wilson to Quezon, March 12, 1915, PW W, XXXII, 369.

262

in the Philippines. Reports of rumors of an imminent Filipino insurrection were still
ﬁnding their way into American newspapers when he boarded ship in San Francisco.83
Quezon joined McIntyre in Manila later in the summer to prepare Harrison and Osmefla
for passage of a new government law patterned on the second Jones bill as amended by
the Senate Committee on the Philippines. The committee had emasculated the preamble
of the bill passed by the House and strengthened the American-dominated executive
branch in the transitional government that would replace the commission government.

Retentionists were hardly idle during the interim as well. Certain that the
Philippine question would reemerge in the new Sixty-fourth Congress, prominent
retentionists in the United States and the Philippines revived their public campaign to
discredit the Harrison administration and rail against the radicalism of the second Jones
bill. In 3 Labor Day speech, Taft blasted Harrison for “wrecking the insular government”
in Manila with his Filipinization program.84 Taking his cue from the former president,
Congressman Miller, fresh from his own investigating mission to the Philippines, made
numerous addresses to virtually anyone who would listen about the graft and cronyism
that riddled the insular government under the Democrats. He offered his most colorful
assessment of the Democratic administration in the Philippines to a correspondent of the
New York Sun: “Not Attila of the Huns nor Theodoric of the Goths ever laid such

destructive hands upon human institutions. The result is complete governmental chaos.”85

 

83 McIntyre, Memorandum for the Secretary of War, January 25, 1916, BIA Records, File 4325,
after 181.

84 Taft, Untitled Address, September 6, 1915, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle,
September 7, 1915.

85 The New York Sun, November 9, 1915.

263

Taft escalated the controversy over the merits of Filipinization even further when he
accused Harrison of “enthroning the Filipino politician . . . at the command of Wilson”
which had demoralized the insular government. “It is a government which is running
down hill,” Taﬁ wrote, “and one that is failing utterly in doing the good for the Filipino
people which the United States promised when it assumed guardianship over them which
is the only justiﬁcation for our being there.”86 The charges and countercharges continued
until Congress reconvened in December.87

In his third annual message to both houses of the new Congress, Wilson urged
immediate action on the Philippine bill.88 Again, he linked resolution of the Philippine
question to the “question of national safety and defense” and America’s mission in the
world: “Our treatment of them [the Filipino people] and their attitude toward us are
manifestly of the ﬁrst consequence in the development of our duties in the world and in
getting a free hand to perform those duties.” Wilson recommended passage of the bill
“with the sincere conviction that there are few measures you could adopt which would
more serviceably clear the way for the great policies” which establish the American “right
to lead in enterprises of peace and good will in the world.”89 The president did not have

long to wait. Shortly after Congress convened, the Senate Committee on the Philippines

 

8° Taﬂ, Editorial, The Press (Philadelphia), November 13, 1915.

87 See for example, New York Times, November 7, 1915, November 30, 1915, December 2, 1915,
and December 7, 1915. Harrison’s response to these “unwarranted attacks” on his administration can be
found in Cables, Harrison to the Secretary of War, September 8, 1915 and December 1, 1915, Harrison
Papers, Box 37.

88 House noted in his diary that Wilson was intent on pushing the Philippine bill through the 64‘“
Congress as its ﬁrst order of business even if it required delaying consideration of the critical Conservation
and Shipping bills. House, Diary Entry, November 4, 1915, PW W, XXXV, 175-177.

89 Congressional Record, 64'” Congress, 1” session, 98.

264

held hearings for one day on a piece of legislation similar to the second Jones bill as
amended by the committee in the previous Congress. The only signiﬁcant change in the
so-called “Hitchcock bill” was a further weakening of the preamble, which stated that it
was the purpose of the United States to grant independence to the Filipino people “when
in the judgment of the United States it will be in the permanent interests of the Philippine
people”)0
It had been McIntyre, after conferring with Garrison and Quezon, who had
persuaded the Senate committee to dilute the preamble even further and include revisions
that strengthened the power of the American governor general vis-a-vis the Philippine
Legislature in the new insular government. Satisﬁed with his handiwork, McIntyre wrote
to General Clarence Edwards, his predecessor as the chief of the BIA, that the Philippine
bill “is about in the condition which the War Department recommended . . . . Forget that
the bill is called an ‘independence bill’ in the newspapers and I think you will realize it is
a good, conservative bill.”9| To strengthen the credibility of the revisions requested by the
War Department, Quezon went before the Senate committee and testiﬁed that the
preamble in the new Hitchcock bill was even “more agreeable” to him. He announced
that he would support the Hitchcock bill despite “attacks” he was certain to incur from his

