But McKinley now argued that the American people had spoken on the Philippine issue and favored his policy. In his view, that implied support also for the large army. When the army bill came up in the House, however, opposition arose not only from Democrats but from some maverick Republicans, most notably the independent-minded Massachusetts representative Samuel McCall, a lawyer and former journalist who had given the administration fits on the Puerto Rican tariff issue. Now he argued that the country didn’t need such a large standing army and couldn’t afford one in any event. Moreover he opposed giving any president that much power. Better, he said, to adopt a Philippine policy like the U.S. Cuban policy—giving the islands a promise of independence on a clear timetable: “Let us tell them that we will aid them for one year or for five if need be in setting up a Government of their own symbolized by their own flag.” Democrats cheered McCall’s speech.
Though the measure passed the House largely along party lines, it ran into a groundswell of opposition from a group of Senate Republicans who aligned with Democrats to put the bill in jeopardy. At one point the measure appeared so beleaguered, with the army’s reduction-in-force deadline looming, that McKinley threatened to call a special session of Congress if the army bill didn’t pass in the current session. Under adjournment pressure, lawmakers hastily hammered out a temporary 100,000-troop authorization, divided as the president wished between regulars and volunteers. There would be no special session.
The army legislation included two other major elements: a measure giving the president full “military, civil, and judicial powers necessary to govern the Philippine Islands” (the Spooner amendment) and a measure by Connecticut’s senator Orville Platt declaring that the United States would not leave Cuba until the new government there accepted certain conditions favorable to the United States.
The Platt measure threatened to blow up into a full-scale conflict with Cuban leaders engaged in the delicate task of writing a government charter at a constitutional convention in Havana. Convention delegates naturally didn’t like having conditions imposed upon their efforts. The requirements included a proscription against any treaties or engagements with other powers that could threaten Cuban independence; a recognized right of the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs if necessary to preserve the island’s independence and societal stability; a requirement that the new Cuban government refrain from assuming debt that could swamp its public finances; and a U.S. prerogative to acquire land for naval stations.
For many Cuban officials laboring to form an independent government and create a new society, this didn’t seem like full independence at all. But it wasn’t difficult to see why the McKinley administration and Congress considered the Platt conditions necessary to hedge against island chaos that could threaten stability in the Caribbean and undermine U.S. regional interests. America certainly couldn’t ignore the reality that, if Cuba fell into hostile hands, not only would U.S. Caribbean hegemony be at risk but so would the country’s isthmian canal project. The imperatives that Washington sought to impose on the emergent Cuban government, constituting a kind of big brother status, represented another foray into the realm of noncolonial imperialism, applying military, economic, and diplomatic power to get other nations to bend to U.S. desires. Ultimately it was about America’s perceived imperative of protecting and maintaining its sphere of influence, codified in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and expanded with the Spanish-American War.
The Cuban constitutional convention delegates served notice on February 16 that they would not allow the United States to establish a naval station on the island. Some days later, when the final document was ready for signature, one top delegate, Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, refused to sign because a copy was to be sent to U.S. military governor Leonard Wood for U.S. review. “Cuba is now independent, and I can see no reason for sending this Constitution to the United States for acceptance,” declared Cisneros. As colleagues sought to persuade him to sign, one reminded him, “We are all Cubans, Senor.”
“Yes,” shot back Cisneros, “when the time comes to fight the Americans, we will fight them together.”
The last thing McKinley needed was another war in Cuba like the one he was fighting on Luzon. Even if he were inclined to compromise on the matter, which he wasn’t, the Platt Amendment precluded any U.S. military withdrawal from Cuba before the congressional conditions were met. Still, McKinley wanted to avoid any incendiary action that could generate civic anger in Cuba. On March 2, Navy Secretary Long called Cortelyou to say three U.S. warships were scheduled to stop in Havana on a routine visit. Should they proceed? McKinley responded, “Tell the Secretary of the Navy not to have the battleships stop at Havana now.”
On February 27, the constitutional delegates in Havana approved a series of amendments that generally acceded to most of the U.S. conditions, while adding a call for reciprocal trade relations between the two countries. But they pointedly refused to accept any U.S. naval base. The convention president told General Wood on March 1 that the delegates might simply dissolve rather than accept such an assault on Cuban sovereignty. But when the U.S. Congress adjourned on March 3, the Platt Amendment stood as the law of the land and couldn’t be changed until Congress reconvened the following December. “Briefly stated,” explained the Washington Post, “the expectation in Washington is that the Cuban convention will accept the conditions laid down by the American Congress eventually, if not in the immediate future, and that the Cuban delegates will be given to understand that the action of Congress was final.” With Congress recessed and the Cuban commission continuing its work, the issue was kicked over till later in the year.
