The Battle of Manila Bay and the prayer of an American president

 

By Noralyn Onto Dudt

"To educate the Filipinos and to uplift and Christianize them,” was what Pres. William McKinley announced in an interview by James Rusling of "The Christian Advocate" for annexing the Philippines in 1898. Quite ironic indeed as the people of the Philippines had been Christian for about three centuries before McKinley and his supporters got the idea. Free access to modern public education was made possible through the Spanish enactment of the Spanish Education Decree of Dec 20, 1863 by Queen Isabella II. And although public education—the kind that we are familiar with—was not yet in place, the Jesuits and the Dominican Orders had built parochial schools all over the archipelago. The University of Santo Tomas in Manila, a pontifical university was founded in 1611, about a decade before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

For all its bad and harsh beginnings, American tutelage had its good points.  The "sentimental imperialists," as the historian Peter Stanley has aptly called them, brought with them education, health and public works programs.  Philippine Independence was guaranteed when the "tutors" deemed that the Filipinos were ready for self-rule.  It was finally granted after liberation from the Japanese in World War ll.  Rule from Washington gave rise to a hopeless fascination with American mass culture among Filipinos which came to fuse with Spanish Catholicism, upper-crust elitism and Malay/Castilian mores.

It was on June 12, 1898 when a young generalissimo named Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed the independence of the Philippines from three centuries of colonial rule by Spain. Just a month before, the American Rear Adm. Dewey's squadron had destroyed General Patricio Montojo's antiquated Spanish fleet in the Battle of Manila Bay. Aguinaldo's nationalists soldiers were already besieging the Spanish troops inside Manila in the climax of a three-year rebellion.  After a visit by the rebels aboard his flagship, Dewey assured them that firm support was forthcoming from the "cradle of genuine liberty," the United States.

 What ensued was something that no one could have foreseen—not Dewey who was probably anxious to go home to celebrate his victory over the Spanish fleet, nor Aguinaldo who was so optimistic and already planning his new government, nor President McKinley who at first declared that it would be "criminal aggression " for the United States to annex the archipelago.

At the end of the Spanish-American War, pressure on McKinley to annex the Philippines was intense. Americans who advocated annexation evinced a variety of motivations: desire for commercial opportunities in Asia, concern that the Filipinos were incapable of self-rule, and fear that if the United States did not take control of the islands, another power with imperial ambitions such as Germany or Japan would do so.

Naturally, there were arguments to counter those advocates.

Annexing a territory with no plans of statehood was unprecedented and unconstitutional, and that occupying and governing a foreign people without their consent violated the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

Six weeks after Dewey defeated the Spanish Fleet at Manila Bay, a German fleet was standing by, seeking to set up a naval base there. The British, French and Japanese also had similar intentions. And it was this scenario that must have kept McKinley up at night, although he admitted later on that he didn't even know exactly where the Philippines was.

To be clear, the Philippines at the time was not lacking in literacy. There were the "Ilustrados" [the "enlightened," the erudite, the learned] from the middle class who have attained higher education in the "colegios" and have been off to Europe for specialized studies. Dr. Jose Rizal, a renowned ophthalmologist and the most prominent of the Ilustrados inspired the craving for freedom and independence with his novels in Spanish that he   published in Berlin, Germany in 1887.  It was in this period that he attended the University of Heidelberg to further his studies in ophthalmology. Prior to his sojourn in Germany, he was at the Universidad Central de Madrid where he met with the other Ilustrados who had the wisdom not to fight battles in the Philippines but instead went to Spain to lobby for assimilation.  They strongly believed that for Filipinos to have equality under the Spanish system, the Philippines must become a province of Spain.  In addition, they thought that secularizing the parishes would bring more freedom and opportunities for a better life for all citizens. During the three hundred years of Spanish rule, parochial schools were built all over the archipelago.  Pre-Spanish Philippines constituted little kingdoms and fiefdoms that spoke different languages—81 in all—and Spain's strategy of having the churches as the center of religious, political and social life in every población brought unity that became the Islas de Filipinas, or the Philippines, named after King Philip II of Spain.

It seemed that President McKinley had been oblivious to all that history, as we can presume other presidents have been as well. According to the Tribune Chronicle of his hometown Niles in the state of Ohio, McKinley had devout evangelical faith" and his Methodist faith deeply affected him throughout his life.  His biography states that he had been fatigued with fighting wars. He served in the Civil War and it was under his administration that the Spanish- American War was fought.  "I have seen the dead piled up, and did not want to see another," he claimed.

In an interview by James Rusling for The Christian Advocate, the president admitted, "when I realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps, I confess I did not know what to do with them. I sought counsel from all sides, Democrats as well as Republicans, but got little help. I thought first we would take only Manila, then Luzon, then the other islands perhaps... I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight, and am not ashamed to tell you gentlemen that I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for guidance more than one night. And one night...it came to me this way. I don't know how it was, but it came."

McKinley implied that he could not "leave the Filipinos to themselves as they were unfit for self-governance and they would have anarchy and misrule, worse than Spain was." And that "giving them back to Spain would be cowardly and dishonorable." And there was nothing left for him to do but "take them all, and to educate the Filipinos and civilized and Christianize them and by God's grace, do the very best we could by them as our fellowman for whom Christ died."

With that, President McKinley said he "went to sleep and slept soundly," and the next morning he sent for the chief engineer (the map maker) of the War Department and told him to "put the Philippines on the map of the United States" pointing to a wall in his office, "and there they will stay while I am president. "

This is one of the most remarkable religious statements ever made by a sitting president, even in an age when people were more open with displaying their personal faith.

McKinley saw America's unexpected opportunity in the Philippines as a sign from God—and set the United States on a new course of global influence.

Unfortunately, such influence did not come easy and cheap.  The outgunned Filipinos adopted guerilla tactics and the U.S Army responded by rounding peasants into "reconcentration camps," declaring entire areas battle zones, in which no distinctions were made between combatants and civilians.  My hometown of Batac in the Ilocos region was burned to the ground. The Batac-born General Artemio Ricarte refused to surrender to the Americans.  Today his statue stands tall in the middle of the city plaza, a reminder of that "dark" history.

There was much suffering on both sides—at least 4,200 American soldiers and 16,000 Filipino soldiers died. Historians debated the scale of civilian deaths with estimates ranging from 200,000 to almost a million.

Those "good points" are still there: a democratic form of government is in place, the public schools (the American system of education) that the United States instituted to keep a linguistically-diverse nation united is intact.  Not only is there a 96.8 % literacy rate but an immense number of the citizenry have advanced degrees.

Whether McKinley and his supporters were right in their decision to annex the Philippines is up for debate. I believe that he was sincere in his prayers for the Lord's guidance. But what about Generalissimo Aguinaldo and his men? What did they pray for? This is open to debate as well.

 

Noralyn Onto Dudt has always read history books with fascination since childhood and has developed a passion for writing historical narratives. She lives in the Washington suburb of North Bethesda, a 20- minute drive from the same White House where President McKinley 123 years ago, walked its floor for many nights, got down on his knees and uttered a prayer.