political opponents in the Philippines for doing so. Quezon assured the committee that

once the Partido Nacionalista ﬁnished informing Filipinos about the measure’s

 

90 Hearings before the Senate Committee on the Philippines on Senate Document 381,
“Government of the Philippines,” 64’h Congress, 1” session, December 15, 1915, l.

9] Letter, McIntyre to Brigadier General Clarence Edwards, December 21 , 1915, BIA Records, File
4325/181.

265

advantages he would not be surprised to learn that ninety-ﬁve percent of the people would
ultimately favor it over all previous versions of an independence bill.92

When the committee reported the Hitchcock bill to the Senate in early January
1916, Democrats expressed a keen sense of unhappiness with the watered-down
preamble. On January 11, 1916, Senator James P. Clarke (Democrat-Arkansas)
introduced an amendment to the bill for the purpose of restoring the preamble to its
original meaning.93 The Clarke amendment, however, proved much more radical than
either of the two Jones bills introduced in the House. Clarke’s amendment provided for
the withdrawal from the Islands of “all the supervision, jurisdiction, control or
sovereignty now possessed or exercised by the United States . . . within two years from
the date of the approval of this act.” Furthermore, the Clarke amendment required the
president to enter into negotiations with “the principal nations interested in the affairs of
that part of the world” and attempt to obtain an international agreement that would
recognize and respect the sovereignty and independence of a Philippine republic. The
United States would guarantee Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity for the ﬁrst
five years of its existence or until a “neutralization pact” could be concluded.94

The unexpected introduction of such a radical amendment by a fellow Democrat

greatly alarmed Wilson. He had viewed Democratic calls for “scuttling” the Philippines

 

92 Hearings before the Senate Committee of the Philippines on Senate Document 381,
“Government of the Philippines,” 64th Congress, 1" session, December 15, 1915, 71-77.

93 According to an undated memorandum by McIntyre, the Clarke amendment originated in a
“Senate cloakroom discussion” between Clarke and fellow southern Democrats. The memorandum states
that upon learning that all those present desired complete withdrawal from the Philippines in the near future,
the Arkansas senator immediately returned to the Senate floor and introduced his amendment. McIntyre,
Memorandum, no date, BIA Records, File 4325004

94 Congressional Record, 64th Congress, lst Session, 846.

266

as unrealistic and dangerous as were Republican calls for permanent retention of the
Islands. The Clarke amendment, he wrote to Tmnulty, seemed even more dangerous than
the ﬁrst Jones bill because it failed to address three important considerations. First,
Wilson did not believe the Filipino people ready for complete independence. Filipinos, he
argued, required a longer period of tutelage before the United States could responsibly
extend complete self-govemment and self-determination to them. Second, Wilson
doubted that the “interested powers” would agree to neutralize the Philippines.
Germany’s blatant disregard for Belgian neutrality in 1914 underscored the vulnerability
of such an approach to maintaining the status quo, especially since the Japanese
government had given ample evidence of its expansionist designs during the war. With
the major powers embroiled in the European war, which from all indications would
continue for at least two more years, the chances for reaching a neutralization agreement
seemed remote at best. Finally, the provision calling upon the United States to provide for
the protection of an independent Philippine republic seemed politically foolish to Wilson.
He did not think it wise to put American troops in peril in the western Paciﬁc if the
United States had relinquished sovereignty over the Philippines. Also, American military
and naval forces in the region were weak compared to Japanese strength.95