The Philippine issue remained very much alive, however. Days after the election, MacArthur issued a status report that “cannot be called highly encouraging,” as the New York Times described it. MacArthur said that Aguinaldo’s bedraggled army had been replaced by guerrilla units; that this had compelled the distribution of American forces to numerous locations over a wide territory; that the antiguerrilla effort remained difficult and dangerous; and that he hadn’t made substantial progress in suppressing the guerrillas, though their losses had been heavy. Clearly the military operation was far from over. The news wasn’t all bad, however. On December 3, some 2,200 rebels relinquished their arms and swore allegiance to the United States. The first political party to organize under the American flag recognized U.S. sovereignty over the islands. By mid-January, several insurgent leaders had surrendered, and Taft, from his perch as head of McKinley’s Philippine Commission, filed a favorable report. “Conditions rapidly improving,” he told Root. “Rifles, officers, privates are being captured or surrendered daily in considerable numbers in North and South Luzon. Same condition in Panay, where more than 35,000 have taken oath of allegiance. Insurgent forces completely scattered.”
It was a paradox. Taft was right that things were improving. And the Times’s interpretation of the MacArthur report also was right: the guerrilla forces, while beleaguered, were far from being wiped out. There were too many of them, fueled by too much civic passion. The Taft Commission sought to explain this paradox in a voluminous January report revising its earlier prediction that the insurgency would collapse within sixty days of the U.S. election. Clearly, said the commissioners, it would take longer. It also would take a greater U.S. effort at encouraging the native population through civic enlightenment, for the vast majority of Filipinos lacked sufficient education to participate meaningfully in any transition to self-government. But most of them wanted peace “and are entirely willing to accept the establishment of a Government under the supremacy of the United States,” particularly with the “policy of conciliation” that was emerging under Taft’s leadership. A lingering problem, though, was insurgency intimidation. Anyone suspected of collaborating with the Americans was “immediately marked for assassination.” It was, said the commission, “a Mafia on a very large scale.”
Reading this, McKinley concluded he needed, along with MacArth
ur’s military operation, a greater civilian effort to foster education, self-government, and economic progress. On January 25 he sent the commission’s report to the Senate, along with accompanying documents and a cover memorandum from Root recommending creation of a civil government capable of fostering “peaceful industrial progress” on the islands. Endorsing the concept, the president asked for legislation “under which the government of the islands may have authority to assist in their peaceful industrial development in the directions indicated by the Secretary of War.” When Congress passed the army bill, with the Spooner Amendment, he had the authority he needed. The key person in his plan was Judge Taft, whose managerial talents and compassionate approach to civilian rule, the president believed, would accelerate the pacification program. The imperious MacArthur didn’t like the compassionate approach any more than he liked sharing power with a civilian authority. But Taft enjoyed the president’s confidence and support, and his philosophy ultimately prevailed.
* * *
IN EARLY DECEMBER, a month after the election, the Isthmian Canal Commission, known as the Walker Commission, issued a 17,000-word report stating its unanimous opinion that “the most practicable and feasible route for an isthmian canal, under the control, management, and ownership of the United States, is that known as the Nicaragua route.” The price tag was huge, $200,540,000, far more than any previous estimate and some $50 million more than the proposed Panama route, which already had been partially excavated by the failed French project. But those advantages were offset, declared the commission, by shorter distances between major ports via the Nicaragua route and also the fact that the Nicaraguans were far more willing to grant U.S. ownership over the canal and contiguous land than Colombia would grant within its Panama territory. If the canal was to be owned and controlled by America, Nicaragua represented the best bet.
Release of the Walker Commission report removed one obstacle thwarting U.S. lawmakers from moving forward on the project via the highly popular Hepburn bill. The other was disposition of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty designed to terminate the old Clayton-Bulwer requirement that the United States and Britain cooperate in the construction and maintenance of any isthmian canal and that neither could exclusively control it. Hay still chafed at the action of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his friend Henry Cabot Lodge in stripping out language that prohibited the United States from fortifying the canal and keeping out hostile ships in wartime. But Hay and McKinley reluctantly had conceded defeat on that matter.
The two Senate floor amendments continued to rankle the two men, however. The amendments declared that the new treaty superseded the old Clayton-Bulwer language and the United States would proceed without inviting involvement from other nations. Even senators who favored such language, reported the New York Times, conceded that it would render the Hay-Pauncefote negotiations “absurd, void, and of no effect.” Hay was aghast. “If Great Britain should now reject the Treaty,” he wrote to his ambassador in London, Joseph Choate, “the general opinion of mankind should justify her in it.” Even before the Senate’s treaty mutilation, he complained to McKinley about the congressional frenzy for action on the Hepburn bill while Clayton-Bulwer remained in effect—“that is, to repudiate and violate a solemn obligation to a friendly power when that power is perfectly ready and willing to release us from it.”
