Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”
[F]or George Dewey, who was used to being in charge and being respected, revered even, this was an unaccustomed and uncomfortable situation.
Just a few years earlier, he was one of the most famous Americans. Dewey gained fame as commander of the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Squadron in 1898 when it crushed the Spanish navy in Manila Bay at the outset of the Spanish-American War. Since then, he had been treated as a hero. Upon his return to the United States, he was celebrated with parades and banquets. His hometown of Montpelier declared Dewey Day and an estimated 40,000 people turned out for the festivities. Dewey memorabilia began to appear nationally. His image graced prints, medallions and dinner plates. People whispered about him as presidential material.
But now Dewey was under attack. Sitting in a U.S. Senate hearing room in 1902, he faced a barrage of questions laced with innuendo. Senators who were members of the Committee on the Philippines wanted to know what role he had played in the U.S. conquest of the islands, which had started as part of a “splendid little war,” as Secretary of State John Hay had called the Spanish-American War.
But now, four years after Spain surrendered the Philippines, the United States was mired in a bloody occupation. Their former allies in the fight against Spain wanted independence and were trying to force the United States off the island. The struggle would kill thousands of American soldiers and damage the United States’ international reputation when reports emerged about its harsh interrogation practices, which many considered torture.
Like the senators who questioned him closely, Dewey, now an admiral, must have wondered how things had gone so wrong. It had all started so promisingly. Dewey, who had attended Norwich University before graduating from the Naval Academy, had seen fierce fighting while serving during the Civil War under Adm. David Farragut. The Battle of Manila Bay was something completely different.
On the morning of May 1, 1898, Dewey’s squadron steamed into Manila Bay and methodically began to pick apart Spain’s outdated fleet anchored there. After a lunch break, Dewey’s men finished the job. Dewey lost one man, to a heart attack.
Once the shooting stopped, so too did Spanish control of the Philippines. With the harbor seized, Dewey told the senators, the roughly 15,000 Spanish troops in Manila had no way to get supplies. The Spanish governor-general of Manila knew he must eventually surrender. He sent Dewey a message saying he would do so once Dewey lobbed a few shells into the city, so he could surrender with honor.
But Dewey delayed. He wasn’t prepared for such a quick and total victory. He didn’t have enough men to control Manila. He had to await the arrival of Army troops. To keep the Spanish hemmed in, he turned to Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino rebel leader.
The Americans had made contact with Aguinaldo in Hong Kong shortly before Dewey’s squadron sailed for Manila. Dewey sent an envoy, Cmdr. E.P. Wood, captain of the American man-of-war Petrel, to meet the rebel leader. Aguinaldo, who had led an earlier armed revolt against the Spanish, was in Hong Kong after accepting exile in return for a cash settlement from Spain. According to Aguinaldo, Wood urged him to return and help free the islands.
Aguinaldo feared that Filipinos would merely be exchanging colonial powers. Wood tried to reassure him: “The United States, my dear general, is a great and rich nation and neither needs nor desires colonies,” Wood told him.
Aguinaldo was elated. But he asked that the pledge be put in writing. Wood said he would ask Dewey, who he said had the power to make such a guarantee. Before Aguinaldo had time to pursue the matter, however, he was forced to travel to Singapore to settle a legal dispute with another rebel leader who wanted his share of the settlement money. Aguinaldo fought the suit, arguing that the money should be saved to finance rebel operations if Spain reneged on its pledge to rule with a lighter hand.
In Singapore, Aguinaldo learned from U.S. Consul General E. Spencer Pratt that the United States had declared war on Spain. “Ally yourself with America and you will surely defeat the Spaniards!” Pratt said. Aguinaldo was jubilant and again he asked for the written guarantee. Like Wood, Pratt told him that only Dewey could make those assurances and he was in the Philippines.
After the Battle of Manila Bay, Dewey summoned Aguinaldo. Boarding Dewey’s flagship, Aguinaldo was greeted with honors befitting a general, he recalled. Dewey remembered the meeting differently, saying that Aguinaldo had received no special honors. What they did agree on was that Dewey told him to “go ashore and start your army.” Dewey contributed about 100 rifles and a large supply of seized ammunition.
By Dewey’s estimate, Aguinaldo raised an army of 25,000. The force was enough to take Manila, but Dewey made the rebels wait. The fall of Manila was a job for U.S. troops, he said. Dewey bemoaned the shortage of American soldiers to finish the job on the day of his naval victory. “If we had had 5,000 troops to have occupied the city that day, we would have had no war (with the rebels),” Dewey testified to the Senate. Instead, he had been forced to rely on Filipino rebels for help.
Dewey said he first heard of the Filipinos’ desire for independence when Aguinaldo invited him to a ceremony declaring their independence on July 15, 1898 – a month before U.S. troops took Manila. Dewey declined the invitation, apparently not wanting to sanction the event. But he sent Washington a copy of the declaration and offered his tacit support of the idea: “In my opinion these people are superior in intelligence and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races.”
Dewey testified, however, that he believed he had no power to recognize a Filipino republic and that anarchy ruled. “There was a reign of terror,” he said, “there was no government.”
Dewey told the Senate committee that he viewed Aguinaldo and the other Filipino rebels as nuisances and distractions from his work, when he thought of them at all. In fact, Dewey said, he believed Aguinaldo was fomenting revolution in order to get rich.
Democratic Sen. Edward Carmack of Tennessee asked Dewey why he would trust a man he viewed as untrustworthy. “Then it is a fact, is it not,” Carmack asked rhetorically, “that you took a man to the Philippines, aided him and encouraged him to organize an army over which you were to have little or no control, a man who had no higher object than to get rich by plundering the people or by betraying them?”
Insulted, or feeling rhetorically boxed in, Dewey responded, “I won’t answer that.”
When it became clear that the Americans intended to stay in the Philippines, Aguinaldo organized a rebel force of up to 100,000 troops. The United States countered by stationing as many as 126,000 soldiers on the islands. Vicious fighting erupted. U.S. commanders accused Filipinos of committing atrocities. In a reprisal for a surprise attack in which 50 U.S. soldiers were killed, and apparently mutilated, an American commander ordered his men to kill any Filipino in the area over the age of 10.
Reports of U.S. soldiers using what they called the “water cure” – an interrogation technique that involved pouring water down the throats of captives to cause pain and simulate drowning – appeared in the world press, much to the embarrassment of American leaders. Indeed, testimony at the Senate hearings focused extensively on this practice, which some senators dubbed torture.
The rebels suffered a major blow when Aguinaldo was captured in 1901 and forced to swear allegiance to the United States. But Filipinos continued to fight in large numbers for another year. Even after most of the rebels laid down their guns, the United States continued to fight the remainder for another decade. The war for control of the Philippines cost the lives of 4,000 American soldiers and an estimated 20,000 Filipino rebels. Those losses were dwarfed by civilian deaths. The fighting, and related disease outbreaks and malnutrition, killed anywhere from 250,000 to 1 million Filipinos.
Dewey, who had played a major role in U.S. Navy planning since 1900, must have been stunned by the duration of the war and the tenacity of the Filipinos. He had apparently agreed with John Hay’s assessment that the war would be splendid and short.
“The Filipinos were our friends, assisting us,” Dewey testified of the days following the Battle of Manila Bay. “They were doing our work. I believed then that they would be so thankful and delighted to get rid of the Spanish that they would accept us with open arms.”