Wilson, who consistently opposed Philippine independence “any time soon,”
interceded to seek out a middle road. Using Tumulty as a conﬁdential envoy, be formally
requested Clarke to modify his original amendment, ﬁxing the time for transferring
sovereignty at not less than two years nor more than four years, but, signiﬁcantly,

affording the president discretion to extend the time limit of separation to the end of the

 

95 Letter, Wilson to Tumulty, January 23, 1916, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel 191.

267

next session of Congress after the expiration of four years if he judged conditions in
either the Philippines or East Asia too tumultuous. If such a revision of the amendment
was forthcoming, he declared, he would accept the Clarke amendment if Congress were
to pass it. Clarke agreed to modify his amendment in the manner the president proposed
about midway through the Senate’s three-week debate on the Hitchcock bill. Wilson,
knowing that the War Department would not approve of his action, sent a note to
Garrison explaining “this is the best we can do under the circumstances.”96
The secretary of war’s reaction to what he considered to be a serious retreat by the
president on the Philippine question was immediate. At a cabinet meeting on January 25,
Garrison explained that he was in complete agreement with McIntyre and the entire BIA
staff who judged that four years hardly constituted an adequate amount of time for the
completion of America’s nation-building mission in the Islands. He told his colleagues
that the War Department stood united in its opposition to any statement in the Hitchcock
bill that speciﬁed a date for Philippine independence. Instead, the United States should
Shirk political expediency and return to a reasonable course of action that would continue
to guide Filipinos safely through the process of preparing for independence. Filipinos
themselves wanted this, he argued, wishing for a more measured progress toward ﬁnal
separation than the one proposed in the Hitchcock bill. In a rather feeble attempt to
assuage his secretary of war, Wilson explained that while he was in complete sympathy
with Garrison’s position on the Philippine question he believed it would be improper for
him to comment publicly on the measure before Congress had an opportunity to act on it.

Garrison, however, would have none of it. As far as the secretary] of war was concerned,

 

96 Letter, Wilson to Garrison, January 25, 1916, ibid

268

he could no longer count on the president to support the War Department’s efforts to
sponsor a moderate bill that addressed the sensibilities of both Filipino nationalists and
American retentionists.97

For Clarke and other Democrats in the Senate, the decision to omit the neutrality
provision from his amendment hardly constituted a matter of concern. Like other southern
Democrats, he had been promoting American withdrawal from the Philippines “without
strings” since 1913. Indeed, Clarke even argued that Japanese annexation of the Islands
might not be disastrous for all concerned. He conﬁded in a reporter from the Boston
Globe that Japan had accomplished much for Korea (which it had annexed in 1910), “and
because of racial similarities” could accomplish much more for Filipinos than American
colonial authorities. Beyond that, the senator argued, because the United States had
prevented Japan from acquiring a foothold in the Western Hemisphere, American policy
makers should be willing to offer Japan a quid pro quo and “keep out of Asiatic
countries.”98

Along similar lines, Senator Willard Salisbury (Democrat-Delaware) offered his
support for the Clarke amendment because it meant avoiding war with Japan. Arguing
that the American occupation of the Islands encroached upon Japan’s “proper sphere,”

Salisbury saw “much reason” in what Japan might term the “White Peril in Asia.” The

speeches of various senators favoring retention of the Islands as a way to ensure

 

’7 Garrison, Memorandum for the President, January 25, 1916, BIA Records, File 4325/215.

98 Manuel Eamshaw [Philippine resident commissioner], Memorandum, March 1916, Harrison
Papers, Box 40; Letters, Hitchcock to Tumulty, January 11, 1916, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel
191; Tumulty to Wilson, January 22, 1916, ibid; Wilson to Tumulty, January 23, 1916, ibid; and Boston
Globe, January 30, 1916.