On December 20, the Senate ratified the treaty, with the three amendments, by a vote of 55 to 18. In receiving it, McKinley felt his only appropriate action was to send it to Britain via Ambassador Pauncefote for London’s reaction. The Times of London viewed that approach as cowardly, as “shifting a dangerous responsibility on the British Government”: “If the Hay-Pauncefote treaty is not adopted in a form acceptable to us, we shall stand quietly upon our indubitable rights under the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, rights which cannot be affected by any action the American Senate may choose to take.” The British government agreed. Without rejecting the revised treaty outright, it simply allowed the time for ratification to expire, thus keeping in place the old Clayton-Bulwer language. But when Ambassador Choate asked Lord Salisbury about prospects for reopening the negotiations with an aim of somehow reconciling the differences, the prime minister readily agreed. He signaled his flexibility by stipulating only that all nations must be charged equally for canal access.
Thus did Secretary Hay get a second chance to apply his famous diplomatic skills to the even greater challenge of picking up the pieces from the initial failed effort. But now the autocratic and fastidious secretary would have to apply those skills to bringing those pesky senators along as he proceeded with his delicate negotiations with the British.
* * *
AS CONGRESS RUSHED to adjournment, the president won a small victory with passage of legislation to reduce, by some $40 million, internal taxes enacted in 1898 to pay for the war. These were largely excise taxes on tobacco, cigars, cigarettes, and beer, as well as on various financial transactions. But now the war was over and, as Secretary Gage reported on November 17, the government’s budget surplus for the current fiscal year would be $80 million. McKinley was thwarted, however, in his effort to get a controversial measure to provide federal subsidies to the shipping industry. A favorite hobbyhorse of Hanna, the bill died in the late-session legislative crunch.
* * *
AT 9:29 P.M. on January 22, Queen Victoria died after sixty-three years on the throne. The president sent a wreath that a Times of London correspondent said “would have compelled the attention of the least observant” because of its “magnificence and superb beauty.” The Times writer added that the wreath, combined with a “lovely cross” presented by Ambassador Choate on behalf of the American people, represented “one of the most beautiful sights that even the Queen’s funeral produced, for, here at the very side of the spot reserved for the coffin, were the tributes of those who represent the nation to which we are more nearly allied by origin, language, and sentiment than any other in the wide world.”
Such sentiments from a writer representing a newspaper that never hesitated to criticize U.S. policy in the most rancorous terms whenever it diverged from British interests, signified an important development of the new century: the maturing relationship between the two Anglo-Saxon nations, one an established global power, the other a frisky newcomer on the international scene. In circumstances that easily could have produced competitive anxieties and frictions, the two nations were moving into a period of growing amity and collaboration. Britain indeed welcomed America’s global emergence, as Lord Salisbury made clear at a London banquet a day after McKinley’s reelection triumph. Rising from his seat next to Ambassador Choate, the prime minister said, “We believe that the cause which has won is the cause of civilization and commercial honor. . . . Therefore we claim that we have as much right to rejoice in what has taken place as the distinguished gentleman who sits at my side.” Then, recognizing he had transgressed protocol in commenting on the internal politics of another nation, he expressed the hope that the ambassador would forgive him “for expressing the supreme satisfaction with which all of us have heard of what has recently taken place in the United States.”
But of course not all Americans embraced His Lordship’s view. Senator Pettigrew, with his usual satiric jocularity, proposed an amendment to the army appropriations bill to read, “And the title of the President shall hereafter be the President of the so-called republic of the United States and the Emperor of the Islands of the Sea.” Marion Butler of North Carolina asked with similar droll intent if the coming inaugural ceremonies would reflect this imperial stature.
“Yes,” replied Pettigrew, “everything will be conducted with due pomp.”
Chandler of Vermont, more of a McKinley man than his two colleagues, suggested that the three of them “should not feel concerned about such matters” inasmuch as all three had lost their seats in the November elections, while the subject of their badinage had scored a definitive political victory.
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Buffalo
“HIS WILL, NOT OURS, BE DONE”
As McKinley’s second inauguration approached, Washington swelled with people and patriotic enthusiasm. By March 2, two days before the celebration, brass bands and military units began converging upon the festively decorated capital, filling the air with martial sounds and marching commands. The growing crowds discovered that restaurant meals now cost up to 50 percent more than usual, and window seats along the parade route fetched $15 to $20 “for the cheaper windows, and out of all reason for the higher-priced and most comfortable places of observation,” reported the New York Times. Volunteers with the Committee on Public Comfort, readily identifiable by their red badges, met arrivals at train stations and guided them to rooming houses. A bed in a sleeping hall could be obtained for fifty cents a night, room and board for $1.50.
“Is 50 cents a night the cheapest?” one wayworn traveler asked a Public Comfort volunteer, noting that twenty-five cents was a reasonable expectation in his hometown.
“That’s about the cheapest on the list,” was the reply.
President McKinley Page 54