269

American dominance in the western Paciﬁc, Salisbury declared, had not added to Japan’s
respect for America’s ambitions in East Asia. Other southern Democrats who supported
the Clarke amendment cited racial antagonisms with Japan as ample evidence for the
abandonment of the region to “the Asiatics.” More explicitly, Senator Robert L. Owen
(Democrat-Oklahoma) declared that if the United States did not withdraw ﬁom the
Philippines in short order, a disastrous race war between the United States and Japan
seemed likely.99

Republican opponents to the Clarke amendment were equally adamant in their
argument that retention of the Philippines held the key to American security and
prosperity in the region. Senator Thomas J. Walsh (Republican-Montana) pointed out that
America’s hold on the Philippines was essential to an American victory over Japan in the
impending struggle for control of China. Senators William A. Smith (Republican-
Michigan) and William J. Stone (Republican-Missouri) criticized Senate Democrats for
pursuing a “policy of scuttle” in East Asia that would render irreparable harm to
American credibility in the region.'00

Not surprisingly, the introduction of the Clarke amendment paralyzed Quezon and
other Nacionalistas who did not relish the idea of independence sooner rather than later.
McIntyre cabled Harrison in Manila that “the Clarke amendment has so upset Quezon

that he had found it necessary to take to bed.”'01 The Assembly debated the merits of the

 

9’ Congressional Record, 64th Congress, lst session, 2109-2110, 21 10-211 1.

‘00 Ibid,2111-2112,2115-2116, 2119,2125. See also, Letter, William J. Stone to Wilson, March
25, 1916, PWW, xxxv1, 366-369.

‘0‘ Cable, McIntyre to Harrison, February 14, 1916, BIA Records, File 1239/135.

270

measure for two weeks before unanimously approving a resolution endorsing the Clarke
amendment. Passage of this resolution was due primarily to the “strong-arm tactics” of
Osmefla who had moved quickly to organize support among Nacionalistas for the Clarke
amendment. 102 In explaining his actions to Quezon, the speaker wrote: “Inasmuch as we
favored the Jones bill only as a step toward independence, we would naturally prefer any
other measure that will more promptly give us our independence.”103
When the Clarke amendment came to a vote on February 2, a tie resulted. Vice-
President Thomas Marshall, after conferring with Wilson, cast the deciding vote in favor
of the amendment. Ten Democrats, including four members of the Committee on the
Philippines, voted against the measure while ﬁve Republicans supported it. The following
two days saw a number of moves to obtain reconsideration of the vote on the Clarke
amendment, but support for the measure grew rather than waned. On February 4, the
Senate approved the Hitchcock bill, with the Clarke amendment intact, by a vote of ﬁfty-
two to twenty-four. All Democrats voting supported the measure as did six
Republicans. '04
Passage of the Hitchcock bill with the Clarke amendment in place did not come
cheaply for Wilson, however. The president’s support for the amendment proved to be the

proverbial last straw for Garrison. The secretary of war had been at loggerheads with the

president and congressional Democrats for some time over the Philippine question as well

 

‘02 Philippine Free Press, January 29’ 1916'

'03 Letter, Quezon to Wilson, January 25, 1916, ibid., File 4325/203a, and Cable, Osmeﬂa to
Quezon, January 12, 1916, published in The Filipino People 111 (March, 1916), 10.

'04 Congressional Record, 64th Congress, 1st session, 2107-2108, 21 16-2125.

271

 

 

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as other issues, especially American military preparedness. Following the outbreak of war
in Europe, Garrison, supported by senior military advisers, had urged “preparedness” on
Wilson. Supported by Bryan and the peace progressives in Congress, the president had
consistently resisted the War Department’s pressure to prepare for war. Instead, he
remained committed to the policy of strict neutrality that he had proclaimed at the outset
of the war.105 In the fall of 1915 the War Department maneuvered to take advantage of
the anger in the United States following the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat
to again convince Wilson of the necessity of “preparedness,” but the president refused to
budge.106

Wilson wanted to play the role of mediator and peacemaker in the world crisis,
not warrior. In late January and early February, he offered several speeches on the issue of
“preparedness” to clarify why he opposed preparing for war, at least in the manner
recommended by the War Department. Wilson’s argument that American and world

interests would beneﬁt more from the United States remaining aloof and disinterested

 

'05 Some scholars have pointed to Wilson’s abandonment of strict neutrality early in the war as
evidence that he was engaging in domestic political posturing with his pronouncements of American
disinterestedness. See, Ernest R. May, The World War and American Isolation, [914-191 7 (Cambridge,
MA, 1959), 34-53, and Saunders, In Search of Woodrow Wilson, 61-63. A more plausible view is offered
by John W. Coogan in The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899-I915
(Ithaca, NY, 1981). Coogan argues persuasively that while Wilson abandoned neutrality early in the war,
his sacriﬁce of neutral rights, resulting in a pro-British or anti-German bias in American policy, did not
mean that he favored intervening in the war on one side or the other. Instead, Wilson saw no contradiction
between his public pronouncements of American disinterestedness and neutrality and his unneutral actions
toward the belligerents on maritime issues. Accordingly, Wilson’s neutrality policy toward the belligerents,
his unfailing opposition to “preparedness,” and his efforts to resolve the Philippine question by securing
legislation that promised Filipinos eventual independence suggest that he was genuinely committed to
promoting American disinterestedness. See John W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality, 194-220, especially
217.

'06 On three occasions in January 1916, Garrison urged Wilson to support the “preparedness”
program. Letters, Garrison to Wilson, January 2, 4, and 7, 1916, all printed in their entirety in New York
Times, February 11, 1916.

272

rather than preparing for and entering into the war as a belligerent also provides important
evidence for the continuity of his thought about American exceptionalism, empire, and
mission since 1898. In Cleveland, the president spoke of imperialism as one of the
principal causes of the Great War. But while Wilson described Europe’s scramble for
colonies before the war “as nlinous” in that it precipitated a deadly arms race and
solidiﬁed the alliance system, he defended America’s pre-war efforts in empire-building
as constructive and beneﬁcial for both Americans and their wards. What distinguished
America’s imperial experience from that of the other powers, he argued, was its emphasis
on “the rights of men, . . not the rights of property.” In this respect, Wilson continued to
maintain that America’s empire was exceptional, that is, qualitatively superior to other
empires?”

In Topeka, Wilson went even further in connecting the events and themes of 1898
to his foreign policy in early 1916. The world at war, “now trying to make up its mind
about America,” needed “a few more demonstrations like the demonstration in Cuba, . . .
a few more vindications of the American name” before it recognized the United States as
a disinterested power. In 1898, Americans went to war to liberate the Cuban people from
Spanish tyranny. When the United States planted its ﬂag, few statesmen in the European
capitals believed the American government would ever really haul it down and return
Cuba to her own people. Now, Wilson pointed out, many of those same statesmen
doubted America’s sincerity about its purpose in the Philippines:

When the American people saw that the time had come when her promises were

to be fulﬁlled, down came the ﬂuttering emblem of our sovereignty, and we were
more honored in its lowering than we had been in its hoisting. The American

 

‘07 See Wilson, Address, “Preparedness,” January 29, 1916, PWW, xxxv1, 41-48.

273

people feel the same way about the Philippines, though the rest of the world does
not yet believe it. We are the trustees for the Filipino people, and just as soon as
we feel that they can take care of their own affairs without our direct interference
and protection, the ﬂag of the United States, will again be honored by the
fulﬁllment of a promise.
Thus, resolution of the Philippine question, Wilson argued, was tied to America’s effort
to offer the world a brighter future:
The American ﬂag stands for honor, not for advantage. The ﬂag stands for the
rights of mankind, no matter where they be [sic], no matter what their antecedents,
no matter what the race involved. It stands for absolute right to political liberty
and free government, and wherever it stands for the contrary, American traditions
have begun to be forgotten.
He explained that when the nations of the world accepted this political truth, then
America’s “vindication” as a disinterested power would be at hand, making possible a
just and durable peace at the end of the war.108
Notwithstanding Wilson’s private and public words on the issues of preparedness
and empire, Garrison was convinced that Wilson would continue to “sacriﬁce sound
judgment” for political expediency on both military preparedness and the Philippine
question. One week after the Senate voted to approve the Clarke amendment, he wrote to
the president: “I consider the principle embodied in the Clarke amendment an
abandonment of the duty of this nation and a breach of trust toward the Filipinos, so
believing, I cannot accept it or acquiesce in its acceptance?”09 In replying to the

ultimatum implicit in Garrison’s letter, Wilson attempted to give his secretary of war an

avenue of escape stating that:

 

‘08 Wilson, Untitled Address, February 2, 1916, ibid's 37'96-

‘09 Letter, Garrison to Wilson, February 9, 1916, ibid., 143-144.

274

It is my judgment that the action embodied in the Clarke amendment to the bill
extending further self-govemment to the Philippines is unwise at this time, but it
would clearly be most inadvisable for me to take the position that I must dissent
from that action should both Houses of Congress concur.l ’0
Garrison submitted his resignation as secretary of war upon receiving Wilson’s letter.l 1'
Wilson’s decision to take a forthright position on the Clarke amendment derived
to a large extent from the fact that he believed the measure was more conservative than it
appeared. First, Wilson’s single stipulation, which Clarke had to incorporate into the
amendment before he would approve it, permitting the president to delay the grant of
independence for the period of one session of Congress if conditions in the Philippines
and the general region did not seem ripe ensured that the ultimate destiny of the Islands
would continue to remain in the president’s hands. If, at the assigned time of review, the
president determined that conditions did not lend themselves to separation, then Congress
would be afforded an opportunity to amend the bill and postpone independence. Second,
Wilson approved the Clarke amendment because it left intact American guarantees of
Philippine independence against external dangers for at least ﬁve years. By doing so, the
United States avoided being subjected to the charge of abandonment in the face of
Japanese expansionism in the region. Third, assuming that the United States would retain

sovereignty for the entire four years allowed in the revised version of the amendment,

Wilson noted that Filipinos could count on nine years in which to complete their

 

”0 Wilson drafted a reply to Garrison and submitted it to Tumulty for comments and revisions.
See, Drafts of Letters, Wilson to Garrison, February 9, 1916, PWW, XXXVI, 144-145, and Tumulty to
Wilson, February 9, 1916, ibid., 145-147. For Wilson’s reply to Garrison containing Tumulty’s suggested
revisions, see Letter, Wilson to Garrison, February 10, 1916, ibid., 162-164.

”I Letter, Garrison to Wilson, February 10, I916, ibid, 164-

275

organization of a fully self-sustaining government. This would bring them to 1925, time
enough, he assumed, for Harrison’s Filipinization program in the Islands to take root.1 ‘2

Garrison and most retentionists, however, remained unconvinced. Their response
to the Clarke amendment was both swift and vigorous. On the day that Clarke introduced
his measure, Taft, who had been on intimate terms with Catholic leaders in the United
States and the Philippines for over a decade, moved to mobilize the American hierarchy
of the Catholic Church to oppose the measure. The former president enlisted the support
of his friends James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore and William Cardinal O’Connell of
Boston, both of whom were fearful that an independent Philippine government would
conﬁscate the Church’s still extensive property holdings in the Islands (valued at nearly
$44 million). Cardinal Gibbons pledged to do everything he could to defeat the Hitchcock
bill in the Senate as he had done three years earlier when he helped smother support for
the ﬁrst Jones bill in the House. Cardinal O’Connell also promised to do what he could to
torpedo the Clarke amendment. Time was too short, however, for the American Catholic
hierarchy to inﬂuence the decision of the Senate, which adopted the Clarke amendment
three weeks after it was introduced.”3

The two months that elapsed before the Hitchcock bill was brought up in the
House enabled opposition to the Clarke amendment to crystallize. The brief interim also

provided time for the Church hierarchy in the Philippines to organize and join in the

 

”2 Letter, Wilson to Tumulty, January 23, 1916, Wilson Papers, series 4, case ﬁle 44, reel 191.

”3 Letters, Taft to James Cardinal Gibbons, January 11 and 16, 1916, T aﬁ Papers, series 1;
Gibbons to Taft, January 12, 1916, ibid See also, New York Times, April 27 and 28, 1916, and the New
York World, April 29, 1916. Wilson became aware of the tactic in early April, but elected not to expose it
for fear of a negative Catholic reaction in an election year. Letter, Baker to Wilson, April 4, 1916, PWW,
XXXVI, 414.

276

retentionist crusade. Archbishop Harty of Manila and a variety of American and Japanese
business ﬁrms in the Philippines retained William N. Kinkaid, a former member of the
Texas House of Representatives and former justice of the Court of the First Instance in
the Philippines who was then practicing law in Manila, to journey to Washington to lobby
for an “acceptable bill.” An avowed apologist for Taft’s policy of attracting retentionist
constituencies to the Islands, Kinkaid spent his ﬁrst two months in Washington discreetly
preaching, apparently without very much success, the gospel of retentionism to
mainstream Republicans.l 1’ His dismal results on Capitol Hill prompted a change in
tactics. In the hopes of intimidating Wilson with Catholic disalfection in an election year,
Kinkaid drafted a long letter to the president warning that the Hitchcock bill threatened
the prestige and the property of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines. Every
Christian in the United States and the Philippines, he wrote, understood that “the Senate
Bill is a threat to every Christian Church in the Philippine Islands and is a violation of the
promises under which they entered the ﬁeld.” All of them would be watching to see if the
president permitted passage of legislation that jeopardized the Church and hence, the
prosperity and security, of the Philippines.'15

On March 1, 1916, the House Committee on Insular Affairs voted eleven to eight

to report the Hitchcock bill. The vote came on the heels of a bitter partisan debate within

 

”4 Theodore Roosevelt’s endorsement of early withdrawal from the Philippines effectively
neutralized some Republican opposition to the Clarke amendment. Letter, Wilson to Newton Baker
[secretary of war], May 5, 1916, BIA Records, File 4325/237.

“5 Letter, Kinkaid to Wilson, February 11, 1916, PWW, xxxv1, 172. As “evidence” ofthe threat
to the Catholic Church in the Philippines, Kinkaid enclosed two retentionist-leaning newspaper clippings
nearly three years old with his letter to the president: “Bishop Brent on the Philippines,” Milwaukee
Wisconsin, April 24, 1913, and “What of the Philippines?,” Columbus [Ohio] Dispatch, April 23, 1913. See
also, The New York Sun, April 28, 1916, and Cable, McIntyre to Harrison, April 17, 1916, BIA Records,
File 4325/221.

277

the committee in which Republicans sought to replace the Clarke amendment with the
preamble of the second Jones bill of the previous Congress. The bill did not come before
the entire House until early May. The additional two-month interval provided
retentionists with more time to organize. The opposition gathered strength until Jones and
Democratic leaders in the House, alarmed by signs that the bill was in trouble, decided to
call a Democratic caucus to consider a resolution making the bill a party measure.“6
When the caucus met at the end of April, Jones read a brief message from Wilson
urging approval of the Hitchcock bill. Jones then introduced a resolution that bound
Democrats to vote for the bill without amendment. This calculated move by the chairman
of the House Committee on Insular Affairs produced widespread dissension among the
Democratic rank and ﬁle. The only thing agreed upon that ﬁrst day of the caucus was to
meet the next day to discuss Jones’ resolution. Signiﬁcantly, the ﬁrst caucus session
disclosed that opposition to the measure was concentrated in House members from New
York, Boston, and Chicago. Not surprisingly, most of the Hitchcock bill’s opponents in
the House were either Irish Catholic themselves or represented large blocks of Irish
Catholic voters.l '7
Jones and House supporters of the Hitchcock bill did not have a better time of it in
the second caucus session. Although the caucus voted 140 to 35 in favor of the measure,
the vote on the resolution binding party members to support it without amendment saw

twenty-eight Democrats, all but two from large cities, refuse to accept the mandate.

Because the Democratic majority in the House was only twenty-one, there was little

 

"6 New York Times, April 23, I916.

"7 Ibid., April 28, 1916.

278

chance that the bill would be enacted that session of Congress. With the parties’
nominating conventions scheduled to be held that summer and Republicans projected to
do well in the November elections, the House Republicans needed only to hold ﬁrm
against any Philippine measure in order to hand Wilson a serious legislative defeat.
Understanding that the Hitchcock bill would meet certain defeat if introduced under a rule
precluding amendments, Democratic leaders in the House decided to try and save the
situation by limiting the debate but permitting amendments. The House debate on the
Hitchcock bill commenced on May 1, 1916, the eighteenth anniversary of the Battle of
Manila Bay. When the measure came up for amendment, the Clarke amendment was
rejected. Jones offered the second Jones bill as a substitute for the Hitchcock bill. House
members voted a straight party line and the bill, with the preamble intact, passed 199 to

152."8

May —— August 1916
Congress adjourned for the nominating conferences before the conference committee
could reconcile all the differences between the Senate and House bills. During the
summer months, Quezon launched a campaign to restore the consensus that he had
labored so hard to construct before January 1916. The resident commissioner worked
diligently to close the ranks and secure some legislation before the presidential election
that November. He understood only too well that walking away empty-handed alter the
Wilson administration and the majority of Congress had publicly declared their support

for an independence bill would yield only dire political consequences for the

 

”8 Congressional Record, 64’” Congress, 1St SCSSiOﬂ, 7205'7212-

279

Nacionalistas.l '9 In a similar vein, Newton Baker, the new secretary of war, urged quick
action among congressional Democrats on the issue. He feared that if Wilson failed to
secure passage of a Philippine bill that session of Congress, then Republicans would be
able to exploit the issue in the 1916 presidential election.120 In July, Hitchcock, following
considerable prodding by Wilson and Quezon, arranged for a compromise measure to be
adopted. Republicans insisted upon retaining provisions of the Hitchcock bill
strengthening the hand of the American governor general while Democrats urged
retention of the preamble of the second Jones bill. After some inevitable legislative delay,
the Senate passed the measure on August 16 with the House following its lead two days
latenm

On August 29, 1916, Wilson signed into law the second organic act of the
Philippines in the presence of a number of army and navy ofﬁcers as well as several
members of Congress. After laying pen aside, the president declared: “The Philippine bill
excites peculiar feelings in me, because there have been times when the people of the
Philippine Islands doubted our intention to be liberally just to them. I hope and believe
that this bill is a sufficient earnest to them of our real intentions.” Clearly, Wilson hoped
that passage of the Jones act would put an end to any further debate in Washington and

Manila about his nation-building program in the Philippines. Thereafter, the United States

 

“9 Cable, Quezon to Osmeﬂa, May 2, 1916, Quezon Papers, BHL, reel 5.
'20 Letter, Baker to Wilson, May 3, 1916, BIA Records, File 4325/236.

121 Congressional Record, 64th Congress, 1st Session, 12732, 12844, and Cable [Conﬁdential],
McIntyre to Harrison, September 1, 1916, BIA Records, File 4325/ 263-270. See also, Stanley, A Nation in
the Making, 224-225.

280

would remain committed to a strictly Burkean policy of “gradually extending to . . .
[Filipinos] genuine self-govemment and control of their own affairs.”122
In another address delivered in Topeka while on the campaign trail for re—election,
Wilson reminded his audience in less lofty terms that the object of the Jones act had been
twofold: ﬁrst, it sought to end America’s longtime policy of drift and evasion concerning
the Philippines’ future political status by pledging the United States to a policy of
eventual independence; and second, it mandated the reorganization of the Philippine
government, replacing the commission government, which had governed the islands since
1901, with one that placed more responsibility in the hands of Filipinos. Thus, the
president concluded, “just as soon as we feel that they can take care of their own affairs
without our direct interference and protection, the ﬂag of the United States will again be
honored by the fulﬁllment of a promise.”123 Wilson also indicated in this campaign
speech that passage of the Jones act possessed serious implications not only for
cultivating the right kind of democracy in the Philippines but also for his emerging
wartime diplomacy. Before passage of the Philippine bill, he declared, America could
only claim to be the “trustees” of the Filipino people; with the bill’s passage, however, ‘

“the entire world can now believe it as do the Filipinos.”124

 

‘22 Wilson, Address, August 29, 1916, PWW, XXXVIII, 101-102. Quotation on 102.
'23 Wilson, Address, October 7, 1916, ibid., 211-213.

'24 Ibid. Quotation on 213.

281

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